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private loot, but as public rights to be safeguarded and protected.
    That good, law-abiding corporations and good, well-meaning men cannot correct these wrongs without changing the economic conditions which produce them, has been proved times without number, and only serves to emphasize the fact that the real fight of the people is not to abolish lawbreaking, but to put an end to that lawmaking which is against the public good.
    It is true that the contest looks like an unequal one; that the advantage seems to be entirely on the side of Privilege; that its position appears invulnerable.
    Is there then no hope? Let us see.
    The people’s advance guard has been routed often, and will be time and time again. New recruits must come to the front. As the firing lines are decimated the discontented masses must rush forward to fill the gaps in the ranks. Finally, when we are fighting all along the line , public opinion will be strong enough to drive Privilege out of its last trench.
    Agitation for the right, once set in motion, cannot be stopped. Truth can never lose its power. It presses forward gaining victories, suffering defeats, but losing nothing of momentum, augmenting its strength though seeming to expend it.
    Newspapers controlled by the Interests cannot stop this forward movement, legislatures must yield to it, the courts finally see and respect it and political parties must go with it or be wrecked.
    What more striking example could be cited than the disintegration of the Republican party as shown at the 1910 election, following so closely upon the almost unparalleled vote for its candidate for President?
    Big Business, corrupt bosses, subservient courts, pliant legislatures and an Interest-controlled press may block, delay, apparently check its progress, but these are only surface indications. The deeper currents are all headed in the same direction, and once fairly started nothing can turn them back.
    It is because I believe that the story of my part in this universal movement helps to illustrate the truth of this proposition that I have decided to tell it.
    I am going to show how Privilege fights in the city, the State and the nation, but I shall deal more largely with the city since it is here that the abolition of privilege must begin.
    In the main, the things I shall tell about Cleveland are the things that might be told about any city or state. The source of the evil; the source of the good; the source of the shame and corruption; the contest between opposing economic interests; the alliance among those identified with the franchise corporations on the one hand, and the unorganized people on the other, is the same everywhere.
    Cleveland’s experiences are the experiences that other cities will have in their efforts to be free. Privilege may not be quite as irresistible for them as it was for us, because the people have been gathering strength, party linesare being broken and knowledge of the meaning of Privilege is spreading. Privilege no longer asserts itself with the arrogance of unlimited and unchallenged power as it did a few years ago. The pressure of right is reaching into the higher places. It is disintegrating the classes which have ruled.
    The influences which operated to arouse my interest in the struggle of the people against Privilege are significant only as they show one of the many ways in which our minds are made to meet and grasp these great problems, for, while really sincere investigators arrive at last at the same conclusion, nearly all of us travel different roads to get there.

MY STORY
I
A MONOPOLIST IN THE MAKING
    I WAS born at Blue Spring near Georgetown, Kentucky, July 18, 1854. My father, Albert W. Johnson, and my mother, Helen Loftin, met while attending different schools at the latter place and here they had been married August 4, 1853.
    My mother was born in Jackson, Tenn., the same little town from which my fellow disturber of the public service peace, Judge Ben B. Lindsey of