This beneficent and generous
association of the weak for the sake of the weakest did not accomplish
itself fully till the baleful instinct of the Accumulation had reduced the
monopolies to one vast monopoly, till the stronger had devoured the weaker
among its members, and the supreme agent stood at the head of our affairs,
in everything but name, our imperial ruler. We had hugged so long the
delusion of each man for himself that we had suffered all realty to be
taken from us. The Accumulation owned the land as well as the mines under
it and the shops over it; the Accumulation owned the seas and the ships
that sailed the seas, and the fish that swam in their depths; it owned
transportation and distribution, and the wares and products that were to
be carried to and fro; and, by a logic irresistible and inexorable, the
Accumulation _was_, and we were _not_.
"But the Accumulation, too, had forgotten something. It had found it so
easy to buy legislatures and courts that it did not trouble itself about
the polls. It left us the suffrage, and let us amuse ourselves with the
periodical election of the political clay images which it manipulated and
moulded to any shape and effect at its pleasure.
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