Excerpt from Triumphant Plutocracy: The Story of American Public Life From 1870 to 1920 The American people should know the truth about American public life. They have been lied to so much and hoodwinked so often that it would seem only fair for them to have at least one straight-from-the shoulder statement concerning this government of the people, by the people and for the people, about whose inner workings the people know almost nothing. The common people of the United States, like the same class of people in every other country, mean well, but they are ill-informed. Floundering about in their ignorance, they are tricked and robbed by those who have the inside information and who therefore know how to take advantage of every turn in the wheel of fortune. The people voted for Roosevelt be cause he talked of trust-busting at the same time that he was sanctioning the purchase of the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company by the Steel Trust. They sup ported Wilson because he kept us out of war at the same time that Wilson was making preparations to enter the war. The rulers can negotiate secret treaties at home and abroad. The people, knowing nothing of either the theory or the practice of secret diplomacy, commit all sorts of follies for which they themselves must later foot the bill. At the present moment the American people are being taught Americanism - taught by the same gentry who are making away with billions of dollars, sometimes legally and sometimes without any sanc tion in the law. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.