Overflight, 54

“We have the greedy trusts, and they are operating under conditions that enable them to appropriate the products of our industry and create wealth which is concentrated into the hands of a few who not only levy a most burdensome toll on the present generations but possess the legal privilege and apparently the opportunity to enforce the same conditions upon future generations. … In no case has government so signally neglected its function as in its failure to issue money and control the charges made for its use. Banks and individuals have been permitted to set up a system for financial action which is supported by credits and the products of the people’s industries. Through its use they are enabled to collect exorbitant dividends, interest and profits on what they do not produce.
From the testimony given by George F. Baker (President of the First National Bank of New York City) before the committee appointed to investigate the Money Trust, we learned that the operations of a single bank produced, in fifty years profits equal to $86,000,000, or 172 times its original capital. If that bank continues to do business and is allowed to pile up profit in that geometrical progression, it alone, in less than 100 years, will extort from the people all of their property and that bank is but one of the 30,000 banks operating on an uneconomic system.
The total capitalization … of 30,000 banks in 1913 was considerable over $4,000,000,000 and dividends compounded on that sum, as is the custom of banks, will, if allowed to do so by the indifference of the people to their own rights, consume the balance of the nation's wealth.
The accumulated holdings of all the trusts that centralize wealth would immensely reduce the time it will take for the interest and dividends on these holdings to absorb all of our present property, and all of what we earn in the future …
So, you see there is competition even between the trusts, and this competition is resulting in their absorption of each other. Anyone with a little imagination and reasoning power can look ahead and see what would be the outcome of that competition if the interests are allowed to carry it to its finish. …