“They control the people through the people’s own money.” (p. 256) “I sympathize with the poor, but the number of poor who are to be sympathized with is very small…let us remember there is not a poor person in the United States who was not made poor by his own shortcomings.” (p. 262). The early capitalists established the rules in such a way that it would create a never-ending dependence of the rich by the poor. The big banks had the people’s money, who voluntarily contributed to the establishment and continuation of corporate capitalism. Little did they know that they would soon be putting their finances and future in the hands of men like J.P. Morgan, who only wanted power and did whatever he deemed necessary to obtain it, including selling rifles that would shoot off the thumbs of the soldiers using them.

The poor lived in a system of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich. They would work for meager wages that would barely sustain their families. They would die doing the dirty work while the rich sat in their mansions, unsoiled. They increased the wealth of bankers by emptying their own pockets and willingly giving them the capital to support the system that oppressed them. This system was created by the rich, but fed by the poor. Unfortunately, once the Carnegies and the Rockefellers of that era claimed dominance of the nation’s wealth and created monopolies, there was little the poor could do to go against it or they would face financial starvation. In the end, both sides are to blame for the system that destroyed the lives of many during industrialization. The rich for creating such a system that deprived the poor and reduced them to mere tools to be thrown away once deemed useless, and the poor for feeding such a system with their blood, sweat, tears, and money.