a place to scratch.
 It’s a Scourge.
 Finance is a demoralizing influence which makes wealth producers give up their earn­ings to a species of four-flushers and then cheer them for taking it.
 It is a self-inflicted hypnosis that makes them happy over the success of the rogues who swindle them out of their property.
 It is a satisfying delusion that the fellow who ensnares them should be praised for placing garbage cans at convenient street corners where they can find a bone to gnaw upon.
 It is a hallucination that a lump of dead metal is of more value in the universe than God's living creatures.
 It is the suction power that forces man to give away his soul for the promise of a hand­ful of gold.
 It is the dope that robs man of his reason and makes him cheat, lie, steal, beg, murder, kidnap, blackmail and commit suicide.
 It is a shadow that gets man to cast his own children into the jaws of the Devil while trying to grab it for himself.
 Finance is a three-shell game in which the Mastodon Slicker stands behind a table and so shifts the shells and manipulates his hook: that the people become obfuscated and don’t know whether they reside in a palace or in a gas house.
 Sooner or later they discover however, that it is a gas house.
 Figuratively, the big bubbly slicker shows the people a piece of sponge. “This suck-em-up,” says he, “represents a piece of gold which in turn represents everything you own or can earn dur­ing the rest of your lives. As Gold is the es­sence of value, it is too precious for the people to touch or even see, so we keep it in our vaults and let them dream about it.
 “The sponge is the medium of exchange, whereby we transfer your property and earn­ings to the financiers who own the Gold.
 “The shells are labeled money, credit and interest.
 “The inspiration of the game now you see it and now you don't.
 “If you can tell which shell the sponge is under you get another chance.”
 Says the big skin, “once we get the idea into your thick heads that Gold is the base of value, there is no way that you can get it out again and we can do as we like with you thereafter. It makes you feel like an inmate of an opium joint.
 “We can then make you worship Gold instead of God and commit the most atro­cious crimes in its name. We can turn father against son, mother against daughter, wife against husband. We can turn one into a frenzied maniac who will com­mit murder or we can turn one into a harm­less crank with a delirium for air castles. We can make one lick our boots in the name of Gold.
 “Now as the entire world's supply of Gold has a theoretical value of about Twenty Bil­lions of Dollars and as it takes One Trillion Dollars in money to carry on the world's trade, we can, by controlling the supply of