"And it wasn’t that these men were getting rich because they were good or smart businessmen. Instead they were buying politicians, corrupting the Constitution, and brazenly destroying their smaller business competitors.
President Cleveland continued:
We discover that the fortunes realized by our manufacturers are no longer solely the reward of sturdy industry and enlightened foresight, but that they result from the discriminating favor of the Government and are largely based on undue exactions from the masses of our people. The gulf between employers and the employed is constantly widening, and classes are rapidly forming, one comprising the very rich and powerful, while in another are found the toiling poor.
As we view the achievements of aggregated capital, we discover the existence of trusts, combinations, and monopolies, while the citizen is struggling far in the rear or is trampled to death beneath an iron heel. Corporations, which should be the carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people, are fast becoming the people’s masters.
Somebody had finally said it out loud. In particular, and—for the time— shockingly, a president had finally said it out loud. The newspapers and the early union movements were both loudly protesting the “iron heel” of the corporate behemoths and the wealthy men who ran them."
http://www.truth-out.org/unequal-protection-peoples-masters/1304366817
The whole book is well worth reading:
http://www.truthout.org/thom-hartmann-unequal-protection
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