All this waste and robbery of the people's property must be stopped! (Applause) The hand of waste or theft must not be strengthened by any legal technicality that plays into the hands of special interests and out of the hands of the American people! (Great applause)
Had we kept all the property that belonged to all the people, and compelled special interests who exploited it to pay us a reasonable price for it, that income today would be paying most of our National expenses. Our resources would have been developed and not exhausted, and our whole material evolution would have been rational and sound instead of unbalanced and defective. Had this been our policy from the start, we would have enjoyed all the benefits from our natural resources, and our children today would inherit colossal National wealth and small National burdens instead of the special interests enjoying all the benefits of the people's property and _their_ children inheriting colossal fortunes and small private burdens. (Applause)
The Nation must keep and administer for the benefit of all the people the property yet remaining to the people (applause). Every State should help and not hinder the Nation, in doing this great duty (applause). Every State should administer the public property within it, and belonging to it, for the public good. Every municipality should keep and administer the property belonging to it for the public good; and both State and municipality should aid the Nation in keeping and administering for the people the property that belongs to _all_ of them.
I want to give you an illustration, very concrete: Many of New York's inconceivably vast fortunes have been expanded by corrupt councils selling watercourses and other property for a mere song to private owners. Had New York kept the property which belonged to the city, instead of squandering it to already multi-millionaires, the city's debt today would not be so vast--and her great private fortunes would not be so vast either (applause). The people's taxes would have been less, and the gigantic unearned incomes of the heirs of great wealth would have been less (applause). And as between the two, the wiser policy have been for the city to keep the property that belonged to all the people of the city instead of selling it sometimes for an infamous price to private owners whose vast wealth, accumulating by the work of the city itself, has raised up in the midst of the American people one of the great questions of the age.