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Home  »  Respectfully Quoted  »  Edgar Lee Masters (1869–1950)

Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.

 
NUMBER: 1452
AUTHOR: Edgar Lee Masters (1869–1950)
QUOTATION: Beware of the man who rises to power
From one suspender.
ATTRIBUTION: EDGAR LEE MASTERS,John Hancock Otis,” Spoon River Anthology, p. 123 (1915, reprinted 1916).

In this poem, the rich John Hancock Otis describes a man “born in a shanty and beginning life as a water carrier … then section hand … afterwards foreman … who rose to the superintendency of the railroad” as “a veritable slave driver, grinding the faces of labor, and a bitter enemy of democracy.”
SUBJECTS: Power