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.”
