Politics and Economics
BY THOMAS E. WATSON
“A TALE of Two Cities,” written by the great novelist, Charles Dickens, contains a vivid picture, which shows the relation existing between a nobleman of the Old Order in France and one of the common people.
In that day the streets were narrow. Sidewalks did not separate the space used by those who went on foot from that used by those who went in vehicles. From the houses on the one side to the houses on the other, travel was free to all: those on the ground were ever in danger from those who were in vehicles.
Dickens describes the progress of the carriage of one of the French aristocrats, driven at headlong speed along these narrow streets. It whirled around the corners with a wild rattle and clatter, and with an utter lack of consideration for pedestrians. Women and children scattered, screaming, to get out of its way, and men clutched at one another to escape the danger.
At last, whirling round a corner, by a fountain, one of the wheels of this furiously driven carriage strikes a little child and kills it. Amid the loud cries of those who behold the sickening spectacle the horses rear and plunge and the carriage comes to a standstill. The nobleman looks out and calmly inquires what has gone wrong. He is told that a child has been run over.
A man is bending over the lifeless form, screaming with grief.
“Why does he make that abominable noise?” asks the nobleman.
“Pardon me, Monsieur le Marquis, it was his child,” explains one of the crowd humbly.
“Killed!” screams the father, lifting and extending his arms. “Dead!” he cries.
The Marquis runs his eye over all the rabble, as though they were so many rats come out of their holes. He draws out his purse.
“I do not see why it is that you people won’t take care of yourselves and children? One or the other of you are always in the way.How do I know that you have not injured one of my horses?”
With this he throws a gold coin on the ground beside the father of the child.
The crazed parent continues to scream: “Dead! Dead!”
As the Marquis is driving away, the gold coin which he had thrown to the ground is flung back into the carriage, and falls rattling at his feet.
“Hold!” says the Marquis. “Hold the horses! Who threw that coin?”
The crowd makes no answer. No blouse-clad man dare look him in the eye.
“You dogs!” says the Marquis smoothly; “I would ride over any of you very willingly and exterminate you from the earth. If I knew who it was that threw that coin I would have the brigand crushed under the wheels.”
So cowed were they, so long andhard had been their experience of what such a man could do to them, that not a voice or a hand or an eye was raised.
Such was the condition of the French before the great Revolution of 1789; and while the picture is drawn by a novelist, it is the picture of a novelist who painted human life and human conditions as they were never painted before. His pictures were photographs.
In another book, not a novel but a history, (the title and the author of which shall not be mentioned here), there is another description of human relations under theAncien Régime, and that description claims to be literally true. I quote the author’s own words:
“Was it not in this same year, 1788, that the Duke of Béthune’s carriage, dashing through the narrow streets, as was the aristocratic custom, ran over a little girl in the rue de la Ferronnerie and killed her?
“Did not the mother see it all? Did not she rush wildly to the scene, snatch up the poor crushed form, gaze distractedly into the eyes for lightand see none, lay her cheek to that of the child to feel the warmth of lifeand feel none?
“Still was the little heart, gone the breath, blanched the cheeks, frozen the tiny hands.
“What sound does the ear ever hear like that of the voice that was heard of old in Ramah?
“Shriek after shriek split the air, piercing every heart in the crowd that gathered as the frantic mother, holding her dead child in her arms, gave voice to her grief.
“And the Duke, what said he?‘Let the woman come to my house, and she shall be paid for her loss.’
“He had not even left the carriage;he had not spoken a word of sympathy or regret.
“In his view of the case he had done some damage to this woman, and, being a man of honor, he was ready to settle the bill.
“That was all. ‘Drive on, coachman!’—and never a thought more did the Duke waste on the mother or child.They were not of his world, but of another and a lower.”
This was more than one hundred years ago. Ever since that time we have supposed that the human race has been advancing onward and upward toward a higher and a better civilization.
The philosopher has reflected and advised. The statesman has studied and planned. The reformer has made his battle-axe ring at the door of every abuse.
Learning has spoken from all our schools. Religion has preached from all our temples; and yet in one of the nations of Europe, where the king and the priest have had absolute control of the minds and the bodies of the people for hundreds of years, the point of view of the aristocrat is precisely the same that it was in France in the year 1788. And the man of the common people submits humbly in 1905 just as he did in 1788.
In Russia no man’s conscience is his own; it belongs to the Church. In Russia no man’s action is free; he belongs to the State. The Czar rules by “Divine Right.” He is the earthly representative ofthe Most High God; the common people of the land are mere dirt under his feet, being of a different world and a lower.
A few Sundays ago his people, in the belief that his heart—the heart of their “Little Father”—was accessible to pity and to the plea for justice, were coming in peaceful procession, accompanied by their wives and their children, to kneel at his feet, lift up their supplicating hands, and, with their own tongues, reach his ear with the true story of their grievances.
Their Little Father refused to see them or hear them.
Their Little Father threw a glittering line of steel between himself and his “children.” The Little Father ordered, “Fire!” and his children fell before the storm of lead.
They were shot down like dogs; women and children were sabered orcrushed under the iron-shod feet of horses; they were scourged back to their hovels, their cellars, their sweltering dens.
And the hundreds of dead bodies which littered the streets were thrown into the river like so much carrion.
A few days afterward it was considered good politics by the Grand Dukes who control this contemptible little Czar to grant a hearing to a deputation representing these same laborers.
The whole world had been aroused to anger and indignation at the manner in which the Cossacks had massacred the people.
Public sentiment had made itself felt even in the inner circles of the heartless oligarchy which controls the Russian Empire.
Therefore the Czar was told to receive the deputation, and he did so. The deputation bowed down to the earth before the Czar, who said: “Good day, my children.I have summoned you to hear my words, and to communicate them to your companions. The recent unfortunate events werethe inevitable results of your own lawless actions. Those who induced you to address this petition to me desire to see you revolt against me and my government.” After a few more words of the same complacent character, this representative of God on earth said to the delegation:
“I am convinced ofthe innocence of the workingmen, and believe thattheyare well disposed toward me.I will pardon those transgressors. Return again to your work. May God assist you.”
The history of the world has so many revolting passages that I cannot say that this Russian episode surpasses others, but when the head of a great Christian government tunes his tongue to the formula of Divine Right which was current during the Dark Ages, and gives us a dash of medievalism, to be reported by a special correspondent in the daily newspapers, there is something so anomalous about the situation that it makes a peculiar impression of its own.
At least 2,000 of this emperor’s “children” had been butchered in cold blood for the high crime of wishing to present a petition to him for shorter hours of labor and a more liberal recognition of their status as human beings.
“May God assist you,” says the Czar—leaving it to the benighted minds of these untutored workmen to find out how it is that God is going to assist them, when the representative of God on earth shoots them down by the thousand, tramples them beneath the hoofs of Cossack horses, slashes them with Cossack sabers, pierces them with Cossack lances, lashes them with Cossack scourges, and sends them bleeding and howling back to their hopeless homes and miserable lives, for no offense other than the wish to kneel at his feet and pray for better treatment.
“I forgive you!” says the Czar.
Forgives them for what?
For being denied the right to petition the throne, for being driven back into serfdom, for being hacked and slashed and trampled and bullet-riddled by the hireling savages of a barbarian government!
“As the Great Father above forgives, so I, your Little Father, forgives.”
Amen. Let the whimpering wretch who nurses a saber-slashed head recover in peace.He is pardoned for having been Cossacked.
Let the father who drags his lifeless daughter from under the hoofs of the warhorse go weep over her in comfort—he and she areforgiven for having dared to hope for mercy from the Czar.
And the nameless dead who went forth that Sabbath morning, following the heroic priest whose baton was the Cross of Christ—went forth in the glow of lofty purpose and pathetic hope, and whose bodies are now feeding the fishes of the Neva—let them also rest in peace—their Little Father has forgiven them.
“How do I know that you have notinjured my horses?” asked Dickens’s Marquis, while the frantic peasant was lamenting his crushed child.
“Let the woman come to my house; she shall be paid. Drive on, coachman,” said the Duke of Béthune.
“Served you right!” says the Czar.
“Served you right!” say the Grand Dukes, speaking through the individual called Vladimir.
“You should not have quit work. You should not have asked a hearing. You got crushed by my troops. I forgive you for it. Go back to your work. Be content with your lot. May God assist you.”
Thus the voice of class-rule speaks in Russia today as it spoke in France on the eve of the Revolution, and as it always has spoken in every part of the worldsince man learned the trick of enslaving his brother.
As everybody knows, the real governors of the vast empire of Russia are the Grand Dukes. The Czar is a mere puppet in their hands. When he is obedient they control him. When he is disobedient they murder him. Thus they killed Paul, the father of Alexander the First, because he favored an alliance with Napoleon Bonaparte, while the Grand Dukes favored an alliance with Great Britain. They would “remove” the present emperor if he were to pit his will against theirs.
The spokesman of the present cabal of Grand Dukes is Vladimir, as perfect a type of the cruel, obstinate, narrow-minded aristocrat as Europe ever saw in its worst days.
Speaking to Michael Davitt, the Irish member of the British Parliament, this Grand Duke declared that the reason why representation could not be given to the common people of Russia was thatthey were not fit to exercise it.
He regarded and intended this to be an indictment against the common people. On the contrary, it is a tremendous indictment against the government.
The Russian people, as distinguished from the Russian aristocracy, have been completely under the control of the laws and the administration which the ruling class saw fit to establish. The altar and the throne have supported each other. Church and State have been firm and fast allies. Ever since the days of Peter the Great the minds and the consciences of the common people of Russia have been absolutely dominated by the ruling class.
The shepherds have had full control of the flock. The guardians have had no interference with the education of their wards.
If after so many hundreds of years the mass of the Russian people are so steeped in ignorance and superstition that they are unfit to exercise the common rights of manhood,that fact, if it be fact,damns the Russian aristocracy with the deep guilt of having debased the nation committed to its care and guidance.
No substantial reform has ever been conceded within a state governed by king or aristocracy until the blood of sacrifice has first been shed.
Spain would grant no concessions to those who claimed freedom of conscience in the Netherlands, until years of warfare had drenched the soil of Holland with the blood of heroes, who fought and died for those principles which we carelessly and unappreciatively enjoy today.
France would loosen none of the chains which galled the peasant, until that peasant rose in his desperation and paid with his life for the liberty his descendants inherit. The king was deaf to all prayers.
The aristocracy drove from power with insults and persecution every enlightened minister who proposed to better the condition of the common people by conceding moderate reforms. It was only when the desperation of despair roused the people to a furious attack upon time-honored abuses and vested wrongs of every conceivable kind, that “privilege” would harken to reason, and Rightcould find a place on the statute-book.
In England the story has been the same. In the long procession of the ages in which the common people have wrung, one by one, from the grip of aristocracy those liberties upon which we now pride ourselves, the price of blood has been always demanded, and invariably paid. Never has king or aristocrat conceded a single demand of the reformers until those reformers had either won it in battle or had made such a demonstration asstruck fear into the hearts of the ruling class.
In Russia precisely the same state of affairs exists, and if ever liberal institutions are to take the place of grand ducal tyranny and class-rule in that empire the soil will once more drink the blood of sacrifice. It was so in the beginning, is now, and ever will be, perhaps, for human nature is the same “yesterday, today and forever.”
The man who believes that the autocratic class in Russia will give up its advantages without a fight is a superficial student of history, just as the man who believes that the dominating trusts and corporations in these United States can be made, by moral suasion, to turn loose, is an idle dreamer who knows nothing of the greed of class-rule. No matter under what name it exploits the people, or under what form it exerts its power, or under what particular system of legislation it usurps control and veils its rascalities, to make itturn looseyou must beat it in battleor make it afraid.
The manner in which the railway pass can make honest men steal was never illustrated more clearly than when the Southern Railroad of J. P. Morgan, a few days ago, filched $142,000 from the taxpayers of this country.
It was a shameless, impudent, vulgarly common steal—nothing else. The Congressmen who stole this money for the Wall Street King, J. P. Morgan, were led by the well-known statesman of Alabama, John H. Bedstead.
Many and many a year ago a stupid Post-Office Department adopted the policy of paying subsidies to certain railroads for the carriage of mails which they had already contracted to carry.
It is doubtful whether a single dollar of this money was well spent. To secure the ridiculously high prices which the government pays for the carriage of the mail, the railroads could always have been induced to contract for as speedy a delivery as was possible.
Subsidies could not make them do more. Even a stupid P. O. Department woke up to this fact, at last, and quit paying the subsidies.
Mails were carried just as fast after that as before.
The rate of payment is so high—the plum so very luscious—that the corporation could not refuse the contracts,especially when they could borrow a rascally congressman’s frank, stuff the bags with bogus mail, and thus secure a false average of weight upon which they were paid for the whole year.
(Congressman Livingston of Georgia can tell you how this is done.)
But the Southern Railroad clung to the subsidy.
It needed the money, as Meredith of Virginia once plaintively stated in the House.
The P. O. Department no longer asked it or advised it—but certain congressmen from the South who are ravenously fond of free passes stood by the hungry corporation, and at every session of Congress this subsidy is voted.
The false pretense, used as an excuse, is that it securesfast mail for the South.
There is no truth in the statement. Under an ordinary contract for mail carriage, the government can secure precisely the same service as the railroad gives in return for the subsidy. In other words, the $142,000isa gift to the Wall Street Monarch, J. P. Morgan.
Hon. James H. Blount of Georgia was for many years Chairman of the Committee on Post-Offices and Post Roads.
He understood every detail of that service. He bitterly opposed this subsidy. I myself heard him denounce it in the most wrathful manner; and he declared on the floor of the House that the people got nothing whatever for it.
It was a donation—nothing more.
Blount’s place in Congress is now partially filled by a different kind of man—and the indignant protest of the South against the contemplated steal was not voiced by him or by any other member from Georgia.
That honor was won by Tennessee.
When Hon. John A. Moon and John Wesley Gaines denounced this subsidy as it deserved, they earned the applause and the grateful remembrance of every honest man in the South.
The Hon. R. B. Macon of Arkansas also deserves the highest credit for his opposition to the theft.
Of course, “Slippery Jim” Richardson of Tennessee rushed to the relief of the corporation,as “Slippery Jim” always does, and the robbers, led by the Bedstead statesman of Alabama, prevailed.
The Congressman from Georgia, or Alabama or any other Southern state who helps Samuel Spencer and J. P. Morgan steal the taxes of the people upon the plea that it is done for the benefit of the South, merits the scorn and contempt of every decent Southern man.
But those who excuse their votes upon that pretense are hypocrites, or dupes.
They know, or should know, that the subsidy gives no benefit to the South which she would not be entitled to under an ordinary mail contract.
The Congressmen who stole this money from the treasury for Morgan’s Railroad were seducedby the indirect bribery of railway favors—JUST THAT, and NOTHING ELSE.
Once upon a time there was a great lawyer, orator, financier and statesman who was honest. He bore himself among men with the port of a king, and even strangers, when they passed him on the streets, would stop and look back at that majestic figure with involuntary admiration. To see him was to get a new idea of the natural impressiveness of a great man. To hear him talk was to learn more than you had ever dreamed of the infinite variety of creative intellect.
I knew him well. And I looked up to him as I have since looked up to the higher summits of the Rocky Mountains—with wondering awe for height which I might never hope to reach.
Royal as this man was in all his ways, his heart was warm and true. Pure as the woman he called wife in his loyalty to the marriage tie, his morality recognized the double-life nowhere, and he scorned all that was mean and false and cruel and oppressive.
Always and everywhere he was for the under-dog.
A more stalwart soldier of Right never stood up in defense of the weak.
In a murder case he was able to command a fee of ten thousand dollars; but he was proudest of that triumph he won in the court-house when he volunteered to defend a penniless negro, and saved the life of the accused by tearing open his shirt and showing the scars which the black man had received on a battlefield in Virginia while defending the life of his young master.
Having incurred the displeasure of the Federal authorities prior to the Civil War and by certain conduct of his during that war, the best Government the world ever saw told him to “git up and git”—and he did it. In his native land he was outlawed.
He went to Europe for his health.
While waiting for the wrath of Thaddeus Stevens to cool, he studied conditions abroad—particularly the railroad systems and the public schools.
Upon his return home he created ademand for a new Constitution for his State, and in the convention which framed it he was the undisputed leader.
The legislative appropriations for the convention were spent before the Constitution was finished, and the patriots were about to disband. Average patriotism moves on its belly, as an army does.
The Georgia outlaw of whom I have been writing borrowed $25,000 from his Cotton Factors, and financed the convention until the Constitution was finished.
On two occasions only was this Outlaw ever seen to weep in public—once when the Constitutional Convention of Georgia thanked him for his princely generosity, and once when he stood at the coffin of Alexander H. Stephens to deliver the memorial address.
In the new Constitution of Georgia the Outlaw believed he had embodied three grand provisions:
(1) He had made the looting of the treasury a difficult job.
(2) He had established a system of public schools to educate at public expense the children of the poor as well as the rich.
(3) He had put a curb on corporation tyranny; made it illegal for competitive lines of railways to combine, and had created a commission to regulate and control the transportation companies.
This was the Georgia Outlaw’s proudest work. He exulted over it; he regarded it as his monument: he relied on it to benefit his people for generations to come.
In this belief he lived out the remnant of his days, and in this belief he died.
Where are now the competing railroads in Georgia?
We have none. Mergers, leases, allied interests have swallowed them all. Monopoly rules from border to border. Constitutional provisions are dead letters.
The corporations who nullify our law and plunder our people keep paid corruptionists busy all the year round to defeat investigation and reform.
When the legislature meets, these professional corruptionists all flock to the Capitol. They remain throughout the session.
If any member seeks to vindicate the outraged Constitution, these lobbyists employ every weapon known to the armory of corruptionists to kill the measure.
The campaign fund with which the present Governor beat his competitor was furnished by the railroads.
The notorious Hamp McWorter, State lobbyist for the Southern Railroad, was tendered a place on the Supreme Bench by this Governor, who owed his election to railroad money.
The Railroad Commission has been reduced to a state bordering on imbecility. If they pass orders which the corporations dislike the orders are ignored. They no more control the railroads than the saddle on a horse controls the horse.
Three excellent gentlemen draw comfortable salaries for acting as commissioners; the railroad lawyers have something to play with; the corporations are sometimes annoyed by having to evade direct answers to troublesome questions, and by having to get a Federal Judge to discipline the Commission; but that is about all.
J. P. Morgan is the absolute king of the railroads of Georgia.
He makes the Governor, controls the Legislature, overrides the Commission and tramples the Constitution of the State under his feet.
The Georgia Outlaw made the Constitution for the good of the people; the Wall Street Outlaw violates it for the good of Wall Street plutocrats.
In making the Constitution, the Georgia Outlaw had the help of the best people of the State, and his work was sanctioned by a popular vote after it was finished.
In violating the Constitution, J. P. Morgan has the aid of the worst men in Georgia, and they dare not submit their work to a free vote of the people.
The party machinery of the Democratic party is prostituted to the vile uses of the corporation lobbyists, andthe negro vote is held in reserve to be used as a club to beat down any organized opposition.
The Georgia Outlaw who made our Constitution was a Democrat; the Wall Street Outlaw who violates it is a Republican.
Georgia is a Democratic state. The Democratic party is in full control of every branch of the Government.
Thus we have an amazing spectacle. A Republican Wall Street outlaw uses the machinery of the Democratic party in Georgia to trample upon the Constitution and plunder the people.
What is the secret of this astonishing situation?
Bribery—direct and indirect BRIBERY.
Daily and weekly newspapers subsidized; rebates given to certain shippers; favors granted where they will do the most good; campaign funds supplied to needy candidates; free passes dealt out by the bushel; princely salaries paid to plausible lobbyists.
Bribery,bribery, BRIBERY!
In no other way can you account for such a shocking state of affairs.
When Democrats hold down a Democratic State while a Wall Street Republican robs it, there is just one explanation—only one—BRIBERY.
With a strenuous rush and clang and clatter, President Roosevelt has set out to solve the Railroad Problem.
All honor to him for the motive. To his everlasting credit be it remembered that he recognized the abuses of the present system and shouldered the task of reform.
But Mr. Roosevelt’s remedy will never reach the seat of the disease.
In a case of blood poison, shin-plasters for surface abrasions never yet saved the patient; and Mr. Roosevelt’s plans for another tribunalto control the railroadsare mere shin-plasters.
The trouble is thatthe corporations will control the new tribunals, just as they have controlled the old ones.
The tremendous pressure which combined capital can bring to bear upon any tribunal which Congress creates will be irresistible in the future, as it has been in the past. Poor human nature is simply unable to withstand temptations which assume so many seductive forms, and intimidations which assail natural weakness in such a variety of ways. So vast is the power of the corporations to reward or punish, enrich or impoverish, that individuals sink into nothingness by comparison. No man is beyond their reach. If they cannot act upon the official himself, they can strike him through his family, or relatives, or friends, or business connections.
Somewhere, within the little world in which he lives, they will find someone who will yield to their temptations or surrender to their power to hurt.
Railroads have been known to do great things for the son of a Judge who was about to try an important case.
Governors, Senators, Judges, Railroad Commissioners sometimes have relatives who are more or less willing to get hold of a good thing.
The wives of the same sometimes have approachable kinsmen who, for a consideration, are willing to speak superciliously of the “demagogues” who assail corporations.
Then, again, the newspapers—those busy bees!—can be so trained by corporation cunning that they will give us their sting instead of their honey.
If Sir Statesman votes with a serene disregard for Sir Demagogue, giving the railroads what they want, Editorial prowess will take care of him. His praises will resound, until his sublime head bumps against the stars. But should he be his own master, obeying no orders save those of his conscience, the corporation organs can so belittle him, slander him, and manufacture lies about him, that healmost grows ashamed of having been honest.
In short, the corporation can make “a good time” for those who serve it, and “a bad time” for those who defy it.
Do not all men know this?
The more necessary any official is to combined capital, the more they will do for him, or against him.
Create any tribunal which becomes an absolute necessity to the corporations—a matter of life and death to them—and they will either tempt it with bribes which no virtue can resist, or assail it with intimidations which no courage can defy.
Mr. President, have you studied the history of “The Granger Cases” of thirty years ago? If not, study it. Then you will know better how the corporations control human tribunals and get rid of laws which are obstacles.
Have you studied the recent decisions of the Federal Judges on the question of fixing “reasonable rates”? If not, study them.
You will then know better what a monkey a railroad lawyer can make of a Federal Judge.
To create another tribunal for the purpose of controlling the railroads, is simply the building of another house upon sand.
The only solution of the Railroad Problem is national ownership,which takes away the motive to do wrong.
In no other way can you cure the disease.
Instead of establishing another Court, or Commission, for the corporations to play with, assert the principle of Eminent Domain, assess the railroads at a fair valuation, pay for them partly in treasury notes and partly in twenty-year two per cent. bonds, place the general management of the property under the Interior Department—andthenthe railroads will no more think of free passes, rebates and discriminations than the Post-Office service does of free stamps, or privileged patrons who must be enriched at the expense of the other patrons.
Collier’s Weeklythinks that the United States should pay higher salaries. Ambassadors do not get enough. Neither do cabinet officers. The President also is underpaid. How lamentable!
“Look at England,” saysCollier’s, in effect.
England pays $100,000 to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, $35,000 to the Speaker of the House of Commons, and so forth and so on.
Well, let us accept the invitation, andlook at England.
Who pays the taxes in England?We know who pays them here. With us the poor man pays the tax.
When he covers his nakedness, when he satisfies his hunger, when he builds his house, when he buys tools to work with, he pays an outrageously oppressive Tariff tax.
Rockefeller pays no more Federal tax than is paid by many a one-horse negro farmer in the South.
Morgan pays less Federal tax than many a Western corn-grower who fed his stove on ear corn in 1891, because it was cheaper than coal.
Blessed are our millionaires! Those of them who are neglected by Congress are tenderly cared for by the Federal judiciary.
Blessed are the rich!—they run the government, and the common man pays the bill.
Look at England!
All right, we now look. This is what we see:
She compels her railway corporations to pay an Income Taxupon the assessed valuation of $190,000,000.
She compels the Coal Barons and the marble quarry owners to pay Income Taxupon an assessed valuation of $95,000,000.
She compels the landlords, bankers and merchant princes to pay Income Taxupon an assessed valuation of $900,000,000.
In this mannershe forces her wealthy classesto pay on property and income nearlytwo hundred million dollars annuallytoward the support of the government!
Her tariff duties are levied exclusively upon articles which arenotnecessaries of life.
Not a dollar of Tariff need the poor man pay to live in perfect comfort.
This tariff upon the non-necessaries amounts to $170,000,000.
From intoxicating liquors the revenue is $150,000,000.
Thus it will be seen, by a look at England, thatthe poor man can feed himself, clothe himself, build a house to live in, and supply it with necessary furniture without having to pay one dollar of national tax.
In this land of the freehe must pay the Tariff tax, or go naked, eat grass, and live in a hole in the ground.
But let us “look at England” again.
We see her operating her Post-Office, carrying parcels as well as letters. She does not allow express companies to amass fortunes by robbing the people in the carrying of light freight.
Thus she makes $70,000,000 instead of letting the corporations make five times that amount.
She owns and operates the telegraph lines, and makes $18,000,000 per year instead of letting the corporations make it.
What, therefore, is the net result of the “Look at England”?
We discover thatthe government supports itself upon the possessions of the people rather than upon their necessities.
Give us the same system of taxation—compelthose who possess the wealth to pay theexpenses of government—and I, for one, will say, “Make the salaries what you will so long as you, who make them, have to pay them.”
Notoriously, you cannot convict a cow-thief when eleven of the jury got part of the beef. Judge Swayne owes his escape to similar conditions. He was acquitted by the United States Senate not because he was innocent, but because he was regular. He had not done anything which the Senatorial Jury does not constantly do.
A railroad fell into the Federal Court of which Swayne happened to be the presiding judge. Swayne possesses and controls this railroad through the medium of a receiver. In law and in morals Swayne is the trustee of the property, administering it for the benefit of the owners—the stockholders. Had he put his fingers into the cash-drawer at the ticket office and stolen five dollars, his crime would have been clear, indefensible. Proof of such an act would have compelled a unanimous verdict of guilty—even in the United States Senate—for Senators do not do it that way.
But Swayne knows how the game is played, and he played according to rule.
That is to say, he made use of the trust funds which were in his possession and control, to fit himself up a palace car and stock it with the best eatables and drinkables. He then took on, as a retinue of servants, the employees who were paid to work for the stockholders, and appropriated car, provisions, employees and all to his own private purposes.
With this luxurious car, upon which he had spent the trust funds committed to his care, he took himself and family on long pleasure trips to his native place in Delaware. In this rolling palace he and his family enjoyed a tour of the West.
The sum total of the trust funds which he thus converted to his own use could not have been less than thousands of dollars, for the car and its equipment would have been worth hundreds of dollars per day had it been used by its owners, the stockholders.
These facts were not denied.
In law and morals, Judge Swayne misappropriated trust funds.
He did not go to the cash-drawer at the ticket office and steal five dollars, but he took charge of the car, the supplies and the employees whose serviceswould have put thousands of dollars into the cash-drawers, and thus converted to his own private use the property which was in his Court for management and final disposition.
Here was a plain case of dishonest use of power and opportunity.
Here was a plain case of robbery—the Federal Judge taking that which belonged to the stockholders and which should have earned them thousands of dollars.
In morals and sound law, the crime is the same as it would have been had he embezzled the same sum in dollars and cents.
The WashingtonPostargues that the President should have a salary of $100,000.
All right. Let us levy a tax or two on the rich, and raise the salaries which the organs of the rich say are too small.
If the President is discontented with his pay, why doesn’t he throw up his job?
I know several fellows who will take it at the present price.
There is W. J. B., for instance.
I haven’t the faintest doubt that he would be willing to quit editingThe Commonerand assume Presidential burdens at $50,000 per year. It would be easier work, don’t you know, than making twenty-two speeches a day for a candidate like Parker, a platform like that of St. Louis 1904, and a National Chairman like Tom Taggart—the gambling-hell man of Indiana.
Governor Folk, of Missouri, was elected to stop boodling, banish bribery and otherwise purify the political atmosphere.
A bill was promptly introduced into the Legislature to make it possible to convict and punish bribery.
The Senate promptly killed the bill.
Folk is still Governor, however.
Populists throughout the country regard with demure interest the modest strides which Kansas is taking in State-Socialism.
That Republican State is to own and operate oil refineries to the end that Rockefeller’s Trust may not swallow the earth.
Besides the Kansas State refinery, the Republican legislature favors other things which arealmostnew under the sun.
No trust, corporation or private partnership shall be allowed to sell cheaper in one place than in another in Kansas—freight being deducted.
All over that State the price must be the same.
Maximum freight rates have been established, oil pipe lines have been made common carriers, and the pumping of Kansas gas out of Kansas forbidden.
Is it possible that we Populists are to find ourselves reduced to a state of mere “eminent respectability” by such thoroughgoing revolutionists as the Republicans of Kansas?
The WashingtonPostsays:
“After Kansas gets her oil refinery in operation she may find that Mr. Rockefeller will not allow his railroads to carry its product.”
When Rockefeller refuses to haul Kansas oil because Kansas operates a refinery he will probably discover that Kansas can do a thing or two against his railroads.
When Theodore Roosevelt was a very, very young man, he wrote a “Life of Gouverneur Morris” in which the youthful author sweepingly classified Tom Paine as “a filthy little atheist.”
Now that Teddy has grown great upon the meat which Cæsar fed on, the University of Pennsylvania has conferred an Honorary Degree upon him.
This is the same institution which conferred an Honorary Degree upon Tom Paine.
So there you are.
To the extent that the University of Pennsylvania can equalize the eminence of Teddy and Tom, equality has been established.
So far as the University of Pennsylvania can link the two names together, they are linked.
Whether he likes it or not, Teddy must promenade down the corridors of time and fame arm in arm with the “filthy little atheist.”
Here is a case where that one of the Grecian philosophers who laughed at everything would weep: and where that one who wept at everything would laugh.
Tom Paine being dead cannot resent the honors paid Roosevelt by any act of renunciation aimed at the University of Pennsylvania; but Teddy lives and can defend his virtue from contaminating contact.
Will he tamely submit to wear the Academic honor tainted by the touch of Tom Paine, or will he spurn it with that disdain which condensed the career of a much-enduring, much-achieving patriot and democrat in the cruelly scornful words, “a dirty little atheist”?
Whenever, in the hour of gloom and doubt, we call upon the presidents of our world-famous colleges for guidance we get it. Which is one of the reasons why we are still in the dark.
A couple of years since, the chief sage of one of these world-famous institutions told us that Social Ostracism was the medicine for the Trust evil which would prove a cure-all.
The chief sage neglected to inform us how and when we should or could dose the wicked corporations with this medicine: hence we have not as yet socially ostracized J. P. Morgan, Ogden Armour or John D. Rockefeller.
Woodrow Wilson, chief sage of Princeton University, is the latest of the academic guides who offers to pilot us out of the gloom.
“Trusts,” remarks Woodrow (who, just between you and me, is something of a prig), “Trusts can never be abolished.”
“We must moralize them.”
“The thing that keeps water in stocks is secrecy.”
“Publicity is the remedy.”
When we hear the chief sage of Princeton droning and driveling this sort of nonsense we wonder whether his mind is fixed upon the actual men, methods and standards of today, or whether he gropes in some Arcadia of the past.
“Moralize the Trusts?”
How will you do it, impractical prig?
Mr. Rockefeller is moral, isn’t he? Goes to church every Sunday, endows Baptist colleges, sends young John to teach Sabbath school and attend English revivals, prates of morality and the Bible to equal any Pecksniff that ever stole the livery of the Lord to shear the sheep in.
Yet where was there ever a more ruthless criminal on the face of the earth than Rockefeller’s Oil Trust?
“The thing that keeps water in stocks is secrecy.”
No, it isn’t, impractical prig.
It’s water that keeps the water in the stocks.
Secrecy has nothing to do with it.
The public always knows when the watering is done!
It was so with the Steel Combine; it has been so with every railroad reorganization which Morgan has managed; it was so with Amalgamated Copper.
“Publicity is the remedy!” says Woodrow, the Sage.
How can that be?
Does the knowledge that we are being robbed stop the robbery?
There is no secrecy about the Beef Trust. Publicity there has run riot.
We know all about the Refrigerator car, the rebate, the discriminations, the Big Stick methods, the colossal, un-Godly profits.
We know how the cattle owner is robbed when the Trust buys, and how the consumer of dressed meat is robbed when he buys.
What good does the Publicity do us?
None at all.
It makes us rage and rant, but the Trust gets our money just the same.
Have not Lawson and Russell and Ida Tarbell and Lincoln Steffens and a dozen others put the flashlight upon all these monstrous piratical combinations until the very children are familiar with the details?
Publicity?
Why, if there is anything that we have got a lavish supply of, just now,it is Publicity.
What we haven’t got is RELIEF.
IfPublicitywere a cure for the disease, we’d have been well long ago.
As it is, the evil grows worse, day by day, in spite of all thePublicity.
Go back to thy gerund-grinding, Woodrow—thou insufferable, impractical prig. Among the dead Greeks and the extinct Romans thy labors may, haply, be useful; but when thou comest among the practical men of today seeking to master actual conditions and to take part in the great battle of thought, motive and purpose which rages around us, thou art but “a babby, and a gal babby at that.”
Mr. Bryan says, in hisCommoner, that “the movement begun in 1896 would have succeeded in 1900 had it not been for the Spanish War and the increase of the gold supply.”
What a superficial view!
First of all, the “movement” did not begin in 1896.
It began when the West and South were brought together by the Farmers’ Alliance in 1890. It was in full swing when it gave General Weaver 1,200,000 votes in 1892. It was running like a millrace when it polled 1,800,000 in the local elections of 1894. It would have scored a triumph in 1896 had the Democratic leaders acted honestly with the Populists.
After 1896 the “movement” lost strength every day.
In 1900 it was doomed to defeat before the campaign opened.
Yes; the reform “movement” was in full swing in 1890, and one of the good things it did was to float into Congress a promising young lawyer named Bryan.
To the Populist movement W. J. B. owes his rise, for there were then no Democrats to speak of in Nebraska.
Populist votes carried his home State for him in 1896, when he ran for President against McKinley.
In 1900 Nebraska went Republican, although the same Bryan was running against the same McKinley.
They are hunting, in Paris, for the bones of John Paul Jones, the first and greatest sea captain who ever flew the Stars and Stripes from the masthead of a battleship, and “held the ocean lists against the world in mail.”
Congress gives $35,000 to find the bones, and of course they will be found—not those of the original Jones, perhaps, but a good enough lot of bones for that amount of money.
Had Gouverneur Morris, the American Minister to France, done his duty at the time of Paul Jones’s death, by giving him a respectable funeral and a modest tombstone, the people of this country would not now be taxed $35,000 to find the hero’s grave.
When John Paul Jones—old, broken and poor—lay dying in Paris, our high-toned Minister to France, Gouverneur Morris, sat feasting with aristocratic company, and that high-toned Minister failed to mark the grave of a man who with Nelson’s chances might have done even more than Nelson on the sea.
His grave was made in an obscure churchyard, his resting-place neglected and forgotten, covered with accumulated deposits, and built over with houses.
Those who seek the bones are sinking holes seventeen feet deep, in the search.
Of course, they will find the body of Commodore Jones. That is what they are hunting for. Therefore, they will find it.
But whether the dust they bring back to America will be that ofourPaul Jones no mortal will ever know.
In his Diary, Gouverneur Morris relates:
“A message from Paul Jones that he is dying.
“I go thither and make his will.... Send for a Notary,and leave him struggling with his enemy.”
The American Minister to France left Paul Jones struggling with death!
Left him alone with a French Notary, and went away.
To do what?
To “dine with Lord Gower and Lady Sutherland”!
The American Minister knew that Paul Jones was dying, for he says so.
After the dinner with the English Lord and Lady, does the American Minister hasten back to the bedside of the fellow-countryman whom he had left “struggling with his enemy”?
By no means.
He goes to the Louvre to look at the paintings; and then takes Talleyrand’s mistress with him to Jones’s lodging.
“But he is dead—not yet cold.”
And this is all that Gouverneur Morris’s Diary records of Paul Jones’s death, until the indignation aroused in America by his shocking lack of attention to the dying hero had thrown him upon the defensive.
Who paid the burial expenses of Paul Jones?
A Frenchman claims that he did it.
Morris, in his Diary, certainly seeks to make the impression that he paid them out of Jones’s estate.
The hero left sufficient property for the purpose, as can easily be shown. Further than that we are left in doubt.
But Morris was requested to authorize a public funeral, in which fitting honors should be paid to the dead. Morris refused. He states that he (Morris) desired “a private and economical funeral.”
He got it. The funeral was so economical and so private that neither the tongue of repute, identifying the grave from generation to generation, nor the more unerring evidence of shaft or vault guides the footsteps of those who come so late, so late! to repair the neglect of a hundred years.
In the great city of New York there is a Subway, an underground street, which was opened at the expense of the taxpayers. Every dollar of the enormous expenditure came out of the pockets of the citizens of New York. After this Subway had been completed and paid for by the people, it was turned over to a private corporation to be used for private profit. It is unnecessary to say that such a stupendous piece of folly could never have been committed by wise men or honest men. On the face of it, the transaction reeks with rascality.
Let us, however, contemplate actual results. The men to whom the property was given operate the Subway to make all the money that is possible out of the franchise. In doing so they have come into collision with their employees. The disagreement results in a strike. The experienced operators of the cars leave them. Inexperienced men take hold. The necessary consequence is danger to life and limb, which only the careless or reckless would incur.
The thousands of people in New York, to whom the Subway is a daily necessity, are incommoded and injured. The entire city suffers because of the dispute between the corporation and its employees.
I will not enter into the question as to who is to blame for the strike. It is sufficient to say that under private ownership of this public thoroughfare the strike does occur and all of its evil consequences naturally follow. No matter whether Belmont is right or wrong;no matter whether his employees are right or wrong, the effect upon the public is precisely the same. The public gets hurt. The public suffers and the public is helpless. Such a situation is surely sufficient to arouse thought and investigation.
Ever since we have allowed private corporations to take charge of public utilities we have had the strike, the riot, the loss of money, the loss of life. As long as private ownership continues to exploit these things which belong to the public, we will continue to have the strike, the riot, loss of money and the loss of life.
I say nothing about the amount of which the traveling public is robbed by these corporations which own the public utilities. I confine myself simply and solely to this thought, namely, that under private ownership the situation, which now confronts the traveling public of New York City, is liable to happen at any time and at any place throughout the Union where public franchises are used for selfish and private gain.
That is the fruit of the tree. It always has been; it always will be. That kind of tree willneverbear any other sort of fruit.
Then why not cut it down?
Public ownership removes themotivefor misuse of public utilities, and when the motive goes the evil will go. As long as selfishness and greed getthe chanceto gratify themselves at the public expense, just so long will they do it.
In every conflict between Capital and Labor the public loses—no matter whether Capital wins or Labor wins.
Public ownership would do for the railroads what it does for the Post-Office, the Police Department or the Fire Department. Who ever heard of a strike among the Post-Office employees? Or in the police force? Or among the firemen?
In Germany the railroads are owned and operated by the Government, and nobody ever heard of traffic being blocked by a strike. In Austria the story is the same. In Australia it is the same. In New Zealand it is the same. Nowhere on earth, so far as I know, has there ever been a strike when the principle of government ownership was in operation. Take those cities of England where the street cars are owned and operated by the city government. Who has ever heard of a strike on those lines? From Liverpool to Birmingham and from Birmingham to Glasgow you will find the principle of public ownership applied with perfect success, and nowhere has the operation of public utilities by the public been stopped by a strike.
It seems almost impossible for the people of our great cities to learn the lesson taught by our own troubles, and taught further by the object-lessons furnished us by nationalities which are not such cowardly slaves of the corporations as we seem to be. The most amazing feature in American life today is the audacity with which predatory corporations ride forth, like the feudal barons of olden times, to strike down the average citizen and rob him of what he makes as fast as he makes it. Individually, we have plenty of courage, but, collectively, we are the most cowardly creatures on earth. The communal spirit seems to be dead within us. Public opinion is in its infancy. The strength which lies dormant within us because of our numbers seems to be a fact of which the masses are totally ignorant.
Acting swiftly, acting with unity of purpose, acting with the keenest intelligence, acting with a magnificent courage, the outlaws of modern commercialism dash at their object with superb confidence in their prowess, and they have seized and ridden away with the spoils before the drowsy, ignorant and timid public have awakened to the fact that they have been raided, stricken down and plundered.
If the city government of New York had at its head a man “with a beard on his chin,” he could find a way to solve this Subway problem and all kindred problems within a few weeks, and in such a manner that it would never be presented again. He wouldhave to be intelligent, he would have to be honest, he would have to be brave, but if he had these qualities and were, besides, a patriot wishing to do what is best for the entire community, he could win a victory which would repeat itself in all the centres of our population, and which would terminate the reign of rascality which now exploits, for personal ends, the powers and the opportunities of public office in almost every great city of this Republic.
You ask mehowcould the Mayor do anything, when the Subway is legally in the hands of a Commission created by the Legislature?
I answer that the city has the right to use its streets. One of its sovereign powers, inherent and absolute, is that of keeping its streets open for the safe and free use of every citizen. Nobody has the right to block travel or traffic, nor can the Legislature grant such a privilege.
As to the Subway, it is a street under the ground. True, themethodswhich he would have to employ differ from those which he would apply to a surface street, but theprinciplewould be precisely the same in the one case as in the other.
He could say to Belmont and his employees: “You are blocking the streets. You are interfering with the rights of the people who paid for the Subway and who want to use it. You and your disputes are as nothing to me in comparison with the duty which I owe to the city.Arbitrate your difference, or I will exert the full sovereign power of the municipality to seize the Subway and to open it to travel.
“And you needn’t run to any judge for an injunction, either. In the exercise of supreme executive authority policing the city and keeping open its streets, I shall tolerate no interference whatever from corporation lawyers or corporation judges. I give you fair warning:Arbitrate, and do it quickly—else the city takes what is hers, and operates the cars which you have tied up!”
Who doubts that a threat like this, made by the right kind of Mayor, would bring Belmont to his senses in a couple of minutes? Arbitrate! Of course he would arbitrate—quickly and gladly.
And the Mayor would have the enthusiastic support of ninety-nine men out of every hundred in New York.