Crawfordsville Review, Crawfordsville, Montgomery County, 15 July 1899 — Page 7
Established 1841.
Buggies, Surreys, Phaetons, Road Wagons, Rubber Tires, Extra Shafts, Extra Po'es, Extra Tops, Extra Cushions, Rain Aprons, Rubber Drill Cloth, Buggy Umbrellas, Cotton Nets, Leather Nets, Horse Covers, Horse Sheets, Horse Blankets, Summer Dusters, Buggy Whips, Team Whips, Top Dressing.
GREAT BARGAIN SALE OF SHOES
Old Age Creeps on Apace
And the eyes get weaker and need assistance. Glasses that will suit your eyes at fifty will not suit them at sixty, and they require the services of a skilled optician to test and properly adjust them to the vision. P, rfect fitting glasses are a second sight to those whose sight has failed, and we can suit your eyes with scientific exactness. A trial will convince you.
M. C. KLINE.
Jeweler and Optician. Opp. Court House.
-/ITEMS OF INTEREST*
To You Kept By
JOE E. FI8HER
A Complete Harness and Buggy Store, South Washington St., Crawfordsville, Indiana, Consisting mostly as Follows:
Light Harness, Surrey Harness, Coach Harness, Double Team Harness, Any Part of auy Kind of Harness, Harness Hardware, Harness to Order, Harness Repaired, Harness Oils, Harness Soaps, Harness Dressing, Harness Saddles, Riding Saddles, Riding Bridles, Robes, all Kinds, Curry Combs, Horse Brushes, Horse Clippers, Extra Pads, Foot Mats.
RUBEN'S
Bates House Clothing Parlors.
Anti Rattler, Prop Nuts, Leather Washers, Whip Sockets, Copper Rivets, Tubular Rivets, Coach Oils, Axel Oils, Axel Oils, Axel Greece, Fair Leather, Harness Leather, Sheep Skins, A Smiling Face and A Clear Conscience. You need Our Goods W) Need •. Your Money.
Special Values For June.
Guaranteed indigo blue, Washington Mills Serge Suits, pure worsted, French faced, elegantly tailored: Ruben's reliable make.... $7.50
Blue, wide wale Suits, the Riverside Mills fabric, fine trimmings, best workmanship Ru ben's reliable make $8.50
Black Clay suits of fine quality and good weight. We use only standard makes—Wankuks, "Washington or Riversides—either sack or fiock style Ruben's reliable make $9.00
Bates House Clottiing Purler.
110 W. Washington St., Indianapolis, Ind.
For One Week On'y. The following'are a few of our Bargains:
Infants' Dongola Patent Tip Burton, 2 to G, worth 30c, our price $ .20 Child's Glove Grain Button, 8 to 12, worth 81, our price 75 Misses Dongola Button, 13 to 2, worth $1.25, our price 75 Ladies' Dongola Patent Tip, Button 2 1-2 to 7, worth $2.00, our price 1.00 Youths' Calf Ball, 12 to 2, worth 81.00, our price 85 Jioys' Calf BbII, 3 to 5, worth $1.25, our price 95 glen's Satin Calf. CoDgress or Lace, 6 to 11, worth $1.50, our price 1.10 Men's Kip Boot, 6 to 11, worth $1.75, our price 1.25
All heavy winter shoes sold at actual cost. Don't forget the'place.
STAB SHOE HOUSE
No. 128 East Main Street
We are wanting corn. We will pay you
Top Market Price. The old reliable firm,
Q)
Crabbs & Reynolds
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CAPITAL AND LABOR.
"Carry a Message to Garcia"—Faith
fulness to Mutual Interests
of Employer and Em-
ployed.
A short time ago there appeared an article under the above title in a little magazine called The Philistine, that expresses so well one of the great trials of all employers of labor that we venture to reprint it entire. There is not a business man in any part of the world who will not agree with what Mr. Elbert Hubbard says, and says so well:
In all this Cuban business, the article begins, there is one man stands out on the horizoi) of my memory like Mars at perihelion. When war broke out between Spain and the United States it was very necessary to communicate quickly with the leader of the Insurgents. Garcia was somewhere in the mountain fastnesses of Cuba—no one knew where. No mail nor telegraph message could reach him. The President must secure his co-operation, and quickly.
What to do! Some one said to the President, "There's a fellow by the name of Rowan who will find Garcia for you, if anybody can."
Rowan was sent for and given a letter to be delivered to Garcia. How "the fellow by the name of Rowan" took the letter, sealed it up in an oilskin pouch, strapped it over his heart, in four days landed by night off the coast of Cuba by an open boat, disappeared into the jungle, and in three weeks came out on the other side of the island, having traversed a hostile country on foot, and delivered his letter to Garcia, are things I have no special desire now to tell in detail.
The point I wish to make is this: McKinley gave Rowan a letter to be delivered to Garcia Rowan took the letter and did not ask, "Where is he at?" By the Eternal! There is a man whose form should be cast in deathless bronze and the statue placed in every college of the landIt is not book-learning young men need, nor instruction about this and that, but a stiffening of the vertebrae which will cause them to be loyal to a trust, to act promptly, concentrate their energies do the thing—"Carry a message to Garcia!"
General Garcia is dead now, but there are other Garcias. No man who has endeavored to carry out an enterprise where many hands were needed, but has been well
Qigh
appalled at times by the imbecility of the average man—the inability or unwillingness to concentrate on a thing and do it. Slip-shod assistance, foolish inattentiou, dowdy indifference and half-hearted work seem the rule and no man succeeds unless by hook or crook, or threat he forces or bribes other men to assist him or mayhap, God in His goodness performs a miracle, and sends him an Angel of Light for an assistant.
You, reader, put this matter to a test. You are sitting now in your office—six clerks are within call. Summon any one and make this request: "Please look in the encyclopedia and make a brief memorandum for me concerning the life of Correggio." "Will ihe clerk quietly say, 'Yes, sir,' and go to the task?
On your life he will not. He will look at you out of a fishy eye and ask one or more of the following questions:
Who was he? Which encyclopedia? Was I hired for that? Don't you mean Bismarck What's the matter with Charlie doing it? ,*
Is he dead Is there any hurry? Shan't I bring you the book and let you look it up yourself?
What do you want to know for? And I will lay you one to ten that after you have answered the questions, and explained how to find the information, and why you want it, the clerk will go off and get one of the other clerks to help him try to find Garcia— and then come back and tell you there is no such mar. Of course I may lose my bet, but according to the law of average I will not.
Now, if you are wise you will not bother to explain to your "assistant" that Correggio is indexed under the
Crawfordsville, Indiana, Saturday, July 15, 1899.
and not in the K's, but you will smile sweetly and say, "Never mind,'' and go look it up yourself.
And this incapacity for independent action, the moral stupidity, this infirmity of the will, this unwillingness to cheerfully take hold and lift, are the things whichjput pure Socialism so far in the future. If men will not act lor themselves, what will they do when the benefit of their effort is for all A first-mate with a knotted club seems necessary and the dread of "getting the bounce" ou Saturday eve holds many a worker in his place.
Advertise for a stenographer, and nine out of ten who apply can neither spell nor punctuate—and do not consider either necessary.
Can burh a one write a letter to Garcia? "You see that bookkeeper," said the foreman to me in a large factoay. "Yes, what about him? •'Well, he's a fine accountant, but I'd send him up town on an errand he might accomplish it all right, and, ou the other haud, he might stop at four saloous on the way, and when he got to Main street would forget what he had been sent for."
Can such a man be trusted to carry a message to Garcia? We have recently been hearing much maudlin sympathy expressed for the "down trodden denizen of the sweatshop," and the "homeless wanderer searching for honest employment, and with it all often goes many hard words for the men in power.
Nothing is said about the employer who grows old before his time in a vain attempt to get frowsy ne'er-do wells to do intelligent work and his long, patient striving with "help" that does nothing but loaf when his back is turned. In every store and factory there is a constant weeding out process going on. The employer is constantly sending away "help" that have shown their incapacity to further the interests of the business, and others are being taken on. No matter how good times are, this sorting continues, only if times are hard and work scarce, the sorting is done finer—but out and forever out the incompetent and unworthy go. It is ths survival of the fittest. Self-inter-est prompts every employer to keep the best—those who can carry a message to Garcia.
I know one man of really brilliant parts who has not the ability to manage a business of his own, and yet who is absolutely worthless to any one else, because he carries with him constantly the insane suspicion that his employer is opposing or intending to oppose him. -He cannot give orders, and he will not receive them. Should a message be given him to take to Garcia, his answer would probably be. "Take it yourself."
To-niglit this man walks the streets looking for work, the wind whistling through his threadbare coat. No one who knows him dare employ him, for he is a regular firebrand of discontent. He is impervious to reason, and the only thing that can impress him is the toe of a thick soled No. 9 boot.
Of course I know that one so morally deformed is no less to be pitied than a physical cripple but in our pitying let us drop a tear, too, for the men who are striving to carry on a great enterprise, whose working hours are not limited by the whistle, and whose hair is fast turning white through the struggle to hold in line dowdy indifference, slip-shod imbecility, and the heartless ingratitude, which, but for their enterprise, would be both hungry and homeless.
Have I put the matter too strongly? Possibly I have, but when all the world has gone a-slumming I wish to speak a word of sympathy for the man who succeeds—the man who, against great odds, has directed the .efforts of others, and having succeeded, finds there's nothing in it—nothing but baie board and clothes.
I have carried a dinner pail and worked for day's wages, and have been an employer of labor, and I know there is something to be said on both sides. There is no excellence, per se, in poverty rags are no recommendation and all employers are not rapacious and high-handed any more than all poor men are virtuous.
My heart goes out to the man who does his work when the "boss" is away as well as when he is at home. And the mai. wno, when given a letter for Garcia, quietly takes ihe
LJ
REVIEW
missive without asking any idiotic questions, and with no lurking intention of chucking it into the nearest sewer, or of doing aught else but deliver it, never gets "laid off" nor has he to go on a strike to get higher wages. Civilization is one long anxious search for just such individuals. Anything such a man asks shall be granted his kind is so rare that no employer can afford to let him go. He is wanted in every city, town and village—in every office, shop, store and factory. The world cries out for such he is needed and needed badly the man who can carry a message to Garcia.
TRUSTS AND nONOPOLIES. No. 1.
A modern economic question is now submitted to the public for solution which is so complicated that the most sagacious leaders and thinkers are at a loss to suggest a remedy. I refer to the caption of this article. ,c"
In truth the present greivahce is not in the nature of trusts, as there ^re but three real trusts in existence. They are the Standard Oil trust, the Cotton Seed Oil the Sugar trusts, but these never cease to operate as trusts. The complaint was in the use or rather the abuse,of the corporation laws of the different States of the union. To illustrate the movement, we will suppose that there are one hundred factories in the United States making nails. Formerly, say fifty years ago, factories of that character were carried on by individuals or by partnerships. To establish a corporation requires an act of the legislature. Along from 1850 to 1860 the most of the states so changed their laws as to provide by general law how parties might form a corporation by filing in the proper offices of the state or county certain papers and agreements by which they might become a legal corporation. The advantages of the corporations were so manifest and easily obtained that in time all manufacturing and much of the mercantile and trading business was done by corporations even if the capital was owned by a very few persons. Now in the instance we have selected, the nail factories here, in the different parts of the United States, each conducting its business independent of all others, and were each competing for public patronage. Competition is the great and only reliance which the people have to get the products at a reasonable price, and it is competition which the manufacturers are always seeking to avoid so that they may sell their products at their own prices. This is extortion contrary to public policy, and to secure this advantage all kinds of schemes are resorted to but tn eecure this undue monopoly they mainly depend upon class legislation. It is precisely so in this case. In order to evade comjietition with foreign manufacturers a duty upon all imported nails was levied by act of Congress sufficient to prohibit a'l competition with foreigners.
The nail men now felt pretty comfortable they were relieved from all competition with foreigners. Why not go a step farther and be relieved and protected from home competitors? The principle was the same, the "logic and arguments were the same and the results would be identical. If the policy was right in the first case, it was undoubtedly so in the second. This is just what Wm. Havemeyer 6aid about his own sugar trust. "The tariff is the mother of trusts." If it was right to relieve one class from competition and give them great profits was it not equally proper to reduce the favored class to fewer numbers. It would be a less burden on the public to make ten millions than to make a hundred, a thousand. Mr. Havemeyer pushed the argument to a logical conclusion. Suppose there area hundred factories making nails and each factory supports a hundred men. If they can reduce the number to ten factories it would be an easier burden on the public to make the one thousand wealthy than to make the ten thousand rich. This is the logical conclusion of a monopolist. It is plutocracy gone to and shows the whole theory is wrong p- -—, from
the mceptiont
propose to
If we
1 we must
destroy the obnoxious weed we must dig it up by the roots and to do that wo must go back and reform the tariff duties. But we find our people are so wed to the false teaching they have imbibed in the last thirty years
58th
Year,
as to be deaf to any argument showing' the absurbity of a high protective tariff. We therefore now confine ourselves to the operations of the so called trusts under the laws now in orce. The hundred nail factories areas we have said relieved from foreign competition. They now propose a scheme to be relieved from home competition the public guard against wanton extortion. Ten of them we will say are located1 in Pittsburg. They may agree among themselves on a scale of prices but that might have the effect to drive all the trade from Pittsburg. They employ some wise old schemer who has the instincts of a pirate to invent a plan by which the parties now in the busiuess can absolutely control prices. relies upon the one instinct of an American trader and that is he has no sentiment. He will sell anything he has got when he can make a profit The expert employed first goes around to see and inquire about the cost of production and profits of all the different plants. Ho finds that fifty millions of money will pay for all the investments as they now stand and that the annual profits are five millions at the prices of nails now on the market. He next finds fifty factories which are ready to go into the scheme as promoters. They are proposing to rob the public and also the factories not engaged as promotors. He then proposes to organize a corporation with one hundred million of capital stock, one-half of it preferred stock, with power to issue bonds for fifty millions, to be named the American Nail Co. He next submits the scheme to the bankers and board of brokers at the stock exchange. It meets with their unqalified approval. It adds a hundred million to the volume of these bonds. They are wanting other people's money left with them for investment. The probabilities are good that the company will pay interest and good dividends and they are not concerned about the morals involved. The company is organized under the liberal laws of New Jersey. This state un-•• der the constitution of the United States and the rules of comity between the different states exercises the right to organize and send out in the world to do business, a class' of corporations seeming liunest and legitimate but which we know and the public all know are intended only to monopolize the business in which they are engaged and deny the public of their only protection against extortion, that is competition.
The new company now pay the fifty promoters in cash one-half of the appraised value of their plants and then in addition give them preferred stock .equal to the full value of their several plants. As for the other fifty plants they make the best deal they can but always pretty liberal until they reduce the out standing number to about ten then they commence the bulldozing plan by which they compel them to sell out and also deter others from going into the business. They will say we control all the wire factories which nails are made. We have freight arrangements which you cant have, besides if you persist in manufacturing nails we will sell nails in your town to your customers cheaper than you can make them and by occasionally selling cheap nails we can make the public and Congress believe that we can make cheaper nails than smaller factories. that does not suffice we can supplement it by buying up some orators and lobbyists and looking after the newspapers. The deal is consumated, the ten are compelled to 6ell out to the trust. Their plants are left to rot down and grow up in weeds. The people that once lived and worked there are scattered tramping the highways or crowding to the great cities where the factories are all located, or they accept' the last resort that is those who are healthy and vigorous and have no family go into the army to fight savages, The trust as it is called has now no competition, when they fix the price that ends it where else, can we go. Not in the United States nor out of it. And yet in this free government made for the people and and
wLden^AhTre'teanjSf.
The extent of the dilemma is intensified when we reflect that every manufactured article in common use is in the same condition.
Is there a remedy short of revolution? We will discuss that hereafter. H.
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