Jasper County Democrat, Volume 14, Number 81, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 January 1912 — AGAINST A MERCHANT MARINE [ARTICLE]

AGAINST A MERCHANT MARINE

Recent Action Must Show the Country the Extent of Dictatorship * of Wall Street. Few things have so opened the eyes of the country to the extent of the grip of the Wall street dictatorship on credit and Industry in the United States as the story of how this centralized money power has refused to permit the organization of a $15,000,000 American steamship company or allow an independent American mercantile marine to be built in American shipbuilding yards. The generalcomment of papers over the country is that nothing can so foster the growth of Socialism as this revelation of a capitalistic control to the extent that It can deny the people of the country the natural advantages of their $375,000,000 Investment in the Panama canal. The people have only vaguely grasped the idea that no railroad can be built except with the consent of a few men in Wall street. This new exhibition of the power of the dictatorship jars the nation'into a realization, at last, that-the great-problem is to curb this power, which is now seen to be great enough to' challenge the government itself by practically declaring that there shall be no mall carrying steamship company organized to operate between r American ports via the canal on the terms which the government itself specifies. These terms are that such a mall carrying steamship line and its directors, shall be absolutely Independent of the great trans-continental railway combination. Likewise does this power serve notice indirectly on the government that no mall carrying company so organized can get its ships built in American yards. And this Is the clique that has been demanding that the government at Washington tax the people of the country to pay it to build ships to give work to American laborers in these yards. This snips the whole ship subsidy propaganda of its last mask, and it is exposed not as a proposal for benefittlng the. ship builders and their workmen, and “to put the American flag on the seas again,” but as another plan, such as the tariff is, to turn national revenues into the treasury of Big Business