People's Pilot, Volume 5, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 February 1896 — Page 2

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Mr. Call turns the searchlight upon the dark places of our political and economic system, and reveals root causes of want in a clear, incisive manner, which will prove anything but pleasing to the barnacles of society. If there is anything which an arrogant plutocracy fears, it is a complete unmasking of the real causes which are forcing millions to lives of hopeless drudgery in a land of marvellous wealth, when under just conditions every man and woman who chose to work might soon become the owner of a home, and gain a position where age would not have terrors from possible want, and where the children who came into the home would be properly educated, and would also be able to enter active life with a more pleasing prospect before them than hopeless servitude and perhaps a homeless old age. When the truth that the misery which t<-ns of thousands of industrious people suffer and the ever present dread which haunts millions of lives are due to monstrous crimes which are entrenched behind partial and cruel paternalistic laws, and the refusal on the part of society to accept the great basic truth that the earth belongs to the people, and not to a few 7 people; when the slow-thinking masses who for so many weary ages have allowed themselves to be hoodwinked by the tools of the privileged classes, awaken to the truth that by uniting at the ballot they can change the current of affairs, and in so changing may bring about, not nihilism or ruin, but a bloodless and glorious revolution which shall help humanity upward as w’ell as onward, and radiate the sunshine of happiness over a heart-heavy world- then will dawn the hour of Humanity's most splendid triumph; the hour which shall entitle man to be called a rational being. . Today while the toilers of the world are engaged in a desperate struggle for “a precarious subsistence, they see around them the lavish wealth and idle splendor of the rich;” a spectacle which alone, if they would but stop and think, would effectively set at naught all the tine-spun fallacies and explanations.of the minions of plutocracy. They would also perceive that while “their own desperate exertions furnish them only a scanty living,” the favored classes are ‘-vying with each other in a mad race to spend their hoards for vulgar display and for every luxury and indulgence known to man,” while, furthermore, their fortunes, despite their reckless waste of unearned wealth, “are growing from year to year. No comparison can be made between the condition of the poor and that of the millionaire; imagination can scarce bridge over the distance between them. Yet in this new world the millionaire is of recent origin.”

‘•When it is considered that less than thirty thousand men already own half the entire wealth of this country of some sixty million inhabitants, and that the number and wealth of the enormously rich is fast increasing, the poverty oh the masses may be accounted for. The! poor and the rich ' live in the same world; andj however enormous may be the possessions of tue one, or meagre the scant earnings of the other, these are alike drawn from the same fund; labor exerted upon the soil or upon the products of the soil is the source of a'l wealth. If. then, the few have such disproportionate shate. there must be little left for the many, .lust in proportion as the rich grow relatively richer must the poor grow relatively poorer. When we see the millionaire heapin,' up his hundreds of millions in the course of a single lifetime, we may and must expect to see labor getting less than its share, and poverty increasing; and this is borne out by the actual facts: in large centres where millionaires most abound, the squalor and poverty of the poor is most general and most extreme. This is. indeed, but the law of simple arithmetic: one hall' the nation’s wealth or labor’s gains being given to thirty thousand men, there remains but one half to divide among the sixty million others. It is also the law of organic life: if the vitality is absorbed to plethora by one part of the body, all other parts must be enfeebled thereby. “It is not, then, because the world is too small or too niggard, it is not because nature refuses to yield to man’s labor enough wealth for all his needs, that the many poor are living in misery and dying of want.” Mr. Call clearly establishes the important fact that “The oppressed condition of labor is not due to any pressure of population upon subsistance; the world is large enough, but it is appropriated and withheld from use.” Yet even under such manifestly unjust conditions, when so little of the approprirted earth is actively employed, wealth is created in abundance, but the distribution of this wealth makes the millionaire and the proletariat. He next emphasizes the fact that “The rich are exempt from any struggle for existence like that of the poor man,” and that it is by exemption from that struggle and through enjoyment of privileges that the colossal fortunes aie acquired. PLUTOCRACY THE PRODUCT OP PRIVILEGE. He observes that a great number of the great fortunes descend to their owners by inheritance. “These inherited fortunes grow without effort or exertion of the owners, by interest, by rent, and by profits upon capital. The many who are disinherited must, have the use of this wealth, and they have no recourse but to go to these owners for that privilege; their necessity compels them to pay the price' asked,i.wbethe'* this

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be interest for the use of money, rent, for the use of lands, or selling their labor at such prices as to yield capital the great profits of industry. Can it be wondered at, then, that the owners of the world’s wealth, to whom it is parcelled out by laws of inheritance, continue to grow richer, standing as they do at the very threshold of life and dictating to the world of labor the terms upon which it shall live? Thus it is that these inherited fortunes grow from age to age, and will continue to do so, until, by the inexorable logic of the present system, the world becomes altogether. as it even now almost is, the world of the rich. Inheritance is thus a privilege, in that those who take under it do so without engaging in any struggle for existence, or even for their hoards, which are vastly in excess of the amount required for their subsistance. It is, furthermore, a privilege, in that the fortunes so acquired grow of their own accord, without struggle or exertion on the part of the owners, by the mastery which the monopoly of the world gives.” “Many more of these fortunes are acquired by the monopoly of land. The poor who invest in the mere equities of land during seasons of speculation, or who endeavor to own their homes under mortgage, may conclude, when they lose these by foreclosure, that land ownership is not desirable; and the conclusion of both may be true when they are compelled to pay interest at present rates upon the mortgages. Yet the fact remains that the real landlord class —not they who hold a mere equity, but they who own the land itself or the mortgage upon incumbered land —although they perform no labor or service upon it, neverthe'ess grow rich; to them, whether in rent or in interest, comes the wealth acquired by the monopoly of land. “Whether the land thus monopolized be withheld from use for mere purposes of speculation, or rent be charged for its use. in either case the ownerof the soil need perform no service upon it; he can sit by in idleness while his hoards grow; the land increases in value with the growth of the community, and rents or interests are paid because of its necessity to the community. Seasons of speculation which lure the laboring classes into purchasing lands, succeeded by periods of crisis which compel .them to relinquish it, but add to the gains ot the real landloid class, who emerge out of each crisis richer than before. There is no loss as a whole; the losses of the land poor but mean the gains Of the land-rich, a mere transfer of wealth lias taken place. “The landlord is exempted from labor, by the privilege which the ownership of land gives him to appropriate and turn into his coffers the labor of others.”

The monopoly of land carries with it monopoly in mines. Th us the Rockefellers and the Flaglers have been able to acquire millions of wealth from obtaining a monopoly in one of Nature’s greatest treasures which should have been enjoyed as the land by the whole people, or subject to rental value. A third source from which the privileged class reap millions is found in monopoly in money. Tims in the republic to-day we have a spectacle which might well excite the amazement of a true republican who believes in a democracy in fact rather than a plutocracy labelled democracy. Here we find that. “The government issues the money andcharges the bank from one-fourth to one half of one per cent interest for its use; the bank, in turn, charges the public rates varying from six to twelve per cent, and even upwards; pratically, the whole interest charged is thus its profits for the mere distribution of the money. The bank also receives individual deposits, paying no interest thereon; these it lends at the same rates as before, the whole charge again constituting its profits. As almost the entire money circulation of the country passes through the banks, it is not strange that with such exorbitant profits their fortunes should be both large and numerous. “The fortune of the banker is not, any more than those acquired through inheritance or the monopoly of land, accumulated by a struggle like that of the toiling poor. Money is a public necessity, and every laborer and all industry must have its use; trade or exchange, which means so much’to industrial society, is impossible without money. The banks which are ini rusted with its distribution take advantage of this necessity. A fourth source of colossal fortunes is found in Monopoly in Transportation. “That large fortunes are acquired by this means every one knows, yet so complex are these interests that the exact manner in which these fortunes are acquired is not always known; there is a growing feeling, however, that it is at the expense of society, and ihe private control of railroads is therefore looked upon with increas ing distrust. “This plunder first begins in the building of the roads. They are regarded as public interests, and large public aids are given by land grants and the voting of bonds to encourage and assist In their building; yet notwithstanding the assistance, the roads when built are often mortgaged far in excess of their actual cost, the public aids, together with the surplus realized from the mortgages above the cost of the roads, going to swell the fortunes of the builders. Stock is then issued upon the road, much as i( a farmer who had mortgaged *a five-thousftnd-dollar farm for ten

thousand dollars should attempt to dispose of his equity. But the public are not acquainted with fcecost of railroads, and these seem to the ordinary imagination the embodiment of wealth; the stock is, therefore, purchased by investors all over the country, and the price received for such investment adds still further to the fortunes of the manipulators. “The road is then launched into operation with a debt-burden far in excess of what it cost to build. The public are charged exorbitant rates for the maintaining of this debt-burden and the payingof dividends to stockholders labor is paid the lowest wages for the same reason, and is also turned out of employment whet business is light, it being well known that applicants will be plentiful enough when again needed. Yet, notwithstanding these exorbitantcbarges to the public, and this oppression of labor, the debt-burden of the road—bond and stock—cannot i e supported; dividends fall behind and interest on bonds is not paid. Here, nowever, is another great scource of profit to the shrewd manipulators, whose power of combination has already done so much for them. The stockholders take fright and sell their stock at any price, and these buy it in. Or if the stock is not worth buying, by reason of the large bonded indebtedness, then it is foreclosed, and these shrewd heads get it for less than it is worth, effectually defeating the claims of stockholders and other creditors of of the road.

“It is by these means—in the building, the operation, and the wrecking of roads—that in the space of a short lifetime the great railroad magnates can heap up their hundreds of millions. The railroad, telegraph, and kindred interests, by their nature, offer peculiar facilities for such appropiation; so long as they are committed to private control, their very complexity permits manipulation which, in simpler affairs, would at once be seen through and resented. Their necessity to communities compels these to contribute unduly toward the building, and their nature as a monopoly compels the public to pay rates fixed by no competition, but aione by the appetite for plunder of their manipulators; their extensiveness, too, prevents all competition between them as employers of labor, and compels labor to contribute more than its share toward this plunder.” Another fountain-head of gigantic fortunes is found to be monopoly of commodities; millions are reaped through systematic plundering of the markets by speculators and trusts. The trust is as yet in its infancy, and “though only just beginning to exult in its newly learned power, it already controls many of tne staples of life.” “Society must have sugar, salt, and oil, and other like commodities at whatever price; and when the trust has secured entire control, it cannot, of course, get these elsewhere; to the trust it must come. There is thus no limit to what tiie trust may and will charge. These giant corporations, already capalized into almost the billions, corrupting legislatures and senates, are piling up untold wealth from the plunder of all society, until by their grip around the sources of life they must throttle it. “Sheltered as they are under alleged freedom of competition and contract, their position toward industrial society is none other, or different than that of the pirate of the high seas toward the honest merchantman he plunders; and the complexity of industrial society makes it as dangerous to license their occupation, as it would .be to license piracy itself. The mere permission to pursue their nefarious business unwhipt of justice, is a privilege from honest toil, and to prey upon the labor and necessities and lives of society.

“Many of these fortunes have, as we have seen been acquired with the assistance of the corporation. The transportation and banking systems are altogether too complex in their nature for individual enterprise, and, , as society does not think it safe to manage its own concerns, there remains nothing for it to do but to create corporations and give these concerns into their keeping. These corporations are called quasi-public; public because the business entrusted to them effects vitally the whole of society, and private because it is conducted wholly for private gain. But it is not only these concerns that have been entrusted in this manner to private corporate control. Does a city or any municipal corporation need street-car or telephone facilities, or water, or gas supply, it is not thought fit for it sell' to provide these, as giving it. too much and paternal power; but straightway a franchise is granted to a corporation, and property condemed therefore, and even public aid extended, as we have already seen it done in the building of railroads; the business is, however, conducted wholly for the gain of the private corporation. It is not strange, where these corporations thus control concerns necessary and vital to the whole community, and where their franchise gives absolute monopoly, thus placing the public at their mercy, that they should amass enormous wealth.” CARDINAf BOURSES OF THE GREAT EORTUNES 7 OF TODAY. It will be seen then that a vast majority of the great fortunes found to-day aie not due to the patient industi-y or intellectual capacity of man, but rather spring from “privileges” which are enjoyed or acquired through (1) inheritance; (2) monopoly in land; (3) monopoly in money; (4) monopoly in tratfsportation; (5) monopoly in

commodities, or corporate control of industry. “There may be large fortunes not so accumulated, and these may, in some instances, be acquired honestly in legitimate enterprise and competition, or they may, more likely, be the result of privilege and vicious legislation. It is not claimed that the privileges here named include all evils of law which need correction; others exist and will grow up, and it is the glory of government, as of intelligent man, to rid itself of these as they arise. But the *privileges here mentioned are the most grevious, those most generally recognized, and the ones that account for by far the larger part of the enormous fortunes which concentrate the world’s possessions in the hands of the few, and thereby, deprive society of their use and oppress it by their power.”

PRIVILEGE THE CREATOR OF CAPITAL. In a chapter on “The Fruits of Privilege,” the legitimate working of the injustice due to privilege is forced home in a manner at once startling and unanswerable. The farmer, the wage-labor-er, and those actively engaged in productive work become the victims of the few who hold the earth, the tools of production, the medium of exchange, and the facilities of transportation. “Not only do these privileges thus oppress labor in all its forms, but in another sense, and as deeply, they effect every member of society as a consumer. The wages or profits of all productive labor are determined by two conditions: First, the actual money wages or returns received; and secondly, the cost of living. The object of the whole struggle of masses is for subsistence—for existence; when the farmer receives so many cents per bushel or per pound tor his products, when the manufacturer so much for his goods, the business man so many cents or dollars profits upon his sales, or when the laborer receives his day’s wage, the paramount consideration with each is how much of the necessaries or comforts of life this money will procure. Now these privileges, while they reduce the actual money reward of productive labor, also, in turn, increase the price 'Or all articles of use to the consumers; production alone is not able to bear their burden. Sometimes the burden is greater upon production, sometimes upon consumption. but the candle of living is burnt at hotheads. The debt-burden entailed upon production by inheritance, its increase by land monopoly, and the interest upon it due to the banking system, compels production of all kinds to raise the price of its products to support these; it must shift some of these burdens upon the consumer, else it cannot even struggle under their weight. So, too, while exorbitant transportation charges and the plunder of markets reduce the price received by the purchaser, they also enhance the price charged the consumer. “In order to fully understand how greatly and vexatiously prices are affected by these privileges, we must follow the history of each article of consumption and see at how many points and from how many directions even the simplest of these is made to contribute to their extortions. Take the coat on the farmer’s or the laborer’s back; the price of the wool is made higher by the load of debt the grower must incur for the use of wealth in the raising of sheep, the price or rent of land, the interest charged upon his debt, taxation levied to build railroads, the exorbitant rates demanded by these for carrying the wool to the manufacturer, and the plunder by speculators or trusts on its way. The manufacturer, too, must add to the price of the cloth in order to support the debt he must incur in its manufacture, together with the interest upon that debt, the rent or price of land upon which his factory is situated, exorbitant transportation charged for the bringing of the wool to his factory, and the plunder of speculators and trusts. This same process of addition must be continued b> the clothing manufacturer, the jobber, the wholesale merchant and the retail dealer, as the cloth or the finished product passes in turn into the hands of each on its way to the consumer; and the greater the plunder or privilege* the more exorbitant must be the prices charged at each step. The final price paid by the consumer is thus out of all proportion to what it should or would be, were industry not in this manner, aj every step, the prey of privilege. Trace any article of food, or clothing, or other use, through ■its passage from the raw to the final consumable shape, the result will be the same; and it can at once be seen how wide is the field of operation, how fruitful is the field of plunder for privilege. “Can we, then wonder why labor fails to procure subsistence, or why vast fortunes are mysteriously accumulated in the midst of growing property? Privilege stands over all production and rob labor of its money reward; it stands, too, over consumption, and by increasing the cost of living, lessens the value of labor’s earnings in procuring subsistence. Thus, and by this means it amasses its fortunes, while labor, with all its grind, is a beggar in the marts of life. The millionaire does not create, but appropriates his millions of wealth. It, is indeed, utterly impossible that any man’s services to society, except he be a genius of the rarest order, should procure him a million dollars in a lifetime; much less, then, should the service of those whose sole object is private gain, entitle them to their hundreds of millions. But when these privileges mean to society the ruin of industry and business, the loss of farms and homes under mort-