People's Pilot, Volume 5, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 March 1896 — A FEARFUL SHOWING. [ARTICLE]

A FEARFUL SHOWING.

What Arc We Doing to Do About th<* Hobberle^? The earnings and substance of the people are absorbed by the trusts, combines and monopolies, as a sponge absorbs water. The bank monopoly robs through interest. The railroad corporations rob by excessive charges, to pay big salaries to a horde of railroad presidents and other dignitaries —besides the millions to pay themselves interest and dividends on watered stock and fraudulent bonds. The telegraph corporations rob the people of millions by charging more than three times as much as charged in England and other countries owning and operating thft, lines. The street railways rob the people of millions to pay interest and dividends on stocks and bonds, four-fifths ot which is wind and water. These railways are capitalized at an average of $125,000 to the mile, while the actual cost does not exceed an average of $lO,000 to the mile. Express companies, side attachments, like the telegraphs to the railroads, rob the people of millions by the extortionate charges for their service. The Standard Oil monopoly robs the people of millions for oils. Then comes the steel trust, the leather trust, sugar trust, and a whole brood of other trusts, corporations and monopolies, each and all preying upon the honest and defenseless earnings of the people to the tune of millions of dollars annually. The land monopolists get in their work, and not only absorb millions in rents, but deprive more than one-half of the people of homes, their natural inheritance.

No wonder that in America there are more than four thousand millionaires averaging three millions each! Is it any wonder that less than one per cent, of the people own more than all the rest, while it is estimated that not less than three millions of ablebodied men are tramps and paupers, or bordering on that condition—to say nothing of the women and children depending on them for food and clothing and homes? Mr. Ingalls, Republican senator at that time, proclaimed in his great speech in the senate In 1891 that more than a million of men were seeking work and unable to procure it. Since then times have been much harder, and the number and suffering of the poor has been greatly augmented. More people are being thrown out of employment daily; debts are piling up, private, state and national. What have the Democrats and Republicans done to relieve the situation? Nothing. Instead of relief, monopolies, trusts and combines have increased and flourished as never before. What do the Democrats and Republicans propose to do to relieve the people? Nothing. Instead of relief, they pile up more bonds and add to the already unbearable burden laid upon the shoulders of the toiling masses. The struggle, upon the part of the masses, for a bare existence is becoming fierce. How is it possible under the conditions imposed upon the people by the policy of these old parties for them to pay these enormous sums extorted from them annually for interest and monopolistic profits, and at the same time live and preserve the semblance of liberty, piosperity and happiness, to say nothing of the enormous principal? Monopoly has squeezed the juice from the lemon until it is about dry. When it refuses to yield any more juice, then what? —Representative.