Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 April 1884 — Republican Convention. [ARTICLE]

Republican Convention.

All voters of the town of Rensselaer, who intend to support the Republican nominees in the approaching campaign, are requested to meet at the .Court House, Monday, April 29tb, 1884, at 7:30 p. m. in mass convention, to nominate a ticket to be voted for at the election of May sth.

MANY REPUBLICANS.

The possession of such enormously overgrown fortunes as that oi W. H. Vanderbiit is so manifestly injurious to society and contrary tn public policy that the government ought to interfere and make it unlawful for any individual to become possessed of property or monies above a certain sum, say ten million dollars —a sum vastly beyond the needs of any one individual to either hold or dispose of. One of the overshadowing dangers“im the future of this country is in the accumulating of the wealth of the country in a few handsand the consequent impoversfrin g —a ml demoralizationof the people. If Vanderbilt’s wealth be not more than o ne half as largeas it is commonly stated, yet his yearly income is as great as the aggregated earnings of ten thousand average working men. “Thou sb alt not take thy children's bread and throw it unto-dogsy” but here, worse than thrown unto dogs, is the bread of fifty thousand human beings either wasted in damning and demoralizing luxury , or, still worse, hoarded to swell the proportions of a fortune already vastly too great. It is a monstrous and an unmitigated evil. We agree with that plank in the anti-monopolists platform which demands a cumulative incomerax, for large incomes, increasing tn rate per cent, in proportion to the

amount of the income, and if we could have our way we would pass a law forbidding the accumulation and holding of such immense fortunes. The day is certainly coming when the people will refuse to longer sweat and groan under the unendurable burden of poverty for the sake of securing to a few the possession of that which, in reallity; enfiches not its possessors and leaves the people poor indeed.