Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 July 1884 — Monopoly Again. [ARTICLE]

Monopoly Again.

With a thoughtful brow the tramp contemplated a fence on which were painted the words: “Clothing for the Old, the Young, and the Middle-Aged; for the Tall, the Short, the Thin, and the Stout One Price.” “And so monopoly has come to this, has it?” said the tramp. “I ain’t surprised. Not at all, sir. I told ’em ao last summer when I waft put off a train because I didn’t happen to have the change in my pocket. It was all in the checks the cashier had forgot to certify. But upon my honor as a gentleman, this is the most insufferable outrage of these grasping and soulless monopolies. Ain’t it enough for ’em to charge as much for carrying a bushel of wheat from Syracuse to New York as from Chicago and pooling railway freights, but now they’ve got to pool charges on clothing, and make everybody pay alike? One price! Everybody—the bald-headed and the thin, the young and the stout, the middle-aged and the rich, the mule-driver and the Alderman-at-large, a county Congressional delegate and a municipal club reformer — they’ve every one of ’em got to pay one price. There it is! You can see it on the fence. I’m a thin man—brain work that’s done it. Now, do they suppose that I’m going to chip in and help make a general average? Pay toward some big man’s clothes ? No, sir; not if the court knows itself. I’ll wear this suit another summer, turn it. I don’t mind the expense. ’Taint that. It’s the principle of the thing—paying one price for everything. ’’ —Syracuse Herald.