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domain. Our streets have been seized by
telegraph, telephone, and railroad companies.
The iron-horse monopolizes the main line of
public travel, and, instead of belonging to the
public, as it should, the horse, as well as the
vehicle, and the road, is private property. Our
helpless cities are not permitted to illuminate
themselves. The private company must be
chartered to hold the light which enables the
public to walk its own streets.
In other civilized countries the carriage of
small parcels and the use of the telephone and
telegraph are parts of the Postal service and
are great blessings to the masses of the people:
with us they are private monopolies and are
very great, blessings to a few Capitalists.
In other civilized countries the public owns,
and operates, the railroads: with us there is
as yet fatuous contentment with a system
of Private ownership which taxes us for divi
dends upon $7,000,000,000 of watered securities
and which persists in killing men, women, and
children rather than go to the expense of
adopting the safety appliances which would
prevent the butcheries.
The historian, wishing to impress us with
the wealth and extravagance of the Roman
aristocracy, tells us that so large a sum as
$1,200 was sometimes paid for a horse, and
$200,000 for a palace. We are then given a
list of Roman millionaires, and it appears that
these plutocrats were worth from One million
to Twelve million dollars. Pompey the Great,
who had conquered and plundered provinces
larger than continental Europe, left property
valued at $3,500,000. Crassus, the richest of
all the Roman nabobs, left a fortune of $12,-
000,000.
Suppose you compare the plutocracy of Rome
to that of these United States. J. P. Morgan
has more money invested in art treasures,
alone, that the richest of all the Romans was
worth. The “summer cottage” of Cornelius
Vanderbilt cost $3,000,000, to say nothing of
the land and the furnishings. John D. Rocke
feller’s yearly income is greater than was the
entire fortune of the richest Roman. Enor
mous as were the treasures which Pizarro’s
tortures forced from the Inca of Peru, they are
dwarfed by the sums which E. H. Harriman
and his gang have taken from the Union
Pacific, the Central Pacific, and the Chicago
& Alton.
Great as was the spoil of Cortez in the Con
quest of Mexico, it was less than Jay Gould
and his son George gathered together in the
Conquest of American railways.
From one comparatively small railroad sys
tem, the Central of Georgia, J. P. Morgan and
a choice assortment of participating thieves,
took and carried away a larger sum than
Caesar wrung from conquered Gaul. The vic
torious Sylla astonished historians by levying
a fine of $25,000,000 upon the rich cities of
Greece. Our Sugar Trust levied an annual line
of twice that amount upon this Republic a
few years ago, to recoup itself for a contribu
tion of $500,000 which it had made to the cam
paign fund of the Democratic party. By judi
ciously placing its contributions with both
the old parties, the Steel Trust gets the privi
lege to so arrange our Tariff schedules as to
extort from us, every year, net profits to an
amount that is ten times larger than the entire
revenue of the Roman Republic.
The Vanderbilt family, through franchise
grabbing and stock watering operations, have
robbed the American people of huger sums
than Alexander the Great harvested by his
THE JEFFERSONIAN.
conquest of the opulent East.
Antiquity was scandalized when Cleopatra
dissolved and drank a pearl valued at $400,-
000; and historians comment in a tone of re
buke upon the luxuries of Lucullus, who spent
$8,500 on a feast. When one of our American
millionaires throws open the grand ball-room
for a night of revelry, the flowers cost more
than the feast of Lucullus. And when one of
our Cleopatras fancies that she is fascinated
by some roving Mark Antony—some English
Duke, Italian Prince, French Count, or Hun
garian sneeze-weed —she thinks nothing of
spending from One to Five million dollars on
the “pearl.” In Cleopatra’s case, the gem was
merely a casual product of nature; in the
modern instances every dollar that goes abroad
to pay for foreign titles, and minister to the
depraved appetites of aristocratic debauches,
is the product of the American laborer’s toil.
Thomas F. Ryan and August Belmont, two
Democrats of masterful influence in the coun
cils of the Democratic party, looted the traction
lines of New York City of bigger sums than
Warren Hastings took from the princes of
Hindustan. Great Britain was indignant at
the rapacity of Hastings, and her greatest ora
tors —Burke, Sheridan, Fox —thundered against
him at the bar of the House of Lords, burning
him with words of invective that will live
forever. Ryan and Belmont did not ravage a
foreign state, nor plunder people of a different
race, as Hastings did; they robbed the people
of their own city, men and women of the
same race as themselves, and no impeachment
for high crimes and misdemeanors has brought
them to the bar of any tribunal which has
power to punish. Warren Hastings despoiled
the idle rich of India —grandees who had
themselves plundered their own people. Ryan
and Belmont did not plunder the idle rich!
No! They put their greedy hands upon the
scanty earnings of millions of workmen and
work women of New York city, and heaped
up riches for themselves, mountain high, by
robbing the industrious poor. But who talks
of indicting such Democratic criminals as
Ryan and Belmont? Who dreams of punish
ing such Republican criminals as Morgan and
Harriman? Weaklings that we are! We not
only crouch before the gigantic law-breakers,
but allow them to run our government. All
that we can do is to punish such offenses as
petit larceny. Let the naked steal something
to wear; let the hungry steal something to
eat; let the miserable wretch, shivering with
wintry cold, steal something to feed the fire —
and we savagely clutch these poor creatures,
and fling them to the lions of the law. But
the men who steal railroads, the Trust-builders,
who trample upon every statute of the penal
code in their march to monopoly and to mil
lions —these are the men before whom we
stand helpless and afraid. There is not an
intelligent, well-informed citizen of the coun
try, who does not know that, through the
machinery of both old parties, these million
aire lawbreakers, who ought to be behind the
bars, dictate our legislation, shape our foreign
and domestic policies, and control our fate.
They talk to us of foreign foes, and some
of our statesmen are wild in their clamors
for a Billion Dollar navy. But, tell me what
greater harm a foreign foe could inflict upon
us than we are suffering from the foe within
the gates?
Our Civil War was fierce and bloody, truly a
cruel war, and it lasted four long, long years.
Around many ana many a wife it threw the
sombre weeds of widowhood; from the lips of
many and many a child it drew the wail of
orphanage. Yet we buried fewer dead, and
carried to the hospitals fewer wounded, than
we now lose every four years, to the remorse
less greed of capitalism. Count up the victims
in mine, mill, and factory; count up the vic
tims that have strewn the lines of our rail
roads; count up the human wrecks of the
sweatshops, the stock yards, the sugar refin
eries and the smelting works; count up what
you have lost to those Christians who have
taken the little children that Jesus loved,
wrung dividends out of their little bodies, and
then tossed them upon the scrap heap; count
up all these for four years, and you will reach
a frightful total, a ghastly total, which exceeds
the losses of our Civil War.
Make the comparison from an economic
point of view. This country, as a whole, was
in a happier, healthier condition at the close
of the Civil War than it is right now. There
were no men out of work; there was not a
shameful “bread line” or “soup kitchen” in
America. Neither in the North nor in the
South was there a constantly growing army of
tramps, dead-beats, and human derelicts. We
had fewer abandoned farms then than now;
we had practically no beggars; we had few
millionaires and few paupers. A vast amount
of paper money, issued by the Government,
was in circulation, and this abundant currency
was rushing along the channels of trade, like
an elixir of life, carrying buoyant strength to
the uttermost extremities of the Industrial
system. On every hill-top rang out the clarion
call of enterprise; from every valley rose the
hum of hopeful industry.
Cities were seen rising from the ashes, •
more resplendent than before the war; farms
were once again snowy with cotton, or golden
with grain.
In 1866, the industrial situation was sunlit;
the black thunder clouds had rolled away, and
the skies were clear; we were moving toward
the future with the quick, confident step ol
those who feel that they are marching into
the dawn.
• In 1866, it was inconceivable that the day
would ever come, in this land, whose wealth
producers have created riches to the amount
of $110,000,060,000, when we should find three
millions of toilers unemployed; should see
them lift up their empty hands and beg, not
for charity—oh no! —but for work, and get
neither charity nor work.
What was it, oh what was it! that cast the
, first shadow over the radiant landscape, that
gave the first check to the industrial army
which was advancing under the white banners
of peace? What was it that drove back the
rising tide of prosperity and strewed human
wreckage all along the coast? Did idleness
seize the workers? Did the clouds withhold
the rain? Did the earth refuse its increase?
No! no!
Such bountiful harvests never blessed a peo
ple as those which we have reaped. Never
in this world!
How then, in the name of the Most High,
how was it that the cup of hope was dashed
to the ground and the word Poverty, Poverty,
Poverty, stamped upon so many millions of
people in the richest land upon which the sun
ever shone?
The soldiers of the Union and the Confed
eracy had hardly stacked arms before the
ravenous financiers of the big cities, East and
North, organized to raid the industries of the
country with a ferocious thoroughness which