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the great dragon.
I
the trust, which is rapidly de
vouring THE PEOPLE.
i
Competition I* Dead, and the Sonl
lefta Syndicate Is Oar Master—One
Man's Extortions the It.u 1n of Thou
t sands Ipon Thousands.
* In liis message to the legislature Gov
ernor Hazen S. Pingree of Michigan
thus discusses trusts and the like:
■ There i3 no feature of our times that
tehonld so alarm the patriot, nor is there
any so well calculated to drive the well
meaning legislator to despair as that
which confronts us on all sides in the
rapid concentration of all the product
ive energies of the nation in the hands
of overgrown corporations, or multiple
corporations called trusts, or, where
more solid combinations cannot be ef
fected, by means of intercorporate
agreements for the purpose of limiting
competition and controlling prices.
The process began with the means of
transportation and intercommunication
—namely, the railroads, telegraph lines
and telephones. In spite of the feeble
effort of the federal interstate inminerce
law to check the tendency it has con
tinued almost uninterruptedly, and
promises to continue in the future.
Indeed the process of concentration
of ownership and management has pro
ceeded much more rapidly since that
law was passed than before. Where
purchases or leases could not be effect
ed, traffic agreements have been entered
into which accomplish the purpose al
most as effectively. Where these agree
ments have been open and public the
commission has in some instances inter
posed a check, but such interruptions
to the process have only driven the pro
moters to more ingenious and secret de
vices to evade the law.
It is no extravagance of despair to
anticipate the time in the not distant
future when the passenger and freight
rates on every train traversing the
country, when the charges for telegraph
and telephone services in every state
and the ownership and control of every
street car line and suburban railroad
shall be centered in one great office in
the city of New York, in the hands of
one board of managers, and possibly in
the hands of one man who may have
the genius and the power to control his
fellows.
It has invaded other fields with the
power of a glacier and the rapidity'of
a torrent. One by one each of the great
staples which form the necessaries of
life L falling into the hands of its
special syndicate or trust or trade com
bine, which are but other names for a
group of men dominated by one man of
superior force and genius, into whose
single hand is concentrated more power
than any king possesses and in compari
son to whom the robber barons of feudal
ages were pygmies in their capacity for
extortion and oppression.
The antitrust laws of the federal gov
ernment have fallen powerless before
them. Constitutional restrictions have
been interpreted by the courts so as
practically to make those laws a dead
letter. Indeed no period of our history
has witnessed so rapid and noxious a
growth of trusts and combines as the
few years since the national congress
undertook to restrain them.
These combines formed or reorganized
since the antitrust law was passed by
congress in 1890 and, controlled by a
comparatively few men, control a capi
tal of nearly equal to
20 per cent cf the entire w'ealtli of the
7,000,000 of agricultural population
scattered over more than 4,500,000 of
farms, a capital more than twice the
aggregate of the entire circulating me
dium of the country.
Nor is this by any means the sum of
the trust and combine element in the
counti’y. Hundreds of articles are gov
erned in their price by secret agree
ments w'hich do not make their ajipear
ance in the form of legally organized
companies. If yon inquire carefully,
you will discover that you can scarcely
make a purchase in which the price is
not dictated by a combination over
w-hich the merchant you deal with has
no control.
Each of these great trusts now aims
for the most part to control but one
staple, although some of them reach out
for many. The control of the iron and
steel and of the coal beds of the country
is slowly drifting toward a single cen
ter. As the organizations grow more
powerful, all related industries will be
combined in one control for each great
class, as in the case of iron and coal.
Even in the small retail trading of
our cities the process of concentration
is only too apparent. Our cities no lon
ger present the once familiar aspect of
miles of busy streets, occupied by thou
sands of small but respectable mer
chants, each doing a modest but satis
factory trade with his more immediate
neighbors, and in aline to which he had
been trained by long experience, look
ing forward to the accumulation of a
modest competence for his old age and
to the transmission to his heirs of an
jhonored name and reputation for fair
dealing, which was as much a family
property as his house or his goods.
There are no longer any merchants,
or if a few of the old sort remain they
are rapidly passing away. In their place
a great corporation is organized, which
t-uilds or rents a vast pile of 10 or 20
iriea. In this are gathered the stocks
of If), 20 or 100 ordinary merchants in
various lines, and as many small mer
chants disappear from trade and reap
pear in time as the hired clerks, floor
walkers and laborers of the corporation.
While the trusts have neither souls
nor hearts, they are ruled by men, not
angels; men, too, who, in their greed
itoward the consumer and their heart
leesness toward the laborer, are freed al
together from the personal responsibility
, which, in spite of himself, controls and
modifies the selfishness of the individual
| manufacturer and employer.
'No employer who does business in his
own name dare stand before the com
munity in which he lives and in which
his reputation is part of his capital for
BTich heartlessness toward labor as the
very small man will calmly and even
conscientiously exercise toward his de
pendents when speaking and acting as
the representative of a corporation to
ward which he regards it as his duty to
grind the last penny for the benefit of
the stockholders.
When the process of concentration
has worked itself out to completion, the
law which governs both prices and
wages will assert itself with irresistible
force. The consumer w r ill be charged
the highest price that can be squeezed
out of him. The laborer will be paid
the lowest wages upon which he can
keep life enough in his body to perform
his daily task.
This result has not yet been quite ac
complished, but it is as sure as that
night follows day, as certain as the laws
of human selfishness.
There is no salvation for the consumer
except in free competition. There is no
dignity, no manhood for the laborer ex
cept in the comparative independence
he derives through the free competition
of many employers who seek his serv
ices.
When there shall be hut one source
from which the consumer can obtain
his supplies, but one employer to whom
the laborer can offer his services, both
consumer and laborer will be slaves.
When each great staple shall have
passed into the hands of one corporation
or trust, those who have that control
will have become masters, not alone of
: he price to the consumer and the wage
to the laborer; but, what is almost as
appalling, of the price which they must
pay to such individual producers of raw
materials as may still remain in the
country, including possibly the farmer.
"When a thousand men make $10,000,-
000, the money is scattered and the
wants of a thousand families are to be
gratified, and others are making profit
in catering to their wants, but when
one man accumulates this amount there
is but one family whose wants are to
be supplied, but one family to look to
for the consumption of the products of
labor, and the other 999 become labor
ers themseves.
Take, for instance, the money ac
cumulated by John D. Rockefeller. If
the three hundred millions of profit that
has been extorted from the people of
this country had been divided among
20,000 men scattered over the United
States, the effect would not have been
so disastrous. No one of them would
have sufficient capital to control the
iron mines and the lake carrying trade,
to crush out and destroy those with a
small capital invested in mines and
boats and to turn loose thousands of
men in search of other employment.
Capital becomes more powerful as it
increases in volume and more danger
ous as it becomes more powerful. A
man backed by $300,000,000, influenced
by ambition, greed cr avarice, holds in
his hands the fortunes and happiness of
tens of thousands of people, and he
should not be permitted to increase this
wealth and power by continued extor
tion if the power of the state can pre
vent it.
There must be remedies. The law
was made for the people, not the people
for the law. We have done greater
things, bolder things, before. Other
peoples have accomplished reforms
which seemed quite as difficult to the
lawyers and the courts.
If technical construction of the con
stitution stands in our way, the consti
tution can he amended, or a more sum
mary method may be adopted by elect
ing and appointing judges who will
construe these instruments according to
the eternal law of justice and humanity.
Silver For India.
A London special to the New York
Journal says: Despite contradictions
from prejudiced sources, advocating a
gold standard in India, The Journal is
informed by members of the Indian cur
rency committee that an influential sec
tion of the committee favors India’s re
verting to the silver standard and re
opening her mints to free coinage.
Several currency experts, who were
recently examined by the committee,
have advocated an arrangement with
the United States, under which Amer
ica, China and India shall provide for
the free coinage of silver at the ratio of
22% to 1.
Sir Robert Giffen, the leading Eng
lish gold expert and ardent single stand
ard advocate, is strongly in favor of
free silver for India, as is also Sir David
Barbour, whose influence and opinion
are all powerful. Sir David is now in
the West Indies and may visit the Unit
ed States on his way home to England.
The report of the Indian currency com
mittee will not be prepared nntil he re
turns.
THE HULL BILL.
I Meaanre That Would Make of Oar
Army n Politicians’ Plnm Tree.
Human nature irt so constituted that
Hen would generally rather do right
than wrong. They do not persist in do
ing evil and unpopular things for the
mere love of mischief. When therefore
we find representatives in congress
pnshing such a measure as the Hull
army bill after its nature has been
thoroughly exposed, there is no occasion
to waste time in wondering at their
unaccountable perversity. All we have
to do is to find out what there is in it.
To make that discovery we do not
have to go very far.
The bill provides for 970 new officers
of the line. As it does not enlarge the
Military academy or make any other
provision for confining the new appoint
ments to trained men all these positions
will be the spoils of politicians.
It provides for 633 new staff officers.
In the judge advocate general’s, sub
sistence and pay departments and the
signal corps appointments from the vol-
service or from civil life may be
made to the grade of major and in the
quartermaster’s department to the
grade of captain.
In view of the fact that every officer
is entitled to be retired at the age of 64
on three-quarters pay the bill as orig
inally drawn provided that no outsider
should be appointed to the grade of cap
tain after reaching the age of 30 or to
that of major after reaching that of 35.
Mr. Hull’s committee subsequently ex
tended this limit in all cases to 50 and
added the qualification that it should
not apply at all to persons who had
served in the civil war or in the late
war with Spain.
Under this arrangement any congress
man or any friend or retainer of a con
gressman who wore a uniform for a
week in war, whether at the front or at
a desk in Washington, may be appoint
ed a major at 63, jumping over the
heads of men who have devoted their
lives to military work, and immediate
ly after be retired on a salary of $1,875
a year for life with nothing to do.
Is there not enough in all this to ex
plain why the Hull bill should have a
certain amount of strength in congress?
It is deliberately framed to buy off op
position by holding out the prospect of
official plums for persons with political
pulls.
If it had been meant to stand on its
merits, it would have required these
soft staff positions to be filled by the
promotion of deserving officers of the
line instead of throwing them open to
incompetent and superannuated civil
ians. It would have made provision for
the efficient training of all the officers
needed, and it would have limited any
unavoidable appointments from civil
life to the lowest grades.
Mr. Hull has pleased the politicians.
But what about the people ?
He proposes to saddle the nation with
an army twice as large as it needs, bad
ly organized, inefficiently officered and
with no provision for reserves available
in time of war. For this force he asks
us to pay the cost of the army of one of
the great military powers of Europe.
We shall not do it. The American
people are still in possession of their
senses if some statesmen are not. —New
York Journal.
Protection In Kanima,
The legislature of Kansas has passed
a law requiring all American insurance
companies outside of the state doing
business in that commonwealth to pay
into the state treasury 2 per cent and
all foreign companies 4 per cent of
their gross earnings. This is the best
law ever passed by any western state,
and, of course, it was a Populist law.
The insurance companies, especially the
great life companies, have been making
untold millions off of the people, and it
is just and right that they should pay
back some of their stolen wealth. The
men that run these companies all voted
for a protective tariff, and now they
will have the pleasure of realizing the
beauties of protection when applied to
their own business. The local insurance
companies are now protected at the ex
pense of the foreigners, and we wonder
how the foreigners will like it. Kansas
is a great state. It goes wrong some
times —for instance, last fall —but the |
sober second thought of the people is al
ways right. It has a law regulating
railroad rates, one taxing insurance
companies. The Pops have the control
of the state senate, and therefore the
Republican administration can do but
little harm. —Omaha Nonconformist.
He Was Low.
‘‘An so Arabella has gone and en
gaged herself to a low churchman ? In
deed lam astonished 1 Why, she even
believes in the confessional!'
‘‘Oh, as to that, perhaps he does too!
But I should judge that he isn’t an inch
over five feet in his socks. ” —Cleveland
Leader.
He Wnn Explicit.
An ex-soldier who had lost a leg in
the war and was tired waiting for his
pension wrote to headquarters at Wash
ington :
‘‘Ef you won’t send me my pension,
won’t you please send me a wooden leg,
go’s I kin git about? The leg I lost wuz
a bowleg on the left side an had three
corns on the three little toes. So, now,
you can’t go wrong in makin anew
one.” —Atlanta Constitution.
'SaJlß*? l *'
=To-“
ATLANTA, CHARLOTTE, AU
GUSTA, ATHENS, WILMING
TON, NEW ORLEANS,
CHATTANGOGA, |NASHVILLE
AND
NEW YORK, BOSTON,
PHILADELPHIA,
RICHMOND, WASHINGTON,
NORFOLK, PORTSMOUTH.
Schedule in Effect Dec. n, 1898.
SOUTHBOUND.
No. 408. No. 41.
Lv. New York *ii 00am *9 00pm
“ Washingtou 4 40pm 4 80am
* * Richmond 8 00pm 9 05am
“ Portsmouth *8 45pm *9 20am
Ar. Weldon 11 10pm 11 50am
Ar. Henderson *l2 57am *1 50pm
Ar. Raleigh *2 10am *3 84pm
“ Southern Pines 4 28am 5 58pm
“ Hainlett 5 07am 6 58pm
'* Wilmington *l:2 05 pin
“Monroe, 0 43am 9 12pm
Ar. Charlotte *7 60am *lO 25pm
Ar. Onester *8 08am *lO 50pm
“Greenwood 10 35am 107 am
“ Athens 1 18pm 8 48am
Lv. Winder 2 08pm 4 28am
Ar Atlanta (C. TANARUS.) 8 50pm 6 20am
SOUTHBOUND.
o. 35.
Ar. Athens 8 05 am
Lv. Winder 8 48 am
Ar. Atlanta 10 40 am
.NORTHBOUND,
No. 402. No. 38
Lv. Atlanta (C. TANARUS.) *1 Oopm *8 50pm
“Winder 2 85pm 10 40pm
Ar. Athens 316 pm 11 l'Jpm
•• lireouwood 5 41pm 2 08am
‘ ‘ Chester 7 53pm , 4 25am
Ar. Monroe 9 30pm 5 55am
Ar Charlotte *lO 25pm *7 50am
“ Hamlet *ll 15pm *7 45am
Ar. Wilmington, *l2 05pm
Ar. Boucuoru Pines 12 oain *9 00am
“Raleigh 2 lOain 11 18ain
Ar. Henderson, 8 28am 12 50pm
Ar. Weldon 4 55am 2 50pm
Ar. Portsmouth 7 25am 5 20pm
Richmond *8 45am 7 12pm
“ Wash'tonP. R. R. 12 31pm 11 lupin
“ NewYork “ 0 23pm 6 58am
NORTHBOUND.
No. 54.
Lv. Atlanta 5 3U pm
Lv. VViuder 7 <!5 pm
Ar. Athens 8 Oo pin
♦Daily. TDauy Except bun. ____
Nos. 403 and 402. "The Atlanta
Special,” Solid Vestibuled Train oi
Pullman Sleepers and t loaches between
Washington and Atlanta, also Pullman
Sleepers between Portsmouth and Ohes
ter, S. <J.
Nos. 41 and 38. —‘‘The S. A. L. Ex
press,” Solid Train Coaches, and Pull
man Sleepers between Portsmouth ano
Atlanta. Company Bleepers between
Columbia and Atlanta.
Both traius make immediate connec
tion at Atlanta lor Montgomery, Mo
bile, Now Orleans, Texas, California,
Mexico, Chattanooga, Nashville, Mem
phis. Macon. Florida.
For Tickets, sleepers, etc., apply to
Agents or W. B. Clements, G. P. A.,
B. A. Newlaud, T. A., Atlanta, Ga.
E. St. John, V. Pres, and Gen’l Mg’r.
V. E. Mcßee, General Superintendent
H. W. B. Glover, Traffic Manager.
T. J. Anderson, Gen’l Passenger Agt.
General Offices, PORTSMOUTH, VA.
GEORGIA RAILROAD
AND
CONNECTIONS.,
For information as to Routes,
Schedules and Rates, both
Passenger and Reisit,
wnte to either of
You will receice prompt and re
liable information.
JOE W. WHITE, A. G, JACKSON
P. A.| G. P. A.
AUGUSTA, GA.
S. W. WILKES, H. K. NICHOLSON.
U. F. & P. A. G. A.
ATLANTA ATHENS.
\Y W. HARDWICK; S. E. MAGILL,
s. a d.;f. A.
MACON. MACON.
M. R. HUDSON, F. W.COFFIN,
8. F. A. S.;F. & P. A.
MILLEDGEVILLE. AUGUSTA.
CUBA IN RELIEF w-
Colic, Neuralglauud Toothac...
■ five minutes. Soar Stomach
and Summer Complaints. Price, 2 K C-nts.
G. W. DeLaPerriere, Winder, Ga.
PROFESSIONAL CARDS.
I* C. RUSSELL. E. C. ARMISTKAD,
RUSSELL & ARMISTEAD,
Attorneys at Law.
Winder, Ga. Jefferson. Ga.
W. H. QUARTERMAN,
[Attorney at Law,
Winder, Ga.
Prompt attention given to "31 legal
matters. Insurance and .Real Estate
agent.
JOHN H. SIKES,
'Attorney at Law.
Winder, Ga.
Office over Harness factory.
J. A. B. MAHAFFEY,
Attorney at Law,
Jefferson, Ga.
Silmau’s old office.
Winder Furniture Cos.
UNDERTAKERS AND—
—FUNERAL DIRECTORS.
C. M. FERGUSON, M’g’r.
WINDER. GEORGIA.
A. HAMILTON,
Undertaker and Funeral
Director,
Winder,
EMBALMING
By a Professional Embalmer. Hearse
and attendance free. Ware rooms, cor
ner Broad & Candler sts.
DR. W. L. DkLaPERRJERE,
DENTAL PARLORS,
In the J. C. DeLaPerriere building,
over Winder Furniture Cos. Call and
see me when in need of anything in
the hue of Dentistry. Work guaran
teed.
Honey to Lend,
We have made arrangements with
brokers in New Y'ork City through
whom we are able to place loans on
improved farms for five years time,
payable in installments. If you want
cheap inouev come in and see us at
once- Shackelford & Cos
100 Broad St., Athens, Ga.
Lodge No. 333, (Winder) Officers—N.
J. Kelly, W. M.; J. H. Jackson. S. W.;
W. L, bt-LaPeninre, J. W.; J H. Kil
gore, Sec’ty. Meets every 2d Friday
evening at 7 o’clock
J. T. Strange, N. G ; C, M. Ferguson,
V. G.; J. H. Smith, Treasurer; A. D.
McCurry, Secretary. Meets every Ist
and 3d Monday nights.
RUSSELL LODGE No. 99.
KNIGHTS OF PYTHIAS.
Meets every Ist. and 3d. Thursday
veiling in each month. R. B. Russell,
P. C. and Rep., C. B. Almond, C. C., H.
C. Poole, V. C., A. A. Camp, K. of R.
and A. S., W. B. Dillard, P., W. H.
Toole, M. ofE., T. A. Maynard, M. of
F. J. J. Smith, M. of A., F. L. Hol
land, I. G., O. L Dabney, O. G.
ROYAL ARCANUM.
Meets every 4th Monday night. J.
T. Strange, R.; J. H, Sikes, V. R.; J.
J. Kilgore, Secretary.
(COLORED).
WINDER ENTERPRISE LODGE,
No. 4282. G. U. 0.0f0.F.
Meets every Ist and 3d Friday night
In each month. Dudley George, N. G.;
G. W. Moore V. G.; L. H. Hinton,
Secretary.
floney to Loan.
We now have plenty of money to
loan on improveu farm property in,
Jackson and Banka counties. Terms
and interest liberal. Call and see ua.
Dunlap & Pickkell,
Gainesville, Ga
Sept. 12 th, 1898
Crichton
The Cos :Business Coarse, Total Cost. (oS.OO.
“toi .+L mmXbms irons start to finish.” Most thorough.
~ ifflgllTirill IIIIIIM TTH ' Cat ire*.