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feted for sale the numerous products
of farm, orchard and garden. And the
farmers arc assisting each other in a
way that insures success to the entire
community. They are helping to bear
one another’s burdens.
Lopez island is one of the divisions
of San Juan county. It is an ideal
land of dairies, farms and orchards.
Every variety of fruits and vegeta
bles produced in the Puget sound ba
sin grow in profusion on the island.
The surplus is shipped to Seattle for
a market In order that the best
prices may be obtained, the farmers
. are united for the common interest
of all concerned. The telephone is
the beginning of concerted action
along all the lines of disposing of
farm produce and the purchasing of
manufactured articles. It marks an
important era in the industries of the
island, And those farmers have set a
good example for other agricultural
communities to follow in the work of
co-operation.—Post Intelligencer.
COTTON IN THE FAR EAST.
Prof. IL B. Hulburt says the Jap
anese are absorbing lands in South
ern Corea for the purpose of growing
cotton in that part of the world. The
Japanese are intelligent, and they are
not entering upon a cotton growing
contest with nature arrayed solidly
against them. They see at least a
probability of success, and possibly
experiments have demonstrated th°
feasibility of the scheme. Corea
reaches southward to the thirty-fourth
degree of latitude, which is just about
the latitude of Birmingham and Cen
tral Alabama. There seems, therefore,
to be no climatic reason why cotton
cannot be grown in Corea. It is free
ly grown in China, but all of the
Chinese product is consumed at home.
All that Japan lacks in order to
control the cotton trade of the Far-
East is an ample home-grown supply
of raw cotton. She can spin nr/*
weave it cheaper than we can, because
labor is lower-priced than it if. here
or in England or on the continent.
She is, too, near untold millions of
consumers—at least 400,000.000. She
has mills, and she has the ambition
to build more, and all she lacks today
is the staple itself.
If cotton can be grown in Southern
Corea, the Japanese will assuredly
grow it, and she may therefore wrest
from us the entire cotton goods trade
of the Far East before we can dig the
canal. This, however, is one of the
ups and downs of this world, and if
we cannot sell goods in the Far East
we can certainly sell them in South
America and in some of the isles of
the seas. American cotton is still in
the ring.
AS WORKINGMEN MUST SEE
* * < IT.
Are there two kinds of law ir the
United States —one for the rich man
and one for the poor man! Are the
petty thief and the poor criminal to
be promptly and adequately pun
ished, while the rich thief and the
powerful criminal go unpunished,
save for an occasional fine during
La stress of aroused public opinion!
B Ire members of organized laboi to
3 prosecuted for capital crimes on
‘■abious testimony, while rich and
Powerful mine-owners can bribe leg
islatures, can appoint governors and
■ State supreme court judges, can
openly, defiantly, and violently t rum
ple under foot State and Federal
WATSON’S WEEKLY JEFFERSONIAN.
laws, and with the aid of governor
and militia—the latter confessedly
in the pay of the mine-owners—sus
pend the writ of habeas corpus, nul
lify all civil law, depose civil offi
cers, deport citizens, suppress news
papers, destroy property, and create
‘‘lawful” anarchy—with absolute
impunity and without even a pre
tense of prosecution by State or Fed
eral authority!
From the viewpoint of organized
labor and its sympathizers, those
questions constituted the real issue
in the Boise trial. This fact ex
plains the deep and widespread sus
picion and the expressed bitterness
against “the State”—that is, the
prosecution—in the Boise trial, and
the denunciation of President Roose
velt for his untimely and unfortu
nate classification of the three ac
cused men as “undesirable citizens.”
It is dangerous and unpatriotic to
minimize the industrial revelations
of the trial at Boise. Yet the labor
troubles in Colorado and in Idaho
are different only in degree from
what happened in the street railway
strike at San Francisco, fiom what
happened in the Homestead tragedy,
in the anthracite coalmining strikes,
in the railway union strike at Chica
go, and in a hundred other strikes of
less impression on the public mem
ory.
On the part of organized labor,
what is the meaning of this unmis
takable lack of faitn in law’ and gov
ernment, of this too ready resort to
primitive and barbaric methods to
obtain justice—as its members see
it! On the part of organized capital,
what is the meaning of this generally
insidious, but when necessary, fla
grant and defiant vio’ation and
usurpation of law and government ?
Surely, it is not merely a contention
between employers and employes as
to whether or not wages shall be
temporarily increased or reduced?
Is not the present attitude of or
ganized capital and of organized la
bor the outgrowth of a different
method of doing business on a large
scale, of a different spirit in iudns
trial and in commercial enterprises--
the different method and the differ
ent spirit being the product of the
marvelous growth of corporations, es
pecially of trusts!
Professedly, a trust is formed to
reduce the cost of production and to
establish and to maintain prices that
will be just and fair to consumer and
to producer alike. In reality, a trust
is formed to crush out competition,
to control the supply of the raw ma
terial and of the finished product, to
reduce wages, to make the price of
the product as high as the public will
stand, and to limit the disbursement
of profits to as few persons as is
practicable—in short, to prey on the
necessities of the people, to subordi
nate humanity to money.
Are not the violence of labor trou
bles in the last twenty-five years, and
the almost universal and unanimous
condemnation of the high-handed
methods of railroads and all other
monopolistic corporations—aie not
these an expression of a profound
popular discontent caused by the
glaring injustice of special privilege
on the one side, and of constantly
lessening industrial opportunity on
the other!
Is not President Roosevelt’s
wonderful popularity due to the fact
that be has called a halt on the abuse
of corporate powers, and has de
manded at least the regulation of a
few special privileges!
Are not the bitterness of organ
ized labor and the strong popular
feeling against monopolistic corpo
rations potent proof that the world
old struggle is now being waged in
this country mere openly and more
fiercely than ever before —the strug
gle between those who earn without
getting and those who get without
earning!
Do not the masses of the Ameri
can people plainly see that now, as
never before in our history, all men
are not equal before the law!
It is universal knowledge that the
officers of three of the largest in
surance companies in the world used
trust-funds for speculative purposes,
opened their treasuries to the devo
tees of “high finance,” to the Wall
street sheep-shearers—all for greed,
for private gain. Not even one of
fender has been puished.
The few men that autocratically
control the railroads of the country
have brazenly violated law and
equity, have treated the public with
defiant insolence, and have main
tained lobbies to corrupt State legis
latures and Congresses. Yet the rail
roads owe their very existence to spe
cial privileges granted by the people;
and every dollar used to build, to
equip and to operate the roads has
been furnished by the people, direct
ly or indirectly.
These same railroad autocrats hav'.
“won” hundreds of millions of dol
lars by juggling railroad stocks in
Wall street, while the service and
the equipment of the roads were not
capable of handling the freight of
fered them. There is no record of
any stock manipulator or railroad
president being punished.
“Watering stock” is a favorite
pastime of “high finance.” Water
ing stock is but another name f v
stealing; it is taking money and giv
ing nothing for it. Yet it pl nP oq ■
heavy secret tax on the American
people and their posterity. All n?
these hundreds of millions of fiat
stock must pav dividends, and the
American people will do the paying
in the name of legitimate earnings, but
in fact for extortionate charges. A
small group of men, dealing in pub
lic utilities and domestic necessaries,
have made hundreds of millions by
watering stock. No stock-waterer, no
dealer in fictitious property, has yet
seen the inside of a prison, by op
eration of law.
The prices of nearly all the neces
saries and the commodities of life
are arbitrarily fixed by trusts. As
a trust means no competition—abso
lute control of the supply—the
American people have no other course
open to them than to submit to be
ing “lawfully” robbed. Notwith
standing his hold-up methods of
money-making, the trust magnate
continues to be an eminently respect
able and exemplary citizen.
The American people have been
plucked of hundreds of millions of
dollars by means of the “Dingley
bill,” a protective tariff law passed
by a pre-election bribed Congress, in
consideration of the munificent con
tributions in the first McKinley-
Bryan camnaign— a bargain and sale
that has no parallel in history for
its audacity in deliberately taxing
all the people for the benefit of the
few.
After “swollen fortunes” had been
taken from the pockets of the peo
ple, the “Dingley bill” promoters
and beneficiaries formed trusts, cre
ated monopolies, and wound up by
issuing hundreds of millions of stock
without adding a dollar to the act
ual value of the plants.
By the judicious use of a small
percentage of this special privilege
tax, the “protective” tariff benefi
ciaries have been successful, up to
date, in keeping Congress in a
“stand pat” attitude, and the special
taxation of all the people for the
benefit of the few still goes indus
triously and merrily on.
There is no more bitter sarcasm
nor mocking humor than the tariff
beneficiaries’ plea that the “protec'
ive” tariff is for the protection of
the American workingman. It is
true that the American workingman
has wrested from employers higher
wages than ever before; but this is
through the efforts and the sacrifices
of organized labor. It is true that
he is better fed, better clothed, and
better housed than those of his own
class and occupation in other coun
tries; but he is a much more compe
tent and valuable workman than the
foreign wage laborer.
Nevertheless the American work
ingman is worried, and he has been
led to do some thinking and investi
gating; first, because 14,000.000 girls
and women in the United States find
it necessary to labor; second, be
cause his share of “unprecedented
prosperity” does not abide with him,
but is taken from him by the greatly
increased cost of living—the tariff
protected trusts being the largest
beneficiaries of this increased cn«t.
He sees that there are two distinct
classes of citizens; the producing
class and the exploiting class. He
sees the shining lights of “high fi
nance,” of stock watering, of pub
lic franchise huckstering, of special
privilege, and of graft of all kinds
and degrees, lined up in the front
tanks of the exploiting class—the
class that has added nothing to the
nation’s happiness or to its material
welfare, but that has debauched pri
vate and public morals at home, and
has disgraced the nation abroad.
He sees the stock jugglers, the
stock waterers, the trust magnates,
the tariff tax beneficiaries, the spe
cial privilege recipients, parading
their evidence of unlimited wealth.
He sees them contributing with
princely liberality to churches, to li
braries, to colleges— to popularize
and to perpetuate the present system
of protective tariff, trusts, and “high
finance.” He sees them with their
villas and their castles at home and
abroad, their public post offices with
in their private grounds, their pri
vate cars, their yachts, their banks,
their railroads, their newspapers,
their lobbies in and out of the legis
latures and of Congress. He sees
them on intimate terms with law
makers and federal judges, even hob
nobbing with royalty. He sees all
this, and he feels that he pays a
large part of the toll, very much
against his will.
He is not envious of the so-called
plutocrats because they have “lots of
money”; but he is convinced that
lots of their money is other people'-
money, for which they gave no valtm
and to which they have no moral
right.
(Continued on Page Fifteen.)
PAGE SEVEN