Capitalistic Greed by L. A. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D.C. · Mar 30, 1905

“Capitalistic Greed”

By L. A. S.

IN a recent issue of The Independent (New York City) is printed what that journal terms “the most remarkable chapter yet written in the history of capitalistic greed, moral paralysis, and political corruption in America.” It is “the story of the handing over of Rapid Transit in New York City to a private monopoly,” told by John De Witt Warner, who gives the history of the transaction in full, with documentary proofs of his assertions. It is a “remarkable chapter” in the history of capitalistic greed because, for one reason, it turns “the search-light upon a supposedly moral, respectable, substantial element in the community,” which is shown to be as faithless to the trust reposed in it by the people as was the “Boss Tweed” ring of old.

The men who compose the New York Chamber of Commerce, those constituting the Rapid Transit Commission, and former mayor Seth Low—men by their positions commanding honor and public confidence in the fullest degree—are the men who, says The Independent, “when it was absolutely within their power to give to New York City a system of rapid transit that should be successful as a means of expeditiously transporting a vast population at reasonable prices, and at the same time a source of vast revenue to the city, deliberately handed it over to private interests, and saddled upon the public an extortionate monopoly which will coin untold millions of dollars from the people’s necessity, and which has already assumed the attitude of opposition to any further extension of subway traffic until the people are made to stand and deliver.”

And these revelations, observes The Independent, are unhappily “but examples of conduct and conditions that prevail in all the great cities of this republic, and probably in most of the towns and villages.” The Independent further describes the situation in the following emphatic language:—

A gigantic struggle is on between capitalism, bent upon the utmost extortion that can be practised, and a people that is becoming thoroughly aroused and wrathful with a sense of outraged right. In this struggle the “respectable” business men, whose duty it is to take broad and sound views of the public welfare, and to stand firmly by the principles of justice and honor, have thus far, with comparatively few exceptions, allowed themselves through prejudice, narrow-mindedness, and selfishness to play into the hands of the most unscrupulous manipulators of economic forces that the world has ever seen.

These “conservative” individuals, “who utter words of solemn warning against agitators,” “the respectable, substantial citizenship of the nation, are the men,” says The Independent, “who are undermining the foundations of American society, endangering the republican scheme of government, and storing up for themselves wrath against the day of wrath.”

A day of wrath is coming,—a day when there will be a French revolution on American soil. More and more is this hinted at by representatives of the most sober, sane, and law-abiding element of the people. On this point The Independent observes:—

So far as the political outcome is concerned, it matters not at all whether a story like Lawson’s “Frenzied Finance” is in the main true or in the main false, if the people happen to believe that it is true. A few documents like those that Mr. Warner contributes to popular enlightenment will convince some tens of thousands of voters that, whether true in detail or not, the writings of Lawson, Miss Tarbell, Lincoln Steffens, and others have not told the half about the real greed and corruption that have been ruling with a high hand in American business and political activity. When this conviction is once established in the popular mind, no fear of free silver or of populism will deter the people from throwing in their lot with the Bryan type of democracy. They will not stop at “safe” or conservative restrictions of corporate power. They will feel that the positions taken by labor organizations, Populists, and even socialists, more freely express the real interests of the people than do the leadership and “practical judgment” of the business classes. . . . When popular revolt gets under way, it will not stop with the “governmental regulation” of corporate activity. It will proceed through schemes of taxation and otherwise to bring about a redistribution of wealth by a confiscation of property.

Yes; a “day of wrath” is coming when there will be “confiscation of property,” and that not by the aid of the law or of the courts. How long can men of wealth who boldly override and defy the law in their robbery of the people, take refuge under that law from those whom they wrong? How long can this continue before the people, in their determination to get even with their oppressors, will set aside all law and legal forms, and lay their hands directly upon these men and their ill-gotten wealth? When the long-pent-up storm of public wrath breaks forth, it will, like the lightning, follow the path of least resistance to the objects of its fury, and that path will not be through the law or the courts. Such is the world’s outlook to-day. How much better the outlook of those whose hopes and ambitions rise above this world, whose eyes are toward “that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ.” L. A. S.