Note and Comment

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jun 27, 1907

ONE of the chief characteristics of this generation is combination for the purpose of coercion, and it is manifest already in nearly every walk of life. It is seen in the great trusts formed for the purpose of coercing purchasers of material to pay more for the material than they are willing to pay or accustomed to pay, while they make it impossible for concerns outside the combination to engage in their accustomed traffic. It is seen in the great labor trusts—labor unions—formed for the purpose of coercing employers to pay more for labor than they are willing to pay or accustomed to pay, while they make it impossible for men outside the labor trust to sell their labor where they will. Already certain merchants dare not sell supplies to a certain class, for fear of losing the custom of an organization upon whose patronage they chiefly depend. Each year the country draws nearer to the realization of the long-threatened farmers’ trust, designed to coerce the consumer into paying more than he is willing to pay or accustomed to pay for the necessities of life. And that union, or trust, or combination can become a success only by coercing with both hands as the commercial trusts and the labor trusts have done. That is, it must coerce not only the consumer of its products, but also those of its own class who are not desirous of joining the combination.

The farmer who has conscientious scruples against being a member of that trust must be coerced by the boycott to come into the organization or go out of the business. That is the way it has been with the labor trusts and with the commercial trusts; and as they are all founded on the same principle, that is how it will be with the American Society of Equity, which is the farmers’ trust.

Already the organization has a membership of over five hundred thousand. It has members in all but three hundred of the three thousand counties of the United States, and has neighborhood and county unions in twenty-eight of the States. The president of the organization, James A. Everitt, in the New York Independent says:—

We are in thorough accord with the great army of union labor, since the objects for which it is working are so similar in many respects to ours. . . . Already organized labor has recognized the benefits of co-operation with this society.

It originated in Indianapolis, the home of John Mitchell, and has been heartily indorsed by Mr. Samuel Gompers. That the president of the organization understands the tremendous power in the hands of his organization, as well as the cruel danger, when its plans are complete, is shown by the following:—

The founders of the society chose the word equity because they realized the tremendous power that would be in the hands of the farmers organized and in possession of all the food and other supplies on which the comforts and very life of human beings and domestic animals depend, and desired that there should always be the motto before them to do equity while they are demanding equity.

But if a good motto were a sure safeguard against injustice and the desertion of principle, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States ought surely to have protected the inhabitants of this country from religious persecution. As those great documents have been unable to do that, we can not expect much from the little word “equity” in the name of the farmers’ trust. These combinations indicate plainly that the world is rapidly getting ready for the universal boycott foretold by the revelator in Rev. 13: 17.