THE GRINDING OF THE POOR.
It is now said that the Sugar Trust has been swallowed by the Standard Oil octopus; but the following statistics of how the Sugar Trust operated, and how similar organizations operate, will be of interest, and will also show the fulfilment of various prophecies of God's Word which point out clearly the social and commercial operations and oppressions of the present day. The figures we get from the Thrice-a-Week World of May 31, 1897. The trust first came into existence in 1887 by a sort of union among fifteen companies, which were consolidated, to evade the anti-trust law, in 1891. The prominent men in it numbered six. Its profits in refining for eleven years aggregated $390,666,966, or an average of $35,515,178.75 a year. The president received a salary of $100,000 a year. His wealth is estimated at from $60,000,000 to $80,000,000. The treasurer receives a salary of $75,000 a year. His wealth is estimated at $30,000,000. The trust produces two and a quarter billion pounds of sugar a year. In a rise of a little over half a cent a pound yearly profits are increased $16,000,000. The trust employs 15,000 persons. Its average wages is only $12 per week. One investigator thus writes of the employees:— “These men work hard in rooms the temperature of which is sometimes nearly 200 degrees, and they are paid but eight and one-third cents for an hour's work. They therefore have to work twelve hours a day in heated rooms to earn $1.00, and as the sugar refineries are operated on Sundays the same as any other day, many of the laborers work every day in the week that they may earn $7.00. Those of the laborers who are married are compelled to look to their wives to help support the family, which the women do in some cases by taking in washing.” The trust was said to have paid to the last Cleveland campaign fund $500,000. And it is said to be equally liberal to both parties in the same campaign. In the year 1894 its profits on refining amounted to over $36,000,000. The same year it is said to have made in speculating in its own stocks by forcing them up and down, $158,471,000. What is a country to do with a combination of such trusts, aggregating such enormous wealth, used for the purpose of corrupting public officials, especially when issues come up over which there are nearly equal parties in Congress? “Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
When wealth accumulates and men decay.” God has forewarned the world concerning these things in such scriptures as Isaiah 59; Amos 8; Habakkuk 2; James 5. He has told us in these prophecies that sometime the trampled worm will turn, and woe be to his oppressor. He has also told his people that their hope was in Christ's coming. “Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord.” James 5:7.