THE GROWING POWER OF GRASPING WEALTH.
The Trust Outlook for the Future.
THE following is what the New York World, the great Democratic newspaper of the East, prints and calls in its issue of January 13, "The Best Statement of the Trust Question." It is from the recent message of Hon. Hazen S. Pingree, Republican governor of Michigan. As for us, we can not see when it is overdrawn. Read it, and then read the scriptures which follow, prophetic of these very times and things: "There is no feature of our times that should 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 productive energies of the nation in the hands of overgrown corporations, or multiple corporations called trusts; or, where more solid combinations can not be effected, 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 Commerce law to check the tendency, it has continued almost uninterruptedly, and promises to continue in the future. "Indeed, the process of concentration of ownership and management has proceeded much more rapidly since that law was passed than before. Where purchases or leases could not be effected, traffic agreements have been entered into which accomplish the purpose almost as effectively. Where these agreements have been open and public, the commission has in some instances interposed a check, but such interruptions to the process have only driven the promoters to more ingenious and secret devices 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 is falling into the hands of its special syndicate, or trust, or trade combine, 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 comparison to whom the robber barons of feudal ages were pigmies in their capacity for extortion and oppression. The Federal Laws Are Powerless.
"The anti-trust laws of the Federal Government 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 anti-trust law was passed by Congress in 1890, and controlled by a comparatively few men, control a capital of nearly three and a half billions of dollars, equal to 20 per cent. of the entire wealth of the seven millions of agricultural population scattered over more than four and a half millions of farms, a capital more than twice the aggregate of the entire circulating medium of the country. "Nor is this by any means the sum of the trust and combine element in the country. Hundreds of articles are governed in their price by secret agreements which do not make their appearance in the form of legally-organized companies. If you inquire carefully you will discover that you can scarcely make a purchase in which the price is not dictated by a combination over which the merchant you deal with has no control. "Each of these great trusts now aims for the most part to control but one staple, altho 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 center. 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. The Death of Competition.
"Even in the small retail trading of our cities the process of concentration is only too apparent. Our cities no longer present the once familiar aspect of miles of busy streets, occupied by thousands of small but respectable merchants, each doing a modest but satisfactory trade with his more immediate neighbors, and in a line to which he had been trained by long experience, looking forward to the accumulation of a modest competence for his old age, and to the transmission to his heirs of an honored 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 builds or rents a vast pile of ten or twenty stories. In this are gathered the stocks of ten, twenty, or one hundred ordinary merchants in various lines, and as many small merchants disappear from trade and reappear in time as the hired clerks, floor-walkers and laborers of the corporation. "All around this great center, scores of small buildings, once the homes of honesty and thrift, become empty and deserted, sad monuments to a class once the bulwark of our trade, the conservative safeguard of our communities. Having no longer a stake in the community or the country, their very intelligence becomes a menace to society by reason of their degradation from a position they have no hope of recovering. "While the trusts have neither souls nor hearts, they are ruled by men, not angels, men, too, who, in their greed toward the consumer, and their heartlessness toward the laborer, are freed altogether 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 community in which he lives, and in which his reputation is part of his capital, for such heartlessness toward labor as the very small man will calmly and even conscientiously exercise toward his dependents when speaking and acting as the representative of a corporation toward which he regards it as his duty to grind the last penny for the benefit of the stockholders. Higher Prices the Inevitable End.
"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 will 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 accomplished, but it is sure as that night follows day, as certain as the law of human selfishness. "There is no salvation for the consumer except in free competition; there is no dignity, no manhood for the laborer except in the comparative independence he derives through the free competition of many employers who seek his services. "When there shall be but 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 the 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 laborers themselves. "Take, for instance, the money accumulated 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 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 dangerous as it becomes more powerful. A man backed by $300,000,000, influenced by ambition, greed, or 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 extortion, if the power of the State can prevent it. There Must Be Remedies for These Evils.
"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 Constitution stands in our way, the Constitution can be amended; or a more summary method may be adopted by electing and appointing judges who will construe these instruments according to the eternal law of justice and humanity. "One of the great political parties of this country has already made this latter suggestion in a national platform, only to have it denounced by the promoters of the people's degradation as anarchy and revolution. "There may be those who will so denounce me for intimating that there is no divinity-hedging about judges which makes them superior to their masters, the sovereign people. I am content to suffer this penalty if I must, but no penalty shall restrain me from raising my voice on all proper occasions, even against courts which foster what I believe to be a danger to the freedom and welfare of the people." The prophet Isaiah thus speaks:— "Wo unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth! In mine ears said the Lord of hosts, Of a truth many houses shall be desolate, even great and fair, without inhabitant." Isa. 5:8, 9. The principle is the same whether it be a monopoly of land or houses or business. "Remedy?" There is none in man. Mankind in general have become so corrupt, public morality in general so venal, public servants so subservient to wealth, and wealth so powerful, that Legislatures can be purchased and judges bought. Well again wrote the prophet:— "They hunt every man his brother with a net. That they may do evil with both hands earnestly, the prince asketh, and the judge asketh for a reward; and the great man, he uttereth his mischievous desire; so they wrap it up. The best of them is as a briar; the most upright is sharper than a thorn hedge; the day of thy watchmen and thy visitation cometh; now shall be their perplexity." Micah 7:2-4. "Judgment is turned away backward, and Justice standeth afar off; for Truth is fallen in the street, and Equity can not enter. Yea, Truth faileth, and he that departeth from evil is accounted mad. And the Lord saw it, and it displeased Him that there was no judgment. . . . And He put on the garments of vengeance for clothing, and was clad with zeal as a cloak. According to their deeds, accordingly He will repay. . . . And the Redeemer shall come to Zion, and unto them that turn from transgression in Jacob, saith the Lord." Isa. 59:14-20, margin. See also James 5:1-8. The only sure hope is in Jesus Christ and His coming again.