Wealth against commonwealth

by Henry Demarest Lloyd

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE MILLIONAIRES

Notices by the Press

The Springfield (Mass.) Republican (editorial).

Those who keep note of passing events will not have forgotten the lock-out of coal miners at Spring Valley, Illinois, in the early months of 1889, and the sufferings of the families of the workmen in consequence.

This sad story of corporate inhumanity has been effectively told by Henry D. Lloyd in a book entitled A Strike of Millionaires against Miners. It merits no less a volume than this. It is not an isolated case—an industrial phenomenon springing from conditions rarely repeated—but one of many similar cases, a part only of the whole story of coal mining in the United States. More than this, it is an aggravated illustration of the soullessness of the corporation in general, through the agency of which the bulk of the producing powers of the nation is working.

Behind this legal fiction men hide and do deeds of grasping cruelty that disgrace manhood, and are fast bringing the industrial organism into contempt. In the case of Spring Valley, the directors and stockholders of the Chicago and North-Western Railroad and the Spring Valley Coal Company—controlled by the same men—are as responsible for the sufferings and death from starvation of miners in Spring Valley in 1889 as if they had all been personally present and assisted in the business of bringing men from a distance to work in their mines on assurance of steady employment, and then of locking them out without warning, to starve them into submission to lower wages, for the sake of higher profits on their stock. This is the conclusion of Mr. Lloyd, and we see no escape from it.

If the corporation is to be considered an impersonality without moral responsibility, it will either have to go, or the industrial system which makes it an essential part will have to go. All the power of government, or wealth, or vested interests cannot maintain that system which, resting as our present system must on the charitable instincts of men, offers a way of escape from the responsibilities imposed thereby to the most powerful factors of the society. Against that system "the pulses of men will beat until they beat it down." What must be the condition of that society which allows the wealthy capitalists who starved these thousands of miners not only to go unpunished, but to move in the very highest circles of business power and social influence? And one of them in particular is to-day figuring upon representing the Democratic party of Pennsylvania in the United States Senate.

The New York Commercial Advertiser (editorial).

It is to be remembered that Mr. Lloyd's book does not profess to be a dispassionate review of the situation. It is an indictment. The corporation's side should be given a fair hearing. But it must be heard soon. Mr. Lloyd's charges are too important, his formulation of them too worthy of respect to be treated with silent contempt. To ignore them is to confess their truth. Should such a reply be made, the readers of this column will be informed of it. A Strike of Millionaires against Miners describes the poverty, the suffering, the utter misery among the miners in Spring Valley, Illinois, during the past year. In the simplicity and restraint of his style, and in the massing of his facts, Mr. Lloyd shows genuine literary power. There is no attempt at rhetoric in his narrative. He depends upon statements of facts, many of them incontrovertible, to rouse the hot indignation of his readers. If the story is true, and it bears every appearance of truth, the Spring Valley mine owners have been guilty of damnable treachery and cruelty to their fellow-men.

Chicago Herald (editorial).

The Herald commends to the attention of its readers the open letter in another column, from Henry D. Lloyd, addressed to various millionaires of New York, Chicago, and St. Paul. It contains what the Herald believes to be the truth as to the Spring Valley scandal, and while in most respects it is a plain statement of facts, it is nevertheless one of the most powerful appeals for justice, and one of the most eloquent denunciations of wrong, which has come under the public eye in many a day.

Mr. Lloyd's high character, his superb attainments, and his well-known philanthropy give force to the arraignment it might not otherwise possess. His letter is a history of a crime—a crime resulting, no doubt, from an infamous conspiracy—and the story leads naturally and inevitably to the conclusion which Mr. Lloyd avows, that there must be conspiracy laws for millionaires as well as for working-men.

Civilization must be bottomed on justice, or it cannot endure. A society which permits such inhuman outrages as that at Spring Valley is either asleep or in an advanced stage of decay. The money god cannot crush out the lives of human beings with impunity. Let its devotees look well to the ground on which they stand. The wise and humane will be warned in time. The foolish and insatiate must be left to the stern judgment of their fellow-men, who must some day pass upon their act.

The Labor World, London, England.

What does Mr. Andrew Carnegie, who chants vulgar pæans to "Triumphant Democracy" say to such a book as this of Mr. Lloyd? This story of the robbery and betrayal of thousands of working miners in Illinois by a great millionaire corporation is one of the worst things we have read for a long time, and is a terribly scathing satire on American "democracy."

Let us hear no more trash about "free" America as compared with down-trodden Europe. Both continents are down-trodden by the rich men who own the raw material out of which wealth is created by human labor. When the land of the United States is all absorbed by private persons, as it will be in twenty years' time, there will not be a pin to choose between America and Europe, so far as wage-workers are concerned. Wages may be higher in America, but the increased cost of living there will nearly equalize the condition of the two continents; while for swindling, lying, and merciless oppression many American capitalists leave their European brethren far behind. Mr. Lloyd's book, which is the first of a new "Bad Wealth Series," ought to open men's eyes to the fact that true freedom is impossible when a few men have a right to appropriate to themselves the raw material of the globe.