If there is anyone who questions that statement, let him speak. Now, let me put it to you men, is it fair, in this corporation where we are all partners, that three of the partners should get all of the earnings, be they large or small—all of them—and the fourth nothing?
Is there a man of you who would put his money in the savings bank and leave it there for one year even, unless he was sure to get at least four per cent. interest? Otherwise you would say that the savings bank was trying to cheat you out of a proper return on your money.
But for fourteen years, to my knowledge—how much longer I do not know—the common stockholders have gotten not one cent out of this company. I just want you to put that in your pipes and smoke it, and see if it tallies with what you have heard about the stockholders oppressing you and trying to get the better of you. That does not sound like oppression, like trying to get the best of the bargain!
And you cannot expect that any one of the partners will remain indefinitely in this or any other corporation if he does not get a fair share of the earnings, with the others. Capital is entitled to a fair return, just the same as labor is.
Would you continue working in some mining camp for even a week, much less a month, a year, or fourteen years, without pay? Of course you would not. You would go to Pennsylvania, Indiana, Ohio—anywhere else on God’s earth where you could get a fair return for your work.
Now, the stockholders have been pretty patient all this time; they have taken a lot of abuse because people have not told the truth.
I think if we had all gotten together, as we have to-day, months and years ago, and discussed these questions, and the facts had been fairly presented, that there is not a man in this room but who would have said:
“That is not a square deal, and in so far as I have anything to do with this company, whether I am digging coal, driving mules, or sitting in an office directing operations—whatever my position, I will do what I can to see to it that every last man in this big family here gets a square deal.”
Now, I am not here to seek sympathy for the common stockholders, but I just want to point out to you what you ought to know: that capital will not stay indefinitely where it does not get proper recognition and a reasonable return.