Belford's Magazine, Vol II, No. 10, March 1889

by Various

This is our government.

Our readers must not charge us with exaggeration. We have statistics, not to be disputed, as to the existence of the power, and we have high authority for the charge regarding the despotic use of the power. Speaking of the railroad corporations, Messrs. Conkling, Sherman, and Windom said, years since, in their celebrated report to the Senate: "They [the railroad companies] can tax our products at will in a way Congress never dare attempt." Now the fiscal agency found in the power to tax is the highest attribute of sovereignty. Because of the usurpation in a British parliament accomplished in the attempt to tax colonies of Americans without their consent we had the War of Independence. Our fathers marched shoeless, tentless, and in rags under muskets for seven years to vindicate a principle that we surrender to the corporations. "They rise above all control, and are a law unto themselves," said President Garfield. "They rob the producers on one side and the stockholders on the other," cried the late Jeremiah S. Black, "and sit on our highways of commerce as did the robber barons on the rivers of Europe. They make members of the House, purchase seats in the Senate, select for us candidates for the Presidency, and own our courts."

Another attribute of sovereignty, found in furnishing a currency for the people, has been seized on by something over two thousand corporations, called banks, and they can contract or expand to further their own selfish greed or that of their favorites and dependents. For thus favoring themselves they are paid a sum that would have supported the national government previous to the late war.

How this condition affects us every citizen can realize if he will reflect. The writer of this lives in a quiet valley of Ohio. He never would know that a political government exists except for the assessor and collector. His police consists of a revolver, a shot-gun, and four dogs. Wrong-doers may threaten his life, restrain his liberty, enter his stables at night, or his house at any hour, and, so far as government goes, he is his own police.

So much for our political structure. How is it with the corporations? They are with him at all hours. He cannot sell a grain of wheat nor an ounce of meat without their consent and toll. The fuel he burns has its toll, that is an extortion. The clothes he wears, the food he eats, the oil he burns by night, the glass that gives him light by day, the walls that shelter him, the shingles or slate upon the roof—in a word, all that he has to purchase or use, pays an uncalled-for tribute to extortion and monopoly.

The political structure could be annihilated, and the citizen would not know of its disappearance but for the absence of assessor and collector, and for the fact learned from the press.

This is the condition of the dweller in a rural district. The denizen of a town is not much better off. If he comes in contact with the political structure at any point, it is to his injury. He is taxed enormously to drain, pave, and light the streets. The draining is a source of peril to health, the pavements are infamous, while the light only makes darkness visible. So far as the police is concerned, it is a political body, organized and used to further the ends of professional politicians. The citizen is in more peril from the club-inclined police than he is from thieves and ruffians.

A most startling illustration of the subserviency of the political power to the moneyed combinations incorporated to ride, booted and spurred, over popular rights, as Jefferson expressed it, was given by the late tramway strikes at New York. When the conductors and drivers threw up their employment because of the starvation wages and overwork decreed by the combine, thereby putting a stop to all transportation, instead of arresting the presidents and directors, and fetching them into court to show cause why their charter should not be taken from them for a failure to fulfil their duty to the public, the entire police force was taken from duty to the public and put under control of these corporations. The rebellious laborers were clubbed into submission, while for a week New-Yorkers were forced either to walk or to trust their necks to those artfully constructed death-traps called the elevated roads.

We are not siding in this one way or the other. It may be that the laborers were all in the wrong and the corporations right, or the case may have been the reverse. To decide this is precisely what we want in a legal tribunal commanding the respect of the public. This is not to be had. The policeman's club is in the pay and under the control of the corporations, and it decides.

All these comments will be decried as unpatriotic. Patriotism with us is something akin to the love a mother has for a sick or crippled child. We are like beggars on the highways of the world, exhibiting our sores to excite, not pity, but—heaven save the mark!—admiration. Of course we cannot be expected to cure cancers that we boast of.