The great transportation companies exercise the power to tax, and the people, who pay the taxes, have no representation in the councils of those who levy the taxes. This surely constitutes an aristocracy of the most powerful kind.
The railroads have the power to tax the life out of any industry, out of any section, out of any city or town; with rebates and discriminations they build up the Trusts which plunder the people.
By reason of the fact that they enjoy the privilege of taxing other people, they pay no Federal taxes to support the government. Whatever they may pay in the way of tariff on material which they use in the construction of roadbeds and rolling stock, they simply charge up to expense account and levy their rates so as to make the utmost possible profit over and above what they have paid out. The public cannot escape the freight rates and the passenger rates which the corporations levy. The public cannot help itself. The public is made to pay, in those freight and passenger rates, every dollar of tax which the railroads have paid to the state and Federal governments. Therefore, as in the case of the national banks and the manufacturers, we have a great class of corporations given special powers by law which are exercised at the expense of the masses of the people, and which escape all the burden of supporting the national Government by reason of the immunities and privileges which the law has made for their exclusive benefit.
Here, then, we have a complete illustration of aristocracy—the government of the few, by the few and for the few, instead of the ideal of Jefferson and Lincoln, “government of the people, by the people and for the people.”
The man who makes a corner in wheat thinks he can relieve all the suffering he caused by endowing a bed in a hospital.
The Track Walker
BY THEODORE DREISER
Author of “Sister Carrie”