You must not mistake me. I would not take a single comfort; nay, not a single luxury from those who have the most. I would not deprive anybody of anything they have or want; but I would so distribute the proceeds of labour that those who produce the comforts and luxuries should have their share of them; that they should have everything that the most favoured now enjoy. In this land of fruitfulness and plenty, if all the labour there is were constantly employed every man’s home might be a palace, and want and sorrow be banished from the country. Am I asking too much for those who have endured long years of toil and suffering to bring this beautiful country to its present condition? Am I asking what you are not willing that they shall have? Am I asking anything more than justice? If you grant them less than justice God Almighty will come some day, visit you and set the matter right, as he visited the South and liberated the downtrodden blacks. So if you do not heed my warning, remember that there is One whom you cannot ignore.
But there is still another way by which the industries are taxed in favour of the non-producers. The railroads, which ought to be, and which, managed properly, would be, a great advantage to the industries, are now at once their blessing and their curse. There are now 75,000 miles of railways in the country, built at a cost of $4,658,208,630: their earnings are $404,000,000 annually. But here is where the people are hoodwinked. This sum does not begin to represent the actual amount paid by the people for fare and freights. Almost the whole of the freighting is done by “lines”—the Red Line, the Blue Line, the White Star Line, and a hundred others, all which have special contracts with the railroads to carry freights at just a living rate, while the lines charge the people all that they can stand to pay, the difference in these two sums going into the pockets of the owners of the lines. And who are they? The owners, managers and officers of the railroads who resort to this to blind the people’s eyes about the profits of railroading, which they could not otherwise conceal, because they are obliged to make annual exhibits. But the lines carry off the profits, while the operating expenses of the roads, their interests and dividends are left for the exhibits. If the companies made 20, 30 or 50 per cent. dividends, the people would not stand it: but the managers play upon them with their lines and blind their eyes while they pocket the profits.
THE RAILROAD SYSTEM.
Then again, there is the system by which the railroads are built, which is little less than a gigantic swindle. Shrewd persons discover places where railroads may be built. They obtain charters and the rights of way, and get the towns along the lines either to issue or endorse bonds and give them stock in the roads for this. They sell the bonds to themselves at tremendous discounts and build the roads, themselves taking the contracts at extravagant prices, and when done begin to operate them. Of course the earnings are not sufficient to pay the operating expenses and the interest, to say nothing about dividends to the stockholders. They were never intended to be. So after a few defalcations of the interest on the bonds, they come in and foreclose under the mortgages and sell out the stockholders and buy in the roads and thus come into their possession built free of cost to themselves. Can such processes be rightly called anything less than swindles? They may be called by some other name, but they still have the odour of a swindle about them. And yet our best men engage in such schemes and call them honourable. To speak vulgarly, this is one of Uncle Sammy Tilden’s best holds. Is it any wonder that there is so much knavery and trickery among the common classes upon a small scale, when they have such examples set them by the upper classes on gigantic scales? or is it any wonder that the public morals are at so low an ebb? So, examine where we may into the schemes for the accommodation of the public, we find them to be vampires sucking its life.
How long do the railroad men imagine that the people will endure their exactions? Should they not know that their scheming will have to come to an end soon? Then why do they not act the part of wise men, and anticipate its coming in time to save themselves? If they do not, the people will sooner or later take the roads from them. It may be said that there is no constitutional or legal way in which this can be done, and they may rest upon this as secure protection. But I would recall the words of Charles Sumner, “Anything that is for the public good is constitutional,” and warn them not to rely upon so slim protection. This was the argument of King George and of slavery; but it failed them both, as it will fail every wrong that relies upon it. The people and the public welfare always triumph in the end; and the longer the triumph is delayed, the more fearful is the recompense for those who stand in its way.
THE FEAR OF COMMUNISM.
But it may be objected that all this tends towards communism. Only bigots and the unthinking are frightened by a name or a shadow from an examination into anything. Perhaps at first it will create surprise when I tell you that the only really good institutions that we have are purely communistic. The public highways are a perfect illustration of communism. They are constructed and maintained at the public expense for the public benefit. All grades of people meet upon them on an equality, and yet no one either loses his identity in the mass or is deprived of any of his private rights, or of any of his personalities. But the principles upon which the industries are conducted and that govern their relations to wealth, the poor man who owns no property, would have no right to use the highways. The same is true of the public schools. The children of the rich, who, it is falsely pretended, pay the taxes to support the schools, and the children of the poor there meet upon an equality. The schools are not a public necessity, they are only a public good. Who will pretend to say that they are not an improvement on the old system, of every family conducting its own education, or of a few families combining to do so? Everybody recognises the public advantage of a communal basis for the education of all the children; recognises that the public good demands that the community shall not only provide school privileges, but shall insist on every child having the benefit of them, not for the good of the child so much, as for the community’s own good. Now this is communism. Why are you not frightened at the communistic tendencies of the public schools? Because, without thinking them to be communistic, you have adopted them and found them to be good.
Next is the post-office—a still better illustration in an industrial sense. Here the Government conducts the business of the people. If the system were maintained wholly instead of partially from the public treasury, it would be purely communistic. Is there anyone who is prepared to say that the postal system is not an improvement on the transmission of letters by private enterprise? And yet nobody is affrighted at the communistic character of the modern post-office. Suppose that this system were extended to the transportation of everything that is interchanged among the people, have we not a right to assume that the same beneficent results that have followed the development of the public mails would also follow there? We have not only the right to assume, but we have the reason to know that it would, and that the railroad question and railroad wars would be for ever settled by such an advance towards communism, and an immense stride be made towards the organization of the industries as a whole; and this is what we have done industrially.
THE ELEMENTS OF OUR POPULATION.
It is an instructive lesson to analyse the population of the country, to resolve it into the several classes. First, from the 44,000,000, there are to be taken the classes that count for nothing—the Indians, the Chinese, and the women, for though they are permitted to live in the country, they form no part of the sovereignty. “They are,” as Justice Carter asserted when endeavouring to prove that women are not entitled to the ballot, “citizens in whom citizenship is dormant.” In round numbers these classes are 23,000,000. Of the remaining 21,000,000, 11,000,000 are adults, who are the sovereignty, and who conduct the Government. Of these 3,000,000 are farmers; 2,000,000 are manufacturers, mechanics, miners, and lumbermen; 1,000,000 are unskilled labourers; 1,000,000 are merchants of all kinds, including dispensers of leaf and liquid damnation; 1,000,000 are gentlemen of ease who live by their wits—their sharpness and shrewdness—bond-holders, money-lenders, landlords, gamblers, confidence men, etc., etc.; 500,000 are clerks; 250,000 are permanent invalids; 200,000, criminals; 100,000, paupers; 100,000, insane; 100,000, weakminded; 100,000, professional teachers; 100,000, employes of the national Government; 100,000, of the State, county and municipal Governments; 90,000, physicians; 60,000, ministers; 50,000, lawyers, and 50,000, editors and professional writers and actors. A large part of the property of the farmers is mortgaged to the money-lenders, and the same is true of the manufacturers, while the liabilities of the merchants exceed their assets. So, really, the 5th class—the gentlemen of ease—either own or else hold mortgages on the whole property of the country. It is said that the curse of England is that 3 4ths of its property is owned by forty families. How much less is true of this country? Can such a state of injustice as this continue? And if it cannot, what shall take its place? It is time that those who hold the wealth, should, for their own sake, be asking this question seriously, unless they would incur the risk of having it answered for them, as the same was answered in France in ’93. Public injustice, unless remedied peaceably, always has terminated in revolution; and it will continue so to terminate as long as it is not remedied in a wiser way by those who have the power to do it.