To illustrate this distinction without a difference, take the island of Cuba, with its half million inhabitants, and suppose it to be ruled by an absolute monarch, who administers his commands through the usual attachés of the court and the noblemen of the island. Virtually owning the people, he commands them to labor, taking from them all their products, and merely feeding, clothing and sheltering them. In this case it would be the non-laborers who, without any circumlocution, directly obtain all the produced wealth, they simply expending their time and talent in its securing, while the lives of the people who produce it would be simply maintained.
Now advance one step toward popular government—to a constitutional monarchy. In this the same results to the producing people will be maintained, while the noblemen will share the wealth among themselves, allotting a certain share to the monarch.
Coming down to a representative government, of which personal liberty is the basis, the despotism of laws enacted in the interest of privileged classes are substituted for the personal despotism of monarchs and nobles. What the absolute monarch possesses himself of by the right of might, the privileged class in the popular government possess themselves of by the right of law, everything legal being held to be just.
Now is not that precisely the case in this country? Do not all the results of labor accrue to the privileged few? and are not the producing classes just as much enslaved to them as the subjects of an absolute monarch are to him?
With this mortification, however. In the last instance, they suffer from conditions over which they have no control; whilst in the former case the conditions by which they are enslaved are of their own formation. And I say, I would rather be the unwilling subject of an absolute monarch than the willing slave of my own ignorance, of which advantage is taken by those who spend their time in endeavoring to prove to me that I am free and in singing the glories of my condition, to hoodwink my reason and to blind my perception.
And I further say, that that system of government by which it is possible for a class of people to practice upon my credulity, and, under false pretenses, first entice me to acquiesce in laws by which immense corporations and monopolies are established, and then to induce me to submit to their extortions because they exist according to law, pursuing none but lawful means, is an infernal despotism, compared to which the Russian Czar is a thousand times to be preferred.
This may at first seem a sweeping indictment of our form of government, but I say it is just. Suppose we take our railroad system, now amounting to fifty-five thousand miles. At an average cost of eighty thousand dollars per mile for construction and equipment, its total cost would be four billions four hundred millions dollars. To pay the shareholders an eight per cent. dividend for doing nothing, the industries of the country would have to be taxed three hundred and fifty millions dollars over and above the cost of maintenance and operation. Did this enormous drain from the products of the people stop here, the fertility of the country, made use of by the ingenuity of the people, might possibly keep pace with the demand. But it does not stop there. The net earning of the railroads enables their directors to make larger dividends than eight per cent. Do their managers relinquish this increase in favor of the people? Never a bit of it. But they increase their stock either by selling new shares, or by making stock or scrip dividends, and to neither process has there been found any legal bar or cure.
Now, what may the result of such a system be? Why, this. If the stock of all these railroads be increased in the same proportion that some of them have already been increased, it may be raised to a thousand billions of dollars, and the people, instead of being compelled to pay three hundred and fifty millions dollars to provide an eight per cent. dividend on their cost, will have to submit to the extortion of eight hundred million dollars annually to satisfy the demands of these legal despots for an eight per cent. dividend upon stock, a large part of which represent absolutely nothing but the people’s stolen money.
A person who would double the size of another’s note simply because the profits of his business would permit the payment of twelve per cent. interest, so that instead of paying twelve per cent. upon one hundred dollars, which would be an illegal charge, it would be six per cent. upon two hundred dollars, would be deemed and adjudged guilty of forgery. But these railroad magnates sit in their palatial offices and raise their notes at pleasure, and they are considered public benefactors. It is a crime for a single person to steal a dollar, but a corporation may steal a million dollars, and be canonized as saints.
Oh, the stupid blindness of this people! Swindled every day before their very eyes, and yet they don’t seem to know that there is anything wrong, simply because no law has been violated. In their eyes everything that is lawful is right, and this has become the curse of the nation. But the opposite—that everything which is right is lawful—don’t follow as a part of their philosophy.