Suppose Mr. Stewart, instead of having labored all these years for his own selfish interests, had labored in the interests of the people? Is it not clear that the half-a-hundred million dollars he has accumulated would have remained with the people who have consumed his goods? Place all other kinds of traffic upon the same proposed basis, and do you not see that the system which makes merchant-princes would be abolished? Neither would it require one-half the people to conduct a general system of markets who are now employed speculating in the results of labor.
In short, every person should either be a producer or a paid agent or officer of consumers and producers, and our entire system of shopkeeping reduced to a magnificent system of immense public markets. In this way there could also be a perfect control exercised over the quality of perishable goods, the want of which is now felt so severely in summer in all large cities, and a thousand unthought of remedies would necessarily suggest themselves as the system should develop.
But let us pass to one of the other branches of this same system. We have in our midst thousands of people of immense wealth who have never even done so much to justify its possession as the merchant-princes have done to justify themselves. I refer to our land monopolists, and to Mr. Astor as their representative. Mr. Astor inherited a large landed estate, which has risen in value to be worth millions of dollars, to which advance Mr. Astor never contributed even a day’s labor. He has done nothing except to watch the rise and gather in the rents, while the whole laboring country has been constantly engaged in promoting that advance. What would Mr. Astor have been without the City of New York? And what would the City of New York have been without the United States? You see, my friends, it will not do to view this matter superficially. We live in too analytic an age to permit these things to go on in the way they have been going. There is too much poverty, too much suffering, too much hard work, too many hours of labor for individuals, too many sleepless nights, too many starving poor, too many hungry children, too many in helpless old age, to permit these villanous abuses to continue sheltered under the name of respectability and public order.
But again, and upon a still worse swindle of the people. A person having money goes out into the public domain and acquires an immense tract of land. Shortly a railroad is projected and built, which runs through that tract. It offers a fine location for a station. A city springs up, and that which cost in some instances as little as a shilling per acre, is divided into town lots, and these are reluctantly parted with at five hundred dollars each.
Again, I wish to inquire, in the name of Justice, to whom does that advance belong? To the person who nominally holds the land? What has he done to entitle him to receive dollars for what he only paid cents? Is there any equality—is there any justice—in such a condition? He profits by the action of others; in fact at the public expense, since in its last analysis it is the common public who are the basis of all advance in the value of property.
Now, I say, that that common public is entitled to all the benefits accruing from common efforts; and it is an infamous wrong that makes it accrue to the benefit of a special few. And a system of society which permits such arbitrary distributions of wealth is a disgrace to Christian civilization, whose Author and his Disciples had all things in common. Let professing Christians who, for a pretense, make long prayers, think of that, and then denounce Communism, if they can; and denounce me as a Revolutionist for advocating it, if they dare.
But, is it asked, how is this to be remedied? I answer, very easily! Since those who possess the accumulated wealth of the country have filched it by legal means from those to whom it justly belongs—the people—it must be returned to them, by legal means if possible, but it must be returned to them in any event. When a person worth millions, dies, instead of leaving it to his children, who have no more title to it than anybody else’s children have, it must revert to the people, who really produced it. Do you say that is injustice to the children? I say, No! And if you ask me how the rich man’s children are going to live after his death, I answer, by the same means as the poor man’s children live. Let it be remembered that we have had simple freedom quite long enough. By setting all our hopes on freedom we have been robbed of our rights. What we want now is more than freedom—we want equality! And by the Heaven above us, earth’s growing children are going to have it! What right have the children of the rich to be born to luxurious idleness, while the children of the poor are born to, all their lives long, further contribute to their ease? Do they not in common belong to God’s human family? If I mistake not, Christ told us so. You will not dispute his authority, I am sure. If, instead of preaching Christ and him crucified quite so much, we should practice his teaching a little more, my word for it, we should all be better Christians.
And when by this process all the land shall have been returned to the people, there will be just as much of it, and it will be equally as productive, and just as much room on it as there is now. But instead of a few people owning the whole of it, and farming it out to all the rest at the best possible prices, the people will possess it themselves in their own right, through just laws, paying for its possession to the government such moderate rates of taxes as shall be necessary to maintain the government.
But I may as well conclude what I have to say regarding railroads, which must also revert back to the people, and be conducted by them for the public benefit, as our common highways are now conducted. Vanderbilt, Scott & Co. are demonstrating it better and better every day that all the railroads of the country can be much more economically and advantageously conducted under one management than under a thousand different managements. They imagine that very soon they will have accomplished a complete consolidation of the entire system, and that by the power of that consolidation they will be able to control the government of this country.
But they will not be the first people who have made slight miscalculations as to ultimate results. Thomas Scott might make a splendid Secretary of the Department of Internal Improvements, for which the new Constitution, which this country is going to adopt, makes provision; but he will never realize his ambition to preside over the railroad system of the country in any other manner.