JOSEPH W. FOLK, of Missouri, achieved the notoriety that made him governor of the state through the hunt for boodlers and grafters which he instituted in the state Legislature. The fact that Mr. Folk received sufficient support from the people to elect him to the highest office in the state has caused him to conclude that the forces of evil are being speedily vanquished, and that an era of peace and righteousness is now being ushered in.
He attributes the recent revelations of corruption in state and municipal affairs to an awakening public conscience rather than to an increase of corruption among those in positions where money can be made with ease, by corrupt practises. In a signed interview, among other things, Mr. Folk says:
"Up to three years ago there had been only thirty-four cases of bribery reported in the preceding hundred years of our country's history. This was not because the offense was uncommon, but for the reason that it was unusual for any one to be prosecuted for what was then termed a conventional crime. Men gave bribes and thought nothing of it. Men took bribes and boasted of the fact. Legislative halls became dens of thieves. The touch of the unclean dollar was over all, and the public conscience was asleep.
"Then came the revelations in St. Louis, followed by Minneapolis and other cities, and the people awoke to how they were being plundered by their trusted officials and to the fact that bribery, if allowed to go on unchecked, would mean government not of the people, but of the few with wealth enough to purchase official favors. From city to city and state to state the idea went until now many states and cities are waging war against the things that dishonor.
"This condition should encourage all lovers of good government, for the remedy for corruption in its last analysis lies in the hearts of the people."
We have passed through the commercial age, when the chief end and aim were to acquire wealth; we are entering now into the age of high ideals. The question is now, not how to get rich, but how to get right. The rule of the dollar is not as potent as it was, and the reign of law is becoming more accepted. We are passing from evil to good, and from darkness into light.
Actual Conditions.
Even the casual reader will hesitate to believe that this roseate view of the present is the true one in view of the daily revelations of corrupt conditions, municipal, state, and national. It is a fact that the very opulent, gorged, overflowing condition of public corruption has forced itself upon the attention of the people. It has been impossible to keep the lid on securely enough to hide it from public view. The public are being tardily awakened by what is coming to light, and a few of the many conspirators of fraud are being punished; but that coming to light is due much more to the very uncontrolled prevalence of the evil than to any public awakening. The people of Philadelphia were aroused and angered by the proposed public steal of valuable franchises by their own municipal officers; but there has been much less accomplished in the way of blocking the plans of the spoilers than a really awakened public conscience would demand. A few men have been removed from their official positions, but no boodler has felt the heavy hand of the law. Even the notoriously crooked mayor of Minneapolis, after a long trial, exhausting legal technicalities, is free. The boodling body of the Missouri Legislature has been scarcely rippled by any legal retribution at all commensurate with the offensive acts performed.
The last paragraph in the quotation above could hardly be farther from a true statement of the conditions that exist. If the world or this nation or any state or city has passed out of the commercial age into the age of high ideals, it is certain that no change has occurred that would indicate the transition. The lust for gold grows with each new hoarded dollar; the lust for control grows with each new industry monopolized; and the god of wealth has more votaries bending before its altar than bow in true, undivided worship at the altar of their Maker. Never were dollars piled on dollars as now; never were men selling souls for "spot cash" as they are to-day, while the victims of their greed are toiling, half-clad and half-fed, in cellar and attic for a miserly stipend that will not keep flesh upon their bones or clothes upon their backs. Some—many—have passed out of the age of commercialism—out of the age of high ideals, too, for that matter—they have been ground through the mills of greed. They are not now in the age of commercialism—they are in their graves, and their numbers are growing. There are some who have never participated in the mammon worship that has made this the age of commercialism—they are few.
What Others Say.
There are men, eminent men, who see the situation as it is. Listen to the words of Mr. James B. Dill, recently a prominent corporation attorney, receiving, it is said, some $300,000 a year. He has left that lucrative position to become a judge of a New Jersey court of errors and appeals at a salary of only $3,000. He gave his reasons for making the change, in an address before the students of Oberlin College a few days ago. He declared that "conditions in the business and financial world are not wholesome," and that men who become mighty in finance and trade, who are back of these great corporations, are abusing their powers, and are acting on the theory that might makes right. One of Mr. Dill's business associates states that Mr. Dill accepts a place in the public service, feeling that—
"the time has come when a corporation lawyer must decide upon which side he will ally himself, whether on the side of honesty, of law and of justice, or with the financial schemers who grow more defiant of law each year, and make demands upon their lawyers for services that conflict with conscientious scruples."
These words do not indicate what Governor Folk would have the world believe, that the times past held more of corruption than the time present. Mr. Dill says, "the time has come," etc. That is, there is a condition now which formerly did not exist. He sees a greater defiance of law each year; that to stay with the greedy corporations means participation in dishonesty; he sees a prevalence of most unscrupulous demands upon attorneys, abhorrent to a man with conscientious scruples.
As regards graft in high places we quote from the Springfield Republican:
"Is there no end to the corruption of employees of the government in the departments at Washington? The post-office department, the interior department, and now the agricultural department, have each revealed brazen dishonesty and graft of the meanest sort. Why, too, have these matters been so long concealed and the people told that things were all right? The exposures in the federal service at this time are beating the records, and disclosing how long and safely rascals have been fattening themselves by rascality, not so slick that it ought to have gone so long without detection."
"These government employees in the agricultural department have been accused of selling to Wall Street gamblers information concerning crop conditions in the country, in order that those gamblers might carry on their work with greater certainty of success—and not only selling information, but actually falsifying government statistics—all for a "consideration.""
And there are the revelations in the Equitable Life Insurance Company, involving the names of men who have been venerated for a generation by their fellows. What does it all mean?—That the predictions of God's Word concerning these times—"the last days"—are true, and that we are in the last days. S.
A "FEDERATION EPOCH" AND "PERPETUAL PEACE."
By G.
PROFESSOR MYERS, the historian, in advancing the idea that perpetual peace is the destiny of our race, sets forth that it is to come through the federation of nations. He maintains that "we are inevitably passing from a nation epoch to a federal epoch." In further support of his theory, the professor says, "A United States of Europe is certain to come."
As to the federation idea, the learned historian is probably correct; everything seems to point that way. But it would seem that he is mistaken both as to the cause and the result. It is not the spirit of peace that is driving the governments of earth to seek some way to evade actual war. It is their nearness to bankruptcy, the fear that the race to sustain the greatest army and navy must soon close for want of funds, that impels them to seek some kind of compromise that will stave off the inevitable crash. And, tho the confederacy scheme succeed as to formality, it will not bring permanent peace. "For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them."
As to the "United States of Europe" which is "certain to come," the prophecy of Revelation 17 tells us of some such consummation. These are "ten kings" which in John's day had "received no kingdom as yet; but receive power as kings one hour with the beast [the restored Papacy]. These have one mind [a federation], and shall give their power and strength unto the beast." The true character of these "United States of Europe," in connection with "the beast," is shown in that they "shall make war with the Lamb;" but "the Lamb shall overcome them," and then there will be a reaction against the apostate church by whose siren teaching these things have come. The great victory of restoration to former power, with government support, will be of short duration, as expressed by the term "one hour." Then the "ten horns" shall hate the harlot that has committed fornication with them, and "shall make her desolate and naked."
Chapter 18 gives more detail of the downfall of7"Babylon," because of her fornication with the kings of earth, by which means—church and state union—she "is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird."
Immediately after this (in chapter 19), we have brought to view the coming of our Lord, and the execution of His judgment. Then will be heard the glorious cry, "Alleluia; Salvation, and glory, and honor, and power, unto the Lord our God; for true and righteous are His judgments."
It is this great consummation that will bring about universal and perpetual peace. The great federation of human governments, from which so much good is expected, can only hasten their own destruction, together with the destruction of the power that is now seeking to become the "arbiter of nations," that it may the more surely control them. Of this power, the Lord says, "Come out of her, My people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues." The Lord has people who are yet connected with that body, and others who are yet so far deceived as to advocate religious and political principles pertaining to that body; will they heed the warning voice, and come out? The only safe stand in these "perilous times" is on "the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus."
G.
TENDENCY TO CLASS DIVISION.
By Editor
It would seem as tho above all other phases of the government the Judiciary should stand for absolute equality. Equity ought to be one of the shining virtues of the Bench, and with this, regard for fundamental law. The fundamental idea of Americanism is that the people shall rule, and the people's will is expressed in the constitution, or bill of rights, in federal and state governments. One of the provisions of the constitution of New York State is that judges may be impeached or removed from their high office, if guilty of malfeasance, by concurrent action of both branches of the legislature, composed of the people's representatives. Recently it has been charged, and seemingly there is no evidence to the contrary, that Judge Hooker, of the Supreme Court, is guilty of malfeasance in office—deplorably so. The state constitution provides a means for his ejection, but now the judges themselves are demanding that he shall be tried by them instead of by the legislature. They are giving us a new interpretation of the expression "tried by a jury of his peers." They seem to think that the judges are a higher class than are legislators, and that the constitution itself should be set aside in their favor. We merely note this to show the tendency of the times. The Supreme Court is only a co-ordinate branch of the government. Behind all these co-ordinate branches are the people, and in the provisions that have been made for the government of the people, by the people, and for the people, no other branch should stand so strongly and faithfully to that constitution as should those who compose the courts of the land. "Judicial prerogatives" and "inherent powers" should be made subject to the constitution and the purity of the court.
THE WAR SPIRIT.
By G.
Talking peace while educating for war is not consistent, but it is quite the fad in these perilous times. The popular churches claim to follow the Prince of Peace, and theoretically advocate peace among the nations; the people at large talk for peace, and predict peace, but the children and young men are educated for war. Patriotism is construed to mean hostility toward every flag but the flag of our own country, the "veneration" of which in the schools is little short of idolatry. Military drill is the order of the day, yet every one knows that it begets anything but a spirit of peace in the young. Who are the patriots?—The men who go to war. Who are the heroes?—The men who do conspicuous deeds in battle. Whom do the young students of military tactics most desire to emulate?—The great generals and admirals. In what dress is the average boy or young man the most vain?—In the military uniform. What attire most attracts the admiration of the average maiden?—The military uniform. And this is all the result of education among a people who profess to love peace.
A straw that shows the direction of the wind is the rage for boys' military clubs. In San Francisco are the Roosevelt Boys' Clubs. Here are classes in various useful branches; but "the boys are also instructed in military tactics, wear the regulation United States Army khaki uniform, and have the regular officers." Another point is that "military drill is conducted every Tuesday evening in Grace M. E. church."
There are a number of good things connected with the clubs, that would be just as good without the military feature; but that is the chief attraction, as is shown by the wearing of the military uniform, etc. Therefore the military spirit predominates, being the most conspicuous. The necessity, or the supposed necessity, of having a military atmosphere surrounding good works, in order to give zest to them, and to interest the public, shows that the war idea has a deeper hold upon the people—especially, by force of education, upon the rising generation—than the spirit of peace. It is an ominous sign of the times. G.
ANOTHER STEP FORWARD.
By Editor
IN Nebraska, hereafter, Memorial Day (May 30), is to be regarded as on a par with Sunday. Horse-racing, baseball games, and other sports not permitted within the state, are not to be tolerated on Memorial Day. Fines and imprisonment are the penalties attached to the law. The Michigan Christian Advocate, in commending the law, says, "This country has well-nigh gone mad on the amusement idea, and our holy days have become mere holidays, and sport and fun their only use."
It is true that "this country has well-nigh gone mad on the amusement idea." And this is just what the prophecy says of many who profess godliness in the "last days"—they shall be "lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God." But the "amusement idea" of people in general is not nearly so dangerous to the integrity of our institutions as is the prevalent idea that the state can make "holy days." This is putting the state in the place of God. This was the prominent feature of ancient Rome in its pagan days; all gods were subservient to the state, which was the object to be defied above every other power.
But when the state became nominally Christian, then, in time, the church became the dominant power, and everything else, state and all, were expected to cater to the ecclesiastical will. So when we concede that the state has power to make any day holy, we have only to add the National Reform idea that the state ought to be governed on a religious basis, and then we will have the principle of Rome in its so-called Christian phase—the church controlling the government. Then we should expect "holy days" in superabundance, as it was in "Christian" Rome, enforced by legal penalties.
This is not a mere stretch of imagination; the tendency is strongly in the direction of church control in the United States. And it is to be Roman Church control at that, unwittingly aided by the various professed Protestant elements composing the so-called National Reform effort to religiosize the government. As a straw showing the direction of the wind, we mention the reference of the Christian Statesman to the Nebraska Memorial-Day Law. It says: "With this we heartily agree, and add that the same protection ought to be thrown around our national Thanksgiving."
It is true that very few people observe Thanksgiving Day because they are thankful. And for this reason most of the modes of celebrating it are out of harmony with the thanksgiving idea. It is for the most part a day of gluttony and debauchery and "sport" of the ruder sort. In this fact is illustrated the folly of making thanksgiving a mere legal formality. Thanksgiving, to be genuine, to be of any value whatever, to gain any recognition at all in heaven, must be a voluntary act, and no civil law ever can accomplish such an end. A pretended or enforced thanksgiving is sheer hypocrisy, an abomination in the sight of God. For the state to assume the function of making such a day holy could not add to the spirit of thankfulness. We might as well call the Fourth of July a holy day, for in that we celebrate an act for which every one ought to be thankful. Indeed it is because of this fact that it is celebrated at all.
The people who do those things on Memorial Day that are not in keeping with its object will not be any more in sympathy with the sentiment of the occasion by the state's calling it a holy day. The genuine feeling of patriotism, or of respect for the dead soldiers, would be far more conspicuous, and have a far greater influence, if the whole affair were a voluntary, rather than a legal, celebration. Perfunctory services are always dry, dull, and lacking in inspiration. Nebraska's Memorial-Day Law is but one step forward in the march toward church-and-state union, the spirit of which is fast bringing about the formality.
G.
INCREASE OF NAVAL EXPENDITURES.
IT is a fact not pleasant to contemplate in these days of arbitration treaties and peace conferences, that our naval expenditures have increased not less than seven hundred per cent. in the past nineteen years and are likely to increase still more if Secretary Morton's idea and the present naval program are fully carried out, increasing our naval force to forty-eight battle-ships. In 1886 the naval budget was something less than fourteen million dollars. Now the annual outlay has arisen to over one hundred and three millions. During the same period the population of the country has increased less than fifty per cent., and the wealth of the country only one hundred per cent. The present cost of the navy per year amounts to more than six dollars per family for the entire population of the country. In 1886 it was only about one dollar and a quarter per family.
The United States, tho still the third naval power, when the ships now building are completed, is building more war vessels at the present time than any European country except Great Britain. We have passed, in this respect, Italy, and Germany, and Russia, and France.
In an interview in March, 1904, Senator Frye, President of the Senate, frankly asserted that we must be prepared to lay out two hundred millions a year on the navy. That is at least fifteen millions a year more than the great navy of England now costs. We have now eleven first-class battle-ships, and eleven more have been authorized. The Naval Board proposes to have the number increased to forty-eight. When this is done, and the corresponding ships of other types added—and from the present trend of things there is no doubt that all this will be done—it will then require at least two hundred millions a year to maintain such a navy, without the addition of further ships. From all these considerations there is scarcely a doubt that we shall yet be brought to spend at least three hundred millions a year on the navy before the people awake to see the danger and the folly of the situation. Our increased naval activity will not induce Great Britain to halt in hers. On the contrary she will be provoked thereby to still greater exertions to maintain her supremacy on the sea. Having once entered into this rivalry for naval supremacy, once entered the vicious circle, where will the end be?—Christian Work.
Heat Wave and Naval Explosion
The terrible heat throughout the Atlantic States continued during the week, being most severe and most fatal in the vicinity of New York. On July 18 in that city there were 190 heat prostrations and 26 deaths. On the same day there were thirteen deaths from heat in Pittsburg. On July 19 the heat deaths in New York City reached 75, with 167 prostrations, and Philadelphia had 10 deaths with 40 prostrations. New York's death roll was made up principally of infants and aged persons whose vitality had been lowered by the continuance of the heated spell. The following day the number of deaths from the same cause in New York amounted to 20. There has been a great amount of suffering in the large cities, especially among the dwellers in crowded tenement houses.
The U. S. gunboat Bennington, while getting up steam preparatory to leaving the port of San Diego, Cal., on July 21, was torn by a terrible explosion. The explosion involved two of the boilers, killing 60 of the crew, and injuring more or less severely 49 others. The force of the explosion caused the vessel to leak badly; but she was soon towed into shallow water, and allowed to settle upon the mud. Nearly everything below deck was shattered or thrown out of place, and the bodies of the men, mangled as they were were almost inextricably mingled with the debris. It is expected that ten of the injured will soon be added to the list of the dead. This is the most serious calamity that has occurred in the American navy since the blowing up of the Maine at Havana.
The threatened Chinese boycott upon American goods has been inaugurated in Shanghai and Canton. The Chinese Government seems unable to cause the agitation against American products to cease, altho it has made endeavors to do so. It is understood that one of the principle objects in calling together the Congress of the United States in extra session is to consider the matter of Chinese exclusion from the standpoint of its effect upon American commerce in China.
The most important event that has transpired in Russia during the week has been the meeting of the Zemstvo, which convened in spite of the direct prohibition of the authorities in Moscow. It has declared itself very emphatically against the administration of the present government, and has made demands that are certainly revolutionary. There are rumors of very important changes in the administration; but all is as yet in an embryotic condition.
Statistics so far gathered of the Russo-Japanese War by Gen. Tasker H. Bliss, of the general staff of the United States Army, show that the casualties have been as follows: On the side of Russia, 180,134 killed and wounded; on the side of Japan, 153,652 killed and wounded.
An attempt was made on July 21 to take the life of the Sultan of Turkey. A bomb was thrown at him, while attending a salamlik at the mosque. The explosion of the bomb resulted in the death of 24 persons, and the injury of 57.
President Roosevelt has decided to call an extraordinary session of Congress, which will convene on November 11.
The government, on July 22, opened bids for supplying 6,000 laborers for work on the Panama Canal.
FORETOKENS OF OUR LORD'S RETURN
By George W. Rine
BY PROF. GEORGE W. RINE
TYRANNY OF COMBINED MILLIONS.
A UNANIMITY of conviction obtains among all sane thinkers that the present overshadowing menace to the permanency of our republican institutions is an economic one. It is found primarily in the consolidating of wealth and the sinister methods by which this wealth is amassed, grouped, controlled, and used. The accumulation of riches is deeply cut with marks of modernized brigandage, and their use is very generally characterized by ruthless oppression, and a disregard of the rights of others.
The all-pervasive predatory spirit of the present-day realm of trade and finance has developed into a science, and its master-minds are found among the most opulent and influential men in the land. The biggest fly in the ointment of these halcyon days of prosperity is the remorseless rapacity and the blind despotism of centralized corporate wealth.
The Marvelously Complete Concentration of Wealth and Power.
In The World's Work for December, 1903, Mr. Sereno S. Pratt categorically affirms that one-twelfth of the estimated wealth of the nation is represented at the meeting of the board of directors of the United States Steel Corporation. They are in practical control of more than 200 other titanic industrial syndicates. These corporations operate one-half of the railroad mileage of the United States. They control approximately all the mining and distribution of the nation's coal. The dominant telegraph system, the street railways of the largest eight cities in the country, and one of the leading express companies, are represented in the Steel Trust board. This group of directors includes also the men in control of five insurance companies, with assets of upward of a billion dollars. These same men speak for the five richest banks and the ten most powerful trust companies in New York City. Each of three of these banks is the head of an interminable chain of financial institutions that ramify all parts of the United States. The master-spirits of telephone, electric, real-estate, cable, publishing, and mercantile companies sit at this same board table.
In one sense, the twenty-four men who constitute this board, are the most extraordinary group in the world. They control corporations whose capitalization aggregates nearly $10,000,000,000, an amount far greater than the combined public debts of the United States, Great Britain, and France. It is the concentration of power vested in this knot of money barons that makes them loom so portentously to the public eye. "But," says Dr. Strong, "this board of directors is guided by the executive and finance committees, which in turn are largely directed by their chairmen, who are probably selected by the great banker who organized the corporation and in large part sways its policy." (Italics mine.)
Those vast and diversified industries of the nation, which come under the category of manufactures, represent a capitalization of $9,900,000,000. But all the really important ones, those which dominate the markets, are absolutely under the control of half a hundred "captains of industry." Recent investigations show that the control of all the great banks and other monetary institutions of this country has gradually passed into the hands of a small group of capitalists, who, in consequence, have the dangerously plutocratic power to regulate the flow of credit in the commercial world of America. Respecting the highly centralized control of the banking power of the nation, the Rev. Dr. Strong says: "In the last analysis it is found that there are actually only two main influences, and that these are centered in Mr. Morgan and Mr. Rockefeller." Dr. Strong shows that Mr. Morgan dominates capital which can be expressed in approximate figures at $6,268,171,300. Congressman Charles E. Littlefield stated in a recent address that there are 793 trusts capitalized at more than fourteen billion dollars, not including the railways capitalized at twelve billion dollars more.
All-Inclusive Railroad Trust.
Of the 215,000 miles of railway in the United States, capitalized at the fabulous figures given above, ninety-five per cent. is under the exclusive sway of six "communities of interest" or titanic alliances. The famous statistician, Mr. John Moody, writes that the money kings that are at the head of, and entirely dominate, this Atlantean railroad trust are J. P. Morgan, John D. and William Rockefeller, W. K. and F. W. Vanderbilt, Geo. J. Gould, A. J. Cassatt, J. J. Hill, E. H. Harriman, and the Moore Brothers. The total earnings of these allied railways for 1904 slightly exceeded $2,000,000,000, or one-third as much as the aggregate wealth of the United States in 1842. Mr. Moody adds: "The control is becoming more and more concentrated, as the number of capitalists controlling the railways is becoming smaller and smaller."
Anent the present irresistible tendency to merge the railway systems of the United States, the San Francisco Chronicle significantly says:
The apologists for consolidation reason about as follows: There is economic saving in consolidation; all economic saving is distributed through society; therefore, consolidation is in the interest of society. That seems sound reasoning, but it is not. The minor premise is not necessarily true, and as a matter of fact is not true, as is evident by the enormous accumulations of wealth not only in single control but in single ownership. If the premises were sound the conclusion would not necessarily follow, for the social consequences of consolidation are not considered, and there may be economic gain side by side with social loss.
At any rate, the people have the ballot and will not endure this continued consolidation. There can be no such concentration of power without abuses and oppression. Those capitalists who are promoting these consolidations are inviting trouble. It may be socialism. It may be the taxation of great fortunes out of existence. It may be something else. It will be trouble.
Monopoly of Invaluable City Franchises.
There are now in this country eleven gigantic franchise trusts, each of which is capitalized at considerably more than $100,000,000; there are also twenty-three similar corporations, each capitalized at $50,000,000 or more, and ninety-five additional franchise "trustlets," each representing a capitalization of $5,000,000 or more. On the face of it, the foregoing statement would seem to prove that the franchise wealth of the country is under widely diversified ownership and control. But it is important to remember that all these corporations, large and small, are so deviously interlocked that, in effect, they are dominated by less than a score of the master-spirits of the "Empire of Finance."
Crushing Monopoly of the World's Tobacco Industry.
No more telling illustration of the dazzling swiftness with which an infant commercial company can be nursed into an all-inclusive and crushing monopolistic trust, can be found than the short but romantic history of the American Tobacco Company, popularly known as "The Tobacco Trust." The Company began its career in 1890 as a modest corporation of Eastern tobacco manufacturers, with a capital of but $25,000,000. In the first fourteen years of its history it developed into a despotically rapacious world-monopoly of every form of tobacco production and distribution, with its capital swollen to the fabulous sum of $502,000,000. Its sphere of operations to-day reaches practically into every country on the globe. It grows the raw tobacco, transports it, converts it into all the diversified forms for consumption, and distributes to the four quarters of the earth. At its inception, in 1890, it controlled only eight plants; in 1904 it had become the master of 150 plants. It has absorbed to itself ninety per cent. of the tobacco industry of the United States and not less than sixty per cent. of the industry in all other parts of the world. It is said to have stifled more competing companies than any other trust except the Standard Oil Company. It is a conspicuous example of the kind of monopoly that has been succinctly described as a combination of "special privilege, efficient labor, and unscrupulous brain power."
Up to this point in the preparation of this article, my aim has been simply to adduce a few typical illustrations of the resistless tendency toward the concentration of the world's wealth into the coffers of a comparatively few persons, who are gifted with a genius for finance. Equally apt illustrations could be given almost without limit, but would afford very little, if any, additional information as to the principle involved.
Specific Instances of Monopoly Oppression.
The Los Angeles Times truthfully declares: "Standard Oil methods are well known to be utterly unscrupulous, utterly relentless, and utterly selfish." More than one writer on economic subjects have been telling their readers that, during the past six months, the Standard Oil Company has acquired so preponderating an influence in railroad management that it can dictate freight rates almost as irrevocably as it dictates the price of oil. Of course, what is true of the Oil trust must be true of the steel, the sugar, the copper, the beef, the coal, and other giant trusts, inasmuch as they constitute a "close community of interests."
The insatiable greed and the utter moral turpitude of the Oil trust was made glaringly evident at the time of the great anthracite coal strike, in the winter of 1902. Up to that time the company had been wholesaling oil in New York City at a handsome profit at seven and one-half cents a gallon. When the stress of the coal famine compelled the people to use oil for fuel, the trust promptly raised the price four cents a gallon; and, as pointed out at the time by newspapers, this increase in price alone amounted to more than $90,000,000 wrung from the helpless misery and distress of the people by the richest corporation in the world, simply because through unlawful and immoral methods this financial leviathan had been able to crush competition and thus place the people completely at the mercy of its wanton extortion. Naturally, the head of the trust, as its heaviest stockholder, "reaped the lion's share of the blood money."9
President Cassatt, of the Pennsylvania Railroad, testified before the New York Investigating Committee "that in eighteen months the railways had paid to the Standard the sum of $10,000,000 in rebates." Yes, we have the unimpeachable records of at least three State Courts, that it was chiefly upon the all-powerful, but utterly iniquitous, rebate that the great Oil King founded and developed to perfection the remorseless monopoly of Standard Oil.
But Standard Oil has actually outgrown the need of this flagrantly lawless artifice. Its preponderating influence in the control of railways enables it to virtually dictate transportation rates. This statement is not mere conjecture. In the April number of The World To-Day, Mr. C. A. Prouty, of the Inter-State Commerce Commission, states, in substance, that most people assume that the rebate is the principal evil in trust oppression. In the past this has been true. "The great trusts and monopolies exercise to-day such control over railway-management, that they can adjust rates in their own interest. The Standard Oil Company no longer accepts rebates—it makes the rates themselves; and the discriminations in its favor are worth enormous sums annually to that monopoly."
The Rev. Dr. Gladden declares that it is not merely on account of what this gigantic power has done in the past; it is on account of what it is doing to-day that it ought to be counted a public enemy. "It is now, as it always has been, an oppressor of the people. Its methods of robbery are more genteel and much more cowardly than those of the highway man or the pirate, but they are not less flagitious." Dr. Gladden declares further: "The man who, upon a railway directory, exerts his influence to establish rates or policies by which he aggrandizes himself by despoiling his business competitors is, in the sight of God, just as truly a robber as the man who puts his pistol to your head in a dark alley." He believes truly that unless the people can learn to discern and punish these cryptic injustices which are woven into the very fabric of our modern industrial system, there will be no hope for liberty here except as the result of a revolution.
Governor La Follette of Wisconsin not long since alleged that there is not an important trust in the United States which does not have the assistance of the railroads in destroying its competitors in business.
[The remainder of this article deals with the history and work of the great harvester trust, the beef-trust vampire, and the meaning of these amassings of millions.]
