Litchfield enquirer., 1873-09-18

ry Aaa placed him--a great prince de pendent on his pleasure; an opulent city afraI4 Of being given up to plunder; W6aithy bankers bidding against each otfl- CT for his smiles; vanlfs piled with gold and jewels thrown open to him alone, and exclaimed in conclusion, By, MT. Chair man, at this moment stand astonished at my own moderation
 MAGsIFIcEScE OF THE PRIZE.
 To form some idea of the maenificene of the whole prize at stake, let us SUD-
 pose that the entire railroad system of the United States is under the control of one company. Nor is this a violent pre- sumption. When we consider the colos- sal strides of the New York Central and Pennsylvania Central towards this result
 --the latter now owning or operating more than four thousand miles, making thonsand-year leases and guaranteeing dividends for thirty generations re- fleet that the owners of the trunk lines control their feeders as absolutely as though they owned them, it will not seem improbable that the whole system may pass under one general management. I'm aglne this accomplished, and the principle that the law cannot fix rates and compel uni tormltyis established d--one company would then have 8 monopoly of all inland trans portation. A, B, 0 and D own the coal mines which supply the city of New York. The mines of A are most valuable and nearest to market. He finds to his aston ishment that his rivals can undersel him, and tho Yaluesof his property is destroy ed. He learns upon inquiry that while he pays freight according to the published tarlff, 5, c and D have special rates. He complains, and is told that he can haul his coal on carts or pack it on mules. He Femdnstrates, and is informed that he can huild his own railroad. Finally, as a choice between that and bankruptcy, he sells or gives a controlling interest in his mine to the directors of the Mammoth railroad company"
 with B., c. and D., and reaches the same result. Then the great Anthracite com pany is formed, composed 70. the direct ors of the Mammoth railroad company" a stock of coal is accumulated in the city; winter has come; the director of the Nam moth looks in the mirror and says to the image he sees there, Anthracite, we have got to advance your rates!" and the image reflects smile and bow; coal advances in the city, but there is no pan lc. Then some new regulation is estab- hshed at the time which proyokes strike The rumor goes abroad, ''No more coal. |" Then there are panic and famine prices in the city-murder at the mine-and the poor shiver and freeze oyer the white ash es in their grate, that Anthracite may swell Mammoth's profits. Some one ven lures to say this is wrong-this is monop- the whole brood of parasites that hask in the social sunshine of Man. moths favorfand eat tho crumbs that fall from his table, join in the cry, "He is a Communist! demagoguei an1 don't be- heve in the rights of property! We are comfortable Mammoth gives us gold for our ilatterys After us the deluge!'" The sentiment las been heard before-it was on the lips of the courtiers on the eve of the French revolution-and then whis- per brought down the avalanche.
 THE SCHEME NOT VISION AIRY.
 suggests it's impracticability. Why four fifths of the preparatory work has been silently done, apparently without design! Take the 70, ,O0O miles of railroad in the United states-the great mass of this property IS owned or controlled as abso- lptely as though it were owned, by cer- tainly less than ten companies, and the di- rectory of these companies may not in- clude hundred men. If the present rate of absorption continue, how long before it will reach one head? It could be &C., complish now in day. Suppose the companies white stars, red stars and blue stars, who have con tracts to run their cars over various roads should conclude to combine, and, mak- ing their capital stock one or two or three thousand million dollars, determine to "place 1t where it would do the most good, and further determine that it could not possibly do so much good anywhere else as in the hands of the men who are directors. Then these men. as railroad directors, lease to themselves as directors, their various roads under their control-and the thing IS done. But such a contract, you urge, would be bad in morals and void in law. l don't know wherein it differs in princi- pie frnm Q contract made by the directors of a railroad company with themselves to construct road. But, you suggest, the stockholders would not stand it. I do not know why they would not, if their dividends are secured by the leases. But the people, you say, would not stand it! There would be an uprising, revolution. Now you are the communicates agita- tor. We do not propose to invoke the bloody power of revolution, but the ma iesty of Q pronognced public opinion un- der the benignant forms of law. Grant that this danger of unifcation is, as per haps many of you think it. the chimera of an overloaded brain-that the tenden- cy toward concentration has reached it's limit. What, after all, is the practical What Vanderbilt might do if sole owner, is doing in various sections by various corporations acting for a con- mon purpose, with Q common interest and common instinct. It is only the diff ference between the king and the satraps.
 THE DANGER DEFINED.
 Let me state again the danger as exact ly as can. There is natural tendency in every civilized society toward the con- centration of capital That tendency has been greatly intensified in this country by the conyulsiOns of our civil war; The in the hands of the people, the men of moderate means, is still hundred fold greater than great the fortunes, but it is employed for ten thusand different pur- poses. Concentrated capital recognizes, by the instinct of money-sense, that the control of the railroads of the country will give it the control of all the property of the country; that to accomplish this, political power, political supremacy, is necessary, and this it is enabled to seek with such an immense pressure upon the rights and material interests of every man and every community, that there is immi- nent danger that we will become enslayed and lose thespirit of independencewhich is the essence of freedom, while we are en- toying the forms of liberty, and barter the bright hopes of the republic for fac titious material growth. The power that threatens this danger has not yet reached unity, but the work is as certainly being done by different companies acting in the same interest as though it had; while the tendency toward concentration under one head, into one iron hand, ,isso manifest that not to see it is to be wilfuliy blind
 AN INTTMIDATED PJRIdC