The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1877-08-23
THE CURSE OF NATIONS.
Fifteen years of Republican admins

FlltGGu Stdlo VI 4eOPoUAiS'h euuA'HAS
tration have imposed upon the country a
system of monopolies which has been
the curse of every nation in which it has
ever Aourished. The press has been
quite exact in fixing the limit of the
right of the people to resist the arbitrary
and merciless eXactions of these corpora
tions. Almost without an exception,
every paper I have seen has declared
that the men had the right to refuse to
work for the wages offered by the railroad
companies, but that they had no right to
prevent others from working. In a nor
NAL condition of affairs this is an indis-
putable proposition. But why has the
press been SO particular in fixing the
limit of the rights of the working people
while it failed to note and denounce the
notorious facts that the corporations have
grown stronger than the laws which they
trample upon and defy; that corrupt and
subservient Congresses and Legislatures
have granted them unconstitutional, anti
Republican and extraordinary privileges,
which they have increased by unresisted
encroachments, and now are to dominate
the commerce of the country and to op-
press the working people. If the strikers
exceeded their right under the laws, in
preventing their fellows from working
for the wages offered by the companies,
it is also true that the corporations are
anomalies in our government; that they
are the creatures Of corruption, that they
have held themselves higher than all con.
stitutional authority, and have trampled
upon private rights, public justice and
common humanity.
And thus has been produced the con-
dition out of which springs instructions
and revolutions. It may be that the
strikers overstepped the boundary of pri-
vate rights, but the monopolists first dis
turbed the economy of society, and dis
ordered the natural and healthful rela-
tions between capital and labor. Let
the blame rest upon those who first trans
gressed the law and violated the funda-
mental principle Of our government and
of all free society.
During the last fifteen years corrup-
tion, favoritism, sectional malevolence
and centralizing policies have disturbed
the natural order of our Republican So
ciety, and introduced in our system those
obnoxious features which have in all
times tended to make the rich richer
and the poor poorer, until wealth has
accumulated itself into masses; and pow
erty also in accumulating enough lies
i'm passably separated from it; opposed,
uncommnnicatinp. like forces in positive
and negative poles. And the gods of this
lower world sit aloft on glittering thrones,
less happy than Epicurus' gods, but as
indolent and impotent; while the bound
less living chaos of ignorance and hunger
welters terrific in dark fury under their
feet" Isl wonderful, then, that there
has been an outbreak of the people; That
ignorance, infamed by wrong and mis-
ery, has risen up and lifted its brawny
arm to strike at the gods whom venality
and false legislation have created and set
up on golden thrones. Who, indeed,
will venture, before he drags down under
the feet of the law, and forces into OBJ
servance of the privileges of humanity
and the rights of society, the overgrown
and bastard monopolies of the land, to
call upon the law to consign to public
condemnation and obloquy the revolu-
tionists of last week? Revolution, after
all, is but "iustice reddened into wrath"
and the events of last week were a revo-
luton.
And if those events shall result in
arousing the American people to the
criminality of the policies adopted by the
Republican party, to the folly of per-
nicious tariff which destroys commerce,
aud to the political villainy of monstrous
monopolies which disturb the order of
society and ride down the people, the
millions they have cost the corporations
and the trade of the country will be a
cheap price for the blessings they will
confer.