Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1880-03-18
The Curse of Capital.

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other night of unemployed working
men" who vowed that they would die
sooner than accept dollar day, one of
the speakers declared that as soon as the
Chinese had been cleaned out the peo-
die intended to make the capitalists go.
Some of the capitalists, as our readers
know, are going already, and the deple-
ton of the capital of the State sil e. the
adoption of the new Constitution has
been rapid enough to cause business
men no little alarm. But the levelling
process is still too slow for the mob, and
although a marked hostility to moneyed
corporations has been displayed in the
Legislature, Kearney is by no means
satisfied He told his followers recently
that "if the people knew one half of the
villainy that was going on at Sacra-
mento they would rise en- mssse and go
up there and strangle that Legislature
Perhaps there is no form of incorpO-
rated capital more odious to the average
agitator than a railway company. The
California roads have been attacked
with special bitterness. They are ae-.
eused of grinding the people by exces-
sive charges, doubling the price of all the
necessaries of life and erippling both the
merchant and the consumer by exorbi-
tant rates of freight. While the clamer
continues, of course the extension of the
California railroad system is arrested,
for no company can afford to build new
lines when it is forbidden to employ
cheap labor, and threatened besides with
legislative reduction of its income. 1t
is strange that even ignorant and ex-
cited men such as those who are now
marching about the streets of San Fran
cisco with threats of vague and terrible
vengeance against the "0ppressors of the
people" should noJ see what an injury
they are Goins to themselves by this
war upon caDital; and the time will
come, and come SOON, when they must
feel the consequences of their costly
mistake in the prostration of all their
industries, and the inevitable sufferings
of an everstocked labor market. Four
years ago, when a wild bill for regu-
lating fares and freights was before the
California Legislature, Mr.. Leland STAN
ford, president of the Central Pacific
Road, printed fOrcible statement of
the company's side of the question un-
der discussion, and at the close of it
made calculation of what the railroads
had saved to the people of the State
ring the previous six years. If the same
passenger and freight movement be-
tween California and the East had been
carried at the old steamer rates which
prevailed before the. road was opened,
the additional cost for the years 1S70-'75
would have been S91,000,00O, that sum
consequently representing what the Eeo-
pie saved by means of the railroads. 1t
is estimated that the saving for ten
years amounts to at least $150,O00,000.
These figures certainly do not prove
that the present rates are fair, but that
they prove that railway corporations are
not public enemies, The complaint of
excessive charges has become sort of
popular habit, and it is not clear that
merchants have not themselves to blame
in part for the odium which has been
excited against all the companies indis-
criminately. A lady in San Francisco
was recently charged S. for chlld's
straw hat, the price Of which in New
York would have been about IS cents
In justification of this exorbitant de-
mand the shopkeeper pleaded the extor-
tionate freight charges of the railroad
The story reached an officer of the Cen
tral Pacific Road, and he had the curios-
ity to investigate the case. The shop.
keepers freight bill was produced, and
the charge was found for one box con-
tanning so many straw hats; it made ths
freight on each hat about two-thirds OF
a cent. Yet the dealer who put forward
freight charge of about per cent as
an excuse for adding 566 per cent to the
price of six-shilling hat was perhaps
not altogether insincere in his denuncia
tions of the grasping railway corpora
i ton; he talked so from the force of hab
it. Denunciation seems to be in the all
of the Pacific coast.
The more We look into the California
troubles the sfighter appears to be the
excuse for the alarming development Of
Kearneyism. The real cause of the dis
turbance is found in the reckless ant
spendthrift habits of people who have
run career of speculation and eXtrava
gance, and, having reached the unayoid
able period of collapse, find it hard now
to be saving and industrious. They lay
their embarrassments, now to exactinl
corporations, and now to the competing
Chinese But there is no proof that the
corporations are earning anything more
than legitimate profit on their opera
tions, while they are certainly enabling
the people to make money if they choose
to work. And as for Chinese competi
ton, it is formidable to the Sand Lots
not because the Celestials are cheap, bu
} because they are steady and reasonable
"Chinese cheap labor is delusion. L
seems to be imagined that the "moon
eyed leper" works for few cents day
and lives on rice. On the contrary, 1t
obtains fair wages-about Us high az
those of ordinary laborers and servants
at the East-and he lays up money
, When the agitators have driven him ou
of the State, they will soon find tina
thar oun condition has not bppn i'm