Democratic Northwest. [volume] (Napoleon, Ohio) 1869-1894, 1882-04-13


roads, if discharged, could find EN-.
ployment on another. Now, If wages
are cut on any one Of them, it is use.
less for the labOrer 10 apply to another.
He has but une chance, and if that is
lost on either Of the monopolies it will
not be supplied by another-to be dis.
charged in New York is to be dis
charged in Texas. Railroad property
is not managed so as to keep up its
condition-all earnings in excess of
fair dividends should be devoted TO
the employment of labor at Legitimate
compensation. The same is true as to
all our manufacturing corporations.
Dividends on stocks must be kept up
in order TO foster speculation, and
labor is taxed by the reduction of its
wages to make this possible. Time is
not remote when money must be spent
to keep up the character of the rail.
roads and manufacturers, then divi.
dends will be reduced or stopped en-
tirely. Confidence will cease and
labor will be dispensed with. Then
hunger will turn to capital and politics
and cry for bread.
1t is plain to see that with the ia.
cilitles of printing and the general
habit of reading in this country, that
there must be a growing uneasiness in
the minds OF the laboring classes as to
their ultimate fate under the radical
change in our system of society effect
ed by speculation. When the skilled
laborer is discharged, as he must be in
case of railroad collapse or panic,
he will come into contact with the
unskilied labor of the country and
affect wages in that direction and
common cause will be made. This is
liable at any time, from the straining
of all corporations to pay dividends
under the watered and inflated con-
dition of their stock.
Says cotemporary:
thio NOM ont almost pvpry carving pornorntinn
in the land, and many other corporations whose
stocks are quoted on the speculative boards are
stripped bare, and straning every point to keep up
their dividends, because the moment the dividends
drop off down goes the stock in the lists, and away
S9O,OOO,OOO in the hands of the speculative class
Now, how are they paying those dividends? They
doing it by ceasng to keep up the repairs of the
railroads. They saving on the road-bed, in the
equipment. and in wages in order to come out every
quarter with the usual dividend on three or four
times the honest value of the road. They have put
these bonds the property to swell their specula
tive wealth, and used every sagacity to see where
they could get another $l,O0OOOO, that s1,OGO,OOO
going to the account of the great investor who
trolls the property. If he can take property worth
S20,0OO0 900 and put Ss0,00O,00O upon it and pay
dividends he ranks eighty-millionaire instead
of twenty millionaire. At this moment the specu-
lative stocks making their vast army of labor no
criterion at all. They are not looking to what that
aboring man is thinking about, what this engineer
who the train is brooding upon, what the con-
ductor-who is watched at every point to see il he
takes few pennies of the fare-is saying to him
self about the nature of his employers. There was
time perhaps, when that class of employees labored
for the small corporations where they well
sidered, where their pride railroad men was not
less than that of the big capitalist who filled the
Presidential or Directors chair But in the passion
for speculative wealth which has rolled over this
country the employer has lost sight of his man, and,
of course, the man having every facility to be in
telligen that his employer has. except this specu-
lative shrewdn ess. turns cold upon his employer.
The wages that paid in many of the corporations
do not affords reasonable subsistence for the family
of the laborer, whether he be skilled or unskied.
Cast your eye to Ireland and how people ac-
customed for centuries to submission have brought
about changes the Government is powerless to i'm
prove. There is hardly any rent being paid in Ire
land There is next to no safety. The landed class
would listen to nothing though several issues were
presented to them, all preparatory to this present
agitation. They would not be warned, could see
nothing but what was right under their noses. And
now it will be long time before they derive any
further benefit from their Irish lands, while mean
time the agitation is spreading from Ireland to other
parts of the British Kingdom, and leading to bitter
feelings, which may result in consequences Great
Britain herself does not comprehend. In America,
where people think quickly, and act not only with
decision, but with right, are liable at any time
within the next year, the next two years or the next
four years to the entire basis of the present poll
lies and system of wealth wiped out.
The unrestrained power of men as
spectators, and to do as they please
in their corporate capacity, is not in
accord with the genius of our institu-
tions and if not stopped in time by
wise legislation will lead to violence.
Wise statesmen alone can stay ter
rible whirlwind between the laborlng
and the speculative few. Cor.
porations have already reduced labor
to a barely living basis; and when the
crash comes, as business men generally
believe it will come, how then will labor
behave when it must be oppressed
still moreover below the price of
bread and shelter? No government
in this country can put down gen
eral movement of labor, satisfied that
t has been outraged. An army large
enough can never be mustered to sub
upate our Intelligent laboring element,