The Austin weekly statesman. (Austin, Tex.) 1883-1898, 1883-11-22
Who Are MOnOnOlists?


Who Are MOnOpOlists?
Yes, my son, monopoly is bad
thing, and am glad to see the people
of this country organizing themselves
against the monopolieS that are crush
ing the life out of honest and worthy
competition. There are several
monopolists in this affected land.
Some of them are worth millions. All
of them want to be worth twice so
much as that. Vanderbilt and Gould
are famous monopolists. The Western
Union telegraph company is gigan-
tic monopoly. And there are several
other mOnopolies.
When you employ three hundred, or
thirty, or ten Workmen and pay them
| with your own money, and COM
mite waits on you to tell you that if
you do not discharge certain work
man, a good mechanic, sober, quiet,
faithful, whose only fault is that he
belongs to no labor organization, the
other two hundred and ninety-nine,
or Twenty-Five, or nine will quit work
in the midst of your busy season; you
are in the clutches of "a monopoly-a
monopoly as grinding, grasping, and
cruel in its way as the Western Union.
1t is called a trade-union, but it is a
monopoly.
When committee of workmen
come to you and say that, as you have
d great many contracts half-fnished,
and as men are scarce and hard to get,
and as they have you on the hip, they
will strike in ten minutes unless you
allow them to set their own pay at
the highest figures; then that is mo-
nopoly that acts just precisely as the
Western Union does when it absorbs
a rival line and tells you that as there
is only one Office in this town they
will raise the rate little.
When you tell your workmen that
times are dull and the market is stag
nant and that you don't need them
anyhow, and that they can work on
half time or none, then you are the
monopoly-that is, you are the striker.
A monopoly is chronic striker. 1t
is always watching chance to pinch
you and squeeze just little more
work or money out of you for its own
benefit.
The tramp who airs his rags at your
kitchen door while his breakfast is
preparing is monopolist. eknows
that you hate him, and don't want to
feed him. But he knows that you
are afraid if you don't feed him he
will set fire to the stable some night.
So he makes you give him breakfast
for nothing.
The honest farmer who holds back
his wheat until he can squeeze $1.40
per bushel out of you for it, not be-
cause it is better wheat than you get
for 80 cents, but because wheat is so
scarce, is as mean a monOpolist as
there is in the lot. Jay Gould couldn't
give him any points.
The man who charges 40 cents a
pound for very ordinary butter just
because the roads are so bad the
people who are selling their butter
in the villages for 20 cents can't get
to the city with it, he, too, is monop-
olist. When you buy jar of lard of
him poke into it with ramrod to feel
for boulder.
And the lady VINO Durns steak and
chips china for you at So week is a
monopoliSt. You spent six weeks
looking for her, she stays with you
two weeks, breaks So worth of china
and glass, loses So worth of spoons
and forks, collect Sc for wages and
goes off, with twenty-fc T hours
warning, to place that [ :ferS her
more china to smash at $3.5L 4 week
for smashing it.
You see, my son, in looking bout
for monopoly to denounce or DIT .lol-
ish, our naturally envious disposit MS
lead US to assail the monopolieS tnat
are more fortunate than our own.
We clamor against Vanderbilt, and
Jay Gould, and Western Union, and
fail to observe the smaller monopolies
that differ from the great ones, not in
spirit, but only in wealth and power.
You are not a monopoliSt? o no, be- |
cause you are clerk in store, and
there are fifty young men watching
you for your place, eager to do for
$25 month what you are paid $40
for doing. There is no monopoly in |
your business; but that isn't your |
fault. Let the merchant over the way |
offer you $45, and IN twenty-four |
hours you would leave the man who |
took you in when you were raw cub |
of boy, doing more damage than |
good to the business; who taught you,
and trained you, and made you worth |
$45 a month. You'd do it too quick, /
my son; that's the kind of man you
are.
A monopolist isn't necessarily
He is simply the man
who holds the whip-handle. 1t is de-
rived from two Latin words. mono
pole, meaning the man at the pole.
And the man with the pole, iyou know,
knocks tho persimmons. He may
knock a million of them or he may
knock only two, but while he is knock
inc Won don't pet any,
Hence, my son, a monopoly is pros
porous combination of which we are
not one.
This MAKES it very wicked, avari-
cious, and dangerous.
When we get into it it ceases to be
a monopoly, and becomes union, a
brotherhood, firm, an association, or
This change of title
also involves a great moral change.
and it becomes mighty engine of
a developer of our country's
resources, factor in the national
and all that sort of thing.
A monopoly is thing which it is
hard to get into.
There is no monopolist so greed
and dangerous as the NihilistS. Th
ordinary monopolist is content to con-
,rol one thing. The Nihilist wants
everything and three-ffths share of
what is left.
If you live to be thirty-fve years
I'D and havn't got into any other
monopoly by that time, would advise
you to go to the North Pole and start
IN ice cream saloon.-R. j. Burdette,
# the Burlington Hawkeve