Alpena weekly argus. [volume] (Alpena, Mich.) 1871-1893, 1883-03-07
Thieyes-and Robbers.

Thieyes-and Robbers.
He who takes by stealth what be-
longs to another is a thief; he who
takes by violence what belongs to an
other is a robber. The robber is pop
ularly supposed to disappear, with 9TH
er predatory animals, before the pro-
gress of civilization; but this is a
superficial judgment. The force that
unlawfully deprives men of their pro-
perty passes through many transfer
nations, but no force is more persis-
tent. Men are plundered nowadays
in America far more frequently and
fagrantly than in England in the days
of Robin Hood there are men among
us beside whose robberies those of the
brigands of Italy and Greece and the
Bedouins of the desert are mere pleas
antries.. OF all the triumphs of in
vention none are more wonderful than
those by which the hard-earned gains
of millions are forcibly conveyed to
the vaults of the robber-princes. Nc
business is more highly organized
more strenuously pursued, more sue
cessfully managed than the business
of robbery. Yet, under all this ella
boration of method, it is robbery,
nothing worse nor better.
The popularity of the modern
method of robbery is the employment
by the robbers, of the State as their
enforced agent and accomplice. Some
times, but not often, they organize
their clients and retainers into armed
bands and seize the converted booty,
combining to have the State confirm
possession. But the force OH which
they prefer to rely is the quiet and
resistless force of the laws and the
court BY artfully contrived legal
schemes they constrain courts to do
their bidding. The judges may be
unwilling instruments, yet they are
bound to sanction, impartially, the
working of legal processes. But what
shall we say when weak or corrupt
judges hasten to legalize schemes by
which great corporations are wrecked
or rehabilitated as suits the purposes
of the conspirator?
Of the gigantic fortunes now held
in this country, not few have been
gotten by legal robbery. Twenty
years ago our millionaires could be
counted almost on the fingers of four
hands. To-day their enumeration
would carry us into thousands. Since
the new system of robbery was per-
fected, about twenty men have amass-
ed fortunes, which taken together, ex-
coed the debt of the nation. Twenty
years ago many of these men were
poor. Some Of the new millionaires
have grown rich honestly, but some
of them have led raid upon the pro-
duction and the accumulated wealth
of the country. So Napolianic in its
boldness and success has been the
method Of the master robbers, that
rich men of better instincts have
been dazzled by it, and have adopt
ed it openly and independently, or
have lent indirect cooperation and
social credit to the robber chiefs and
have shared in the plumber. Men of
honorable regulations, who have been
crowned with public honors, have
countenanced these crimes as afford
ing the surest way of adding to their
unsatisfying fortunes of ten, twenty,
or even thirty millions. 1t is by no
means our purpose to throw discredit
upon the pursuit of wealth. Honest
production and the honest gains of
wealth that Is employed In the service
of society are the bulwarks of civil
zation. But we do say that examples
of private greed are sapping the
sources of public honor; examples of
gigantic and countenanced robbery are
undermining the foundations of public
morality and corrupting the national
character.
Our legislators have failed to see,
or, for private and corrupt reason,
have winked at the fact, that the laws
which were made to fit old-fashioned
ideas of honor and morality instead
of protecting the public, are the
strength and the protection of dishon-
est men. The old code of CONNER.
cial honor Is lost sight of in the COM
pick transaction Of stockholders, who
remain out of sight while their work
is being done by constituencies factors |;
by lawyers skilled in discovering
loop-holcs in the law and in Juggling
with the law; by paper shares and
oapep promises TO paw: by cipher mes