Weekly Chillicothe crisis. (Chillicothe, Livingston Co., Mo.) 1878-19??, 1883-02-01
THIEVES AND ROBBERs.

other is q robber The robbcr il
properly supposed to disappear, witt
other predatory animals, before tn,
progress of civilization; but this is ;
superficial judgment. The force tha
unlawfully deprives men of their prop
erty passes through many transforma
tiOns, but no force is more persistent
Men are plundered nowadays in Amer
lea far more frequently and llagrantly
than in England in tho days of Robir
Hood; there are men among us be
side whose robberleS those of the bri
gands of Italy and Greece and th,
Bedouins of the desert are mer,
pleasantries. OF all the triumphs o.
invention none are more wonderful
than these by which the hard.earnet
gains of millions are forcihly conveyed
to the vaults of the robbcr-princes
No business is more highly organized
more strcnously pursued, more success
fully managed than the business o.
robbery. Yet, under all this elabora
tion of method, it is robbery, nothing
verse nor better.
The peculiarly of the modern method
of robbery is the employment, by the
robbers, of the state as their enforced
agent and acComplice. Sometimes,
but not often, they organize their
clients and rctainers into armed bands
and seize the coveted booty, combining
to have the state confirm possession.
but the force on which they prefer to
rely is the quiet and rosistless force OF
the laws and the courts. BY artfully
contrived legal schemes they constrain
courts 10 do their bidding. The judges
may be unwilling instruments, yet
they are bound TO sanction, impartially,
tkc working of legal processes. But
what shall we say when weak or cor
rupt judges hasten TO legalzc schemes
by which great corporations are
wrecked or rehabiitated as suits the
purpose Of the conspirators?
OF the gigantic fortunes now held in
this country, not few have been got
ten 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 syS-
TEN of robbery was perfected about
twenty men have amasscd fortunes,
which, taken together, exceed the debt
of the nation. Twenty years ago many
of these men were poor. Some of the
new millionaircs have grown rich hon
estly, but some Of them have led raid
upon the production and the accu-
mulatod wealth Of the country. So
Napoleonic in lis boldness and success
has been the method of the master rob-
bers, that rich men Of better instincts
have been dazzled by it, and have
adopted 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 withpubic honors, have coun-
tenanced these crimes as allording the
surest way of adding to their unSatisfy-
ing fortunes of ten, twenty, or even
thirty millions. 1t is by no means our
purpose to throw discrcdit 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 civilization. But we
do say that examples OF private greed
are sapping the sources ofpublic honor;
examples of gigantic and c0untenanced
robbery are undermining the founda-
tions of public morality and corrupting
the national character.
Our Legislators have failed to see, or,
for private and corrupt reasons, have
winkcd at the fact, that the laws which
were made to fit old-fashioned ideas of
honor and morality, instead of protect
ing the public, are the strength and the
protection of dishonest men. The old
code of commercial honor is lost sight
of in the complex transactions of stock
iobbers, who remain out of sight while
their work is being done by conscience.
less foctors; by lawyers skilled in dis
covering loOp-holcs in the law and in
Juggling with the law; by lobbies with
money at the doors of legislatures; by
paper shares and paper promises to
pay; by cipher messages and spies, and
by abusing the facilities of stock ex-
changes.
1t is well that our legislators are
making at least the show of inquiring
into the methods by which the public
is robbed in the interest of stockhold-
ers, and they, in turn, are robbed by
corporate managers; by which whole
sale robberyis cloaked with legal forms
of consolidation" reorganization"
''recoivcrships, and "watered stocks; ;
by which men may safely conspire to
pcrvert the natural course of produc.
ton and trade, and rob the public by
the artitice of corners; by which u
man is allowed to control rival or
double systems of railways, and with
impunity array one against the other,
as suits his varying purpose, thereby
despoiling the public with the ease of a
gambler playing with marked cards
What have the people to say about
these practices? They do not appear,
as yet, to have anything to say. The
robber princes are held in high esteem.
They go about to the colleges, some of
them, and Doctors of Law and Doctors
of Divinity grovel at their feet; if any
Mordecai has refused to bow down
before them, his name has not been
reported. Men whose riches have
been increased by spelling their neigh
bors are held up as shining examples
for the imitation of our youth. So
long as teachers of morality silently
indorsc such iniquities, it is not to be
expected that the people will cry out
against them. But the day is sure to
come when plain men will clearly see
that no one man can get with clean
hands, in an ordinary lifetime, hun
dred million dollars; that such an
enormous pile, so suddenly collected,
must be loot, not profit. That will be
a day of reckoning, indeed, for the
robbers and for the judges and the
Legislators and the public teachers who
have been their aCcomplices.
Meantime these facts are to be kept
in mind-that we have among us u
class ofmen who, in their rapacity, are
bent on enriching themselves by fore
IDLY seizing the property of their neigh
bors; and that they have learned how
to use for this purpose the organized
force of the state. Some means must
be found of putting stop 10 them.
Unless this be done speedily, the res
pect for law on which social order
rests will not long survive.
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