Morning journal and courier., 1883-08-08
Wedne sday, August g. 1888.
NOT COMMURIsTTC

NUT CO4n1QBASv1Cs
 The New York Sun charges those who fla vor postal telegraph lines with Communism. A few days since when the New York Board of Trade and Transportation, body com posed of some of the leading business men of that city, adopted resolutions favoring the establishment of government lines, the Sun in commenting upon their action said. s'It IS wonderful how communistic ideas will get hold of ignorant men" This is an attempt to dispose of question by epithets. It does not go great way towards proving that a man is in the wrong to call him a Communist or to say that he is ignorant. .h
 FFem;~hom does the Western Union Teie graph company get it's right to stretch it's wires across the country except from the people acting through the State governmental The power to erect telegraph wires, to lay railroads, and to run ferries belongs to the public, and in the absence of any legislative grant of such power to others the public alone has the right to exercise it. The cor porations possessing franchises are in csr- tain sense the servants of the people. They contract. in consideration of the franchises they receive. to perform certain public ser vices. The public may exercise those pow CTS which it grants to private parties. The question as to whether it shall perform g service itself or grant the right to perform it to individuals in the form of franchise is purely one of expedi- ency. It is as absurd as it is coarse and vulgar to call man ignorant, OF say he is Communist, because he thinks the govern ment ought to perform some one particular service which may be or is now performed by private parties. The theory of Socialism, the modern form of Communism, is that government should own all property and carry on all enterprises, public and pri- vate alike. One docs not become Com munist because he is of the opinion that the government should undertake one enterprise essentially public in it's nature The federal government carries the mails The Sun has not ventured to say that this is Comnunistic, and yet 1t could be and formerly was done by private capital. The British government runs telegraphs. The Prussian government owns railroads, and nobody would think of calling these governments Communistic.
 The Sun says: If the government may carry on any business when it is expedient
 
 that it should, why may it not run the butch ering business, and proceeds by 8 ridiculous process of special pleading to show that this business could be better managed by the government. The butchering business has never become an odious monopoly It is not in the hands of one corporation, but in the hands of hundreds of thousands of men No strike can take from the people the op- portunity to buy plenty of meat On the other hand the telegraph strike has embar- rassed the business of the whole country, and it is suggested, very properly, that the government should establish lines of it's own and not leave the people at the mercy of great corporation or it's employees. The claim is not that the government should carry on every business that it can manage with more economy or greater efficiency than individ- uals could, but that the government may in some unusual emergency, or whenever the circumstances especially demand it, under take any public service which may be prop erly the subject of franchise and which is within the scope of it's powers And this is not Communism.