The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1883-11-22
WHO ARE MONOPOLISTS?

> afflicted land. Some of them ar
worth millions. All Of them wan
to be worth twice as much as that
Vanderbilt and Gould are famou
mOnOpolists. The Western Uniol
Telegraph com pany is a gigantic
monopoly; and there ara seyera
other mOnOpolies.
When you employ 800, or thirty
: or ten workmen, and pay them will
= your own money, and a COMMITTEES
waits on you TO tell you that if you
do not discharge certain workman
good mechanic, sober, quiet, faith
ful, whose only fault is that he be-
longs to no labor organization, the
other 500, or twenty-nine, or nine will
quit WORK in the midst Of your busy
season; you are in the clutch of d
monOpoly-a monopoly as grinding,
grasping and cruel in its way as the
Western Union. 1t is called a trade
union, but it is monopoly.
When a committee of wOrkmen
come to you and say that, as you
nave a great many contracts half
finished, 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
llgureS; then that is a monopoly
that acts just precisely as the West,
ern Union does when it absorbs a
rival line and tells you that as there
Is only one office in this town thew
will raise the rate little.
| Whom Won fell vo,1r tUorLpoon IL l.
times are dull and the market is
stagnant and that you don't need |
them anyhow, and 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 a
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 break
fast is preparing, is a: monopo list.
lie knows that you hate him. and
don't want to feed him. But he
knows that you are afraid if Won
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 squee re 81 40
per bushel out of you for it, not be-
cause 1t is better wheat than Won
got for 80 cents, but because wheat
is 80 scarce, is as mean n1onopolist
as there is in the lot. Jay Gould
could't give him anv points.
The man who charges 40 cents q
pound for very ordinary butter lust
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 mono.
pollSt. When you buy jar of lard
OF him poke into it with ramrod
to feel for boulder.
And the lady who burns steak 6
and chips china for you at SIS 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 ]
IS for wages and goes off, with
hours warning, to a
place that offers her more china to
smash and $3.50 week for smash
ing it.
You see, my soon, in looking
about for monopoly to denounce
Or demollsh, our naturally envious
lead US to assail the
that 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 monopolist2 o, 10, because
You are 8 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
in your business; but
that isn't your fault. Let the
merchant over the way offer you
$40, and in twenty-four hours you
would leave the man who took you
in when you were raw cub of a
boy, doing more damage than good
to the business; who taught you
and trained you, and made you
worth S45 a month. You'd do it
too quick, my son; that's the kind
of man you are.
A monopolist isn't necessarily a
millionaire. He is simply the man
who holds the whip handle. It is
derived from two Latin words,
mono and pole, meaning the man at
the pole. And the man at the pole,
you know, knocks the persimmons.
He may knock million of them or
he may knock only two, but while
he is knocking you don't get any.
Hence, my son, a monopoly is a
prosperous combination of which |
we are not one.
This makes it very wicked, avar- |
icious and dangerous.
When we get into it it ceases to
be a monopoly, and becomes a
union, a brotherhood, a firm, an
association, or corporation. This
change of title also involves a great
moral change, and it becomes a
mighty engine of progress. a devel-