The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1883-12-07
About Monopolists.
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Rnrdetta in the Rnrlinrton Hawksva.

(Burdette in the Burlington Hawksye)
Yes, my son, monopoly is bad thing,
and am glad to see the people of this coun-
try organizing against the monopolies that
are crushing the life out of honest and
worthy competition. There are several mo-
nopolies in this afflicted land. Some of
them are worth millions. All of them want
to be worth twice as much as that. Van
derbilt and Gould are famous monopolists;
the Western Union telegraph company is q
gigantic monopoly, and there are several 9TH
er monepolies.
When you employ three hundred or thirty
or ten workmen and pay them with your
own money, and committee waits on you
to tell you that if you do not discharge q
certain workman, 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
nine, or nine, will quit work in the midst of
your busy season, you are in the clutches of
MONOPOLY monopoly as grinding, grasp
ing and cruel in its way as the Western Un-
ion. 1t is called trade union, but 1t Is q
monopoly.
When committee Of workmen come to
you and say that, as you have 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 ih ten min
utes unless you allow them to set their own
pay at the highest figures, then that is mo-
nopoly that acts just precisely as the West
ern Union does when its absorbs a rival iiua
and tells you that, as there is only one ONCE
in this town, they will raise the rate little.
When you tell your workmen that 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.
monopoly is chronic striker. It is al
ways watching chance to pinch you and
squeeze just little more work or money
out of you for its own benefit.
And the lady who burns steaks 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 $8 we.th
of china and glass, and loses So worth of
spoons and forks, collects So for wages and
goes of, with twenty-four hours warning, to
place that offers her more china to smash
and $3.50 a week for smashing 1t.
You see, my 500, in looking about for q
monopoly to denounce or demolish our
naturally envious dispositions lead us to as
sail the monopolies. that are more fortunate
than our own. We clamor against Wander
bilt and Jay Gould and Western Union, and
fail to observe the smaller monopoles that
differ from the great ones, not In spirit, but
only in wealth and power.
A monopolist isn't necessarily a million
aire. He is simply the man who holds the
whip-handle. 1t 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 q
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 prosper
GUS combination of which we are not one.
This makes it very wicked, avaricious and
dangerous.
When we get into it, it ceases to be a mo-
n0poly and becomes union, a brotherhood.
a firm, an association, or a corporation.
This change of title also involves a great
moral change, and it becomes mighty en-
gine of progress, developer of our coun-
try's resources, a factor in the national
and all that sort of thing.
If you live to be thirty-five years old, and
have not been able to get into any other mo-
nopoly by that time, would advise you to
go to the North Pole and start an ice cream
saloon.