The Labor enquirer., 1884-10-25

made" in q two minutes transaction
4 strikes the most conservative with :
sense Of injustice. But it is not easy t
see that the methods we as a society
have furnished, by which such results
are accomplished, are wrong. unjust and
unnatural.
i Competition and profits, when used in
the ordinary transactions Of business, to
the casual observer. seem Legitimate
means Of accumnlating wealth. The
store keeper, the agent, the middle man
are all apparently earning an honest liv-
ing; it is only when one, in the natural
course of such system. has crushed oui
all the little dealers and gained every
thing himself. that q howl is raised
AGAINST the terrible "monopolist."
People do not remember that he only
played the game they were all playing,
and happened to beat, not because he
was better or superior, but because some
one had to beat, and he was the one.
And 80 in the buying and selling of
land. He who does not see, to-day, a
great danger menacing the peace and
welfare of future generations. in the
enormous sales and gifts of lands to in
dividuals and companies, is very dull of
comprehension or very careless indeed.
Men denounce the landlord who drives
hundred families out to starve and
freeze in the highways, that he may turn
his thousand acres into grazing lands.
They would be Mortified to see the con-
tinents owned by a few individuals and
the Inhabitants driven into the sea, be-
cause the owners wllled it; and yet these
are only logical results of the system
they defend. If a man really owns the
land he has right to do as he pleases
with it. He may rent it and demand
what he likes, or keep it to look at, or
cover it with weeds and brambles or do
whateyer he chooses with it, and be con-
sistent with the prevailing ideas. Only
extreme cases are noticed and con-
demned, vet when we say that no man
has a rightto own, buy and sell and spec
ulate in the land by which human beings
must live, that the people who till it
have right to its products, we are called
crazy" "fanatical," "red handed Com
munists," etc. -.
A system that leads as naturally to the
great wrongs SO easily seen, as river
runs from its source to its mouth, cannot
be checked at any giyenpoint, and told
to run no further. 1t must flow till it
finds a natural outlet. ..t- -
The usurer Is generally an object of
scorn. Forty per cent per month is too
palpable a theft, and moral people dare
not countenance it. But the most de-
voted deacon of the purest. church can
pocket 10 per cent ON mortgage on some
poor, hard-working mans little farm,
with clear conscience, and no one has
a word of objection to make.
We must stop playing game where>a
few only can win, and to be beaten
means ruin, misery, death. The whole
competitive system Is game of chance.
With W orld full of all good things
mankind needs. and with armies of
strong and willing hands to make them
ready for use, it is a burning disgrace to
the intelligence of and morality of pres
ent generations, if no just and equitable
system of distribution can be established.
A tiny stream trickling through an
embankment seems an innocent thing,
yet it will surely lead to destruction, ruin
and death. But the people who inhabit
dike-protected countries realize the dam
ger of the least breakage. Must another
civilization sink into darkness and OBJ
liylon before men learn to recognize
danger and check it at the beginning2
LIZZIE NJ. SwANK.