The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1884-11-05
agricultural.
T. H. HosKlNs, Newport, w., Editor.
To Him that Hath.

greedy capitalists, whose conduct SHOWS
them to have far too feeble estimate
of their natural obligations to their fell
low-men. These men, often of great
ability and energy, having, by fortunate
" Strikes" or occasionally by inher-
itance, become possessed of large CAPT
tai, are now using what they have to
obtain control of all the great sources
of wealth that can be monopolized.
They have already got hold of almost
everything but the land, and are begin
ming upon that. Their fortunes roll
up so that hundreds of them count their
riches only by round millions Van
derbilt two hundred millions, Gould
hundred millions, Stanford eighty mil
lions, and so on, down to pitiful little
fortunes of eight or ten millions. And
all, or nearly all, this millionaire wealth
is being used for leverage, to draw
into few hands the entire capital of the
nation,-a plan which, when it sue
ceeds, will give us for people millions
of men without reserved dollar, and a
few hundred men owning all the money
and all the productive property of the
nation. England, having already reached
that noble pitch of grandeur,--a nation
of paupers governed by millionaires-
is sending over her millionaire scions
to grow up here on the republican
stock, giving us larger Britain in
America. Plenty of Americans are
taking up the British idea,-t able
ones making and consolidating the great
fortunes, and their silly offspring imi-
tating aristocratic British vulgarisms
Of speech, dress and department.
In the South a similar aristocracy tried
to build itself up on the coarse basis of
absolute slavery. The grossness of
this, and the brutal and domineering
character developed by it, so offended
the stronger non-slaveholding section
that at last it worked its own fall, and
great was the fall thereof. But at the
same time there was growing up a like
institution in the North, without the
coarse, undisguised tyranny and cruelty
of the black mans task-master,- more
subtle, more respectful of the forms of
liberty, skillful even to use those forms
for the safe accomplishment of its own
ends,-but substantially aiming at a
result equally evil to the great mass of
humanity. For it is not only when
man can be bought and sold upon an
auction-block that he is slave. He is
equally a bondman when society has
become so organized that the poor are
too poor to resist for month or day
the absolute will of the rich. When
the point is reached (and it is almost
reached in some of our states) where
the rich man can say to the poor man,
" take the wages 1 offer you, or starve;"
"vote the ticket / indicate to you, or
lose your employment;" "cease to as
sociate yourselves together for mutual
support, or be outlawed by your asso-
ciated masters, when it comes to
this, how much better off is the white
working-man of the North than was the
black working-man of the South?
Already the southern capitalists have
found out how foolish were their old
methods, and, with sardonic grins, they
are remodeling their society on the i'm
proved northern and British system,
whereby the people, nominally left free,
are enslaved in mass. AS this is per-
fected, we hear less and less of the
coarse and ignorant Ku-Klux method.
The violent and self destructive "out-
rage" is replaced by the cool and cum
ming system, whereby the same results
are accomplished in England and Amer
lea, without the poor mans knowing
how it came about that he can no longer
act freely, vote freely, or even speak or
write freely,-scarcely think freely in
deed,-while everything around bears
the aspect of freedom, and yet even
the air he breathes drags heavily into
his lungs with conscious effort.
A whole nation may be, by cunning
work, got into this kind of subsection
without knowing it. 1t may be that
even when brought there they will still
have enough to eat, drink and wear,
while they can work, and comfortable
poor-house to die in at last, if they are
obedient, frugal and virtuous. This in
deed is the ideal state of society with a
great many of the social philosophers
and political economists of the time.
A refined, wealthy "upper class" in
dulging in all luxuries which their
clergy may tell them are possible with
out damnation, and humble, obedient,
virtuous lower class, contented without
any luxuries at all. This is the millen-
mum of the British and American
" Philistine." They are looking for
ward to it, and feel sure they could re-
alize it were it not for those pestiferous
fellows of the press, and those political
demagogues who will still quote the
"glittering generalities of the declara-
tinn Of in1anapHapna apH n,,r b;IIa &c