The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1886-02-17


the Independent freighter with his wagon and
team disappear, as the ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
him. drawing thousand such loads, q hun
dred times faster, and it would have seen
that these Independent freighters, instead Of
being the sole masters of their living, in a
state OF rugged independence, were employed
at days wages where a hundred thousand
would own one man master. They
would have seen their law of primo
geniture set aside by the growing i'm
Portance of personal property, and
they would have seen an enormous pro-
ductiveness become visible in enormous
wealth-wealth controlled by a few who
paid their FIVE hundred, thousand employees
engaged in carrying freight and passengers a
weekly stipend. They would have seen
these five hundred thousand men reduced 10
mere servants, living nearly from hand to
mouth, or at best by the personal good will
of half dozen masters, by a species Of tax
called subsidy, through which they were
compelled to give large sums to their mas
tiers, and by which the masters were enabled
to accumulate the vast wealth through
which they were controlled. They would
have seen aggregations of these masters
gather together and form pools-pools in
iron pools in wool and cotton, pools in
bread, pools to import labor, pools in every
essential to human life, for the purpose of
making such prices as they might consider
the people able to pay. They would have
seen that these pools and prices were made
possible by a terrible, despotic act of the very
Government they had Just founded
on such fair principles which COM
PEELED the people to buy of
these pool-makers and no other They would
have seen an oppressed people band together
with an instinct of self-preservation, into
vast aggregations called trade unions,
oranges Knights of Labor and the like, and
warning on these masters with blind, relent-
less fury. They would have seen personal
independence of the mass of the people, in
the matter of getting a living, submerged
into dependence upon men and creditors en-
tirely beyond their influence or control. If
they could have seen all this they would not
have written the Constitution.
They would have established an autocrat.
They would have given him absolute power
to control the owners of the vast wealth that
controls 500 900 railroad men as well as the
men themselves. They would have made it
incumbent upon him to hold the destiny of
pOol-makers and Knights of Labor alike in
the hollow of his hand. They would have
considered means and measures by which
the wealthy corporations should be made to
obey the same laws that their servants obey.
They would have made the pool-masters re-
spOnsible for the just, equitable government
of their serfs, Just as they would
have made the autocrats responsible for just,
equitable government of the whole. In a
word they have builded government upon
a military principle, with personal respon-
sibility attached upon every member of the
host
Our real government, our living institution
that yields power, is an untitled aristocracy:
Year by year their number grows smaller, a
few rising to greater power, the many falling
back into the seething mass of the people
Year by year power is more and more con-
centrated into fewer and fewer hands Well
may our contemporary say that the tendency
of the times is to proceed by government ex
ecution in the accomplishment of schemes of
general interest. What but the Government
stands in the way of absolute legal control by
this aristocracy that already yields absolute
social control? Is there anything left but
Cesar tor the American people to appeal to,
divided and distracted and largely controlled
as this Cesar may be by wealth OF this I'M
titled aristocracy?
VIII our Government ever succeed in max
ing itself Cesar of strength Cesar whose
modern name may be called the law? viii
1t ever succeed in imparting to the law the
majesty and strength of Cesar that can gov
ern in its own strength and by the rules Of
its own business? Sometimes we fear it may
not succeed, but that the aristocracy will
grow in smaller number, exerting more and
greater power until one day some one man
will oVertop the whole, and then there will
be a real, living Cesar in flesh and blood.
This we consider is the meaning Of this
modern tendency. Can a Grand Master OF a
united trades corporation expand his powers
ever the multitude and rule as he does rule
over a smaller multitude? Or will some rail-
road prince expand his powers until he can
rule over both his peers and the multitude?
Or can laws be established and enforced that
will rule them all? One of these things is
certain to occur. That, as by an unerring
instinct, the popular mind turns to its own
creation, its government, to do things it can
not do alone is the most natural result of the
conditions that surround us. This is an
age Of great things. Great masses
of capital, great masses of labor
combined under the direction of single
mind are the necessities of nearly every
kind of enterprise. That people prefer that
the Government their own creation, the
only power they have any influence upon,
should usurp the great powers of the rail-
road, and telegraph, and banking elements,
that, organized as they are, not only tend to
impoverish, but to enslave them. can only
be regarded as an inspired instinct for self
preservation.
We have going on in Washington an illus.
tration of this very thing. We have Presi-
dent confronted with demaud from certain
of this social aristocracy TO do a thing the