The Republican journal., 1886-05-20
Cooperative Industry.
BY c. S. GRIFFIN.
NO. V.

Suppose poor farming community where
the work is all done with oxen and no other
farming implements than the common plough,
scythes are used, and a wealthy man moves in
to town and buys large tract of land and
works it with horses and all the improved ma
chinery; and all that is raised by the poor far
merS and by this rich one has to be sold in the
same market; what is the result? With fine
sulky plow the rich man without help rides all
day and will plough two acres. The poor man
with his oxen and one man to help him will
walk and work all day and plough not over
tWo-thrds of one acre. The rich man without
being obliged to furrow will use Il double horse
planter and plant ten acres i'll Il day and ride all
the time. The poor man with a man to help
him must first furrow, then drop his seed by
hand and cover with hand hoe or with a
plough one row ut time. and at best the two
will not plant more than one-tcnth rs much as
the rich man planted alone.
What is true of planting is true of harvest
ing, especially haying. and also of cutivating.
We see that the rich man with his machinery
can raise corn and wheat for twenty cents Il
buShel, while the poor man cannot raise ii for
less than sixty cents When the market be-
comes gluttcd and wheat and corn falls to forty
cents Il bushel the rich man is still getting twice
lS lutn 1Of MS WllCat ana corn rs IL MN.
The poor man must sell his corn and wheat at
forty cents also, while ii cost him sixty to raise
it. The rich man has taken his work easy and
made money. The poor man has worked hard
and lost. What is the remedy? The remedy
often suggested is for the poor man to buy ma
chincry and thus be able TO compete with the
rich. But the poor man answers: II have only
Il ten acre farm, and Il sulky plough. patent har-
row, seed-planter, moving machine. horse
rake and a complete outfit of such machinery,
if | had the money to buy it, would cost so
much that if my whole farm was under cultya-
tion it would not produce enough to more than
pay the interest and taxes on the machines, and
leave me nothing to live on and feed my team
The rich man has farm ten times larger than
mine and it is therefore large enough to sup
port all the llnproN cmcntS. What shall do:"
The poor man is ut work on the same farm his
father and grandfather made Il good living on,
and he says: 81 know rs much of farming As
they did and work rs hard. W ho is to blamc"
Who is to blame? and what shall do: are qucS-
tions that all poor men aS well a. poor farmers
are asking and they are all suffering from the
same cause. Not seeing that under competition
they are at war with machinery, they are ready
to accuse the rich of wilfuly robbing them;
and the rich i'll turn say and believe the poor
are poor because Of >lothfulnesS, intcmpcrance
and bad calculation. 1t is a natural impossible
ity to heap UP a pile of stones and have every
stone on top. Equality demands that the piling
business must be abandoned. \ policy. how
ever Old that demands that one man can cle-
waite his condition only in proportion that he
takes advantage of another, ought to be aban-
doned, especially now that we know of pro-
cess by which one man can elevate himself to
the advantage of all others.
Take Il string three feet long and tie each end
to different eats tail and the two eats will
fight, each believing the other the offender.
Machinery operates between the rich and poor
very much as the string does between the cats
"a ant of trnul,lp tlny n tbaiI ~
tention to the string or to the machinery.
Many people have seen that the difficulty has
come through machinery and haVo-aioptcd the
same logic that would be recommended to the
cats. namely, destroy the string. But we shall
do better. Machinery has come to increase our
abundance and at the same time diminish our
labor, and of course has come to stay. 1t is
folly 10 suppose the human race will ever give
up machinery or be cOntented with no more
than we now have. The only remedy is to so
organize our industries into one common
operative body that machinery will, like the air
and the sea, become a common servant and an
equal blessing. And by the same cooperation
We shall make the land as well as the sea.
common inheritance. Then indeed will all be
''born free and equal
If every owner cf land held it for his own
exclusive use, cjecting all others, the law
provides that he may, then the man who OWL
ed but ten acres would be fenced into that lot
for life with no access to the balance of the
world BY ten thousand such little farmers
uniting their farms in one, each would make
his own liberties ten thousand times larger.
This principle works the same way with all
other possessions men have been in the habit
of dividing and parceling cut i'll small lots
for each others exclusive use. This eX
elusive personal property principle is like
ly to be abandoned for the united or CO.
operative principle that gives the largest
opportunities. If all the present owners of
land saw tit to exclude all others. more than
half the human race would have 10 right to
stand on earth, for they own no land what
ever. Land is not the only common gift of the
Creator that might be divided up and parceled
out to the exclusive Use of the few. ii the
five most powerful nations should each APP
pTopriate by agreement one ocean to itself and
the Atlantic fell to the United States and Con-
gress dealt with it as il has with the public
lands, it would be but a few Years before no
man could 90 on the water or catch fish with
out paying some capitalist rent toll for the
privilege. The toll that could he collected for
commerce and fishing would soon pay for the
whole ocean and then be steady income to the
proprietors.
erty can be bought of government not only By
law but trith law, instead of money | will dis
crihe how millions of acres of our western
lands and the great railroads We're purchased
from tie people with law without giving any
other consideration for them.
\ little band of capitalists incorporated
themselves into one body known the Union
Pacific Railroad Co. They then induced Con-
grcsS to give them Il few million acres of land,
on condition that they, the company, would
build railroad for themselves. Congress
gave them the land. They then lnortgaged
this land back to the government and got mon
ey enough i'll this way to build the road. and
the earnings of the road afterwards paid of
the mortgage, SO in few years the company
owned the land and the railroad without pay
ing any thing for either of them. This is using
law for a purchasing power. About three
fourths of our western public lands have been
purchased from us for the same consideration.
All other gifts of the Creator could be turned
into the hands of the few lly the same process.
In the railroad scheme above referred to if
given a little more in detail much of its real
character will be lost sight of. 1t may he stat
ed in this way The company went to Con-
grcSs and told them the people needed rail
road across the continent to open up for sale
its waste lands and to transport troops from
ocean to ocean in case of war with foreign
powers, or internal rcbellions; and that by
selling and settling those lands it would draw
the people from the over crowded cities of the
east and also furnish employment for thou
sands. That the government could not afford
to build the road and it had no constitutional
authority to either build or operate it. and it
was such a desolate country it would be many
years before it would pay anything. But this
company was willing to build the road if Con-
gress would encourage them little. First
they wanted some of that vast and worthless
land to build over and little more to make
into farming lands to encourage settlers. Every
other square mile Of land in strip ten miles
wide from the Missouri river to the Pacific
ocean would do. This Congress gave them.
They could not raise loan on this from pri-
vate parties, Congress made them the loan
which is called the Union Pacific Loan and bet
ter known as the Credit Mobile scheme. They
gave it a French name to hide its character. In
this way the company got the bonds to build
the road, and the earnings of the road is now
paying back the money. Though many Con-
gresham soiIcd his bright fame by taking, as Il
present, stock enough to make him the
feasibility of the loan business, the public do
main continued to be given away to such COM
panies as would agree to build themselves Il
railroad, but most Of the roads haven't been
constructed yet because Congress has been a
little dilatory about taking mortgages on them
before they are built. The above is given
simply to show that the growing about cap-
talism and monopoly is not all ill-foundcd. 1t
is because of such things that we lose sight of
many of our true difficulties and more Of our
remedies.
1t is often stated that because these corpora
tons have got these lands and railroads by
their wits without paying money for them still
the laboring man has no reason to complain.
man more clearly his need of corporation, but
let us examine their business methods little
farther. Let us suppose for the sake of illus
tration that Jay Gould was the president of the
U. F. railroad and that at its eastern end, name
ly, at the Missouri river, it connected with two
| roads running from there to New York. We
will name the two eastern roads the and the