Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1889-11-07

| Social Strata beneath them. There
are no such natural differences between
man as that one could by his own ef-
forts or even his own mastery over
minds produce q million dollars year
| while another's best eff ,rts will hardly
| bring him in three hundred; and when
artificial differences to this extent ap-
pear, it must cause discomfort, how
ever vaguely or enormously that is
directed. A triumphant plutocracy
has endowed the vast body of our peo-
pie; and unless there is some r lief, its
weight will crush the bearers of the
burden, or the uprising of the latter
viii wreck the Republic and bring such
chaos as France saw IN 1889. We may
not yet be at the verge of the chasm,
but each step brings US nearer to it,
and to the day all thoughtful men
must dread when they remember
how other civilizations have fallen.
And in one sense it would be even
better that America should suffer such
fate, horrible as that would be, than
that it should go on further in the road
which we have been travelling SO fast
in the last twenty years. For the
bonds that give the rich their power
are choking the life out of the nation's
industry, and destroying the very
sources from which they draw their
wealth. If We do not have chaos we
must some day reach industrial stag
natism-unless we come the evil and
avert both consummations. AS civ
ilization grows, no man produces all
he must have for his own needs. He
makes a surplus of some things and
exchanges that surplus tor the surplus
of other things which other men have
made. Yet we, in our folly, seek to
to forbid this exchange by which alone
can men live under present conditions.
We maintain a preposterous tsrif wall,
such as China invented, and decree
that men must pay fine if they bring
ute to the wealth of some one who con-
trolls the national materials out of
which similar goods can be made at
home. By this tariff, we especially
mine-cwners; limit the possibility of
the farmer to produce wealth and de-
cree that out of what he does produce,
he must share with someone else. We
f,xr ind nfrxy of oil
kinds and in every possible way dis
courage the production of the one and
the existence of the other. fla man
but improves his house, or his barn, or
his store, we put an extra burden upon
him ss a sort of warning not to do too
much Of that sort of thing. And with
it all, by our system of taxing unused
land at lower rate than land which
is improved. we add to the tendency
of all these taxes on production to make
it more profitable for some men to COB
ble up the natural opportunities which
are necessary to labor and keep them
lying idle until the necessities of 9TH
er men force them to pay more blood
money for their use; rather than encou.
rage them to put their capital to activ e
employ.
By all these cOntrivances, which in
our blindness we consider a system of |
taxation that is to fall equally upon
all, we at once partially paralyse the
farmer and compel
the workers in our hire to pay a con-
stantly increasing toll to the drones,
the owner of mine, forest, a city |
lot the use of which is a necessary fac
tor in the ramifications of modern trade,
4 railroad or a telegraph line-in short,
Of anything created by nature and |
the refore impossible of duplication by
man, or erected by the franchise ofthe
with its accompanying
feature of such forestalling of certain |
q natural advantages as practically for
bid petition-the man who has
such privileges or shrewd enough to
seize upon them In advance Of the pub
lie need, is in such position that he
may safely look to his fellow eli tizens
TO pay him for their use at an ever in
,reasipg rate. And therefore it is that
a few reap all the benefits of an incre ase
in the production of comforts in which
he many are engaged; while the many
are steadily falling behind in the race
and sinking into a condition of serf-
iom that is no less oppressive because
it is CLOSED over with specious class
Therefore it is that men
,re growing restive and looking for re-
lief in such spirit that we may well
remble when we think Of the future.
But gravest of all, we find here the
.eason why compulsory idleness is
'preading its fell shadow over larg-
,r percentage Of our population every |
year. By taxing industry and its
products, we place premium on
keeping idle the natural elements es-
;ential to industry, and thus limit its
exercise. we often make it more prof
table to work mine at its smallest
for the sake of the higher
price in consequences realized for the
malIer product; we carefully pro-
pose and name the ground on which
breeds such speculation in vacant
OTIS as curses all of our progressive
owns and cities. denying the right of
i