Los Angeles daily herald., 1889-10-22
TUESDAY. OCTOBER ss. 1889.
Have we a Despotism in America i?

TUESDAY. OCTOBER 2S. 1889.
Have we a Despotism I'm America?
1t is sometimes question as to
whether in the United States there is
not growing up the most CALLING despot-
ism ever known in the history of man
kind. 1t is not one in which the gives
worn appear in the shape of palpable
iron or steel, or in which the manacles
have attached to them clanking chain.
The robber baron of the Middle Ages
was bold and open-faced and uncom.
promising villain. Occasionally he sal
lied forth from his donjon keep, struck
down the wayfarer by the might of his
ruthless power and immured him in
noisome prisons, if he resisted. If the
suspicion rested in the mind of this IRON
hearted and iron.handed bandit that his
despoiled victim had still further store of
treasure, he frequently subjected the
helpless wight to the torture and to un-
told horrors.
And yet it may be questioned as to
whether all the robber barons who ever
clustered around Ehrenbreitstein, Stolz-
enfels, Bingen on the Rhine, or any other
points from which deadly swoop might
be made on travellers, ever worked in a
dozen years half the damage and ruin
wrought in single day by Jay Gould.
The methods, of course, are far differ
ent. The one set of criminals accom-
plieh by indirection and subtlety born
of the devil what the other accomplished
by manly if brutal force.
The latest form of robbing the people,
the trust or combine, probably extin-
guishes more lives in year,
through the starvation of the
masses arising from the enhanced
prices Of the necessaries of life, than
q hundred robber barons sacrificed
in score of years. Then everything
was in favor Of the method of the robber
baron. When he found it necessary to
kill he did it in an outright manner, by
the sword, and not by the subtle chemi.
cal operation of denying to masses of his
fellow men the constituents needed to
repair their steadily wasting tissues.
The present system of expressing the
people reminds one of nothing 80 much
as an ingenious contrivance Of subtle
robber of the Middle Ages. He caused
one of his servitors gifted with mechani-
cal genius to prepare him machine
which should first assume the appear.
ance Of an innocent apartment. When
immured in it the chamber shrank daily
until, when starvation had attai ned its
utmost triumph. he found himself en-
closed in cofiu. The modern trust or
combine beats this.
Verify is the man who is obliged TO
earn his bread in the sweat of his brow
environed with difficulties nowadays.
His tribulations may be said to be with.
out end.
The American people, having got rid Of
q King, may, in the innocence Of their
hearts, suppose that they have got rid Of
all the trappings Of monarchy. They
find in the way the courts of the United
States are administered fatal Interrupt
tion to this idea. These tribunals are
run upon more than the autocratic ideas
of the Stuarts. From the Supreme
Court of the United States down to the
humblest provincial tribunal, every mar
who calls himself judge fancies that he
is King, and King with real powers
and not simply an ideal prerogative.
This thing of peremptory prerogative
with murder anneyed has got down to
the policemen and constables ap-
purtenant tonthe courts, Federal or
State. Each of these people, clothed in
little brief authority, in the despotic
and autocratic United States, thinks that
he is empowered to kill at his pleasure.
These minions of what ought to be a
moderate delegated authority in Re-
public will shoot down the citizen on the
smallest provocation. On q manifesto
ton in London town of the murderous
insolence which characterizes 80 many
American policemen and constables,
especially if accompanied by overt out
rage, two hundred thousand Britons
would surge around Hyde Park and per-
haps overturn the British throne.
The first duty of intelligent Americans
just now is to recover portion of the
liberties they inherited from English
men, who cherish monarchy, but who
do not permit it to become a despotism
in England, at least.
A great shame today is the imprison-
ment in San Francisco of man named
Barry, editor of a newspaper, who hap
pened to incur the displeasure of Judge.
And this scandalous invasion of the
rights Of an American citizen, who ought
at least to be protected by the last fifty
years of amended English procedure in
similar cases, has taken place in city
in which portions of the judiciary are as
rank with corruption as q sewer rat is
with filth, and in which justice has often
been known to swing disastrously low in
the scales against coin.
Tho question arises, are We to be
forcsd into the methods Of the Socialists