Phillipsburg herald. [volume] (Phillipsburg, Kan.) 1882-1905, 1889-04-26

A Few Thoughts About Railroad
Earnings, Railroad Employees,
Farmers, and Unlimited
Ownership OfLand
Austin Corbin, the big railroad man
Of New York has bought 5000 acres
IN Sullivan county, New Hampshire,
and will establish a mountain deer
park. The purchase included twenty
farms and their buildings and the
park will be inclosed by wire fence
ten feet high Chicago Journal
If we were to believe all that vari-
Gus 'big railroad men," say about the
hard times which they have encoun-
tered, we would be sorry for them.
The @. B. q O.. last week, and this,
discharged several hundred employees
because they could not afford to pay
them from S1.OO to $3.50 a day for ten
hours work. The dividends to stock
holders are so light now, they must
curtail expenses, so that the holders
of stock can have bigger profits, and
yet not less than three-fOurtbs of the
90" stock IS water" or fraudulent.
It would not do to cut down the
princely salaries of the chief officers,
who get from $4,000 to $4,000 and
$4,000 per year. Oh, no, but the
poor section men, the breakmen, the
engineers and fremen and shopmen
have to go. What IdIotic Legislation
we have had in this country in rela-
ton to railway and other corpora
tions! The United States has gwen
away millions of acres of land and al
lowed the corporations to pile up col
lOssal fortunes for the members of the
syndicates while the farmers and
mechanics and other people not com
bined together in trusts or monOpO-
listic associations, have been taxed
and robbed, and made to contribute
to the Shylock corporations all that
farming and other Industrial pur-
suits would bear.
In Ireland, where the people are
compelled to live in caves and novels.
and where they are starved and muir
dered by the brutal and infamous
landlord laws of England, English
dudes and worthless drOnes, who have
inherited the Irish lands from their
ancestors who never had any right to
them, have in the past torn down and
destroyed hundreds of houses Orient
ers, driven the half starved men.
women and children into the high
ways and Dogs of that country, and
made immense parks which were
stocked with deer and foxes and
which were devoted to the exclusive
use of the nobility, and used for no
purpose than that Of a hunting ground.
By English law it was felony for a
poor man to be seen trespassing in
the lords parks. And so it would
seem that Austin Corbin proposes to
follow the example of the English
lords. OF course Jay Gould and Van
derbilt and the other ''bIg railroad
men," will not be out done, but will
SOON have a hunting ground twice the
size of COrbin's. Nearly all the val
liable government land is gone.
Enough was given away to make sew
eral states as large as Kansas. The
fellows to whom it was given propose
to lay some of it out in vast tracts in
which they and their kind may have
grand fox hunts. In due time thew
will probably want laws passed to
line and imprisOn poor landIess devils
who might climb over the fence and
set foot on that portion of the earth's
surface that God created for all his
children alike, but to which these
sporting, fOx-hunting gentry have by
some hoous-pOcus got the absolute
title.
In the mean time hundreds Of
homeless, landless men are rushing
to Oklahoma, and scrambling and
fighting and killing each other in
bloody squabbles for the possession
OF few acres of poor land which |
they want for homes. And why cen
sure them for this terrible scrambled
The land is nearly all gone; this is
about the last chance for free land.
because Of the improvident action If
our law makers in the past. The |
land problem IS a great one. Upon
its proper solution depends the f1-
ture of the republic Land monoDo-
Iy has caused the downfall Of ancient
countries. 1t is a bad omen for the
land to pass out of the possession and