Lancaster daily intelligencer. [volume] (Lancaster, Pa.) 1864-1928, 1890-07-25

IL IN HnluslnH 10 tne pnllosopnIchi Tbauei
of the leading Republican journals to OBJ
serve the manner in which their several
editors obey the power behind the throne,
while endeavoring to conceal its existence.
They have reduced their obedience to a
fine art, aud the man who takes but one
paper would never suspect that the very
editorial which sounds most like the inde-
pendent deiverance of an independent
thinker was dictated from political head
quarters by the "boss' His eyes would
be opened, however, If he would read for
few days some half dozen other organs,
where he would find the same "indepen-
dent utterance' in the same royal style.
Just at present the command has been is
sued to the organs that the United States
Senate must be lashed into the adoption of
a gag law for the suppression of debate
upon either the Mckinley or the Lodge
bill. Open discussion of these measures,
they greatly fear, will prove fatal TO their
passage, and free speech must therefore be
prohibited in the chief deliberative body of
tho freest nation on the globe. Submis-
sive as these organs are, this was for many
of them very hard pill to swallow, but
they are one after the other, falling into
| line; and the press which claims that its
| party struck the shackles from tho African
| slave is now endeayoring to place these
same shackles upon the lips of tho Ameri-
can senator.
STRANGE are the changes in public
| opinion - the rovenges wrought by the
| whirligg of timel one of the original
| points of attack of industrial reformers and
especially of all labor organizations was
Ia In nT ;fuIi St L
| as trusts. These powerful syndicates of
immensely wealthy men seemed not long
ago, to all who think seriously upon eco
nomic questions, to be an unmitigated
evil. Their obvious purpose seemed to be
to crush out competition, which was Il
blessing, and despotcally control the prices
of commodities, which would prove pub
| lie curse. This was everywhere tho argu-
ment of labor reiormers. But a change
has come over the spirit of their dream.
Competition wears no longer so lovely u
face, and the concentration of production
in a few hands possesses no longer fright
ful mien. The Journal Of the Knights Of
Labor, one of the ablest of the periodicals
devoted to the interests of organized work
ingmen, declares In recent ISSUE that as
trusts are in line with the tendency of the
age, it is useless to oppose them. This is
| an era of Capitalization. OF tho concentra-
tion of population, wealth and power, and
| in Franklin's not very elegant but forcible
| phrase, "he who spits against the wind
| spits in his own face"
SIT is an infinitely simpler matter" says
the JourRdt, "to deal with ten monopo.
lists than with ten thousand people having
small and scattered interests. Moreover,
every one of the class of small business
men and capitalists who is crushed out by
inability to compete with the large and
highly organized concerns, from being an
| opponent becomes "A friend to the cause o.
| social reorganization. The fewer that ar,
interested in maintaining the capitalstic
system and the more whose obvious wei
fare lies in forcing readiustment of con,
| ditions, the more easily can change be
| accomplished"
All this sounds very well, and Seems
clear ana sensible. The only difficulty
lies in the fact that economic conditions Sc
| large as those of our time and country ar,
not "forced to a readjustment." They are
like constitutions, the result of slow growth
and no man, not even the ablest labor
editor, can tortell their issue. The present
era may be one of transition from the
competitive to some other and better
system, but II is impossible to predict VIII al
that system Will be- for the simple reason
that we cannot know even its factors and
controlling forces. single invention as
great as was that of the locomotive in it,
day, would be sufficient to change all the
economic tendencies of the age. Electrical
science for example is in its infancy
Who can tell what it may yet bring forth