Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1890-03-02
Treated by Edward BeIlamy, OF
Looking Backward" Fame.
The Principles and Purposes of Nation
aIism - Naturalization OF
Industries.
How Ii Follows the Lines Laid Down by the
Founders of the Republic, and is No
Longer an Experiment.
[coprrighted 18gO, by the AuthOr. ]


no republic can long exist unless substantial
equality in the wealth of citizens prevails.
Wealth is power in its most concentrated, most
efficient and most universally applicable form
In the presence of great disparities Of wealth,
social equality is at an end, industrial indepen-
dence is destroyed, while mere constitutional
stipulation to the equal rights of citizens po-
litically or before III law become ridiculous.
One hundred years ago this republic was
founded on substantial equality in the condi-
ton OF the people. It was not an equality es-
tabiished by law, but condition resulting
from general state of poverty. For the first
Afty years the increase in the wealth of the
country was gradual, but within the last thirty
years, owing to great mechanical and CONNER
ciaI inventions, it has multiplied by leaps and
bounds, no longer growing from decade to de-
cade by arithmetical, but by geometrical ratio.
Instead of chiefly tending to enhance the general
welfare of the people, this wealth has been
mainly appropriated by a small class. At the
present time the property of one hundred men in
the United States aggregates more than the
total possessions of the rest Of the people. Ten
thousand people own nearly the whole of New
York city with its two million population. The
entire bonded debt of the United States is held
by z, 900 persons only, and over so per cent. of
1t is in the hands of =, 600 persons. volume Of
similar details might be furnished, but the stu
alton may be summed up in one of the Charac-
teristic phrases of modern business, as follows:
Mainly within thirty years 100000 Americans
have succeeded IN ''freezing out'' their Is ,OOO,
600 co-partners as to more than half the assets
of the concern, and at the rate of the last thirty
years, within thirty years more will have Sc
cured the remainder.
That is the situation which has created the
need for nationalism. Those are the facts which
account for the rapidity Of its spread among the
people:
the evil effects the concentration OF wealth in
the hands of a few, as political, social and in
dustrial. First as TO
THE POLITICAL EFFECTS.
The great corporations and combinations of
capital dwarf our municipalities, overtop our
states and are able to dictate to our national
legislature. The extent TO which intimidation
and bribery are employed TO influence popular
elections taints with the suspicion OF fraud
nearly all vcrdicts of the ballot when the ma
iority is not large. Even in the grand appeal to
the nation the money power by judicious con-
centratiOn of corruption funds upon close states,
IS able to set at paught the will OF the people
The titles of the presidents of the republic are
no longer clear. What money cannot effect at
the polls, by intimidation or by bribery, it does
not hesitate to attempt by the corruption OF in
dividual legislators. Our municipal council
chambers are too often mere auction rooms,
where pubic franchises are sold TO the hlghest
briber. The legislatures of some Of our greatest
states are commonly said to be owned by partic-
Mar corporations. The United States senate is
known as rich mems club and in the
lower house OF congress the schemes OF capital
have only to meet the sham opposition OF the
demagOgue,
Socially, the vast disparities OF wealth afford
every side inhuman contrasts of cruel want
tons of pomp and power, which the prizes
of wealth, have lent to the pursuit of gam, at
all times sufficiently keen, feverish intensity
and desperation never seen before in this or any
other country. The moderate rewards of per- |
sistent industry seem contemplate in the midst |
OF universal speculative fever. In all dlrec-
lions the old ways of legitimate business and |
steady application are being abandoned for |
speculative projects, gambling operations and !
all manner OF brigandage under forms of law. |
The spectacle presented in many instances Of |
great riches notoriouslv won by corrupt meth
DDS, has undermined the foundations of hon |
esty. Fhe epidemic of fraud and embezzlement |
which to-day renders wealth so insecure results !
OF property, though IL may have legal title, is |
very commonly without moral one. This is |
the deplorable explanation of the
CYNICAL TOLERANCE OF FRAUD
by public opinion. Property will not, in the |
long run, be respected which is without some
reasonable basis in industry or desert, and it is
Justly believed that much of the wealth of to- |
day could not stand inquiry into the means Of |
its getting.
INDUsTRIALLY,
the consequences of the appropriation of the |
nations wealth by a few, and its further con-
Gates, have made possible policy of mOnopo- |
Hzing the control and profits of the indu stres of
the country never before even imagined as |
among the possible perllS OF society. Hitherto. |
when oligarchies have uSurped the political |
control of nations, they have left the conduct OF
business TO the vulgar. but our new order or /
nobility is laying its foundations deeper by |
obtaining absolute mastery of the means of sup
port OF the people.
The effect of the concentration and combina~
ton of capital in the conduct Of business has
been directly to bring the wase-earner more
al " oyer rGpr he lTTnh az ne
employer. A chief object of combination is to
control prices by restricting production-that Is
TO say, employment. While the competition
among wage-earners for work is thus made more
desperate, they are placed at the mercy of en-
ployers by the fact that in so far as employers
are consolidated they no longer compete with
one another.
But there could be no greater mistake than to
fancy that the manual worker is peculiarly
victim OF the present situation. The business
men, the small tradesmen and manufacturers
and the professional classes are suffering quite
much and have quite as much to dread from |
monopoly as has the poorest class of laborers.
As one after another the different departments |
of business, productive and distributive, pass
into the single or syndicate control of the great
capitalists, the so called middle class, the bust
wit, who used to cOnduct the business IF the
country, crowded out of their occupation |
and rendered super1uous. No doubt the sub
stltution Of single for multiple control anG the |
suppression OF middle men represents an econ |
omy But the economy does not benefit the
consumer. but goes TO swell the profits OF the
capitalists. Meanwhile, fathers. who were set
up by their fathers in business, find it impossi- |
BILE to do the like for their There is al
most no opportunity left for starting in business
IN moderste way; none indeed unless backed by |
large capital. What this means is, that We
are rapidly approaching time when there viii
be no class between the very rich living on their
capital, and vast mass of wage and salary re-
ceiyers, absolutely dependent upon the former
class for their livelihood. Meanwhile, as the
immed late effect of the closing up of business
careers to young n en-, the professions are being |
overcrowded to the starvation point. The prob
lem before the young men coming out of school
or college, where to find place in the world,
was never so hard it is now. Plutocracy is
indeed leaving but one place for young man,
and that is in the party OF radical social
reform
The agricultural interests Of the country are
passing under the yoke of the money power
quite as rapidly as the other forms of industry.
The farmers are becoming appropriated by the
operation of something like a universal mort
gage system, and unless this tendency is checked
the next generation of farmers will be 8 genera
ton of tenants at-will. The agrarian conditions
% Ireland bid fair in no long time - oe repro
duced in portions of the West.
Such, fellow countrymen, is the condition of
political corruption, OF social rottenness, Of
moral degeneration, of industrial oppression.
confusion and impending ruin which has resulted
from the overthrow Of our republican equality