The record-union., 1892-06-10
A TALE OF Woe,
And the Cause of it Allan Arch
Enemy.
What it Threatens TO the State-How
it Gloats Over Deso1ation - The
Cause of all Our Sorrows.

A meeting was held in San Francisco
the other night of young business men
to consider the decline of trade in that
city. 1t was resolved and stated that
''trade is prostrate"; that "many old
houses have gone out of business; that
there are 5000 houses in San Francisco
to rent, and offices and stores and shops
TO let without number; "that business
is not so good as it was twenty years
ago.; that ruin threatens the State; that
everything is going to the devil and the
dogs, and that pretty soon the alleged
merchants Of San Francisco will have to
take to ''peddling tamales for living"
or starve amidst the plenty of metro
politan bank deposits.
And the author of all this woe-the
arch enemy that we are told lies in wait
and conspires with all demons to sink
city or make its streets pathways between
moldering wrecks of trade; that is striv-
ing to cast disgrace and ruin upon the
fair name of our beloved California:
that this unconquerable, devilish, fiend-
ish, blood-sucking monster, reveling in
woe, misery, ruin and demoniac tri-
umphS; this cause that is moved only by
vile and selfish aims''; this monster that
stunts and crushes the interests and re-
sources OF our grand and noble State'';
this vampire that takes delight in suck
ing the life blood OF California, reducing
everybody to beggary, gloating over
human woe, and reveling in common
prostration of business, stagnation of
commerce, paralysis of industry and
the triumph of hell and the spirits of evil
generally, is the chief railway industrial
promoter of the State.
,I; 81
men who say they have business sense
bellies the claim, shames common de-
cency, and makes OF the business men of
San francisco spectacle for the wonder
of the world.
Who believes for one moment that even
the men who indulge in this balderdash
are sincere in such silly expression?
They know that the business prostration
they charge to the railroad company is
due wholly and solely to immutabIe COM
mercial laws, that can no more be turned
backward upon their course than can the
tides of the ocean.
If they are at all worthy Of the name
OF merchant, they know that the COM
petition with the true merchants OF the
East, III which San Francisco has been
Worsted, is no more chargeable to the
railroad companies than to the spots on
the sun.
In one breath they clamor for reduc-
ton OF rates between California and the
East, and in the next denounce the
agency that opens the door to the in
coming OF the Eastern merchant They
Sneer at the detensible claim that has
been made that what San Francisco really
needs is such high rates on Eastern i'm
ports by rail, and such low rates on out
going products, as will protect the home
distributors IN the one case and profit the
producers in the other,
In fact, these business men declare
that the chief transportation indus
Try of the coast, dependent for it's very
existence upon the prosperity, upbuild-
ing and progress of California, is actually
gloating over depression, and doing its
utmost to rip up its own bowels.
Men who talk such Sickening twaddle
to the people have lost all sense of shame
are invulnerable to reason and are the
Verlest slaves of passion and demagogy.
If the people will recall history to
mind, these citizens will be remembered
as OF the class who hailed rival railway
construction on the north with joy, that
has now repaid them by stripping from
San Francisco all her northern trade and
erecting barrier between this State and
the whole Northwest.
1t was from such unwise citizens that
protests went up to Congress against the
construction of the California and Oregon
Railroad, that is the only saving link be-
tween the inland commerce of California
and Oregon and prevented the utter de-
porture of all traffic from the north with
California.
1t was from such citizens as these that
pIaudlts came on the incoming of a trans
continental line into the south that-as
was foretold would be the case-has taken
from San Francisco every dollar of sun-
ply traffic she had in that section. and
transferred 1t to the martS of the Missis
sippi Valley.
1t is from such unreason that the de-
mand goes up that because the people of
the interior avail of the common human
right over a transcontinental railway to
! buy at Will in the East and directly from
| first hands, therefore the railroad has dis
crImlnated against the metropolis.
1t is case OF eating cake and still hav-
! ing 1t; of demanding something and
cursing acquiesence in the demand: of
crying aye and nay in the same breath.
OF dece1vlng self with the belief that Wit
operative mounting is strength, and that
the interchangeable, inevitable laws of
trade can be retruded and made to
serve at one and the same time interior
prosperity and metropolitan monopoly of
distribution.
If this rage of passion that knows not
the seat OF its own fever, or the spring
and source of its discomfort, continues.
we may expect to hear before many more
suns rise and set that the merchants of
San Francisco, over whom, it is said by
! their sons, impends the tamale-peddIing
fate, will be charging the sterility of
women, the shifting of the trade winds
and the impotence of men, along
with the drying up of cows milk, the
changes of the moon, the ungodliness of
the metropolis and the coming of the
Goblin moth, to that arch enemy of all
men and things beneath the sun, the