Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1893-02-08
Call on Options and Futures.

Mr.. President, proper cOnsldera-
ton of the pending bill requires that
we should consider the present condl-
lions and circumstances of the country.
This is period of vast combinations.
embracing all the staple products of
agriculture; it is atlme of gigantic in
corporated associations of private and
public credits, holding in their grasp
all the subjects of commerce, the aven-
ues and means of transportation, the
control of the public money, and rapid
ly acquiring the ownership of the soil
of the country. These combinations
largely control and direct the Dewspap-
er press of the country, and speak, or
claim to speak, the opinion and will of
the people.
These great associations. in the mi
nuteness and extent of their power aud
in their control of men and resources,
equal the power and the operations of
the government. They are more pow
erful than the barons of old, who
wrested their privileges from the
crowned heads of Europe.
The tendency to monopoly; to con-
s"lidation; to the solidarity of interests
is inevitable and seemingly oyerwhelm-
ing, and its heartless greed and oppres-
i've methods increase every day. An
instance of this is to be found in the
present condition of things. In the
midst of this extreme cold, in which
the poorer people are giving their lives
by hundreds and thousands for the
want of the necessary comfort and
warmth and fire, a combination increas-
es the price of coal; and, although the
supply is boundless, having already ac-
quired control of the coal fields of our
own country, it is reaching out it's
hands to embrace the supply of the con-
tinent and seeks to pervert the bounties
of nature to be the instruments of suf-
ferinH, torture, and death.
This power, useful and promotlve of
enterprise when restrained by arbitrary
law, If left unreStrained, controls the
power of the government; it manipu-
lates the elections of the country; it
controls and influences the Legislators
who choose senators here; it speaks the
will OF the great corporations through
the judicial tribunals of the country to
large extent; and it seems as If there
was no power III this government of
ours to check and restrain it in its oper-
atoms.
I'm this increase of the price of one
of the great staples and one of the nee
eSsanes of life through commercial
methods and the public economies
which now prevail, we have an illus
tration of the necessity of some legiSla-
ton hitherto unknown in'the country;
something more positive than the ex-
perience of legislation in the history of
our country before this time has reQuir-
ed. Let us consider it for a moment
and see whether it does not require of
those who represent the people some
other method and some greater exercise
OF power than has hitherto been
used
The increase in price of this great
necessary staple Of life strikes as dead
ly blow at human life as does the
murderer's dagger in his sleeping and
innocent victim. The only difference
is that the one inflicts death quickly
and Uainlessly, the other not upon one
victim, but upon hundreds and thous-
ands in the painful tortures of famine
and cold. The superstition of the Mid
die Ages inflicted death by torture and
lingering pain to save the soul of the
victim, but the ayarice and greed of
corporate monopoly, of commercial
methods in our dav, has revived upon a
larger scale and wider field to accum-
ulate fortunes and give luxury and
power.
This power spares neither age, nor
sex, nor race. 1t makes this free coun-
try of America the field of its largest
exploits and its most successful opera
tons. While despOtic powers deal with
it with an iron hand, our professedly
free government allows it to crush out
tho life of the people for fear that we
may trench upon the limitations of the
constitution and open the way for des-
potic power, but there is no despotism
like monopoly; no cruelty like that of
great combinations to control the great
staples on which human life and COM
fort depends; no greed and cupidity so
heartleSs and devOuring as that of per-
sons protected by the Responsibilities
of great corporations, no immunity
from wrong equal to that Of corporate
lrreSpOnsibility.
IF as have been said Ill this debate
the modern methods take up and dis
tribute the sum of the vast products of
agriculture with greater ease and expe-
dltion and less nominal cost than was
done formerly with one-fourth OF the
quantity, it may also be said that they
appropriate to those who control and
direct them so large part of the COM
MERGE as TO leaYe the producers with
comparatively nothing of the results of
their labor. In their silent but sure
influence they approach the famine
which staryes whole provinces and
states, and the pestlience which Stays
its hundreds of thousands.
This bill must be tried by this con-
slderation and not by that proposed by
senators in their argument of its uncon-
stutiolG.ity and its overthrow of the
partitions of security between the
states and national government. The
proposition is that, admitting the exis-
tence for the arguments sake of great
public evil which threatens the social
order and the existence of free govern
ment and republican institutions, an
evil which establishes privileged class
and the dominance in an industrial