The representative. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1893-1901, 1895-02-27
FORWARD
OLD PARTY ADMISSIONS.
The St. Paul Globe Admits the
Bad Condition of Affairs: But
Does Not Want to Advance.

to strange habit Of telling the truth
lately;-if it persists in it it's political
orthodoxy will soon be questioned.
Here is what it said few days ago:
I'm the house, while the bond bill
was under discussion, Mr.. Hatch read
letter from Proctor Knott to one of
the senators, which expresses the feel
ing of apprehension held by all who
Referring to the fact that when his
friends doubted his sanity when, in
1S60,he predicted that the election Of
Lincoln meant civil war: and that
when war came they regarded me, as
Byron did Jefferies as "a ID discern
ing fellow he says: "Now, mark
my words, if the inexOrable law of
cause and effect has not been ex-
plunged from the statute book of the
Almighty, unless, halt is called p. d.
g., you may expect to see the horrors
of the French revolution put on the
American stage with all modern I'M
prOvementS, and that within the next
decade"
After making all due allowance for
the pessimism of an old man .and it's
tendency to exaggeration, there is
much in the present condition to give
~ w SAW AO0IO AOl UtlC luUuIc.
We are having the fruits of socialism
in government, the fruit of the use of
the latter ostensibly for public well
fare, but, as it ever has been and al
ways will be, utilized by greed and
cunning to its own enrichment. 1t is
safe statement to make that there
are not hundred men in the Union
whose fortunes are above million
whose wealth is not largely the fruit
of some use, direct or indirect. of the
power to tax.
AS long ago as 1883, Herbert Spencer,
seeing the tendency then visible, and
since grown stronger, Of using the
government as a wealth-a bsOrbing i'm
plement, said of us that ''the United
States must go backward before it
can go forward" We must go back to
greater individualism; to a cessation
of this mad and dangerous mixture of
philanthropy, greed and government,
to restriction of this power of all to
the guarding of the rights of all, be-
fore we can go forward. We will GER
tainly go back. All history teaches
that. But the question is whethe
we Will retrace our steps until our
feet are again bathed in fratricidal
blood"
We agree with our friend, the Globe,
as to its diagnosis of the disease. but
we do not agree with it as to the
cause.
We do not suffer from too much law,
but from too little. Mans cunning
has got beyond the limitations of the
statute book, and the lawmakers
have not yet caught up with it.
Gould, Vanderbilt, ETC.. did not make
their fortunes by the use of the govern
mental power of taXation; but by an
individual power of levying taxes, out
side the law to pay interest on water
ed stock. Our honest predecessors
never thought of such cunning de-
vice as watered stock-a blanket
mortgage spread over whole states,-
and all the people paying the interest.
And hence there was nothing in the
armory of the law to fight such ras-
cality: and since then the bene-
ficiaries have successfully resisted all
attempts to pass remedial legislation.
The vast conspiracies Of the trusts,
the Wheat Rings, the Meat Rings,
the Oil Rings, the Whiskey Rings, and
all the rest, do not exist by virtue of
any law, but because there is no law
sufficient to stop them.
The public do not suffer from social
ism but from terrible individualism;
the monstrous greed of the few. If
our friend of the Globe will not be ap-
palled by a word, but will look into
the nature Of things, he will see that
socialism is human society acting to.
gether for the good of all. The pub
lie schools are socialistic-not individ-
ualistic; so are the post offices.
When God made man a social, gre
garious creature, he established
standard toward which civilization
was to aspire:-"one for all and all for
each.'
Tom Lowry represents individual
ism;-he taxes the whole people of the
twin-ctics to pay interest on So, 900
mile OF his street car lines, when they
cost but $4,000 a mile. Now, if Min.
neapolis and ST. Paul took those lines.
and run them at one-fifth present
rates, and left the remainder in the
pockets of the people, that would be
socialism There would be one mil
lionare less but millions of people
better off. "The greatest good for the
greatest number" would be realized.
and that is good cid Democratic doc
trine.
The people are furious today be-
cause they are powerless. They are
unable to make laws or enforce laws
against the great highwaymen of in
duStry. In the Middle Ages we had
individualism in its most horrible as
poets. The baron reduced the farm
ers to serfs; he sailed out from his
fastncss and left the travellers
weltering in their blood. Every step of
progress since then has been an ad-
vance towards greater power for the
masses, and less power for the indi-
vidual; but even yet the human
tigers break through the meshes of
the law, now and then, and re-enact
the part Of the old barons. And our
friend Of the Globe says, the remedy
is to destroy the net. and ''go back
wards" to baronial days. We hope his
keen intelligence will not be deceived
b. any such sophistries.
The human family has got to 60
forward. Behind US is ignorance,
aespotism. cruelty, brutality, bar