The Dalles daily chronicle. [volume] (The Dalles, Or.) 1890-1948, 1895-02-22
FRIDAY : FEBRUARY %. 1895
THE GREAT PROBLEM.

and these circumstances are being taken
advantage of by capitalists to lout the
treasury and make shuttlecock of the
nations money for speculative pur-
poses. This will soon pass away, and
that other question, of more Importance
than finance, of greater import than
the tariff, will come irresistably to the
front, and it Will stay to the front until
it is answered, and answered right.
The question of the lights of labor, the
duties of capital, and the control of cor
porations is one to which the wisest
statesman may devote all his energies,
and find a task that may battle his ut
most skill. 1t is question the answer
ing of which will affect, not only the
prosperity of the government, but its
existence; and to arrive at correct
answer will require, not only good states
manship. but a largely developed patri-
otism on the part of every citizen of the
republic.
Heretofore the question has been de-
bated by two bitter partisans, the laborer
on one side, the capitalists on the other,
and each has tried to convince the pub
lie and themselves that they were right.
The matter does not want to be ap-
preached from either of these stand
points. It must be settled on the basis
of the greatest good to the entire people.
The interests of capital and labor are
the same; neither can do much without
the other, for granted that labor creates
capital, and that labor can create new
capital if the present stock were all
taken away, yet when it has created it
It is capital still.
The relative position of these two COM
modities has changed wonderfully with
in the past fifty years, is changing rap
idly still, and this change is driving the
two forces, that must be friends for
either to prosper, yet wider apart.
Vast aggregations of wealth are neces-
sary to carry on the business of modern
times, especially in the matter of rail-
roads. These vast sums, or the roads
that represent them, are simply legiti-
mate money-making machines, built
for the purpose of returning to the
owners a proper return on their money.
This at least was their condition at first,
but of late years the speculator, the rail-
road wrecker, and the money-kings have
used these roads as playthings. In
stead of being run for the purpose of
earning fair return on the money in
vested, and which is their right, the
actual values of the roads and rolling
stock are we'll 'watered," +" so that where
5000, 900 are invested, the stock is
nd ho oil foil izof oh
that $15, ,00O, 900 or $40, 100000 have been
invested. The management then un-
dertake to earn a reasonable per cent,
not on the money invested, but on the
fictitious values given. The result is
that an unnecessary tax is levied upon
the producer, to get his crops to market,
and the thumb-screws are put on the
wages of the employees, and they are
twisted every year lower and lower in
the desire to keep stocks up by liberal
dividends.
Labor has undertaken to resist these
steady encroachments by the strike sys-
tenn, and it has failed. That weapon is
broken and harmless, but the fight is
not ended; indeed it is scarcely begun.
The railroad companies, such is the
irony of circumstances, have suddenly
taken cover, and successfully shield
themselves behind the people whom
they are combating, by placing theni-
selves under the care of the United
States courts, which are supposed to
represent the whole people. The corpo-
rations, with blindness to their own
interests that is simple unaccountable,
instead of facing the situation as it is,
and arriving at some understanding fair
to all parties, and consequently to the
entire people, have undertaken to use
the laws which they defy, to protect
them from any responsibility to anyone.
1t is perhaps we'll for the country tnat
they have done SO, for they have dem
onstrated to it that their wings must be
clipped, and that they, the artificial
persons created by the law, shall have
no greater rights than the citizens who
created them.
This is not the case now. The rail-
road corporations of today are above and
beyond lawl Do you doubt it2 1t so, ex-
anime into the case of Debs at Chicago.
He was sentenced to imprisonment by a