The Black Hills union. [volume] (Rapid City, Pennington County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1889-1904, 1897-07-23
WE HAVE GOOD TIMES
BUT PROSPERITY is CONFINED
TO A FEW.
Shall the Prosperity and Good Times
Now Monopolized by the Few Become
the Inheritance of All?-The Chorus
Of Deliverence.
BY Walter VrOOman.

BY Walter Vrooman.
We can vote our country prosper
GUS. But it is very essential that we
understand clearly whom we mean
when we say Country" We have
been voting for one kind of prosperity
for a long time, even before the NC
kinley brand was on the market.
Our mistake has been in not asking
the advance agents. to tell us whose
prosperity they represented. If a bur-
glar is emptylng your wife's jewelry
box and filling his trousers pock-
cts with the contents of your
safe, prosperity to him means
ruin to YOU, and your success
means the burglars death. So, in the
larger affairs of our nation, the kind
OF prosperity hoped for by the plum
derers of the people means ruin to
their millions of victims, while good
times for the workers, the farmers, the
merchants, mean hard times to our
d~espoilers. We have the best
times the world has even seen. Mr..
Rockefeller, or Robafellow-one is his
name the other ought to be-has an
income of forty thousand dollars a
day, and it is increasing. No country
IN the world has ever produced SO
much; never were there barns so burst
Ing with grain, or warehouses so filled
with clothing, furniture and jewels;
never before so many men making
from five to forty thousand dollars a
day. This great National Joint Stock
company of ours, with it's seventy mil
ion stockholders, is doing a thriving
business and making barrels of
money. There is only one objection
able feature. It is that after the labor
of these seventy millions of people,
their genius. their suffering and their
sweat, are converted into wealth, the
dividends are given to a few hundred
men, while the rest of us pay the as
sessments. We do not need better
times. Anybody who wants to make
more than forty thousand dollars a day
is a hog. The real issue is not wheth-
er we shall have hard times or good
times, prosperity or panic in the alb
stract, but it is whether that prosperity
and good times, now monopolized by
the few, shall become the inheritance
of all. If a select company of burglars
and safe-blowers were to enter your
village and relieve a number of you
merchants of the contents If their
safes, their stocks of jewels, silks and
clothing, end were to secure all Of the
finest horses from half the neighbour
ing farms, and utilize them in getting
the booty safely to the nearest for
est, they world no doubt, while I'M
packing their wealth and feeding their
horses, after their hasty trip, con-
graduate one another upon their re-
markable prosperity" They would be
very apt to brag about the unusual
good times" But if, as the sun rose
over the tree-uops and they were re-
packing their goods, they saw sud-
denly the g~listening p%itchforks of half
a hundred angry farmers and the de-
termined, furious faces Of as many
brawny workmen and merchants. bent
on retaining their property-there
would be a panic. The p%lunderers of
the world are enjoying good times at
the expense of the masses. Their
profits are as fabulous as their meth
DDS are cruel. But in the midst of
their celebration feast, their crime is
discovered, and the %pitchforks of five
million city workmen loom up in the
distance, and the result is panic and
loss of confidence-among the jewellers.
AS We approach November, 1900, this
panic will increase. But, as there
wells up the sound Internal of their
weeping and wailing and crashing of
teeth, there will be heard still louder,
the voices of millions singing their
chorus of deliverance. AS these Of
tenders look into the grave where lies
buried their every plan for selfish az
grandizement, to us, their innumerable
victims, that same grave will be the
open window through which We behold
the land of promise.