Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1897-04-08
DEPARTMENT STORES.
AEttators should Attack the Root, No
LOp on n Branch.

of success in business is due entirely to
the encroachment of the department
stores. His bill is claimed to be sure
panacea for the so-called industrial evil
and so enthusiastic have its advocates
become that many believe its passage
would usher in an era of local pros
perity that was to come with the cleo
ton of Mr.. Mckinley. With this class
of our fellow citizens we deeply sympa-
thize. No one can wonder at their
anxiety to change conditions that they
know will surely ruin them unless re-
lief is speedily found.
We have always advocated those poll
cies which it is believed would bring
the greatest good to the masses of the
people, and overthrow the special priv
ileges of the few enjoyed at the expense
of the many. But it would be recreant
to its duty were it to join in the popular
clamor against the department stores
as the cause of the present terrible de-
preston. Men must look beyond these
institutions for the cause of their ruin,
and when they do, they will learn that
the department store is not cause, but
is rather only one of the effects of the
great cause that is operating throughout
every department of human activity to
paralyze individual effort and central
ize power and wealth in the few.
The department store is only one
manifestation of the system we are liv-
ing under, and it would be as easy to
ladle the Mississippi with a teaspoon as
to bring relief to the people by proscrib-
ii, n -irraca I.f
stores. II these men will look about
them they will find that the ruin they
complain of has overtaken men in other
vacations; they will see the bust
ness of the small miller ruined by the
competition of the great milling syndi-
Gates; they will behold the ruin of the
individual coal miner by the coal trust,
and the swallowing up of individual
iron miners by the iron ore octopus;
they will behold the lumber trust, the
sugar trust, the oil trust and all the
other trusts levying tribute and crush
ing resistance in their respective fields;
they will even find the practice of law
largely monopolized by a few large
firms and corporations; they will see
the small farmer succumbing to conf
petition he cannot meet and fastening
to swell the proletariat of the cities; but
beyond all and holding all other trusts
in it's devilfish grasp they will behold
the ultimate power-the money trust.
When this power is destroyed and the
people themselves resume control of the
quality and volume of their circulating
medium, then, and not till then, will the
II Lo e%r sob a in
dustry and paralyzed trade respond to
individual effort. When the American
people come to understand, as they
surely will, that financial system
based upon the single gold standard is
system of contraction that means ruin
to every man whose property is in
things and not in actual cash, there will
be some hope of our returning to condi-
tions under which republics thrive in
stead of drifting with the stream, as
we now are, which leads to despotism.
Under the gold standard money con-
stantly appreciates in purchasing power
and products of labor correspondingly
decline. The tradesman who purchases
q stock of goods finds that his margin
of profit between the purchase price and
the price for which he can sell them is
constantly growing smaller, until at
last it reaches a point where there is
no profit and finally a loss. Then he
cannot longer pay rent and the land
lord suffers; he cannot pay his employees
and they are thrown out of employ
meEt; his goods are sold at bankrupt
sale and the tradesman who is more
fortunate in commanding capital and
is perhaps no better business man than
his fellows, buys the stock in and adds
another line to his own. Thus, having
bought his goods below cost and elitn-
mating largely the items of rent and
cost of handling and transportation. he
is enabled to make prices which COM
petitors cannot meet and other bank
ruptcies follow, which he takes adj
vantage of. He has large credit at the
bank, which his small competitors have
not. He is thus enabled to take adj
vantage of discounts and bargains and
SO the great department. store is grad
ually evolved and the men who were
formerly Independent proprietors are
found behind it's counters as clerks nee
essarily conforming to a system of
routine which gradually destroys indi.
viduality and the power for independent
action.
All this is to be deplored, but it does
not necessarily follow that the proprie-
tor of the department store is bad or
an inhumane man; he is very likely an
honorable man and a good citizen. His
business is simply the irresistible eyolu-
ton of a system, and as long as the peo-
pie are all the time growing poorer and
money dearer, it becomes absolutely
necessary for them to take advantage of
the bargains the department stores are
able to offer.
There is no more reason that depart
ment stores should be made the subject
of legislative enactment to suppress
competition than other lines of bust
ness. The lawyer, the farmer, the miner
has as good.
They tell us also that the question of
morals is involved, and that the com
petition of female with the male labor
is ruinous. That may be the case. but
suppose you abolish the department
stores, will not these same employees
be compelled to find employment at
even lower wages or none at all? Would
the morals of the community be inn
proved? No philanthropist ever yet
discovered a way to promote morality
b. increasing the number of the uneIa-
p1oyed.
The conditions complained of in the
store system are the legiti-
mate fruits of the gold standard. and
they lead in the end to national dis
aster. Give the American people finan-