The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1897-05-31

our States, 1t is time to call halt. Never
was rational extravagance greater or the
desire for the pomp and circumstance Of
Office more acute. Appoint a man to a
federal tdewatership and he insists upon
a stenographer a typewriter with clerks
and messengers galore. We are bill
lionaire people was the jaunty excuse for
appropriations which. in the midst of pro-
found peace, exceeded those of our govern
ment during the agony OF bloody sweat
of 1S61-5
JUSTICE TO WEALTH.
"And yet let us be just to corporations
and wealth do not believe in slandering
either With all their abuses, corporations
have plant ed civilization and refinement
where, but for them, savagery would have
ruled for q century TO come. The Standard
Oil octopus is supposed to be the first
cousin of the devil, yet it gives TO the
people of the United States illuminating oil
of a better grade and at a lower price than
any other people in the whole world en-
joy. While John d. Rockefeller IS on the
road to billionism, yet personally he IS the
most magnificent giVer to education and
religion of any man IT. the whole world.
l am bound to admit that as business
man his reputation is bad Our laws gov
erning corporate action are u disgrace 10
America. In the old world corporations,
greater than any we have here, are kept
unde" wholesome restraint. The London q
Northern Railway Company has a capital
of over one thousand million dollars, but
has never failed to pay q dividend. Scan
dal has never touched it. This shows that
our corporate abuses, of which we com
plain so much, are omissions OF legislation
and personal forbearance and neglect 10
hold them to the law. Another portion OF
our unfinished work is the solution OF Inc
city problem. Fortunately for Indiana, not
Cne-twentieth part of our people are urban
Far more dangerous than corporations or
plutocracy is the labor question. The pres
cnt competitive system is ultimately bound
to give way to something better. Any sys-
tenn that rewards an idle man with an
income of 81 100000 per year and punIsheS
the industrious but equally worthy man
with an income of 800 a year cannot eX-
pect to be permanent. Forty years ago the
wisdom of the world could see no remedy
for the slave. Let US do our best that
this labor problem may, in the next forty
years, find peaceful solution
THE American people, whatever thelr
faults, are the most generous people IN
the whole world. We spend in pensions
more than any other nation does in its
military establishments - but look at the
difference, but look at the difference! The
$50 600 600 per annum which the United
States pays as pensions is all absorbed in
the homes and feeds the families OF our
people, and not a dollar, as in Europe IS
wasted in powder or lead or enforced mil
itary. Blessing on the man who invented
pensions While it is impossible that
among q half million pensioners some
frauds will not occur, still we, as a people,
can stand an occasional fraud, but we cam
not afford any innovation upon our mag
n1flcent system, except 10 Webu OUT liIe
bounty jumper and skulker from any share
in our national bounty.
1.-The vast and magnificent changes of the
last forty years are the work of the sol
diers of this Union, living and dead 1t is
they who have planted the schoolhouse up
on the site of an old auction block
and put the pen in the place of the
whip. 1t is they who have given us the
splendid new South, instead of the old
South of the dark ages, and rehabilitated
the North 1t is they who have added to
our Union the grand cluster of States west
of the Missouri and tied great oceans to-
gether by a half dozen railways. 1t is they
/ say, who have made all these things pos
sible. 1t is they who are slowly convert
ing what thirty years ago was q dangerous
experiment of universal suffrage into a
grand and glorious fact. Language can
not express our gratitude nor tears our
sorrow"