Sistersville oil review. [volume] (Sistersville, W. Va.) 1896-1901, 1898-09-07
STANDARD OIL
millionaire ExhOrts Oppressed Labor
TO Arise and Fight Trusts.


aire who says the. laboring class
q should unite and prepare them
selves for mighty conflict with
capital; who openly denounces mo-
nopoly as tyranny, and monopolists
as thieves and robbers; who asserts
and believes that labor fails to get
its just rights, and who says the
time must come when labor shall
be emancipated, and who predicts
revolution.
The man who makes these aston
ishing statements is himselfa mem
4 Der of the Standard Trust and a
stakeholder in it. He is Charles
Russell Burke, a descendant of Ed
mund Burke, the great Commoner
of England. He was secretary OF
the famous Eagle Oil company be-
fore it was swallowed up by Mr..
John D. Rocketellers great octo-
pus, and has ever since held an i'm
portant place in the Standard, be-
!, ing an expert on the oil trade.
\ His father, Russell W. Burke,
was the greatest handler of petrole-
um in the world, prior to the organ
ization of the great trust by Rookie
Teller, into which he was drawn
with most of the other dealers in
America.
He owned the Empire, the
Queens County and several other
oil refining plants, and did heavy
business in the export as we'll as in
the domestic trade. But the octo-
pus took him in, and its tentacles
have held all his interests fast ever
since that day.
Charles Russell Burke, the au-
thor of this striking bit of advice
to American workiugmen, is
cousin of Senator Redfeld Proctor,
on his mothers side. The Burkes
are Vermont family.
A very rich and influential uncle
of the writer is Charles c. Burke,
ex president of the New York Pro-
duce Exchange.
This new and ardent friend of
the laboring man married, few
years ago, Miss Maria c. Benson,
daughter of R. H. Benson, founder
I of the beautiful town of Benson.
hurst, L. l.
In his novel, called thistle Sif-
ter" the advance sheets of which
the Sunday Journal has just re-
ceived from F. Tennyson Nicely,
Mr.. Burke says all this and great
deal more.
The novel itself is light and
fimsy affair, the characters being,
in the main, weak and destestable
crew. But the story is interesting
s and the pointed lesson it conveys to
men who produce all the wealth in
the world and who reap so little of
the fruit of their toll, is sufficient
excuse for the medium chosen by
the author.
This is Mr.. Burke's language to
American labor:
"You are being oppressed to the
verse of slavery by your masters,
the controllers of the great monop-
olistic corporations. There is no
help for you unless you take these
monopolies into your own hands.
To do this you must have both
brains and money.
"You must adopt their methods
to some extent. If you have the
money you can buy the brains, as
big corporations are now doing. l
propose a plan by which you can
acquire all the money you need. "
1T is business plan. 1t is
based on the very principles which
have made possible the vast accum-
ulations of capital, which now
threaten to enslave mankind. You
must make sacrifices to achieve it;
you must make up your mind to
wait patiently, to save, to deny
yourselves, to trust those whom
you chose to execute your purpose
and to be faithful unto death till
the goal is attained.
"You must remember that all
the capital in the world is produced
by your own toll. Every dollar
that is controlled and used against
you by the monopolists, every dol
lar that has been employed in the
building of railroads and telegraphs
in the develoDment of mines and