The Topeka state journal., 1898-10-29

responsibility of the whole for each in
dividual, is its distinct mark and quail
ity. The individual feels himself en-
slaved and oppressed in the enslavement
and oppression of his brethren; he feels
himself guilty of his brothers blood in
every custom of necessity that makes
for poverty, ignorance and defenseless
toll.
For instance, I can not come from
Iowa college to this city to speak to
you of Chicago against the existing or
der of things without riding upon a rail-
way system, the capitalization of which
is largely watered stock Now, watered
stock is method of high treason by
which corporations fOrcibly tax the ma
tion for private profit, and by which
they annually extOrt millions from
American toilers and producers. 1t is
as essentially a system of violence,
spoil and robbery as would be the over
running of the nation by Tartar hOrdes,
laying hands on whatever they chose
to take for their own. Although a large
part of the American industry is or
ganiZed by this system of watered
stocks. and we consent to it tamely and
ignorantly, it is yet the worst historic
form of indirect usurpatiOn and tyranny
and it renders our national wealth in
large part purely fictitious. Again, this
railway system practically administers
the government of the United States in
all things that concern the system, and
the governments of the several states
of the union. The majority of the United
States senators recently elected have
been its were appointees and lobbyists
and agents of other corporate properties.
1t took shameless mob of railway at
tOrneys to elect a United States sem
atOr to represent the people of the state
of which am a citizen.
"But the railroad system is not all;
indeed, it is but the beginning. If put
sugar in my coffee I support a trust
which practically administered the
finances of the United States for per-
sonal profit; that threw the national
government into the hands of Wall
street receiver; that presented, in its
relation to the United States senate, one
of the most awful and uncOncealed
spectacles of national debauchery in po-
htical history. In speech made in the
American senate Senator John Sherman
stated that this trust, upon basis OF
SO 900, 900 issued SIS, ,000, 900 of stock and
$40, 600 of bonds and paid upon it,
Watered stock and all, from to II
per cent interest every year, every dol
lar of which was at the cost of the peO-
pie of the United States.'
again. in order to send my children
to the public school, the holy of holes
in the temple of American freedom, I
must buy the books ordered by a pri-
vate corporation that has forcibly as
sumed the function of administering the
free school system of the United States
as private property; that employs
gangs of rufffans to go up and down
these states and prepare school legiS-
lation for private profit; that appoints
school superintendents, intimidates
school principals, throws out of employ
nenC ana DldckllStS any Ieacner VINO
dareS to reject its publications. l can
no longer clOthe myself. whether in
good clothes or cheap, without the like
HhOOd that my clothes are made under
sweat-shOp conditions, in which men
and women and children toll together
in hOt-air slaVe-pens Il to IS hours a
day for earnings that range from 81
to SIS a week. If I send my students
to pursue further study upon subjects
to which I have introduced them must
send them to receive the benefits of en-
dowments from the hands of a besotted
philanthropy, drunken and sated with
the wine of life pressed from the
crushed and exhausted millions who
fed the modern industrial Winepress. BY
merely preaching the ethics of the SER
mon on the mount in their pulpits I
have been the means of depriving able
and noble men of their positions and
HVellhOOdS, because of their economic
dependence upon the few rich men who
control the organizations of their
churches. Whatever 1 do, whichever
clOthe my family, nor take part in pub
lie affairs a citizen, nor speak the
truth as conceive it, without being
stained with the blood of my brothers
and sisters; without putting my hands
into the WickedneSs that prostitutes eV-
cry sacred national and religious func-
tion. It matters not that ask of So
ciety only such keep as will enable me
to serve with peace of mind and to the
exhaustion Of my possibilities; society
denies me a guiltless keep.
'On every hand we may see what
desolations are wrought by the ecOnO-
mic wars and cOnquests of our lords of
industry, our NapOleons of the market.
In the early part of 1897, when meetings
for the relief of the famine in India
were being held in English and Ameri-
can cities, when contributions were re-
ceived from newsboys and washerwo-
men, scores of ships laden with wheat,
and carrying millions of money, arriv-
ed in the English ports as rents from
the people of India for the privilege Of
living on the lands which the English
had taken from them The recent for
cible control of the American wheat
market which enabled one man to hold
up the earth by precisely the same
method with which the footpad with the
sandbag holds up his victim in the
dark alley Occasioned the shooting
down of hundreds of starving work
men in italian cities, and may indI-
rectly cost more human lives than some
of the great wars An eminent physi-
clan recently declared to me his belief
that the control of the anthracite coal
output few winters ago, by which a
few men forcibly took a hundred and
twenty-five million dollars from the
American people, caused more deaths
than NapoleOn's retreat from Moscow.
The economic advantage which our
Spanish war has given to the control
lers of the markets will probably result
in the loss of more lives, by economic
indirection, than there are people in the
island of Cuba; the chivalry and patri-
otism of the people furnish opportunity
and prey for the spectators. Where
the Spaniard has slain US by tens says
Mr.. Lloyd, the American has slain his
own by hundreds, by army contracts
and pulls for inCOmpetentS and poll
ticians. The country stands pale with
rage at the tragedy of the fever, the
hunger, the nakedness, the delirium Wis
tied upon those who have labOred for
it upon the fields of battle. But capt.
taIism, business, has been visiting these
horrors year in and year out on those
who labor in all the other fields not less
1,acassa to SAFETY and honor ca mn