Dakota farmers' leader. (Canton, S.D.) 1890-19??, 1900-03-02

young men Of the country, it is the
creation of a power greater than the
Government-blind, rapacious, relent-
less.
Are we to wait and wait supinely and
watch this. overwhelming power roll
itself over the face of our commercial
and industrial life in the hope thaS
some day an American Joshua will
arise and cry: Sun, stand thou still
upon Gibeon and thou, moon, in the
valley of Ajalon9" Better to say now.
while the people have some power left:
"No man shall take the neither or the
upper milestone to pledge; for he taketh
a mans life to pledge" That was the
law of Moses.
Go and talk to the thousands of COM
mercial travelers-those skirmishers
on the firing line of commercial and
industrial independence-who, have
been thrown out Of employment by the
trusts They will ,ell you of hundreds
and hundreds Of business men who
have been forced out of business within
the last three or four years. They will
tell you now the trusts have ordered one
man after another to close his establish
ment. They will tell you the names Of
ambitious and thriving proprietors who
are now clerks or agents of gigantic
corporate combinations. all hope dead,
all opportunity gone.
This terrible change in the conditions
of life in America has occurred within
fifteen or twenty years. What will the
condition be when the boy born to-day
is man? The trusts represent The
combined, disciplined power of two
billions of dollars now. What will
their wealth and power be twenty five
years hence? The trusts can nominate
and elect the President Of the United
States and determine the laws now.
What will they be able to do when the
next generation is grown? Will the
Constitution of the United States be
spared when industrial and commercial
concentration has spared the lives and
fortunes of the whole people at the
mercy Of two or three hundred men?
The young man has little chance of
rising in business in this country today
unless he happens to be gifted with sup.
RENE genius. Every month narrows
his opportunities. He is charmed and
befooled by the glittering rhetoric of
trust paid orators. He reads the figures
which tell the story of rapidly increas.
ing wealth in America, and he, is daz-
zled by the sight Of unmatched proster.
ity-for a few. Mr.. Hanna and Mr.
Mckinley tell him that all this concen-
,ration of commercial and industrial
power is scientific, logical, the irresis-
tible evolution of modern civilization;
that to interfere with it would be like
interfering with the tides of the ocean
or the progress of the seasons.
And the young man hears this dlas-
phemy against God and humanity, this
mocking Of institutions and conditions
to establish which men have wet the
earth with their blood and tears for q
thousand years and he believes Mr..
Hanna-or does heH
Look back along the path of the dead
centuries and see how it is marked
with the graves of the great men who
have toiled and suffered aud died for
the sake of the right to complete. The
track is strewn with the ashes of en-
pires and people who finally forgot to
keep open the door Of opportunity for
their young men.
In twenty years we have witnessed
the growth of the trust system to
point where the President of the United
States dares not to oppose its bidding.
Can we find q President who has
manhood and intelligence and prophecy
enough in him to use the whole power
of the government to check the blind
brutality of this strangling process? If
80, can he be elected?
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