Condon globe. (Condon, Gilliam Co., Or.) 189?-1919, 1901-08-22
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Portland reAegram


may not win their points ON this
beat. may be worsted in this round;
But ii will have called the cnnntry's
attention, as never before, to the
greedy grasping, crushing and in
deed criminal designs and purposes
Of certian agglomerations ofcapital
People-not only these striking
hborers and their friends through
sympathy, but millions ofthought
ful, moderate, reasonable. law-abid-
hg, taxpayirg people besides-will
discover, as never before, the crush
mg, contaminating, paralyzing,
even erininal nature ofsnch com
bfne as this steel trust, headed by
J. p. Morgan, the unrestrained, au-
daciousr boss land pirate of the age.
That Morgan and company are
swindling the people of this country
out of tens Of millions of dollars an
nually is becoming widely known.
They organize corporation, under
our liberal laws, with a capital
stock Of, say, $1,000, 900, 600, put in
$25O,0O0, 600, and require all the
consumers to pay prices that will
yieldla little coterie of these million
aires big interest, perhaps 20 per
cent, not on what they really invest
but on their capitalization. Thus
they wiring from the people so, 80
or 100 per cent. a year on their in
vestment. To do this they bribe
Congress. They put tool of theirs
in the Presidential chair. They
make it profitable for courts to de-
eide their way. They defy and seek
to crush labor. They say in effect
10 the m en- who do their hard and
skilled labor: "You ignorant, toll
mig cattle, take what give you,
bare living; it is enough for you; all
you deserve. Nor will we permit
you to organize for your protection,
as we have organized for our own
financial advantage and for public
plunder. for if you should do SO you
would soon be demanding share Of
our extortionate profits, and that
We viii not yield"
Therefore the first hard work Of
the steel combine is to crush labor,
to make it absolutely dependent
and servile. For this purpose it
has almost all-powerful assistants
aud allies. It has nearly always
a majority ofCongress. 1t has just
now, aud usually, the President and
the majority of q seryile, syeophan-
tic Cabinet. It makes sure, at least,
Of the Attorney General. 1t has
now in that position the rankest
trust attorney in the United States
except possibly the one he superced-
ed. 1t has, in one way or another,
by themost brazen kind of traffic
by beads, Bibles and other knick-
knacks and trinkets-a majority of
most of the state Legislatures. And
it has courts here, there and every
where. Such a trust is organized
and incorporated for plumber, for
robbery, for oppression; and all
these agencies, theoretically sup
posed to be in the service of the
people, or sufficiency of them for
the trusts purposes, are its tools
and servants.
The only bulwark is the working
man. He is trying to stand up for
his rights. He is demanding per-
eentage of the spoils, because it is
he not capital" who is the alchem-
ist that turns raw material into fin
ished products, dross into gold,
coarse commodity into wealth,
The trust is working on this
troublesome element in two ways;
first, to crush it out of hand, but
more particularly to corrupt it.
Naturally, necessarily, corruption
is the trusts method. Nothing that
it touches, and chat in any manner
yields to its touch, can escape cor
Tuption. It's universities smell of
oil; its churches smirk with scarlet
shame. Morgan and his fellow
bandits feed and fatten on corrup-
ton. They have no more idea Of
civic virtue than an illiterate tramp
who finds accidentally a pouch Of
hidden or lost treasure and becomes
inebriated in consequence has of the
conceptions of Angelo or Shake
speare. The trust magnates think
everything can be bought. Rookie
feller, for example, believes that he
has bought God.
The strike will probably fail, for
the present, but il viii have results
II Is eh.,uk finoa thai Al, oJ.4