Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1893-1920, 1904-05-28


housing and sheltering healthier and
happier people. 1t means better cloth
| ing and better shoes covering sturdier
| limbs. 1t means more schools, with
| wider instruction impaired in them.
| 1t means more hospitals with better
attendance for the sick provided in
them 1t means more parks and IL
braries and museums, with more intel
ligent people using and enjoying them.
How is this prosperity to be reach
ed? How are commodities to be pro-
duced in greatest abundance? There
are but two ways, as 1 have already
pointed out more than once, by which
property of any kind can be secured
by anybody. One is by productions;
| the other is by plumber. Whenever
man desires anything, he must secure
| it in one of two ways-he must make
| It or he must take it. There is no 9th
er way. He must make it himself or
he must take it from somebody who
has made it. What he obtains through
exchange - that is, by giving for 1t
something which he has made-is viz
tuaIly produced by himself. Now, sir,
apart altogether from the moral queS-
ton involved, Democrats believe that
production is the only reliable album
dant fountain of prosperity, because
the fruits of production are boundless,
while the fruits of plumber are neces-
sarily limited You gentlemen who
come in here with proposal that mon
eys be taken from the treasury and
given to these shipowners, which they
have never produced themselves, must
see that your enterprise is a scheme OF
plumber, for you cannot call 1t produc-
| ton. And the source of everything
valuable Il it be not production must
be plumber. -"
1 concede the purposes of the gen.
tIemen supporting this measure are of
the loftiest. l don't impugn the mo-
tives even of the men who are eagerly
awaiting its passage. Nevertheless 1
lay it down as my fundamental propo-
sition, capable of absolute demonstra-
ton, that government cannot interfere
in private industry except for plumber;
that government cannot be benevolent
without being predatory. 1 am not
speaking now of any particular meas
ure nor of any particular form which
these attempts at benevolence may as
| sure. I am advancing a principle
which believe to be self evident with
| out exception and absolutely decisive
of this entire question when 1 say that
government cannot interfere for be-
nevolence. for protection, for subsidy,
| for bounty, for any benefit whatever
to anybody except by plundering the
vast majority.
| Mr. Speaker. the essential connection
between trusts and the system of pro-
| lection Is clear from the fact that the
sole object of organizing a trust is to
eliminate competition, and that is pos
sible only through the aid of a tariff
wall We have seen all the domestic
producers of q protected article com
bined in a single concern, but it has
never yet been found possible to COM
| bine in one concern the producers of
the whole world in any field of indus
try or to control by any artificial agree
ment the volume of their product. The
vital Importance Of competition to the
masses of the people is shown, sir, by
the value placed on the elimination of
competition by the organizers of trusts.
| We have all seen that when a combina-
ton of several corporations is formed
the stocks of each have been suddenly
| doubled, trebled and quadrupled in
price, and this increase is not due to
any magical power possessed by the
promoters, but IT is the value placed in
the open market upon the power to tax
the people which the extinction of COM
petition bestows on the beneficiaries
| OF the tariff
What, sir, in the last analysis does
| this mean? 1t means that these trusts
exercise a power to plumber the Amer
lean people and that they treat this
power as an asset of their own, capt.
taliZe it as one Of their possessions. To
| the fair value of its product the trust
is OF course entitled. Under an honest
condition of trade that is all it could
exact. The difference between the fair
value to which it Is entitled and the
high price which 1t is enabled to exact
under the operation of the tariff laws
constitutes the plumber that it levies
ON the community. In the case of the
United States Steel company this pow
er to plumber the American people was
expected to yield revenues sufficient to
pay dividends on a capital three times
greater than the value of all its prop
erty. According to this valuation this
power to levy plumber which this con-
Germ exercised was worth twice as much
as all the property it possessed. OF its
whole capitalization, therefore, one
third is based on property and two
thirds on plumber. Every share of its
stock represents one-third property,
two-thirds the power to plumber the
American people.
There can be no genuine prosperity
except where labor is high and whore
commodities are cheap, for the same
causes produce both results. When
wages are stationary and the cost of
living increasing or when wages are
rising but moderately and commodi
ties advancing enormously you have
not got a genuine prosperity. but a
bastard prosperity; not the permanent,
ever broadening prosperity that comes