Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1904-12-31
Written n, The Evening Star by J. W. Muller.

Written r. The Evening Star by J. W. Muller.
When sitting on the sharp edge of the fu-
ture, as we are, the pain of the moment
prevents really calm consideration of the
beneficent way in which that sharp edge
Is going to cut when it gets to moving.
There never was a generation yet that
did no. feel acutely conscious that it was
sitting more Immediately on the edge of the
future than was any previous generation.
If one were to judge by the troubled and
noisy remarks of ourselves, for instance.
one might suppose we were the only ones
who ever had a real future ahead of them.
But, as a matter of fact, our problems
have been almost figured out. Already
great proportion of the figures that are to
give ts The quotients and sums of the COM
pieted calculation is written down. The
sufferers who had the real problems before
them, in jumbled mass of horrifying fig
ure-tanglcs, with all the methods of doing
The sum still to learn, were the pupils who
sat in the school of the nation three-quar-
tiers of century ago.
The Americans who welcomed the New
Year of 1925 sat on a real sawtooth edge
of future. 1t was then that old school
master Time set for his class course of
bran-racking study in which we of 1905
arr nearly ready to be graduated.
Oc.opLses, lawesS organizations. monopo-
listic corporations, imperialistic schemers,
robber industries and greedy labor unions
were on every mans tongue then; and IL
ours are infinitely fatter, theirs were in
dEitely more agile and unrestrained.
The Good Old Times.
Three-quarters of a century ago, as in
our day, the country was booming. Fac
tories smoked from the to the frontier.
Banks sprang up everywhere, and every
where the corporations pushed for elbow
room. Insurance companies, steamboat
companies, transportation companies con-
fronted the common people on every side.
A man could not use a road, turnpike or
canal without paying toll to a corporation.
The workingman called for help to save
him from getting poorer while the rich
grew richer. An appeal to the Pennsyl-
vania legislature about 1925 read literally
that new laws we're needed to prevent
the rich from swallowing the inheritance
OF the poor and to prevent 1.-The injurious
consequences to the community of indi-
viduals amassng large landed properties
They nominated workingmens tickets
throughout the country. The corporations
and "other vested interests" replied that
the tickets were prepared by persons
who scott at morality and demand a sys-
ten of public robbery In New York the
wcrkingmen's ticket was dubbed 1.-THE in
fidel ticket by it's opponents. The churches
were dragged in and took heated and,
In the case of some ministers, savage
part in the discussion. When the New
York workingmens ticket was found to
have elected candidate for the legislature
by striking majority in 1899, the cry was
raised that ''all the horrors of anarchy had
arrived" and the legislature was actually
called on to unseat him.
Labor Versus the Octopus.
Weavers from New Jersey and New York
state marched to the New York city hall
and gave battle to a mass meeting called
by the business interests to agitate against
tariff. They routed the people, wrecked
everything in sight and were barely defeat
ed by the police in time to prevent them
from tearing up the city hall by the roots.
By 1926 the workingmen, who had struck
and instituted 'turnouts" many times be-
fore that began to formulate their de-
mands clearly and went into politics to
enforce them. Their primary demands
were for shortened hours of labor; higher
wages; better treatment; payment in hon
est money and not in deprecated bank
scrip; and a free public school education.
In a number of states they demanded the
abolition of the militia and union shop.
The rich" uprose in horror. Time after
time they defeated the proposition to es-
tablish public schools in state after state.
They declared that it struck a deadly blow
at the very foundations of the republic; that
it was unconstitutional to tax free peo-
pie for the support Of schools as they put
it in Illinois; it mortified the citizens to
declare tax for school purposes in
Maryland in Pennsylvania the opposition
was so fierce that the law had to be re-
pealed in 1926.
What free schools there were were run
on the principle that the children who at
tended were the children of the poor; and
the workingman fought year after year
against this pauperiZation, and year after
year in vain.
The Beginning of Labor War.
Cobblers, carpenters and other laborers
began to work at am. in the summer and
worked till sunset. Carpenters wages were
5 shillings a day. There was not a single
mechanics lien law in all the United States.
In number of states he was disfranchised.
His wages were paid in paper of the wild
cat banks, which were as plentiful as black
berries. He had to accept the stuff at face
value and exchange 1t at market value. He
often got counterfeit bills and bills of bro
ken banks in payment of wages, and no
law protected him, nor was there way by
which he could sue without expensive law
yers.
He scared the country when he began to
articulate his wrongs. A speech that swept
the country said: 1--WE find that the
voracious appetite of monopoly Is Unsuitable;
the more we give up, the more are We re-
quired to abandon The motto of a manu-
facturer is monopoly-his purpose to put
down all competition, to command ex-
clusively every market to compel every one
to buy at his prices and sell at his prices.
This was in 1S27-not in 1904.
The people who wiggled on the sharp edge
of such a future as this seemed to portend
were living in a country which seemed hope
lessly materialistic id soEdid. William Gull
len Bryant contributed thirty poems to the
United States Literary Gazette in 1928 and
was glad to get 81 each for them. Con-
tributors to a great library of biography
got 70 cents page, the historian Prescott
earning exactly $44.S0 for his share.
The states that didn't want tariff threat
ened to boycott all products of other states,
leyying imposts that would make them I'M
salable and giving privileges to English
made goods. Kentucky abolished Its own
courts because they declared some legis-
lative enactments unconstitutional. Alto
gether, in this period, thirteen states. on
purely commercial and selfish grounds, had
threatened everything from civil war to
secession.
In the twenty years between 1910 and
1880, 1870 amendments to the Constitution
had been proposed. and they aimed at
everything from breaking the federal courts
to muzzling the President
Results of the "Mess.''
Yet out of all this appalling. hopeless
mess there came no disruption of the re-
public. The poor have not become poorer
| since then, but a lot Of the poor have be-
come the rich who have become richer. The
workingman got his shortened working day,
his higher wages his better treatment his