The Ocala banner. (Ocala, Marion County, Fla.) 1883-194?, 1905-04-21
BARBARIAN OR sEMEFAcToR7

immense city depended on oil lamps
for light, and oil stoves, not only to
do their scanty cooking, but to fur
nish what little heat there was in
their cherries abOdes. These people
so said that great paper, with an av-
erage income of less than a dollar a
day per family, bought in penny
worths and felt keenly the addition
of cent or two gallon to the price
of OIL And there were thousands of
these people. 1t is pity that Mr..
Harris had not been editing that pa
per.-Ocala Evening Star.
The cherries homes of the INDECENT
poor is one of the ugly scars that mar
the surface of the splendor of our
civilization, and if lessening the price
of kerosene oil makes brighter and
more cheerful these homes, how
starry must be the crown of John d.
Rockefeller. for as he writes Mr.. Har-
ris has before him an old musty mer-
camille ledger where he gathers the
information that in 1867 an INDECENT
widow in this city was charged two
dollars per gallon for this precious IL
luminant.
Two dollars per gallon Just think
of it!
That was before Mr. Rockefeller
laid his pipe lines and reduced 1.-THE
| price of it to less than 20 cents per
gallon
Less than the freight was in those
years.
Suppose that Mr.. Rockefeller had
not done this, what would those very
poor people have done in these big
cities who depended on kerosene oil
lamps for light and oil stoves for
| heat?
If 20 cents per gallon were a pinch
ing, squeezing tax, 81 per gallon
would have been a prohibition and
their suffering would have been great
! indeed!
| Now it does seem to us that the
man who cornered this product and
voluntarily lowered the price, must
, be something more than barbarian
! and heather.
He cannot be evil through and
through.
We are now paying $50 per thou
/ sand feet for gas in Ocala.
! If VT. George Mackay, president
of the Ocala Gas company, will vol
unfairly reduce the price to 10 cents,
and i'll addition thereto will give a
big endowment to the Marion county
hospital, found ID great college in
Ocala, build the new court house free
of cost, whether he builds any
: churches or not or gives cent TO
convert the heather, this paper will,
even though it be alone, proclaim
him d patriot, hero. and a benefac-
tor, and cover his expansive brow
with a wreath of immorteiles-
But the man who raises the price
of an article of consumption may be
the benefactor, and not the man who
lowers 1T
The members of the turpentine OPP
! orators association are good friends
of ours. While not diminishing the
output, they have doubled the price
OF the product Are they benefac-
tors or are they enemies of the state?
The purpose of the Watermelon and
Cantaloupe Growers association is TO
increase the prices of melons Are
their efforts commendable, and are
they to be classed as benefactors?
Cotton is staple product. A great
many of the worlds poor are de-
pendent upon it to hide their bodies
from cold and nakedness.
The object of the Cotton Growers
association is to increase the price of
this product.
Do the poor of other lands regard
the object of the association a laud-
able one and the members as bene-
factors to the race?
The price of chickens has doubled
in the last few years. This is nice