The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1905-03-23
CORPORATE ANARCHY.

The spirit of anarchy is pretty
much the same the world over. 1t re-
lies on brute force. on the reckless
taking of an undue advantage, on the
power to maintain conditions bought
of dishonor, on the creation of condi-
tions regardless either of the laws of
God or of man. Anarchy is a broader
term than that which it is usual to
confine it to. The wretch who throws
bomb is but the monster of the vice
in the chrysalis. He has not learned
the wider vent for his distemper
against the world. He seeks to COR
rect an impression by the mutilation
of an individual of a species. Your
anarchist-as we have gotten in the
habit of calling the class-is gener-
small capacity for harm. Nature is
force of large parts and productive to
infinity. The soured individual who
would scatter the pavements with the
bloody brains of an aristocratic kinglet
creates scarcely less than a ripple on
the polished, slow moving, myriad
tinted current of life in each of whose
sparkles dwells a replica of the aim of
the bomb. Like a really good crimi-
nal, the educated, the advanced an
thrower as an expert of the bank safe
scorns a porch-climber. The funda-
mental motive is the same. The diff
ference lies in the method and in the
results.
We in America have had but spas
modic cases of the fool anarchist; but
with the very widespread intelligence
which has made his class a rarity
there has developed the more danger
Gus and insidious class of men who,
banded together byropes Of gain, fol-
low a course of anarchy under the
guise of corporate action which is the
stronger and the more dangerous in
this: that it's ends affect the life OF
generations instead OF an Individual,
and that there is no way of fixing the
responsibility on any particular man
or set of men. Corporate anarchy is
the bane and the danger of the coun-
try. 1t strikes with an impudence that
is fiendish because it is non-personal.
Public sentiment is put to desperation
because it cannot strike man of
straw. No one can strike corpor-
alton. 1t is there, its tentacles are
firm and grasping and binding. the
public feels it's operation, yet 1t is the
creature of the public itself, Frank
enstein that it has raised up to power
and to strength and endowed with evil
initiative disassociated from con-
science. Behind the blank wall OF It's
peculiar personality the evil corpora
ton works with immunity from all hu-
man standards of morality or justice,
freed from all human reproa:h. The
brains behind the mask, the men who
animate the iron fingers of greet, are
frequently, for the most part, men who
hold a place with the life about them
that is kind and helpful and humane.
With the corporation, they are at once
it's masters and its servants. They
occupy a dual role, acting not as they
would in private life but as the phil
osophy of the corporation, which is
the sense of money or of power, would
dictate. The world is full of men,
and the corporation is not particular.
1t demands alone the mentality TO
edge it on it's way, but it dictates the
cold quality of the sense which as
Pigment of the brain, as an inanfmate
and fictitious institution, 1t needs IN
its business but which it cannot suf-
fer should be allied to the heart. LII
there has been in the world mental
machine, whose pulses did not quick
en- or whose blood was not warmed
by some human appeal, history has
not shown nor fiction imagined him.
And yet, it is the peculiar triumph OF
civilization that it has in it's hey-day
created the thing which no one of its
units could be. And the freezing quail
ity of the corporation the slow and
sinister trickle of its blood, the paral-
wing grasp of its death-like fingers,
is made possible by men who in So
ciety arc of rudy face and cherry
4
hearts, who love their homes, who play
with children by the Preside, who dis
solve in tears of pity at the misfortune
of the occasional derelict of life; but
who yet, for the needs or the ambition
of the thing which is but a myth OF
the law, forget their private life, their
humane prejudices, the Unborn sense
of personal justice, and lend to the
creature Of their making the animal
ing mind with which to strike and with
which to Cypress. not an individual
unless. perchance, he gets in the
way-but an entire race.
This corporate power is the develop
ment of anarchy. Anarchy lives in
the idea that rule, that success, that
power and right lie in opportunity
The idea is false in itself, yet it is per-
! sistent in the breast of avarice as is
! the sap in the trees of the springtime
Nations have crumbled under it; kings
have learned that it's magnificence is
as the passing of sigh of childhood