The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1905-07-08

NSOutAlQCQ rage ol8.J
the financial mechanism they have Gre
ated the time must come when the own
Srship of all the wealth of this great
land must fall into their hands and the
people be reduced to actual servitude.
This is no fancy picture, men and
women of Kansas; no wall of pessin1sm;
no wolf cry to needlessly alarm you, but
q blunt and fortnight statement of the
conditions actually underlying your
boosted civilization. Today at every
gate, turn and current of your existanee
the enemy stands guard and compeis
tribute. They fix arbitrarily the prices
you must pay for every pound of food
you eat, every stitch of clothing you
wear, every stick of timber in the houses
that shelter you, every hod OF coal you
burn, every pint of oil you consume, eV-
cry foot of gas, every book you read,
every mile of transportation on land or
on sea, for yourselves or for the goods
you sell or buy. Yes, preposterous as II
may seem, what the American people
shall receive for the products of their
labor or their capital, what they shall
receive for their labor itself, labor OF
body or mind, is as despotically estab-
Hshed for them as if actually they were
mind and body slaves of these few men
AS though the law said You are not
dee; you are not equal, only as THESE
few men allow you to be-"
Confronted by the facts I have set
before you, and realizing the condition
you have allowed yourselves to ian
into, you ask each other, VINO are
these Rockefellers and Carnegfes ana
Havemeyers that have gained hundreds
of millions during the years we nave
but kept soul and body together! OL
what are they made, and how came
the great powers they have achieYedE
We have had our Washingtons, our
Lincolns, our Websters, our LongIel-
lows our EmersonS, our EdtSons, Bells'
Howes, Morses-Our inventors OF lncdn-
al
chimes and telegraphs-but none or these
men, or all together, made $50O,oUO,oOo'
or controlled our luxuries and neces-
saries as these men do"
Are Billions Samsons?
Surely" you say, these Rockefellers
erses are men of greater than common
mold; surely they have 100 arms ana
1000 legs and eyes, the thews of Samson
and the wisdom of Solomon.
You see them, and 10! they are but as
other men-onIy meaner, more cruel,
more cowardly. These men are no diff
ferent to the rest of us, save that they
are Machiavellis in their trickery, III
dases in their treachery Apaches III
their cruelty. In comparison 10 our
Lincolns and our Jeffersons these men
are as eagles to snipes. Then it bursts
upon you that there surely is something
terribly wrong in our body polite, that
q cancerous growth has seized upon the
vitals of our American institutions ana
is draining and rotting their blood and
fiber.
You say. ''How has this come about?''
It is to this question 1 am here to reply,
and for this I have come from the
money-tainted centers of the east to
these grand stalking grounds Of nature,
where the strength of our nation mas
now its abiding place
Men and women Of Kansas, mine is
the task of the schoolmaster, for am
here to tell you how Standard Oil and
the System" the great organizations
of these few men who have usurped the
wealth and power of the people, have
hypnotized you into believing that and
2 make % instead of only 4, and how
you can punish them for their decep-
ton, compel restitution of the billions
they have filehed and tricked away
from you, and then render it impossible
ever to repeat the plundering.
Three Ways to Rob the People.
To begin with, in a country in which
the majority rule there are but three
ways whereby the few can concentrate
in themselves the power over all the
BY force-The few by boldness might
conquer and enslave tinnid populace.
But this is not condition that could
occur to the American people.
BY the consent of the people-When
that happens there will be no American
people.
Without their edge-Through
guile and trickery.
The only way a free people can be-
come the debtor slaves of few of
their number is through this minority
secretly creating artificial economic
conditions which secure to them the
results of the labor of the majority
without returning it fair value. There
have been Shylocks in all ages of the
world, for it is no new thing for ma
lions as we'll as individuals to find the
barriers they have erected to protect
their equal rights converted into the
battements of their enemies. When
a people discover that the honorable
rules it has made for the regulation of
commercial relations between it's in
oividuals have been tempered with
for the benefit of the dishonest few. it
is their legal and moral duty and right
to correct the perverSion and undo the
wrongs wrought through it. This may
he done by one of two methods-re-
shaping the laws and proceeding by
due legal process to deprive the few of
the profits their evasion has gained for
them. or by the many compelling the
few to submit to the same artificial
condition which they had created for
the plundering of the many This
latter can be accomplished without
new or special legislation, and con-
stitutes the best plan of amendment,
for it is a dangerous practice for a
great people arbitrarily to make laws
to deprive one class of something for
another's benefit Such law may work
well enough when it takes from the
bad who have stolen and restores to
the good what they have lost but
there is ever the dangerous RESPONSE
bility of a decision as to who is good
and who bad, what is honest prop
erty and what dishonest. If the peo-
pie take it on themselves to Vindicate
their rights by legislating property
out of one hand into another, who
shall prevent the powers of evil using
the precedent for their own bad pur-
poses should they gain later absolute
ascendancy in the nation? I am fat
footedly opposed to one class of our
people depriving another class of its
property by special laws, for that way
lies anarchy; but I am glad to say
that the wrongs I am here to disclose
to you can be righted without pro-
ceeding to such extremities.