River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1906-08-09

The trusts control our products.
food and money
Their affairs are paramount public
questions.
The whole country is discussing
railroad rates, the private car and
pure food.
The whole country is discussing
American meat, American insurance.
Readers of the daily and weekly
newspapers have everything at stake
in these matters.
They are forming opinions that will
affect everything they eat, raise, sell,
have or buy, every dollar they earn
or hope to earn.
Now is the Time
To Settle Things.
Since these subjects are under dis
cussion and all manner of reforms and
legislation are being devised, this is
the time to settle things.
Thank goodness, public matters are
eventually submitted to the people.
This is still free country and the
people have sovereign power.
The corporations control the money,
food, railroads and insurance OF the
people but the people control the cor
porations, or can do so if they wish.
Intelligence and Power
of the Rural People.
Right control can only be exercised
when knowledge exists as to what
the public should demand of the
trusts.
That knowledge should be fur
nished the people who live in the
smaller cities and towns and on the
farms.
They have most at stake
they produce the meat and the
wheat.
they make the country's prosper
ity
they supply the cash for the in
surance companies
they are the most intelligent peo-
pie in the nation.
they are the most powerful peo-
pie in the nation
It is Not the Cities
That Should Control
1t Is not the cities that should con-
troll
The cities produce nothing, not
even intelligent citizens. The cities
live upon the products of the country
and prosper by the country's cash.
They run the mills that grind the
country's wheat, the packing houses
that prepare the country's meat, the
factories that manufacture the conn-
try's wool and cotton and iron and
wood, the railroads, the insurance
companies and the politicians.
The cities have populations given up
to money making and pleasure, who
do not own the houses they live in,
do not suppress crime or vice nor
support any adequate system of edu-
cation
people who perpetuate the lowest
order of intelligence, as shown in the
sensational newspapers they read and
the class of men who represent them
in legislation.
The Real Seat of Power
Is With the Country Folks.
City people live in dirt and Disease.
Go into Chicago and see the filth in
the. streets, breathe the air filed with
manure dust, hear the roar Of the
streets, observe the clouds of sitting
smoke, the terrible expressions on
the faces of the people, the
strenuous, helpless masses who rush
down town to work in the morning,
out to a dyspeptic lunch at noon and
back at night to dingy boarding houses
and thence to beer gardens or vaude-
vile shows that vie with the sport
ing extras" in sensationalism, and you
don't wonder they have gotten into
trouble with their stock yards. If the
stock yards are no worse than the rest
of Chicago they are bad enough.
And do you suppose these people
have any real power?
No, real power is where intelligence
and decency are-where people earn
honest money by honest work, where
they live clean lives, support their fam.
flies and perpetuate the race with chill
dren who are well educated and made
moral by precedent and universal SEN
timent-and such people live "far from
the madding crowd"
Rich Men Seek
the Country.
When men get rich they seek the
country because the country is the
place to live.
And people who live in the country
are rich in health and happiness, in
freedom of thought, in independence
of action.
They are the intelligent people of
the nation, able to solve great ques-
! lions and so they should have
the facts and figures regarding the
trusts and thus be placed in position
to form their own conclusions on cat
tie and fruit raising, the meat sys-
TEN, the railroad rate issue, the pri-
vate car, the packing houses, the flour
mills, the insurance companies.
A series of articles on these sub
jects will be published in this paper.
The Best Writers Will
Prepare the Matter.
The articles are written by the