Waterbury evening Democrat., 1906-03-03
DUNES AID QUITS ]
Chicago Official Gives Unique
 Reasons For Resigning.
IS OUT FLATFOOTED AS SOCIALIST

Would Like to Make Laws For the Ordinary Young Man of Today.
 Wealth Should Be More
 Equally Divided.
 CHICAGO, March 3.-Joseph Medill Patterson, commissioner of public works, has submitted his resignation to Mayor Dunne, to take effect at once. The resignation was mailed to the mayor from Washington, where Patterson is spending few days at the residence of his father Robert A. Patterson, proprietor of the Chicago Fri une.
 Patterson, who is one of the richest young men in Chicago and part owner of the Chicago Tribune, declares 1t is useless to try to combat lawlessness of rich men under laws made for capi- tai.
 Stirring paragraphs of MT. Patterson are as follows:
 Money is power and dominion. It is wine and women and song. It is idleness or activity. No one possesses, but 1t possesses everybody. In life money means everything, and there fore anybody will do anything to get it.
 "The man who has money masters the destinies of those who have it not. It ensiaves those whom it possesses, and 1t likewise enslaves in a more sor- did way those who have none of it."
 MT. Patterson, who is the youngest official ever appointed to so important post in Chicago, is but twenty-eight years old. >s
 He said he knew that many people would say that man who declares himself Socialist is dead one," but that he did not care T have nev- CT read but one work on Socialism and therefore am not capable of log ical argument now," Mir. Patterson said, but believe in it."
 His principle, he said, was to make laws. for the ordinary young man of today. -
 "Of course the extraordinary young man will rIse," he said. "When we say that things should be divided equally we mean that every man should have a chance. Men like Schwab and Carnegie have risen from poor young men to wealth, but they are the extraordinary young men. The ordinary young man is not able to rise above his birth, and the extraordinary young man is one in a million. Pres ent laws are not for the ordinary work man. I don't mean by this that all the money in the country should be cut up into equal parts. What mean is that the people should own in com mon all the means of production, the sources of wealth, and divide the re- suits. The talk of economical equali- ty Is no more ridiculous now than was the talk of social equality years ago. Then Mir. Patterson went on to illus trate:
 Suppose Alfred G. Vanderbilt has e6,OQO. 900 invested in his railroads Say there are .25000 employees. Out of his investment he receives, say, per cent, which is S25o,0oo a year. He doesn't turn a wheel. He doesn't move an engine. He doesn't do thing for the railroad. He simply owns 1t. He doesn't contribute toward making the road safe. Those men earn so much money for him. Suppose he should give them what they earn instead of taking it himself.
 "My idea is to have things equally divided, so that when a man dies his children shall not inherit wealth" :" Then Mir. Patterson explained that so long as wealth was centered and un- earned consolidation Is inevitable, and to this remark he added, "There is nothing more ridiculous than the Sher- man antitrust law"