Mower County transcript., 1906-11-07
WICKED
COFFIN TRUST


ing illegal combinations which extort
outrageous prices from the public, let
us pray that sooner or later the Coffin j
Trust will "get it in the neck" Among
the inhuman monsters who glut their
rapacity upon human needs and human
helplessness, there is none to compare
with the Coffin Trust.
The Standard Oil company is bad
enough, heaven knows!-but it robs the
living. The Coffin Trust robs the dead.
The Steel Trust plumbers in shop and ,
field, in city, town and village, but the
Steel Trust Aeeces those who are alive.
The Coffin Trust tjeeces the dead and
chases it's victim into the grave. The
Beef Trust comes to us as we go about I
our daily affairs, unoppressed by any
special burden of trouble and woe. !
But the Coffin Trust invades our homes
when the sob Of heartbroken wife or
husband or mother or child is heard as
they wiring their hands around the bier.
With heartlessness that would de-
grade the fercest beast Of the field, this
Collin Trust penetrates every walk of
life, and allows no man to bury his
dead until he has knelt to piratical
combine and paid tribute to a pitiless
master.
The Trust takes six poplar planks
worth perhaps about twenty-five cents
apiece. These planks are thrown to-
gether lined with satin on the inside,
vanished on the outside, possibly
cheap piece of glass inserted in the top
plank, a few pewter and gilt orna-
ments stuck along the sides, and there
you area completed coffin, worth at
the uttermost some Sc or So or $40 or
$12.
Here comes the afflicted husband or
wife or son or daughter or brother or
mother. A coffin must be had. lime
is short; the necessity imperative. The
coffin must be had. The Coffin Trust
does business upon that fact. 1t un-e
mercifully robs people by virtue of that
fact.
What value is put upon this coffin?
Forty dollars, fifty dollars, sixty dollars,
eighty dollars. Every day we can see
these plain, cheap, and sometimes
gaudy cofins, which cannot by any
sort of calculation be shown to have a
greater value than dozen of dollars,
sell for five times that amount. Why?
Because the purchaser is helpless, and
because the seller has no pity in his
heart.
The purchaser speaks for the dead,
acts for the dead, is within the awful
shadow of domestic grief. The Nom
ber of the family, whose sad duty it is
to purchase the coffin, feels that it
would be indecent, unseemly, distaste-
full, utterly repugnant to the occasion
to higgle and haggle and cheaper and
squabble about the price of what the
dead man is compelled to have. No!
husband wants to hesitate over a mere
question Of dollars and cents when the
beloved form of the wife needs burial.
No wife will stop at any question of
filthy lucre when her husband demands
the last rites which her devotion can
ever pay. The parents will not quar-
rel about the price of the box which is
to hold all that is mortal of the darling
child. Nor will son or daughter COM
bat the Trust when necessity arises for
the seemly, decorous dutiful laying
away Of the father and mother.
Thus while other trusts exploit the
living, the Coffin Trust exploits the
dead. Against other trusts we have
some chance to fight. Against the
Coffin Trust we have no chance
So it is that the Coffin Trust has
seized upon coign of vantage which
makes it irresistible. Heartbroken grief
is to the Coffin Trust it's securest ally.
The tears and sobs of orphanhood
bring gold to it's Golfers. The unreas-
oning devotion of the half-crazed hus-
band or wife becomes an ally of as re-
mOrseless rObber of human beings as
one has ever seen.
Ever since God fashioned the world
and put the breath of life into man
and woman, nothing has ever been
known that was so Unsuitable, so cruel
]y unjust as the Coffin st.-Tom
Watson, in his Magazine.
Has the boy dog, or the good wife
a cat, or are there pigeons or rabbits or
pet squirrels on the place? If you have !
any Of these, or are going to have them,
you should have the Bicycle Pet Book, |
which is No. 7 of the Bicycle Farm Ii