Aberdeen herald. [volume] (Aberdeen, Chehalis County, W.T.) 1886-1917, 1907-04-15
SOUNDS FAMILIAR
new YORK PRESS EMITS LOUD
CALAMITY HOWL.
Editorials in Republican Paper Sound
Like pOpuIiStiC Calamity HowIS in
1896. Says Jail, Not Martyrs
Crown is Due to Railway High
finanCierS.

The editorial page OF the New York
Press, republican, sounds these days
very like an 1896 democratic document.
Indeed, it would be difficult to find in
the history of the 1895 campaign de.
nunciation by democrats so severe as
that which appeared in the leading edi-
toria printed in the New York Press,
republican, Of March IA, 1907. That
editorial is entitled, "What is Due the
Railway High Financiers is Not the
Martyrs Grown but Jail"
Extracts from that editorial follow:
Years ago this paper predicted the
very things that are now coming to pass,
and repeatedly, through the wild de-
bauch of the railway manipulators. we
have warned them that they were has
tening the day Of reckoning The whole
trouble with their schemes. as we have
often pointed out, is not that the public
has started what they are pleased to call
a prairie fire. 1t is that they have sim
ply been carrying on green goods swim.
dies on colossal scale.
They have been taking the railroads
out OF the hands Of engineers and railway
men and giving them over to corporation
lawyers and stock market gamblers. In.
stead of managing them to haul great
traffic and to take care Of the futWe
transportation needs of the country, they
have used them to control the ticker tape
quotations and to perform speculative
miracles. They have stripped the prop
critics to make fraudulent show of earn
ings 60 that they might double divid nds
over night after they bad "gone lols u
stocks" and, selling the next day on the
rise, put tens and hundreds of millions
of gambling profits into their private
pockets. They have seized roads that
were legitimately capitalized, multiplied
their stocks and bonds several times,
issued the bogus securities to themselves
or their syndicates at low price and
then unloaded them on the public "at
the top" They have piled up earnings
into huge surplus which ought TO have
been used for buying locomotives, cars
and rails to handle the growing traffic,
but which they have lent to themselves
to buy other stocks low and sell them
high. stuffing their wallets with the
proceeds.
These manipulators OF the railways of
the country have taken hundred mill
ion dollars of shares OF one road, added
them to one hundred million dollars OF
shares of another and called them, by
the mere process of merging, worth five
hundred millions. They have issued
securities to themselves insuring their
possession OF the actual worth of the
properties and printed counterfeit securi.
ties representing the water they have
poured into the merger. This stuff they
have palmed off on the public as the
original and increased value of the roads
and gathered in fabulous fortunes by the
operation.
And because the railroads were being
handled by the lawyers and stock mar
ket gamblers to make saturnalia OF
speculation; because it was OF more i'm.
portance to them to take from fifty to
one hundred points OF profit on margined
accounts in the Stock Exchange than to
convey the traffic OF the country in hand
and to provide for that IN prospect, the
railroads themselves have been going to
the dogs. For lack of proper equipment,
track inspection, labor, ETC., they have
been numbering passengers and blocking
freight to degree unapproached any.
where else in the world and never before
paralleled even in the United States. We
know of case OF railroad pay
ing s per cent. dividends declared to
mark up the price OF the stock SO that
the gamblers could unload at tremen lous
profts) which had lever break in a
switchtower and the whole system was
tied up because there was not an extra
lever ready to be put in. 10 make
bookkeeping showing which would in
duce the public to take the stock at more
than 200, the road was not buying neces.
sary supplies like ties, rails, spikes, lev
ers and switches! 1t is doing this thing
at this very minute. If locomotive
breaks down, there is no other available
to take its place; the train must be
abandoned
The high financiers and stock market
gamblers have played their game to the
limit. They have made their tens and
hundreds of millions. But the public
has learned what is the matter-why
there aren't cars enough, why the trains
don't run on time, why perishable goods