The wageworker. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1904-????, 1907-09-27


Do not the of the American people
plainly see that now, never before in our
history, all men are not equal before the law?
1t is universal knowledge that the officers
OF OF three OF the largest insurance companies in
the world used trust-funds for speculative pur-
poses, opened their treasures to the devotees
of high finance to the Wall Street sheep
shearers-all for greed, for private gain. Not
even one offender has been punished
The few men that automatically control
the railroads of the country have brazenly vio-
lated law and equity. haze treated the public
with defiant insolence. and have maintained
lobbies to corrupt state legislatures and
gress. Yet the railroads their very exist
ence to special privileges granted by the people;
and every dollar used build, to equip, and to
operate the roads has been furnished by the
people, directly or indirectly.
These same railroad autocrats have won
hundreds of millions of dollars by juggling rail
road stock in Wall Street, while the service and
the equipment of the roads were not capable
OF handling the freight offered them. There is
record of any stock manipulation railroad
president being punished.
Watering stock is favorite pastime of
high finance. Watering stock is but another
name for stealing; it is taking money and giving
nothing for it. Yet it places heavy secret tax
on the American people and their posterity. All
OF these hundreds of millions of fiat stock must
pay dividends. and the American people will do
the paying in the name of legitimate earnings
but in fact for extortionate charges small
group of men, dealing in public utilities and
domestic necessaries. have made hundreds of
millions by watering stock No stock-waterer,
inside of prison, by operation of law.
The prices of nearly all the necessaries and
the commodities of life arbitrarily fixed by
trusts. AS trust means competition-abso-
lutte control of the supply-the American people
have no other course open to them than to sub
nit to being lawfully robbed. Notwithstand-
trust magnate continues to be eminently
spectacle and exemplarJ citizen.
The American people have been plucked
of hundreds of millions of dollars by means of
the "Dingley BILL. protective tariff law passed
by prediction bribed congress, in considera-
tion of the munificent contributions in the first
Mckinley Bryan campaign-a bargain and sale
that has parallel in history for it's audacity
in deliberately taxing all the people for the bene
After swollen fortunes had been taken
from the pockets of the people, the .'Dingley
bill'' promoters and benefciaries formed trusts,
created mOnOpolies. and wound up by issuing
hundreds of millions of stock without adding a
dollar to the actual value of the plants.
BY the judicious use of small percentage
of this special privilege tax, the protective
tariff beneficiaries have been successful, up to
date, in keeping congress in stand pat atti-
tude. and the special taxation of all the people
for the benefit of the few still goes industriousy
and merrily
There is no more bitter sarcasm nor mock
ing humor than the tariff benefcaries' plea that
the protective" tariff is for the protection of
the American workingman. 1t is true that the
American workingman has wrested from en-
ployers higher wages than ever before; but this
is through the efforts and the sacrifices of
ganized labor. 1t is true that he is better fed
better clothed. and better housed than those of
his class and occupation in other countries;
but he is much more competent and valuable
workman than the foreign wage laborer
Nevertheless the American workngman is
worried and he has been led to do think
ing and investigating; first, because 100000
girls and women in the United States find it
necessary to labor second. because his share of
unprecedented prosperity does not abide with
him. but is taken from him by the greatly in
creased cost of living-the tarf-protected trusts
being the largest benefcaries of this increased
cost.
He that there two distinct classes
of citizens; the producing class and the exploit
ing class. He the shining lights of high
finance" of stock-watering. of public franchise
huckstering. of special privilege. and of graft