Weekly Jeffersonian., 1907-01-24

concede their right to a fair and rea-
sonable profit upon the actual invest
ment, but l do say that it is unreasona-
BILE, unjust for the government to
pass laws giving to the manufacture
ing industries special favors, special
privileges, enabling them to make
more than % per cent net profit on
a ten billion dollar investment at a
time when the legal rate of interest is
one-third lower than that, when pri-
vate concerns seeking a safe invest
ment cannot get One-fifth of that;
when the railroad itself grabs less
than one-fourth of that, and when the
vast army of agricultural workers are
not making any net profit at all.
Study these questions profoundly,
act upon them independently. AS in
dividuals do what you think is right.
Let no subsidized editor mislead you
into fighting against your own home
and fire side. Let no willy politician
pacify you with his lies and intimi-
date you with the party lash. Laws
are not going to be changed so long
as you leave the job to your rivals and
your competitors in business. When
the laws are changed it will be be-
cause you yourself have brought to
bear upon the lawmakers the ire
sistible pressure of public opinion.
If you will make up your minds to it,
you can govern this country. Seven
hundred thousand manufacturing pro-
prietors organized themselves into a
class corporation and are now ruling
congress. You represent at least
twelve million of men, and will you,
the twelve million, continually bow
your head.to the yoke of seven hundred
thousand manufacturers? You need
not do it, if you don't want to do it.
You can rule this country if you will.
1t is indeed high time you were doing
it. Our protective system has built
up the most heartless aristOcracy the
world ever saw. De Tocqueville, the
Frenchman, studying our institutions
more than seventy years ago, pointed
to this protective system as the door,
way through which aristocracy would
enter upon the American people and
became a danger to democratic insti-
tutions.
In the days of slavery, the sick
slave and the old slave, as we'll as the
infant slave, were taken care of. The
child was fed until it should be able
to work. The sick were visited, every
care used to restore them to health
In old age, when too enfeebled to
work, they were cared for with hui
name treatment. That was the slave
aristocracy which was so hateful in
the eyes of New England. Today, New
England has an aristocracy of her own
tenfold more hateful than anything ever
seen in the south. The children per-
ish in the great tenements for lack of
fresh air and food Thousands die
like flies, and the plutOcracy takes no
account of it, The weaver may fall
faint at the loom, may be carried home
to linger for weeks upon a bed of sick
ness. New England plutocracy takes
no account of the sick. Another hand
is put in the place of the one who has
fallen by the wayside If the sick
recover all right; if the sick do not
recover, away with them to the Pot
ter's field. Plutocracy takes no ac.
count of the too old to work, the too
sick to work, the too young to work.
In fact, the modern slave system takes
the child almost out of the cradle and
grinds up it's little bones into diVi-
dends.
By the law of nature, New England
was sterile. No wealth by any natur-
al process was ever intended hers. On
the other hand, the south and the west
received at the hands of the Creator
boundless sources of natural wealth.