The Stark County Democrat. [volume] (Canton, Ohio) 1833-1912, 1908-07-30

markets and remorselessly ruin and
drive them out of business, and there
by create and maintain monopoplies in
themselves, and then fix prices to suit
themselves, and even manufacture
goods of such quality as they see fit,
having no competitors! Is that sort
of thing to be stopped or not?
Democrats and Republicans helped
to set afoot an effort under President
Roosevelt to stop it, but great many
powerful people who call themselves
I Republicans, but who are such for per-
sonal profit and revenue only, and
would as lief be anything else for the
| same reason, and some who call them
selves Democrats, but belong to the
same classification, opposed it, and
have brought the movement to a
stanstill. Their politics is to make
the nominations for both parties, ma
tional, State and local, so as to be en-.
tirely safe in any event, and when
they fail as to one party they bend
their enormous power to misleading
the voters of tn ecountry by falsehood
and corruption.
They call the effort to free our pub
lie highways of their grip and unlaw-
full use "meddling with private bust.
ness" and denounce it as opposition
to corporations and combinations in
business and as radicalism and So
cilaism, and even anarchism. Hon.
est people have got tired of such
abuse and do not propose to submit to
it and longer. There is no opposition
in this country to combinations and
enterprise in business based on equal
conditions to all, nor the slightest pos
sibility of the confscation of private
property. There is no danger of the
honest American people confiscating
any ones property.
There is no opposition to the gross
wrong of giving few sets of persons
an advantage over all others by
means of such determinations and
favoritisms on the public highways,
and by which they destroy and pre-
vent competition and create monopo-
lies in themselves of the principal
! products and manufactures of the
country, one after another. 1t is the
mother of monopolies-or of trusts,
| if we must give up plain word for
an obscure one. And no free people
can suffer monopOlies to flourish over
them and survive.
Monopolies belong to despotism, not
to free government. Monopoly and
! despotism, and the growth of monopoly
and the decay of free government go
| hand in hand the world over.
And we here in New York do not
need to go away from home for OBJ
! ject lessons in still other misuses of
government privilege and of our pub
| lie franchises and highways in still
other ways by these same people for
| their own enormous enrichment and
for the consequent decentralization, il
not degradation, of the mind of the
community. When these things are
happening all over the country they
must affect national politics. Look
at the present scandalous condition of
our street railroads in New York City.
They are the most valuable and best
paying public franchises in the whole
world and were conferred as gifts of
perpetuity by government, and yet
they have been so prostituted to dis
| honest greed, despoiled and robbed,
| that they are today bankrupt and in
| the hands of court receivers. The ad-
ditions from year to year of block
after block of bogus securities be-
came in the end so enormous in the
aggregate that even the enormous
revenues paid into the coppers of
the companies by the public by means
of the largest average street railway
fare in the world, no longer suficed
to pay the interest; and hence bank
ruptcy followed, and disintegration
and annulment of connecting leases,
made pursuant to statutes, whose OBJ
ject was a single fare over connect
ing lines and the cutting off of trans
fers hereunder; all by the court and
its receivers, selected for the pur-
pose; and all to aid in congratulations
over the heads of swindled stockhold
ers and swindled community, which
only smiled year or two ago when
told by some of them that the leases
for terms of 999 years of all the COM
panies to one paper company, and on
which leases the swindled securities
were largely issued, were more apt to
last only nine years than 999.
When honest men, whether rich and
prosperous, or only struggling to sup
] port their anu MAKE DOlH
ends meet from week to week, or
! from year to year, so long as God
/ leaves them here, see these things
go unchecked and in the end unpun-
/ ished, and all, it is claimed, accord
ing to law, they cannot help doubling
that law and justice reign here for all
alike. And those who commit these
wrongs, and make a lifetime and life
work of them, call out frantically not
to array class against class when
their conduct is called in question;
| for arraying class is what they call ar
raging honest conservative men
against their pernicious dishonesties
against the whole community.
J There are on radical questions be-
| fore the country, but only plain ques-
| tiOns of right and wrong which have
long been calling out in vain for set
| tlement. In spite of all We have heard
of the misuse of our public highways
by favoritism in freight rates, no in
dividual, however gross an offender,
has been indicted by the Government,
and the gross result is the collection
of few thousand dollars in fines.
The question, is whether we are TO
nave not only proper laws, but an i'm
partial and reasonably strict admin
istration OF the laws for the welfare
of all, or whether our Government is
.