The Ocala banner. (Ocala, Marion County, Fla.) 1883-194?, 1908-03-27
HAVE WE GONE TOO FART

Of the most influential newspapers
printed In that state Of breezy poll
tics, is of the opinion that the agita-
ton through which we have recent
ly passed, or, perhaps. are still pass
ing, the great pendulum. which is sup
posed to regulate the business af-
fairs Of the nation, has swung as far
in one direction as it had hitherto
swung in the other, and as extremes
meet." it is doing the same amount of
harm through its general tone of
alarm.
The Globe says:
There are too many people willing
to enjoy low prices that are too low.
If, by public clamOr, passenger rates
are reduced to two cents a mile. is
there enough fairness among the peo-
pie to refrain from clamoring for one
cent a mile? Why not keep on reduc-
ing freight rates?
"Is there enough common sense
among the people to make them I'M
derstand that corporations are emit
tied 10 fair prices? Where will all this
end? Suppose the average citizen
saves fifty dollars a year on lower
freight and passenger rates, and loses
two hundred dollars a year as a result
Of hard times? Has not his sel1shness
resulted in personal injury?
In every business establishment
there is one man rustling to meet the
weekly pay roll Very few have fair
ness enough to realize the difficulties
encountered by this man.
Suppose all the politicians and all
the newspapers were hammering
away at your business, and misrepre-
senting it, and thus created a preju-
dice that rendered it impossible for
you to make both ends meet? How
would you like it? Missouri Pacific
stock has been hammered within a
year from S1O6 to s2S. Yesterday it
was announced that Missouri Pacific
payday had been postponed.
There has been so much unfrieRd-
~ legislation, so many attacks on
corporations, that the worried man,
whose business it is to provide for the
pay roll. is in trouble. People have
forgotten that these railway corpora
tons are very useful In Atchison.
the Missouri Pacific pay roll amounts
to fifty thousand dollars per month.
Lately we had good times In a
day good times were changed TO hard
times. For every dollar saved by the
assaults on corporations, the people
have lost twenty dollars as a result
of hard times. Are we so hungry to
injure corporations that we are will
ing TO suffer personal loss? Have the
people become crazy in their desire to
Destroy"
The Minneapolis Bellman, under
the heading Of The Dawn of Reason"
quotes what the Atchison Globe says
and comments as follows:
The cuckoo papers throughout the
country have been so busy abusing
the railways and applauding every
possible administrative and legisla-
tive act designed to embarrass and
render improbable their operation,
that they have entirely lost their sense
OF proportion.
ITO them the exultant, triumphant
fact that a passenger rate has been
reduced TO two cents a mile. which
means that one person out of thOus-
and or ten thousand is saved perhaps
fifty dollars a year, is of much greater
Importance than the consequent loss
OF employment to many thousands
who were formerly able to earn from
seven hundred to thousand dollars
annually.
The advertiser in these papers re-
Allies the difference when he finds
that the buying ability of the people
as a whole has been reduced; that
vast numbers Of discharged railway
employees are economizing in their ex-
penditures and that the curtailment of
work is making inroads upon his sales
and forcing him to be more cOnseTva-
tive in his advertising appropriation.
The credit for the saving of the
fifty dollars to the one person in the
thousand or ten thousand is certainly
due, above everything else, to the pa
pers which rapturously encouraged
this legislation, and to them is also
due full credit for the result in the
decreased earning power of the mass
es. The intelligent advertiser should
remember this and place the respOn-
sibility where it belongs"
We notice also that big damage
suits are being everywhere brought
against the railroads, one in Jackson
vile for $4,000, and another in Tam
rwl