The labor argus. [volume] (Charleston, W. Va.) 1906-1915, 1909-12-16
ANARCHY
Thrives Where Wealthy
Criminals Escape the
Law, While Thefts of
Bread Bring Forth Heavy
Jail Sentences-By John
M. Dorney in the Shoe
Workers Journal.

The intense activities of modern life,
the wonderful Inventions, the greatest
discoveries of the past half century, the
tremendous increase in the production of
wealth have resulted in a very Babel of
confusion; sharp, shrewd, brainy men, ut
terly devoid of either morality or patriot
ism, seems to have become insane in the
pursuit of wealth, nor is the insanity of
money yhunting confined to those who
openly proclaim that their rule of life is
Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow
we die. -
For anamalous as it may seem, we see
men who pose as believers in God, in
the moral law, in the life to come, in re-
sponsibility after deathfor deeds done in
tho flesh, acting in the same manner. We
see men who occupy front pcws in Jewish
synagogues, in Roman Catholic Churches,
in Protestant Churches, who are counted
as leading lights in their respective
temples, whose names head charity lists,
who pose as philanthropists, who build
hospitals, asylums, libraries for the
working people, and who have the te-
mority to build and endow churches and
synagogues ostensibly to ''the honor and
glory of God,' and yet those men are
ever in the limclight as chief figures in
all the legalized looting, the downright
robbery carried on today by the trusts,
syndicates and combines. We see these
chiefs of predatory wealth using their
ill-gotten gains to corrupt city councils,
state legislatures and congress, to de-
bauch the courts and the press, and to
corrupt and degrade the people No
burglar, stage robber or bunco stcerer
possesses less respect for law than do
these ''Captains of Finance AS a
necessary consequence of their contempt
for law, of their Hypocrisy, those people
have dcgenerated into whited scpulchers
Externally they are punctilious as to
form, but behind the scenes, in the circle
of the ''4OO,' they vary all the way from
moral rottenness to the most asnine
frivolity. If the major portion of them
had their just deserts they would be do
ing time in the penitcntiary. yet they
have the efrrontcry to attempt to die
tate national elections, and through the
columns of their lackey press, edited by
inen of brains who have sold themselves
like the son of perdition, those legalizcd
looters assail every man who possesses
brains to sec and who will not be bought
This republic faces the same conditions
today that caused the downfall of the
Roman Republic; it is controlled by an
ignorant, vulgar, rlutocracy. In the pre-
cincts of the ''40O,'' the password is
money: matter how stupid or how
morally rotten may be the man or woman,
if they have money, no matter how it
was gotten, they are welcomed and at
once enter upon the privilege of % So
ciety,' to maintain a harem, to select
aifinities,' - to plumber by law, and then
use their plunder to secure immunity from
punishment through purchased press,
hireling lawyers and pliable Judges.
In Philadelphia recently q man was
arrested charged with stealing loaf of
bread, he said he and his wife and family
we're Starving. Even the police stated
he was a decent, sober man and had never
been ''arrested. - The judge sentenced
him to ninety days in Jail, but, in the
state Of Penns sylvania honorable thieves,
leading citizens, pillars of society. stole
100000 from the state and the hon
orable gentlemen are all free and enga ged
in damning the leaders of organized Ia
Dor.
The predatory rich in this republic,
degenerate Americans, the chief
" dangerous class in America. A close
second to those madmen are those Ameri
cans, who, under existing conditions, are
content, who do not protest. The Ameri
can. not of the plutocratic dangerous
Glass; - who is content, who does not
protest, is either stupidity ignorant, or he
is a lackey of the plutocracy.
Here we have the dangerous classes,
the GO miserable rich,'' rotted, enervated,
degraded by great wealth and the 'mis-
erable poor who are rottcd. enervated.
deerated by great poverty-both a men
ace to republic.