The weekly Republican. (Plymouth, Ind.) 1911-1922, 1911-08-10

as certainly as the laws that govern
that physical world, the law of accre-
ton and gravitation. That law is
that the tendency of all great bodies
is to attract and attach to them
selves all smaller bodies, and thus ii
is that many great enterprises are
so strongly entrenched and systema-
tized in their methods that nothing
is required to insure their continued
success, but ordinary business sense
and honesty. They just grow, and
| that is about all there is to It.
And it is matter of common obser-
walton and knowledge that many
large enterprises such as railroads,
manufacturing plants and commercial
houses have been successfully man.
aged and placed upon their feet f.
nancially, by courts, acting through
the agency of receivers and trustees
and that many of these receivers and
trustees knew but little about
such business enterprises as COM
pared with the men who had Planned
and set them going, but whose ex-
travagance or recklessness had
brought their affairs to the verge of
ruin.
All of which goes to prove that
there is not such mighty difference
in the abilities of men as some per-
sons seem to imagine. The real diff
ference between the man who has a
genius for accumulation and the man
who does not amass great wealth
may lie in the fact that the one man
may not be willing to pay the price
of such success, which in plany in
stances is the sacrifice of self-respect
and the commission of acts that are
revolving to his sense of justice and
right.
But place that same man in a po-
sition of trust and respor sibil.ty,
where he has nothing to do but to
faithfully and honestly manage that
which is intrusted to him, and he
cot unfrequently makes good, and
.'lkonishes his acquaintancbs with
his business Judgment and capacity.
The wrecking of railroad or two,
where thouands of small stockholders
are betrayed by its business agents
and officers, and robbed of their
holdings by some brilliant stroke of
high finance. accounts for many
colossal fortune In this land of ours.
1t is. therefore evident that if it
is right to permit one individual to
grasp all he can. by methods little
short of criminal, and to hold ex-
elusive possession and control of the
same to the exclusion Of all other
men, then it is equally just and right
that he be permitted to do with his
property as he pleases. even TO the
extent of entailing it to succeeding
generations of his posterity.
The effect upon the commonwealth.
and upon each individual member of
society. is precisely the same in the
one case as in the other.
Two hundred million dollars, NOM
inallv wrapped up in a shroud. but
in reality out of the grave. working
every day in the year, as is the es-
tate of Marshall Field, is no greater
menace to the rights and interests
of those who under the law have
no interest or ownership in it than
was the same property In the hands
of its original owner, Marshall Field.
The incurable vice in our present
industrial system and laws of prop
erty lie In the assumption that it is
normally right for one individual to
get all the property he can, without
breaking the criminal code, and to
hold his possessions during life to
the exclusion of society at large and
to the exclusion of every other indi-
vidual without regard to its effect
upon community or individual. This
assumption is based upon the unten-
able and false supposition that the
possessors of such fortunes have hon.
estly earned them-that is, that their
laboring power has produced them.
Nothing could be further from the
truth than such an assumption as
that.
Another false assumption is that
entertained by class of sleek, we'll
fed and SNUG gentlemen who seem
to see nothing wrong in the world,
and who act upon the superstition
that everything is lovely and the
goose hangs high.
Men like these sleep peacefully on
the crater of an open volcano, and
nothing in the way of acts or argu-