The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1914-01-17
The Curse of Monopoly

Almost every deep seated injustice in human
society may be traced back In the last analysis
to monopoly. Whatever form it may take, 1t
towers up in our midst an obnoxious upas
tree dropping it's fruits of mephitic poison into
every corner of the land. The genius in econom-
les who can arise to trace the qualifications of its
roots, the magnitude of its evil and can discover
a means to tear it forever from earth, will be to
politics what Newton was to astronomy.
Monopoly is based on special privilege mac
cessible to outsiders. 1t is the mother of ineffi-
cheney. It strangles productiveness 1t is the
death of individual initiative and personal effort.
It is a cord about the neck of industry, chain
about the ankles of progress
Society's greatest sins against its own men,
bers can be laid at it's door. The Roman Empire
was simply stock company Of monopohsts.
They held a corner in slaves, owned an army,
controlled the land, and thereby able to hold
up Greece, Palestine, Persia, Egypt, and Cartha-
GINA Ancient Egypt lay like dead carcass be-
meath the feet of it's priesthood because they
1nonopolized learning And splendid
money monopoly rules the roost as the federal
governments own Investigations show, simply
because it has grip credit.
The gigantic evils of monopoly are we'll illus
trated in the present plight of two of the
weathiest and most generously endowed ma
lions on the foot-stoo England and Mexico.
The Duke of Bedford recently sold fifteen
acres in the heart Of London When the land
came into the family in 1862 it's annual rent was
only $82. Today it is drawing yearly revenue
of $1,25O,OOO. The city of London created that
rise in value, but the upholstered Duke and his
family of Dukelets and Duchlings rake it into
their own private Golfers.
England's curse is it's Duke of Bedfords.
They have gotten control of the greater part of
the islands tillable soil. Much of this they have
opened up for game preserves and have cut up
much of it into small tenant farms which mis-
cradle English poems are barely able to scrape
out enough to keep their flabby bodies and their
dried up souls in vital union. Once the 'merrie''
isle boosted of 2,132,OOO workers in the soil to-
day she is reduced to 100000. Once she saw 80
men at work on every thousand acres; today she
sees but 40. Little Belgium averages 100.
The result Of this monopoly in land has been
to degrade the status of farm labor until the
present time reveals nation of agrculturists,
90 per cent of whom receive less in wages than
are paid to the inmates of the warehouses;. Bar
barsm, in short, is eating into the nwards of the
home of Henry l. and of Cromwell; barbarism
that seems for the present, in the eyes of the
present administration, to be vulnerable to moth
ing short of a most thoroughgoing State So
cialism.
Mexico is in a worse plight still but from the
Identical cause. General Terrazas, a refugee
in the United States covering in fear of the
bandit Villa, (Who made a bandit by the
very soldiers called to protect Senior Terrazas
land), "owned' two-thirds of the entire state Of
Chihuahua.
And what was true of this state is also true
of the larger part of Mexico. Most of the LAND
is owned by the monopolists and most of the in.
habitants poems.
Peonage is form of slavery. The peon owns
nothing; buys his provisions from the landlords
store; lives in the landlords house; and is
chained to the place by laws forbidding the NOV
ing of poems owing bills at the same store. He is
as much slave the black man ever was. He
is owned hand and foot by the landlord
Landlord Land-devil rather No devil coulC
possibly invent effective instrument fol
crushing out every manly quality in man. Lane
monopoly leaves its victim ignorant, fanatical
brutal and irresponsible. 1t makes barbarian
of him.
The Mexican is slave rebellion.
Land monopoly is bearing the same fruits il
Mexico that it is in England regardless of the ut
ter disparity of the "cuture' and "civilization'
in the two countries. And what monopoly is do
ing for these two powerful nations it will do any
where-yes, even in the United States!
Cincinnati's Research Bureau
Ex-mayor Hunt, whose recent term in Cncin
natl set hitherto undreamed of high STANDARD
of good city government in one of the worst gov
orned cities in the land was an ardont ady