The Telegraph-courier. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1888-1946, 1916-10-05
THURSDAY, OCTOBER s, 1916.
Business Aliens.

poorly clothed man with his personal
4 belongings in a pack waiting for some
sleek fellow representing the govern
ment to come around and look over his
eyes to see that he is not suffering from
communicable disease and look over
his passport to see that he is not an
anarchist slipping into the country.
Kenosha gets lot Of aliens who come
through Castle Garden, but it has lot
of other aliens whose birth place for
the most part is Delaware, New Jersey
and other states on the eastern sea-
board where men who have money
and want to earn money, go to or
ganize trade corporations
The business alien has a pretty firm
hold on Kenosha. These fellows are in
Kenosha, but not Of Kenosha and the
dollars that 90 into their Golfer never
have round trip ticket for Kenosha.
On the other hand, the money of the
business alien is almost as irrevocably
gone as that which some Of the sup
posed thrifty people send to the mail
OtubE uOuScHs nCbJ DlSAiAO1H GAtOh5
usually get more money out of COM
munity than any one else. Who are the
business aliensg Well, first of all,
there are the public service corpora
tions whose directors live in New York
or Timbucktoo and who do not care
anything for Kenosha save as Kenosha
is place in which they can earn
dividends. OF course, these corpora
tions do contribute something to the
comfort of the city, but contributing
to the comfort of the city may be
classed as the secondary cause of their
existence We have as yet to see a
public corporation which existed only
for the comfort of the people,
Then there are express companies,
chain store companies, telegraph COM
panies. All of these companies seem
to think that they are doing the city
an honor by coming in and taking the
money Of the people. They are as
much not part of Kenosha as if their
places were located on the Pacific sea-
board. These people for the most part
go into nothing that leads to the adj
vancement of the city. The men who
have charge of them are seldom found
in the ranks of the "Booster Clubs, -
the commercial organizations or any
thing else If you would suggest to
them that they buy ticket for the
booster trip they would assure you
that the matter would have to be taken
up with the head office of the company
and probably the returned answer
would be HThis company has no charity
fund, !" A lot of really excellent fell
lows have been placed in executive po-
sitions for these companies in Kenosha
and they should not be expected to go
down into their own pockets and pay
the cost of making the companies they
work for real part of Kenosha.
These companies usually do nothing
of the pioneer work of making cities
They wait about until after the city
has thrown away the swaddling clothes
and other fellows have paid the cost
of pioneering it and then they slip in,
gobble up the best store building in
the town and start to send dividends
to Newark or New York.
For the most part the taxes of these
business aliens are paid in the way of
q state license and all that the city
gets out of them comes in such an in
direct way that it would be impossible
to find out. that the companies paid
anything. If small personal taxes hap
pen to be assessed against them it is
paid only after their high priced
attorney in some other place, has
announced that there is no way of
evading the tax.
1t is not to be expected that any
thing that is said along these lines will
better conditions. For the most part
these people are callous to everything
but the movement of dividends. The
only way to get to their heart is to
cut off the dividends. Hundreds of
thousands of dollars 90 into the cof-
fers of these business aliens in Kenosha
every year and there should be some
way to pry some of it loose and get
into advancement funds in Kenosha.
The regular Kenosha business man
counts his contribution to the adj
vancement of the community as a part
Of his cost of doing business. He has
the allen as a competitor and it is
to be expected that with his acting
the parasite-taking the benefit of
every forward movement without con.
tributing anything to it--that he can
do business cheaper than the man who
believes in paying his honest debt to
the community just the same as he pays
the invoice of the wholesale merchant
from whom he buys his stock
What the state SHOULD do is to make
some way for cities to realize some
thing from the business of the aliens
in business. The city is entitled to it
even if it does cut the dividends of
the men who live in other states.