Various

“ If the people could realize that their hard struggle to keep body and soul together and at the same time lay by a little for old age—making life a mere battle for existence—if they could realize that this struggle is made necessary by the present systems, that prosperity is the natural right of everyone who does his share of labor, they would be more easily induced to vote against monopoly rule. Populists should endeavor to dissatisfy the people with their present condition and show them that they should be getting so much more out of life.—Missouri World. ”

“ To say nothing of its accuracy, may it not have been an unwise thing for you to claim that the black man has risen during thirty years more rapidly in the scale of civilization than the whites have risen in a thousand?
True, you confine yourself to the Italians, the Spaniards, the Russians and the South Americans, but when you say the darkest of all the colored races is superior to that great section of the white race named by you, does it not occur to you that you may create a feeling of resentment among all the whites? ”

“ On the one hand are those who believe that legislation should be dictated by the interest of the few; that the powers and the benefits of good government should be monopolized by the few; that the blessings and the opportunities of life should be the heritage of the few; that wealth and privilege and national initiative should perpetually be the legacy of the few. ”

“ It is the problem of monopoly crystallized. The evils of the trust rivet the public attention, not because they are more real than the evils of monopoly per se, but because they are more obvious. In some respects the trust, by combining certain elements of monopoly, tends to make monopoly more perfect and its operations more harmful. But it simply avails itself of monopolistic institutions—that is to say, it is built upon land, railroad or tax monopoly; it takes to itself certain privileges which society has created and which have hitherto been appropriated and exercised by individuals. ”

“ He waved it aside resolutely as a matter of small consequence. “There is also Ertaria. Shall we grant that the Princess may not be happy? Then there is one woman unhappy and a nation free. Havensea, you do not understand the stake for which we play. It is not a crown, nor a woman’s heart, but a nation’s freedom. The heel of Russia bruises the very souls of men. Russia knouts a man’s soul. Where is Poland today? It is a great game to save a nation from that curse.”
The man of granite spoke soberly. ”

“ From the Latin race, which you affect to despise. From these Italians whom you say are so inferior in development to the negro.
Italy led the modern world in almost everything which we call civilization—she is today one of the world’s most inspiring teachers, nor will her power for good be gone till the Christian religion is repudiated, the voice of music hushed, the wand of literature broken, the force of law defied, the witchery of art lost to the minds, the hearts and the souls of men. ”

“ The railroads have the power to tax the life out of any industry, out of any section, out of any city or town; with rebates and discriminations they build up the Trusts which plunder the people.
By reason of the fact that they enjoy the privilege of taxing other people, they pay no Federal taxes to support the government. Whatever they may pay in the way of tariff on material which they use in the construction of roadbeds and rolling stock, they simply charge up to expense account and levy their rates so as to make the utmost possible profit over and above what they have paid out. ”

“ That pang of anguish so familiar to us all when we think of the possibility of our loved ones suffering from want and the fear of want when we are gone never wrung the heart of that black man. Child labor as it exists under the present system was unknown to the children of the black slaves. “Over the hills to the poor-house,” when age and decrepitude had made him no longer useful, had no terrors for the black slave. ”

“ The bondholder, proud in all the security of the untaxed receiver of other people’s taxes, would see in these fields merely the industry from which he gathers tribute; it would never dawn on his mind that without the opening of those furrows and the hurrying army of children dropping corn his bond wouldn’t be worth the paper it is written on.
Yet it is literally so.
Feed the world, and it can live, work, produce and march on. Starve it, and what becomes of railroads, banks, mills, mines, notes, mortgages and bonds? ”

“ Miscreants! that they should dare to enter France! But they will pay for their folly; ah, they will pay well! I knew; I said it. ‘Wait,’ I said, when they came to us with their long faces and their stories of defeat. ‘France has slept; but she will shake herself and awake.’ Mon Dieu, yes. Why I—I who speak, my little Josephine, put a hundred to flight when I was young, with this little drum alone: that is why they call great-grandfather Monsieur Tuck-of-Drum, my dear. See, it is the sun of Austerlitz that shines on the white trees. ”

“ Yet, somehow—who can tell by what strange evolution?—working on blindly, gropingly, toilsomely, he has still contrived to press forward, until today, with a generation scarcely gone, he stands on a plane no one counted on his reaching under a hundred years. And the best of all his gains is that the most intelligent of his race have come to comprehend what true progress means, and to compare the slight space traversed by their people with the vast upward stretch reaching away in front of them. ”

“ The advance made by your race in America is the reflection of the white man’s civilization. Just that and nothing more. The negro lives in the light of the white man’s civilization and reflects a part of that light.
He imitates an example kept before his eyes; copies models never out of his sight; echoes the words the white man utters; patterns after the manners and the methods of the whites around him, and thus reflects our civilization. ”

“ The reason why all this anti-trust legislation is futile is because, having created monopoly privileges, Government has appealed to the natural instincts of all men to seek these opportunities and benefits. Such laws are attempts to give effective form to the public’s foolish anathemas against impulses shared by everybody, and are therefore as futile as the Pope’s bull against the comet. ”

“ In the city they think Fair a bit off his head because he does everything that sacred British methods decry—and grows rich at it. And in society they think him singular because he has such a childish way of telling the truth. You and I know that he makes friends in society just as he makes money in the city. No, I don’t think Fair is mad—I wish to heaven I could think so.”
Allyne was striding up and down the room by this time, and when he next reached Travers he stopped and said: “Confound it, Travers, he can’t have done anything so rum as all this melodramatic rot would make one think. ”

“ A monopoly can be induced to accept only with difficulty improved devices which under the spur of competition it would gladly avail itself of. Thus in the Post-Office, which is a monopoly, though a Government monopoly, improvements are introduced only with the greatest difficulty.
If combination can of itself effect monopoly, why are huge sums set aside by these great corporations to influence legislation? Why are contributions made to the campaign funds of the two great parties? ”

“ A high-minded, warm-hearted philanthropist, like Mr. J. G. Phelps-Stokes, of New York, acts admirably when he ministers to the poor in the slums; but his work is still more effective when he gives his thought and his work to the removal of those abuses of government which produce [Pg 498] the greater part of the miseries of those slums.
The grandest task which human intellect can set for itself today is the redemption of the government from the usurpers who have used the machinery of government to enrich themselves and to plunder their less fortunate brothers. ”

“ During the thousand years which Doctor Washington says that the Latins have done less than the negroes have done in thirty, Spain rose into world-power, dominated the European Continent, shook England’s throne to its base, broke the Turkish scimiter in the great sea-fight of Lepanto, evolved a splendid literature, reached the highest development in the Fine Arts, launched Columbus upon his voyage into unknown seas to test the suggestion of another Latin—Toscanelli—and thus took the first daring step in that marvelous chapter of Discovery whose sober facts are grander and stranger than Romance. ”

“ It gives the manufacturer a price which he could not get without the law which insures him the monopoly of the home market. All the world can compete with our laborers by sending immigrants to our shores; all the world can compete with our farmers; but nobody is allowed to compete with our manufacturers, and the result is the Trust, under which Americans combine to rob the helpless American citizen, who is not allowed to buy his food or his clothing or tools to work with from anyone except the American manufacturer. ”

“ National licensing of corporations to do business—a remedy proposed by Mr. Bryan and adopted by President Roosevelt—must also be dismissed. Obviously if the state has endowed corporations and armed them with letters of marque by authority of which they may prey upon commerce, it is the height of absurdity to ignore this feature of the question with talk about licensing them. In a very real sense they are already licensed, for it must be repeated that combinations do not create the monopoly, but merely avail themselves of the monopolistic powers created by society through acts of Government. ”

“ Why don’t the President call a halt on the corporation lobby (some of them having known offices in Washington with as many as ten clerks) who defeat men and measures. Let this be denied, but we do know that corporations fix nominating conventions where nominations are equivalent to election; especially naming those who say: “I am in the hands of my friends.”—Ohio Liberty Bell.
The Government issues money and loans it to the national banks at one-half of 1 per cent. per year. This is old party doctrine, for it has prevailed under the rule of both old parties. ”

“ In every city and town we believe that the municipality, which is a part of the state’s sovereignty, should take over to itself those public utilities which in their very nature are monopolies, and, just compensation having been paid, that these utilities should be used for the benefit of the people, to whom they belong.
We believe that the government should be supported by a system of taxation in which each citizen will pay taxes in proportion to his ability to pay. ”

“ On the other hand is the Jeffersonian idea that the human family are all alike the children of God; that the earth and all it contains was created for the benefit of this human family, and that any system of law and government which gathers into the hands of the few an unjust proportion of the common estate, to the exclusion of the vast majority, is an infamous invasion of the natural rights of man. ”

“ Absolutely the only hope of radical reform lies in a straight-out, aggressive and fearless fight upon both the old parties, which in turn have had control of the Government, and which have played into each other’s hands in forging the chains of class legislation which now bind and burden the Common People. ”

“ The negro has been absolutely unable to develop as a race when left to himself. Nowhere, at any time, has he developed a system of agriculture, or commerce, or manufactures, made headway in mining or engineering, or conceived a system of finance. Never has he produced a system of laws, institutions of state, religious organization, or worked out a political ideal. Never has he created a literature, or developed original capacity for the fine arts. ”

“ If a young man enters politics for the mere sake of getting office or personal advancement, his motives are sordid, and his life will be worth nothing to his fellow-man and nothing creditable to himself; but, if in conjunction with honorable ambition, he entertains the earnest desire to be useful to the community in which he lives by exercising his energies in political work, there is a glorious field for him.
If this combination of motives inspires you, my young friend, by all means yield to your inclination and “enter politics.”
Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pa., April 1, 1905. ”

“ We should be killed,” whined another man.
“Killed? And what then?” Laplume snorted with fierce contempt.
“Let us be killed then!” broke in Dufour, crashing his stick down on the sanded floor. “It would be worth it. A thousand times worth it! Let each village in France raise a wall of dead against the invaders!”
Bergeret nodded his foolish head again and again with emphasis. The fat man began to talk fast, volubly, excitedly, pouring torrents of abuse on the Emperor, generals, government, the enemy, waving his fat hands, shrugging his fat shoulders. ”

“ Allyne,” said Marshall deprecatingly.
“You take this rather coolly, I must say, Marshall,” remarked Fair when Travers had succeeded in pushing Allyne into a chair.
“I find coolness conducive to clear thinking,” replied Marshall.
“Well, then, I have nothing further to say. I have murdered a man. I have neither the heart nor the wish to set up a defense. Were I to clear myself by technicalities, it would become the duty of the police to try to establish the guilt of someone else. ”

“ As the Washington Post remarked some time since: “The United States has not a single voter, and does not hold elections for any office. All elections are state elections.”
Already there has been too much concentration of power in the central Government. To take away from the states their power of selecting Senators would be nothing short of revolution, and would lead to such a consolidation of power as would entirely change the form and spirit of our Government. ”

“ Their plea for laissez faire is hollow and insincere; true laissez faire would render every combination of capital innocuous for evil; there would be no mammoth aggregations of wealth in the hands of single individuals and no plethoric incomes.
The law of competition, let the Socialists prate as they will, gives only to those who earn. But from the denial of this law (of competition) flows all existing inequality in the distribution of wealth. There are, it is true, great swollen fortunes, which seem unconnected with these artificial laws of monopoly. ”

“ You know what our great Emperor wrote, “It will be sufficient for you to say, ‘I was at the battle of Austerlitz,’ to authorize the reply, ‘Behold, a brave man.’”’”
Dominique Laplume waved a hand in depreciation, as if to brush aside the praise. “A brave man? Every Frenchman is brave. It is in the blood of France. We need not be proud of what we cannot help. We have been unfortunate, yes; badly led, yes; but the men—the men——”
The door opened suddenly. The village postmaster stood again at the entrance, his eyes starting, his face lemon-colored, his lips livid under the straggling beard. ”

“ In his definition of a trust Mr. John Moody, author of the “Truth About Trusts,” says: “When men form corporate organizations, or make agreements, they do not form monopolies. They may take advantage of monopoly in one way or another, but they do not create it. The monopoly itself is a social product, which exists with the consent of society, and men in business take advantage of it where found, just as they take advantage of other factors for the purpose of achieving their ends.” ”

“ It is true that over-capitalization may conceal from the public the real extent of monopoly profits, and is for this purpose, if for no other, often resorted to. But this of itself ought to constitute no valid reason for drastic legislation. Investors ought to be left free to take their own risks, and speculative ventures ought to be left free to fix their own capitalization, for otherwise perfectly legitimate, if largely speculative, business interests may be made to suffer injuriously to the interests of the community. ”

“ The toilsome processes by which the Georgia negro has climbed from destitution to his present state of comparative prosperity deserve more than a passing glance. Do not think it was the same as if you or your neighbor, or even Mr. Riis’s European, who is to be refashioned into an American, should start today without money or lands, without friends except those destitute as yourselves. We should know where to turn, what work to take up, how to apply whatever of skill or energy or special aptitudes might exist within us. ”

“ And how charming it sounds to say we are protected from burglars, from enemies and from the horrors of trade—that is, trade with a foreigner. It must be always understood that if you could stand near the Canada or Mexico boundary and make a good bargain on the other side—say, the purchase of a horse for fifty dollars less than you could purchase him in your own country—you would inflict upon yourself and your country just so much loss. But if you buy the horse here at a price higher by fifty dollars, or over a tariff, with the fifty dollars added, you enrich both yourself and your country. ”

“ The public cannot help itself. The public is made to pay, in those freight and passenger rates, every dollar of tax which the railroads have paid to the state and Federal governments. Therefore, as in the case of the national banks and the manufacturers, we have a great class of corporations given special powers by law which are exercised at the expense of the masses of the people, and which escape all the burden of supporting the national Government by reason of the immunities and privileges which the law has made for their exclusive benefit. ”

“ It is conceivable that, under certain conditions, a mere agreement between individuals might perfect a combination clearly within the provision of the law compelling its forcible dissolution. But this is not conceivable under modern conditions where wide distribution of capital and free labor exists. Law, indeed, may create such monopolies, which it may by popular demand be called upon to destroy, undoing with one hand what it has done with the other. ”

“ If, on the other hand, the convention nominates a Gold Standard Democrat on a platform indorsing the gold standard, gold bonds and national bank currency, should the nominee be supported by those who believe the gold standard to be a conspiracy of the capitalistic classes against the producers of wealth—a crime against mankind? Who says they should?
“If to continue Mr. Cleveland’s financial policy is to declare war against the common people, what friend of the common people would be willing to enlist in such a warfare, even at the command of his party? ”

“ Therefore, the Populists, successors to the old Greenbackers, have always clung to it as an article of faith that the Federal Government should exercise its constitutional right to create a currency, and should not delegate that power to national banks or to private citizens or corporations.
The government should supply the country with a sufficient amount of national money, every dollar of which should be equal to any other; every dollar of which should be a full legal tender for all claims, public and private, and no dollar of which should be made redeemable in any other dollar. ”

“ Beyond the fact that competition has never yet been fully tried, that it has never yet been wholly free, and that such waste as it entails is inseparable from the natural process which weeds out the incompetent, the antedated and the unskilled—a process of which the waste is but incidental to the conservation—is that these combinations do not seek primarily to escape the waste of competition so much as to avail themselves of those artificial laws which prevent competition from doing its perfect work. ”

“ Would either of those independent sovereign states have accepted a place of inferiority in the Government? Assuredly not.
Then how is the indestructibility of the states guaranteed in the Constitution? By giving the state, as a state, its full power in the United States Senate, and, in a smaller degree, in the election of Chief Magistrate.
The Constitution itself was modeled by delegates chosen, not by citizens of the United States, acting as individuals composing the entire nation, but by voters acting as citizens composing distinct and independent states to which they respectively belonged. ”