Once more resuming our pursuit of the millionaire whom we have
dispossessed of his railroad plunder, we find the chase taking us into
town, where Confiscation will find many problems which it alone can
solve - where it will find his sixteen story building, for his hours of
plotting, and his suburban palace for his hours of ease, and the hiving
humanity between over whom he had to walk to reach either. Those palaces
on the Nob hills of these United States are the toadstools of the decay
that is going on in this Republic to-day.
The master crime of all ages was the building of those pyramids on the
Egyptian sands, for they were useless, but the whim and the slaves and
the lash of power were there, and the pyramids went up.
Let us see to it that the power of our pyramid builders is destroyed
before it gets beyond five million dollar palaces.
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When we apply the principle of Confiscation to the millionaire merchant
and turn his excess into the public treasury, it will be no more
destructive of the business of which he has had all the profits than it
was of the railroads. There will be more business done in the same line
than ever, but more will be doing it, and consequently more will share
in the profits. But if our object is to break up these fabulous
fortunes, which mean certain death to our liberties, and whose blight
has paralyzed progress and development, there should be no reason why we
should not allow the present owners to take a hand in the breaking up.
If the merchant, or other millionaire, would rather divide his millions
among his relatives (barring his wife and minors) and friends, than to
resign it over to the public treasury, let him do so. Our aim will be
attained whichever happens, which is simply to bring about a better
distribution of the wealth of this country, and we know of no way of
making this even distribution that will compare with Confiscation.
Socialism, in all its forms, means the surrendering of individual
liberty, and is a retrograde movement, and the outcome of it can be
nothing more or less than despotism of the very worst kind.
Socialism enlarges the power of one individual over another. This is
incompatible with the liberty that goes with a republic. Confiscation
says, $100,000 is enough. When you are found with more, it will be
considered as proof that you have been taking an unfair advantage of
some one, and the surplus makes you dangerous to the welfare of a
republic, and is therefore forfeited. There will be nothing more
disagreeable, so far as the right of the individual goes, in the
enforcing of this proposed law than there is in the collection of taxes
on incomes. Cutting a fortune down to the $100,000 limit may be
considered a very disagreeable thing indeed, but when we are reminded
that it is all done for the common good, we become reconciled at once,
for we feel in our heart of hearts that the altar at which we can
cheerfully make whatever sacrifices we are called upon to make, is the
altar of our brother's welfare.
The millionaire merchant will doubtless take advantage of his right to
divide his business among his relatives and friends. Naturally they
would give him the management, but the instinct to be master is strong
within us all, and this would soon break up and scatter that dangerous
accumulation. Then there would be more Market streets and Broadways.
Every dollar of business that would be taken from the one or two
principal thoroughfares, which is all that is now found in any of the
cities, would mean an increase of value in the property of the street
where this transfer business is carried on. And this increase in the
value of city property would continue on out to the city's limits; and
the limits themselves would be extended further out to find room for
habitable homes for the human beings that are supposed to live in the
tenements. There can be no question but what merchandising would spread
itself more over the cities if this limited ownership of capital was in
force; and this spreading out will give employment to all in bringing
about the change; and prosperity, such as goes with plenty of work, will
take the place of the wretched misery and want that now fill all the
soup-house infected cities of the country. There will be no impairment
in the value or need of the big "dailies" that are published in these
centres of population. They will simply be owned by more people and read
by more, and the improvement in the times being of a stable and
permanent character their circulation will be free from the rise and
fall with which they are now only to well acquainted, and the cheap-John
business into which so many have gone, in the last few years, wheedling
the ten cents and the dollars out of the child-like poor for worthless
truck, can be thrown into the waste basket with the last offer of money
for a Wall Street editorial. It is a mistake, by the way, to think we
are a nation of readers. Man is an interesting animal where-ever found,
the desire to know what he has done and is doing is strong in us all,
but even the little county paper is beyond the reach of many. The
writer, who is a common toiler like the rest, finds the moving world a
sealed book to him, for he cannot spare the needed dollar, and live. And
those editors who will fiercely rend and tear, with all the power of
their trained brains and skilled pens, at this vital need of our times
may live to see the day when they too will believe this world is round,
and that calling the original believers fools, thieves, scoundrels,
rascals, and enemies to civilization was a repetition of an old mistake.
It will be the day when they can be our guides, philosophers, and
friends without the itching palm stuck out behind. It will be the day
when we can accept, without doubt or a curl of the lip, the admonition.
from the sixteen stories of steel, because we will then know, that the
conscience of the man within is not itself all awry.
To whatever cause the existing rot is chargeable the editor, at least of
all others, had the power to stop or check it, and failure to meet this
great responsibility shows that the strut of this great personage is
assumed, and that, like the rest, his necessities have been used by the
master to bend and break him till he no longer dare call his soul his
own.
We can expect the screech of this helpless tool to fill the land as his
desperate master nags him on in the revolution that is coming.