The mammoth hotel where the parasite of greater or lesser degree
sojourns, where the popping corks of the costly imported champagne is
heard, can still be a hotel, but the profits of its millions of
invested capital must no longer he taken away by one or two men and it
therefore must have many more owners than it has now. It, too, must go
to the people, if its millionaire owner can find no more relations to
share with and begins to suspect his "friends" of having had a hand in
bringing about the upheaval. And if the "plain" people never expect to
enjoy the material results of the inventive wit of man as they are
focused within its luxurious interior, they at least have some reason
for being satisfied when they know that the profits will stay where they
were made and help those who made them. This reference to hotels brings
to mind a corroborative fact that proves the charge we make when we say
that all these colossal fortunes are nothing more than the accumulations
of able rascality of some form or other: bilking, cornering, lobbying,
watering stock, or charging all the traffic will bear.
The Palace Hotel in San Francisco was built by a speculator and floater
of mining shares, and cost millions that he cashed in, after cleaning
out the simple minded laborer and servant girl, whom he deluded, with
all the art known to his tribe, into believing that there was still more
for their rainy day if they would only invest the little they already
had.
The law makes a felon of the rascal with the bogus gold brick, but that
clumsy worker in the field of robbery does not get the returns which the
scienced work of his brother professional brings in; therefore, when
outraged law gives this petty malefactor the knock-out blow, the satisfied
spectators, chattering about the majesty of something, depart and the
curtain is rung down on another exhibition of what the American people are
said to like - namely, humbug. Let us say in passing, that the American
does not like humbug. Take the average of him as he is found in the little
world in which the routine work of his life is done and you will find him
alert and close enough to deal with, and that in all things in which he
has his experience to rely on humbug (swindling) is practically
impossible.
But when he gets outside of that experience, then, like the experienced
traveler, he patiently submits to imposition when resistance might mean a
loss greater than the original. But even the traveler must have enough to
continue on with, and when imposition reaches that stage resistance
begins.
So it will be with the man who is said to like humbug (robbery), when he
finds humbug (slavery) closing in on him. He too will resist. He did
before
and the rightful owners gained possession, as this same man, who is said
to
like humbug, will again recover possession of what is being so stealthily
taken from him.
When outraged law is asked to administer justice to the scoundrel who
has deluded thousands into buying worthless mining shares or some such
swindling bait, the victims are told that the whole swindle has been
legitimized by the great seal of the state, and that their loss is the
profits of a business conducted by a licensed trader.
The man with the bogus gold brick goes to jail. The man with the bogus
gold mine goes free.
Why this difference when the principle in the two crimes is the same? Is
it because the millionaire swindler has, in fact, been given rights
under the law that is denied to the smaller fry? Or is it because the
larger bird of prey makes enough to go all around? Certain it is, however,
that Labor in its contests with Capital never got a decision in its favor
yet - in time to be of any service.
These wholesalers found the concubining of justice herself a necessity
to the success of their rascalities and the delays and decisions of this
harlot are but the echoes of her paramour's orders. And at no time does
the debasement of this whited sepulchre display itself more than when
the miserable and friendless criminal whose crime is, assuredly, nothing
more than the natural and to be expected outcome of the wrong and
inexcusable crime developing conditions under which he is compelled to
live, is at her altar for Justice, which She renders in ringing tones
such as are never heard when Her paramour or his hirelings are before
Her.
When Labor does finally get a decision it is as worthless to it as is
its pass-book on the gutted savings bank.
Make the millionaire an extinct species, and the above assertion will
not have logic to sustain it, and our courts will not be making terrible
"examples" of the friendless, while the thief who ruins thousands is
allowed to go free.
-
There must be a radical change made in our laws if we ever expect to
stop the sharks from preying on us. Our laws, like a hole in a fence,
makes access easy, and the endless raids will never cease until the
holes are stopped up. Constant watching, even with the light from former
experiences, will all count for nothing while those holes and breaks are
left open. The persistent work of the crew of sharpers that has the
Nicaragua canal steal in tow shows this necessity for a change in the
economic laws of the country. Duplicating the scheme by which the
Huntingtons and Oakes Ameses robbed the people they submitted their
prospectus for endorsement, and, lo, this whole coast grovels in the
dust to these new Moseses, who are to show them the way out of the
wilderness into which their original, Huntington, has led them.
The canal should be built. But the estimated cost of the whole
enterprise was $66,000,000 according to their own expert, whose report,
eight years ago, was published in "Harper's Weekly" - (published as
news, by the way, but was an advertisement, and paid for as such. And
that Julian Ralph stuff that appeared in that same weekly lately is more
of that peculiar kind of news that is being constantly ground out by the
capitalistic sharks to catch the unwary, and was paid for by Spreckels
- another Moses, that has come to the succor of our beleaguered coast.
The "Journal of Civilization" is a fit organ for the millionaire
corruptionist and the civilization that he is degrading) - and although
they have gone over the ground again and again since that report was
made, the maximum estimate is still well inside $100,000,000. Yet they
now want to issue $100,000,000 in stock; want the people to guarantee
principal and interest on $70,000,000 of bonds, and the right to issue
$30,000,000 of bonds themselves. No wonder it was called a steal on the
floor of the Senate. The public treasury will ever be the objective
point of such wholesalers until the inducement is removed. Humanity,
Honor, Patriotism, each and all are powerless before this all
conquering appetite of Individual Greed.
What can such people as they care for this people, their country and its
benign form of government? What use have such as they for a government
that denies them the title that distinguishes their kind over the sea?
Ay, what is to prevent them from using the vast power that goes with the
wealth they are absorbing day by day, and to gratify the one unsatisfied
wish of their purse-proud and selfish souls, and establish an Empire in
place of the Republic? The Republic is but a shell and their work would
be easy.
The sophistry about the inalienable right of one man to crush another
has had its day, and their hypocritical wail about civilization and this
inalienable right, when these conscienceless rascals find their race is
run, will be like the yelling of remorseless wolves that have been
trapped and kicked into the vanishing distance.