Read Ebook: The Emigrant Trail by Bonner Geraldine

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Ebook has 2292 lines and 124511 words, and 46 pages

So with the Telegraph and the Telephone and Express Companies.

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 in a Tax on the Franchises enjoyed by private corporations.

We believe that the Income Tax would be the fairest of all taxes, because it would take for the support of the government, not the property of the citizen, but a portion of the income which the citizen derives from that property, or from his individual exertions, and the tax would be proportioned to the income.

That property or that salary could not be enjoyed without the protection and the advantages which flow from government, and it is eminently fair, where the government has protected me, or where it affords me such opportunities, that I can receive a large income from any source whatever, I should pay to the government, in return for its protection and its advantages, a fair share of that which I could not have made without that protection and those advantages.

Under our present system a man like John D. Rockefeller pays no more Tariff tax when he buys a hat than a doctor or lawyer or preacher pays when he buys a hat. So with the shoes, the clothes, the crockery on the table, the furniture in the house. Many a citizen whose income does not amount to ten thousand dollars per year pays fully as much Tariff tax in the purchasing of necessary articles of clothing, furniture and food as John D. Rockefeller pays, whose income is counted monthly by the millions of dollars.

The same thing is true of Carnegie, Morgan, Hill, Harriman, Gould, Cassatt, Vanderbilt. Many a farmer whose income from his farm may not do more than give his family an actual support, after the operating expenses are paid, contributes annually a greater sum in Tariff tax to the Federal Government than is paid by the fabulously wealthy beneficiaries of class legislation.

It has been said that the People's Party dodges the Tariff issue. This is not true.

One of our earliest platforms, which has been repeatedly reindorsed, declares:

This is precisely the principle announced by Thomas Jefferson, who declared that the taxes should be so laid that the luxuries of life would bear the burden of government, and that his ideal was a system in which the poor would be entirely relieved from the crushing weight of taxation.

Furthermore, we have said that legislation should not be so framed as to build up one business at the expense of another.

The Tariff wall keeps the foreigner from interfering; the railroads and the national banks supporting the Trusts make it impossible for domestic dissatisfaction to assert itself effectively.

We believe in direct Legislation--putting the power of making laws and choosing rulers back into the hands of those to whom it belongs--and the election of all officers by the people.

The people should not be made to await the pleasure of the Legislature or of Congress. They should not be kept in ignorance of what the law is until legislative acts become known through the newspapers. There should be in every case the right to initiate those laws which they want, and to veto, through the Referendum, any law which they do not like.

When an officer whom they have elected shows by any vote or act that he is not the man they took him to be, they should not have to wait till the expiration of his term to get a better man. They should have the right to recall the officer the moment he betrays his trust.

We believe in the eight-hour day for labor in Government works, in factories, workshops and mines.

We believe in the regulation of child labor in factories, workshops and mines, to the end that children of tender age shall not be made to slave out their lives in order that corporations shall have cheap labor and large dividends.

Saturn, the old fable tells us, devoured his own children: Christian civilization does the same thing.

We believe that the land, the common heritage of all the people, should not be monopolized for speculative purposes, or by alien ownership, but that legislation should be so shaped as to encourage to its full extent the right of every man born into this world to till the soil and make a living out of it.

And one of the principal reasons why we favor a graduated income tax, which increases by geometrical progression as the income increases, is that it automatically keeps the wealth of the country in a constant sort of redistribution, and acts as a check upon that excessive accumulation which is recognized by all intelligent thinkers as one of the most serious perils and intolerable evils of our present era of class legislation.

My faith was as firm in 1891 as it is today, and I had as little doubt then as I have now that Populism is just as sure to triumph as the sun is to continue to warm the world.

There is a saying that the difference between a wise man and a fool is that the wise man never makes the same mistake twice, while the fool continues to make it without limit.

It is of supreme importance that those who will act as political leaders during the next four years should think clearly in order that they may act wisely.

We have not, as yet, discovered any brighter lamp with which to guide our footsteps than that which Patrick Henry named the Lamp of Experience.

If I felt that our national leaders were about to repeat a disastrous mistake and adopt a policy which seems the continuance of the reign of class legislation and special privilege, I should be false to my own sense of duty if I did not at this early day point out that error and warn the Jeffersonians against it.

I say Jeffersonians because, after all is said and done, there are but two great differences of political thought in the United States--never have been but two; never will be but two.

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.

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.

Now, what is it that endangers the cause of the Jeffersonians?

What is it that seems to me to be so certain to insure the continuance of the rule of the few over the many?

It is the continued existence of the political alignment of the great mass of the people in two political parties, each of which, in its heart of hearts, is wedded to the rule of the few.

Neither one of these parties wants any material change in our present system of legislation or of administration.

Both of them are absolutely dominated by the same interests.

In the ranks of each of these parties are found the powerful railroad kings, the irresistible trusts, the indispensable national banks, the vastly influential insurance companies.

As a matter of fact, nearly every board of management of every predatory corporation against which the people are rising in revolt is made up half and half of Democrats and Republicans, in order that, no matter which party wins at the polls, the corporation will have influence at court.

It is so clear to me that the only possible hope for the people is to drive these two parties together while the people unite under another standard.

In vain does Judge Parker talk about the difference between his Democracy and the Republicanism of Mr. Roosevelt. During the campaign he was unable to state any difference, and there is, in fact, no difference.

Between Belmont's ideas of government and those of Mark Hanna there is not the slightest difference.

Between the Democratic corporation and the Republican corporation it is absurd to claim that there is any difference.

Between Democratic manufacturers and Republican manufacturers no human being of intelligence will expect any difference or find any.

In other words, the millionaire beneficiaries of class legislation control both of the old parties, and the battle which they wage year after year, decade after decade, is a mere sham battle. The strategy of the corporations consists in keeping the people divided in order that the corporations may rule.

Believing this to be true, I am painfully impressed with the fact that Mr. Bryan is making a huge mistake.

The pity of it is, he has already made that mistake twice, and is now making it for the third time.

What is the mistake?

It consists of the effort to get radical reform out of a party which has always been dominated and always will be dominated by conservatives. When the currency was contracted just after the Civil War and ruin brought upon so many thousands of people in this country, it took the joint action of both the old parties to do it.

When the revenue taxes were taken off railroads, manufactures, insurance companies, bank checks and express companies, soon after the close of the Civil War, it took the joint action of both the old parties to do it.

When the Income Tax was lifted from the burdened shoulders of the rich, it took the joint action of both the old parties to do it.

When Silver was struck down and the Gold Standard forced upon us, it took the joint action of both the old parties to do it.

When our National Bank System was enthroned, and that terribly unjust system was chartered to prey upon the people, it required the joint action of both the old parties to do it.

When Congress, over the protest of Thaddeus Stevens and others, obeyed the command of the Rothschilds , and declared by legislative enactment that the banks should be paid in gold while the soldier at the front should be paid in greenbacks, it required the joint action of both the old parties to do it.

There has never been a necessary act of Congress--necessary to the rule of the few, necessary to carry out the Hamiltonian ideal--that did not rest for support one foot on the Republican Party and the other on the Democratic Party.

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