[San Francisco Bulletin ]
Mr. Howard Crosby, of New York, in a recent article in the North American Review, has brought forward an old view of a certain dangerous class in a new light. He points out the fact that we have been for a long time in the habit of looking for national disaster from the lower strata of society—from the ignorance and vices of the masses. There can be no doubt that most of the disorders which threaten the prosperity of great cities may be traced to these classes. Mob violence always begins in the lower strata. That was strikingly true in New York, more strikingly true in Paris, and less so in San Francisco, because the evils complained of in this city were not as apparent as in those older cities. But the writer points out that it is a superficial view which ascribes all the tumults and disorders which culminate in mobs and revolutions to what is called the vicious or non-property-holding classes. It has been the fearful oppression of the rich, greedy and voluptuous, which have made the working classes mere beasts of burden, which has brought on reaction and revolution.
The coarse vice which prevails in the lowest classes can be perilous to the State at large only as it is turned into insurrectionary channels by the gross injustice of the higher classes. This coarse vice may indeed do local harm, it may generate thieves, burglars, and murderers, and it certainly will do this, but the ordinary machinery of government is sufficient to keep these developments in check. The motives which lead to the local crimes are not those which produce revolutions. They are simply personal greed or enmity. These local crimes can seldom move a multitude, or, if they do, the movement takes the shape of a temporary riot. The lowest classes are in themselves the dangerous classes only so far as this. The greater danger — the danger compared with which all this local disorder is as nothing, the danger which threatens the uprooting of society, the demolition of civil institutions, the destruction of liberty and the desolation of all—is that which comes from the rich and powerful classes in the community. What we have to fear is the encroachment of these influential elements upon the rights of the people, until, under a sense of oppression, the people, who are naturally timid and slow to act in organisation, are forced into united resistance, which necessarily (from the constitution of the masses) becomes destructive to civilisation and social well-being. Mere demagogues, even with socialistic or nihilistic ravings, are of no avail with the masses, unless a real grievance of a formidable sort supports them. Herr Most is only ludicrous in America, but in Russia he would be a firebrand to a magazine. It should be our aim, amid our liberties, to prevent our country from becoming a Russia.
The writer goes on to show that the form in which the greatest danger is now threatened is a vast money power. The vast accumulation of money by means of mines and railroads has brought into dangerous prominence a great number of unscrupulous oligarchs, who are able to trample under foot all competition and all considerations of individual honesty and all attempts at honest legislation. The men who wield this power control Legislatures and often control courts. This is done in no ostentatious way. These men have their paid servants. They are everywhere. They sometimes sit upon the benches of courts. They are elected to Legislature, and in various ways they serve the masters who have created them. Dishonesty, which in a narrow sphere would send the individual thief to the penitentiary, works no evil to men who by combinations put up or put down the stocks to the extent of millions of dollars, and in that way rob the poorer stockholders of their small accumulations.
Besides the moral desolation caused by this aggregation of wealth in a few hands, the political safety of the country is especially endangered. The making and maintaining this concentered wealth demands a system of plunder and oppression of the poorer classes and of the public generally. Prices are made, not through the natural laws of demand and supply, but by "corners" and conspiracies. Fair competition, which is the life of trade, is utterly crushed by the giant foot of this money-swollen monster. A few monopolise the entire trade of any given article, by reason of their money power, remorselessly destroying any one who dare even to glean in the field they have made their own by robbery. The word "robbery" is not a misnomer, for the money has been forced from unwilling hands by immoral, though sometimes legal, means. A widow, having the care of a family of small children, puts her money in railway stock. She is advised to do so by a director in the railway. It is the widow's all. Soon afterwards this director, and a few with him, seeing the importance of their road and its capabilities, determine to secure a controlling interest in the stock for themselves, thus both increasing their investment in a profitable concern, and at the same time obtaining a power to do what they please with the road thereafter, as occasion may demand. Accordingly, their first step is to run the stock down. This they accomplish by paying agents to go to places where the stock is owned, and, by brief articles in the local newspapers, to insinuate that the road is shaky. Every little fact against the road is exaggerated. If a dividend had been passed in order to make an important improvement, this omission of a dividend is ascribed to the road's approaching bankruptcy. By these means the public are soon led to believe that the road is financially a failure. Our poor widow holds on to her stock, until from par it drops to 25. She is then thoroughly frightened. She hears many now say, " Sell out your stock or you'll lose all. So she sells her stock and loses three-quarters of her property, which even before was only enough to keep her and hers in the ordinary comforts of life.
The writer cites the instance of a college professor getting a meagre salary, holding a mortgage of 10,000 dol., by which holding his income is eked out. He pays 2 1/2 per cent, a year personal tax on this mortgage (250 dol.), receiving as interest only 3 1/2 per cent. (350 dol.) His neighbour, with 3,000,000 or more, does not pay a cent. of personal property tax, although he is the owner of more than fifty mortgages. There have recently been a number of striking illustrations of the rebellion of powerful corporations against the Government in the refusal to pay the taxes which have been assessed against them, and generally on pleas which the private individual did not think it right or expedient to make. But for a conservative man Dr. Crosby's hints savour of the commune or something akin to it.
But this state of things cannot always continue. The sense of oppression on the part of the people at large becomes deeper and stronger. They begin to learn that their reform leaders are brought up by the money power, and that the so-called reforms are but tubs thrown to the whale. They see that only violent measures can relieve them, and a common feeling of revenge unites them. Now comes the catastrophe. At the first stroke they find themselves a power, and when men first discover their power they are reckless how they use it. They carry destruction on every side. They revel in slaughter. They waste property. They burn dwellings. They overturn all institutions. They paralyse trade. They annihilate society. The tyranny of the moneyed units has accomplished what nothing but tyranny can accomplish — the united action of a heterogeneous and naturally unorganised populace. It has raised a spirit of evil which it cannot allay. It has unchained the tiger and whetted his appetite for blood. Those must not be considered as exaggerated prophecies. History shows that we are sober in our statements. The community cannot be plundered for ever ; combinations of capitalists and legislators to rob the poor for the benefit of the rich eventually meet with counter combinations which will not confine themselves to robbery. This is human nature as well as history. The present peril of our country is exactly here. The dangerous classes among us are those who are engaged in amassing colossal fortune — the giants who tread ordinary men under their heel, and care not how much the people suffer. They are absorbed by their own greatness, lifted by their wealth out of all sympathy with the mass of mankind, and live as if the world belonged to them. The cries of want and sorrow are unheeded by them, the appeals of charity and benevolence are spurned, the demand for co-operation in works for the public weal is slighted—while all their millions are poured into the channels of their own selfishness. In monarchical countries, so long as the people can find a living they will endure the oppression ; but in a republic like ours the time of account will come sooner. Here the people will not wait until they are ruined. They have some notions of rights, and some forethought of impending evil, and they will anticipate their own crisis by making a crisis for others.
The remedy which the writer advocates is that the dangerous classes must be rendered harmless by righteous laws, righteously administered. He holds, further, that there must be a limit to individual wealth, for the safety of the people. But here again our conservative writer is approaching dangerous ground. What is the limit ? The man who has acquired a hundred millions has done it by virtue of conditions which he has helped to impose, which have made a great many poor men. But is not the danger of stripping such a man, or of limiting his wealth to a moderate sum, nearly as great as the danger of a few extremely rich and unscrupulous men who in a few years by natural decay, will disappear from the community ?
Mercury (Hobart, Tas. : 1860 - 1954), Saturday 16 June 1883, page 2
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