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The Commoner.
VOLUME 7, NUMBER 21
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THE LUKEWARMS AND THE KINGS
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(Juvonllo Series.)
Onco upon a tlmo thoro -was a .great nation,
'comprising many millions of people known as
tho Lukowarms, who occupied a land of great
extent, fertility and vast natural resources.
Tho Lukowarms wore very proud, and
claimed to bo tho descendants and modorn repre
sentatives of the Groat White Race, and that
thoro was, and had boon for many conturles, re
posed In their special keeping tho Groat Charter
of Llborty, granted by one King John, which
onumerated and established for all. time tho
natural liberties of the people.
Tho LukewarmB kept the Groat Charter In a
burglar proof safo, upon which was a tlmo lock
which ran for a half century, so that twice In
i ovory century tho Lukowarms wore accustomed
to open tho safo and read before tho assembled
1 multitudes tho Great Bill of Rights.
During tho first century the Lukowarms
wore ruled over by a king whoso name was
George, who lived and hold his Court on another
continent thousands of miles away from the land
of tho Lukowarms, but during this century noth
ing unusual or extraordinary happened, and the
Lukowarms greatly increased in numbers. When
tho tlmo clock on the big safe ran down at the
end of tho first century tho Lukowarms as usual
opened it and read the Great Charter, and thoro
thoyplainly road a chapter which they had long
forgotten, which said that no taxes should bo
paid by the Lukowarms unless they or their rep
resentatives consented to it.
Now, King George, for a long time, had
been collecting taxes upon tea without tho con
sont of tho Lukewarms and they were very fond
of tea and drank a great deal of it. This made
thorn very angry and they rose up in the night
and disguised as Indians, got all of the king's
tea and threw it into the ocean.
The Lukowarms then gathered together
thoir armiesraird,'made war on. King George, and
ilimo-hfB'omcors and men from tho country.
, vv They also established a new government
of their own, and declared that they should for
ever have all rights granted by tho Great Char
ter., which should never be broken. They then
replaced tho Charter of Liberty in tho safe, and
r set the tlmo lock for another fifty years.
I During the following fifty yearB the Luke-
I warms were governed by a king whoso name was..
, Virginius.
Now this king and his officers were kind
and gontle people and had no great fault, ex
cept that they very much disliked to work, and
wanted other people to labor for them In the
fields. So King Virginius brought into the
country from foreign lands largo numbers of
black men who wer? held In bondage, and com
pelled to work In the fields without pay upon
pain of being beaten with whips.
It came to pass at the end of the third
half century period when tho clock had run down
tho Lukewarms again opened the safe and took
out and read boiore the whole people the Great
Charter of Liberty. j '
And behold they there read in tho charter
as plain as day, a chapter whch said that no
freeman -shall be imprisoned or punished ex
cept by the judgment of twelve men of his own
kind upon a fair trial.
Thereupon the assembled Lukewarms were
very wroth, because they saw that millions of
black men were being hold In bondage without
any trial or verdict of. a jury and who were
free men when they were taken and brought
into the country. v
In their groat r.nger they raised armies,
and made war upon all of those who held black
men in bondage.
This war lasted five years, during which
a million soldiers on both sides lost their lives,
and the black men were released from bondage
and the Lukowarms wrote in tho charter that it
should mean that all men should forever be
free except when punished for crime.
They then returned the Great Charter, and
tho time lock was again set for fifty years.
During tho following half century the Luke
warms wore ruled over by a king whose name
was Hogall.
Now Hogall was a cruel desnot and a law
unto himself, and ho governed the Lukewarms
through an assembly called the Council of Erfs,
appointed by the king, which was composed of
two members from each province, whom he be
lieved to bo duly qualified as enterprising rail
road foremen.-Hence it was each member was
called an B. R. F. '
And it came to pass that King Hogall had
caused all of tho public roads to be called rail
roads, and had' placed iron rails upon them so
that thd wagons of tho people could hot pass
over thorn, and then ho took tho roads away
from the peoplo and claimed them as his own,
and ho charged tho Lukowarms so much to
travel or ship goods over, the roads that it took
all thoy could earn by hard work to pay
Hogall.
The king also caused tho Council of Erfs
t& pass a law called tho "commerce act" by
which all of the lands along tho seashore and
around tho navigable lakes and other waters
should be convoyed to his railroad minister,
whoso namo was Corkup, so that the people
could not build any wharves, or transport people
or freight by water, or move from the water
to tho land or from the land to tho water with
out first securing a permit from Corkup, and
to stop the people from using the rivers he
built low bridges wherever ho could do so.
King Hogall then caused the Council of
Erfs to pass another law called the "tariff act"
by which ho prohibited any of tho people from
importing goods or supplies from foreign coun
tries without paying very high taxes to the king,
and also passed another law, which was called
the "coastwise trade law" by which the peoplo
were prevented from shipping freight, or carry
ing passengers from one port to another in
Lukewarm land, in any foreign ship, or in any
other ship except thoso owned by Hogall.
By thoso laws he fenced in the Lukewarms
upon the land, and compelled them, lnbrder to
get supplies or to sell their goods, or farm pro
ducts, to use his railroads, and pay any rate
which he exacted.
Now, the Lukewarms were a very Indus
trious people, and labored from early morn, till
late at night to earn enough money to pay the
rates and tariffs fixed by the king, and. they
had little time to think about their own rights,
ind they did not, for a long time, Understand
that the Great Chatter was being in any way
violated.
How.over, during the latter part of the
fourth half century the peoplo began to mur
mur against the exactions of King Hogall, a,nd
some of them claimed that the rates and tariffs
fixed by Hogall for transportation upon the
roads was nothing more nor less than a tax
which the king had no right to ?evy, except by
consent of the people, or" their own represent
atives. ,And it came to pass that this fifty year
period began to draw to a close, but the time
lock upon the great safe had 'not run down, so
that the people could not read the Charter.
They met in a great assembly and demanded of
King Hogall that the "roads", rivers and water
front should be restored to the people, for free
navigation, and one of the elder men, speaking
for the people, stated that he reuembered when
ho was a boy to have distinctly read in the
Great Charter that it should be unlawful to
collect any taxes from tho people without their
consent, and that there was another chapter In
the charter which" stated that the property of
the people Bhould not be taken from them with
out payment being made in coin of the realm
and that there was another chapter which said
that the people should forever have tho right
to freely carry on commerce within their coun
try and with foreign countries. ' That in his
opinion all of these chapters of the Charter were
being violated and that such was tho opinion,
, of many of tho people. ' .
King Hogall then addressed the people and
stated that he would candidly state the facts in
the case and would show them that he had not
violated the Charter. He said that he knew that
the Lulcewarms were a very industrious people,
and that for decades they had accumulated prop
erty and Increased the.ir wealth at the rate of
about three per cent per- year; that he had
placed rails upon tho public roads at a cost of
about $30000 a mile, and had covered 00,000
miles with., rails which greatly facilitated the
movement of trade and commerce, and that the
total cost was six billions of dollars, which he
had borrowed from Jhe people to pay for cpn
struction. That he was well aware that a re
turn upon the investment based upon the same
rate which the whole country was earning, would
be three per cent upon six billions of dollars, or
nearly two hundred million dollars a year, and
that the rates which he charged, for all trans
portation, amounted to about two and a half
billion dollars a year, of which one billion of
dollars was net earnings, and he knew that the
people were not really earning more than one
billlonqf dollars a year outside of rises ih prop
erty values, an inflation caused by the increase
of paper money and that he calculated that the
true earnings were ;just enough to pay -the net
income of the railroads, but that he was rapidly
reinvesting in railroads the surplus earnings,
which otherwise would accumulate, and that in
that way ho would keep the money in circula
tion, would greatly improve the highways, and
facilitate tho movement of commerce, and at
the same time would fix industry upon the Luke
warms as a constitutional habit. He also stated
that ho had caused a public board to be estab-'
llshed which he had called the Interior Com-
plainers and that ho had provided by law that
if" anyperson thought that his rates or taxes
weretoo high he could complain before the .
Interior Complainers, who were then directed
to inquire into the matter in all parts of Luke- ,
warm land for three years, and at the end of
that tlmo, if they found that such person had
a ground of complaint, the matter should then
be taken into the ordinary courts and that when
ever the case was decided in one court it should
be then appealed to another court and. so on
until all the courts passed on the case, and It
should be litigated for seven years, in all parts
of the land and that at the end of that time,
if the complaining person were not dead, any
excessive rate would doubtless he reduced, pro
vided, of course, that the rates were not in the
meantime increased by Hogall through the Erfs.
He also stated that it was true that the Great
Charter provided, as he remembered it, that the
people .should not be taxed without their con
sent but that the tariffs which he had levied as
rates for transportation, were not taxes, but
were merely voluntary contributions of the peo
ple because if they did not want to ship sup
plies over the roads, or travel upon thorn, they
were not compelled to do so, and therefore the
money paid by the people was a voluntary con
tribution and not a tax.
He further stated that even K the charter
did provide that no "person's" property should
be taken without compensation, it had no application-to
the railroad tariffs, or to tho use of
public roads; that if the public roads belonged
to the, whale peoplethey did not belong to any
"person" and therefore the provision that the
property of a "person" should not be taken,
meant for any particular person and had no ap
plication to the whole people. He also ex
plained that the Charter provision that com
merce should bo free applied tfnly to the rights
of his own railroads and never did apply to the
people.
These explanatfons were satisfactory Jo
many of the assembled people, but others were
more than ever convinced that the Great Char
ter was being violated, but" inasmuch as the time
lock would not run down for some time the' peo
ple dispersed. However there was much dis
content among the Lukewarms and King Hogall -lived
in constant dread lest the people would
blow up the safe" and read the' Great Charter
and not wait for the time lock to run down.
King Hogall employed many speakers to dis
suade the people from discussing these things
among themselves and he issued a decree
through the Council of Erfs that all those Vfho
discussed or who complained of his system
Bhould be treated as agitators, and public
enemies. Castac Doil, in Pacific Monthly.
Letters From the People
D. L. Strain, Shanon City, Iowa. I was
asked the other day who was the leading spirit
in the Andrew Johnson impeachment proceed
ings and could not answer. Please give-me the
information. Thaddeus Stevens proposed the
impeachment and was chairman of the managers
for the impeachment.
C. W. Crossley, Corpus Christ!, Texas.
My only excuse for sending you the enclosed and
somewhat free translation of an article that ap
peared yesterday in the most influential German
newspaper published in San Antonio and read
yery extensively in south and southwest Texas
by the best German element, is that -you might
be interested to know that the Freie Presse,
the paper named above is a strong republican,
organ. I desire to say that if our party will
mako the tariff the issue in 1908 it will win.
"As a straw showing the Relative attitude of the
steel trust to the" government is the recent threat
made by tho vice president of the trust, Mr.
tv. ':J