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About The Wealth makers of the world. (Lincoln, Nebraska) 1894-1896 | View Entire Issue (July 18, 1895)
V LINCOLN, NEB., THURSDAY, JULY 18, 1895. NO. 6 VOL. VII. l4 : ' k ft SO MOVES THE WORLD. "We deep and wak and Bleep, Dut all thing move; The Sun flies forward to bis brother 8nn : The dark Earth followe, wheeled In her ellipse; And human tutnus, returning on themselves. Hove onward, leading up the golden year." Peru and Bolivia are fightingmad with each other. Carpet weavers, over 1 0,000 in number, are out on a strike in Philadelphia. The operators and miners of Indiana have failed to agree on scale of wages. The employes of all the Philadelphia carpet mills are threatening to join the weavers' strike. Kansas City councilmen have so exas perated the people with gas works bood feism that they have threatened to visit them with ropes. The organization of the plate glass trust i&jibout completed. It is called the Pittsburg Plate Glass Company. The last plant to be absorbed by the trust was at Elwood.lnd., valued at $350,000. Detroit has just opened a 40 mile line of electric street railway which is to charee three cents a ride. Mayor Pin- gree acting as mortorman took the first train over the line July 8th, and was greeted enthusiastically by the people. A $20,000,000 capital coal combine bas been formed by the Alabama coal mine owners to raise prices. It is the purpose of those in the pool to extend it to include all the mines in Tennessee and Kentucky, so as to control the out put of the entire south. The millionaire club of New Tork is to build a gorgeously costly summer club house on the Hudson. It will be in the center of seventy-five acres of ground purchased at Irvington which will be fitted up something after the fashion ol Tuxedo. The Rockefellers and Goulds are in this club and prime movers. Governor Altgeld is fighting the boodle assemblymen of the Illinois legislature. He has made startling statements con cerning their corruption, saying that $5,000 was paid one member for his vote Investigation is looked for. The recent disclosures of legislative corruption in connection with certain measures during the regular session are likely to lead to the calling of an extra session of the grand jury to inquire into the subject. Result of The Conference The following is a platform adopted by the National Reform Conference at Pro hibition Park, Staten Island, July 3, as a proposed basis of union for the reform forces. Representative Prohibitionists, Populists, Socialists, and other reform ers in large numbers attended the con ference, which adopted the platform al most unanimously. It was voted to call another conference in some representa tive city between October 1 and March 1 oext. PROPOSED BA8i3 OP UNION. As a basis of a union of reform forces. "1. Resolved: That we demand Direct Legislation, the Initiative and Referen dum in national, state and local matters the Imperative Maudateand Proportion al Representation. "2. That we demand that when anv branch of legitimate business becomes a monopoly in the hands of a few against the interests of the many, that industry should be taken possession of, on just fns, Dy tne municipality, the state or nation, and administered by the peo 3. That we demand the election of udent and vice-president and D. S. t senators by direct vote o the people, and also of all civil officers as far as practicable. "4. That we demand equal suffrage without distinction of sex. "5. That as the land is the rightful heritage of the people, we demand that no tenure should hold without use and occupancy. "6. That we demand the prohibition of the liquor traffic for beverage purpo ses, and governmental control of the sale for medicinal, scientific and mechanical Uses. "7. That all money paper, gold and silver should be issued by the national government only, and made legal tender for all payments, public or private, on future contracts, and in amount adequate to the demands of business. "8. That we demand the free and un limited coinage of silver and gold at the ratio of 16 to 1." Limit Fortunes Curb covetousness. Why shouldn't this lust, the climax and total of Deca logue sins, be legally restrained as are others? Why is it ,the one privileged crime with no legislative barrier nor ban? Throughconcentrated compound-interest, hereditary fortunes, transmitted practica-ly intact, vastly more dangerous and heartless than hereditary rank, are being redoubled into tens of millions of dollars each; some into hundreds of mill ions of dollars already; and, inevitably, into thousands of millions of dollars j)kk. Boundless solecism in political economy, Gospel morality, and common eensel Yet every thinker must see that there is no possible legal corrective other than my Amendment. As the world'B only hitherto remedy for the financial cent rip (ul.has been violent revolution destroy and start again it is mathematical certainty that only a sufficiently long period of undisturbed law and order, peace and progress, is re quired to produce even trillionaires. This absorption process intensifies in the cities. Thus, in Washington, D. ft, an eleventh of the citizens uow own all the lots, hence the notorious corruption Congress besieged to subsidize real-estate, Some closer limit is indeed enough than one million dollars; but, a hundred mill ions is better than no limit at all. Limit omitting unanswerably proves secular law a traitor to man; as it is bent to rapidize and ensafe the tinanclal centri petal: thus betraying him eventually back to serfdom. AhchcoveterSj thus compelled, will, to avoid forfeiture into TJ. S. lreasury ap portion surplus among friends, and stop the infinite concentrating. The framers of the Constitution would undoubtedly have provided some like common-sense restriction, had they foreseen the need This Limiting Principle would have been the Constitution's peculiar and original glory, blessed the world with its moral and economic example, applicable to monarchies as to republics, and in the highest, justest sense, conservative. CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT. Preluding private.property-right car ried to absurd infinitude. Now approved by the veteran Lawyer, Judge and sena- tor, Lyman Trumbull. No citizen nor resident nor investor, in any or all States, Territories or District, comprising the United Stales, shall be permitted to possess, in all kinds of pro perty, an aggregate value of more than one million of dollars; which sum shall be the limit of private property in or for any individual, joint-individual, guar dian, trustee, or other form or device of private estate o wnership, or reserved for each inheritor or legatee. And whenever or whatever such private ownership or holding or reserving shall be found to exceed the limit above named, the excess shall be condemned as a public nuisance and a public peril, and be accordingly forfeited into the United States Treasury And the states, etc,, shall, each and all, enforce this amendment by necessary or penal legislation, failing which, Congress shall so j ttoree it. Paymaster Rodney, tJ. s. n. (Author of Alboin and Rosamond.) Fort McIIenry, Baltimore. The Land Question Thesample copy of Equity sent me with which I am so well pleased prompts me to write what follows on one of the im portant questions it proposes to discuss, "The land question." If I may be allow ed a friendly criticism of the arrangement of the five questions, I would put the land question first in order of importance For they who own the land own the peo ple. Land is basic to all things terres trial. All things are built and done on land. Without it nothing can be done. All reform movements to be effectual of good in promoting "equity," must be founded on the earth, otherwise they will be but castles in the air. If all men were sober and industrious, the landlord would raise his rents until a bare living was left the laborer. The most perfect monetary system that could possibly be devised would raise the value of land and the landlord would reap the benefits and prevent "equity." If transportation was reduced in cost to one-fourth what it is, the rent of land would proportionately rise to the tenant No adjustment of the tariff can benefit the landless man. With all the reforms in government, the discoveries in science and the inven tions of , labor saving machinery, the landless man has not been benefited in the way of an "equitable" distribution of wealth. How to promote the production of more wealth and distribute it "equitably" I mean to the deserving producer of wealth without infringing upon the rights of any one shall be the burden of this in quiry.' It will be conceded that what a person produces justly belongs to him as against the world. He has added his personality to it, and it belongs to him. It is his property. It is proper to him. It is equally just that what ten men equally produce belongs equally to the ten. And what one, five or ten million people equally produce belongs equally to all that produce it. There is but one thing in the world that all the people jointly and equally prod uce. That one thing is land values (not land, for it is a creation, not a pro? ductiou.) To prove the above proposi tion, take the population of any prospe rous town and multiply it by four and you get the price of an acre of land in heart of the town in dollars. The price grades down as you recede from the cen ter to the suburbs into farm land. Take the population of any state and multiply it by 500 and the product will be the aggregate value of the land in the state in dollars. Land, however fertile for vegetation. away from population is worth nothing. The most productive land in the state of Illinois ts on htate, Washington. Madi son, Adams and other streets near the center of Chicago. Land has sold there at the rateof $10,700,000 per acre. The million and a half people o( that city with the surrounding country made the Talue of land in Chicago. In speaking of laud, I mean land ex elusive of improvements. The improve ments were made by individuals, and be long to those who produce them. If the people of Chicago hud surround ing country produced the value of land in Chicago and vicinity; they should m justice and equity have the value they produced. How to equalize this value to all is our next inquiry. The value of laud is what it will rent for. A man may rent for ofle year or pay all the future rental value of it atone time and get a legal title for it in per petuity. If the people produced the annual rental value of land, exclusive of improvements, why not take that annual value by what we may call a tax, since we have a tax gathering machine ready made to order 1 will use the. term "sin gletax" for want of -a better term to express the collecting of this "economic rent ' or "unearned increment of wealth as J. S. Mill calls it. The landlord who heretofore pocketed this unearned incre ment did not produce it. Yet the land lord class, an entirely non-productive and useless class, a barnacle on the ship of state, retarding its progress, pockets fully one-third of the wealth of the civi lized world, and yet we attribute the hard times to every cause but the right one, landlordism.. The rent of land advances in price be yond everything else until it has absorb ed so much of the wealth of the world that capital and labor are unable to pro duce, and turn to fighting each other in stead of uniting against the great robber, the landlord. j . Do rents comedown in prices with other things? Not much. Vide Pullman, where the tenants only asked a reduction of rents commensurate with wages. The single tax on land values seems to be a Divine arrangement for the expense of government. The value of land and the necessities of government increase pari passu. Since the population of Ohio has doubled the price of land and the cost of government has quadrupled. If what a man produces of wealth be longs to him, what right has the state, country or municipality to take part of it away from him in proportion to his industry, sobriety and economy, especi ally when the whole state, county and municipality has a value that all pro duced? Why not take that annual value and return it to all the community who produced it in the way of public improve ments, and such things as all may en joyequal benefits from? By taxing the products of labor, such as improvements on land, and in fact any kind of wealth, industries are dis couraged. A tax on dogs makes them scarce. A tax on wealth makes it scarce and higher in price. A tax on land values makes it cheaper and more plenti ful. To tax a vacant lot the same as an adjacent improved one would induce the holder of it to improve it or abandon it to some one who would. The single tax would encourage industry. It would lower rent. It would raise wages. It would equalize opportunities. It would thereby benefit all (except land specula tors as such). It would compel invest ments in improvements; for every indivi dual controlling natural opportunities would either have to utilize land by the employment of labor or abandon it to others. It would thus provide opportu nities of work for ail wen, and secure to each the full reward of his labor. It would as a result abolish poverty, and the greed, intemperance and vice that spring from poverty and the fear of pov erty. It would return all rise in the value of land to the public treasury, where it justly belongs, instead of as at present into the hands of land specula tors. By eliminating the landlord, labor and capital would receive fully fifty per cent more than they now do. There are but three factors that enter into the produc tion of wealth, viz: land, labor and capital. Capital is denned to be laid-up wealth to produce more wealth, ana is the product of labor applied to land. Land is the prime factor, labor next in importance and capitaf a convenient auxiliary. Each should have its portion of wealth proportioned to its producti vity or importance. It is well,enough to remark that it is only on valuable land that wealth is produced. It Is not land we would tax, but land values. The pro per agent to receive the share coming to land should be the people's agent, not landlord. The people produce the value and should have it. Since the landlord now eets full one-third the wealth of the civilized world, if he was eliminated labor and capital would get all the wealth pro duced, for in a short time all would be laborers and capitalists. The landlord and other idlers would be compelled to resort to industry for a living, for free access to natural opportunities would leave no excuse for - poverty. Poverty, the progenitor of crime, would be abol ished and no provisions would be made for idlers. Under the single tax the lar- mer would reap more benefit as a laborer and capitalist than he would lose as a landlord. He would pay less taxes than he does now. To eliminate his direct tax on his stock, improvements and machin ery, and the indirect tax imposed as a tariff, he will pay very little as a land lord. He would not hold more than he could put to a good use aud large farms would be divided into smaller ones. Farmers would not be so isolated as now and would have better roads, school houses, churches, etc. lenantry would Continued on 6th page. Christian i;o-oparatlon or LaOorUom munlon The following Is, In substance, an address d llvored before "The School of the Kingdom" at Its recent summer session at Iowa College, Grin- noli, by ti e editor ol this paper. ''Your plan isevidently looked upon at chimerical, aud I would know of its practr cal side." ( So writes one who had obtained an in perfect knowledge of an organization lately formed by the writer and others at Lincoln, Nebraska, an organization named (to express truly what it is) "The Christian Corporation." Is there anything chimerical about a corporation? Evidently not. And can a Christian corporation or body have no existence except in thought? Is a Christian corporation -"vain, imag' inary, delusive?" What do professedly Christian business men answer to these interrogations? Do we have any bus! ness men who do business, either individ ually or in companies, as Christ would do it. What is the life, the animating, direct ing principle or the corporations we are all acquainted with? Is it not selfishness entirely separated from sympathy? Is it not sublimated greed, the greed of many gathered and solidified to constitute a new body, a legal person, a grasping monster that has no heart to feel or to appeal to? The stockholders of corpora tions are always clamoring for dividends and measure success by the percent they can command of the sweat of others The senatorial committee appointed to investigate has reported that the West ern Union Telegraph Company divides 60 percent a yearon its investment. The gain-seeking corporations are restrained in their exactions only by the limit of their power. They are absolutely love less and merciless. "Our roads werenot built forcharity," said Judge Hubbard, speaking for the Northwestern Railroad last year; and so much did its managers fear that a single act of uubought service might be forced from them by a thousand Industrials who were seeking work and in sorest need, that they called for the state soldiery to save them from the one act of forced helpfulness. But corporations are not peculiar in being selfish. They are simply the em bodied spirit of the commercial world. They do business on what is called "busi ness principles;" so also do individuals. Selfish or business principles are never theless diametrically opposed to Chris tion principle, to the law of sacrifice. Strange as it may seem a corporation cannot be christianized by leading into the church all its stockholders. As the churches now teach and practice, if the stockholders of a railroad corporation were all to become church members.it would not reduce transportation tariffs, or raise the pay of employes, or diminish the burden of dividends, or provide more work for the unemployed. It might in crease church aud charitable revenues somewhat, but it would give the world no example of a Christian corporation, a body of men doing business as Christ would do it. The church itself at the present day is not a Christian body, because its so-called members act as separate wholes, com peting with one another, struggling for gain one of another, doing business as others do it, by the selfish method. They do not become in any vital, organic, whole, or holy sense members one of another. They remain separated in the midst of the selfish competitive strife of the world and continue to accept as su preme wisdom what has been called "The simple rule, the good old plan. That he shall get who has the power And he shall keep who can." The church is a Sunday society, a talk ing, singing and praying society, a char itable society to some extent. The church has charge of the world's benevo lence; the devil direct) the world's busi nesson which the benevolence depends. Which explains why there is so little benevolence. With the exception of a small minority of ministers like Prof. Herron, the church does not criticise the respectable selfishuess of the every day business world. It cannot, so long as it continues to practice the same thing. Its preachers and teachers, with some excep tions, are not alive to the fact that thfs universal unrebuked selfishness, shown in the competitive struirtrle and pursuit of private property, is the rejection of God's law and Christ's example, and that out of its activities flow almost all the evils and multiplied temptations which afflict mankind. It kills love between man and man and fills the world with oppression, unsatisfied needs, unending strife and misery. The church has either lost faith in or knowledge of the law of complete sacri fice, which.contradictory as it may seem, is the law of organization and the means of divine individual life, salvation and social order. There are sacrificers, who consume all on the altar, but there are no saved people in the church or the world today. If I have been followed closely I shall be understood. Loss is not gain. Sacrifice is not salvation. Sacrifice is loss, unless it wins the heart of another. Sacrifice must unite men, must call forth like loving sacrifice and lead to economic industrial organization that each may give and receive utmost service, aud the organization! must in crease in numbers until it shall come to include all men, before there can be full salvation and beatitude for any indivi dual. We cannot be saved in this world or any world by Christ's single sacrifice; because salvation is the service and joy of many sacrificial acts. The sacrificial work that Christ in life and death began, must be continued and perfected by his disciples.. If we continue to seek our own wealth or private property as individuals or as competing families we are contin uing in selfishness, aud faith in Christ will not save us from the effects of it. We talk about surrendering all to Christ. But where is the evidence that those who profess such surrender prac tice it?. Except our giving up of all be actual, and not a mere profession, unless it shall differ from and greatly exceed the giving up commonly practiced in the churches, we can "in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven." Industrial sacrifice, the actual giving up of our pro perty, time, talents, skill and daily labor, the best and utmost that is in us, is the law of lifo, is Christ's requirement. We cannot give up our property prospect ively, in the future, and labor for Christ in imagination'. Christ's hungry ones must be fed today, not after our children and children's children have been pro vided for. His homeless ones must be now taken in and his naked clothed. His blind must bo enlightened, his sick healed and his imprisoned oues set at liberty at this, present time. Heso began to do, to save, and we must complete his work. Christ made the needs of the poor and the oppressed his own, and he waits in judgment to see what we will do for him in the persons of these, his brethren. He will not have them treated as objects of charity, or as Lazarus was treated. He will not accept passing pity of us. It is love, a brother's strong, constant, up lifting love, that they need, and that given to thera will be by him received. Note the difference between love and charity. Charity bestows old clothes and some small portion of one's surplus; love distributes equally, and will even give up its own share to the unfortunate and nn worthy. ' , We are plainly, positively, and without exception or exemption forbidden to lay up individual treasures upon earth. And the reason of this prohibition is, that if we do it our weaker brothers must suffer need and perish daily. Yet, is it not true that six days in seven we say as Cain said, "Am I my brother's keeper?" and that the brand of Cain is upon us all who remain in and a part of the selfish com petitive system? The church is looking to the clouds for Christ's appearing, And expects him by some display of power to make "new heavens and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness." But his Spirit is now here, waiting to be socially embodied that this work may be done. He must be revealed by us. Before Satan (or sel fishuess) can be bound and cast out of this world the Spirit of Christ must have a body, not a member, but a body, not a mystical body, not a lot of property divided and therefore dead members, but aliving,love-empowered industrial organ ism. We who consider ourselves the "house of Israel" and "the body of Christ" are still in our graves. We are as the dry bones of Ezekiel's vision (Eze. 37; 1-14). "We arecut off for our parts. Canng more for individual members than for the body, we have even lost our indi vidual sinews and become very dry; and we hear the question, 'Can these scat tered siuewless, breathless bones be brought together and live?' Have we lost all hope that this may be? Let us look again at the inspired des cription of the embodied Christ, "the larger Christ" that alone can save. "Foras the body is oneand hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so ilso is Christ. For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we bond or tree; and have been all made to drink in to one Spirit. For the body is not one member, but many. If the foot shall say, Because I am not the hand, I am not the body; is it therefore not of the body? And if the ear shall say, Because I am not the eye, tI am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body? If the whole body were an eye, where were the hear ing? If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling? But now hath God set the members every one of them in the body as it hath pleased Him. "And if they were all one member, where were the body? But now are they many members, yet but one body. And the eye cannot say unto the hand, 1 have no need of thee: nor again the head to the ... et, I have no need of you. Nay, much more those members of the body which seem to be more feeble are neces sary: and those members of the body which we think to be less honorable, upon these we bestow more abundant honor; and our uncomely parts have more abundantcomeliness. For our comely parts have no need: but God hath tem pered the body together, having given abundant honor to that part which lacked: that there should be no schism in the bbdy; but that the members should have the same care one for another. And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honored, all the members rejoice with it. "Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular." This is not a picture of the church to day. It is not such a body. But such a body must be born and by its perfect unity manifest the re-embodied Christ Spirit. The hand of labor and the head of capital must cease to strive. The eye must not struggle in the market place with the band, contending as to the price of service, or the terms of exchange. Christ's members may not sell their ser vices and compare eye, ear, hand and brain values, contending for gain and service one of another. Such acts are prostitution and profanation. It dis members the Christ, drives his Spirit from among us aud sacrifices his again broken body upon the altar of Mammou. The growth of selfish, corporations is fast forcing upon us the alternative of orgauizod co-ojration or slavery. But the desolations aud distress of organized war, between capital and labor, are greater than the waste of single-handed strife. Therefore we must have Chris tian corporations. The law of co-operation is not the spirit of selfishness, but the spirit of universal love and justice. Selfish co-operation is u I ways destructive and in the end self destructive. . Unselfish co-operation is individually preservative und socially up building, malting possible the most eco nomic production of wealth and the widest range of service. . "Chimerical" to co-operate Rather, let us say, it is chimerical not to co-op-erate. Pursuing and struggling with one another for gain, with which to pur chase happiness, is, in fact, the chimera which the world in all ages has gone wild over. "Two are better than one." A three fold anion is better still. And as the numbers unselfishly co-operating increase the measure o! individual benefits will increase. The family has preserved among men the idea of the world that should be, a world where love rales. In many fami lies the ideal unity of love, of sacrifice, is realized so far as it can be realized by the limited number of the home circle. And individual sacrifice in the bomecircle is sweet. But family is arrayed against family in industrial competition and commercial struggle, and this trans mutes family love into selfish motive and makes the home circle a circle of selfish ness. We endeavor to fence off a little; . fold for the family, but make, after all, only wplf dens, places where the selfish retire to enjoy the prey, and live lovingly with wife and children. God's plan, as revealed to Abraham, is to destroy all selfishness first in the fam ily, and enlarge the family in purely unselfish relations till it becomes the na tion, and make of the nation a univer sal kingdom, God's kingdom, into which shall be gathered all the nations of the earth, We have the germ unit of "the kingdom" which is to "fill the whole earth" in the single family, father, mother and children who live together unselfishly, serving one another in love. But this germ must be made to burst its shell, its selfish circle, or it will never be anything but a germ. The Divine Spirit must quicken it aud compel it to break its bonds and develop by communities into a national and universal family; or we can have no salvation from family separating selfishness, no deliverance from preseat evils, no growing kingdom of God. The individual has no right to be sel fish, as an individual. The family has no right to be selfish, as a family. The nation bas no right to be selfish, as a na tion. As members of the one family of God we are all by our infinite Father equally provided for, His equally loved children, equal inheritors of His land, mines, energies, air and sunshine, the mrth and heaven. And we are made in dividuals, each different from all others, that each may endear himself to all others by individual service. Some are stronger than others; therefore their bur dens should be heavier. Some are wiser than others; but their wisdom should be used for all. Service must not be bought and sold. Tse family into which children are born is intended to be a training school of love. The church into which the selfish should be regenerated, is properly and . must makeitself the growinircommunity nation and kingdom of perfectly united, industrially organized, unselfish families. The church must forbid family self-seeking as well as all individual selfishness. It must make its (church) members actu ally members one of another, a body whose interests in production and ex change cannot be separated or antagon ized. As the human body cannot be divided, so the Christian body cannot be a body with divided contending interests. Chimerical to love and serve one another, to co-operate instead of com pete, to be brothers instead of comba tantsl Why, only the insane and atheists n say so. Christians can never believe it- Christ made no mistakes. He was our perfect example. He did not sell his ser vices, either as a preacher, teacher, physi cian or food provider. He accumulated nothing, and left his mother in the care of his most loved and lovable disciple. His disciples with him, living under his teaching, had one purse. Doing good not getting gain, miuistering, not seek ing ministration, was his example; and it was an example for all men in all avocations and for every day of the -week. He disagreed very radically with the political economists and respectably selfish of his time and ours. But he nevertheless made clear what is ol value to all individuals, and how the wealth of nations can alone be secured. He taught the political economy which is divine, the perfected science of production and dis tribution. (Continued on 4th page.)
