The Commoner.
5
SEPTEMBER 30, 19iO , t
Thou Shalt Not Steal
Louis P. Post in The Public
"A -steel cage on wheels, cunningly wrought
by a skilled craftsman and safeguarded by locks
of the most complicated design, for the morn
ing's ride of Vinson McLean, America's $100,
000,000 baby, Is the latest and most startling
novelty which two fond parents at Bar Harbor
have adopted to protect their boy from kidnap
pers;" and "detectives, private watchmen, thirty
house servants, and fifty outside retainers are
also enlisted in protecting this child marvel
from kidnapping." That is one of the news
items with which the history of this glorious
August week begins.
The news of the week before was enlivened
with gay accounts of a bull pup passenger rid
ing from ocean to ocean in a special Pullman
car to save him the discomfort and indignity of
traveling in the baggage car, a car whose master
gets for years ot hard work less than the cost
of that bull pup's traveling expenses on that
one luxurious journey.
. Mixed with these news stories of prosperity
were news stories of a different kind. There
was the man who, gone crazy it may be from loss
of a pitifully unremunerative job and with har
rowing fears of starvation at any rate indig
nant unto death from a sense of injustice, real
enough no doubt though wrongly directed
tried to murder a mayor. There were young
girls synchronized to the motions of tireless ma
chinery, wearing out their lives at the murder
ous rate of ten hours a day. There were sui
cides caused by poverty and tear of poverty;
and crimes caused by poverty and fear of pov
erty emphasized, perhaps, by a plausible feel
ing that legality crimes are no worse in morals
than the legality privileges that breed hundred
million dollar babies and Pullman car pups.
Apologists for things as they are, may ask
with a sneer if we would have the rich give all
their wealth to the poor. It is a trick question
which no intelligent person any longer asks,
unless he is dishonest as- well as intelligent.
We would no more have the rich give all their
wealth to the poor though there is good Chris
tian authority for it, is there not? than wo
would have them give any part of it to tho poor,
as they piously and boastfully do through their
charity donations.
Those contrasts raise a quest ion, not of "di
viding up" with the poor, but of stealing from
the poor.
The over rich are thieves. It is a hard say
ing, to be sure, and we point to no person; let
every one be his own jury, like Joseph Pels.
But thieves they are, you know thieves in all
but guilty intent.
Some may have the guilty Intent, too, but
they are not worth distinguishing, for it can't
- be easily proved and it wouldn't be worth the
proving. Let us, then, acknowledge guiltless In
tent in all.
This shields them from the penalties of the
criminal law, and irritation at being regarded
as-sure enough thieves. But it can not' shield
them from the penalties of violated natural
law, which is no respecter of persons and takes
no account of Intent.
Natural law is inexorable, from the bursting
of a toy balloon to the collapse of a civilization.
You can not have hundred million dollar babies
and Pullman car pups, in the midst of suicides,
- murders, robberies, wretched wages, scant em
ployment, starving babies and factory-foundered
women, without sooner or later incurring its'
penalties. Think of the spectacle on Sinai as a
fact of history or a truth symbolized, as you
please; nevertheless you must see that you can
- not escape that elemental law of those tablets
of stone which reads: "Thou shalt not steal."
- The history of slavery in all its crude forms
goes to verify that great law (of which we make
so little when we relate it only to the larcenies
of the criminal code) and to prove its penalties
inexorable. Sanitary scientists are overwhelm
ly proving its truth now. While perfumed
seigneurs delicately lounging in some Oell-de-Boeuf
or busy capltallzers of common property,
wliere lounging seigneurs are out of date have
an alchemy of tho law whereby they may ex
tract the juices of the industry of others for
their very own, there will be slums as well as
palaces, and the slums will avenge themselves
by infecting palaces with disease and rearing
kidnappers for palace-bred babies,
Nor always, it may be, in those ways alone.
Read your Carlyle again and see.
Carlyle phrased a question and its answer for
the disinherited of every era, a question ad
dressed not alone to perfumed seigneurs of the
old regime In Franco, but as well to tho Ameri
can classes of our day among whom hundred
million dollar babies are born: "How havo yo
treatod us, how havo yo taught us, fod us and
led us, while we toiled for you? Tho answer
can be read in flames over the nightly summer
sky. Tills is tho feeding and leading wo havo
had of you: Emptiness of pocket, of stomach,
of head and of heart. Behold, thoro Is nothing
in us; nothing but what naturo gives her wild
children of tho desert: Ferocity and appetite;
strength grounded on 'hunger. Did yo mark
among your rights of man, that man was not
to dlo of starvation while 'there was bread
reaped by him? It is among tho mights of
man!"
Pray let no one be such a silly fate-defying
fool as to take for violent threats what are but
friendly warnings. Of disaster these warnings
are, indeed and of disaster inevitable, of tho
world-old kind, if tho world-old crlmo of tho
classes against tho masses bo persisted in. You
can avoid the catastrophe If you help establish
justice. But if you keep on pamporlng your own
insanely selfish desires for luxury, or your pride
of power, until you have exploited out of tho
tolling millions everything but thoso primal
faculties of the savage to which Carlyle gives
name ferocity and appetite, strength grounded
in hunger the disaster will overwhelm you,
overwhelm us all, as inevitably as effect follows
cause.
Are you blind to the menacing signs that oven
now appear? The necessity for an armored baby
carriage, and doubtless It is a necessity, is-one
of .them. Is there no fateful meaning to you In
the4 growing violence attending labor strikes,
nor in such more advanced signs as mutinies of
long trained policemen when ordered on strike
duty? Haven't you read of something like this
in stories of the French revolution? Aro you,
like tho French seigneurs, so Insane as to Imag
ine that repressive laws can control their
ferocity and appetite, their strength grounded
in hunger, once you have stripped your tollers
of all but these? You may Imprison them, you
may kill them. Aye, but not so you can kill
that which perennially raises them up in savage
revolt. This is your crime against them, and
you can kill that only by giving it up and sin
ning against them no more.
Is it not more wise, moro human, moro honest,
to do as Joseph Fels is doing acknowledge that
the overwealthy, whother they Intend to be
thieves or not, owe their wealth to economic
Institutions that defy the mandate "Thou shalt
not steal," and set about abolishing those in
stitutions by educational methods? Instead of
making war upon tho Impoverished and grow
Ingly impatient toiling class, would it not be
better, even for yourselves you of the Pull-man-car-pup
class, and you of the hundred-mlllion-dollar
baby class wouldn't it be better
for you, infinitely better for your babies, and
no worso for your pampered pups, to soften your
aristocratic or plutocratic wrath and anticipate
an otherwise Inevitable disaster by helping to
do away with its cause? The cause Is institu
tional. You may be no more to blamo for It
than are those whose earnings are your plunder.
But you are in better position than they to rid
our civilization of it.
You have only to be a little less selfish, a little
more thoughtful, a little more patriotic, a little
less pious and more religious, a little moro
courageous with tho courage called moral.
"Thou shalt not steal" neither against law
nor by authority of law.
PUBLIC OWNERSHIP IN IRELAND
It looks like public ownership In Ireland.
Tho. Springfield (Mass.) Republican says:
"It is a weighty government commission
which lias been inquiring into tho condition of
tho railroads of Ireland, and the radical con
clusions which have been reached will have un
usual force on this account. The members are
Sir Charles Scotter, chairman of the Loudon
and Southwestern railway; Lord Pirrle of tho
Harland and Wolff shipbuilding concern,
Thomas Sexton, the Irish parliamentary leader,
Colonel Poe, an eminent engineer; Sir Herbert
Jekyll of tho British board of trade, W. M.
Acworth, a leading English authority on rail
roads, and General Manager Aspinwall of the
Lancashire and Yorkshire railroad.
"This distinguished body of experts is unani
mously In favor of the consolidation into ono
concern of all the railroads of Ireland, and the
first four men mentioned, constituting a ma
jority, are unqualifiedly in favor of government
operation of the roads, through a board of four
government nominees and sixteen elected mem
bers; and of what Is the equivalent of govern
ment ownership undor a plan of leaving th
capitalization as it hi and guaranteeing a certain
rate of Interest on tho sanio. Nor docs It ap
pear that tho other members of tho commit
slon aro strongly hostllo to such a plan, Cer
tainly Mr. Acworth can not bo, for ho Is al
ready on record in npprovnl of Mexico's na
tionalism of- Its roads through a holding com
pany wherein tho government owns a majority
-of tho Block nnd controls tho boards of directors.
Mr. Acworth has contrasted tho American plan
of control with that of Mexico by saying that
tho latter country la showing tho world 'how
to do it,' whllo tho United States Is showing tho
world 'how not to do It.'
"Of particular interest to us is tho fact that
government regulation of railroads In Ireland
has gono to Just about tho longth now reached
in this country undor the recent amendments
to tho interstate commorco act. Tho Wall
Stroot Journal says on this point:
" 'In Iroland rates have been regulated by
act of parliament, exactly as some of our con
gresslonal insurgents and a largo number of
democrats want them .regulated hero. A maxi
mum rate has been fixed beyond which the rail
roads can not go, while no rate below that
maximum can bo advanced without the expres
permission of tho board of. trade. Tho conse
quence has been oxnetly tho contrary of what
Was expected. Tho Important seaport of Cork,
with all kinds of possibilities for truck farm
ing In tho area surrounding It, la securing Its
fruit, flowers and vegetables from tho Channel
Islands or Franco. Tho reason la that tho rail
road would lllco to experiment with a reduction
In rates, but dare not do ho If It can not restore
such rates as fail to stimulate now business
"This brings out tho essential weakness of
carrying rate regulation to tho point forced Into
tho American railroad act at the last eongrew
session. Beforo that railroads could advance
rates, and if found unreasonable later on by
tho government commission their reduction
could bo forced. Thus railroads could then ex
periment with lower rates, as tho New Haven m
company did in tho caso of two-cent fare for
tho whole systom. Now, however, no railroad
will caro to experiment with reduced rates for
stimulation of traffic since, if tho experiment
proves of contrary from tho expected effort, tho
old rates can not bo restorod without tho con
sont of tho commission and after long delay
under tho ton-months' suspension provision.
"Tho offect of this policy In Iroland is said
to have been tho exclusion of all enterprise from
tho management of the roads and tho driving
away of new capital. Nothing now remains to
Lo done, In tho view of a majority of tho abovo
commission, save for the government to take
over the roads and provide tho capital for need
ed extensions and improvements. This Is all
rather strikingly confirmatory of tho views of
many of our railroad presidents and others that
government regulation, carried to tho point
reached in the national act as lately amended,
will in the end bring about government owner'
ship."
MONOPOLIZING WATER POWER
Mr. Herbert ICnox Smith, tho United State
ccfmmlssloner of corporations, in the conserva
tion meeting held at St. Paul recently, called
attention to tho concentration of water power
in private hands. He said: "This process la
rapidly advancing. Eighteen concerns control
3,200,000 horse power water power today. Tho
total water power In the United States is 5,300,
000. Fifty-three men in the Central Electric
company form a group which controls eighty
public servlco corporations, moro than fifteen
railroads, six companies that use their power
in manufacturing cotton goods, and over fifty
banks and financial houses." "This," Mr. Smith
adds, "means a personal relationship that makes
further conservation possible. A few brief
conferences might at any moment concentrate
into definite form a sweeping control over the
dominant water power of the country, as well as
their related public service corporations."
This is a very strong statement. Moro than
one-half of the water power of the United Slates
now controlled by eighteen concerns, and tho
larger use of water power for tho generation
of electricity just In Its Infancy! la it strango
that the special Interests are active? Is It not
strango that tho public is not more alert than
it is? This water power that comes rushing
down the mountain Bides and can bo harnesspd
without great expense ia an asset of tremendous
value? Surely It behooves the public to see to
It that this generation shall not fetter future
generations by perpetual monopolies or even by
limited franchises of excessive duration. Now
Is the time to act.
G VJ
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