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About The Conservative (Nebraska City, Neb.) 1898-1902 | View Entire Issue (July 14, 1898)
p ' v Coneervatw. Nebraska City , TlinrKtlttyitli / JJSV8. , . IMC i IKS AND Some years ago Wil- CAPITAL. liniu Graham Stunner , professor of political and social science in Yale college , published a small vol ume entitled "What Social Classes Owe to each Other. " There never has been liny volume of its size printed during . the last ten years which contains so ( much of the essence of economic truth f \ as it contains. On page 44 of the Sumner book re- H ferrod to is found the following : "A good father believes that he does syisely to oncoiirngo enterprise , produc tive skill , prudent self-denial and judi cious expenditure on the part of his son. The object is to teach the boy to accumulate - ulate capital. If , however , the boy should read many of the diatribes against 'the rich' which are afloat in our literature ; if ho should read or hear some of the current discussion about 'capital ; ' and if , with the ingenuousness of youth , he should take these produc tions at their literal sense , instead of discounting them , as lu's father does , he would bo forced to believe that he was on the path of infamy when he was earning and saving capital. It is worth while to consider which we mean or what we mean. Is it wicked to be rich ? Is it mean to be a capitalist ? If the question is one of degree only and it is right to bo rich up to a certain point and wrong to be richer , how shall we iind the point. Certainly for practical pur poses wo ought to define the point nearer than between one and five millions of dollars. * There is an old ecclesiastical prejudice in favor of the poor and against the rich. In days when men acted by ecclesiasti cal rules those prejudices produced waste of capital , and helped mightily to re- plunge Europe into barbarism. The prejudices are not yet dead but they sur vive in our society as ludicrous contra dictions and inconsistencies. One thing must bo granted to the rich : they are good-natured. Perhaps they do not rec ognize themselves , for a rich man is oven harder to define than a poor one. It is not uncommon to hoar a clergyman utter from the pulpit all the old preju dice in favor of the poor and against the rich , while asking the rich ( p do some thing for the poor ; and the rich comply without apparently having their feelings hurt at all by the comparison. We all agree that heis a good member of soci ety who works his way up from poverty to wealth , but as soon as ho has worked his way up wo begin to regard him with suspicion , as a dangerous member of so ciety. A newspaper starts the silly fal- lary that 'the rich are rich because the poor are industrious' and it is copied from one end of the country to the other as if it were a brilliant apothegm. 'Cap ital' is denounced by writers and speak ers who have never taken the trouble to iind out what capital is , and who use the word in two or three different senses in as many pages. Labor organizations are formed , not to employ combined effort for a common object , but to indulge in declamation and denunciation , and es pecially to furnish an easy living to some officers who do not want to work. People who have rejected dogmatic re ligion , and retained only a residuum of religious sentimentalism , find a special field in the discussion of the rights of the poor and the duties of the rich. We have denunciations of banks , corpora tions , and monopolies , which denuncia tions encourage only helpless rage and animosity , because they are not con trolled by any definitions or limitations , or by any distinctions between what is indispensably necessary and what is abuse , between what is established in the order of nature and what is legisla tive error. Think , for instance , of a journal which makes it its special busi ness to denounce monopolies , yet favors a protective tariff , and has not a word to say against trades-unions or patents ! Think of public teachers who say that the farmer is ruined by the cost of trans portation , when they mean that ho can not make any profits because liis farm is too far from the market , and who de nounce the railroad because it does not correct for the farmer , at the expense of its stockholders , the disadvantage which lies in the physical situation of the farm ! Think of that construction of this situa tion which attributes all the trouble to the greed of moneyed corporations ! Think of the piles of rubbish that one has read about corners , and watering stocks , and selling futures ! Undoubtedly there are , in connection with each of these things , cases of fraud , swindling , and other financial crimes ; that is to say , the greed and selfishness of men are perpetual. They put on now phases , they adjust themselves to new forms of business , and constantly de vise new methods of fraud and robbery , just as burglars devise now artifices to circumvent every now precaution of the lock-makers. The criminal law needs to bo improved to meet new forms of crime , but to denounce financial devices which are useful and legitimate becaxiso use is made of them for fraud , is ridicu lous and unworthy of the ago in which wo live. Fifty years ago good old Eng lish Tories used to denounce all joint- stock companies in the same way , and for similar reasons. All the denunciations and declama tions \ylrich have boon referred to are made in the interest of'the poor man. ' His name never ceases to echo in the halls of legislation , and he is the excuse and reason for all the acts which are passed. Ho is never forgotten in poetry , sermon or essay. His interest is invoked to defend every doubtful procedure and every questionable institution. Yet where is ho ? Who is ho ? Who ever saw him ? When did ho over got the benefit of any of the numberless efforts in his behalf ? When , rather , was his name and interest over invoked , when , upon examination , it did not plainly ap pear that somebody else was to win somebody who was far to 'smart' over to bo poor , far too lazy ever to bo rich by industry and economy ? " In view of the foregoing from Professor ser Sumner , the reader is asked to ima gine 250 citizens of Otoo county each having in the bank a thousand surplus dollars lars for which ho has no immediate use. The possession of this money finally bo- conies known to all of the 250. To gether they are the masters of a quarter of a million of dollars. Separately they are unable to establish a banker to build a needed railway to connect the Nebras ka City stock yards and packing houses with the Rock-Island railroad to the southwest of us. But , incorporating themselves as a railway company , in stead of turning their attention to the banking business ( which is vastly overdone - done in Otoo county , where money is begging to be borrowed at (5 ( per cent per annum on good farms ) , these 250 citizens become a moneyed corporation and-are competent to build the line of railroad. Prior to their combining their capital as private citizens they were gener ally regarded as superior types of self- reliant and self-denying men. All their neighbors spoke well of them and of their accumulations. But the moment their money becomes corporate capital it is assailed by small-bore politicians , demagogues , communists and walking delegates of every shade and variety. Every day newspapers in Nebraska and eructatory orators denounce capital ; and yet capital is as essential to the develop ment of Otoo countyto the upbuilding of Nebraska City and for the advancement and exaltation of the productive capabil ities of the whole commonwealth , as steam or water is to run machinery. Millionaires are singled out for special anathemas every day and yet the incom ing and settling at Nebraska City of a couple of dozen millionaries with the in tention of building up the tile works , erecting great fkmring mills , construct ing beet-sugar manufactories , building a vast glucose establishment and project ing numerous other enterprises , would bo hailed with great acclaim and satis faction by all of the intelligent members of this community. On the other hand , if we may believe their vaporings , there is another class of professional millionaire-denouncers and vilifiers , who would organize a military company for the purpose of keeping them all on the other side of the Mis souri river. These assailants of capital , these condemners of thrift , are , as a rule , not gifted with any intense desire for productive employment. As a rule , they sit at street corners and whittle and damn everybody Avho does not also whittle and condemn thrift wherever it appears. There never has boon any internation al legal tender since commerce first made its exchanges across seas and oceans. Balances between Europe and the United States are not settled by any international , legal tender money. If the commerce of the world and the in terchanges of all the nations thereof can bo conducted without a universal legal tender , why can not the business of the United States also bo conducted by a currency which shall have no legal ten der quality.