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About The Conservative (Nebraska City, Neb.) 1898-1902 | View Entire Issue (June 21, 1900)
The Conservative * A corporation is CORPORATIONS. a natural product of evolution. It is an improvement in the industrial world and bears the same relation to capital that the machine does to labor. One displaces hand labor while the other drives out the small cap italist. If the displacement of the small capitalist is in itself an evil and must be suppressed by statute , we must apply the same hostile regulation to the introduc tion and use of improved machinery. To do either would be to strike a severe blow at industrial progress. Modern business enterprise has become of such colossal magnitude that immense capital is required to successfully carry it on. This capital must be either the accumu lations of one individual or the com bined fortunes of many. As few indi viduals are possessed of sufficient private resourcesthis capital is , most generally , accumulated in corporate form. What evil can there be in this consolidation of money and enterprise as distinguished from its individual ownership and man agement ? Does it not indicate a more healthful industrial condition to have this democratic form of capital , its dis tributed possession , than to have a mon- arohial ownership of it ? Is it not better for the community to have this owner ship in the many rather than in one ? Corporations then in themselves are not an evil. They are a necessity. Their destruction would Not an Evil. be a step backward a return to primitive methods of trade. The real question involved in this trust agitation is not one of suppression but of discrimination. We should seek not to destroy the corporation or combina tion but to remove the possibility of their doing evil. A danger that is frequently pointed out in these combinations of capital , is that many of them Speculation. are organized for the purpose of speculation in stocks rather than to carry on a legitimate business. This , however , is not a danger that concerns the public generally , but is confined to those who buy stock and become a part of the combination. The way , then , to avoid the dangers of the speculative trust is to keep out of it. The failures in the last few months of trusts of this character show that they will correct themselves and perish of their own accord. Legislation is no more required to suppress this form of speculation than it is to restrain people from buying real estate at boom prices. The only real danger of trusts is that of monopoly , or the stifling of compe tition. The remedy Price Raising1. for this is quite simple. The policy of England gives us a helpful suggestion. Thomas Scanlon , of Liverpool , England , in writing about "Trusts in Great Britain" says in a pre vious issue of THE CONSERVATIVE : "That trusts exist in free trade couu- tries is undeniable , but while in the former the economy in production which results from their promotion goes to benefit the consumer in the shape of re duced prices , in the latter they are identified with high prices to the con sumers and large profits to the producers. Our American friends are just now re ceiving a short lesson in the principles of free trade. They have built up high tariff walls in the interests of high prices. If the American workingmen want high prices , by all means let them have them , but surely it is a little illogic al for them to complain when the trusts and combines have raised the prices to the limit allowed by the tariff. The 'trust' in itself is a harmless institution ; it is the tariff the element of monopoly that makes it harmful. If they want to cripple the power of the trusts they must attack them through the tariffs. " In this paragraph is contained the meat of the whole trust controversy. It is a common sense Remove the Turin1. . , , . view of the ques tion and suggests the only logical remedy , viz. , "to attack them through the tariffs. " Every price-raising and price-controlling trust in this country is protected by tariff duties and , to the ex tent of these duties , is thus enabled to arbitrarily raise prices. Congress , al ready , has ample power to remove the tariff. The constitutional amendment , proposed by Mr. Bryan and the republi cans is entirely superfluous. ° f THE BOXERS. the "boxers" in China is construed in this country as a ground for interference by the civilized nations of the world ; that they should crush the Chinese dynasty and dismem ber the empire. Because of an attack upon American missionarieswho seek to Christianize China.it is generally accept ed as a sign of moral degeneracy of sufficient enormity to justify "armed intervention" and , with the persuasive influence of rapid fire guns , to compel the unwilling heathen to worship as we would have him worship. In our Christian zeal and deep relig ious fervor we forget that , when we deny the Chinese the Reciprocity. . . . . . . right to come into our country we must grant to them the reciprocal right of denying their coun try to us. If it is right for us to pre serve our nationality by excluding people of a different national type , whose as similation is apparently hopeless , the right must be admitted , for those who are thus excluded , to preserve their national character by opposing the in vasion of their country by our people. We forget , too , that for every lawless outbreak against Americans in China , there is precedent in the attacks upon Chinese residents of our country and this at the ratio of about 20 to 1 hostile demonstration in China. But has any religious enthusiast suggested because of these anarchistic tendencies among our own people , that our country should be invaded by hostile foreign bands ? If American missionaries had not gone to the Chinese empire and sought to re place the native with the Christian re ligion , we would not now be involved in any difficulty with China nor would there be the slightest occasion for any ' warlike demonstration. Since it is plainly evident that our missionaries are persona uon grata , what is the duty of our government ? Should we have them retire or should we use our army to keep ' them in China ? Our duty from a "Christian" standpoint - j point is thus vividly portrayed by | , , , Bishop Earl Crau- S Christian Duty. ston , of the Methodist - odist church , who recently returned from j China : "It is worth any cost in money. It is worth any cost in bloodshed , if we can make the millions of Chinese true and intelligent Christians. I would cut all the red tape in the world and break all the treaties ever made to place the armies of the United States in the fore next to Great Britain. The open door must be maintained for Christianity as well as commerce. " The opinion of this prominent Metho dist divine reflects quite accurately , public opinion from the standpoint of those engaged in foreign mission work. The Bishop says , if money will not make Christians out of them we must use the shot gun. "To make them true and intelligent Christians , " he says , "it is worth any cost in bloodshed. " We are constrained to believe that the pious expounder made this statement only after being fully convinced that the army to be slaughtered would not be recruited from among the bishops. It is quite significant , too , that he was discreet enough to place the Pacific Ocean be tween himself and the irate dowager before giving publicity to his opinions. According to this new exponent of international law , this is not a secular , but a Christian A Christian Nation. . T , nation. Instead of the purpose of our government being to protect the inalienable rights , of life , liberty , and pursuit of happiness , it is to protect and propagate the Christian re ligion and to prosecute a war of ex termination upon all other religions. Although Christ taught righteousness and justice toward all men , this modern interpreter of divine will would "break all the treaties ever made to place the armies of the United States in the fore next to Great Britain. " This is the policy fanatical religious propagandists would force upon the country. They Charlemagne. . rf . - . would do as Char lemagne did. In 772 he started out to convert the Saxons to Christianity. He used the same methods our Methodist brother would now employ. It required V..T. y n - ' vttrx ; > _ ' '