I am going to rewrite something that was said by someone else. I hope you read it all and not just scroll down to see who said it and when. Why? Because it applies even more today than ever----
The Government itself is under bond to the american people, that no condition in life shall give rise to discrimination in the treatment of the people by their Government.
The citizen of our Republic in its early days rigidly insisted upon full compliance with the letter of this bond, and therefore, combinations, monopolies, and aggregations of capital were either avoided or sternly regulated and restrained. But no longer. That bond between government and it'speople had become frayed as the result of the sudden rise of a new wealthy aristocray.
We discover that the fortunes realized by our manufactuers are no longer solely the reward of sturdy industry and enlightened foresight, but that they result from the discriminating favor of the Government and are largely based on undue exactions from the masses of our people. The gulf between employers and the employed is constantly widening, and classes are rapidly forming, one comprising the very rich and powerful, while in another are found the toiling poor.
As we view the achievements of aggregated capital we discover the existence of trusts, combinations, and monopolies, while the citzen is struggling far in the rear or is trampled to death beneath AN IRON HEEL. (caps mine) Corporations which should be the carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people are fast BECOMING THE PEOPLE'S MASTERS. (caps. mine)
This flagrant injustice and this breach of faith and obligation, is not equality before the law. The existing situation is injurious to the health of our entire body politic. It stifles in those for whose benefit it is permitted all patriotic love of country, and substites in it's place selfish greed and grasping avarice.
It appears in the sordid disreguard of all but personal interets, in the refusal to abate for the benifit of others one iota of selfish advantage, and in combinations (back when this was said combinations ment mergers and acquisitions when one corporation bought dozens or hundreds of companies to control entire markets) to perpetuate such advantages through EFFORTS TO CONTROL LEGISLATION (caps mine) and improperly influence the suffrages of the people.
Our workingmen, enfranchised from all delusions and no longer frightened (the workers were orgainizating unions and getting restive) will reasonably demand through such revision steadier employment, cheaper means of living in their homes, freedom for themselves and their children from the doom of perpetual servitude, and an open door to their advancement beyond the limits of a laboring class.
(note at this time the new danger arising to America was the writings of Karl Marx and Communism. The speaker went on to say)
Communism is a hateful thing and a menace to peace and organized government, but the communism of combined wealth and capital, the out growth of overweening cupidity and selfishness, which insidiously undermines the justice and integrity of free institutions, is NOT LESS DANGEROUS (caps mine) than the communism of oppressed poverty and toil, which, exasperated by the injustice and discontent, attacks with wild disorder the citadel of rule.
END PART ONE
No comments:
Post a Comment