J-v viv
33G.24
D10¿m
The Conquering
March of Capital.
(seventh papbe.)
•
MAN versas MAMMON,
by
PERCY DANIELS,
Ex-Lieutenant Gtî^rnor of Kansas.
WITH PETITION TO AND ACTION OF THE KANSAS
LEGISLATURE.
Copyrighted (from section titles 4 to 12, 15 to 30,
and 33 to 37), 1897.
CONTENTS.
Sectiou No. 1.—Petition. 2—A Prosperous Coun¬
try. 3—A Hostile Flag Sighted. 4—Public
Sentiment and the Common Thief. 5—The
Great Pipe-line. 6—Work of the Despoiler.
7—A Conflict Begun. 8—Legislative Delin¬
quency. 9—Anarchy as a Readjuster. 10—A
Vain Hope. 11—A Flank Move Needed. 12—
A Patient People. 13—Some Readjustment In¬
evitable. 14—Will it be Orderly or Violent?
15—Charity and Labor's Ultimatum. 16—Two
Pictures. 17—Protests and Protests. 18—In
Hostile Array. 19—A Lost Prerogative. 20—
"The Repealed Taxes on Wealth." 21—La¬
bor's Greatest Burden. 22—A Coming Awaken-
ing. 23—Repudiators, Traitors, and Anarch¬
ists. 24—^An Invitation to Exiled Justice.
25—Who will Object? 26—Voices from the
Past. 27—Kansas Should Again Light the
Beacon Fires. 28—Has She the Nerve of '57?
29—Are We Ready? 30— Then "Fall In." 31—
Senate Concurrent Resolution No-. 23. 32—
Resolutions Adopted hy the Kansas Senate
February 27, and by the House March 2, 1897.
33—Shall We Have a New Crusade? 34—Sig¬
nals from the Kansas State House, 35—Where
to Strike is the Message it Bears. 36—Work
for the Idle, the Key. 37—Let Mammon Pay
the Bill. 38—Labor's Jubilee. 39—If not as
Purifying as the Sword, Still Good Enough for
Us. 40—The Consistency of Change.
MAN versus MAMMON.
An Appeal from the U. S. Supreme Court
decision in the Income Tax cases, with a plea
for conferring on Congress full power to tax
Inordinate Wealth as equity demands.
QUESTION AT ISSUE.
Shall the right and power of Congress to
tax the luxury of Inordinate Wealth be re¬
stored and increased, that the first principle
in all equitable taxation, that of ability to
pay, may be revived f
I. PETITION.
To the Honorable Legislature of the State of
Kansas:
The undersigned would respectfully rep¬
resent to your Honorable Body that perplex¬
ing questions and serious dangers are men¬
acing our long-cherished Kepublican Insti¬
tutions.
That the equal privileges and opportuni¬
ties guaranteed by our fundamental law to
all law-abiding citizens, and which are a
part of the consideration in the contract be¬
tween them and the government, are not
within the reach of a majority of our people.
That the two most essential of these guar¬
antees which havg been annulled through
4 Conqucrinf/ Mardi of ('(i¡)it<i1.
sins of omission and of commission on the
part of the general government are:
First: An opportunity to earn or produce
a living. The Divine command, 'Tn the
sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread,"
does not simply carry the order to work: it
carries with it the privilege, the oppor¬
tunity, the right, to do this; and he who de¬
nies it is preaching the doctrine of damna¬
tion as an amendment to the plan of salva¬
tion. Every human being who comes into
this world is entitled to the opportunity and
a place to work to procure the necessaries
of life; and in this era when the aggregate
hours of labor necessary to supply all rea¬
sonable wants, and some unreasonable ones,
of the total population, are not over three-
fourths as much per capita as a hundred
years ago, all who are industrious and fru¬
gal are entitled to some of its comforts.
The first purpose of Republican govern¬
ments is to protect them in the enjoyment
of that right.
There are millions in want, and hundreds
of thousands on the verge of starvation in
this country, because government, while
forcing them to obey both its letter and
spirit, has failed on its part to keep its con¬
tract:
Second: The opportunity to hold—to re¬
tain and enjoy—enough of the fruits of their
labor and the product of their toil to keep
them from want and from the bondage of
charity in their declining years.
Because our government has broken its
promises to its most loyal and useful class of
citizens, tens of millions of them have lost
most of that which they had laid by for
this purpose; and they are now being plun¬
dered of the pittance which they have left,
at the rate of over three million dollars a
day.
That, while aggregate statistics indicate
a season of unparalled prosperity during the
last quarter of a century, their details tell a
story of appalling injustice. The widening
gulf between the rich and the poor which
Man versus Mammon.
5
these figures show, and which the depres¬
sion, the mutterings, the discontent and the
uncertainty—evidences which are seen,
heard and felt by all, except a very few—
also reveal and affirm, is because govern¬
ment has assumed the authority to break
its pledges and cancel its contract with the
brawn and sinew of the country; and has
remunerated, with constantly increasing
compensation and rewards, the cunning
sharpers and crafty rogues who have lured
it into its treacherous course, while keep¬
ing a confiding and patient people deluded
by the specious arguments or placated by
the hypocritical promises of their valets, on
whom the people have showered honors
without stint, and to whom they have given
official power without question.
That not only these circumstances, con¬
ditions, facts and events point to a coming
readjustment of life's opportunities and
economic conditions, but the deliberate
judgment of many of our conservative and
honored statesmen concede this is essential
to national perpetuity, while others assert
that under any contingencies it is inev¬
itable.
Your petitioners believe both proposi¬
tions to be true; that it is both essential to
the maintenance of the Republic, and that it
is inevitable. But we believe an orderly,
peaceful and constitutional readjustment to
be within the limits of wise statesmanship;
and that thereby the rights of the indi¬
vidual to equal opportunities may be re¬
vived, and assured; that the rights of all to
a chance to earn or produce the necessaries
of life may be restored, and that such re¬
strictions may be put upon the operations
of the forces of avarice and ambition, as will
protect our institutions from their usurpa¬
tions, and the laboring millions from their
plundering schemes, and lawless exactions.
And we therefore most respectfully re¬
quest you, to whose judgment and wisdom
we have voluntarily confided our interests.
6
Conquering March of Capital.
to drop your routine work long enough to
consider and act on the accompanying pre¬
amble and resolutions.
PERCY DANIELS, ex-Lieut. Governor.
FRANK DOSTER, Chief Justice Sup. Ct.
S. H. ALLEN, Associate Justice Sup. Ct.
DAVID OVERMYER, Democratic Leader.
W. H. MORRIS, State Auditor.
G. C. CLEMENS, Supreme Court Reporter.
J. W. LEEDY, Governor.
WM. STRYKER, Supt. Public Instruction.
A. M. HARVEY, Lieut. Governor.
H. S. LANDIS, Warden of Penitentiary.
JAMES SHEARER, ex-State Senator.
THE .\DVOCATE, by J. W. Morphy, Mgr.
JNO. H. MAHAN, District Judge.
W. M. CAMPBELL, Railroad Commiss'r.
JNO. MARTIN, ex-U. S. Senator.
L. C. BOYLE, Attorney-Generai.
D. H. HEFFLEBOWER, State Treasurer.
ED. S. WATERBURY, ex-County Atfy.
W. E. BUSH, Secretary of State.
W. P. DILLARD, Railroad Commissioner.
J. D. BOTKIN, Congressman elect.
W. D. VINCENT, Congressman elect.
JERRY SIMPSON, Congressman elect.
IL A PROSPEROUS COUNTRY.
Thirty years ago we were enjoying the
prosperity and content—the privileges and
opportunities—which are the ever-present
and inevitable blessings of Kepublican In¬
stitutions justly administered.
A mighty rebellion, that for four years
had seriously threatened the life of the Na¬
tion, had been wiped out two years before.
A million veteran soldiers, fresh from fields
of carnage and triumph, had been mustered
out, to take up anew the threads of peaceful
pursuits, which an instinctive patriotism
impelled thern to break in the hour of their
country's peril ; and the germs of a renewed
and appreciative loyalty were fast spread¬
ing their beneficent influence among the sol¬
diers of the "Lost Cause."
Man versus Mammon.
7
III. A HOSTILE FLAG SIGHTED.
During the years since then a cunning
and treacherous foe has been sucking the
life-blood and gnawing at the vitals of the
Republic. Beginning under a mask of pat¬
riotism in a quiet way, with plausible-words
on its tongue and a perfidious purpose in
its heart, it has grown bolder and bolder as
one success after another has crowned its
cunning schemes, until, looking back over a
record of brutal, of villainous knavery and
unprecedented corruption—a record of
schemes of plunder unparalleled in history—
it^ stands iu the citadel of Supreme Bower
with the courts aud the leeislatures at its
feet: while the plundered people, dazed and
in confusion, are either groping in the dark
for a chance for relief from its barbarous
oppressions, or are sending emissaries to
the citadel, asking for guides to show them
the surest way to escape from its tyranny.
This Tyrant is the money power—com¬
bined and concentrated capital—which has
been freed from righteous penalties for its
crimes, by the courts it has bought and tlie
priests it has pensioned; and gradually
usurping the powers of a Sovereign, has
been crowned as a monarch and vested with
with the authority of an absolute Dictator;
which authority it now exercises with the
greed of a Midas and the malignity of a
Nero. So instead of realizing the natural
blessings of peace, virtue and industry,
which are the free promise of our heritage,
we are living amid the mutterings of a right¬
eous and ominous discontent, and in the
shadows of a tottering republic.
Asa result of the schemes of these brig¬
ands of civilization, less than one-half of
one per cent, of our people (or 2 per cent, of
the families) have acquired possession of
!).j per cent, of the total property of the Na¬
tion. These fabulous fortunes that repre¬
sent the labor of so many men have mostly
been piled up by unholy means; and they are
held because we as a people are condoning
8
Conquering March of Capital.
the crimes; while our apathy has made of the
Nation a particeps criminis.
IV. PUBLIC SENTIMENT AND THE COM-
■ MON THIEF.
"If a horse thief or a safe cracker was known to
be lurking in the neighborhood seeking an oppor¬
tunity to ply his vocation, ofldcers would expend
the value of a horse or a safe if necessary, to pre¬
vent his operations or catch the little miscreant,
for the purpose of showing their efficiency. Pub¬
lic sentiment is brave enough to require the en¬
forcement of law against the ragged and hungry
pilferer, but not against our spangled and daz¬
zling pirates. Individual sentiment favors the en¬
forcement of the law against both classes of
criminals, but public, sentiment, that teaches the
officer what law to enforce and what to ignore,
cowers before the frown of these petted pirates,
and cries for the release of Barabbas."
V. THE GREAT PIPE LINE.
"So in open violation of law, these leeches
have been permitted to prosecute their designs and
protected in perfecting their appliances for plun¬
dering the masses, until they have practically got
a pipe line laid and in operation, from every
grainery and feed lot in the West; from every
cotton field, rice swamp, and truck patch in the
South; from every forge and bench and case and
block. North or South—a pipe line through local
trade centers to the great commercial marts, that
carries all the profits, and often more, of our in¬
dustrial and producing classes to the coffers of the
great speculators and bond manipulators and
usurers and plunderers who own the lines. And
gliding along through this dank and sinuous way,
is a current that never turns—a tide that never
ebbs—^fiowing without cessation and with con¬
stantly increasing volume, always and ever pour¬
ing its stream of spoils into the coffers and vaults
and warehouses of the great pirate chiefs."—From
"Cutting the Gordian Knot."
VI. WORK OF THE DESPOILER.
In the past 25 years a great change has
come over our people. In these years the
prosperity and content of those days have
gradually wasted away. Our people have
watched, first with a querelous look, and
then with a frowning face, a gaunt specter
cross the thresholds of their cottage homes,
and they have seen the despoiler stalk out
Man versus Mammon.
9
undisturbed, leaving to those he found in
homes of reasonable affluence, life's mejLger
comforts. To those who were contented in
the possession of the comforts of life, he
left but its hand-to-mouth necessaries; and
a million homes he found filled with the
amplest necessaries he has blotted out, and
pitilessly turned the sorrowing inmates into
the highways to beg or starve or pass "over
the hill to the poor-house." At the massive
doorway of the palace only, does his foot¬
step falter and his form recede. And there
this specter robber has left the plunder-
seized from all the rest.
By the processes that have plundered the
masses, the occupant of the palace has been
raised to a position where state and national
legislatures hasten to do his bidding, and
his demands are ever the same. He has
heen enabled to bring the channels of com¬
merce to serve his idolatrous and single pur¬
pose, and their current is stayed or a flood
turned loose as the calls of his service re¬
quire. And lastly, the supplies of a for¬
bearing people have been made the servant
of his boundless greed.
VII. A CONFLICT BEGUN.
We grumble at the impositions of these
men, but we have not refùsed to answer
their demands; and so this process of rob¬
bery has been permitted to grow until the
condition of all labor in the country has be¬
come a critical one. While a conflict is
already begun, it is confined as yet to de¬
bate; but it is begun nevertheless. The
sooner we realize this fact the better.
Every day brings new evidence of the pur¬
pose and inhumanity of the aggressor party;
while daily transactions show the increasing
want and decreasing patience of their vie
tims.
Our legislators say man ought to have an
equal chance, and the government is willing
to give them that; but the assertion
amounts to nothing in the face of the facts.
Barty conventions say certain things ougKt
10 Conquerinfi March of Capital.
not to be, but they continue; and they con¬
tinue because the strongest among the in¬
fluences and forces which control party
policy, want them continued; and because
those who control government action are
reaping the harvest of their continuance.
VIII. LEGISLATIVE DELINQUENCY.
Legislation in some cases, and a lack of
it in others, which has enabled the capital¬
ists to rob the industrial classes of at least
20,000 million dollars in the last ten years,
has for nearly a quarter of a century been
the main factor in making the rich richer
and the poor poorer.
The condition and prospects of the coun¬
try to-day—the depression in business, the
destroyed confidence, the discontent among
laborers, the low wages and idle millions,
the suffering and want among the poor, the
arrogance and selfishness of the rich, the
drifting away from the "green pastures" of
a prosperous and contented people, and cut¬
ting the cables of moral restraint—all of
them penalties which we as a people are
bearing—are the natural and inevitable re¬
sults.
IX. ANARCHY AS A READJUSTER.
There is but one way to compensate a
plundered people for their loss, when the
spoil is in sight and the culprit at bay. It
is to resort to such measures as will restore
to the victims their own. Violence cannot
accomplish it. Anarchy as a readjustee, or
a servant of Justice is a mockery, serving
the oppressed to betray them. Justice is
neither dead nor sleeping, but only ban¬
ished. In seasons of anarchy and during
the triumph of its despotic precursor, she
plays the part of exile. There is a better
way out of our trouble. It is the straight
and narrow way. It is the only just way—
the only peaceful way. That is through a
process of taxation that will relieve the
masses of a part of their public burdens.
Man versus Mammon. 11
and collect annually from those holding the
bulk of this plunder, more than it is pos¬
sible for them to realize from the use of it;
and to diffuse it by goyernment expendi¬
ture on public works; collecting enough to
employ all idle labor at good wages; and
the pensions should also be paid from the
same fund.
X. A VAIN HOPE.
Anarchists are in control and possession
of the Nation to-day, and Justice is an exile.
They are not the anarchists from the ranks
of the discontented, the plundered, the op¬
pressed and downtrodden, but the organ¬
ized and plundering brigands of law-defying
capital.
The masses want a peaceful solution of
the troubles. They have watched their
wealth pouring into the plunderer's pockets,
with only verbal protest, until the aggre¬
gate has gone beyond the 40,000 million
mark, and forty times as many as there are
of the beneficiaries of the process (forty
times 130,000) are already in want; but
they still cling to the hope that organized
greed will soon either relent, forget its cun¬
ning, surrender its prestige, or vacate its
position to appease or pacify a divided
people. Vain hope! It will never be.
Nothing will appease its appetite for spoils.
Nothing will arrest its conquering march
or stop the desolation in its trail but su¬
perior force.
XI. A FLANK MOVE NEEDED.
The capitalist, having forced labor to
work under a system of competition, should
not complain if the laborer decides to fiank
him out of his stronghold by combination
and co-operation in the political arena.
This a (Iraduated Property Tax will do;
and it will do more. It will cut off his sup¬
plies. It will flood his magazine and mire
his trains. It will prevent his retreat. It
will knock his defensive works about his
ears. It will upset his batteries and spike
his guns. It will tap the "l>arrels" of the
12 Conquering March of Capital.
multi-millionaires as deftly as they have
fliled them, and with a spirit of charity,
humanity and philanthrophy which they
have never shown in their schemes to rob
the masses. And it will also wipe out their
elaborate system of oo-operation, and send
them, as fellow-travelers, hand in hand with
labor, down the pleasant highway of compe¬
tition, that offers to all capital and all labor,
an apportunity to find a job and a chance
to help make the world better.
XII. A PATIENT PEOPLE.
Until about eight or ten years ago the
plundered people, not realizing the iniquity
of the methods or the responsibility for
their origin and enactment, by which they
were being despoiled, bore their misfor¬
tunes with patience and fortitude. "They
felt the stings of poverty without a murmur
and saw the insolence of wealth without a
sigh." Since then investigation and edu
cation have located the cause and uncov¬
ered the responsibility for their troubles.
Eight years ago Thos. G. Shearman, after
a long investigation to find out who owned
the Nation's wealth, said that 250,000 peo¬
ple at that time owned the most of it; but
under the conditions then existing, in thirty
.years 50,000 people would practically own
the whole of it. But the policies and proc¬
esses that were then in operation have so
increased their facilities and extended their
operations, that at present 130,000 people
are thought to be the possessors of 88 per
cent, of the 74,000 million dollars of the
country's wealth; and calculations based
on available testimony showing the rate of
growth, during the last seven years, of the
fifty largest individual fortunes, (in the ag¬
gregate) to have been 7 per cent, per year
—the dividends on various trust stocks—^
the profits of manufactories as indicated
both by the census reports and by annual
statements, and the impoverishment of the
industrial classes by shrinkage in values,
bv low prices of products and by idleness
Man versus Mammon.
13
—calculations based on these evidences in-
dictate that the 25,000 individuals Avho had
50 per cent, of it in 1890 now have over 63
per cent. Had Mr. Sherman figured on the
enlarged opportunities and increasing
power of such vast accumulations—on the
widening swath and increasing weight of
a snow-ball rolling down a steep incline—
he would have divided his thirty years by
1 wo.
It is the plunder of the masses by the
possessor of inordinate wealth, and by
methods as cunning and lawless as ever
rewarded the corsairs and pirates of 200
years ago, that have brought the conditions
which are indigenous in Despotisms, and
exotic in a Republic. Their existence with
us is not simply a blotch, it is a dangerous
disease. Its festers and eruptions and
sjireading rottenness,are what havebrought
protests and cautions and warnings from
many public men, including several noted
doctors of divinity. Some of these cautions
have been incited by a fear of the result.
Others, and especially those of such men
as cx-Governor Francis, of Missouri, the
venerable Doctor Holland, of Massachu¬
setts (deceased), Governor Pingree, of Mich¬
igan, and Col. W. A. Phillips, a Kansas con¬
gressman (deceased), were inspired by pa¬
triotism and a love of justice.
XIII. SOME READJUSTMENT INEVITABLE.
The evidence of these men and a hundred
others I might name only indicates the
growth of a conviction that some method
of readjustment of life's privileges and op¬
portunities, and of economic conditions is
inevitable in this country.
The time has come when labor, which in¬
cludes all industrial and producing classes,
must turn on its oppressors and take the
aggressive, or supinely submit to the galling
chains of a permanent bondage.
The dictatorial control of every channel
of commerce, and every throb of human en¬
deavor, by capital in support of its own
greedy and ghoulish ambitions, has become
14
Conquering March of Capital.
so complete and barbaric, and so well de
fended by official sympathy—by legislative
devices—and by judicial entrenchments,
that the only escape for American laborers
from serfdom, is for them to take the ag¬
gressive, and take it now.
There is not a new mechanism of in¬
dustry started—not a labo-r-saving device
perfected—not two blades of grass made to
grow where but one grew before, that does
not bestow greater privileges on capital
and reduce labor's opportunity and reward.
The more the total hours of labor required
to supply human needs are reduced, the
harder the struggle of those who carry the
burden; and their dividend from the ap¬
plication of American genius to God's
philosophy, is more rags and less rations.
These things are not a relic of mediaeval
barbarism. They are the barbarism of mod¬
ern civilizations, pure and simple. They have
been devised and are enforced for the pur¬
pose of enabling the classes to rule the
masses; but before the latter consent to an
unconditional surrender, a new test of the
value of our institutions will be required.
We will have to show that our boastings
have not been vain words.
We boast of our liberty, but we boast of
what we have lost.
We boast of the justice of our laws. If
our laws are just, their application is
tyranny.
We boast of our care for the laborer. It
is the interest that feeds him to bleed him.
The nefarious income tax decision is a
sample of our interest in our laborers.
A readjustment that will carry relief to the
common people and justice to the oppressed
is coming. The evidence that the masses of
the people (the 70,000,000) have lost over
0,000 million dollars of their capital in the
last seven years, while the classes (the 130,-
000) have increased their accumulations over
15,000 million dollars in the same time, is
conclusive proof of this impending re-
adjnstment. The vast piles of the Nation's
Man versus Mammon. 15
treasures stored in the securities and piled
in the vaults of the few, represent the effort
and savings of the multitude. They are
the booty of a thousand forays of the
pirate chiefs. The processes that are sup¬
porting this spoliation are going to be
stopped. In the name of the "Great Je¬
hovah and the Colonial Congress," if other
authorities fail, some of this plunder will be
replevined. These ill-gotten piles of capital
will be attacked either by the leveling forces
of disorder, or by the mild and peaceful
process of readjustment by taxation. One
or the other of these is just as inevitable
as the freaks of the North Wind; or the tire¬
less surge of the waves at Point Judith.
To-day we have the opportunity to adopt
and enact the peaceable process. To-mor¬
row that chance will be gone. Then the
deluge.
A readjustment is coming. Fear it, de¬
plore it or welcome it as we may, it is in¬
evitable. Increasing turbulence and dis¬
order are but the harvest from increasing
injustice and suffering. Philosophers who
are delving among the cobwebs of the past,
can see it; and those who are building
castles for the future, will, if they are wise,
include in their calculations this inevitable
readjustment of opportunities, of con¬
ditions, of burdens and blessings, unless
they are willing to admit a race degeneracy
which they share.
XIV. WILL IT BE ORDERLY OR VIOLENT?
This process will be orderly or violent, as
the energy and temper of the contending
forces are wisely guided and restrained by
the arbitration of law ; or stupidly permitted
to waste their force and consume their sub¬
stance in hostile efforts to control or to
crush each other.
The former will sow broadcast the seeds
of perennial peace and content, and
"plenty" for all. And in the trail of the lat¬
ter, there is certain to be bitterness and sad¬
ness and woe and want, with possibly the
16 Conquering March of Capital.
debris of a pestilence and a famine—a hur¬
ricane and an earthquake combined.
The peaceable readjustment through the
channels of taxation, would offer to every
oppressed citizen and family within our bor¬
ders, a visible and tangible opportunity for
relief. Cutting the fuse in the plutocrat's
shrapnel, it will tender the laborer a chance
to earn and enjoy a home of his own, and to
rest in the shade of his own vine and fig tree.
The growing prominence of these ques¬
tions is not a product of the recent cam¬
paign, any more than was "Free Silver" its
vital issue. It is a result of the success of
the schemes of the brigands of our civiliza¬
tion, supported by the deliberate failure of
courts and legislatures to "serve either their
God or country with half the zeal they 've
served" their tawdry king.
XV. CHARITY AND LABOR'S ULTIMATUM.
But the day may be nearer than we or
the solicitous divines imagine, nearer than
the apathetic spectators or Ñero and the
revelers apprehend, when the serving, sor¬
rowing millions will notify the 130,000 mas¬
ters that they will no longer pay a thousand
million dollars a year for the privilege of
serving them. It cannot be very long in the
future, when, under present conditionsf
doled out charities will be futile in restrain¬
ing the plundered masses from following an
ultimatum with a force that won't wait for
its acceptance. It will not be long, if a rad¬
ical change is not soon a result of govern¬
mental action, and Kansas people of to-day
have got the nerve and patriotism of forty
years ago, till Kansas will notify the op¬
pressed and oppressors, that she is ready
to plant her guidons on a line that will say
to the arrogant leaders of the forces of com¬
bined capital: "Thus far and no farther.
Despite your ambitions and greed and
jiower, the men whose efforts and industry
have made this Nation what it is—the labor¬
ing men, the brawn and sinews of the land,
from Alpha to Omega—are going to have a
Man versus Mammon. 17
cliance for life and some of its comforts; a
chance to earn a home and live in it; as that
is the promise to, and the contract of Repub¬
lican governments with every one of their
citizens."
Robert G. Ingersoll says :
"This great question of division has got to be
settled in this country. Capital takes too much.
Labor gets too little. Flesh and blood are more
sacred than gold. If they who toil cannot have
some of the good things of this life I do not want
anybody to have them."
The wonder is that the American people
could have been deluded into so complete
apathy; that while being waylaid and con
quered, bound and robbed, they can boast
of their vigilance, their courage, their vic¬
tories, their freedom; that these processes
could have been permitted to continue and
to spread until the economic condition of
the masses has become relatively far worse
than that of the French people in 1788.
XVI. TWO PICTURES.
When the French Revolution broke out,
one-half the country was owned by the 100,-
000 nobles, and the Church owned one-sixth ;
leaving one-third for the other class (of 25,-
000,000) called "third estate." Here our
25,000 aristocrats, who may be noble in
ways we know not of, owned (?) one-half
the country in 1890, and have 63 per cent,
of it now; 105,000 own 25 per cent, of it,
and the 70,000,000 "third estate" have but
12 per cent.
The protests of Doctor Rainsford, of New
York, against the vulgar ostentation of the
wealthy at this time when so many are suf¬
fering, seems to have been made more from
fear that jn their distress the robbed will
be incited to turn on the robbers, rather
than to record a condemnation of the meas¬
ures and methods by which the classes are
plundering the masses. Others protest
against such art exhibitions as burnished
the Seely dinner. But protesting against
the ostentatious displays, the gorgeous dis-
18
Conquering March of Capital.
sipatíons, the vulgar revels or the baccha¬
nalian carousals of the nobles of lust and
lucre is useless. These things are not
only inevitable results of existing condi¬
tions, but they are a part of the penalty
which Divine wisdom has seen fit to impose
on mankind for his follies and greed.
All we can consistently do at this time in
that direction, as it seems presumptuous to
protest against the enforcement of the Di¬
vine penalty, is to lament that when the
laws of nature were formulated, humanity
had no convivial representative present to
direct the efforts and amend the decrees of
the Creator. This was a great oversight,
but it seems to be a situation we are now
unable to mend. Next time, however, with
man's protest on this record, God will know
better and do better, if we are as bright and
He is as dull as the priests and valets of
Plutocracy would have us believe; for have
we have not resolved;
That gall shall drop its hittemess,
And God must mend His ways,
Before we listen to distress,
Or love to sing His praise?
But until then the chances are that our
highest prosperity is only possible by modi¬
fying our methods, correcting our plans and
revising our laws to conform with those de¬
crees which He drafted when time was born,
has so long seen fit to enforce, and refuses
to revoke to gratify man's selfishness or har¬
monize with his whims.
XVII. PROTESTS AND PROTESTS.
Our protests should be against the pol¬
icies and practices—the rules and regula¬
tions—the edicts and enactments that have
not only defended our multi-millionaires in
their plundering schemes, but have enabled
them to lay the corner stone of a heartless,
a shameless, and a godless plutocracy on
the rotten and crumbling foundation of a
once noble Republic.
It would seem more appropriate for Doc¬
tor Rainsford to lament that the masses
Man versus Mammon. 19
have been plundered, than that they do not
bear their consequent distress more meekly.
But these "warnings coming from so many
sources, whether incited by a love of jus¬
tice or a fear of consequences, should in¬
duce our legislators to drop their routine
work long enough to devote a little time to
the consideration of corrective measures.
XVIII. IN HOSTILE ARRAY.
The industrial armies of the Nation are
gathering between the hosts of Pharaoh and
the Red Sea. They are a multitude in num¬
bers but puny in defensive force because dis¬
organized. The day is past when the
waters will divide to let them escape. They
have the weapons of their own salvation, and
they must organize and turn on their pursu¬
ers or go into indefinite bondage. The fiesh
pots of Egypt, with their savors and allure¬
ments, may tempt and seduce some weak¬
enings who cower before these hosts and
fear the alternative. Tf in that way we
lose a corporal's guard for asserting our
rights and- demanding their recognition, in
offering labor a certain opportunity for re¬
lief and independence, beyond the reach of
Plutocracy's mandate or artillery, we will
swap every wavering squad for an "Iron¬
sides" division.
Then will the antics of the Plutocrats—
Their wallowing and wobbling with Wall
street—
Their dancing and dallying with the De-
lilas of the demi-monde—
Their truckling to the tawdry thieves of
the "tenderloin"—
And all their siren's songs of sophistry,
become a side-show and a farce.
Then too will be revived and reenacted
for the law-abiding Lambs of Labor, and
the lawless Lords of Lucre, two of the fun¬
damental principles of Judaism and Chris¬
tianity, the two greatest axioms of hnman
rights: For the first; "IN THE SWEAT OF
THY BROW SHALT THOU " (always have
opportunity to) " EAT THY BREAD."
äO Conquering March of Capital.
And for the second, " THOU SHALT NOT
STEAL."
But wïiether or not these old time and
seemingly obsolete laws are revived and
again enforced, of one thing we may all rest
assured: That a readjustment of opportuni¬
ties and economic conditions is coming in
the United States. It is inevitable. A
peaceable process is still a possibility, but
it cannot long remain so. That is a process
which will start the engine of taxation to
eating into inordinate accumulations of
wealth. If the ministers want to still a
storm they should plead with the winds and
not the waves. They waste their breath in
saying to the revelers, "Don't strut:" and
to the starving, "Do n't squeal." Human na¬
ture is in as full play in one case as in the
other. They should talk of remedies—of
measures to abolish the crime of poverty
and wash away the sin of want. The labor¬
ers should be given employment. Every
one of them is entitled to it. Turning out
vagrants by the million is a serious crime.
To stop it I can see no better way than to
lay a heavy tax on inordinate wealth—the
greater wealth above some definite line, the
greater tax—and expend the proceeds in
the employment of all idle labor on public
works of general utility such as roads,
canals, water courses and reservoirs; and in
I)aying the pensions; thus relieving the
treasury and the masses of that burden. If
any one can suggest a more feasible or a
more equitable method, he cannot serve his
country better than by making it public.
XIX. A LOST PREROGATIVE.
Under the latest construction put upon
the constitution, the people are prohibited
from putting a tax on inordinate wealth,
as such,a right which they had enjoyed,and
exercised at their pleasure for a century.
So in a Republic (?) we are prohibited from
using a method of lightening the burdens
on labor, which is used by all the great mon-
Man versus Mammon.
21
archies of Europe. This is because Plutoc¬
racy has got it patented in America.
Had the capital of the Nation been in the
Mississippi valley this amendment to the
constitution would have been lost. Courts,
from the country squire to the greatest in
the land, are swayed by the influences and
atmosphere in which they live; by the sea
of public opinion on which they swim. Hil-
dreth's History (Harper's ed. 1856), vol. IV,
p. 263, says:
"So far as sentiment and feeling go, always of
great weight in political affairs, questions of con¬
stitutionality and expediency are always inti¬
mately connected. When the expediency of a
certain course of policy has been established, ar¬
guments in favor of its constitutionality will not
be wanting. Hence, too, the opposite practice, al¬
ready commenced in Virginia, and which soon
came to he common to all parties, of denouncing
as unconstitutional almost every measure to which
opposition was made."
In reference to the income tax decision:
the possession for a hundred years, of the
right to impose it, should have prevented
the quibbling and outrageous division over
it on a trivial technicality. Justice would
be more abundant and come cheaper if our
national capital was in a different climate.
Had it for the past ten years been between
the 90th and 100th meridians, the national
treasury would, without doubt, be getting
thirty or forty millions of dollars a year
from the holders of inordinate wealth.
XX. THE REPEALED TAXES ON WEALTH.
Thirty years ago the internal revenue
taxes yielded $266,000,000 in a year. The
New York World of September 1, 1896, in
an editorial on "The Repealed Taxes or
Wealth," said of these proceeds:
"They were nearly all taxes on accumulated
wealth or active capital. . . . These internal
taxes on manufactures, aside from whisky, beer
and tobacco, aggr^ated $122,000,000. . . .
Other taxes collected from wealth that year were:
From incomes, $61,000,000 (in round numbers);
banks and railroads, $13,300,000; licenses, $18,-
000,000; stamps, $15,000,000; telegraph, express
and insurance companies, steamboats, stage
22 Conquering March of Cagita^
coaches, amusements, etc., $10,000,000; legacies,
$1,000,000. . . . The exemption of wealth from
any direct tax left the whole burden of the cost
of the government upon consumption—mainly of
the common necessaries of the people. The in-
c'ome tax was an attempt to correct this gross
inequality and injustice. In that or in some way
wealth must be made to pay its equitable share
in the expenses of the government whose protec¬
tion it asks and receives, or the agitation which
now disturbs and alarms the country will go on."
Some of the cranks and anarchists who
fought the recent tax law so bitterly say
that legislation has not helped to make the
rich richer and the poor poorer. Let us ex¬
amine this evidence a little more, to see
whether it supports their assumption, or
the contrary.
Spofford's Almanac says the income of
the United States government in 1867 was
$463,000,000, and that $270,000,000 of it
came from internal taxes. The World
claims the repealed taxes on wealth soon
after the war amounted to 8240,000,000 a
year, but the figures fail to prove it quite
that large. By 1870, had these taxes on the
accumulated wealth of that day (and insig¬
nificant compared with the present) not
been repealed, they would have amounted
to over $200,000,000 a year. That was more
than three-fifths of the average receipts of
the government from 1870 to 1880. ^\'ith-
out any increase in the receipts from that
source, in thirty years the aggregate
amount, without interest, would have
reached the sum of 6,000 million dollars.
If accumulated wealth paid to-day the ])ro
portion of national expenditures it would
have done under that law, it would be pay
ing 300 million dollars a year. The recent
income tax law proposed to tax them only
about one-tenth of that sum.
The repeal of that tax law of thirty
years ago, was in direct violation of a prom¬
ise made when the war tariff was adopted.
Its repeal has saved to manufacturers,
bankers and corporations over 10,000 mil¬
lion dollars, or at least 15 per cent, of the
whole wealth of the Nation. Labor and the
Man versus Mammon. 23
poorer classes have paid nearly the whole
of it. And yet the fanatics who fought the
little thirty million tax, and their dupes and
hirelings, teach (or try to) that the growing
gulf between the rich and the poor was not
a growth from class legislation. If 10,000
million dollars paid by the masses in in¬
creased taxation and interest, and saved by
the wealthy class, is so insignificant a mat¬
ter as to have had no influence in producing
this result and present conditions, it cer¬
tainly will not disturb those now using it,
to pay it back through a system of gradu¬
ated taxation and public expenditure.
XXI. LABOR'S GREATEST BURDEN.
But this 200 million dollar deal is but one
item in Labor's bill of particulars. There
is another six times as great. It is the tax
of the trusts and corporations to pay divi
dends on fictitious capitalization and ex¬
orbitant rates on real investments; and
the depression in the prices of produce
by combination. Their plundering now
amounts to over four million dollars a
day. There are 140 trusts in operation
at present. Three of them (the coal, sugar
and oil trusts) have been bleeding the
people to the amount of over $12,000,000
a month. Their operations are the most
cunningly planned and fiercely executed,
for making the rich richer and the poor
poorer, that the world has ever seen. And
the American people, boasting of their
humanity and love of justice; boasting of
their freedom and courage; boasting of "old
glory" and the heroism of their forefath¬
ers who devised and established it, and of
the valor of their predecessors who de¬
fended and saved it; boasting of their sym¬
pathy for the oppressed Hindoos and Ar¬
menians, Egyptians, and Cubans, fold their
bands, and cringe and cower like a pack of
whipped mastiffs, while millions of their
own blood are driven from their homes, and
turned into the wilderness of poverty and
24 Conquering March of Capital.
want, before the merciless march, the de¬
spoiling and conquering march of the
phalanxes of organized and combined cap¬
ital. And all because they are told by the
hirelings of Plutocracy, with proof to the
contrary staring at them from every page
of our recent history, that we cannot make
the rich richer by legislation.
XXII. A COMING AWAKENING.
As these taxes on wealth were abolished,
the burden was gradually put on the in¬
dustrial classes. That is how we have
shown our love for the laborer. These re¬
pealed taxes on wealth cannot be reimposed
now. They have become unconstitutional.
The laborer has paid most of them for the
past thirty years. This is an index of bow
we love the laborer, as we cheerfully per¬
mit him to be protected in this privilege.
The constitution used to allow us to show
our love for him by putting part of this bur¬
den on wealth. It don't now. It has been
"seen" by the Plutocrats and changed its
mind between two days: been fixed for the
occasion, as it were. Our constitution
seems to be as elastic as our currency ought
to be; but its warping is all one way, and
the industrial classes will continue to pay
the repealed taxes on wealth until they
wake from their stupor and depose tlie
usurpers. The men who have the laborers'
earnings, knowing they have come by them
by stealth or fraud, are more surprised at
our apathy and the success of their stu¬
pendous schemes of plunder, than that we
liave now dissected their crooked devices.
If they should be surprised that we demand
a readjustment, it will not be half as great
as they have been that we have not de¬
manded it before, or at our forbearance and
apathy.
We are now moving rapidly toward an
awakening. The leaven of education
spreading among the people will continue
its work. It will continue to incite them to
awake. It will continue to uncover the in-
Man versus Mammon.
25
justice of plutocratic rule, and to gather
the force to correct it. It will continue to
pull the moss from the fossils and dema¬
gogues of the oligarchy, that the brand on
their backs may be seen. It will continue to
expose the methods by which they are now
enabled to tax labor by their fiat, the stu¬
pendous sum of 2,000 million dollars a year
for their personal use and benefit.
XXIII. REPUDIATORS, TRAITORS AND AN¬
ARCHISTS.
It will continue to show that the great
renudiators, the great traitors, the great
anarchists of the country sit in their coun¬
cils or are numbered with their vassals.
And it will continue to show that they
must be disarmed, if liberty is to be re¬
stored. So let us hope that this leaven will
speedily stir us to decide on the best way
to accomplish this, and drive us to add
works to our faith, and enforce measures
that will peaceably depose the pretenders;
that will offer to every American freeman,
independence and a home; and that will
again make the Nation, "the land of the
free and the home of the brave." And
hoping, let us each resolve to add our mite
to the forces gathering for the suppression
of the oligarchy and the re-establishment
of constitutional liberty, that this change
may be consummated before the tyranny of
capital has convinced the watching, anxious
patriot, that we have passed the line where
Ihe duty of loyal citizens to condone in¬
justice and to quietly submit to persecution
ceases, and the true patriot and the Chris¬
tian soldier hear the call of duty and the
voice of charity inciting them to meet the
tyrant before the court of last resort, and
depose the pretender by physical force.
God's law is for mankind. His gifts are
for the million. Drones, peacocks and but¬
terflies are the tares of our civilization. If
civilization offers its best gifts only to the
drones, peacocks and butterflies, it is a
curse, and its endowments are a fraud. If
26 Conqiicrivf/ Mnrcli of Capital.
civilization oilers less opportunity for the
millions to enjoy His gifts, and for mankind
to find shelter under His law, than bar¬
barism, think you He would intervene to
stay a ilood of barbarism now, any more
than when mighty and majestic Rome went
down? When the cry of "Bread!" floats
toward the skies from a crowd of strug-
urliug, starving men, as a rule they are
famishing on account of the absence of
somelhing more essential than bread—and
that is justice.
Is this the kind of repudiation, or an¬
archy or treason that is disturbing the cap¬
italistic junto, by asking for God's com¬
mands to be executed and government
pledges to be fulfilled?
They may well call us repudiators. We
are such. Not those anxious or willing to
repudiate honest obligations; but we ad¬
vocate repudiating the sophistries of cap¬
italistic anarchy, and the paganism of plu¬
tocratic avarice.
They may well call us traitors. ^Ve are
such. Not traitors to our country or its
institutions; but traitors to the venal pur¬
pose, the corrupt practices and the bar-
l)aric methods of those who are willing to
overthrow them.
They may well call us anarchists. We are
such, if anarchists are those who prefer
to overthrow and disarm anarchy by law.
One unquestioned fact we should all re¬
member: that human judgment is a vic¬
tim of mutations. It has always been
cumbered with the infirmities of fallibilitv.
The heretics and cranks and traitors of oiie
generation in the world's history, have often
become teachers and heroes to the next.
XXIV. AN INVITATION TO EXILED JUSTICE.
Four years ago Kansas set her face
squarely towards measures that would
scatter the gathering storm-clouds and cor¬
rect these wrongs by a legal and peaceable
readjustment through the channels of tax¬
ation, by resolution of her legislature and
Man versus Mammon.
27
petition of her state officers, asking Con¬
gress to tax inordinate wealth—not the pro¬
ceeds derived from its use, but the accumu¬
lated capital itself—enough to employ all
idle labor on public works of general util¬
ity, such as roads, watercourses, reservoirs,
and parks, and to pay all pensions and other
war charges. The measure then indorsed
was in direct conformity with the recom¬
mendation of Thomas Jefferson. I have
since learned that it also follows the sug¬
gestions of an able Kansas statesman. Col.
Wm. A. Phillips, of Salina (now deceased),
who after the passage of that resolution
gave me a copy of his work, "Labor, Land,
and Law," or "a Search for the Missing
M'ealth of the Working Poor."
The measure referred to taxes no one but
the possessors of property worth over |1,-
000,000; and beginning at that amount with
1 per cent, tax, the rates increase to 18
per cent, on fortunes above |10,000,000, al¬
ways exempting the first million. While
such a project at first thought seems arbi¬
trary, it will not when the methods by which
these inordinate aggregations have been ac¬
cumulated are studied; when the injustice
and barbarity of their work is thought of,
and the fact that in each case a million dol¬
lars was exempted from the proposed tax,
is considered.
The developments of four years since
then have only added new proof O'f the
justice of such a process, and the necessity
for setting it to work without delay.
The court decision on the income tax
question shows the forces plutocracy can
control and array with the servants of
mammon against the masses in the strug¬
gle. Our course now should be to ask Con¬
gress to submit an amendment to the con¬
stitution specifically conferring on them the
authority to tax inordinate wealth in such
ways and to such amounts as in their judg¬
ment the demands of equity and the first
princÍT»les of taxation require.
On this question Kansas cannot afford to
28 Vonqucrinf! March of Capital.
take a step backward. The masses are in
favor of such a process of readjustment
If party leaders, in their blind wrangling
over the questions of spoils, fear they would
not receive popular support in such an
effort, they have a shallow conception of
the spirit and temper that pervades the
rank and file of parties in the West and
South.
Having learned that the present depres
sion in trade, the great army of the unem-
l)loyed, the discontent and turbulent sjfirit
among laborers, the increasing misery and
poverty and crime are mainly a result of
systems and measures of spoliation that has
reduced the ability of the masses to pur¬
chase, curtailing consumption in every
branch of commerce, they have set to work
to apply remedies. They hope to agree on
and apply them in a peaceable way.
XXV. WHO WILL OBJECT?
This feeling is not confined to the ranks
of any one party. Take from either of the
great political parties this class, and there
would be nothing left but a skeleton of
wirepullers, and the few who live by plun¬
dering the many. The day of reckoning
spoken of by the Century Magazine four
teen years ago—presumably by Doc tor Hol¬
land—is evidently coming on the invita¬
tion of the wronged millions. It said:
"But the day is soon to come when plain men
will clearly see that no one can get with clean
hands, in an ordinary lifetime, one hundred mil¬
lion dollars—that such an enormous pile so sud¬
denly collected must be loot, not profit. That
will be a day of reckoning, indeed, for the rob¬
bers and for the Judges and legislators and the
public teachers who have been their accomplices.
Meantime the fact must be kept in mind that we
have among us a class of men who, in their
rapacity, are bent on enriching themselves by
forcibly seizing the property of their neighbors,
and that they have learned how to use, for this
purpose, the organized force of the state."
The position that Kansas took on propo¬
sitions for legislative protection against
such forces, and remedial measures for cor-
Man versus Mammon. 29
recting the wrong already done, was not
only consistent with the requirements of
justice, but was in conformity with the rec¬
ommendation of the greatest statesman
who helped to establish our institutions.
XXVI. VOICES FROM THE PAST.
Thomas Jefferson advised such a process
of taxation, and for this specific purpose,
110 years ago. Col. Wm. A. Phillips also,
a Republican statesman and congressman of
Kansas,in 1885 advocated the same process.
In his work, "Labor, Land and Law—a
search for the missing wealth of the work¬
ing poor," he says:
When capital has grown to be in excess of the
moderate competence which industry and thrift
can fairly produce, it is a just subject for the
heaviest burdens of the state. (Page 14.) * * *
It remains to be seen whether a written con¬
stitution will prove a sufficient shield for the
rights of the people. An aristocracy is even more
abhorrent than a king, and aristocracies are usu¬
ally created by great wealth, and fostered by un¬
equal privileges. The foundations of American
aristocracy are already laid. (Page 22.) * ♦ »
A sound form of society will repudiate non-pro¬
ducing classes, whether they be lazy paupers or
sturdy capitalists who draw the lion's share of
the annual outputs of human labor by ingenious
financial devices. (Page 15.) * * * All part¬
nerships, to endure, must be perfectly fair, and
of mutual benefit. Capital, if employed, should
increase the laborer's wealth. It it does not do
this, he is better without it. In order to pre¬
serve society prosperous and continuous, the la¬
borer must be preserved. (Page 10.) * * * In
an era of great development, they are poorly de¬
veloped. In an era of great luxury, they have
few luxuries. The very grandeur of the civiliz¬
ation they are helping to build becomes a mock¬
ery to them. (Page 10.) * * ♦ It is a common
thing to boast of the wealth and increasing prop¬
erty of a Nation, but a Nation should never be
considered as prosperous or increasing in real
wealth unless the improvement is with the labor¬
ing and producing classes. The wealth that in¬
creases the number of idlers to live on the pro¬
ducers is not beneficent, but is merely the ma¬
chinery for greater oppression. (Page 97.) * *
* A corporation in this country is a subordinate
part of a state government, a creature of a state
government. * * * Every company or corpo¬
ration, whether by general law or special charter
30 Conquering March of Capital.
made amenable or not, is subject to the xwwers of
the state. It is the creature of the state, created
only on the supposition that it was for the bene¬
fit of the public interests, and liable to be
changed, altered, amended or abolished by the
state. » » * The constitution of a state con¬
fers on no general assembly that may^ happen to
meet under it the power to part with the author¬
ity granted to the legislature as a successive
body. (Page 365.) » * *
Corporate privileges are a public trust which
ought to be resumed by the people whenever
they have become subversive of public interests.
The time, to all appearance, is rapidly approach¬
ing, when peace, order and security may demand
the abolition of such delegated powers. (Page
395.) * * *
When a man deliberately contemplates making
and leaving a fortune for his children so that
they will never need to work, but be maintained
from accumulated capital as part of a nonpro-
ducing class, he conspires against the public
interests. It is more than probable that he also
conspires against the best interests of his child¬
ren. (Page 414.) * * *
No one would argue the propriety of defending
a thief's right. Shall the highwayman and pirate
come into court to demand protection for their
acquisitions? Shall the gains of fraud and decep¬
tion be maintained to the detriment of those who
honestly earn the proceeds of labor. (Page 416.)
*********
Society is organized for the equal protection
of ali its members, and its duty in regard to prop¬
erty is to see that those who really made it are
protected in its use. (Page 417.) * * »
We witness to-day the greatest evasions of tax-
paying among the richest men of the country.
The science of keeping property off the tax-roli
does not seem to come into successful operation
until the accumulation exceeds one hundred thou¬
sand dollars. (Page 461.) * » *
Taxation should be graded, moreover, that it
might not fall heavily on the needed competence
that merely secures independence in old age. The
mischievous accumulations of wealth are those
devoted to maintaining a second or succeeding
generation as a non-productive class. This the
state has a right to prevent. A wise public pol¬
icy should take means to prevent it, and one of
the most efficient steps is to place the public bur¬
dens heavily on all such accumulations. There
are other necessary public duties that would re¬
quire the additional taxes thus raised. (Page
463.) * * »
Cool, calculating, may be deemed the best bal¬
ance wheel for society, but experience shows us
that it brings communities into a condition when
Man versus Maiiuitoii.
31
organized benevolence or revolution are indis¬
pensable. (Page 29.) * * *
While age may justly have accumulated mod¬
erate wealth, and live in comfort or even lux¬
ury, there is no reason why youth should be ex¬
empted from toil by the curse of a competence.
Hereditary wealthy families are not in harmony
with American ideas. A just public policy should
tend to scatter and redistribute wealth. (Page
23.) * » *
Such changed conditions are rapidly approach¬
ing, and will produce one of three things: The
destruction of the representative power and free¬
dom of the people; peaceful remedies wisely taken
in time which will secure perfect equality of
rights, or the overthrow of the aristocracy by vio¬
lence and anarchy. (Page 23.)
XXVII. KANSAS SHOULD AGAIN LIGHT
THE BEACON FIRES.
Forty years ago Kansas lighted the fires
that melted the chains of chattel slavery.
Js'o true American is ashamed of her efforts
and record at that time. Her courage and
prowess are the pride of the Nation, and
well may she cherish their record. But
present honors cannot rest entirely on
youthful valor or early prowess. She has
grown to man's estate, and carries the wis¬
dom of mature years. She remains faithful
to the purpose and traditions of her found¬
ers. Having the prudence and sagacity of
maturity, has she also the heroism of her
youth, the patriotic enthusiasm of forty
years ago? Again the opportunity to serve
humanity is within her reach. She can
start the fires to-day that will melt the gall¬
ing chains of a worse bondage than chattel
slavery; that will liberate ten times as
many millions and that will release from an
onerous serfdom and restore to the inde¬
pendence, honors, opportunities, and posi¬
tion, of true American freemen, the indus¬
trial classes of the Nation.
Should she accept this opportunity, the
American people forty years hence will ac¬
cord to her double the laurels for throwing
her influence and wisdom on the side of free¬
dom and humanity in this crisis of the Na
tion, that they have done for her early loy¬
alty to right and justice.
32
Conquering March of Capital.
XXVIII. HAS SHE THE NERVE OF '57?
The eyes of the Nation are on us to-day;
and the forces ready to assist in the enforce¬
ment of any feasible plan for restoring to
labor its God-given rights and rescuing the
Republic from its besetting dangers, are
looking to us to again head a rescuing col¬
umn.
XXIX. ARE WE READY?
To this end Kansas with her history and
prestige should take the initiative in map-
])iug out a policy and starting a uiovement
that will carry a ray of hope to the toiling,
struggling and despondent masses. A Na
tion's peril and a people's needs incite us
to now take our bearings. The pleadings
of Justice require us to move. The voice
of humanity commands us to act. The op¬
portunity is ours. The duty is oui s. The
responsibility for neglect or delay will be
ours.
If every state waits for eveiy other state
to lead, we will sneak out of our camps
under the noonday sun, before the advanc¬
ing legions of the usurper.
If every iudividual in Kansas waits for
every other individual, the sunset will come
and find us, fleeing and dropping, a be¬
wildered and stupified mob. The deluge or
the Red sea will meet us, with neither ark
nor pontoon. The time to act is now.
Are we ready? tt'e will never be more
so.
XXX. THEN "FALL IN;"
And let us now do our part toward the
deliberate inauguration of a movement that
will make the greatest good to the greatest
number its highest purpose and sole in¬
spiration; that will require of its membeis
that they will swear eternal fidelity to an
effort to not only repair the foundations of
the Temple of Liberty, but to overthrow
the tables of the money-changers therein;
to cast out the Bacchanalian usurpers, and
to renovate the structure.
When, under the present arrogant atti-
Man versus Mammon.
33
tude of aggregated capital, and the despond¬
ent condition of the plundered unisses, any
association makes, as its first object, the
restoration to labor of its lost honors; and
under any and all conditions of corporate
ambitions, or contingencies of Plutocratic
greed, can offer all laborers an opportunity
to keep the gaunt spectre of want from
their doors when the ordinary sources of
employment fail; and to do this, sincerely
proposes and supports measures that will
procure sufllcient funds for this purpose,
without injustice or oppression, they will
find the forces necessary to enact them at
their back.
If any part of our organic law stands in
the way of such a process for granting the
greatest good to the greatest number, as
commanded by the precepts of Christianity,
and promised in our Magna Charta, if we
swear we will break the seal on this closed
book of justice, and live or die, sink or
swim, we Avill pledge ourselves to the work
of restoring to every law-abiding American,
an opportunity for the enjoyment of life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness, the
Píen of valor to aid us will be like the sands
of the seashore in numbers. They will rally
as the forces of law, and justice and order,
and come by the million to be mustered.
They will stand, an invincible line, around
our grand but tarnished temple, a thousand
deep and ten thousand long, while the outer
wall is repaired and the inner temple reno¬
vated, without tumult or disorder; and the
arrogant and now defiant hosts of plu¬
tocracy will
"Fold their tents like the Arabs
And quietly steal away."
Then will the everlasting precepts of
Christianity, the immutable decrees of Jus¬
tice, the eternal theories of Liberty find new
expression and gather new force in a "Land
of the free and the home of the brave."
34 Conquering March of Capital.
XXXI. SENATE CONCURRENT RESOLUTION
No. 23.
Whereas, With an abundanci> of all the
necessaries and comforts of life in the coun¬
try, millions of our loyal and industrious
people are in want, and hundreds of thou¬
sands are homeless, and tens of thousands
are starving; with an abundance of work
to do, the means that should do it lying
idle, and the laborers that are anxious to
do it roving the streets, and drifting into
the ranks of the criminals; and
Whereas, This state of affairs is the re
suit of unwise political policies, of oppres¬
sive commercial practices, and of discrimi¬
nating financial measures and transactions,
many of which have been in open viola¬
tion of statute law, and all of which have
violated the higher law ; and
Whereas. Through such lawless and arro¬
gant practices, capital has gradually been
brought under the control, and not only the
control but ownership of so small a circle
„of individuals, that they are able to enforce
a thorough system of co-operation; and this
position of vantage has enabled them to
force labor to work under a system of com¬
petition. Its congestion in small areas and
in few hands, to say nothing of the crimes
by which this has been accomplished, has
impaired its vitality, so it cannot render
the service to the nation it would if it ^\ as
in more hands; nor is this question of serv
ice to the people or the community one that
enters into the plans of its manipulators in
this circle. "How many men can I dispense
with and curse," rather than "how many
can I employ and bless," is one of the prob¬
lems they have continuously studied. The
more idle the less they must nay those who
work. The idle millions alone enable the
capitalists to hold the battle ax of star\a
tion above all who labor for wages; and
Whereas, As capital has gradually con¬
fiscated, first, the profits of the industrial
classes—using these to strengthen its posi¬
tion in buying courts, bribing legislators
Man versus Mammon.
85
and pacifying- executives—and then their
hard-earned accumulations, until the plun-
derings now reach above three and a half
million dollars a day from their savings
alone, a yawning, widening and ominous
gulf is found between the caidtalists and
their victims, between the plundered and the
plunderers; and
Whereas, A prerogative which the people
had enjoyed and exercised at their pleasure
for over a hundred years, becoming theirs
by right of possession and undisputed use,
had it not come within the concessions of
our written law, has recently been annulled
and wiped out by the juggling decision of a
judicial sycophant; and
Whereas, Thirty years ago, inordinate
wealth and corporations were paying more
than one-half of the expenses of the na¬
tional government; and under corrupt in¬
fluences and with broken promises, this
burden was transferred from the shoulders
of the men who derived the greater beneflts
from the war to the backs of the common
people, the release from taxation of the
wealthvj by changes in the tax laws having
reached a sum amounting to over $200,000,-
000 a year in 1870, and whose aggregate
brought down to the present time exceeds
16,000,000,000, and with interest added
reaches 15 per cent, of the country's total
wealth, all of which has been wrung from
the toiling millions for the beneflt of un¬
scrupulous capitalists and financial pirates;
and
Whereas, The recent phosphorescent and
spasmodic decision of the supreme court
changes what has heretofore been a per¬
mission to exempt inordinate wealth from
a special tax, into a command to do so;
giving it an immunity in a republic un¬
known to the monarchies of Europe; and
Whereas, This is one of the processes of
legislation by which the ricl\ have been
made richer and the poor poorer; and
Whereas. Other encroachments on the
vested rights and God-given opportunities
3fi CoiKjurruui March of Capital.
of the masses by the lawless designs and
greedy purpose of co-operating capitalists,
are now taking several times as much per
year from their savings as the repeal of
tlie taxes on wealth; and
Whereas, No permanent return of pros¬
perity is possible until the ability of the
masses to purchase and consume is increas¬
ing instead of decreasing; and
Whereas, The present official construction
put upon the tax provisions of the national
constitution prohibits the taxing power
from considering in the distribution of all
public burdens, the first principle of equi¬
table taxation—that of ability to pay;
therefore be it
Resolved, By the Senate of the state of
Kansas, the House of Representatives con¬
curring therein. That we, the legislature of
the state of Kansas, request and petition
the congress of the United States to submit
to the legislatures of the several states, in
compliance with article number five of the
federal constitution, a proposed amend¬
ment to the same, conferring on congress
full power to tax inordinate wealth, or its
proceeds and revenues, and also all incomes,
by such niethods and in such amounts as in
its judgment would meet the requirements
of equity: Provided, That all incomes of
less than |2,000 a year, and the property of
every individual whose aggregate posses¬
sions or wealth is less than $200,000 be ex¬
empt from the operation of any law for
levying the said special tax.
Resolved, That the accumulation of inor¬
dinate wealth, which has become a detri¬
ment to the masses and a menace to our in¬
stitutions, should be retarded, and its evil
influences mitigated, if not wholly dissi¬
pated, by graduated taxation.
Resolved, That we approve the proposi¬
tions of a bill (H. R. 8618) now before con¬
gress, for that purpose, which begins with
a one per cent, tax on individual possessions
exceeding $1,000,000, taxing only the ex¬
cess above a million; increasing the rate
Man versus Mammon.
.87
two per cent. (2 per cent.) at $2,000,000; five
per cent. (5 per cent.) more at $5,000,000;
and ten per cent. (10 per cent.) more at $10,-
000,000, a proposition which has already
been approved by a large majority of the
voters of Crawford county, and was in¬
dorsed by the legislature and state officers
of 1893.
Resolved, That we favor the levying of
such a tax, and the appropriation of the
proceeds of it as provided for in the said bill
—First, to the payment of pensions, the
principal of, and the interest on, the public
debt: Second, that the residue be divided
among the states, either according to pop¬
ulation, which is the way the constitution
apportions direct taxes; or according to
population, wealth and area combined; and
that the states then use it in the employ¬
ment of all idle labor, on public works of
geúeral utility, such as roads, reservoirs,
water-courses, canals and forest parks; and
to paying the expenses of state military
establishments; but no part of this fund
to be used for the latter purpose until every
citizen of the state wanting work is em¬
ployed at not less than one dollar a day for
eight hours work.
Resolved, That a copy of the preceding
petition, preamble and these resolutions be
sent by the secretary of the state of Kansas
to the presiding officer of every state senate
and house of representatives in the nation,
with the request that they—the said legis¬
latures—unite with Kansas in asking con¬
gress to submit such a proposed amendment
to the constitution, to the several states for
their consideration and action; and also for
the purpose of testing, developing an inter¬
est in and promoting a familiarity with the
application of the initiative and referendum
theory to the direction of government policy.
Resolved, That our senators be instructed
and our representatives be requested to
urge the reference of such a proposition to
the states at once, that, in case the present
legislatures should fail to represent the pop-
38 Conquering March of Capital.
ular wish on this question, succeeding legis¬
latures nia.v be chosen with reference to
this problem of putting an equitable share
of public burdens on vast accumulations of
capital.
XXXIII. SHALL WE HAVE A NEW CRUSADE?
The foregoing Resolutions were intro¬
duced in the Kansas Senate in connection
with the Petition that opens this article, on
Feb. 2.Ö, 1897, bj' Mr. Ryan of Crawford
county. They were called up for consider¬
ation February 27, and adojited by the fol¬
lowing vote: Yeas 20, nays 9.
Senators voting in the aifirmative were;
Messrs. Renson, Braddock, Caldwell, Cooke,
Crossan, Farrelly, Forney, Hart, Helm.
Helmick, Householder, Jumper, Lupfer,
Mosher, Pritchard, Ryan, Shaffer, Titus,
Young, and Zimmei'.
Senators voting in the negative were:
Messrs. Battey, Coleman, Fulton, Hessin,
Johnson, Matthews, Sterne, Stocks, and
IVallack.
-March 2nd, the Resolution came up in
the House.
Mr. Brown of Pratt moved that the reso¬
lution be adopted, and upon this motion
.M r. Lambert of Lyon, and others, demanded
a roll-call.
The roll was called, with the following
result: Yeas (iS, nays 10; absent or not
voting, 17.
Centlemen voting in the affirmative
were: .Messrs. Armstrong. Barkley, Basgall,
Bean, Brown of Cowlej^ Brown of Pratt,
Carr, Cassin, Clark, Conger. Crosby, Davis,
Dingus, Doyle, Epperson, Ernst, Fairehild,
Farrell, Feighner, Fell, Foley, Fulton, Gil¬
lespie, Goodno, Graves, Gray, Hackney,
Harbaugh, Harvey, Hibner, Ingle, Jamie-
son, Johnson of Chase, Johnson of Labette,
Jones, Keefer, Kelson, Lambert of Lincoln,
Lawson, Lewis, Loomis, Malin, Marks,
¡Marty. McGrath, Metzler. Mott, Muenzen-
mayer. Montgomery, Outcalt, Patton, Rich¬
ards, Rothweiler, Rutledge, Simmons, Sin-
Man versus Matnmon.
39
gleton, Smith of Sherman, Stevens, Stoner,
Taylor, Wallace, Walters, Ward, Wehrle,
Weilep, Williams, Wright, and Mr. Speaker
Street,
Gentlemen voting in the negative were:
Messrs. Aker, Bacon, Barker, Botkin, Ben¬
nett, Brown of Greeley, Buell, Burkholder,
Burtis, DeWitt, Finney, Fitzgerald, Fonts,
Giessler, Grimes, Haywood, Heckman, Hol-
lembeak, Irwin, Jackson of Comanche,
Jackson of Harvey, Johnson of Nemaha,
Keddie, Lambert of Lyon, Larimer, Lob-
dell, Longley, McCarthy, McKeever, Moore,
Perry, Poison, Reed, Seaton, Seaver,
Shouse, Stuart, Tapscott, Ury, and Vogel-
gesang.
By this act the Kansas legislature offers
to the laboring masses a chance to force a
readjustment of opportunities and burdens;
to drop an effective bomb of readjusting
taxation into the camps of labor's plunder¬
ers, that will shake the oligarchy out of its
fortifications and help to call those who
compose it back to decent methods and
honest effort.
We need a Crusade again, to smash the
fossils of mouldy tradition and loosen the
grip of perverted precedent. We need to
advocate measures, and prove our alle¬
giance to them, that the millions can see
mean certain relief to them instead of a
doubtful tender to posterity. They are too
tired of waiting for relief, to be interested
or amused by any quibbling over trivial
tariff changes, or the stupid efforts at
doctoring the currency, first by bleeding
and then with hypodermic injections.
XXXIV. SIGNALS FROM THE KANSAS STATE
HOUSE.
Relief is what they want. It is what they
demand. They have been gulled and plun¬
dered too long to be patient. They are
tired of the intricate structures of tradition
and precedent that sustain policies and
methods, whose only dividend to them is
more rags and less rations. They demand
a change, a,nd it must lie granted.
40 Cohfjiicriiifi Mdvch of Capitol.
Kansas has planted her guidons on a line
that will bring it, in the above resolutions.
The millions are ready for a Crusade.
Their eyes are turned toward the plains of
Kansas, and Kansas signals from the flag
staff of her State House "We are readi/ to
lead the ran." Can the patriots of other
states not read the signal? Can they not
find in them an answer to the following?
"And what in this hour of peril and need
Can curb the rauk follies of passion and greed?
What from the light of a famous affray
Is ¡.he message we send to the slaves of to-day?"
XXXV. WHERE TO STRIKE IS THE MES¬
SAGE IT BEARS.
Recent events and rapidly changing con
ditions are telling us more and more
plainly, that other methods than those
suflBcient a hundred years ago, must be
adopted to protect people in the enjoyment
of the rights accorded them by our funda¬
mental law; and especially to protect them
from the oppressions of the immense ac¬
cumulations of capital which the many
have earned and the few have got.
We pass laws against the trusts; and the
trusts increase. The acts are purposely de¬
fective, or the officers refuse to enforce
them. We cumber our statute books with
penalties for minor crimes, and they stead¬
ily increase. There are better ways tO)
attack both of these evils. Under present
conditions both will increase. We might as
well legislate against sunshine, as to enact
that men with the means and opportunity
shall not combine. The conclusion of the
New York senatorial investigating commit¬
tee in reference to trusts—that legislation
against them is useless—but records the
conviction of observing people. The writer
in a course of lectures in 1889 said :
Legislation may be able to prevent the combina¬
tion of corporations: It may recall all its grants
of privilege and power: But it cannot prevent
two or two hundred individuals working together
through a common agent. ("Crisis Lectures.")
The conclusion of the Lexow committee,
as well as the agitation over the depart-
41
ment store question in several cities, calls
foi" a different line of attack on these
kindred forces that are sapping the life of
the nation. The power by which they exist
offers their only vulnerable point. Stupen¬
dous aggregations of wealth constitute
that power, and the action of the Kansas
legislature says, that is where we will at¬
tack. This is the only way they will ever
be disturbed, and it will be found a better
way than to cumber our statutes with
"Thou shalt nots."
XXXVI. WORK FOR THE IDLE, THE KEY.
There is a better way to reduce the
wrongs of the criminals tbau statute pen¬
alties and stone walls. In the cases of a
majority of them, the public may have been
the original aggressor. Kansas proposes
that we try the better way. We would stop
stealing and the need for soup houses, food
distribution and cast off clothing, by en
abling men to live comfortably without
them. We would scatter our army of va¬
grants by enlisting them as industrials and
keeping them busy on public works in every
organized county; and we would pay them
all by a tax that would rout the trusts and
gradually replevin the power—the ill-
gotten millions—of the plutocrats.
would relieve an army of usurers from duty
by qualifying the masses to live without
borrowing—by enabling them to lend in¬
stead of forcing them to borrow. That is
the message we are signaling—the message
now going from our State House to evci v
other state legislature.
We also believe in shorter hours for
labor, but the only sure way to bring -this
about, is to enable all classes of labor to
earn a good living in less hours than the
present average day. But this can never be
while millions are idle and in need.
The first thing to do to accomplish these
great changes, is to find employment for the
idle millions and remove them from compe¬
tition with those now at work, and pay them
good wages by a tax on inordinate wealth
42
Conquering March of Capital.
as proposed in the measures supported by
the Kansas state government. That is the
better way than driving men lo crime by
forced idleness—than soup houses or work¬
shops for vagrants—which Kansas is signal¬
ing to her sister states.
Should enough of them join in the de
raand to force a test of the better way.
twelve months of experimental operation
would put every industrious laborer in the
nation, above the temptation to barter his
ballot for beer, or to sell his sovereignty for
bread. They would then possess both the
knowledge and the independence to fairly
decide whether the cause of Justice would
be better served by measures more conserv¬
ative or more radical.
XXXVII. LET MAMMON PAY THE BILL.
It would take an immense fund to employ
all idle labor and furnish the appliances
for their work, but the legislative résolu
tions provide for that feature in supporting
a project for a graduated tax. (as recom¬
mended by Thomas Jefferson,) on the prop¬
erty of all millionaires. The proposed rales
begin at 1 per cent, at .fl,000,000, and in
crease to 18 jier cent, on fortunes exceeding
«10,000,000.
There are five persons who own 1 per cent,
of the whole value of the nation. The three
richest of these have about 1505,000,000
with an annual income exceeding $35,000,-
000 (some estimates say nearly $50,000,-
000). This is $113,000 a day for 310 working
days. The following table shows how much
resolution No. 3 would tax millionaires.
♦ Six per cent, is much below the average reve¬
nues from most of the great fortunes. The grpwth
Income, at
Owners of 6 per cent.*
$1,000,000 $60,000
2,000,000 120,000
4,000,000 240,000
6,000,000 360,000
11,000,000 660,000
51,000,000 3,060,000
101,000,000 6,060,000
150,000,000 9,000,000
190,000,000 11,400,000
Annual ta.r.
0
$10,000
90,000
400,000
1,980,000
9,000,000
18,000,000
26,820,000
34,020,000
Man versus Mammon.
4b
The imposition of this direct tax on prop¬
erty, would not under the Kansas resolu¬
tions, interfere with a tax on all incomes
down to $2,000 a year, if Congress decided
that the demands of equity or the necessity
for more revenue required it; but this
schedule alone would, by taxing about 7,000
persons, raise a sufficient sum to not only
emplo3' all idle labor as proposed, but to
pay all pensions and the interest on, and
finally the principal of the public debt. It
will also enable us to decide the great suit
now pending, in behalf of the plaintiff—
MAN.
XXXVIII. LABOR'S JUBILEE.
(From "Cutting- the Gordian Knot.")
With these immense funds flowing back from
the piles of plunder, whose vicious getting and
corrupt use have contaminated the springs of
individual effort and corrupted our vast sys¬
tem of public service, through the various state
treasuries into the channels of industrial activity,
every resting nerve and muscie of the Nation
would resume its work. The lack of confidence
would be dissipated in a night. The depression
in business would vanish with the morning sun.
The last wheel of industry would resume its merry
hum, for we would have Cut the Gordian Knot that
locks the property of the Nation in the corsair's
coffers, and turned a steady counteracting stream
from the Vampire's Vaults through a Re-adjusting
Pipe-Line back into the- producer's pockets. This
process would soon restore to those who have
created it, a reasonable per cent, of the Nation's
wealth.
«*«*******
The only possible way to either stop the "looting"
by the brigands (as Dr. Holland says) or to undo the
wrongs we have permitted to grow till they have
enslaved the masses and threaten, as they ought,
the life of the Republic, is to destroy the power of
the men who own the accumulated forces of money
for continuing their work; their power to hold the
battle-ax of starvation over the heads of labor.
of many of them in the past ten years shows an
annual increase of 9 per cent, or more. The World
in publishing a list of the New York millionaires
in 1894, said the revenue from the Astor property
was estimated at 7 per cent, and the Rockefellers
at 6 per cent., but careful estimates of the latter's
wealth made it $100,000,000 in 1889 and $179,000,000
in Aug., 1896, an increase of 79 per cent, in seven
years.
44
Conquering March of Capital.
We cannot by peaceable methods destroy their
power to do this without increasing the ability
of labor to resist it
We cannot decrease the offensive armament of
the capitalist, without increasing the defensive po¬
sition of the laborer.
Taxation is the only peaceable process by which
a re-adjustment of economic conditions can be
reached, or by which the power of capital to con¬
tinue its barbarities can be destroyed.
XXXIX. "IF NOT AS PURIFYING AS THE
SWORD, STILL GOOD ENOUGH FOR US."
It may not be as purifying or rejuvenating as
the sword. Granted that it is not; it is good
enough for us. Then let us adopt it and enforce
it while statesmen are evolving some better way,—
turning over a new leaf in 1897 that will restore
to all law-abiding American citizens an equal
opportunity for the enjoyment of life, liberty and
the pursuit of happiness.
With the idlers employed; with business re¬
vived; Wiuh the veterans rewarded; with confi¬
dence restored; with the producers garnering a
profitable harvest; with consumers able to double
their purchases and willing to pay fair prices, a
rainbow of content would span the country from
Sandy Hook to the Golden Gate; and the anthems
of a prosperous people would again ca ry to Ihr
tyrants of the Old M orid, the tidings of Amcriai's
despots deposed and the American Republic rrstond.
* * * * * * * * « 4
Let us, realizing that, under present conditions,
Republican Institutions are a practical failure, and
that the curtain must soon fall to close the last act
of a great comedy-tragedy play, so mould our pur¬
poses that, from the very fairness of our plans and
the equity of our projects, we may convince the
jury of 12,000,000 men to whose calm judgment we
appeal, that it rests with them to noir say to our
imperious masters, whether or not we will sit idly
by to see Republican Institutions go down, or
whether from
Justice's honored castle
We will hurl the wild Pretender
And install our old Defender.
XL. THE CONSISTENCY OF CHANGE.
Emerson says:
"Speak now what you think in hard words; and
to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard
words, though it contradicts everything you said
to-day."
Let us speak in 1897 in hard words the thoughts
of 1897, and hold out the olirc pranch of lasting peace
Man versus Mammon.
45
to the autocratic usurpers; an olive branch whose
every leaf will sparkle with the jewels of frater¬
nity; and whose nodding sprays will make fra¬
grant every breeze that fans them, by the exhala¬
tions from the blessed message it bears to the
agents and representatives of capitalistic despot¬
ism, THAT IT IS HEREBY DECREED THAT NO
LAW-ABIDING AND INDUSTRIOUS AMERI¬
CAN CITIZEN SHALL LONGER SUFFER FROM
WANT IN A LAND OF PLENTY; THAT NO
AMERICAN CHILDREN SHALL BE LONGER
FORCED TO GET THEIR EDUCATION IN THE
CITY STREETS; THAT NO AMERICAN FAM¬
ILY SHALL BE TURNED INTO THE HIGH¬
WAYS AND SCATTERED TO THE WINDS IN A
LAND DOTTED WITH DESERTED HOMES, for
lack of an opportunity to earn, not only the nec¬
essaries but the comforts of life; AS THE
SHACKLES OF INDUSTRIAL SLAVERY, WITH
THE GOLDEN CALF IT HAS ENABLED THE
MASTERS TO REAR AND INDUCED THEM TO
WORSHIP, ARE TO BE THROWN TOGETHER
INTO THE FURNACE OF GRADUATED PROP¬
ERTY TAXATION.
The endorsement of such a project by
Kansas state officers, and the favorable
action of her legislature, offers to every
one of the industrial classes, a specific, a
certain, a speedy and an equitable oppor¬
tunity to escape from the wilderness of
civilized serfdom and enter the Promised
Land of Republican freedom.
It now remains for them to say by their
acts, whether or not they have the sturdy
manhood, the desire for Liberty, the love
of Justice to accept it.
Awaken ye toilers! Arouse from your dreams!
Put your ballots together to stop the huge streams
Of booty that flows to the coffers of wealth.
From the pockets of labor, by channels of stealth ;
Unceasingly flows in flood or in drouth.
To plunder the toilers of the North and the South.
That is the warning; the hour is here.
When the startling message of Paul Revere,
With its cry of defiance, its notes in the night,
Will call forth the patriot hosts for the fight:
Will awaken the slave, to fetter the knave.
Now lord of a Nation he used to fear.
4() Conquering March of Capital.
Muster! then to spread the story,
Of our exiled Prince's glory;
Muster! now to sweep the plain!
And seat him on his throne again.
Then touch elbows for a nation,
That again will give salvation,
To the mass who've brought it glory:
That will strangle superstition.
And consign to long predition.
The vicious measures of the classes;
And work out a quick fruition.
As wrong doers reach contrition.
For the toiling, burdened masses;
And recall the ancient story.
This is the message of Paul Revere.
His cry of defiance and not of fear.
'Tis his startling call from that famous affray.
To the tax-plundered toilers,—the slaves cf to-day.
—From the Midnight Message of Pauf Revere.
Should other states respond to the Kansas bea¬
con fires, and send back a favorable answer to the
signals from the dome of the State House, a call
will be issued for volunteer Paul Reveres from ev¬
ery township, to meet at their respective county
seats on a date in early summer, organize for a
New Crusade and make details to ride
"And spread the alarm
Through every school district, borough and farm"
and gather recruits to remove the stone of tradi¬
tion, of precedent and of juggling court decrees
from the doorway of the sepulchre of Liberty.
What say the toiling millions of our sister
states North and South. East and West? Will
they sustain the conclusions of our state govern¬
ment; and arrried with the powerful and peaceful,
the harmless and effective, the mild and conquer¬
ing weapon of the ballot, help us to guide the car
of progress over a "great divide" between hostile
theories—the divide between a realm cursed with
the blight of industrial slavery, and a land where
the laborer as well as the loafer, may gather the
fruit and enjoy the shade of his own vine and fig
tree? If so they will respond to our signals by
petitions to their own legislatures.
BOOKS
BY
Ex-Lieut.-Gov, Percy Daniels,
OF KANSAS.
The Free Coinage of American Labor
into Hone.st Dollars. Price, 5 cents.
A Sunflower Tangle. An address to the
People's Party State Convention in 1894.
Price, 5 cents; per dozen, 40 cents.
The Midnight Message of Paul Revere.
Price, 5 cents ; per dozen, 35 cents.
A Lesson of To-Day and a (Question
of TO' Mori'ow. .V campaign speech of
1892. With cut and sketch of author.
Price, 10 cents; per dozen, 75 cents.
Man versus Mammon. With Petition to
and Concurrent Resolution of the Kansas
Legislature of 1897.
Price, 10 cents ; per dozen, 80 cents.
Cutting the Gordian Knot.
Price, 25 cents ; per dozen, $2.
A Crisis for the Hushaudmaii. Third
edition. With supplement ("American
Despots to the Rear " ), Graduated Prop¬
erty Tax Bill, and "A Lesson of To-Day."
Price, 50 cents ; per dozen, 84.
Also, blank Petitions and Resolutions for use
in other States, at 20 cents per dozen, or $1.50 per
hundred.
Address,
PERCY DANIELS,
Girard, Kansas
336.24
Dl 86m