THE CORPORATIONS AGAINST THE PEOPLE
The Second Silent Revolution
One of the things that propagandists do really well that we might want to emulate is to zero in on THE “enemy.” Galvanizing people’s time, money and attention is very difficult without a suitable target. Throughout the twentieth century, communist, socialists, and radicals of all kinds were the “enemy.” Communism functioned as a devil term, the purpose of which enabled quick and easy identification of the social heretic without all the fuss of explaining or rationalizing why this particular belief was heresy in the first place.
Approbation—reflexive and unconscious, could be heaped on the target. Simply label the target and move on. A bit like crying out “witch” in the Middle ages or rending your clothes while shouting blasphemy.
And while inappropriately identifying and castigating false enemies, exactly what the label “Communist, “ did in the twentieth century, is unhelpful to society. Recognizing WHO THE ACTUAL ENEMY IS continues to be a most vital task.
Current “enemies” being perp-walked across the media landscape including much of our sacred alternative media are ... The Neo-Nazi Right, The Marxist Left, The Deep State, The WHO, The United Nations, Russia, and China. Rarely do you hear terms like “Transnational Capitalist Class” (TCC), or “Globo-Cap” short for Global Capitalists. Rarer still are they perp-walked as enemies in the media.
We might want to start taking some notes from someone who earned a reputation as the “editorial dean of democracy, in the late eighteen hundreds.
B.O Flowers, editor of the Arena Magazine hammered away at corruption a decade before the Muckrakers started throwing their haymakers at the privileged elite of society. The moniker was well earned; his prophetic and incisive analysis of the true issues of his time and his relentless exhortations for citizens to organize and beat back the forces that would imperil future generations are exemplary.
Writing in June 1898 he penned an article titled, The Corporations Against the People. I ask you to consider whether anything has really changed in this country or globally for that matter, since that time. Or did the amnestic and diversionary effect of twentieth century propaganda cause us to lose sight of the TRUE enemy right under our beds while distractedly wasting time and effort hunting the latest boogieman everywhere else.
Enemies are important. Crystal clear enemies. Can you see them yet?
When we act like greyhounds chasing a stuffed rabbit...they find humor in our ignorance.
Let’s not waste our energy beating the air with our fists, punching and landing indiscriminate blows on sideshows and diversions.
Enjoy Mr. Flower’s article reprinted from the June 1898 edition of Arena magazine. (p. 218-228)
Please feel free to leave your comments.
IT IS of vital importance that the friends of popular government should grasp in a broad way the great basic issues involved in the titanic struggle of the present — a struggle upon which depends an issue no less momentous than the very existence of popular government. The conflict which is pending is between corporate power in the hands of a few on the one side and public interests and the people's rights on the other. Any narrowing of this issue, or any attempt to elevate one of the many evil consequences flowing from it so as to make a paramount issue of that which is partial, or only a single stem from the giant stalk, is a serious blunder which can serve only to divide the forces of progress. Even if the single reform, however beneficent, triumphed, it could in the nature of the case be at best but a partial success. Thus, monopoly in money, monopoly in transportation, monopoly in all public utilities, whether national, State, or municipal, and monopoly in commodities essential for man's life, comfort, or well-being, are the offspring of corporate control, of society's needs, and civilization's demands, in which the great profits of the few are acquired at the expense of the many. Against this evil, as the concrete representation of despotism in its latest role, all reformers, all friends of liberty, freedom, and justice should unite.
The forces of freedom and the forces of oppression are being rapidly marshaled, the lines of battle are being drawn. The tendencies of the opposing theories are no longer vague or doubtful. If the corporations are to continue, a popular government cannot live, any more than liberty can exist under the rule of absolutism. Here is a fact for thoughtful people to consider. The corporations, as we shall presently see, are the sworn enemies of public rights, individual independence, common justice, and that wholesome liberty which marks a free government.
Nothing is gained by pursuing the ostrich policy. It is neither manly nor safe to disguise the naked facts, which are no longer disputed questions among honest and informed citizens. The situation in the United States today reminds one of a certain Eastern legend. Abdallah, an oriental prince, was one day reclining on his couch, sipping his wine, listening to the music of birds, and enjoying the rich fragrance wafted from his garden of roses, when a beautiful fly entered his apartment and poised on the edge of his wine-cup; he watched the little insect with interest until it flew away. The next day it returned to his cup, and so on, each successive day finding the little visitor at the prince's lonely board. In a short time Abdallah became strongly attached to the fly; he encouraged, humored, and petted it, never noticing how rapidly it was growing, nor the strange transformation that was gradually taking place, by which the once small and inoffensive insect was assuming the form of a man, and later that of a giant. With the growth of the intruder the vigor, health, and greatness of the prince diminished. Abdallah became so fascinated with his visitor that he gave him the right of his house; and when his self-invited guest, after appropriating some of the prince's most prized treasures, gave them back to Abdallah, the poor potentate went into an ecstasy over the generosity of his guest, wholly oblivious of the fact that the little returned was but a moiety of his own wealth which the interloper had appropriated. With the ascendency of the giant that had once been a fly came the complete transformation of the prince. He lost all capacity for reason and self-government, and reflected only that which the giant desired him to manifest. Hence he became a cringing lackey at the feet of a soulless tyrant. Under this fatal spell Abdallah dismissed, degraded, or destroyed all his true friends and faithful servants and followers, putting in their place the wily tools of the giant. Then another change came over the unhappy prince; the fascination of love changed to the fascination of fear. The warnings of his old friends had been mocked, their fidelity had been rewarded with disgrace, and now the prince felt himself a powerless victim of one who was a stranger to every high or holy sentiment. One morning the prince rose not. His servants entered his apartment to find hiia dead. It was whispered that the print of the giant's thumb was on his throat.
This legend is suggestive. The corporations have ensnared our nation as did the apparently harmless and beautiful fly. They have been tolerated until they have gained power and a firm foothold in the government throughout all its ramifications. Moreover, and worse, the great opinion-forming agencies of the age have come under their power. Silently, secretly, but with the one central thought of mastery through consolidation and triumph through organization, a few men have banded themselves together and have seized upon various sources of wealth, — sometimes the wealth which nature through countless ages has prepared for all the children of earth. In other instances, those things which, arising from and being dependent upon society, clearly belong to the people collectively, have been seized upon and utilized for the benefit of the few; while a third method of accumulating wealth has been through indirect oppression by securing a monopoly of the products which enter largely into modern life, a monopoly rendered possible through the protection afforded by government and the aid of those who had already grown powerful through the control of nature's treasuries and society's opportunities. These class favors and special privileges have been frequently supplemented by acts which, to say the least, have been glaringly immoral, such as the watering of stock and gambling with loaded dice. In this manner have the corporations advanced step by step till the warnings of statesmen and scholars, which a few years ago were denounced as absurd and demagogical, are no longer questioned.
The great power of corporations is fed by sources of wealth which belong to all the people, and the unjust appropriation of which by a few entails that natural suffering upon the social body which an infraction of hygienic law entails upon the physical body. Thus, nature has provided land rich in productive power; she has stored light and heat in her secret recesses for the blessing and comfort of all the people; and it is the right, nay, it is the supreme duty, of the government to see that society as a whole enjoys the blessings of these sources of comfort and essentials to life. It is a crime when a few persons are permitted to seize and hold for their own profit these vast privileges, while the humblest citizen, because of these unequal advantages, is made to suffer and die for what otherwise would have made life a joy.
Today we find the vast oil fields of America in the hands of a corporation which has behind it a record of lawlessness that may well amaze intelligent foreigners; and this corporation, with its hands on the tap which supplies the people's light, levies a revenue from millions of people, which if enjoyed by all instead of by a few score people would render it possible to reduce taxes on the one hand, and, on the other, for the nation to carry on vast measures for internal improvements that would give employment and good wages to the "out-of-works" on practical and needed enterprises, such as the erection of permanent levees, the reclamation of arid land by irrigation, the building of great highways for the people, and similar necessary improvements. The infinitesimal fraction of the vast accumulation farmed from the people by one man in the Standard Oil trust, which has been given to a conservative sectarian educational institution, gives a very fair hint of the enormous benefits which would accrue to all if this wealth, which nature has stored up for society, were operated for the benefit of society, instead of being seized and appropriated by a few in such a manner as to render possible an oligarchy at once lawless, corrupt, and cruel.
The great oil monopoly is a fair illustration of one way in which associations or corporations composed of a few men are growing rich almost beyond the imagination of man, through the stored-up resources of nature, which should be, nay, which are, the common heritage and inalienable property of all the people.
In the great coal corporations, with their frightful system of oppression, so suggestive of galley-slave methods, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, their control of the output which places the nation at the mercy of a few persons, we have another illustration of the same vitally important fact which confronts the republic today. Nor, when considering the injustice practiced against the wretched miners, and the extortionate prices charged for coal, must we lose sight of the very important point, that with government ownership and fair profits a vast revenue would accrue to the state from this and other sources of natural wealth which by right belong to all the people — unless it can be clearly established that might and craft make right. These great reservoirs of wealth provided by a beneficent Providence for humanity are being seized and held by an infinitesimal proportion of society, and through this injustice, this wrong, this moral crime, the sufferings of the people are yearly increasing, while the normal unfoldment of civilization is checked, real progress is retarded, and the currents of public life are being polluted by a subtle and deadly poison.
Passing from the treasure-house of nature, where is found wealth which if employed by the people for the good of all would soon change the front of civilization, we come to another source of corporate power, which, in the hands of organized society, where it manifestly belongs, and operated as is the post office for the good of all, would prove a double blessing to the people, because (1) the enormous interest on fictitious valuation, or watered stock, now being wrested from the people — which is essentially dishonest — would under public ownership disappear; and (2) a fair profit or revenue above running expenses on actual investments would, in the hands of the national, State, or municipal government, yield an income sufficient to reduce taxes to a minimum. Under existing conditions corporations control franchises of fabulous value to society; and through the possession of these public or quasi-public utilities they are levying tributes incomparably greater than all the burden of direct taxation, tributes which go to enrich a few who are already enormously wealthy, to increase the power of corporate greed, to further enslave the millions, debauch and corrupt government, and shift the basis of national life from justice, integrity, and freedom to might, cunning, and oppression.
The history of the great monopolies which so largely control the storehouses of nature's wealth or govern their output and distribution, and the story of the rise of the various other natural monopolies, such as railroads, telegraphs, telephones, and the public utility in municipal life, would each require a volume.* The story of one, however, is practically the history of all, and I shall therefore merely refer to one or two typical illustrations.
In a masterly review of the railroad question recently made by Justice Walter Clark, of the Supreme Bench of North Carolina, the able jurist showed from the returns made by the railroads operated in that commonwealth for 1896, that the net earnings of the three principal roads were $2,975,000, or almost fifteen per cent on the full actual valuation of the railroads, a valuation which according to the railroad corporations is in excess of the value of their entire property.^ Yet though according to their own reports for 1896 their net earnings were almost $3,000,000, the claim of the roads is that in addition to a large interest on the actual cost of the property, or its real valuation, they must pay interest on $70,000,000 of fictitious capital, or water. But I ask, in the name of reason, justice, or right, why should every farmer, every traveller, and every shipper in North Carolina be thus systematically plundered to pay for capital which never existed except on paper? Why should the wealth-creators of North Carolina pay fifteen per cent on a liberal valuation of the entire railroad properties, after all running expenses, including princely salaries to favored officials, have been paid, when under state-ownership three per cent would yield a handsome profit for money invested, and twelve per cent would remain with the proper owners, or real creators of the wealth?
•The reader is urged to peruse Mr. Henry D. Lloyd's masterly works, " Wealth Against Commonwealth," which gives a startling picture of the history of the Standard Oil monopoly, the history of a crime which reads like a romance; and "The Strike of the Millionaires against the Miners," being a chapter on the crimes of corporate power as illustrated at Spring Valley, near Chicago; also Governor William Larrabee's scholarly work on " The Railroad Question," which, though extremely temperate in spirit, proves in a startling manner how the people are being wronged out of millions upon millions of the wealth which they create, and how society is being debauched by the railroad corporations. The writings of Professor Frank Parsons, Professor Edward Bemis, and other scholarly and careful thinkers should be studied by all earnest men and women. They all illustrate the vital truth that organized corporate greed is becoming all-powerful through systematic plunder, through the control of opinion-forming organs of the press, the crushing of opponents and competitors, the debauching of government, and the enslavement of the people.
^The three leading roads own more than four-fifths of the total valuation.
In the case of the New York Central, as very ably discussed by Governor William Larrabee,* a similar revelation is made; while in the cases of the Atchison, the Iron Mountain, the Erie, and other great trunk lines even more astounding is the story of the corporate plunder of the public. The methods pursued by the Pennsylvania, as pointed out by Governor Larrabee, while more ingenious are scarcely more creditable than those of other lines. But, as I have already said, the story of one of these great corporations which own and control these vast public utilities is, with slight variations, the story of all.
When we come to quasi-public utilities in municipalities we find the same record of public plunder for private gain. Take, for example, the metropolitan street railway of New York, which furnishes a fair illustration. The New York World of October 11, 1897, published a carefully prepared and somewhat exhaustive history of the rise of this giant monopoly. The story shows that there is to-day about $20,000,000 of water in the body of this one child of corporate greed, which enjoys an enormously valuable street franchise, and in return compels the traveling public to pay dividends, or interest, on $19,880,000 more than the total cost of the property. Here is a summary made by the World of the extent of water in this one corporation. It should arrest the attention of every thoughtful person. It is a fairly typical illustration of the way in which the people of every great municipality in the New World are being plundered for the enrichment of the few:
From the official reports filed with the Railway Commissioners by the Metropolitan Street Railway Company and its constituent companies up to June 30, 1896, it appears that $19,880,000 in water goes to make up the capital stock of $16,500,000 and bonds of $9,000,000 of the Metropolitan. These are the figures in detail: $450,000 excess of amount paid in stock and bonds by Houston, West Street, and Pavonia Ferry Railroad Company for the purchase of property of Avenue C Railroad.
*The Railroad Question, " by William Larrabee.
•490,000 excess of reported cost in 1883 over report of 1882, for which no equivalent in value is' shown.
1600,000 excess of stock payment for Chambers Street Railroad over fair value for road and franchise.
16,000,000 amount of bonds issued in 1801-1803 by the Houston Street company, and for which no report is returned, except that they were exchanged for stock.
$200,000 paid to promoters for franchise of the South Ferry Railroad, according to report in 1886.
$960,000 Broadway Railroad Company capital stock over and above the amount paid for the property at the receiver's sale in 1889 of the assets of the Broadway Surface Railroad Company.
$860,000 of the stock and bonds of the Metropolitan Crosstown Railroad Company issued in excess of mar value of property.
$6,000,000 of the $10,000,000 of the stock and bonds of the Lexington Avenue Railroad Company, being the amount above the cost of the property.
$4,500,000 of the $6,000,000 stock and bonds of the Columbus and Ninth Avenue Railroad Company issued for construction and equipment, being in excess of the cost of the property.
$19,880,000— total water.
The same paper makes the following comments on the facts disclosed:
The tremendous loss to the people of this city through the gift of it* street-railway franchises to private corporations is clearly shown by the reports made to the State Railroad Commissioners by the Metropolitan Street Railway Company and the companies which make it up.
By the figures in these reports it appears that fully $19,880,000 of the entire capital and bonds of the Metropolitan Company issued up to 1896 is water.
This immense sum was divided up among a host of people — promoters, constructors, and manipulators. It represents the profit in "deals" with the property of the people.
Some of it, perhaps, represents the cost of "securing" franchises. It certainly does in the case of the Broadway line, obtained by gross corruption on the part of Jacob Sharp.
But more clearly than anything else this stock-watering means high street-car fares to the people. It means a vastly increased amount on which interest and dividends must be paid, and consequently it means that fares will not be reduced.
The New York Journal published some valuable articles showing the enormous revenues which properly belong to the city of New York, but which through the control of quasi-public utilities by private corporations are diverted into the pockets of the few. This paper also published a table giving the annual income in interest, rental, and dividends from some of the leading public utilities of New York, of which the following is a summary:
Street and Elevated Railroads...................$9,023,881
Gas Companies...........................................$4,714,746
Electric-Light Companies............................$824,780
Brooklyn Street-Railway Company..........$2,588,775
Total income in dividends, interest, and rentals............. $17,152,182
Under municipal ownership this immense sum would be saved to the people in cheaper service and in lower taxes.
These illustrations are fair samples of the £1 Doradoes of wealth which annually flow into the pockets of the few, who, through the corporate control of public utilities, are levying unjust tribute for private gain from the wealth-creators of the nation.
Special privileges or protection granted by legislation are another source of gain, from which, with the aid of those who control nature's stores and the utilities made valuable by society, the few have been enabled to form vast trusts and monopolies. Thus, in the one item of sugar it was made possible for one great trust to take millions of dollars from the people by levying an additional tax on every spoonful of sugar eaten.
All the corporations are linked together by the band of community of interest. There are periods when there is local warfare for a short time while the greater corporations are absorbing or crushing their smaller rivals, but these are merely incidents in the march of corporate power, and the fact remains that corporate greed is a unit against public weal. The corporations exist for the purpose of acquiring wealth for the few from the nation or the units that make up the nation; and corporate power, having no ethics, and indeed no conscience or soul, is the most formidable and essentially demoralizing influence in the republic, a power which corrupts and subverts government while it organizes oppression, and in whose atmosphere neither justice nor liberty can long survive.
Its influence is as a moral miasma in public life, while it impoverishes, enslaves, and debases the people. From the national government, despite the persistent efforts of organized corporate power to prevent exposures, have come such glaring and revolting swindles as the Credit Mobilier, the Whiskey King, the Secret Bond Deal, and the Armor J Plate and the Sugar scandals. These are fair examples of the debauching influence of the corporations in public life. The Tweed Ring and the exposures of the Lexow Committee were startling illustrations of the corrupt conditions in municipal life which were rendered possible by the influence of corporate power seeking franchises and special privileges.
But the less open and less brazen influence of the corporations is something even more alarming than their bolder and more direct methods. Such are the purchase of large interests in great opinion-forming journals and the silencing of voices which would soon awaken the conscience of the nation were they allowed to expose the corrupt and immoral practices of the corporations; the union of great advertising interests in a practical boycott by withdrawing their patronage from papers advocating measures beneficial to the people but offensive to the millionaires, such as the income tax; the pressure brought by bankers and insurance companies upon the advertising patrons of the press, as well as upon the press which advocates measures opposing the money-lending interest. These are a few of the influences which have long been actively at work, and which, owing to the rapidly increasing power of the corporations and their Machiavellian methods, are becoming more and more successful.
The real conflict of the present, the struggle upon which the issue of free government is hanging today, is between corporate power and the public weal. It is a life-and-death conflict between interests organized in bands and conducted for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many, on the one hand, and the genius of free government and the wellbeing of the millions, on the other.
It is of first importance to keep ever in the foreground the fundamental fact that the real issue is and must be the commonwealth against the corporations; that is, the freedom, happiness, and prosperity of all the people against the aggressions of organized greed. It matters not whether we consider the question from the standpoint of economics, from that of public morality and national integrity, or from that of private virtue and self-respecting manhood; whether we view it in its relation to the liberty of the people and that sound morality upon which enduring free government alone can rest; whether we view it merely as a question of business relating to the interests of the people; or whether we consider the higher and more important aspects which relate to the fundamentals upon which lasting civilization rests, — this issue becomes one of first importance to every right-thinking man, whether he be statesman or educator, farmer or artisan.
And what is more, in the presence of this mortal struggle between the forces of progress and those of oppression an awful duty devolves upon every man, a responsibility which no one, I care not how insignificant his influence may seem, can evade without committing a moral crime for which, somewhere and in some way, he will suffer as surely as there are moral laws running through the universe, and as certainly as the infraction of law brings evil consequences. This question, therefore, is one that concerns in a vital way every man and woman in the nation. What more glorious work can one engage in than that of rescuing freedom from oppression, reinstating justice on the throne of law, and bringing hope, happiness, and prosperity once more into the lives of the people!