Show 1 WHO ARE MONOPOLISTS Yes my son a monopoly is a bad thing and I am glad to see the people of this country organizing themselves against the monopolies that are crushing the life out of honest land worthy competition There are reveral monopolies in this afflicted land Some of them are worth millions All of them want to be worth twice as much as that Vanderbilt and Gould are famous monopolists The Western Union Telegraph company is a gigantic monopoly and there are several other monopolies When you employ 300 or thirty or ten workmen and pay them with j your own money and a committee I waits on you to tell you that if you do not discharge a certain workman a good mechanic sober quiet faith ful whose only fault is that he be longs to no labor organization the other 399 or twentynine or nine will quit work in the midst of your busy season you are in the clutch of a monopolya monopoly as grinding grasping and cruel in its way as the Western Union It is called a trade union but it is a monopoly When a committee of workmen come to you and say that as you have a great many contract s b olF 0 J uo UaLL finished and as men are scarce and hard to get and as they have you on the hip they will strike in ten minutes unless you allow them to set their own pay at the highest I figures then that is a monopoly that acts just precisely as the Western West-ern Union does when I it absorbs a I rival line and tells you that as there is only one office in this town they will raise the rate a little Whan you tell your workmen tht times are dull and the market is stagnant and that you dont need them anyhow and they can work on half time or none then you are the monopolythat is you are the striker A monopoly is a chronic striker It is al always watching a chance to pinch you and squeeze just a little more work or money out of you for its own benefit The tramp who airs his rags at your kitchen door while his break fast is preparing is a ° monopolist He knows that you hate him and dont want to feed him But he knows that you are afraid if von dont feed him he will set fire to the I stable some night So he makes you give him a breakfast for I nothing The honest farmer who holds back his wheat until he can squeeze SI 40 per bushel out of you for it not because be-cause it is better wheat than you got for 90 cents but because wheat is so scarce is as mean a monopolist as there is in the lot Jay Gould couldt give him anv points The man who charges 40 cents a pound for very ordinary butter just because the roads are so bad the people who are selling their butter in the villages for 20 cents cant get to the city with it he too is a monopolist mono-polist When you buy a jar of lard of him poke into it with a ramrod to feel for a boulder And the lady who burns steak and chips china for you atSS a week is a monopolist You spent six weeks looking for her she stays with you two weeks breaks 88 worth of china and glass loses 82 worth of spoons and forks collect S6 for wages and goes off with twentyfour hours warning to a place that offers her more china to smash and 350 a week for smashing smash-ing it You see my soon in looking about for a monopoly to denounce or demolish our naturally envious dispositions lead us to assail the monopolies that are more fortunate than our own We clamor against Vanderbilt and Jay Gould and Western Union and fail to observe the smaller monopolies that differ from the great ones not in spirit but only in wealth and power You are not a monopolist 0 no because you are a clerk In a store and there are fifty young men watching you for your place eager to do for S25 a month what you are paid 840 for doing There is no monopoly in your business but that isnt your fault Let the merchant over the way offer you 845 and in twentyfour hours you would leave the man who took you in when you were a raw cub of a boy doing more damage than good to the business who taught you and trained you and made you worth Si5 a month Youd do it too quick my son thats the kind of a man you areA are-A monopolist isnt necessarily a millionaire He is simply the man I who holds the whip handle It is to Y derived from two Latin words mono and pole meaning the man at the pole And the man at the pole you know knocks the persimmons He may knock a million of them or he may knock only two but while he is knocking you dont get any Hence my son a monopoly is a prosperous combination of which we are not one This makes it very wicked avaricious avar-icious and dangerous When we get into it it ceases to be a monopoly and becomes a union a brotherhood a firm an association or corporation This change of title also involves a great moral change and it becomes a mighty engine of progress a developer devel-oper of our countrys resources a factor in the national prosperity and all that sort of thing A monopoly is a thing which it is hard to get into There is no monopolist so greedy and dangerous as the Nihilist The ordinary monopolist is content to control one thing The Nihilist wants everything and a threefifths share of what is left If you live to be 35 years old and havent been able to get into any other monopoly by that time I would advise you to go to the North Pole and start an ice cream saloon R J BlTRDETTE t |