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Show ;! GULF BETWEEN RICH AND POOR. . W mentioned the other dy that the men who are aifting the trust and trying to reduce their bnainew to the level of the methods of the man who ha - tVwollar Bri 4 irying -throughthosefew . dollars and bin own exertions to make livelihood and a little more; do not comprehend the omnipotence omnipo-tence of money. The old autagonism between the rich and the poor haa alwaya existed, and when the blatherskite politician began to try to array the poor against the rich antedates history. But within the past 100 years and especially within with-in the last twenty-five years, the rich man's opportunities oppor-tunities have vastly improved. In olden times if the rich man wanted anything done he had to employ em-ploy men less fortunate than himself to do it. A . great many men made fortunes out of the mines of J'cxii-o and Feru. But they had to employ and pay fair wages to rant numbers of men who mined the oree and on their heads packed those ores out ot the mines, and more, through the erode means ' then in use, to reduce the ores and save a percentage percent-age of their value. Now steam and gasoline and , electricity have so multiplied the working force of great mine that 100 men, easily, with these aids, do the work of mor than twenty times their number num-ber in the old ways. There are other aids. One Cornish pump alone can drain more ' water from mine than a thousand men could have done in Mexico or Peru. Half a dozen charges .. of dynamite can break down more ore than 500 . men could have done in five times the time in Mex-. Mex-. ico or Peru, and one hoisting engine can bring tip ' from the 300 level more ore in a day than a thousand thou-sand men could have brought out in a week not many years ago. How many men would it require to do what one steam shovel does at Bingham f How many men ' would it require to handle the hot metal at the Garfield Gar-field smelters that one man handles by simply tnuch-. tnuch-. ing a button occasionally? How many team and " stages would it require to handle the freight and ' passengers of the I'nion and Southern Pacific rail- roads T We mention these things merely to call attention to the fact that while up to, within a few years the ri-h man could not accomplish anything any-thing great in an industrial way except by paying fair wages to a multitude of men; he now requires but a very few. just enough to manipulate and con-' con-' trol the geniis that with a few dollars he can bring to his aid. . ' . ' What thr outcome- ia to hf, who ran prediftt Surly the school (ihould be improved in way ti so pquip the young that the world will heed their work in aoma rapacity, and we believe that without waxting time in the discii(in of equities, national preaerration demands auch a readjustment of taxation that it will hear harder and harder on a man or company aa the income increases until after it reachea a certain point the whole should b- absorbed. Take the caae of Andrew Carnegie, for instance. He ia called a philanthropist and his gift are a wonderment to the world. Hia gifts Pid he ever earn that money? Did hia industry and genius combined ever honestly accumulate any sum which, placed at interest, could possibly earn what he annually gives away t 'Of course not. But if a mm haa worked hard for thirty years, and bought a modest bouse for hims'lf, hia wife and children, can he avoid paying the full tax on that house? Suppose the law forty years ago had read that the first $10,000 per annum which Mr. Carnegie earned annually should be free from taxes, that the second (10.000 should pay a small tax, the third a larger tax and so on until it reached 10(1.000, that then it should be confiscated by the btate, would it not have been just as well for Mr. Carnegie and vastly better for the state! and nation? |