| Show J U 1 u 9 lof 91 CROSSCUP POINTS OUT A WEAKNESS corporations ARE TROLLED BY AMERICAN PEOPLE E industrial oligarchy now Is matter of affairs Groes cups reply to harriman Harrl man i 1 new york april 3 judge peter S grosscup groscup of chicago addressed a L meeting of first voters at cooper union night he cetin g w wu W under tho the auspices of the tb Peoples jil statute and wag attended by a large number of men judge grosscup said 11 mr aft ryan Is reported report Pd to have said a few days ago that tho the railroads of the tile country were owned by the people of the country in a large sense that thit ie is true the bonds that have bulit built and equi equipped the railroad are owned by the people in considerable amounts the people own too the great bulk of the wealth in the form of de deposits ln banks insurance companies and the like that la Is largely utilized by railroad owners in the way of loans to carr carry y their securities but neither in the railroad world nor the corporation work generally have I 1 the people obtained any real j part rt in the power and advantage that goos with actual proprietorship the ne hand may be the band hand of esau but tho the voice is the voice of jacob and it Is upon this great fact tho the ninety and nine furnishing the means but practically deprived of participating in the tle power and advantage of the count country rys incorporated property that the great q questions of our future hinge binge governments monopolized by the few have always boon been denounced as oligarchies oligarch ies it made no diffene difference i that tho the soldier who defended such governments came from the ranks of the people or that the means that sustained it were the savings of the people the government was none the less an oligarchy so long as the middleman making up the body of its people was excluded from part and parcel in the actual power wielded wiel deO and the greatest chapter in tho the history of the human race is not that which tells of the periods of greatest material plenty but that which tolls tells of the struggle of the individual man to open to himself the doore doors of power and of its success every step stop from oligarchy toward democracy in struggle was a step forward every step in our Indu industrial industria il life from individual industry owned by the people to corporate industries owned by the few has been a step backward backward it Is those these backward steps step that must bo be arrested can they be arrested can the causes that have been making them backward steps be turned forward so that here as in the transformation form aaion from oligarchy to democracy in the world of political government the individual middle american made secure of bread and ani and higher wages may obtain at the same me time an open door to an aspiring mans place and part in the great new industrial life that surrounds unde him upon the answer to that question it Is I 1 repeat that the future of the country hinges for my part I 1 believe that the transformation can be brought about the real quest question ibn Is not so much can it be done as how shall it be done how bow shall we set about ahmit this tilts work wok of transforming ns forming the new great greit life from an industrial oligarchy to an industrial democracy not by standing pat on conditions condl tlona as they exist leaving it to work out ont the problem time works wo wonders but there arc are times also that press tor for action and we witness as we now witness wit noss the great industrial life created by this generation of americans going almost completely under corporate control when we realize as we realize now that corporate con arol is in too many instances not control according to any principles of good faith but control according to the will and personal interest of the men into whose hands the corporation has fallen when it Is called to our pa attention as it Is almost every day now that the corporation Is not industry organized as it should be in tho the interest of the public and of tho the individual men and women chosa lives and fortunes are bound up in it but Is a shell merely behind whose walls any kind of game Is permissible when we see vast fortunes transferred in an hour from the treasuries of the corporation to ahe pockets of individuals when we see the state and the nation in the miserable plight of having no power to prevent only power to lock the stable door after the horse Is stolen instituting here and there a prosecution and administering now and then a penalty but a prosecution that too often is merely spectacular and a penalty that does not punish or prevent and when wo we see as every thoughtful person 2 sees ees that the effect of this system Is to throw out of what would otherwise bo be the he natural channels of investment the vast capital of the country belonging to the people of the country nearly all of what Is thus thrown out flowing back to the men who chiefly responsible for the corporations mis chiefs in the aa past st may utilize it over again in the future the times seem to press even now for something in the direction of genuine reform but how shall genuine reform be brought about how shall we set about the work of getting the individual american into his rightful place and part in the great new life of which he be Is now chiefly an industrial part only how low can wo we bring about in this new era ra of industrial building on which america has entered what was achieved in the old ora era of nation building out of which we have just emerged by employing here I 1 answer as was employed there the axiom that if the right avenues are fully opened up mans natural instincts will do the rest what government is to men politically liti cally organized the corpo corporation ration 1 Is to modem In industry austry organized A and ald as into the institution of 0 government was introduced security to tho the individual man working hla ills way up tip to fill participation in political power into tho the corporation must bo introduced tho the prohibitions and limitations the ways and means that will give security to the individual american working his way toward proprietorship in the tho industrial flold the corporation is here to stay to destroy it would be as if our fathers instead of reforming government that it might open up ul avenues to the individual man had bad destroyed govern ment altogether no no my young friends it Is not the destroyer that we vre should invoke nor a continuance of the whirlwind of passion and misunderstanding nor on the otner other hand the dead calm that would bo be followed only by another and more destructive etive whirlwind it is the rebul lder that we must invoke that reconstruction st of the corporation that opening up to the middle american I 1 an opportunity to work out hla his instinct for an individual independence of his own will eventually trans forni the great new life alf that the corporation embodies as govern government mont was transformed into something that the people will proudly ou sustain stain because I 1 the peoples industrial life will then be something that really belongs to them somo something thing into which hope and aspiration pour as we well as toll and self denials first then let lot us fully recognize continued judge grosscup that the individual american has sull still the property instinct secondly that he has the means thirdly and here 1 is where our immediate work begins let us remove the causes that have divorced this instinct and these financial means from froni nearly every kind of property that haa has gone into corporate form that have destroyed his confidence in the corporation as an avenue through which he be individually can participate groat great bulk of his count coant rys property t I 1 after a resume of the corporation reform in IVL Germany thirty years ago and its results judge grosscup continued but while I 1 am aln not attempting in detail to point out the exact structure of the american COT por atlon aa an it should stand when reconstructed some of tho principles on oil which the reconstruction should take place can be particular ired the reconstructed corporation for instance must have no place in it tor for those schemes of spoliation alint with within in or without plunder the people whose capital has created it ond whose wheat patronage mus 1311 support it 1 inthe in the reconstructed carpol corporation atlon the securities blued must be related in some way to the values actually put in in the reconstructed corpora uon tion not only must the officers be trustees of the we stockholders eri iclal belol to the strict accountability to anich individual trustees are now held and denied tho the privilege as individual teen are now denied of making profit out of the trust lut the administration of the trust as in the caad of individual trustees must wust bo can ean kept under th eye eve of or some sonie tribunal of the govern government and in the reconstructed corpor corporation atlon tang ible inducements ought tobe to be given to the workman tag the dork clork th the 0 em hioye of every kind to secure lecup tart hip 1 now what practical courso in it a political way ahal shall be taken tr sup biant the corporation or of today with the corporation whose paramo paramount dut purpose and baikie pies ale j I 1 hav 0 tried to summarize in some of the state legislature bills have already ap appeared for tor the ictor I 1 matlon mation of the corporation on the anes indicated governor hughes seems to have taken partial hold though iam biting his attention to public utility corporations governor deneen ii moving in illinois these movements are in the right spirit they show that underneath the present contusion confusion something practicable is stirring that the winds that are now whirling may settle soon into steady forward forces |
