DOLCE FAR NIENTE AND DOLLARS.
THE dispatches state that during the three weeks George
Gould was lazing and luxuriating in a foreign land "the
business revival added at least $15,000,000 to the value of
the Gold securities." Gadzooks! how sweet idleness must
be when sugared with more than $714,000 per day! I'm
willing to loaf for half the lucre. How refreshing it is to
contemplate our plutocrats lying beside their nectar like a
job lot of Olympian gods—"careless of mankind"—while
"—they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands,
Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery sands,
Clanging fights and flaming towns, and sinking ships and
praying hands."
One of Mr. Gould's employees, who was toiling at risk
of life and limb for about $2 a day while his imperial
master was doing the dolce far niente act for $714,000
per diem and his board, comments as follows in a letter to
the ICONOCLAST:
"W. C. BRANN: It might be pertinent for you to find
out how the festive George, of yacht-racing, Waler-hob-nobbing fame, has managed to reap such pronounced benefits
from the revival in business. It is notorious among
railroad men that one of the first moves of Superintendent
Trice, who succeeded Tim Campbell as manager of the
I. & G. N., was to inaugurate a series of `reforms,' the
chief feature of which was the cutting salaries of from
20 to 40 per cent, especially among the office men, and at
the same time covering it by swapping the men around as
much as possible. Forces were reduced by compelling the
half-starved employes to do overtime at less pay, and the
poor devils can only grin and bear it. Suppose you write
down, and get the true data from the various places where
the I. & G. N. touches, and then show the true source, or
the real `revival' that has given the festive George such
a boost in his cash box."
In the first place, "the business revival" has not
"added $15,000,000 to the value of the Gould securities"
—it is a political falsehood which George can be depended
upon to promptly repudiate when the tax assessor calls
around to tender congratulations. It is eleven to seven
that Georgie assures him that the Gould estate is in a very
bad way, that only by the most heroic self-sacrifices in
this period of business depression can he succeed in
remaining solvent; that there was a slight advance in railway
values while crops were moving, only to be succeeded
by a doleful slump, caused by the high tariff, which cuts
so dreadfully into tonnage. If he refrains from putting
up some such game of talk as that I'll take up a collection
among the bootblacks of Texas to help pay his taxes.
Fifteen millions in three weeks! Oh my! Since "Count"
Castellane pulled one leg off the estate it is no larger than
it was when old Jay went to He-aven. Now Jay was an
honorable man—at least he wouldn't steal the buttons
off your undershirt while you had it on, and hotel keepers;
did not take the precaution to chain his knife and fork to
the table; but in his palmiest days he paid taxes on but
$75,000 worth of personal property—railway securities
and "sich." Heavy crops, for which Providence and the
industry of the American people are alone responsible,
have added somewhat to the present earning power of
railway properties, but it is doubtful, if the total mileage
and equipment owned by the Goulds would sell for as much
actual cash as before the election of McKinley. The
great bulk of the boasted advance in Gould securities
consists of wind pumped in by the "pulls"; but just the
same the American people will be bled to pay dividends on
this speculative boodle—both patrons and employes will
suffer that interest may be collected on "invested capital"
which never had an existence. But even were the dispatches
true, what must be said of a "business revival"
that reduces wages, that adds enormously to the wealth
of the plutocrats while making economic conditions harder
for the great mass of the American people? The general
trend of wages is downward, while the cost of living is
enhanced by the Dingley tariff and the advance in flour
caused by foreign crop failures. Why? Because, despite
the pumping of the Republican press about the "return
of prosperity," the country is full of idle men, and the
inevitable tendency of the gold standard and high tariff
is to increase their number and further lower wages by
the pressure of these people for employment. Railway
securities have advanced a little despite the repressive effect
of Republican policy, have beaten up somewhat against
the adverse winds, impelled by speculators whose
vis vitalis
was the crops of the country—the great bulk of which
were produced by men who voted for Bryan. The necessary
sequence of an appreciating standard of value is
depreciation in the selling price of property, whether such
property be Gould securities or Irish potatoes; while a
high tariff inevitably reduces tonnage below what it would
otherwise be—chisels a yawning hiatus into the revenues
of every American railroad. This fact is so self-evident
that it may seem unnecessary to say more on the subject
—that arguing the matter were like wasting time proving
that water is wet; but as a number of Republican papers
are having a serious of violent epeliptoid convulsions
because I recently asserted that a nation can only be paid
for its exports with its imports, it may not be amiss to
make a few remarks adapted to the understanding of the
kindergarten class. Trade, whether between the people
of this republic, or those of Europe and America, is, when
reduced to the last analysis, nothing more than an exchange
of commodities. It may happen that we sell largely
to a country of which we buy but little; but the nations
that purchase of our debtor pay for our products. Our
exports usually exceed our imports, and for the simple
reason that we owe vast sums abroad, the surplus being
employed in the payment of interest and the discharge
of our foreign indebtedness. When we become a great
creditor nation like England, our imports will exceed our
exports—we will begin to absorb the labor products of
foreign lands. If America received foreign gold for all
her exports it would be nothing more than a commodity
weighed to her at so much per ounce and which she might
exchange at her good pleasure for foreign goods, just as
she does her cotton and corn. Some gold crosses the sea;
but it goes and comes just as go other commodities—seeks
the most advantageous market. A tariff wall, by keeping
foreign products
out keep American products
in,
thereby
narrowing our market and limiting production. If the
workman does not product he cannot consume, and production
and consumption are the basis of railway business.
But why, it may be asked, would the railway corporations
cut their own throats by helping elect McKinley? Surely
they understand their business much better than does a
Texas maverick-brander who writes economic editorials
while astride a mustang. Possibly so; but it were well to
remember that while it is evidently to the interests of the
stockholders of such a corporation that it should prosper,
the bond-owner, who is a kind of wholesale pawnbroker
and flourishes best during periods of business depression,
also has something to say. Whether the former receives
any dividends or not the latter must have his interest,
and the more of labor products required to pay it the
more he is enriched. The railway bondholder is usually
the party who holds a $500 mortgage on a $10,000 farm.
Crops may fail, the hogs get the cholera and the poultry
die of the pips; cotton may go down and cloth go up; but
the sorrows of others cause him to lose no sleep. As I have
hitherto pointed out, we have it on the authority of Mark
Hanna's newspaper organ "lower wages are certainly a
feature of the new prosperity"—that the American workman
need not hope for permanent employment until willing
to accept the same wages paid "the pauper labor of
Europe," from whose disastrous competition the Republicans
solemnly promised him protection. If Supt. Trice
is reducing wages and overworking his men it may be
accepted as certain that he is compelled thereto by a
higher power—that the edict has gone forth that the
employees of the I. & G. N. must work longer hours for
less money that interest be paid on the $15,000,000 which
the blessed "business revival" added to the value of Mr.
Gould's securities while he was idling about Europe.
