Part 23 (2/2)

Pullman Company blacksmiths, $16.43 a week; boiler-makers, $17; carpenters, $12.38; machinists, $16.65; painters, $13.60, and laborers, $9.90 a week. As for the lower wages paid to the workers in the Field stores, we have already given them. And apart from the exploitation of employees, every person in Chicago who rides on the street or elevated railroads, and who uses gas, electricity or telephones, must pay direct tribute to these lads. How decayed monarchial establishments are in these days! Kings mostly must depend upon Parliaments for their civil lists of expenditure; but Capitalism does not have to ask leave of anybody; it appropriates what it wants.

This is the status of the Field fortune now. Let the Field striplings bless their destiny that they live in no medieval age, when each baron had to defend his possessions by his strong right arm successfully, or be compelled to relinquish. This age is one when Little Lord Fauntleroys can own armies of profit producers, without being distracted from their toys. Whatever defense is needed is supplied by society, with its governments and its judges, its superserviceable band of lawyers, and its armed forces. Two delicate children are upheld in enormous possessions and vast power, while millions of fellow beings are suffered to remain in dest.i.tution.

FOOTNOTES:

[179] ”The Truth About the Trusts”:266-267.

[180] ”Industrial Evolution of the United States,” 313.

[181] Parsons, ”The Railways, the Trusts and the People”:196. Also, Report of Chicago Chief of Police for 1894. This was a customary practice of railroad, industrial and mining capitalists. Further facts are brought out in other parts of this work.

[182] ”Report on the Chicago Strike of June and July, 1894,” by the United States Strike Commissioners, 1895.--Throughout all subsequent years, and at present, the Pullman Company has continued charging the public exorbitant rates for the use of its cars. Numerous bills have been introduced in various legislatures to compel the company to reduce its rates. The company has squelched these measures. Its consistent policy is well known of paying its porters and conductors such poor wages that the 15,000,000 pa.s.sengers who ride in Pullman cars every year are virtually obliged to make up the deficiency by tips.

[183] Sweeping as this statement may impress the uninitiated, it is entirely within the facts. As one of many indisputable confirmations it is only necessary to refer to the extended debate over child labor in the United States Senate on January 23, 28, and 29, 1907, in which it was conclusively shown that more than half a million children under fifteen years of age were employed in factories, mines and sweatshops.

It was also brought out how the owners of these properties bitterly resisted the pa.s.sage or enforcement of restrictive laws.

[184] Eighth Biennial Report of the Illinois Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1894. The report, made public in August, 1909, of the Illinois Tax Reform League's investigation of the Chicago Board of Review's a.s.sessments, showed that these frauds in evading taxation not only continue, but on a much greater scale than ever before. The Illinois Tax Reform League a.s.serted, among other statements, that Edward Morris, head of a large packing company, was not a.s.sessed on personal property, whereas he owned $43,000,000 worth of securities, which the League specified. The League called upon the Board of Review to a.s.sess J. Ogden Armour, one of the chiefs of the Beef Trust, on $30,840,000 of personal property. Armour was being yearly a.s.sessed on only $200,000 of personal property. These are two of the many instances given in the report in question. It is estimated (in 1909), that back taxes on at least a billion dollars of a.s.sessable corporate capital stock, are due the city from a mult.i.tude of individuals and corporations.

[185] ”The Present Distribution of Wealth in the United States”:143.

[186] ”Hundreds of millions of people.” Not only are the 85,000,000 people of the United States compelled to render tribute, but the peoples of other countries all over the globe.

[187] ”Marshall Field's Will” by Joseph Medill Patterson. Reprinted in pamphlet form from ”Collier's Weekly.”

[188] The number of men killed per 100,000 employed has increased from 267 a year in 1895 to about 355 at present. (See report of J. A. Holmes, chief of the technological branch of the United States Geological Survey.) The chief reason for this slaughter is because it is more profitable to hire cheap, inexperienced men, and not surround the work with proper safeguards.

END.

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