University of Wisconsin Superior - Gitche Gumee Yearbook (Superior, WI)

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us go forward in the spirit of this true statesman, lend a sympathetic hand to these people of another race, follow in our practices the precepts already taught the Chinese by the missionaries of Christ. Let us deal with these people in the spirit of the Golden Rule. Let us rejoice as the Star of the Orient rises to a worthy place among the powers of the world. STEVEJVS TOIJVT THE MENACE OF CORPORATE MONOPOLY GUY E. CARLETON N the Declaration of Independence our forefathers gave to the world a new political faith—a faith that recognized the right of men to own themselves. In that document arc enshrined the principles around which has risen the structure of our government. The republic of America is a supreme act of confidence in man, a revelation of the dignity of human effort and ability. Its creation was one of the boldest acts recorded in history. Ever triumphant under the protecting folds of the emblem of liberty, the republic has grown; the infant has become the giant. Yesterday five million people were clustered along the Atlantic border, struggling to conquer nature and rear democratic institutions founded on the principles of constitutional liberty. Today behold the ceaseless tide of population which is ever rushing past us toward the setting sun, sweeping away the wilderness, waking up industry and civilization in its westward progress. Fortune has smiled most generously on America’s sons. We arc a mighty people. In the past, perils have come upon us as if in the bold resolve to put republican institutions to the most severe trial. Civil war fell to our lot; yet it was the one test needed to give to us the consciousness of our own vigor and power, and never was the republic so strong in all the elements of life, so menacing to all the foes of democracy, as when the sun of Appomattox shone upon her banner and revealed upon its azure ground the presence of the full galaxy of her stars. The war over, the problems of reconstruction settled, politics became incidental, and the whole energies of the people were centered in the material development which has placed us foremost among the nations in the great elements of national prosperity. Hand in hand with our industrial development there has evolved a distinct classification of citizens. First, the busy man, whose whole being is engrossed in the struggle for existence; secondly, the man of leisure, who succeeded in amassing a large fortune. Our government has grown so big, the problems of legislation become so difficult, and the powers of government and the duties of citizenship have grown so complex, GITCHE GUM EE PAGE THIRTEEN

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coal sufficient in one province to supply the world’s demand for several thousand years.” China can produce enough wealth to support one-half of the entire population of the world. Is the industrial ability of the Chinese sufficient to develop these resources? Their achievements in the past and their present skill in the industrial development will answer this question. China is the mother of inventions. When the implements of our forefathers were but the stones of the hillsides, these people had devised many machines—the printing-press, the mariner’s compass, gunpowder, and many things which we use today in our own civilization. A Saracen scholar once said: “Wisdom, when she came to the earth, lodged in the head of the Greek and the hand of die Chinaman.” Since they have opened their doors to Western learning, they have shown their present ability to develop their resources. Railroads, trolley-lines, automobiles, steamships, and all the modern inventions are rapidly being introduced into this country. These arc operated almost exclusively by the Chinese. China has the largest, most persevering, economic, industrious laboring class on the face of the earth. She has made more progress during the last five years than any other country on the globe. She bids fair to accomplish in a single century what the Anglo-Saxon has gained in a thousand years. China’s industrial progress during the past few years is striking. No phenomenon of such wide-spread and marvelous reform has ever before been witnessed by man. China’s prospects for the future arc the most favorable. She is indeed an awakening nation which will startle the world with the rapidity and quietness with which she will work out her reforms. She lias set free the marvelous capacities of a vast number of people to develop her resources. She is preparing herself to take her place on the great new stage of commerce and to become one of the star actors on that stage. She is carrying on within her borders one of the greatest revolutions of ideas ever carried on by a nation. She is the Rising Star of the Orient, whose lustre is growing brighter and brighter with each succeeding day. In the cycle of a century she will outshine many a nation that has won great glory in the past. China has opened her doors to the ideas of Western reform. She turns to America for counsel and help. She seeks our modern methods and improved machinery to increase her agricultural wealth. She calls for our capital to develop her mines, her manufactures, her commerce. She sends her sons to America and Europe to he educated. She pleads for our sympathy and respect. In the past America has erred. She has been as exclusive as China herself. It has been harder for a Chinese scholar to get into America than for an American laborer to enter China. In response to China’s call for equality and courtesy, we have shunned and scorned her people. Too often we have treated the Chinese with contempt. What we sow, that shall we also reap. This growing power of the East will some day be able to avenge tenfold the wrongs heaped upon her by the Western world. Our relations with China should be most sympathetic. Our interests arc mutual. In common with her, we must promote commerce on the Pacific. The gap between America and China must be bridged. Cordial relations must be established with this new power. It was an American statesman that saved China from the greedy grasp of European powers. Secretary Hay became a valiant champion of China's integrity and the open door. His sincerity and courage won simple justice for this nation. Let PACE TWELVE

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GITCHE GUM EE that the average citizen, the busy man, lias not time to study or understand their full meaning. Government, therefore, lias rapidly passed into the hands of a third class, the office-hunter and the privilege seeker, who have become expert in the art of controlling elections. Forty years of commercialism has lowered the standard of our political morals. The rapid growth of the power of gold has blinded the conscience of the people. Thriving under the indifference of the average citizen, political bosses and grafters have taken up their abode in our midst. Thru these agencies, organized wealth has enthroned itself in power. For many years legislation has looked to the protection of wealth; but today the greatest problem before the American people is how to recover the power corporate monopoly has usurped and return it to the people. Shall the government be administered by the people, in the interests of the whole people, or shall it be administered for the benefit of a few and by those whom the corruption of politics has elevated to power? Or, is this to be a people’s government, or a government of monopolies, by monopolies, and for monopolies? Our great country has been controlled by the great kings of finance. These modern barons, more powerful than their military prototypes, own our railroads, control our coal-fields, fix the price on oil and steel, in fact, levy tribute at will upon all our vast industries. That billion dollar trust, the United States Steel Corporation, holds in its clutches the destinies of the manufacturing world. It feeds the mountain ranges into its mills with the one hand, and with the other dispatches its products in its own cars and steamships to every market in the world. Its surplus is invested in banking, in railroading, in shipping, and in mining. Its charter is perpetual, and its power is limitless. How easy it would be for some industrial Alexander to place his hand on some city or village, and it would flourish or wither, according to the edict of his irresistible will. Against these commercial kings the workingmen have combined in self-defence. They, too, have caught the spirit of monopoly and combination. The edict of their boss must be obeyed also. The workingman who docs not submit his individual will to the law of the trade union can neither work himself nor teach his children to work. The whole capital of the country on the one side, and the whole labor of the country on the other, arc controlled by two great bodies, by which the liberty of the individual is crushed as between the upper and nether millstones. Our fathers, when they launched the ship of State, could not foretell its course nor see the dangers it would encounter on its voyage down the sea of time. Freedom was the pilot, equality the motto; and with their faith in a living God, it was their one wish to hand down to posterity a government in which the people were to be sovereign. The fundamental laws of our country guarantee us that “all rights, not delegated to the United States, nor prohibited to the states, arc reserved to the people.” Save for these limitations the rights of the people arc supreme. This is the ideal. How docs it compare with the real? We see the forces of wealth stealing from the masses their rights and liberties, and establishing in their place a dictatorship of the “privileged few.” But this must not continue; for as true as that a nation divided against itself cannot stand, and that a nation half slave and half free cannot permanently endure, is it true that a people who arc slaves to market tyrants will surely PAGE FOURTEEN