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

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conic to be their slaves in all else; that all liberty is lost when one liberty is lost; that a people half democratic and half plutocratic cannot permanently endure. As we cast our eyes over the history of nations, we behold the fate of that little group of Italian states, whose political institutions were wrecked by commercial greed, and whose republican freedom vanished before the breath of commercial ambition. Their glittering fragments strewed the shores of the Mediterranean like shattered baubles, as soon as their commerce became mightier than their constitution and more potent than their statesmanship. History bears out the truth that: 111 fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth accumulates and men decay. That these same dangers would menace this republic, was clearly seen by our greatest statesmen. Out of the past we hear the voice of Washington warning his countrymen against the corrupting influence of consuming wealth, and with his last breath bidding them beware of the encroaching tyranny of ambitious greed. And how true were the prophetic words of the immortal Lincoln when he said, I sec in the future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned, and an era of corruption in high places will follow; the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign upon the people, until all the wealth is aggregated in few hands.” A wise people will listen to these voices of the past and order their actions in conformity with the great lessons that they teach. It is for us to say whether the public spirit that threw the tea into Boston harbor, that removed the yoke of bondage from four million slaves, will slumber while commercial and industrial chains arc being riveted on the toil and talents of millions of American people by the mighty forces of corporate wealth. The great corporations and consolidated monopolies arc fast seizing the reins of power that lead to the control of public affairs. It is an open secret that they have ruled states thru controlling legislatures and corrupting courts; that they are strong in Congress, and that they are unscrupulous in the use of means to conquer prejudice and acquire influence. This condition is truly alarming; for, unless it be changed quickly and thoroughly, free institutions arc doomed to be subverted by an oligarchy upon the basis of money and corporate power. The question is not whether monopoly is to continue; for the sun sets every night on a greater majority against it; but whether we are to pass thru revolution or reform. Industry and monopoly cannot live together; for our modern perfection of exchange and division of labor cannot last without equal perfection of morals and sympathy, based on terms of love and justice. Neither can liberty and monopoly live together; for the common people have little chance against the persistent and easy coalescence of the confederated cliques who aspire to say of all business, 'This belongs to us,’ and whose members, though moving among us as brothers, arc using against us, thru the corporate form we have given them, power of invisibility, because impersonal and unmoral, and most peculiar of all, powers to act as persons, as in the commission of crimes, with exemption from punishment as persons. The signs of the times are hopeful. Not in vain has advancing civilization challenged the virtue of American manhood or the resourcefulness of American statesmen. Champions of public welfare, political virtue, and the people’s rights, arc moving men to action. In the Badger state there has arisen from the ranks of the people a leader PACE FIFTEEN

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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

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who stands for the highest ideals in government. The destinies of this nation arc guided by one, who, though an aristocrat by birth, dares to champion the people’s cause in their struggle with the forces of unprincipled wealth. GIT CHE Under these fearless leaders, let us hope that the day will soon come that will GUMEE decide whether we arc to live under the republic planned for us by our ancestors, or submit, with the tame spirit of underlings, to an oligarchy fastened upon us by industrial Caesars. The corporate hosts are marshalling their forces; the people must prepare to give them battle. Let the watchword be, “Equal rights to all; special privileges to none.” Let all men who prize dearly their heritage of liberty and peaceful fraternity, and who are in favor of the basic principles of the brotherhood of man, unite, and with that potent weapon, the ballot, sound the funeral knell of the reign of corporate monopoly. In a legal, constitutional manner, these corporations, rings, and combinations can be routed, their paid agents and lobbyists can be driven from the halls of legislation, and the standard of equal rights can again be raised aloft, and this time without the use of bullets or the shedding of blood. In the prerogative of the ballot, the American people have in their hands the most powerful weapon of modern times. Let us use this weapon, stand shoulder to shoulder, and rescue our country from the hands of corporate monopoly, rescue popular government from the grave opening to receive it, and guide this republic onward, ever onward, in its mission of giving to all men an equal opportunity in the battle of life. O Normal Bell, O Normal Bell! How many a tale thy music tells. How joyous then, in the assembly room, When we as seniors heard thy tunc. Those joyful hours arc passing by, And many a sorrowing heart beats high To think that within another school we’ll dwell And hear no more that Normal bell. And so ’twill be when we are gone; Thy joyful peal will still ring on, When other seniors walk these dells, And sing thy praise, O Normal Bell. THE NORMAL BELL —Sorrowing Senior. PAGE SIXTEEN