Monopolies -- United States; Railroads and state -- United States
record as unfaithful to their trust, and struck a blow at public
morality which will be fatal to our popular government, unless resisted
by the whole moral power of the nation.
And here we might well pause, and ask, what security have the people for
the continuance of republican government? These gigantic corporations
are in their nature anti-republican; they tend to a centralization of
power; they compel the people to submit to their demands; they are under
the protection of congress, under whose special legislation they are
permitted to disregard state laws; their ramifications extend throughout
the country; their artifices and money control the votes of the people;
they elect their friends to both the senate and house; they organize and
send strong bodies of men to the lobby of congress and state
legislatures, well supplied with money to obtain the passage of laws in
their interest, and to prevent such legislation as would be detrimental
to them, and in favor of the people; they have their friends and
emissaries in every department of the government, and throughout the
country, and they exercise a controlling influence not only at
Washington, but at almost all the seats of state government. The offices
filled by appointment of the executive and confirmation of the senate,
are too often the agencies of this same influence. We would not be
understood as saying that the president acts corruptly in these
appointments; we mean that the influences that secure many of the
presidential nominations are the same as used by these corporations in
the election of _their_ senators and representatives. The appointment of
judges of the supreme court of the United States has, in at least two
instances, within the last few years, been made through the influence
and in the interest of these monopolies. These corporations are also
represented in the cabinet. It is well understood that the removal of
Attorney General Ackerman, and the appointment of his successor, was
done by these corporate influences. The fact that the secretary of the
interior, to whom reports should have been regularly made of the
progress and condition of the Pacific railroad, was silent, while
private fortunes were being fraudulently taken from the public treasury,
proves that he also was under the same influence. It can be accepted as
an established fact, that all the departments of the government are to a
great extent controlled by corporations and combinations of speculators
whose interests are adverse to those of the people, and the result is,
that statutes are enacted, executive offices appointed, and decisions of
court rendered in the favor of these powerful classes, while the rights
guaranteed to the people by the constitution are disregarded.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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