I know no better way to explain to my well-meaning friends who wear
dollars instead of lenses in their spectacle frames why I do not care
to make a private monopoly of Roadtown, than to say that I was raised
in a country town and know the sad limitations of human aspirations
due to the loneliness and narrowed horizon of isolated existence, and
that I have also lived in the congested districts of New York and of
other large cities and know the pain and misery of the life of the
city, and that for me to think of promoting Roadtown as a private graft
would be exactly comparable to the idea of the discoverer of diphtheria
antitoxin keeping the secret for selfish gains.
The Roadtowns will be built by the people who believe in its principles
and who have money to invest at 5 per cent, or the market price of a
security better than municipal bonds. The Roadtown corporations will
each be chartered with a nominal capital stock which will bear no
dividends. I will at first hold this stock in trust. This stock will be
the voting stock of the corporation, hence, I or trustees I might name
will have control of the policy of the company within the limitations
of the charter. I wish this stock to be non-dividend paying so the
Roadtown can never be made to pay profits to me or anyone else and to
pay interest on bonds only to those who are cash investors. My object
in holding or trusteeing this stock is to keep the control of the
Roadtown out of the hands of those who may use such control as a means
to the numerous forms of graft commonly present in corporations. I wish
to stand between the bond holders and the residents of Roadtown and the
grafters, and this privilege is the reward I ask for the invention of
Roadtown--I want no promoters or monopoly profits, no inventors’ stock,
and no fancy salary, but I do want the opportunity to see that no one
else gets any such advantage over the Roadtowners.
My reason for wishing to control the voting stock of Roadtown is that I
do not believe a democratic organization can be created at once in its
entirety but that it will have to evolve naturally. If an oligarchic
form of control was established now it would doubtless be perpetuated
for generations and become corrupt as are present corporations and
governments. I believe that during my life time, I, with the aid of
good advisers, can evolve a purely democratic form of control and thus
permanently prevent it from falling into corrupt hands. I confidently
expect the coöperation of men of the highest national reputation in
matters of trusteeships.
_Home Rule for Roadtowners._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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