The Gavelyte, December 1907

the hearts of the freedom-loving Anglo-Saxons and in the hearts of those of other races who have quickly caught the same spirit, the seminal principle of individual liberty should have burst into the fullest bloom. Under the influence of this grc>at principle, there has sprung up in A– merica, haunted but a few years ago by the cries of wild animals and the war– whoop of still wilder savages, a rivilization such as all the centuries of ~Ju– rope or the millenium.s of Asia have not yet produ(!,erl; a civilization not so perfect in some respects as others, perhaps, but which for material advance– ment, for opportmiities for growth, for the development of the best that is in man, is unsurpassed. Rut the work of individual liberty is not yet complete. The message of the Anglo-Saxon race is not yet futly formulated. Civil, , religiom,, and political liLerty, indeed, have been est.ablished; all men are equal before the law; every mar.i is independent; he m:1y worship God in any manner he sees fit,, with none to molest, nor to make him afraid; and the reign of kings and nobles ha~ bren abolished. But economic freedom is yet to be nttained. Is it pm-;sible that the old Anglo-Saxon love for individual liberty, assured that npon the sacred soil of America, conserrated fon·ver to the Goddess of Lib– erty,no king dar~ ascend a throne, nor a few lords dominate the St.ate; is it possible that this ancient devotior. has been lulled to sleep, that oligarchy might again return to its own? It seems, indeed to be true. ·Under the very name of the inriividual liberty, for which our father.3 dicld men have built vast commrrcial and in:lustrial combines, ~iving their owners infinitely more power than any king- of F:ngland ever possessed- the enormous revenues which thPy receive, and the numerous interests which they control, er1able them to drive to thP wall their weaker competitc,rs, to cruRh labor to the earth, tn exploit our agricultural population for their own profit, and to exact from all alike -tributP, compared to which the Stamp Act, which our forefathers so hotly resented, is as nothing. Five men at the he·vl of ona of these combinatiomi control five hundred corporations. inclurliPg sixty-per cent, of the raih oads, the principal iron, steel, tobacco, oil, expre~s. telegraph and cable companies -and many, many others representing six billion dollars of capital. The power ~,ielrled by such ~1 combine cannot be rsl imat 0 rl, nor effectively guarded agairn;t, because, being under the guise of privaLP business, it is not subject– Pel to the light of publicity that shines upon a thronP. It is, moreover, a rnpirll/ growing powPr. Tt took rpntnriPs to jiuilcl the grPat monarrhieR of