192 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



tuate with, every breath of public opinion, the medium on which 

 politics depends ; while for government to step into the business 

 arena and assist one party or the other is as immoral, financially, 

 as for the umpire of a ball-game to play upon one side or the other 

 by partial decisions. 



In 1887 steel rails were selling in the markets of the world for 

 twenty dollars per ton. Like a wall around the United States, 

 there was a protective duty of seventeen dollars, and steel rails 

 were selling within this country at thirty-seven dollars per ton. 

 Protection removed foreign competition, a trust removed domestic 

 competition, and the two carried prices to the very limit. Here 

 the business men of Pittsburg had gone out of the purely business 

 arena they had stepped into politics, had got the United States 

 Government into their business as a business factor, and, securing 

 to themselves the surrender of a part of its taxing power, they had 

 government, which is only just when impartial, playing on their 

 side. 



Now note, the business man by government partiality gets thirty- 

 seven dollars per ton where otherwise, or in the markets of the 

 world, he could only get twenty. He has a rise in price on steel 

 rails of seventeen dollars per ton. The young girl has worked a 

 day and got a dollar; she wants ten yards of calico, and goes 

 to a store and gets it at ten cents a yard, and pays the dollar her 

 day had produced. The store-keeper would have charged only 

 nine cents a yard but for extra freight he had to pay ; the railroad 

 charged extra freight because of the increased cost of its steel 

 rails. In other words, when, by government interference on be- 

 half of the business man, the price of steel rails was carried from 

 twenty to thirty-seven dollars per ton, the railroad got it back by 

 increased freights and the merchant by increased prices. The 

 young girl got it back from nowhere ; her ten cents was passed 

 over to the merchant, who passed it over to the railroad, which 

 passed it over to the business man. 



Government, which can produce nothing, has wrought a dif- 

 ferent distribution of wealth ; the business man gets all he earns 

 as before, but also gets one tenth of the earnings of the young 

 girl. Government is no longer just, because no longer impartial ; 

 the girl is no longer free, because not permitted to enjoy in full 

 the fruits of her own labor. Ten cents apiece, once a year, from 

 a hundred thousand persons, made up of young girls, boys, babies, 

 sick and old folks, and the poor generally for the tax can always 

 be landed upon the poor at last make ten thousand dollars. 

 That ten cents to the young girl was blood-money ; she will be less 

 well clothed, less well nourished, and, taken from supplies already 

 scant, it may mean hunger, cold, and even death to her. To the 

 business man it may mean a cigar, or a stick of chewing-gum for 



