100 Transactions of the 



agogism, but recently factions and seditions parties have formed, 

 composed of unnaturalized aliens, with no sympathy in common 

 with our country, or its institutions, desiring its destruction and 

 plotting against its peace and prosperity; whose ideas — I will not 

 call them principles — are communistic and socialistic in their ten- 

 dency; who, being too lazy to work, will not allow any one else to do 

 so; who,_ starting out with the announcement that the world owes 

 them a living, refuse to present their demands for the obligation in 

 due form, but proceed to steal it. The rabble leader has mounted 

 his i)latform, that should be his scaffold ; strife has been engendered, 

 and the red flag of the commune has been flaunted in the face of 

 the bright sun. True, the blemish on the otherwise clear horizon 

 is yet only as large as a man's hand, but who can tell how soon the 

 heavens may be blotted out by the terrible clouds that shall deluge 

 this fair country with blood? I pray God such a fatal storm may 

 be averted ! 



Gentlemen, I feel so strongly on this question that I can scarcely 

 trust myself to speak on it. It does seem so monstrous that here, 

 where labor is better paid than in any other State in the Union, and 

 consequent!}^ than in any other portion of the globe, that here where 

 capital is not arrayed against labor, that here where the rich do not 

 grind the faces of the poor, and oppress the widow and orphan, that 

 here, of all places in the world, in free California, dastardly com- 

 munism should be preached and endeavored to be put into practical 

 effect, seems to me a henious sin, a grave pity, and an intolerable 

 shame! If capital grows timid, who are to be blamed for it? It is 

 true these frothy aliens who have nothing to lose, are in part the 

 guilty ones; but what shall we say of those from amongst ourselves, 

 who simply for political effect and in order to rise into power and 

 place, have been the educators of the educator of the people? These 

 boldly declared that corporate power had no rights that any one was 

 bound to respect; that while three or four men in their individual 

 capacity were safe in the enjoyment of their property and accumu- 

 lations, that combined as a corporation, their interests were liable to 

 confiscation; that aggregate capital must be destroyed ; that vested 

 rights were not vested rights if the mob saw fit so to will, and that 

 money as capital was the enemy of mankind, but offering no remedy 

 to take its place ! It is a fact that for the last fifteen years there has 

 been a constant antagonism erected upon a basis of imaginary bur- 

 dens borne by reason of the construction of railroads. These imag- 

 inary burdens have been made the subject of comment by newspajiers 

 inimical to corporations, until the condition of aftairs brought about 

 by the sand lot orator and his followers has been the result. Brutal, 

 disgusting, infamous as such a leader is, we feel at times like apolo- 

 gizing for him on the ground that the wn;.s exuded from himself and 

 his satellites has been embodied by absorption, the result of the 

 teachings of predjudiced minds on the stump and through the press. 

 When the sand lot missionary talks of ajiplying the torch and letting 

 loose the demon of destruction upon corporate property, he is simply 

 reechoing the sentiments of those who boast of their cultured 

 minds and ability and knowledge as expounders of public opinion. 

 The trouble is that these sand lot reformers are apt scholars. The 

 views of the cultured Communist and the rough, uncouth advocate 

 of the sand lot, are similar, only with this difference: he has a 

 brutal way of giving his form and utterance, while his mentors 



