Page:Carl Sandburg - You and Your Job (1910).pdf/18

 18 and communication, so that with railroads, steamships, electric lines, telegraphs and telephones, the distribution of goods after they are produced is faster and easier than ever in history.

Now, all these new things are owned and held by a small class of people, the capitalist class. The instruments of production and distribution are so controlled by this class that they can give the workers prosperity or misery, as it pleases them. To one who looks into the matter, this capitalist class is found to be very small. Sereno Pratt, the editor of the Wall Street Journal, writing a special article for the World's Work Magazine for April, 1904, says that the final control of the banks, railroads, telegraph lines and dominant industries of the United States centers in the hands of a group of twenty men. Instead of one czar, like Russia, we have twenty! These men are in politics and dictate the legislation of the national congress and that of the state legislatures. They have their hands in the so-called high sanctuary of the supreme court and get decisions in their favor when they need them.

Part of this capitalist class has done worthy work. John D. Rockefeller, J. Pierpont Morgan, Edward Harriman, have brought together interests that were fighting each other. In doing this, these men have centralized industry and transportation so that when the people are ready to assume control of them and operate them for the benefit of all, they will be ready. But there are others in the capitalist