Page:Studies in the Scriptures - Series I - The Plan of the Ages (1909).djvu/337

 The Day of Jehovah. 33*

to legislate that all greedy corporations, fat with money and power derived from the public, shall be restrained, and compelled by law to serve the public at reasonable rates. In no other way can these blessings of Providence be se- cured to the masses. Hence, while great corporations, representing capital, are to a large extent a blessing and a benefit, we are seeing daily that they have passed the point of benefit and are becoming masters of the people, and if unchecked will soon reduce wage-workers to penury and slavery. Corporations, composed of numbers of people all more or less wealthy, are rapidly coming to ocupy the same relation to the general public of America that the Lords of Great Britain and all Europe occupy toward the masses there, only that the corporations are more powerful.

To accomplish our ends, continue the wage-workers, we need organization. We must have the co-operation of the masses or we can never accomplish anything against such immense power and influence. And though we are organized into unions, etc., it must not be understood that our aim is anarchy or injustice toward any class. We, the masses of the people, simply desire to protect our own rights, and those of our children, by putting reasonable bounds upon those whose wealth and power might other- wise crush us which wealth and power, properly used and limited, may be a more general blessing to all. In a word, they conclude, we would enforce the golden rule "Do unto others as you would that they should do to you."

Happy would it be for all concerned if such moderate and reasonable means would succeed; if the rich would rest with their present acquirements and co-operate with the great mass of the people in the general and permanent im- provement of the condition of all classes; if the wage- workers would content themselves with reasonable demands ; if the golden rule of love and justice could thus be put in

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