 |
| William Clark, editor and publisher of the Cortland Standard |
 |
| Standard block, corner Main and Tompkins streets. Editorial office and post office on first floor on Tompkins Street. |
Organized Greed.
The
Cortland Standard of November 21 sustains its merited reputation as the
organ of organized greed in the following editorial:
"Many
of our merchants are protesting—and their protest is likely to take form in writing and come before our Village Board—against
allowing auction and Cheap John concerns from outside to come into the village
and hawk their wares on the most public corner, or rent stores for a short time
at desirable seasons and flood the market with their goods often poor or
worthless, to the injury of regular and reputable home dealers. The small
license fee paid by these concerns into the village treasury does not begin to
make up for the injury done home dealers—and frequently does not represent a
hundredth part of the money swindled out of purchasers. A business man who
makes his home here, rents or owns his store or house, pays his taxes and discharges
his duty as a citizen, is entitled to all the protection which the law will
permit to be given him. Our home dealers would often prefer to pay the license
fee themselves rather than have one of these outsiders permitted to set up
shop, but this they ought not to be asked to do. The village which protects
itself and its citizens, and where no one buys anything outside which can be
bought at home, is always the one where prosperity is the most general."
A little
coterie or cabal of retail merchants, grocers and market men organized to black
list every man who disputes an account, or who for any reason, well or ill-founded,
omits or refuses to pay the same, and calling themselves by the lofty sounding name
of the Board of Trade, have repeatedly importuned the Board of Trustees in
public and the members thereof individually in private, to adopt ordinances
proposed by them, the purpose of which was to relieve them from the effects of
legitimate business competition, and give them the monopoly of the exclusive
right to retail the necessaries and conveniences of life in Cortland, and
compel purchasers to pay the prices they may combine to fix or agree upon among
themselves. They thus propose to apply the doctrines of a protective tariff to
the village of Cortland and compel all purchasers to pay tribute to themselves as
vendor's of merchandise, that is, to make ten thousand people pay them a profit
upon their purchases in excess of what they could obtain for the same goods in
a free trade market, where competition was not restrained or prohibited by a
village ordinance.
They do
not exceed one hundred persons all told, and probably not fifty, yet this
insignificant number persist in dictating municipal legislation so as to increase
their profits, which they propose to take out of the ten thousand or more who
buy their goods in Cortland, indirectly and obscurely, by means of an ordinance
protecting them from all competition save that among themselves, which they will
paralyze or remove by combining to fix prices. The consequence will be that the
able and the enterprising will not buy in Cortland.
More than
half the builder's hardware used in Cortland is now bought in Syracuse because
of the excessive prices charged by our local dealers, who seem to prefer the
slow shilling to the nimble sixpence.
The
disease with which this cabal is afflicted is hide-bound selfishness and should
not be spread but checked. Among their number are some of the most astute and inveterate
tax dodgers in Cortland. Their stocks of goods are not assessed by our assessors,
their real estate in a majority of instances is grossly undervalued. Some of their
number become nominal members of the Fire Department for the evident purpose of
exempting their property in whole or in part from taxation, and other evasions are
resorted to to escape just taxation too numerous to mention; yet they never
omit to claim that they are tax payers, and well they should be.
The
streets are maintained at an annual cost of $6,000 or $7,000 over which their
merchandise is mainly transported and their customers come and go. The water
works for the extinguishment of fires costs the village $4,500 per year that their
stocks of merchandise may be protected from the flames. The police are maintained
at an annual expense of about $2,500 a year to protect their persons from assault
and their property from depredation. The streets are lighted at an annual expense
of $5,000 for their benefit, and the poor artisan or laborer, who lives in a
dark and muddy alley pays a much greater proportion of this expense in
comparison with the benefits he receives, than do these nabobs of the Board of
Trade.
But they
are not content with this; they want the Board of Trustees to put a handle on
the earth for them and give them exclusive control of the handle. To such an
odious complexion has the doctrine of protection brought our citizens that many
have embraced the heresy against their own dearest and best interests.
The prosperity
of Cortland can never be promoted by municipal legislation in the interest of
the few at the expense of the many. The ordinance which the trustees have been
urged to adopt will drive trade away from Cortland and bring none to it if
adopted. If it accomplishes the purpose designed for it, it will increase the
cost of living to the inhabitants in about the same sum it increases the
profits of the members of the Board of Trade. Already hundreds of our
population have been compelled to leave the place by the excessive cost of
living and the dearth of employment, and perhaps the odious black list of so
called dead beats, compiled and used by the Board of Trade for their selfish
interests, has been instrumental in driving away from Cortland some of our
unfortunate poor.
Shall
this organized greed be allowed to depopulate our village and drive trade from our
markets that they may for a time at least reap greater profits?
The Board
of Trustees have thus far held out nobly against the pressure brought to bear
upon them to induce them to commit this despicable folly and injustice, but the
people whom it is their duty to serve should counteract the baleful influence
brought to bear upon them in the interest of organized greed by an overwhelming
remonstrance against such measures.
The
following remonstrance which has been already quite numerously signed, or one
of similar import ought to be signed by every lover of justice and hater of tyranny
in the village, and presented to the Board of Trustees.
The undersigned, citizens of the village of
Cortland, hereby respectfully protest against the adoption of any ordinance
restricting by license or otherwise, the sale of any article of food, or other
commodity sold for consumption in the village of Cortland as experience has
shown that such an ordinance has the effect to increase prices thereof, to the
consumer and also to limit dealing therein, to a favored few who combine to advance
prices to the consumer and diminish the same to the producer after the manner
of trusts. We respectfully protest against ail municipal legislation the purpose
or effect of which is to relieve any class of persons from the legitimate competition
incident to their business or that unjustly discriminates in favor of one part of
the community or against another part as tending to favor and promote trade conspiracies.
We further protest that it is no part of the
duty of the Board of Trustees to aid any class of persons to obtain customers for
their goods or enhance the price thereof and any ordinance which promotes such
a purpose is outside of any lawful authority which can be conferred upon a
municipal corporation and tends to create harassing, expensive and
unjustifiable litigation and unnecessarily increases the duties and labors of
the police and the expense of maintaining the same and bears unjustly upon those
who sell or buy the necessaries of life excepting only the favored few, who by means
thereof may obtain a monopoly of the trade affected thereby.
Cortland Village, August 17, 1889.
By this
means the Trustees will know that they have the approval of their constituents in
the course they have hitherto pursued. Don't imagine this matter will take care
of itself. Organized greed influences most of the legislation of the present. "An
ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." Serpents are best killed in
the egg. Act at once and either sign and circulate a remonstrance against the
measures proposed in the
Standard's article and the petitions already on file with the village clerk
in the interest of the would-be plutocrats of Cortland.
Good
lawyers pronounce such an ordinance as that proposed for adoption by the Board
of Trustees illegal. Its legality may be doubtful, but its injustice is evident
and certain.
FAIR PLAY.
[pen name]
PAGE TWO/EDITORIALS.
·
Cheek is a tolerably good thing in its place,
but it is barely possible to have an overstock of it when it sometimes proves
to be a heavy load to carry. Last week the Whitney's Pt. Reporter published an article on its third page, complimenting
itself on the vast amount of original reading matter that the paper contained
and saying that the proprietors knew very well that they could publish the
paper much cheaper and easier by using plates as many of their neighbors were
doing. Of course the inference intended to be conveyed was that all the reading
matter in the paper was set up in type. On turning to the first page of the Reporter
we were somewhat surprised to find that the entire page of reading matter
was printed from plates. "There are tricks in all trades but ours,"
but then it pays better to be honest. There are very few papers published now
that do not make use of plates to some extent. Even the McGrawville Sentinel
that made such a great bluff a year ago about its neighbors using plates,
is running them on its inside pages now.
·
The Cortland Message of last Saturday has
an article on "Editorial Thinking" that places one or two of our
editorial brethren in anything but a pleasant predicament. It gives an extract
from the N. Y. Times of Nov. 20, 1889,
and then prints below it an extract from an editorial in the Cortland Standard
of Nov. 21, 1889, on the same subject. Singularly enough, both articles
read precisely alike and many of our citizens are wondering if there is some quality
in the wild, wild winds of November, that produces the same thought in
different minds, located so far apart. The Message thinks that a
"wave of editorial thought" is occasionally let loose in New York and
that it usually travels north at the rate of about ten miles an hour, reaching
the Cortland Standard about twenty-four hours after it has started on
its northern voyage. While the wave may not prove of a vast amount of benefit
to the originators, it undoubtedly serves to lessen the labors of some of our
editorial brethren. The wave seems to have struck the McGrawvillc Sentinel with
diminished force.
HERE AND THERE.
The winter term of Cincinnatus
Academy opens Dec. 10th.
Charles J. Cummings, of Preble,
has taken out letters patent on a potato digger.
The members of the Board of
Supervisors had a square meal [free substantial meal—CC editor] at the County House on
Wednesday.
The DEMOCRAT is issued Wednesday
afternoon, in order to give its employees an opportunity to observe Thanksgiving.
The schools in this place will
be closed Thursday and Friday.
The December term of the County
Court and Court of Sessions will open at the Court House in this village, next Monday, Judge S. S. Knox presiding.
The Catholics of Homer are
circulating a subscription paper which they intend to forward to Bishop Ludden,
with a petition for a Catholic church to be established there.
The dairymen and farmers of
Homer and vicinity held a meeting at Hotel Windsor in that place, last week
Wednesday, to form a Milk Producers’ Association. L. H. Heberd was elected
president and C. O. Newton, secretary.
In another column will be found
an article signed "Fair Play," which explains itself. The columns of
the DEMOCRAT are always open for the discussion of such questions, and we
invite a free expression of opinion on the subject.
Last Monday, while Mr. J. T.
Copliss, foreman of the mounting department in the Howe Stove Works, was
working at an emery wheel, it bursted and one of the pieces struck him between
the eyes, causing a severe wound. Dr. Dana dressed the injury.
A large number of Catholic
priests attended the Anniversary Mass for the repose of the soul of the Very
Rev. Dean McLoghlin, solemnized in St. Mary’s Church in this place last
Tuesday. A very large congregation was present,
and the members of the C. M. B. A. were present in a body. The services were
very interesting and impressive.
The Chenango county Board of
Supervisors have awarded the publishing of the official canvass of that county
to the Chenango Union and the Chenango Telegraph,
and fix the price at $100 each, which is only a fair remuneration for the work
performed. The Cortland county Board of Supervisors have selected the Homer Republican
and the Cortland DEMOCRAT to publish the official canvass of this county,
and have fixed the price at $15 each. Generous fellows.
No comments:
Post a Comment