AMERICAN PLUNDERERS.

Dunstan Times, Issue 1081, 12 January 1883, Page 4

AMERICAN PLUNDERERS.

The New York correspondent of the Sydney Morning Herald writes: — • \Ye look into the future, and see that many things which are now tolerated will sooner or later become absolutely intolerable The greatest of these is the presence in our midst of men with fortunes such as never been known before in human society, who display cynical indifference to the public interest The great capitalists are practically at constant and perpetual feud with the community in which they live. They increase their wealth by every conceivable form of gentlemanly roguery, and protect themselves by corruptly centre Hug the public Legislatures. Everyone knows this, and yet while, as at present, there is enough and to spare for all, the pa pie at large do not care to engage in a crusade for the limitation in some way of the dangerous powers of enormous• riches. Mr Vanderbilt, in a few years that have elapsed since the death of his father, has turned Ids hundred millions of inheritance into four times that sum, and this vat, fortune produces as much annual revenue as would double that amount invested in the public funds of Europe The schoolboy is taught that Csesar’s speculations in Gaul during several years amounted to ten millions of our present money. Even the lesser of our two great luminaries, Mr Gould, has made more than that in six months by adroit manipulation of the stock market. Monopolies and rings are constantly being formed—and successfully —to reduce yet further the area in which the influences of an open market can be felt. Alreadv coal, oil, bread, meat, matches, gas, and nearly all the other staple necessaries of life pay 101 l to such combinations. During the last month two more articles have been added to the list—fish and india-rubber. The latter is a euviousinstanco of the power of evil lo propagate itself over a constantly widening realm. The supply of manufactured rubber articles his long been regulated by a close union of two or three score of established producers. They have, however, tempered extortion with decency-—• owing mainly to the unwichllv size of the ring —and have only made us pay 10 or 20 per cent, above the natural price. The raw rubber has been collected in Central and South America, and has passed through the hands of a few great American and English houses. These latter conceived the. idea of a “ corner ” —for a year or two at any rate—of fhe raw rubber market. Having seen ed all the possible sources of supply fbey have advanced the juice more than 50 per cent., and the manufacturers, after consultation, have reluctantly consented to pay as required. But the latter now talk of establishing in the near future their own channels of supply, and as soon ss that is done we shall, without doubt, see the present “corner” created into the dignity of a permanent monopoly.