Hellraisers Journal – Friday September 12, 1902 George F. Baer Expounds Upon the Divine Rights of the Capitalist
From the Appeal to Reason of September 6, 1902:
GEO. F. BAER ———-
Kansas Agitator September 5, 1902
Before he became president of the Reading railroad:
Extracts from an address delivered by Geo. F. Baer, before the law department of the university of Pennsylvania, on October 3, 1887:
States Resources Fabulous.
The natural resources of this state, (Pennsylvania ) are simply fabulous. How much of this great wealth falls to the share of our state and her citizens? It has passed into the hands of giganticassociations, kept together by state charters, or some cunning called a trust, whose principal stockholders are not among us nor of us. Daily they carry off our treasures, and leave only enough to pay the labor, which prepares them for and transports them to market. The profit which should enrich our citizens and state, goes beyond our borders and we thus receive little benefit from it. All this has only become possible through the mistaken policy of attempting to foster the development of our resources by departing from the simple principles of honest, free government. It is thru the manipulation of these associations that men ride to ‘sudden fortune,’ and thereby provoke the discussion of social problems and the promulgation of theories, which are at variance with all sound thinking and past experience.”
After he became president of the Reading railroad:
Wilkesbarre, Penn., Aug. 20.-W. F. Clark, a photographer of this city, recently addressed a letter to President Baer, of the Philadelphia & Reading railroad company, appealing to him as a Christian to settle the miners’ strike. The writer said that if Christ was taken more into our business affairs there would be less trouble in the world, and that if Mr. Baer granted the strikers a slight concession they would gladly return to work, and Baer would have the blessing of God and the respect of the nation.
Baer’s Reply Was:
“I see you are evidently biased in your religious views in favor of the right or the working man to control a business in which he has no other interest than to secure fair wages for the work he does. I beg of you not to be discouraged. The rights and interests of the laboring man will be protected and cared for, not by the labor agitators, but by the Christian men to whom God in his in his infinite wisdom has given the control of the property interests of the country. Pray earnestly that the right may triumph, always remember that the Lord God Omnipotent still reigns, and that His reign is one of law and order, and not of violence and crime.”
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