This is a matter of most serious import, which is tending to a despotism more intolerable than that exercised by any of the monarchies of the Old World—the despotism of capital over labor.
Victoria C. Woodhull
The Public Record
Victoria Claflin Woodhull, later Victoria Woodhull Martin, was an American leader of the women's suffrage movement who ran for president of the United States in the 1872 election. While many historians and authors agree that Woodhull was the first woman to run for the presidency, some disagree with classifying it as a true candidacy because according to the Constitution she would have been too young to be president if elected.
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This despotism is making the productive interests of the country utterly subservient to the power they have created, fostered and protected, which should forever remain their servant instead.
These improvements are demanded by all the growing interests of the country that express themselves through commerce between the several States, and it is the duty of Congress to “regulate” them.
Nor should there be any outcry raised against the purchase and control of railroads by government, as an unwarrantable interference with private rights.
There are no such things as private rights when the public good stands in question.
There are no circumstances existing within the range of government which are deleterious to the conditions among which they are found that do not come within the sphere of its control.
The criminal is not only the son and brother, but often the husband and father.
Though he may have, by some act, forfeited the guarantee of liberty government extends to the people, he has not thereby sundered family relations, responsibilities and duties.
It is the duty of government to foster these, while protecting public welfare by preventing the criminal from pursuing his course of individual freedom at the expense of the freedom or happiness of other individuals or the public.
In this view penitentiaries should not be what they are, but should be changed into vast workshops, where the convicted may labor at some not altogether distasteful employment, to the same end that he should labor when free.
As now practiced it is exceedingly doubtful whether the State does not do the individual greater injustice than he has done the public.
Charity, with its long cloak of justice escaped, has long enough covered a multitude of sins.