Confiscation; An Outline Part 5

XII.

The silver interest a.s.serts that we will never stop our headlong rush to the devil if we do not get free coinage of silver. Silver, like pork or potatoes, is something for sale, and its owners have given up their whole attention to finding it a market. Whoever heard of J. P. Jones interesting himself in anything except silver. Never in all of his twenty years of public life did he show that he was anything more than "a man from one of the Silver States." Ever and always whenever he fills the air with his noise, you have only to look and there you will find him still knocking at the public treasury for a customer that already has had enough of him.

He has become a monomaniac on silver, and, although one of the princ.i.p.al owners of the Mariposa land grant, will not open it up because it is silver he wants and the grant only shows gold. It is this dementia that secures him a life-lease of the Senators.h.i.+p from Nevada. For Nevada has only one interest, and that is silver. Silver is her wool, her cotton, her wheat, her coal, her iron, her lumber, her manufactures. It made her a State. It made her first representative to Congress and her last. It made Jones - Jones the drummer whose one sample is silver, who talks of silver, who sings of silver, who dreams of silver, and who gets his inspirations of the past, present, and future as he looks down the shaft of his silver mine in Nevada.

Never did the tail of the dog work harder than does this little bob-tailed thing called silver, that we find moving around among our legs, trying to trip us up every time the political procession makes a move.

There is distress because there is not money enough in circulation, say these peddlers of silver. It is a well understood fact that every sound bank in the country has idle money in its vaults looking for investment.

Money is precisely like the laborer - it, too, is on the lookout for work. Show money where it can make interest, and it will come out of those vaults as quick as the hungry laborer will answer the knock at his door.

Whatever distress the laborer is suffering, however, be sure that the millionaire owner of that idle money feels it not. His belly is well filled and his back well covered, and he knows nothing of the jolt of the box-car as he listens to the rhythm of the wheels of his Pullman sleeper. And it matters little to this millionaire, this flower of a foreign clime, when his increase sets in again. He has millions, a word we little comprehend the meaning of, and he will never know distress, any more than the laborer will know plenty again while this vampire of progress is permitted to survive. But the time must come when labor will get to work again for a few months each year, the usual thing now, to produce the needed stock of necessaries for the country, and then he will see the man of millions step off and collect his usual toll, and enough besides to make good any shrinkage in the princ.i.p.al. This owner of immense capital, this traveler in the Pullman, who makes his regular rounds through the country collecting toll off every laborer in every section, preparatory to his flight to Europe, is twin brother to the great land owner, and there is no hope for our country until both are legally or otherwise exterminated.

We could undo the capitalist by making interest illegal, as this would force him. to draw on his princ.i.p.al. We do not object, however, to the interest capital receives. Banks have no enemy in this proposed change, and we suspect either the motives or the judgment of those whose stock in trade is a howl against banks, and what they call usury. Money has its place in civilization, and the bank where it is dealt in is a shop just as much as is the dry goods store or grocery, and is ent.i.tled to its profits just the same. If a man earns $5,000 he should be allowed to charge something for its use the same as for the wagon be made or the house he built. Neither the wagon nor house is any more the result of his labor than is this money, and no one will question his right to charge something for the use of the first two. It is here where the banks are of service - the man with money takes it to a place - the bank - where the man who wishes to hire it knows where to look for it. Good sense will not deny a market to a man with potatoes; neither will it deny him a market for any other product of his labor, be it capital or what not. Interest is wrong only when it is being drawn by a millionaire, who, of course, did not earn the princ.i.p.al. Those millions is where the danger lies, when found with an individual owner, whether they are in bank vaults or on the shelves of the millionaire merchant.

Besides, it is a slow process, this breaking up the millionaire owner of some thing by stopping his interest. This earth should be ours while we are alive to enjoy it, and there is no hope of getting it by applying the graduated tax idea to either land or capital. When a curse like poverty can be removed the quicker it is done the better.

Interest is wrong (we are not justifying extortion) when it is drawn by the millionaire, not only because his labor did not earn the princ.i.p.al, but because he has the power to take it out of the country where it was earned. And he does take it out thereby impoveris.h.i.+ng the country of the capital that is needed to carry on developments that should never be allowed to stop.

There is, as has been said, idle money now, but the millionaire owners care nothing for the general welfare, and the people cannot get this idle money because they find it impossible to pay interest for its use, and carry at the same time the fearful burdens they are now loaded with.

An individual can be forced to submit to any kind of terms when his necessities are driving him. When those necessities are satisfied he must stop and let development go, for he cannot stand the terms. He is willing to go ahead, but he simply finds his physical being unequal to the task. As it is with one individual so it is with a nation of individuals. They also can be forced to submit to any kind of terms when their necessities are driving them, and when their necessities are supplied they too must stop and let development go, for they cannot stand the terms. In other words, the capacity of people, singly or collectively, is limited, and if they are compelled to exhaust that capacity in supporting millionaire parasites at home, and paying for their extravagance abroad, they cannot improve themselves or develop their country.

Complicity, then, and negligence on the part of our law makers has made a few men the absolute owners of the financial or money branch of our economics, and the people find it impossible to move except when these masters find it to their interests to let them.

Progress under such conditions will never be more than a dream.

We could find use for all the capital that is now in the country, and all that has been and is being taken out of it, but we should first loosen the grip of these legalized despoilers and see how far what we have got would go before we talk of issuing more, which would soon turn up missing like the rest.

XIII.

We hear much about what we are losing by the balance of trade being against us, but not a word about that other floodgate through which our capital is rus.h.i.+ng, namely, our millionaire cla.s.s making its purchases abroad, and their other expenses while living among the foreign birds of a like feather. Their idle money is left here for investment. They do not look to that quarter for income. The world over there is under the feet of a few as it is here, and the result is the same - idle money looking for interest.

No less an authority than the late Ward McAllister has said that up to last year two hundred and eighty American women had married foreign t.i.tles.

$1,000,000,000 was the war indemnity demanded of France by the Germans, and so vast is this sum that the civilized world believed the Germans wanted to retain possession of the conquered country and demanded what the French could not pay. Yet the amount of American money it took to buy those two hundred and eighty t.i.tles is far in excess of that war indemnity. At four millions each it would exceed $1,000,000,000. But the average cost must have been more than four millions. One of our millionaire flour mill owners, who is a mere tallow candle in this constellation, paid $7,000,000 for the t.i.tle his daughter is now wearing. And this $7,000,000 must have been a mere bagatelle compared to what it cost Huntington to get the lively Hatzfeldt. The poor flour mill man could not have paid that fellow's "debts of honor." This buying of t.i.tles, however, is but one way by which the millionaires are beggaring the American people. So much of their time is now spent over there that they have come to look upon the United States as their rented farm, and Europe as the place where they, in their high roller way, must get rid of its income. Call to mind the millionaire families who live a large part of their time in Europe. Call to mind those who have made Europe their permanent home, with their income drawn from the United States.

Call to mind the great European estates, that have been first cleared of their peasantry, and then leased by American millionaires, that they may have the exclusive right to shoot at something. Call to mind the New York City millionaire, who purchased an English estate, one to fit the t.i.tle he is lick-spittling after, and where he can rest, after airing his mind in his great London Daily and Monthly; all three, estate and periodicals, being a source of loss, that is made good by American earned money. Call all these things to mind, and if we are poor in capital have we not found the reason why?

Europe is the Broadway of these people, and they are there to squander money, not to make it. And the European visitor to our sh.o.r.es does not make up the loss. He comes, looks at some of our landscape, Niagara, the Yosemite, etc., and is out of the country and home again. His is but a drop to the ocean we lose.

Need we wonder at our gold disappearing? Our bonds and stocks, Government and corporation, are scattered broadcast over the whole of Europe, and those decrepit t.i.tles, that were dying out, have been put on their feet again by American money, and are now living off the interest of American bonds of one kind or another.

Nor should we have to borrow foreign capital. It is over a century since this government was established, and it is time we had enough capital of our own.

But the United States Treasury is, and has been for over thirty years, the clearing house for the foreign holders of American securities. We are a mortgaged nation, and the office of our National Treasury is the place of all others where our foreign owners should get their interest.

We are still in possession of the office, however, and in this we are ahead of Egypt, but it will take much hair-splitting to show any substantial difference in the results.

History does not contain, the imagination cannot evolve, a more d.a.m.nable exhibition of incompetence than this failure of our scrub statesmen to extricate their country from the clutch of its foreign masters.

Ruling one or the three princ.i.p.al gold producers of the world, they are compelled to resort, to all the s.h.i.+fts known to the desperate bankrupt in order to keep a few millions of it in the Treasury, and thereby save our whole monetary system from going to the dogs. For let us not delude ourselves; the moment the United States Treasury cannot give gold for its greenbacks, that moment will the history of the greenback begin to repeat itself. And we are not saving ourselves by making greenbacks lean on silver. They cannot be made stronger than the thing they lean on.

Gold we must have as our standard.

We are in commercial relations with all nations, and the laws of trade are inexorable, and say: You must have money that is acceptable to those you buy from. Bring any other, and you can call the fifty cents it contains one hundred, but your laws are for the United States only, and you must accept the fifty cents or take back the mongrel that in your own barnyard crows so loud, for the United States has induced a swindle that she is powerless to enforce beyond her own borders.

No law is necessary to make us take gold. Just out of the mine or just out of the mint, we want it - the whole world wants it.

Finance, if not as old as the hills, is at least pretty near as old as the graves at the foot of them. There is nothing new to be learned regarding her laws. And those laws do not shut out tin, copper, paper, rags, nails, or silver from being used as money as long as it is agreeable to the interested. But the wisdom of the world comes from her experience, and if she calls for gold money it is because she has never found a better. All other kinds fade before it as fades the moon before the rising sun.

There is but one central orb in the world's monetary systems, and that is Gold. And its satellites, paper or silver, will never be able to get out of their orbits where the fixed and unalterable laws of the world's financial systems have placed them. Temporary disturbances may deceive the searcher, but he has mistaken his calling who cannot distinguish planets from the sun around which they are moving.

The different governments of Europe, that are not gold producers, have gold as the basis of their monetary systems, and, what is more, the gold is there. The United States, that is a gold producer, would also have it as the basis of its monetary system, but this nation, the one independent nation that is all extensive and the leading producer of the metal that the enlightened world approves of as making the best of all moneys, cannot retain enough of it to give future stability to her own currency.

This nation, the greatest of to-day, or any day!

This nation, that has given more to the rest of the world than it has ever received!

This nation - of all others on this earth - must be content with the money of the enslaved East Indian coolie; must be content with the money of the decaying Chinaman; must be content with the money of the half savage republics to the south of us!

This nation, whose chief magistrate is the embodiment of power never dreamed of by the Caesars and Napoleons in their palmiest days! This nation, that is impregnable against the combined armies of the world, is being sapped and mined of its wealth under the very eyes of its driveling lawmakers, and silver is becoming the badge of its humiliation and inferiority!

XIV.

The national debt of France is $7,000,000,000. This exceeds the combined national debts of the United States, England, and Germany.

In territory, France is not as large as California.

Her population is[2] ....................... 37,000,000 The population of the United States is ..... 65,000,000 The population of England is ............... 37,000,000 The population of Germany is ............... 40,000,000 ____________ Total .................................. 142,000,000

The French navy is a fairly close second to that of England.

Her army is as large as that of Germany.

France, then, supports an army and navy of the first cla.s.s, and has only 37,000,000 people to do it with. And this same 37,000,000 people pays interest on a debt that is greater than that of the 142,000,000 people in the three countries named. Yet there is no wail of distress, such as we are familiar with, heard in this France, with its great army and navy, and its fabulous interest-bearing, debt.

What is the secret of it?

France is the greatest producer of luxeries in the world, and, of course, has the rich the world over for her customers; and she is a nation of small owners, her resources, land and all else, being subdivided among her people to an extent unknown elsewhere. This is only half the secret.

There is a natural increase of wealth in every country. Keep that natural increase in the country where it is made, and there will always be a surplus left after the mere live and wear expenses are paid, and this surplus can be used either to support an army or to build macadamized roads. This then is the other half, without which she would be where we are: France legislates to keep her wealth in her own country - and her loss on that ca.n.a.l is only one plum out of her heeping bushel.

The foreign sapper and miner does no work on French soil. His field of operation is the whole American continent, beginning in Canada and on down through, without a skip, till he reaches Magellan and the Horn, scattering his due bills all the way.

The French law-maker, in spite of his clatter, is without a peer, and he dwarfs none so much as our own, who will become the b.u.t.t of his own sneer if he ever gets his eyes open.