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 ECONOMIC ESSAYS, 
 
 BY 
 
 WALTER S. WALDIE. 
 
 Price 50 cents. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA: 
 
 1886. 
 

 i(#^ 
 
 1;^ 
 
 ^/ 
 
 
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^ GrRO: ASS'D: 
 
 12 
 
 ECONOMIC ESSAYS UPON THE RELATION 
 
 OF MAN TO PROPERTY. 
 
 FROM THE 
 
 STANDPOINT OF AN AMERICAN CITIZEN. 
 
 BY 
 
 WALTER S. WALDIE. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA : 
 
 PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR. 
 
 814 N. Eleventh St. 
 
 1886. 
 
tt^'l 
 
 .1 
 
 V 
 
 COPTEIGHT BY 
 
 WALTER S. WALDIE. 
 1886. 
 
 Collins Printing House, 
 705 Jayne St. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 False Teachers 5 
 
 Association and its Instrument . . . .13 
 
 Banks AND Banking 19 
 
 Intrinsic Value . .25 
 
 Buy Cheap and Sell Dear 31 
 
 Subsidies 38 
 
 Land 45 
 
 Labor 51 
 
 Wages 58 
 
 The Social Arrangements of a People must Har- 
 monize WITH THEIR Political Principles . . 65 
 
 Liquidation of Bonded Debt 72 
 
 Political Action .81 
 
 Dedication 87 
 
ERRATUM. 
 
 On fourtli line from foot of page 76, read $100 — amount of one year's 
 interest, instead of $80. 
 
 I 
 
FALSE TEACHERS. 
 
 We find in the curriculum of nearly every colle- 
 giate institution in the United States a branch of 
 study called Social Science, and as these colleges 
 have great influence in forming public opinion it is 
 proper we should examine the authorities upon which 
 this so-called social science has been established, and 
 also to examine how compatible its teachings are 
 with the ideas of our American Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence. 
 
 The original source of inspiration of every text- 
 book used in colleges is the work of Adam Smith, a 
 Scotchman, who published it in 1776, under the title, 
 "The Cause and Nature of the Wealth of Nations." 
 He honestly refrained from calling his book anything 
 else than what it was — a treatise on the development 
 of wealth, in which he ignores man except as a ma- 
 chine for the accumulation of wealth to those havino^ 
 money to invest, and plainly tells those who do the 
 physical labor and drudgery in developing wealth, 
 that "they have no reason to expect a greater share 
 of the products of their labor than sufficient to main- 
 tain a mere animal existence and raise a new genera- 
 tion of workers." 
 2 
 
6 FALSE TEACHERS. 
 
 If we regard social science as the science which 
 teaches man how to associate himself with his fellow- 
 men and develop his intellectual and spiritual facul- 
 ties, which distinguish him from the brute creation, 
 then Adam Smith's book has not the shadow of a 
 claim as a treatise on social science which our college 
 professors have given it. Adam Smith cannot be 
 censured for writing as he did at the time, for he 
 lived under a government whose cardinal principle 
 is the superiority of property over life ; a government 
 that would expatriate a man for hooking a salmon, but 
 gives a man six months' imprisonment for beating his 
 wife to death. Despotism does not permit of opposi- 
 tion, and Smith and his book would have been expa- 
 triated, as Priestley was, had his book contained one 
 plea for humanity. Yerily a strange book for Ame- 
 rican college professors to expound from ! 
 
 English government being almost incessantly at 
 war with some nation, and pauperism being on the 
 increase among her own subjects, some excuse had to 
 be made to appease the suffering victims. The Kev. 
 E. T. Malthus, a member of the English Established 
 Church, did this service in his work, "Principles of 
 Population," by help of which his readers might, as 
 they were assured, understand the causes "of the 
 poverty and misery observable among the lower 
 classes of the people in every nation," and of "the 
 repeated failures in the efforts of the higher classes 
 to relieve them." Mr. Malthus's invention consisted 
 in claiming that the Creator had established a great 
 law which relieved the favored wealthier classes from 
 all responsibility for the poverty and misery prevalent 
 
FALSE TEACHERS. 7 
 
 among the people, and enabled them to close their 
 purses and even their hearts against the commonest 
 dictates of charity, comforting themselves with the 
 reflection that if they should in any manner " stand 
 between the error and its consequences," or "inter- 
 cept the penalty" affixed to the procreation of their 
 species by those who had not accumulated the sup- 
 port for children — which 'penalty was poverty^ wretched- 
 ne55, and death — they would but " perpetuate the sin,"' 
 and thereby become themselves participants in the 
 crime. This theory satisfied the rich that they might 
 safely and conscientiously " eat, drink, and be merry," 
 though surrounded by poverty, disease, and death. 
 
 The ground plan of the Malthusian theory is that 
 population increases as 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, etc., while sub- 
 sistence can be only increased 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc., conse- 
 quently wars, pestilences, and famines were virtues — 
 benefits, and not evils — as they prevented starvation 
 by reducing population down to the food standard. 
 This theory was not sustained by any logical proof, 
 but it was so completely in accord with English des- 
 potism and greed of wealth among the governing 
 class that it was received without a dissenting voice 
 and transferred to American colleges as being good 
 orthodox teaching. 
 
 Daniel Kicardo, a Jew, born in Amsterdam, quar- 
 relled with his father and went to London, where he 
 made an immense fortune in stock gambling, and, 
 after apostatizing from the Hebrew faith, bought his 
 election to a seat in Parliament, and wrote a book 
 supporting the blasphemous Malthusian doctrine of 
 surplus population. He asserted, contrary to all truth^ 
 
8 FALSE TEACHEES. 
 
 that original settlers occupied the richest lands, forcing 
 all new comers to accept inferior, lands, consequently 
 starvation for the last generation was only a question 
 of time. 
 
 That the theories of Smith, Malthus, and Eicardo 
 are in accord with the spirit of the governing class in 
 England is demonstrated by the following extract 
 from the London Times, the leading organ of the 
 English aristocracy: — 
 
 " For a whole generation man has heen a drug in 
 this country, and populatio7i a nuisance. It has scarcely 
 ever entered into the heads of economists that they 
 would ever have to deal with a deficiency of labor. 
 The inexhaustible Irish supply has kept down the 
 price of English labor, whether in the field, the rail- 
 way, the factory, the army, or the navy ; whether at 
 the sickle, the spade, the hoe, or the desk. We be- 
 lieve that, for fifty years at least, Jahor^ tahing its qual- 
 ity into account^ has been cheaper in this country than 
 in any ^ar^ of Europe^ and that this cheapness of labor 
 has contributed vastly to the improvement and power 
 of the country, to the success of mercantile pursuits, 
 and to the enjoyment of those who have money to spend.^"* 
 
 While it is natural for English aristocracy to accept 
 the teachings of Smith, Malthus, and Eicardo, it is 
 unnatural that such doctrines should be the ground 
 plan for text-books on social science adopted in nearly 
 every educational institution in this country. The 
 secret may be explained in the fact that college pro- 
 fessors, as Perry and Sumner ; Congressmen, as Oar- 
 lisle, Watterson, Morrison, etc., have salaries to spend, 
 
FALSE TEACHERS. 9 
 
 and thej want a system that makes it "good for those 
 who have money to spend." 
 
 It is impossible for like causes to fail in producing 
 the same results upon a people, .be they subjects of a 
 monarchy or citizens of a republic ; and .as it is the 
 social, much more than in the political, relations 
 where the heel of oppression is most grinding, it is 
 self-evident that illogical dogmas invented and 
 patented for the use of the vilest government upon 
 earth — England — cannot be suited to the education 
 of American students. 
 
 It is to these false teachings that we owe the dis- 
 cordant conditions now existing in nearly every 
 branch of productive industry between employer 
 and employed, falsely called a conflict between capi- 
 tal and labor, but which is in reality a bitter feud of 
 the creditor class against the debtor and producing 
 class, to which feud the employer is as great a slave 
 as the employed. The creditor class dictates how 
 much money shall be disbursed as wages, and em- 
 ployes have to scramble for their share. The diffi- 
 culty of getting hampers the disbursing, causing re- 
 ductions on one side and strikes on the other, and 
 will continue until employer and employed combine, 
 instead of fighting each other, to compel equity be- 
 tween debtor and creditor. This equity between 
 debtor and creditor can only be attained by destroy- 
 ing the English policy of making man subservient to 
 property instead of property subservient to man. 
 College professors and English gold have given the 
 English system the ascendency in our national legisla- 
 tion. The power pf the creditor class is disguised by 
 
 2* 
 
10 FALSE TEACHEES. 
 
 a systematic arrangement of delusions, believed in by 
 the ignorant and connived at by the intelligent but 
 unscrupulous, which it will be the object of these 
 essays to expose. 
 
 England is per se the capitalistic nation of the 
 world, while the United States, with its immense 
 natural resources, yet in infantile course of develop- 
 ment, is the labor nation. England's policy is to keep 
 the world in debt to her, because as a creditor nation 
 she can dictate prices for such crude materials as she 
 chooses to purchase to utilize her coal in driving 
 machinery. Depressing her own labor to the mini- 
 mum point of existence, she forces the same mini- 
 mum animal existence, devoid of every intellectual 
 aspiration, upon every nation who buys her manufac- 
 tures. The condition of the people of India, Egypt, 
 Turkey, and Ireland should be a warning beacon to 
 Americans not to allow themselves to be debtors to 
 England by purchasing her productions, no matter 
 how nominally low the price may be. It is the smile 
 of the harlot sure to end in destruction of industrial 
 and political independence ; for depressed labor in the 
 United States will produce an American aristocratic 
 oligarchy, just as certainly as that depressed labor in 
 England supports a landed aristocracy. 
 
 The late Southern slaveholders understood the 
 value of an open market for English manufactures as 
 being the best support for their peculiar institution. 
 They saw the close alliance of hired labor dependent 
 upon English capital, and their personal chattel labor. 
 
 It has been openly proclaimed in New York City 
 -r-a vassalage of England — by some of the leading 
 
FALSE TEACHERS. 11 
 
 citizens, that the American laborer has no right to 
 expect any better condition of life than that of the 
 English laborer, but the Beechers, Goes, and other 
 believers in this doctrine do not offer anv evidence in 
 support of it ; the mere assertion of such honorable 
 men is sufficient to silence all doubt upon the subject. 
 Colleges are mainly supported by those "who have 
 money to spend," and professors must be in accord 
 with the views of their patrons. Is the condition of 
 English laborers such an enviable one that Americans 
 should ignore their great natural and political advan- 
 tages and accept the dregs of feudalism existing in 
 England to day? 
 
 Every dollar of a debt due abroad is a manacle 
 upon American labor, for it is labor that pays every 
 dollar of deht^ foreign or domestic, and however remiss 
 our national legislation, misled by the false teachings 
 of college professors, has been in regard to preserving 
 equity between domestic debtors and creditors, it is 
 only adding fuel to the fire by permitting the English 
 manufacturer to add his burden upon American labor 
 by our buying English goods. 
 
 Between such antagonistic principles as exist be- 
 tween monarchy and democracy, there must be a 
 barrier between the industrial products of the two 
 countries, because unrestrained competition will re- 
 duce Americans to the English standard. As import 
 duties are paid by the foreign manufacturer, and not 
 by the American consumer, the cheapest and most 
 certain barrier is a high import duty, which has 
 always cheapened the article to the American con- 
 sumer and helped the American manufacturer. 
 
12 FALSE TEACHERS. 
 
 If, by any means, we can exclude that infernal 
 piratical curse of the world, England, from inter- 
 ference with our domestic industries, our domestic 
 grievances could be soon adjusted, for the American 
 ballot can control American legislation, but cannot 
 influence English, though English gold is lavishly ex- 
 pended in our national halls at Washington. 
 
 A French writer truthfully describes the English 
 policy as "a special science devoted to merely con- 
 sidering man as an instrument of labor, ignoring his 
 personal welfare, in order to produce cheaper than 
 other nations. Under the influence of the doctrines 
 of the English school of economists, a colossal indus- 
 try has been created which fills the world with its 
 manufactures. It is a vast arena where men, women, 
 and children are thrown pell-mell like a regiment of 
 soldiers in the heat of battle. From this ardent and 
 confused mass, the result of which is to create millions 
 of wealth, the strong and cunning rise to the top, 
 while dishonor and ruin seize upon the weaker, and 
 the great mass, deprived of security, oscillate between 
 death and starvation. They treat social science as a 
 question of wealth, and not as an application of nature's 
 law to development of civilization as it should be." 
 Our American college professors totally ignore the 
 French standpoint in their blind allegiance to English 
 brutality. 
 
13 
 
 ASSOCIATION AND ITS INSTRUMENT. 
 
 The isolated man dependent upon his own unaided 
 resources is one of the weakest creatures in existence 
 in comparative ability to supply his wants ; his home 
 and food are what he finds unappropriated by savage 
 animals, while being himself in constant danger of 
 becoming- their prey, but by association with his 
 fellow-men he acquires supremacy over the forces of 
 nature. 
 
 Association is understood to be the intelligent inter- 
 change of mental and physical services between indi- 
 viduals, and also the combination into concentrated 
 effort for public good, as being best protective of in- 
 dividual safety ; herding together as buffialoes, or 
 congregating in unorganized tribal communities as 
 Indians, are not examples of association. 
 
 In all of the innumerable exchanges of services 
 transacted in organized communities, each individual 
 has his peculiar relative value which must be acknowl- 
 edged and protected by the community. To do this 
 equitably requires some form of certificate expressive 
 of the value of the service rendered, when such ser- 
 vice is not requited by another service at the time, 
 which is very rarely the case in civilized life. 
 
 The recipient of a service becomes a debtor to him 
 who has performed the service, and as the creditor 
 
14: ASSOCIATION AND ITS INSTKUMENT. 
 
 has to search through the communitj for some one 
 who will accept the debtor's due-bill or certificate, in 
 payment of such service as he may need, it is posi- 
 tively necessary that 'the certificate shall be one ac- 
 knowledged by the whole nation. This certificate 
 does not pay a debt ; it merely asserts the ownership 
 of a debt due to its possessor by the community. As 
 individual debtors and creditors are being constantly 
 created, the immense importance of properly con- 
 structing this balancing certificate cannot be over- 
 estimated. Errors in the system of creating and 
 controlling this balancing certificate are, and have 
 been, the most prolific agent of human misery. 
 
 Arguing from the American standpoint of equality 
 in the rights of man, however variable his capabilities 
 may be, it is self-evident that this balancing certificate 
 of individual indebtedness can be only equitably 
 issued by an authority in which every individual has 
 an equal voice in creating, which is the United States 
 Congress. And as individual happiness is dependent 
 upon exchange of services with his fellow-men, it is 
 also self-evident that the amount of these exchanges 
 should be the guiding principle in establishing the 
 volume of such certificates, both in regard to the 
 totality of amount and to the denominations. Any 
 arbitrary decision upon either of these points cannot 
 fail to impair the usefulness of the authorized certifi- 
 cate. Such an arbitrary Act of Congress is equiva- 
 lent in stupidity to a railroad company limiting the 
 number of its cars regardless of the wants of its cus- 
 tomers. 
 
 The value of this certificate being dependent upon 
 
ASSOCIATION AND ITS INSTRUMENT. 15 
 
 the productive ability or wealth of the community, it 
 is absurd extravagance to use an expensive material 
 on which to stamp its amount of credit. Being 
 merely an instrument to effect exchanges it should be 
 considered in the category of all other machines or 
 instruments, to be constructed at the least possible 
 expense compatible with usefulness and security. 
 And as its volume is an increasing one according to 
 the growth of population and productive wealth, the 
 selected material must be capable of production com- 
 mensurate with such growth. Enacting an issue of 
 balancing certificates without having the material for 
 its execution is similar to designing a building with- 
 out having the materials for constructing it. 
 
 I^early every civilized government has tried the 
 experiment of a theoretic money based upon metals 
 they could not create nor control, only to learn its 
 utter inefficiency in times of great emergency, when 
 they were obliged to use means commensurate with 
 the object and coin a money out of the only material 
 that all governments have at their command — public 
 credit — and in every instance has this public credit 
 money fulfilled every demand made upon it, and 
 saved the government that created it. Public credit 
 money brings the individual in closer connection with 
 the public, and this close alliance is the secret of its 
 great strength. 
 
 There is little use of saving the government if the 
 people are not saved, and why a money that carried 
 a government through a severe emergency cannot be 
 continued, after the public danger has passed, to pre- 
 vent the individual people from having industrial 
 
16 ASSOCIATION AND ITS INSTKUMENT. 
 
 emergencies, can only be explained by legislation 
 being influenced by the ignorant teachings of college 
 professors not emancipated from the fossal dogmas of 
 feudalism. And it is rather remarkable that monar- 
 chical England and democratic United States should 
 have pursued the same policy of crushing individual 
 prosperity as soon as the political existeuce of the 
 nation was assured. Individual prosperity is not a 
 plank in the monarchical platform, therefore her 
 action was perfectly consistent, but as individual 
 prosperity is the most iiiportant plank in the platform 
 of a republic, imitation of England's policy of crush- 
 ing individual prosperity by adopting the same pro- 
 cess — contraction of the balancing certificate between 
 debtor and creditor — was as brutal as it was inconsis- 
 tent with our Declaration of Independence, and justly 
 ranks the promoters of the scheme as confederates of 
 Benedict Arnold. 
 
 Historical evidence having fully demonstrated the 
 inability of our present system of supplying a balanc- 
 ing certificate between the individual debtor and 
 creditor, it is the part of common sense to gather 
 from the past such facts as will help us to construct 
 a better one. 
 
 Barter is the basis of all business or exchanges be- 
 tween individuals, and as it is the true object of every 
 form of money to cheapen the means and extend the 
 area of barter, it is self-evident that the paymaster of 
 metal or paper money is some form of personal ser- 
 vice or of productive industry. Every attempt at 
 making an intermediate paymaster is a hindrance to 
 
ASSOCIATION AND ITS INSTRUMENT. 17 
 
 the object desired — exchange of services and commo- 
 dities. 
 
 All values in barter transactions are expressed in 
 " Money of Account," whose denominations vary in 
 every country, each of which has its own unit, in 
 multiples of which values are expressed. The unit 
 of the United States is the " mill" — an ideal unit un- 
 represented by any material — one thousand of which 
 constitutes the standard dollar. Upon this ideal unit 
 the United States government has created an ideal 
 money of gold, and a struggle is going on to take 
 silver in partnership on an equal footing. 
 
 The people are doing what business they can in 
 money of account, the amount of which far exceeds 
 the combination of gold and silver to supply. The 
 deficiency between ideal or legal money and money 
 of account compels the use of bank credit, and divides 
 the nation into a 90 per cent, debtor class and a 10 
 per cent, creditor class — an aristocracy without titles 
 but as potent as any monarchical aristocracy with its 
 ribbons and gew-gaws. 
 
 Until the money of account of the people is balanced 
 by the ideal, inefl&cient theory money of the govern- 
 ment, there cannot be equity between debtor and 
 creditor. The discordant conditions now existing 
 in nearly every branch of productive industry are 
 largely due to the feud between the ideal money of the 
 government and the money of the people, or money 
 of account. 
 
 The people of the United States are daily increas- 
 ing their productive ability with a corresponding in- 
 crease in the money of account, while the materials 
 3 
 
18 ASSOCIATION AND ITS INSTRUMENT. 
 
 of the ideal money, misnamed the "precious metals," 
 are as rapidly decreasing. Even with unlimited coin- 
 age of silver the breach between debtor and creditor 
 portions of the nation will widen. Either industry 
 must merge into idleness and pauperism, as in Eng- 
 land, Scotland, and Ireland, or ideal money must be 
 abandoned for substitution of a money representative 
 of and based upon productive industry. 
 
 As changing a debt from an inconvenient to a con- 
 venient form does not increase the amount of the 
 debt, there is not any valid reason why the national 
 bonds, subject to call, should not be replaced with 
 national notes of small denominations. If bond- 
 holders demand coin give them silver, or certificates 
 of one, two, and five dollar denominations. This 
 would do more to restore harmony in industrial circles 
 than labor organizations can do in a century. 
 
 It is a strange idea entertained by many that an 
 interest bearing debt issued by the United States is 
 more sacred than a non-interest bearing debt. If 
 an interest bearing bond is good security for national 
 bank notes, are not the notes made from the bonds 
 and issued directly from the public treasury just as 
 good as when issued through the banks? 
 
 The word "inflation," meaning cheap money, is a 
 terrible bug-a-boo to money lenders, though they are 
 as callous as flint to the miseries of cheap labor. Idle 
 money is harmless, but idle humanity is dangerous 
 and expensive. 
 
19 
 
 BANKS AND BANKING. 
 
 There is not in the business arrangements of a 
 people a subject so influential upon industrial pros- 
 perity and one so little understood as this one of 
 Banks and Banking. 
 
 Starting as they did in times when individual credit 
 depended more upon might than right, banks taught 
 the world the immense value of organized credit in 
 facilitating commerce — that valuable aid to human 
 progress. Bank credit was as superior to private 
 credit as a good turnpike was to a soft dirt road. 
 But to-day the steel rail is supplanting the turnpike, 
 and the people are now asking that the nation's credit 
 shall supersede the bank credit. 
 
 There is an absurd idea prevalent in the minds 
 of many respectable people that bankers are per se 
 financiers, ^. e., they are proper judges of how much 
 money is needed by a community to balance indi- 
 vidual transactions; and, by virtue of this delusion, 
 bankers have had almost entire control over our 
 national financial legislation. Bankers are not finan- 
 ciers in the sense just referred to ; their business is to 
 exchange their credit for private credit ; to sell their 
 credit as a substitute for money, and the less money 
 they can keep the government from issuing the higher 
 is their charge for their credit. They advocate the 
 
20 BANKS AND BANKING. 
 
 use of gold as a balancing agent because they know 
 that gold can be supplied only in limited amount, and 
 depreciate silver because the supply of it threatens to 
 become a severe competitor against the use of their 
 credit. Banks are organized to make money for their 
 stockholders, and the public has no right to expect 
 that banks will omit any legal means to make their 
 business profitable, any more than to expect that a mer- 
 chant will sell his goods below the market price. If 
 productive industry is prosperous and the banks make 
 money, well and good. If productive industry is not 
 prosperous but the banks make money, it is also well 
 and good as far as the banks are concerned. The people 
 must organize for their own interest just as the banks 
 do for themselves. Yitaperation of bank officers is as 
 absurd as it is unjust, for bank officers are fair repre- 
 sentatives of the business intelligence and integrity 
 prevalent in the community. The people have the 
 legislative power to create a better system. Let them 
 study how to do it. 
 
 As an active movement of what money the people 
 may possess is of as much importance as having the 
 money itself, common sense dictates that depositories 
 for the sale of money, the same as for the sale of any 
 other form of merchandise, is mutually beneficial to 
 the individual and to the public. It is, tkerefore, a 
 great mistake for an individual to think that any 
 unused money he may have on deposit in a bank of 
 discount and deposit is of no value to him. His very 
 balance may be loaned to some one who becomes a 
 direct customer, or, using it in some other channel, 
 becomes indirectly a customer. Every dollar dis- 
 
BANKS AND BANKING. 21 
 
 bursed in one channel has its influence upon every 
 other channel of business. 
 
 The volume of money has always been subject to 
 some chance, as the discovery of metallic ores, etc., 
 and limited in amount, while communities increase in 
 population and production, creating a demand for 
 money in excess of supply, and compelling the use of 
 some substitute for money. Bank credit offered the 
 readiest solution of the difficulty, and banks were 
 authorized to issue obligations — bank notes — in excess 
 of the money they had on hand. This afforded 
 relief, and would have worked very well but for an 
 asinine regulation that compelled the banks to pay 
 all obligations, loans as well as actual deposits, in 
 coin money. The absurdity of this regulation is 
 apparent when we consider that bank obligations 
 were sanctioned because there was not enough money 
 to transact business, and, consequently, these obliga- 
 tions could not he paid on demand. A bank that 
 exchanges its demand obligations in excess of its 
 ready money for an individual obligation payable in 
 the future becomes legally insolvent^ while it is Tnorally 
 solvent. Legally insolvent because it is impossible 
 to pay obligations in what it does not possess and 
 cannot get. It is morally solvent because the people 
 owe the bank more than the bank owes the people, 
 and can cancel its obligations by accepting them in 
 payment of debts to it by the people. This nervous 
 condition of moral solvency and legal insolvency 
 keeps the money market, as it is called, in a constantly 
 feverish condition, which at times burns into a sus- 
 pension. That is, an honest confession of its legal 
 
 3* 
 
22 BANKS AND BANKING. 
 
 insolvency at the same time demonstrating its moral 
 solvency by accepting its obligations in payment of 
 debts dae to it. After the first flurry or excitement 
 of suspension has subsided, bank notes and bank credit 
 serve business purposes just as well as during the 
 time when the absurd pretence of specie payment was 
 in vogue. 
 
 Legal enactment can limit the extent of ratio of 
 bank loans to its capital, but legal authority cannot 
 compel the bank to keep its loans up to giny standard. 
 For instance, at this present writing the loans of the 
 banks in Philadelphia are about four and one-half 
 times their paid-in capital. They cannot be com- 
 pelled to keep their loans up to this ratio, and if any 
 public excitement occurs, as in 1857 and in 1873, the 
 banks will be compelled in self-defence to call in their 
 loans as speedily as possible. The vacuum in the 
 money market produces a corresponding vacuum in 
 the purchasing market. Prices of merchandise must 
 decline proportionately to the decline in volume of 
 money, but obligations for payment do not decrease 
 one cent from their face value, hence the manufac- 
 turer is obliged to give more goods to pay his note — 
 possibly be obliged to sell goods below cost of manu- 
 facture. In such a case he must either stop working 
 or reduce wages. 
 
 These fluctuations of prices, and interruptions of 
 industrial activity, cannot avoid being periodical as 
 long as the business movements of the people are de- 
 pendent upon possessing a purchasing agent created 
 and supplied from a source that has not any other 
 motive to guide it except that of its own interest. 
 
BANKS AND BANKING. 23 
 
 Business and not banking is the primal factor in 
 the progress of a people, hence the banking or money 
 power should be held by the people and be made 
 subservient to business purposes. In short, those 
 who create the goods should control the instrument 
 that gives stability to prices ; that preserves equity 
 between debtor and creditor. The people must sub- 
 stitute their own credit for that of bank credit, which 
 they can readily do, and have this national credit so 
 firmly created that the suspension of individuals 
 would not disturb any channels of business except 
 those immediately connected with the bankrupts. 
 The idea that a money panic should occur in the 
 United States because one individual banker failed is 
 about as absurd as that all property should burn 
 because one house was burned. 
 
 The periodical financial panics indicate so clearly 
 the internal weakness of our present banking system 
 (if it can be called a system), that it is a stigma upon 
 the intelligence of our business men that they have 
 not established a better one when they have the 
 ballot in their control. 
 
 In 1857 and in 1878 the financial panics scattered 
 the labor organizations like chaff before the wind, 
 and will scatter them again when another panic 
 occurs, and there is nothing to prevent in the future 
 what has occurred under the present system. 
 
 If labor organizations would take into account 
 that the ability to organize a business establishment is 
 a talent possessed by comparatively few out of the 
 multitude, and when such an establishment is under 
 way its success depends upon the owner getting back 
 
24 BANKS AND BANKING. 
 
 from the public the money he has invested in machin- 
 ery, stock, and wages, they would see the necessity of 
 providing means that the public can purchase the 
 fruits of their labor. Under the present system, 
 when the banks contract their loans, the public are 
 unable to buy, and the "boss," unable to raise money 
 to pay notes and wages, has to contract work by dis- 
 charging hands or reducing wages. Nearly all of the 
 discordant relations now existing in so many branches 
 of productive industry have their origin in the declin- 
 ing purchasing ability among the great mass of the 
 public. 
 
 Contrast between the labor conditions of 1865 and 
 1873 should convince labor organizations that the 
 purchasing ability of the public is the great protector 
 of labor prosperity, and if the labor men would in- 
 telligently examine into the cause of the prosperity of 
 1865, and the cause of the great depression in 1873, 
 they would learn that the public had nearly four 
 times the purchasing ability in 1865 that it had in 
 1873. It was by bank influence upon national legis- 
 lation that the purchasing power of the people was so 
 abridged, and until the bank power is shorn of its 
 great power labor organizations are only wasting 
 their time and strength. 
 
 We must take from the banks the power to issue 
 their notes, and confine them to their legitimate busi- 
 ness of dealing, as banks of discount and deposit, 
 with the money created and issued direct from the 
 I] nited States Treasury. 
 
25 
 
 INTRINSIC VALUE. 
 
 The dogma that Intrinsic Yalue exists in the so- 
 called " precious metals," gold and silver, has exerted 
 more influence in creating social enslavement of man- 
 kind than the exploded and equally absurd dogma of 
 the "divinity of kings." 
 
 Anything dependent cannot have intrinsic value, 
 for the word "intrinsic" implies something beyond 
 and above all extraneous influences, and as gold and 
 silver would forever remain embedded in the earth 
 without man's manipulation, their value is as entirely 
 dependent upon the fiat of authorized power of civil 
 government as is the value of the commonest clay. 
 
 Brute force can be appreciated and be resisted by 
 brute force, but the syllogisms of error can be so dis- 
 guised by sophistry that the victims unconsciously 
 become their own task-masters by hugging the chain 
 that enslaves them. This is especially applicable to 
 the conferring upon gold and silver the false attribute 
 of being the standard of payment or debt-balancing 
 agent. 
 
 The most potent tyrant in social life is debt, and 
 when men bind themselves to pay what they can- 
 not produce, or that their ability to purchase with 
 their labor depends upon accidental sources — as the 
 opening of metallic mines — they place around their 
 
26 INTRINSIC VALUE. 
 
 necks a metallic chain fully as enslaving, though not 
 so conspicuous, as the iron band around the neck of 
 Gurth which proclaimed him the born thrall of Cedric 
 the Saxon. 
 
 After we Americans had made our political sepa- 
 ration from that harlot of a mother, England, we 
 bound ourselves to her in social slavery by swallowing 
 in one gulp her common law, which is based upon 
 intrinsic value in property, and claims to carry with 
 it the right of governing those who had been robbed 
 of their property. Land monopoly had divided the 
 people into a small-creditor and a large-debtor class ; 
 and to prevent the debtor class escaping from debt- 
 slavery, the common law of England made all debts 
 payable in metallic money, which the peasant could 
 not produce any more than he could create land. 
 Under this metallic restriction land monopoly has 
 increased, and the peasant is as enslaved as when the 
 monks and barons held him in military subjection. 
 It is to the adoption of this common law of England • 
 that the metallic standard of the United States owes 
 its pretended legality, and not to any direct authority 
 in the Constitution. 
 
 Land was too abundant in the United States to 
 admit of a land monopoly as in England, but the 
 metallic standard system has covered more than three- 
 fifths of all of our occupied land with interest-bearing 
 mortgages, which are rapidly accumulating landed 
 property in the hands of a few as in England. 
 
 To maintain a certain amount of gold in the vaults 
 of the Bank of England the people are driven to 
 starvation and rioting ; and the effort to hoard a stipu- 
 
INTRINSIC VALUE. 27 
 
 lated amount of gold in our national treasury is doing 
 for Americans what the Bank of England is doing 
 for Englishmen. The similarity of social conditions in 
 the United States and in England point to a common 
 cause — the inability of the debtor class to escape the 
 burden of interest-bearing debts — and will continue 
 as long as the debt-paying power is denied to produc- 
 tions of industry. 
 
 The iniquity of metallic intrinsic value was bad 
 enough when it included both gold and silver, but 
 when silver is denied its former privilege as a debt- 
 payer, the chain of debt enslavement is doubled in 
 power. It is in perfect accord with England's policy 
 to enchain her subjects by every means she can 
 invent; therefore the mono-metallic agent of pay- 
 ment is natural for monarchical England, but unnatu- 
 ral for adoption in democratic United States. 
 
 The creditor class of the United States is mainly 
 represented by the national banks, and, as evidence 
 of their unscrupulous efforts to enhance their power 
 over their debtors, we quote an edict issued by a 
 bankers' convention held a few years since at Sara- 
 toga, IST. Y. : — 
 
 " The farmer is not rich according to the number of 
 bushels of grain he raises^ nor is the iron manufacturer 
 rich according to the number of jpounds of iron he makes ; 
 but both are rich according to the amount of gold these 
 articles will bring.''"' 
 
 The eminent respectability of so august an assem- 
 bly as a bankers' convention was deemed sufficient 
 authority to give validity to any edict it might pro- 
 mulgate, as not a particle of evidence was ofiered to 
 
28 INTRINSIC VALUE. 
 
 sustain it. Kor can any evidence be offered for such, 
 an asinine outrage upon the rights of the debt-paying, 
 productive classes. Stupid and false as this edict of 
 the bankers' convention is, it has nevertheless been the 
 guiding principle of our national financial legislation 
 since 1865 down to the present time, the two leading 
 political parties rivalling each other in their worship 
 of bank-power and the establishing of the gold 
 tyranny. 
 
 According to this gold theory not one of the great 
 non-producing gold States has a dollar's worth of value 
 tintil some gold pedler comes along and dictates prices 
 for all productions. There is not a certainty that 
 such a pedler will ever come along, nor do the 
 banks promise he will ever come. The banks do not 
 want the gold pedler to come along, because, in his 
 absence, the necessity of the people will compel them 
 to buy bank credit as a balancing agent between in- 
 dividual debtors and creditors. The banks claim 
 their debt is honest money ^ always the equivalent of 
 any standard of payment, and as long as they are the 
 people's creditors they can maintain their position. 
 But in doing this, the banks lend a club to break their 
 own heads. Educating the people to nse credit as a 
 substitute for an absurd arbitrary standard of metal, 
 the people will naturally inquire if they cannot create 
 their own credit upon some permanent data that will 
 avoid the arbitrary fluctuations in the volume of bank 
 credit, and at the same time be cheaper as well as 
 more reliable. 
 
 Taking the bankers' assertion that everything is to 
 be estimated by its ability to be exchanged for gold, 
 
INTRINSIC VALUE. 29 
 
 we find that from 1861 to 1879 bank debt was not 
 even claimed to be convertible into gold, yet the 
 banks sold billions upon billions of their debt to the 
 people and received many millions of dollars as in- 
 terest. Tested by the edict of their own convention, 
 all the sales of their debts during that period were 
 barefaced swindles ; selling a worthless article to an 
 ignorant and confiding public. The practical evi- 
 dence that for eighteen years the people transacted 
 business exchanges by use of an agent not laying the 
 least claim to a gold value, should fully demonstrate 
 to intelligent men that the bankers' convention, as 
 well as the principle upon which our national finan- 
 cial legislation is based, are frauds upon the people. 
 
 There is a very valuable lesson to be learned from 
 these eighteen years' experience of non- metallic money. 
 Bank debt is based directly upon debt and only in- 
 directly, by intervention of law, upon the property of 
 the debtor, who may, before the maturity of his debt, 
 place his property beyond reach and leave his debt 
 out in the cold. There is, therefore, an uncertain 
 amount of contingent loss in all bank assets. Indi- 
 vidual business debts will average at least fifty per 
 cent, of the market value of the merchandise held by 
 the debtor, and as individual business debts form the 
 greatest bulk of bank assets, it is very evident that 
 bank assets do not offer anything like the same secur- 
 ity for their debt, as assets based upon only one per 
 cent, of the market value of property itself, regardless 
 of ownership. 
 
 The citizens of a republic have a right to pledge 
 4 
 
30 INTRINSIC VALUE. 
 
 their property for any purpose they may deem ad- 
 vantageous to their welfare. The citizens of the 
 United States taxed themselves to crush a rebellion, 
 and they have an equal right to pledge their property 
 as a substitute for bank debt to facilitate business 
 development. 
 
 The property of the citizens of the United States is 
 not stored in public, but in private, individual store- 
 houses, and it is to these individual establishments 
 that public debt must go for redemption, the same as 
 bank debt does. Behind all forms of debt is the re- 
 deeming agent, not an inert material, but man with 
 his productive industry, and when only one per cent, 
 of individual property is required, is there not a 
 greater certainty of payment than when fifty per 
 cent, is demanded? 
 
 One per cent, on the individual property would be 
 a safficient assessment to begin the substitution of 
 public for bank debt. Why not do it? 
 
 Some writers have gone so far as to assert that the 
 Author of the universe made gold and silver com- 
 paratively scarce in order that they should be recog- 
 nized and used as standards. This gross insult to the 
 world's Creator needs not a comment. It is too dis- 
 gusting for discussion." 
 
 Yalue being entirely ideal there cannot be a stand- 
 ard of value, though law can and does create standards 
 of payment, i. e., legal tenders. 
 
31 
 
 BUY CHEAP AND SELL DEAH. 
 
 To do this profitably requires a true conception of 
 what is cheap. Misconception of the truth, especially 
 when confounding it with low prices, has sent indivi- 
 duals and nations into bankruptcy when they fondly 
 thought they were on the road to fortune. 
 
 Cheap is a comparative term dependent for solution 
 on the equitable relation between the productive and 
 the purchasing power of the members of a community. 
 Low prices are the futile attempts of manufacturers 
 to adjust sales to an inadequate purchasing ability in 
 the members of a community. Experience teaches us 
 that when the purchasing power of a people is de- 
 veloped, as it was in 1865, sales of merchandise at 
 apparently high prices prove their cheapness by the 
 large demand made for them by consumers able and 
 anxious to consume all they could get ; and experi- 
 ence also teaches us that when the purchasing ability 
 is stinted, by any cause whatever, stocks of unsold 
 merchandise accumulate even when offered at great 
 decline in selling prices. 
 
 Purchasing ability being the pivotal point on which 
 values of merchandise depend, it is of primary im- 
 portance to determine the best way to give individuals 
 their highest purchasing power. 
 
 As production and service pay for production and 
 
32 BUY CHEAP AND SELL DEAK. 
 
 service, it is self-evident that the more intimate and 
 direct the exchanging parties come in contact the 
 cheaper and more rapid will the exchanges be made. 
 They then mutually buy at the cheapest and sell at the 
 highest value. This apparent paradox is readily ex- 
 plained by the fact that crude articles, the first efforts 
 of individual labor, reach their culminated value at the 
 door of the mill for conversion into form for human 
 use, while the finished article is then and there at its 
 cheapest value. Wheat, cotton, logs, ores, etc., have 
 their highest value at the grist, spinning, and saw 
 mills, and the furnace; and flour, muslin, lumber, etc., 
 are the cheapest at the same establishments. As the 
 serviceable value of articles are not in themselves 
 enhanced by transportation, the closer the convert- 
 ing agent is to the source of supply the more profit- 
 able it is for both producer and consumer. It is 
 practically impossible to avoid some transportation 
 from crude to finished productions and back again to 
 the original source of supply, and as the producer of 
 crude materials has to pay the transport cost both 
 ways, it is his interest to have this cost at its minimum. 
 When the farmer can reach the grist mill with his 
 own team he knows exactly what it costs to and from 
 the mill, but when cars and steamboats go and come 
 between the farm and mill he is largely in their 
 power. 
 
 When the finished article comes in competition 
 with similar articles made from other sources of sup- 
 ply, the selling price of the finished article regulates 
 the price of the crude article at home. It is therefore 
 of the highest importance to all producers of crude 
 
BUY CHEAP AND SELL DEAR. 33 
 
 materials, as farmers, miners, etc., to have the con- 
 sumers of flour, cloth, and iron, etc., as much removed 
 from competition from other sources as possible. 
 There is not a branch of productive industry in the 
 United States so dependent upon protection against 
 foreign competition as the American farmer, yet 
 stupidly blind to his own interest, he allows himself 
 to be duped by such college quacks as Perry, and 
 Sumner, and some smaller chips from the same block, 
 and by such miserable demagogues as Beecher, 
 Hewitt, Carlisle, Hewitt, etc., and is clamoring to 
 have all restrictions taken from English goods under 
 the gross delusion that England will buy our crude 
 material to the extent that we buy her manufactures, 
 when she has no more idea of doing so than she has 
 of doing any decent act towards humanity. 
 
 Let us examine into the advantages so loudly 
 claimed by its advocates. In the first place, by an 
 infernal system of fraud and violence, England obtained 
 possession of the valleys of the Ganges and of the 
 Kile, and by merciless taxation upon the defenceless 
 natives, she is annually increasing her supplies of 
 wheat and cotton from those regions, and in the near 
 future will be independent of any supply from this 
 country unless below the price of Indian slave labor. 
 Spending millions of money every year in facilitating 
 transportation she has succeeded in reducing the 
 price of India wheat so low, that but for the tariff* 
 duty on wheat, the American Atlantic seaports would 
 be shut out from our own farmers. With our own 
 home market only saved to the farmer by a tax, 
 what hope has he for the English market where there 
 
34 BUY CHEAP AND SELL DEAK. 
 
 is not such a tax, and to reach, which he has 3000 
 miles ocean carriage to pay ? 
 
 If when wheat is worth one dollar per bushel it 
 requires 20 pounds of flour to pay the freight on a 
 barrel of flour to England, and 20 more pounds of 
 flour to pay freight on the cloth brought back, the 
 purchasing power of the barrel of flour is 160 pounds. 
 "When wheat is worth only 50 cents per bushel, the 
 freight to and fro will be double, 80 pounds, making 
 the purchasing ability of the barrel of flour only 120 
 pounds. That is, the percentage cost of freight increases 
 as the price of the article decreases^ which should con- 
 vince any sane man of the folly of striving for a 
 market wherein freight has such tyrannical power, 
 until every avenue of the home market has been filled 
 to the fullest capacity, which is not the case at pre- 
 sent. In the English market the American farmer 
 buys dear and sells cheap. 
 
 In 1833, at the dictation of the Southern* slave- 
 holders, we began the experiment of patronizing En- 
 glish workshops as being cheaper than our own, with 
 the result that every year the purchasing power of 
 American products declined, culminating, in 1840, to 
 such prostration of value that individual, and, conse- 
 quently, public purses were exhausted; and although 
 we owed not one dollar of national debt we could not 
 borrow the paltry sum of twenty millions of dollars; 
 the cautious money lenders in Europe saw our selling 
 so cheap and buying so dear would only increase the 
 ne'cessity for new loans, as it had already created the 
 necessity for the loan then requested. In 1842 we 
 began the policy of patronizing our own shops, and 
 
BUY CHEAP AND SELL DEAR. 85 
 
 directly our purchasing ability began to advance, and 
 in a short time the duties on imported goods filled 
 the public treasury to overflowing, and private purses 
 were enabled to buy comfortable homes. Official 
 reports show that the more positively we determine 
 to make American production pay for American con- 
 sumption the more anxious are foreign countries to 
 sell us their higher grades of manufactures. In place 
 of the clay-stuffed low-priced muslins they sent us in 
 exchange for our low-priced crude materials, they sent 
 us fine cambrics which our infantile establishments 
 had not yet learned to make. With every improve- 
 ment of American manufacture our paying ability to 
 purchase foreign luxuries increases. Let those who 
 doubt this statement examine for themselves the ex- 
 port and import reports of the years when we patron- 
 ized foreign shops in preference to our own, most 
 absurdly called Free Trade, and when we reversed 
 this policy in 1842 and 1861 known as "Protective" 
 years. 
 
 The American miller being excluded from foreign 
 supply of wheat has to pay American prices for wheat, 
 provided he has customers sufficient to buy all the 
 American production in the shape of flour. When 
 stocks of flour accumulate in the grist mills the miller 
 can dictate prices to the farmer, it is therefore the 
 joint interest of the farmer and miller to secure cus- 
 tomers for their products. The converter of every 
 form of crude material to finished production has to 
 be fed wherever he may live, and it is, therefore, evi- 
 dently the interest of American farmers to have opera- 
 tives who cannot be fed by low-priced wheat raised by 
 
36 BUY CHEAP AND SELL DEAR. 
 
 Indian slave labor. By stimulating every possible 
 form of productive industry in tbe United States, and 
 our natural advantages make these almost infinite, the 
 farmer creates the greate'st possible demand for his 
 wheat. But when the American farmer advocates 
 that every form of American mechanical or manufac- 
 turing industry shall be regulated by English prices 
 of goods made by men fed with cheap Indian wheat, 
 he cannot expect that American labor can pay him 
 higher prices for his farm produce than the English 
 operative pays for India wheat. 
 
 In the positive certainty in the very near future of 
 our crude products being excluded from foreign mar- 
 kets, every form of productive industry should be on 
 the alert to increase the purchasing ability of the 
 American people, for they have not any other avenue 
 of egress for their productions. With the exclusion 
 of the foreign market our railroads will lose a large 
 business now in vogue in carrying grain from the 
 Mississippi Yalley to the Atlantic Coast for shipment 
 abroad, which must cease unless they exert their iif- 
 fluence, by protection to American industry, to give 
 employment to the thousands in our seaboard who 
 are either idle or miserably underpaid, and who would 
 gladly consume more of American food than we have 
 been sending abroad. In fact it is impossible to say 
 who is not directly interested in having his neighbor 
 able to buy from him. The shoemaker knows his 
 neighbor would gladly pay him for shoes for his bare- 
 footed children if he had the means. Is not only he, 
 but the tailor, hatter, etc., all equally interested in 
 giving purchasing ability to their neighbors, not by 
 
BUY CHEAP AND SELL DEAR. 37 
 
 individual charity or eftbrt, but by concentrated poli- 
 tical action compelling national protection against 
 English invasion upon American industry. This 
 form of invasion is a thousandfold more destructive 
 to American independence than any military inva- 
 sion, for fear of which it is proposed to spend millions 
 of the people's money. Monarchies govern by force, 
 republics by intelligence and equity. 
 
 England is a warning example against the substitu- 
 tion of low prices for true cheapness. In her attempts 
 to force sales of merchandise at arbitrary low prices 
 she has crushed the purchasing power of her own 
 people until they are driven to starvation point and 
 present themselves in masses before the Parliament 
 house as proof of their misery. The Cobden Club is 
 doing for England what the wars and court extrava- 
 gances of Louis XlVth did for France, planting the 
 seed for a social and political revolution, the conse- 
 quences of which it is impossible to foretell. The 
 mob of to-day may, and probably will, organize into 
 an army in the near future, and organization for right 
 is bound to conquer organization for wrong. 
 
 England has disbursed millions of money in outra- 
 geous wars upon weakly defensive nations to crush 
 the purchasing power of the people. In India and 
 Egypt the people starve because they cannot aftbrd 
 to consume the food their industry has raised, and see 
 it carried off' to England, where the poor English serf 
 is equally unable to consume it. English politicians, 
 including the Cobden Club, call this food cheap; it is 
 low-priced, but how cursedly dear in the scale of 
 humanity. 
 
38 
 
 SUBSIDIES. 
 
 There is a strange hallucination with many of our 
 leading citizens that money received for productions 
 sold to a neighbor is not as good as the money re- 
 ceived from a foreigner for the same articles. That 
 is to say, if the land west of the Mississippi still re- 
 mained under the Spanish flag, the present business 
 done with that section of country would be considered 
 as a great increase of national wealth and commerce, 
 but as the people there are under the American flag, 
 and the merchandise is carried to them in railroad 
 cars instead of ships, this great business is counted 
 for nothing, stigmatized as mere home trade un- 
 worthy of the name of commerce. 
 
 There is also a great howl that the American flag 
 does not float at the mast-head of steamships sailing 
 to Europe, South America, etc. These howlers 
 ignore our great sea-coast traific from the St. Law- 
 rence to the Gulf of Mexico carried on under the 
 American flag and far exceeding the transatlantic 
 trade. Steamers, schooners, sloops, and barges effect 
 an enormous amount of exchanges, while the daily 
 traffic of a trunk line railway could not be loaded in 
 a foreign steamer under a month. 
 
 The nonsense of this mania can be well illustrated 
 in the case of the steamer Tagus, that came to this 
 
SUBSIDIES. 39 
 
 port a few years since as a pioneer movement of open- 
 ing steam communication between Philadelphia and 
 Liverpool. There was great praise at the time given 
 in the newspapers for the spirited manner in which 
 our merchants at the Corn Exchange bought 60,000 
 bushels of grain to insure a return cargo to the 
 steamer. 
 
 At that time information was obtained from a relia- 
 ble importer of European cloths that 60 pounds of 
 cloth of the average quality and price were worth 
 $160, while 60 pounds of wheat were sent for one 
 dollar, leaving us in debt $149 for every 60 pounds 
 of imported cloth. If we take the average price of 
 the import cargo at only $5 for each. 60 pounds in 
 60,000 bushels of wheat, we have a — 
 
 Total of . . . ... $300,000 
 
 For which we sent . . . 60,000 
 
 Leaving us in debt . . . $240,000 
 
 If we assume, for sake of illustration, that the 
 steamer's expenses were $3000 each way, the per- 
 centage of freight would be one per cent, on the im- 
 port and five per cent, on our export cargo, a rate 
 that no low priced article can pay, and at once ex- 
 cludes American shipping. 
 
 American exports being lower in price in propor- 
 tion to bulk than imports, anything like a balance of 
 accounts cannot be maintained unless some of the 
 foreign vessels come over in ballast, or American 
 vessels carrying American productions must return 
 in ballast. Debt cannot be increased without limit. 
 
-iO SUBSIDIES. 
 
 When we can put $150 value in 60 pound weight and 
 can find customers we can have steamships for trans- 
 atlantic, as we now have for coastwise traffic at Amer- 
 ican prices and among our own citizens. 
 
 American steamship owners go whining and blub- 
 bering before Congress and the public that even if the 
 steamships were presented to them they could not 
 run them. Ex-Governor Hoyt made such a state- 
 ment in the Academy of Music when lecturing on 
 Free Trade, but the audience didn't scare worth one 
 cent. In fact every thinking man knows that if a 
 foreign vessel never entered an American port we 
 would be much better off. 
 
 The idea that toting goods to and fro within the 
 same zone adds to the wealth of either party may do 
 for a simple minded priest like Fenelon to teach a 
 verdant youth like Tel^maque, but the fact that such 
 trade cannot be maintained without subsidies or 
 sacrifices proves the error of such doctrine. Espe- 
 cially is this true as regards articles of food, the great 
 staple of American exports. Every land can feed its 
 own population, and England is not an exception, but 
 being anxious to starve out her agricultural laborers, 
 especially the Irish, she is steadily decreasing her 
 area of arable land, with proportionate decrease in. 
 her home supply of food. England has created a 
 great rivalry among other nations to supply her with 
 food, which she consequently is getting at bottom 
 prices. She knows that every pound of food im- 
 ported into England helps to dig an Irishman's grave, 
 and these graves she intends to dig until the last 
 Irishman is either dead or expatriated. 
 
SUBSIDIES. 41 
 
 England subsidizes nearly all, if not entirely all, of 
 her first-class steamers, and with such subsidies buvs 
 the right to divert them to her own use ; to make 
 them war transports at a moment's notice, without the 
 slightest regard to mercantile demands. This subsidy 
 maintains a navy much cheaper than by keeping 
 government vessels in commission. 
 
 As our government is not run upon piratical prin- 
 ciples like England, her subsidy policy is no model 
 for us. 
 
 True commerce is between different zones with 
 variety of productions that can be exchanged with 
 mutual advantage. We have between our own 
 national limits the ability to produce almost every 
 article pertaining to human luxury. Why not de- 
 velop a true commerce across the zones on American 
 soil, where American production paying for Amer- 
 ican production keeps us out of debt to foreigners? 
 
 Claimants for subsidies to maintain a mercantile 
 navy for foreign trade point to the fact of our land 
 subsidies to internal railroads. Whether these land 
 grants were wisely or foolishly done, the effect has 
 been to develop the power of association within our 
 own jurisdiction and tend to a concentration of politi- 
 cal power backed by intelligent freemen, whose moral 
 strength will crush the pigmy hireling armies of 
 monarchical Europe. The profits of the foreign carry- 
 ing trade are presented to show what we lose in not 
 having a foreign mercantile navy. Do they ever try 
 to show the profits of the home carrying trade? Does 
 the balance-sheet of England's commerce show that 
 her people are getting richer and happier by her " 
 6 
 
4:2 SUBSIDIES. 
 
 carrying trade? We cannot follow her example 
 without earning the same reward. 
 
 There is a clause in the revised statutes of the 
 United States providing for ten per cent, differential 
 duties on imports in American bottoms, which clause 
 has been abrogated in our treaties with foreign 
 nations, and now we are asked to put our hands in 
 our pockets and pay subsidy to vessels to bring us in 
 debt. Abrogate the treaties and enforce the ten per 
 cent, act, and whatever commerce other nations mayB 
 want to do with us will be done in American ships,, 
 provided we keep up our duties to a protective point jf 
 
 There is much stress laid upon the value of the' 
 South American markets, but for what reason it is 
 hard to imagine. An ignorant, priest-ridden people 
 living in a climate requiring a limited supply of cloth- 
 ing, with an almost spontaneous supply of food, few 
 diversified forms of manufacture, and they of the 
 most common order, what have they got to pay us 
 for what we send to them? § 
 
 Every South American government is in financial 
 difficulties, a sure indicator of individual poverty. 
 And the Buenos Ayres papers' reports of the trade 
 with England fully prove South American poverty. 
 They lately said that imports from England amounted 
 to twenty-eight millions and the exports were only 
 ten millions, causing a drain of eighteen millions of 
 gold, forcing the banks to suspend coin payments with 
 utter prostration of business. A situation resembling 
 our own in 1837 from our attempting to find foreign 
 markets for American industry by importing English 
 manufactures. 
 
SUBSIDIES. 43 
 
 Commerce cannot be done so cheaply, nor so equi- 
 tably with foreigners as among ourselves, and until 
 our home channels are filled, it is positive stupidity to 
 exchange the cheap and certain for the expensive and 
 uncertain. We have in our midst a large population 
 now stinted in their purchasing ability, which, if pro- 
 perly developed, is worth more than any foreign 
 market can ever be. 
 
 England has expended millions of money to open 
 commerce with Turkey and Egypt. What is the 
 value of English trade with those countries now? If 
 England had spent ten per cent, in wages to her own 
 'operatives that she spent in piracy upon compara- 
 tivelv defenceless nations, her manufactures and her 
 people would not be in the wretched condition they 
 are to-day. With an equitable system of wages to 
 our own.great body of consumers our home market 
 Iwould always be in demand equal to the supply. 
 
 If foreigners want our goods let them come after 
 them and pay us our price, but when we have to 
 solicit new markets for sales of our goods the sacrifice 
 is on our side. If we wish to compete with England 
 in other markets we must sell on long credits, for that 
 is her policy in selling, and collect the bills by an 
 army. Shall we imitate her brutal policy? 
 
 If we wish to extend custom for our manufactures, 
 let us take a hint from the large retail stores. They 
 will send even a trifling purchase several miles dis- 
 tant from the store and not make a difference in 
 charge if the customer takes it with him. The de- 
 livery is charged in the general expense account and 
 not specific upon the article. Now, as every dollar of 
 
44 SUBSIDIES. 
 
 new trade brought to Philadelphia ramifies its influ- 
 ence through every individual channel of business, 
 let every citizen give his equitable mite to a fund 
 controlled by representatives of Philadelphia indus- 
 try. "With this fund let the committee get one of 
 Cramp's first-class steamers, and then announce to the 
 Brazilians: — 
 
 "Philadelphia manufactures delivered at R'o Janeiro 
 at Philadelphia prices, and coffee to the full amount 
 of purchases will be taken in payment." 
 
 Coffee is sold in every grocery store in the United 
 States. An announcement that "Brazilian coffee 
 would be delivered at Brazilian prices" would make 
 Pliiladelphia the cheapest market for coffee, and at- 
 tract the attendance of new customers. This would 
 be the true and cheapest form of a subsidy, but it 
 will not be considered for an instant as long as Uncle 
 Sam is willing to foot the bill. Of course other cities 
 would follow this experiment if once adopted by 
 Philadelphia, and the petty insignificance of the South 
 American trade would soon show itself when di- 
 vided up. 
 
 Toting merchandise around the world does not im- 
 prove its quality, but travel improves human intelli- 
 gence. Passenger and not freight steamers are 
 wanted, and these will be supplied when the demand 
 comes, for personal comfort and safety will be paid for. 
 
45 
 
 LAND. 
 
 To the isolated man with nothing but his own in- 
 adequate physical abilities, land is a most inexorable 
 tyrant. It will not of its own free will give food or 
 shelter, but, like all other tyrants, it will yield to 
 well-devised organization. North American Indians, 
 numbered only by thousands, led a half-starved pre- 
 carious existence while they had possession of the 
 virgin soil of the same domain that now supports 
 millions, through the powers of association, in afflu- 
 ence. The white man was not physically stronger 
 than the Indian, but he brought with him the repre- 
 sentatives of centuries of association in the axe, spade, 
 and plow, with which to conquer the land, and the 
 rifle to give him meat to support life while land took 
 its own time to perfect the grain. In fact, a loaf of 
 bread, the representative panacea for pauperism, is 
 the product of a large investment of pre-existent 
 capital which must be supplied to the pauper to en- 
 able him to be self-supporting, even if he has the 
 ability to become so with the aid of land and the pre- 
 existent capital presented to him. Agriculture is not 
 automatic to be used like a machine, but, even in its 
 crudest forms, requires skill and experience not gene- 
 rally possessed by handicraft workers. It is, there- 
 fore, only adding insult to injury to tell skilled 
 
46 LAND. 
 
 mechanics and artisans, thrown out of employment 
 by quack financial legislation destroying the instru- 
 ment of association, to " go West" without either capi- 
 tal or experience. You might as well give a man a 
 chunk of iron and tell him to convert it into watch 
 springs, as to give him a plot of land and tell him to 
 make a loaf of bread. Both watch springs and bread 
 can be made by properly organized association of 
 other industries, and it is this organized diversity of 
 industries that gives value to all crude forms of 
 nature's elements. Isolated cultivated land pays 
 high interest to obtain command of the instrument of 
 association, money, which it would not be required 
 to do if value existed in the land itself, and was not 
 dependent upon association. 
 
 The plausible slang of sentimentalists (and engage 
 of the Cobden Club), e. ^., Henry George, and the igno- 
 rant ravings of socialistic would-be leaders, only mis- 
 lead public attention from the true remedy against 
 enforced idleness on some individuals, and other so- 
 ciety evils, which all spring from defective associa- 
 tive arrangements. 
 
 Land is not the source of wealthy it is only the vehicle 
 by use of which man develops a product existing in 
 ideal form before putting a spade in the ground. 
 Land is the connecting link between man's necessities 
 and supply, as money is the connecting link between 
 man and his fellow -men ; both land and money should 
 be protected from centralized monopoly as existed 
 when the monk and baron owned all the land. 
 
 Land ownership is considered a strong element of 
 conservatism ; that the homestead incites a spirit of 
 
LAND. 47 
 
 self-respect which tends to moral strength and good 
 citizenship. That this is partially trae cannot be 
 denied, but land ownership is not so great a blessing 
 as is claimed for it. 
 
 Fixed land tenure has a strong tendency to convert 
 conservatism into mud-turtleism ; to make the intro- 
 duction of new ideas and new principles very repug- 
 nant. If we examine the intellectual condition of 
 provincial France, where the land division is more de- 
 veloped than in any other country in Europe, we do 
 not find an educated progressive population, nor one 
 holding a higher moral standard than is to be found 
 in other lands. How far the anti-progressive spirit of 
 the Roman Catholic Church, so long dominant in 
 France, together with the centralizing policy of French 
 political rulers are responsible for this stagnated, 
 mud-turtle condition, the reader must judge for him- 
 self. 
 
 From an official report of an elaborate investigation 
 made under the joint efibrts of public and private ex- 
 aminers, the physical condition of the French peasant 
 is not one to be envied by the peasantry of other 
 countries. This report shows that the combined 
 efforts of parents and children in cultivating their 
 little patches of ground by hand labor gave the family 
 a precarious animal existence with little aspiration 
 for intellectual improvement, and with as little oppor- 
 tunity to gratify it. The consequence is that this 
 waste of human energy makes even vegetable food 
 very dear, while even a taste of animal food is a treat 
 only for high days and holidays. Household furni- 
 ture and Sunday clothing descend from generation to 
 
48 LAND. 
 
 generation. Greater diversity of human employment 
 with a concentration of little patches of ground into 
 fields large enough to substitute the plow and reaper 
 for the spade and sickle, would enrich the poor peas- 
 ant with more and better food, also a better supply of 
 furniture and clothing. 
 
 Across the channel from France we come to the 
 other extreme, a villainous centralization of land 
 ownership into the hands of an unscrupulous oli- 
 garchy intently devoted to destruction of food-pro- « 
 ducing land, and converting it into mere pleasure 
 grounds, so that no one shall exist there but house- 
 servants, and mill operatives, and miners, to serve 
 and produce wealth for the land owners. 
 
 Land is yet too abundant to feel the restraint of 
 monopoly in the United States, and the people are 
 earnestly discussing the best means to prevent its 
 being monopolized by corporations and aliens. A 
 certain amount of land is necessary for the profitable 
 use of machinery and cheapest production of food to 
 avoid French errors, but beyond this amount indi- 
 vidual possession should be strictly limited to avoid 
 the curse of the English system. 
 
 Combined action on the part of the wool grower, 
 the cloth weaver, and the tailor, creates a coat which 
 is bought and worn without any idea of tyranny on 
 the part of the wearer against the tailor, who has paid 
 the other two for their share in making the coat, but 
 when some one else paj^s mechanics and others for a 
 building which shelters both the man and his coat, 
 then this house owner becomes an outrageous tyrant 
 when he asks pay for the use of the house, in the 
 
opinion of some who may wish to occupy the house, 
 although such person has not contributed one iota of 
 his labor toward constructing the house. If these 
 discontented anti-renters were asked to give the result 
 of their labor for nothing they would bitterly com- 
 plain of the injustice. It is not considered any injus- 
 tice to pay for a house and get fee simple possession 
 by a parchment deed, but to get actual possession for 
 a specifi-ed period by paying a percentage on the 
 amount demanded for a perpetual title of ownership, 
 then this percentage is called robbery. 
 
 All investments of money capital, sooner or later, 
 sink to one common level of profit, and house rents, 
 as a general rule, are rather below than above this 
 level. The true cause of complaint is that the renter 
 does not receive that just compensation for his ser- 
 vices, which, if he did receive, would enable him to 
 pay rent as cheerfully as he paid his tailor or shoe- 
 maker. 
 
 There are thousands of our citizens perfectly able 
 to buy and own their homes, but they prefer not to 
 permanently invest in bricks and mortar, preferring 
 stipulated periods of ownership by payment of rent, 
 so that they can vacate when improved and more con- 
 venient houses are offered, or when business considera- 
 tions may make a change of location desirable. Change 
 of business channels sometimes leaves property so high 
 and dry that it is more burdensome than profitable. 
 
 Until we recognize that man is the only source of 
 wealth, and that all atoms of nature, be they metallic 
 or earthy, are dormant and valueless without the im- 
 
50 LAND. 
 
 press of human intelligence, we will never be able to 
 establish a true republic. 
 
 Every scientific development, as electricity and 
 telephony, giving man greater command over the 
 forces of nature, opens new avenues for individual 
 activity in higher forms of thought, which will assign 
 all crude materials pertaining to the physical to their 
 proper station as obedient accessories. 
 
 Man was never created by a fiat nor as a •finality; 
 he is the developed spirit of every atom of nature that 
 preceded and now surrounds him, and this developed 
 humanity is progressing as rapidly to-day as ever in 
 the past, and will continue so in the future. With 
 every onward step the grosser forms of nature sink 
 in value, and land among the rest. 
 
51 
 
 LABOR. 
 
 Expressing Labor as any and every act useful to 
 the community, be it mental or physical, it is impos- 
 sible for legal authority to classify labor any more 
 than it can classify citizens. Whatever may be the 
 names by which citizens designate themselves for 
 business convenience, they are all subordinate to the 
 title or name of citizen. 
 
 The instant that any form of labor is made a legal 
 specialty the whole superstructure of republicanism is 
 shattered. A citizen has not a right to demand any 
 act for himself that he is not willing to grant to every 
 one else under similar circumstances. Violation of 
 this evident truth has brought a variety of paupers to 
 the doors of legislative halls, asking alms in the way 
 of special privileges for themselves. Bankers asking, 
 and unfortunately obtaining, the privilege of convert- 
 ing their investments in Uuited States bonds into a 
 currency which is denied to other forms of invest- 
 ment. Ship owners ask for subsidies to pay freights 
 on vessels to lessen the cost of importation and be 
 better able to compete in price with American in- 
 dustry, under the disguise or deception that such sub- 
 sidies would extend American commerce. 
 
 Copying these iniquitous examples, American citi- 
 zens engaged in physxal employments have organized 
 
52 LABOR. 
 
 to demand special legislation for themselves as a class, 
 thereby acknowledging the correctness of previous 
 special legislation, which has hitherto been a constant 
 theme of complaint in what are known as Labor Con- 
 ventions. Law is dependent -apon the power behind 
 it, and the moment that law is invoked for labor it is 
 only a question of power whether the laws prevalent 
 under Henry YIIL, of England, shall not be enacted 
 again. If law had the power to limit a man to the 
 condition in which he was born, as the Chinese law, 
 then there would be some excuse for such action, but 
 being free to develop his individual capacity to the 
 best of his own judgment, the true policy of every one 
 dependent upon his own physical exertions is to de- 
 mand repeal of all present privileges, and the enact- 
 ment of laws equally beneficial to each and every 
 citizen. 
 
 Suppose Federal authority could collate a perfectly 
 true statement of every penny of wages paid to each 
 man, woman, and ^ child in the United States, what 
 suggestions for legislative action could be deduced 
 from such a table ? Massachusetts has the reputation 
 of making the most elaborate labor statistics, and has 
 made some improvement in factory regulations which 
 could have been as well done without the Labor Bu- 
 reau as with.it. Some statements have been made 
 showing how much, or rather how little, a family can 
 subsist upon, just as an agricultural society would 
 discuss the fattening of a pig. 
 
 Some one will point to the benefits accruing from 
 the Agricultural Bureau. What are they ? Can any 
 valuable suggestions be deduced from columns of 
 
LABOR. 53 
 
 figures giving the namber of bushels of cereals, etc., 
 that were produced the previous year? Will such 
 reports influence the weather ? Will they have any 
 effect upon planting? 
 
 What we really want is a Bureau of Information, 
 where the relations between man and society can be 
 investigated and the causes made known why at cer- 
 tain periods industrial prosperity blooms over the 
 land, with harmonious relations existing in work- 
 shops and factories ; why, at other periods, idleness, 
 poverty, crime, and discordant relations are rampant. 
 This desirable information will never be obtained by 
 legislative inquiry so long as legislation is based upon 
 the English idea of man being a chattel. It is this 
 chattel legislation against which Knights of Labor 
 and Trades Unions are fighting, but for want of proper 
 study of the subject, these organizations have never 
 been able to effect permanent improvement. The 
 panics of 1857 and 1873 are liable to occur again, as 
 the same causes are as actively at work to-day as they 
 were then. In 1857 and in 1873 labor organizations 
 were thoroughly prostrated, and the members had the 
 opportunity of learning that prosperous lahor could 
 maintain labor organizations^ hut that lahor organiza- 
 tions in themselves could not maintain prosperous in- 
 dustry. The agent for good or evil is outside of 
 their organization, but very few of the members take 
 the trouble to find out where or who the agent is. 
 In 1857 I had frequent opportunities of asking intel- 
 ligent skilled American mechanics, if they and their 
 bosses had any disputes. The answer uniformly was 
 no ! That the boss would gladly give them work, 
 6 
 
54 LABOK. 
 
 and they would be glad to accept it. Then I asked, 
 Have you attempted to ascertain the cause why 
 American citizens anxious to be employed had to re- 
 main idle? Invariably the answer was no! Some 
 blamed one thing, and some another, but not one 
 could give any good reason for his opinion. They 
 repeated what they had heard others say. It is some- 
 what better to-day wi^i some few, but not with the 
 great body of employes. 
 
 It does not appear to have entered into the heads 
 of the railroad employes in the West to ask why a 
 single individual, as Jay Gould, had so much power 
 over them. He had not an army to back him, yet 
 he could control their time and wages. The very 
 fact that arbitration was demanded was an act of 
 servitude that no American citizen should submit to, 
 although arbitration might be available as a tempo- 
 rary expedient for the time being, owing to previous 
 negligence in not preventing Jay Grould, or any other 
 man, from obtaining such power over them. Every 
 one of the strikers, if he had had equal talents and 
 opportunities, would have done just as Jay Gould has 
 done, taking advantage of a false system of finan- 
 cial legislation which enabled him to buy bankrupt 
 railroads for comparatively nothing. Killing Jay 
 Gould will not kill the system, nor will the change of 
 ownership after his death change the situation one 
 jot. Go to the ballot-box and boycott the Shermans, 
 Morrills, Morrisons, Carlisles, Beechers, and college 
 professors, the authors and advisers of the system 
 that prevents each man from being the servant of his 
 
LABOK. 55 
 
 own arbitration, and makes him dependent upon that 
 of another. 
 
 If citizens, calling themselves "labor men," would 
 devote one-tenth part of the time to study of econo- 
 mic laws as they do to bellowing in so-called " labor 
 conventions," and make their convictions felt at the 
 ballot-box, they would have small cause of complaint; 
 but a constituency ignorant of economic laws will 
 have representatives equally ignorant with unwhole- 
 some results. It is very safe to say that not twenty 
 men on the floor of Congress have ever read a work 
 on the best means of enabling man to associate with 
 his fellow-men, yet they draw salaries as if they were 
 first-class workmen. A machine shop cannot be run 
 with unskilled hands any more than a government 
 can be run with an ignorant constituency. 
 
 It is very common to speak of strife between labor 
 and capital, but such talk is incorrect; there is no 
 strife between labor and capital, the strife is between 
 labor and gold money, or money pretended to be 
 based upon gold. The proof of this is shown by the 
 harmonious relations existing in 1864 and '5, when we 
 had a labor money, not dependent upon gold, and 
 before those traitors to American industry, McCulloch, 
 Sherman k Co., began their warfare against labor 
 money, by withdrawing it from circulation, so as to 
 prevent it from demanding gold, and then calling such 
 contraction a " Eesumption of Specie Payment." From 
 the date of the enactment of the so-called Resumption 
 Act, business troubles began, culminating in 1873 in 
 the total prostration of labor. The coining of silver 
 with issue of silver certificates in 1878, gave labor a 
 
56 . LABOR. 
 
 start again, and it was improving rapidly when Sena- 
 tor Morrill and Eepresentative Wm. D. Kelley gave 
 it a stunning blow on Marcli 3, 1883, by giving English 
 manufactures increased ability to compete with Amer- 
 ican labor by reducing duties on imports. 
 
 Eestore the condition of the currency to what it was 
 in 1864 and '5, and tariff duties to what they were prior 
 to 1883, and Jay Gould would not be of any more ac- 
 count than any other citizen, and the railroad com- 
 panies would be offering acceptable terms to the very 
 men who are now vainly endeavoring to secure even 
 a pittance. Election of Congressmen pledged to restore 
 the currency and the tariff to their former status, is 
 the only possible means to place labor in an indepen- 
 dent position. This coming autumn is the time for 
 action, but it must be commenced at once, so as to be 
 ready to strike in October at the ballot-box. 
 
 There is not any use for universal suffrage if it is 
 not applied to useful purposes. What other motive 
 than security for social happiness can men have for 
 going to the polls ? 
 
 Mr. Powderly makes a fatal error in advising non- 
 political action. All the labor troubles of the day are 
 effects of neglected political duties, and the sooner the 
 error is retrieved the sooner will come the remedy. 
 
 A great error is made by many who have become 
 skilled in some branch of mechanics, in believing that 
 their skill is a finality to remain in the same condition 
 during their lifetime, though they see around them 
 continued advancement in all other branches. The 
 world is ever on the alert for new ideas, and he who 
 gives them wins, while the others remain to be 
 
LABOK. ^7 
 
 "hewers of wood and drawers of water." No man. 
 
 whatever be his occupation, should ever consider him- 
 self out of his apprenticeship. Technical education is 
 of immense importance towards developing new ideas, 
 provided the students will consider every new fact 
 the same as they would a new and improved tool, as 
 an instrument for still better work. 
 
 6* 
 
58 
 
 WAGES. 
 
 Every act useful in a community is justly entitled 
 to compensation, whether it be the act of an author, 
 artist, manufacturer, distributor, or of manual labor. 
 This compensation we designate as wages, and as it 
 is through disbursement of wages that every dollar 
 of money finds its way into circulation, the import- 
 ance of a proper understanding of this subject cannot 
 be overestimated. 
 
 The value of services are not only measured by the 
 community in which they are performed, but the pay- 
 ment is also made by the community, because, behind 
 the metallic or paper certificate given in acknowledg- 
 ment of a service rendered, stands the ability to give 
 value in some form of productive industry for the 
 certificate. It is evident then that the demand for 
 productions and services increases with every in- 
 crease of wage certificates, and also that the demand 
 slackens with decrease of such certificates. The cer- 
 tificates or money do not pay anything of themselves. 
 
 Much time and space have been devoted to com- 
 parison of wages as expressed by money, but all such 
 discussions are mere windmill fightings. What other 
 nations disburse as wasres is no criterion for an Ame- 
 rican standard of wages. We want men, and not 
 mere human machines, and we must have them, or 
 else abandon the universal franchise. 
 
WAGES. 69 
 
 The right of voting implies the duty of thinking, 
 to do which a man must have healthy, physical, and 
 mental conditions. Men and their families must be 
 able to procure wholesome food and eat it in well- 
 ventilated domicils; not to be given as charity, but 
 as just compensation for their services. Unwholesome 
 food and illy-ventilated houses disarrange brain and 
 stomach, and create that unnatural desire for alcoholic 
 •or other stimulant, which brings the " sample room" 
 and " beer saloon," with entrances for " ladies," into 
 existence. Demand always comes before supply, and 
 it is the desire for rum that opens the saloon, and 
 the best patrons of them are the lowest priced wage 
 workers. This can be readily accounted for. Every 
 human being has an intuitive desire for social enjoy- 
 ment and amusement to relieve the drudgery of daily 
 toil. The low-priced wage worker is unable to gratify 
 any refined aspiration by hearing good elocution or 
 good music, but must seek such as his few pennies 
 will buy, and rum offers the most enticing reward. 
 The best saint on earth cannot resist the desire of 
 stimulant, if he is forced to physical exhaustion day 
 after day, with no prospect of relief except by a ride 
 in the coach that does not bring passengers back, and 
 if these miserable quacks, who go snivelling around 
 with debauched informers to find some poorly paid 
 and over-worked human being who had bought a 
 glass of beer on a Sunday, would study into cause 
 and effect, and if they were really honestly in earnest 
 (which is very doubtful), they would find out that 
 well-earned homes and leisure to enjoy them are 
 the best antagonists of rum mills. Such homes and 
 
60 WAGES. 
 
 leisure must be provided, sooner or later, and the 
 sooner we begin, the sooner will we begin to get rid 
 of almshouses and prisons. 
 
 Official records show that in periods of compara- 
 tively well paid wages, the criminal record is the 
 shortest, and the prisons most untenanted. This is 
 in accordance with natural law. Man is the apex of 
 all of Nature's mutations of this earth from chaos to 
 the present condition, and with every advancement his 
 aspirations expand. If these aspirations are checked 
 by too severe a struggle for physical existence, he 
 retrogrades towards the animal; but if he is sur- 
 rounded by proper conditions, he advances towards 
 the spiritual, and away from the animal. 
 
 But independent of the rum question, low wages 
 are a curse to the whole community. Low-priced 
 wages necessitates too close quarters for living, which, 
 in connection with poor food, generate disease whose 
 germs find their way into the homes of the more for- 
 tunate, where every sanitary precaution is observed, 
 except that of keeping healthy the home of his less 
 fortunate neighbor. 
 
 Many employers decrease their wages on the false 
 assumption that such reduction is added to the profit, 
 but those who study this subject find that sales not 
 only decline in price, but also in bulk with every re- 
 duction of wages, and with a steady course towards 
 closed mills and bankruptcy. The percentage cost of 
 selling and distributing manufactures increases with 
 the decline of sales, which more than balances the 
 reduction in wages. 
 
 Every manufacturer is himself a wage worker with 
 
WAGES. 61 
 
 the public as liis paymaster, and as the operatives in 
 his own establishment are typical of the community, 
 he cannot fail to see that their ability to purchase is 
 curtailed by the reduction of wages, which mast run 
 its course through all other business establishments. 
 In fact, reduction of wages is similar in effect to bank 
 contractions of discounts. 
 
 Muscular energy is one of the most perishable arti- 
 cles owned by man. A day once wasted can never 
 be recovered. It requires double pay for a working 
 day to pay for the idle day, which men should well 
 consider before they enforce weeks of idleness upon 
 themselves for a paltry advance of ten or twenty per 
 cent, in their wages, and which may last only for a 
 short time. 
 
 There are some inconsiderate people, arguing from 
 assumptions and not from facts, who contend that 
 the rate of wages has not any influence upon the 
 welfare of the manual laborer. They say that high 
 vv^ages cause a corresponding advance in the price of 
 articles consumed, and that the month's wages will 
 not buy more comforts than when wages were lower. 
 The fallacy of this absurd assertion is manifest when 
 we consider that the cost of the plant — building and 
 machinery — and also the charge for interest, remain 
 the same under high as under low wages. In addi- 
 tion to these items there is the fact of the difference 
 in the percentage of cost upon goods manufactured 
 by the machinery running full time (always the case 
 under high wages) than when the same machinery 
 runs only part time. The percentage cost of distri- 
 bution of the goods also declines under large sales, for 
 
62 WAGES. 
 
 a clerk can make an invoice and bill of lading just as 
 readily for two cases as he can for one. Witli large 
 sales the manufacturer makes a larger amount of 
 money, with less percentage of profit, than he does 
 with slow sales and a higher percentage of nominal 
 profit. High wages bring more money into circula- 
 tion with a corresponding increase of cash business 
 and diminution of individual credit — that great draw- 
 back upon prosperous business. 
 
 In 1864, before Hugh McCulloch began his infernal 
 contraction of the currency, individual business notes 
 were very rare, as there was plenty of money (good, 
 honest Grreenbacks), and business transactions were 
 cash. Comparatively high wages prevailed, and em- 
 ployers and employed were as polite and complacent 
 with each other as bride and groom. 
 
 When the Boys in Blue had saved the country and 
 were returning to their workshops, which they had 
 left at their country's call, there was just as much 
 need for money to pay these men in their workshops 
 as it was to pay them on the battle-field. But before 
 they had fairly rested, the order came from the 
 National Treasury, " Make tramps of these soldiers; 
 they crushed black slavery, and established freedom. 
 I will make both whites and blacks slaves by with- 
 drawing their means of earning a livelihood." These 
 were not the words, but they express the sentiments 
 of those who controlled the financial legislation when 
 they funded current securities used as a circulating 
 medium, and began withdrawing the Greenback. What 
 are the strikes to-day, but embryo revolutions against 
 metallic money slavery ! The aim of the strikers is 
 
WAGES. 63 
 
 in every way commendable, but their plan of warfare 
 is not well chosen. It is only through the ballot-box 
 that wrongs can be corrected. 
 
 There are some manufactures in our midst so closely 
 pressed by English low-priced wage- made goods 
 (thanks to Morrison, Morrill, and Kelley), that they 
 cannot exist except by close approximation to English 
 wages. The only advantageous strike the men in 
 such establishments can make is against the Tariff 
 Act of March 3, 1883, which laid the foundation of our 
 business troubles. 
 
 But, again, there are other investments entirely in- 
 dependent of English competition, whose plants are 
 several times more valuable than their original cost, 
 and daily increasing in value by growth of popula- 
 tion, who have not the slightest excuse for their 
 brutal enslavement of their employes. When the 
 chartered privileges of our street railways are taken 
 in account current with the accommodations offered, 
 we cannot shut our eyes to the great swindle they 
 have perpetrated upon the public, and, when in addi- 
 tion to this, they treat the unfortunate human beings, 
 whom circumstances have compelled being their em- 
 ployes, with a cruelty unequalled in the days of Uncle 
 Tom, not only the employes, but the entire public 
 should rise en masse and annul the contract so shame- 
 fully violated. There is not a shadow of excuse for 
 these companies making men work twelve hours a 
 day for two dollars, and liable to discharge at a mo- 
 ment's notice without cause or appeal. 
 
 It is only through a positive system of high wages, 
 guarantied beyond change, that shorter hours for 
 
64 WAGES. 
 
 labor can be attained. The great body of the manual 
 laborers are just abore the poverty line, their homes 
 are devoid of refined comforts to which they all aspire, 
 and for which they will work as long as their strength 
 will permit, regardless of hours. The constant arrival 
 of immigrants whose worldly possessions are very 
 limited will resist all attempts to limit their working 
 hours until they have secured home comforts. 
 
 Neither competent wages nor shorter hours for 
 work, with educational refinement, can ever be attained 
 without complete exclusion of English degraded labor 
 competition, and a full supply of money based upon 
 productive labor issued directly by Congress. 
 
65 
 
 THE SOCIAL ARRANGEMENTS OF A 
 PEOPLE MUST HARMONIZE WITH 
 THEIR POLITICAL PRINCIPLES. 
 
 For want of attention to this important truth the 
 American people find their ideal republic so closely 
 resembles monarchical countries in regard to individ- 
 ual conditions, that it is very difficult to tell wherein 
 the two systems differ, except in names of public 
 authorities. The antagonism between individual in- 
 terests is as strongly marked in the United States as in 
 England, Germany, Belgium, and other monarchical 
 countries in Europe. Class divisions of society regu- 
 lated by money are as strongly defined in the United 
 States as the titled distinctions are in Europe. 
 
 Is it not time to correct this evil? 
 
 The real, vital difference between monarchical and 
 republican institutions consists in the social arrange- 
 ments much more than in any political dicta. An 
 Englishman can growl at his Queen and criticize the 
 action of his Parliament with as much freedom as an 
 American can criticize his President and Congress, 
 and public sentiment in England can influence legisla- 
 tion there with as much force as it can in the United 
 States, though not quite so quickly. With a limited 
 franchise an Englishman has as much political power 
 as an American has with universal suffrage. It is 
 7 
 
66 SOCIAL AKRANGEMEN^TS. 
 
 very evident, therefore, that it is in the social 
 arrangements where the oppressive power is hidden 
 and not in the political. 
 
 When our ancestors abolished primogeniture in 
 regard to kings and property, and gave every man 
 a voice in the management of public affairs, they 
 yery naturally concluded that every bar to human 
 prosperity and happiness had been removed. Peace 
 had scarcely been concluded between England and 
 America, before the crushing eflect of England's 
 social system became so manifest in the United States 
 that the six vears following — 1783 to 1789 — are re- 
 corded as one of the most distressful periods of 
 American history. It was to avert the curse of the 
 English system that called the new, our present. Con- 
 stitution into existence. Every time we change the 
 policy adopted by our ancestors in 1789 we suffer the 
 evils endured during the previous six years-. In 
 spite of this historical evidence there are persistent 
 fools in and out of Congress clamoring to reinstate 
 the sufferings of past periods. 
 
 Why should the social arrangements of a republic 
 differ from those of a monarchy? Simply because 
 different conditions of society are demanded. 
 
 A monarchy can only be maintained by disintegra- 
 tion of the people, having several grades or classes 
 competing with each other, and a small favored class, 
 closely allied to and supporting the throne. Disinte- 
 gration is not enforced by military power, but by por- 
 tioning to each class a share of the annual productive 
 earnings in such a manner that the aristocratic 
 governing class shall revel in luxury, while the ob- 
 
SOCIAL AERANGEMENTS. 67 
 
 jective class are at the starvation level, or barely 
 above it. By the annual productive earnings it is 
 not intended to express the amount brought yearly 
 into the royal treasury, but the actual amount of 
 food and maoufactures produced by individual indus- 
 try. The increased value given by manual labor to 
 crude material converted into finished merchandise 
 is so frittered away by interest and taxes, that only a 
 pittance is left for the worker. So limited is his 
 purchasing ability that in the cloth manufacturing dis- 
 tricts — where Morrison, Carlisle, Beecher, etc., say 
 cloths are so cheap — the poor weaver lives in rags. 
 This condition cannot be otherwise where ten per 
 cent, of the population get 85 per cent, of the annual 
 earnings, and 90 per cent, of the population get 15 
 per cent, of the annual earnings. 
 
 What are the social arrangements whereby this 85 
 and 15 per cent, division is made? 
 
 In the first place, England prevents association 
 among the subjective class by keeping the instru- 
 ment of association, money, beyond their reach. Not 
 having paper-money of less denomination than twenty- 
 five dollars (five pounds sterling), all individual ex- 
 changes must be made by metallic money (of which 
 the entire kingdom cannot produce a single ounce), 
 and consequently are limited to the supply of metallic 
 money received from abroad for property in the form 
 of merchandise sent out of the country. Property 
 owners, whether of land, machinery, or manufactures, 
 have, therefore, the entire control of the distribution 
 of money among the landless producers of mer- 
 chandise wealth ; and, as the more degraded and igno- 
 
68 SOCIAL AERANGEMENTS. 
 
 rant these unfortunate victims can be kept the 
 more contented they will be, it is the interest of 
 the property owners to limit the supply of money to 
 the minimum point. We had a similar state of 
 affairs in the old slave States of the South. The 
 slave owners controlled all Southern products, and it 
 was through them that dribs of money found entrance 
 into the pockets of the poor white men, who worked 
 little patches of ground, and were unable to send their 
 little bundle of cotton to the North. Abolitionists 
 wondered how it was that a small percentage of the 
 Southern population, as the slave owners were, could 
 hold the whole mass of white men in such terror. 
 "Cotton was king" because cotton gave control of 
 money in the South. Control of money inaccessible 
 to the people supports aristocratic institutions in 
 England as it did chattel slavery in the old South. 
 Must we not pursue a different policy if we wish to 
 maintain republican institutions? 
 
 Disintegration, or antagonism of interests, being the 
 support of monarchy, its opposite, concentrated unity 
 of citizens with equitable individual interests, must 
 be the corner-stone of republican solidity and strength. 
 Instead of merely getting the results of manual labor, 
 as in monarchies and states with chattel slavery, we 
 must have each and every individual ability developed 
 to its highest capacity, or power, through education 
 and public assistance. 
 
 In the first place, we must see that each man has a 
 sufS.cient supply of wholesome food to be eaten in a 
 well- ventilated domicil, and must not be so physically 
 exhausted that he craves animal excitement by use of 
 
SOCIAL AERANGEMEXTS. 69 
 
 alcoholic stimulants. His work must not exceed the 
 limits of healthy exercise, the safeguard of a good 
 mental condition. 
 
 With these surroundings the individual can take 
 care of himself, but many will ask, How are you going 
 to "bell the cat," to give every man such a home? 
 It cannot be done in a daj^, and it is not desirable so 
 to do it. All social changes to be beneficial must be 
 gradual ; the individual must grow with the change. 
 But the idea is not so Utopian or impracticable as it 
 appears to the unthinking devotee of old customs. In 
 the first place, decrease the cost of money and trans- 
 portation to the lowest limits, by cancellation of use- 
 less debts, and by development of the home market, 
 as has already been suggested. If these fail to do all 
 that is necessary, make periodical additions to the pay 
 of operatives. Let everything be done upon a settled 
 plan, gradually, but permanently, so that it cannot be 
 disturbed by ignorant demagogues who may swindle 
 themselves into legislative halls. Do not fret about 
 prices being advanced, as long as men are advanced. 
 It is men that republics want and must have, and if 
 it requires exclusion of low priced foreign products, 
 exclude them, but there is no reason for excluding 
 voluntary immigrants who want to identify themselves 
 with our institutions, for every such immigrant will 
 be a consumer to the full extent of his productive 
 ability. Imports of contracted labor at European 
 standard of prices should be treated as felony, but the 
 turbulent behavior of those who have been imported 
 will most likely cure this evil and prevent further 
 
 importations. 
 
 7* 
 
70 SOCIAL ARRANGEMENTS. 
 
 It is cheaper to pay prices insuring comfortable 
 homes than it is to pay English prices and have En- 
 glish prisons, almshouses, poor-rates, and an ignorant, 
 degraded population. Poor food and unhealthy homes 
 produce diseases that are not confined to their own 
 locality, but send the germs of malaria that enter 
 homes of the more fortunate of our citizens who have 
 made every sanitary precaution for themselves, but 
 neglected to preserve their neighbors from interfering 
 with him. 
 
 There is in the minds of many, especially the credi- 
 tor class, a holy horror of idle money, but who 
 have not the slightest anxiety or care a^Dout having 
 idle men in the community. 
 
 Idle money is harmless, but idle men are both 
 dangerous and expensive, and until every man is fully 
 employed there is not any danger of an excess of 
 money. When such a phenomenon occurs as a sur- 
 plus of money, which has never yet occurred, it can 
 be put away for the time when the progressed com- 
 munity will want it, like the farmer keeps his Sun- 
 day carriage, while he rides in his wagon during the 
 week. 
 
 There is another bad feature in our social system 
 that must be abolished — taxing industry and reward- 
 ing idleness. For illustration. Two men take up a 
 piece of public land, the one improves his until the 
 district assessor puts it on the taxable list of properties, 
 but the other one develops his land so little that it 
 is scarcely worth taxing, though the idler receives 
 equal legal protection with the industrious one, and 
 the latter, in consequence of his industry, has to pay 
 
SOCIAL ARRANGEMENTS. 71 
 
 taxes for protecting the idler, who is unable to pay 
 anything. The assessor should say to the owner of 
 the developed farm : "The government will lend you 
 its credit to half the assessed amount of your farm, 
 in recognition of your having increased the productive 
 wealth of the nation, but as public expenses have to 
 be provided for, a tax will be levied upon the loan in 
 lieu of any claim for interest. If you continue to in- 
 crease the value of your farm, there will not be an 
 increase of taxation, as the government only asks 
 compensation for services rendered hy it and not for 
 services rendered to it." 
 
 With the aid of this loan the industrious man can, 
 by purchase of improved machinery, etc., lessen phy- 
 sical fatigue and command that leisure which stimu- 
 lates mental improvement. He has a comfortable 
 home which the idler cannot fail to contrast with his 
 shanty ; knowing that his reward will be the same for 
 similar service, he is induced to convert idleness into 
 productive industry, to his own benefit as well as that 
 of the community. 
 
 Because a thing has not been is not a reason why 
 it should not be. We are surrounded with discordant 
 conditions produced by errors which must be har- 
 monized by truthful measures. 
 
72 
 
 LIQUIDATION OF BONDED DEBT. 
 
 It is computed by competent authorities that more 
 than three-fifths of all the improved land in the 
 United States are under bond and mortgage debt, 
 bearing from four to ten per cent, annual interest. 
 In addition to this specific pledge we have Federal, 
 State, and municipal bonds, pledged upon all forms of 
 property, real and personal. 
 
 Are these Debts to he in Perpetuity ? 
 
 An examination into the origin of the mortgage 
 debt upon land discloses the fact that such mortgages 
 were given by individuals to obtain possession and 
 control of definitely defined portions of land, which at 
 the time had not a representative equivalent value in 
 any form of debt-paying agent. Land thus became 
 monetized and entitled to draw interest as money. 
 Many of the original mortgages have been cancelled ; 
 but as the debt-paying agent has always been less 
 in amount than the debts due, every such cancellation 
 was only a transfer to some other property by another 
 individual. The gross amount of debt first incurred 
 has not been decreased, and under present arrange- 
 ments there is not the slightest prospect of its ever 
 being cancelled. 
 
 Are not such mortgages but a continuance of land 
 
LIQUIDATION OF BONDED DEBT. 73 
 
 feudalism in a more subtle, but not less oppressive, 
 form than the old one of manual or militarj?- service ? 
 The first mortgagees of this land held their title by 
 virtue of royal warrants precisely as the Norman 
 pirates obtained their titles under William the Con- 
 queror ; but as the founders of our republic accepted 
 the situation, we must do the same, and acknowledge 
 the validity of present titles ; but accepting the errors 
 of the past does not preclude the right to correct them 
 in the future. 
 
 Law and custom having for more than a century 
 sanctioned the monetization of land as a means of 
 creating interest-bearing debt, has not law an equal 
 right to monetize land to pay off the debt ? 
 
 It is utterly absurd to assert that mortgage or any 
 other form of debt, has a right to claim payment in 
 any material other than the material obtained by the 
 debt. A return of the land has at all times the right 
 to cancel the mortgage. As every debt is created in 
 obtaining land, production, or service, the debt can 
 equitably demand payment only in the same material 
 or equivalent service. This assertion is thoroughly 
 demonstrated by the actual practice in our daily 
 transactions, where one form of debt balances another 
 form of debt. A man becomes a debtor for a pair of 
 shoes, and he gives the shoemaker a mortgage given 
 by a tanner, hatter, tailor, or some other member of 
 the community, and his debt for the shoes is can- 
 celled. 
 
 If the original mortgagor had given his feudal credi- 
 tor one thousand mortgages of one dollar each, instead 
 of the one mortgage for a thousand dollars, he would 
 
74 LIQUIDATION OF BONDED DEBT. 
 
 not have increased his debt to the extent of a single 
 cent, and each one dollar mortgage would have as good 
 a security for its debt face as the thousand dollar 
 mortgage, with the additional advantage that some 
 of them could be redeemed by the debtor's produc- 
 tions or services which otherwise would be lost. 
 
 It would not be practical for each individual to 
 mortgage his own property, production, or service 
 with which to cancel his debts, but the united voice 
 of the people can authorize its National Congress to 
 issue mortgages in denominations convenient for in- 
 dividual use, based upon and redeemable in any or 
 every form of property, production, or service within 
 the jurisdiction of the United States. 
 
 As it is law that enforces obedience to the terms of 
 the mortgage, should the debtor default, so is it law 
 that can enforce redemption of the debt issued by 
 public authority, but experience proves that our last 
 issue of government mortgages, known as Greenbacks, 
 were most greedily sought after by the people for 
 redemption by their production and services. It was 
 not necessary to ring a sheriff's bell to make sales to 
 redeem Greenbacks, as is the case under mortgage 
 debt, when there are not Greenbacks to represent it. 
 Every man was his own sheriff'. 
 
 Legal authority to enforce the payment of debts 
 carries with it the duty of providing a supply of a 
 debt-paying agent, in default of which our States have 
 several times enacted stay laws to prevent excessive 
 sacrifices on the part of the unfortunate debtors. 
 This plan gave temporary relief to the debtor, with 
 great damage at times to the creditor, who was thus 
 
LIQUIDATION OF BONDED DEBT. 75 
 
 prevented from paying his debts. The reason why 
 legal authority does not supply the means to enable 
 citizens to obey the law will be found in the article 
 entitled "Intrinsic Yalue," where the creditors of the 
 people claim that gold is the only representative of 
 value and consequently the only legal debt-paying 
 instrument. As long as legal authority obeys the 
 banker's edict there remains but one honest duty on 
 the part of law, to abolish all decrees for collection of 
 debts, and let the debtor and creditor fight it out the 
 best way they can. Law is bound to protect the 
 debtor as well as the creditor which it fails to do to- 
 day. Protect neither or both. 
 
 The steady increase in the volume of bonded debt 
 in the form of car trust loans and other bonds has 
 arrested the attention of some of our more thoughtful 
 and intelligent citizens, but the evil can only be cured 
 by the people as a "committee of the whole," instruct- 
 ing their legislators to supply a sufficient amount of 
 money. Every dollar of interest has to he paid before 
 one dollar of wages is paid, so the great body of indus- 
 trial producers are directly interested in reduction of 
 interest-bearing debt, and until they accomplish some 
 plan for complete extinction of interest-bearing debt, 
 their so-called labor organizations are mere bags of 
 wind, and will collapse as soon as the banks stick a 
 pin in them. 
 
 The most feasible plan is for Congress to commence 
 purchasing the existing mortgages according to their 
 priority of date, by issue of an United States legal stand- 
 ard of payment ; not a promise to pay gold, silver, or 
 other form of money, but actual money itself, to do 
 
76 LIQUIDATION OF BONDED DEBT. 
 
 all that any form of money can do, i. e., exchange one 
 commodity or service for another commodity or ser- 
 vice. This standard of payment should be composed 
 largely of one, two, and five dollar notes, and a mode- 
 rate amonnt of subdivisions of a dollar. From ten to 
 fifteen millions of dollars of this standard of payment 
 can be monthly ejected into business arteries without 
 serious disturbance to commercial prices, because the 
 real money getting into circulation would substitute 
 itself for the bank credits now used as money, and 
 thus gradually would a present necessary evil be 
 transplanted by a positive good. Uncle Sam having 
 possession of the mortgages, could charge an annual 
 commission of one per cent, to pay expenses of main- 
 taining this true "labor bureau," which the debtor 
 would cheerfully pay in exchange for the onerous 
 burden of interest paid by him at present. 
 
 Custom having sanctioned the paying of interest 
 for use of money, it is perfect equity to demand that 
 money paid as interest should in its turn receive in- 
 terest, to be credited against debt principal. This 
 equitable plan prevailed in monarchical Prussia be- 
 fore its absorption into the present Germany, whereby 
 a land owner could borrow twenty years' rental of 
 his property at four per cent, interest. Eighteen an- 
 nual payments of interest cancelled the debt. For 
 example : A mortgage loan of $2000 would be can- 
 celled by eighteen payments of $80 — amount of one 
 year's interest at four per cent. The rate of interest 
 was only a question of convenience, as the number of 
 interest payments decreased with advance of rate. A 
 
LIQUIDATION OF BONDED DEBT. 77 
 
 six per cent, bond expiring in about two-thirds of the 
 time required to cancel a four per cent. bond. 
 
 If monarchical Prussia could do so much for her 
 subjects, certainly democratic United States could and 
 should do as much for her citizens. Our building 
 and loan associations are based upon this equitable 
 principle, but there are so many contingent risks at- 
 tending their management that many of them do more 
 harm than good. Yalues of property are too depend- 
 ent upon the volume of bank credit to allow of time 
 contracts being made with certainty. The unfortu- 
 nate debtor frequently seeing his property sold for 
 the amount due upon it after he had paid several 
 years' dues into the association, not for any fault of 
 his or of the association, but because neither he nor 
 the association had control of the agent that exerts 
 so much influence upon valuation as the volume of 
 money does. 
 
 Had this equitable principle — of interest earning 
 interest— been developed when we first began build- 
 ing our railroads, how much cheaper would our coal 
 and transport charges be to-day ? 
 
 When an adjustment of the money troubles of the 
 Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Company takes 
 place, it will be time to make the calculation whether 
 the creditors would not have made more money by 
 equity than they will make by enforcement of the 
 usury charged under the present arrangement. 
 
 Not only can their innovations upon old bad habits 
 
 be carried out, but there is a positive necessity that 
 
 they shall be carried out. If every labor organization 
 
 will determinedly and politely tell their congressional 
 
 8 
 
78 LIQUIDATION OF BONDED DEBT. 
 
 representatives that upon this subject they are posi- 
 tively united, there is not a congressman, nor a pros- 
 pective candidate for one, who will dare to refuse 
 their demand. But if our labor men — as they call 
 themselves — are to continue their old custom of bel- 
 lowing like bulls in convention and baa-ing like sheep 
 on election day, they will never accomplish any im- 
 provement over their present surroundings. 
 
 It is the youug men now coming to the front who 
 must undertake the duty of completing their coun- 
 try's emancipation from feudal oppression left unfin- 
 ished by their ancestors, the patriotic founders of our 
 government. It was by severe physical suffering they 
 earned the right for their descendants to make im- 
 provements as experience diistated them, and it is 
 gross moral cowardice to neglect what was so nobly 
 won. 
 
 There is not any use of asking this or that party to 
 put such a plank in its platform. The true objective 
 point of attack is the individual candidate himself, 
 and when he sees intelligent resolution determined 
 to accomplish its object, he will be obedient. When 
 citizens will discuss ideas, and select men to represent 
 them, we will have a government of the People, and 
 not before. The social evils of the day are dividing 
 old party lines in the remedies proposed for public 
 relief, as witness the silver coinage question, which 
 congressmen will not permit to come to a positive 
 vote if they can possibly prevent it. There is no 
 doubt that the free coinage of silver would give tem- 
 porary relief to the debtor class, but as production of 
 
LIQUIDATION OF BONDED DEBT. 79 
 
 silver is an uncertainty, it cannot afford permanent 
 relief to a progressive people, because silver itself is 
 dependent upon production of man's industry for re- 
 demption or value. 
 
 There is not, in the opinion of the writer, a member 
 of the present Congress better versed in the social 
 problem of the daj^, and one more honestly devoted 
 to emancipation of the debtor class, than Congress- 
 man Brum, of Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, and 
 without consultation with him, or asking his consent, 
 the writer respectfully suggests that he be made the 
 central point of present organization, and for the time 
 the leader in the proposed scheme for cancellation of 
 debt. 
 
 The money disbursed among the people in paying 
 off the mortgage debt upon land will largely aid the 
 people in freeing themselves from the burdens im- 
 posed by other forms of bonded debt. The Eeports 
 of the Pennsylvania Eailroad Company show that the 
 expenses of the road are about sixty per cent, of re- 
 ceipts, leaving forty per cent, to be absorbed by bond 
 interest and stock dividends. As this road is typical 
 of all the other trans-continental trunk lines, some, 
 idea can be formed of the enormous tax upon industry 
 in the form of transportation, without the prospect of 
 its decrease under present arrangements. 
 
 Independent of pecuniary considerations, cancel- 
 lation of debt is positively demanded upon moral- 
 grounds, because debt is one of the most potent stim- 
 ulators of crime ; especially is it active in driving 
 people to the use of alcoholic stimulants in response 
 to the exciting and exhaustive anxieties to find means 
 
80 LIQUIDATION OF BONDED DEBT. 
 
 to meet obligations. Court records show that rum 
 and crime are more rampant in what are called hard 
 times — difficulty in paying debts — than in good times 
 — ready payment of debts. Why not create perpe- 
 tuity of good times in place of a perpetuity of debt ? 
 
81 
 
 POLITICAL ACTION. 
 
 Individual success in business is so dependent 
 upon general success of tlie community that it is gross 
 stupidity to neglect intelligent study of the effects of 
 national legislation, yet the great body of business 
 men, be they engaged at the bench, mill, or in the 
 counting-house, scarcely ever look beyond their imme- 
 diate surroundings. This inattention to political duties 
 on the part of individual citizens has created a new 
 class of industry, known as politicians, that has be- 
 come an important factor in legislative proceedings. 
 These politicians have their election machinery so 
 well organized, and know so well who are the incon- 
 siderate voters on whom they can rely, that it is 
 almost an absurdity for an inexperienced and unor- 
 ganized class of citizens to attempt to defeat them. 
 These politicians are dealers in public opinion, and 
 try to shape their expressions of political principles 
 as nearly as possible to what they think is the most 
 popular. Their own principle is themselves, and, like 
 the chameleon, turn to the color of the opinion that 
 will feed them best. 
 
 Under this arrangement, the best practical way to 
 get new ideas into legislation is to manufacture public 
 opinion through social discussions, free from prejudice 
 engendered by partisan spirit. Leaders of political 
 
 8* 
 
82 POLITICAL ACTION. 
 
 parties keep close watch upon growth and change of 
 public opinion, 'and can tell almost to a dot how many 
 votes a new idea will get when it enters the political 
 arena as a distinct political party. These political 
 leaders can measure popular demonstrations just as a 
 good mechanic can measure the effective force of a 
 machine. How often have we seen thousands gathered 
 in the name of labor, with music, speeches, parade, etc., 
 yet on the day of election the votes amount only to a 
 few score. Popular demonstrations rarely carry the 
 positive and permanent conviction that a quiet and 
 friendly discussion between chums will produce, of 
 which fact the political leaders are perfectly con- 
 versant, and they produce demonstrations as frothy 
 and unreal to counteract the other demonstrations. 
 
 Excitement may be substituted for reason in a 
 circus or other place of amusement, but reason must 
 prevail over excitement when citizens are to deter- 
 mine upon measures best calculated to bring happy 
 home surroundings. In the accompanying essays I 
 have endeavored to suggest thoughts, not to formulate 
 a platform, nor organize a new party, because the 
 right and duty to do such things belong to the com- 
 munity, of which I am only one integer and unknown 
 to the public. Organized movements, to be successful, 
 must begin with a few who know exactly what they 
 want to do, and have perfect confidence in each other. 
 Gradually drawing in new associates of the same 
 stamp, creates a power that will win public confidence, 
 if judiciously and honestly managed upon broad prin- 
 ciples of equity, and free from the stupid selfishness 
 of what are called trades unions. The moment one 
 
POLITICAL ACTION. 83 
 
 man says to anotlier, " you sha'n't," it is only a ques- 
 tion of strength whether the other shall not retort, 
 and say, "you sha'n't." The "sha'n't" system never 
 accomplishes a permanent good. 
 
 Physical exhaustion by manual labor and mental 
 exhaustion incurred by competition in business have 
 the same tendency to ignore the study of economic 
 principles, and it is difficult to decide which is the 
 more ignorant class of the two, employers or employed. 
 But the banker having control of the situation is free 
 from anxiety, and can study the effects of fiscal legis- 
 lation and formulate congressional bills to his advan- 
 tage. Business men must protect themselves against 
 this bank tyranny by having some one to study finan- 
 cial laws in their behalf. These students of social 
 science are, or should be, the wives and daughters of 
 business men having means to free their family from 
 household drudgery. Free from partisan strife and 
 honestly looking only to discover truth, they could 
 elucidate a true idea in a few minutes that had prob- 
 ably taken them considerable time to determine upon, 
 a time which their husbands or brothers would never 
 take from business to do. Through this channel 
 female influence upon legislation will be more speedily 
 and more potently effected, than by women stulti- 
 fying their great intuitive faculties by partisan ex- 
 citement. In voting, they cannot avoid identifying 
 themselves with one of the parties, and the pride ol 
 party success will make them hob-nob with discordant 
 parasites to win an apparent victory, just as men do 
 now. If the Democratic party was to repudiate the 
 rum interest the party would be largely in the 
 
84 POLITICAL ACTION. 
 
 minority, and to secure a majority at the polls many 
 good temperance Democrats will wink at the alliance 
 with the rum-seller. It was so in the days of slavery: 
 thousands of Democrats did not like slavery, but with- 
 out the slave- owner their party was a skeleton regi- 
 ment. If women enter the political arena, the number 
 of voters will be increased without any improvement 
 in politics. 
 
 The influence of women teaching the present rising 
 generation need not stop because the boy leaves the 
 grammar school. One hour a week devoted at home 
 to an honest comparison of the economic condition of 
 his own country with the attendant political policy, 
 ■under the guidance of an intelligent mother, or elder 
 sister, would bend the twig to make a straighter tree. 
 It is woman's influence that keeps up the churches, 
 not through the ballot-box, but through the social 
 circle, and through the same channel they can stimu- 
 late higher political sentiments. It is not desirable 
 to make homes cock-pits for senseless political party 
 wrangles, but when a wife can, at convenient moments, 
 make an intelligent exposition to her husband of the 
 political surroundings, when his business was pros- 
 perous, and what they were, or are, when business is 
 otherwise, the number of men who will not sacrifice 
 party partialities for business success is so small as 
 hardly worthy of mention. 
 
 Neither of the present contending factions has a 
 clean record in regard to business prosperity. Under 
 a Kepublican President and Congress the country suf- 
 fered in 1873 one of the most disastrous panics and 
 industrial prostrations ever experienced in our his- 
 
POLITICAL ACTION. 85 
 
 tory, while the present discordant conditions are 
 largely due to the action of a Eepublican Congress in 
 March 3, 1883, which was largely aided by many 
 Democrats. The Democratic administrations of Jack- 
 son and Van Buren, from 1828 to 1840, brought public 
 and private bankruptcy, which was restored under a 
 change of administration by the tariff act of 1842, to 
 be again demolished by the tariff act of 1846, and 
 making the country ripe for the rebellion of 1861, 
 which had been smouldering since 1832. These are 
 historical facts that will not down, and taken in con- 
 nection with the utter imbecility displayed by Presi- 
 dent Cleveland, in his message regarding the labor 
 disturbances, proves the necessity of some new de- 
 parture in political manipulations. 
 
 The fact that certain localities give constant majori- 
 ties for one or other of the two parties proves how 
 largely men are influenced by personal antecedents 
 and family connections. These predilections can only 
 be changed by non-partisan teachers, more devoted 
 to truth than to party success, and if women will 
 devote themselves to this duty, and cease their silly 
 attempt to degrade themselves at the polls, they will 
 be true guardians of the future of our republic. 
 
 When citizens have to ask, " What will Congress 
 do?" there is not much of a people's government 
 about such a Congress. The people themselves must 
 legislate, and elect their representatives to formulate 
 the bill with necessary details. 
 
 When banks, Cobden clubs, and the candidates 
 themselves pay the expenses of elections, the people 
 have not much right to expect legislation beyond 
 
86 POLITICAL ACTION. 
 
 personal benefit of the elected. A representative 
 worth having is worth paying for. A free ballot is 
 like a free lunch, there is poison behind it. 
 
 No single idea can ever establish a new political 
 party when there are so many noxious weeds to be 
 eradicated from the body politic. With some voters 
 the rum question is paramount to all others; with 
 others, the tariff question, and with others, the money 
 question. These divisions are all made among the 
 intelligent, thinking voters, leaving to the routine 
 voter an easy victory for continuance of old evils. 
 Women's teaching at the home circle would unite Dem- 
 ocrat and Eepublican upon a higher political plane, 
 and create a distinct demarcation between truth and 
 error that could not fail of success on the right side. 
 Business education of men teaches them better how to 
 apply means to accomplish an end than women can 
 ever learn in the domestic life. When men know the 
 truth they will develop it through business inter- 
 course. The leading member of any business firm, 
 when possessed with a high moral tone of character, 
 carries an immense influence for good upon every one 
 he comes in contact with, and these are the men who 
 should be sent to legislative halls, but such men will 
 not go as representatives unless the constituency is 
 ready to send them. They will neither ask to be 
 sent, nor intrigue to be elected, the public must elect 
 them. 
 
87 
 
 DEDICATION. 
 
 AuTHOKiTY to perform an act does not in itself 
 necessarily confer upon the grantee the wisdom or 
 ability to execute it, and until this ability is developed, 
 an unwise exercise of the authority may produce more 
 mischief than benefit. Our Declaration of Indepen- 
 dence gave the authority to create a republic. It 
 was all it could do at the time ; the people were to do 
 the work, and as far as they knew they did the best 
 they could, but the experience of a century demon- 
 strates that the ability was not commensurate with 
 the authority. Too much stress has been laid upon 
 changes of political names and forms, with almost 
 total neglect of the means whereby the individual can 
 combine with his fellow-citizens to create a union 
 strong in itself, and capable to protect and develop 
 the individual. 
 
 Monarchical power grants privileges to subjects ; 
 republican citizens grant privileges to public power. 
 Such antipodal systems cannot possibly be maintained 
 by the exercise of the same means. One or the other 
 must give way, and unfortunately for us our grand- 
 fathers adopted the process for crushing individual 
 development when they adopted the Common Law of 
 England, Avhich contains the poison of measuring man 
 by property. It is against this chattel enslavement 
 of man that the present antagonistic movements in 
 
88 DEDICATION. 
 
 industrial circles are directed, but until the macfii- 
 nerj is removed that produces the noxious power, the 
 power cannot be destroyed. We cannot run a repub- 
 lican locomotive upon monarchical rails. 
 
 With the view to induce the young men of the 
 United States to examine into the errors of the domi- 
 nant dogmas of the day these accompanying essays 
 have been written. They do not formulate any espe- 
 cial drill-manual of reform, because communities must 
 do their own reforming according to their capacities. 
 All that individual effort can do is to suggest thoughts 
 in the minds of others, where, if the seed be good, good 
 will result. 
 
 Old dogs will not learn new tricks, neither will men 
 occupying social and political influential positions dis- 
 turb their opinions with the intrusion of new ideas. 
 The work of making a true republic depends upon 
 the Young Men of the United States; to whom I 
 most respectfully dedicate these preliminary essays. 
 
 WALTER S. WALDIE. 
 
 Philadelphia, May, 1886. 
 
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