Full Text

Confiscation

An Outline

WILLIAM GREENWOOD

Those Palaces on the Nob Hills of these United States; are the

toadstools of the decay that is going on in this Republic today. - Page

42.

PREFACE.

The Emancipation Proclamation has only 718 words.

Lincoln's address at Gettysburg has only 266 Words.

The works of Thomas Paine were not only one of the important factors

that brought success to the struggle for Independence, but they were

also largely instrumental in the Declaration itself being made. And

those works, what were they? - mere pamphlets.

Shakespeare, whose writings are said to be an education in themselves,

can be had in a volume not twice the size of "Progress and Poverty."

Why, then, cannot a scheme of political economy, even when it is a

radical departure from our present system, be sufficiently outlined for

working purposes in a volume of this size, and also written so that it

shall be intelligible to those to whom all such works should in a

Republic be addressed; namely, the voter, who alone has the power to

bring about the desired change?

The late Professor Tyndall was both an original investigator of natural

phenomena and a teacher who could make his discoveries plain to the

ordinary mind as he could to the scientist working in the same field as

himself.

Discovering a truth in Nature or in political economies is work only

half done if the discoverer wishes to make it known to those in whose

interest he claims to be working.

Labor, iron labor, makes the scholar, says Emerson.

Labor, iron labor, gave Tyndall the faculty that, made him intelligible

and interesting to the young, and the right to preside at a meeting of

Humboldts.

But there is pride of intellect as well as pride of riches, and none

shows this pride as do the writers on political economy who have made it

the "dismal science," instead of having made it the A, B, C of our

mental furniture, as it should be with the people of a republic.

Making a good use of our means in our home and business affairs is good

economics.

Making a poor use of them is bad economics.

That is all there is to this word, whether it is our private affairs or

those of the nation that are being considered.

If we live up to our laws, and yet want and privation exist while there

is more than sufficient for all, then the fault must, be in those laws.

Making a scapegoat of the foreigner for those conditions because he will

not buy our wheat, or use a metal that we have an overplus of, places us

side by side with the witch-burner of old. We are just as ignorant in

one way, as he was in another.

At his door who has been writing on this subject does the blame of this

universal ignorance of it belong. He takes up this plain, simple

subject, and becomes an intellectual aristocrat and a snob of

exclusiveness from that time on, and, like the aristocrat of wealth,

will have nothing further to do with the common people, cutting off all

former connections by turning out a mass of intellectual mud that, only

leisure and education can penetrate. And dear to him is the dignity of

bulk, the dignity of paunch, using, as he does, twenty words where three

would do better work. The living and the dead if his species are alike

in this hunt for the "Absolutely Pure" to puff out their little dough.

Dissecting "Co-operation," the writer of Progress and Poverty must drag

the poor remains through over 800 words - almost enough to bury the

single tax theory itself. Co-operation means getting rid of the

middleman. With organized labor it, means keeping out all whose

admittance would cause a surplus of labor among those who have organized

to prevent that as well as injustice by the employer. But what has

become of that middleman and black-balled laborer? One is ruined and

the other is a helpless chip that is drifting into - some State prison for

forty years.

Co-operation is the savior of some, but the ruination of others, and her

plea of justifiable homicide cannot be accepted while this earth has

more than enough for her own.

Not a God-like wisdom, nor the assumption of it, is needed to either

conceive a remedy for our present troubles, or to formulate laws for its

application. Plain sense we most all have, let us use it, then, and we

will have no further use for either the bookworm or the logic chopper.

Confiscation.

I.

Running a republic under the economic laws of a monarchy must of

necessity result in producing the same conditions - great wealth for

some and great poverty for the rest. This may be a government by the

people, but it certainly is no longer a government for the people.

Heretofore individual greed has had full swing in the United States, and

naturally enough the ablest returned in possession of everything worth

grabbing. And naturally enough, too, if a republic means a country owned

by all its people, it cannot be a republic if it is owned by only a few.

All the power of a country is bound to be in the hands of those who own

it. If its wealth is in the hands of a few, its power is there with it.

In the hands of a few it must be, if it would be a kingdom or empire. In

the hands of all it must be, if it would be a republic. To insist on

having the personal liberty that goes with a republic, and at the same

time not to set a limit to the resources an individual can own, is a

contradiction. A republic has economic laws that are essential to her

existence. Any others mean her destruction. And it is utterly out of the

question for any political party to improve the conditions of the

people, while they use the present economic laws as the basis of their

proposed legislation.

You must begin at the foundation. Individual greed should be made to

respect the right of others to exist, and made to conform itself to laws

that are as necessary to the life of a republic as is the ballot itself.

The ballot, in fact, has lost its power. It is the key to a house we

have lost possession of, and if we would regain possession and make the

ballot something more than a mere symbol of a thing that is dead, we have

no choice but to resort to the one process by which the resources of the

country can be returned to its people, and the blight of poverty and

pauperism that is settling down on the country and is becoming permanent

can be removed - namely, confiscation.

Man, in the beginning, seeing annihilation staring him in the face,

combined and gave us the Government of the Tribe; out of that developed

the Despotic form; out of that developed the Constitutional Monarchy,

out of which developed the Republic, the highest type of them all; and

this work of development must ever go on, if we would not lapse into

former conditions.

The founders of the republic could not have expected their work to so

soon come to the Chinese halt that has overtaken it, until we now find

ourselves floating on an ebbing sea back to the shores we thought we

had forever left behind.

The founders of the republic met the needs of their hour, and expelled

the foreigner. We have failed to meet the need of our hour in not

discarding the economic laws that were of that foreigner's bringing;

the economic laws of the monarchist and despotic forms of government,

that is making this republic a republic only in name: the economic laws

of the monarchist and despotic forms of government that has built up an

aristocracy of wealth here as they have there, that must of necessity

depend here for its existence as it does there, on the enslavement of

the people. Do not let a mere word further deceive you. The word

republic means a free people - we are slaves. For great revenue, be it

of king or millionaire, has the same magician's wand - the overladen

back of the enslaved toiler.

In the face of our boasted intelligence what an appalling sight does

this country offer to the All-seeing Eye. An abundance of everything and

people starving by the thousands. When our lawmakers in Washington

learned that the death penalty was to be inflicted on those who were

convicted of treason for trying to overthrow the established government

in Hawaii, they said it must not be done, and busied themselves to save

those people's lives. And during all their agitation to save these men

who were to suffer a punishment that is meted out to such by all

governments, thousands of their own people were perishing for the want

of something to eat - not inhuman or hard-hearted, but simply do not see

how they can prevent it. There is no law by which they can stop

starvation. The legislator in a monarchy knows that poverty is inseparable

from that form of government and are reconciled to it.

Our legislators are reconciled to the same conditions. They do not see

the incongruity of conforming the legislation of a republic to the

economic laws of a monarchy. They do not know what a government by the

people and for the people means. If they did, they would know that there

was something wrong when one man has $50,000,00 while another has not

enough to get his shoes cobbled: and another has 50,000 acres of land,

while others must be buried four in a grave.

And none of the political parties shows a way of escape out of this

miserable state of affairs, as a brief review of their positions will

show.

We once had the Free States and the Slave States, and these two terms

were designative of two sections into which the country was then divided

on the question of slavery. To-day we have "Free Coinage of Silver,"

"Protection," and "Free Trade." These three terms, Free Coinage of

Silver, Protection, and Free Trade, are as truly designative of three

different sections into which the country is divided to-day on economic

or industrial questions as were the terms Free States and Slave States

designative of two sections in the past. Thus the preponderating

interest in one section is the mining of silver, and this interest is

represented by the Populist Party, who demands the coinage of more

Silver. The preponderating interest of the second section, or East, is

manufactures, and is represented by the Republican Party, who demands

protection. The preponderating interest of the third section, or South,

is agriculture, and is represented by the Democratic Party, who demands

free trade. This is substantially correct, although the Populists seem

to be as strong in the agricultural South as in the silver-producing

West. The Populist Party, indeed, originated among, the agriculturists

of the South, and was the outgrowth of discontent among the farmers; and

in saying that Populism has its stronghold in the West, or

silver-producing section, we simply mean that the farmers' organization

has been captured by the silver interest. They seem to think that their

own prosperity is linked with that of the silver producers, and that the

free coinage of silver means the salvation of both. With this political

manoeuvering, however, we have nothing to do. There are three political

parties in the field, each with the preponderating interest of some

section in charge, which it is bound to see through regardless of the

interests of the other two. The industrial rivalry that is going on

throughout the whole world has entered these United States, and each of

the three different sections are struggling to obtain legislation

favorable to itself, with the same indifference to the interests of the

others that is shown by France to England or by England to the United

States. Even the naked savage has found that it is a good thing to have

something to sell, and our agriculturists are brought into competition

with territory the New World over where a plow or harvester was unknown

ten years ago; instead of having a monopoly in the European markets, as

was the case a few years ago, where they could dispose of their surplus,

they are now compelled to feed it to their hogs, which, as a source of

profit, ranks even now with the thing they are fed on.

But we are not depending on foreign markets for enough to eat and wear.

Those things are here, not there. We may have lost the foreigner as a

customer, but what prevents us from eating that which he refuses to buy.

We look back a hundred or more years, and cry out in horror at the

inhumanity of those then in power, in allowing human beings to be burned

alive and living creatures to be torn to pieces on the rack. Those who

will look back to these times will be no less astounded at the

inhumanity and imbecility of those now in power in allowing starvation

while food is actually rotting for the want of consumers. The question,

then, is, can we not formulate a policy that will work harmoniously

throughout the whole country for the benefit of all sections and every

individual? Can we not find some way out of the swamp into which the

masterful greed of a few and the dense stupidity of their legislative

tools have mired us?

If we cannot, then let us submit, with the best grace possible to our

masters who know how to lay on the lash when their dividends are at

stake.

The resources of the United States have hardly been touched upon; but in

less than a hundred years individual greed has done its work, and the

people are bankrupt. They have been legislated out of everything, and

the one function of our government, as at present conducted, is to see

that this legislation is enforced. Yes, it is beyond the reach of

contradiction that this government, that was founded in the interests of

All, has degenerated into a merciless taskmaster, ever ready to beat

into submission the slaves of the country, when their few owners give

the word.

But this treatment should be expected. It goes with ownership. Give me

the ownership of men, and all else goes with the title - how I shall

clothe, feed, and lodge them, and how I shall keep them on the grind. Of

course, the wise ones will say, Was it not our own chosen representatives

who made all those laws that gave our resources and the people themselves

over to the favored few, and must not we, the principals, grin and bear

it, and live up to whatever contracts those representatives, our agents,

made in our name?

It is not, however, how we were despoiled, but how we are to recover the

plunder, that is interesting us just now. Is there a way out of the

night of despair? is the question that should be met, and, if possible,

answered. Finding a way out of a difficulty is one thing, however, and

having the courage to take it is another. Modern surgery has discovered

much, but without the courage to use the knife mankind would not have

been the gainer. The prayer meeting has its uses, but those who expect

to obtain political or industrial deliverance in that quarter can set

out their rain-gauges and go there; but those who know the nature of the

fellow who has been grabbing all in sight will make him let go in the

old-time way by using a force superior to his own - a force that he will

feel when it comes down, supposing the power to feel is left in him.

We have no hatred of the rich - nor love of the poor, for that matter.

They are both fishers for gain, and one gets it, and the other don't;

but his basket is just as large. But we are a lover of justice, and if

one is too much for the other would handicap him, and thereby make the

struggle for existence more even for both. The weakling, will always be

a weakling, whatever laws are passed for his benefit, and the drudgery

of the world will ever be his portion; from it he can never escape, but

he is entitled to his life, and if the able denies him, what is

necessary to it, then Justice must step in and take his part.

Volumes could be padded in showing how this can be done, but we can

demonstrate in this brief work how poverty can be obliterated as a

feature of our national life, and if it does not make justice more

even-handed for all, and the people of this country as prosperous as any

on earth, then the fault must be in the plan itself, and not in the

resources which we possess, for of those we have enough to empty every

poorhouse in the land, and eighty-five per cent. of the jails and

penitentiaries.

Let our wrongs be righted without physical force, by all means. History,

however, has no encouragement for such a hope. The contentions with

those on top have ever been of the blood-red order. Power once obtained

has never been surrendered only through conquest. The ballot should do

much, and had it been in use in the past history might have had less of

blood in it, as it should have less of it in the future. But the ballot

for a long number of years has, like a great many stomachs of late, been

working on wind - the wind of the Protectionist, the wind of the Free

Trader, and the wind of the latest cure-all, the fellow who is hunting a

market for his silver.

If something substantial to work on is not soon given to this man with

the ballot, he will drop it - and then let the blame of it rest with the

fools and rascals who have been deluding him so long.

The average man makes a better soldier than he does a voter. He can get

the range of an object easier than he can comprehend an economic truth -

this one, for instance: If the capitalists have obtained possession of

the money issued in the past, what is to prevent them from getting

possession of all that will be issued in the future? His answer will be

to issue more. He has been told so by his political mentor. When the man

with the ballot loses confidence in this mentor, he will start a game of

his own, and then the jig will be up with that idiot. We use the word

idiot advisedly here. When a tax was assessed against the incomes of the

rich, this driveler would score a point gained in favor of the people.

This claim of itself shows the institution to which he should be

consigned.

Victoria, Empress and Queen, rules a country where, pauperism is

steadily on the increase, and the potter's field received the bodies of

eighty of her subjects that were frozen to death in London in four days

of January last. Yet the rich have been paying an income tax in that

country for generations past.

When the rich merchant, or rich anything else, insures what he is

dealing in, he adds the cost of his policy to the thing he sells. The

income tax is but another premium, and he tags that on where he pinned

the other. The laborer has always paid the expenses of the rich, and

always will. The laborer can never dictate terms to the rich. The labor

leaders even have come to recognize the hopelessness of the unequal

contest. The power of the rich to do as they like can never be destroyed

while they are allowed to retain the riches that gives them this power.

A readjustment and a limit set to the amount an individual can own is

the only remedy. And the sooner that unassailable truth is recognized

and acted upon, the sooner will you get rid of the lobbiest and the

pauper.

II.

We need more money per capita: say some more would-be leaders, who have

found the only way out of the land of bondage. Increase the currency to

$50 per capita, and business and prosperity will once more fill the

land. Money has become scarcer, they continue, and therefore dearer.

Those who contracted monetary obligations last week find that they are

now paying more for the use of that money than it was worth when the

debt was made.

This is a hardship on the borrower, and can be prevented by increasing

the amount of money in circulation.

This is the very essence of what is claimed by those who are for

increasing the volume of money in circulation. Money has changed in

value, and those who are mortgaged, or otherwise under interest-paying

obligations, have found that money is scarcer, in this instance through

contraction of the currency, and therefore harder to get.

There should certainly be enough money issued for the smooth carrying on

of the country's business, and when they determine the amount necessary,

it should be put in circulation at once. But stopping money from

fluctuating value is another thing.

The man who buys a barrel of flour one day for $4.00 may find that it is

worth only $3.50 the day after. The man who borrows money at 7 per cent.

one day may find it worth only 6 1/2 the day after.

To prevent these fluctuations in the value of either money or

commodities is a legislative feat beyond the power of mortal man. And

when we see our Legislator trying to regulate the value of anything that

one man has to sell to another, are no longer surprised at his trying to

regulate the weather by exploding powder in the air. Our Mark Twains and

Bill Nyes are flat indeed, when compared to that straight-faced clown,

the American legislator, who would give an unchangable value to either

the shoes we wear or the money we use.

This whole question of currency has as little to do with the prevailing

misery as the missing button off your vest would have to do with your

being frozen to death. England not only has enough money to carry on her

own business, but also has $15,000,000,000 to lend to outsiders. It is

not the wealth of a country, but how it is distributed that tells the

story.

-

The single taxers of whom Henry George is the great apostle, are also

claiming the floor, but a patient hearing finds the distressed turning

away for relief that the single taxer can not give. They are cultivating

a century plant, and while we are waiting for it to bloom three

generations of human beings will have met their millionaire masters and

taken their place in the line that leads to the soup house and the

pauper's grave.

The masterly logic of these reformers is the work of serene-tempered and

well-fed men, whose cosy library with windows facing to the south, and

the open fire-place with its soothing and cheerful glow, is conducive to

the developing of a red-tape reform that must be an inspiring subject

for discussion at an afternoon tea. Because they are well fed is the

reason why they can play a waiting game, but the despairing and maddened

people, for whose benefit this single tax contract, with its long

deferred payment, is being drawn up, will have as little use for it as

they will have for the plate-glass window when their bread riots begin.

The land owner alone is the one these one-horse-chaise reformers would

start their Dobbin after. The large landowner should be cut down in his

holdings, and their plan is just the one to fix him and make him let go.

They will tax him in such a way that he cannot pay, and then they have

got him, they tell us, as they leisurely jog along over their pleasant

highway.

Now, why this dilly-dallying with the large land-owner, or any one else,

that has something that he should surrender for the general good?

When the owning of 50,000 acres of land by one man is wrong, then it is

wrong to let him own it, and if there was one drop of the John Brown

blood in this crew of house-gown and plush-slipper reformers, they would

go into the enemy's camp, and never let up on their open warfare until

what belonged to the people was returned to them.

Taxing an enemy to make him give up his plunder!

When hunger and plenty is found side by side what solution can there be

but to set a limit to what the overendowed can tag with his name, and to

put his forfeited surplus where the underfed can, with reasonable labor,

get possession of it.

If the single taxer is given plenty of time, he will accomplish

something, undoubtedly, but the whole thing will be over long before

poor old Dobbin gets on to the scene.

-

The millionaire land-owner and the millionaire capitalist are as much

out of place in a republic as is the man with a title; and the laws

which permitted the growth of the first two are the primary cause of the

disgraceful conditions that exist in this Republic to-day. When we know

that people in actual want are to be found in every section of the

United States, we ought to be able to say that it is Nature that has

failed us for the time being; but it is not Nature, but the wretched

laws of man's own making that are at fault. Had we the economic laws

that belong to a republic, instead of those that belong to a despotism,

the foreign markets could be entirely closed to us, and all our people

would still have enough of all things that are necessary to life. And

those able men who have gone into the domain of natural philosophy, to

see what they could find to advance and benefit the human race, have

found so much, and brought about such a change in the industrial world,

that they have completely bewildered our political philosophers, who

have been utterly unable to make room for the labor-saving inventions

and discoveries of those men, until the confusion and distress resulting

from the incompetence of our political philosophers to adjust the laws

to meet the changed conditions are beginning to make us look upon the

inventors as our enemies, instead of our benefactors.

The work of the world consists principally in raising food and

manufacturing the things we wear, and the forwarding of both to the

consumer. And the great inventions of the McCormicks, Howes, Fultons,

Stephensons, and rest have made this work so easy that the labor done in

two months now is equivalent to the labor done in twelve months a few

years ago. That is why they are great inventions. Yet our law-makers are

still legislating for conditions that disappeared with the ox-goad,

hand loom, lapstone, and sickle, and are continually trying to devise

ways and means by which the labor of the country can be kept employed

the year round. What doing? When they find out how to make you wear

twenty pairs of shoes at a time, they will have found out how to keep

the shoe factories running the year round, not before.

The natural philosopher can overcome physical difficulties; the

political philosopher cannot overcome economic ones.

We would reside on a certain hill were it not for the climb. A Hallidie

lays his cable, and puts us at the top without further trouble. We find

Egypt cutting into our cotton market, Argentine into our wheat market,

France and Germany have shut their doors against our meats, and

England will not approve of silver. Many throughout this country find

their very bread falling short through these conditions abroad, and the

sufferers call in our political economists to help them to at least keep

the

necessaries of life within their reach.

Of the various nostrums prescribed by these political quacks, two have

been thoroughly tried, but the aggravating results have only cut the

eye-teeth of the humbugged; and when they take the field themselves as

political economists they will have a preparation of their own that will

be bitter enough to the taste of those to whom they will apply it.

III.

What rainbow-chasers these McKinleys, Wilsons, and J. P. Joneses are!

Do they not see this country with its limitless resources? Do they not

see the surfeited millionaire, and the hungry laborer with his starving

dependents? Do they not see that they must break down the one if they

would build up the other? Do not these miserable bunglers see that this

noble ship of the fathers is foundering because of her uneven load?

See the imbeciles rushing hither and thither in frantic despair! This,

one with his wad of wool to stop a leak that does not exist; that one

with his tears and kisses falling on the silver charm that hangs about

his neck; this other at the masthead high shouting to foreign Shores for

help we do not need.

Never did the black flag of a Caesar or a Napoleon III. bear down on a

richer-laden prey than this helpless hulk and its jabbering crew.

-

Through Confiscation, and Confiscation alone, can we restore the

conditions that are necessary to the life of the Republic.

Confiscation is a forbidding word. We associate it with the sheriff's

writ, and with the idea of distress in some form, and with bloody war

itself, its greatest field of operation. It is one of the few words in

the vocabulary of Might. Without Might there would be no such word, and

the weak have ever been the prey of both. But it is a plain word. As

plain as are the conditions under which we are now living. There is no

mistaking its meaning. And having the same momentous work ahead of us -

of gaining our freedom, and throwing off the yoke of our latest master -

as that which confronted the founders of the Republic, we cannot go to a

nursery rhyme for a word to describe that work.

It is the way in which Might is to restore our lost liberties and

resources that is of the gravest concern to all, and not the word used

to describe the result of what Might shall do.

Justice is due. But how is it to arrive? By way of the ballot, or over

the same bloodstained road in use before the ballot was discovered?

If the plundered and starving have lost faith in the ballot, and sheer

want has brutalized them until they see no way but the brute's way of

saving themselves, then place the horror of it all at the doors of

incompetence and grasping greed where it belongs.

It is a plain word. As plain as are the conditions under which we are

now living. As plain as is the wide-spread want and hunger that is in

this land to-day, while there is more than enough for all.

And those who have gained possession of our resources are responsible

for this hunger, and are enemies just as much as if they were invaders.

Whatever progress external foes could make in landing on these shores

would be only temporary, and not a blow could they strike, or a step

make, without our knowing it. Not so the millionaire. His is the work of

the thief in the night and we know nothing till his work is done. And

then, because we would resort to the same process of recovery that we

would in the case of any common enemy, we hold back, forsooth, because

that process is called Confiscation.

Those whom we find to be inimical to the life of the republic will look

upon an anarchist as a cooing dove compared to the man who would

advocate Confiscation. They have nothing to fear from the anarchist,

except a stray bomb now and then, for they know full well that the

"plain" people will always stand between them and that wild-eyed dreamer

of the impractical.

What those favored people think, however, does not interest us. What is

of more concern to us, and to all others who have no doubt but what

there is something wrong in the present scheme of things, is that the

doctrine of Confiscation should be first understood before it is

rejected. If it is found to conflict with law and order; if it is found

to obstruct in any way the material welfare necessary to any man, woman,

or child in the United States; if if takes from any man, woman, or child

in these United States a solitary privilege or right that is essential

to their well being; if it makes one more tramp, convict, or outcast of

the street; if it fills one more pauper's bed or potter's grave, then

our Search is not ended, for it is only another delusion, and of them we

have more than enough already.

If, on the other hand, it does away with hunger and rags in a land of

plenty. Does away with the cause of ignorance, namely poverty. Does away

with the cause of eighty-five per cent. of crime, namely, poverty. Does

away with the cause of strikes and rioting, namely, poverty. Destroys

the power of one man to bribe one or fifty, and with his thumb at his

nose defies the law to reach him. Makes robbery of the people by way of

the lobby a thing of the past, and makes unnecessary a third house for

the investigation of the other two, a stage we have already reached.

Does away with the millionaire and his charity - the beggar and his need

of it. Gives the conditions which makes individual and national

improvement possible, and securing every such national improvement by

making all the people its willing defenders, which they are far from

being now in their hunger and wretchedness. Makes employment easy to

obtain, with just wages in return for the labor done, putting within the

reach of all, those comforts and luxuries, which, in this age of the

world with its skill for quick and easy production, should be looked

upon as a matter of course, but which in fact are unknown to a large

part of the working people of the country.

If Confiscation, then, can do all this, why should it not be made to

supersede all other policies that have been tried, and all those that

are now courting public favor, but which, like the rest are based upon

unrepublican economic laws, and must end, therefore, like the rest, in

failure and disappointment?

With our resources restored to the people, which can be done only

through Confiscation, prosperity would diffuse itself throughout the

country as easily as the sun scatters its light.

We will now outline, as briefly as we may, what will be the effects of

Confiscation, and what Confiscation means. It means the limiting of

every individual fortune in the United States to $100,000.

And the excess of every fortune now exceeding that amount to be

confiscated and turned into the public treasury. No exceptions to be

made as to persons or the thing owned. Money, land, buildings, bonds,

stocks, everything - wherever an excess is found, confiscate.

The anarchist! It is justice and the intelligence of the people that

these new tyrants dread. The equity of this reform should be evident to

every one who knows that this government was originally established for

the good of all. And the time has now come when the work commenced in

1776 should be again resumed, and our latest masters got rid of some way

or other.

But, it will be asked, will not a fifty times millionaire give

employment to as many men as will 500 men with $100,000 each. No. Not

even if madam and himself are at home from toadying up and down through

Europe in search of a princeling. (Stop this fad of the spoiled darlings

of fortune and you stop a leak through which over $1,000,000,000 of

American money has already disappeared. We will sustain this with facts

in its proper place.) One million dollars divided among ten men will do

ten times more good than if owned by one man. One million dollars owned

by one man is like one million acres owned by one man. He will certainly

make some kind of use of his acres, but the very best he can do will be

as nothing compared to the use a thousand men or more can make of them.

It is the same with a million of money. And an enterprise calling for

one million dollars of capital can be carried on just as well if that

capital is owned by fifty men, as it could if it is owned by one man. We

will have more to say on this point before we are done.

The American millionaire has also the power to squander outside of our

own territory that which is much needed in his country. And the

thousands in money which he sends to Europe for something to hang on his

walls would pay for a much needed improvement in some city or town in

the country where the money was made.

The American millionaire is a detriment to his own country any way you

take him, although a great many people are thoughtless enough to say

that we cannot get along without the millionaire. The capital which he

controls will be still here after he is legislated out of office, just

as it is when Father Time gathers him in.

He not only injures our country by taking its capital away, but he

checks development by tying up the resources which he has got title to.

He incloses thousands of acres for a few deer or some such to browse in

when the whole should be thrown open, and those in need of homes allowed

to settle it. There can be no doubt but what this is a great waste of

land when we remember how rapidly those reservations were settled when

they were thrown open within the last few years. Those large inclosures

may or may not contain land suitable for those in need of homes, but a

look through the foothills and mountains of California will show that

homes can be made among the rocks and canyons even - when people are

forced to it. And it is this power of millionaire to compel us to takes

his refuse that we have to do with here, and not with the quality of the

land in his game preserves. Strip him of this power and you make the

"decoration for his wall." the "deer park," and the "princeling"

impossible, and the people will once more have come into their own. Let

him retain it and he will soon drive us to beat the bush for game that

he himself will bag, as he has already bagged the wealth we produced.

Let him retain it, and his sixty miles of fencing may or may not inclose

worthless land, but it will not be the land, but the idea represented by

the deer inside, that will set us to thinking of the aristocratic

parasite and of the pauperism and slavery that is a part of his

belongings where-ever he is found. Let him retain it a little while

longer, and the soldier, who is steadily working his way on to the

scene, will be here, and then the power to help ourselves will be gone,

for the grip will be at our throats.

Those who are watching the mighty drama that is slowly unfolding itself

on the world's stage of to-day, saw during the strike of last summer

with what astounding ease a great people can be subjugated by a few

disciplined men. And we no longer labor under the mistake of thinking

that because they are our own people they will not shoot to kill. Put

your brother - aye, your son - into a uniform, and he needs but the word

to snuff you out as quick as he would a red handed Apache. He has been

drilled to believe that he himself would be snuffed out if he disobeyed.

And this result of disobedience is ever present with the man in uniform,

and has been engraved into his very soul, for his only God is the

drum-head court-martial. This is the creature that has made the

aristocratic parasite a fixture in Europe, and he is all that is needed

to make the same curse a fixture in our own country, and every attempt to

increase his number should be resisted with all the means in our power,

until the plunder he is wanted to guard shall have found its way back to

its rightful owners.

IV.

We will now show how the principle of Confiscation should work in the

case of railroads. This class of property, by the way, should never have

been given over to private ownership to begin with. They are for the

convenience of the public, just as much as any harbor or navigation ever

was. And if it was right that the founders of the Republic should, in

the interests of the country's commerce, deny the right of private

ownership in our navigable waters, then it was wrong to concede the

right of private ownership in railroads. As for the capital to build

them with, it was just as easy to get it for that purpose as it was to

get capital to dredge harbors, build lighthouses, build forts or the

Stanford University. The first railroad, or even the twentieth, never

suggested to the leaders of those times any idea of what this rival of

the winds and tides would develop into in a few short years. Individual

greed has so little time, to spare from the building of its own nest

that politics in the United States, where the common good should be the

aim of all legislation, has become a hand-to-mouth affair, and the

morrow must shift for itself. Busy hunting for spoil, like our own

incompetents of to-day, the legislators of the past cared nothing for

the morrow; and, without knowing what they were doing really,

surrendered a principle to the railroad projectors that was but a spark

at the time, but which has spread until we find the blaze devouring us

to-day. The statecraft that never found time to look beyond the ringing

of the curfew bells would have starved to death had it to compete with

those who were then working the lobby, while it was splitting hairs over

the Constitution and accepting the "stuff" that would do it "the most

good." No class of property shows the justice, and therefore the need,

of Confiscation as much as railroads. No class of property has done as

much toward absorbing and transferring the whole country into the hands

of a comparatively few men as railroads. But when Confiscation gets

through with these monarchs of all they survey, the town or section

through which these railroads run will not find themselves like a sucked

orange by the wayside.

Taking the Southern Pacific Railroad, we find that it runs through

Madera County, California, but it is doubtful if ten cents worth of its

securities are owned there. Madera County, then, has property within her

borders that earns an income, not one cent of which goes to the county

where it was earned.[1] The property is there, but the income from it is

taken elsewhere. This is the one great flaw in our present economic

life, and is the very root of our present troubles.

The income from property is taken from the locality where it was earned.

And the farmer's wagon sinks to the hubs for want of money to build good

roads. And the laborer is robbed of the income that his labor earned,

and he sinks his manhood at the soup-house door. We repeat it: The great

defect in our economic life is the taking of the income from the locality

where it was earned, and from the laborer, the source of of it all. This

does not mean that the laborer must spend his income or wages where it

was made. It does not mean that the income from property must be spent

in the particular locality where the property is located. It does not

mean, in short, that there shall be any restrictions placed upon the

individual in any way outside of limiting him to the ownership of

$100,000. With that he can do as he likes, and go where he likes -

title-hunting if he wishes, when he will be sure to find many bargains,

for it is our impression that there will be a slump in that market when

the American millionaire is no longer found among the bidders.

To the United States Government must be left the winding up of the

affairs of the railroads, and all other paper-represented property,

as it is obvious that she can do it much better than the many States of

which the country is composed; and the before mentioned excess shall

then be turned over to the different counties where the railroads are

located, each county to receive in proportion to the value of the

railroad property within her limits, and not according to the number of

miles.

President Huntington does not own all the stocks and bonds of the

Southern Pacific, but for illustration sake we will assume that he does.

Is it not plain then that Confiscation, when it gets through with this

railroad owner, will have made the counties where it is located its

owners, both of the property itself and the income which it earns? Is

this Government ownership of railroads? That term as now understood

means buying the railroad, and it is the millionaire we are trying to

get rid of, but he is still here if you take his railroads and give him

something better. We have already said that private ownership should not

have been allowed, and we would now confiscate them without any

reservation whatever if it were not for the thousands of small investors

in their securities and as these small investors must not be injured, we

are compelled to leave the railroads in the hands of private owners, as

buying out even these small owners would cause a national debt such as we

had better steer clear of. But it is not essential to the welfare of the

people that the Government should own the railroads. The point we wish

to bring out is, that the wealth and resources of the country has found

lodgment in a few hands, whereas it should be scattered among all the

people, and as long as they are getting the benefit it will matter

little to them whether they own it in their Governmental capacity or as

individuals, and the counties even are not to hold on to the forfeited

excess, but must dispose of it as fast as the people are able to buy.

But Huntington not owning all the securities of the railroad of which he

is president, we send for persons and papers and confiscate as fast as

the excess turns up, and distribute as described above. "Oh my! Oh my!"

comes a voice from out of the woods. "Is not this robbery?" No; nor armed

revolution either, but a peaceable solution of the question. Who owns

this earth anyway?

When persons and papers are sent for, and one of the interrogated is

found to possess, say, $100,000 in money and securities, $100,000 of

real estate, and $100,000 of other good things the right of choice

Should be given him as to the $100,000 he wishes to retain. For the

limiting of every individual fortune to $100,000 does not mean $100,000

of one kind of property and $100,000 of another kind, etc., but $100,000

all told.

Those of our own country are, of course, amenable to our laws, but many

of the securities of the road under consideration are owned abroad, and

persons and papers there are not responsive to our subpoenas. If it

brings disaster to a country to lose income made there, are we not close

to one of the causes of the wretched want that is confined to no section

of this land as we draw nearer to the man abroad, who is fattening from

income that is drawn from all over this country?

Repudiation is unnecessary here. Simply stop the interest on all

American securities owned out of the country.

This we have a perfect right to do, and when it is done the foreign

holders

will be on their way here as fast as the first ship can take them. The

despised steerage and all will be full of him.

Here we are once more obliged to use a word that is as hateful to us as

it must be to every one who has probed the wounds of this bleeding

country in the hope of finding their cause. And probe where we will, and

how we will, it is Bonds; always Bonds - the interest bearing bonds. And

standing around are the hyena millionaires, from far and near, lapping

their income from the dying form whose first breath was the immortal

Declaration.

Gas Bonds, Water Bonds, Sugar Bonds, Flour Bonds, Telegraph Bonds,

Railroad Bonds, Bonds, Bonds, Bonds.

School District Bonds, Road Bonds, Municipal Bonds, County Bonds, State

Bonds, and United States Bonds - chief offender among them all, whose

issue is left to the sweet will of one man - the political freak now in

the White House.

[1] The railroad, of course, pays taxes to the county, but it would have

to pay taxes even if it had no income.

- (V. editor)

But we always get the money when the foreigner gets the bonds. That is a

lie. Here is some sample evidence of it.

When our parasite hears of another large jewel reaching London from the

African mines, he says he must have it for madam's tiara, and taking a

small matter of $500,000 or so of securities, he goes over, and when we

next see him the securities are gone. But has he money in their place?

None whatever. Madam's tiara is safe, but this country is not one cent

of money the richer by the transaction.

And when it is time for a husband for Miss Parasite, the two old birds

start over with bulging grip to get a mate for the sweet damsel - for

she is sweet, as they all are, bless them, whether they belong to the

millionaire's brood or to the laborer's - and it freezes our blood when

we think of what is sure to happen if the dread machine gets to work

here as it did over the way - to get, we say, a mate for the damsel, and

when he is found there must be money down and this money is obtained in

exchange for the bonds, and remains in the same country where the bonds

and titles are.

This has been a losing transaction all round, for, alas, the dear one

herself goes over in a few days, and when we next hear of her she will

be calling on her big brother to go and thrash the whelp that our money

purchased.

It does not look like business to make purchases abroad with income

producing property. But when they buy, say $50,000,000 of government

bonds at a clip, as did the late Wm. H. Vanderbilt, they turn the

interest as fast as it comes in into more income producers, and this

leaves their cash-till comparatively empty, so that when they need money

quick, for there is much competition among this gentry, as in the case

of a big jewel or a princeling, they have no option but to be up and

away, and our securities being pie to them over there they grab a lot,

and then the rush begins.

Nevertheless there must not be the semblance of injustice done to these

foreign investors in our securities when they arrive here to make terms.

We have the right to stop the interest, but the securities themselves we

must redeem. But redeeming them all at once in gold being out of the

question, and as that is the only kind of coin that is now acceptable to

the foreigners, they must either wait until we get enough of gold, or

until they think better of silver, and are willing to take that metal in

part payment, and in the meantime while they are making up their mind,

about it they must accept the best we are able to give them, namely

non-interest bearing bonds.

It is against the grain to bring the unsavory Bond on to the boards

again. But looking at him closely, as he now appears, You will notice

that he is well broken and as we have no better we must use him to bring

in the rest of the untamed band to which he once belonged. Neither

should our visitors complain about this form of payment. If all of our

obligations from abroad were paid in coin, assuming that we had enough,

it would fill Europe with idle money, and as we have always been a good

customer, and always prompt in our payments, they should be reasonable,

and admit that it is no worse to have idle bonds than it is to have idle

money, so long as final payment is assured. Neither should they expect,

par value for what did not, in many cases, cost them fifty cents on the

dollar. We will pay them market value no more. And do not imagine that

these people have been kept waiting very long to find out these terms.

For so positive are these leeches, here and elsewhere, of being able to

maintain their hold that those we have just finished with will not make

a move to come here until the New Bill of Human Rights has become the

law of the land.

And this foreigner whom we are done with, so far as his power to injure

us goes, is the counterpart of our own millionaire, and the scowl with

which he leaves these shores means another crunch of the iron heel

on the necks of his own slaves, and it is only the magnitude of the work

that is before us, which none but the blind will deny, in the subduing

of our own masters, that makes it a sad necessity to refuse aid to the

oppressed the world over. One thing is certain however: whether Bunker

Hill led to the fall of the Bastile or not, the liberation of the slave

in the New World will show way to his liberation in the Old, and in this

way do we render him a service, even if we cannot see our way to help

him in any other.

-

The foregoing should make plain how the principle of Confiscation will

work in the case of railroads, and all other paper-represented property

that can be, and is, owned elsewhere than where the property itself is

found.

And there is no need of interfering with or changing any of the

functions of the different branches of our Government in order to make

Confiscation a part of our organic law any more than there would be to

increase the duty on imported wool and to collect it. The machineries

of the law making, judicial, and executive branches of our Government,

are sufficient for any calls that Confiscation can make on them. Any

other construction that may be put on what has been said heretofore

or may be said hereafter, is all error. If insisted on, what then? Have

we run up against the impassable? It is sufficient to say that what is

ours is ours to change when the need is evident, and the Constitution

itself is not, an exception to the truth of this.

The laws regulating the rising and the setting of the sun are not of our

creating, and we cannot hasten or retard its coming and going one iota

of time, and we do not live in the age when it could be done.

But the Constitution is a man-made thing, and when growth has made it a

straight jacket then the time for ripping has come.

VI.

Once more resuming our pursuit of the millionaire whom we have

dispossessed of his railroad plunder, we find the chase taking us into

town, where Confiscation will find many problems which it alone can

solve - where it will find his sixteen story building, for his hours of

plotting, and his suburban palace for his hours of ease, and the hiving

humanity between over whom he had to walk to reach either. Those palaces

on the Nob hills of these United States are the toadstools of the decay

that is going on in this Republic to-day.

The master crime of all ages was the building of those pyramids on the

Egyptian sands, for they were useless, but the whim and the slaves and

the lash of power were there, and the pyramids went up.

Let us see to it that the power of our pyramid builders is destroyed

before it gets beyond five million dollar palaces.

-

When we apply the principle of Confiscation to the millionaire merchant

and turn his excess into the public treasury, it will be no more

destructive of the business of which he has had all the profits than it

was of the railroads. There will be more business done in the same line

than ever, but more will be doing it, and consequently more will share

in the profits. But if our object is to break up these fabulous

fortunes, which mean certain death to our liberties, and whose blight

has paralyzed progress and development, there should be no reason why we

should not allow the present owners to take a hand in the breaking up.

If the merchant, or other millionaire, would rather divide his millions

among his relatives (barring his wife and minors) and friends, than to

resign it over to the public treasury, let him do so. Our aim will be

attained whichever happens, which is simply to bring about a better

distribution of the wealth of this country, and we know of no way of

making this even distribution that will compare with Confiscation.

Socialism, in all its forms, means the surrendering of individual

liberty, and is a retrograde movement, and the outcome of it can be

nothing more or less than despotism of the very worst kind.

Socialism enlarges the power of one individual over another. This is

incompatible with the liberty that goes with a republic. Confiscation

says, $100,000 is enough. When you are found with more, it will be

considered as proof that you have been taking an unfair advantage of

some one, and the surplus makes you dangerous to the welfare of a

republic, and is therefore forfeited. There will be nothing more

disagreeable, so far as the right of the individual goes, in the

enforcing of this proposed law than there is in the collection of taxes

on incomes. Cutting a fortune down to the $100,000 limit may be

considered a very disagreeable thing indeed, but when we are reminded

that it is all done for the common good, we become reconciled at once,

for we feel in our heart of hearts that the altar at which we can

cheerfully make whatever sacrifices we are called upon to make, is the

altar of our brother's welfare.

The millionaire merchant will doubtless take advantage of his right to

divide his business among his relatives and friends. Naturally they

would give him the management, but the instinct to be master is strong

within us all, and this would soon break up and scatter that dangerous

accumulation. Then there would be more Market streets and Broadways.

Every dollar of business that would be taken from the one or two

principal thoroughfares, which is all that is now found in any of the

cities, would mean an increase of value in the property of the street

where this transfer business is carried on. And this increase in the

value of city property would continue on out to the city's limits; and

the limits themselves would be extended further out to find room for

habitable homes for the human beings that are supposed to live in the

tenements. There can be no question but what merchandising would spread

itself more over the cities if this limited ownership of capital was in

force; and this spreading out will give employment to all in bringing

about the change; and prosperity, such as goes with plenty of work, will

take the place of the wretched misery and want that now fill all the

soup-house infected cities of the country. There will be no impairment

in the value or need of the big "dailies" that are published in these

centres of population. They will simply be owned by more people and read

by more, and the improvement in the times being of a stable and

permanent character their circulation will be free from the rise and

fall with which they are now only to well acquainted, and the cheap-John

business into which so many have gone, in the last few years, wheedling

the ten cents and the dollars out of the child-like poor for worthless

truck, can be thrown into the waste basket with the last offer of money

for a Wall Street editorial. It is a mistake, by the way, to think we

are a nation of readers. Man is an interesting animal where-ever found,

the desire to know what he has done and is doing is strong in us all,

but even the little county paper is beyond the reach of many. The

writer, who is a common toiler like the rest, finds the moving world a

sealed book to him, for he cannot spare the needed dollar, and live. And

those editors who will fiercely rend and tear, with all the power of

their trained brains and skilled pens, at this vital need of our times

may live to see the day when they too will believe this world is round,

and that calling the original believers fools, thieves, scoundrels,

rascals, and enemies to civilization was a repetition of an old mistake.

It will be the day when they can be our guides, philosophers, and

friends without the itching palm stuck out behind. It will be the day

when we can accept, without doubt or a curl of the lip, the admonition.

from the sixteen stories of steel, because we will then know, that the

conscience of the man within is not itself all awry.

To whatever cause the existing rot is chargeable the editor, at least of

all others, had the power to stop or check it, and failure to meet this

great responsibility shows that the strut of this great personage is

assumed, and that, like the rest, his necessities have been used by the

master to bend and break him till he no longer dare call his soul his

own.

We can expect the screech of this helpless tool to fill the land as his

desperate master nags him on in the revolution that is coming.

VII.

The mammoth hotel where the parasite of greater or lesser degree

sojourns, where the popping corks of the costly imported champagne is

heard, can still be a hotel, but the profits of its millions of

invested capital must no longer he taken away by one or two men and it

therefore must have many more owners than it has now. It, too, must go

to the people, if its millionaire owner can find no more relations to

share with and begins to suspect his "friends" of having had a hand in

bringing about the upheaval. And if the "plain" people never expect to

enjoy the material results of the inventive wit of man as they are

focused within its luxurious interior, they at least have some reason

for being satisfied when they know that the profits will stay where they

were made and help those who made them. This reference to hotels brings

to mind a corroborative fact that proves the charge we make when we say

that all these colossal fortunes are nothing more than the accumulations

of able rascality of some form or other: bilking, cornering, lobbying,

watering stock, or charging all the traffic will bear.

The Palace Hotel in San Francisco was built by a speculator and floater

of mining shares, and cost millions that he cashed in, after cleaning

out the simple minded laborer and servant girl, whom he deluded, with

all the art known to his tribe, into believing that there was still more

for their rainy day if they would only invest the little they already

had.

The law makes a felon of the rascal with the bogus gold brick, but that

clumsy worker in the field of robbery does not get the returns which the

scienced work of his brother professional brings in; therefore, when

outraged law gives this petty malefactor the knock-out blow, the satisfied

spectators, chattering about the majesty of something, depart and the

curtain is rung down on another exhibition of what the American people are

said to like - namely, humbug. Let us say in passing, that the American

does not like humbug. Take the average of him as he is found in the little

world in which the routine work of his life is done and you will find him

alert and close enough to deal with, and that in all things in which he

has his experience to rely on humbug (swindling) is practically

impossible.

But when he gets outside of that experience, then, like the experienced

traveler, he patiently submits to imposition when resistance might mean a

loss greater than the original. But even the traveler must have enough to

continue on with, and when imposition reaches that stage resistance

begins.

So it will be with the man who is said to like humbug (robbery), when he

finds humbug (slavery) closing in on him. He too will resist. He did

before

and the rightful owners gained possession, as this same man, who is said

to

like humbug, will again recover possession of what is being so stealthily

taken from him.

When outraged law is asked to administer justice to the scoundrel who

has deluded thousands into buying worthless mining shares or some such

swindling bait, the victims are told that the whole swindle has been

legitimized by the great seal of the state, and that their loss is the

profits of a business conducted by a licensed trader.

The man with the bogus gold brick goes to jail. The man with the bogus

gold mine goes free.

Why this difference when the principle in the two crimes is the same? Is

it because the millionaire swindler has, in fact, been given rights

under the law that is denied to the smaller fry? Or is it because the

larger bird of prey makes enough to go all around? Certain it is, however,

that Labor in its contests with Capital never got a decision in its favor

yet - in time to be of any service.

These wholesalers found the concubining of justice herself a necessity

to the success of their rascalities and the delays and decisions of this

harlot are but the echoes of her paramour's orders. And at no time does

the debasement of this whited sepulchre display itself more than when

the miserable and friendless criminal whose crime is, assuredly, nothing

more than the natural and to be expected outcome of the wrong and

inexcusable crime developing conditions under which he is compelled to

live, is at her altar for Justice, which She renders in ringing tones

such as are never heard when Her paramour or his hirelings are before

Her.

When Labor does finally get a decision it is as worthless to it as is

its pass-book on the gutted savings bank.

Make the millionaire an extinct species, and the above assertion will

not have logic to sustain it, and our courts will not be making terrible

"examples" of the friendless, while the thief who ruins thousands is

allowed to go free.

-

There must be a radical change made in our laws if we ever expect to

stop the sharks from preying on us. Our laws, like a hole in a fence,

makes access easy, and the endless raids will never cease until the

holes are stopped up. Constant watching, even with the light from former

experiences, will all count for nothing while those holes and breaks are

left open. The persistent work of the crew of sharpers that has the

Nicaragua canal steal in tow shows this necessity for a change in the

economic laws of the country. Duplicating the scheme by which the

Huntingtons and Oakes Ameses robbed the people they submitted their

prospectus for endorsement, and, lo, this whole coast grovels in the

dust to these new Moseses, who are to show them the way out of the

wilderness into which their original, Huntington, has led them.

The canal should be built. But the estimated cost of the whole

enterprise was $66,000,000 according to their own expert, whose report,

eight years ago, was published in "Harper's Weekly" - (published as

news, by the way, but was an advertisement, and paid for as such. And

that Julian Ralph stuff that appeared in that same weekly lately is more

of that peculiar kind of news that is being constantly ground out by the

capitalistic sharks to catch the unwary, and was paid for by Spreckels

- another Moses, that has come to the succor of our beleaguered coast.

The "Journal of Civilization" is a fit organ for the millionaire

corruptionist and the civilization that he is degrading) - and although

they have gone over the ground again and again since that report was

made, the maximum estimate is still well inside $100,000,000. Yet they

now want to issue $100,000,000 in stock; want the people to guarantee

principal and interest on $70,000,000 of bonds, and the right to issue

$30,000,000 of bonds themselves. No wonder it was called a steal on the

floor of the Senate. The public treasury will ever be the objective

point of such wholesalers until the inducement is removed. Humanity,

Honor, Patriotism, each and all are powerless before this all

conquering appetite of Individual Greed.

What can such people as they care for this people, their country and its

benign form of government? What use have such as they for a government

that denies them the title that distinguishes their kind over the sea?

Ay, what is to prevent them from using the vast power that goes with the

wealth they are absorbing day by day, and to gratify the one unsatisfied

wish of their purse-proud and selfish souls, and establish an Empire in

place of the Republic? The Republic is but a shell and their work would

be easy.

The sophistry about the inalienable right of one man to crush another

has had its day, and their hypocritical wail about civilization and this

inalienable right, when these conscienceless rascals find their race is

run, will be like the yelling of remorseless wolves that have been

trapped and kicked into the vanishing distance.

VIII.

Understanding the principle of Confiscation, it will be easily seen how

it must work in every individual case; and, therefore, it is needless to

dwell on or elaborate its workings when it is applied to banks,

breweries, sugar refineries, water works, gas works, street railways,

etc.

It will not destroy capital or business. It may lessen the value of real

estate on the principal streets in large cities, and fall in values is

not certain even there. It will trouble no one, however, if it does; not

the present owner, even, for the value of property in favored localities

is so great now that, however much one man can own now, he can own but a

fraction of it under the proposed change. The owner of, say, a $400,000

building and lot on such a street as we are now considering may find a

shrinkage of $100,000. This will give him two partners instead of three.

The shrinkage, therefore, will be to his liking; for, be it known, the

aristocrat is a proud bird, and likes to flock by itself. And any

designs against these two partners will be so fruitless of results to

himself that a word in his ear now and then by his friends and

well-wishers, about the public treasury, will end in his cultivating,

such a lamblike submission to the new dispensation that his eloquence,

born of the new light and an awakened conscience, will make his titled

sister over the way give up her bauble when he shows her the cost of its

pomp to the struggling poor.

Such will be the effect of the change on a man who now carries the law

in his pocket, when he hasn't it under his feet.

Moving the laborer so far away from the centre of the city, and where

there is room to build habitable homes, will be a serious objection, it

will be urged. They cannot get to their work on time without getting up

at all hours. They can just have time to snatch a bite and be away

again. And the whole of Sunday must be given to sleep they cannot get at

any other time.

They will be strangers in the near-by theatre, and the near-by library

will be given up to the spider and his web, and the little garden of

flowers that the once half-starved women have made a delight will be

unknown to the worn out bread-winner, who will be the same old slave we

premised to unshackle. Better clothes surely, and his home shows what it

is to be a citizen of a republic that is a republic in fact as well as

in name; but he has only time to snatch a bite and be away again.

Will it never occur to those critics that we are here dealing with the

greatest creation of the Almighty, and of all time - civilized man; and

that we must make the conditions fit him, and not he the the conditions.

Everything he eats, wears, and uses in twelve months can be produced in

two. Why, then, should he be compelled to labor twelve months for that

which can be produced or made in one-sixth of that time? The reason is

plain. When two laborers make an exchange there is wholesale robbery

committed by the non-producing and idle parasites, while the fruits of

Labor are on the way to those who alone are entitled to the whole. "And

I," says the millionaire, "say this robbery must go on, for I am an

impossibility without it." That gnawing canker never had any doubts as

to where his surfeit comes from. And now that it has become a question

of life and death with those he has been plundering, he should be

dragged to the bar of justice and compelled to disgorge. And then labor,

too, can come in on the eight and nine o'clock train, and be no later

for its work than is the banker and the rest of his class that have had

Labor under their heels so long.

The capacity of the modern world to produce has entirely outstripped her

capacity to consume, and trying to solve the economic problems of the

day, by further denial or ignoring of this fact, that should be

self-evident, will be to build a structure with only half the foundation

laid, and the inevitable collapse is bound to follow.

There will always he plenty of room in the heart of a city for those who

must live close to their work.

But the inventor has made night work, except by the parasitical leeches,

unnecessary to the masses, a few hours of daylight being more than

sufficient to supply all the needs of the country. We are not insisting,

be it understood, on a four-hour or eight-hour system of labor. No

industry or occupation will be hampered or meddled with by doing justice

to the laborer in the way proposed. The railroad employee, printer,

baker, factory hand, etc., can work on as now, but they must be

compensated with just wages for the labor done. This will enable them to

retire before decrepitude comes on, and orders are left for the

poorhouse ambulance to call on its way out.

If every city occupied three times the ground they now do, they would be

gainers in all ways, and the moral degradation into which large sections

of them have sunk would disappear with the conditions that produced

them.

The capacity of Europe to feed her people is being crowded, we are told,

and then our flag is again run-up, and during the whole exhibition the

Chinese system of bunking is quietly fastening itself in every city of

consequence in the country. When those sorely pressed people, whose very

existence is being threatened by these foreigners of a degraded

civilization, awaken to the extremity of their danger, the bunking

system and its introducers will find perjury and the habeus corpus mill

powerless to save them. Mark this, however. The big capitalist imported

the Chinaman, and his powerful influence has defeated all attempts to

remove him. It follows, then, that we must break up the big capitalist,

if we ever expect to get at the thing behind him.

We are not indifferent to the hardships of the oppressed of other

nations, but we cannot get out of our own perplexities by saying that we

are more favored in some way than are others. There are rocks ahead of

ourselves, and watching others going to pieces and firing congratulatory

guns will not help them or save us from, a like fate.

Whatever is in the near future for Europe, we, at least, have nothing to

fear as to the capacity of our country to support all her people. And as

it is with room for producing, so it is with room in which to live.

There is plenty of both, and we should show ourselves worthy of the

legacy left us by that handful of brave men who established liberty in

our country, and insist on getting plenty of both before the armed

hireling appears and it is too late.

IX.

We will now apply the principle of Confiscation to land, and we will see

that Confiscation alone can undo the wrong that has of late become

apparent to even the law makers in Washington. Up to within three years

or so there were two ways by which farming lands could be obtained from

the Government - by homesteading and preempting.

It is unnecessary to give the laws of either, but so fast was this class

of land going that Congress repealed the preemption law. In other words,

the amount you could obtain was cut down one half - from 320 acres to

160. What was more significant still of their barn door work after the

horse was gone, they made the owning of 160 acres, regardless from whom

it was got, private purchase or Government, a bar to the taking up of

Government farm land. Prior to the repeal every citizen, and those

intending to become citizens, had certain land rights, and owning half a

State did not impair them; which all goes to show that even this free

and easy-going Government thought it about time to call a halt. But that

was all it did do. As it was not necessary to give the laws under which

the homesteader and preemptor got title, neither is it necessary to here

ask how some men became owners of all the way from 1,000 to 60,000

acres, every acre of which was Government land years after California

became a State. (We are using California facts. The rest of the Western

part of the United States has an abundance of the same kind.) Suffice it

to say, that they now own them; and suffice it too, that Confiscation is

the only way by which we can dispossess them of plunder, that the

welfare of the country demands should be returned? In Confiscation alone

will the people find a servant who will not condone the past, but will

follow up this breed of the grabber and restore what it finds, as it has

already done with others of his tribe.

It will be the re-discovering of America.

Never did kind and beneficent laws show what men, with the right kind of

stuff in them, could do, as did our land laws. Men who now own territory

as large as some of the Eastern States started in without a dollar.

They had something better. They had consciences that was good for any

tests that the scoundrels could put them to. Never did gangs of

"floaters" help the political boss and ward-heeler rob the public

treasury with greater success than did this other brand of the bastard

citizen help his boss to hog the public domain.

In the fertile valley of the Sacramento, land that would give one

hundred and sixty acre homes to ten thousand families (fifty thousand

people) is owned by one hundred individuals, all average of sixteen

thousand acres to each owner. This is but a fraction of the valley and

leaves out the owners of less than sixteen thousand acres.

In the great San Joaquin valley, the laborer in search of work can walk

for days in one direction alongside of fencing that incloses land

belonging to one firm. And this immense fortune-in land was obtained by

robbery, just as the other millionaire fortunes were obtained.

In the land office we see the miserable tool and his master.

In the legislative halls we see the miserable tool and his master.

And we see the leaves on Liberty's Tree droop and wither as these deadly

borers do their work under the bark below.

Up among the peaks and valleys of the Sierra Nevada lies the town of

Mariposa, settled by gold seekers whose rich findings gave world wide

fame to this hamlet among the mountains. Aluvial gold and quartz bearing

gold was scattered with lavish hand through the surrounding hills, and

in the beds of the summer-dried streams. Generous laws of their own

making, gave ample room, and the eager workers toiled on, forgetting the

past hardships of the long journey where so many fell by the way, and

the rugged hills became endeared to them as they marked out the shaded

spots on their shelving sides where their coming dear ones could look

down on the busy scene below. But the camp follower with ready knife

never finished the wounded brave quicker than did the "land grant"

swindler finish Mariposa when her riches became the theme of every gold

camp throughout the world. And to-day the big hearted and stalwart miner

goes to fever-laden Africa and ice-bound Alaska, when there are whole

mountains of the best mineral bearing land in the world in his own

country, but which our present laws forbid him to touch.

Our people should no more bow to a Mexican land grant title than to a

superstition of their cave-dwelling ancestors.

What matters it, however, in what way these colossal robberies were

committed; by coffee-stained lie from Mexico, or perjured oath of

faithless citizen; it has been done, and it is time for the undoing.

Man developed the school house, and for this each is indebted to the

other, and the mutual debt is acknowledged by making the school free to

all.

The Creator developed the Earth from chaos to the habitable home of man,

free to all, but this debt is not acknowledged, and the many are driven

into the highway by the few.

Give us all the conveniences of modern life, railroads, telegraphs,

etc., etc., etc., but give us back the land, that is our natural

heritage as much as is the water we drink or the air we breath.

Give us back this birthright, or take your railroads, and so on, and

your civilization, and sink them deep in the depths of hell, for the

starving have no use for them, and we'll take the savage state that

knows no hunger except in the time of famine.

X.

Limit the ownership of land, be it arable, grazing, timber, or any other

kind, to 160 acres. As no one shall own more than $100,000 worth of

property all told, this 160 acres will have to be reduced as we get near

to the centres of population. This will still give the owner of such

convenient land an advantage over those living further out, who will

always be willing to exchange should the first rather follow the coarser

grades of farming to dairying or gardening.

Neither is there any reason why the owning of great sections of timber

land by one or two men should be necessary to the running of sawmills

and supplying the people with lumber. The mills are capable of doing

just as good work if the fifty quarter sections are owned by fifty men

as they are if owned by one man. And the waste of timber seen on every

hand wherever you find a mill owned and operated by capitalists would

have been unknown if there had been an individual owner to each quarter

section. The wanton waste of this breed of the capitalist, in his hurry

to pile up, would have been impossible had his mill been a "custom"

mill, to saw the timber from your quarter section and mine instead of

his fifty or five hundred. And the poor unskilled laborer would not have

to go to make room for the chinaman, or that member of a worthless tribe

who sold his "claim" to the "company" for so much and the promise of a

job. The small owner cannot afford the waste of the large one. His

income will not be so great that he can afford to waste the principal

from which it comes. As to any friction about whose turn it is to run

his timber through, it is only necessary to say that the business will

be then carried on by those who are now doing the labor, and it will be

no worse to accept wages from the man on the neighboring claim for

helping him to make lumber than it was to accept wages from the man who

was dethroned, and he will probably pay you as much as you could make

running your own logs through.

If this is not satisfactory, sell out at once to one of the many that

are waiting to buy, and go, for you will not find anything in what we

are advocating that interferes in the least with the liberty of the

individual. Some may think differently, but then they are the ones who

brought all eyes to the window to see what was going on in the street.

And as you travel on you will miss the once eager dog at the farm house

by the way, and no palsied hand will be lifting the corner of the

curtain as you are passing by, for the tramp has disappeared, and the

rare survivor and incurable will be doing it on bread and water, for he

must be a useless thing not to have drawn his last breath with his

compatriot at the other end of the scale.

The farmer who has children that are not of age when the new arrangement

goes into force will see great hardship in the 160-acre law. He intended

to give this piece of land to one son and that piece to another, and so

on. He would give each of these sons more, but some one else owns the

rest of the country thereabouts, and these, say, 160-acre tracts, are

the best he can do. Leaving out of the question whether his sons can

locate alongside of himself or not, and confining ourselves to their

chance of being able to get 160 acres, which is the vital point in the

whole matter, he must see that, if he must surrender his excess and all

others must do the same, there would be more land to take up than there

are people to take it. We are in a Republic, Mr. Farmer, and the

interest of the many who have called at your door call on you to

disgorge with the rest.

When we come to the land in the mountains we find that it averages poor,

yet the 160-acre law must be applied there also. To allow more would be

to give an opening to the smart one, who would take advantage as he has

always done; and as the country is pretty well tired of him we will save

future complications by tying him down to 160 acres like the rest. The

mountain farmer or rancher, with rare exceptions, gets his income from

the raising of pork or beef animals, which are rarely confined to the

owner's premises, but are allowed to roam and graze where they will, at

times as far as forty and fifty miles away from where they belong. And

as the mountaineer makes little if any provisions for the barn feeding

of his animals, outside of one or two milk cows and his few work

animals, and these last only through the work season and the bad weather

of whatever winter the locality may have, he will not find his business

of raising meat for the market curtailed in any respect. Should he need

more hay or grain ground, or ground for orchards or gardens, be will

always find it inside of his 160-acre inclosure, for there are none yet

among them who knows the possibilities of a 160-acre ranch under the

plow. And as none has yet been forced to put the plow into outside

ground, it can be taken for granted that they never will.

Where, then, is the reason why this class of farmers should be allowed

title to more land than the others? The range or grazing ground among

the hills and along the water courses will still be open to their

animals, and instead of the proposed change injuring their business, it

will, in these days of cheap barb-wire, stop the would-be cattle king

and speculative grabber from crippling or destroying it altogether, a

fate not unknown to some who have tried in a small way to make a living

from cattle raising.

There is, therefore, no reason why the farmer in the hills should be

allowed more land than his less favored brother in the valleys and

plains below. He must fall into line with the rest; and, as he takes his

place at the foot the assembled multitude of liberated slaves, sees a

gleam of scorn in the eyes of the once mighty railroad king as this poor

relation is thrust upon his notice.

But it is not in a brave people to humiliate a fallen enemy, and the

order to break ranks is given, and the ex-slave and ex-master mingle

together, and depart to work out a destiny common to both.

-

In the preceding pages we have briefly tried to show that Confiscation

is the only peaceable way that is now open to us by which the people can

again obtain possession of their country. And we have tried to convey an

idea of how its principle should be applied, and we will now turn our

attention to its workings, and show, as briefly as possible, how easy it

is for the people to be prosperous when they have control of their

country's resources.

There is not a railroad in the country that would not be taxed to its

utmost in carrying settlers to the forfeited lands; and the work of the

land agent and boomer, the uphill work of the town or section in trying

to build themselves up by advertising far and near, and the hauling of

cars full of exhibition pumpkins crossways and lengthways of the land,

would be needless. Government land, be it County, State or United

States, never requires booming in these days of the anxious home-seeker,

and never will again.

At present when a new section becomes attractive there is a rush into

it, and then the rush slacks up with an air-brake suddenness. The

speculator has got there and pitched his tent, and his $100 to $500 acre

signs - part down, the rest at 8 per cent. - has taken possession, and

the stream is turned aside and goes elsewhere. And then the pumpkin,

with its 8 per cent. tags plastered all over it, is put aboard and

hauled through the country on its mission of deceiving the innocent.

With the land speculator out of the way, and no expenses outside of

office fees, there would be a steady increase of population wherever

there is agricultural land, until the last acre is in possession of an

actual settler, whose home would be on the place. (The principle which

allows a man living in New York, or somewhere else, to own land in

California, or somewhere else, should set every law-maker to scratching

his head to see if he cannot get an idea out of it.)

And do not plague yourselves about the numerosity of the new settler,

and where the whole of him is to find a market. We are trying to get rid

of the pauper, and whoever heard of a farm, free of the 8 per cent.

night-mare, being the breeding place of such as he? Whatever else

happens to the farmer he at least is sure of enough to eat. Wheat may be

down; cattle without buyers; eggs a drug; potatoes left to rot in the

ground, milk wasting like water, and not ten cents in money on the

premises, but the owner is not starving. The dude may not see a brother

in him, and he will be denied entrance to the Inner Circle when Major

domo McAllister sees him in the rear. But he has weight, and looks as if

trying to get away with this year's crop, to make room for the next,

agrees with him; and if he thinks now and again of the days of the

hungry tramp it must be that the undertaking has proportions he little

dreamed of.

But he will have a market. What causes him to need one? This. That he

may be able to get that which he does not produce or make himself. And

is there not some one else producing or making those very things, and

who needs what the farmer alone produces or makes? If yes, then we have

found the whole secret of what we call business - two producers or

makers of different articles making an exchange one with the other. Stop

that exchange, and there would be no manufacturing; we would all be

living off raw nature once more, and our ball-games would give way to

the pelting of cocoanuts and hanging by our tails.

XI.

The opening of these forfeited lands would be the salvation of that

pitiable creature, the victim of the 8 per cent. grind. The homeless

wanderer can get shade and shelter from the burning sun and driving

storm, and with these is content, for he has long since resigned

ambition to those who are willing to continue the hopeless struggle; but

the man, on the 8 per cent. treadmill, who has not yet acknowledged

defeat, has no way of escape from the glare of the master's eye, except

by self-murder or the pauper's grave. There is nothing that excites our

hatred against the infamous laws of our times as much as does the sight

of this brave man struggling against the fate that is crushing him, and

whose patriotism will soon be kindred to that of the Russian serfs, if

it does not go to the other extreme and make him a nihilist or some

other brand of the political desperado. It was from this quarter, forget

it not, that the old flint locks came, "whose report was heard around

the world," and the serf will never be his model, for the old spirit has

still enough of life left for another blaze, as these new oppressors

will find to their awful cost.

The burdens which these people are staggering under can be easily

imagined when it is known that they have been paying interest on

mortgages for years that the places would not now sell for, even after

they were improved by years of labor and the outlay of much money. In

the San Joaquin valley, for instance, there are homesteads by the

thousands that will not sell for what they are mortgaged for, and the

extraordinary spectacle was witnessed in the city of San Francisco last

year of a bank having to close because it could not sell out the valley

farmers for the mortgages due it. Of course these farmers obtained money

from the bank, and the justice of the bank's claim is not what we are

now trying to get at, but to show that if we had the laws that belong to

a republic the people would not be the victims of bankers or any one

else. Had they been allowed in the first place to take possession of all

unimproved land without having to give up the savings of years to some

land grabber, whose theft was authorized and sustained by law, and then

loaded down with interest obligations, they would have had no more

trouble in keeping their land than they would in keeping an arm or a

leg.

With every one limited to 160 acres there would be so much thrown open

to settlement that it would practically wipe out all mortgages on land,

for the occupant of mortgaged premises, could give his owner the option

of accepting what would be a fair price under the new conditions, and if

it were refused then the occupant could simply back his wagon up, put

his portables on and drive to some of the Government land nearest to

him.

And it should not be so difficult to get the fencing and the lumber for

the few small buildings that would answer till he could get better, and,

once started, his condition would be a steady improvement, the interest

he now pays remaining on the premises where it is made. At present there

are the usual fences and buildings put up when the land is bought (part

down, the rest at 8 per cent.), and these are the only improvements,

outside of vine and tree growth, that can be made; the wear of time even

cannot be repaired, for the occupant has nothing to spare for repairs or

improvements, and even the necessaries of life are a tug, and as to

decent clothing for himself and wife and other dependants that is not to

be thought of while he is loaded down with that bane of modern life,

interest obligations.

The cost of moderately sized buildings would of course depend on

circumstances, but it should not exceed a few hundred dollars; and as it

would be a more profitable investment for a county to help a settler,

that is already on the ground, to get a start, than to spend the money

trying to get him there, as is the practice now, there can be no serious

reason why the voters should not authorize their local Government to

extend the necessary aid, and make it optional with the borrower whether

he shall pay in money or work; the length of time and other details to

be governed by circumstances, but no interest to be charged. If this

last causes some apparent loss, let it be charged to the old pumpkin

fund.

There are people of small means who have taken mortgages on land, and

these must be protected, as we have already done in the case of like

investors in paper-represented property. But if these small lenders are

already owners of one hundred and sixty acres they must make the best

terms they can with their debtors, for it is a cardinal idea of this

needed readjustment that no one shall own more than 160 acres. But if

the lender does not own that amount of land, he can get and hold title

as at present.

-

The result of the proposed change being to keep the income of the whole

country within its own borders, it follows that every section must find

itself with an abundance of capital such as was never known to them

before, giving them the means to carry on improvements that are entirely

beyond them now. At the present time, too, if a laborer, through errors

of judgment, should lose the savings of his years of youth and strength,

he can rarely recover the ground lost, and finds that paying his way

from day to day thereafter is all he can do, and when his work days are

gone for good he must either go to the poor-house or be cared for by his

relations, whose own load is about all they can bear up under. With the

income kept where it is made all this is would be changed, for then,

instead of having work only a part of the time, and poor wages besides,

the laborer, when his work for private parties gave out, could get work

from the local Government, which always has it to give, and the money to

pay for it. And should a laborer here and there through some unforeseen

cause, be forced by poverty and age to accept food and shelter that he

cannot pay for, his relations can provide for him, for the getting of

the mere food and clothing will not be the momentous question that it is

now. And this power of the local Government to give work will save many

a one from a fate that should never overtake the honest and willing.

Pauperism and crime can never be eliminated from society, any more than

the susceptibility to sickness and disease can be eliminated from flesh

and blood, but as civilization grows older its accumulating wisdom

should be more than a match for poverty, the parent germ of both

pauperism and crime; but the discouraging fact is that these two

diseases of civilized society are advancing faster than civilization

itself, and we build larger poor houses and jails, and then sit down and

nurse the hideous disorders, as if they were the incurable rot of

leprosy instead of being the result of economic laws that allow the able

to rob the weak.

There is not a county or State but what has plenty of work had it the

money to do it. The question of good roads is becoming prominent, but if

they are ever built under our present system of economics they will be

built by slave labor pure and simple. It is absolutely out of the

question for the people to raise the money for running the Government;

pay interest on bonds; pay for the bonds themselves; pay pensions; carry

on the costly work of giving the whole country macadamized roads, and

care for the millionaire, and remain free at the same time.

Government expenses.

Pensions.

Interest on bonds.

Matured bonds.

Macadamized roads.

Care of millionaire.

To think of carrying such a load and remain free is madness.

We are contending that the country is already crushed with debt; that

she is saddled with such a tremendous load, that, like the mortgaged

farm, improvement and progress is utterly out of the question. We have

the resources for any and every improvement that the country needs, but

they are wasted and squandered paying interest to foreign capitalists,

and supporting our mushroom growth of millionaire parasites, who are the

cause of our poverty of capital, and the foreigners' ability to lend us

money.

Do away with interest paying and the millionaire, and the required roads

could be commenced at once, and as for the Nicaragua canal, we would

make as light of it as does the farmer in hoeing a hill of beans.

XII.

The silver interest asserts that we will never stop our headlong rush to

the devil if we do not get free coinage of silver. Silver, like pork or

potatoes, is something for sale, and its owners have given up their

whole attention to finding it a market. Whoever heard of J. P. Jones

interesting himself in anything except silver. Never in all of his

twenty years of public life did he show that he was anything more than

"a man from one of the Silver States." Ever and always whenever he fills

the air with his noise, you have only to look and there you will find

him still knocking at the public treasury for a customer that already

has had enough of him.

He has become a monomaniac on silver, and, although one of the principal

owners of the Mariposa land grant, will not open it up because it is

silver he wants and the grant only shows gold. It is this dementia that

secures him a life-lease of the Senatorship from Nevada. For Nevada has

only one interest, and that is silver. Silver is her wool, her cotton,

her wheat, her coal, her iron, her lumber, her manufactures. It made her

a State. It made her first representative to Congress and her last. It

made Jones - Jones the drummer whose one sample is silver, who talks of

silver, who sings of silver, who dreams of silver, and who gets his

inspirations of the past, present, and future as he looks down the shaft

of his silver mine in Nevada.

Never did the tail of the dog work harder than does this little

bob-tailed thing called silver, that we find moving around among our

legs, trying to trip us up every time the political procession makes a

move.

There is distress because there is not money enough in circulation, say

these peddlers of silver. It is a well understood fact that every sound

bank in the country has idle money in its vaults looking for investment.

Money is precisely like the laborer - it, too, is on the lookout for

work. Show money where it can make interest, and it will come out of

those vaults as quick as the hungry laborer will answer the knock at his

door.

Whatever distress the laborer is suffering, however, be sure that the

millionaire owner of that idle money feels it not. His belly is well

filled and his back well covered, and he knows nothing of the jolt of

the box-car as he listens to the rhythm of the wheels of his Pullman

sleeper. And it matters little to this millionaire, this flower of a

foreign clime, when his increase sets in again. He has millions, a word

we little comprehend the meaning of, and he will never know distress,

any more than the laborer will know plenty again while this vampire of

progress is permitted to survive. But the time must come when labor will

get to work again for a few months each year, the usual thing now, to

produce the needed stock of necessaries for the country, and then he

will see the man of millions step off and collect his usual toll, and

enough besides to make good any shrinkage in the principal. This owner

of immense capital, this traveler in the Pullman, who makes his regular

rounds through the country collecting toll off every laborer in every

section, preparatory to his flight to Europe, is twin brother to the

great land owner, and there is no hope for our country until both are

legally or otherwise exterminated.

-

We could undo the capitalist by making interest illegal, as this would

force him. to draw on his principal. We do not object, however, to the

interest capital receives. Banks have no enemy in this proposed change,

and we suspect either the motives or the judgment of those whose stock

in trade is a howl against banks, and what they call usury. Money has

its place in civilization, and the bank where it is dealt in is a shop

just as much as is the dry goods store or grocery, and is entitled to

its profits just the same. If a man earns $5,000 he should be allowed to

charge something for its use the same as for the wagon be made or the

house he built. Neither the wagon nor house is any more the result of

his labor than is this money, and no one will question his right to

charge something for the use of the first two. It is here where the

banks are of service - the man with money takes it to a place - the bank

- where the man who wishes to hire it knows where to look for it. Good

sense will not deny a market to a man with potatoes; neither will it

deny him a market for any other product of his labor, be it capital or

what not. Interest is wrong only when it is being drawn by a

millionaire, who, of course, did not earn the principal. Those millions

is where the danger lies, when found with an individual owner, whether

they are in bank vaults or on the shelves of the millionaire merchant.

Besides, it is a slow process, this breaking up the millionaire owner of

some thing by stopping his interest. This earth should be ours while we

are alive to enjoy it, and there is no hope of getting it by applying

the graduated tax idea to either land or capital. When a curse like

poverty can be removed the quicker it is done the better.

Interest is wrong (we are not justifying extortion) when it is drawn by

the millionaire, not only because his labor did not earn the principal,

but because he has the power to take it out of the country where it was

earned. And he does take it out thereby impoverishing the country of the

capital that is needed to carry on developments that should never be

allowed to stop.

There is, as has been said, idle money now, but the millionaire owners

care nothing for the general welfare, and the people cannot get this

idle money because they find it impossible to pay interest for its use,

and carry at the same time the fearful burdens they are now loaded with.

An individual can be forced to submit to any kind of terms when his

necessities are driving him. When those necessities are satisfied he

must stop and let development go, for he cannot stand the terms. He is

willing to go ahead, but he simply finds his physical being unequal to

the task. As it is with one individual so it is with a nation of

individuals. They also can be forced to submit to any kind of terms when

their necessities are driving them, and when their necessities are

supplied they too must stop and let development go, for they cannot

stand the terms. In other words, the capacity of people, singly or

collectively, is limited, and if they are compelled to exhaust that

capacity in supporting millionaire parasites at home, and paying for

their extravagance abroad, they cannot improve themselves or develop

their country.

Complicity, then, and negligence on the part of our law makers has made

a few men the absolute owners of the financial or money branch of our

economics, and the people find it impossible to move except when these

masters find it to their interests to let them.

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

We could find use for all the capital that is now in the country, and

all that has been and is being taken out of it, but we should first

loosen the grip of these legalized despoilers and see how far what we

have got would go before we talk of issuing more, which would soon turn

up missing like the rest.

XIII.

We hear much about what we are losing by the balance of trade being

against us, but not a word about that other floodgate through which our

capital is rushing, namely, our millionaire class making its purchases

abroad, and their other expenses while living among the foreign birds of

a like feather. Their idle money is left here for investment. They do

not look to that quarter for income. The world over there is under the

feet of a few as it is here, and the result is the same - idle money

looking for interest.

No less an authority than the late Ward McAllister has said that up to

last year two hundred and eighty American women had married foreign

titles.

$1,000,000,000 was the war indemnity demanded of France by the Germans,

and so vast is this sum that the civilized world believed the Germans

wanted to retain possession of the conquered country and demanded what

the French could not pay. Yet the amount of American money it took to

buy those two hundred and eighty titles is far in excess of that war

indemnity. At four millions each it would exceed $1,000,000,000. But the

average cost must have been more than four millions. One of our

millionaire flour mill owners, who is a mere tallow candle in this

constellation, paid $7,000,000 for the title his daughter is now

wearing. And this $7,000,000 must have been a mere bagatelle compared to

what it cost Huntington to get the lively Hatzfeldt. The poor flour mill

man could not have paid that fellow's "debts of honor." This buying of

titles, however, is but one way by which the millionaires are beggaring

the American people. So much of their time is now spent over there that

they have come to look upon the United States as their rented farm, and

Europe as the place where they, in their high roller way, must get rid

of its income. Call to mind the millionaire families who live a large

part of their time in Europe. Call to mind those who have made Europe

their permanent home, with their income drawn from the United States.

Call to mind the great European estates, that have been first cleared of

their peasantry, and then leased by American millionaires, that they may

have the exclusive right to shoot at something. Call to mind the New

York City millionaire, who purchased an English estate, one to fit the

title he is lick-spittling after, and where he can rest, after airing

his mind in his great London Daily and Monthly; all three, estate and

periodicals, being a source of loss, that is made good by American

earned money. Call all these things to mind, and if we are poor in

capital have we not found the reason why?

Europe is the Broadway of these people, and they are there to squander

money, not to make it. And the European visitor to our shores does not

make up the loss. He comes, looks at some of our landscape, Niagara, the

Yosemite, etc., and is out of the country and home again. His is but a

drop to the ocean we lose.

Need we wonder at our gold disappearing? Our bonds and stocks,

Government and corporation, are scattered broadcast over the whole of

Europe, and those decrepit titles, that were dying out, have been put on

their feet again by American money, and are now living off the interest

of American bonds of one kind or another.

Nor should we have to borrow foreign capital. It is over a century since

this government was established, and it is time we had enough capital of

our own.

But the United States Treasury is, and has been for over thirty years,

the clearing house for the foreign holders of American securities. We

are a mortgaged nation, and the office of our National Treasury is the

place of all others where our foreign owners should get their interest.

We are still in possession of the office, however, and in this we are

ahead of Egypt, but it will take much hair-splitting to show any

substantial difference in the results.

History does not contain, the imagination cannot evolve, a more damnable

exhibition of incompetence than this failure of our scrub statesmen to

extricate their country from the clutch of its foreign masters.

Ruling one or the three principal gold producers of the world, they are

compelled to resort, to all the shifts known to the desperate bankrupt

in order to keep a few millions of it in the Treasury, and thereby save

our whole monetary system from going to the dogs. For let us not delude

ourselves; the moment the United States Treasury cannot give gold for

its greenbacks, that moment will the history of the greenback begin to

repeat itself. And we are not saving ourselves by making greenbacks lean

on silver. They cannot be made stronger than the thing they lean on.

Gold we must have as our standard.

We are in commercial relations with all nations, and the laws of trade

are inexorable, and say: You must have money that is acceptable to those

you buy from. Bring any other, and you can call the fifty cents it

contains one hundred, but your laws are for the United States only, and

you must accept the fifty cents or take back the mongrel that in your

own barnyard crows so loud, for the United States has induced a swindle

that she is powerless to enforce beyond her own borders.

No law is necessary to make us take gold. Just out of the mine or just

out of the mint, we want it - the whole world wants it.

Finance, if not as old as the hills, is at least pretty near as old as

the graves at the foot of them. There is nothing new to be learned

regarding her laws. And those laws do not shut out tin, copper, paper,

rags, nails, or silver from being used as money as long as it is

agreeable to the interested. But the wisdom of the world comes from her

experience, and if she calls for gold money it is because she has never

found a better. All other kinds fade before it as fades the moon before

the rising sun.

There is but one central orb in the world's monetary systems, and that

is Gold. And its satellites, paper or silver, will never be able to get

out of their orbits where the fixed and unalterable laws of the world's

financial systems have placed them. Temporary disturbances may deceive

the searcher, but he has mistaken his calling who cannot distinguish

planets from the sun around which they are moving.

The different governments of Europe, that are not gold producers, have

gold as the basis of their monetary systems, and, what is more, the gold

is there. The United States, that is a gold producer, would also have it

as the basis of its monetary system, but this nation, the one

independent nation that is all extensive and the leading producer of the

metal that the enlightened world approves of as making the best of all

moneys, cannot retain enough of it to give future stability to her own

currency.

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

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

ever received!

This nation - of all others on this earth - must be content with the

money of the enslaved East Indian coolie; must be content with the money

of the decaying Chinaman; must be content with the money of the half

savage republics to the south of us!

This nation, whose chief magistrate is the embodiment of power never

dreamed of by the Caesars and Napoleons in their palmiest days! This

nation, that is impregnable against the combined armies of the world, is

being sapped and mined of its wealth under the very eyes of its

driveling lawmakers, and silver is becoming the badge of its humiliation

and inferiority!

XIV.

The national debt of France is $7,000,000,000. This exceeds the combined

national debts of the United States, England, and Germany.

In territory, France is not as large as California.

Her population is[2] ....................... 37,000,000

The population of the United States is ..... 65,000,000

The population of England is ............... 37,000,000

The population of Germany is ............... 40,000,000

____________

Total .................................. 142,000,000

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

Her army is as large as that of Germany.

France, then, supports an army and navy of the first class, and has only

37,000,000 people to do it with. And this same 37,000,000 people pays

interest on a debt that is greater than that of the 142,000,000 people

in the three countries named. Yet there is no wail of distress, such as

we are familiar with, heard in this France, with its great army and

navy, and its fabulous interest-bearing, debt.

What is the secret of it?

France is the greatest producer of luxeries in the world, and, of

course, has the rich the world over for her customers; and she is a

nation of small owners, her resources, land and all else, being

subdivided among her people to an extent unknown elsewhere. This is only

half the secret.

There is a natural increase of wealth in every country. Keep that

natural increase in the country where it is made, and there will always

be a surplus left after the mere live and wear expenses are paid, and

this surplus can be used either to support an army or to build

macadamized roads. This then is the other half, without which she would

be where we are: France legislates to keep her wealth in her own country

- and her loss on that canal is only one plum out of her heeping bushel.

The foreign sapper and miner does no work on French soil. His field of

operation is the whole American continent, beginning in Canada and on

down through, without a skip, till he reaches Magellan and the Horn,

scattering his due bills all the way.

The French law-maker, in spite of his clatter, is without a peer, and he

dwarfs none so much as our own, who will become the butt of his own

sneer if he ever gets his eyes open.

This foreign master of the art of governing legislates in the interests

of his own people, who are the only source of his country's power or

greatness, and he leaves the income of the large farm or small one where

it is made. And when the issuing of bonds is the only alternative he

issues them in sizes those small incomes can buy.

Their labor pays the debt in the end, and it is their interests that are

first consulted when profits from bond issues are considered. He makes

the size of the bond fit their ability to buy, and not that of the

millionaire syndicate, as is the case in this misgoverned land, where

the matchless ignorance and complicity of the law-maker is made to serve

the matchless corruption and greed of its millionaire master.

No French syndicate makes its five to ten per cent. profits off every

issue of bonds.

Thousands among our toilers could have secured their ten-dollar savings

could they have bought Government bonds of that denomination but they

could not, and were forced to become the victims of swindling bankers.

Individual greed cares nothing for its victims as they are thrown on the

streets and its ways.

When this enterprising foreigner, with his surplus capital, the result

of wise laws, started for Panama to do a much needed work for this

Western world, that this great gold producing country could not find the

capital to do, our blackmailers worked the Monroe Doctrine on him and

all the while he was quieting the rascals, the sappers and miners were

splitting their sides at our treasury door.

Congress is opened by a chaplain. It should be opened by a physician and

a warrant - bibs for the drooling chins of some and the rest to jail.

[2] The writer is not within hundreds of miles of works of reference;

but these figures are substantially correct. The quibbler, however, is

welcome to anything he may find.

Conclusion.

A policy that keeps our increase of wealth in the country, and prevents

it from lodging in a few hands, can work no injury whatever. No

enterprise worthy of notice will languish for the want of the necessary

capital. The savings banks are the depositories of the people, and the

capital of those institution in all the cities of the country exceeds

that of the commercial or capitalistic banks, and the "statements" of

the savings banks should dispel any fears as to whether capital can be

concentrated afterit once gets into the hands of the people. $50,000,000

is the assets of more than one savings bank in the City of New York. And

our own San Francisco has its Hibernia and other banks of its kind, with

from $5,000,000 to $30,000,000 of capital. And when it is remembered

that the total deposits of an individual in most of those institutions

is not allowed to exceed $3,000, we can see that the people will not

fail us as "concentrators" when their help is needed.

Those statements also show whether those of small means are for

concealing it, or for putting it into the hands of competent managers

for investment. And if these competent managers approve of an enterprise

they will not neglect their client's interests by refusing to make the

required loan.

At present, they do not seek investment outside of corporate limits,

and, of course, the money they have been intrusted with, must be about

all invested, and cannot be called idle money, or there could be no

interest paid to its owners.

There will be no friction in the management of industrial enterprises

when this savings-bank depositor makes a direct investment. The voter at

the polls has his say as to who shall fill a political office, but he

cannot interfere in the work of the office itself. Neither will our

investor have the right or power to interfere. In short, the modern

industrial world would go to pieces even now, if it was run by its

million owners, instead of by its appointed or elected superintendent.

These small depositors are either laborers or in "business;" business

that they would enlarge if business of all kinds was not already

overdone. It is not to be inferred from this that the new law will cause

factories to run day and night, or keep the merchant's door always on

the swing. There will be an increase of business surely; but this world

is not like a goose whose liver we are after. Her capacity to absorb

what we make or produce is limited, and when we reach that limit, let us

be content, and chain down Greed for the moment, that we may look out

and see how beautiful is this world whereon we live, when freed from the

crack of the master's whip.

-

Through Confiscation alone can the people regain their liberty and

possession of their resources.

A readjustment means justice to all.

Without it the days of the republic are numbered, and the overwhelming

disaster to mankind will mark the burial place of the aspirations of its

founders, and the latest conquest of individual greed.

That disaster cannot be averted by Grover Cleveland, the head of the

Democratic party, finding a foreign market for a few more shiploads of

our products. And never should the oppressed of other lands find an

enemy here to take their bread. Pinching nature has not made wolves of

this people that they should go and show their teeth among the cabins

and hovels of Europe. Theirs is but a crust now, and a judgement should

wither the hand that would take it from them.

This disaster cannot be averted by Thomas B. Reed, the idol and

recognized leader of the Republican party, forcing the producers of

those few ship loads of products to consume them themselves. The whole

could be dropped to the bottom of the sea, or sold for their value a

hundred fold, and it would not stay the doom of the Republic one swing

of the pendulum.

This disaster cannot be averted by Robert G. Ingersoll - another idol -

advising the millionaire to be extravagant. Or by taking the

labor-saving machinery away from the people, and keeping them longer at

their toil, as this humbug has suggested.

-

This Is The Age Of Beef.

Our leaders are incompetent. Argument here is needless. We have plenty

of everything, and plenty of hunger at the same time, which shows

mismanagement. Our leaders, therefore, must be incompetent. Nor should

the blame of this be charged to the people. Statecraft, like the

prescribing of medicine or the practice of law, is a profession, and the

unlearned in their ways is at the mercy of the quacks of all three.

When none but quacks offer their services to the State a selection must

be made, and the people cannot be held to account for choosing quacks

when there was nothing to choose from but quacks.

Whatever physical characteristics distinguishes the genius of leadership

from the ordinary man; whether it is long legs or short; long nose or

pug; big heads or little, one thing is certain - history tells you on

her every page that leadership is never found in combination with beef.

Cleveland and Reed! How they stew and swelter in positions they cannot

fill. How these Jonahs have grown till they have become the whale

itself. How their fat will spot the pages to come, and float on the sea

where the Republic went down.

And Ingersoll - let us not forget Ingersoll - the thumber over of past

woes, whose five hundred dollar opera ticket identifies the class to

which he now belongs, and proves his success as a fifteenth century

reformer. The people made and keep up the acquaintance of this man by

way of the ticket office, but instead of considering him as they would

any other footlight performer, who had struck a paying vein and was

working it for all it was worth, and who can only be heard at so much

per ticket, they have come to look upon the character he has been acting

as the man himself, and their friend who would make their cause his own.

No fee is collected at the door of the little church that is found along

the byways of every Christian land, and its humble preacher can be heard

free of cost. But abuse of this follower and disciple of Jesus, whose

teachings are in no way responsible for the crimes of Individual Greed,

has been the source of large profits to this man, who has even gone so

far as to tell his hearers not to give a dollar to the support of a

preacher - meaning, doubtless, while you could see his performance for

half the money.

This man, whose audience is world-wide, uses his great opportunity for

helping mankind by inclosing the scenes of former struggles, and

collecting the gate receipts.

This bogus friend of the people answers the cry of distress that is

heard all over this bountiful land by a shrug, and a nod to the master

to drop a few more crumbs, as if the people were hungry dogs under the

table.

Ingersoll a friend of the oppressed? He would render justice to the

enslaved toiler by lengthening his hours of labor.

A sham reformer, who would destroy the Inquisition of this day by

plunging his spotless blade into an Inquisition whose sun has set, never

to rise again.

Ingersoll of the tender soul, who shows the sincerity of his

exhibition-tears for the persecuted dead by riding, rough-shod, over the

sensibilities of the blameless living.

Warrior Ingersoll, furiously charging up and down an abandoned

battle-field, rattling the bleaching bones of a dead and gone enemy -

for an admission fee.

Ingersoll the capper, who would turn all eyes to the ashes of a

burned-out bell, while another is being dug in our rear.

Cleveland - Reed - Ingersoll,

The Three

C A G L I O S T R O S.