Victoria C. Woodhull

“ Why should we not be the nation to give to the world a reformed currency? The world—or that part of it which has grown to appreciate our kind of freedom—involuntarily turns its eyes to us for patterns of all things that a people during a change of government require. One of the first things a government requires is money. Why shall we not show the nations how to make the best use of their means, and give them a system that will do more for them than any system that has yet been tried, and by so doing also meet our own needs? ”

“ When a person worth millions, dies, instead of leaving it to his children, who have no more title to it than anybody else’s children have, it must revert to the people, who really produced it. Do you say that is injustice to the children? I say, No! And if you ask me how the rich man’s children are going to live after his death, I answer, by the same means as the poor man’s children live. Let it be remembered that we have had simple freedom quite long enough. By setting all our hopes on freedom we have been robbed of our rights. What we want now is more than freedom—we want equality! ”

“ I would make the stigma so great that woman should find it impossible to confront the world in a marriage for a home, for position, or for any reason save love alone; and I would have her who should sell her person to be degraded in marriage, as culpable, as guilty, as impure at heart, as she is held to be who sells it otherwise. I would put every influence of the community against impure relations and selfish purposes, in whatever form they might exist, and encourage honour, purity, virtue and chastity. ”

“ Bank profits demand the circulation of more notes than they have real value to represent. Profits come only from speculating either upon the confidence or the money of the people, and government has no right to protect such illegitimate and unjust practices.
Our present system of banking is a swindle upon the people, which it is simply surprising that they endure as they have and do. For the banks to be permitted to filch from the people twenty-four million dollars per annum is an outrageous villainy which, if comprehended by the people in its true light, could not exist another year. ”

“ Has the evolution of government proved a blessing to the people? Are we, as a people, in a better condition politically? Are we nearer the ultimate condition than they were of ancient time, when the family was the highest form of government? If we are, then we should be equally improved, industrially, if we were upon the same plane in this respect. There are no contradictions in natural growth. Like degrees of evolution bring equal good in all; the same to government, to industry, to intellect, to morals, to religion. ”

“ Tested by these propositions, what conditions and relations does the government of the United States, as a whole composed of parts, present? Does it form one homogeneous whole, the paramount interests of the parts of which is the best welfare of the whole? Does each and every part act in unity and harmony with every other part, and in turn yield to the preponderant authority of the whole, with that grace and dignity which bespeak unison of purpose and interest? ”

“ It has always been concession by the government. There has never been an equality for the people. It has always been the stronger, in some sense, preying upon the weaker; and the people have never had justice. When there is authority, whether it be of law, of custom, or of individuals, neither of these can exist except in name. Neither do these principles apply to the people in their collective capacity, but when the people’s time shall come they will belong to every individual separately. Equality will exist in freedom and be regulated by justice. ”

“ The fundamental propositions upon which this government professes to rest—that all men and women are born free and equal and entitled to the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness—are in accordance with the general order of the universe below man, and are therefore of the highest possible authority.
That all are born free is a proposition that no one can question; but this freedom is general to all, and does not refer to the individual, nor entitle him or her to push his freedom so as to encroach upon the same freedom guaranteed to every other individual. ”

“ THE SILVER QUESTION. As if they were not yet satisfied with the oppressions already in operation, some of those whom you have sent to Washington to conduct your business, and who have got you into all this difficulty, think that silver is not good enough money in which to pay interest, because it is not now worth proportionally quite so much as gold. Where has the wisdom and prudence of this people fled? Have they no care for what may come upon their families, that they sit by and see indignity after indignity piled mountain-high upon the people? ”

“ I am for revolution, if to get equality and justice it is required. I only want the people to have what it is their right to have—what the religion of humanity, what Christ, were he the arbiter, would give them. If, in getting that, the people find bayonets opposing them, it will not be their fault if they make their way through them by the aid of bayonets. And these persons who possess the monopolies and who guard them by bayonets, need not comfort themselves with the idea that the people won’t fight for their rights. ”

“ On the contrary, it is their true interest to render fullest justice and strictest equality to the demands of labor, to be determined by the principles that shall promote the most general good. It is the greatest mistake of the age—it has been the greatest mistake of all ages—to suppose that individual benefit must accrue from the acquisition of wealth at the expense or sacrifice of any general principle of justice. It is also a great mistake for labor to array itself in opposition to wealth, and to form combinations to control it. ”

“ Why do individuals want a gold basis upon which to issue currency? To get the privilege to levy interest on many times as much currency as they have capital invested. A bank with an actual capital of $100,000 in gold could issue $300,000 in currency, all which it could loan out together with nearly all the deposits that it could secure, which, in some instances, have been known to amount to ten times the capital. Why should not a class of men, if the people are blind enough to let them do it, speculate upon the credulity of the public through the idea that they are rendering a public service? ”

“ It is a crime for a single person to steal a dollar, but a corporation may steal a million dollars, and be canonized as saints.
Oh, the stupid blindness of this people! Swindled every day before their very eyes, and yet they don’t seem to know that there is anything wrong, simply because no law has been violated. In their eyes everything that is lawful is right, and this has become the curse of the nation. But the opposite—that everything which is right is lawful—don’t follow as a part of their philosophy. ”

“ What the world needs to-day is, that science, supported by wealth, shall come into power. Could this be arrived at, the dangers and difficulties now hovering around the issues between the still captive and the interests of enslaved labor, would be dispelled, and society, without further convulsive efforts, could assume its uninterrupted march toward perfect conditions of existence. It is to be feared that wealth will not yield to science, and that it will endeavor to bring it under its sway to further enslave the “toiling millions” and make them minister longer to its despotism. ”

“ Having obtained freedom from the despotism of rulers and governments, the rule and despotism of individuals began to usurp the places made vacant by them. Where once the king or the emperor reigned, capital, reinforced by the power of public opinion and religious authorities, now sits and forges chains with which to fetter and bind the people. Where, by divine right, men once demanded the results of the labors of their people, the privileged few, by the means of an ingenious system, facetiously called popular laws, now make the same demand, and with equally decisive results. ”

“ Let it be seen that no shirking of duty is permitted on the part of pretended labor representatives, and also let it be seen that all who lend themselves to the schemes of capital are properly shown up to the country.
Our interests are great and our country is dear to us, for it has cost us immense treasure and blood. Is it not worthy of being defended from all schemes, when so much has been required to construct and preserve it? To the care of laboring classes its preservation is now committed. Will they prove themselves worthy of the high trust? ”

“ I might show that the United States is, after all, nothing but a confederation of equal and antagonistic powers, and not a Federal Union; that Washington is more a place in which representatives from the several States assemble to quarrel over the spoils of office and to lay the ropes for the succession, than it is the capital of a free and mighty people; that there is such a contrariety of laws in the several States upon any given subject, that it puzzles a Philadelphia lawyer to tell whether a given act is a crime, a misdemeanour, or whether actionable at all in the different States ”

“ Society must no longer punish and compel suffering and death for its own wrongs. It must evolve such a social system as shall leave no single member of the common body to suffer. When one member of the body suffers, the whole body sympathizes. So, also, when a member of the social body suffers, does the whole body suffer. And yet we have pretended philanthropists and Christians who have never grasped that truth.
Our civilization and our Christianity have been made too much a matter of faith in, and devotion to, the unknowable, divorced from all human relations. ”

“ Where could oppression hide itself? Where could the lusts of the flesh plot their treason against the sovereignty of the spirit, beyond the range of spirit vigilance—this new safeguard of human society, the eternal law of progress, which is now unfolding? ”

“ We have looked on quietly and seen the sufferings to which this people are reduced by the rapacity of the usurers, until we can no longer hold our peace; and if it be in our power, we intend that wealth and not industry shall yet be made to pay what it should have been made to pay at first; that it shall return to the government the bonds which the toiling masses have redeemed by the rivers of blood that they have shed, and that the government shall return the $2,000,000,000 of interest that it has already filched from industry for interest on this most unjust debt. ”