Various

“ Woe to the ragged woman who snatches food for her starving children.
Woe to the bad men who steal during ten years, one hundred thousand dollars from the Members of the American Bankers’ Association. These five or six hundred bad men will be sentenced, in the aggregate, to a penal servitude of over two thousand years.
But let the President of the Bankers’ Association steal one million and four hundred thousand dollars from the men and women who trusted him with their money, and the highly-connected thief gets off with a nominal punishment and a seven-year term which will never be enforced. ”

“ Wipe out the Public Debt and there would be no foundation for the National Banks. One form of privilege having been abolished, the other would follow. And then others would follow! The bonds are the keystone to the arch. The Public Debt is the nucleus of the system by means of which Wealth runs the Government for its own benefit.
Who wants the Government to economize? Not the Privileged. By no means. If the Government were to economize there would be such a surplus in the Treasury that the Government, for very shame, would have to pay itself out of debt. ”

“ It was once my privilege to go over a thousand or two letters from people who, after becoming members of a great and good system of education by correspondence, had written in the fullness of their hearts to tell how it had made their lives brighter and happier and to thank the school, not as much for the knowledge they had acquired from their reading and study at home, but for the great pleasure and joy the having of this knowledge had brought them—for the new intellectual, social and moral life that had come to them with it. ”

“ With the doors of immigration standing wide open vomiting into our industrial world all the cheap white labor of the universe, our Protected capitalists are still able to convince our wage-earners that American capital protects American labor from the competition of foreign “pauper” labor!
Having ground down the price of factory labor to such a low point that they can undersell foreigners in the foreign market, our Privileged and Protected Capitalists can nevertheless convince American laborers that the motive for high tariffs is to enable the Capitalist to pay big wages! ”

“ While in Russia, Doctor Talmage saw the Rulers, and no others. He talked with the governing class, and no others. He saw a ship from the United States bringing bread to the Russian farmers, but it never occurred to his mind that a drouth in one portion of the huge Russian Empire was no good reason why the New World should have to save Russian peasants from starvation.
Looking only on the surface, seeing only what his “old friend” the Czar, wished him to see, he praised the Russian government in terms of the most unqualified eulogy. ”

“ A robber who has worn the mask and ridden with the band on many a midnight marauding foray is always listened to with breathless interest when he enters the box and tells how the robbery was planned, how the crime was committed, and now the spoil was divided. This is but natural. No matter how much proof one may have to establish the guilt of the accused, one feels, always, that there are details which none but the criminal can supply. Here Thomas Lawson’s value is beyond dispute and beyond price. ”

“ As we have seen, sovereign power alone can issue money. That being a fact, Congress alone should issue all our money, whether coin or paper, and it should all be made a full legal tender; and no one kind “redeemable” in another kind; with no state or National note circulation as a substitute for money.
Another very important consideration is that it should be issued in sufficient volume to effect all our exchanges on a cash basis, or as nearly so as possible; for debt and usury, now called interest, is the present curse of every civilized country on earth. ”

“ Now I am happy to know that the people are waking up to know that justice and righteousness will prevail against fraud and rascality. I feel happy to believe that Tom Watson will be our next president. Now let us all get to work by showing up the light of truth to our misguided laboring people. Our forefathers taught us the principles of self-government—equal rights to all and special privileges to none. I would say that every voter should read Watson’s Magazine and vote for Watson for President. ”

“ Yes, he has taken this greedy lion or corporation by the throat with a cry that he surrender to the working people their rights and that they must be equal to you. Then, my brother workingman, I appeal to you with all my earnest and honest heart to rally to this honest and brave man, Watson, and stand by him and vote for him and aid him to devour the greedy lion that you may have your liberties and rights for yourself, wife and children. ”

“ Nothing is redeemed when a gold dollar is given for a silver dollar, or a metallic dollar exchanged for a paper dollar. That method of fooling the people will go out of fashion as the people become educated. All money is absolute fiat money. That is, the law makes the money. God made no money. Nature made no money. Evolution made no money. The law takes raw material and makes money out of it, just as the lumberman takes a log and makes plank or shingles out of it.
The Government fiat makes gold money, makes silver money, makes nickel money, makes copper money. ”

“ I made the statement that the railroads had violated our Constitution by “a joint ownership of competing lines, thus establishing the monopoly which the Constitution forbids.”
That is a serious charge. If it be true that the railroads have trampled the Constitution under foot and established a monopoly in defiance of law, that fact alone should damn them. No man, no set of men, no corporation, no combination of corporations, should be allowed to make law for themselves in Georgia. We should compel all persons, natural and artificial, to respect and obey our laws. ”

“ Sir, when I consider that, by a single bill like the present, millions of dollars may be transferred annually from one part of the community to another; when I consider the disguise of disinterested patriotism under which the basest and most profligate ambition may perpetrate such an act of injustice and political prostitution, I cannot hesitate, for a moment, to pronounce this system the most stupendous instrument of corruption ever placed in the hands of public functionaries. ”

“ You claim for the Government the power to create money. If that be so, why clamor for gold and silver only? Let us suppose that the United States Treasury is now full of such money as you propose, Gold, Silver or Fiat. I want some of it. How am I to get it?
I agree with you heartily that the making of our Federal Government is all out of joint, and I think that it is the unwarranted meddling with affairs over which it has no rightful control. The remedy, as I think, is not in enlarging and extending its powers, for every step taken in that direction makes worse conditions possible. ”

“ As the cost of living decreased, the purchasing power of wages would increase, and every dollar now paid to Labor would command for the laborer a greater quantity of necessaries, comfort and luxuries of life.
How could you suppose that the wages of workers will go down when the masses of the people wrest the Government out of the hands of the plutocrats? Public ownership of public utilities cannot be brought about until the people rout the Privileged Few at the polls, when that day comes do you fear that the people will cut down their own wages as the Privileged Few have done? ”

“ Democrats, and the Democratic Party, always went up against the National Banks to fight them, declaring that such an institution was of deadly hostility to the spirit of republican government.
Democrats, and the Democratic Party, always clamored against the Funding System, and demanded that the Public Debt be paid off.
Those were the memorable, historic principles of Democrats in the years preceding the Civil War—in the years when the Democrats had a mission, a creed; leaders who had convictions, champions, who loved ideas well enough to cherish them more dearly than office. ”

“ If high Tariffs benefit the laborer, why is it that workmen get better wages in free-trade England than in high-Tariff France, Italy and Germany? If high-Tariffs give the benefit to the laborer why is it that the Salvation Army had to save the factory hands at Fall River, Mass., from starvation, by ladling out free soup? The best paid laborers in the United States are the negroes of the South who raise cotton, a free trade product. The laborer gets a larger share of the cotton he produces than any employee in any protected industry. ”

“ I don’t believe there is one person in a hundred that knows the real luxury of sleep. Consider the uncounted hordes that live in terror of “night air.” Consider the more enlightened that raise their bedroom windows just a trifle, to calk them up as soon as ever it turns a little cool. But even when wide open, a bedroom with a window in it is not by any means the same thing as a tent to sleep in, a tent by the lakeside, its front all flaring open, and its sides and top working like bellowses with the breeze. ”

“ Since then we have created by law a person as great, as arrogant and tyrannical as the king—the Public Corporation.
How can all men have an equal footing in law when we give special privileges to the corporate person and enable that person to levy tribute at will on the wealth of the nation? ”

“ They have put elements of value and beauty there which nature did not supply. They have so directed their labor, their judgment, their good taste, their tender interests, that the home which they have created is as different from the wild land, as the noble watch-dog at the door differs from the gray wolf of the wilderness. ”

“ Now if the people ruled this country, if there was no Privilege, no Monopoly, no taxing of some to enrich others, no granting of Governmental powers to private Corporations, no corrupt alliance between Commerce and Government, you may bet your bottom dollar that fat dividends would be cut, before men, women and children would be desolated by a reduction of wages. ”

“ I don’t believe many busy women can save as much as a third from their lighter days, but I do firmly believe that nearly every one of you can save some part of it. Maybe it is only half an hour, but much can be done in even that little space several times a week. What we need in our daily work is more generalship. Your body is like an army blundering around without a leader unless you guide it with your head. ”

“ How can all have equal rights, when the corporate person can spend millions of dollars to corrupt our city councils, our state legislatures, our Congress and our courts?
The movement against these legalized law-created individuals is the awakening of the spirit of democracy, and it means the eventual wiping out of these public service corporations which occupy relatively the same position in this country that the king does in a monarchy. It means that genuine democracy, the rule of the people, will supplant the rule of the corporation. ”

“ If what we read for amusement happens to be poor literature it is not true to life and you are learning things about yourself and others that are not true and may lead you into mistakes some day. You know what dime novels—Wild West and detective stories—will do to young people. It isn’t only because they are exciting and deal with crime, but because they give false ideas of life and false ideals. There are thousands of books, apparently harmless enough, that will hurt grown people as much as dime novels hurt the children. ”

“ How many millions of dollars have the common people lost by the rascality of dishonest bank officers? How many times have we seen frantic crowds of men and women gather about the door of some busted bank—men sick at heart because of sudden ruin, women screaming in terror because robbed of every dollar they had on earth?
Yet when an infamous scoundrel like John R. Walsh of Chicago converts to his use the millions of money held in his banks, Leslie Shaw, Secretary of the Treasury, hastens into print to say that it was all right ”

“ Why are the members of the order, who have carried their insurance at great sacrifices, to have an additional burden placed on them? Why must this great reserve be created unless for the same reasons it was created in the three great companies in New York City? What is the object of creating a reserve when there is no paid-up or extended insurance and no cash-surrender to be made, and when assessments are required to be called for as needed to pay death losses? Why should any assessment company have a reserve beyond a few assessments ahead? ”

“ Yes, there is internal heat in the world we inhabit, but we are taught that the Man was once a ball of fire and is now gradually cooling off. It is ridiculous to say it is alive like us. Look how fine and delicate is our flesh; see the Man made of coarse, rough substance forming banks along every river we navigate. Think of how tremendous its heat is, when it is great enough to keep these teeming millions of us from perishing! ”

“ Next month in the April number we will take up woman’s interest in politics. Is there any reason for her being interested in them? What effect do city, state and national laws and law-makers have on her own personal welfare or that of her family? If she raises children what effect does that have on future politics? What two great questions now before the country bear directly on the price she pays for food and clothing and on the price her husband receives for what he sells or for his labor? ”