Victoria C. Woodhull

“ The public highways are a perfect illustration of communism. They are constructed and maintained at the public expense for the public benefit. All grades of people meet upon them on an equality, and yet no one either loses his identity in the mass or is deprived of any of his private rights, or of any of his personalities. But the principles upon which the industries are conducted and that govern their relations to wealth, the poor man who owns no property, would have no right to use the highways. ”

“ Was it not enough that mothers and wives should give their sons and husbands to fill the soldier’s grave that the wealth of the country might remain inviolate? Was it not enough that we did all this without now being forced to give our toil year after year to return these rich, who did nothing, these loans? Is it too much to ask of wealth that it pay the expenses of the war? Should we not rather demand, in tones of thunder if lesser ones are insufficient to rouse its holders to a sense of their duty, that it shall bear its part of the burden? ”

“ 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. ”

“ In this land of fruitfulness and plenty, if all the labour there is were constantly employed every man’s home might be a palace, and want and sorrow be banished from the country. Am I asking too much for those who have endured long years of toil and suffering to bring this beautiful country to its present condition? Am I asking what you are not willing that they shall have? Am I asking anything more than justice? If you grant them less than justice God Almighty will come some day, visit you and set the matter right, as he visited the South and liberated the downtrodden blacks. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Indeed, I would make it a crime to enter marriage in ignorance of any of its possible duties and responsibilities; and twice a crime to bear improper children, for they who, to satisfy their own propensities, bring children into the world marked with the brand of Cain or Judas, are the worst kind of criminals. I would frown upon prostitution in every form; and make promiscuousness an abomination in the sight of man as it is in the sight of God ”

“ Why should not their agent—the Government—when amply secured, freely loan the people all the money that they want for use? Suppose that the farmers and the manufacturers did not have to pay interest on the money that they are compelled to have to produce their crops and goods? Don’t you see that they could compete successfully with the people of any country in the world, in the production of anything? Institute free money and there would be no necessity for a tariff for protection to keep out the cheaper goods of other nations. ”

“ WHO ARE CITIZENS? But who are citizens? Why, those who possess and enjoy, or who have the right to acquire and enjoy, an equality of political and civil privileges. Only certain classes of men possess these rights. These certain classes having possessed themselves of the machinery of the Government, tread upon the Constitution and spit upon the declarations of the Supreme Court. ”

“ The schools are not a public necessity, they are only a public good. Who will pretend to say that they are not an improvement on the old system, of every family conducting its own education, or of a few families combining to do so? Everybody recognises the public advantage of a communal basis 41for the education of all the children; recognises that the public good demands that the community shall not only provide school privileges, but shall insist on every child having the benefit of them, not for the good of the child so much, as for the community’s own good. Now this is communism. ”

“ The lives, the labour, the all of the poor may be taken for the public good; but your bonds, your money, your usury must not be touched. They are considered to be of more consequence than life and toil and everything else that the poor have got to be taken!—your revenue must be sacred, and the Shylocks must take their “pound of flesh” from the daily labourer, let it cost whatever blood it may in the cutting of it; and no wise Portia comes to stay the hand already dripping with the life of the toilers, for is not the interest wrenched from their toil, their life! Look at the poor of the country ”

“ This was the reply that the king made to the people who wanted a political republic; of course it will be the reply that the privileged classes will make to those who want an industrial republic. You know how fallacious the objection has been politically. The king deprived of his crown has not been compelled to sleep with the scavenger. It will prove equally as fallacious industrially. The money and railroad kings will not have to live with the men who do the rough work of the industrial public, unless they choose to do so, any more than they do now. ”

“ On the contrary, the inspiration of the privileged classes, the power and use of wealth will be found everywhere; ’tis true that we have a Republican Government in name and form, but it is also true that money rules, that it elects the officers and controls the legislation. The people who are outside of the privileged classes, outside of the offices and the press, are powerless to help themselves. ”

“ The machinery of the government is in the hands of those who want things to continue as they are, while the few in power who are devoted to the public welfare, beat the air in vain attempts to strike either the causes of, or the remedy for existing evils. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I would make enforced commerce as much a crime in marriage as it is now out of it, and unwilling child-bearing a double crime. As the architects of humanity, I would hold mothers responsible for the character and perfection of their works; make them realize that they can make their children what they ought to be, every one of them God’s image in equality. ”

“ It was this character that gave the Greeks as a nation, and to the world as an example, the first code of laws; gave a Constitution as a conservatory of the people’s rights, and made a Lycurgus possible, the principles of whose Spartan code are only now beginning to be appreciated. It is to this code that we must look as the prime source of political economy, and it has been the inspiration of all the modifications of laws ever made in the interests of the people. In this respect, Lycurgus will be known in the future ages as the Spartan law-giver of the world. ”

“ The best of what made Greece, still lives in the people of the world. Greece was the garden of modern civilization and will remain its inspiration until three elements of character—the religious, the intellectual and the social—shall join their powers to construct the future government of the world. ”

“ Hence, men have no more right to seize upon the land and deprive others of its use, or part with it to others for a consideration, than they have to bottle the air for the same purpose. There can be no ownership of the elements; no ownership of the land any more than of the air or water. Pretended ownership is another name for a usurpation. But the elements, unused, are valueless. Labour applied to them yields results, and these are valuable, consequently wealth; the net results after subsisting the people are the accumulated wealth of the world, and there is no other wealth. ”

“ But we may look in vain through the whole list of those who have, one after another, prominently occupied public attention, for a great mind in the sense of instituting reforms in government; in replacing vicious by beneficent legislation. Washington, who will always be deservedly revered, was in no sense a great man save in goodness. As a general or statesman he has been excelled by dozens since his time, not one of whom has left anything behind him that will make his name immortal. ”

“ The condition of the people and the country could scarcely have been worse had we had Kings and Parliaments, instead of Presidents and Congresses. A tree, let it be called by whatever name, is known by the fruit it bears. If we are to judge the political tree in this country in this way, shall we not be forced to say that we have gathered thorns from grapes and thistles from figs? In purity in the administration of justice, our Government can stand no comparison with that of England. ”

“ Our fathers would have never fought for the liberty to have a King or an aristocratic ruler of their own. They endured the hardships and privations of that war for independence for themselves and their posterity. Nothing less than this was the inspiration of those years of suffering, nothing less than this could have given them inspiration to gain their independence. ”

“ I would build the Pacific railroads north and south for the people and not give them to individuals, as was the case with those already built; I would construct immense workshops in every State in which the skilled labour of both sexes might be utilised when otherwise unemployed, because every day that any labourer is idle is a loss to the prospective wealth of the country; which fact is the condemnation of the policy of throwing men out of employment whenever business is depressed. Every labourer thus made idle adds to the general distress, because from being a producer he becomes a consumer ”

“ THE ROOT OF THE TROUBLE. We come now in logical order to the grand and fundamental error that has been made which lies at the back of all political fallacies, and to which are to be primarily attributed all industrial and financial ills from which we suffer, both as a nation and as individuals, since, let the Government be as good as it may, with this error lying between it and the industries, it were impossible that evil should not come upon the people. ”

“ While I do not desire to stir up the wrongs that industry has suffered in this matter, and drive the weary toilers to seek redress, it is nevertheless time, when thousands of families are suffering the pangs of hunger as a consequence of this wrong, to lay it open before the people who have been its cause and who have profited by it; it is time that the government should be shown the errors that it has committed and be told that the people are coming to an understanding of them ”

“ This country needs that God shall send a law-giver; one who shall understand what has led to the present situation; what the exigencies of the people demand, and who shall have the ability to propose and the power to enforce the needed remedies—a Lycurgus to give a new code of laws that shall be the incarnation of the principles of the Declaration of Independence, which alone of all principles have any influence to mould the people, and from which they draw the characteristics which distinguish them from the other nations of the earth ”

“ Should they not know that their scheming will have to come to an end soon? Then why do they not act the part of wise men, and anticipate its coming in time to save themselves? If they do not, the people will sooner or later take the roads from them. It may be said that there is no constitutional or legal way in which this can be done, and they may rest upon this as secure protection. But I would recall the words of Charles Sumner, “Anything that is for the public good is constitutional,” and warn them not to rely upon so slim protection. ”

“ Suppose the security of the national bank notes were their own capital instead of the bonds, who would not prefer to trust the faith of the United States, rather than that of any individual in these times of Credit Mobilers, Tweed and whiskey rings? Then, again, why should individuals furnish the circulating medium of the people, when the people can furnish it themselves and save the expense? $1,000,000,000 is as small an amount of currency of all kinds as will transact the business of the country properly. ”

“ MONEY THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL. If every person were to produce all the different things he needs or wants, there would be no use for money, and the people would escape the curses that follow in its trail, but experience taught labourers that it was an economy for each to labour in some special way, and to exchange his surplus products for those of others labouring in different ways. ”

“ At the basis of all questions relating to wealth and money, lie the elements—the land, the water, the air—and these are the free gifts of God to man. None have the right to dispossess others of their natural inheritance in these elements. The right to life carries along with it the right to the use of so much of each of these elements as is necessary to support it. No one has a natural right to more than this. ”