William Greenwood

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”