League of the Public Weal

“ Indeed, it is doubtful if free government can long exist in a country where such [Pg 11] enormous amounts of money are allowed to be accumulated in the vaults of corporations, to be used at discretion in controlling the property and business of the country against the interest of the public and that of the people, for the personal gain and aggrandizement of a few individuals. ”

“ The funds wherewith to buy are the surplus revenue, the proceeds of public property, and some £8,000,000 of poor’s rate. Assuredly, here is ample means of restoring their own to the people, without robbing anybody. All that is wanted is an honest parliament to legalize the work. ”

“ We deny gold and silver any function as money except for small amounts--such as five dollars or less. We know of no supplies of those metals in our mountains, and if we tied our prosperity to their chariot, the little, comparatively, there is among us, would gradually gravitate into a few hands, and these men would become the masters of the country. We issue, therefore, a legal-tender paper money, receivable for all indebtedness, public and private, and not to be increased beyond a certain per capita of population. ”

“ At the death of any individual, child or adult, the property reverted to the commonwealth. There were no capitalists, no monopolies; consequently no great enterprises except those undertaken by the government—and they were many—the costs being defrayed by the public treasury. ”

“ With these facts before our eyes we must realise the necessity of limiting the issue of paper money to the needs, the custom, and the benefit [Pg 47] of the community in general. Permission cannot be granted to certain individuals to play with the wealth and prosperity of society, to take from it its hard cash and to give it in exchange rags of paper. What incentive can they offer to persuade the public to give up to them valuable bills for worthless ones, certainty for uncertainty? ”

“ Fair Play demands that money for the State Shall be collected, so that all shall pay, And pay in due proportion to their means, Allowance given for the right to live. He who earns just sufficient for his needs Should not be asked to give his daily bread, But all who profit by their toil should yield Unto the State their equitable share; Commodities required in daily life, And necessary to the weal of Man, Should not be taxable, but free as air, And luxuries alone be charged upon. ”

“ Requiring, as it does, all dues to the Government to be paid in gold and silver, its effect is to restrain excessive issues of bank paper by the banks disproportioned to the specie in their vaults, for the reason that they are at all times liable to be called on by the holders of their notes for their redemption in order to obtain specie for the payment of duties and other public dues. ”

“ Speaker, will not be found in a superabundance of depreciated [367] paper currency. It lies in the opposite direction—and the sooner the nation finds itself on a specie basis, the sooner will the public treasury be freed from embarrassment, and private business relieved from discouragement. Instead, therefore, of entering upon a reckless and boundless issue of legal tenders, with their consequent depression if not destruction of value, let us set resolutely to work and make those already in circulation equal to so many gold dollars. ”

“ So we accept the paper promises of the government, when we believe the government can and will pay them without discount. Paper money is more convenient to handle than metal money, and so long as it is worth its face value, so long will it circulate to the partial or total exclusion of gold and silver. It is when a doubt of the solvency of the government creeps into the mind of the public, that the people demand the money upon which there is never a discount. ”

“ 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? ”

“ But we are already taking steps leading to the abolition of the money system. Society is being transformed into one huge labour organisation or company to produce and distribute what is already produced without the agency of gold coinage or paper money. The end of the power of money is imminent. ”

“ The seven or eight millions of rates raised annually for the relief of the poor are also public property,—only with this important distinction, that being a legal substitute for the share which the poor formerly enjoyed of the tithes and other ecclesiastical revenues, their destination for the poor has equity as well as law for its sanction. ”

“ They agree in their elevation of the power of money to the supreme place socially—one defending the power as belonging of right to wealth, the other regarding the social situation as due to the unjust privileges of the few who prey upon the many. ”

“ The separation of the money of government from all banking institutions. The national government, only, should exercise the high prerogative of issuing paper money, and that should be subject to prompt redemption on demand, in gold and silver, the only equal standards of value recognized by the civilized world. ”

“ It is asked, whether the borrowing class, may not forbear to borrow, and whether this power of forbearance, is not an evidence, that the profit or income collected by banking, proceeds from the voluntary act of individuals. Should bread and water be placed in abundance, before a hungry and thirsty multitude, could their eating and drinking be fairly said to be merely voluntary? Currency is the medium for exchanging necessaries. If gold and silver, the universal medium, are legislated out of sight, all human wants unite to compel men to receive the tax collecting substitute. ”

“ Remember that a government based upon gold, {7} wealth, sordidness, must end unhappily. We must have other and higher ideals for our people.
Do not misunderstand me; I do not decry individual, and, in certain degrees, aggregate wealth. Let our citizens accumulate money "beyond the dreams of avarice." Through the natural channels open for its circulation, it will gradually flow back to the community. ”

“ To delegate this power to banks and money-lenders is as grave an error as it would be to confer on a class the privilege of making laws for the whole community.
The volume of money should be regulated to suit the requirements of all the people and not the greed of those who thrive on usury.
The use of metals for money is unscientific, and they will eventually be relegated to obscurity with the shells, pelts, tally-sticks and other cumbrous mediums of exchange employed by our ancestors. But great reforms cannot be accomplished at once. Gold and silver are the money of the Constitution. ”

“ That act increasing the market value of the bonds gave a profit to many who now join the beneficiaries of the act assuming the District debt in vociferous proclamation that "the Government cannot create value." Does not the location of a public building add to the value of adjacent real estate? Do not towns contest the location of a county seat because of the advantage it brings? Does not the use of gold and silver as money increase the value of each ounce of each metal? ”

“ Those who make use of the great modern accumulations of wealth, gathered together by the dragnet process of the sale of stocks and bonds, and piling up of reserves, must be treated as under a public obligation; they must be made responsible for their business methods to the great communities which are in fact their working partners, so that the hand which makes correction shall easily reach them and a new principle of responsibility be felt throughout their structure and operation.
What are the right methods of politics? ”

“ Nobody wants to penalise or to stigmatise income derived from dividends, rent, or interest; for accumulated capital, apart from monopoly, represents the exercise of thrift and prudence, qualities which are only less valuable to the community than actual service and labour. ”

“ The power now exercised by the bankers will, in a producers' society, be under the control of public servants whose business it will be to link up the various lines of activity within the economic machine.
At one stage in the development of the world's economic life it was necessary to take out of the hands of private individuals the right to issue money, and to make of money issue a public function. To-day no one questions the desirability of having money issued by public authority, and the right to issue money is recognized as one of the important attributes of sovereignty. ”

“ Every socialized industry and every farmer will furnish to the state the bulk of his produce—that is, the minimum exacted by the state—in exchange for this kind of currency. [191] It is only the surplus—the amount produced by the farmer and factory above the minimum established by the state—that the farmer and the factory will be at liberty to sell for gold instead of exchanging for public store notes; and of this surplus the farmer and factory will be free to sell as much as they choose for public store notes, so that gold and silver will constitute a small part of the medium of exchange. ”

“ A plenty of currency induced legislative bodies to increase their wages; governments to increase their expenses, extend their patronage, and bestow pensions; and capitalists to increase protecting duties; and has taught us, by woful experience, the effects of a redundancy of money. It is used by the property-transferring policy to augment its incomes, and ultimately to punish the credulity which believes that a plethora of money will advance the wealth or happiness of majorities. ”

“ These laws at first seem only to make one class rich and the others poor, and merely to affect the distribution of wealth in a nation, but they are unnatural and retard the industry of the people, and diminish their productive power, and make the whole nation less rich. Legislation may favor wealth and not men—property which is accumulated labor, rather than labor which is the power that accumulates property. Such legislation always endangers wealth in the end, lessening its quantity and making its tenure uncertain. ”

“ It asks the government and ratepayers to use the public money in the most advantageous way for the public. It does not ask them to take money from one class to give to another, nor to relieve the pauperism that is at the risk of what may be elsewhere. All surplus revenue in the hands of government is clearly public property: it is raised from the whole body of the public. The proceeds of crown lands, corporation lands, church lands, and various other descriptions of public property are also clearly amenable to public uses, without infringing the rights of private property or vested interests. ”

“ As to predatory instincts, we may say, broadly speaking, that in a state of nature there would be two ways of acquiring riches—one by production, the other by robbery. Under our existing system, although what is recognized as robbery is forbidden, there are nevertheless many ways of becoming rich without contributing anything to the wealth of the community. Ownership of land or capital, whether acquired or inherited, gives a legal right to a permanent income. ”

“ We leave our currency, which is the lifeblood of our industrial system, in the hands of men entitled under our law to consider this currency a mere method of increasing their private wealth; we offer to these men monopolies of transportation, of water, of gas, from which they can make gigantic fortunes and through which they can control our politics, and then we expect the very legislatures they control, the very legislators they elect, and the very officers they appoint, to control them. ”

“ But as the currency changes in purchasing power, so the money value of all you possess, and all you have to buy or to sell, changes also; so that the power of the Government to determine the quantity of currency that shall be in circulation is virtually equivalent to the power, by its own arbitrary act, to increase or decrease the money value of all private property in the land; in other words, the private fortune of every citizen is placed at the mercy of the Government's arbitrary pleasure. ”

“ Such are lands, or other natural opportunities, the value of which is but the result of the acknowledgment in favor of certain persons of an exclusive right to their use, and which represents merely the power thus given to the owners to demand a share of the wealth produced by those who use them. Increase in the amount of bonds, mortgages, notes, or bank bills cannot increase the wealth of the community that includes as well those who promise to pay as those who are entitled to receive. ”

“ I see nothing for it but to empower local authorities to advance the money on loan out of local funds, and to authorise the Charity Commissioners, and other authorities in control of semi-public moneys, to include such loans among their recognised objects. After all, we are great communists in this country with regard to our workhouses and poor-rates. ”

“ We may each one of us counsel our active and enterprising countrymen to be constantly on their guard, to liquidate debts contracted in a paper currency, and by conducting business as nearly as possible on a system of cash payments or short credits to hold themselves prepared to return to the standard of gold and silver. To aid our fellow-citizens in the prudent management of their monetary affairs, the duty devolves on us to diminish by law the amount of paper money now in circulation. ”