National Capital

“ Others are as inseparably connected with human capacity for labor as soil-improvements with a piece of land; e.g., the greater dexterity acquired by a workman through scientific study, or the greater confidence he has acquired by long trial.276 The state itself is the most important incorporeal capital of every nation, since it is clearly indispensable, at least indirectly, to economic production.277
The greater portion of the national capital is in a state of constant transformation. It is being continually destroyed and reproduced. ”

“ The character impressed upon its capital is a great factor in a nation's growth. The site of the capital is decided by its natural advantages; but the use made of the site, the ideas which it is made to express—these are a permanent element in the national life, which somehow responds to the demands made upon it by an outward symbol of its dignity and greatness. ”

“ Our increased strength and enhanced prosperity would irrefragably demonstrate the fallacy of the arguments against free institutions drawn from our recent national disorders by the enemies of republican government. The admission of loyal members from the States now excluded from Congress, by allaying doubt and apprehension, would turn capital now awaiting an opportunity for investment into the channels of trade and industry. ”

“ Although a private institution, owned and controlled by private capital, its large profits accruing for the benefit of its own share-holders, yet it became so closely inter-woven with the commerce, manufactures, trade, and the public finances of the nation, that it may be considered as in reality a national institution. At its inception its whole capital was swallowed by the treasury. ”

“ Under the faith of the laws, they have embarked their capital in the production of one of the great necessaries of life, and in support of a national system, which they understood it was the object of the government to establish. ”

“ Such activities of the head of state possess symbolic value in the sentiments of the citizens thereby serving as the psychological momentum for national unity. Therefore, such activities have a fundamental significance in determining the characteristics of the capital. In addition, the capital is the location where the activities of the national institutions and organs implementing governmental functions take place. The government leads the nation in politics and administration by responsibly implementing all domestic and international policies including, especially, economic policies. ”

“ At the time we were funding our national debt, we heard much about "a public debt being a public blessing;" that the stock representing it was a creation of active capital for the aliment of commerce, manufactures and agriculture. ”

“ In the first place, in order to destroy the effect of chance and of the utilization of chances in creating the present accumulations in private hands, it is necessary to divert into the public treasury as far as possible the whole of that part of the national income which goes now, in the form of rent, interest, or profit, into the pockets of the owners of land and capital, and the conductors of business enterprises. ”

“ They create an order, having above fifty millions capital, most of it consisting of nominal stock, called credit; a privilege of emitting national money; and the powers of banishing national coin, of governing commerce, and of deciding the fate of mercantile individuals; it draws five millions annually from national labour; and is able to influence elections, and to corrupt legislatures. ”

“ They openly publish a resolution, that the national property being increased in value, they must by an increase of circulating medium furnish an adequate representation of it, and by further additions of active capital promote the enterprises of our merchants. ”

“ But further, apart from the class of lazy annuitants thus created, and from the improvised wealth of the financiers, middlemen between the government and the nation—as also apart from the tax-farmers, merchants, private manufacturers, to whom a good part of every national loan renders the service of a capital fallen from heaven—the national debt has given rise to joint-stock companies, to dealings in negotiable effects of all kinds, and to agiotage, in a word to stock-exchange gambling and the modern bankocracy. ”

“ Our rulers will best promote the improvement of the nation by strictly confining themselves to their own legitimate duties, by leaving capital to find its most lucrative course, commodities their fair price, industry and intelligence their natural reward, idleness and folly their natural punishment, by maintaining peace, by defending property, by diminishing the price of law, and by observing strict economy in every department of the state. ”

“ A capital contributor of a for-profit legal person shall not abuse his rights as such to harm the interests of the legal person or any other capital contributor. A capital contributor abusing such rights and causing harm to the legal person or any other capital contributor shall bear civil liability in accordance with law. A capital contributor of a for-profit legal person shall not abuse the legal person’s independent status and his own limited liability status to harm the interests of the legal person’s creditors. ”

“ Unless otherwise provided by law, the persons with a right to use a lot of land for construction purposes are entitled to transfer, exchange, offer as capital contribution, give away as a gift, or mortgage their rights. ”

“ For the first time it then seemed to the intelligent and generous of the working classes of a great nation, that they had obtained a government who sincerely desired the freedom and dignity of the many, and who did not look upon it as their natural and legitimate state to be instruments of production, worked for the benefit of the possessors of capital. ”

“ The State, collectives, and private individuals may establish companies with limited liabilities, joint stock companies limited by shares, or other enterprises through making capital contributions in accordance with law. Where the immovable or movable property of the State, collectives, and private individuals are invested in an enterprise, the investors are, in accordance with their agreement or in proportion to their investment, entitled to receive returns on the assets, make major decisions, and select business managers, and obligated to perform their duties. ”

“ When a non-profit legal person established for the purpose of public welfare terminates, it shall not distribute the residual assets among its capital contributors, incorporators, or members. The residual assets shall continue to be used for the purpose of public welfare, as is stipulated in the articles of association or the resolution made by the governing body ”

“ We call, therefore, upon all, from the mountains to the seaboard, to take part in this great central development, involving not only the prosperity of our capital, but, in its ramifications, affecting the prosperity of the entire State. ”

“ Where a building or structure, and auxiliary facilities thereof are transferred, exchanged, offered as capital contribution, or given away as a gift, the right to use the lot of land for construction purposes in the lot of land occupied by the building, structure, and auxiliary facilities thereof shall be disposed of concomitantly. ”

“ The capital invested in these industries constitutes a gigantic money-power dependent for the magnitude of its profits on legislative favors, and therefore interested in influencing legislation for its own benefit. ”

“ He considered it as an art. “Political Economy,” he says, in the introduction to the fourth book, “proposes two distinct objects: first, to provide a plentiful revenue or subsistence for the people, or, more properly, to enable them to provide such a revenue or subsistence for themselves; and, secondly, to supply the state or common weal with a revenue sufficient for the public service. It proposes [43] to enrich both the people and the sovereign.” ”

“ Suppose, sir, that all the sales that have been effected had been made by the state, and that the proceeds had gone into the state treasury, to be returned back to the people in some of the various shapes in which a beneficient local government exerts its powers for the improvement of the conditions of the citizens. Who can say how much of wealth and prosperity, how much of improvement in science and arts, how much of individual and social happiness, whould have been diffused throughout the land! ”

“ Only he who thus conceives of mercantilism will understand it; in its innermost kernel it is nothing but state-making, not state-making in a narrow sense, but state-making and national-economy-making at the same time; state-making in the modern sense, which creates out of the political community an economic community, and so gives it a heightened meaning. ”

“ Where such consultation fails, the partners shall share the profits and assume the losses in proportion to their paid-in capital, or in equal share if the proportions of their paid-in capital cannot be determined. ”

“ THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES It is evident from the signs of the times, the business situation, our interstate commerce laws, and the domination of the trusts and combines by the Federal government, that there will soon come a great change in our business methods, and practices.
We are expecting that competition will be restored to the place it occupied before men were forced out of business by overpowering interests and vast aggregations of capital. ”

“ Here we see set forth as the natural consequence of development the violent introduction of the Socialist-Democratic state. With the rise of that form of polity the domination of private capital comes to an end; machinery is no longer private property, but it, with all the other instruments of production, with all that which is understood by the term capital, is transformed into collective or state capital. ”

“ I have stated that three elements of prosperity to the nation--capital, labor, skilled and unskilled, and products of the soil--still remain with us. To direct the employment of these is a problem deserving the most serious attention of Congress. If employment can be given to all the labor offering itself, prosperity necessarily follows. I have expressed the opinion, and repeat it, that the first requisite to the accomplishment of this end is the substitution of a sound currency in place of one of a fluctuating value. ”

“ To those upon whose coming so much depends, every inducement must be offered. And be it remembered that capital seeks its home in sections wherein life and prosperity enjoy the greatest security under the law. ”

“ He advocated more economy; less taxes; greater equality, and less distinction among the people. Also the establishment of a national bank, with branches in each state and territory, the net revenue therefrom to be applied to government interests. ”

“ There is every indication that we are to see new developments of the power of aggregated capital to serve civilization, and that the new developments will be made right here in America. ”

“ The Federal Government is called upon to buy or hire unsalable ships, to build canals which will not pay, to furnish capital for all sorts of experiments, and to provide capital for enterprises of which private individuals will win the profits. ”

“ It must greatly abate, or rather, altogether destroy, in countries where profits are low, the immense importance which used to be attached by political economists to the effects which an event or a measure of government might have in adding to or subtracting from the capital of the country. ”

“ This definition appears to us peculiarly liable to misapprehension; and much vagueness and some narrow views have, we conceive, occasionally resulted from its being interpreted with too mechanical an adherence to the literal meaning of the words.
The capital, whether of an individual or of a nation, consists, we apprehend, of all matters possessing exchangeable value, which the individual or the nation has in his or in its possession for the purpose of reproduction, and not for the purpose of the owner's unproductive enjoyment. ”

“ The more the citizens acquire capital and themselves enter on commercial undertakings, and form business habits, and get to look at things with a practical eye, the stronger and more general will grow the public sentiment that insists on replacing the reign of force by the reign of law. ”

“ You will consider it as the capital of a great nation advancing with unexampled rapidity in arts, in commerce, in wealth, and in population, and possessing within itself those energies and resources which, if not thrown away or lamentably misdirected, will secure to it a long course of prosperity and self-government. ”

“ President, what I understand by the credit system is, that which thus connects labor and capital, by giving to labor the use of capital. In other words, intelligence, good character, and good morals bestow on those who have not capital a power, a trust, a confidence, which enables them to obtain it, and to employ it usefully for themselves and others. These active men of business build their hopes of success on their attentiveness, their economy, and their integrity. ”

“ In the United States we welcome the investment of the money, the intelligence, and the industry of foreigners, and recognize them as assets added to the prosperity of the country. Because we have pursued that policy we stand to-day without a peer in national prosperity, wealth, and credit. ”

“ Yet what can be more conducive to Progress? A financial system which promotes the one, conduces, by the very same excellences, to the other. Economy, for example, equally preserves the existing stock of national wealth, and favors the creation of more. A just distribution of burdens, by holding up to every citizen an example of morality and good conscience applied to difficult adjustments, and an evidence of the value which the highest authorities attach to them, tends in an eminent degree to educate the moral sentiments of the community, both in respect of strength and of discrimination. ”

“ The increasing amount of capital also needed for success in business as the markets grew, and the town supplied not only the country but foreign lands, gradually broke down the democratic constitution of the trade-gilds. ”