Hacendero

“ They will use every means in their power to get hold of their money, or, without mercy, clutch the property that secures it, and foreclosures, executions, sheriff's sales will be the order of the day. The creditor, to save himself, will appear in his most relentless temper, and in thousands of cases the debtor, thus getting rid of his indebtedness, together with his property, in the manner most disastrous to him, will have reason to curse those who pretended to relieve him by “making and keeping the volume of the currency equal to the wants of trade.” ”

“ Now, if a man gave himself in bondage to a creditor until such time as his debt should be discharged, he became that creditor’s slave for a period that might only end with his own life. Here we have another way in which the man of property could get the disposal of regular labour without buying a slave in the market or turning to work himself. ”

“ The contract evidently supposes that the debtor, while laboring, is to have enough of the fruit of his labor for his subsistence, (because a man cannot labor without a subsistence;) that his labor is to he bestowed upon the capital on which the creditor has a lien ”

“ Thus, all savings however moderate; all household furniture, books, indeed everything but the simplest clothing are property, and the property owners belong to all classes. The wage-earning classes, being largely property owners, viz., not only by their household goods, but by their investments, building societies, their small deposits in savings banks, their periodical payments to their trade societies and friendly societies, they would naturally and wisely defend these against confiscation. ”

“ That any prohibition, by a government, of any such kind or amount of money—provided it be honest in itself—as the parties to contracts may voluntarily agree to give and receive in exchange for labor or property, is a palpable violation of their natural right to make their own contracts, and to buy and sell their labor and property on such terms as they may find to be necessary for the supply of their wants, or may think most beneficial to their interests. ”

“ Frequently, hacendados participated in other areas of business, such as finance, commerce, and mining. Their privileged economic position permitted them to furnish their rural properties with great luxury and to sustain a life of affluence. ”

“ They were permitted to have houses or portions of houses to themselves, and to live there on the share of the public produce allotted to the several members of each household. It had been assumed as matter of course by the majority that when every one was forced to work there would be more than enough for all; that public spirit, and if necessary coercion, would prove as effectual stimulants to exertion and industry as interest and necessity had done under the system of private ownership. ”

“ At his command, through foremen and managers, workmen are employed or dismissed. He decides how long they are to work and what pay they are to get. And all this happens because the factory is his factory, the works, his works; they belong to him, are his private property. It is this right of private property over the means of production that is the cause of the terrible power which is in the hands of capital. ”

“ Should he become dissatisfied with his master, he can get some one else to buy him by paying the debt, and he thus becomes the slave of the second, but this is always done legally. The original owner must write out a statement of the amount of debt, and allow the peon three days for each hundred dollars to seek a new master. Once in debt, always in debt, so the poor peon is never free, and his wife is included in his contract, and the haciendas will have no other kind of labor. ”

“ If any one fail to meet a claim for debt, and he sell the maid servant who has borne him children, for money, the money which the merchant has paid shall be repaid to him by the owner of the slave and she shall be freed. ”

“ Property, for instance, a factory acquired by a series of frauds and by taking advantage of the workmen, is considered a result of labor and is held sacred; but the lives of those workmen who perish at work in that factory and their labor are not considered their property, but are rather considered to be the property of the factory- owner, if he, taking advantage of the necessities of the workers, has bound them down in a manner considered legal. ”

“ A seignior could sell his land, and still draw rent from the very peasant who had bought it of him in the shape of seignioral dues. They, too, had their 'corvées,' and the peasant was forced to labor for them a certain number of days in each year. On everything that he owned must he pay dues to them. Yes, he must pay them for the right of selling his own produce in the market. ”

“ All large fortunes (putting treasure-trove and gambling out of consideration) are founded either on occupation of land, usury, or taxation of labor. Whether openly or occultly, the landlord, money-lender, and capitalist employer, gather into their possession a certain quantity of the means of existence which other people produce by the labor of their hands. The effect of this impost upon the condition of life of the tenant, borrower, and workman, is the first point to be studied;—the results, that is to say, of the mode in which Captain Roland fills his purse. ”

“ Now, this reproductive leaven—this eternal germ of life, this preparation of the land and manufacture of implements for production—constitutes the debt of the capitalist to the producer, which he never pays; and it is this fraudulent denial which causes the poverty of the laborer, the luxury of idleness, and the inequality of conditions. This it is, above all other things, which has been so fitly named the exploitation of man by man. ”

“ The very essence of feudal property was exploitation in its most naked and shameless form, compulsory labor, additional corvées at the very moments when the peasant’s labor was most urgently needed on his own holding, innumerable dues and payments, the obligation to grind at the lord’s mill and bake at the lord’s oven, the private justice of the lord’s court. ”

“ In the natural savage and in the untutored man to-day there is no limitation to the sphere of ownership. Whatever you can fight for, you can own; women-folk, spared captive, captured beast, forest glade, stone-pit or what not. As the community grew, a sort of law came to restrain internecine fighting, men developed rough-and-ready methods of settling proprietorship. Men could own what they were the first to make or capture or claim. It seemed natural that a debtor who could not pay should become the property of his creditor. ”

“ All the great establishments, of every kind, now in the hands of a few proprietors, but employing a great number of wage laborers, would be broken up; for few, or no persons, who could hire capital, and do business for themselves, would consent to labor for wages for another.
The credit furnished by this system would always be stable; for the system is probably capable of furnishing, at all times, all the credit, and all the money, that can be needed. ”

“ The relations between the large employer of labor and the employees are substantially the same. Ordinarily the employer, the rich man, is apt to be the only debtor among them. The employees are, as a rule, only creditors, and as they lay up savings, they are apt to become creditors in a larger sense. They deposit their money in savings banks or invest it in building associations, in mutual benefit societies, in loan companies or in life insurance policies, and become capitalists in a small way. ”

“ The labourer, or peon, is rented a small tract of land, including a little hut, and is allowed to grow his own vegetables. He may also be allowed to pasture a few animals. In return, he must work, or provide labour, for the hacendado as required. For this he is paid a certain small wage. The landlord allows him credit for supplies at the store, which is invariably a part of the establishment, at prices which mean a good profit. As long as he is indebted to the owner, the peon must stay on the place. If he is even in his account, he [199] is at liberty to depart wherever the notion takes him. ”

“ Fortunately injustice to, and robbery of, fellow-citizens, eventually injure the wrong-doer as well as the wronged. A time came when the claims of the creditors had been liquidated and the goods of the traders had been confiscated, and the former refused further loans and the latter laid in no new stocks. The capitalist and the merchant were alike ruined or driven from business, and it was the landholder, unable to sell, to buy, or to borrow, who was the eventual sufferer. ”

“ It is, however, obvious that the confiscation of rent would, seeing that land has for generations been in the circle of exchangeable commodities, strike at the roots of the institution of private property. ”

“ For, if the instrument or capital of production is the mark of the laborer, it is also his pedestal, his support, his country, and, as the Psalmist says, THE PLACE OF HIS ACTIVITY AND HIS REST. 38
Let us examine more closely still the inevitable and approaching result of the last law concerning judicial sales and mortgages. Under the system of competition which is killing us, and whose necessary expression is a plundering and tyrannical government, the farmer will need always capital in order to repair his losses, and will be forced to contract loans. ”

“ The mercantile class, as merchants only, must be impoverished by this policy; but a few individuals of this class, more frequently evade its oppression, than of other labouring classes, by blending the capitalist with the mercantile character; and becoming bankers, lenders to government, or factory owners. So far also, as the agricultural and mechanical classes, are interspersed with individuals endowed with pecuniary privileges, such individuals derive emolument from the property-transferring policy, not as mechanicks or agriculturists, but in their privileged characters. ”

“ That such would be the result is obvious-because, 1, a capitalist would prefer, as a general rule, not to become the second creditor of a debtor; and, 2, as capitalists would not wish to become the second creditor of a debtor, it would be indispensable, as a general rule, that the first creditor should advance capital enough to enable the debtor to prosecute his business advantageously, else he might lose a part of what he should loan him. ”

“ The laborer who consumes his wages is a machine which destroys and reproduces; the proprietor who consumes his income is a bottomless gulf,—sand which we water, a stone which we sow. So true is this, that the proprietor—neither wishing nor knowing how to produce, and perceiving that as fast as he uses his property he destroys it for ever—has taken the precaution to make some one produce in his place. That is what political economy, speaking in the name of eternal justice, calls producing by his capital,—producing by his tools. ”

“ Operation of the law of property is more clearly evident when we look into indirect or money wages. Here a time lag between production and consumption dissolves all appearance of intent. Let us follow through a specific instance. A clothing worker acquires title to a coat by virtue of the labor he has put into it; even municipal law acknowledges the morality of his title by way of a mechanic's lien. ”

“ What the common soldier of fortune received as reward for his valor eight hundred years ago, and which he held subject to confiscation to his prince if he failed to render him service in person and with retainers, has developed into a huge monopoly which appropriates in rental more than the tenant can pay, with the added necessary subsistence required to sustain him. There are also the imposition of direct taxes by the government and indirect taxes upon all implements and other articles of manufacture, occasioned by the division of labor, which he must use ”

“ The butcher, the baker, the clothier, as well as the farmer, the dealer in feeding-cake and manure, have claims quite as good as that of the landlord, and, as they think, a great deal better. Tradesmen who have fed and clothed people, and others who have helped them to fatten their land and their cattle, think their claims paramount. It is of the nature of every creditor to think he has the right to be paid before anybody else. ”

“ But the crime is unavailing: labor and production increase; soon the proprietor will be forced to labor, and then property is lost.
The proprietor is a man who, having absolute control of an instrument of production, claims the right to enjoy the product of the instrument without using it himself. To this end he lends it; and we have just seen that from this loan the laborer derives a power of exchange, which sooner or later will destroy the right of increase. ”

“ Those of the capitalists who had no friends at Court were made to pay the money, for which they had been forced to pledge themselves; and those who had such friends, got the sums which they had engaged to pay, represented as irrecoverable balances due by proprietors, and struck off. The proprietors themselves, plundered of all they had in the world, and without any hope of redress, left the country, or took service under our Government, or that of Oude, or descended to the rank of day-labourers or cultivators in other estates.* ”