Money power

“ For thirty years past it has been the uniform policy of the British Government, directed by the pressure of the money power, and the influence of realised capital, to augment the value of realised wealth, by enhancing its price and cheapening everything else. ”

“ At certain times there are greater and less demands for money, which, under our present practices, make a dollar, to-day, worth four per cent. per annum interest, and to-morrow increase it to ten per cent. It must be remembered that we are now speaking of an irredeemable currency, the representative of the wealth of the nation: that the government representing the nation has uttered it, in behalf of the people, upon the soundest and, in reality, the only sure basis of value any money can have—the productive power and capacity of the nation. ”

“ The few who could center in themselves, by grace of Government, the banking and manipulation of the people's money and the restricting or inflating of money issues, were immediately vested with an extraordinary power. ”

“ But now imagine a Congress controlled by statesmen like Governor Allen, who think that more and more currency must be issued until the money of the country stays out of the banks; or imagine a Congress manipulated by a ring of unscrupulous and adroit financial sharpers, and such a Congress wielding the tremendous power of changing at pleasure the current value of every dollar and every dollar's worth of property you have—does not your head swim at the prospect? ”

“ Money meant to me power—the kind of power one could grasp by striving and sacrifice. Why, I've walked the streets of Richmond with five cents in my pocket, and the dream of uncounted millions in my brain. ”

“ A constant but unperceived rise in the value of the dollar with which those payments must be made, baffles all plans, thwarts all calculation, and destroys all equities between debtor and creditor. If we can not intelligently regulate our money volume so as to maintain unchanging the value of the money unit, if we can not preserve our people from the blighting effects which an increase in the measuring power of the money unit entails upon all industry, to what purpose is our boasted civilization? ”

“ But I do say that the restoration of sound money will revive that confidence which is necessary to set all the industrial forces of the country in motion again to give you remunerative employment; that it will protect you against that insidious robbery with which a currency of fluctuating value strips your earnings and savings of their purchasing power; that it will open to you a fair chance again in the struggle of life by securing to you an honest dollar as wages for honest work. That is what the restoration of sound money will accomplish for ourselves and our children. ”

“ By the increase of that measuring power all hopes are disappointed, all purposes baffled, all efforts thwarted, all calculations defied. This subtle enlargement in the measuring power of the unit of money (the dollar) affects every class of the working community. ”

“ I hold, therefore, that a new axiom should be added to the science of political economy; namely, that as the purchasing power of money increases, its income producing power decreases, and in about the same ratio; and conversely, when the purchasing power of money decreases, its income-producing power increases. In other words, when prices rise interest rises; when prices fall interest falls. ”

“ The real inspiration of this objection, however, springs from quite another source. Those who make it know that with the coming of industrial organisation, the power which money has to increase will fall, and make it impossible for anybody to live without labour. Money has no rightful power to increase. Its origin and sphere distinctly forbid the power, as can be clearly shown. The theory that money is wealth is false. ”

“ While money is employed to gain more, it never can procure to the proprietor, either power or authority; but when, in the last case, it is employed for the gratification of our desires, in the hands of the ambitious, it acquires power ”

“ We really, and justly, look upon a person as possessing the advantages of wealth, not in proportion to the useful and agreeable things of which he is in the actual enjoyment, but to his command over the general fund of things useful and agreeable; the power he possesses of providing for any exigency, or obtaining any object of desire. Now, money is itself that power; while all other things, in a civilized state, seem to confer it only by their capacity of being exchanged for money. ”

“ You cannot venture upon any business enterprise, you cannot sell or buy a lot of merchandise on time or even for cash, you cannot make a contract involving the outlay or payment of money, but the Government will have the power to determine whether it will be to your profit or loss, and perhaps in extreme cases whether it will make you rich or bankrupt. This, then, is the awful power of a government intrusted with the office of "making and keeping the volume of currency equal to the wants of trade." ”

“ Money, says the same commentator, is the universal medium or common standard by a comparison with which the value of all merchandise may be ascertained; and he also speaks of it as "a sign which represents the respective values of all other commodities." Such a power, that is the power to coin money, he adds, is one of the ordinary prerogatives of sovereignty, and is almost universally exercised in order to preserve a proper circulation of good coin, of a known value, in the home market. ”

“ If the money has increased or decreased in purchasing power, I have satisfied my debt with dishonest dollars. While the Government can say that a given weight of gold or silver shall constitute a dollar, and invest that dollar with legal-tender qualities, it cannot fix the purchasing power of the dollar. That must depend upon the law of supply and demand, and it may be well to suggest that this Government never tried to fix the exchangeable value of a dollar until it began to limit the number of dollars coined. ”

“ But by permitting the representatives of wealth—money—to have the power to increase, the makers of money have been able to filch all the net earnings from labour, and as a result of this, most of the accumulated wealth of the world is in the hands of the makers of money instead of in those of the makers of wealth. ”

“ Here was the headquarters of the gold power in this country, and having a monopoly of money, it bore to the people the relation of a Universal Creditor and absorbed the ENTIRE SURPLUS created by their labor to meet its demand for interest, etc. Here was practically determined the amount allowed to producers on one hand, and the price charged to consumers on the other. This power was the unquestioned dictator in every sphere of human activity. But we will visit the vaults of the great money kings of that time, which were the actual head-center of this oppressive oligarchy of wealth. ”

“ For although the rate of interest in many such cases may be low, the capitalist is compensated for this by the enhancement in the purchasing power of each dollar of the principal and by the necessarily greater command it secures over the products of labor. ”

“ But whether the lazy spendthrift must not be doubly poor?
424 Whether money circulating be not the life of industry; and whether the want thereof doth not render a State gouty and inactive?
425 But whether, if we had a national bank, and our present cash (small as it is) were put into the most convenient shape, men should hear any public complaints for want of money?
426 Whether all circulation be not alike a circulation of credit, whatsoever medium (metal or paper) is employed, and whether gold be any more than credit for so much power? ”

“ It scarcely occurs to any of them that he needs a knowledge as to gold; yet every bargain into which he enters depends for one of its two terms on gold. I cannot but believe that the diffusion among business men of the fuller knowledge of the equation of exchange, of the relation of money to deposits, of credit cycles and of interest, which the future is sure to bring, will pay rich returns in mitigating the evils of crises and depressions which now take them so often unawares. ”

“ Whatever the apparent purpose of contraction, and however specious the arguments advanced in its justification, the real object has always been to increase the purchasing power of money. In all countries, and throughout all time, it is the cupidity of the creditor classes and annuitants, and their desire to increase the value of the money unit that has brought about a shrinkage in the money volume. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In those days, when the world spoke of the five "Great Powers", money was called the sixth "Great Power" and that with full right. It is a fact, that money means power, and that in a wider sense of the word than is generally accepted. ”

“ Every voter in this Republic has a head above his shoulders supposed to contain a think-shop; and, if the “Power” now controlling our money volume, and as a result our “commerce and industries,” is to be removed and better times secured, every think-shop must get down to business, with a full determination to see that our “commerce and industries” shall not be interfered with, that the volume of money be increased enough to effect rapid exchange of products and the payment of debts. ”

“ It is to exactions such as these that the wealth of the investment banker is in large part due. And since this wealth is an important factor in the creation of the power exercised by the Money Trust, we must endeavor to put an end to this improper wealth getting, as well as to improper combination. The Money Trust is so powerful and so firmly entrenched, that each of the sources of its undue power must be effectually stopped, if we would attain the New Freedom. ”

“ So long as the rank and file even of business men fail to realize that they are daily gambling in changes in the value of money, a fact of which they are blissfully unaware, they will exert no demand for preventing those changes. They are the parties whose interests are chiefly involved, and the first essential step in the reform process is that they shall be made to comprehend the benefits of a stable purchasing power.*53 Until this time arrives, any political proposals will be premature. ”

“ Concentrated power without responsibility may be the worst possible thing. The other great financial nations have money trusts ... too, but each is capped by a vast central bank, more or less a government institution, and from the necessity of the case operated not only with a view to the general welfare but more or less openly and publicly.... ”

“ And thus every question concerning these things merges itself ultimately in the great question of justice, which, the ground being thus far cleared for it, I will enter upon in the next paper, leaving only, in this, three final points for the reader's consideration.
It has been shown that the chief value and virtue of money consists in its having power over human beings; that, without this power, large material possessions are useless, and, to any person possessing such power, comparatively unnecessary. But power over human beings is attainable by other means than by money. ”

“ The national power to create money is appropriated to enrich bondholders; a vast public debt payable in legal tender currency has been funded into gold-bearing bonds, thereby adding millions to the burdens of the people. ”

“ Under no circumstances would anybody receive money from the government as a gift. The merchant will have to sell merchandise for it; the farmer will have to raise crops and stock for it; the manufacturer will have produce goods for it; the laboring man will have to work for it and earn it as wages. For a dollar in greenbacks or in fiat money, as long as it is worth anything, he will have to work just as hard as for a dollar in gold. To-day the greenback dollar or a national bank note he receives in the shape of wages is, in point of value of purchasing power, as good as a dollar in gold. ”

“ Now this vast increase of wealth in the hands of the already wealthy owners of stocks and bonds and accumulated money, by laws increasing the power of their accumulated capital, at the expense of the debtors and laborers, is reacting with terrible force against those who did it. ”

“ It is not disputed that the value, the purchasing power of an irredeemable paper currency is affected by the quantity in circulation, and that other circumstances, such as the confidence of the people and solvency of the Government, remaining the same, an appreciable expansion of the currency will result in its depreciation, and vice versa. ”

“ You who are in power have only the means that money produces—we who are in expectation, have those which devotion prompts.” ”

“ Whoever attempts, under whatever popular cry, to shake the stability of the public currency, bring on distress in money matters, and drive the country into the use of paper money, stabs your interest and your happiness to the heart."
The herd of hungry wolves who live on other men's earnings will rejoice in such a state of things. A system which absorbs into their pockets the fruits of other men's industry is the very system for them. ”

“ Mankind has been taught that in the essence of things fiscal your question of currency is as intricate and involved as was the labyrinth of Minos. And then, to add ill-doing to ill-teaching, our own crazy-patch system of finance has been in every one of its patches cut and basted and stitched with an interest of politics or of private gain to guide the shears and needle of what money-tailor was at work. ”