VOTE YOURSELVES RICH.
Those who have been voted rich, not by their own votes, but by our
votes, the votes of the common people, are now engaged in proving to us
THAT WHAT WE HAVE ALREADY DONE FOR THEM WE CAN BY NO POSSIBLE MEANS DO
FOR OURSELVES.
Having accumulated immense fortunes by means of vote enacted
legislation, THEY PREACH TO US THE UTTER FOLLY OF OUR HOPING FOR ANY
GAIN FROM THE SAME SOURCE.
So interested are they in our proper economic education, that they are
willing to supply both text-books and teachers. They love learning and
from purely philanthropic motives seek to make us wise.
But what is their wisdom so willingly imparted? From what follies are
they so anxious to guard us?
TO VOTE OUR ENEMIES RICH: THIS IS WISDOM.
TO ATTEMPT TO VOTE OURSELVES RICH: DANGEROUS FOLLY.
Their science teaches that IT IS IMPOSSIBLE FOR THE INSTRUMENT WHICH IS
THE SOURCE OF THEIR WEALTH TO BE OF ANY EFFECT IN BEHALF OF THOSE WHO
WIELD THE INSTRUMENT.
Text-book in hand they say to the people, "It is impossible for you to
vote yourselves rich."
Strictly speaking, it is unnecessary for the people to "vote themselves
rich." WE, THE PEOPLE, ARE ALREADY RICH. We are rich by the gift of
nature and the will of God. Each scientific discovery and invention,
wrung by toil, genius and martyrdom from the strange earth and
firmament that greeted primeval man, has added to our riches. We are
now rich, but are debarred by force from the possession of our own. We
are heirs, not only to the riches of the earth as originally created,
but to all those opportunities for utilizing these natural treasures,
resulting from the accumulated knowledge and skill of the centuries.
But we are kept from our inheritance.
We have been deprived of our wealth by vote-enacted legislation, and it
is vote-enacted legislation that will again give us possession.
Our enemies say contemptuously that government can no more increase
wages by legislation than it can increase the size of your foot or
the length of your arm, for the increase or decrease in both cases is
governed wholly by natural law.
"Let the poor," they say, "stop agitating and hoping to become
prosperous through legislation, and instead let every man go to work
building his own home and fortune, and all will be well."
"The Government cannot legislate a single dollar into existence."
"The remedies for poverty are industry, frugality and temperance."
These are the things they say. But suppose we watch their acts instead
of listening to their words. Then we learn that, while for us they
point in one direction to the road that leads to fortune they seek this
road themselves by going the opposite way. We, who have followed their
advice, have been impoverished; they, who imitated their acts, have
been enriched.
POTATOES AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.
I ride to market with a load of potatoes, the result of sweat and labor
for half a year. A ruffian knocks me off my wagon, takes my seat and
drives away.
Questions: Shall I ask a policeman to help me catch the despoiler,
or shall I "cease agitating and go to work?" Shall I arm myself and,
with the help of friends, take back my own, or shall I return to the
farm and "practice industry, frugality and temperance?" Is it nobler,
manlier, more courageous of me to get possession of my potatoes by
fighting, or, forsaking them, to go to work and raise another crop for
the next thief?
Honest and contented labor under these circumstances is dishonorable.
WHEN A MAN IS ROBBED, THE WAY FOR HIM TO GET MONEY IS NOT TO WORK FOR
IT BUT TO FIGHT FOR IT. To tell a man that he cannot possibly make any
money by talking nor get any potatoes by agitating police officers
is absolutely true, PROVIDED, the man has been loafing all year and
has not been robbed of his crop. But these demonstrations of the
economists go into the waste basket, when the fact is made plain that
the man, seeking by government aid to get potatoes, has already earned
them by hard labor, but is deprived of them by the criminal act of
another. Under such circumstances, the man who, instead of fighting and
pursuing, applies himself to honest toil, is a coward.
Men who, wrongfully deprived of their property, go to work to earn
more, thus providing additional booty for their despoilers, are
unworthy a better fate. Honor impels a true man to fight, not work,
when a wrong is suffered either by himself or friends.
To quietly plow while another eats the result of last year's plowing,
to contentedly plant while another reaps, to submissively bow one's
head beneath a yoke and receive the kicks and jeers and sneers of the
drivers, are not the acts of a man nor the duties of a citizen, but the
follies of an ass. When a true man, after gathering his harvest, sees
his product taken by another, he mounts his horse, before planting
again, and with pitchfork, shotgun or other efficient weapon, starts in
hot pursuit. He seeks to recover last year's product before trying to
raise another crop.
Therefore, when government-made millionaires try to persuade the
working people, small tax-payers and business men to stop meddling with
politics and instead to work harder in the hope of laying by something
for old age, they really desire them to cease defending their property
and to continue creating more for others to enjoy.
The learned professor teaches that "the government cannot legislate
into being a single dollar, nor a dollar's worth of wealth." From this
premise, he reasons that a dollar legislated into one man's pocket
must necessarily be legislated out of another man's pocket. He then
concludes that the poor cannot legislate themselves comfortable without
to the extent of their gain depriving another class of their earnings.
If my neighbor accompanied me to market with a load of potatoes and
I were to ask a policeman to help me take his load from him, the
economists' words would apply. The government, through its agent, the
policeman, could not double my wealth without robbing my neighbor. But
this is not the situation. I came alone. A stranger assaulted me and
took both wagon and potatoes, leaving me very poor. Now, in spite of
the professor's words, the state, in the person of its officer, can
abolish my poverty and give me a wagon filled with potatoes without
doing injustice to any one else. I can be made happy without depriving
any other being of what he has earned, and I do not ask the state
to legislate into existence a single potato. I simply ask that the
potatoes already existing as the result of my labor be taken from the
highwayman and returned to their rightful owner.
This is what the masses ask. Not that the government give them anything
produced by others, not that the government attempt to create anything
independent of the labor of its citizens, but that it return to them
their own. We demand the capture of the highwayman, monopoly, and that
the opportunities taken from us by him be restored to us.[10]
[10] When a monopoly becomes a government monopoly, its nature
changes entirely, and all that was objectionable disappears.
The evil pertaining to a monopoly is its exclusiveness. When
private monopoly becomes government monopoly, it is no longer
exclusive, for the whole people enjoy its benefits alike.
Unity of administration is not an evil if the resulting
benefits are shared by all. The only possible way to destroy
the great monopolies is to convert them into government
functions, and administer them as the post office, the army,
navy, weather service, the public schools and parks are now
managed. There is no other way to destroy our new industrial
despotism.
Read "Socialism and Social Reform," by Prof. R. T. Ely; also
"Wealth against Commonwealth," by H. D. Lloyd.
We not only demand but we are actually organizing for the pursuit. The
Democratic Volunteers are superintending the preliminaries and in 1900
law and order are to be established, the adventurers suppressed, and
restoration made. The issuance of the nation's money, now a private
monopoly, controlled by bankers, will again be made a function of
government, and the people will be permitted to exchange their products
without paying revenue to their enemies for the means of exchange,
which is their own creation. Other wrongs will be righted with equal
facility.
Each victim, however, must be taught that his vote is both horse and
hound for pursuing, and both gun and rope for punishing and reclaiming.
Our vote is our one weapon, our one means of defense, and source of
power.
The value of legislative control to our enemies is shown by the
desperation with which they oppose any effort on the part of the people
to recover it. They know it to be the true creator of their fortunes,
and they look to it alone for future "fruits of labor" and "rewards of
genius."
We are rich, but we have been ousted from our patrimony. How shall
we recover it? By the same means through which we lost it, namely,
legislation. The oppressions that curse man are all entrenched in,
and owe their power to, legislation. If we are to be freed from them,
it will be by legislation. In primitive times, government was openly,
frankly exercised for the enrichment of a class at the expense of the
mass. For ages the "right divine" was believed in honestly. Later when
its justice was denied, its benefits were seen to be too valuable to be
relinquished. So duplicity was employed, and the art of "plucking the
goose without making it squeal" was invented.
Money-making heretofore has not been so much a function of government
as money-taking, and this function can be made to work one way as well
as another.
If thieves by government action can despoil honest men, honest men by
government action can despoil thieves.
If legislation has been made the instrument of crime, it also can be
made the instrument of restoration. No personal temperance, thrift and
industry can enrich men so long as the power to legislate rests in
other hands. Labor makes wealth but legislation decrees how it shall
be divided. When the people legislate directly and intelligently the
division will be in accord with justice. By the ballot we can enter
upon our inheritance.
Poverty exists and we are told that it is the natural order, with which
legislation has nothing to do. There has been told no more transparent
lie. Wealth is created by the union of man's labor with nature's gifts.
What is it but legislation that keeps apart in unnatural divorce these
two that God hath joined together? What but legislation can remove the
barriers and allow them again to come together?
Legislation CAN make money; so lavishly that no man need want. How? By
making conditions favorable to labor, and securing the laborer in the
fruit of his toil.
WE CAN ACTUALLY VOTE RICHES INTO EXISTENCE.
Our instructors say, "Government cannot legislate a single dollar into
existence." Let us see.
While riding to market with a crop of potatoes, I am dispossessed.
In the struggle a portion of the crop is injured. The highwayman, in
escaping, lames the horses by overdriving. Instead of going to work the
next day, in company with an officer, I start in pursuit. The robber,
alert, removes to another state at an expense of half his booty.
Whether successful or not, my time, the officer's time and the thief's
time are all wasted, in addition to three-fourths of my product.
Now, my neighbors and I, who together make up the government, suppress
brigandage. Instead of three fourths of my crop being wasted by
struggle for possession, it is all sold the very day it is carted to
market. Instead of exchanging my hoe for a gun and chasing another
man, I plant another crop of potatoes. Instead of helping me in the
chase the policeman grows a crop of his own, and the bandit, knowing
beforehand that it is impossible to live by robbery, ceases to watch
for possible victims and raises his own potatoes instead of taking mine.
Without proper governmental interference the three of us have
only a portion of one crop of potatoes between us. AS THE RESULT
OF GOVERNMENTAL ACTION, WE HAVE THREE FULL CROPS. THE GOVERNMENT,
BY LEGISLATIVE "EDICT" OR "FIAT," if you please, CREATES TWO AND
THREE-QUARTERS CROPS OF POTATOES. WE CAN VOTE OURSELVES RICH.
And of each dollar voted into our pockets, not more than fifteen cents
will be stolen property reclaimed. The other eighty-five cents will be
a new product, rescued from waste or destruction.
The saddest feature of our present industrial cannibalism is that where
one dollar is stolen at least seven dollars are wasted. THE PREVENTABLE
WASTES OF CIVILIZATION CAN MAKE EARTH A PARADISE.
PROSPERITY, "THE McKINLEY" AND OTHER BRANDS.
We can vote our country prosperous. But it is very essential that we
understand clearly WHOM we mean when we say "country." We have been
voting for one kind of prosperity for a long time, even before the
"McKinley brand," was on the market. Our mistake has been in not asking
the "Advance Agents" to tell us whose prosperity they represented.
If a burglar is emptying your wife's jewelry box, and filling his
trousers pockets with the contents of your safe, prosperity to him
means ruin to you, and your success means the burglar's death. So, in
the larger affairs of our nation, the kind of prosperity hoped for by
the plunderers of the people means ruin to their millions of victims,
while good times for the workers, the farmers, the merchants, mean hard
times to our despoilers.
We now have the best times the world has ever seen. Mr. Rockefeller,
or Robafellow--one is his name, the other ought to be--has an income
of forty thousand dollars a day, and it is increasing. No country
in the world has ever produced so much; never were there barns so
bursting with grain, or warehouses so filled with clothing, furniture
and jewels; never before so many men making from five to forty thousand
dollars a day.
This great National Joint Stock Company of ours, with its seventy
million stockholders, is doing a thriving business and making barrels
of money. There is only one objectionable feature. It is that after
the labor of these seventy millions of people, their genius, their
suffering and their sweat, are converted into wealth, the dividends are
given to a few hundred men, while the rest of us pay the assessments.
We do not need better times. Anybody who wants to make more than forty
thousand dollars a day is a hog. The real issue is not whether we shall
have hard times or good times, prosperity or panic in the abstract, but
it is whether that prosperity and good times, now monopolized by the
few, shall become the inheritance of every child of God.
THIEVES TAKE PANIC WHEN PURSUED BY HONEST MEN.
If a select company of burglars and safe-blowers were to enter your
village and relieve a number of your merchants of the contents of
their safes, their stocks of jewels, silks and clothing, and were
to secure all of the finest horses from half the neighboring farms,
and utilize them in getting the booty safely to the nearest forest,
they would no doubt, while unpacking their wealth and feeding their
horses, after their hasty trip, congratulate one another upon "their
remarkable prosperity." They would be very apt to brag about the
unusual "good times." But if, as the sun rose over the tree-tops and
they were repacking their goods they saw suddenly the glistening
pitchforks of half a hundred angry farmers and the determined furious
faces of as many brawny workmen and merchants, bent on reclaiming their
property--there would be a PANIC.[11]
[11] If you want legal evidence to prove the existence of
gigantic steals and robberies, read Lloyd's "Wealth Against
Commonwealth," Harper Bros., and the "Seven Financial
Conspiracies."
The plunderers of the world are enjoying good times at the expense
of the masses. Their profits are as fabulous as their methods are
cruel. But in the midst of their celebration feast, their crime is
discovered, and the pitchforks of five million farmers glistening in
the morning sun, the angry faces of four million city workmen loom up
in the distance, and the result is PANIC and loss of confidence--(among
the revelers.)
As we approach November, 1900, this panic will increase. But as there
wells up the sound infernal of their weeping and wailing and gnashing
of teeth, there will be heard still louder, the voices of millions
singing their chorus of deliverance. As these offenders look into the
grave where lies buried their every plan for selfish aggrandizement, to
us, their innumerable victims, that same grave will be the open window
through which we behold the land of promise.
INDEX.
Chapter Page
I. Introductory 5
II. How to Begin Work 23
III. Speeches and Meetings 43
IV. Methods of Travel 65
V. Saloon Meetings 101
VI. The Heroic and Prosaic 115
VII. Practical Politics 127
VIII. Fundamentals 141
IX. The Church as a Field 151
X. Only Two Parties in the World 171
XI. Witnesses for Plutocracy Discredited 189
XII. Vote Yourselves Rich 211
The Volunteers' Training School For Speakers.
Opens at St. Louis September 15, 1897.
Young men of moderate attainments can become ready speakers in from one
to three months time.
Practice both indoors and outdoors every day by every student, under
the direction of experienced campaigners.
All the arts and secrets of successful oratory taught in the most
expeditious manner, accompanied by the daily application of every truth
learned.
Tuition per month $1.
Text books, good for one year, $5.
Especially Cheap Rates at Volunteers' Boarding House.
Address Joseph Hoffman Mgr.,
4713 Page Avenue, ST. LOUIS, MO.
In preparing for this course read any of the following:
Wealth Against Commonwealth, Henry D. Lloyd, Pub. by Harper Bros.
Socialism and Social Reform, Prof. Richard T. Ely.
Social Aspects of Christianity, Prof. Richard T. Ely.
Ten Men of Money Island, Norton.
Merrie England, Robert Blatchford.
Seven Financial Conspiracies.
The New Democracy, Vrooman.
Coin's Financial School.
The First Battle, Bryan.