I.

Running a republic under the economic laws of a monarchy must of

necessity result in producing the same conditions - great wealth for

some and great poverty for the rest. This may be a government by the

people, but it certainly is no longer a government for the people.

Heretofore individual greed has had full swing in the United States, and

naturally enough the ablest returned in possession of everything worth

grabbing. And naturally enough, too, if a republic means a country owned

by all its people, it cannot be a republic if it is owned by only a few.

All the power of a country is bound to be in the hands of those who own

it. If its wealth is in the hands of a few, its power is there with it.

In the hands of a few it must be, if it would be a kingdom or empire. In

the hands of all it must be, if it would be a republic. To insist on

having the personal liberty that goes with a republic, and at the same

time not to set a limit to the resources an individual can own, is a

contradiction. A republic has economic laws that are essential to her

existence. Any others mean her destruction. And it is utterly out of the

question for any political party to improve the conditions of the

people, while they use the present economic laws as the basis of their

proposed legislation.

You must begin at the foundation. Individual greed should be made to

respect the right of others to exist, and made to conform itself to laws

that are as necessary to the life of a republic as is the ballot itself.

The ballot, in fact, has lost its power. It is the key to a house we

have lost possession of, and if we would regain possession and make the

ballot something more than a mere symbol of a thing that is dead, we have

no choice but to resort to the one process by which the resources of the

country can be returned to its people, and the blight of poverty and

pauperism that is settling down on the country and is becoming permanent

can be removed - namely, confiscation.

Man, in the beginning, seeing annihilation staring him in the face,

combined and gave us the Government of the Tribe; out of that developed

the Despotic form; out of that developed the Constitutional Monarchy,

out of which developed the Republic, the highest type of them all; and

this work of development must ever go on, if we would not lapse into

former conditions.

The founders of the republic could not have expected their work to so

soon come to the Chinese halt that has overtaken it, until we now find

ourselves floating on an ebbing sea back to the shores we thought we

had forever left behind.

The founders of the republic met the needs of their hour, and expelled

the foreigner. We have failed to meet the need of our hour in not

discarding the economic laws that were of that foreigner's bringing;

the economic laws of the monarchist and despotic forms of government,

that is making this republic a republic only in name: the economic laws

of the monarchist and despotic forms of government that has built up an

aristocracy of wealth here as they have there, that must of necessity

depend here for its existence as it does there, on the enslavement of

the people. Do not let a mere word further deceive you. The word

republic means a free people - we are slaves. For great revenue, be it

of king or millionaire, has the same magician's wand - the overladen

back of the enslaved toiler.

In the face of our boasted intelligence what an appalling sight does

this country offer to the All-seeing Eye. An abundance of everything and

people starving by the thousands. When our lawmakers in Washington

learned that the death penalty was to be inflicted on those who were

convicted of treason for trying to overthrow the established government

in Hawaii, they said it must not be done, and busied themselves to save

those people's lives. And during all their agitation to save these men

who were to suffer a punishment that is meted out to such by all

governments, thousands of their own people were perishing for the want

of something to eat - not inhuman or hard-hearted, but simply do not see

how they can prevent it. There is no law by which they can stop

starvation. The legislator in a monarchy knows that poverty is inseparable

from that form of government and are reconciled to it.

Our legislators are reconciled to the same conditions. They do not see

the incongruity of conforming the legislation of a republic to the

economic laws of a monarchy. They do not know what a government by the

people and for the people means. If they did, they would know that there

was something wrong when one man has $50,000,00 while another has not

enough to get his shoes cobbled: and another has 50,000 acres of land,

while others must be buried four in a grave.

And none of the political parties shows a way of escape out of this

miserable state of affairs, as a brief review of their positions will

show.

We once had the Free States and the Slave States, and these two terms

were designative of two sections into which the country was then divided

on the question of slavery. To-day we have "Free Coinage of Silver,"

"Protection," and "Free Trade." These three terms, Free Coinage of

Silver, Protection, and Free Trade, are as truly designative of three

different sections into which the country is divided to-day on economic

or industrial questions as were the terms Free States and Slave States

designative of two sections in the past. Thus the preponderating

interest in one section is the mining of silver, and this interest is

represented by the Populist Party, who demands the coinage of more

Silver. The preponderating interest of the second section, or East, is

manufactures, and is represented by the Republican Party, who demands

protection. The preponderating interest of the third section, or South,

is agriculture, and is represented by the Democratic Party, who demands

free trade. This is substantially correct, although the Populists seem

to be as strong in the agricultural South as in the silver-producing

West. The Populist Party, indeed, originated among, the agriculturists

of the South, and was the outgrowth of discontent among the farmers; and

in saying that Populism has its stronghold in the West, or

silver-producing section, we simply mean that the farmers' organization

has been captured by the silver interest. They seem to think that their

own prosperity is linked with that of the silver producers, and that the

free coinage of silver means the salvation of both. With this political

manoeuvering, however, we have nothing to do. There are three political

parties in the field, each with the preponderating interest of some

section in charge, which it is bound to see through regardless of the

interests of the other two. The industrial rivalry that is going on

throughout the whole world has entered these United States, and each of

the three different sections are struggling to obtain legislation

favorable to itself, with the same indifference to the interests of the

others that is shown by France to England or by England to the United

States. Even the naked savage has found that it is a good thing to have

something to sell, and our agriculturists are brought into competition

with territory the New World over where a plow or harvester was unknown

ten years ago; instead of having a monopoly in the European markets, as

was the case a few years ago, where they could dispose of their surplus,

they are now compelled to feed it to their hogs, which, as a source of

profit, ranks even now with the thing they are fed on.

But we are not depending on foreign markets for enough to eat and wear.

Those things are here, not there. We may have lost the foreigner as a

customer, but what prevents us from eating that which he refuses to buy.

We look back a hundred or more years, and cry out in horror at the

inhumanity of those then in power, in allowing human beings to be burned

alive and living creatures to be torn to pieces on the rack. Those who

will look back to these times will be no less astounded at the

inhumanity and imbecility of those now in power in allowing starvation

while food is actually rotting for the want of consumers. The question,

then, is, can we not formulate a policy that will work harmoniously

throughout the whole country for the benefit of all sections and every

individual? Can we not find some way out of the swamp into which the

masterful greed of a few and the dense stupidity of their legislative

tools have mired us?

If we cannot, then let us submit, with the best grace possible to our

masters who know how to lay on the lash when their dividends are at

stake.

The resources of the United States have hardly been touched upon; but in

less than a hundred years individual greed has done its work, and the

people are bankrupt. They have been legislated out of everything, and

the one function of our government, as at present conducted, is to see

that this legislation is enforced. Yes, it is beyond the reach of

contradiction that this government, that was founded in the interests of

All, has degenerated into a merciless taskmaster, ever ready to beat

into submission the slaves of the country, when their few owners give

the word.

But this treatment should be expected. It goes with ownership. Give me

the ownership of men, and all else goes with the title - how I shall

clothe, feed, and lodge them, and how I shall keep them on the grind. Of

course, the wise ones will say, Was it not our own chosen representatives

who made all those laws that gave our resources and the people themselves

over to the favored few, and must not we, the principals, grin and bear

it, and live up to whatever contracts those representatives, our agents,

made in our name?

It is not, however, how we were despoiled, but how we are to recover the

plunder, that is interesting us just now. Is there a way out of the

night of despair? is the question that should be met, and, if possible,

answered. Finding a way out of a difficulty is one thing, however, and

having the courage to take it is another. Modern surgery has discovered

much, but without the courage to use the knife mankind would not have

been the gainer. The prayer meeting has its uses, but those who expect

to obtain political or industrial deliverance in that quarter can set

out their rain-gauges and go there; but those who know the nature of the

fellow who has been grabbing all in sight will make him let go in the

old-time way by using a force superior to his own - a force that he will

feel when it comes down, supposing the power to feel is left in him.

We have no hatred of the rich - nor love of the poor, for that matter.

They are both fishers for gain, and one gets it, and the other don't;

but his basket is just as large. But we are a lover of justice, and if

one is too much for the other would handicap him, and thereby make the

struggle for existence more even for both. The weakling, will always be

a weakling, whatever laws are passed for his benefit, and the drudgery

of the world will ever be his portion; from it he can never escape, but

he is entitled to his life, and if the able denies him, what is

necessary to it, then Justice must step in and take his part.

Volumes could be padded in showing how this can be done, but we can

demonstrate in this brief work how poverty can be obliterated as a

feature of our national life, and if it does not make justice more

even-handed for all, and the people of this country as prosperous as any

on earth, then the fault must be in the plan itself, and not in the

resources which we possess, for of those we have enough to empty every

poorhouse in the land, and eighty-five per cent. of the jails and

penitentiaries.

Let our wrongs be righted without physical force, by all means. History,

however, has no encouragement for such a hope. The contentions with

those on top have ever been of the blood-red order. Power once obtained

has never been surrendered only through conquest. The ballot should do

much, and had it been in use in the past history might have had less of

blood in it, as it should have less of it in the future. But the ballot

for a long number of years has, like a great many stomachs of late, been

working on wind - the wind of the Protectionist, the wind of the Free

Trader, and the wind of the latest cure-all, the fellow who is hunting a

market for his silver.

If something substantial to work on is not soon given to this man with

the ballot, he will drop it - and then let the blame of it rest with the

fools and rascals who have been deluding him so long.

The average man makes a better soldier than he does a voter. He can get

the range of an object easier than he can comprehend an economic truth -

this one, for instance: If the capitalists have obtained possession of

the money issued in the past, what is to prevent them from getting

possession of all that will be issued in the future? His answer will be

to issue more. He has been told so by his political mentor. When the man

with the ballot loses confidence in this mentor, he will start a game of

his own, and then the jig will be up with that idiot. We use the word

idiot advisedly here. When a tax was assessed against the incomes of the

rich, this driveler would score a point gained in favor of the people.

This claim of itself shows the institution to which he should be

consigned.

Victoria, Empress and Queen, rules a country where, pauperism is

steadily on the increase, and the potter's field received the bodies of

eighty of her subjects that were frozen to death in London in four days

of January last. Yet the rich have been paying an income tax in that

country for generations past.

When the rich merchant, or rich anything else, insures what he is

dealing in, he adds the cost of his policy to the thing he sells. The

income tax is but another premium, and he tags that on where he pinned

the other. The laborer has always paid the expenses of the rich, and

always will. The laborer can never dictate terms to the rich. The labor

leaders even have come to recognize the hopelessness of the unequal

contest. The power of the rich to do as they like can never be destroyed

while they are allowed to retain the riches that gives them this power.

A readjustment and a limit set to the amount an individual can own is

the only remedy. And the sooner that unassailable truth is recognized

and acted upon, the sooner will you get rid of the lobbiest and the

pauper.