If this analysis be applied to the present situation we shall see what
is the matter with the industries. When the South rebelled, the North
was compelled to resist, or else permit the national unity to be
destroyed. Let it be borne in mind what stress was put upon the
necessity of preserving the oneness of the people politically. To do
this an army was required. When volunteers ceased to offer in sufficient
numbers to keep the army to its necessary strength, the government,
acting upon the right of a representative of a politically united
people, resorted to drafting to determine which of the members of this
unity should go into the army and jeopardize their lives for its
preservation. This was in perfect harmony with the principles of
government upon which this order rests, and was fully endorsed by the
people. But what did the government do to subsist these men, and to
provide the munitions of war? Did it proceed the same way that it did to
secure the men? Not at all! It borrowed the money from the bankers of
New York, Hamburg and London, and agreed to pay them a rate of interest
double that demanded of any other first class nation, parting with its
bonds to them at “60.” In other words, it borrowed $1,800,000,000, at 10
per cent., and gave $1,200,000,000 in bonds as bonus for making the
loan.
Now this was the error that was committed, for, although the people were
industrially upon a lower order of development than they were
politically, nevertheless, since necessity knows no law save that of its
own conditions, the government should have proceeded as if we were upon
the same plane in both respects. When it called for volunteers to raise
an army, and the ranks of industry responded liberally, it should at the
same time have also called for volunteer assistance from the ranks of
wealth, to subsist that army; and as it resorted to drafting to maintain
the necessary number of fighting men when volunteering failed to do it,
so should it have resorted to drafting the means with which to pay their
expenses when volunteer assistance should have failed to do it. Had the
people been one industrially as they were politically; had the
industrial organization of the people been upon the same plane as their
political organization, this would have been done naturally, and there
would have been no bonded debt incurred.
What does this show? This clearly; that, while the government can
command the lives of the working men and put them in jeopardy, even
sacrifice them without stint to maintain itself, it has no power over
the property of the rich to compel them to assist in that maintenance.
Had it been so that the government could not have borrowed any money, it
would have fallen from this disparity between the political and
industrial development. Is not this clear? And if it is, does it not
show a very great and grave defect in the wisdom of our institutions?
But what has been the effect of this error in this instance? The present
prostration of industry, necessarily: and it has come about in this way:
The armies were made up from the ranks of industry; the “rank and file”
were so many men taken away from producing, and, therefore, from adding
to the accumulated wealth; but the maintenance of the army was borrowed
at an exorbitant rate of interest from the accumulated wealth, which was
wholly in the hands of those who never fired a shot in defence of the
country, nor added a dollar to its aggregate wealth by labour. While the
war continued, the men who were left in the ranks of industry were
called upon to pay this interest; and when it was over, those who had
survived the war and returned to productive toil were included with
them. And it is expected that the industrial classes will continue to
pay this interest until the bonds mature, and then the bonds themselves,
as I shall show you that they do hereafter; or what is more to the
point, for the $1,800,000,000 that the government borrowed from the
money-lenders it would compel the people to return them as bonus,
interest and principal, the enormous sum of $5,000,000,000.