Or still again: why should the people pay any interest at all on loans
from themselves? Why should not their agent—the Government—when amply
secured, freely loan the people all the money that they want for use?
Suppose that the farmers and the manufacturers did not have to pay
interest on the money that they are compelled to have to produce their
crops and goods? Don’t you see that they could compete successfully with
the people of any country in the world, in the production of anything?
Institute free money and there would be no necessity for a tariff for
protection to keep out the cheaper goods of other nations. But on the
contrary, this country would shortly be supplying other nations with the
very things with which they are now supplying us and thereby crippling
our manufactures and productions. Besides, all the people would be
constantly employed, prices would be low, every comfort and even luxury
abundant and in the reach of all, and thrift would replace stagnation
everywhere. Plenty of money, plenty of work and plenty of everything
that the ingenuity and strength of man can make, are the most favourable
conditions for the masses; while just the reverse is true for the
privileged classes. But why, since the former class outnumbers the
latter, as five to one, do not the former have all things their own way
in this country where the majority rule? Ask the masses this, and they
can make no reply. But it is because the superior intelligence and tact
of the minority enable them to concoct schemes by which, without seeming
to do so, they reduce the majority to actual, though mostly unconscious
servitude; making them pay, first, all the interest on the public and
private debts; next, all the expenses of the national, state, county and
municipal governments; and next, obtain their own support and the
increase of their wealth from them. Do you think that I overstate this?
I think I can make it so clear that you cannot doubt it; and if I do,
will you not think differently of the toiling masses than you have
thought of them heretofore? At the beginning of any year take the amount
of real wealth in the hands of the non-producers. During the year the
governments continue, the taxes are gathered and the expenses are paid:
your debts, your expenses and all; the producers have continued to
labour as usual, and at the end of the year find themselves just where
they were at its beginning; but the property of the wealthy classes has
increased about three per cent. for the whole country. And while the
latter class has become fewer in numbers and richer individually, the
former has increased in numbers and become poorer individually. Now
these are the facts, and with them before them who will pretend to say
that the class who have not produced anything have added to the
aggregate wealth? Whence has come this increase of wealth? From the
wealth producers, from the labouring classes and from no other source.
Industry being the sole source of wealth, it could have come from no
other source. Hence let the non-producer get his increase by whatever
strategy, it comes in some channel directly from the producer. This may
be done by interest, by speculation, by sharp trades, by profits; but
let it be by which it may, the producer has to pay the bill. In other
words, every addition that is made to the wealth of non-producers is so
made at the expense of the producers, the former having so much more
than they had which they did not produce, and the latter having so much
less than they did produce. This is self-evident, and all the
sophistical argumentation that can ever be made cannot make it
otherwise. The minority may attempt to explain it away; to show that
this and that are so and so; but here are the facts staring them in the
face, and they will no more down than would Banquo’s ghost for the
guilty Thane. There they stand, an everlasting condemnation of the rule
of the minority and the servitude of the majority. Nothing can be
clearer; nothing truer. And is it not a shame that it is true?