Nobody pretends that Mr. Stewart ever produced a single doll

Freedom! Equality!! Justice!!!

These three; but the greatest of these is Justice.

A SPEECH

ON THE

Impending Revolution,

DELIVERED IN

Music Hall, Boston, Thursday, Feb, 1, 1872,

AND THE

Academy of Music, New York, Feb. 20, 1872,

BY

VICTORIA C. WOODHULL.

[Illustration]

NEW YORK:

WOODHULL, CLAFLIN & CO., PUBLISHERS,

No. 44 Broad Street.

1872.

THE

IMPENDING REVOLUTION.

Standing upon the apex of the nineteenth century, we look backward

through the historic era, and in the distant, dim past catch sight of

the feeble outreachings of the roots of humanity, which during thousands

of years have evolved into the magnificent civilization by which we are

surrounded. Mighty nations have risen and fallen; empires have gathered

and wasted; races and peoples have evolved and decayed; but the mystic

ebb and flow of the Gigantic Spirit concealed within the universe has

continued upon its course, ever increasing in strength and in variety of

sequence.

It is true that the results which have flown from this progressive

course have very materially changed. Early in its history every

achievement was considered great or small, as its conquests by military

prowess were great or small. But who in this era would think of placing

a Sesostris, or a Semiramis, or even an Alexander, or Cæsar, in

comparison as conquerors, with the steamship, the locomotive engine, the

electric telegraph, and last and greatest, collecting the efforts of all

men, and spreading them world-wide—the printing-press. Where kings and

emperors once used the sword to hew their way into the centers of

barbarism, the people now make use of their subtle powers of intellect

to pierce the heart of ignorance. The conquerors of the present, armed

with these keen weapons, are so intertwining the material interests of

humanity that, where exclusion was once the rule among nations,

intercommunication has made it the exception. Every year some new tie

has been added to those which already bound the nations together, until

even the continents clasp hands across the oceans, and salute each other

in fraternal unity, and the islands stand anxiously waiting for their

deliverance.

The grand results of all these magnificent changes have accrued to the

benefit of nations as such. All the revolutions of the past have

resulted in the building of empires and the dethroning of kings. The

grandeur of the Roman Empire consisted in its power, centered in and

expressed by its rulers. The glory of France under the great Napoleon

was the result of his capacity to use the people. We have no histories

making nations famous by the greatness of their peoples. Centralization

of power at the head of the government has been the source of all

national honor. Under this system grades and castes of people have built

themselves, the stronger upon the weaker, and the people as individuals

have never appeared upon the surface.

Government has gone through various and important evolutions and

changes. First we learn of it as residing in the head of the family,

there being no other organization. Next, families aggregated into

tribes, with an acknowledged head. Again, tribes united into nations,

occupying specified limits, and having an absolute ruler. Then began a

double process, which is even now unfinished—the consolidation of

nations into races, and the redistribution of power to the people. That

which was once absolute in the head of the family, the tribe and the

nation, is now shared by the head with the most powerful among the

people. These two processes will continue until both are complete—until

all nations are merged into races, and all races into one government;

and until the power is completely and equally returned to all the

people, who will no longer be denominated as belonging to this or that

country or government, but as citizens of the world—as members of a

common humanity.

“God loves from whole to parts: but human soul Must rise from individual

to the whole.”

It is at once one of the most interesting as well as instructive of

studies, to trace the march which civilization has described. Beginning

in Asia, it traversed westward by and through the rise and decay of the

Assyrian, Egyptian, Persian, Grecian and Roman Empires, each one of

which built successively upon the ruins of the preceding, and all

culminating in the downfall of the last, whose civilization was

disseminated to impregnate that portion of the world then unknown.

Modern Europe rose, and when at its height of power, civilization still

undeviatingly marching westward, crossed the stormy Atlantic, and

implanted itself in the virgin soil of America.

Here, however, an entirely new process was begun. Representatives from

all nations, races and tongues here do congregate. Not only do the

nations of Europe and Africa pour their restless sons and daughters

westward, but the nations of Asia, setting at defiance the previous law

of empire, send their children against its tide to meet it and to

coalesce. To those who can view humanity as one, this is a fact of great

significance, since it proves America to be the center to which the

nations naturally tend. But this is only a part of its significance. The

more prophetic portion is, that here a new race is being developed, into

which will be gathered all the distinctive characteristics of all the

various races. Each race is the distinct representative of some special

and predominant characteristic, being weak in all others. The new race

will combine all these different qualities in one grand character, and

shall ultimately gather in all people of all races. Observe the merging

of the black and white races. The white does not descend to the black,

but the black gradually approaches the white. And this is the prophecy

of what shall be:

“For mankind are one in spirit, and an instinct bears along,

Round the earth’s electric circle, the swift flash of right and wrong;

Whether conscious or unconscious, yet Humanity’s vast frame,

Through its ocean-sundered fibres, feels the gush of joy or shame:

In the gain or loss of one race, all the rest have equal claim.”

As in this country the future race of the world is being developed, so

also will the foundation of the future government be developed, which

shall become universal. It was no mere child’s play or idle fancy of the

old prophets, whose prophecies of a Christ who should rule the world,

come trooping down the corridors of time, and from all eras converge

upon this. Neither were the Jews entirely at fault when they looked for

a Messiah who should reign over the world in temporal as well as in

spiritual things, since it is beginning to be comprehended that a reign

of justice in temporal things can only follow from the baptism of them

by spirituality. And it is the approach of these heretofore

widely-separated principles which is to produce the impending

revolution. And that revolution will be the final and the ultimate

contest between justice and authority, in which the latter will be

crushed, never again to raise its despotic head among and to divide the

members of a common humanity.

St. Paul said: “Faith, Hope and Charity. These three, but the greatest

of these is charity.” Beautiful as this triplet may appear to be to the

casualist, it cannot bear the test of analysis. It will be replaced in

the vocabulary of the future by the more perfect one—Knowledge, Wisdom

and Justice. These three, but the greatest of these is Justice. Charity,

with its long cloak of justice escaped, has long enough covered a

multitude of sins. Justice will in the future demand perfect

compensation in all things, whether material, mental or spiritual.

Heretofore justice has only been considered as having relation to

matters covered by enacted law, and its demands have been considered as

satisfied when the law has had its full course. With Freedom and

Equality it has been a mere abstract term with but little significance.

There has never been such a thing as freedom for the people. It has

always been concession by the government. There has never been an

equality for the people. It has always been the stronger, in some sense,

preying upon the weaker; and the people have never had justice. When

there is authority, whether it be of law, of custom, or of individuals,

neither of these can exist except in name. Neither do these principles

apply to the people in their collective capacity, but when the people’s

time shall come they will belong to every individual separately.

Equality will exist in freedom and be regulated by justice.

But what does freedom mean? “As free as the winds” is a common

expression. But if we stop to inquire what that freedom is, we find that

air in motion is under the most complete subjection to different

temperatures in different localities, and that these differences arise

from conditions entirely independent of the air simply as such. That is

to say, the air of itself never changes its temperature. Therefore the

freedom of the wind is the freedom to obey commands imposed by

conditions to which it is by nature related. So also is water always

free to seek its own level. But neither the air or the water of one

locality obeys the commands which come from the conditions surrounding

another locality. That is to say, that while air and water as a whole

are subject to general laws, when individualized, each separate body

must be subject to its peculiar relations, and to the law of its

conditions. Water in one locality may be pure—hydrogen, nitrogen and

oxygen; while in others it may contain various additional elements, as

sodium, calcium or ammonium, and yet each is free. Air in one locality

may be twenty degrees above, and in another twenty degrees below, zero;

and yet each is free in its own sphere.

Now, individual freedom in its true sense means just the same thing for

the people that freedom for the air and water means to them. It means

freedom to obey the natural condition of the individual, modified only

by the various external forces which are brought to bear upon, and which

induce action in, the individual. What that action will be, must be

determined solely by the individual and the operating causes, and in no

two cases can they be precisely alike; since no two human beings are

precisely alike. Now, is it not plain that freedom means that

individuals having the right to it, are subject only to the laws of

their own being, and to the relations they sustain to the laws of other

things by which they are surrounded?

If, then, freedom mean anything, it means that no individual is subject

to any rule or law to be arbitrarily imposed by other individuals. But

several individuals may agree among themselves to be governed by certain

rules, since that is their freedom to do so. And here is the primal

foundation and the only authoritative source of government. No

individual can be said to be free and be held accountable to a law to

which he or she did not consent.

In the light of that analysis, have the people of this country got

freedom? But should it be objected that such freedom would be liable to

abuse, we reply that that is impossible. Since the moment one individual

abuses his or her freedom, that moment he or she is encroaching upon the

freedom of some one else who is equally entitled to the same right. And

the law of the association must protect against such encroachment. And,

so far as restraint is concerned, this is the province—the sole

province—of law, to protect the rights of individual freedom.

But what is equality, which must be maintained in freedom? A good

illustration of what equality among the people means, may be drawn from

the equality among the children of a family in the case of an equal

division of the property of the deceased father. If the property is

divided among them according to their respective merits, that would not

be equality.

Now, equality for the people means the equality of the family, extended

to all families. It means that no personal merit or demerit can

interfere between individuals, so that one may, by arbitration or laws,

be placed unequally with another. It means that every individual is

entitled to all the natural wealth that he or she requires to minister

to the various wants of the body, and to an equal share of all

accumulated, artificial wealth—which will appear self-evident when we

shall have analyzed wealth. It also means that every person is entitled

to equal opportunity for intellectual acquirements, recreation and rest,

since the first is necessary to make the performance of the individual’s

share of duty possible; while the second and third are the natural

requirements of the body, independent of the individuality of the

person, and which was not self-created but inherited.

Under this analysis have we any such thing as equality in this country?

And yet it should be the duty of government, since it is a fundamental

portion of its theory, to maintain equality among the people; otherwise

the word is but a mere catch, without the slightest signification in

fact.

What, then, should be the sphere of justice in maintaining equality in

freedom? Clearly to maintain equal conditions among free individuals.

But this will appear the more evident as we proceed. The impending

revolution, then, will be the strife for the mastery between the

authority, despotism, inequalities and injustices of the present, and

freedom, equality and justice in their broad and perfect sense, based on

the proposition that humanity is one, having a common origin, common

interests and purposes, and inheriting a common destiny, which is the

complete statement of the religion of Jesus Christ, unadulterated by his

professed followers.

But does the impending revolution imply a peaceful change or a bloody

struggle?

No person who will take the trouble to carefully observe the conditions

of the various departments of society can fail to discern the terrible

earthquakes just ready to burst out upon every side, and which are only

now restrained by the thick incrustations with which customs, prejudices

and authorities have incased humanity. Indeed, the whole surface of

humanity is surging like the billows of the stormy ocean, and it only

escapes general and destructive rupture because its composition, like

the consciences of its constituent members, is so elastic. But, anon,

the restrained furies will overcome the temper of their fastenings, and,

rending them asunder, will sweep over the people, submerging them or

cleansing them of their gathered debris, as they shall have located

themselves, with regard to its coming.

All the struggles of humanity in the centuries which have come and gone

have been for freedom—for freedom to think and for freedom to act, as

against authority and despotic law, without regard to what should come

of that thought and action. But we are now entering upon a struggle for

something quite different from this. Having obtained freedom from the

despotism of rulers and governments, the rule and despotism of

individuals began to usurp the places made vacant by them. Where once

the king or the emperor reigned, capital, reinforced by the power of

public opinion and religious authorities, now sits and forges chains

with which to fetter and bind the people. Where, by divine right, men

once demanded the results of the labors of their people, the privileged

few, by the means of an ingenious system, facetiously called popular

laws, now make the same demand, and with equally decisive results. The

demand is answered by the return of the entire proceeds of each year’s

surplus productions into their coffers. And this is no more true of the

pauper laborers of Europe and the slave laborers of Asia than it is of

the free labor of America. Six hundred millions people constantly toil

all their lives long, while about ten millions sit quietly by gathering

and luxuriating in their results.

Simple freedom, then, is not enough. It has not accomplished the

redemption of the people. It has only relieved them from one form of

slavery to leave them at the mercy of another still more insidious in

its character, because more plausible; since, if penury and want exist,

accompanied by suffering and privation, under the rule of a monarch, he

may justly be held responsible. But when it exists under the reign of

freedom, there is no responsibility anywhere, unless it may be said to

be in the people themselves, which is equivalent to saying

responsibility without application.

To illustrate this distinction without a difference, take the island of

Cuba, with its half million inhabitants, and suppose it to be ruled by

an absolute monarch, who administers his commands through the usual

attachés of the court and the noblemen of the island. Virtually owning

the people, he commands them to labor, taking from them all their

products, and merely feeding, clothing and sheltering them. In this case

it would be the non-laborers who, without any circumlocution, directly

obtain all the produced wealth, they simply expending their time and

talent in its securing, while the lives of the people who produce it

would be simply maintained.

Now advance one step toward popular government—to a constitutional

monarchy. In this the same results to the producing people will be

maintained, while the noblemen will share the wealth among themselves,

allotting a certain share to the monarch.

Coming down to a representative government, of which personal liberty is

the basis, the despotism of laws enacted in the interest of privileged

classes are substituted for the personal despotism of monarchs and

nobles. What the absolute monarch possesses himself of by the right of

might, the privileged class in the popular government possess themselves

of by the right of law, everything legal being held to be just.

Now is not that precisely the case in this country? Do not all the

results of labor accrue to the privileged few? and are not the producing

classes just as much enslaved to them as the subjects of an absolute

monarch are to him?

With this mortification, however. In the last instance, they suffer from

conditions over which they have no control; whilst in the former case

the conditions by which they are enslaved are of their own formation.

And I say, I would rather be the unwilling subject of an absolute

monarch than the willing slave of my own ignorance, of which advantage

is taken by those who spend their time in endeavoring to prove to me

that I am free and in singing the glories of my condition, to hoodwink

my reason and to blind my perception.

And I further say, that that system of government by which it is

possible for a class of people to practice upon my credulity, and, under

false pretenses, first entice me to acquiesce in laws by which immense

corporations and monopolies are established, and then to induce me to

submit to their extortions because they exist according to law, pursuing

none but lawful means, is an infernal despotism, compared to which the

Russian Czar is a thousand times to be preferred.

This may at first seem a sweeping indictment of our form of government,

but I say it is just. Suppose we take our railroad system, now amounting

to fifty-five thousand miles. At an average cost of eighty thousand

dollars per mile for construction and equipment, its total cost would be

four billions four hundred millions dollars. To pay the shareholders an

eight per cent. dividend for doing nothing, the industries of the

country would have to be taxed three hundred and fifty millions dollars

over and above the cost of maintenance and operation. Did this enormous

drain from the products of the people stop here, the fertility of the

country, made use of by the ingenuity of the people, might possibly keep

pace with the demand. But it does not stop there. The net earning of the

railroads enables their directors to make larger dividends than eight

per cent. Do their managers relinquish this increase in favor of the

people? Never a bit of it. But they increase their stock either by

selling new shares, or by making stock or scrip dividends, and to

neither process has there been found any legal bar or cure.

Now, what may the result of such a system be? Why, this. If the stock of

all these railroads be increased in the same proportion that some of

them have already been increased, it may be raised to a thousand

billions of dollars, and the people, instead of being compelled to pay

three hundred and fifty millions dollars to provide an eight per cent.

dividend on their cost, will have to submit to the extortion of eight

hundred million dollars annually to satisfy the demands of these legal

despots for an eight per cent. dividend upon stock, a large part of

which represent absolutely nothing but the people’s stolen money.

A person who would double the size of another’s note simply because the

profits of his business would permit the payment of twelve per cent.

interest, so that instead of paying twelve per cent. upon one hundred

dollars, which would be an illegal charge, it would be six per cent.

upon two hundred dollars, would be deemed and adjudged guilty of

forgery. But these railroad magnates sit in their palatial offices and

raise their notes at pleasure, and they are considered public

benefactors. It is a crime for a single person to steal a dollar, but a

corporation may steal a million dollars, and be canonized as saints.

Oh, the stupid blindness of this people! Swindled every day before their

very eyes, and yet they don’t seem to know that there is anything wrong,

simply because no _law_ has been violated. In their eyes everything that

is lawful is right, and this has become the curse of the nation. But the

opposite—that everything which is right is lawful—don’t follow as a part

of their philosophy.

No matter what a person does if it is not actionable under the law; he

is an honest man and a good church member. But Heaven defend us from

being truthful, natural beings, unless the law says we may—since that is

to be an infamous scoundrel.

A Vanderbilt may sit in his office and manipulate stocks, or make

dividends, by which, in a few years, he amasses fifty millions dollars

from the industries of the country, and he is one of the remarkable men

of the age. But if a poor, half-starved child were to take a loaf of

bread from his cupboard, to prevent starvation, she would be sent first

to the Tombs, and thence to Blackwell’s Island.

An Astor may sit in his sumptuous apartments, and watch the property

bequeathed him by his father, rise in value from one to fifty millions,

and everybody bows before his immense power, and worships his business

capacity. But if a tenant of his, whose employer had discharged him

because he did not vote the Republican ticket, and thereby fails to pay

his month’s rent to Mr. Astor, the law sets him and his family into the

street in midwinter; and, whether he dies of cold or starvation, neither

Mr. Astor or anybody else stops to ask, since that is nobody’s business

but the man’s. This is a free country, you know, and why should I

trouble myself about that person, because he happens to be so

unfortunate as not to be able to pay Mr. Astor his rent?

Mr. Stewart, by business tact, and the various practices known to trade,

succeeds, in twenty years, in obtaining from customers whom he has

entrapped into purchasing from him fifty millions dollars, and with his

gains he builds costly public beneficiaries, and straightway the world

makes him a philanthropist. But a poor devil who should come along with

a bolt of cloth, which he had succeeded in smuggling into the country,

and which, consequently, he could sell at a lower price than Mr.

Stewart, who paid the tariff, and is thereby authorized by law to add

that sum to the piece, would be cast into prison.

Now these individuals represent three of the principal methods that the

privileged classes have invented by which to monopolize the accumulated

wealth of the country. But let us analyze the processes, and see if it

is wholly by their personal efforts that they gain this end.

Nobody pretends that Mr. Stewart ever produced a single dollar of his

vast fortune. He accumulated it by dealing in the productions of others,

which he first obtained at low rates, and then sold at a sufficient

advance over the cost of handling to make in the aggregate a sum

amounting to millions.

Now, I want to ask if all this is not arriving at the same result, by

another method, at which the slaveholders of the South arrived, by

owning negroes? In the case of the latter, the slaveholder reaped all

the benefits of the labors of the negroes. In the former case the

merchant princes, together with the various other privileged classes,

reap the benefit of the labors of all the working-classes of the

country. Every year the excess of the produced wealth of the country

finds final lodgment in the pockets of these classes, and they grow

richer at each succeeding harvest, while the laborers toil their lives

away; and when all their strength and vigor have been transformed into

wealth, which has been legally transferred to the capitalists, they are

heavy with age, and as destitute as when they began their life of

servitude. Did ever Southern slave have meaner end than this?

In all seriousness, is there any common justice in such a state of

things? Is it right that the millions should toil all their lives long,

scarcely having comfortable food and clothes, while the few manage to

control all the benefits? People may pretend that it is justice, and

good Christians may excuse it upon that ground, but Christ would never

have called it by that name. He would even give him that labored but an

hour as much as he that had labored all the day, but to him who labored

not at all he would take away even that which he hath. And yet we hear

loud professions of Christianity ascending from the pulpit throughout

the length and breadth of the land. And when I listen, I cannot help

exclaiming, “O, ye hypocrites, how can ye hope to escape the damnation

of hell?”

Am I asked, How are these things to be amended? I will tell you in the

first place, that they must be remedied; and this particular case of

dealing in the labor of the people is to be remedied by abolishing

huckstering, or the system of middle-men, and substituting therefor a

general system of public markets, conducted by the people through their

paid agents, as all other public business is performed. In these markets

the products of the country should be received, in first hands, direct

from the producers, who should realize their entire proceeds. In this

manner the immense fortunes realized by middle-men, and the profits made

by the half-dozen different hands through which merchandise travels on

its way to consumers, would be saved to the producer. A bushel of

apples, purchased in the orchard at twenty-five cents, is finally sold

to the consumer at a dollar. Now, either the consumer has paid at least

a half dollar too much, or the producer has received a half dollar too

little, for the apples; since, under a perfect system, the apples would

go direct from the orchard to the market, and thence direct to the

consumer.

We are forever talking of political economy, but it appears to me that

the most vital points—one of which is our system of huckstery—is

entirely overlooked.

Suppose Mr. Stewart, instead of having labored all these years for his

own selfish interests, had labored in the interests of the people? Is it

not clear that the half-a-hundred million dollars he has accumulated

would have remained with the people who have consumed his goods? Place

all other kinds of traffic upon the same proposed basis, and do you not

see that the system which makes merchant-princes would be abolished?

Neither would it require one-half the people to conduct a general system

of markets who are now employed speculating in the results of labor.

In short, every person should either be a producer or a paid agent or

officer of consumers and producers, and our entire system of shopkeeping

reduced to a magnificent system of immense public markets. In this way

there could also be a perfect control exercised over the quality of

perishable goods, the want of which is now felt so severely in summer in

all large cities, and a thousand unthought of remedies would necessarily

suggest themselves as the system should develop.

But let us pass to one of the other branches of this same system. We

have in our midst thousands of people of immense wealth who have never

even done so much to justify its possession as the merchant-princes have

done to justify themselves. I refer to our land monopolists, and to Mr.

Astor as their representative. Mr. Astor inherited a large landed

estate, which has risen in value to be worth millions of dollars, to

which advance Mr. Astor never contributed even a day’s labor. He has

done nothing except to watch the rise and gather in the rents, while the

whole laboring country has been constantly engaged in promoting that

advance. What would Mr. Astor have been without the City of New York?

And what would the City of New York have been without the United States?

You see, my friends, it will not do to view this matter superficially.

We live in too analytic an age to permit these things to go on in the

way they have been going. There is too much poverty, too much suffering,

too much hard work, too many hours of labor for individuals, too many

sleepless nights, too many starving poor, too many hungry children, too

many in helpless old age, to permit these villanous abuses to continue

sheltered under the name of respectability and public order.

But again, and upon a still worse swindle of the people. A person having

money goes out into the public domain and acquires an immense tract of

land. Shortly a railroad is projected and built, which runs through that

tract. It offers a fine location for a station. A city springs up, and

that which cost in some instances as little as a shilling per acre, is

divided into town lots, and these are reluctantly parted with at five

hundred dollars each.

Again, I wish to inquire, in the name of Justice, to whom does that

advance belong? To the person who nominally holds the land? What has he

done to entitle him to receive dollars for what he only paid cents? Is

there any equality—is there any justice—in such a condition? He profits

by the action of others; in fact at the public expense, since in its

last analysis it is the common public who are the basis of all advance

in the value of property.

Now, I say, that that common public is entitled to all the benefits

accruing from common efforts; and it is an infamous wrong that makes it

accrue to the benefit of a special few. And a system of society which

permits such arbitrary distributions of wealth is a disgrace to

Christian civilization, whose Author and his Disciples had all things in

common. Let professing Christians who, for a pretense, make long

prayers, think of that, and then denounce Communism, if they can; and

denounce me as a Revolutionist for advocating it, if they dare.

But, is it asked, how is this to be remedied? I answer, very easily!

Since those who possess the accumulated wealth of the country have

filched it by legal means from those to whom it justly belongs—the

people—it must be returned to them, by legal means if possible, but it

must be returned to them in any event. When a person worth millions,

dies, instead of leaving it to his children, who have no more title to

it than anybody else’s children have, it must revert to the people, who

really produced it. Do you say that is injustice to the children? I say,

No! And if you ask me how the rich man’s children are going to live

after his death, I answer, by the same means as the poor man’s children

live. Let it be remembered that we have had simple freedom quite long

enough. By setting all our hopes on freedom we have been robbed of our

rights. What we want now is more than freedom—we want equality! And by

the Heaven above us, earth’s growing children are going to have it! What

right have the children of the rich to be born to luxurious idleness,

while the children of the poor are born to, all their lives long,

further contribute to their ease? Do they not in common belong to God’s

human family? If I mistake not, Christ told us so. You will not dispute

his authority, I am sure. If, instead of preaching Christ and him

crucified quite so much, we should practice his teaching a little more,

my word for it, we should all be better Christians.

And when by this process all the land shall have been returned to the

people, there will be just as much of it, and it will be equally as

productive, and just as much room on it as there is now. But instead of

a few people owning the whole of it, and farming it out to all the rest

at the best possible prices, the people will possess it themselves in

their own right, through just laws, paying for its possession to the

government such moderate rates of taxes as shall be necessary to

maintain the government.

But I may as well conclude what I have to say regarding railroads, which

must also revert back to the people, and be conducted by them for the

public benefit, as our common highways are now conducted. Vanderbilt,

Scott & Co. are demonstrating it better and better every day that all

the railroads of the country can be much more economically and

advantageously conducted under one management than under a thousand

different managements. They imagine that very soon they will have

accomplished a complete consolidation of the entire system, and that by

the power of that consolidation they will be able to control the

government of this country.

But they will not be the first people who have made slight

miscalculations as to ultimate results. Thomas Scott might make a

splendid Secretary of the Department of Internal Improvements, for which

the new Constitution, which this country is going to adopt, makes

provision; but he will never realize his ambition to preside over the

railroad system of the country in any other manner.

And I will tell you another benefit that will follow the nationalization

of our railroads. You have all heard of the dealing in stocks, of the

“bulls” and the “bears,” and the “longs” and the “shorts,” and the “lame

ducks” of Wall street. Well, they will all be abolished. There will be

no stocks in which to deal. That sort of speculation, by which gigantic

swindlers corner a stock and take it in at their own figures, will, to

use a vulgar phrase, be “played out.” And if you were to see their

customers, as I have seen them, rushing about Broad street to catch

sight of the last per cent. of their margins as they disappear in the

hungry maw of the complacent brokers, you would agree with me that it

ought to be “played out.”

Under the system which I propose, not only will stock gambling be

abolished, but also all other gambling, and the hundreds of thousands of

able-bodied people who are now engaged in it, living from the products

of others, will be compelled to go to producing themselves.

But, says the objector, take riches away from people and there will be

no incentive to accumulate. But, my dear sir, we don’t propose to do

anything of the kind, nor to destroy any wealth. There will never be any

less wealth than now, but a constant increase upon it. We only propose

that the people shall hold it in their own right, instead of its being

held in trust for them by a self-appointed few. Instead of having a few

millionaires, and millions on the verge of starvation, we propose that

all shall possess a comfortable competence—that is, shall possess the

results of their own labors.

I can’t see where there is a chance for a lack of motive to come in. It

seems to me that everybody will have a better and a more certain chance,

as well as a better incentive to accumulate. Will the certainty of

accumulation destroy the desire to accumulate? Nobody but the most

stupid would attempt to maintain that. It is not great wealth in a few

individuals that proves a country prosperous, but great general wealth

evenly distributed among the people. That country must be the most

prosperous and happy where the people are most generally comfortably and

happily circumstanced. And in this country, instead of a hundredth part

of the people living in palaces and riding in coaches, while the balance

live in huts and travel on foot, every person may live in a palace and

ride in a coach. I leave it to you to decide which is the preferable

condition and which the more Christian.

And why should the rich object to this? If everybody has enough and to

spare, should that be a subject of complaint? What more do people want,

except it be for the purpose of tyrannizing over others dependent upon

them? But no objections that may be raised will be potent enough to

crush out the demand for equality now rising from an oppressed people.

This demand the possessors of wealth cannot afford to ignore. It comes

from a patiently-enduring people, who have waited already too long for

the realization of the beautiful pictures of freedom which have been

painted for them to admire; for the realization of the songs which poets

have sung to its praise. Let me warn, nay, let me implore them not to be

deaf to this demand, since they do not know so well as I know what

temper there is behind it. I have tested it, and I know it is one that

will not much longer brook the denial of justice.

But there is another monopoly of which I must speak—I mean the monopoly

of money itself. We have seen how great a tyranny that is which arises

from monopolizing the land. But that occurring from the monopoly of

money, is a still more insidious and dangerous form of despotism, since

its ramifications are more extensive and minute. It may be exercised by

the person possessing a hundred, or by the person possessing a million

dollars. But what is the process? A person inherits a half million

dollars for which he never expended a single day’s labor. He sits in his

office loaning that sum of money say, in sums of one thousand dollars to

one thousand different persons, each of whom conducts a little business

which yields just enough to support a family and to pay the interest.

These people live for forty years in this manner, and die no better off

than when they began life. But during that time they have paid all their

extra production to the amount of four thousand dollars, each, to the

capitalist; and, finally, the business itself is sold out to pay the

principal. And thus it turns out that the capitalist obtains everything

those thousand persons earned during their whole lives, they leaving

nothing to their families. Now, what better is that result than it would

have been had these people been slaves? Could their owners have obtained

any more from them? I say they would have obtained less; since, had they

been slaves in name, as in fact they were, there would have been times

during the forty years that they would not have earned interest over

cost of their support. Now, look at the capitalist. For one million

dollars, and without the straining of a muscle, he receives five million

dollars direct, which, reinvested from time to time as it increases,

amounts at the end of the forty years to not less than fifteen millions

dollars.

But try another example of a somewhat different kind. A person having

four grown children, whom he has reared in luxury, and given all the

facilities of education, dies, leaving each of them a farm worth

twenty-five thousand dollars. These children having never learned the

art of farming are incapable of conducting these farms; but they lease

them to four different people for a thousand dollars a year each, and

live at ease all their lives, therefrom, never so much as lifting their

hands to do an hour’s labor. Now, who is it that supports those four

people? Is it not clear that it is the people who work the farms? And

how did it happen that they had the farms to lease? Simply by an

incident for which there was no legitimate general cause, else why do

not all children have farms and live without work?

Nor can you, my friends, discover anything approaching equality, or

aught that looks like justice in that operation. I tell you nay! It is

the most insidious despotism, with a single exception, that is possible

among a people. It is a despotism which was condemned in all former

times, even by barbarians, and which the Jews were only permitted to

enforce upon people of other nations. It is the hideous vampire fastened

upon the vitals of our people, sucking—sucking—sucking their very life’s

blood, leaving just enough to keep up their vitality, that they may

manufacture more. It is the heartless monster that will have the exact

pound of flesh, even if there be loss of blood to obtain it, and there

is no just judge near to prevent the taking, or to hold him to account

if he take it. It paralyzes our industries; shuts the gates in the way

that leads to our inexhaustible treasures within the bosom of mother

earth; strips the stars and stripes from the masts of merchantmen;

compels our immense cotton lands to luxuriate in weeds; robs our

spindles of the power to turn them; and lays an embargo upon every

productive enterprise. Whoever makes a movement to compel the earth to

yield her wealth, or to transform that wealth into useful form, must

first obtain the consent of this despot, and pay his demands for a

license.

Thirteen millions of laborers in this country produce annually four

thousand millions dollars of wealth, every dollar of which over and

above the cost of living is paid over to appease the demands of this

insatiate monster—this horrid demon, whose name is Interest.

We are told that we cannot manufacture railroad iron in this country as

cheap as it can be manufactured in England. Yes! And why? Is it because

we have no ore or no coal; or that, which is not as good as England has?

No! We have on the surface what in England is hundreds of feet in the

bowels of the earth, and coal the same; and both of better quality. But

money can be put at interest in this country so as to double itself

every four years, and be amply secured. What reason have capitalists to

construct iron works, or to have their care, when twenty-five per cent.

per year is returned them, without care or risk? And what is true of

iron is also true of every other natural production. Is it any wonder

that our manufacturers are obliged to demand that the people pay an

additional per cent. upon everything they eat, drink or wear, that they

may be protected in their various productive enterprises, when such

exactions are laid upon them by this more than absolute monarch? No! It

would indeed be a wonder if it were not so.

Now, do you suppose our markets would be flooded with British goods if

our producing and manufacturing interests had all the money they require

without interest? If there are any borrowers at ten per cent. who hear

my voice, let them answer. No; it is the tribute that industry is

compelled to pay to capital that forces our government to exact ten,

twenty, fifty, aye, even a hundred per cent. for the privilege of

bringing merchandise into this country.

But they tell us if we go to free trade that our country would be

flooded with foreign products, so there would be absolutely no

production of manufactured goods in the country. Now that would be true,

if we should attempt free trade and leave the monster Interest with his

grip upon our vitals. And here is the short-sightedness of Free-Traders.

If we want free trade, we must, in the first place, attack, throttle and

kill this demon, after which we may manufacture at prices that will not

only absolutely forbid the importation of almost everything that is now

imported, but which will also enable us to play the same game with

Europe that Europe has played so long upon us. Free money in this

country would abolish every European throne within ten years. And yet

people cannot be made to see that this country is their support. With

free money what need would we have for a protective tariff? Can any

Protectionist answer that?

You see, my friends, that it is the people who catch sight of an idea

and pursue it to the death, regardless of relative ideas, who make

reform so ridiculous. One reform cannot advance alone. All kinds of

reform must go on together. Interest and free trade must go hand in

hand; interest, if either, a little ahead.

And in this regard I am free to confess that the National Labor Union’s

demand for a decrease of interest is the most reasonable single reform

now being advocated. We want free trade; but we want free money first,

so that not a spindle or forge in this country shall stop at the command

of those across the ocean.

But how are we going to get free money? Why, in the very easiest way

possible. It is the simplest problem of them all. I am not going into

this discussion to prove to you that gold is not money, since everybody

ought to know that it has no more the properties of money than cotton,

corn and pork have the properties of money. Now, money is that thing

which, if every dollar in circulation should be destroyed, there would

be no loss of wealth. Gold, cotton, corn and wheat are wealth. Destroy

these and there is a loss. But when money is destroyed, there is no more

loss than when a promissory note is destroyed. A note is an evidence of

debt. It is not wealth, but its representative. So also is money not

wealth, but its representative. And if we had a thousand million dollars

in circulation to-day, there would be no more wealth in the country than

there now is, and we would have quite as much wealth if there were two

thousand millions dollars, since money and wealth are two entirely

distinct things.

But they tell us that unless money is made redeemable in gold, it is not

of any account, and that, too, in the face of our miserable greenback

system, which was so much better even than gold that it saved the nation

when, had we stuck to gold, we should have been destroyed. Oh, but it

was a depreciated currency, says some one. Yes, it was a depreciated

currency, and we should have ample reason to be thankful if when we come

to pay our bonds, we have a depreciated currency with which to liquidate

them, instead of being obliged, as we shall, to pay a thousand dollars

in cotton for what we realized less than five hundred in gold.

It is not the gold only of a country that constitutes its wealth. What

should we care if we had not a single ounce of gold, if we had a

thousand million bales of cotton, ten thousand millions bushels of corn

and wheat, and a billion dollars’ worth of manufactured goods to send to

other countries? So you see it is not the gold after all that makes a

circulation good, but the sum total of all kinds of wealth. Now, that is

what we propose to substitute for gold as the basis for a money issue.

And instead of permitting corporations to issue it and remain at liberty

to dispose of their property and let the people who hold their

circulation whistle for its redemption, we propose that government,

which can neither sell our property nor abscond with it, shall issue it

for the people and lend it to them at cost; or if you will insist on

paying interest for money, why, then, pay it to the government and

lessen your taxes that much, instead of paying interest to bankers and

supporting government besides.

Now, don’t you think that would be rather a good sort of a money system?

I know that every manufacturer in the country would like it. But I can

tell you who will not like it; and whom we may be compelled to fight

before they will permit us to have it; and these are the money-lenders

and money-changers, such as it is related the Head of the Christian

Church—one Jesus Christ, of whom we hear a great deal said, but whose

teachings and doctrines are wofully perverted—scourged out of the Temple

at a place known as Jerusalem.

I have not been guilty of frequenting the temples of the country much of

late, but if I am not misinformed upon the subject, and unless they have

changed since I did frequent them, if Christ should pass through this

land of a Sunday, scourge in hand, he would find plenty of work to do in

the same line in which he labored so faithfully among the Jews.