Chapter 3
This has been a losing transaction all round, for, alas, the dear one herself goes over in a few days, and when we next hear of her she will be calling on her big brother to go and thrash the whelp that our money purchased.
It does not look like business to make purchases abroad with income producing property. But when they buy, say $50,000,000 of government bonds at a clip, as did the late Wm. H. Vanderbilt, they turn the interest as fast as it comes in into more income producers, and this leaves their cash-till comparatively empty, so that when they need money quick, for there is much competition among this gentry, as in the case of a big jewel or a princeling, they have no option but to be up and away, and our securities being pie to them over there they grab a lot, and then the rush begins.
Nevertheless there must not be the semblance of injustice done to these foreign investors in our securities when they arrive here to make terms. We have the right to stop the interest, but the securities themselves we must redeem. But redeeming them all at once in gold being out of the question, and as that is the only kind of coin that is now acceptable to the foreigners, they must either wait until we get enough of gold, or until they think better of silver, and are willing to take that metal in part payment, and in the meantime while they are making up their mind, about it they must accept the best we are able to give them, namely non-interest bearing bonds.
It is against the grain to bring the unsavory Bond on to the boards again. But looking at him closely, as he now appears, You will notice that he is well broken and as we have no better we must use him to bring in the rest of the untamed band to which he once belonged. Neither should our visitors complain about this form of payment. If all of our obligations from abroad were paid in coin, assuming that we had enough, it would fill Europe with idle money, and as we have always been a good customer, and always prompt in our payments, they should be reasonable, and admit that it is no worse to have idle bonds than it is to have idle money, so long as final payment is assured. Neither should they expect, par value for what did not, in many cases, cost them fifty cents on the dollar. We will pay them market value no more. And do not imagine that these people have been kept waiting very long to find out these terms. For so positive are these leeches, here and elsewhere, of being able to maintain their hold that those we have just finished with will not make a move to come here until the New Bill of Human Rights has become the law of the land.
And this foreigner whom we are done with, so far as his power to injure us goes, is the counterpart of our own millionaire, and the scowl with which he leaves these shores means another crunch of the iron heel on the necks of his own slaves, and it is only the magnitude of the work that is before us, which none but the blind will deny, in the subduing of our own masters, that makes it a sad necessity to refuse aid to the oppressed the world over. One thing is certain however: whether Bunker Hill led to the fall of the Bastile or not, the liberation of the slave in the New World will show way to his liberation in the Old, and in this way do we render him a service, even if we cannot see our way to help him in any other.
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The foregoing should make plain how the principle of Confiscation will work in the case of railroads, and all other paper-represented property that can be, and is, owned elsewhere than where the property itself is found.
And there is no need of interfering with or changing any of the functions of the different branches of our Government in order to make Confiscation a part of our organic law any more than there would be to increase the duty on imported wool and to collect it. The machineries of the law making, judicial, and executive branches of our Government, are sufficient for any calls that Confiscation can make on them. Any other construction that may be put on what has been said heretofore or may be said hereafter, is all error. If insisted on, what then? Have we run up against the impassable? It is sufficient to say that what is ours is ours to change when the need is evident, and the Constitution itself is not, an exception to the truth of this.
The laws regulating the rising and the setting of the sun are not of our creating, and we cannot hasten or retard its coming and going one iota of time, and we do not live in the age when it could be done.
But the Constitution is a man-made thing, and when growth has made it a straight jacket then the time for ripping has come.
VI.
Once more resuming our pursuit of the millionaire whom we have dispossessed of his railroad plunder, we find the chase taking us into town, where Confiscation will find many problems which it alone can solve - where it will find his sixteen story building, for his hours of plotting, and his suburban palace for his hours of ease, and the hiving humanity between over whom he had to walk to reach either. Those palaces on the Nob hills of these United States are the toadstools of the decay that is going on in this Republic to-day.
The master crime of all ages was the building of those pyramids on the Egyptian sands, for they were useless, but the whim and the slaves and the lash of power were there, and the pyramids went up.
Let us see to it that the power of our pyramid builders is destroyed before it gets beyond five million dollar palaces.
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When we apply the principle of Confiscation to the millionaire merchant and turn his excess into the public treasury, it will be no more destructive of the business of which he has had all the profits than it was of the railroads. There will be more business done in the same line than ever, but more will be doing it, and consequently more will share in the profits. But if our object is to break up these fabulous fortunes, which mean certain death to our liberties, and whose blight has paralyzed progress and development, there should be no reason why we should not allow the present owners to take a hand in the breaking up. If the merchant, or other millionaire, would rather divide his millions among his relatives (barring his wife and minors) and friends, than to resign it over to the public treasury, let him do so. Our aim will be attained whichever happens, which is simply to bring about a better distribution of the wealth of this country, and we know of no way of making this even distribution that will compare with Confiscation. Socialism, in all its forms, means the surrendering of individual liberty, and is a retrograde movement, and the outcome of it can be nothing more or less than despotism of the very worst kind.
Socialism enlarges the power of one individual over another. This is incompatible with the liberty that goes with a republic. Confiscation says, $100,000 is enough. When you are found with more, it will be considered as proof that you have been taking an unfair advantage of some one, and the surplus makes you dangerous to the welfare of a republic, and is therefore forfeited. There will be nothing more disagreeable, so far as the right of the individual goes, in the enforcing of this proposed law than there is in the collection of taxes on incomes. Cutting a fortune down to the $100,000 limit may be considered a very disagreeable thing indeed, but when we are reminded that it is all done for the common good, we become reconciled at once, for we feel in our heart of hearts that the altar at which we can cheerfully make whatever sacrifices we are called upon to make, is the altar of our brother's welfare.
The millionaire merchant will doubtless take advantage of his right to divide his business among his relatives and friends. Naturally they would give him the management, but the instinct to be master is strong within us all, and this would soon break up and scatter that dangerous accumulation. Then there would be more Market streets and Broadways. Every dollar of business that would be taken from the one or two principal thoroughfares, which is all that is now found in any of the cities, would mean an increase of value in the property of the street where this transfer business is carried on. And this increase in the value of city property would continue on out to the city's limits; and the limits themselves would be extended further out to find room for habitable homes for the human beings that are supposed to live in the tenements. There can be no question but what merchandising would spread itself more over the cities if this limited ownership of capital was in force; and this spreading out will give employment to all in bringing about the change; and prosperity, such as goes with plenty of work, will take the place of the wretched misery and want that now fill all the soup-house infected cities of the country. There will be no impairment in the value or need of the big "dailies" that are published in these centres of population. They will simply be owned by more people and read by more, and the improvement in the times being of a stable and permanent character their circulation will be free from the rise and fall with which they are now only to well acquainted, and the cheap-John business into which so many have gone, in the last few years, wheedling the ten cents and the dollars out of the child-like poor for worthless truck, can be thrown into the waste basket with the last offer of money for a Wall Street editorial. It is a mistake, by the way, to think we are a nation of readers. Man is an interesting animal where-ever found, the desire to know what he has done and is doing is strong in us all, but even the little county paper is beyond the reach of many. The writer, who is a common toiler like the rest, finds the moving world a sealed book to him, for he cannot spare the needed dollar, and live. And those editors who will fiercely rend and tear, with all the power of their trained brains and skilled pens, at this vital need of our times may live to see the day when they too will believe this world is round, and that calling the original believers fools, thieves, scoundrels, rascals, and enemies to civilization was a repetition of an old mistake. It will be the day when they can be our guides, philosophers, and friends without the itching palm stuck out behind. It will be the day when we can accept, without doubt or a curl of the lip, the admonition. from the sixteen stories of steel, because we will then know, that the conscience of the man within is not itself all awry.
To whatever cause the existing rot is chargeable the editor, at least of all others, had the power to stop or check it, and failure to meet this great responsibility shows that the strut of this great personage is assumed, and that, like the rest, his necessities have been used by the master to bend and break him till he no longer dare call his soul his own.
We can expect the screech of this helpless tool to fill the land as his desperate master nags him on in the revolution that is coming.
VII.
The mammoth hotel where the parasite of greater or lesser degree sojourns, where the popping corks of the costly imported champagne is heard, can still be a hotel, but the profits of its millions of invested capital must no longer he taken away by one or two men and it therefore must have many more owners than it has now. It, too, must go to the people, if its millionaire owner can find no more relations to share with and begins to suspect his "friends" of having had a hand in bringing about the upheaval. And if the "plain" people never expect to enjoy the material results of the inventive wit of man as they are focused within its luxurious interior, they at least have some reason for being satisfied when they know that the profits will stay where they were made and help those who made them. This reference to hotels brings to mind a corroborative fact that proves the charge we make when we say that all these colossal fortunes are nothing more than the accumulations of able rascality of some form or other: bilking, cornering, lobbying, watering stock, or charging all the traffic will bear.
The Palace Hotel in San Francisco was built by a speculator and floater of mining shares, and cost millions that he cashed in, after cleaning out the simple minded laborer and servant girl, whom he deluded, with all the art known to his tribe, into believing that there was still more for their rainy day if they would only invest the little they already had.
The law makes a felon of the rascal with the bogus gold brick, but that clumsy worker in the field of robbery does not get the returns which the scienced work of his brother professional brings in; therefore, when outraged law gives this petty malefactor the knock-out blow, the satisfied spectators, chattering about the majesty of something, depart and the curtain is rung down on another exhibition of what the American people are said to like - namely, humbug. Let us say in passing, that the American does not like humbug. Take the average of him as he is found in the little world in which the routine work of his life is done and you will find him alert and close enough to deal with, and that in all things in which he has his experience to rely on humbug (swindling) is practically impossible. But when he gets outside of that experience, then, like the experienced traveler, he patiently submits to imposition when resistance might mean a loss greater than the original. But even the traveler must have enough to continue on with, and when imposition reaches that stage resistance begins. So it will be with the man who is said to like humbug (robbery), when he finds humbug (slavery) closing in on him. He too will resist. He did before and the rightful owners gained possession, as this same man, who is said to like humbug, will again recover possession of what is being so stealthily taken from him.
When outraged law is asked to administer justice to the scoundrel who has deluded thousands into buying worthless mining shares or some such swindling bait, the victims are told that the whole swindle has been legitimized by the great seal of the state, and that their loss is the profits of a business conducted by a licensed trader.
The man with the bogus gold brick goes to jail. The man with the bogus gold mine goes free.
Why this difference when the principle in the two crimes is the same? Is it because the millionaire swindler has, in fact, been given rights under the law that is denied to the smaller fry? Or is it because the larger bird of prey makes enough to go all around? Certain it is, however, that Labor in its contests with Capital never got a decision in its favor yet - in time to be of any service.
These wholesalers found the concubining of justice herself a necessity to the success of their rascalities and the delays and decisions of this harlot are but the echoes of her paramour's orders. And at no time does the debasement of this whited sepulchre display itself more than when the miserable and friendless criminal whose crime is, assuredly, nothing more than the natural and to be expected outcome of the wrong and inexcusable crime developing conditions under which he is compelled to live, is at her altar for Justice, which She renders in ringing tones such as are never heard when Her paramour or his hirelings are before Her.
When Labor does finally get a decision it is as worthless to it as is its pass-book on the gutted savings bank.
Make the millionaire an extinct species, and the above assertion will not have logic to sustain it, and our courts will not be making terrible "examples" of the friendless, while the thief who ruins thousands is allowed to go free.
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There must be a radical change made in our laws if we ever expect to stop the sharks from preying on us. Our laws, like a hole in a fence, makes access easy, and the endless raids will never cease until the holes are stopped up. Constant watching, even with the light from former experiences, will all count for nothing while those holes and breaks are left open. The persistent work of the crew of sharpers that has the Nicaragua canal steal in tow shows this necessity for a change in the economic laws of the country. Duplicating the scheme by which the Huntingtons and Oakes Ameses robbed the people they submitted their prospectus for endorsement, and, lo, this whole coast grovels in the dust to these new Moseses, who are to show them the way out of the wilderness into which their original, Huntington, has led them.
The canal should be built. But the estimated cost of the whole enterprise was $66,000,000 according to their own expert, whose report, eight years ago, was published in "Harper's Weekly" - (published as news, by the way, but was an advertisement, and paid for as such. And that Julian Ralph stuff that appeared in that same weekly lately is more of that peculiar kind of news that is being constantly ground out by the capitalistic sharks to catch the unwary, and was paid for by Spreckels - another Moses, that has come to the succor of our beleaguered coast. The "Journal of Civilization" is a fit organ for the millionaire corruptionist and the civilization that he is degrading) - and although they have gone over the ground again and again since that report was made, the maximum estimate is still well inside $100,000,000. Yet they now want to issue $100,000,000 in stock; want the people to guarantee principal and interest on $70,000,000 of bonds, and the right to issue $30,000,000 of bonds themselves. No wonder it was called a steal on the floor of the Senate. The public treasury will ever be the objective point of such wholesalers until the inducement is removed. Humanity, Honor, Patriotism, each and all are powerless before this all conquering appetite of Individual Greed.
What can such people as they care for this people, their country and its benign form of government? What use have such as they for a government that denies them the title that distinguishes their kind over the sea?
Ay, what is to prevent them from using the vast power that goes with the wealth they are absorbing day by day, and to gratify the one unsatisfied wish of their purse-proud and selfish souls, and establish an Empire in place of the Republic? The Republic is but a shell and their work would be easy.
The sophistry about the inalienable right of one man to crush another has had its day, and their hypocritical wail about civilization and this inalienable right, when these conscienceless rascals find their race is run, will be like the yelling of remorseless wolves that have been trapped and kicked into the vanishing distance.
VIII.
Understanding the principle of Confiscation, it will be easily seen how it must work in every individual case; and, therefore, it is needless to dwell on or elaborate its workings when it is applied to banks, breweries, sugar refineries, water works, gas works, street railways, etc.
It will not destroy capital or business. It may lessen the value of real estate on the principal streets in large cities, and fall in values is not certain even there. It will trouble no one, however, if it does; not the present owner, even, for the value of property in favored localities is so great now that, however much one man can own now, he can own but a fraction of it under the proposed change. The owner of, say, a $400,000 building and lot on such a street as we are now considering may find a shrinkage of $100,000. This will give him two partners instead of three. The shrinkage, therefore, will be to his liking; for, be it known, the aristocrat is a proud bird, and likes to flock by itself. And any designs against these two partners will be so fruitless of results to himself that a word in his ear now and then by his friends and well-wishers, about the public treasury, will end in his cultivating, such a lamblike submission to the new dispensation that his eloquence, born of the new light and an awakened conscience, will make his titled sister over the way give up her bauble when he shows her the cost of its pomp to the struggling poor.
Such will be the effect of the change on a man who now carries the law in his pocket, when he hasn't it under his feet.
Moving the laborer so far away from the centre of the city, and where there is room to build habitable homes, will be a serious objection, it will be urged. They cannot get to their work on time without getting up at all hours. They can just have time to snatch a bite and be away again. And the whole of Sunday must be given to sleep they cannot get at any other time.
They will be strangers in the near-by theatre, and the near-by library will be given up to the spider and his web, and the little garden of flowers that the once half-starved women have made a delight will be unknown to the worn out bread-winner, who will be the same old slave we premised to unshackle. Better clothes surely, and his home shows what it is to be a citizen of a republic that is a republic in fact as well as in name; but he has only time to snatch a bite and be away again.
Will it never occur to those critics that we are here dealing with the greatest creation of the Almighty, and of all time - civilized man; and that we must make the conditions fit him, and not he the the conditions.
Everything he eats, wears, and uses in twelve months can be produced in two. Why, then, should he be compelled to labor twelve months for that which can be produced or made in one-sixth of that time? The reason is plain. When two laborers make an exchange there is wholesale robbery committed by the non-producing and idle parasites, while the fruits of Labor are on the way to those who alone are entitled to the whole. "And I," says the millionaire, "say this robbery must go on, for I am an impossibility without it." That gnawing canker never had any doubts as to where his surfeit comes from. And now that it has become a question of life and death with those he has been plundering, he should be dragged to the bar of justice and compelled to disgorge. And then labor, too, can come in on the eight and nine o'clock train, and be no later for its work than is the banker and the rest of his class that have had Labor under their heels so long.
The capacity of the modern world to produce has entirely outstripped her capacity to consume, and trying to solve the economic problems of the day, by further denial or ignoring of this fact, that should be self-evident, will be to build a structure with only half the foundation laid, and the inevitable collapse is bound to follow.
There will always he plenty of room in the heart of a city for those who must live close to their work.
But the inventor has made night work, except by the parasitical leeches, unnecessary to the masses, a few hours of daylight being more than sufficient to supply all the needs of the country. We are not insisting, be it understood, on a four-hour or eight-hour system of labor. No industry or occupation will be hampered or meddled with by doing justice to the laborer in the way proposed. The railroad employee, printer, baker, factory hand, etc., can work on as now, but they must be compensated with just wages for the labor done. This will enable them to retire before decrepitude comes on, and orders are left for the poorhouse ambulance to call on its way out.
If every city occupied three times the ground they now do, they would be gainers in all ways, and the moral degradation into which large sections of them have sunk would disappear with the conditions that produced them.