CHAPTER XII.

VOTE YOURSELVES RICH.

Those who have been voted rich, not by their own votes, but by our votes, the votes of the common people, are now engaged in proving to us THAT WHAT WE HAVE ALREADY DONE FOR THEM WE CAN BY NO POSSIBLE MEANS DO FOR OURSELVES.

Having accumulated immense fortunes by means of vote enacted legislation, THEY PREACH TO US THE UTTER FOLLY OF OUR HOPING FOR ANY GAIN FROM THE SAME SOURCE.

So interested are they in our proper economic education, that they are willing to supply both text-books and teachers. They love learning and from purely philanthropic motives seek to make us wise.

But what is their wisdom so willingly imparted? From what follies are they so anxious to guard us?

TO VOTE OUR ENEMIES RICH: THIS IS WISDOM.

TO ATTEMPT TO VOTE OURSELVES RICH: DANGEROUS FOLLY.

Their science teaches that IT IS IMPOSSIBLE FOR THE INSTRUMENT WHICH IS THE SOURCE OF THEIR WEALTH TO BE OF ANY EFFECT IN BEHALF OF THOSE WHO WIELD THE INSTRUMENT.

Text-book in hand they say to the people, "It is impossible for you to vote yourselves rich."

Strictly speaking, it is unnecessary for the people to "vote themselves rich." WE, THE PEOPLE, ARE ALREADY RICH. We are rich by the gift of nature and the will of God. Each scientific discovery and invention, wrung by toil, genius and martyrdom from the strange earth and firmament that greeted primeval man, has added to our riches. We are now rich, but are debarred by force from the possession of our own. We are heirs, not only to the riches of the earth as originally created, but to all those opportunities for utilizing these natural treasures, resulting from the accumulated knowledge and skill of the centuries. But we are kept from our inheritance.

We have been deprived of our wealth by vote-enacted legislation, and it is vote-enacted legislation that will again give us possession.

Our enemies say contemptuously that government can no more increase wages by legislation than it can increase the size of your foot or the length of your arm, for the increase or decrease in both cases is governed wholly by natural law.

"Let the poor," they say, "stop agitating and hoping to become prosperous through legislation, and instead let every man go to work building his own home and fortune, and all will be well."

"The Government cannot legislate a single dollar into existence."

"The remedies for poverty are industry, frugality and temperance."

These are the things they say. But suppose we watch their acts instead of listening to their words. Then we learn that, while for us they point in one direction to the road that leads to fortune they seek this road themselves by going the opposite way. We, who have followed their advice, have been impoverished; they, who imitated their acts, have been enriched.

POTATOES AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

I ride to market with a load of potatoes, the result of sweat and labor for half a year. A ruffian knocks me off my wagon, takes my seat and drives away.

Questions: Shall I ask a policeman to help me catch the despoiler, or shall I "cease agitating and go to work?" Shall I arm myself and, with the help of friends, take back my own, or shall I return to the farm and "practice industry, frugality and temperance?" Is it nobler, manlier, more courageous of me to get possession of my potatoes by fighting, or, forsaking them, to go to work and raise another crop for the next thief?

Honest and contented labor under these circumstances is dishonorable.

WHEN A MAN IS ROBBED, THE WAY FOR HIM TO GET MONEY IS NOT TO WORK FOR IT BUT TO FIGHT FOR IT. To tell a man that he cannot possibly make any money by talking nor get any potatoes by agitating police officers is absolutely true, PROVIDED, the man has been loafing all year and has not been robbed of his crop. But these demonstrations of the economists go into the waste basket, when the fact is made plain that the man, seeking by government aid to get potatoes, has already earned them by hard labor, but is deprived of them by the criminal act of another. Under such circumstances, the man who, instead of fighting and pursuing, applies himself to honest toil, is a coward.

Men who, wrongfully deprived of their property, go to work to earn more, thus providing additional booty for their despoilers, are unworthy a better fate. Honor impels a true man to fight, not work, when a wrong is suffered either by himself or friends.

To quietly plow while another eats the result of last year's plowing, to contentedly plant while another reaps, to submissively bow one's head beneath a yoke and receive the kicks and jeers and sneers of the drivers, are not the acts of a man nor the duties of a citizen, but the follies of an ass. When a true man, after gathering his harvest, sees his product taken by another, he mounts his horse, before planting again, and with pitchfork, shotgun or other efficient weapon, starts in hot pursuit. He seeks to recover last year's product before trying to raise another crop.

Therefore, when government-made millionaires try to persuade the working people, small tax-payers and business men to stop meddling with politics and instead to work harder in the hope of laying by something for old age, they really desire them to cease defending their property and to continue creating more for others to enjoy.

The learned professor teaches that "the government cannot legislate into being a single dollar, nor a dollar's worth of wealth." From this premise, he reasons that a dollar legislated into one man's pocket must necessarily be legislated out of another man's pocket. He then concludes that the poor cannot legislate themselves comfortable without to the extent of their gain depriving another class of their earnings.

If my neighbor accompanied me to market with a load of potatoes and I were to ask a policeman to help me take his load from him, the economists' words would apply. The government, through its agent, the policeman, could not double my wealth without robbing my neighbor. But this is not the situation. I came alone. A stranger assaulted me and took both wagon and potatoes, leaving me very poor. Now, in spite of the professor's words, the state, in the person of its officer, can abolish my poverty and give me a wagon filled with potatoes without doing injustice to any one else. I can be made happy without depriving any other being of what he has earned, and I do not ask the state to legislate into existence a single potato. I simply ask that the potatoes already existing as the result of my labor be taken from the highwayman and returned to their rightful owner.

This is what the masses ask. Not that the government give them anything produced by others, not that the government attempt to create anything independent of the labor of its citizens, but that it return to them their own. We demand the capture of the highwayman, monopoly, and that the opportunities taken from us by him be restored to us.[10]

[10] When a monopoly becomes a government monopoly, its nature changes entirely, and all that was objectionable disappears. The evil pertaining to a monopoly is its exclusiveness. When private monopoly becomes government monopoly, it is no longer exclusive, for the whole people enjoy its benefits alike. Unity of administration is not an evil if the resulting benefits are shared by all. The only possible way to destroy the great monopolies is to convert them into government functions, and administer them as the post office, the army, navy, weather service, the public schools and parks are now managed. There is no other way to destroy our new industrial despotism.

Read "Socialism and Social Reform," by Prof. R. T. Ely; also "Wealth against Commonwealth," by H. D. Lloyd.

We not only demand but we are actually organizing for the pursuit. The Democratic Volunteers are superintending the preliminaries and in 1900 law and order are to be established, the adventurers suppressed, and restoration made. The issuance of the nation's money, now a private monopoly, controlled by bankers, will again be made a function of government, and the people will be permitted to exchange their products without paying revenue to their enemies for the means of exchange, which is their own creation. Other wrongs will be righted with equal facility.

Each victim, however, must be taught that his vote is both horse and hound for pursuing, and both gun and rope for punishing and reclaiming. Our vote is our one weapon, our one means of defense, and source of power.

The value of legislative control to our enemies is shown by the desperation with which they oppose any effort on the part of the people to recover it. They know it to be the true creator of their fortunes, and they look to it alone for future "fruits of labor" and "rewards of genius."

We are rich, but we have been ousted from our patrimony. How shall we recover it? By the same means through which we lost it, namely, legislation. The oppressions that curse man are all entrenched in, and owe their power to, legislation. If we are to be freed from them, it will be by legislation. In primitive times, government was openly, frankly exercised for the enrichment of a class at the expense of the mass. For ages the "right divine" was believed in honestly. Later when its justice was denied, its benefits were seen to be too valuable to be relinquished. So duplicity was employed, and the art of "plucking the goose without making it squeal" was invented.

Money-making heretofore has not been so much a function of government as money-taking, and this function can be made to work one way as well as another.

If thieves by government action can despoil honest men, honest men by government action can despoil thieves.

If legislation has been made the instrument of crime, it also can be made the instrument of restoration. No personal temperance, thrift and industry can enrich men so long as the power to legislate rests in other hands. Labor makes wealth but legislation decrees how it shall be divided. When the people legislate directly and intelligently the division will be in accord with justice. By the ballot we can enter upon our inheritance.

Poverty exists and we are told that it is the natural order, with which legislation has nothing to do. There has been told no more transparent lie. Wealth is created by the union of man's labor with nature's gifts. What is it but legislation that keeps apart in unnatural divorce these two that God hath joined together? What but legislation can remove the barriers and allow them again to come together?

Legislation CAN make money; so lavishly that no man need want. How? By making conditions favorable to labor, and securing the laborer in the fruit of his toil.

WE CAN ACTUALLY VOTE RICHES INTO EXISTENCE.

Our instructors say, "Government cannot legislate a single dollar into existence." Let us see.

While riding to market with a crop of potatoes, I am dispossessed. In the struggle a portion of the crop is injured. The highwayman, in escaping, lames the horses by overdriving. Instead of going to work the next day, in company with an officer, I start in pursuit. The robber, alert, removes to another state at an expense of half his booty. Whether successful or not, my time, the officer's time and the thief's time are all wasted, in addition to three-fourths of my product.

Now, my neighbors and I, who together make up the government, suppress brigandage. Instead of three fourths of my crop being wasted by struggle for possession, it is all sold the very day it is carted to market. Instead of exchanging my hoe for a gun and chasing another man, I plant another crop of potatoes. Instead of helping me in the chase the policeman grows a crop of his own, and the bandit, knowing beforehand that it is impossible to live by robbery, ceases to watch for possible victims and raises his own potatoes instead of taking mine.

Without proper governmental interference the three of us have only a portion of one crop of potatoes between us. AS THE RESULT OF GOVERNMENTAL ACTION, WE HAVE THREE FULL CROPS. THE GOVERNMENT, BY LEGISLATIVE "EDICT" OR "FIAT," if you please, CREATES TWO AND THREE-QUARTERS CROPS OF POTATOES. WE CAN VOTE OURSELVES RICH.

And of each dollar voted into our pockets, not more than fifteen cents will be stolen property reclaimed. The other eighty-five cents will be a new product, rescued from waste or destruction.

The saddest feature of our present industrial cannibalism is that where one dollar is stolen at least seven dollars are wasted. THE PREVENTABLE WASTES OF CIVILIZATION CAN MAKE EARTH A PARADISE.

PROSPERITY, "THE McKINLEY" AND OTHER BRANDS.

We can vote our country prosperous. But it is very essential that we understand clearly WHOM we mean when we say "country." We have been voting for one kind of prosperity for a long time, even before the "McKinley brand," was on the market. Our mistake has been in not asking the "Advance Agents" to tell us whose prosperity they represented.

If a burglar is emptying your wife's jewelry box, and filling his trousers pockets with the contents of your safe, prosperity to him means ruin to you, and your success means the burglar's death. So, in the larger affairs of our nation, the kind of prosperity hoped for by the plunderers of the people means ruin to their millions of victims, while good times for the workers, the farmers, the merchants, mean hard times to our despoilers.

We now have the best times the world has ever seen. Mr. Rockefeller, or Robafellow--one is his name, the other ought to be--has an income of forty thousand dollars a day, and it is increasing. No country in the world has ever produced so much; never were there barns so bursting with grain, or warehouses so filled with clothing, furniture and jewels; never before so many men making from five to forty thousand dollars a day.

This great National Joint Stock Company of ours, with its seventy million stockholders, is doing a thriving business and making barrels of money. There is only one objectionable feature. It is that after the labor of these seventy millions of people, their genius, their suffering and their sweat, are converted into wealth, the dividends are given to a few hundred men, while the rest of us pay the assessments.

We do not need better times. Anybody who wants to make more than forty thousand dollars a day is a hog. The real issue is not whether we shall have hard times or good times, prosperity or panic in the abstract, but it is whether that prosperity and good times, now monopolized by the few, shall become the inheritance of every child of God.

THIEVES TAKE PANIC WHEN PURSUED BY HONEST MEN.

If a select company of burglars and safe-blowers were to enter your village and relieve a number of your merchants of the contents of their safes, their stocks of jewels, silks and clothing, and were to secure all of the finest horses from half the neighboring farms, and utilize them in getting the booty safely to the nearest forest, they would no doubt, while unpacking their wealth and feeding their horses, after their hasty trip, congratulate one another upon "their remarkable prosperity." They would be very apt to brag about the unusual "good times." But if, as the sun rose over the tree-tops and they were repacking their goods they saw suddenly the glistening pitchforks of half a hundred angry farmers and the determined furious faces of as many brawny workmen and merchants, bent on reclaiming their property--there would be a PANIC.[11]

[11] If you want legal evidence to prove the existence of gigantic steals and robberies, read Lloyd's "Wealth Against Commonwealth," Harper Bros., and the "Seven Financial Conspiracies."

The plunderers of the world are enjoying good times at the expense of the masses. Their profits are as fabulous as their methods are cruel. But in the midst of their celebration feast, their crime is discovered, and the pitchforks of five million farmers glistening in the morning sun, the angry faces of four million city workmen loom up in the distance, and the result is PANIC and loss of confidence--(among the revelers.)

As we approach November, 1900, this panic will increase. But as there wells up the sound infernal of their weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, there will be heard still louder, the voices of millions singing their chorus of deliverance. As these offenders look into the grave where lies buried their every plan for selfish aggrandizement, to us, their innumerable victims, that same grave will be the open window through which we behold the land of promise.

INDEX.

Chapter Page

I. Introductory 5

II. How to Begin Work 23

III. Speeches and Meetings 43

IV. Methods of Travel 65

V. Saloon Meetings 101

VI. The Heroic and Prosaic 115

VII. Practical Politics 127

VIII. Fundamentals 141

IX. The Church as a Field 151

X. Only Two Parties in the World 171

XI. Witnesses for Plutocracy Discredited 189

XII. Vote Yourselves Rich 211

The Volunteers' Training School For Speakers.

Opens at St. Louis September 15, 1897.

Young men of moderate attainments can become ready speakers in from one to three months time.

Practice both indoors and outdoors every day by every student, under the direction of experienced campaigners.

All the arts and secrets of successful oratory taught in the most expeditious manner, accompanied by the daily application of every truth learned.

Tuition per month $1.

Text books, good for one year, $5.

Especially Cheap Rates at Volunteers' Boarding House.

Address Joseph Hoffman Mgr., 4713 Page Avenue, ST. LOUIS, MO.

In preparing for this course read any of the following:

Wealth Against Commonwealth, Henry D. Lloyd, Pub. by Harper Bros.

Socialism and Social Reform, Prof. Richard T. Ely.

Social Aspects of Christianity, Prof. Richard T. Ely.

Ten Men of Money Island, Norton.

Merrie England, Robert Blatchford.

Seven Financial Conspiracies.

The New Democracy, Vrooman.

Coin's Financial School.

The First Battle, Bryan.