Engraving in
The Life, Speeches, Labors and Essays of William H. Sylvis (1828-1869),
Late President of the Iron Molders' Union,
and also of the National Labor Union,
by James C. Sylvis, (Philadelphia, 1872)
The Life, Speeches, Labors and Essays of William H. Sylvis (1828-1869),
Late President of the Iron Molders' Union,
and also of the National Labor Union,
by James C. Sylvis, (Philadelphia, 1872)
Standing is William H. Sylvis
Seated is Jonathon Fincher, president of the Machinists & Blacksmiths and editor of Fincher's Trade Review, the only Civil War period labor paper. *http://homepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~marier/Stories-Pics/Labor_Leader.htm
He was often mentioned as a possible vice presidential candidate in the Democratic Party.
For several years he had not enjoyed good health and on the morning of July 22, 1869, he went to the office as usual and started working on an address he was to give at the National Labor Union, but he felt compelled to return home. At five o’clock, his doctor was called. The doctor said that he had a severe inflammation of the bowels. On the following Monday, his pastor was called and in reply to an inquiry if he had any fears in view of his approaching dissolution, and if his mind was at peace, he calmly replied, "If it pleases God to take me, I have no fear of death: I believe I am grounded in the true faith: Christ has pardoned my sins." At 3 o’clock he exclaimed, "Glory to God, I am going home to Christ: I know my sins are all forgiven." These were his last words.
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William Sylvis died at his zenith—he was not yet 41 years old. He left a destitute wife and family because he had never taken a penny for his work with the union. The union got together and paid his funeral expenses and a small stipend for his second wife. His first wife died in 1865. His eldest son, Henry Clay, was sent to Cincinnati to live and work for relatives
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In February 1866 Sylvis set his sights on the establishment of an organization that was broader still — a federation of unions which would be able to bring workers of different crafts together under a single organizational umbrella.]
The end result of this preparatory period was the establishment of a new national federation, the National Labor Union (NLU).[
Sylvis came to see the NLU as a potential vehicle for social and economic reform, including the establishment of producer cooperatives, the 8-hour work day, and currency reform.
Death at an early age intervened, however, and Sylvis's vision of a broad and powerful National Labor Union and its associated National reform party ultimately came to naught.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_H._Sylvis~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Life, Speeches, Labors and Essays of William H. Sylvis, Late President of the Ironmoulders' International Union: And Also of the National Labor Union (Google eBook)
Excerpts from The life speechs and essays of William Sylvis
HIS EXCELLENCY JOHN W. GEARY, GOVERNOR OF PENNSYLVANIA. THE FEARLESS MAGISTRATE, THE PATRIOTIC STATESMAN, AND CHAMPION OF LABOR'S RIGHTS, WORKING PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES, THIS BIOGRAPHY AND RECORD OF THEIR STAUNCH FRIEND AND FEAR LESS ADVOCATE, William Sylvis AND BY THE AUTHOR
"Our objective point is a new monetary system, a system that will take from a few men the power to control the money, and give to the people a cheap, secure, and abundant currency.
We must show that when a just monetary system has been established there will not longer exist a necessity for trade unions.
The whole productive powers of this nation have become subservient to and dependent on upon this moneyed aristocracy. They control the whole currency of the country, and with the money the government. Our people are divided into two classes, the rich and the poor." pg82
These men who arrogate to themselves the right to monopolize all the wealth of the nation, are the worst enemies of mankind. pg114
Again I am asked, "And what is cooperation?" Cooperation is the banding together, by mutual agreement, of a number of individuals for the accomplishment of a given object.
Cooperation is the great idea of the age; it is the means by which we can fully control both labor and money, by which we can secure to ourselves the wealth we have for so long been creating for the use of others; for by it we secure a fair standard of wages, and a fair share of the profits arising from our industry.
Co-operation aims at elevating men morally, mentally, socially, physically and politically. This it will do by freeing us from the carking cares of poverty and wretchedness, which chains millions to a merely animal existence, and blessing us with the plenty and happiness that come of sympathy and united action for a good end. pg117
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WHAT IS MONEY? pg351-387
[these articles first appeared in the Workingman's Advocate, of Chicago.]
What is money? is a question so frequently asked, especially by workingmen, and so many different answers have been given, all based upon the idea that gold is the only material out of which money can be made, that I have determined to add one more answer to the long list.
In taking up this question, I do not expect to present any new idea, or to say anything new. My only object is to present the matter in a plain, common-sense light; and in doing so, I shall use such arguments and illustrations as will be easily understood by every one who reads. What I have to say will be the plain words of a workingman addressed to workingmen.
Money made of gold is a monarchical and aristocratic institution. Kings adopted it as a sure means of keeping the people in subjection, by taking from them all power to control or in any way interfere with the currency. Princes and nobles were created—special privileges were bestowed upon a few; these few were rich, and were of course interested in maintaining the king's money. Thus the king, with his well-fed few, succeeded in robbing the masses, keeping them poor, ignorant, and wholly dependent.
When our ancestors ran away from Europe to escape religious persecution, they came here and set up for themselves; unfortunately for us, they did not leave behind them their prejudices and false notions on many of the most vital points in the science of government.
Reared amid the hardships and dangers of a new continent — separated from the "parent government" by a great ocean—thrown upon their own resources, they learned lessons of self-reliance and ideas of self-government that served them well when the struggle for independence came, and for the change in civil government about to take place. It was left for them to present to the world, for the first time, a self-formed government, whose basis was the equal rights of man, civil equality, and common privileges, and whose end was to be the general prosperity, virtue, and happiness of the people. Independence gained, it was natural that joy and satisfaction should be inspired, upon having escaped some of the oppressions of European systems, without feeling much curiosity to ascertain whether the new government was actually so founded as to secure the happiness of the many instead of ministering to the benefit of the few. This could only be learned after a considerable experience, and after that class out of which came bankers, brokers, bond-holders, usurers, and other plunderers of labor, had time to find out and take advantage of the weak places in our system of government.
This point was soon reached, and then began that scramble for wealth and power that has resulted in creating among us a moneyed aristocracy that is fast sapping the foundation of our government, and destroying the liberties of the people.
It is true that, compared with the wretched population of despotic Europe and Asia,'the people of this country, even under existing unjust relations of man to man, enjoy many things not common to the people of other countries. But comparative superiority may still be a condition fraught with much misery to the human family, and not less repugnant to benevolence than revolting to justice. Even in Europe and Asia, this superiority forms the boast of one nation over another, throughout the long-continued chain of comparative wretchedness among the great mass of the population.
We might run without end through a scale of comparative physical misery and enjoyment, and corresponding moral dignity or degradation, and never attain a principle of justice to reconcile ourselves to a wrong and oppressive system from such examples.
The question is not what people endure the least misery, but which enjoy the most happiness and real comfort; and having found that point, we are irresistibly forced to another, based upon the susceptibility of the social compact to yield the- full amount of happiness to the mass of the people, and to inquire into the reason why this object is not accomplished by our institutions, when it has been so bountifully provided for by a paternal Providence.
The slightest observation will satisfy the most obstinate mind that nature has abundantly supplied the industry of man with the means of universal comfort. We behold it in every form of luxury — every object of magnificence — every refinement of pleasure — every waste of riot and sensuality — every monument of pride — every display of vanity— every gorgeous decoration of wealth, power, and ambition. We behold the proof in the lordly millionnaire, tortured on his sick-couch by agonies of repletion, while the laborer famishes at his door. We behold it in the luxurious capitalist, swelling with the pride of pampered opulence, while the hearts of those who laboredto produce his wealth, shiver and faint with misery and want, or drag out a protracted life of endless toil. What God has spread before us as the reward and property of him whose labor shall bring it into use, government—unjust, despotic, proud, all-grasping government—has ordained shall belong to those who never labor, and for whose exclusive benefit the laborer shall toil forever. Thus do human institutions, founded on tyranny, or turned from their original principles of justice, destroy the beneficence of heaven, robbing the poor and giving to the rich.
Thus do we find our boasted institutions of equal rights to be the merest skeleton of liberty, which by their letter declare that equal rights and privileges shall be guaranteed to all, but by their operation create aristocracy, special privileges, extortion, monopoly, and robbery.
Such are the defects of organic law, practical government, and property, which are thrown as obstacles in the path of the workingman.
The great mistake made by the founders of our government was in retaining the king's money, — in ingrafting into our republican institutions monarchical and aristocratic ideas of currency and finances,— in setting up, in our temple of liberty, the golden calf. But the time has come when this idol shall be removed.
Fellow-workingmen, prepare for the fight. The world's greatest revolution is now at hand.
My first article was general or preliminary, intended to show, First, that money made of gold was a kingly, despotic invention. Second,that it has been continued in use because it provided the surest way to rob the many for the benefit of the few. Third, that it was the most dangerous element of despotic governments ingrafted into our republican institutions; and, Fourth, that its use is wholly incompatible with the spirit of our form of government, and has entirely subverted the designs, intentions, and desires of the authors of our Constitution.
We come now directly to the subject: "What is money?" Kellogg says that money has four properties or powers. First, to represent value. Second, to measure value. Third, to accumulate value by interest. Fourth, to exchange value.
As a discussion of either one of these four powers would involve a partial discussion of all, and prolong the discussion, I shall consider them in a general way, giving the greatest prominence to interest, and the material of which money should be made.
Money is the measure of value, and the rate of interest fixes the standard of measure; therefore, the standard should be the same everywhere. Government has decreed that sixteen ounces shall make a pound, and thirty-six inches will make a yard. Suppose Congress should repeal this law, and say that the people in each State or city shall have the right to regulate these matters to suit themselves, what would be the result? We would soon have yardsticks and pound-weights of various capacities. There would be just as much reason and justice in this, as there is in allowing everybody to fix a measure of value to suit themselves. The necessity for uniformity in weights and measures is no greater than for uniformity in the rate of interest; but it is said that a uniform rate of interest cannot be maintained, no matter what the law may be. That this is true under our present monetary system, I freely admit; because bankers and brokers monopolize the lending of money. The law of Pennsylvania says that six per cent. shall be legal interest; and yet it is impossible to borrow money at that rate, because Congress has fixed a higher rate, and because the business money-lending is confined to a few persons, whom neither the law of the State nor the law of conscience can control. All borrowers must go to them; therefore, they can fix their own terms; that is, they make their own measure of value, which amounts to the same thing as if it was cloth they were selling, and had the making of their own yardstick.
"The government reserves the right to fix the length of the yard, the weight of the pound, the size of the hushel, and the value of the dollar. Money is the public measure of value, and the government is bound to make it just and uniform, that it may correctly determine the value of all commodities. Measures are definite quantities of length, weight, size, and value. The pound-weight, yardstick, and bushel are measures of quantity, and the dollar or money is the measure of value."
"When the yardstick measures cloth, it does not determine its own length, and when money measures property, it does not determine its own value." The law fixes the length of the one and the value of the other. To alter the length of the yardstick is a high crime, and subjects the person guilty of it to severe punishment, while the power of the dollar to measure value can be altered with impunity; and yet the fraud practised upon labor is a thousand times greater than would be the shortening of weights and measures at the option of every seller in the land. "The government reserves the right to fix the measuring power of the dollar to bankers, brokers, and other gamblers."
The man who will interfere with the measure of value is just as guilty of crime as he who defrauds his customers by light weights and short yardsticks.
One of the most silly and absurd notions of the day is that each State should have the right to give to money a legal standard — to fix a legal rate of interest. The government should issue all money, giving to every dollar the same legal value — the same power to measure value in all parts of the country. Money, properly considered, can in no case be an article of barter and sale. It was never instituted to be bought and sold; its only functions are to buy and sell the products of labor. The laborer does not buy money, but he sells his labor(sic) formoney. The farmer does not buy money, but he sells his wheat for money. The manufacturer does not buy money, but he sells his waresfor money; and the consumer buys what he wants with money; thus is money simply a medium of exchange. The ♦ making of money an article of commerce is a prostitution of the currency of the country, and is simply legalized robbery.
A false monetary system, and the unwise financial policy pursued by the government from the beginning of the war to the present time, has built up a moneyed oligarchy such as the world never saw; and the whole nation is completely under its control. Congress has so legislated as to fix a standard of value, or a rate of interest that is absolutely ruinous — six per cent. in gold is about nine per cent. in greenbacks; and the bonds being exempt from taxation, and considering all other things to their advantage, we find that the rate of interest is fully thirteen per cent. If this was really the fixed standard, it would not be so bad; but it is only the rate below which it cannot go; but it goes far above that nearly all over the country.
Money was instituted by the government for no other purpose than to be a measure of value and a medium of exchange. We see that the law in nearly every State recognizes this principle by fixing some legal rate of interest; and the government has recognized it by fixing six per cent. in gold as the legal standard. These legal rates are not uniform; and if they were, it would make no difference, because the whole matter of interest, and everything connected with money, is in the hands of a few persons, whose only study is how best to bring to themselves the wealth produced by the labor of the nation. They rob alike the government and the people.
The Constitution of the United States declares that Congress shall have power to coin money and regulate the power thereof, and of foreign coin, and to fix the standard of weights and measures.
Congress has definitely fixed the length of the yard, the size of the bushel, and the weight of the pound, but it has not fixed the value of money. Under our present monetary system, the value of money is no more fixed by congressional action than is the price of coal, iron, or any other article of commerce.
Money is the legal standard of value. The rate of interest fixes the value of money. Its value is no more fixed by the quantity or quality of its material, than the size of the bushel is fixed by the quantity or quality of its wood. It would be thought unwise or unjust, if Congress should provide that the yardstick should be made of a rare and costly material, and to authorize a few merchants to regulate its length; and yet it would not be half so injurious to the public good as to empower a few bankers and usurers to regulate the value of money. In the former case, the merchant would be brought face to face with the purchaser, the fraud would be seen, and the buyer would have the means of self-protection; while in the latter case, the power operates silently and unseen, and the oppressor is seldom brought in contact with the injured party.
The rapid centralization of the property of the nation into our large cities, and into the pockets of the strictly non-producer, is plain to every mind. The wealth-producing classes have sought to avert this evil, and better their condition, by almost every means but the true one. Laborsaving machines have been invented to increase production, and every possible means of improving the quality of the various productions of the soil and labor have been introduced, and new avenues of transit have been multiplied to cheapen transportation, but all to little or no avail. These classes are still compelled to toil on in comparative poverty — the increase in production, the improvement in quality, with the increased means of transportation, have but tended to augment the wealth of the few and impoverish the many.
With the present accumulative power of interest, there is no more chance for the laboring-classes to gain their rights by combining their labor to increase production, than there would be hope of success in combining their labor to reverse the course of the rivers, and make them run to the tops of the mouutains, and pile up their waters on the summits. The law of gravitation, in the latter case, would not be more sure to overpower all their labor and frustrate all their plans, than the present governing power of interest on money is sure to gather up the increased production and add it to the wealth of the capitalist. The fault is in the law which governs the distribution of property; and combinations to increase production would no more effect any general change in the distribution, than combinations against law of gravitation would effect a change in its general governing powers. The evil is legislative, and the remedy must be legislative, or something worse.
It was my intention, in the beginning, to have finished this subject in three articles, but I have found it impossible to do so to my own satisfaction. I must, therefore, ask the indulgence of the reader; if I grow tedious, and if these articles are extended beyond what may seem necessary, it must be attributed to an earnest desire to make the whole matter plain to the understanding of every reader.
The power of money to accumulate value by interest is a vast power; so great, indeed, that it is hard to bring it into such proportions as to be easily understood by ordinary minds. When we begin to talk of thousands of millions, and billions, etc., the mind of the workingman, who but seldom has more than a week's wages to count over, becomes bewildered, and he don't care to listen. I have already said that interest acts like the tax-collector; it gathers up the products of labor — taking them from the laborer and giving them to the capitalists. Money loaned at ten per cent. will double in seven years, three months and five days; at nine per cent. in eight years and fifteen days; at eight per cent. in nine years and two days; at seven per cent. in ten years, two months and twenty-six days; at six per cent. in eleven years, ten months and twenty-one days; al five per cent. in fourteen years, two months and thirteen days; at four per cent. in seventeen years and eight months; at three per cent. in twenty-three years, five months and ten days; and at two per cent. in about thirty-five years. The average rate of interest for seventy years has been about eight per cent. per annum. At the beginning, property was more equally distributed than it is now. We will suppose oneeighth of the population to have owned one-fourth of the value of the property, and to have loaned it on interest, or rented their property at this rate; collecting and reloaning the interest annually for the seventy years, the amount would be $54,639,310,632, or over three times the amount of the value of the whole property of the nation in 1860.
Now, cannot the simplest mind see something wrong in this? The rate of interest amounting, in seventy years, to more than three timesthe value of all the property in the nation. All that labor produced went to the capitalists— a few men—all non-producers, and this balance of interest over production is a lien upon labor—productive labor, physical labor—a vast load of debt heaped upon the backs of the toiling millions — a mortgage upon the bone and muscle of the nation — the very heart's blood of the workingman is mortgaged from the cradle to the grave.
Had the rate of interest been three per cent. instead to eight per cent., it would have amounted, in seventy years, to $1,980,000,000, or less than one-twenty-seventh part of the amount at eight per cent. Thus, it will be seen that, at three per cent., labor would have retained over seven-eighths of all it produced; while at eight per cent., capital got over three times the value of all the property in the nation, besides All that labor produced. This seven-eighths, which would have been labor's share, would have been divided among the producers in the shape of wages, and every workingman in the nation could be in possession of a comfortable home, and in circumstances entirely independent. We would have no Vanderbilts, Drews, Astors, Stewarts, Belmonts, and Cookes, worth their hundreds of millions, and exercising an influence and power over the government and people such as was never before known since creation, while the dismal cries of poverty-stricken labor, shivering with cold and hunger, come up from every part of the land. Just think of it, fellow-workingmen, there are ten men in the city of New York whose combined wealth is over three hundred millions of dollars,and in the same city there are over one hundred thousand workingmen and women whose daily wages do not bring them the commonest necessaries of life, and during last winter many honest, industrious workingmen and women were compelled to apply for public or private charity to keep themselves and their loved ones from starvation, and many died from want of proper food, clothes, and shelter. While these ten men were worth millions, there were nearly 63,000 paupers supported by the city of New York during the year 1867, and a much larger number during 1868. Let it be remembered that a large proportion of these poor people, called " paupers" by newspapers and offipials, are honest workingmen and women, the profit of whose toil goes to make up the fortunes — the millions — of the few whose costly equipages jostle the starving mechanic in the same street.
Nowhere in the world is so high a rate of interest maintained; nowhere in the world is labor more completely under the control of the money power; and nowhere in the world is all wealth so surely and so rapidly concentrating in the hands of the few, as in the United States.
It is a first principle that no man can become rich without making another one poor, and that all accumulations of great fortunes necessarily produce poverty somewhere The course is plain. It is not in the power of man to produce a sum of labor so immense as to make every one rich. but he does produce enough to make all comfortable. If some, therefore, acquire large fortunes from the pile produced by labor, it must leave others without any. To make this still plainer, we will suppose there are one hundred men whose combined or aggregate production is $100,000; an equal division would give to each one $1,000. If one of these men got one dollar more than his share, ninety-nine would get less. But suppose ten of them got $5,000 each, then there would be but $555.55 apiece for the other ninety; but if twenty of the ninety take $2,500 each, then seventy would be left without any. A truth so plain requires no further demonstration.
Wealth, seated in the midst of her golden paradise, often sends her attendant, false benevolence, among the wretched, who are famishing from hunger and cold, to exhort them to economy and temperance; or, alarmed by their cries of anguish and suffering, she gathers the poor into almshouses, and eases her conscience by feeding them upon offals, and selling their dead bodies to the dissecting-rooms to defray a portion of the expense. The most pernicious character in society is the miser — the accumulator — the man who will gather up the product of labor beyond his needs; the man who steals from honest toil and leaves the toiler to starve. He is one of the moral extremes that meet us on the verge of misery, worthlessness, and non-production. The accumulator is a tyrant, whose every step inflicts anguish, crushes the heart, or slays his victim.
I am frequently asked by workingmen, what has the question of interest to do with us? we are not borrowers, neither have we money to lend. The natural increase in the wealth of the nation in seventy years is less than four per cent.; that is, the aggregate wealth of the nation increased at the rafe of four per cent. annually; then it follows that any rate of interest above four per cent. is direct robbery upon labor, and is running the nation in debt.
While the increase in wealth is at the rate of four per cent., interest has averaged at least eight per cent. tor seventy years. But if we take the last six years, we will find that the increase in wealth has not been over three per cent., while the rate of interest has averaged fully fifteen per cent.; making an actual loss to productive industry of twelve per cent. Right here the question may be asked, how can this thing called interest consume more than is produced? the answer is plain. The three per cent. consumes all that is produced, after feeding and clothing the producers; and the twelve per cent. is a lien upon future labor. It is a mortgage upon the productive industry of the country.
That this may be clearly understood, I will put it in another form. I have said that three per cent. is a lien upon present labor. That is, if a man has an income of $3,000 a year, and spends $15,000, how long will it be until he is bankrupt? He is running behind at the rate of $12,000 a year, providing his debts are such as bear no interest; but if they are interest-bearing debts, the matter is still worse. This, I think, will make it perfectly clear to every working man.
Interest acts like the tax-gatherer; it enters into all things, and eats up the profits of labor. Labor marries a wife and supports a family. Labor needs food, clothing, and rest. Labor works six days out of every seven, and but ten hours out of every twenty-four. Labor gets sick, and has doctor-bills to pay. Interest works twenty-four hours in a day and seven days in a week. Interest needs no clothing. Interest never gets sick or tired. Interest has no family to support, and needs no almshouse when it gets old. Interest produces nothing, but consumes everything; it gathers together the products of labor into large heaps, making a few rich and many poor. Labor erects a house, and then pays from ten to one hundred per cent. for the privilege of living in it. Labor produces bread, and then pays from ten to five hundred per cent. for the privilege of eating it; every dollar labor can raise goes for interest; labor remains poor and the Shylocks become rich. Interest produces nothing. All it does is to transfer the products of labor to the pockets of the money-lenders, bond-holders, &c.
While this question of interest is the most important of all the questions connected with the political and social relations of the people, yet it is less understood, perhaps, than any other. The poor man, while he toils from year to year, but little dreams that it is interest that is robbing him of all he produces.
This matter of interest is the source of all our financial panics and business prostrations. The man who spends more than his income will go to the wall sooner or later, and a nation that spends more than it produces must break down. No nation on the globe ever did or ever can carry a rate of interest above the natural increase of the national wealth without coming to financial ruin. The manufacturer, the farmer, the mechanic, and the common laborer, each run in debt, each depending upon future labor to make up present deficiencies. A vast system of credits is built up throughout the land. The money-lenders, and the whole horde of bankers, speculators, and gamblers, are day by day accumulating additional liens upon the productive powers of the nation.
This condition of things lasts for about ten years, when labor breaks down under the enormous load. Its resources are exhausted; the rate of interest can no longer be paid; the creditors begin to crowd the debtors; a "money panic" ensues, and financial ruin sweeps ever the country, prostrating everything before it; hundreds of millions' worth of property change hands at great sacrifices — debts are settled at a small percentage on the dollar — bankrupt laws are enacted — we become a nation of individual repudiators, and there is a general balancing of accounts, which simply means transferring all there is from labor to the pockets of the money - lenders and financial gamblers. The bottom is reached; a lull takes place; labor renews its energies for a new start, only to have the same operation repeated over again. And this same operation has been repeated about every ten years, ever since we have been a nation, and will continue to be repeated so long as we are cursed by our present monetary system.
The manufacturer, the farmer, the business man of any kind, needing money, must pay from ten to thirty per cent, for the use of it. In many cases the profits of his business are less than the rate of interest demanded. To borrow. would be ruinous; therefore his business must languish, or, what is very frequently the case, a reduction of wages is made. This reduction does not always, as is supposed, go into the pocket of the employer, but into that of the moneylender. Thus do employer and employe- suffer from this system of legal robbery called interest on money.
I have already said that Congress has, by a violation of the Constitution, delegated the power to fix the value of money to a few bankers, brokers, and usurers. It is true, that Congress has fixed a rate of interest on its bonds — six per cent. in gold or about nine per cent. in greenbacks — considering that they are exempt from taxation, and have certain other special advantages, the rate is very nearly thirteen per cent. This may look to many as if Congress had fixed the rate of interest which determines the value . of money, and it may be said that the fact that this does not control the rate of interest is a sufficient answer to my argument. That this does not control the rate of interest is evident from the fact that the usual or average rate is far above thirteen per cent. Would it be otherwise, if the rate of interest on the bonds was but three per cent.? While the average rate of interest would be less than now, the system would remain the same, for the reason that while Congress says that one hundred cents shall make a dollar, it has allowed a few men to monopolize the lending of money, and to fix their own measure of value. To these all borrowers must go, because there is nowhere else they can go.
By reason of speculation in gold, and the high rate of interest maintained, a very large proportion of the whole currency of the nation is centralized in the great commercial centres of the East, leaving the West and South without money to do business. While money is worth from thirteen to twenty-five per cent. in Philadelphia, New York, Boston, 'and other points East, it is worth much more AVest and South; indeed in many places it is not to be had at all. In many of the manufacturing and mining districts of the interior there has been an almost universal return to the old order system; and private scrip, such as due bills, Ac., is made to answer as currency. Why? Because the profits of business are less than the rate of interest on money; and because men cannot borrow money, they are compelled to do without it — to provide their own currency, or close up altogetter. In many instances, the employer, to keep his works going, must borrow money, and must pay more interest for the use of it than his return in profit; to save himself, he reduces wages; the workmen, not being able to see where the true difficulty is, go on a strike—the works are closed, and employer and workmen go to ruin together.
"Money creates no wealth; it only gathers up and appropriates to its owner things already produced."
Money is not wealth; it only gives to its owner power over the productions of labor. Wealth is accumulated labor. Money creates nothing, and has no value whatsoever to its owner, except as he exchanges it for what labor produces. A man may have a million of dollars, and be very poor; if he keeps it in his possession, he will starve, he will be destitute of food, clothing, and shelter. Money has no value, only as we part with it for something we need. This is, of course, plain to every mind.
A centralization of wealth is a centralization of power. When the few possess themselves of everything, and the many are reduced to that condition of dependence when it is compulsory to work or starve, then it is that the power of wealth and the rule of the few is absolute.
The most pernicious effect of wealth is, that it hardens the heart, blunts the sensibilities, deadens the conscience, deforms the moral nature, and makes a tyrant of its possessor.
For money, men sacrifice domestic comfort, health, character, and even hazard life itself. For it, they are guilty of fraud, deception, and robbery. For money, they sacrifice friendship, gratitude, natural affection, and every holy and divine feeling. For money, man becomes a creeping, crawling, miserable thing, instead of walking upright, as God intended he should. Mammon and manhood are incompatible.
When wealth accumulates in the hands of the few, the spirit of vindictiveness — a desire to rule, to get more, to reduce labor to a condition of vassalage, and to make pliant tools and helpless, obedient slaves of all who toil at physical labor — develops itself more and more, and widens the breach between the rich and the poor. As the one goes up, the other must go down. The one feels secure in its power, the other grows restless under fraud and persecution.
Here is the fountain from which flow all the social eruptions that blacken the body politic. Here is the cause of all strikes and revolutions. So tight has the hold of these money-changers upon the industry of the country become, that we will find it a hard job to shake them off. We must not waste our time in parleying, in trying to coax them to let go, or thinking we can frighten them away. All this has been tried. There is but one way left. We must take them by the neck with a grasp like a vice, and squeeze the life out of them.
There are but two ways by which this can be done. The first is by our power at the ballot-box: we can vote them out of existence, if we will. If we fail to do this, they will continue to suck at our vitals until, in a fit of desperation, we cut their heads off with the sword.
If, out of the vast wealth we produce, we are to receive but a miserable subsistence, and no prospect before us but eternal toil, and starvation or an almshouse in old age; if the ballot-box is not a sufficient remedy for these evils; if a few men will appropriate all to themselves, while labor toils and starves, then the time will come when an outraged and enslaved people will rise in their physical power, and force a more equitable division of the products of their labor by other means than a lower rate of interest.
What we want, and what we propose to have, is a general levelling up. I do not mean by this that we desire to pull anybody down, not even if they are up with a rope around their necks—as a considerable number of them ought to be; but we do desire and intend to get up.
The work of accumulation on the one hand, and degradation on the other, must stop. The millions of little streams of wealth, put into motion by our hands, must find their way into other and a larger number of pockets. We have no desire to disturb any man in the possession of what he now has; we are willing the thieves shall escape with their plunder; but we say the work of plunder must stop. This is what we mean by a levelling up; and this levelling up must be effected by a lower rate of interest, and an entire change in our monetary system. This change we will have by one means or another. The bleeding operation has been going on long enough; the patient is tired of it, and demands that it be abandoned. We are for a peaceable solution of this problem; but if there must be blood-letting, it shall be on the other side.
Confiscation or organism is no part of our plan; but it does not require a very great stretch of the imagination to picture the lamp-posts in Wall Street ornamented with the bloated carcasses of the money-shavers, gold gamblers, and land-sharks, who are robbing the government and the people. Labor is forced into an unnatural and degrading position. It is at the bottom of the hill instead of at the top. The products of labor are sifted like corn through a ladder — labor gets what sticks to the rungs. Out of this unnatural position we desire to get — through the ballotbox, and by peaceable means, if possible; but we mean to get out, even if to do so involves the cutting off of a few heads. If this is a digression from the subject, I ask the reader's pardon. (Bitch note: force is no part of our transition. We might note that this was written by Sylvis in the civil war era. He may have not made the connection between violence and how they have held the human race back for such a long time. Taking control of the issue of money requires no force other than a general strike.)
Up to this point in the discussion of this question, I have dwelt almost entirely upon the power of money to accumulate value by interest. Having, I trust, made this part of the subject clear to every reader, I shall now offer a few remarks on the " material" of money.
The reader will remember that I have already said that only the precious metals are fit to make money with is a fallacy, and has been adhered to by those who have taken upon themselves the management of financial affairs, for no other reason than because it furnished the surest and most secure means of controlling and enslaving the productive industry of the world.
For the first time in the history of civilization, we find a wide-spread and earnest effort in favor of a currency made exclusively of paper; and it is not surprising that these efforts have been opposed by many workingmen. We have all been educated to the idea that money could only be made of gold. In fighting this battle against the centralizing power of "gold money," and against the whole monetary system as it now exists, we have to combat the accumulated prejudices of thousands of years, a vast amount of ignorance and indifference, besides the combined power of the worst moneyed aristocracy in the world.
There are very few men, outside of those who control financial affairs, who have given the subject of money any consideration, and all who have written upon it have viewed it from a gold stand-point.
Workingmen, as a general thing, have given the matter no attention whatever. They have taken it for granted that the subject was so deep and mysterious as to be entirely beyond their reach. They have supposed that only men educated in all the arts and mysteries of financial problems could handle it; therefore they have given it the goby, allowing bankers, brokers, and other swindlers to do their thinking for them.
One hundred and fifty years ago, Bishop Berkeley wrote a pamphlet called the Querist, in which he took strong ground against gold, and in favor of paper money. So fierce was the denunciation of his work and of himself by the wealthy, and so ignorant and indifferent were the workingpeople that his little book soon became obsolete, and for nearly a hundred years the idea slept: men who entertained the same idea were not bold enough to proclaim it. It was not until the great work of Edward Kellogg made its appearance that any definite shape was given to it, or that men began to study and comprehend it. This work made a deep impression on the minds of a few men, while the many cast it aside, and the newspaper press almost universally denounced it as the production of a lunatic. In 1864, Hon. Alexander Campbell, of Illinois, issued a pamphlet called the "Free American System of Finance," which was a powerful defence of the Kellogg theory of money. This work was widely read in the West, and made many converts.
During the winter of 1865, Mr. Kuykendall, of Illinois, introduced a bill in Congress, providing for a national currency to be exclusively paper, and made a very able speech on it. These were widely circulated, and did good work. In 1868, Mr. Cary, of Ohio, the only workingman's Congressman ever elected, presented a bill looking to the same end, and made a powerful speech upon it. These, too, were scattered broadcast over the country.
In the meantime, others had taken up the subject, and it began to make slow but certain progress. It was left for the National Labor Union, at its second session, August, 1867, to be the first public body to adopt it, and proclaim it to the world as the central idea of their platform and organization. So rapidly is this idea of a people's money being spread, and so deep is its hold upon the people, that its enemies — all who are interested in swindling labor — are becoming alarmed, and beginning to denounce it. This is the point we have long been desiring to reach, knowing very well that just so soon as a fair hearing could be had, our ideas would prevail.
The accumulation of a vast public debt, and a system of taxation the most odious in the world, with a national bank monopoly, and the gigantic swindles going on in all parts of the country, even in the treasury department at Washington, have opened the eyes of the people. Workingmen are taking hold of the question, and find it uo difficult matter to unlock the whole mystery, and are astonished to learn how they are being swindled, and wonder why they never discovered it before.
Just now the world is being agitated by a cry for an international currency. The wise men who arrogate to themselves the right to do our thinking on financial matters, have not condescended to tell us what this cry means, nor do I believe one of them could give a satisfactory explanation if put upon the witness-stand. They might tell us that it meant a money that would go in all countries at a fixed value. But as the world has, and always did have, such a currency, there is neither sense nor reason in the cry or the explanation. Bullion — gold in the lump — has always been an international currency. That it may be improved upon, I admit; and the best way to improve it is for the world to make its money out of paper, and reduce gold to an article of merchandise.
When we talk of an exclusive paper currency, the question is asked, "How are we to settle balances of trade, and what are men to do who desire to travel in foreign countries where your paper money would not pass?"
Balances of trade are never paid with money. If, in our dealings with England, we find, at the end of the year, a balance against us of $50,000,000, this balance is paid with gold, but not with money. They take our gold coin at its weight, without any regard to the legal stamp upon it; and they would much sooner have gold bars than gold dollars.
By establishing paper money, we would in no wise alter our manner of doing business with other countries. As money does not in any way enter into our foreign dealings now, it would not then. As all business between us and foreign nations is now carried on by a simple exchange of commodities, so it would be then. We export cotton, corn, and wheat, and import sugar, coffee, and cloth; that is, we trade the one for the other. If we get more than we give, we settle the balance with something else. If they want no more of the produce of our farms or workshops, we give them the production of our mines—iron, copper, lead, silver. or gold; and when they take our gold it is no more money than is our wheat; the quantity of wheat they take is measured by dollars, so is the quantity of gold. If our merchants desire to settle balances with gold, let them buy it, as they do cotton and corn. If our people desire to travel in foreign countries, they will do just as they must do now— secure a sufficient amount of gold, which they will convert into money that will pass where they are going.
But we are told that to establish a paper currency, will be to undo the experience of six thousand years, and go back upon every established principle of political economy. Well, suppose it is. If men have worshipped a golden idol for six thousand years, is that a good reason why we should continue it? If the people have been robbed, and kept in poverty and wretchedness for six thousand years, is that a good reason why they should still permit it? If gold is the god that has always ruled and ruined in despotisms, is that a good reason why it should do so in a republic? We think not. Therefore the cry, Down with this false god; clean out Wall Street and the treasury department, as Christ cleaned out the temple, and let the betrayers of the people do as did Judas their illustrious predecessor — go and hang themselves.
Must we stick to gold because all the theories of political economists are built upon it? We think not. This is an age of reform; this is a time when old things are pulled down, and new things are built up; and if the "established principles " of political economy are wrong, and are in the way, they must come down.
The whole system of political economy, from beginning to end, is an apology for tyranny, and the whole tribe of political economists are humbugs; they are such because they have humbugged the people, and at their head stands the prince of humbugs, John Stuart Mill.
I desire to show how the flow of gold from the United States has affected the currency.
In 1855, there were $90,000,000 of gold in the Bank of England, and the rate of interest fell to four per cent. By the close of 1856, the amount of gold in said bank had fallen to less than $50,000,000, and the rate of interest rose to seven per cent. Immediately, gold began to flow towards England. In 1857, the amount of gold in the Bank of England fell to $35,000,000, and interest rose to ten per cent. — the highest point ever reached. Within a very short time, over $30,000,000 of gold left New York. This thirty millions of gold had been the basis of at least one hundred and twenty millions of State bank paper, besides many millions of commercial credits.
This sudden departure of gold unsettled all financial arrangements; credits and value were alike disturbed; confidence was destroyed; a panic seized the people, and a run on the banks commenced. "The regular discount of bills by the banks had mostly suspended, and the street rates for money, even on unquestioned securities, rose to three, four, and even five per cent. a month. On ordinary securities of merchants, such as promissory notes and bills of exchange, money was not to be had at any rate." The Commercial Agency of New York reported the debts of the country merchants to be two thousand two hundredand eighty-two millions of dollars, and the debts of the whole country to be over twelve thousand millions of dollars,— a sum four times greater than our present national debt. This vast system of credits and utter financial rottenness was the result of a vicious system of paper money — " wild-cat"— based upon gold, and its offspring, a high rate of interest. With such a load of accumulated debt piled upon the back of productive industry, it only required the first brick to fall to knock down the whole row.
I have said that the sudden departure of $30,000,000 of gold took away the basis at least of $120,000,000 of bank paper. The holders of these notes were swindled. The notes purported to be the representatives of money, when, in fact, they represented nothing. They rested upon gold; the gold was taken away, and the whole structure fell to the ground, involving the whole industry of the country in disaster and ruin. The same thing was repeated in 1861, when the amount of gold in the Bank of England fell to less than $60,000,000, and the rate of interest rose to eight per cent. It was not until the adoption of the greenback law, in 1862, that relief came. Immediately on the passage of that law, confidence was restored, new life and energy were infused into every department of industry, and although involved in a gigantic war, the people started upon a period of prosperity without a parallel in the history of the nation. This high degree of prosperity was the result of a partial divorce of the government from gold money.
The government's necessities compelled Congress to adopt the greenback law. Our armies were in the field, but there was no money to feed and clothe them. Congress asked for money, and instantly the vault-doors of the banks were closed; the patriotic and Christian bankers hid away their gold, and left our soldiers to shiver and starve, and the industries of the country were almost entirely suspended. Not only had inactivity paralyzed the nation, but a feeling of alarm, bordering on despair, was rapidly taking hold of the people; and the more urgent became the necessity, the tighter did these patriotic and Christian bankers draw the strings of their money*bags. To save the life of the nation, Congress was compelled to make a new money.
The great mistake made was, that the greenbacks were made payable in gold; they should have been separated entirely from gold, and made money absolutely. The perpetuity of the government should have been their cornerstone. Upon their face should have been written: "This is the money of the United States, and is receivable for all debts, public and private." But, unfortunately, Congress made two kinds of money—one for the government and one for the people. It made gold — its worst enemy — the corner-stone of the greenback; and it made two classes of debts, one payable in gold and the other in greenbacks. Immediately there began a war between greenbacks and gold; and just as soon as the war closed, there began a cry from Wall Street — that den of thieves — for a return to specie payments. This cry was taken up by bankers and brokers all over the country. Pretty soon it was given out that the Supreme Court would declare the greenback law unconstitutional. But for this, there would have been no pause in the prosperity of the country. If, in 1867, the sudden flow of gold out of the country caused the panic of that year, why did not the same result follow in 1866, when the rate of interest in the Bank of England rose to ten per cent., and large amounts of gold left the country?
All will remember that in the latter part of 1866 we had a general prostration of trade, from which we have not yet recovered; but we had no real panic. Why this difference? It was because we had got rid of the local or State banks. Previous to 1857, we had a paper currency based upon gold, and issued by irresponsible parties; and when in that year it was discovered there was no gold to redeem this " wild money,"-the paper became suddenly worthless— a market-basketful would not buy a breakfast. The gold having disappeared, and the paper being good for nothing, the country was without any money at all; and for nearly five years the nation was involved in utter financial ruin, and want, misery, and squalid poverty stalked through the land. If these results did not follow a suspension of specie payment in 1862, nor at any time since, it was because our greenbacks were issued by the government. They rested upon a foundation stronger -than gold — they remained good when there was not a dollar of gold to be had. In this fact we have a more powerful argument in favor of a paper money based upon the credit of the government, and entirely separated from gold; for, even though they were a promise to pay in gold, the absence of gold did not destroy their value.
The greenbacks carried us safely through the war, and saved the life of the nation; and, after the close of the war, nothing saved us from such financial ruin as the world never saw, but our greenbacks. And had Congress separated them from gold entirely, and given us enough to do the business of the country, the industrial and commercial interests of the nation would have remained undisturbed.
In these instances of a sudden flow of gold out of the country, and the fact that for a long time past there has been more gold going out of the country than was produced or being brought into it, we find the strongest argument against gold as a material for money. If our money was all made of paper, and gold was reduced to a simple article of commerce. the same as iron, wheat, cotton, corn, etc., the Bank of England might raise her rate of interest to fifty per cent., and every ounce of gold in the country might be taken away, it would have no effect whatever upon our country.
The advocates of a metallic currency, or "gold money," tell us that the material out of which money is made must have a value within itself equal to its legal value. That is, a twenty-dollar gold piece must weigh enough to make its commercial value as gold as much as its legal value in money, so that if the legal stamp were removed, it would still be worth twenty dollars. This, they tell us, constitutes the basis of a sound currency — that is, it is money, and rests upon itself; is dependent upon no other thing to give it permanent value.
Instead of this being a good argument in favor of gold as a material for money, I consider it one of the strongest arguments against it, and for the same reason that gold is not a fit basis for money made of paper, because it is small in quantity, easily concealed or taken out of the country, and when it disappears it takes with it its value as money as well as its value as gold. When gold goes to Europe to settle balances against us, it does not go as money, but as gold — as bullion ; the moment it crosses the border it loses its legal value; but it does not leave its legal value behind it to circulate as money. Its power as money dies; as money, it is entirely wiped out of existence, and its place is filled by nothing else.
A democratic money, a people's money, a money fit for a republican form of government, must be cheap, safe, convenient, abundant, an inexportable. Cheap in the material out of which it is made, and that material must belong absolutely to the government; that is, it must be a material in which there can be no possibility of speculation, a material that nobody will have except for its legal value. It must bear a low rate of interest, that it may be cheap to all who desire to use it.
It must be safe. It must rest upon something that has positive and permanent value; something that cannot be destroyed without destroying the government; something that cannot be collected together in small heaps, in a few hands, and hid away out of sight; something that cannot be carried out of the country. Money must be as a house built upon a rock; the foundation upon which it stands must be indestructible and immovable; permanent as the government itself. These are the elements of safety.
It must be convenient. It must be easy of transportation, small in bulk and of little weight, so that it can be sent from place to place at little cost, and be carried about in the pocket for every-day use, without hindrance or inconvenience. Lycurgus money, that took a yoke of oxen to pull a hundred dollars, was too cumbersome; it was just the opposite of a convenient currency. It must be convenient to get; all who desire to use it must be able to get it without bar or hindrance, by a simple compliance with the law.
It must be abundant. There must be no limit to its quantity, except the laws of supply and demand. To limit the amount in dollars, and say no more shall be issued, is to create a monopoly; to place much in the hands of some, and none in the hands of others, is to create borrowers and lenders, and place the borrowers at the mercy of the lenders. If a few men can control all the flour there is, they can fix their own price, and the people must pay it. If a few men can control all the money there is, they can fix their own rate of interest, and the borrowers must pay it.
Money — all money — should be created by the government, out of a material that will admit of no speculation. The government should be the only lender, and should lend at the same rate of interest to all borrowers, and the government rate of interest should never exceed one and a half per cent. They would secure an abundant currency at all times and under all circumstances.
It should be inexportable. That is, it should have no value outside of our own country. A money that can be taken out of the country, either to settle.balances of trade, to purchase goods or property in other countries, or for any other purpose, is not a safe, a reliable currency; because every dollar taken away lessens the quantity, creates a vacancy, and to that extent unsettles values and disturbs the whole business of the nation.
When we have secured these five necessary qualities — cheap, safe, convenient, abundant, and inexportable—we will have a democratic money; we will no longer present to the world the inconsistency of a republican government with a monarchical currency.
One of the very best results of the late war is the practical demonstration of the utility of paper money, and its many and great advantages over gold. In nothing is this so clearly shown as in the fact that the same cause (a flow of gold from the country) which produced the financial panics of 1847, 1857, and 1861, has not disturbed us since the passage of the greenback law.
We see that in 1847 the rate of interest in the Bank of England rose to eight per cent., in 1857, to ten per cent., and in 1861, to eight per cent. At each of these periods a large amount of gold left the country, and a panic ensued. In 1862 the greenback law was passed, and a paper money was substituted for gold. In 1863 the rate of interest in the Bank of England rose to eight and a half per cent., in 1864, to nine per cent., in 1865, to eight per cent., and in 1866, to ten per cent.; during the whole of this time — from 1862 to the present time—the flow of gold from the United States has been very great, most of the time more than was produced by our mines and that imported, that is, there was more gold went out of the country than came in; and notwithstanding this almost continuous flow of gold from us — sometimes in quantities greater than ever before—so little did it affect our currency or the business interest of the nation, that no one stopped to inquire whether gold was going out or coming into the country.
Practically, there has not been a gold dollar in the country since 1862, because none were in circulation; and for the purpose for which it has been used, it would have been better in the shape of bars, than in the shape of dollars. The reason why this continual and heavy flow of gold from the country did not affect our currency or our business, was because it did not go from us as money; it did not take a single dollar from our circulation; it did not disturb the value of our greenbacks, because the greenbacks rested upon something stronger than gold, something that the people valued more highly than gold; they rested upon the credit and stability of the government.
Our experience since 1862 has proven that there is a security, a reliability in paper money, that "gold money" never did and never can have; and it furnishes the most incontestable proof of the correctness of our position, that gold is not a fit material out of which to make money.
We must not lose sight of the fact that all this experience, all this accumulated mountain of evidence against gold, is the result of a paper money only partially separated from gold. Greenbacks are a promise to pay gold; they are not a legal tender for all things, therefore they are not absolutely money. They are not receivable by the bond-holders for interest on the public debt, nor by the government for duties on imports.
The great mistake made by Congress was that it did not make the greenback money instead of a promise to pay, aud a legal-tender in payment of all debts to the people by the government, and to the government by the people. There should have been a total separation from gold.
The New York World — the organ of the gold gamblers — tells us that such a currency would create "a prodigious inflation of the currency. Supposing the natural rate of interest [natural rate of interest is very good] to be seven per cent., if men can borrow at half that rate, they will be likely to use double the quantity of money," that is, if industry is prostrated because of a high rate of interest; lower the rate, and men will borrow money, and business will revive; or to put it in plainer terms, if a manufacturer can only run his shop with half his usual number of employes, reduce the rate one-half, and he could borrow money to fill up his shop and run full time. At a high rate of interest, the builder is not willing to embark in new enterprises; reduce the rate one-half, and he would put up whole rows of new houses. At a high rate of interest, the farmer cannot afford to make improvements; but lower the rate one-half, and he will build a new barn, make new fences, underdrain his swamp lands, and put his Tarin in complete order. But, according to the World, to stimulate industry by plenty of money and a low rate of interest, would be a national calamity.
A high rate of interest is the mill-stone about the neck of labor; it cripples the energy of the whole people, and retards production; because of it thousands and tens of thousands of workingmen are out of employment, and want and misery are abroad in the land. Reduce the rate of interest to three per cent., and give us a national currency made of paper, and new enterprises will be started, machinery now idle will be put in motion; there will be work for all, and peace and plenty will bless the land. This, the World thinks, would be a disaster. Perhaps it would to the World and its backers, but not to honest people.
Why is the rate of interest so high? Because it is but a limited quantity in the country, and that is controlled by a few men who control the rate of interest. The borrowers are many and the lenders few. If one thousand barrels of flour come to market, and there is no more to come, and everybody wants flour, a few men will buy it all up, and charge whatever their conscience will allow.
All monopolies are wrong, and especially monopolies of the necessaries of life; but the most infamous of them all is a monopoly of money, and a government that will permit it is not a government of the people.
Expansion and contraction are terms very much used, and it would be well if workingmen understood their full meaning.
Inflation, in the sense in which it is used, does not mean a plentiful supply of money. It means too much money — money lying around loose — a quantity of money above the wants or demands of the people. Inflation, as used by the World and its masters, meanstoo much. There cannot be too much money, until everybody has enough. There can be no such thing as an inflation of flour, until everybody has as much as they can eat. There is just as much sense in saying there is too much flour in the country, when half the people were hungry for bread and could not get it, as to say there is too much money in the country, when half the people have none, and no way of getting it. This word inflation is held up before the people as a hideous monster, and is one of. the scarecrows used to frighten the ignorant and unsuspecting. We also hear a great deal of talk about an irredeemable currency. We are told that a purely paper currency would be an irredeemable currency, therefore good for nothing. Why, workingmen, there is no such thing as irredeemable money. Whenever it ceases to be redeemable, it ceases to be money, because it has lost all the qualities of money. It is redeemable so long as it circulates, and whenever it ceases to circulate, that is, whenever people refuse to take it, it ceases to be currency. Money is a lien upon every dollar's worth of property in the nation; money will buy anything that is for sale, even congressmen; money is being redeemed continually; it is redeemed whenever it is paid out for value received.
The same 810 bill may be redeemed a dozen or fifty times in a day. One man pays it out for flour, another for rent, a third for coal, a fourth for clothes, and so on; and it is redeemed every time it is paid out. But, say these croakers, paper money must be redeemable in gold,that is, it must be exchangeable for "gold money." A man must be able to swop dollars; but money was not made to buy money, and I fail to see the sense in trading one dollar for another. But paper money is redeemable in gold. Greenbacks will buy gold watches, or any other articles made of gold, or gold in the lump or bar. Thus are they redeemable in gold, as in flour.
If workingmen will just stop and think a little, they will see that all the greenbacks they can get are redeemed for rent, clothing, provisions, just about as fast as they can get them.
Expansion and contraction. The one means a low rate of interest, plenty of money, labor fully employed, high wages, no credit, cash for everything, and the general prosperity of the people.
The other means a high rate of interest, no money, low wages, store pay, idleness, poverty, and want. Wall Street and the World go for contraction, honest people go for expansion.
The Cary bill proposes to reach the same point, but by a different road. It provides for the issuing of a paper money to be called " Treasury Certificates," the notes to be in denominations of $1 upwards to $1,000, not bearing interest, and to be a legal tender for all debts public and private; this includes all taxes, duties on imports, interest on the public debt, except that portion the interest of which is made payable in gold, and all other debts due the government.
It further provides for the issue of bonds in denominations of not less than $100, nor more than $10,000, said bonds to bear three per cent. interest. The bonds to be convertible into money, or the money into bonds, at the will of the holder.
Let me illustrate this.
Mr. Jones has a $1,000 bond bearing three per cent.; if he holds this bond one year the interest will be $30. If he wishes to borrow money he deposits his bond with the government, and gets $1,000 in "Treasury Certificates." This money he keeps one year, then returns it and takes up his bond. For this year he receives no interest on the bond, or, in other words, while he holds the bond, the government pays him three per cent., when he converts the bond into money the interest stops. So long as he can make more than three per cent. out of the money he will keep it, and when his profit falls below three per cent. he will return the money and take up the bond.
This is the monetary system proposed by the National Labor Union, and is emphatically a people's monetary system.
There could be no speculation in these bonds, because they are issued by the government, directly to the people, and every person with a hundred could buy a bond, and every person with a bond could borrow money directly from the government, at three per cent. The government would be the only lender, and the whole people would be the borrowers, and between the borrowers and the lender there could be no middlemen — brokers, money-changers, and skinners—to swindle the people by high rates of interest, as there is now under our present monetary system.
This would, of course, abolish all banks of issue, and leave the present national banks merely banks of "deposit, loans, and discounts."
This bill further provides that the national banks shall return their notes to the treasury department within six months, the notes to be returned in sums not less than $1,000, and for every $1,000, or more, of these notes returned, a just and proper amount of bonds pledged for their redemption shall be returned to such bank. And should any bank fail to return its notes, or any part of them, within six months, the interest on the whole amount of bonds deposited with the treasurer by such bank shall cease; and in case the whole or any part of the notes of such bank are not returned within two years, the bonds, or other securities in the hands of the treasurer, shall be forfeited to the government, and used to redeem the outstanding notes. It also provides that all debts, bonded or otherwise, of the government, contracted to be paid since July 1, 1861 (except such as are made payable in gold), and all debts which may hereafter be incurred, shall be paid in "Treasury Certificates," or in three per cent. bonds, at the option of the creditor.
It authorizes the secretary of the treasury to give notice to the holders of bonds, or other obligations of the government, to present the same for payment or exchange, when due and payable, or redeemable at the option of the government, within five months, and, failing to do so, the interest shall stop. The holders of the bonds or other obligations to have the right to exchange them for the three per cent. bonds, or receive in payment the " Treasury Certificates," at their option.
With this I will leave the subject for the present, and if I have succeeded in making it plain to the mind of a single individual, I am amply paid for my labor.
End of Essay by William Sylvis on what is money?
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Excerpts from William Sylvis biography. available at Google books.
I am asked, what better Congress could have done than submit to the hard terms of the bankers ? Sup pose the workingmen of the whole country had said, we won't go into the army, nor fire a musket, until you give us one hundred dollars a month in gold. What would Congress have done ?
Do you think the terms would have been granted ? No ; a draft would have been ordered ; armed soldiers would have entered our workshops and our homes, and forced us into the army, and that would have been perfectly right. When men were wanted, they were taken, which was right ; for the government has the right to lay its hand upon every citizen, and say, " You must come and help defend the life of the nation." Now, if it wanted money, could it not have done the same thing ? If it has the right to take every man, has it not the right to take every dollar also ?
Why, sir, instead of surrendering to the bankers, Congress should have drafted the money, as it did the men ; it should have filled its treasury, as it did its army. Congress should have taken this monetary power by the throat and squeezed the life out of it. This was not done, and now the bankers and bond-holders are squeezing the life out of the nation. There is but one remedy — the people must do what Congress failed to do. They must take this monster by the neck and shake the life. out of it. Our debt of $3,000,000,000 is but a small matter, if properly managed.
Give us a sound currency, equal taxa tion upon all property, resolve to pay the five-twenties in greenbacks, reduce the interest on the debt to three per cent., and bring the expenses of the government within reasonable limits, and every department of industry will be fully em ployed, the productive powers of the nation will go forward as we have never seen them, and the wealth of the nation will be so largely and rapidly increased, that the payment of the debt will be but a small task. As it is, what are the prospects ? Commissioner Wells issued a report, a short time ago, which led us to believe that the debt was being largely reduced. Now, what are the figures? We see that the debt has been increased over $50,000,000 in ten months. At this rate, how long will it be until the debt is paid ? Just get out your slates and pencils, and figure it up.
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The funding system is one of the parents of the unequal distribution of property — a fungus on the body politic. In itself, the funding system, of all the provisions of our Constitution, is especially oppressive to labor. It is the parent of the banking system — that fruitful mother of un utterable affliction to the sons of industry — which brought us, at one fatal step, into the vortex of a moneyed aris tocracy, overgrown fortunes, and hopeless poverty, taxa tion through all the elements of existence, and speculation to the utter grinding down of labor, to pamper the fortunes of the rich. Thus far, then, we see our boasted equal rights to be the merest skeleton of liberty, which by its letter de clares that equality shall be guaranteed to all ; but by its operation creates aristocracy, privileges, extortion, monopoly, and the legal robbery of those who toil. Shall these bonds be paid in gold ? Shall this incubus of uncounted millions be fastened upon us and our posterity forever? Our answer at the ballot-box must settle the question. "When the green backs were issued as a legal tender, many men in both parties opposed it as dangerous legislation, and contrary to the spirit of our Constitution. The friends of the measure were compelled to defend it. I remember the debates very well. I was one of its friends, for I thought I could see through it the dawning of the day of deliverance for labor. I remember that it was common to raise the cry of rebel, traitor, etc., against all who opposed it. We, who favored it, said the greenbacks would be as good as gold ; that they would take the place made vacant by the withdrawal of the gold and silver by these patriotic bankers ; that we would have no more use for gold as money — no more use for bankers and brokers — and that we would be free from the grasp of the money power. If any of you, fellow-working- men, are fortunate enough to have a greenback in your pocket, just look at it, and you will see on its back the words — " This note is a legal tender for all debts, public and private, except duties on imports and interest on the public debt, and is receivable in payment of all loans made to the United States." From this we draw the most con clusive proof, that it was the intention of the makers of the law that these greenbacks should be the currency of the country, and that no law should be made recognizing contracts for the payment of any other kind of money. So careful were they not to be misunderstood as to the public debt, that they said, in large letters on the back of each note, " And is receivable for all loans made to the United States.'" Not only do we find this clear proof on the backs of the original legal - tenders," but if you will look up a national bank note, you will see upon its back these words : " This note is receivable at par in all parts of the United States in payment of all taxes and excises, and all other dues to the United States, except duties on imports ; and also for all salaries and other debts owing by the United States to individuals, corporations, and associations within the United States, except interest on the public debt." These notes were issued after every denomination of bond was author ized.
Does any man want any stronger evidence than this, that those who framed these several laws never intended the public debt should be paid in gold ? The only excep tions made were duties on imports and interest on the pub lic debt. If they intended to pay the principal in gold, would they not have excepted that also ? If it was not the intention to pay the principal in greenbacks, then every note issued by authority of Congress bears a lie upon its back, and those who authorized their issue are fathers to the lie. But we have further evidence: Senator Sherman, of Ohio, a leading man in all our financial measures for years past, said in a speech the other day in Ohio : " Now when we come to look at the law, which is the essential part of the contract, we find a provision that a kind of money defined in that act, and called lawful money, shall be a lawful tender in payment of all debts, public and private, except the interest of the public debt, which must be paid in coin. Now, I have reasoned about this matter very often, in public and private discussion. I have made and answered collateral arguments in speeches and reports ; but my mind always comes back to this conclusion: that under the law the contract between the creditor and the United Slates was, that the creditor should loan the United States lawful money, or paper money — that the United States would pay the interest at six per cent. in coin, and that the United States might, at the end of five years, return to the creditor his principal sum, in Uie same money loaned to the government." Senator Sherman is stumping the West tor the Republi can party. He says the law means greenbacks. Senator Morgan is stumping the East for the same party. He says the law means gold. Who is right, Sherman or Morgan ? The secret of the difference between these two great men is not to be found in men, but in the atmosphere.
In the West, the plough-holders predominate ; in the East, the bond holders control the political machine. The operations of the atmosphere upon the human system, and especially upon the human pocket, are altogether different in the two sections. Shall these bonds be paid in gold ? Not if the people have the power to prevent it. What do you say, you man, out there in the crowd, with one leg, and a prop under your arm, did you get your wages in gold? Do you get your pension in gold ? No. If you did, you might buy a new leg. But there is no gold for you. The blood that flowed from your veins on some hard-fought field in the defence of the old flag, was coined into gold for the bond holder. There is no gold for the widow and orphan. Their tears and sorrows have been made into gold-bearing bonds, and sold to the worst enemies this country ever had. What do you say, workingmen of Northumberland County, are you going to allow yourselves and your children to be chained to the car of this monstrous Juggernaut — this gold power? Are you going to receive wages in green backs and pay taxes in gold ? Your answer is one univer sal no. But election-day will tell whether you are honest or not. But we are told that these bond-holders loaned their gold to the government when it was in a tight place.
They never did any such thing. They held on to their money-bags until the government, to save itself, was com pelled to issue greenbacks. They then run down the green backs and bought them up with their gold, and bought bonds with the greenbacks. As soon as they had got the bonds, they had both the government and the people in their power. The next step towards absolute power was the creation of the national banking system, by which we are taxed $50,000,000 a year, which we pay to these banks for furnishing us with $300,000,000 of bank-notes — the printing of which could be done for a few hundred dollars. Why did not Congress issue $300,000,000 of greenbacks, instead of these national bank notes ?
Greenbacks are free of interest. But the $50,000,000 of interest is but a small portion of what the government and people are swindled out of by the speculations and dishonesty of these banks. One of the ablest writers in America says of this greenback question : When the Legal-tender Act was passed in 1862, all our Republican friends declared that greenbacks were as good as gold. Governor Todd, in a speech which elicited great attention, insisted that they were better than gold. They actually did pay all debts, debts that had been contracted in gold to be paid in gold. There were plenty of instances where debts of $1,000 in gold were paid with $1,000 in greenbacks, which were worth but $400 in gold. They liquidated all contracts of every description ; they cancelled mortgages ; they satisfied judgments and stopped executions. All the business of trust funds w.is conducted in them. The debts of the infant creditor, the widow, and the orphan were discharged in them. They paid the soldier and the pensions for the price of their blood. They satisfied all bonds of every description — town, city, county, and State.
The Republican legislatures of the States paid the interest
.....of debts contracted in gold with legal-tenders. Did our Republican friends see any repudiation in all this ? None in the world. The legal-tenders were money, the people's money, and to question it was to be disloyal in the highest degree. But, presto! what a change! When the bond holder of the United States is to be paid — that privileged and aristocratic class, which has been exempt from all taxation for years — then, for the first time, we are informed by the radicals that greenbacks will not answer. They have paid everybody else's debt, but they can't pay the bond-holder. He stands on a more elevated plane than the rest of the community. No offerings can be burned at his shrine but the solid and bright gold. Now, we are told, after greenbacks have liquidated thousands of millions of debts — after they are in everybody's pocket — they are not money, but mere promises to pay, of no particular account. By a magic wand, the bond-holder seems to have converted all the radical leaders and newspapers to his opinions ; and the latter immediately proceed to unsay all that they have said, and to undo, financially, all they have done. To pay the bond-holder in the same currency that pays every other debt, in the same currency with which he bought the bonds, is now, forsooth, no payment at all — it is repudiation.
Most happy and patriotic bond-holder ! you are the pre ferred of the preferred, the very elect of the elect. The people lent gold, and had to take legal-tenders ; you lent legal-tenders, and must have gold ! But another objection raised to the payment of the 5.20 bonds in greenbacks is that most of the savings-banks hold them as security or on deposit, and most of the depositors are poor men — workingmen; and to pay in greenbacks would be an injustice to these people. This, the gold people think, is a strong point, and thousands of workingmen think it is a sound and just argument.
Let us see how...........much truth there is in it. A savings-bank holds $500,000 in bonds. It draws six per cent. in gold, or nine per cent. in greenbacks, and pays to its depositors five per cent. in greenbacks — a clear gain of four per cent. Nine per cent. on $500,000 would be $45,000; five per cent. to the depos itors would be $25,000— a net profit to the bank of $20,000. But this is not all. The poor depositor must pay tax on his income, while the bank pays no tax at all. This, with other advantages in favor of the bonds, makes the interest about twelve per cent. Thus you see, while the depositor gets but five per cent., the bank gets seven per cent. Twelve per cent. on $500,000 would be $60,000 ; or, in other words, the depositors would get $25,000 and the bank $35,000. Do you see how this is done ? Do you see how labor is robbed ? You pay your money to these banks and get five per cent. in greenbacks; they take your money and buy bonds, and get interest in gold, and pay no tax.
Some may say no wrong is done the depositor, because he gets what they agree to pay him. Very true; but a great wrong is done to the people, to the tax-payer, to the producer. The $35,000 pocketed by the bank is stolen from the peo ple. It is added to the millions more that are ground out of your bone and muscle by the tax-gatherer's machine. Three years ago the war ended, and every heart was filled with joy. The soldiers returned to their homes, the ships were laid up, and every one expected a large contrac tion of expenses. What has been the result ? $600,000,000 a year is squeezed from the industry of the nation in the shape of taxes, and yet the debt is increasing at the rate of $10,000,000 a month ; and one of the leading papers of our country stated, a few days ago, that the last report of Mr. M'Cullough showed that the revenue laws were not quite productive enough. Taxes must be raised. " " Oh, but," says John Covode, and other gold men, "no man pays......any tax whose income is not over $1,000 ! " What do you say to that? How much more do you pay for the neces saries of life than you did before the war ? I make the assertion here, without fear of contradiction, that not one dollar of tax is paid, or can be paid, that does not come out of the workingman — the producer ; not indirectly, but directly out of the producer's sweat and toil ; and the man who will endeavor to deceive the people by a contrary argu ment is a fraud upon the country.
pg215-246 Biography of William Sylvis
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A man wanting to start a bank, buys $100,000 worth of bonds, takes them to Washington, deposits them with the secretary of the treasury, gets $90,000- in national. bank notes, comes home, and opens a bank. He draws six per cent. interest in gold on his bonds, besides what he makes on his circulation and the speculations banks indulge in. The profits made by these banks can be judged from the magnificent palaces they build. The operation, in all its naked deformity, is a simple one. The government fur nishes the bonds upon which the circulation is based, and pays six per cent. in gold for the privilege of allowing them to remain in the treasury department ; then it furnishes the notes for circulation ; then it issues a charter, — more pro perly called a license to swindle the people, — and the bank is complete. The only thing that the banker furnishes is his own worthless carcass. The interest of the nation re quires that the $300,000,000 of national bank currency be called in, and $500,000,000 of greenbacks be issued ; with these take up $500,000,000 of 5.20 bonds. This will
.........give us a good currency, and will pay off nearly one-fifth of the national debt, and save, in interest alone, $30,000,- 000 per annum, besides breaking up the greatest nest of public robbers ever organized in any country. I am fre quently asked by workingmen, what has this question of interest to do with us ? we are not borrowers, neither have we money to lend. Let us see : the natural increase in the wealth of the nation in seventy years is less than four per cent. — say four per cent. per annum.
Then it follows that any rate of interest above four per cent. is too much, and is running the nation in debt. While the increase of wealth was at the rate of four per cent. per annum, interest has averaged at least eight per cent. for seventy years. But if we take the last seven years, we will find 'that the increase in wealth has not been over three per cent., while the rate of interest has averaged fully fifteen per cent., making an actual loss to productive industry of twelve per cent. per annum. This matter of interest is the source of all our financial panics. The man who spends more than his income must go to the wall sooner or later ; and the nation that spends more than it produces must come to ruin. No nation on the globe ever did, or ever can, carry a rate of interest above the natural increase of wealth, without coming to financial ruin. The manufacturer, the farmer, the mechanic, and the common laborer each run in debt, or each have a load of debt accu mulating upon him, an ever-increasing mortgage upon his energies, upon future labor to make up present deficien cies.
The money-lenders and the whole horde of bankers, speculators, and other gamblers are, day by day, accumu- » lating additional liens upon labor. This condition of things lasts about ten years, when labor breaks down under the load. Its resources are exhausted, the rate of interest can no longer be paid, the creditors begin to crowd the debtors, a "money panic" ensues, and financial ruin sweeps over the..........land, prostrating everything before it ; debts are settled at a small per cent. on the dollar, bankrupt laws are enacted, we become a nation of individual repudiators — all the figures on the slate are wiped off. In this general ruin and mixing up of things, the bankers gather up all there is, and labor must make a new start. This operation is re peated every ten or twelve years. Interest acts like the tax-gatherer; it enters into all things, and eats up the profits of labor. Labor marries a wife and supports a family ; labor needs food, clothing, and rest ; labor works but six days in the week ; labor gets sick, and has doctor's bills to pay. Interest works all the time ; interest never gets tired ; interest needs no clothing ; interest never gets hungry ; interest never gets sick ; interest has no family to support, and needs no almshouse when it gets old ; interest produces nothing, but it consumes everything ; it gathers together the products of labor, making the. rich richer and the poor poorer.
Interest produces nothing ; all it does is to transfer the products of industry to the pockets of the money-lenders, bankers, and bond-holders. One .word more about these bonds : they should never have been issued ; there was no necessity for it. If the government has the right (and it has) to make every man enter the army, has it not also the right to take every dol lar ? Is money more sacred than life ? When the govern ment wanted men, it drafted them. Why did it not draft the money also ? When it sent a file of soldiers into the workshops to look after us, why did it not send them into Wall Street to look after the money-bags ? When these bankers refused to give up their money, they should have been put into the front ranks, and their money taken to pay the expenses. Had this just policy been pursued from the start, we would not now be cursed with this vast gold- bearing debt, and a bond-holding, privileged, untaxed aristocracy, that is squeezing the life out of the nation and people. Jefferson tells us that " a wise and frugal government, which shall keep men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to follow their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned, is the sum of good government." How far we have departed from this simple plan of government every man can judge for himself.
Nowhere in the world is there such powerful monopolies ; nowhere in the world is there so rapid a centralization of wealth ; nowhere are the rich becoming more rapidly richer and the poor more surely poorer, than here in our boasted land of liberty. Our dearest rights are being stolen from us by the power of gold. Bonds and banks are the Alpha and Omega of the devil's alphabet, and unless we arrest them in their work of ruin, our government will soon be but the shadow of itself, and our liberty the lingering memory of a dream. I ask for what I have said, a careful consideration. I have considered each question from a labor stand-point as they affect labor and laboring-men. Let us be true to our selves, true to our country, and true to the principles that must prevail in this nation, or it must cease to be the land of the free. If each man will do his duty in the coming struggles, we will soon be in fact what we have so long been in name — a free people. pg249
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Is the secret to be found in co-operation?
...........It has no doubt been a matter of surprise to you, as it has been to me, that in Europe, where the masses are kept in subjection, and hampered by restrictions and oppressive laws, they should rise superior to all these obstacles with a boldness and success that has so far eclipsed our best efforts. With all their poverty, with all the proscriptions heaped upon them, they subsist amid strikes and lock-outs, such as would sorely test our powers of endurance in this land of plenty — the secret will be found in co-operation. They have no credit in the corner grocery, because the employers warn the proprietors against trust. They seldom have a shilling " to the fore," because the wages paid admits of nothing " for a rainy day." But they have invested the profits of the corner grocer in co-operation. Little by little it has been accumulating in stock, and when idleness or sickness comes, they have a fountain from which to draw.
pg194
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Workingmen of America, never forget that God's or dained equality of man is recognized in the laws and insti tutions of our country ; and to admit of, or submit to, a distinction, based on a difference of circumstances in life, would be rank sacrilege. To suppose that He could, in His immaculate conception and execution of creating and peo pling worlds, design that a man's mind should grow with his money-bags, or expand with his broad acres, would be an infamous calumny upon Divine wisdom and justice.'
Were this possible, the world would never have been blessed with more than half the mechanical inventions and scien tific discoveries which have marked the progress of man. Godfrey, Franklin, Fitch, and Fulton could never have conferred upon us the countless benefits which still flow from their towering genius. But, aside from the men asso ciated with poverty and toil, who have so largely contrib uted to the advancement of art and science, the great majority of our orators, heroes, and statesmen came from the ranks of labor.
But, in our opinion, these pretensions to an aristocracy of intellect cannot stand the test of either observation or experience. Take an equal number of those who live upon the labor of others, and of those who labor for a living, and scrutinize their progress through life. Who will question the preponderance of all that is practical and useful in favor of the latter ? It is because the act of producing tends to develop the powers of the mind, while the luxury of con suming, blended with the vice of idleness, generally renders it inert and contracted. The same may be said of the chil dren of each.
The child of wealth, though favored by the
...best education that money can procure, often becomes an imbecile, or a mere book-worm at most, in the absence of all opportunity to apply his mind to mechanical, agricul tural, or other useful pursuits ; while the child of poverty, with limited schooling, and that obtained at an early age, often outstrips the other in the race of life, for the reason that his little learning is assisted by industrial associations which daily tax his intellect as well as the body ; for just as the muscles are strengthened by exercise, so the mind becomes enlarged by the variety of its application.
With so many living illustrations of the truth of our position, we can but smile at the loose "mental philosophy" of the day, which would violate every natural law in the effort to build up an aristocracy of intellect. Its votaries may maintain one of wealth, because that is as often associated with igno rance as with intelligence ; but you might as well attempt to monopolize the sunlight, or the air we breathe, as to confine intellect to a class. It dwells in cot and palace, and, like heaven's dew, falls upon the rich and poor alike.
THE RESPECTABILITY OF LABOR.
A great deal of distinction is made between the different trades, arising from a silly prejudice which concedes more respectability to one trade than another. Labor is labor all the world over, and the only difference consists in the various modes of its application. The shoemaker plies his awl and hammer, the tailor his needle and shears, the car penter his jack-plane, the moulder his rammer, and so on, through the whole catalogue of mechanism. Each and all give brain and muscle to these several occupations ; and, for the life of us, we cannot see the claim to superiority of a single one over another.
The grubbing-hoe, the hod, or the mud-spud, are equally honorable implements of industry, although coming under the class of unskilled labor ; but, should all receive equal compensation, where shall the higher grade of respectability begin ?
If we accept the dif ference justly existing between a mechanical trade which takes years of apprenticeship to acquire, and that species of labor which depends more upon physical than mental capacity, we see nothing at variance with a common interest and a common destiny.
We look upon every kind of labor as respectable, because necessary; and no man, should he reach the most exalted position in life, could possibly lessen the dignity of himself, or compromise the sphere in which he moved, by resuming the humble occupation from which he sprung, for either pastime or convenience, so long as he faithfully discharged the duties of that position.
Would Abraham Lincoln, while President, have degraded himself or his office had he " took a turn " at splitting rails, or grasped the helm of a flat-boat ? Could .Andrew Johnson have done the same by patching his coat, or sewing up a rip in his pantaloons ? On the contrary, the one felt a glow of honest pride when liv ing, as the other does now, while alluding to their past occu pations.
Then, if proud to boast, as Presidents, of the trades they followed in poverty, why should they not, with equal pride and satisfaction, split a rail or mend a coat, as Presidents ? It is evident that neither of these great men recognized a distinction between the labor of the mechanic or workman, and that of a President. In fact, while free to boast of their performance as laborers, they were by no means vain glorious while occupying the highest position in the coun try. It is the wide difference of compensation which creates the distinction, and not the occupation.
We have often read sneering criticisms of both, whenever they made allusions to their past history; but while the occupation of either may stiuk in aristocratic nostrils, one had, and the other has, the moral courage to throw the mantle of respect ability around the humblest calling. pg448
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Again I am asked, "And what is cooperation?" Cooperation is the banding together, by mutual agreement, of a number of individuals for the accomplishment of a given object.
Cooperation is the great idea of the age; it is the means by which we can fully control both labor and money, by which we can secure to ourselves the wealth we have for so long been creating for the use of others; for by it we secure a fair standard of wages, and a fair share of the profits arising from our industry.
Co-operation aims at elevating men morally, mentally, socially, physically and politically. This it will do by freeing us from the carking cares of poverty, wretchedness, which chains millions to a merely animal existence, and blessing us with the plenty and happiness that come of sympathy and united action for a good end.
"The problems which in ancient days have vexed and the minds and hearts of men, are, to co-operations praise, wrought out by hand, and tongue, and pen.
These virtues win my sympathies, and tie me to cooperate; and as our strength in union lies, Let love increae and patience wait.
Tyranny is founded upon ignorance, and liberty upon education.
Capitalists have deliberately attempted to destroy trades unions. Fortunately, their strength was ludicrously inadequate to the task.
Jefferson tells us that " a wise and frugal government, which shall keep men from injuring another, shall leave them otherwise to follow their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned, is the sum of good government..
Our objective point is a new monetary system, a system that will take from a few men the power to control the money, and give to the people a cheap, secure, and abundant currency.
We must show that when a just monetary system has been established there will not longer exist a necessity for trade unions.
The whole productive powers of this nation have become subservient to and dependent on upon this moneyed aristocracy. They control the whole currency of the country, and with the money the government. Our people are divided into two classes, the rich and the poor.
These men who arrogate to themselves the right to monopolize all the wealth of the nation, are the worst enemies of mankind. pg114
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pg15. Leaving William Sylvis, at his death, without means sufficient to bury him ; whereas, had he been more thoughtful of himself, and less liberal to the cause, he might have amassed quite a snug little competence.
We might have told how he wore clothes until they became quite threadbare, and he could wear them no longer ; how the shawl he wore to the day of his death, — which, during the year or two that he devoted to the resuscitation of the Iron-Moulders' Union, after, through his predecessor's unfaithfulness, it had well- nigh died out of existence, — was filled with little holes, burned there by the splashing of the molten iron from the ladles of moulders in strange cities, whom he was beseech ing to organize ; how he was more than once compelled to beg a ride from place to place on an engine, because he had not money sufficient to pay his fare ; how, to give the National Labor movement a fair start, he had fully made up his mind to mortgage his furniture to prepay the expenses of the Philadelphia convention, though he died before it met ; how suffering moulders " on the tramp " came to him for assistance, and, if deserving, were never sent away empty handed ; how he was denied the privilege of working because he had the manhood to exact a decent respect of his rights from those who regarded him and his fellow- workingmen as mere wealth -making machines, — brutes with the forms of men but without the souls; how one, whose bitter enmity he had enlisted by his rigorous deal ing with traitors, was so far malicious as to fire a pistol at him upon one occasion ; how he had himself bolstered up in a sick-bed that he might dictate a scathing rebuke to men who had evinced a willingness to submit to tyranny when victory was almost within their grasp.
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Can we not relive the spirit of Labor leader William Sylvis and reject a willingness to submit to tyranny when victory is almost in our grasp? STRIKE THEM OUT labor. Master's time has passed. His boom boom has sealed his fate. He's a man of the past............
Is bourse not anything other than "ABSTRACT RECEIPTS OF LABOR," the tickets that access the products and services of labor? Will labor not step up and take control of (bourse=money), into its own hands and see that God's wishes are fulfilled, and that there be a subsistence provision made with the creation and institution of an existence stipend that has something for everyone? Should we not consider this to be a God given right?
Stop the war: STRIKE THEM OUT!
They have refused maintenance of God's children. Tens of Millions die in destitution while American industry operates with less than 50% capacity, and high technology of life is blocked. Has there been anything like this to be seen since before serfdom? Our brothers and sisters forced into the streets and Returned to the wild feral state in America. God our Father wants the faulty people that banker management has installed gone! To get them out labor you must control the issue of bourse. To take control of the bourse labor you must STRIKE THEM OUT! God blesses us in this demand for peace and social justice.
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Read entire William Sylvis Biography at:
http://books.google.com/books/about/The_life_speeches_labors_and_essays_of_W.html?id=qNlHAAAAIAAJ
Seated is Jonathon Fincher, president of the Machinists & Blacksmiths and editor of Fincher's Trade Review, the only Civil War period labor paper. *http://homepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~marier/Stories-Pics/Labor_Leader.htm
He was often mentioned as a possible vice presidential candidate in the Democratic Party.
For several years he had not enjoyed good health and on the morning of July 22, 1869, he went to the office as usual and started working on an address he was to give at the National Labor Union, but he felt compelled to return home. At five o’clock, his doctor was called. The doctor said that he had a severe inflammation of the bowels. On the following Monday, his pastor was called and in reply to an inquiry if he had any fears in view of his approaching dissolution, and if his mind was at peace, he calmly replied, "If it pleases God to take me, I have no fear of death: I believe I am grounded in the true faith: Christ has pardoned my sins." At 3 o’clock he exclaimed, "Glory to God, I am going home to Christ: I know my sins are all forgiven." These were his last words.
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William Sylvis died at his zenith—he was not yet 41 years old. He left a destitute wife and family because he had never taken a penny for his work with the union. The union got together and paid his funeral expenses and a small stipend for his second wife. His first wife died in 1865. His eldest son, Henry Clay, was sent to Cincinnati to live and work for relatives
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In February 1866 Sylvis set his sights on the establishment of an organization that was broader still — a federation of unions which would be able to bring workers of different crafts together under a single organizational umbrella.]
The end result of this preparatory period was the establishment of a new national federation, the National Labor Union (NLU).[
Sylvis came to see the NLU as a potential vehicle for social and economic reform, including the establishment of producer cooperatives, the 8-hour work day, and currency reform.
Death at an early age intervened, however, and Sylvis's vision of a broad and powerful National Labor Union and its associated National reform party ultimately came to naught.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_H._Sylvis~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Life, Speeches, Labors and Essays of William H. Sylvis, Late President of the Ironmoulders' International Union: And Also of the National Labor Union (Google eBook)
Excerpts from The life speechs and essays of William Sylvis
HIS EXCELLENCY JOHN W. GEARY, GOVERNOR OF PENNSYLVANIA. THE FEARLESS MAGISTRATE, THE PATRIOTIC STATESMAN, AND CHAMPION OF LABOR'S RIGHTS, WORKING PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES, THIS BIOGRAPHY AND RECORD OF THEIR STAUNCH FRIEND AND FEAR LESS ADVOCATE, William Sylvis AND BY THE AUTHOR
"Our objective point is a new monetary system, a system that will take from a few men the power to control the money, and give to the people a cheap, secure, and abundant currency.
We must show that when a just monetary system has been established there will not longer exist a necessity for trade unions.
The whole productive powers of this nation have become subservient to and dependent on upon this moneyed aristocracy. They control the whole currency of the country, and with the money the government. Our people are divided into two classes, the rich and the poor." pg82
These men who arrogate to themselves the right to monopolize all the wealth of the nation, are the worst enemies of mankind. pg114
Again I am asked, "And what is cooperation?" Cooperation is the banding together, by mutual agreement, of a number of individuals for the accomplishment of a given object.
Cooperation is the great idea of the age; it is the means by which we can fully control both labor and money, by which we can secure to ourselves the wealth we have for so long been creating for the use of others; for by it we secure a fair standard of wages, and a fair share of the profits arising from our industry.
Co-operation aims at elevating men morally, mentally, socially, physically and politically. This it will do by freeing us from the carking cares of poverty and wretchedness, which chains millions to a merely animal existence, and blessing us with the plenty and happiness that come of sympathy and united action for a good end. pg117
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WHAT IS MONEY? pg351-387
[these articles first appeared in the Workingman's Advocate, of Chicago.]
What is money? is a question so frequently asked, especially by workingmen, and so many different answers have been given, all based upon the idea that gold is the only material out of which money can be made, that I have determined to add one more answer to the long list.
In taking up this question, I do not expect to present any new idea, or to say anything new. My only object is to present the matter in a plain, common-sense light; and in doing so, I shall use such arguments and illustrations as will be easily understood by every one who reads. What I have to say will be the plain words of a workingman addressed to workingmen.
Money made of gold is a monarchical and aristocratic institution. Kings adopted it as a sure means of keeping the people in subjection, by taking from them all power to control or in any way interfere with the currency. Princes and nobles were created—special privileges were bestowed upon a few; these few were rich, and were of course interested in maintaining the king's money. Thus the king, with his well-fed few, succeeded in robbing the masses, keeping them poor, ignorant, and wholly dependent.
When our ancestors ran away from Europe to escape religious persecution, they came here and set up for themselves; unfortunately for us, they did not leave behind them their prejudices and false notions on many of the most vital points in the science of government.
Reared amid the hardships and dangers of a new continent — separated from the "parent government" by a great ocean—thrown upon their own resources, they learned lessons of self-reliance and ideas of self-government that served them well when the struggle for independence came, and for the change in civil government about to take place. It was left for them to present to the world, for the first time, a self-formed government, whose basis was the equal rights of man, civil equality, and common privileges, and whose end was to be the general prosperity, virtue, and happiness of the people. Independence gained, it was natural that joy and satisfaction should be inspired, upon having escaped some of the oppressions of European systems, without feeling much curiosity to ascertain whether the new government was actually so founded as to secure the happiness of the many instead of ministering to the benefit of the few. This could only be learned after a considerable experience, and after that class out of which came bankers, brokers, bond-holders, usurers, and other plunderers of labor, had time to find out and take advantage of the weak places in our system of government.
This point was soon reached, and then began that scramble for wealth and power that has resulted in creating among us a moneyed aristocracy that is fast sapping the foundation of our government, and destroying the liberties of the people.
It is true that, compared with the wretched population of despotic Europe and Asia,'the people of this country, even under existing unjust relations of man to man, enjoy many things not common to the people of other countries. But comparative superiority may still be a condition fraught with much misery to the human family, and not less repugnant to benevolence than revolting to justice. Even in Europe and Asia, this superiority forms the boast of one nation over another, throughout the long-continued chain of comparative wretchedness among the great mass of the population.
We might run without end through a scale of comparative physical misery and enjoyment, and corresponding moral dignity or degradation, and never attain a principle of justice to reconcile ourselves to a wrong and oppressive system from such examples.
The question is not what people endure the least misery, but which enjoy the most happiness and real comfort; and having found that point, we are irresistibly forced to another, based upon the susceptibility of the social compact to yield the- full amount of happiness to the mass of the people, and to inquire into the reason why this object is not accomplished by our institutions, when it has been so bountifully provided for by a paternal Providence.
The slightest observation will satisfy the most obstinate mind that nature has abundantly supplied the industry of man with the means of universal comfort. We behold it in every form of luxury — every object of magnificence — every refinement of pleasure — every waste of riot and sensuality — every monument of pride — every display of vanity— every gorgeous decoration of wealth, power, and ambition. We behold the proof in the lordly millionnaire, tortured on his sick-couch by agonies of repletion, while the laborer famishes at his door. We behold it in the luxurious capitalist, swelling with the pride of pampered opulence, while the hearts of those who laboredto produce his wealth, shiver and faint with misery and want, or drag out a protracted life of endless toil. What God has spread before us as the reward and property of him whose labor shall bring it into use, government—unjust, despotic, proud, all-grasping government—has ordained shall belong to those who never labor, and for whose exclusive benefit the laborer shall toil forever. Thus do human institutions, founded on tyranny, or turned from their original principles of justice, destroy the beneficence of heaven, robbing the poor and giving to the rich.
Thus do we find our boasted institutions of equal rights to be the merest skeleton of liberty, which by their letter declare that equal rights and privileges shall be guaranteed to all, but by their operation create aristocracy, special privileges, extortion, monopoly, and robbery.
Such are the defects of organic law, practical government, and property, which are thrown as obstacles in the path of the workingman.
The great mistake made by the founders of our government was in retaining the king's money, — in ingrafting into our republican institutions monarchical and aristocratic ideas of currency and finances,— in setting up, in our temple of liberty, the golden calf. But the time has come when this idol shall be removed.
Fellow-workingmen, prepare for the fight. The world's greatest revolution is now at hand.
My first article was general or preliminary, intended to show, First, that money made of gold was a kingly, despotic invention. Second,that it has been continued in use because it provided the surest way to rob the many for the benefit of the few. Third, that it was the most dangerous element of despotic governments ingrafted into our republican institutions; and, Fourth, that its use is wholly incompatible with the spirit of our form of government, and has entirely subverted the designs, intentions, and desires of the authors of our Constitution.
We come now directly to the subject: "What is money?" Kellogg says that money has four properties or powers. First, to represent value. Second, to measure value. Third, to accumulate value by interest. Fourth, to exchange value.
As a discussion of either one of these four powers would involve a partial discussion of all, and prolong the discussion, I shall consider them in a general way, giving the greatest prominence to interest, and the material of which money should be made.
Money is the measure of value, and the rate of interest fixes the standard of measure; therefore, the standard should be the same everywhere. Government has decreed that sixteen ounces shall make a pound, and thirty-six inches will make a yard. Suppose Congress should repeal this law, and say that the people in each State or city shall have the right to regulate these matters to suit themselves, what would be the result? We would soon have yardsticks and pound-weights of various capacities. There would be just as much reason and justice in this, as there is in allowing everybody to fix a measure of value to suit themselves. The necessity for uniformity in weights and measures is no greater than for uniformity in the rate of interest; but it is said that a uniform rate of interest cannot be maintained, no matter what the law may be. That this is true under our present monetary system, I freely admit; because bankers and brokers monopolize the lending of money. The law of Pennsylvania says that six per cent. shall be legal interest; and yet it is impossible to borrow money at that rate, because Congress has fixed a higher rate, and because the business money-lending is confined to a few persons, whom neither the law of the State nor the law of conscience can control. All borrowers must go to them; therefore, they can fix their own terms; that is, they make their own measure of value, which amounts to the same thing as if it was cloth they were selling, and had the making of their own yardstick.
"The government reserves the right to fix the length of the yard, the weight of the pound, the size of the hushel, and the value of the dollar. Money is the public measure of value, and the government is bound to make it just and uniform, that it may correctly determine the value of all commodities. Measures are definite quantities of length, weight, size, and value. The pound-weight, yardstick, and bushel are measures of quantity, and the dollar or money is the measure of value."
"When the yardstick measures cloth, it does not determine its own length, and when money measures property, it does not determine its own value." The law fixes the length of the one and the value of the other. To alter the length of the yardstick is a high crime, and subjects the person guilty of it to severe punishment, while the power of the dollar to measure value can be altered with impunity; and yet the fraud practised upon labor is a thousand times greater than would be the shortening of weights and measures at the option of every seller in the land. "The government reserves the right to fix the measuring power of the dollar to bankers, brokers, and other gamblers."
The man who will interfere with the measure of value is just as guilty of crime as he who defrauds his customers by light weights and short yardsticks.
One of the most silly and absurd notions of the day is that each State should have the right to give to money a legal standard — to fix a legal rate of interest. The government should issue all money, giving to every dollar the same legal value — the same power to measure value in all parts of the country. Money, properly considered, can in no case be an article of barter and sale. It was never instituted to be bought and sold; its only functions are to buy and sell the products of labor. The laborer does not buy money, but he sells his labor(sic) formoney. The farmer does not buy money, but he sells his wheat for money. The manufacturer does not buy money, but he sells his waresfor money; and the consumer buys what he wants with money; thus is money simply a medium of exchange. The ♦ making of money an article of commerce is a prostitution of the currency of the country, and is simply legalized robbery.
A false monetary system, and the unwise financial policy pursued by the government from the beginning of the war to the present time, has built up a moneyed oligarchy such as the world never saw; and the whole nation is completely under its control. Congress has so legislated as to fix a standard of value, or a rate of interest that is absolutely ruinous — six per cent. in gold is about nine per cent. in greenbacks; and the bonds being exempt from taxation, and considering all other things to their advantage, we find that the rate of interest is fully thirteen per cent. If this was really the fixed standard, it would not be so bad; but it is only the rate below which it cannot go; but it goes far above that nearly all over the country.
Money was instituted by the government for no other purpose than to be a measure of value and a medium of exchange. We see that the law in nearly every State recognizes this principle by fixing some legal rate of interest; and the government has recognized it by fixing six per cent. in gold as the legal standard. These legal rates are not uniform; and if they were, it would make no difference, because the whole matter of interest, and everything connected with money, is in the hands of a few persons, whose only study is how best to bring to themselves the wealth produced by the labor of the nation. They rob alike the government and the people.
The Constitution of the United States declares that Congress shall have power to coin money and regulate the power thereof, and of foreign coin, and to fix the standard of weights and measures.
Congress has definitely fixed the length of the yard, the size of the bushel, and the weight of the pound, but it has not fixed the value of money. Under our present monetary system, the value of money is no more fixed by congressional action than is the price of coal, iron, or any other article of commerce.
Money is the legal standard of value. The rate of interest fixes the value of money. Its value is no more fixed by the quantity or quality of its material, than the size of the bushel is fixed by the quantity or quality of its wood. It would be thought unwise or unjust, if Congress should provide that the yardstick should be made of a rare and costly material, and to authorize a few merchants to regulate its length; and yet it would not be half so injurious to the public good as to empower a few bankers and usurers to regulate the value of money. In the former case, the merchant would be brought face to face with the purchaser, the fraud would be seen, and the buyer would have the means of self-protection; while in the latter case, the power operates silently and unseen, and the oppressor is seldom brought in contact with the injured party.
The rapid centralization of the property of the nation into our large cities, and into the pockets of the strictly non-producer, is plain to every mind. The wealth-producing classes have sought to avert this evil, and better their condition, by almost every means but the true one. Laborsaving machines have been invented to increase production, and every possible means of improving the quality of the various productions of the soil and labor have been introduced, and new avenues of transit have been multiplied to cheapen transportation, but all to little or no avail. These classes are still compelled to toil on in comparative poverty — the increase in production, the improvement in quality, with the increased means of transportation, have but tended to augment the wealth of the few and impoverish the many.
With the present accumulative power of interest, there is no more chance for the laboring-classes to gain their rights by combining their labor to increase production, than there would be hope of success in combining their labor to reverse the course of the rivers, and make them run to the tops of the mouutains, and pile up their waters on the summits. The law of gravitation, in the latter case, would not be more sure to overpower all their labor and frustrate all their plans, than the present governing power of interest on money is sure to gather up the increased production and add it to the wealth of the capitalist. The fault is in the law which governs the distribution of property; and combinations to increase production would no more effect any general change in the distribution, than combinations against law of gravitation would effect a change in its general governing powers. The evil is legislative, and the remedy must be legislative, or something worse.
It was my intention, in the beginning, to have finished this subject in three articles, but I have found it impossible to do so to my own satisfaction. I must, therefore, ask the indulgence of the reader; if I grow tedious, and if these articles are extended beyond what may seem necessary, it must be attributed to an earnest desire to make the whole matter plain to the understanding of every reader.
The power of money to accumulate value by interest is a vast power; so great, indeed, that it is hard to bring it into such proportions as to be easily understood by ordinary minds. When we begin to talk of thousands of millions, and billions, etc., the mind of the workingman, who but seldom has more than a week's wages to count over, becomes bewildered, and he don't care to listen. I have already said that interest acts like the tax-collector; it gathers up the products of labor — taking them from the laborer and giving them to the capitalists. Money loaned at ten per cent. will double in seven years, three months and five days; at nine per cent. in eight years and fifteen days; at eight per cent. in nine years and two days; at seven per cent. in ten years, two months and twenty-six days; at six per cent. in eleven years, ten months and twenty-one days; al five per cent. in fourteen years, two months and thirteen days; at four per cent. in seventeen years and eight months; at three per cent. in twenty-three years, five months and ten days; and at two per cent. in about thirty-five years. The average rate of interest for seventy years has been about eight per cent. per annum. At the beginning, property was more equally distributed than it is now. We will suppose oneeighth of the population to have owned one-fourth of the value of the property, and to have loaned it on interest, or rented their property at this rate; collecting and reloaning the interest annually for the seventy years, the amount would be $54,639,310,632, or over three times the amount of the value of the whole property of the nation in 1860.
Now, cannot the simplest mind see something wrong in this? The rate of interest amounting, in seventy years, to more than three timesthe value of all the property in the nation. All that labor produced went to the capitalists— a few men—all non-producers, and this balance of interest over production is a lien upon labor—productive labor, physical labor—a vast load of debt heaped upon the backs of the toiling millions — a mortgage upon the bone and muscle of the nation — the very heart's blood of the workingman is mortgaged from the cradle to the grave.
Had the rate of interest been three per cent. instead to eight per cent., it would have amounted, in seventy years, to $1,980,000,000, or less than one-twenty-seventh part of the amount at eight per cent. Thus, it will be seen that, at three per cent., labor would have retained over seven-eighths of all it produced; while at eight per cent., capital got over three times the value of all the property in the nation, besides All that labor produced. This seven-eighths, which would have been labor's share, would have been divided among the producers in the shape of wages, and every workingman in the nation could be in possession of a comfortable home, and in circumstances entirely independent. We would have no Vanderbilts, Drews, Astors, Stewarts, Belmonts, and Cookes, worth their hundreds of millions, and exercising an influence and power over the government and people such as was never before known since creation, while the dismal cries of poverty-stricken labor, shivering with cold and hunger, come up from every part of the land. Just think of it, fellow-workingmen, there are ten men in the city of New York whose combined wealth is over three hundred millions of dollars,and in the same city there are over one hundred thousand workingmen and women whose daily wages do not bring them the commonest necessaries of life, and during last winter many honest, industrious workingmen and women were compelled to apply for public or private charity to keep themselves and their loved ones from starvation, and many died from want of proper food, clothes, and shelter. While these ten men were worth millions, there were nearly 63,000 paupers supported by the city of New York during the year 1867, and a much larger number during 1868. Let it be remembered that a large proportion of these poor people, called " paupers" by newspapers and offipials, are honest workingmen and women, the profit of whose toil goes to make up the fortunes — the millions — of the few whose costly equipages jostle the starving mechanic in the same street.
Nowhere in the world is so high a rate of interest maintained; nowhere in the world is labor more completely under the control of the money power; and nowhere in the world is all wealth so surely and so rapidly concentrating in the hands of the few, as in the United States.
It is a first principle that no man can become rich without making another one poor, and that all accumulations of great fortunes necessarily produce poverty somewhere The course is plain. It is not in the power of man to produce a sum of labor so immense as to make every one rich. but he does produce enough to make all comfortable. If some, therefore, acquire large fortunes from the pile produced by labor, it must leave others without any. To make this still plainer, we will suppose there are one hundred men whose combined or aggregate production is $100,000; an equal division would give to each one $1,000. If one of these men got one dollar more than his share, ninety-nine would get less. But suppose ten of them got $5,000 each, then there would be but $555.55 apiece for the other ninety; but if twenty of the ninety take $2,500 each, then seventy would be left without any. A truth so plain requires no further demonstration.
Wealth, seated in the midst of her golden paradise, often sends her attendant, false benevolence, among the wretched, who are famishing from hunger and cold, to exhort them to economy and temperance; or, alarmed by their cries of anguish and suffering, she gathers the poor into almshouses, and eases her conscience by feeding them upon offals, and selling their dead bodies to the dissecting-rooms to defray a portion of the expense. The most pernicious character in society is the miser — the accumulator — the man who will gather up the product of labor beyond his needs; the man who steals from honest toil and leaves the toiler to starve. He is one of the moral extremes that meet us on the verge of misery, worthlessness, and non-production. The accumulator is a tyrant, whose every step inflicts anguish, crushes the heart, or slays his victim.
I am frequently asked by workingmen, what has the question of interest to do with us? we are not borrowers, neither have we money to lend. The natural increase in the wealth of the nation in seventy years is less than four per cent.; that is, the aggregate wealth of the nation increased at the rafe of four per cent. annually; then it follows that any rate of interest above four per cent. is direct robbery upon labor, and is running the nation in debt.
While the increase in wealth is at the rate of four per cent., interest has averaged at least eight per cent. tor seventy years. But if we take the last six years, we will find that the increase in wealth has not been over three per cent., while the rate of interest has averaged fully fifteen per cent.; making an actual loss to productive industry of twelve per cent. Right here the question may be asked, how can this thing called interest consume more than is produced? the answer is plain. The three per cent. consumes all that is produced, after feeding and clothing the producers; and the twelve per cent. is a lien upon future labor. It is a mortgage upon the productive industry of the country.
That this may be clearly understood, I will put it in another form. I have said that three per cent. is a lien upon present labor. That is, if a man has an income of $3,000 a year, and spends $15,000, how long will it be until he is bankrupt? He is running behind at the rate of $12,000 a year, providing his debts are such as bear no interest; but if they are interest-bearing debts, the matter is still worse. This, I think, will make it perfectly clear to every working man.
Interest acts like the tax-gatherer; it enters into all things, and eats up the profits of labor. Labor marries a wife and supports a family. Labor needs food, clothing, and rest. Labor works six days out of every seven, and but ten hours out of every twenty-four. Labor gets sick, and has doctor-bills to pay. Interest works twenty-four hours in a day and seven days in a week. Interest needs no clothing. Interest never gets sick or tired. Interest has no family to support, and needs no almshouse when it gets old. Interest produces nothing, but consumes everything; it gathers together the products of labor into large heaps, making a few rich and many poor. Labor erects a house, and then pays from ten to one hundred per cent. for the privilege of living in it. Labor produces bread, and then pays from ten to five hundred per cent. for the privilege of eating it; every dollar labor can raise goes for interest; labor remains poor and the Shylocks become rich. Interest produces nothing. All it does is to transfer the products of labor to the pockets of the money-lenders, bond-holders, &c.
While this question of interest is the most important of all the questions connected with the political and social relations of the people, yet it is less understood, perhaps, than any other. The poor man, while he toils from year to year, but little dreams that it is interest that is robbing him of all he produces.
This matter of interest is the source of all our financial panics and business prostrations. The man who spends more than his income will go to the wall sooner or later, and a nation that spends more than it produces must break down. No nation on the globe ever did or ever can carry a rate of interest above the natural increase of the national wealth without coming to financial ruin. The manufacturer, the farmer, the mechanic, and the common laborer, each run in debt, each depending upon future labor to make up present deficiencies. A vast system of credits is built up throughout the land. The money-lenders, and the whole horde of bankers, speculators, and gamblers, are day by day accumulating additional liens upon the productive powers of the nation.
This condition of things lasts for about ten years, when labor breaks down under the enormous load. Its resources are exhausted; the rate of interest can no longer be paid; the creditors begin to crowd the debtors; a "money panic" ensues, and financial ruin sweeps ever the country, prostrating everything before it; hundreds of millions' worth of property change hands at great sacrifices — debts are settled at a small percentage on the dollar — bankrupt laws are enacted — we become a nation of individual repudiators, and there is a general balancing of accounts, which simply means transferring all there is from labor to the pockets of the money - lenders and financial gamblers. The bottom is reached; a lull takes place; labor renews its energies for a new start, only to have the same operation repeated over again. And this same operation has been repeated about every ten years, ever since we have been a nation, and will continue to be repeated so long as we are cursed by our present monetary system.
The manufacturer, the farmer, the business man of any kind, needing money, must pay from ten to thirty per cent, for the use of it. In many cases the profits of his business are less than the rate of interest demanded. To borrow. would be ruinous; therefore his business must languish, or, what is very frequently the case, a reduction of wages is made. This reduction does not always, as is supposed, go into the pocket of the employer, but into that of the moneylender. Thus do employer and employe- suffer from this system of legal robbery called interest on money.
I have already said that Congress has, by a violation of the Constitution, delegated the power to fix the value of money to a few bankers, brokers, and usurers. It is true, that Congress has fixed a rate of interest on its bonds — six per cent. in gold or about nine per cent. in greenbacks — considering that they are exempt from taxation, and have certain other special advantages, the rate is very nearly thirteen per cent. This may look to many as if Congress had fixed the rate of interest which determines the value . of money, and it may be said that the fact that this does not control the rate of interest is a sufficient answer to my argument. That this does not control the rate of interest is evident from the fact that the usual or average rate is far above thirteen per cent. Would it be otherwise, if the rate of interest on the bonds was but three per cent.? While the average rate of interest would be less than now, the system would remain the same, for the reason that while Congress says that one hundred cents shall make a dollar, it has allowed a few men to monopolize the lending of money, and to fix their own measure of value. To these all borrowers must go, because there is nowhere else they can go.
By reason of speculation in gold, and the high rate of interest maintained, a very large proportion of the whole currency of the nation is centralized in the great commercial centres of the East, leaving the West and South without money to do business. While money is worth from thirteen to twenty-five per cent. in Philadelphia, New York, Boston, 'and other points East, it is worth much more AVest and South; indeed in many places it is not to be had at all. In many of the manufacturing and mining districts of the interior there has been an almost universal return to the old order system; and private scrip, such as due bills, Ac., is made to answer as currency. Why? Because the profits of business are less than the rate of interest on money; and because men cannot borrow money, they are compelled to do without it — to provide their own currency, or close up altogetter. In many instances, the employer, to keep his works going, must borrow money, and must pay more interest for the use of it than his return in profit; to save himself, he reduces wages; the workmen, not being able to see where the true difficulty is, go on a strike—the works are closed, and employer and workmen go to ruin together.
"Money creates no wealth; it only gathers up and appropriates to its owner things already produced."
Money is not wealth; it only gives to its owner power over the productions of labor. Wealth is accumulated labor. Money creates nothing, and has no value whatsoever to its owner, except as he exchanges it for what labor produces. A man may have a million of dollars, and be very poor; if he keeps it in his possession, he will starve, he will be destitute of food, clothing, and shelter. Money has no value, only as we part with it for something we need. This is, of course, plain to every mind.
A centralization of wealth is a centralization of power. When the few possess themselves of everything, and the many are reduced to that condition of dependence when it is compulsory to work or starve, then it is that the power of wealth and the rule of the few is absolute.
The most pernicious effect of wealth is, that it hardens the heart, blunts the sensibilities, deadens the conscience, deforms the moral nature, and makes a tyrant of its possessor.
For money, men sacrifice domestic comfort, health, character, and even hazard life itself. For it, they are guilty of fraud, deception, and robbery. For money, they sacrifice friendship, gratitude, natural affection, and every holy and divine feeling. For money, man becomes a creeping, crawling, miserable thing, instead of walking upright, as God intended he should. Mammon and manhood are incompatible.
When wealth accumulates in the hands of the few, the spirit of vindictiveness — a desire to rule, to get more, to reduce labor to a condition of vassalage, and to make pliant tools and helpless, obedient slaves of all who toil at physical labor — develops itself more and more, and widens the breach between the rich and the poor. As the one goes up, the other must go down. The one feels secure in its power, the other grows restless under fraud and persecution.
Here is the fountain from which flow all the social eruptions that blacken the body politic. Here is the cause of all strikes and revolutions. So tight has the hold of these money-changers upon the industry of the country become, that we will find it a hard job to shake them off. We must not waste our time in parleying, in trying to coax them to let go, or thinking we can frighten them away. All this has been tried. There is but one way left. We must take them by the neck with a grasp like a vice, and squeeze the life out of them.
There are but two ways by which this can be done. The first is by our power at the ballot-box: we can vote them out of existence, if we will. If we fail to do this, they will continue to suck at our vitals until, in a fit of desperation, we cut their heads off with the sword.
If, out of the vast wealth we produce, we are to receive but a miserable subsistence, and no prospect before us but eternal toil, and starvation or an almshouse in old age; if the ballot-box is not a sufficient remedy for these evils; if a few men will appropriate all to themselves, while labor toils and starves, then the time will come when an outraged and enslaved people will rise in their physical power, and force a more equitable division of the products of their labor by other means than a lower rate of interest.
What we want, and what we propose to have, is a general levelling up. I do not mean by this that we desire to pull anybody down, not even if they are up with a rope around their necks—as a considerable number of them ought to be; but we do desire and intend to get up.
The work of accumulation on the one hand, and degradation on the other, must stop. The millions of little streams of wealth, put into motion by our hands, must find their way into other and a larger number of pockets. We have no desire to disturb any man in the possession of what he now has; we are willing the thieves shall escape with their plunder; but we say the work of plunder must stop. This is what we mean by a levelling up; and this levelling up must be effected by a lower rate of interest, and an entire change in our monetary system. This change we will have by one means or another. The bleeding operation has been going on long enough; the patient is tired of it, and demands that it be abandoned. We are for a peaceable solution of this problem; but if there must be blood-letting, it shall be on the other side.
Confiscation or organism is no part of our plan; but it does not require a very great stretch of the imagination to picture the lamp-posts in Wall Street ornamented with the bloated carcasses of the money-shavers, gold gamblers, and land-sharks, who are robbing the government and the people. Labor is forced into an unnatural and degrading position. It is at the bottom of the hill instead of at the top. The products of labor are sifted like corn through a ladder — labor gets what sticks to the rungs. Out of this unnatural position we desire to get — through the ballotbox, and by peaceable means, if possible; but we mean to get out, even if to do so involves the cutting off of a few heads. If this is a digression from the subject, I ask the reader's pardon. (Bitch note: force is no part of our transition. We might note that this was written by Sylvis in the civil war era. He may have not made the connection between violence and how they have held the human race back for such a long time. Taking control of the issue of money requires no force other than a general strike.)
Up to this point in the discussion of this question, I have dwelt almost entirely upon the power of money to accumulate value by interest. Having, I trust, made this part of the subject clear to every reader, I shall now offer a few remarks on the " material" of money.
The reader will remember that I have already said that only the precious metals are fit to make money with is a fallacy, and has been adhered to by those who have taken upon themselves the management of financial affairs, for no other reason than because it furnished the surest and most secure means of controlling and enslaving the productive industry of the world.
For the first time in the history of civilization, we find a wide-spread and earnest effort in favor of a currency made exclusively of paper; and it is not surprising that these efforts have been opposed by many workingmen. We have all been educated to the idea that money could only be made of gold. In fighting this battle against the centralizing power of "gold money," and against the whole monetary system as it now exists, we have to combat the accumulated prejudices of thousands of years, a vast amount of ignorance and indifference, besides the combined power of the worst moneyed aristocracy in the world.
There are very few men, outside of those who control financial affairs, who have given the subject of money any consideration, and all who have written upon it have viewed it from a gold stand-point.
Workingmen, as a general thing, have given the matter no attention whatever. They have taken it for granted that the subject was so deep and mysterious as to be entirely beyond their reach. They have supposed that only men educated in all the arts and mysteries of financial problems could handle it; therefore they have given it the goby, allowing bankers, brokers, and other swindlers to do their thinking for them.
One hundred and fifty years ago, Bishop Berkeley wrote a pamphlet called the Querist, in which he took strong ground against gold, and in favor of paper money. So fierce was the denunciation of his work and of himself by the wealthy, and so ignorant and indifferent were the workingpeople that his little book soon became obsolete, and for nearly a hundred years the idea slept: men who entertained the same idea were not bold enough to proclaim it. It was not until the great work of Edward Kellogg made its appearance that any definite shape was given to it, or that men began to study and comprehend it. This work made a deep impression on the minds of a few men, while the many cast it aside, and the newspaper press almost universally denounced it as the production of a lunatic. In 1864, Hon. Alexander Campbell, of Illinois, issued a pamphlet called the "Free American System of Finance," which was a powerful defence of the Kellogg theory of money. This work was widely read in the West, and made many converts.
During the winter of 1865, Mr. Kuykendall, of Illinois, introduced a bill in Congress, providing for a national currency to be exclusively paper, and made a very able speech on it. These were widely circulated, and did good work. In 1868, Mr. Cary, of Ohio, the only workingman's Congressman ever elected, presented a bill looking to the same end, and made a powerful speech upon it. These, too, were scattered broadcast over the country.
In the meantime, others had taken up the subject, and it began to make slow but certain progress. It was left for the National Labor Union, at its second session, August, 1867, to be the first public body to adopt it, and proclaim it to the world as the central idea of their platform and organization. So rapidly is this idea of a people's money being spread, and so deep is its hold upon the people, that its enemies — all who are interested in swindling labor — are becoming alarmed, and beginning to denounce it. This is the point we have long been desiring to reach, knowing very well that just so soon as a fair hearing could be had, our ideas would prevail.
The accumulation of a vast public debt, and a system of taxation the most odious in the world, with a national bank monopoly, and the gigantic swindles going on in all parts of the country, even in the treasury department at Washington, have opened the eyes of the people. Workingmen are taking hold of the question, and find it uo difficult matter to unlock the whole mystery, and are astonished to learn how they are being swindled, and wonder why they never discovered it before.
Just now the world is being agitated by a cry for an international currency. The wise men who arrogate to themselves the right to do our thinking on financial matters, have not condescended to tell us what this cry means, nor do I believe one of them could give a satisfactory explanation if put upon the witness-stand. They might tell us that it meant a money that would go in all countries at a fixed value. But as the world has, and always did have, such a currency, there is neither sense nor reason in the cry or the explanation. Bullion — gold in the lump — has always been an international currency. That it may be improved upon, I admit; and the best way to improve it is for the world to make its money out of paper, and reduce gold to an article of merchandise.
When we talk of an exclusive paper currency, the question is asked, "How are we to settle balances of trade, and what are men to do who desire to travel in foreign countries where your paper money would not pass?"
Balances of trade are never paid with money. If, in our dealings with England, we find, at the end of the year, a balance against us of $50,000,000, this balance is paid with gold, but not with money. They take our gold coin at its weight, without any regard to the legal stamp upon it; and they would much sooner have gold bars than gold dollars.
By establishing paper money, we would in no wise alter our manner of doing business with other countries. As money does not in any way enter into our foreign dealings now, it would not then. As all business between us and foreign nations is now carried on by a simple exchange of commodities, so it would be then. We export cotton, corn, and wheat, and import sugar, coffee, and cloth; that is, we trade the one for the other. If we get more than we give, we settle the balance with something else. If they want no more of the produce of our farms or workshops, we give them the production of our mines—iron, copper, lead, silver. or gold; and when they take our gold it is no more money than is our wheat; the quantity of wheat they take is measured by dollars, so is the quantity of gold. If our merchants desire to settle balances with gold, let them buy it, as they do cotton and corn. If our people desire to travel in foreign countries, they will do just as they must do now— secure a sufficient amount of gold, which they will convert into money that will pass where they are going.
But we are told that to establish a paper currency, will be to undo the experience of six thousand years, and go back upon every established principle of political economy. Well, suppose it is. If men have worshipped a golden idol for six thousand years, is that a good reason why we should continue it? If the people have been robbed, and kept in poverty and wretchedness for six thousand years, is that a good reason why they should still permit it? If gold is the god that has always ruled and ruined in despotisms, is that a good reason why it should do so in a republic? We think not. Therefore the cry, Down with this false god; clean out Wall Street and the treasury department, as Christ cleaned out the temple, and let the betrayers of the people do as did Judas their illustrious predecessor — go and hang themselves.
Must we stick to gold because all the theories of political economists are built upon it? We think not. This is an age of reform; this is a time when old things are pulled down, and new things are built up; and if the "established principles " of political economy are wrong, and are in the way, they must come down.
The whole system of political economy, from beginning to end, is an apology for tyranny, and the whole tribe of political economists are humbugs; they are such because they have humbugged the people, and at their head stands the prince of humbugs, John Stuart Mill.
I desire to show how the flow of gold from the United States has affected the currency.
In 1855, there were $90,000,000 of gold in the Bank of England, and the rate of interest fell to four per cent. By the close of 1856, the amount of gold in said bank had fallen to less than $50,000,000, and the rate of interest rose to seven per cent. Immediately, gold began to flow towards England. In 1857, the amount of gold in the Bank of England fell to $35,000,000, and interest rose to ten per cent. — the highest point ever reached. Within a very short time, over $30,000,000 of gold left New York. This thirty millions of gold had been the basis of at least one hundred and twenty millions of State bank paper, besides many millions of commercial credits.
This sudden departure of gold unsettled all financial arrangements; credits and value were alike disturbed; confidence was destroyed; a panic seized the people, and a run on the banks commenced. "The regular discount of bills by the banks had mostly suspended, and the street rates for money, even on unquestioned securities, rose to three, four, and even five per cent. a month. On ordinary securities of merchants, such as promissory notes and bills of exchange, money was not to be had at any rate." The Commercial Agency of New York reported the debts of the country merchants to be two thousand two hundredand eighty-two millions of dollars, and the debts of the whole country to be over twelve thousand millions of dollars,— a sum four times greater than our present national debt. This vast system of credits and utter financial rottenness was the result of a vicious system of paper money — " wild-cat"— based upon gold, and its offspring, a high rate of interest. With such a load of accumulated debt piled upon the back of productive industry, it only required the first brick to fall to knock down the whole row.
I have said that the sudden departure of $30,000,000 of gold took away the basis at least of $120,000,000 of bank paper. The holders of these notes were swindled. The notes purported to be the representatives of money, when, in fact, they represented nothing. They rested upon gold; the gold was taken away, and the whole structure fell to the ground, involving the whole industry of the country in disaster and ruin. The same thing was repeated in 1861, when the amount of gold in the Bank of England fell to less than $60,000,000, and the rate of interest rose to eight per cent. It was not until the adoption of the greenback law, in 1862, that relief came. Immediately on the passage of that law, confidence was restored, new life and energy were infused into every department of industry, and although involved in a gigantic war, the people started upon a period of prosperity without a parallel in the history of the nation. This high degree of prosperity was the result of a partial divorce of the government from gold money.
The government's necessities compelled Congress to adopt the greenback law. Our armies were in the field, but there was no money to feed and clothe them. Congress asked for money, and instantly the vault-doors of the banks were closed; the patriotic and Christian bankers hid away their gold, and left our soldiers to shiver and starve, and the industries of the country were almost entirely suspended. Not only had inactivity paralyzed the nation, but a feeling of alarm, bordering on despair, was rapidly taking hold of the people; and the more urgent became the necessity, the tighter did these patriotic and Christian bankers draw the strings of their money*bags. To save the life of the nation, Congress was compelled to make a new money.
The great mistake made was, that the greenbacks were made payable in gold; they should have been separated entirely from gold, and made money absolutely. The perpetuity of the government should have been their cornerstone. Upon their face should have been written: "This is the money of the United States, and is receivable for all debts, public and private." But, unfortunately, Congress made two kinds of money—one for the government and one for the people. It made gold — its worst enemy — the corner-stone of the greenback; and it made two classes of debts, one payable in gold and the other in greenbacks. Immediately there began a war between greenbacks and gold; and just as soon as the war closed, there began a cry from Wall Street — that den of thieves — for a return to specie payments. This cry was taken up by bankers and brokers all over the country. Pretty soon it was given out that the Supreme Court would declare the greenback law unconstitutional. But for this, there would have been no pause in the prosperity of the country. If, in 1867, the sudden flow of gold out of the country caused the panic of that year, why did not the same result follow in 1866, when the rate of interest in the Bank of England rose to ten per cent., and large amounts of gold left the country?
All will remember that in the latter part of 1866 we had a general prostration of trade, from which we have not yet recovered; but we had no real panic. Why this difference? It was because we had got rid of the local or State banks. Previous to 1857, we had a paper currency based upon gold, and issued by irresponsible parties; and when in that year it was discovered there was no gold to redeem this " wild money,"-the paper became suddenly worthless— a market-basketful would not buy a breakfast. The gold having disappeared, and the paper being good for nothing, the country was without any money at all; and for nearly five years the nation was involved in utter financial ruin, and want, misery, and squalid poverty stalked through the land. If these results did not follow a suspension of specie payment in 1862, nor at any time since, it was because our greenbacks were issued by the government. They rested upon a foundation stronger -than gold — they remained good when there was not a dollar of gold to be had. In this fact we have a more powerful argument in favor of a paper money based upon the credit of the government, and entirely separated from gold; for, even though they were a promise to pay in gold, the absence of gold did not destroy their value.
The greenbacks carried us safely through the war, and saved the life of the nation; and, after the close of the war, nothing saved us from such financial ruin as the world never saw, but our greenbacks. And had Congress separated them from gold entirely, and given us enough to do the business of the country, the industrial and commercial interests of the nation would have remained undisturbed.
In these instances of a sudden flow of gold out of the country, and the fact that for a long time past there has been more gold going out of the country than was produced or being brought into it, we find the strongest argument against gold as a material for money. If our money was all made of paper, and gold was reduced to a simple article of commerce. the same as iron, wheat, cotton, corn, etc., the Bank of England might raise her rate of interest to fifty per cent., and every ounce of gold in the country might be taken away, it would have no effect whatever upon our country.
The advocates of a metallic currency, or "gold money," tell us that the material out of which money is made must have a value within itself equal to its legal value. That is, a twenty-dollar gold piece must weigh enough to make its commercial value as gold as much as its legal value in money, so that if the legal stamp were removed, it would still be worth twenty dollars. This, they tell us, constitutes the basis of a sound currency — that is, it is money, and rests upon itself; is dependent upon no other thing to give it permanent value.
Instead of this being a good argument in favor of gold as a material for money, I consider it one of the strongest arguments against it, and for the same reason that gold is not a fit basis for money made of paper, because it is small in quantity, easily concealed or taken out of the country, and when it disappears it takes with it its value as money as well as its value as gold. When gold goes to Europe to settle balances against us, it does not go as money, but as gold — as bullion ; the moment it crosses the border it loses its legal value; but it does not leave its legal value behind it to circulate as money. Its power as money dies; as money, it is entirely wiped out of existence, and its place is filled by nothing else.
A democratic money, a people's money, a money fit for a republican form of government, must be cheap, safe, convenient, abundant, an inexportable. Cheap in the material out of which it is made, and that material must belong absolutely to the government; that is, it must be a material in which there can be no possibility of speculation, a material that nobody will have except for its legal value. It must bear a low rate of interest, that it may be cheap to all who desire to use it.
It must be safe. It must rest upon something that has positive and permanent value; something that cannot be destroyed without destroying the government; something that cannot be collected together in small heaps, in a few hands, and hid away out of sight; something that cannot be carried out of the country. Money must be as a house built upon a rock; the foundation upon which it stands must be indestructible and immovable; permanent as the government itself. These are the elements of safety.
It must be convenient. It must be easy of transportation, small in bulk and of little weight, so that it can be sent from place to place at little cost, and be carried about in the pocket for every-day use, without hindrance or inconvenience. Lycurgus money, that took a yoke of oxen to pull a hundred dollars, was too cumbersome; it was just the opposite of a convenient currency. It must be convenient to get; all who desire to use it must be able to get it without bar or hindrance, by a simple compliance with the law.
It must be abundant. There must be no limit to its quantity, except the laws of supply and demand. To limit the amount in dollars, and say no more shall be issued, is to create a monopoly; to place much in the hands of some, and none in the hands of others, is to create borrowers and lenders, and place the borrowers at the mercy of the lenders. If a few men can control all the flour there is, they can fix their own price, and the people must pay it. If a few men can control all the money there is, they can fix their own rate of interest, and the borrowers must pay it.
Money — all money — should be created by the government, out of a material that will admit of no speculation. The government should be the only lender, and should lend at the same rate of interest to all borrowers, and the government rate of interest should never exceed one and a half per cent. They would secure an abundant currency at all times and under all circumstances.
It should be inexportable. That is, it should have no value outside of our own country. A money that can be taken out of the country, either to settle.balances of trade, to purchase goods or property in other countries, or for any other purpose, is not a safe, a reliable currency; because every dollar taken away lessens the quantity, creates a vacancy, and to that extent unsettles values and disturbs the whole business of the nation.
When we have secured these five necessary qualities — cheap, safe, convenient, abundant, and inexportable—we will have a democratic money; we will no longer present to the world the inconsistency of a republican government with a monarchical currency.
One of the very best results of the late war is the practical demonstration of the utility of paper money, and its many and great advantages over gold. In nothing is this so clearly shown as in the fact that the same cause (a flow of gold from the country) which produced the financial panics of 1847, 1857, and 1861, has not disturbed us since the passage of the greenback law.
We see that in 1847 the rate of interest in the Bank of England rose to eight per cent., in 1857, to ten per cent., and in 1861, to eight per cent. At each of these periods a large amount of gold left the country, and a panic ensued. In 1862 the greenback law was passed, and a paper money was substituted for gold. In 1863 the rate of interest in the Bank of England rose to eight and a half per cent., in 1864, to nine per cent., in 1865, to eight per cent., and in 1866, to ten per cent.; during the whole of this time — from 1862 to the present time—the flow of gold from the United States has been very great, most of the time more than was produced by our mines and that imported, that is, there was more gold went out of the country than came in; and notwithstanding this almost continuous flow of gold from us — sometimes in quantities greater than ever before—so little did it affect our currency or the business interest of the nation, that no one stopped to inquire whether gold was going out or coming into the country.
Practically, there has not been a gold dollar in the country since 1862, because none were in circulation; and for the purpose for which it has been used, it would have been better in the shape of bars, than in the shape of dollars. The reason why this continual and heavy flow of gold from the country did not affect our currency or our business, was because it did not go from us as money; it did not take a single dollar from our circulation; it did not disturb the value of our greenbacks, because the greenbacks rested upon something stronger than gold, something that the people valued more highly than gold; they rested upon the credit and stability of the government.
Our experience since 1862 has proven that there is a security, a reliability in paper money, that "gold money" never did and never can have; and it furnishes the most incontestable proof of the correctness of our position, that gold is not a fit material out of which to make money.
We must not lose sight of the fact that all this experience, all this accumulated mountain of evidence against gold, is the result of a paper money only partially separated from gold. Greenbacks are a promise to pay gold; they are not a legal tender for all things, therefore they are not absolutely money. They are not receivable by the bond-holders for interest on the public debt, nor by the government for duties on imports.
The great mistake made by Congress was that it did not make the greenback money instead of a promise to pay, aud a legal-tender in payment of all debts to the people by the government, and to the government by the people. There should have been a total separation from gold.
The New York World — the organ of the gold gamblers — tells us that such a currency would create "a prodigious inflation of the currency. Supposing the natural rate of interest [natural rate of interest is very good] to be seven per cent., if men can borrow at half that rate, they will be likely to use double the quantity of money," that is, if industry is prostrated because of a high rate of interest; lower the rate, and men will borrow money, and business will revive; or to put it in plainer terms, if a manufacturer can only run his shop with half his usual number of employes, reduce the rate one-half, and he could borrow money to fill up his shop and run full time. At a high rate of interest, the builder is not willing to embark in new enterprises; reduce the rate one-half, and he would put up whole rows of new houses. At a high rate of interest, the farmer cannot afford to make improvements; but lower the rate one-half, and he will build a new barn, make new fences, underdrain his swamp lands, and put his Tarin in complete order. But, according to the World, to stimulate industry by plenty of money and a low rate of interest, would be a national calamity.
A high rate of interest is the mill-stone about the neck of labor; it cripples the energy of the whole people, and retards production; because of it thousands and tens of thousands of workingmen are out of employment, and want and misery are abroad in the land. Reduce the rate of interest to three per cent., and give us a national currency made of paper, and new enterprises will be started, machinery now idle will be put in motion; there will be work for all, and peace and plenty will bless the land. This, the World thinks, would be a disaster. Perhaps it would to the World and its backers, but not to honest people.
Why is the rate of interest so high? Because it is but a limited quantity in the country, and that is controlled by a few men who control the rate of interest. The borrowers are many and the lenders few. If one thousand barrels of flour come to market, and there is no more to come, and everybody wants flour, a few men will buy it all up, and charge whatever their conscience will allow.
All monopolies are wrong, and especially monopolies of the necessaries of life; but the most infamous of them all is a monopoly of money, and a government that will permit it is not a government of the people.
Expansion and contraction are terms very much used, and it would be well if workingmen understood their full meaning.
Inflation, in the sense in which it is used, does not mean a plentiful supply of money. It means too much money — money lying around loose — a quantity of money above the wants or demands of the people. Inflation, as used by the World and its masters, meanstoo much. There cannot be too much money, until everybody has enough. There can be no such thing as an inflation of flour, until everybody has as much as they can eat. There is just as much sense in saying there is too much flour in the country, when half the people were hungry for bread and could not get it, as to say there is too much money in the country, when half the people have none, and no way of getting it. This word inflation is held up before the people as a hideous monster, and is one of. the scarecrows used to frighten the ignorant and unsuspecting. We also hear a great deal of talk about an irredeemable currency. We are told that a purely paper currency would be an irredeemable currency, therefore good for nothing. Why, workingmen, there is no such thing as irredeemable money. Whenever it ceases to be redeemable, it ceases to be money, because it has lost all the qualities of money. It is redeemable so long as it circulates, and whenever it ceases to circulate, that is, whenever people refuse to take it, it ceases to be currency. Money is a lien upon every dollar's worth of property in the nation; money will buy anything that is for sale, even congressmen; money is being redeemed continually; it is redeemed whenever it is paid out for value received.
The same 810 bill may be redeemed a dozen or fifty times in a day. One man pays it out for flour, another for rent, a third for coal, a fourth for clothes, and so on; and it is redeemed every time it is paid out. But, say these croakers, paper money must be redeemable in gold,that is, it must be exchangeable for "gold money." A man must be able to swop dollars; but money was not made to buy money, and I fail to see the sense in trading one dollar for another. But paper money is redeemable in gold. Greenbacks will buy gold watches, or any other articles made of gold, or gold in the lump or bar. Thus are they redeemable in gold, as in flour.
If workingmen will just stop and think a little, they will see that all the greenbacks they can get are redeemed for rent, clothing, provisions, just about as fast as they can get them.
Expansion and contraction. The one means a low rate of interest, plenty of money, labor fully employed, high wages, no credit, cash for everything, and the general prosperity of the people.
The other means a high rate of interest, no money, low wages, store pay, idleness, poverty, and want. Wall Street and the World go for contraction, honest people go for expansion.
The Cary bill proposes to reach the same point, but by a different road. It provides for the issuing of a paper money to be called " Treasury Certificates," the notes to be in denominations of $1 upwards to $1,000, not bearing interest, and to be a legal tender for all debts public and private; this includes all taxes, duties on imports, interest on the public debt, except that portion the interest of which is made payable in gold, and all other debts due the government.
It further provides for the issue of bonds in denominations of not less than $100, nor more than $10,000, said bonds to bear three per cent. interest. The bonds to be convertible into money, or the money into bonds, at the will of the holder.
Let me illustrate this.
Mr. Jones has a $1,000 bond bearing three per cent.; if he holds this bond one year the interest will be $30. If he wishes to borrow money he deposits his bond with the government, and gets $1,000 in "Treasury Certificates." This money he keeps one year, then returns it and takes up his bond. For this year he receives no interest on the bond, or, in other words, while he holds the bond, the government pays him three per cent., when he converts the bond into money the interest stops. So long as he can make more than three per cent. out of the money he will keep it, and when his profit falls below three per cent. he will return the money and take up the bond.
This is the monetary system proposed by the National Labor Union, and is emphatically a people's monetary system.
There could be no speculation in these bonds, because they are issued by the government, directly to the people, and every person with a hundred could buy a bond, and every person with a bond could borrow money directly from the government, at three per cent. The government would be the only lender, and the whole people would be the borrowers, and between the borrowers and the lender there could be no middlemen — brokers, money-changers, and skinners—to swindle the people by high rates of interest, as there is now under our present monetary system.
This would, of course, abolish all banks of issue, and leave the present national banks merely banks of "deposit, loans, and discounts."
This bill further provides that the national banks shall return their notes to the treasury department within six months, the notes to be returned in sums not less than $1,000, and for every $1,000, or more, of these notes returned, a just and proper amount of bonds pledged for their redemption shall be returned to such bank. And should any bank fail to return its notes, or any part of them, within six months, the interest on the whole amount of bonds deposited with the treasurer by such bank shall cease; and in case the whole or any part of the notes of such bank are not returned within two years, the bonds, or other securities in the hands of the treasurer, shall be forfeited to the government, and used to redeem the outstanding notes. It also provides that all debts, bonded or otherwise, of the government, contracted to be paid since July 1, 1861 (except such as are made payable in gold), and all debts which may hereafter be incurred, shall be paid in "Treasury Certificates," or in three per cent. bonds, at the option of the creditor.
It authorizes the secretary of the treasury to give notice to the holders of bonds, or other obligations of the government, to present the same for payment or exchange, when due and payable, or redeemable at the option of the government, within five months, and, failing to do so, the interest shall stop. The holders of the bonds or other obligations to have the right to exchange them for the three per cent. bonds, or receive in payment the " Treasury Certificates," at their option.
With this I will leave the subject for the present, and if I have succeeded in making it plain to the mind of a single individual, I am amply paid for my labor.
End of Essay by William Sylvis on what is money?
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Excerpts from William Sylvis biography. available at Google books.
I am asked, what better Congress could have done than submit to the hard terms of the bankers ? Sup pose the workingmen of the whole country had said, we won't go into the army, nor fire a musket, until you give us one hundred dollars a month in gold. What would Congress have done ?
Do you think the terms would have been granted ? No ; a draft would have been ordered ; armed soldiers would have entered our workshops and our homes, and forced us into the army, and that would have been perfectly right. When men were wanted, they were taken, which was right ; for the government has the right to lay its hand upon every citizen, and say, " You must come and help defend the life of the nation." Now, if it wanted money, could it not have done the same thing ? If it has the right to take every man, has it not the right to take every dollar also ?
Why, sir, instead of surrendering to the bankers, Congress should have drafted the money, as it did the men ; it should have filled its treasury, as it did its army. Congress should have taken this monetary power by the throat and squeezed the life out of it. This was not done, and now the bankers and bond-holders are squeezing the life out of the nation. There is but one remedy — the people must do what Congress failed to do. They must take this monster by the neck and shake the life. out of it. Our debt of $3,000,000,000 is but a small matter, if properly managed.
Give us a sound currency, equal taxa tion upon all property, resolve to pay the five-twenties in greenbacks, reduce the interest on the debt to three per cent., and bring the expenses of the government within reasonable limits, and every department of industry will be fully em ployed, the productive powers of the nation will go forward as we have never seen them, and the wealth of the nation will be so largely and rapidly increased, that the payment of the debt will be but a small task. As it is, what are the prospects ? Commissioner Wells issued a report, a short time ago, which led us to believe that the debt was being largely reduced. Now, what are the figures? We see that the debt has been increased over $50,000,000 in ten months. At this rate, how long will it be until the debt is paid ? Just get out your slates and pencils, and figure it up.
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The funding system is one of the parents of the unequal distribution of property — a fungus on the body politic. In itself, the funding system, of all the provisions of our Constitution, is especially oppressive to labor. It is the parent of the banking system — that fruitful mother of un utterable affliction to the sons of industry — which brought us, at one fatal step, into the vortex of a moneyed aris tocracy, overgrown fortunes, and hopeless poverty, taxa tion through all the elements of existence, and speculation to the utter grinding down of labor, to pamper the fortunes of the rich. Thus far, then, we see our boasted equal rights to be the merest skeleton of liberty, which by its letter de clares that equality shall be guaranteed to all ; but by its operation creates aristocracy, privileges, extortion, monopoly, and the legal robbery of those who toil. Shall these bonds be paid in gold ? Shall this incubus of uncounted millions be fastened upon us and our posterity forever? Our answer at the ballot-box must settle the question. "When the green backs were issued as a legal tender, many men in both parties opposed it as dangerous legislation, and contrary to the spirit of our Constitution. The friends of the measure were compelled to defend it. I remember the debates very well. I was one of its friends, for I thought I could see through it the dawning of the day of deliverance for labor. I remember that it was common to raise the cry of rebel, traitor, etc., against all who opposed it. We, who favored it, said the greenbacks would be as good as gold ; that they would take the place made vacant by the withdrawal of the gold and silver by these patriotic bankers ; that we would have no more use for gold as money — no more use for bankers and brokers — and that we would be free from the grasp of the money power. If any of you, fellow-working- men, are fortunate enough to have a greenback in your pocket, just look at it, and you will see on its back the words — " This note is a legal tender for all debts, public and private, except duties on imports and interest on the public debt, and is receivable in payment of all loans made to the United States." From this we draw the most con clusive proof, that it was the intention of the makers of the law that these greenbacks should be the currency of the country, and that no law should be made recognizing contracts for the payment of any other kind of money. So careful were they not to be misunderstood as to the public debt, that they said, in large letters on the back of each note, " And is receivable for all loans made to the United States.'" Not only do we find this clear proof on the backs of the original legal - tenders," but if you will look up a national bank note, you will see upon its back these words : " This note is receivable at par in all parts of the United States in payment of all taxes and excises, and all other dues to the United States, except duties on imports ; and also for all salaries and other debts owing by the United States to individuals, corporations, and associations within the United States, except interest on the public debt." These notes were issued after every denomination of bond was author ized.
Does any man want any stronger evidence than this, that those who framed these several laws never intended the public debt should be paid in gold ? The only excep tions made were duties on imports and interest on the pub lic debt. If they intended to pay the principal in gold, would they not have excepted that also ? If it was not the intention to pay the principal in greenbacks, then every note issued by authority of Congress bears a lie upon its back, and those who authorized their issue are fathers to the lie. But we have further evidence: Senator Sherman, of Ohio, a leading man in all our financial measures for years past, said in a speech the other day in Ohio : " Now when we come to look at the law, which is the essential part of the contract, we find a provision that a kind of money defined in that act, and called lawful money, shall be a lawful tender in payment of all debts, public and private, except the interest of the public debt, which must be paid in coin. Now, I have reasoned about this matter very often, in public and private discussion. I have made and answered collateral arguments in speeches and reports ; but my mind always comes back to this conclusion: that under the law the contract between the creditor and the United Slates was, that the creditor should loan the United States lawful money, or paper money — that the United States would pay the interest at six per cent. in coin, and that the United States might, at the end of five years, return to the creditor his principal sum, in Uie same money loaned to the government." Senator Sherman is stumping the West tor the Republi can party. He says the law means greenbacks. Senator Morgan is stumping the East for the same party. He says the law means gold. Who is right, Sherman or Morgan ? The secret of the difference between these two great men is not to be found in men, but in the atmosphere.
In the West, the plough-holders predominate ; in the East, the bond holders control the political machine. The operations of the atmosphere upon the human system, and especially upon the human pocket, are altogether different in the two sections. Shall these bonds be paid in gold ? Not if the people have the power to prevent it. What do you say, you man, out there in the crowd, with one leg, and a prop under your arm, did you get your wages in gold? Do you get your pension in gold ? No. If you did, you might buy a new leg. But there is no gold for you. The blood that flowed from your veins on some hard-fought field in the defence of the old flag, was coined into gold for the bond holder. There is no gold for the widow and orphan. Their tears and sorrows have been made into gold-bearing bonds, and sold to the worst enemies this country ever had. What do you say, workingmen of Northumberland County, are you going to allow yourselves and your children to be chained to the car of this monstrous Juggernaut — this gold power? Are you going to receive wages in green backs and pay taxes in gold ? Your answer is one univer sal no. But election-day will tell whether you are honest or not. But we are told that these bond-holders loaned their gold to the government when it was in a tight place.
They never did any such thing. They held on to their money-bags until the government, to save itself, was com pelled to issue greenbacks. They then run down the green backs and bought them up with their gold, and bought bonds with the greenbacks. As soon as they had got the bonds, they had both the government and the people in their power. The next step towards absolute power was the creation of the national banking system, by which we are taxed $50,000,000 a year, which we pay to these banks for furnishing us with $300,000,000 of bank-notes — the printing of which could be done for a few hundred dollars. Why did not Congress issue $300,000,000 of greenbacks, instead of these national bank notes ?
Greenbacks are free of interest. But the $50,000,000 of interest is but a small portion of what the government and people are swindled out of by the speculations and dishonesty of these banks. One of the ablest writers in America says of this greenback question : When the Legal-tender Act was passed in 1862, all our Republican friends declared that greenbacks were as good as gold. Governor Todd, in a speech which elicited great attention, insisted that they were better than gold. They actually did pay all debts, debts that had been contracted in gold to be paid in gold. There were plenty of instances where debts of $1,000 in gold were paid with $1,000 in greenbacks, which were worth but $400 in gold. They liquidated all contracts of every description ; they cancelled mortgages ; they satisfied judgments and stopped executions. All the business of trust funds w.is conducted in them. The debts of the infant creditor, the widow, and the orphan were discharged in them. They paid the soldier and the pensions for the price of their blood. They satisfied all bonds of every description — town, city, county, and State.
The Republican legislatures of the States paid the interest
.....of debts contracted in gold with legal-tenders. Did our Republican friends see any repudiation in all this ? None in the world. The legal-tenders were money, the people's money, and to question it was to be disloyal in the highest degree. But, presto! what a change! When the bond holder of the United States is to be paid — that privileged and aristocratic class, which has been exempt from all taxation for years — then, for the first time, we are informed by the radicals that greenbacks will not answer. They have paid everybody else's debt, but they can't pay the bond-holder. He stands on a more elevated plane than the rest of the community. No offerings can be burned at his shrine but the solid and bright gold. Now, we are told, after greenbacks have liquidated thousands of millions of debts — after they are in everybody's pocket — they are not money, but mere promises to pay, of no particular account. By a magic wand, the bond-holder seems to have converted all the radical leaders and newspapers to his opinions ; and the latter immediately proceed to unsay all that they have said, and to undo, financially, all they have done. To pay the bond-holder in the same currency that pays every other debt, in the same currency with which he bought the bonds, is now, forsooth, no payment at all — it is repudiation.
Most happy and patriotic bond-holder ! you are the pre ferred of the preferred, the very elect of the elect. The people lent gold, and had to take legal-tenders ; you lent legal-tenders, and must have gold ! But another objection raised to the payment of the 5.20 bonds in greenbacks is that most of the savings-banks hold them as security or on deposit, and most of the depositors are poor men — workingmen; and to pay in greenbacks would be an injustice to these people. This, the gold people think, is a strong point, and thousands of workingmen think it is a sound and just argument.
Let us see how...........much truth there is in it. A savings-bank holds $500,000 in bonds. It draws six per cent. in gold, or nine per cent. in greenbacks, and pays to its depositors five per cent. in greenbacks — a clear gain of four per cent. Nine per cent. on $500,000 would be $45,000; five per cent. to the depos itors would be $25,000— a net profit to the bank of $20,000. But this is not all. The poor depositor must pay tax on his income, while the bank pays no tax at all. This, with other advantages in favor of the bonds, makes the interest about twelve per cent. Thus you see, while the depositor gets but five per cent., the bank gets seven per cent. Twelve per cent. on $500,000 would be $60,000 ; or, in other words, the depositors would get $25,000 and the bank $35,000. Do you see how this is done ? Do you see how labor is robbed ? You pay your money to these banks and get five per cent. in greenbacks; they take your money and buy bonds, and get interest in gold, and pay no tax.
Some may say no wrong is done the depositor, because he gets what they agree to pay him. Very true; but a great wrong is done to the people, to the tax-payer, to the producer. The $35,000 pocketed by the bank is stolen from the peo ple. It is added to the millions more that are ground out of your bone and muscle by the tax-gatherer's machine. Three years ago the war ended, and every heart was filled with joy. The soldiers returned to their homes, the ships were laid up, and every one expected a large contrac tion of expenses. What has been the result ? $600,000,000 a year is squeezed from the industry of the nation in the shape of taxes, and yet the debt is increasing at the rate of $10,000,000 a month ; and one of the leading papers of our country stated, a few days ago, that the last report of Mr. M'Cullough showed that the revenue laws were not quite productive enough. Taxes must be raised. " " Oh, but," says John Covode, and other gold men, "no man pays......any tax whose income is not over $1,000 ! " What do you say to that? How much more do you pay for the neces saries of life than you did before the war ? I make the assertion here, without fear of contradiction, that not one dollar of tax is paid, or can be paid, that does not come out of the workingman — the producer ; not indirectly, but directly out of the producer's sweat and toil ; and the man who will endeavor to deceive the people by a contrary argu ment is a fraud upon the country.
pg215-246 Biography of William Sylvis
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A man wanting to start a bank, buys $100,000 worth of bonds, takes them to Washington, deposits them with the secretary of the treasury, gets $90,000- in national. bank notes, comes home, and opens a bank. He draws six per cent. interest in gold on his bonds, besides what he makes on his circulation and the speculations banks indulge in. The profits made by these banks can be judged from the magnificent palaces they build. The operation, in all its naked deformity, is a simple one. The government fur nishes the bonds upon which the circulation is based, and pays six per cent. in gold for the privilege of allowing them to remain in the treasury department ; then it furnishes the notes for circulation ; then it issues a charter, — more pro perly called a license to swindle the people, — and the bank is complete. The only thing that the banker furnishes is his own worthless carcass. The interest of the nation re quires that the $300,000,000 of national bank currency be called in, and $500,000,000 of greenbacks be issued ; with these take up $500,000,000 of 5.20 bonds. This will
.........give us a good currency, and will pay off nearly one-fifth of the national debt, and save, in interest alone, $30,000,- 000 per annum, besides breaking up the greatest nest of public robbers ever organized in any country. I am fre quently asked by workingmen, what has this question of interest to do with us ? we are not borrowers, neither have we money to lend. Let us see : the natural increase in the wealth of the nation in seventy years is less than four per cent. — say four per cent. per annum.
Then it follows that any rate of interest above four per cent. is too much, and is running the nation in debt. While the increase of wealth was at the rate of four per cent. per annum, interest has averaged at least eight per cent. for seventy years. But if we take the last seven years, we will find 'that the increase in wealth has not been over three per cent., while the rate of interest has averaged fully fifteen per cent., making an actual loss to productive industry of twelve per cent. per annum. This matter of interest is the source of all our financial panics. The man who spends more than his income must go to the wall sooner or later ; and the nation that spends more than it produces must come to ruin. No nation on the globe ever did, or ever can, carry a rate of interest above the natural increase of wealth, without coming to financial ruin. The manufacturer, the farmer, the mechanic, and the common laborer each run in debt, or each have a load of debt accu mulating upon him, an ever-increasing mortgage upon his energies, upon future labor to make up present deficien cies.
The money-lenders and the whole horde of bankers, speculators, and other gamblers are, day by day, accumu- » lating additional liens upon labor. This condition of things lasts about ten years, when labor breaks down under the load. Its resources are exhausted, the rate of interest can no longer be paid, the creditors begin to crowd the debtors, a "money panic" ensues, and financial ruin sweeps over the..........land, prostrating everything before it ; debts are settled at a small per cent. on the dollar, bankrupt laws are enacted, we become a nation of individual repudiators — all the figures on the slate are wiped off. In this general ruin and mixing up of things, the bankers gather up all there is, and labor must make a new start. This operation is re peated every ten or twelve years. Interest acts like the tax-gatherer; it enters into all things, and eats up the profits of labor. Labor marries a wife and supports a family ; labor needs food, clothing, and rest ; labor works but six days in the week ; labor gets sick, and has doctor's bills to pay. Interest works all the time ; interest never gets tired ; interest needs no clothing ; interest never gets hungry ; interest never gets sick ; interest has no family to support, and needs no almshouse when it gets old ; interest produces nothing, but it consumes everything ; it gathers together the products of labor, making the. rich richer and the poor poorer.
Interest produces nothing ; all it does is to transfer the products of industry to the pockets of the money-lenders, bankers, and bond-holders. One .word more about these bonds : they should never have been issued ; there was no necessity for it. If the government has the right (and it has) to make every man enter the army, has it not also the right to take every dol lar ? Is money more sacred than life ? When the govern ment wanted men, it drafted them. Why did it not draft the money also ? When it sent a file of soldiers into the workshops to look after us, why did it not send them into Wall Street to look after the money-bags ? When these bankers refused to give up their money, they should have been put into the front ranks, and their money taken to pay the expenses. Had this just policy been pursued from the start, we would not now be cursed with this vast gold- bearing debt, and a bond-holding, privileged, untaxed aristocracy, that is squeezing the life out of the nation and people. Jefferson tells us that " a wise and frugal government, which shall keep men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to follow their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned, is the sum of good government." How far we have departed from this simple plan of government every man can judge for himself.
Nowhere in the world is there such powerful monopolies ; nowhere in the world is there so rapid a centralization of wealth ; nowhere are the rich becoming more rapidly richer and the poor more surely poorer, than here in our boasted land of liberty. Our dearest rights are being stolen from us by the power of gold. Bonds and banks are the Alpha and Omega of the devil's alphabet, and unless we arrest them in their work of ruin, our government will soon be but the shadow of itself, and our liberty the lingering memory of a dream. I ask for what I have said, a careful consideration. I have considered each question from a labor stand-point as they affect labor and laboring-men. Let us be true to our selves, true to our country, and true to the principles that must prevail in this nation, or it must cease to be the land of the free. If each man will do his duty in the coming struggles, we will soon be in fact what we have so long been in name — a free people. pg249
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Is the secret to be found in co-operation?
...........It has no doubt been a matter of surprise to you, as it has been to me, that in Europe, where the masses are kept in subjection, and hampered by restrictions and oppressive laws, they should rise superior to all these obstacles with a boldness and success that has so far eclipsed our best efforts. With all their poverty, with all the proscriptions heaped upon them, they subsist amid strikes and lock-outs, such as would sorely test our powers of endurance in this land of plenty — the secret will be found in co-operation. They have no credit in the corner grocery, because the employers warn the proprietors against trust. They seldom have a shilling " to the fore," because the wages paid admits of nothing " for a rainy day." But they have invested the profits of the corner grocer in co-operation. Little by little it has been accumulating in stock, and when idleness or sickness comes, they have a fountain from which to draw.
pg194
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Workingmen of America, never forget that God's or dained equality of man is recognized in the laws and insti tutions of our country ; and to admit of, or submit to, a distinction, based on a difference of circumstances in life, would be rank sacrilege. To suppose that He could, in His immaculate conception and execution of creating and peo pling worlds, design that a man's mind should grow with his money-bags, or expand with his broad acres, would be an infamous calumny upon Divine wisdom and justice.'
Were this possible, the world would never have been blessed with more than half the mechanical inventions and scien tific discoveries which have marked the progress of man. Godfrey, Franklin, Fitch, and Fulton could never have conferred upon us the countless benefits which still flow from their towering genius. But, aside from the men asso ciated with poverty and toil, who have so largely contrib uted to the advancement of art and science, the great majority of our orators, heroes, and statesmen came from the ranks of labor.
But, in our opinion, these pretensions to an aristocracy of intellect cannot stand the test of either observation or experience. Take an equal number of those who live upon the labor of others, and of those who labor for a living, and scrutinize their progress through life. Who will question the preponderance of all that is practical and useful in favor of the latter ? It is because the act of producing tends to develop the powers of the mind, while the luxury of con suming, blended with the vice of idleness, generally renders it inert and contracted. The same may be said of the chil dren of each.
The child of wealth, though favored by the
...best education that money can procure, often becomes an imbecile, or a mere book-worm at most, in the absence of all opportunity to apply his mind to mechanical, agricul tural, or other useful pursuits ; while the child of poverty, with limited schooling, and that obtained at an early age, often outstrips the other in the race of life, for the reason that his little learning is assisted by industrial associations which daily tax his intellect as well as the body ; for just as the muscles are strengthened by exercise, so the mind becomes enlarged by the variety of its application.
With so many living illustrations of the truth of our position, we can but smile at the loose "mental philosophy" of the day, which would violate every natural law in the effort to build up an aristocracy of intellect. Its votaries may maintain one of wealth, because that is as often associated with igno rance as with intelligence ; but you might as well attempt to monopolize the sunlight, or the air we breathe, as to confine intellect to a class. It dwells in cot and palace, and, like heaven's dew, falls upon the rich and poor alike.
THE RESPECTABILITY OF LABOR.
A great deal of distinction is made between the different trades, arising from a silly prejudice which concedes more respectability to one trade than another. Labor is labor all the world over, and the only difference consists in the various modes of its application. The shoemaker plies his awl and hammer, the tailor his needle and shears, the car penter his jack-plane, the moulder his rammer, and so on, through the whole catalogue of mechanism. Each and all give brain and muscle to these several occupations ; and, for the life of us, we cannot see the claim to superiority of a single one over another.
The grubbing-hoe, the hod, or the mud-spud, are equally honorable implements of industry, although coming under the class of unskilled labor ; but, should all receive equal compensation, where shall the higher grade of respectability begin ?
If we accept the dif ference justly existing between a mechanical trade which takes years of apprenticeship to acquire, and that species of labor which depends more upon physical than mental capacity, we see nothing at variance with a common interest and a common destiny.
We look upon every kind of labor as respectable, because necessary; and no man, should he reach the most exalted position in life, could possibly lessen the dignity of himself, or compromise the sphere in which he moved, by resuming the humble occupation from which he sprung, for either pastime or convenience, so long as he faithfully discharged the duties of that position.
Would Abraham Lincoln, while President, have degraded himself or his office had he " took a turn " at splitting rails, or grasped the helm of a flat-boat ? Could .Andrew Johnson have done the same by patching his coat, or sewing up a rip in his pantaloons ? On the contrary, the one felt a glow of honest pride when liv ing, as the other does now, while alluding to their past occu pations.
Then, if proud to boast, as Presidents, of the trades they followed in poverty, why should they not, with equal pride and satisfaction, split a rail or mend a coat, as Presidents ? It is evident that neither of these great men recognized a distinction between the labor of the mechanic or workman, and that of a President. In fact, while free to boast of their performance as laborers, they were by no means vain glorious while occupying the highest position in the coun try. It is the wide difference of compensation which creates the distinction, and not the occupation.
We have often read sneering criticisms of both, whenever they made allusions to their past history; but while the occupation of either may stiuk in aristocratic nostrils, one had, and the other has, the moral courage to throw the mantle of respect ability around the humblest calling. pg448
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Again I am asked, "And what is cooperation?" Cooperation is the banding together, by mutual agreement, of a number of individuals for the accomplishment of a given object.
Cooperation is the great idea of the age; it is the means by which we can fully control both labor and money, by which we can secure to ourselves the wealth we have for so long been creating for the use of others; for by it we secure a fair standard of wages, and a fair share of the profits arising from our industry.
Co-operation aims at elevating men morally, mentally, socially, physically and politically. This it will do by freeing us from the carking cares of poverty, wretchedness, which chains millions to a merely animal existence, and blessing us with the plenty and happiness that come of sympathy and united action for a good end.
"The problems which in ancient days have vexed and the minds and hearts of men, are, to co-operations praise, wrought out by hand, and tongue, and pen.
These virtues win my sympathies, and tie me to cooperate; and as our strength in union lies, Let love increae and patience wait.
Tyranny is founded upon ignorance, and liberty upon education.
Capitalists have deliberately attempted to destroy trades unions. Fortunately, their strength was ludicrously inadequate to the task.
Jefferson tells us that " a wise and frugal government, which shall keep men from injuring another, shall leave them otherwise to follow their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned, is the sum of good government..
Our objective point is a new monetary system, a system that will take from a few men the power to control the money, and give to the people a cheap, secure, and abundant currency.
We must show that when a just monetary system has been established there will not longer exist a necessity for trade unions.
The whole productive powers of this nation have become subservient to and dependent on upon this moneyed aristocracy. They control the whole currency of the country, and with the money the government. Our people are divided into two classes, the rich and the poor.
These men who arrogate to themselves the right to monopolize all the wealth of the nation, are the worst enemies of mankind. pg114
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pg15. Leaving William Sylvis, at his death, without means sufficient to bury him ; whereas, had he been more thoughtful of himself, and less liberal to the cause, he might have amassed quite a snug little competence.
We might have told how he wore clothes until they became quite threadbare, and he could wear them no longer ; how the shawl he wore to the day of his death, — which, during the year or two that he devoted to the resuscitation of the Iron-Moulders' Union, after, through his predecessor's unfaithfulness, it had well- nigh died out of existence, — was filled with little holes, burned there by the splashing of the molten iron from the ladles of moulders in strange cities, whom he was beseech ing to organize ; how he was more than once compelled to beg a ride from place to place on an engine, because he had not money sufficient to pay his fare ; how, to give the National Labor movement a fair start, he had fully made up his mind to mortgage his furniture to prepay the expenses of the Philadelphia convention, though he died before it met ; how suffering moulders " on the tramp " came to him for assistance, and, if deserving, were never sent away empty handed ; how he was denied the privilege of working because he had the manhood to exact a decent respect of his rights from those who regarded him and his fellow- workingmen as mere wealth -making machines, — brutes with the forms of men but without the souls; how one, whose bitter enmity he had enlisted by his rigorous deal ing with traitors, was so far malicious as to fire a pistol at him upon one occasion ; how he had himself bolstered up in a sick-bed that he might dictate a scathing rebuke to men who had evinced a willingness to submit to tyranny when victory was almost within their grasp.
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Can we not relive the spirit of Labor leader William Sylvis and reject a willingness to submit to tyranny when victory is almost in our grasp? STRIKE THEM OUT labor. Master's time has passed. His boom boom has sealed his fate. He's a man of the past............
Is bourse not anything other than "ABSTRACT RECEIPTS OF LABOR," the tickets that access the products and services of labor? Will labor not step up and take control of (bourse=money), into its own hands and see that God's wishes are fulfilled, and that there be a subsistence provision made with the creation and institution of an existence stipend that has something for everyone? Should we not consider this to be a God given right?
Stop the war: STRIKE THEM OUT!
They have refused maintenance of God's children. Tens of Millions die in destitution while American industry operates with less than 50% capacity, and high technology of life is blocked. Has there been anything like this to be seen since before serfdom? Our brothers and sisters forced into the streets and Returned to the wild feral state in America. God our Father wants the faulty people that banker management has installed gone! To get them out labor you must control the issue of bourse. To take control of the bourse labor you must STRIKE THEM OUT! God blesses us in this demand for peace and social justice.
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Read entire William Sylvis Biography at:
http://books.google.com/books/about/The_life_speeches_labors_and_essays_of_W.html?id=qNlHAAAAIAAJ