IS CASTE A NECESSITY?
But to this the common objection is raised, that it is impossible to make industrial interests common, on account of the necessary differences in labour: that there must be caste in industry. This was the reply that the king made to the people who wanted a political republic; of course it will be the reply that the privileged classes will make to those who want an industrial republic. You know how fallacious the objection has been politically. The king deprived of his crown has not been compelled to sleep with the scavenger. It will prove equally as fallacious industrially. The money and railroad kings will not have to live with the men who do the rough work of the industrial public, unless they choose to do so, any more than they do now. The foundation stones of a house always remain at the bottom, covered up in the dirt; nevertheless, they are even more important to the safety of the house than any upper part. So it will be in the industrial structure when it shall be erected. There will always be Vanderbilts, Stewarts, Fields and Fultons—the agents of the people industrially, as there are now presidents, governors and mayors—agents of the people politically. And do you not see how perfectly this corresponds to the teachings of Jesus when He said: “Let him who would be greatest among you be the servant of all,” and with this falls the objection of the aristocrat to the industrial republic, as utterly untenable.
The real inspiration of this objection, however, springs from quite another source. Those who make it know that with the coming of industrial organisation, the power which money has to increase will fall, and make it impossible for anybody to live without labour. Money has no rightful power to increase. Its origin and sphere distinctly forbid the power, as can be clearly shown. The theory that money is wealth is false. It came to be accepted from the fact that valuable things have been used as money.
Wealth is the product of labour; is anything that labour produces or gathers. But the functions of money are representative wholly. Money takes the place of wealth for the time—stands for it. Here is the fallacy of a specie basis for money: specie is wealth, and can be made a basis for the issue of money, but the error consists in making a distinction against other kinds of wealth which would be equally as good. Anything that has value may properly be made a basis for the issue of a currency.
If we trace the origin of money, all this will be made plain. At the basis of all questions relating to wealth and money, lie the elements—the land, the water, the air—and these are the free gifts of God to man. None have the right to dispossess others of their natural inheritance in these elements. The right to life carries along with it the right to the use of so much of each of these elements as is necessary to support it. No one has a natural right to more than this. Hence, men have no more right to seize upon the land and deprive others of its use, or part with it to others for a consideration, than they have to bottle the air for the same purpose. There can be no ownership of the elements; no ownership of the land any more than of the air or water. Pretended ownership is another name for a usurpation. But the elements, unused, are valueless. Labour applied to them yields results, and these are valuable, consequently wealth; the net results after subsisting the people are the accumulated wealth of the world, and there is no other wealth.