OUR NATIONAL DEBT.
If this analysis be applied to the present situation we shall see what is the matter with the industries. When the South rebelled, the North was compelled to resist, or else permit the national unity to be destroyed. Let it be borne in mind what stress was put upon the necessity of preserving the oneness of the people politically. To do this an army was required. When volunteers ceased to offer in sufficient numbers to keep the army to its necessary strength, the government, acting upon the right of a representative of a politically united people, resorted to drafting to determine which of the members of this unity should go into the army and jeopardize their lives for its preservation. This was in perfect harmony with the principles of government upon which this order rests, and was fully endorsed by the people. But what did the government do to subsist these men, and to provide the munitions of war? Did it proceed the same way that it did to secure the men? Not at all! It borrowed the money from the bankers of New York, Hamburg and London, and agreed to pay them a rate of interest double that demanded of any other first class nation, parting with its bonds to them at “60.” In other words, it borrowed $1,800,000,000, at 10 per cent., and gave $1,200,000,000 in bonds as bonus for making the loan.
Now this was the error that was committed, for, although the people were industrially upon a lower order of development than they were politically, nevertheless, since necessity knows no law save that of its own conditions, the government should have proceeded as if we were upon the same plane in both respects. When it called for volunteers to raise an army, and the ranks of industry responded liberally, it should at the same time have also called for volunteer assistance from the ranks of wealth, to subsist that army; and as it resorted to drafting to maintain the necessary number of fighting men when volunteering failed to do it, so should it have resorted to drafting the means with which to pay their expenses when volunteer assistance should have failed to do it. Had the people been one industrially as they were politically; had the industrial organization of the people been upon the same plane as their political organization, this would have been done naturally, and there would have been no bonded debt incurred.
What does this show? This clearly; that, while the government can command the lives of the working men and put them in jeopardy, even sacrifice them without stint to maintain itself, it has no power over the property of the rich to compel them to assist in that maintenance. Had it been so that the government could not have borrowed any money, it would have fallen from this disparity between the political and industrial development. Is not this clear? And if it is, does it not show a very great and grave defect in the wisdom of our institutions?
But what has been the effect of this error in this instance? The present prostration of industry, necessarily: and it has come about in this way: The armies were made up from the ranks of industry; the “rank and file” were so many men taken away from producing, and, therefore, from adding to the accumulated wealth; but the maintenance of the army was borrowed at an exorbitant rate of interest from the accumulated wealth, which was wholly in the hands of those who never fired a shot in defence of the country, nor added a dollar to its aggregate wealth by labour. While the war continued, the men who were left in the ranks of industry were called upon to pay this interest; and when it was over, those who had survived the war and returned to productive toil were included with them. And it is expected that the industrial classes will continue to pay this interest until the bonds mature, and then the bonds themselves, as I shall show you that they do hereafter; or what is more to the point, for the $1,800,000,000 that the government borrowed from the money-lenders it would compel the people to return them as bonus, interest and principal, the enormous sum of $5,000,000,000.