WHY DO THE PEOPLE PAY INTEREST?
Or still again: why should the people pay any interest at all on loans from themselves? Why should not their agent—the Government—when amply secured, freely loan the people all the money that they want for use? Suppose that the farmers and the manufacturers did not have to pay interest on the money that they are compelled to have to produce their crops and goods? Don’t you see that they could compete successfully with the people of any country in the world, in the production of anything? Institute free money and there would be no necessity for a tariff for protection to keep out the cheaper goods of other nations. But on the contrary, this country would shortly be supplying other nations with the very things with which they are now supplying us and thereby crippling our manufactures and productions. Besides, all the people would be constantly employed, prices would be low, every comfort and even luxury abundant and in the reach of all, and thrift would replace stagnation everywhere. Plenty of money, plenty of work and plenty of everything that the ingenuity and strength of man can make, are the most favourable conditions for the masses; while just the reverse is true for the privileged classes. But why, since the former class outnumbers the latter, as five to one, do not the former have all things their own way in this country where the majority rule? Ask the masses this, and they can make no reply. But it is because the superior intelligence and tact of the minority enable them to concoct schemes by which, without seeming to do so, they reduce the majority to actual, though mostly unconscious servitude; making them pay, first, all the interest on the public and private debts; next, all the expenses of the national, state, county and municipal governments; and next, obtain their own support and the increase of their wealth from them. Do you think that I overstate this? I think I can make it so clear that you cannot doubt it; and if I do, will you not think differently of the toiling masses than you have thought of them heretofore? At the beginning of any year take the amount of real wealth in the hands of the non-producers. During the year the governments continue, the taxes are gathered and the expenses are paid: your debts, your expenses and all; the producers have continued to labour as usual, and at the end of the year find themselves just where they were at its beginning; but the property of the wealthy classes has increased about three per cent. for the whole country. And while the latter class has become fewer in numbers and richer individually, the former has increased in numbers and become poorer individually. Now these are the facts, and with them before them who will pretend to say that the class who have not produced anything have added to the aggregate wealth? Whence has come this increase of wealth? From the wealth producers, from the labouring classes and from no other source. Industry being the sole source of wealth, it could have come from no other source. Hence let the non-producer get his increase by whatever strategy, it comes in some channel directly from the producer. This may be done by interest, by speculation, by sharp trades, by profits; but let it be by which it may, the producer has to pay the bill. In other words, every addition that is made to the wealth of non-producers is so made at the expense of the producers, the former having so much more than they had which they did not produce, and the latter having so much less than they did produce. This is self-evident, and all the sophistical argumentation that can ever be made cannot make it otherwise. The minority may attempt to explain it away; to show that this and that are so and so; but here are the facts staring them in the face, and they will no more down than would Banquo’s ghost for the guilty Thane. There they stand, an everlasting condemnation of the rule of the minority and the servitude of the majority. Nothing can be clearer; nothing truer. And is it not a shame that it is true?