POTATOES AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.
I ride to market with a load of potatoes, the result of sweat and labor for half a year. A ruffian knocks me off my wagon, takes my seat and drives away.
Questions: Shall I ask a policeman to help me catch the despoiler, or shall I "cease agitating and go to work?" Shall I arm myself and, with the help of friends, take back my own, or shall I return to the farm and "practice industry, frugality and temperance?" Is it nobler, manlier, more courageous of me to get possession of my potatoes by fighting, or, forsaking them, to go to work and raise another crop for the next thief?
Honest and contented labor under these circumstances is dishonorable.
WHEN A MAN IS ROBBED, THE WAY FOR HIM TO GET MONEY IS NOT TO WORK FOR IT BUT TO FIGHT FOR IT. To tell a man that he cannot possibly make any money by talking nor get any potatoes by agitating police officers is absolutely true, PROVIDED, the man has been loafing all year and has not been robbed of his crop. But these demonstrations of the economists go into the waste basket, when the fact is made plain that the man, seeking by government aid to get potatoes, has already earned them by hard labor, but is deprived of them by the criminal act of another. Under such circumstances, the man who, instead of fighting and pursuing, applies himself to honest toil, is a coward.
Men who, wrongfully deprived of their property, go to work to earn more, thus providing additional booty for their despoilers, are unworthy a better fate. Honor impels a true man to fight, not work, when a wrong is suffered either by himself or friends.
To quietly plow while another eats the result of last year's plowing, to contentedly plant while another reaps, to submissively bow one's head beneath a yoke and receive the kicks and jeers and sneers of the drivers, are not the acts of a man nor the duties of a citizen, but the follies of an ass. When a true man, after gathering his harvest, sees his product taken by another, he mounts his horse, before planting again, and with pitchfork, shotgun or other efficient weapon, starts in hot pursuit. He seeks to recover last year's product before trying to raise another crop.
Therefore, when government-made millionaires try to persuade the working people, small tax-payers and business men to stop meddling with politics and instead to work harder in the hope of laying by something for old age, they really desire them to cease defending their property and to continue creating more for others to enjoy.
The learned professor teaches that "the government cannot legislate into being a single dollar, nor a dollar's worth of wealth." From this premise, he reasons that a dollar legislated into one man's pocket must necessarily be legislated out of another man's pocket. He then concludes that the poor cannot legislate themselves comfortable without to the extent of their gain depriving another class of their earnings.
If my neighbor accompanied me to market with a load of potatoes and I were to ask a policeman to help me take his load from him, the economists' words would apply. The government, through its agent, the policeman, could not double my wealth without robbing my neighbor. But this is not the situation. I came alone. A stranger assaulted me and took both wagon and potatoes, leaving me very poor. Now, in spite of the professor's words, the state, in the person of its officer, can abolish my poverty and give me a wagon filled with potatoes without doing injustice to any one else. I can be made happy without depriving any other being of what he has earned, and I do not ask the state to legislate into existence a single potato. I simply ask that the potatoes already existing as the result of my labor be taken from the highwayman and returned to their rightful owner.
This is what the masses ask. Not that the government give them anything produced by others, not that the government attempt to create anything independent of the labor of its citizens, but that it return to them their own. We demand the capture of the highwayman, monopoly, and that the opportunities taken from us by him be restored to us.[10]
We not only demand but we are actually organizing for the pursuit. The Democratic Volunteers are superintending the preliminaries and in 1900 law and order are to be established, the adventurers suppressed, and restoration made. The issuance of the nation's money, now a private monopoly, controlled by bankers, will again be made a function of government, and the people will be permitted to exchange their products without paying revenue to their enemies for the means of exchange, which is their own creation. Other wrongs will be righted with equal facility.
Each victim, however, must be taught that his vote is both horse and hound for pursuing, and both gun and rope for punishing and reclaiming. Our vote is our one weapon, our one means of defense, and source of power.
The value of legislative control to our enemies is shown by the desperation with which they oppose any effort on the part of the people to recover it. They know it to be the true creator of their fortunes, and they look to it alone for future "fruits of labor" and "rewards of genius."
We are rich, but we have been ousted from our patrimony. How shall we recover it? By the same means through which we lost it, namely, legislation. The oppressions that curse man are all entrenched in, and owe their power to, legislation. If we are to be freed from them, it will be by legislation. In primitive times, government was openly, frankly exercised for the enrichment of a class at the expense of the mass. For ages the "right divine" was believed in honestly. Later when its justice was denied, its benefits were seen to be too valuable to be relinquished. So duplicity was employed, and the art of "plucking the goose without making it squeal" was invented.
Money-making heretofore has not been so much a function of government as money-taking, and this function can be made to work one way as well as another.
If thieves by government action can despoil honest men, honest men by government action can despoil thieves.
If legislation has been made the instrument of crime, it also can be made the instrument of restoration. No personal temperance, thrift and industry can enrich men so long as the power to legislate rests in other hands. Labor makes wealth but legislation decrees how it shall be divided. When the people legislate directly and intelligently the division will be in accord with justice. By the ballot we can enter upon our inheritance.
Poverty exists and we are told that it is the natural order, with which legislation has nothing to do. There has been told no more transparent lie. Wealth is created by the union of man's labor with nature's gifts. What is it but legislation that keeps apart in unnatural divorce these two that God hath joined together? What but legislation can remove the barriers and allow them again to come together?
Legislation CAN make money; so lavishly that no man need want. How? By making conditions favorable to labor, and securing the laborer in the fruit of his toil.