Nequa; or, The Problem of the Ages

by Alcanoan O. Grigsby; Mary P. Lowe

"Your question," said Norrena, "is far-reaching and I can only hint at the reply which it naturally calls forth. The money kings over-reached themselves by encouraging people to secure loans and pledge their real estate for interest and principal, and then by contracting the circulation in order to increase the purchasing power of the money which they received as interest. As long as only a minor fraction of the land was mortgaged the interest was promptly paid, but a time came when nearly all of the lands were mortgaged and the people were compelled to force their products on the markets all at once to get money to pay interest. More and more of the debtors gave up the struggle and abandoned their farms. These lands were useless to the money-kings when no longer cultivated by a sturdy yeomanry. All along this eastern seaboard, where agriculture ought to have been most profitable, farms were abandoned because they would not pay interest on the investment. The money value of lands for actual use to producers, declined to zero, and the people crowded into the city and were regarded, in their impoverished condition, as a dangerous class. Under these circumstances the tendency of the ruling class was to encourage the homeless poor to go upon the lands and dig a subsistence out of the soil, for which there was no market."

"Iola explained this to me," I said, "but I have never quite understood why it was that these colonists were not charged a rental that would keep them in perpetual poverty."

"That," said Norrena, "would certainly have been the result, if there had been no great Central West, with a widespread tendency to agitate the money question and its relation to the economic condition of the wealth-producing millions. When the people began to organize as consumers with a view to minimizing the demand for money, and to equalize distribution by paying dividends to labor, the money kings were forced to change their policy in regard to labor, and many producers got a firm hold on enough land to furnish a subsistence. The unused lands had no value and the Equitists continued to increase the price of products in the west. The money kings who were not able to sell their lands could avail themselves of opportunities to exchange them for products. The leaders of the co-operative movement here in the east knew how to take advantage of these changing conditions, and by their communal system of co-operation, were able to keep the movement on peaceful lines, and thus avoid violent collisions which might have, locally, at least, set the work of industrial emancipation back for years."

"Then it appears," I said, "that it was not the western organization of Equitable Exchange, singly and alone, that compelled the Gold Power to relax its grasp; but this eastern co-operative movement was also a factor in securing better conditions for labor."

"That is true," said Norrena. "In the west, the people had one great advantage over the east, plenty of land. But it was the organization of equity in the west that flooded this eastern financial center with money, not as interest, but because the western people were using less money and paying debts. This made times better for the eastern workmen. Both the western and eastern co-operators were working on the same principles. They were all accumulating funds to purchase land, and just in proportion as the people acquired control over business they had more influence on legislation, and the power of money was correspondingly decreased."

"So it seems," I said, "that your business organization did at last get into politics!"

"Yes," said Norrena, "it did get into politics as a business influence and what may seem strange to you, its object was to prevent the repeal of laws which had been enacted in the interest of the money monopolists. These shrewd financiers, raised a great outcry against combinations among producers to increase the price of products by using interchangeable certificates of deposit instead of money, in the transaction of business. The people were using the same methods for the improvement of their own financial condition that had been used so successfully by monopolists for their impoverishment, and the Patrons demanded that all the laws that had been enacted in favor of monopoly should remain on the statute books. They further demanded that all debts should be payable in legal tender money at the option of the debtor."

"I should have thought," I said, "that the people would be glad to welcome the repeal of laws from which they had suffered so much."

"There was a time when they would," said Norrena, "but not after they had adjusted their business relations to the operation of monopoly laws. Their debts were legally payable in money, and as the purchasing power of money was continually decreasing, it was to their interest to pay in money, and when all their debts were paid and the people refused any longer to take money for their products, the money kings who owned these vaults and their hoards of gold had to go in search of food. Many found homes in the co-operative communities and became valuable citizens, while a larger number had taken the alarm and emigrated to the Old World, only to meet a worse fate a little later on, for in the less enlightened parts of the world, the Reign of Gold wound up in a Reign of Terror."

The lesson taught by these ruins would fill volumes. Norrena's accurate historical knowledge and ever ready explanations, with the not less forcible comments of Oqua and others, covered every phase of this wonderful, speedy and peaceful evolution from the Era of Money Despotism to the Era of Man and Universal Freedom, Equality and Fraternity. No wonder, I thought, that these people had preserved the ruins of Kroy as a relic of their Dark Ages and a warning to humanity for all time to come. Here, human selfishness reigned supreme and the people of an entire continent had suffered in order to pour into this greedy maw the wealth which it had no power to consume. And now, this once great center of wealth, pride and fashion, was a solitude. Its aristocratic "four hundred" had actually been starved out by the refusal of the "clodhoppers," "greasy mechanics" and "mudsills," whom they had held in such contempt, to feed and clothe them any longer. Surely this was an object lesson well worthy of the care that had been taken to preserve it from the refining and civilizing hand of labor. Time was slowly obliterating these foot prints of a tyranny from which the people had been emancipated for ages, but it was still important that it should not be entirely forgotten, and there could be no better reminder of the evil that had impoverished and degraded the millions, as well as of the means by which it had been removed, than these ruins and the abandoned heaps of useless gold.