“The civilized governments of the present day are resting under a burden of indebtedness computed at $27,000,000,000. This sum, which does not include local obligations of any sort, constitutes a mortgage of $722 [now about $950] upon each square mile of territory over which the burdened governments extend their jurisdiction, and shows a per capita indebtedness of $23 upon their subjects. The total amount of national obligations is equal to seven times the aggregate annual revenue of the indebted states. At the liberal estimate of $1.50 per day, the payment of the accruing interest, computed at five per cent., would demand the continuous labor of three million men.... Previous to the present [nineteenth] century, England and Holland were the only nations that had learned by experience the weight of national obligations; but at the present time the phenomenon of public debts is almost universal....
“It is all the more difficult to understand this new method of financiering, because it has made its appearance while wealth has been rapidly increasing. The world is daily growing richer as nature yields her forces with ever increasing willingness to serve the purposes of men; yet, notwithstanding increased opulence, the governments of the world are plunging headlong into debt.”
The reader should keep in mind that the burdens of debt discussed here by Dr. Adams are almost wholly war debts, and that they have, since 1887, increased heavily—to about $35,000,000,000, almost three times the total amount of cash in the entire world.
“Reflect for an hour upon the appalling aggregate,” wrote Professor Ridpath (De Pauw University),[[55]] “consider the pressure of this intolerable incubus; try to estimate the horror of this hell; weigh the woe and anguish of them who rest under it, and then—despair and die.
“Twenty thousand millions of dollars; statesmen, philanthropists, preachers, journalists, mouthpieces of civilization, one and all of you, how do you like the exhibit? Does it not suffice? Who is going to pay the account? The people. Who, without lifting a hand or turning in their downy beds, will gather this infamous harvest during all of the twentieth century? Plutocracy.
“It has been the immemorial policy of the Money Power to foment wars among the nations; to edge on the conflict until both parties pass under the impending bankruptcy; to buy up the prodigious debt of both with a pail full of gold; to raise the debt to par; to invent patriotic proclamations for preserving the National Honor; and finally to hire the presses and pulpits of two generations to glorify a crime.”
Henry Ward Beecher put the matter thus:
“Most of the debts of Europe represent condensed drops of blood.”
Reflect again:
“In one short eighteen months the [British] war party now sitting on our necks has dissipated [in the Boer War] more money than the working class managed to accumulate out of their wages during the whole reign of the late Queen Victoria.” (That is, from 1837 to 1901.) “The patient savings of two generations were [in the Boer War] dissipated at one cruel swoop.”[[56]]