The property of the country is fast passing into the hands of the creditors, and if the iniquitous system is not reversed the condition of our American farmers will be that of the farmers of gold-standard countries. Instead of owning their farms they will be tenants and rent-payers—a condition but little in advance of that which prevailed in feudal days.
Machiavelli, describing a turbulent period in the history of Florence, said:
The people perished, but the brigands throve.
The brigandage of the Middle Ages, whether in Italy or elsewhere, was a criminal defiance of law, but it was pursued at some risk, and under manifest disadvantages. The brigand took his life in his hands. He knew that his calling was unlawful; and, although ruthless in his work, the method by which he exacted ransom of his occasional victim was less destructive to the prosperity of the community than the legalized brigandage of to-day by which, through a vicious system of money, the great mass of the people are despoiled of their property. The distinguishing characteristic of the brigandage of the nineteenth century is that it scrupulously observes all legal forms, and is conducted in the name of honor, honesty, good morals and "sound finance." Mortgages are foreclosed only in accordance with law, and the unearned increment which results from the increased and increasing value of the money is transferred from the debtor to the creditor, with punctilious regard for the statutes.
The demands of the brigand were enforced with guns and pistols; those of the creditor are enforced with bonds and mortgages; both exactions cruel and unjust, one by violence, the other by law. But, in the latter case, so indirect is the method of operation that many of those who are benefited by it are unaware of the perpetration of any wrong. So subtle is the process that the change seems to be only a change in the price of commodities, and thousands of men who would scorn consciously to exact from any one more than a just return for money loaned are beneficiaries of this vicious and ruinous system.
With regard to the great body of the working masses it is sometimes said they have no cause for complaint, that their condition now is better than ever before.
But, Mr. President, it is not enough that men are better off than they have been. When we reflect that nine-tenths of the inventions and improvements constituting all the material features of the civilization of this century have been made by working men, it is manifest that they are entitled to much more of the comforts and convenience of life than are now accessible to them. By watchful, repeated, and aggressive efforts through their trade organizations, the working men in many branches have been enabled to keep wages from sinking, and occasionally to secure an advance; but, during a period of falling prices, what is gained in this way by those who are kept at work is lost to the working class as a whole by the remission to idleness of part of their number.
The statisticians who seem to be employed by some propaganda to prove by figures that prosperity prevails, point exultantly to the fact that the wages of the working people seem constantly to have increased while prices are falling, and they cite this to prove that low prices are consistent with prosperity. They leave entirely out of the account the large numbers of workmen who of necessity are relegated to idleness on account of the lack of profit in business.
If you go into the workshops of any large manufacturing enterprise, while prices are low and lowering, and ask the managers what they now do when a strike occurs among the workmen, they will tell you they find it impossible to shut down, because they have contracts extending through time that they must fill, but, they add, "We pay the wages demanded and we reduce the number of the employed."
If there are a thousand workmen employed, getting $2 each per day, that would be a wage fund of $2,000 a day. If, when prices fall and business becomes dull, the employer should want to reduce the pay of each workman to $1.50 a day, and if the workmen, by striking, should prevent that decrease, and if, then, 25 per cent. of their number should be discharged, the loss to the working class, as a body, and to the community at large, would be the same as though the wages were reduced to $1.50 a day. Until these people who present statistics can show us how many laborers are left out of employment there is no possibility of arriving at any correct conclusion as to what the wage fund is and how much wages are paid.