Section 2.
But further. Each one of these 2,000 legal, or artificial, persons, who alone are permitted to lend money, is made up of, say, fifty actual, or natural, persons, to whom alone, it is well known, that this legal person will lend it!
These 2,000 legal persons, then, who alone are permitted to lend money, are made up of 100,000 actual persons, who alone are to borrow it.
These 100,000 actual persons, who compose the legal persons, do not, then, become bankers because they have money to lend to others, but only because they themselves want to borrow!
Thus when the system says that they alone shall lend, it virtually says that they alone shall borrow; because it is well known that, in practice, they will lend only to themselves.
In short, it says that only these 100,000 men—or one in four hundred of the population—shall have liberty either to lend, or borrow, capital! Such capital as is indispensable to every producer of wealth, if he would control his own industry, or make his labor most productive.
Consequently, it says, practically—so far as it is in its power to say—that only one person in four hundred of the population shall be permitted to have capital; or, consequently, to labor directly for himself; and that all the rest of the four hundred shall be compelled to labor for this one, at such occupations, and for such wages, as he shall see fit to dictate.
In short, the system says—as far as it can say—that only 100,000 persons—only one person in four hundred of the population—shall be suffered to have any money! And, consequently, that all the property and labor of the thirty-nine million nine hundred thousand (39,900,000) persons shall be under the practical, and nearly absolute, control of these 100,000 persons! It says that thirty-nine million nine hundred thousand (39,900,000) persons shall be in a state of industrial and commercial servitude (to the 100,000), elevated but one degree above that of chattel slavery.
And this scheme is substantially carried out in practice. These 100,000 men call themselves "the business men" of the country. By this it is meant, not that they are the producers of wealth, but only that they alone handle the money! Other persons are permitted to sell only to them! to buy only of them! to labor only for them! and to sell to, buy of, and labor for, them, only at such prices as these 100,000 shall dictate.
These 100,000 so called "business men," not only own the government, but they are the government. Congress is made up of them, and their tools. And they hold all the other departments of the government in their hands. Their sole purpose is power and plunder; and they suffer no constitutional or natural law to stand in the way of their rapacity.