The Squirrel Hunters of Ohio; or, Glimpses of Pioneer Life

by N. E. Jones

It is an old and well-founded belief that the earth was not made in vain, but is capable of fulfilling all the purposes for which it was created—now as at any other period in its history. It is also worthy of thought that the interest in the well-being of man by creative and governing intelligence is not less than that extended to the beasts of the fields, and that his title to a share of subsistence on the earth is quite as good as that of the cattle that graze upon a thousand hills.

Every one can, and every one should, secure a share in this inheritance while living. His heirship is indisputable, and on which no mortgage ever found a right, room or reason to rest. If every cast-off from the seductive trusts, combines and monopolies—every one of the millions begging bread—had a definite home upon the soil of the earth, there would be room for millions more, and bread riots and starvation would be unknown in all the land.

Natural civilization—that made in accordance with the laws of nature—does not consist in aggregating the products of labor into the hands of a few and distributing poverty broadcast to the many, but in cultivating intelligence, securing homes, families, subsistence, comfort and happiness, by every man owning and controlling the products of his own labor.

During the first half century of the settlement in the Buckeye State, the equality and advancement of true civilization of the people have never been surpassed in the history of the world. Although their land estates were small, and with that prohibition nature had thrown around the state against all foreign imports, it might readily be imagined the living and populating a great empire on its own developed resources would naturally entail much want and distress. But such was not the fact. They all had enough and to spare, and vagrants were as unknown to public provision as were paupers or want among the sparrows, or the innumerable millions of buffalo that were provided for on the western plains.

Those who had homes they could call their own, with families and friends, plenty to supply the necessities of life, were singularly exempt from avarice, or that which since the world began has been denounced “the root of all evil.”

The first organized money power of serious import, endangering a republican form of government, was the monopoly termed “The Bank of the United States,” incorporated by act of Congress in 1816, for the term of twenty years. And with its millions of easily earned profits, it soon controlled legislation in the interests of wealth and the corporation, causing suffering and disaster to the business of the nation by making prices unstable through contractions and expansions of the mediums of exchange, so that the State of Ohio raised objections to the contemplated establishment of branches of the monopoly within her borders.

After much political discussion of the matter, a legislature was elected largely opposed to the money power, and the state in 1818 passed an act in the nature of a high protective tariff, “taxing each branch of the United States Bank located in the State of Ohio fifty thousand dollars.” The bank refused to pay the assessments when due under the act, and, like most monopolies in sight of a supreme court, disregarded the act of legislation and defied the authorities.

The law-makers in Ohio, even in that early day, had seen enough to understand the defiant insubordination of wealth, and in the act for collecting the tax from the branch banks due the state, authorized the collector to employ an armed force, if necessary, and to enter the bank and seize money sufficient to cover the claim and costs of collection.

This was done by the collector for the “Chillicothe branch,” and the state became defendant, returning with interest the money taken at the end of the usual course of litigation, by an order of the supreme court. It has often been related by those who took part in the great struggle for supremacy of law, or will of the majority of a producing population, as against the tyrannical usurpations of a money power, with its revolving satellites, that the contest threatened the peace, prosperity and safety of the whole nation.