Watson's Magazine, Vol. IV, No. 2, April, 1906

by Various

Mr. Doctrinaire asks me: “How did the ruling class at Rome come to control the money?” I might answer by asking him: “How did the controlling class in the United States come into control of the money?” He would certainly admit that they have got control of it. How did they get it? They took into their own hands, in the days of Alexander Hamilton, the control of governmental machinery. They erected a tariff system to give special privileges to manufacturers. Out of this has come the monopoly which the manufacturers enjoy of the American market, and the natural evolution of the tariff act which Alexander Hamilton put upon our statute book more than one hundred years ago, produced The Trusts.

Again, the power to create a circulating medium to be used as money and to expand and contract this circulating medium, thereby controlling the rise and fall of markets, was a vicious principle embedded into our system by, Alexander Hamilton, more than one hundred years ago.

Again, the granting of charters to private companies to exploit public utilities is another means by which our patrician class has secured the control of money. Now at Rome there was a similar process. Instrumentalities were different, the names of things were different, but the ruling class at Rome had the power of fixing the taxes, and they appropriated to themselves the proceeds of these taxes. They had the power of legislation in their hands and exploited the public for their own benefit. In this way they secured, of course, the control of money. The one advantage of paying no tax themselves and of appropriating to themselves the taxes which they levied upon the plebeians was sufficient to give them not only the control of money, but the control of the land and of the man. In fact that tremendous power, to fix the taxes and to appropriate the public revenue, is all that the ruling class of any country need have in order to establish an intolerable despotism over the unfavored classes.

Mr. Doctrinaire has the fatal habit of crawling backwards with his logic. He says that the Roman Patrician could not have controlled the money until he got control of the land. The slightest reflection ought to convince him that this cannot be true. No class of men ever secured the control of money by merely controlling the land. Just the reverse is the universal truth. Without any exception whatsoever governmental machinery, the taxing system, usury, expansion and contraction of the currency hold the land-owner at their mercy. The land-owner, as such, never had them at his mercy and he never will.

Another instance of the crawl-backwards method of reasoning is given when Mr. Doctrinaire says that usury grew out of land monopoly instead of land monopoly growing out of usury. When a man gets himself into such a state of mind that he can deliberately write a statement of that sort for publication, he is beyond reach of any ordinary process of conviction and conversion. My statement was that usury is a vulture that has gorged itself upon the vitals of nations since the beginning of time. Mr. Doctrinaire says this is not true. On the other hand, he says that land monopoly came first, and then usury. If the rich people got all the land first, so that they had a land monopoly, upon whom did they practice usury? How could they fatten on those who had nothing? If Mr. Doctrinaire is at all familiar with the trouble between the Russians and the Jews in Russia he knows that one of the accusations brought by the Russian against the Jew is that the Russian land-owner has been devoured by the money-lending Jew. If he knows anything about our agricultural troubles in the South and in the West, he knows that the Southern and Western farmer complains that he has been devoured by usury. If he knows anything about the history of the Russian serf, he knows that the money-lending patricians made serfs out of the small land-owners by usury. If he will study the subject, he will find that in Rome, Egypt and Assyria the small land-owner was devoured by usury, had to part with his property and thus surrender to those who were piling up great fortunes by governmental privilege and by the control of money.

Take the Rothschild family for an example. Did they have a land monopoly which made it possible for them to wield the vast powers of usury? Theirs is a typical case. Study it a moment. A small Jewish dealer and money-lender in Frankfort is chosen by a rascally ruler of one of the German States as a go-between in a villainous transaction whereby the little German ruler sells his subjects into military service to the King of England. These soldiers, who were bought, are known to history as the Hessians, and they fought against us in the Revolutionary War. This was the beginning of the Rothschild fortune, the transaction having been very profitable to the Rothschild who managed it. Later, during the Napoleonic Wars, the character of a Rothschild for trustworthiness became established among princes and kings who were confederated against Napoleon and many of the financial dealings of that day were made through him. Of course, these huge financial transactions were profitable to the Rothschild. Again, a certain German ruler, during those troublesome times, entrusted all of his cash to the safe-keeping of a Rothschild, the purpose being to put the money where Napoleon would not get it. For many years the Rothschild had the benefit of this capital, and he put it out to the very best advantage in loans and speculations, here and there. By the time Napoleon was overthrown at Waterloo the Rothschild family had become so rich and strong that it spread over the European world. One member of the family took England, another France, another Austria, another Belgium, the parent house remaining in Germany, and to this day the Rothschild family is the dominant financial influence of the European world. In other words, by the power of money and the power of usury, they were able to make a partition of Europe and they are more truly the rulers of nations than are the Hapsburgs, the Hohenzollerns, the Romanoffs, or any other one dynasty which nominally wields the sceptre.

Now, can Mr. Doctrinaire ask for a better illustration of the truth of my statement that the power of money is not based upon the monopoly of land; and that the monopoly of land is the fruitage of the tree of usury? Originally, the Rothschilds owned no land. It was only after they had become so rich that they were compelled to look around for good investments that they began to buy real estate. Their vast fortune, which staggers the human mind in the effort to comprehend it, was not the growth of land monopoly, but was the growth of usury. What the Rothschilds have done in modern times, men of like character did in ancient times, and just as the modern world will decay and collapse if these evil accumulations be not prevented, so in ancient times people went to decay and extinction because no method of reform was found in time to work salvation.

Mr. Doctrinaire asks me what is the cause of the Standard Oil monopoly. I thought that if there was any one thing we all agreed about it was that the Standard Oil monopoly had its origin in violations of law, in the illegal use of those public roads which are called transportation lines, the secret rebate, the discriminating service, the favoritism which the transportation company can exercise in favor of one shipper against all others, to the destruction of competition. You might end land monopoly, but as long as the railroad franchises exist, the Standard Oil monopoly will exist, if they can get the favored illegal treatment which they got in the building up of their monopoly and which they still have in sustaining it. The power of Privilege in securing money, and the power of money in destroying competition, was never more strikingly evident than in the colossal growth of Standard Oil. Mr. Doctrinaire might own half the oil wells in America, but unless he made terms with the Standard he would never get his oil on the market at a profit. The Big-Pistol is not the ownership of the oil-well. The Big-Pistol is the mis-use of franchises.

With all the power that is in me, I am fighting the frightful conditions which beset us, but I know, as well as I know anything, that the principle of the private ownership of land has had nothing whatever to do with our trouble.

Repeal the laws which grant the Privileges that lead to Monopoly; equalize the taxes; make the rich support the government in proportion to their wealth; restore public utilities to the public; put the power of self-government back into the hands of the people by Direct Legislation; restore our Constitutional system of finance; pay off the National debt and wipe out the National banking system; quit giving public money to pet banks for private benefit; remove all taxes from the necessaries of life; establish postal savings banks; return to us the God-given right to freedom of trade.