A WORD TO NON-PRODUCERS.
I do not say this in the interest of the workmen, but speak in appeal to the non-productive classes, those who live without labour, to show them that through their servants, the Congress and the administrators of the laws, they are repeating the folly of the Southern slave-holders, who could not have found a more effectual way to rid themselves of slavery than that which they adopted. Looking upon it now, it seems that they could not have been satisfied with the progress of abolitionism in the North, under the lead of Garrison, Phillips and Douglass, and therefore they stirred up the war at home to precipitate the end, and succeeded admirably. The heartiness with which the Southern members of the St. Louis Convention recently accepted “the results” is evidence that this is a proper view to take of it. It is only a wonder that, going so far as they did, they did not fall into the arms of the Cincinnati Convention and thank its party for the services rendered them. But this aside. Had they been content to keep the power they had, they might have retained their slaves for years to come; but they wanted more! more! more! Nothing less than the whole country as slave territory would satisfy their morbidness upon the subject. Perhaps they did not know what they were doing; but they must have been blind indeed if there were not among them one sagacious mind who understood it.
But when, through promises from northern doughfaces, they had brought on the war, then those who had been gradually getting rich, quietly extending their mortgages, through railroad and other speculative schemes and exorbitant rates of interest, saw an opportunity to extend, at a single effort, their grasp over the whole property of the country, and reduce the masses to servitude for all time to come, as they are reduced in England. The classes to whom I speak knew that the government would have to have money; and that it would have to come to them to get it; and they also knew that the longer the war continued the more money would be required. So, while the copper-headed bankers of the North gave the rebels all the encouragement they dared, their English brethren furnished them with arms and ammunition, and thus the war was prolonged and made a costly one. The plan was well conceived and nicely executed; the productive classes were saddled with a debt of $3,000,000,000, for which the government received little more than half that sum.
SOME TELLING FIGURES.
But they who were engaged in this scheme over-reached themselves as the South had done before them. They over-estimated the vitality and endurance of the industries, already carrying a debt of $4,000,000,000 in railroad, State, county and municipal bonds, besides paying interest on individual loans to a still larger amount. They could not bear the added burden. With gold at par with which the interest was paid on this enormous debt before the war, they managed to get along; but when the war had raised the price of gold and had added $3,000,000,000 to the debt, it was more than they could stand. On this $11,000,000,000 debt, with the interest on some parts of it at 8, 9, 10 and even 12 and 15 per cent. per annum, and allowing for the large discounts that were frequently extorted, and adding to this the premiums paid for gold and including the dividends on stocks, the industries of the country were, and still are, taxed $1,300,000,000 every year to pay interest! Think of it, you who take this interest! Think of the toiling millions who, beneath the broiling sun, or in the murky mines, or dismal shops, or in the frozen forests, give up their lives to toil! Think of it! Taxed $1,300,000,000 annually for interest, part of which goes to enrich European bankers, and the remainder to those who, in luxurious ease, idle their lives away at home. Think of it, I repeat again, and then wonder, if you can, that industry is prostrate beneath the heel of capital! Say, if you can, whether the wonder is not rather, that there is a wheel in motion in the country, or that there is a plough moving in the soil.
The total products amount to but $5,000,000,000 annually. Out of this, there is first to come the subsistence of the 44,000,000 population. On an average it cannot be said that it costs less than $100 a year per capita to support this mass. Some people spend more than that for cigars in a single month, and others double for wines and other liquors, to say nothing about establishments costing thousands upon thousands to maintain; and yet there are so many who live upon less than $100 a year, that the average cost of subsistence may be placed at that sum. This would consume $4,400,000,000 of the $5,000,000,000 products, and leave but $600,000,000 with which to pay the $1,300,000,000 interest. Hence it is plainly to be seen that the productive interests of the country are running into debt to the capitalists at the rate of $700,000,000 every year; that their mortgages on the property of the country are increasing yearly by that amount. This is a frightful showing, but it is a true one; it is one that the labouring classes are beginning to understand; it is one that you who are oppressing them should also understand, for, by ignoring it, you are challenging swift destruction. The only question is, how long can these things go on, with the wealth of the country increasing at the rate of two and a half per cent. per annum; it is a simple thing to calculate how long it will require for money, increasing at the rate of 6, 8, 10, and even 15 and 20 per cent. per annum, to consume the wealth.
THE ROOT OF THE TROUBLE.
We come now in logical order to the grand and fundamental error that has been made which lies at the back of all political fallacies, and to which are to be primarily attributed all industrial and financial ills from which we suffer, both as a nation and as individuals, since, let the Government be as good as it may, with this error lying between it and the industries, it were impossible that evil should not come upon the people. Hence, let the Government and the public service be as bad as they may; let the people suffer from bad legislation as much as they have; the fault is, after all, more to be charged against the system than against the individuals who, for the time, are its administrators. No matter how skilful the engineer may be, nor how watchful the fireman; if the engine itself be faulty in construction, it will explode; or if the engine be perfect in itself, but connected with other machinery that is not fitted to run at the same speed as the engine, then the machinery will fly in pieces. The same is true of the relations between the Government—the political organisations of the people—and the wealth producers—the industrial organisation of the people, as we shall see, for the Government is a machine constructed after the highest known principles of political mechanism, while intimately connected with it is the industrial organisation, running upon the very lowest—the rudimental—industrial mechanism. Consequently, when the political machinery runs at a high rate of speed, requiring an extra amount of fuel and water, the industrial machinery, in its efforts to supply this demand, and urged on by its connection to keep pace with the rapid motion, flies in pieces; becomes prostrated and useless, as we see it everywhere in the country now, when to keep the political machinery running at the present high rate of speed, it has to draw upon its accumulated stock of fuel, as it is doing now to the amount of $700,000,000 annually.
If we go back and examine the evolution of government and industry, all this will be made clear; so clear that all may understand it. Certain fixed laws direct and regulate the growth of everything, and they are the same for all departments in the universe. The statement of the laws by which the sidereal and solar systems have evolved, will also describe those which the earth has obeyed, and are the laws of all material, governmental, industrial, intellectual, social, moral and religious change. This law as applied to government and industry may be stated in philosophic terms, thus: The progress of government and industry is a continuous establishment of physical relations within the community, in conformity with physical relations arising within the environment, during which the government, industry and the environment pass from a state of incoherent homogeneity to a state of coherent heterogeneity; and, during which, the constitutional units of the government and industry become ever more distinctly individualized.
If we examine the growth of industry and government, and the relations that exist between them now, in this country, we shall discover how far they have advanced from incoherent homogeneity toward coherent heterogeneity. Looking through the dim vistas of the past into the pre-historic time, we find a time when there were no aggregations of individuals larger than the family; that the family was the only government and the only organization for industry; that its head ruled with arbitrary sway, having no one to whom he was accountable, each family having to depend wholly upon itself for subsistence. The people then were in the same state politically and industrially, and this was the homogeneous or original state. Afterwards we find that, for protection or for conquest, two or more families combined in a political sense and formed tribes, having an absolute head, but remaining in the rudimentary state industrially; next, tribes came together and built cities, and cities then coalesced and constituted nations (the rulers of which still using arbitrary power), until single rulers aspired to the dominion of the world; and in a sense succeeded. But all this time, industrially, the people remained in the original state. There had been no coalescing for the purpose of subsistence as there had been for government. While politically the people had evolved through several stages of progression, industrially they were still in the rudimentary state.