But this consideration is only a stepping-stone to what shall be. Money must be made free from interest. In fact, I do not know but people who have money should pay something to have it securely loaned, the same as you must pay your Safe Deposit Companies for safely keeping bonds, jewels and other valuables. I think people ought to be made to pay for the safe keeping of money upon the same principle. Money under our present system is the only thing which we possess that does not depreciate in value by use. The more money is used, the more it increases; a proof complete of the fallacy and its despotism.
The Government now pay the banks thirty millions dollars per year for the privilege of loaning them about three hundred millions national currency, which the banks reloan to the people at an average of ten per cent. It seems to me that is almost too good a thing to last long. If the Government can afford to do this thing, why can’t they better afford to loan directly to the people for nothing, and save thirty millions dollars annually? Do you think the people would object? Oh, no; but the bankers would. But for all that the cry of “Down with the tyrant” is raised, and it will never cease until interest shall be among the things that were.
I also desire to call attention to the reduction of the Public Debt, and to the means by which this reduction has been accomplished. The Administration hangs almost all of its hopes upon this fact, while if it were thoroughly understood it would prove its condemnation. It has paid three hundred millions of the debt, they say. Who has paid it? we inquire. It fails to answer. We say that that entire payment has been made by the producing classes of the country, while the capitalists have not reduced their cash balances in the least. In other words, the producers have got no more money now than they had before the debt was paid, while the capitalists have had their bonds changed into money. Now, who have paid that three hundred millions dollars? I repeat the laboring people have done it, just as they pay all public debts and all public expenses, besides constantly adding to the wealth of the capitalists themselves. Can such a state of things continue? Again I tell you nay.
This wrong must be remedied by a system of progressive taxation. If persons having a hundred thousand dollars pay one-half per cent. tax, let those having a million pay ten per cent., or two millions twenty-five per cent. Let there be a penalty placed upon monopolizing the common property, and it will soon cease and equality come in its place. Now, the poorest woman who buys the cheapest calico pays a tax to the Government, while the rich appropriate her labor to pay their dues. Truly said Jesus, “The poor ye have with you always.”
Another mode of remedying the existing ills in industry and the distribution of wealth, must be in giving employees an actual interest in the products of their labors, so that ultimately co-operation will be the source of all production, its results being justly distributed among all those who assist in the production. First, pay the employer the same rate of interest for his capital that Government shall charge for loans made to the people; next, the general expenses, including salaries to himself and all employees, the remainder to be equitably divided among all who have an interest in it. Do you not see what a revolution in industrial production such a constitutional provision would effect? And do you not suppose if the workingmen and women of this country understood the justice of it, that they would have it? I intend that they shall have the required information. Already there have been half a million tracts upon these subjects sent broadcast over this land, and the present year shall see double as many more, until every laborer, male and female, shall hold in his or her own hands the method of deliverance from this great oppression.
But there is another consideration, which, more forcibly than any other, shows the suicidal policy which we pursue. If the present rates of interest are continued to be paid upon only the present banking capital and bonds of the country, for twenty-five years to come, the interest, with the principal added, will have absorbed the total present wealth, as well as its perspective increase. And such a consummation as this are the European capitalists now preparing for this country. Europe holds not less than three thousand millions of bonded indebtedness of this country, which is being augmented every month by additional railroad bonds, or some syndicate operation. So do you not see that European capital is gradually, but nevertheless inevitably, absorbing not only all of our annually produced wealth, but also acquiring an increased mortgage every year upon our accumulated wealth? There is no escaping these facts. Figures don’t lie. Mathematics is an absolute science from whose edicts there is no escape. And mathematics inform us that we are year by year mortgaging ourselves to European capitalists, who will ultimately step in and foreclose their mortgages, and possess themselves of our all, just as we foreclose our smaller mortgages, when there is no hope of a further increase from interest.
Besides the monopoly of land, money and public conveniences, there is another kind of monopoly still, which may appear rather strange and new to be thus classed, but it is nevertheless a terrible tyrant. I refer to the monopoly of education. I hold that a just government is in duty bound to see to it that all its children of both sexes have the same and equal opportunities for acquiring education, and that every person of adult age shall have graduated in the highest departments of learning, as well as in the arts, sciences and practical mechanics. Every person should be compelled to acquire a practical knowledge of some productive branch of labor, because the time will come when all people will be obliged to produce at least as much as they consume, or earn what they consume, as the paid agents of producers. What a revolution would that accomplish? If every person in the world was to work at production two hours a day there would be a larger aggregate produced than there is now. Therefore every person must learn the art of production, and thus be equal in resources to any other person, and Government must undertake the compulsory industrial education of all its children.
Thus I could continue analysis upon analysis, until not a stone in the foundations of our social structure would be left unturned, and all would be found unworthy of our civilization—our boasted Christian civilization. I think Christianity has been preached at, long enough. I go for making a practical application of it at the very foundations of society. I believe in recognizing the broad principle of all religion—that we are all children of one great common parent, God, which, since it disproves the propositions of the Church, that at least a large portion of us are the children of the devil, and renders the services of the clergy to save us from that inheritance unnecessary, will abolish our present system of a licensed and paid ministry. Thirty-five thousand ministers are paid twenty-five millions dollars annually for preaching the gospel in cathedrals costing two hundred and fifty millions dollars; and how many of them ever teach any fact other than that Jesus was crucified, just as though that would save us from the sloughs of ignorance in which we are sunk? Which one of them dare tell his congregation the truth, as he, if he be not a blockhead, knows it? I here and now impeach the clergy of the United States as dishonest and hypocritical, since the best of them acknowledge that they do not dare to preach the whole truth, for, if they should, they would have to preach to empty seats—an admission sufficiently damnable to consign them to the contempt of the world and to the hell of which they prate so knowingly, but whose location they have not been able to determine, and to light the torch which shall fire the last one of these palatial mockeries of true religion.
Why, should Christ appear among these godly Christians as he did among the Jews, he would be arrested as a vagrant, or sent to jail for stealing corn; and in Connecticut, perhaps, for Sabbath-breaking, or for telling the maid at the well “all she had ever done,” which is now called fortune-telling, or for healing the sick by laying on of hands, which they denominate charlatanry. Christ and his Disciples and the multitude which he gathered together had all things in common. But every pulpit and every paper in this Christian country launch the thunders of their denunciations when that damnable doctrine is now advanced. Now, Christ was a Communist of the strictest sort, and so am I, and of the most extreme kind. I believe that God is the Father of all humanity and that we are brothers and sisters; and that it is not merely a theoretical or hypothetical nothing but a stern reality, to be reduced to a practical recognition. And they who cannot accept and practice this doctrine of Christ, and who still profess to be his followers, are simply stealing the livery of Christ in which to serve the devil in their own souls.
I do not care to what length Christians may stretch their faces of a Sunday, nor how much they pay to support their ministers; nor do I care how long prayers they may make, nor what sermons preach, when they denounce the fundamental principles of the teachings of Christ, I will turn upon and, in his language, utter their own condemnation: “Inasmuch as ye have not done it unto the least of these, ye have not done it unto” Christ. And they may make all the fuss, call me all the hard names, they please; but they can’t escape the judgment. And I don’t intend they shall have a chance to escape it. I am going to strip the masks of hypocrisy from their faces, and let the world see them as they are. They have had preaching without practice long enough. The people want practice now, and when they get it, they can even afford to do without the preaching.