The value of legislative control to our enemies is shown by the desperation with which they oppose any effort on the part of the people to recover it. They know it to be the true creator of their fortunes, and they look to it alone for future "fruits of labor" and "rewards of genius."
We are rich, but we have been ousted from our patrimony. How shall we recover it? By the same means through which we lost it, namely, legislation. The oppressions that curse man are all entrenched in, and owe their power to, legislation. If we are to be freed from them, it will be by legislation. In primitive times, government was openly, frankly exercised for the enrichment of a class at the expense of the mass. For ages the "right divine" was believed in honestly. Later when its justice was denied, its benefits were seen to be too valuable to be relinquished. So duplicity was employed, and the art of "plucking the goose without making it squeal" was invented.
Money-making heretofore has not been so much a function of government as money-taking, and this function can be made to work one way as well as another.
If thieves by government action can despoil honest men, honest men by government action can despoil thieves.
If legislation has been made the instrument of crime, it also can be made the instrument of restoration. No personal temperance, thrift and industry can enrich men so long as the power to legislate rests in other hands. Labor makes wealth but legislation decrees how it shall be divided. When the people legislate directly and intelligently the division will be in accord with justice. By the ballot we can enter upon our inheritance.
Poverty exists and we are told that it is the natural order, with which legislation has nothing to do. There has been told no more transparent lie. Wealth is created by the union of man's labor with nature's gifts. What is it but legislation that keeps apart in unnatural divorce these two that God hath joined together? What but legislation can remove the barriers and allow them again to come together?
Legislation CAN make money; so lavishly that no man need want. How? By making conditions favorable to labor, and securing the laborer in the fruit of his toil.
WE CAN ACTUALLY VOTE RICHES INTO EXISTENCE.
Our instructors say, "Government cannot legislate a single dollar into existence." Let us see.