The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast — Volume 12

by William Cowper Brann

Give for what? To build fine temples in whose sacred shadows will lurk the gaunt specter of Famine and the grisly gorgon of Crime. To buy grand organs and costly bells to peal praises to One who had nowhere to lay his head. To pay stall-fed preachers five, ten, twenty thousand dollars a year to expound the doctrine of a poor carpenter who couldn't have kept a silver dollar in his jeans a single day while there was poverty and suffering in the world.

While the wealth-producer is robbed to pension millionaires who suffered mental anguish because of the draft, and to administer worse than useless laws, still the amount so unnecessarily abstracted would be but a mere bagatelle if labor was steadily employed and reaped its just reward. With the mighty energies of this nation in full play and the wealth remaining with its producers, we could give even all the candidates an office, with plenty to get and little to do, and still have pie in the pantry and corn in the crib. There is something more the matter than governmental waste—there's something RADICALLY wrong.

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In tracing the causes of panics and periods of business depression, we invariably find our currency more or less at fault. Now don't get frightened. I'm not going to dose you with free silver nor give you the gold cure. This is neither Coin's Financial School nor a gold-bug incubator. The currency question is one you know all about. Everybody does—especially the corner-grocery politician. He understands it from A to Izzard—knows almost as much about it as a hello-girl does of the nature of electricity. Prof. Jevon truly says that "a kind of intellectual vertigo appears to seize people when they talk of money." Perhaps the Goddess of Liberty on the silver dollar has 'em Trilbyized.

We hear a great deal of late about the "science of money." It's supposed to be something very esoteric— something that a fellow can only master by drawing heavily on his gray matter, by working his think-machine up to the limit and sweating blood. Now let me tell you that there is no "science of money," any more than there's a science of harvesting hoop poles or fighting flies. When a man begins to give you an interminable song and dance about the science of money, just you send for the police and have him locked up as a dangerous lunatic.

Here's a ticket good for so many meals at a restaurant —an order for so much wealth; and here's a silver dollar —no 'tisn't; it's a check on a—er—on a "resort"; in fact, on a saloon; an I.O.U. for 11 cents, the price of a cigar—or something—I suppose. "Man should not live by bread alone." Now what's the difference between this ticket and check and the currency issued by the government? Simply this: These are the I.O.U.'s of individual's money, the I.O.U.'s of the entire American people. These are orders for certain kinds of wealth at particular places; money is an order for all kinds of wealth at any place within the jurisdiction of the federal government. This ticket is the check of one American, drawn against his personal wealth and credit; this bill is the check of all Americans, drawn against the collective wealth and credit of the nation. That's all the difference between a cocktail check and a coin, between a meal ticket and a ten dollar bill. Neither is worth a rap unless it can be REDEEMED. Like sanctification caught at a camp-meeting, there must be a hereafter to it or its a humbug. But don't you metallists take that as a premise and jump at conclusions or you're liable to sprain your logical sequence. What kind of redemption did I have in view when I acquired this che—I mean this ticket? I expected that it would be redeemed in something that would expand my surcingle and enable me to cast a shadow—in eggs and oleomargarine, corn-bread and buttermilk. And if so redeemed on demand, is it not a GOOD TICKET—is it not WORTH ITS FACE? What kind of redemption did I expect when I acquired this bill? I expected it to be redeemed in the necessaries of life—or possibly the luxuries. Who issued it? The government. Who's the government? The people. And when the people have given me bread and butter, tobacco and transportation, clothing and cocktails, and afforded me police protection to the extent of my ten dollars hasn't it been REDEEMED in the manner I anticipated—in the only way in which money can be redeemed? If I exchange this bill for a gold eagle what have I got? Another governmental drink-check or meal- ticket that awaits redemption. And there you have the whole "science of money," over which politicians have so long puzzled their brains that their think-tanks have got full of logical wiggletails. A dollar, whether it be made of gold, silver or paper, is simply an order which the people in their official capacity give against all the wealth, actual and potential, of the nation; and unless the holder can get it promptly redeemed in food and clothing, he's in a terribly bad fix.

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Every few years our industrial system gets the jim-jams. Capital flies to cover, factories close and labor goes tramping across the country seeking honest employment and receiving a warm welcome—from militia companies with shotted guns. Cheerful idiots begin to prattle of "over- production," the economic M.D.'s to refurbish all the old remedies, from conjure bags to communism. They all know exactly what caused the "crisis" and what to do for it; but despite the doctors the patient usually—survives. And the M.D. who succeeds in cramming his pet panacea down its throat claims all the credit for the recovery. We are slowly emerging from the crash of '93, and the cuckoos are cock-sure that Cleveland hoodooed with that financial rabbit-foot known as the gold-reserve—that a country fairly bursting with wealth was saved from the demnition bowwows by the blessed expedient of going into debt; that labor found salvation by shouldering an added burden in the shape of interest-bearing bonds. Hereafter when a burro tries to lie down beneath a load that's making him bench-legged, we'll just pile a brick house or two on top of him, and, with ears and tail erect, he'll strike a Nancy Hanks gait and come cavorting down the home stretch. When a statesman can see such things as that while wide awake and perfectly sober, he ought to consult a doctor. No wonder the Democratic party spilt wide open—transformed from an ascendent sun into a bifurcated Biela's comet, wandering the Lord knows whither.

The gold reserve, we are told, is to "protect the credit of our currency." Protect it from whom? You and I are making no assault upon it—wouldn't hurt it for the world. When we get a paper or silver dollar we don't trot around to the treasury to have it "redeemed" in a slug of yellow metal—we make a bee line for the grocery store and have it redeemed in a side o' bacon. Who is it that chisels desolation into the blessed gold reserve—the so- called "bulwarks of our currency?" The fellows who want bonds—the capitalistic, the creditor class; the men who own the mortgages and have millions of dollars corded up in bank—the men who have most to LOSE by any bobble in the credit of our currency. And every time the capitalist tries to hoist himself with his own petard, the administration smothers the blaze with a block of interest- bearing bonds. If he wants to make a sky-rocket of himself, let him kerosene his coat-tails and apply the match. If the gold reserve were really necessary to the credit of our currency, capitalists would no more make war upon it than they would bestride a buzz-saw making a million revolutions a minute. Instead of systematically draining it they would, whenever it struck "the danger-line," gather all the gold they could get and send it on to Washington. The capitalists are not crazy; they've simply got a soft snap in that "bulwark" business and are working it for an it's worth.

Calico is sold by the yard, kerosene by the gallon, coffee by the pound. These measures are immutable, and those who buy and sell by them make their contract in perfect confidence. But suppose they altered from day to day or from year to year,—the yard ranging from 25 to 50 inches, the pound from 10 to 20 ounces; would our exchanges be effected without much friction, think you? Would not such a ridiculous system of weights and measures paralyze exchange and demoralize industry? Would not those who could juggle the system to suit themselves—buying by a long and selling by a short yard— accumulate colossal fortunes at the expense of the common people? Would we not have "panics" in plenty and "depressions" galore? Well, that is exactly what is happening to the dollar, our measure of value, the most important of all our trade tools. And mark you, a change in the purchasing power of the dollar is equivalent to an alteration of every weight and measure employed by commerce. Understand? When the purchasing power of the dollar expands or contracts it has the same effect on exchange as would the expansion or contraction of the yard, the gallon and the pound.