Confiscation; An Outline

by William Greenwood

It is a plain word. As plain as are the conditions under which we are now living. As plain as is the wide-spread want and hunger that is in this land to-day, while there is more than enough for all.

And those who have gained possession of our resources are responsible for this hunger, and are enemies just as much as if they were invaders. Whatever progress external foes could make in landing on these shores would be only temporary, and not a blow could they strike, or a step make, without our knowing it. Not so the millionaire. His is the work of the thief in the night and we know nothing till his work is done. And then, because we would resort to the same process of recovery that we would in the case of any common enemy, we hold back, forsooth, because that process is called Confiscation.

Those whom we find to be inimical to the life of the republic will look upon an anarchist as a cooing dove compared to the man who would advocate Confiscation. They have nothing to fear from the anarchist, except a stray bomb now and then, for they know full well that the "plain" people will always stand between them and that wild-eyed dreamer of the impractical.

What those favored people think, however, does not interest us. What is of more concern to us, and to all others who have no doubt but what there is something wrong in the present scheme of things, is that the doctrine of Confiscation should be first understood before it is rejected. If it is found to conflict with law and order; if it is found to obstruct in any way the material welfare necessary to any man, woman, or child in the United States; if if takes from any man, woman, or child in these United States a solitary privilege or right that is essential to their well being; if it makes one more tramp, convict, or outcast of the street; if it fills one more pauper's bed or potter's grave, then our Search is not ended, for it is only another delusion, and of them we have more than enough already.

If, on the other hand, it does away with hunger and rags in a land of plenty. Does away with the cause of ignorance, namely poverty. Does away with the cause of eighty-five per cent. of crime, namely, poverty. Does away with the cause of strikes and rioting, namely, poverty. Destroys the power of one man to bribe one or fifty, and with his thumb at his nose defies the law to reach him. Makes robbery of the people by way of the lobby a thing of the past, and makes unnecessary a third house for the investigation of the other two, a stage we have already reached. Does away with the millionaire and his charity - the beggar and his need of it. Gives the conditions which makes individual and national improvement possible, and securing every such national improvement by making all the people its willing defenders, which they are far from being now in their hunger and wretchedness. Makes employment easy to obtain, with just wages in return for the labor done, putting within the reach of all, those comforts and luxuries, which, in this age of the world with its skill for quick and easy production, should be looked upon as a matter of course, but which in fact are unknown to a large part of the working people of the country.

If Confiscation, then, can do all this, why should it not be made to supersede all other policies that have been tried, and all those that are now courting public favor, but which, like the rest are based upon unrepublican economic laws, and must end, therefore, like the rest, in failure and disappointment?

With our resources restored to the people, which can be done only through Confiscation, prosperity would diffuse itself throughout the country as easily as the sun scatters its light.

We will now outline, as briefly as we may, what will be the effects of Confiscation, and what Confiscation means. It means the limiting of every individual fortune in the United States to $100,000.

And the excess of every fortune now exceeding that amount to be confiscated and turned into the public treasury. No exceptions to be made as to persons or the thing owned. Money, land, buildings, bonds, stocks, everything - wherever an excess is found, confiscate.

The anarchist! It is justice and the intelligence of the people that these new tyrants dread. The equity of this reform should be evident to every one who knows that this government was originally established for the good of all. And the time has now come when the work commenced in 1776 should be again resumed, and our latest masters got rid of some way or other.