Seven Financial Conspiracies Which Have Enslaved The American People

Republics are lost because their guardians - the people - entrust them to scheming politicians. We did not profit by the experience of other Republics, but followed in their footsteps, - and in their downfall we see our pending doom.

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THE Earl of Chatham, England's great statesman, once said, " Show me the laws of a country and I will show you the condition of its people."

Starting upon this proposition, we are led to the conclusion that the laws of our country are not in accordance with the principles of justice and equality, for there is nothing in the condition of the masses that denotes prosperity, but rather a tendency to poverty and demoralization. No period of our history has been marked by such general dissatisfaction.

Wherever we turn is discontent; labor idle, or at least working on short time and low pay; mill after mill silent; furnaces cold and unproductive; tramps filling our highways; the gaunt wolf of starvation staring into desolate homes, and strikes against starvation wages - those forerunners of revolution springing up on every hand. On the other side, we see granaries bursting with the abundance with which God has fattened the land, palatial mansions rising in fabulous magnificence, and mountains of wealth - the product of half-requited labor - poured into the coffers of the idle and affluent. All over the land the wail of distress comes up from poverty-stricken homes crushing out the manhood and womanhood of human kind, blighting the beauty and buoyancy of youth, and destroying the faith of mankind in an all-wise merciful father. In a land of plenty, where the willing hand of industry has created untold wealth, why should that hand be paralyzed for want of the very wealth it has created? Why should comfortable food, clothing and homes be denied to those who have produced these things in such abundance? Reader, these are questions that must soon be answered before the tribunal of a long-suffering but much enduring people.

In view of these facts and the responsibilities that rest upon us as American citizens, I earnestly ask that you lay aside your prejudices, and with me briefly consider a few of the circumstances that have brought about this deplorable condition. It is within the memory of many of my readers when millionaires were not indigenous to American soil. But that period has passed, and today we boast more millionaires than any other country on the globe; tramps have increased in a geometrical ratio; while strikes, riots and anarchists' trials constitute an exciting topic of conversation in all classes of society. There is no doubt but that the unequal distribution of the products of labor is one of the most fruitful sources of social and political disturbances.

Any rational person must admit that a nation's prosperity does not lie so much in the amount of its wealth as in a just distribution of that wealth among those who have produced it.

That nation is the most prosperous whose laborers hold warranty deeds, rather than leases of their homes, and a hundred cottage homes and gardens owned by a hundred workingmen is greater evidence of national prosperity than a million of property in the hands of a single individual. The ownership of home is the great safeguard of liberty, and it is impossible for a people long to remain free who do not own their homes. History bears us out in this statement, and we trace with minuteness the connection between land monopoly and national death. God has implanted in the human heart an unquenchable thirst for knowledge and for liberty, a knowledge of that liberty which makes men free from the bondage of their physical necessities and breaks the manacles of that slavery which through all ages, the strong have imposed upon the weaker portion of mankind.

Since the day that Esau sold his birthright for a mess of pottage, crafty men have taken advantage of the physical necessities of their less artful brothers; since that day, too, hungry men have been selling the birthright of their liberty for a mess of pottage which barely enables them to eke out a miserable existence. From the days of Esau to the present time two classes of people have existed upon this earth, the one class who live by honest labor, the other who live off of honest labor. From earliest times the one class have lived by tilling the soil, raising flocks and herds, delving in mines, working in wood, brass and iron, or deriving their subsistence from the waters over which God had given them do minion. The other class consisted of roving bandits, who under chiefs or leaders subsisted by swooping down upon and plundering the honest toilers; sometimes a strong band would take possession of a rich territory, subdue its people and divide the spoils between themselves; the chief became king, the brigands nobility, and the conquered people who only the day before were happy possessors of homes, became the slaves of this robber band who ruthlessly wrenched from them their homes and the products of their toil.

Today the same two classes exist as of old, not only in Europe but in this America, which gave such glorious promise of protection to its toiling people. True, the robber chiefs of our times have not by physical force taken possession of our toilers, and the products of their labor; they did not swoop down upon these people with bayonets and bowie knives; they did not say to them we have conquered your country and you are our slaves; ah, no, the terms robber and brigand are too harsh; civilization has advanced, and these terms are obnoxious to the refined intelligence of the age. The civilized brigandage of today is ashamed of its ancestry, but its appetite for plunder is no less ravenous and daring. Modern brigandage is carried on under more euphonious titles, and new methods of robbery are employed. Instead of " robber king " and " brigand chief " we have today the money king, the coal king, the cattle king, the railroad magnate, the telegraph monopolist and the lumber baron. Instead of spoils and plunders, we have interests, dividends, revenues and rents.

The system of American government as instituted by our fathers afforded little if any opportunity for robbery and oppression. Having successfully repelled their enemies across the water their prowess was established, and the civilized world stood in awe of the young republic. Not a crowned head of Europe aspired to clip the wings of the young American eagle, and for fourscore years the proud bird soared defiantly through the American heavens, or hovered above the sacred temple of our liberties. But, alas, in an evil hour the tempter came, the guardians were betrayed, and the very sanctuary of our liberties became the charnal -house of American freedom, and the market place of American honor.