Driving Out the Money Changers

Charles E. Coughlin

BONDS OR CHARITY ?

It appears that religion has lost much of its charm and forcefulness in the scheme of our modern civilization.

This is so true that more than sixty per cent of our fellow citizens profess no allegiance whatsoever to any organized church.  They regard dogmas as unscientific presumptions.  They look upon morals as unreasonable impositions.

While the Bible is regarded as a book to be revered, it is oftentimes considered archaic to maintain that its contents are revealed truths.

This is most unfortunate especially when we are confronted with the momentous problems of the present day.

Unguided by faith or by biblical principles, what solution has science offered to liquidate the imponderable debts accumulated by the Great War or to stem the ever increasing tide of losses which threaten to engulf us ?

With all the gifted intelligence resident in the minds of the economists which one of them, divorced from religion, has approached the problem of unemployment with such clarity of thought as is manifest in the legislation of the Mosaic Law or in the verses of St. Paul’s inspired letter to the Corinthians, chapter the thirteenth ?

Not one of them !  These problems which are deep-rooted in man’s social relations, one to another, have baffled a Pericles and an Aristotle of old, and will continue to defy lesser minds today unless the dim, fluttering candle of reason gives way to the lustrous shining of the Light of the World !

God’s standard has been bartered for an impossible gold standard.  Debts and financial rights have been deemed more precious than love and human rights.

I

First, let us consider the stupendous debts which are devastating our farms, confiscating our homes, divorcing our life’s savings, destroying our industries and throwing into inevitable bankruptcy our once prosperous country.

As you are already appraised of the fact, our national and private debts have reached approximately $235-billion.

Definitely related to these debts is a conservative loss of $264-billion sustained by our citizens during the past three years.

This total of nearly $500-billion is so staggering that our capacity to pay has long since become an impossibility.

Now, with what solution do the sacred Scriptures supply us when we are confronted by such a perplexing situation ?

Read with me the twenty-fifth chapter of the Book of Leviticus.  There you find inscribed the following words :

“ Thou shalt sanctify the fiftieth year, and shalt proclaim remission to all the inhabitants of thy land ;  for it is the year of jubilee.  Every man shall return to his possession, and everyone shall go back to his former family.

“ In the year of jubilee all shall return to their possessions.

“ When thou shalt sell anything to thy neighbor or shalt buy of him thou shalt buy of him according to the number of years from the jubilee.

“ Do not afflict your countrymen.”

Here, then, both a principle and a practice are expressed.

The principle is plainly this, namely, that debts have a limitation and an ending.  They must not afflict your fellow countrymen, nor, in any event, may they endure in perpetuity.

It is a principle which plainly infers that financial rights have a termination and that human rights are eternal.

Is is a principle which was not abrogated under the Christian dispensation ;  for Christ came to perfect and not to destroy.

It is a divinely inspired principle which seemingly has not filtered through the minds of those into whose hands the destiny of our nation has been placed.

“ Do not afflict your countrymen ! ”  What care they for this economic inspiration that was born in heaven ?

If it conflicts with the philosophy of creditors, let it perish !  Let poverty reign, let stark starvation run rampant through our countryside ;  let evictions multiply !  In a word, crush out human rights !  Pillory them in every public place to teach a broken hearted people that financial rights are supreme !

How inconsistent we so-called Christians are !  Invokers of the Name of God in our political speeches !  Builders of churches with our ill-gotten gains !  Mumblers of prayers in public places !  And hypocrites when actions would be more eloquent than words !

II

Take up and read not only those of you who still cling to the outstretched hand of religion but also those of you who, oppressed by debt, have forsaken her guidance to wander aimlessly down life’s treacherous pathway—take up and read this twenty-fifth chapter of Leviticus in its entirety.

And what else shall you find ?

At least one more principle that is applicable in our present day when the budget is unbalanced, when taxes are being multiplied, when unemployment has reached a national crisis, and when the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few rides ruthlessly on under the whip and spurs of bonds and interest.

Let me read for you the passage at hand :

“ If thy brother be impoverished and thou receive him as a stranger and sojourner, and he live with thee, take not usury from him nor more than thou gavest.

“ Thou shalt not give, him thy money upon usury, nor exact of him any increase of fruits.

“ If thy brother constrained by poverty, sell himself to thee, thou shalt not oppress him with the service of bond servants.”

Usury !  Interest !  Bonds !  Taxation !

Were we religious minded, it would not be difficult to apply this principle today.

III

On the contrary, we have adopted a policy which is out of tune with the basic harmony of the scripture which I have quoted.

It is a long, sordid story, my friends, in the telling of which I shall try to be brief.

Many of our social and economic sorrows are traceable to the lust for power, and to the greed for gold which dictated the policies which culminated in the Great War.

No one seriously denies that this wholesale carnage was an inevitable sequence to the commercial and financial greed which characterized the Age of Reason.

This is a serious statement to make.  It is one which should not go unchallenged unless substantiated by facts.

For a moment, let us disregard the European nations and focus our attention upon America.

If you recollect, we entered the Great War on Good Friday in the year 1917.

On the eve of that eventful day our Senate was assembled.

Long into the hours of Holy Thursday night serious minded men debated both on grounds of patriotism and of righteousness whether or not we should take up arms against the Central Powers.

The night when nearly 1900 years before the Master supped with His Apostles and said to them :  “ This is the chalice of the new and eternal Testament which shall be shed for you and for many unto the remission of sins ! ”

The night when Judas betrayed Him for thirty pieces of silver !  The night of Gethsemane with is horrors, with its infuriated mob.

The night when was spoken the words “ Put up thy sword into its scabbard.  Know ye not that they who use the sword shall perish by it ? ”

The short-lived night when Annas and Caiphas gloried in their passing triumph !

The clock in the Senate Chamber moved towards midnight.  Frenzied words passed to and fro !

Voices were filled with emotion !

Was there ever such nervous tension before in the history of that august body ?  Never !  Never !

The hands of the clock ticked off the seconds, the minutes !

It was ten minutes to twelve—and yet no decision had been made.

From his seat rose a white plumed, fearless, honest man.  It was Senator James Reed of Missouri.

“ If you must declare war,” said he “ for God’s sake, do it now before it becomes Good Friday.”

And then the bells of midnight began to toll the yearly requiem for the Prince of Peace.

The Senate had waited too, too long !

Waited for the anniversary of His death day to declare the most iniquitious war that was ever waged !

It was the Good Friday of that memorable year of 1917.

It was the doomsday of thousands of America’s youths who, like the innocent Victim of old, were herded to their Calvary of sacrifice to be crucified between the two thieves of gold and greed.

On that eventful day the President of the Bank Board of the United States was Mr. E.P.C. Harding.

If the Senators knew not why they declared war, at least Mr. Harding was not ignorant.

On March the 22nd previous to the Declaration, mind you, he knew that eventually we would commit ourselves against the Central Powers.  He knew it and knew why as is evident from these historic words—words that shall go down to blot with shame the pages of American history.  Mr. Harding said :

“ As a banker and creditor, the United States would have a place at the Peace Conference table, and be in a much better position to resist any proposed repudiation of debts, for it might as well be remembered that we will be forced to take up the cudgels for any of our citizens owning bonds that might be repudiated.”

What a confession, my friends !  What a paradox to Christian teaching !  What a burlesquerie on human rights !  To think of it :  We must take up the cudgels ;  we must rush headlong into a sea of blood ;  we must sacrifice our boys ;  we must crush the hearts of their mothers ;  we must multiply barbarously the orphans in our fair land ;  we must crucify again the Prince of Peace ;  we must consign to hell the doctrines of charity—all for the sake of bloody bonds owned by private citizens and bought at their personal risk.  Bonds which today sleep in vaults where wealth lies buried, but which tomorrow shall rise like ghosts from graves in hell to haunt and to torment both us and our children !

Some future historian, my friends, will have both the courage and the honesty to analyze that statement of the president of the Bank Board of the United States and to tell fearlessly to the generations to come that our entrance into the Great War was motivated not to make the world safe for democracy, but to make the bonds and the debts collectable by our private lenders.

Christ was betrayed again for thirty dirty pieces of silver.  And once again they who thus used the sword shall perish by it !

IV

What had happened to evoke such a heinous, sinful statement from the official mind of the president of the Bank Board of the United States ?  Briefly, this is the outline of the facts :

We are discussing the year 1917.

For three years previous to this date American corporations had been waxing fat on the war materials which they were shipping chiefly to England and to France.

Already billions of dollars worth of wheat, of cotton, of arms and munitions had been poured into the lap of the Allies.  Hardly a penny in actual money had been extended to them.

Now in 1917, it seemed certain that Germany would be victorious.  If so, it seemed equally certain that England and France and the Allies would repudiate their debts.

Thus, it appeared that the private contracts entered into directly by American munition manufacturers with the Allied governments of Europe would be disavowed.

So we went to war to save our thirty pieces of silver ;  to guarantee that the Allies whom our wealthy citizens had staked for three years would win and therefore pay.

Now the United States as a nation, after 1917, was officially participating in the conflict.

Now the complexion of the loans to the Allies was undergoing a change.  Their payment was being made secure by the bodies and souls of innocent men.

More than ever in 1917 arms, munitons, coal and foodstuff were required by the Allies as well as by our army and navy.  But from this year on our Federal Government, which means the American taxpayer, undertook to carry the burden.

Roughly estimated $14-billion of war material was loaned to the Allies by the broad shouldered American taxpayer until eventually came the Armistice, and with it a second chapter of bond history was written.

For behold !  The $14-billion worth of material—of wheat and of cotton, of meat and coal and munitions which we shipped abroad to England, to France, to Italy, to the Allies—was summarily cancelled.  Their war debts were officially wiped out !

Meanwhile the American producers of these war materials had been paid in American dollars.

Meanwhile Government interest bearing bonds had been sold to our banks and to our citizens to raise these dollars.  Those who were crucified to the cross of poverty must offer up sacrifice to those, their fellow citizens, who sat upon the thrones of the Herods of wealth.

Do you understand ?  The taxpayers of the United States assimilated the debts cancelled so generously to the European nations.  We assimilated the debts, and the taxpayers, through the medium of bonds, began to pay back the manufacturers of munitions and bullets used to kill and to destroy.  Oh, indeed, if the debts had been cancelled in favor of the foreigners, the bonds representing them and piled upon the backs of the American public had not been canceled !  They still remained.  Our citizens were still pledged to redeem these bonds which our Government had issued to pay the great corporations of America for their profitable contribution in having made a shambles of the civilized world.

We who thought that the flower of our youth had been sacrificed to make the world safe for democracy now agreed with president Wilson when he disillusioned us with the statement :  “ This was a commercial war.”

Thus, once more I stress the point that as a result of the Great War the citizens of this, nation are, in one sense, debtors to the war profiteers of this country.

Their profits ran into billions of dollars.  And as a result of it all, there sprang up in our midst in a period little over one year and a half 16,500 more millionaires than we had before we entered the conflict.

Let me give you a few examples from the official records in our Federal archives.

First comes the Bethlehem Steel Company.  The profits of this corporation for the years 1911, 1912 and 1913 averaged $3,075,108 per year.  But in 1915 the profits jumped to $17,762,813.  In 1916 they totalled $43,503,968.  And in 1918 they pyramided to $57,188,769.

Second :  Twenty-nine leading copper producing companies from 1915 to 1918 had a surplus of $330,798,593 compared with the surplus of $96,711,392 on the same day of 1914.

Third :  The United States Steel Corporation with a capital stock of approximately $750,000,000 made a profit in 1916 and 1917 alone of $888,931,511.

Fourth :  In the senate document 259 of the Sixty-fifth Congress there is made manifest the profits gained by American business during the year 1917.  This document contains 388 pages of almost unbelievable facts.

In the meat-packing business alone half of the concerns admit profit of more than 50 per cent, and a sixth of them admit they made a profit of over 100 per cent.

Of the 340 coal producers in the Appalachian field, 79 of them reported profits between 50 and 100 per cent ;  135 of them testified that they profitted to the extent of 100 to 500 per cent ;  21 reported profits of from 500 to 1000 per cent ;  and 14 testified that they made profits of more than 1000 per cent.

Of course, my fellow citizens, immediately following the Great War $14 billion which Europe owed us at that moment in 1918 were summarily canceled.  But that does not signify that the United States Government Bonds which floated these debts and which eventually are payable by your tax money and by mine—it does not signify that these were cancelled.  For generations to come the American people will be paying out taxes to the dollar-a-year profiteer who already had grown fat upon the misery of a stricken people.

Perhaps the truthful historian to whom I referred a few moments ago will regard the Great War as the death knell to a system of irrational capitalism which greedily profiteered upon misery and to a system of financial control which waxed fat upon the bonded debts of a patient people.

And so today, my friends, the American people are demanding the normalization of the American dollar—a dollar that was abnormalized and rendered dishonest by the issuance of War Bonds, by the inflation of domestic credit at home, by the break-down of foreign commerce and trade and by the subsequent flight of currency money from the channels of circulation.

Today as in the year 1862, we are being terrorized and tyrannized by the philosophy which then was spoken by the House of Rothschild to the American bankers.

In a letter, known as the “Hazard Circular”, received by every bank in the State of New York and in New England on that date, we find the following statement :

“ The great debt that capitalists will see to it is made out of the war must be used as a means to control the volume of money.  To accomplish this, the bonds must be used as a banking basis.”

Thus, everyone is aware that money is controlled both by the debts and the profits arising from the war and by the multiplicity of bonds, bloody bonds, which bind us to the past and prevent us striving for the better things of the future.

No wonder that today following the Great War it is just as true as in the days following the Civil War that bankers are adverse to the issuance of currency money to replace the existence of interest bearing bond money that is sucking the life blood from our nation.

In 1872 a mighty group of New York bankers sent the following circular to every bank in the United States.  It reads as follows :

“ Dear Sir :  It is advisable to do all in your power to sustain such prominent daily and weekly newspapers, especially the agricultural and religious press, as will oppose the issuance of greenback paper money, and that you also withhold patronage or favors from all applicants who are not willing to oppose the Government issue of money ........ To repeal the law creating National Bank notes, or to restore to circulation the Government issue of money, will be to provide the people with money, and will therefore seriously affect your individual profit as bankers and leaders.”

V

Thus, the question of issuing non-interest bearing Government money to replace the interest bearing bond money has become a national issue.

The principle of Scripture supports Government non-interest bearing money.  The principle of bankers stands firmly behind the bond money.

“ If thy brother be impoverished”, says the Scripture—and God knows as a nation we are not only impoverished, but we are on the verge of bankruptcy—“ if thy brother be impoverished and weak of hand, take not usury from him nor more than thou gavest.”

By which principle do the people of this nation wish to stand ?

By the principle revealed by Almighty God to His chosen people or by the policy advocated in the financial documents which I quoted ?

Billions of dollars of War Bonds bearing interest and multiplying wealth at the expense of our misery !

Or the equivalent of these bonds handed to their present possessors in new currency at which they will scoff and say :

“Fiat money” as if it were not backed by gold ;  as if it were not cleaner and holier than the blood money of War Bonds to which they cling !

It would be billions of sterile currency dollars which the present bondholders would perforce invest in industry or in other tax bearing bonds.

It would help substantially to end the famine of money from which we are suffering.

Religion !  Faith !  Revelation !  These things, so taught the proud rationalist of the previous century, were relics of the uncultured past.  Let us replace them with the clay god of reason.  Let us substitute for God’s word the word of erring man.

If in ancient days it was taught that thou shalt not oppress thy brother, we of this new age shall shout from the house-tops and preach in the press that this absurdity must terminate once and for all.

If bonds and interest were forbidden even in the dim past of Mosaic days we of this age of reason shall teach a new doctrine that there can be no progress, no concentration of wealth in the hands of a few unless these instruments of tyranny are revived.

If there needs be such an illusion as religion, says the rationalist, bind it and cabin it up within the narrow precincts of a Sabbath Day ;  for it has no place in the bank, no place in the stock exchange, no place in the secular life of a world’s prosperity.

Oh, my fellowmen, what price have we paid for this philosophy, for our cleverness, for our rationalism ;  what sacrificial victim have we offered up at the feet of this dirty god of clay !

With tears in our eyes ;  with hearts filled with repentance we have sadly staggered under the weight of this cross ;  we became its victims until we were crucified between the thieves of greed and gold.  But today I trust that we are glimpsing the first rays of a new sunrise, of a revived faith, of a happy Easter morn of resurrection from the dead past.

Once more we shall take up and read the Scriptures.  Once more we shall turn to that beautiful letter which Paul inscribed to the Corinthians and read therein God’s philosophy of man’s relation to his fellowman as we put aside once and for all the rugged individualism, the pagan selfishness and the cursed exploitation which have temporarily replaced it in the days just passed.

“ If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.

“ And if I should have prophecy and should know all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I should have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.

“ And if I should distribute all my goods to feed the poor, and if I should deliver my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.

“ Charity is patient, is kind :  charity envieth not, dealeth not perversely is not puffed up, is not ambitious, seeketh not her own, is not provoked to anger, thinketh no evil ;  rejoiceth with the truth ;  beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

“ Charity never falleth away :  whether prophecies shall be made void or tongues shall cease or knowledge shall be destroyed.

“ For we know in part :  and we prophesy in part.

“ But when that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away.

“ When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child.  But, when I became a man, I put away the things of a child.

“ We see now through a glass in a dark manner; but then face to face.  Now I know in part :  but then I shall know even as I am known.

“ And now there remain faith, hope and charity, these three :  but the greatest of these is charity.” (I. Cor. XIII. 1-14).

And that, my friends, is the beautiful philosophy which God reveals to us—the doctrine of charity which is counter to the doctrine of rugged individualism.  Charity, which looks into the soul of your fellow man and sees there not only the facial expressions of another human being but the borrowed splendor of the God Who created him !

Charity bids us love our fellowmen not for what they are in themselves but because God dwelleth in the temple of their hearts.

Charity, greater than all things, greater than all power, all wealth teaches us to love the Lord our God with our whole heart, with our whole soul, with our whole mind and our neighbor as ourselves.  Charity teaches us that whatsoever we do unto the least of God’s little ones we do unto Him !

Without charity you cannot even pretend to Christianity.

Thus, shall we go down the highway of time perpetuating the hypocrisy of the past ?  Shall we endeavor to work hardship and exploitation upon our fellowman knowing that whatever we do unto him we are doing unto Christ.

Oh, rob, steal, profiteer and exploit, bend low and break your fellow citizens !  Every time you lift a lash of oppression ;  every time you raise a scourge of exploitation you are lashing Christ again at the pillar in Pilate’s hall, you are driving home once more the thorns of worry into His brow ;  you are crucifying Him upon the cross of Calvary !

Whatsoever you do to the least of His little ones you do unto Him !