(The ultimate foundation of economics is to be found in God's law, not in man's law. Father Charles Coughlin knew much more about economic law & justice than all the Morgenthaus and the Greenspans who infect America ever did - as this timeless 1931 radio sermon shows.) "GOLD AND SILVER and CHILD WELFARE BUREAU" A SUMMARY IN LAST Sunday's discourse I endeavored to insist upon the idea that not only the workingman but practically every type of citizen became a sufferer because of the international depression which has afflicted the entire world. Of course, the laborer, on account of the fact that he has no reserve capital; on account of the fact that in most cases he must live by a hand to mouth policy, has been the one who in this unparalleled catastrophe of greed and injustice has borne the brunt and shock of the harrowing suffering. Only for the fact that an unprecedented generosity has been manifested both by many wealthy persons and those of the middle class towards the alleviation of hunger and nakedness, the present suffering would be unbearable. However, the laborers beyond America are manifesting an ominous unrest. Russia has gone communist. Revolution has followed revolution in South America. China is in chaos. India is a seething turmoil. Even sedate Germany, not to mention many more countries, is temporarily veering towards a policy which forbodes no good. At least two-thirds of the population of the world has lost its patience and has adopted means to express their dissatisfaction not by words but by action. The peace which was enacted in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, and the manipulations which followed it through the agencies of certain international bankers have been disastrous failures. Before venturing into the main discussion reserved for this evening, I wish to unfold for this audience one of the greatest acts of international injustice which resulted from the post-war adjustments. I refer to the attempt to destroy the purchasing power of silver in the money markets of the world. In its wake has followed a deluge of desolation. Sum up all the horrors of the age of slavery -- men and women sold at the auction block -- "add all the heartaches and sufferings and bloodshed which resulted both from ancient and modern wars. Then pyramid these alongside this latest act which calls to God for vengeance, and they are as a pigmy standing alongside a Hercules. This post-war catastrophe to which I refer has not simply happened and grown to its present magnitude as did Topsy of Uncle Tom's Cabin fame. It was a deliberate, scheming, dastardly contrivance on the part of certain European diplomats and bankers. A COMPARISON Let me explain by a rather homely and concrete parallel before venturing further into this subject: Supposing you owed your creditor $10,000.00 on a note for money which you had borrowed and had spent in building a house. Supposing this creditor discovered that, due to wild investments and expensive debaucheries, his own capital suddenly became insufficient to meet his debts. Supposing by some trickery this same creditor arranged that henceforth your $10,000.00 house should drop in value to $5,000.00 Would this not inflict upon you a tremendous loss? But this is only half of the parallel. The other half is related to this second supposition: Supposing this same creditor possessed a monopoly on the manufacture of the clothes you must wear, the machinery you must use, the automobile which you intend to purchase. Now in order to recoup his debts, he quickly doubled the price of each of these commodities, thus forcing you either to do without them or to pay double for them. What would be your predicament? First of all, your home which represents your chief possession is only half its former value. And secondly, your purchasing power is only half what formerly it had been. The result would be that your economic structure would come toppling upon your head. THE ACTUALITY Ladies and gentlemen, something very similar to this has been happening on an international scale since the decade of 1920. Following the Great War, certain diplomats and bankers acting chiefly in the interests of England, decided that henceforth gold should be the only standard of money. Henceforth, so they decreed, the purchasing power of silver must be reduced to one-half its pre-war value and be regarded simply as an ornament, or, as they say, a commodity subject to change in price like wheat or cotton or any other usable thing. Now as a result of this decision, some bankers have told us that there is a gold shortage. The reason for this statement is the fact that they have attempted to make gold do the work of both gold and silver in the money markets of a world where practically sixty-five per cent of its population had previously adhered to a silver coinage standard. To the south of us there is Mexico with its silver dollar. China and India and Abyssinia with over eight-hundred-million population, greater than Europe and America fused together, from time immemorial have used silver as their standard of coinage. These and other nations have suddenly awakened to discover that by an edict of the international bankers, their lands, their properties, their money had shrunk one-half in value over night while the price of the manufactured commodities, of wheat, of machinery, of clothing and other exports from England and the United States and other gold standard countries remained identically the same. All this occurred because it was determined that henceforth approximately thirty-two ounces of silver was required to balance one ounce of gold, whereas formerly gold was related to silver as one is to sixteen. Thus, the citizen of Bombay, India, or the resident of Peking, China, who wished to buy a pair of $2.00 shoes walked into a shop one morning to discover that he must place $4.00 on the counter to take them away. Or if he wishes to purchase a $1,000.00 American automobile, its price suddenly had become inflated over night. Its price was now $2,000.00. THE ANALYSIS Some people may call this a question of political economy. As a matter of fact it was the greatest historic breach of the Seventh Commandment that has ever been written into the chronicles of the world. It was the brain child of a certain few of these diplomats and bankers who desired to pay an immense war debt at the expense of the untold misery of more than sixty-five per cent of the population of this earth -- of people who practically had no part in the actual hostilities of the Great War. No wonder China is torn asunder. The American Board of Foreign Missions assures us that ten-thousand of her citizens are dying every day from starvation. No wonder India is black with revolt. No wonder that a world wide depression has come when the major portion of the world's population has lived to see its coinage, its property, and its produce cut in half. Sixty-five per cent of the world has lost its buying power. And as a result of this the manufacturing power and the selling power of the other nations have suffered tremendously. To quote United States Senator Key Pittman of Nevada, we find that he reminded us on Tuesday, December 2, 1930, that: "The problem confronting the world today is the restoration of the power for consumption.... We have grown out of the period of national isolation." My fellow Americans, we are not so parochial in our ideas as to think that we can exist of ourselves and by ourselves. Is it not apparent to all of us that the nations of the world form one great commercial family? Is it not evident to the thoughtful man that unless the wheels of transportation and commerce are active in carrying textiles from our eastern states, golden wheat from our western prairies, gleaming steel from Pittsburgh, shining motor cars from Detroit to those places of the world which have them not, then our factories will be idle, our mills will be closed, and our granaries shall be choked with an over-produced grain? I dare say that America is capable of taking care of her personal needs with the expenditure of no more than three days' labor each week. Unless international commerce is normalized, our laboring class will be confronted with an average of two and one half days' idleness each week, which is another way of prophesying poverty and distress. Despite the many shortcomings which have grown up around the American industrialist with his uncurtailed mass production, his uncurtailed exportation of American gold to build up competitive European industry, the working class of America cannot expect him to manufacture automobiles and locomotives simply for the purpose of storing them in the waste lands of Wyoming and Montana. In one sense, my friends, as we analyze this world-wide depression, we must be honest enough to admit that there are more people in the world today than there were at the height of our prosperity in 1929. There is the same desire on the part of the world's population to possess fine clothing, to build comfortable homes, to possess a motor car, to enjoy the comforts and luxuries of life, as there was in 1929. But to continue quoting United States Senator Pittman: "If people were enabled to purchase what they need, the production of 1929 would be an underproduction in the enlarged market of January 18, 1931. The return of wealth and prosperity to the people of the United States depends primarily upon the ability of producers to dispose of their surplus production at a profit. Such surplus production is disposed of through our exports to foreign countries. These exports have decreased at a serious rate since the latter part of 1929, and are still steadily decreasing." Those who were responsible for the destruction of the silver standard have likewise been greatly responsible for the idleness, the poverty, the discontent and the suffering of our present day. Thus, greedy for the blood and the wealth of the nations, they have raised their voices until the clamorous shout has gone mocking to heaven: "Give us Barrabas -- The Barrabas of gold begotten of greed!" And today, Christ's millions of brothers are treading their weary way from Pilate's Hall to the heights of the crimson Calvary. Their brows are imbedded with thorns of worry. Behold them with bodies emaciated by the lash of poverty! Behold them as they stumble and fall and rise again while they carry the cross of gold upon which civilization shall be crucified. Alas, only too late shall some one from the motley crowd cry out: "Indeed this Man was the Son of God!" THE HISTORICAL FACT Perhaps, my friends, you begin to appreciate the malice of the hidden forces which have conspired against the common people of the world. To be explicit, in the year 1926 the Vice Regal Government of India imposed upon their people a legislation dictated by Stanley Baldwin the Prime Minister of England and his Cabinet, providing that India should adopt a gold bullion standard in place of the previous gold exchange standard. This government further imposed that the Indian Treasury should sell on the open market the excess stocks of silver consisting of several-hundred-million ounces. Perhaps you begin to understand why our foreign export has dropped to a minimum; why the silver mines of Canada and of the United States are idle and why the maximum price is being paid by the laborer who today worries and starves. It is only one more cause -- not the total cause -- of the worldwide depression through which we are staggering. It is only one more instance where the doctrine of the universal spiritual brotherhood of mankind preached by Jesus Christ has been annulled and scoffed at. It is only the reverberation coming down the centuries of the blasphemy of Pilate's Hall: "Give us Barrabas and away with Christ!" Of these things knowledge should be had. At this instant may I give credit to the Honorable Senators of the United States, especially Senators Borah and Pittman, and the Honorable Louis McFadden and to the Irving Trust Company of New York City who have made these facts known to the public. CHRISTIANITY? Those things, my friends, are mentioned primarily from a religious motive. Surely you are not forgetful that Christ came into the world not to destroy but to perfect. Surely you have not forgotten how He went about doing good, curing the blind and the leprous and feeding the hungry. To repeat what I have often enunciated from this pulpit the Catholic interpretation of religion does not merely confine itself to the folding of hands in prayers, to the singing of hymns and canticles. Its essential act of religion, indeed is sacrifice -- the sacrifice of the mass which is a perpetuation of the sacrifice of Calvary. But among other things it also considers an integral part of religion that whatsoever we do for our fellowman, be he Indian or Chinaman or barbarian of mid-Africa, we also do for Jesus Christ. That is the main motive, therefore, why it has been a labor of love to touch upon such subjects the solution of which can bring food to the hungry, health to the sick, and peace to a distracted world. Our patriotism and our nationalism indeed are sacred to us. But to quote from the "Mid-Month Review of Business" of December 17th, "The facts above enunciated clearly indicate the nature of the relief which is needed, and it is to be hoped that neither short sighted nationalistic prejudices nor mere notions about gold and silver standards will stand in the way of the type of legislative action that is urgently necessary if the western nations are not going to push the Orient into an even deeper abyss of misery." The policies of greed must give way to gestures of Christianity. We shall not participate in any national or international action whose main object and motive is to cut in half the values, the livelihood, the food, the clothing of sixty-five per cent of the population of this world. By so doing we not only become co-operators in one of the most dastardly crimes of history by thus inflicting pain upon foreign nations, we also become treacherous betrayers of our own citizen, whose livelihood is so much dependent upon the purchasing power of our foreign buyers. The country which has been loudest in its praise and staunchest in its support for the League of Nations has been most responsible for the overturning of the purchasing power of the world. Beware of the "Leak" of Nations! CHILD'S WELFARE BUREAU My dear friends, may I occupy the remaining minutes left at my disposal this evening on a moral question which is of interest to everyone of us. It deals with the Christian principles which underlie the existence of family life. You know that the family is a unit of a nation. Families do not exist for the State. Rather a State exists for the safeguarding of the families which constitute it. Long before the State was ever conceived the family's existence preceded it. Certain inalienable rights bestowed by the hand of God upon the head of a family can never in justice be absorbed by the State or annulled by legislation. By recalling these axiomatic truths which no one can honestly deny, may we for a moment brush aside that abstraction called the laborer, and behold him as the father of a family? As he returns home from his laborious toil, his body may be wearied but his heart is filled with the same love for his wife and his children as is your own. He thrills at the clasp of baby arms. He joys at the thought of resting in his own home. About him are a hundred intimate associations. Behind him are a hundred intimate days of suffering. Days of love and hours of prayer have consecrated that hallowed spot. Yes, each hour was a deft finger which wove into his soul the golden thread whose letters spell "Home, Sweet Home." It is home to him though it be filled with riches or haunted with the ghost of poverty. It is still his castle barricaded by the walls of God's own making. If to him and to his wife have re-echoed the ancient command of "increase and multiply"; if he carried away from the altar of the Lord the memory of those words, "What God hath joined together let no man put asunder," he likewise feels that he must protect those whom love has multiplied and safeguard her whom God has given him. Thus, when the fathers of ancient time assembled to build for themselves the first State, it was done not with the idea of surrendering the heaven born rights bestowed upon them, but with the motive of render ing them more secure. In the words of the great Leo: "The State must not absorb the individual or the family; both should be allowed free and untrammeled action as far as is consistent with the common good and the interests of others." Sometimes, my friends, through the agency of a well organized propaganda a legislative bill which strikes at the sanctity of the home is rendered attractive by an appealing title. Thus, a child welfare bill known as the "Jones Maternity and Infancy Bill" recently has been flashed upon the skyline of our Congress. It is nothing more than a revival of the Shepherd-Towner Maternity and Infancy Act which proposes to subject the sacred secrets of parenthood to the supervision and control of a so-called Federal Children's Bureau. A vast appropriation of money is demanded for its execution. It cries for admittance upon our statute books because, as its authors contend, there has been an increasing death rate among the infants of our nation. As a matter of fact, before the original Shepherd-Towner Act became legalized, we discover that the death rate in the United States fell from a ratio of one-hundred infants in 1915 to seventy-six in 1921. In Kentucky the infant death rate was reduced from eighty-seven to sixty-two. For five years preceding the Shepherd-Towner era we discover in Virginia that mortality among babies was reduced from ninety-eight to seventy-nine. The States of Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Illinois, Massachusetts and many others likewise registered a decrease in infant deaths without any aid of Shepherd-Townerism. But setting aside the value of figures for a valid argument, may I delve a little deeper into this new Jones Bill, which by Federal enactment shall be the wedge of an attempt to scrutinize your wife's pregnancy and your child's infancy? First of all, the Jones Bill is in conflict with President Hoover's announced plans and recommendations. Secondly, the proponents of this Bill are Miss Grace Abbott and Mrs. Florence Kelly, the latter a well known communist whose full communistic record appears in the Congressional Record of May 31, 1924, and July 3, 1926. By the way, Mrs. Kelly's correct name is Florence Kelly Wischnewetzky. She is probably the only living communist leader personally trained by Frederick Engels himself, the same Engels who was the financial backer and co-author with Karl Marx of the "Communist Manifesto" and who openly advocated that children are the property of the State. And lastly, despite the fact that our President, as are all Americans, is anxious to do whatsoever is within his power for the welfare of children -- despite the fact that he absolutely said that any outlay of money should be expended through the United States Public Health Service, this new bill would erect almost an omnipotent Federal Children's Bureau. At present we are waiting for a report from President Hoover's Conference on Child Health and Protection which will not be ready much before February 1st. Knowing the communistic tendencies and doctrines which advocate contraception, birth control, and abortion; realizing the communistic ambition to socialize all mothers and all infants, we readily understand why the Catholic women of America through the United Charities and through their Chaplain; and why the medical profession of America, all of whom represent more than twenty-three-million of our citizens, openly protest as does each man and woman who loves his home, against this incursion and Soviet stranglehold upon our American families. Mrs. Florence Kelly Wischnewetzky perhaps can flood with telegrams and letters the Congressional Chambers of our United States Government. But there are more than twenty-three-million unwritten letters of American lovers of home and country who protest against this Russian invasion which is endeavoring to propagate birth control under the specious texture of legislation. If they prate of child welfare in the seats of Congress, let them first take care to feed the fathers and mothers who generate our children so that a race of undernourished and underfed infants will not be propagated. To quote the Honorable Senator James A. Reed of Missouri in a speech delivered on June 29, 1921, when this original bill under the name of Shepherd-Towner was first introduced: "Official meddling cannot take the place of mother love. Mother love! The golden cord that stretches from the throne of God, uniting all animate creation to divinity. Its light gleams down the path of time from barbarous ages when savage women held their babes to almost famished breasts and died that they might live. Its holy flame glows as bright in hovels where poverty breaks a meager crust as in palaces where wealth holds Saturnalian feasts. It is the one great universal passion -- the sinless passion of sacrifice. Incomparable in its sublimity, interference is sacrilege, regulation is mockery. "The wild beasts hear its voice and answer to its call. A tigress finding her cubs slaughtered, pauses to lick their wounds, and then with raging heart seeks out their murderer. A she wolf standing at the mouth of her den, with gleaming fangs and blood-red tongue, dies in defense of her whelps. Tiger's cub or wolf's whelp, I would rather feel the rough caresses of the hairy paws of my savage mother, I would rather have her care and protection than that of an official animal trainer. "I once saw a little timorous mother quail, with marvelous intelligence and still more marvelous courage, protect her brood by exposing herself to the hunter's deadly aim. I then realized that nothing could take the place of mother love. "If its divine fire so warms and thrills the heart of beast and bird, with what intensity does it consume the bosom, with what ecstasy inspire the soul of a woman, for the child of her body. Although she knows that she must risk her own to bring forth a new life, she does not draw back. Her love-lit eyes behold only visions of happiness, of glory, and of power to be realized by her unborn child. With smiling lips and eager heart she enters the vale of shadows. The first cry of the new-born falls on her ear, sweet as the music of paradise. Her trembling hands caress the tender skin; her soul cries out the anxious question, Will my baby live? The torturing days of convalescence fly swiftly upon wings of hope. She nestles the tiny, helpless thing to her bosom; sustains it with the milk of her body, every drop drawn from a fountain of infinite love. "With indescribable solicitude she watches over her offspring. Even when her body slumbers her soul keeps vigil and her hands in unison with her spirit will stretch forth to soothe the baby back to sleep. With glowing pride she watches the growing child, shields it from harm, guides it along the paths of rectitude, inspires its soul with lofty sentiments of honor and of faith in the eternal God. "When time has piled the snows upon her head and turned her brown or raven locks to white, her love will still abide, riper and sweeter with the passing years. Though she may live until her children are themselves grown old and gray, she yet will see the silken locks of youth; their roughened hands yet have the caressing touch of baby fingers; their voices bear to her the tender and melodious notes of industry. And when at last she approaches the portals of death there is no solace so sweet as the presence of those she bore 'to people and replenished the earth.' "For mother love there is no substitute, even though it bear an official stamp. If there be truth in religion, then this holy sentiment was planted in woman's heart by the hand of God. It has made life possible. It is in truth the very source of life itself. When all other passions are dead it survives. It will pass through the fiery furnaces of disgrace and yet live. It will endure the scorching breath of contumely with unwavering fidelity. "A mother will enter prisons of shame and kiss a felon hand thrust through the bars. She will sit beside the accused in courts of law, when the mob jeers and the heartless machinery of justice grinds its grist of agony, and with unwavering faith maintain her child is innocent. She will stand at the foot of the scaffold and, when the trap has fallen, cover the condemned body with kisses and with flowers. It is still to her the innocent suckling she once hugged to her breast. "But if the path of life has led her son to fields of honor, her heart will glow with pride, ineffable, unspeakable. If he is called to war, she will bid him good-bye with dry eyes, although her heart be filled with tears. She will maintain a firm and hopeful mien, that he may gain sublimer courage from her sublime example. When he sleeps upon the tented field her spirit will keep watch. Whilst he is slumbering she will pray. In the agony of waiting she will die a thousand deaths but will choke back her sobs and hide her torture. She will search for him amongst the slain, and try with kisses to warm the dead and unresponsive lips to life. She will coffin her heart with the beloved body, and her soul will keep the eternal vigil of a deathless love. "Mother love! It has produced, fondled, reared, inspired, and glorified all of the shadowy hosts who have passed across the 'bank of time' since man first raised his eyes toward the heavens. It is, I say again, the golden cord that binds the earth to God. Official interference between the mother and her babe is tyrannical and criminal." My friends, I thought it most appropriate to quote in full these beautiful words which came from the lips of the Honorable James Reed of Missouri. Appropriate, because on Tuesday of this week our Congressmen will have presented to them the Jones Maternity and Infancy Bill for their consideration. If it has been advocated by a communist, it is condemned by every Christian father and mother in these United States who will not be slow in forgetting its sponsors nor ungrateful in remembering the majority of those gentlemen who are opposed to the nationalizing of our mothers and our children and the handing of them over in the sacred moments of pregnancy and birth to the care of some Federal Bureaucratic Old Maid. As Senator David Walsh of Massachusetts remarked on December 16th: "There is a very deep and growing feeling which is gaining headway constantly that the States should not be interfered with by the Federal Government in the working out of their own social welfare and educational problems." Or as Dr. H. S. Cumming, the Surgeon General of the United States of America says: "The most effective work in the protection of maternal and child life will be done by such local health organizations as a part of the general health program." Ladies and gentlemen, come back with me on the wings of memory to the sanctity of a home in Nazareth, with Jesus and Mary and Joseph. I ask you in the Name of God to Christianize them and not nationalize them. Let Mary the Queen of Mothers, be your model of both sanctity and hygiene. Let Joseph, the patron of every working man, be your exemplar of Godliness, of justice, and of fidelity. And pray to Him whose hands have wrought the mystery of love from the flesh of your flesh and in the sanctuary of your body to build up in character, in age, in wisdom, and in grace the children whom you love and for whom you would die.