The American People's Money

THE AMERICAN PEOPLE'S MONEY

Chapter I

SCENE:—A palace sleeping car on an overland train from Chicago to the Pacific.  Great bustle and confusion ;  crowds rushing through and treading on each others’ feet.  People kissing and bidding good-bye in the aisles—to the obstruction of all the rest—when they might just as well have done their farewelling in the depot.  Husbands and wives parting with tears,—with internal consolatory reflections.  Bags, valises, bundles, umbrellas gradually crawling into corners and adjusting themselves to them.  Colored porters moving around, sombre and mysterious as Othello, when he was about to do the business for Desdemona.  Grave looking brakesmen and conductors, with cabalistic gold letters on their caps, and semi-military uniform—the children think they own the railroad, and they feel like it themselves.

The ringing of the bells and tooting of the engine, with a great deal of unnecessary uproar, and the huge grandson of the old stage coach moves slowly out of the depot.  The passengers draw a sigh of relief and settle back in their seats—some put on their skull-caps and slippers.  Each man and woman looks about at his or her neighbors—the men at the faces, the women at the clothes.

In section No. 7 two men faced each other.  Both were of about middle life ;  both were well-dressed ;  both looked well-to-do ;  and yet they represented two widely different types of the genus Homo.  The one facing the engine (which showed he had the right to the lower berth), was evidently a business man ;  gloves on hands ;  a high silk hat ;  broadcloth garments ;  a clear-cut, keen face, with penetrating eyes and firm mouth.

He was studying the person on the opposite seat, (the tenant of the upper berth), and these were his reflections :

“ Respectable looking man—not poor—lives in the country—has the bronzed skin and large chest which comes from having acres of space to supply him with the finer elements of the atmosphere.  Large frame—six feet high.  That slouch hat never was made in Chicago.  Good nose, and large, broad brow too.  No fool.  Glad he has the upper berth.  Fewer thieves among the middle-aged than among the young.  Why is that ?  Don’t like to have one of our modern scamps too near me.  The criminal class now is largely composed of those half way between boy and man.  Some of them would cut a traveler’s throat for five dollars.  Wonder if he is going through.  I must get acquainted with him.  It will be safe to do so.”

“ The car is crowded, sir.”

“ Yes,” replied the other, “ I suppose a great many are going through to the coast.”

“ Probably so.  Do you go through ? ”

“ Yes.”

“ Do you live there ? ”

“ No ;  I am from central Illinois.  But I have a son who owns a fruit farm, near Sacramento, and I am going out to visit him.”

“ As we will be together for several days we might as well become acquainted,” and he handed the other his card.

It read :  “ James Hutchinson, president of the Traders’ and Mechanics’ Bank, Chicago.”

“ I have no card,” replied the other, “ but my name is Hugh Sanders, farmer, of Shelbyville, Shelby county, Illinois.”

“ Do you find farming profitable ?” inquired Mr. Hutchinson.

“ No ;  I can’t say I do,” was the reply.  “ Nothing is profitable now-a-days but your business of money-lending.  Fortunately for me I made my money during the war, and soon after it, when prices were high ;  and of late years I have rented my lands for a share of the crop, and thus have taken no chances, and have kept out of debt.  If I had farmed it myself I should probably be in the same boat with the rest of them.  As it is I have a good lot of land and some money out at interest.  Present conditions are such that the man who does nothing is better off than the man who ventures and works hard and produces something.  Society rewards the idler and punishes the toiler.”

“ I fear you are a pessimist,” said the banker.

“ You mean a ‘crank,’ ” replied the farmer, “ but you are too polite to speak it right out.  I suppose I am.  Years of observation have led me to the conclusion that the world is in bad shape, and likely to grow worse.”

“ Why,” said the other, “ there has never been a time in the history of the world when wealth increased more rapidly, or the productive power of industry was greater.”

“ Yes, I admit that ;  but it only intensifies the wrong conditions.  If the reverse were true—if all wealth was shrinking—no man could complain because he suffered his just share of the universal calamity.  And if labor, from some cause, produced only one-tenth as much as it did thirty or fifty years ago, the laborer would be ashamed to protest.  But when those who produce the wealth do not get all, or even a reasonable part, of what they create ;  but, on the contrary, find what they have is slipping away from them, then it is no wonder they complain.  The only wonder is that they are as patient as they are.  The intelligent laborer says to himself :  ‘ This machine I am using enables me to do ten times as much work as formerly, but I do not get ten times as much pay ;  I do not get even as much as I did then.  And there are a hundred unemployed men hanging around the factory doors, or looking in at the windows, with eager, hungry faces, ready to take my place if I object, and work for less than I require to support myself and family.’ ”

“ But that is the great law of supply and demand,” said Mr. Hutchinson.  “ You might just as well try to amend the attraction of gravitation by an act of the legislature, as to interfere with a great economic law.  Competition must necessarily force down wages, according to the - iron law of wages,’ to the lowest point of compensation for which the laborer will be able to live, perform his work and raise another to take his place when his time has come.  This rule runs through all nature.  Darwin calls it the ‘ survival of the fittest.’  The man who can work for fifty cents a day survives the man who works for a dollar a day ;  and the man who will work for twenty-five cents a day will take the place of the man who will not work for less than fifty cents.”

“ Precisely,” said the other, “ and the man who will work for ten cents must eventually supplant the man who asks for a quarter.”

“ Exactly.”

“ And there is no limit to it ? ”

“ None whatever.  The operation of the law is inflexible and inexorable.”

“ Then it follows that as the great mass of mankind are toilers with muscles, the great mass of mankind must be reduced to the lowest possible condition compatible with continued existence ? ”

“ Of course.”

“ So that the Chinaman who works for six cents a day and lives on a diet of rice, flavored with an occasional rat, is a type of what the American citizen of the producing class is to be in the near future ? ”

“ It seems so ;  the law is inflexible.”

“ But does not Darwin admit that the human race, by reason of its intelligence, rises above the limitations of his great theory ?  He shows that the too great increase of the lower animals has, for countless ages, been kept in check by the wild beasts that preyed upon them, and by the contagious diseases which infected them.  But man, with his big, active, bold, cunning brain, proceeded to exterminate, by pitfalls, arrows, spears, snares, poisons, the wild beasts, until he has driven them off three-fourths of the earth’s surface.  He turned the tables on them ;  and instead of their living off him and his offspring, he dragged their carcasses and those of their young into his den or cave, and dined upon them.

“ And of late years his masterful intellect and keen penetration has led him to discover the minute forms of life, which, swarming in his system, produce what we call diseases ;  and he is able now to check their ravages ;  even to set one kind of microscopic creature to pursue and devour another ;  so that plagues which formerly swept whole continents nearly bare of human inhabitants are now comparatively harmless.

“ Thus, you perceive, that the doctrine of ‘ the survival of the fittest ’ does not stand when it comes in conflict with human intelligence.  Go look at the huge bones of the monstrous lions, tigers, wolves and bears found in the caves of Europe.  Where are their progeny to-day ?  There is none.  They are exterminated.  Then look around for the posterity of the naked savages, armed with clubs and flint weapons, who exterminated them, and you behold the swarming, cultured, highly-civilized inhabitants of London, Paris and Berlin.  Primitive man had not the size of his giant foes, nor their strength, nor their swiftness, but he had intellect, and to intellect all laws yield.

“ Man not only exterminated the wild animals, but he has put bits in the mouths of the cruel aristocracy which once made him a slave ;  and he crossed the wide Atlantic to found a government on this continent from which all that cruel breed of beasts might be excluded.

“ And, if necessary, the free man will exterminate any new aristocracy which may rise up to reduce him to universal poverty, (to six cents a day and rice and rats), just as he blotted out the fierce creatures of prehistoric times.  Your philosophers may speculate about your great economic laws, under which the majority are to be enslaved by the minority ;  but the highest law on this earth is the law of the human intelligence, which bends all things to itself, and which claims for each a fair share of the joys and blessing of life.

‘ This will footpath all your seas ;
Will track your lightning to its lair of cloud,
Lay flat your forests ;  master, with a frown,
Your lion in his fasting ;  and fetch down
Your eagle flying.’”

The speaker’s eyes flashed as he spoke, and Mr. Hutchinson looked at him with astonishment.  He was a revelation to him.  He thought what would not ten million men accomplish who felt as this man did—even if they could not express themselves as clearly.

“ But, my dear sir,” he said, “ is your view of life the correct one ?  Does hot the patience with which the lower classes sink into servitude, all over the world, and humbly submit to their lot, show that they are not entitled to anything better ?  Must there not be a cultured, intelligent class, for whom the good things of this world are intended ?  These are the men who encourage and reward art ;  who read the books of the great authors ;  who cultivate science ;  purchase the works of the immortal painters ;  build opera houses and listen to the distinguished musicians ;  these are the representatives of the highest civilization.”

“ Very true,” replied the other, “ but we differ as to how extensive that class should be.  You would confine it to the money-dealers and their families—a few thousand in number.  We believe that, under a proper system of government, the great bulk of mankind can be brought up to that level.  We recognize the fact that the mental qualities which give a man success, in this scramble for spoil, are the very things which unfit him and his breed to play the part of public exemplars of a generous age.  You cannot make a race of artists, statesmen or philanthropists of a people who have achieved success simply because there was in their blood an inherited monkey-like instinct to grab everything their paws could reach.

“ And, when you come to consider it, how shallow appear the vanities of the greatly rich.  A man cannot eat more than a reasonable quantity of plain food, except at the cost of his health and the shortening of his life.  He cannot drink anything but pure and simple beverage without disordering his system, producing sickness, and hurrying himself into the grave.  We read that one of the Rothschilds, possessed of immense wealth, was taken sick, not long since, and sent for the best doctor he could find.  The doctor told him the impairment of his health was due to his riches and high living, and that if he would live, he must cast aside his possessions, so far as his personal enjoyment was concerned, and come down to the condition of the beggar that begs from door to door.  Rothschild concluded that life without luxury was preferable to a death bed with millions ;  and so he is seen, barefooted and bareheaded, tramping the roads of his estate and living on bread and milk.  That is all he can get out of life, despite his vast wealth.  That is all Christ and Socrates had—but how different the results of their life-work.  They blessed, and benefited mankind by their example and teachings, while every Rothschild that has ever lived has simply degraded humanity and lessened its happiness.

“ And what is it to gather around one a great variety of decorations and adornments—to rest their superiority upon the gimcrackery they can collect.  Is the interior spirit greatened by piling on its temporary shell a heap of things for which it has no use whatever ?  A man cannot wear more than one suit of clothes at a time if he has a thousand.  The distinguished family of Ten Broeck, so we are told, takes its name from the fact that the original ancestor was the proud possessor of ten pairs of breeches, which he wore all at the same time !  Here is your true aristocrat.  Observe the breechless fellows—the savages—looking on him with envy or reverence.

“ Human happiness, in this degenerate age, seems to consist in having what somebody else wants ;  and the more urgently they want it the keener is the satisfaction of the fellow who withholds it.  Ten Broeck may be inconvenienced by trying to locomote encased in those ten pairs of breeches, but how delighted he is to think that the ten savages have not even a breechcloth to cover their nakedness.  That compensates him for the chafing of his legs.  He would fight to the death rather than divide with the breechesless ones.  And his posterity was so proud of the fact that he had ten pairs of breeches, and wore them all at once, that they represented the distinction in the family name ;  and there it will stand as long as one of the breed survives.  There you have a type of the true monopolist—to hold on to something, for vanity sake or selfishness, which is of no use to him and a veritable injury to retain.  If Jay Gould had been content with $l00,000 instead of $100,000,000, he would probably have lived twenty years longer.  He rotted prematurely to obtain that which enslaved and destroyed him, and which he had to leave behind.  If the soul retains consciousness and the passions of this life, how wretched must be the feelings of the spirit of one who has lived purely to plunder his fellow men, to realize that he has no pockets under his wings, and that his ghostly fingers can grab and carry away nothing ?  Although his impalpable substance may pass into the treasure vaults of the world ;  the gold, the silver, the jewels are safe from his greed.  He will look upon the poor man at work in the fields and weep to think that no longer can he compel him to work for his profit.  He will see the trooping millions of men and women going to their daily work, and tear his hair with rage, to think that while they are plundered of all but a bare subsistence he can get none of the spoil.

“ And then, if the ghost takes any interest in posterity, how it must agonize him to see the possessions, which he sacrificed everything to collect, squandered by the vice and shallowness of his posterity ;  or to observe that the same greed, which in him, directed by shrewdness and cunning, gave him fortune, misdirected in his children or his children’s children is leading them to crime and the prison and the scaffold ;  for an evil nature is more certain to descend from generation to generation than the millions which he left them.

“ The gospel of grab, incited by vanity, will eventuate in ridiculous vanity when the necessity to grab is gone ;  and the posterity of the successful adventurer will signalize themselves with antics of pretension that would disgrace a couple of gorillas.

“ The best testimony to the shallowness of the qualities which make men rich is the character of their offspring.  Look at the English nobility which, in these latter days, is principally of plutocratic origin :

“ ‘ Brewers and bakers, men of hideous omen,
Auriferous fellows of immense abdomen,
Flashy directors with their diamond rings—
Such is the sum of our six hundred kings.’

“ And see the breed of cattle they are producing—the Oscar Wildes and the Queensberry stock—guilty of practices which a brute beast would be incapable of.  Are we to exchange the glorious dreams of the poets and philanthropists, of a universal lifting up of the whole human family, for a few thousand bestial and degraded creatures like these ?  Shall we turn back the wheels of time and destroy our splendid civilization, and concentrate the sun’s energies and God’s largesses in raising up a lot of Sodomites ?

“ The noblest sight that is unrolled beneath the eyes of the Creator is a mighty concourse of people, none vastly rich, none greatly poor, but all intelligent, educated, industrious ;  gaining abundance by honest toil ;  with none to despoil them, none to molest or make them afraid ;  but each and all loving man and praising God.  This is a picture over which the angels hang with delight, and which lights up the face of Divinity with smiles.  This is a grander sight than all the hundreds of millions of suns of the universe.

“ But how dreadful is the picture when that vast concourse of the world’s inhabitants are like martyrs in a pit, with the lions and tigers of greed and cunning and cruelty leaping upon and devouring them, while the ground is wet with their blood, and the heavens ring with their pitiful lamentations.  And that is the condition of the great mass of mankind to-day.  In their horrible distress they faint and die ;  nay, they kill each other ;  they even cut and stab and mangle themselves to escape out of this sentient world, which God had intended shall be so gracious and beautiful.

“ And how dreadful is it to think that a race of beings so capable, so masterful,

“ ‘ The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals,,

“ who have conquered wind and waves and heat and cold, and made them their instruments ;  who have dug out of the bosom of patient nature her hidden and secret powers and make them lightning-like servants ;  who have chained steam and electricity, and sent them, like the genii of Arabian fable, over all the globe, annihilating time and space.  How dreadful, I say, is it that this superb race of demi-gods should fall down into the abyss like a trapped lion, and lie there wounded and howling ? ”

“ Your picture, my friend,” said the banker, “ is strongly drawn, but it is an exaggeration.  Mankind is not in such a lost condition as you represent.  But suppose it is, are not the results unavoidable ?  Is it not the work of Providence ?  Are the rich responsible for the evil state of the world ? ”

“ It angers me,” said the other, “ to hear the sins and blunders of men laid on the shoulders of Omnipotence.

“ ‘ The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.’

“ I believe it is in the power of man to make this earth a paradise or a hell.  I believe the resources of this planet are adequate to support in the highest degree of comfort fifty times the population that now inhabits it.  It is God’s intention that we should reach that elevated condition ;  but he has given us intelligence and he expects us to work out the problem for ourselves.  He will not save us by old-fashioned miracles.  When he intervenes it is through the minds of men—in great tidal waves of universal feelings,—and in our vanity we think we did it all ourselves.

“ ‘ It is the glory of God to conceal a thing and the glory of man to find it out ? ’

“ But I see the porter is looking over his nose at us, and thinks we ought to go to bed.”

“ Well, let us retire, ” said Mr. Hutchinson, “ and we will renew the conversation in the morning.  I am interested in your views, although I am sure you are altogether wrong.  Good night.”

“ Good night.”