SEVEN FINANCIAL CONSPIRACIES

CHAPTER VI.
REFUNDING.

THE next and fifth step in the infernal scheme was that of refunding the national debt.  Few people ever comprehended the enormity of that crime, and never was there a deeper laid plot to reduce a people to abject and hopeless servitude.

This act, approved July 14, 1870, provided for the refunding of the national debt.  In other words, it was a scheme to perpetuate the debt and a plot against the people to keep them forever under the yoke of bondage.  Webster’s definition of the funding system fully expresses the design of Congress in passing this act ;  he says :  To fund—to put into the form of bonds or stocks bearing annual interest.  To refund is to renew these bonds or stocks, perhaps under a new contract, which changes the rate of interest, though the interest continues.  Funding system is “a scheme of finance or revenue by which provision is made for paying annual interest on a public debt.” Mark you, it is a scheme, and no provision is made for paying the debt itself.  The refunding of this bonded, untaxed, interest-bearing debt is a calamity upon this people, for it has placed the burden beyond the control of the generation that created it ;  we have already paid interest enough to have twice paid the debt, and yet today it is a greater burden upon the people than it was at the close of the war.

The evil effects of this system are at this time especially apparent.  With money enough in the treasury today half the public debt, the people are debarred this privilege, because the villainous act of refunding has postponed the time of payment from ten to twenty years.  In consequence of this nefarious act, about $750,000,000 of the debt cannot be paid until 1907.

Consequently, with an enormous sum of money lying idle in the treasury (or what is still more intolerable, deposited with national banks which have been granted its free use for more than twenty years) the people are not only deprived of its use in their business, but are still compelled to pay interest upon the entire amount.

Now, would you have any confidence in the business ability of a man who would so arrange a large indebtedness that he should continue to pay interest upon the entire debt after he had accumulated the means for liquidating a large part of it ?  And yet this is the very policy embodied in the funding act of 1870.  And further, the same party that enacted this law is today putting forth every effort for the expenditure of this surplus, in any and every other way then that of liquidating the national debt.  The Direct Tax bill, the Educational bill, the River and Harbor bills, the Pension bills, bills to provide for coast defences, and other innumerable bills for disposing of the surplus are, in the main, schemes concocted for the sole purpose of using this surplus in such a way as to prevent the payment of the bonds and to continue the infernal system of taxation which is wringing the life blood from the people, and which affords the only plausible pretext for maintaining party lines between the two old organizations.

But this is not all ;  during the present session of Congress, the indomitable Weaver has made the startling discovery that this funding bill never passed Congress in the form in which it appears upon the statute books.  By the changing of a single word the import of the entire bill was so changed as to make the four per cent bonds payable only after thirty years, instead of previous to that time.  The anarchism of 1887, under its worst construction, sinks into insignificance before the light of such diabolical assassination of law.

The object of funding our debt was to establish a bond system on the same plan of England’s bonded debt.  England’s debt, which commenced with the same infamous banking system which we have adopted, was established two centuries ago.  The interest on her debts supports a few idle aristocrats, but it has reduced to ignorance and degradation millions of her toiling people.  Another object of funding our debt was to build up a moneyed oligarchy, and an aristocracy of wealth to compete with that of our ancient foe.

That those who have long controlled our government are determined to carry out their plan does not admit the slighest doubt.  The bill of Congressman White, now pending, to refund the entire national debt into a fifty-year 2½ per cent bond, also the bill of Senator Farwell to perpetuate the national banks, adds to the evidences of their determination to saddle this interminable burden upon the American people.

There is but one interpretation to the funding act ;  its object is to compel our children and children’s children, through all generations, to serve the children of these bond holders.  Voter, is this the legacy you intended to bequeath to your children ?  Is this the liberty they are to thank their fathers for ?  Born slaves to aristocrats !  And yet this is the inheritance the money king would bequeath to the posterity of labor in America ;  this is what the old parties are asking you to do ;  this is what for twenty-five years you have been doing, bartering away this blood-bought inheritance, selling the birth-rights of your children.  And what have you received in return ?  Mortgaged homes, endless taxes, unremitting and unrequited toil.  Is this any better than the inheritance of slaves ?  And will you permit this bondage to continue ?  Are the ties of party so dear that liberty, home and family must be sacrificed upon its altar ?  In the name of your homes and the children that bless them ;  in the name of thousands of homes, and tens of thousands of wrecked and ruined lives I entreat you to break this party thralldom and smite down this iniquitous legislation.