Brann the Iconoclast Volume 12 Part 21

In tracing the causes of panics and periods of business depression, we invariably find our currency more or less at fault. Now don't get frightened. I'm not going to dose you with free silver nor give you the gold cure. This is neither Coin's Financial School nor a gold-bug incubator.

The currency question is one you know all about. Everybody does--especially the corner-grocery politician. He understands it from A to Izzard--knows almost as much about it as a h.e.l.lo-girl does of the nature of electricity.

Prof. Jevon truly says that "a kind of intellectual vertigo appears to seize people when they talk of money." Perhaps the G.o.ddess of Liberty on the silver dollar has 'em Trilbyized.

We hear a great deal of late about the "science of money." It's supposed to be something very esoteric-- something that a fellow can only master by drawing heavily on his gray matter, by working his think-machine up to the limit and sweating blood. Now let me tell you that there is no "science of money," any more than there's a science of harvesting hoop poles or fighting flies. When a man begins to give you an interminable song and dance about the science of money, just you send for the police and have him locked up as a dangerous lunatic.

Here's a ticket good for so many meals at a restaurant --an order for so much wealth; and here's a silver dollar --no 'tisn't; it's a check on a--er--on a "resort"; in fact, on a saloon; an I.O.U. for 11 cents, the price of a cigar--or something--I suppose. "Man should not live by bread alone." Now what's the difference between this ticket and check and the currency issued by the government?

Simply this: These are the I.O.U.'s of individual's money, the I.O.U.'s of the entire American people. These are orders for certain kinds of wealth at particular places; money is an order for all kinds of wealth at any place within the jurisdiction of the federal government. This ticket is the check of one American, drawn against his personal wealth and credit; this bill is the check of all Americans, drawn against the collective wealth and credit of the nation. That's all the difference between a c.o.c.ktail check and a coin, between a meal ticket and a ten dollar bill. Neither is worth a rap unless it can be REDEEMED. Like sanctification caught at a camp-meeting, there must be a hereafter to it or its a humbug. But don't you metallists take that as a premise and jump at conclusions or you're liable to sprain your logical sequence.

What kind of redemption did I have in view when I acquired this che--I mean this ticket? I expected that it would be redeemed in something that would expand my surcingle and enable me to cast a shadow--in eggs and oleomargarine, corn-bread and b.u.t.termilk. And if so redeemed on demand, is it not a GOOD TICKET--is it not WORTH ITS FACE? What kind of redemption did I expect when I acquired this bill? I expected it to be redeemed in the necessaries of life--or possibly the luxuries. Who issued it? The government. Who's the government?

The people. And when the people have given me bread and b.u.t.ter, tobacco and transportation, clothing and c.o.c.ktails, and afforded me police protection to the extent of my ten dollars hasn't it been REDEEMED in the manner I antic.i.p.ated--in the only way in which money can be redeemed? If I exchange this bill for a gold eagle what have I got? Another governmental drink-check or meal- ticket that awaits redemption. And there you have the whole "science of money," over which politicians have so long puzzled their brains that their think-tanks have got full of logical wiggletails. A dollar, whether it be made of gold, silver or paper, is simply an order which the people in their official capacity give against all the wealth, actual and potential, of the nation; and unless the holder can get it promptly redeemed in food and clothing, he's in a terribly bad fix.

Every few years our industrial system gets the jim-jams.

Capital flies to cover, factories close and labor goes tramping across the country seeking honest employment and receiving a warm welcome--from militia companies with shotted guns. Cheerful idiots begin to prattle of "over- production," the economic M.D.'s to refurbish all the old remedies, from conjure bags to communism. They all know exactly what caused the "crisis" and what to do for it; but despite the doctors the patient usually--survives.

And the M.D. who succeeds in cramming his pet panacea down its throat claims all the credit for the recovery. We are slowly emerging from the crash of '93, and the cuckoos are c.o.c.k-sure that Cleveland hoodooed with that financial rabbit-foot known as the gold-reserve--that a country fairly bursting with wealth was saved from the demnition bowwows by the blessed expedient of going into debt; that labor found salvation by shouldering an added burden in the shape of interest-bearing bonds. Hereafter when a burro tries to lie down beneath a load that's making him bench-legged, we'll just pile a brick house or two on top of him, and, with ears and tail erect, he'll strike a Nancy Hanks gait and come cavorting down the home stretch.

When a statesman can see such things as that while wide awake and perfectly sober, he ought to consult a doctor.

No wonder the Democratic party spilt wide open--transformed from an ascendent sun into a bifurcated Biela's comet, wandering the Lord knows whither.

The gold reserve, we are told, is to "protect the credit of our currency." Protect it from whom? You and I are making no a.s.sault upon it--wouldn't hurt it for the world. When we get a paper or silver dollar we don't trot around to the treasury to have it "redeemed" in a slug of yellow metal--we make a bee line for the grocery store and have it redeemed in a side o' bacon. Who is it that chisels desolation into the blessed gold reserve--the so- called "bulwarks of our currency?" The fellows who want bonds--the capitalistic, the creditor cla.s.s; the men who own the mortgages and have millions of dollars corded up in bank--the men who have most to LOSE by any bobble in the credit of our currency. And every time the capitalist tries to hoist himself with his own petard, the administration smothers the blaze with a block of interest- bearing bonds. If he wants to make a sky-rocket of himself, let him kerosene his coat-tails and apply the match.

If the gold reserve were really necessary to the credit of our currency, capitalists would no more make war upon it than they would bestride a buzz-saw making a million revolutions a minute. Instead of systematically draining it they would, whenever it struck "the danger-line,"

gather all the gold they could get and send it on to Washington. The capitalists are not crazy; they've simply got a soft snap in that "bulwark" business and are working it for an it's worth.

Calico is sold by the yard, kerosene by the gallon, coffee by the pound. These measures are immutable, and those who buy and sell by them make their contract in perfect confidence. But suppose they altered from day to day or from year to year,--the yard ranging from 25 to 50 inches, the pound from 10 to 20 ounces; would our exchanges be effected without much friction, think you?

Would not such a ridiculous system of weights and measures paralyze exchange and demoralize industry?

Would not those who could juggle the system to suit themselves--buying by a long and selling by a short yard-- acc.u.mulate colossal fortunes at the expense of the common people? Would we not have "panics" in plenty and "depressions" galore? Well, that is exactly what is happening to the dollar, our measure of value, the most important of all our trade tools. And mark you, a change in the purchasing power of the dollar is equivalent to an alteration of every weight and measure employed by commerce. Understand? When the purchasing power of the dollar expands or contracts it has the same effect on exchange as would the expansion or contraction of the yard, the gallon and the pound.

A shifting measure of value is the n.i.g.g.e.r in our industrial woodpile. We have got to have a measure of value that's as immutable as our measure of quant.i.ty; a dollar as reliable as an official pound; a dollar that's the same yesterday, and to-day and forever, before we see the last of these panics and periods of business depression. We have got to have a currency that will adapt itself automatically and infallibly to the requirements of commerce-- that will const.i.tute an ever-effective exchange medium-- before we can obtain a smooth working industrial machine and the maximum employment of labor.

We know from experience that gold will not supply us with such a currency, that silver will not do it, that bi- metallism will not do it--that greenbackism, as we understand the term, will not come within a mile of it. Then what will do it? That's the problem. Solve it, and you forever put an end to commercial panics in a land of plenty; you deprive capital of its power to oppress labor; you a.s.sure industry a constant friend where it has so often found an insidious foe. Solve it and Columbia can furnish happy homes for half the world--homes unhaunted by the wolf of want, but crowned with sweet content and gilded with freedom's glory.

For a century economists have been seeking the solution of this all-important problem. Even conservative old Adam Smith dreamed of the emanc.i.p.ation of the world from the multifarious ills of metallic money; but we still cling with slavish servility to the silver of Abraham and the gold of Solomon.

I do not claim to have found the philosopher's stone, for which so many wiser men have sought in vain; but the currency plan I proposed in 1891--and which was again outlined in the ICONOCLAST for May of this year--has been carefully examined by the ablest financiers of Europe and America, and they have been unable to point out a fundamental fault. It is known as the interconvertible bond-currency plan, by which our circulating media would be bottomed on the entire wealth of the nation instead of upon fragments of metal of fluctuating value; by which the volume of the currency would depend, not upon the fecundity of the mines, the fiat of Congress or the greed of Wall street, but upon the needs of commerce itself.

By this plan the proportion between the money-work to be done and the money available to do it is always the same; hence it would afford an immutable measure of value. In studying the plan it is well to bear in mind that our foreign trade--that bogy man of the metallists--has no more to do with our currency than with our pint cups and bushel- baskets--no more than with our language and religion; that we can pay our foreign debts and collect our foreign credits only in commodities; that the prattle indulged in by the metallists anent "money that is good the world over" is mere goose-speech--that there is no such money.

We buy and sell with England and France to the extent of tens of millions annually; yet I haven't seen a British guinea or a French franc in fifteen years. And if you had a foreign coin and should go around to a resort, and call for a gla.s.s of--er--of b.u.t.termilk, and plank the little stranger down on the counter, the party in the white ap.r.o.n and Alaska dazzler would say:

"Wot yer givin' us?"

You'd reply: "I'm givin you gold--money good the world over."

"Wot is it--watch charm? Dis ain't no p.a.w.n shop."

"But that's money."

"Eh?"

"Money--gold coin that maketh the heart glad."

"Wot kind o' money?"

"It's a British guinea."

"Well, why don't you go to Great Britain to blow yourself?"

"But my dear sir, this is money of final payment. This is value itself. This does not depend on the stamp of government, but circulates throughout the world on its intrinsic merit."

"Well, it don't circulate in this joint. See?"

Slam your THEORIES up against CONDITIONS before you tie to them.

You all know that in this country there should be no such thing as able-bodied pauperism. You know that until the last arable acre is brought to the highest possible cultivation, every mine developed, every forest made to contribute to the creature comfort of man, there should be remunerative work for all. You know that, with the aid of wealth-creating machinery every laborer should be able to acquire a competence to comfort his declining days.

You know that until Need is satisfied and Greed is gorged there can be no such thing as overproduction--that under normal conditions when there's a plethora of necessaries, the surplus energy of the nation turns to the creation of luxuries and the standard of living advances. You know that with such wonderful resources, touched by the magic wand of genius, the golden age of which poets have dreamed and for which philanthropists have prayed, should be even at our doors.

I hope to contribute in some slight degree to the establishment of conditions that will enable us to utilize to the utmost the free gifts of a gracious G.o.d; to the proper distribution of wealth; to the emanc.i.p.ation of labor, not by the law of blind force, but enlightened self-interest--not by riotous revolution, but peaceful evolution. I want to see every American Citizen in very truth a Sovereign, to whom life is a joy instead of a curse. I want to see every rag transformed into a royal robe, every hovel into a cultured home. I want to hasten, if by ever so little, the day when we can boast with the proud sons of imperial Rome, that to be an American is greater than to be a king.

And when we so amend industrial conditions that each can find employment at profitable prices, we do more to eliminate crime and foster morality than have all the prophets and preachers, from Melchizedeck the mythical to Talmage the turgid.

No man can be either a patriot or a consistent Christian on an empty stomach--he's merely a savage animal, a dangerous beast. You must get a square meal inside of a man and a clean shirt outside of him before he's fit subject for saving grace. You must give him a bath before he's worth baptizing. And when you get him clean and well clothed, fed and housed as a reward of his own honest industry, he's not far from the Kingdom of G.o.d. But if you want to degrade a people beyond redemption; if you want to transform them into contemptible peons and whining hypocrites who enc.u.mber the earth like so much unclean vermin, educate them to feed on the crumbs from Dives' banquet-board and accept his cast-off clothing with obsequious thankfulness.

The concentration of wealth in the hands of the few and the impoverishment of the common people until it was the bread of charity or the blood of the revolution, has ever been the herald of moral decay and of national death. So pa.s.sed the glory of Greece and the grandeur of Rome, and, if we may judge the future by the past, so will perish the greatest republic that ever gleamed like a priceless jewel on the skeleton hand of Time. Self-interest, humanity, patriotism, religion itself, admonish us to weigh well the problem of the hour--a problem born of human progress, forced upon us by the mighty revolution wrought in the industrial world by the giant Steam--and that problem is: Shall the average American Citizen be a Slave or a Sovereign?

Don't imagine for a moment that I'm an anarchist-- that I'm going to wind up this seance by unfurling the red flag and throwing a hatful of bombs. I admit that I haven't much respect for law--there's so much of it that when I come to spread my respect over the entire lot it's about as thin as one of Sam Jones's sermons. Still, I don't believe in strikes, and riots and bloodshed. I'm for peace --peace in its most virulent form. I've had a sneaking respect for Cleveland ever since he employed a subst.i.tute to put a kibosh on the Southern Confederacy while he remained at home to play pinochle with the pretty girls. He may not be much of a statesman in time of peace, but there's no picnic ants on his judgment in time of war.

It is time that capital and labor realized that their interests are really commutual, as interdependent as the brain and the body; time they ceased their fratricidal strife and, uniting their mighty forces under the flag of Progress, completed the conquest of the world and doomed Poverty, Ignorance and Vice--h.e.l.l's great triumvirate--to banishment eternal. Unless labor is employed, capital cannot increase--it can only concentrate. Unless property rights are held inviolable and capital thereby encouraged to high enterprise, labor is left without a lever with which to lift itself to perfect life and must sink back to barbarism.

It is time that American citizens of alleged intelligence ceased trailing blindly in the wake of partisan band- wagons and began to seriously consider the public welfare --time they realized that the people were not made for parties, but parties for the people, and refuse to sacrifice their patriotism on the unclean altar of partisan slavery.

Blind obedience to party fiat; the division of the people of one great political family into hostile camps; subjection of the public interest to partisan advantage; placing the badge of party servitude above the crown of American sovereignty--the ridiculous oriflamme of foolish division above Old Glory's star-gemmed promise of everlasting unity--have brought the first nation of all world to the very brink of destruction.

It is difficult for people here in Texas to understand the industrial condition of the American nation today; to appreciate the dangers upon which it is drifting. We are too apt to imagine everybody as prosperous and conservative as ourselves; or if not so, it's because they do not vote the Democratic ticket--that panacea for all the ills that flesh is heir to. Here in Texas we have hung our second providence on the Democratic party--it has become a religion with us. If a man is orthodox in his political faith all things are forgiven him; but if there's any doubt about his Democracy we are inclined to regard him as an alien, if not an anarchist. Most of us enjoy the shadow of our own vine and fig tree--which it is impossible to mortgage. We feed three times a day, have a c.o.c.ktail every morning, a clean shirt occasionally and even when cotton goes so low it doesn't pay for the paris-green to poison the worms, we blame it on the Lord instead of on our political leaders. But it's different in other sections of the Union.

America contains more than a million as desperate men as ever danced the Carmagnole or shrieked with brutal joy when the blood of French aristocrats reddened the guillotine. The dark alleys and unclean dives of our great cities are crowded with dangerous sans-culotte, and our highways with hungry men eager for bread--though the world blaze for it. Pauperism is rampant, the criminal cla.s.ses increasing and everywhere the serpent of Socialism is leaving it's empoisoned slime. Suppose that these desperate elements find a determined leader--a modern Marat, who will make the most of his opportunities for evil: how many of that vast contingent now clinging with feeble grasp to the rotten skirts of a doubtful respectability, would be swept into the seething vortex of unbridled villainy? Note the failure of public officials to protect corporate property; the necessity of calling for federal bayonets and batteries to suppress labor riots; the dangerous unrest of the common people; the sympathy of the farmer--that Atlas upon whose broad shoulders rests our political and industrial world--with every quasi-military organization that throws down the gage of battle to the powers that be, then tell me, if you can, where Dives may look for defenders should the rabble rise in its wrath, the bullet supplant the ballot in the irrepressible conflict between the Cormorant and the Commune! And what are we doing to avert the danger? Distributing a little dole and preaching patience to starving people; quarreling about the advisability of "counting a quorum" or coining a little silver seigniorage; wrangling over the "rights" of a mid-Pacific prost.i.tute to rule Celts and Saxons, and trying to so "reform" the tariff that it will yield more revenue with less taxation! We are bowing down before various pie-hunting political G.o.ds and electing men to Congress who couldn't tell the Federal Const.i.tution from Calvin's Confession of Faith. We are sending street- corner economists to state and national conventions to evolve from their innate ignorance and gild with their supernal gall political platforms which we are pledged beforehand to accept as the essence of all worldly wisdom.

Our patriotism has been supplanted by partisanship, and now all are for a party and none are for the state. On July 4 we shout for the old flag and all the rest of the year we clamor for an appropriation. The man who is kicked by a nightmare while dreaming of the draft demands a pension and every burning patriot wants an office.

And while our ship of state is threading with unsteady course the stormy straits between the Scylla of Greed and the Charybdis of Need; its canvas torn by contending winds; its decks swept by angry waves, we boast of the strength of our "free inst.i.tutions"--as though Republics had never fallen nor revolutions erased from the map of the world proud Empires that imagined themselves immortal.

But before G.o.d I do believe this selfish and unpatriotic age will pa.s.s, as pa.s.sed the age of brutish ignorance, as pa.s.sed the age of tyranny. I believe the day will come-- oh blessed dawn!--when the angel of Intellect will banish the devil of Demagogy; when Americans will be in spirit and in truth a band of brothers, the wrongs of one the concern of all; when labor will no longer fear the Cormorant nor capital the Commune--when all men will be equal before the law wherever falls the shadow of our flag.

RAINBOW-CHASERS.

[This is the lecture that Mr. Brann delivered and was to continue on his lecture tour, which was cut short by his death.]

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: There are many things which I very cordially dislike; but my pet aversion is what is known as a "set" lecture--one of those stereotyped affairs that are ground out with studied inflection and practiced gesture and suggest the grinding of Old Hundred on a hurdy- gurdy; hence I shall ask permission to talk to you tonight as informally and as freely as though we were seated in friendly converse around the soda fount of a Kansas drug store; and I want you to feel as free to talk back as though we had gotten into this difficulty by accident instead of design. Ask me all the questions you want to, and if I'm unable to answer offhand I'll look the matter up later and telegraph you--at your expense. With such unbounded liberty there's really no telling whither we will drift, what subjects we may touch upon; but should I inadvertently trample upon any of your social idols or political G.o.ds, I trust that you will take no offense--will remember that we may honestly differ, that none of us are altogether infallible. Lest any of you should mistake me for an oratorical clearing-sale or elocutionary bargain- counter, expect a Demosthenic display and be disappointed, I hasten to say that I am no orator as Brutus was, but simply a plain, blunt man, like Mark Antony, who spoke right on and said what he did know, or thought he knew, which was just as satisfactory to himself. He's dead now, poor fellow! Woman in the case, of course.

Shakespeare a.s.sures us that "men have died from time to time and worms have eaten them, but not for love." However that may be, Antony's just as dead as though he had died for love--or become a gold-bug "Democrat." Yes, Mark Antony's gone, but we still have Mark Hanna. One threw the world away for Cleopatra's smile, the other threw Columbia's smile away for a seat in the Senate, and so it goes. Of the two Marks, I think Antony was the easiest.