Confiscation; An Outline Part 3

The millionaire merchant will doubtless take advantage of his right to divide his business among his relatives and friends. Naturally they would give him the management, but the instinct to be master is strong within us all, and this would soon break up and scatter that dangerous acc.u.mulation. Then there would be more Market streets and Broadways.

Every dollar of business that would be taken from the one or two princ.i.p.al thoroughfares, which is all that is now found in any of the cities, would mean an increase of value in the property of the street where this transfer business is carried on. And this increase in the value of city property would continue on out to the city's limits; and the limits themselves would be extended further out to find room for habitable homes for the human beings that are supposed to live in the tenements. There can be no question but what merchandising would spread itself more over the cities if this limited ownership of capital was in force; and this spreading out will give employment to all in bringing about the change; and prosperity, such as goes with plenty of work, will take the place of the wretched misery and want that now fill all the soup-house infected cities of the country. There will be no impairment in the value or need of the big "dailies" that are published in these centres of population. They will simply be owned by more people and read by more, and the improvement in the times being of a stable and permanent character their circulation will be free from the rise and fall with which they are now only to well acquainted, and the cheap-John business into which so many have gone, in the last few years, wheedling the ten cents and the dollars out of the child-like poor for worthless truck, can be thrown into the waste basket with the last offer of money for a Wall Street editorial. It is a mistake, by the way, to think we are a nation of readers. Man is an interesting animal where-ever found, the desire to know what he has done and is doing is strong in us all, but even the little county paper is beyond the reach of many. The writer, who is a common toiler like the rest, finds the moving world a sealed book to him, for he cannot spare the needed dollar, and live. And those editors who will fiercely rend and tear, with all the power of their trained brains and skilled pens, at this vital need of our times may live to see the day when they too will believe this world is round, and that calling the original believers fools, thieves, scoundrels, rascals, and enemies to civilization was a repet.i.tion of an old mistake.

It will be the day when they can be our guides, philosophers, and friends without the itching palm stuck out behind. It will be the day when we can accept, without doubt or a curl of the lip, the admonition.

from the sixteen stories of steel, because we will then know, that the conscience of the man within is not itself all awry.

To whatever cause the existing rot is chargeable the editor, at least of all others, had the power to stop or check it, and failure to meet this great responsibility shows that the strut of this great personage is a.s.sumed, and that, like the rest, his necessities have been used by the master to bend and break him till he no longer dare call his soul his own.

We can expect the screech of this helpless tool to fill the land as his desperate master nags him on in the revolution that is coming.

VII.

The mammoth hotel where the parasite of greater or lesser degree sojourns, where the popping corks of the costly imported champagne is heard, can still be a hotel, but the profits of its millions of invested capital must no longer he taken away by one or two men and it therefore must have many more owners than it has now. It, too, must go to the people, if its millionaire owner can find no more relations to share with and begins to suspect his "friends" of having had a hand in bringing about the upheaval. And if the "plain" people never expect to enjoy the material results of the inventive wit of man as they are focused within its luxurious interior, they at least have some reason for being satisfied when they know that the profits will stay where they were made and help those who made them. This reference to hotels brings to mind a corroborative fact that proves the charge we make when we say that all these colossal fortunes are nothing more than the acc.u.mulations of able rascality of some form or other: bilking, cornering, lobbying, watering stock, or charging all the traffic will bear.

The Palace Hotel in San Francisco was built by a speculator and floater of mining shares, and cost millions that he cashed in, after cleaning out the simple minded laborer and servant girl, whom he deluded, with all the art known to his tribe, into believing that there was still more for their rainy day if they would only invest the little they already had.

The law makes a felon of the rascal with the bogus gold brick, but that clumsy worker in the field of robbery does not get the returns which the scienced work of his brother professional brings in; therefore, when outraged law gives this petty malefactor the knock-out blow, the satisfied spectators, chattering about the majesty of something, depart and the curtain is rung down on another exhibition of what the American people are said to like - namely, humbug. Let us say in pa.s.sing, that the American does not like humbug. Take the average of him as he is found in the little world in which the routine work of his life is done and you will find him alert and close enough to deal with, and that in all things in which he has his experience to rely on humbug (swindling) is practically impossible.

But when he gets outside of that experience, then, like the experienced traveler, he patiently submits to imposition when resistance might mean a loss greater than the original. But even the traveler must have enough to continue on with, and when imposition reaches that stage resistance begins.

So it will be with the man who is said to like humbug (robbery), when he finds humbug (slavery) closing in on him. He too will resist. He did before and the rightful owners gained possession, as this same man, who is said to like humbug, will again recover possession of what is being so stealthily taken from him.

When outraged law is asked to administer justice to the scoundrel who has deluded thousands into buying worthless mining shares or some such swindling bait, the victims are told that the whole swindle has been legitimized by the great seal of the state, and that their loss is the profits of a business conducted by a licensed trader.

The man with the bogus gold brick goes to jail. The man with the bogus gold mine goes free.

Why this difference when the principle in the two crimes is the same? Is it because the millionaire swindler has, in fact, been given rights under the law that is denied to the smaller fry? Or is it because the larger bird of prey makes enough to go all around? Certain it is, however, that Labor in its contests with Capital never got a decision in its favor yet - in time to be of any service.

These wholesalers found the concubining of justice herself a necessity to the success of their rascalities and the delays and decisions of this harlot are but the echoes of her paramour's orders. And at no time does the debas.e.m.e.nt of this whited sepulchre display itself more than when the miserable and friendless criminal whose crime is, a.s.suredly, nothing more than the natural and to be expected outcome of the wrong and inexcusable crime developing conditions under which he is compelled to live, is at her altar for Justice, which She renders in ringing tones such as are never heard when Her paramour or his hirelings are before Her.

When Labor does finally get a decision it is as worthless to it as is its pa.s.s-book on the gutted savings bank.

Make the millionaire an extinct species, and the above a.s.sertion will not have logic to sustain it, and our courts will not be making terrible "examples" of the friendless, while the thief who ruins thousands is allowed to go free.

There must be a radical change made in our laws if we ever expect to stop the sharks from preying on us. Our laws, like a hole in a fence, makes access easy, and the endless raids will never cease until the holes are stopped up. Constant watching, even with the light from former experiences, will all count for nothing while those holes and breaks are left open. The persistent work of the crew of sharpers that has the Nicaragua ca.n.a.l steal in tow shows this necessity for a change in the economic laws of the country. Duplicating the scheme by which the Huntingtons and Oakes Ameses robbed the people they submitted their prospectus for endors.e.m.e.nt, and, lo, this whole coast grovels in the dust to these new Moseses, who are to show them the way out of the wilderness into which their original, Huntington, has led them.

The ca.n.a.l should be built. But the estimated cost of the whole enterprise was $66,000,000 according to their own expert, whose report, eight years ago, was published in "Harper's Weekly" - (published as news, by the way, but was an advertis.e.m.e.nt, and paid for as such. And that Julian Ralph stuff that appeared in that same weekly lately is more of that peculiar kind of news that is being constantly ground out by the capitalistic sharks to catch the unwary, and was paid for by Spreckels - another Moses, that has come to the succor of our beleaguered coast.

The "Journal of Civilization" is a fit organ for the millionaire corruptionist and the civilization that he is degrading) - and although they have gone over the ground again and again since that report was made, the maximum estimate is still well inside $100,000,000. Yet they now want to issue $100,000,000 in stock; want the people to guarantee princ.i.p.al and interest on $70,000,000 of bonds, and the right to issue $30,000,000 of bonds themselves. No wonder it was called a steal on the floor of the Senate. The public treasury will ever be the objective point of such wholesalers until the inducement is removed. Humanity, Honor, Patriotism, each and all are powerless before this all conquering appet.i.te of Individual Greed.

What can such people as they care for this people, their country and its benign form of government? What use have such as they for a government that denies them the t.i.tle that distinguishes their kind over the sea?

Ay, what is to prevent them from using the vast power that goes with the wealth they are absorbing day by day, and to gratify the one unsatisfied wish of their purse-proud and selfish souls, and establish an Empire in place of the Republic? The Republic is but a sh.e.l.l and their work would be easy.

The sophistry about the inalienable right of one man to crush another has had its day, and their hypocritical wail about civilization and this inalienable right, when these conscienceless rascals find their race is run, will be like the yelling of remorseless wolves that have been trapped and kicked into the vanishing distance.

VIII.

Understanding the principle of Confiscation, it will be easily seen how it must work in every individual case; and, therefore, it is needless to dwell on or elaborate its workings when it is applied to banks, breweries, sugar refineries, water works, gas works, street railways, etc.

It will not destroy capital or business. It may lessen the value of real estate on the princ.i.p.al streets in large cities, and fall in values is not certain even there. It will trouble no one, however, if it does; not the present owner, even, for the value of property in favored localities is so great now that, however much one man can own now, he can own but a fraction of it under the proposed change. The owner of, say, a $400,000 building and lot on such a street as we are now considering may find a shrinkage of $100,000. This will give him two partners instead of three.

The shrinkage, therefore, will be to his liking; for, be it known, the aristocrat is a proud bird, and likes to flock by itself. And any designs against these two partners will be so fruitless of results to himself that a word in his ear now and then by his friends and well-wishers, about the public treasury, will end in his cultivating, such a lamblike submission to the new dispensation that his eloquence, born of the new light and an awakened conscience, will make his t.i.tled sister over the way give up her bauble when he shows her the cost of its pomp to the struggling poor.

Such will be the effect of the change on a man who now carries the law in his pocket, when he hasn't it under his feet.

Moving the laborer so far away from the centre of the city, and where there is room to build habitable homes, will be a serious objection, it will be urged. They cannot get to their work on time without getting up at all hours. They can just have time to s.n.a.t.c.h a bite and be away again. And the whole of Sunday must be given to sleep they cannot get at any other time.

They will be strangers in the near-by theatre, and the near-by library will be given up to the spider and his web, and the little garden of flowers that the once half-starved women have made a delight will be unknown to the worn out bread-winner, who will be the same old slave we premised to unshackle. Better clothes surely, and his home shows what it is to be a citizen of a republic that is a republic in fact as well as in name; but he has only time to s.n.a.t.c.h a bite and be away again.

Will it never occur to those critics that we are here dealing with the greatest creation of the Almighty, and of all time - civilized man; and that we must make the conditions fit him, and not he the the conditions.

Everything he eats, wears, and uses in twelve months can be produced in two. Why, then, should he be compelled to labor twelve months for that which can be produced or made in one-sixth of that time? The reason is plain. When two laborers make an exchange there is wholesale robbery committed by the non-producing and idle parasites, while the fruits of Labor are on the way to those who alone are ent.i.tled to the whole. "And I," says the millionaire, "say this robbery must go on, for I am an impossibility without it." That gnawing canker never had any doubts as to where his surfeit comes from. And now that it has become a question of life and death with those he has been plundering, he should be dragged to the bar of justice and compelled to disgorge. And then labor, too, can come in on the eight and nine o'clock train, and be no later for its work than is the banker and the rest of his cla.s.s that have had Labor under their heels so long.

The capacity of the modern world to produce has entirely outstripped her capacity to consume, and trying to solve the economic problems of the day, by further denial or ignoring of this fact, that should be self-evident, will be to build a structure with only half the foundation laid, and the inevitable collapse is bound to follow.

There will always he plenty of room in the heart of a city for those who must live close to their work.

But the inventor has made night work, except by the parasitical leeches, unnecessary to the ma.s.ses, a few hours of daylight being more than sufficient to supply all the needs of the country. We are not insisting, be it understood, on a four-hour or eight-hour system of labor. No industry or occupation will be hampered or meddled with by doing justice to the laborer in the way proposed. The railroad employee, printer, baker, factory hand, etc., can work on as now, but they must be compensated with just wages for the labor done. This will enable them to retire before decrepitude comes on, and orders are left for the poorhouse ambulance to call on its way out.

If every city occupied three times the ground they now do, they would be gainers in all ways, and the moral degradation into which large sections of them have sunk would disappear with the conditions that produced them.

The capacity of Europe to feed her people is being crowded, we are told, and then our flag is again run-up, and during the whole exhibition the Chinese system of bunking is quietly fastening itself in every city of consequence in the country. When those sorely pressed people, whose very existence is being threatened by these foreigners of a degraded civilization, awaken to the extremity of their danger, the bunking system and its introducers will find perjury and the habeus corpus mill powerless to save them. Mark this, however. The big capitalist imported the Chinaman, and his powerful influence has defeated all attempts to remove him. It follows, then, that we must break up the big capitalist, if we ever expect to get at the thing behind him.

We are not indifferent to the hardships of the oppressed of other nations, but we cannot get out of our own perplexities by saying that we are more favored in some way than are others. There are rocks ahead of ourselves, and watching others going to pieces and firing congratulatory guns will not help them or save us from, a like fate.

Whatever is in the near future for Europe, we, at least, have nothing to fear as to the capacity of our country to support all her people. And as it is with room for producing, so it is with room in which to live.

There is plenty of both, and we should show ourselves worthy of the legacy left us by that handful of brave men who established liberty in our country, and insist on getting plenty of both before the armed hireling appears and it is too late.

IX.

We will now apply the principle of Confiscation to land, and we will see that Confiscation alone can undo the wrong that has of late become apparent to even the law makers in Washington. Up to within three years or so there were two ways by which farming lands could be obtained from the Government - by homesteading and preempting.

It is unnecessary to give the laws of either, but so fast was this cla.s.s of land going that Congress repealed the preemption law. In other words, the amount you could obtain was cut down one half - from 320 acres to 160. What was more significant still of their barn door work after the horse was gone, they made the owning of 160 acres, regardless from whom it was got, private purchase or Government, a bar to the taking up of Government farm land. Prior to the repeal every citizen, and those intending to become citizens, had certain land rights, and owning half a State did not impair them; which all goes to show that even this free and easy-going Government thought it about time to call a halt. But that was all it did do. As it was not necessary to give the laws under which the homesteader and preemptor got t.i.tle, neither is it necessary to here ask how some men became owners of all the way from 1,000 to 60,000 acres, every acre of which was Government land years after California became a State. (We are using California facts. The rest of the Western part of the United States has an abundance of the same kind.) Suffice it to say, that they now own them; and suffice it too, that Confiscation is the only way by which we can dispossess them of plunder, that the welfare of the country demands should be returned? In Confiscation alone will the people find a servant who will not condone the past, but will follow up this breed of the grabber and restore what it finds, as it has already done with others of his tribe.

It will be the re-discovering of America.

Never did kind and beneficent laws show what men, with the right kind of stuff in them, could do, as did our land laws. Men who now own territory as large as some of the Eastern States started in without a dollar.

They had something better. They had consciences that was good for any tests that the scoundrels could put them to. Never did gangs of "floaters" help the political boss and ward-heeler rob the public treasury with greater success than did this other brand of the b.a.s.t.a.r.d citizen help his boss to hog the public domain.

In the fertile valley of the Sacramento, land that would give one hundred and sixty acre homes to ten thousand families (fifty thousand people) is owned by one hundred individuals, all average of sixteen thousand acres to each owner. This is but a fraction of the valley and leaves out the owners of less than sixteen thousand acres.

In the great San Joaquin valley, the laborer in search of work can walk for days in one direction alongside of fencing that incloses land belonging to one firm. And this immense fortune-in land was obtained by robbery, just as the other millionaire fortunes were obtained.

In the land office we see the miserable tool and his master.