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at public expense, for the easy transfer of labor and products, on which
no toll charge can be rightfully claimed through class legislation to
favor the few. Are not bank unwisely allowed to toll the people's money?
At one time, by largely discounting private notes, in exchange for bank
credit, they expand values; at another, by withholding help, precipitate
public ruin. A sound national, full legal-tender paper money, maintained
always sufficient for their exchanges, would stop bank inflation and an
unreasonable toll on the public.
Money should be the tool of handicraft, not its master. Its value should
no longer be gauged by laws which hamper the growth of industry. New wants
suggested by discovery and invention beckon us onward to higher civilization,
and the circulating medium should no longer be arbitrarily determined
by quack theories, but be clothed with an expansive power, like postage
stamps, proportionate to the industrial exigencies of the people, and
at rates that shall not paralyze national growth!
Excessive Interest is Ruin to Industry.
Unjust laws for the undue increase of capital at the expense of labor,
are charged with dwarfing the industries, though excessive interest, thereby
retarding civilization. The draft of capital is too heavy. It concentrates
wealth in few hands, and condemns the many to hopeless poverty.
Laws in all ages have not been made in the interest of a broad humanity,
but to perpetuate wealth and power for the benefit of the few. Laws allow
an estate of six millions of dollars, in forty years at six per cent.,
to be compounded to ninety-eight millions of dollars, while its possessor
may live in idleness. Custom give to the world's workers barely sufficient
compensation for the most economical support of a family, while failing
health or employment too often brings dependence. Do laws and customs
promote social progress and general prosperity, which restrict the host
of workers to the barest necessities of comsumption, in order to build
up a few towering fortunes?
The rental or mortgage of a store or farm, worth $10,000, at sever per
cent. net, compounded for seventy years, will produce $1,270,000, equal
to one hundred and twenty-seven stores of like value. With all the investment
of brain, toil, and capital, the uncertain chances of business in that
period have bankrupted more than one occupant of that store, as statistics
show ninety-seven per cent. of merchants fail.
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