Democratic Sentinel, Volume 2, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 April 1878 — WHICH SIDE WILL YOU TAKE? [ARTICLE]

WHICH SIDE WILL YOU TAKE?

Individualism or Nationalism. The principle of all individualism is defiance. It is the egotism of power, the selfishness of gain, the ambition to control. Scott and Vanderbilt represent it in railroads, Stewart in merchandise, Packer in coal, Rothschilds in money, Shylock in usury. It is monopoly rampant. It usurps all it can lay its hands upon. It cares not how many starve so that it grows fat. Specie is its instrument, domination is its aim, aristocracy is its result. It ignores all democracies of right; it sneers at all the evangelisms of equality. When it attains its majority and its power it is Louis XIV. declaring “ I am the state.” There is a principle in direct antagonism to this. It is association. Its aim is the universal good; its civilization is charity; its religion, “Do unto others as you would that others should do unto you;” its law, “ Love thy neighbor as thy self;” its philosophy is education, its humanity is justice. Francis de Sales was its apostle, Franklin was its representative, Washington its conqueror, Jefferson its philosopher, Hamilton its economist, Chase its financier. Paper money is its instrument, equality is its aim, a free and prosperous people result from its principles. It hails every democracy of right, it welcomes every means of equaling rewards—labor’s prosperities. When it becomes strong it will not alone declare that all men are born free and equal, but it will battle to maintain a perfect equality of rights—not of intellects, but "of security from oppression; not of abilities to accumulate, but of protection from all usurpations. Specie has long been the right arm of power to individualism. Paper money must become the right hand of power to annihilate the idea that any man can arrogate to himself the power to declare, and be able to maintain his arrogance in declaring, either that “I am the state, “the tyrant of railroad power,” “the ruler of merchandise,” “ the monopolizer of coal,” the “ dictator of money,” or the “enslaver of labor.” Specie is king-craft, paper money is democracy; specie is oppression, paper money is liberty; specie is the feudality of the past— slavery ; paper money is equality, holding the reins of progress for its strides in the future—freedom. Specie requires submission. Ignorance gave it power; barbarity made it king ; oppression made it master. Long ages of tyrants have made it the autocrat of privileges and the enslaver of mea. Paper money demands unity, confidence, education, and equality. It is the enemy of kings. It is the hero to battle down oppression. It carries the torch of light, and the fetters of the oppressed melt away and are broken as it approaches. Let us understand what the term paper money signifies. We may reach its affirmative meaning by showing what it is not. It is not individual bankers’ paper, nor corporate bank paper, nor State bank paper; for neither of these are money; they are but representatives of money. It is paper issued by a sovereign power capable of declaring what shall constitute money, and by that power made a legal tender for all debts, dues and obligations, public and private. It is issued under the seal, guarantee and sovereignty of a Government acknowledging no superior but God, and no responsibility but to the people who constitute it. Money thus created and heralded as the sovereign measure of values, circulated under the standard flag of the free, by the plaudits of a great and an independent people, is the paper money I recognize. The greenback is its type. The United States issues it. Specie requires submission, because the individual few who are rich control it. Everything which gives monopolized power to the few creates power. All power is selfish, tyrannical, and often brutal. It always oppresses those who mo too weak or too timid to resist it Specie never has, and never can be, mined in quantities to meet the demands of a free or an enterprising people. Always sought after by the powerful, as a means of controlling men, power has always controlled it The very fact of its scarcity has made it the autocrat of privileges. All autocracy creates slavery; all slavery is ignorance. Ignorance is menial. The menial is the subordinate tool of the master; masters are individuals, and any system which creates masters creates individualism. Paper money is the instrument of the free, and the free can create just as much of it as educated freedom demands —just as much of it as equalized rights require to equalize capital and labor, progress and justice. The sneering individualist says you can create it so easy that you will destroy it. The individualist is a selfish scoffer at all liberty. The Tory of England said that the excesses of liberty would destroy liberty. The Government and the progress of the United States is his answer. To admit that the people of the United States cannot regulate and control their own issues of money with safety, is to declare that the people are not capable of self-government. This was the language of individualism with the Tories and aristocracy of George llL’s time. It was a libel on the human race. It was a slander on freedom in government Individualism propagated it Aristocracy applauded the lie. Ignorance submitted to it Education took the slanderer by the throat; the struggle became a contest ; the contest ripened into a revolution ; Bunker Hill, Trenton, Monmouth, Saratoga, Yorktown were its battles, its victories, its triumph. A century has created a nation. The strength, the intelligence, the power and the wealth of that nation is America’s answer to the libel, the slander, the lie. Specie was the right arm of England, as she said to the colonies, “ Submit to taxation without representation or we will burn your towns, annihilate your commerce; Indians shall murder your citizens and scalp the unprotected, and Hessians, hired to kill liberty, shall revel in the blood of your people.” Specie in 1812 was master of the ocean. Arrogant and insolent, it impressed our seamen, insulted our flag, and played the tyrant, until, using our treasury certificates, we showed the British Lion that he must attend to his own ships, mind his own business, and cease all interference with the American flag. Our national character was sustained by our national credit Specie, in 1816, 1825,1833,1837,1842, 1857, 1861 and 1873, through the selfish tyranny of capital, made its wicked tattles to kill our credit ruin our manufacturers, starve labor and bankrupt business, simply to satisfy the greed of individual sharks who controlled the

finances of the country. Our slavery to this individualism of specie capital costs the people more than our present national debt in losses, bankruptcies, failures and stoppages. It added co lossal fortunes to individualism, repre Rented by the holders of dead capital. It wrenched, and robbed, and desecrated the life-long energies and earnings of 10,000 people where it benefited a single usurer, and added pomposity to a single capitalist. Millions were trampled into the dust to give superiority to a few hundred hoarders of accumulated fortunes. In 1861, when our nationality was the stake, when liberty was assailed, when slavery held aloft its flag of battle and defied freemen to the duel between a government of freemen or a government of slavery and servitude, England and gold were the right-hand supporters of rebellion. Then came the test; all monarchical aristocracies sang hosannas to the South; all tyrants prayed for the success of slavery; all landlordism in the British isles covertly, meanly and sneakingly sent their aid to kill liberty in our Government. The same dastardly cowards who paid Indians for scalping women and children, and who hired the butcher Hessians to make battle on the free, were against us. The murderers of Ireland were against us; the despots who rule India were against us; English gold was against us. We had to battle all these elements into utter defeat, or our life as a nation of freemen was-end-ed. We had to battle without gold, and against gold, or be slaves. Lt fact, from July, 1862, to July, 1865, and January, 1878,g01d and silver were never seen; they were not used as currency or treated as money; they were our bitterest enemies; they fought against us, and yet we conquered. The people’s money (the young giant, the greenback) fed our soldiers, clothed them, shod them, paid them. It furnished us with arms, ammunition, transit powers, and, in fact, with every element an army of Americans required to sustain American arms, American independence, and American money. Paper money killed coin money. Coin represented the slavery of individualism; paper money represented associated freemen —the people. Coin is the instrument of individualism the world over. England makes it her Achillian shield, but America makes paper money her club of Hercules. England recedes. America progresses. The Lion growls, the Eagle soars aloft. England is a land of “monstrous riches,” and “more monstrous poverty.” Her lords are the pillars of the throne, the masters of her lands and her people. England represents individualism—aristocracy. America is a land devoted to freedom, progress. Equality, association of all for each, and each for all, is her principle. She is no longer afraid of England; in her heart she despises her—her arrogance, her grasping tyranny, her oppression of the poor, her robberies in Ireland, her plundering vandalism in India, her sneaking meanness, her hypocrisy—and let her understand that America will not submit to any interference with her financial independence. She must keep her hands off, or by the Eternal we will thrash her, break Ireland’s yoke, and send India legions to crush out the black-hearted infamy of English rule I Specie is England’s god. Her god is her tyrant. Individualism worships it, freemen curse it. Nationalism, as distinguished from individualism, is the nation as a unit, acting to educate, enlighten, equalize, and Christianize the people in every element of liberty and in every idea of progress. Individualism is the favored few, always seeking to take adventage of money, power, privileges, and monopolies by which the favored shall grow rich at the expense of the subdued, at the expense of labor, at the expense of justice, decency, and humanity. Paper money belongs to nationality and. to the sovereignty of the people. It is comprehensive as the people, as expansive as population, as bountiful as our production, as flexible as our wants, as true as the planets. It is liberty blessing enterprise. It is labor winning its reward. It is industry gathering its harvest. The greenback is its child. Specie is selfishness; selfishness is individualism. It is limited to the few; it contracts itself to the greed of the usurer; it is niggardly, never supplying the necessities of production. It cramps us most when we need it most. It is false, always flying in the hour of necessity. It is Shy lock cursing the liberal. It is the taskmaster to labor, starving it. It is sacrificing industry to greed; gold is its instrument, agent, king. Choose between liberty and slavery. Would you be protected by the nation, be national. Would you cringe to despots, accept individualism for your support. Would you prosper, cling to the greenback; it has all the strength and all the fidelity of the nation to sustain you. Would you be a slave, bend your knee and give your vote for hard-money individualism. Would you be free from the taxes now imposed upon you to pay the bounties to national banks, and to exempt a bondholding aristocracy from taxes, you must be national; you must swear by all that is sacred in religion, home, country, and liberty to sustain the national paper money of the nation. Would you be a slave to usury, to taxes, to national banks, to the Rothschilds, and Belmonts, and Jay Goulds, and to bondholders exempt from taxes—in one word, to an aristocracy of Shylocks—in of the usurer’s god and the people’s misery and degradation, swear that you will sustain gold as the basis of banking, and as the sole legal tender of the nation. Nationalism is full of blessings. Individualism is full of curses. A free man may make his choice. The hour has come to say which side you will take —with the people, for the nation, or with the usurers for themselves.

STEPHEN D. DILLAYE.