Democratic Sentinel, Volume 2, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 September 1878 — CAPITAL AND LABOR. [ARTICLE]

CAPITAL AND LABOR.

Capital: It* Rights, and Nothing More Labor: It* Bights, and Nothing Less. Labor is the normal condition of life. Production is the fruit of labor, and capital is the fruit of production. Independent of labor, there is no such thing as capital. Nature supplies the earth and sea; but man, through the higher elements of mind directed by experiment into experience, and by the intuitive genius of invention into creation, gathers from the land and from the sea his means of life. As his skill advanced his production increased, and just to the extent that his production increased beyond his wants was capital created—for capital is nothing more nor less than the excess produced by labor beyond what labor requires to nourish itself for production. All capital, then, however acquired, originated in labor; for, independent of it, capital could not have existed; and, independent of it, cannot exist Stop labor—we starve. Stop labor—we are without raiment Stop labor—production ceases. Gold and silver may remain; but, independent of labor, they can neither buy us food or furnish us with raiment Labor is prosperity, and whatever tends to depreciate labor tends to lessen capital. Capital has, through the tyranny of laws and the accidents of time, made power its slave; and, by power, it has subjugated man to man, labor to gold, and weakness to strength. All tyrannies have grown out of this subjugation. All wars are its fruits—all degradation has been its result. In the eternal struggle, the world has succumbed to the monstrous dogma that might makes right. How else did Nero reign? How else Caligula command? It was this that made Poland what she is. It was this that gave Ireland to her English despots. It was this that left manacled India a charnel land of starving dupes. It is this that to-day gives 6,000,000 of dependent paupers and 16,000,000 of hireling slaves to England. It is this which makes Prussia an iron-handed military despotism, where the rifle is the argument and the sword the logic of power. It is this which capital has arrayed itself in incorporated power and moneyed insolence to bring about in the United States. For a century, liberty and manhood and the spirit of ’76 have kept this our land free from despotism. But as capital has increased, labor having been frugal, industrious and generally rewarded, and specially confiding, it has concentrated—concentrated into gigantic proportions. I said free from despotism—that is not correct, for slavery existed, and slavery is despotism. Indeed, so despotic became its power that even in the light of education, and in the progress of liberty, it assumed that cotton was king—might, right. Then came war—wild as rebellion, daring as despair and desperate as revenge. As war came, the demands of war came—money—money by the hundred millions, nay, by the thousand millions —and with the demand the cunning, over-reaching insolence of money marshaled it, commanded it, controlled it. Wall street and Beekman street, Third street and State street played the part of Harpagon as lender. Knowing that war held the country by the throat, they made their terms, and such terms no Jew usurer ever before imposed upon necessitous need. Insatiable greed held the purse. Forty-two cents they would Five for a dollar, provided they were released from taxes, and provided they could have exclusive bank charters, with S9O in bills and SIOO in bonds for $42, and provided they got interest in gold on their bonds, and provided they should have the right to receive deposits and discount them, and sell exchange and compound interest. So that capital made its terms thus : Capital lends $42, for which capital receives : Rondssllo Interest, $9.00 Bills 90 “ 8.10 Deposits 200 “ 18.00

Totals39o $37.10 Thus, by the infamous subtleties of interest, the nation pays for the $42 it received : In interest, $37.10 ;in bonds, SIOO ; in bills to lend on compound interest, S9O, and the privilege of playing the usurer on S2OO in deposits. It was by this most hellish brood of chartered privileges that the Bank Association has robbed the people and got the start of labor. Two thousand bank Barons—l,ooo bank usurers—have consolidated $2,000,000,000 of capital into a colossal guillotine to decapitate labor and hold in captivity every laborer who aspires to respectable wages, to a decent home, to education for his children, and to the comforts of life for old age. This huge fraud of associated taxexemptionists is from second to minute, from minutes to hours, from hours to days, and from days to years, sucking up the earnings and the life-blood of the people: Every second it draw* $3.17 ■very minute it draws 190.75 ■very hour it draws 11,415.40 Every day it draws 273,960.00 Every year it draws 100,000,000.00 Every hour it draws enough to settle in comfort, with enough to build a home on homestead land, get in crops, buy teams, cows, and everything essential for fifteen families, or seventy-five people; and every day its profits, robbed from the public, would settle 265 families, or 1,825 people, on such homesteads. For these profits the Government derives no benefits, but, if the Government would pay off its bonds, stop the interest, stop the bounties and stop the inequality of taxation, and give the money now paid to these cormorants to help honest and industrious men to get on to Government homesteads, the benefit would be incalculable. It would be the grandest step in the history of civilization. It would elevate the now dependent It would give to labor its just reward. It would make producers out of consumers; indeed, it would render poverty unnecessary, and place comfort and competency within the reach of all. We possess every description of climate—as soft as Persian valleys, as fruitful as Indian gardens, as rich as Andalusian fields. Our productions are as varied as our climates, from the bloom of endless flowers to the snows of endless winters. Everything that grows ripens into harvest, and is gathered into granaries, Irom. the pinefringed borders of the Atlantic to the golden shores of the Pacific; from the tropical fruits of Southern seas to the frozen climes of Labrador. We have land full of all possibilities, such as no Government in the providence of the All-Wise ever before bestowed upon its people. Lands for homes, lands inviting culture, and rich in all the elements of productive wealth. And until within a century our rivers were without vessels,

our lakes were undisturbed, our land uncultived. One hundred years back, and the whole population was on the Atlantic coast. Our country was then new, its virgin soil was then fresh as it came from the hand of God, and our inland rivers and seas were as unruffled by navigation as when the waters of the flood swept resistless and sublime into the channels nature prepared for them. Yes, all this land, now glowing with the active rivalries of 45,000,000 of human souls, but little more than a century back was a dreary waste of riches. Today we have but broken through its crust; but commenced to comprehend its richness, its humanities, its education, and its duties. The men who were the pioneers in its -settlement had been educated to oppression, to classified rights, to aristocratic orders, to slavery for the million, to almost universal ignorance and to almost universal oppression. Printing, it is true, had lightened its touch, but its rays were yet weak, for feudalism reigned, and privilege i«led. Mind had thrown off its serfdom, but mind, like light, required forces it could not command. It had to work its way, growing as it went, and soaring as it flew, till it reached those mountain heights where genius made it immortal. Philosophy did as much to people and to create the Government of the United States as all its endless resources. Liberty hailed America as its chosen land. But it was without capital to invite labor, as it was without labor to invite capital. Railroads did not exist Steamers there were none. Men had to walk through forests ; ride they could not, for there were no roads, no carriages, few horses, and cattle were hardly to be seen. In one word, the early settlers had not alone to battle their way by the most primitive means, but to make their way through all obstacles, even the tomahawk of the savage. This, remember, was only a century’back. All west of the lakes was an unbroken waste. Fifty years measures civilization between the Alleghanies and the Rocky mountains, between Lake Erie and the Pacific ocean. Ho v, then, were the difficulties overcome? How did the poor become rich? How did labor battle its way into production? Let us look back to see how it was done, and forward to see what may be done. Money the pioneers did not have. Land was everywhere, but for capital, beyond his head, his hands, and his locomotive powers in the midst of boundless fields, he was as destitute of as the pennyless beggar at the door of Delmonico’s, who, seeing a feast of riches before him, is yet forced to beg for a crust of bread. The pioneer was without money, but he was rich; the boundless continent was before him; he was young, he was strong, he could work. It was labor’s' business to pr duce wealth, and labor alone could produce it. Labor then put on its leathern apron, calloused its hands, freshened its heart with hope, and, with the bold energy of youth, it struck down the forest; up went the cabin, in went the plow, scrape went the hoe, scatter went the seed, God freshened the soil to quicken growth, bright suns ripened the grain. Swift followed the cradle, on went the rake, up went the shock, down went the flail, out came the grain. On flowed the stream that turned the millstone, away went the grain to the hopper, out came the flour, soft hands molded the bread. The means of life were secured. But to make the cabin, construct the plow, make the hoe, pound out the scythe, scrape out the flail, pound out the wheat, yoke up the oxen, drive to the mill, and grind out the flour—made labor for farmer, meclianic, and miller, and to make the bread a good wife was wanted. With the cabin, and the flour, anil the wife, came children. Wheat bought cows, and sheep, and hogs, and hens, and labor. Everything that came created new wants, and labor was the fruitful mother of every want, and every want created new demands for labor. So that from the felling of the forest, the building of the cabin, there came an endless demand for help, and every demand for help was a promise of food and home and comfort for labor. Labor thus promised grew into communities, where labor divided itself into all trades, into all arts, into all orders of production. With production came churches to Christianize men into duty, and schools to educate them into manhood and into justice. In early days of American life churches and schools and printing-presses came slowly, but they came. They that were poor, by labor became rich; and,where fifty years back was the untouched forest or the wild prairie, cities, towns, farms, and homes, opulent in all that constitutes comfort and creates wealth are now the generous rewards of that early toil. To-day five years will accomplish what it required thirty years to accomplish a century back, and what it required ten years to accomplish half a century back. For today we put ourselves on railroads to reach new lands, and labor has invented and created every appliance to achieve homes, wheat, and production, which is but another name for riches. To-day, too, homes of land are given to whoever will occupy land and make it a home. But, with all the splendid growth of the productive power, and with all the accumulated conveniences the spirit of liberty and the genius of production have evolved out of the resources of this God-blessed land, there has grown up, silently, quietly, almost unnoticed, the curse which the Old World has fostered, and which all tyrannies have conspired to increase, and that is the power of dead capital concentrated into monopolizing wealth. It is this curse, fed on usury, nurtured by interest, pampered by power, which has created the Bank Association—that 2,000-headed devil-fish, whose suckers are drawing the life-blood of the nation to fatten ostentation and enslave labor. The corner-stone of the edifice is monopolized power. Its proclaimed principle is to cripple labor by starving it into submission. It is to liberty what the Bastile was to France. So long as it existed slavery existed, poverty was crushed, the rich reigned, despots ruled. When it fell humanity cried aloud for joy, the human mind was delivered from the chains of the past. It threatened labor, hope and life, and the people tore it down, leveled its battlements, hurled its keepers into eternity, and cut the cable which for 800 years had anchored labor to despotism, and the people to servitude. The Bank Association is the Bastile of American tyranny. There’is but one thing to be done, kill it; vote it out of existence, pay off the bonds which feed its suckers with interest, tear down its frowning ramparts with greenbacks. Next after the Bank Associatiou come the railroad Barons. The New York Central, with Vanderbilt to monopolize highways, to regulate travel, to kill opposition, to dictate wages, controlling $200,000,000 of capital, as fierce in its dictatorial mandates to labor as any

Irish-ruling English landlord—a public curse. Twin monopolist, Thomas Scott, with his iron links reaching across the continent, controlling the highways of freight and travel from the Atlantic to the Pacific, dictating wages to labor, and saying, “Take this, or the rifle shall make you take it ” Then follows Garrett, of the Baltimore and Ohio, and the Pacific railroads, making up monopolies stronger than any European despot ever exercised or controlled. These moneyed and railroad corporations have made tyranny a possibility in the United States. They have attempted to control lands, transportation, food , labor, and all that goes to make up the daily factors in prosperity. They stand in the way of equal laws. They stand in the way of free farms. They stand in the wav of homes for mechanics. They stand in the way of labor. They stand in the way of that equality essential to liberty. They stand in the way of all individual effort. They are antagonisms to the spirit of the age. Their power must be controlled, their monopolies must cease, their dictations to labor must end, or their fate will be the fate of the Bastile.

With millions of men ready to create new wealth, new farms, new homes, new cities, new States; with labor which has but to unite to say that this Government shall no longer be the legislative slave to capital, the way to equality of rights is plain. The voter holds the key. Labor commands all its outposts. Stop all interest. Labor can do it. Vote. Pay all bond? in the money of the people—the sovereign greenback. Vote that it be done. Put an end to all railroad monopolies. Vote that the Government shall control and own all public highways. Vote that no mm shall monopolize a single foot of public land that he does not oacupy. Vote that no monopoly shall exist. Vote that education shall be universal and imperative. Vote that no felon’s labor shall be put in competition with honest labor. Vote that the Government shall advance, in the sovereign money of the sovereign people, to every headr of a family who desires to go on to our public lands, and who is a sober, honest and intelligent worker, money enough to enable him to build a comfortable house, get in his first crop, procure farming implements and farm stock, and in five years the. East will be depopulated of its surplus labor. Strikes will be unknown, crime will diminish, drunkenness will no more be seen. The great West and the fruitful South will grow into gardens. Then will true equality commence, then will civilization approach its purpose, then there will be no drunkards but the idle rich and the idle poor. Then there will be no criminals but the viciously wicked. Then there will be no want but of the profligate and the wasteful. All that is demanded to accomplish this beneficence, all that is required to make homes certain and production universal is concert of political action. Vote and it is accomplished. But labor and intelligence must combine into unity, must organize into strength. The voter reigns—that is, if the voter organizes; but the unorganized voter is like the water of Niagara above the falls —direct it, organize it, give it work to do in canals, in water viaducts, in channels, and it would turn the machinery of the world; but let its strength rush on in mad defiance, unorganized, undirected, and it plunges wild, blind, terrible in its worthless power into gulfs of despair, and floats away in savage grandeur to be lost in the lake which swallows it.

The great laboring and mental waves of the people are as grand in their strength, as resistless in their power, if organized and directed by reason into unity and by unity into action, as Niagara. If they act in unity and vote they can move the machinery of the world. The political power of the United States is to-day with the laborers of the United States—with its farmers, its mechanics, its laborers, mental and physical; and if they would have sovereign money to equalize values, if they would have labor justly rewarded, if they would end monopolies, if they would put down bank associations, if they would curb corporations, if they would have free farms and aid to improve them; in one word, if they would Christianize politico into equality and education into justice they must organize to vote—and vote the National Greenback-Labor party into power. The voter can do it. will he do it ? That is the question. Stephen D. Dillaye.