People's Pilot, Volume 5, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 January 1896 — ENGLAND'S POLICY. [ARTICLE]

ENGLAND'S POLICY.

The Terror of the World —The Centralization of Wealth. Philadelphia American: No engine proved so mighty, no instrument so powerful and unfailing, in the transference of property from the producing to the money lending classes, and the consequent centralization of wealth in | the hands o the few, as the single gold standard. Having discarded silver and gained control over the gold money of the world, the creditor classes the producing classes absolutely at their mercy, for, by displacing sili ver, the demand for gold has been doubled, and continues to increase as trade and population grow. And with this increase and increasing demand, gold has and must continue to rise in value, resulting in a shrinkage in the value of the property of the producers, and an increase in the burden of all debtors in a like ratio. No one ever perceived this more clearly than Samuel Lloyd, Who rose to the head of one of London’s greatest banking firms, a firm afterward merged into the London and Westminster bank —the recognized chief of the moneyed interests during,the second quarter of the century, the author of the bank restriction act of 1844 —a .man who influenced the policy of England, we might safely add of the world, more than any other man in his time. Lloyd’s first great aim was to limit the issue of the bank of England and thus rigidly limit the currency of England to" the gold available for money. This was accomplished by thg bank act of 1844, which required that the bank of England hold pound for pound in gold in its vaults against every pound of paper outstanding in excess of £14,000,000. Thus securing an inelastic currency that could not be increased in obedience to the increased demands of trade, save by addition to the stock of gold, Lloyd felt that he had placed the debtor classes prostrate at the feet of their creditors. The legal tender money being insufficient to carry on the trade, and being absolutely fixed, he saw that payment was only made possible to their debtors when the creditors saw fit to loan them the means. It followed that when the creditor classes chose to contract loans, payment be- j came impossible, and they thus -had it ' in their power to forfeit the property of their debtors. Lloyd reasoned that with expanding trade, and a currency fixed absolutely by the quantity of gold in. the country, money must rise in value as the demand thrown upon it by growing population and expanding trade increased, for he deemed it impossible that the production of gold would be such as to make possible an increase in the quan- ' tity of gold in use as money as fast as population and trade grew. He perceived that as gold became more and more valuable it would become more "i and more difficult for debtors to pay ; their debts, and saw that debtors thus becoming more and more dependent on loans of the creditor class to enable them to meet payment of interest and principal, debtor would be forced — whenever the creditor classes systematically contracted loans —to surrender their property on such terms as creditors might dictate.

He foresaw that under such contraction prices would fall to a lower level than in other nations, that then gold would flow into England, and that this influx would increase the quantity of money and raise prices, to the great benefit of the creditor class, who could sell the property of the debtors during the panic, at an advance. The property of one class of debtors having once been forfeited and then sold at an advance to a new set of hopeful producers, the wheels of contraction could again be put in motion, another panic precipitated, and another set of debtors shorn of their property. , ' Fortunately for the producing classes of the world, the great discoveries of gold in California and Australia upset Lloyd’s plans. For a time attempts at contraction miscarried and the world prospered. But while the contractionists failed in their effort to demonetize gold in 1850-’55, the succeeded in de monetizing silver 20 years later, and now we see Samuel Lloyd's policy being put in force, with the result that the few are being enriched at the expense of the many.