People's Pilot, Volume 6, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 July 1896 — Labor Pays All Debt. [ARTICLE]

Labor Pays All Debt.

All wealth comes out of the earth. This fact should be kept in mind. The way it is extracted from the land is also important. It can only be drawn from the soil by the application of labor to land. Thus it will be seen that all of the debts and taxes are paid by labor applied to land. The most difficult thing in the world is to secure for this fact a lodging place in the human mind. The merchant thinks probably that he adds to the wealth of the country by selling goods at a great sacrifice from his bargain counter. He does not add a penny to the volume of the nation's wealth. The banker may think he adds to the national wealth by the practice of usury, skinning the people on his loans. A banker never did add one cent to a nation’s wealth. The great army of middle men may think they add to wealth by robbery of both the producer and the consumer. Middle men never created one penny of national wealth. And so it goes with all classes of business and professional men. They are consumers of wealth, but they do not produce a cent. All wealth being created by lator,* it follows that all of the debts of government, national, state and municipal, fall to the lot of labor to pay. An another important question to be remembered is that the greater the debts, the heavier tax and the less labor derives in the way of wages for producing wealth. When the debts become sufficiently burdensome then labor becomes a condition of absolute slavery.—Southern Mercury. (