Chapter II: Bimetallism Extinguished (2)

The ancient Peruvians went further. They argued that the happiness, welfare, and prosperity of one was the concern of all. They banished poverty by giving every person productive work, and by their system transformed every foot of tillable land into productive gardens, enabling them to support in affluence an immense population, only a small fraction of which could have subsisted under conditions such as prevail with us. In our country to-day we have vast areas of useless land, only waiting to be transformed into tillable acres second in richness to no land in the country. To-day we have necessary work in the way of internal improvements which is imperatively demanded, and which, but for the slothfulness and indifference of our government, would be performed, thereby enormously increasing the wealth of the nation; while the performing of the same would give productive employment to millions of idle hands.

A striking illustration of the criminal neglect and shortsightedness of our government was seen this last spring in the devastation created by the floods in the Mississippi Valley, rendered possible through the inadequate levee system. Here the losses to crops and in stock killed are said to have been considerably over twelve million dollars, to say nothing of the enormous outlay which will be required to patch up the levees and make the devastated farms again habitable. This great loss would have been averted had the government acted upon the suggestions which I made some years ago in a paper on "Emergency Measures for Maintaining Self-respecting Manhood," in which it was shown that a permanent levee was practicable, and could be built in such a way as to resist the floods, reclaim many hundreds of thousands of acres of rich land, and protect millions of dollars' worth of property which is now under a yearly menace through danger of floods.

In this enterprise, which I shall again touch upon, we have a striking illustration of a practicable work which would immediately increase the national wealth far beyond the outlay required, while it would also change an army of idle consumers into an army of wealth-producers.

But as I wish to consider this question more at length a little later, I now pass on to a brief notice of the vast tracts of land in the West, which have not yet fallen into the clutches of land syndicates, and which for a comparatively small outlay by proper irrigation could be transformed into garden spots. Take, for example, the State of Nevada. Here we find immense tracts of arid land, representing millions of acres, which to-day are unproductive for lack of moisture, but which, wherever irrigation has been introduced, have been transformed into wonderfully productive garden land. Mr. William M. Smythe, in the April _Forum_, has given some very interesting facts in regard to the agricultural resources of Nevada, from which we summarize the following:

The most painstaking and systematic inquiry, however, ever made
with regard to the extent of her water supply resulted in the
conclusion that at least 6,000,000 acres of rich soil could be
irrigated. The commission of 1893 reported twenty lakes and sixteen
rivers of importance, which with minor streams and springs could be
made to irrigate upward of 5,000,000 acres; and artesian wells
would bring up the total to the figure above named. It should be
borne in mind that the splendid agricultural prosperity of Colorado
and Utah is based upon a cultivated area of only about 2,000,000
acres. It seems, then, that, so far as her agricultural
capabilities are concerned, Nevada might sustain at least as many
people as do Utah and Colorado put together, at their present stage
of development. The products of the irrigated lands of Nevada are
the fruits, the vegetables, cereals, and grasses of the temperate
zone, and, in the extreme southern portions, the more delicate
products of the semi-tropics, such as figs, olives, pomegranates,
almonds, Madeira walnuts, and, in sheltered places, even oranges.
When we add that Nevada, like all parts of the arid plateau, is
distinguished for pure dry air, an extraordinary amount of
sunshine, and consequently a very high degree of healthfulness, it
can be scarcely maintained that the state is destitute of
attractions.

What is true in regard to the possibilities of Nevada is true of large areas of land in other Western States and Territories. It must be remembered that irrigated land can be relied upon to yield bountiful crops with practical regularity, as the water-supply is ever present, while for most persons the fine pure air in these high regions is peculiarly healthful and invigorating. Thus the great West still offers millions of acres of exceedingly productive land which can be transformed into gardens and made to increase the national wealth by untold millions if the government will treat these tracts as any wise or thrifty private owner would treat them. If the government or the various commonwealths would take all the available land which can be irrigated and give to the unemployed work at fair wages until the great desert tracts become fertile areas, the national or state domain would be enormously increased in wealth at a relatively small cost through the wise employment of the now paralyzed hand of industry.

Returning to the question of the Mississippi river, let our national government build a permanent levee, which, like the great highways of ancient Rome, should be built to endure for generations.

"There are," says ex-Governor Lionel Sheldon, "over twenty-three
million acres exposed to overflow from the mouth of the Ohio to the
Gulf of Mexico. The productive power of these lands is not excelled
in any part of the world, and by proper cultivation they would
annually add many hundreds of millions of dollars to the national
wealth and afford profitable employment for several hundreds of
thousands of people."

Eminent engineers who have examined the levees under the auspices of the Mississippi river commissioners, agree that the problem is one which can be successfully solved if a sufficient amount is appropriated for so gigantic an undertaking, which would require substantial uniformity in the width of the channel of the river by building spurs and dikes at points where the Mississippi is too wide, the proper riveting of the banks wherever caving is likely to occur, together with the building of permanent levees of a height and strength sufficient to confine the waters in the channel. It is stated that since 1865 the cost of repairs has amounted to considerably over forty million dollars, yet owing to the fact that this work is of a temporary character the benefits which would be derived from a permanent levee are lost, and every few years the floods necessitate fresh expenditures of vast sums of money. Hence this patchwork policy is shortsighted and in the long run the most expensive. The carrying out of a comprehensive plan for permanent improvements by the erection of impregnable levees and the governing of the currents by dikes and spurs, would give us a territory, now absolutely useless, which would annually add hundreds of millions of dollars to our national wealth.

The great arid plains of the West and the levees of the Mississippi are merely examples of internal improvements of a perfectly legitimate character which could be undertaken most properly by the general government, under Sec. VIII of the Constitution, which authorizes the "raising of revenue to pay the debts and provide for the common defence and the _general welfare_ of the United States." By such internal improvements as those mentioned above the nation's wealth would be increased to a far greater extent than by the amount of outlay required for the completion of the work, while these enterprises would at once give productive employment to our millions of out-of-works, and this army of employed would put into immediate circulation large sums of money which would at once stimulate business through all its ramifications and bring about the long-hoped-for good times.

But at the very threshold of the discussion we are met with the declaration that we have no money in the Treasury with which to carry on these great projects. Before answering this objection I wish to point out the fact that we have millions of dollars to spend for a useless navy, a navy which in the hands of our senile government does not protect the life or the property of American citizens, a navy which is a constant and an enormous expense. While almost unlimited sums can be raised for the building and equipment of battleships, we have not a dollar to aid honest industry to maintain self-respecting manhood by engaging in works which would add immensely to the real wealth of the nation.

And, again, before pointing out how this money could be raised, I would call attention to the fact that this cry is by no means a new one. It was raised, and with much more show of foundation, during the dark hours of the early sixties, but the great Civil War exploded the fallacy. One would think that in the presence of the stupendous facts connected with the conduct of our Civil War, even if the question of the value to the state of an independent, contented, and prosperous manhood should be left out of consideration, the shallowness of the objection would be so apparent that it would have no weight with thoughtful persons. Let us not forget that there was a time in the history of our country when the Treasury of our government was empty, a time of great national peril when gold had fled across the seas or into the vaults of the bankers and usurers, as it ever flees in time of danger, when public credit was greatly impaired by the presence of war within our borders and a strong probability that even if the national government escaped overthrow a large number of the States would become an independent nation. In this crisis we had men in charge of the government who were statesmen, men great enough to rise to the emergency of the hour. Now, if we were able under such conditions to carry to a successful termination the most expensive and memorable civil war of modern times by the aid of the greenback, surely there would be no risk in resorting to a similar medium of exchange for the carrying on of a work which would immediately add to the nation's resources and free from the bondage of involuntary idleness a large army of men who are now a burden to society and a danger to stable government.

If, however, the fiction by which bondholders enslave the people still holds such power over our legislators and the public mind that the menace of the growing army of unemployed, the injury to the state by the enforced degradation of her children, and the continued unproductivity of both soil and industry must go on unless a concession is made, it would be wiser to make the concession than to let the crime against manhood continue. I therefore suggest that bonds on the land to be reclaimed be issued to the amount of the national notes used for these great works in redeeming the now useless land. The bonds issued against these lands could be cancelled as the lands were sold. I do not for a moment hold that this is necessary. I only advance this suggestion in case the prejudice fostered by selfish and interested classes might otherwise defeat a work of such inconceivable importance.

The inevitable result which would follow such wise, statesmanlike, and humane proceedings on the part of the government may be briefly summarized as follows:

Through this judicious, far-sighted, and enlightened course the government would, first, so strengthen and intrench herself in the hearts of the people that armories and militia would be little needed against the menace of lawlessness _within our borders_, while this wise solicitude and care for the welfare of her citizens would make millions of persons, who to-day have little or no love for a nation which is indifferent to their manly cry for work, loyal defenders of the flag. By such a broad, wise, and just course the United States would do more than she could in any other way to render herself impregnable in time of danger. Second, by affording millions of her citizens the opportunity to engage in productive work she would utilize a vast amount of idle energy in adding to the permanent wealth of the nation, and the state would be fulfilling the noble function of government to promote justice, increase happiness, and ennoble citizenship. She would be restoring hope and the spirit of independent manhood to her children, and so would prevent a great increase in beggary, in degradation, and in crime, which must inevitably follow unless present conditions are radically changed. From an economic point of view the government would be far richer through the amount saved from what otherwise would be required to provide prisons, poorhouses, and court expenses. Third, it would add vastly to the nation's wealth in increasing by untold millions the annual product of real wealth, while it would also supply homes for millions of home-seekers. Fourth, it would bring prosperity to America.

Let us suppose three millions of those now idle should be thus enabled to engage in productive work, there would then be placed in circulation each week from five to ten million dollars more money than there is now, and it would be paid out in small amounts, so that the bulk of it would instantly go into general circulation. The men would not only purchase for their own needs, but would send a part of their earnings to their loved ones, who would thus be able to do what they cannot now do--buy coal, wood, groceries, and, indeed, life's various necessaries. The prices of the farmer's crops would naturally rise, and he in turn would be able to increase his buildings and purchase more machinery. The increased demand for clothing would raise the price of wool and cotton, while it would start up the factories without any resort to artificial measures, such as levying a tax on imported goods.

The difference between present hard times and low prices and good times and high prices would be illustrated in this way: To-day millions of our people are idle, a load and an expense; they cannot buy what they need at any price, for they have nothing to buy with. Millions of others have to curtail in every way, frequently doing without many needed things, for times are such that it is impossible for them to do more than barely subsist. Now, the millions who to-day buy nothing, because they have nothing to buy with, under these provisions for internal improvements would soon be buying regularly, because they would have the wherewithal to buy. They would gladly pay the farmer, manufacturer, and merchant more than what they now ask because they would have something to buy with, while to-day they have nothing; and those other millions who are curtailing expenses to the last degree would gladly pay the increased amount, for all lines of productive business would receive an impetus from the great addition to the circulating medium put forth as a result of the productive work being carried on. Now, our tariff taxes may put up prices for the favored classes, but they thereby increase the burdens of all save those who are enabled to gain added wealth from the taxes imposed on the millions who are yet able to buy, while the small increase in the demand for work, so long as millions are unable to buy what is made, would make but little impression on the vast army of unemployed.

_A tariff tax is a burden to the millions, stimulating prices artificially, and benefiting chiefly the very wealthy._ But the plan for internal improvements here outlined would give all ablebodied men productive work which would benefit the nation far more than the amount of the outlay involved, and afford time for the general work of education, by which justice and equitable conditions could be brought about, to proceed. Those who love peace, those who would see mankind elevated and the wealth of the nation preserved and increased, should favor this great palliative movement for maintaining self-respecting manhood, for enriching the nation's resources, and for insuring prosperity in the quickest and most healthful manner possible.

AN OPEN LETTER TO EASTERN CAPITALISTS.

BY CHARLES C. MILLARD.

Gentlemen: Against you individually, or as a class of persons who have accumulated more or less wealth, and who loan it at interest to those who perhaps have been less fortunate, I have not the least prejudice. I believe that yours is an honest as well as a legitimate business; that great wealth may be, and often is, won by honest means; and that it does not border upon the marvellous that the capitalist is often an honest man, and the pauper as often a rogue. I believe that you are as honest as other men are, and that if you fully understood the situation in the West and South, and knew that a certain line of conduct would result to your own advantage financially, and also be a great benefit to the whole country, you would act as other honest people would act under similar circumstances; and it is because I so believe, that I write this letter.

I write neither as a partisan nor in the interests of any party, but to give plain facts which can be easily verified, and to show how these facts are seen and felt by those who, like myself, have been born and bred on the boundless prairies, and have had a varied experience with the ups and downs of life on the sunset side of the Father of Waters. I hope by so doing to help you to realize the extent of the disasters which a continuance of the present financial policy will inevitably bring to _you_ as well as to us.

THE ACTUAL CONDITION.

In 1886, the chief clerk and trusted agent of a great loan company, who has since been in the employ of Jarvis Conklin & Co., said to me: "There is plenty of money to loan, but the securities are practically exhausted." Everything "in sight" was covered with a mortgage. The few who had escaped the mania of speculation did not want any mortgage on farm or city property. Loans since then have been mostly renewals, and for a time one company loaned money to be paid to another; but, with a few exceptions, the Eastern money borrowed since 1880 has not been paid, and anyone familiar with the facts does not need the gift of prophecy to foretell that, under the present conditions, it never can or will be paid.

The mortgages, bonds, and most of the coupons you still hold, and, in many cases, you also have a deed to the property; but neither the one nor the other is of any practical present value. The mortgagor is dead, moved away, bankrupt, or working at daily labor--when he can get work--for his daily bread. Therefore the debt is worthless, and the property is but little better. The very best of it--costly business blocks in the heart of the cities--is unremunerative. No intelligent poor man would, or could, take a brick block as a gift and keep the taxes and interest paid.

And perhaps the larger share of the city property is unoccupied or paying no rental. He who rides upon a Western railroad can see the proof of this from the car windows. In every city, town, village, and on not a few farms, can be seen the broken or boarded-up windows which are the footprints, not of time, but of the Eastern mortgage. This property belongs to you. No Western man pays taxes or interest, and no one expects to pay the principal. No one wants the property; no one has any use for it; and no want ever existed which it was calculated to fill, except in the brain of the monomaniac who built it. Whether you have "foreclosed" or not, the property is virtually yours; the mortgagor has no equity in it. While he had an equity, the decline in prices affected that equity; now it affects only _your_ interest.

You own our business buildings, mansions, and cottages. You have an everlasting grip on our public buildings, Board of Trade halls, Young Men's Christian Association buildings, and even our churches. The Rev. Mr. Wooley, in the pulpit of the Central Christian Church of Wichita, said recently: "Every church building in this city, except one, is heavily incumbered, and most of them are practically insolvent." Even the "calamity howlers" of the "Populist" party are afraid or ashamed to tell the truth, "and the whole truth," about our financial condition.

And it is not improving. A few farm mortgages are being paid, and scarcely any new ones are being made except renewals; but all the reduction so made is more than equalled by the sum of defaulted interest payments on mortgages outstanding. The statements in the papers, that the mortgage indebtedness of Kansas--or some other State--was reduced so many thousand dollars during the past year, are misleading. They are regularly published to restore "confidence." For the benefit of my Eastern brother, I will explain, lest he may imagine that we are each year paying back more money than we borrowed during that time, and that therefore, in the course of geologic time, our debts would be paid.

The "reduction" is a reduction of record only. I have known of the payment of $25 to reduce the record of $650, and $20 to make a "reduction" of $400; and for various reasons many mortgages are cancelled without any cash payment. These are well-known facts, and I could give a long list of those which have come under my own personal observation, while the mortgages which I have known to be paid in full might be counted on the fingers of one hand.

In addition to this, nearly every city or incorporated town, and many of the counties, have a bonded indebtedness as large as they can possibly carry. In some cases bonds have been issued and sold to pay interest on other bonds, and in one case at least--Pratt Centre--the interest payments have been discontinued "by order of the council."

THE FUTURE PROSPECT.

So far I have been dealing only with the past and the present, and have given only a plain statement of facts, the value of which must depend upon my capacity as an observer, my opportunities for observation, and my truthfulness as a writer. If you are inclined to be sceptical, inquire of your neighbors who hold, or have held, Western mortgages. The value of my forecast of the immediate future must depend upon the character of my reasoning and judgment.

As "death and taxes" are certain, it is safe to predict that taxes will be levied to pay the interest, and afterwards the principal, of city bonds. Also, it may be assumed that you, who own the larger and more valuable share of the property, will pay the lion's share of the taxes. The Western man has "let go"; he is not "in the deal"; and when one capitalist is taxed to pay another, he is not an "interested" party. I sympathize with you. You have exchanged good money for bad property; and with the property you have assumed the bulk of our _burden of taxation_. You must pay our bonds, pay for the repairs and improvements of public property, pay for educating our children and making our laws, and yet you have no voice in determining when, how, or to what extent these things shall be done; nor power to prevent the jobs and steals which accompany such transactions in Kansas as well as in New York.

But, notwithstanding my sympathy, and the additional fact that I must indirectly suffer from the effects of your suicidal policy, it is amusing to see you trying to squeeze the remaining value out of _your own property_. For, I repeat, it is yours. Interest payments will cease in the same ratio that they have ceased, and for the same reasons. And the principal cause will be that the mortgagor has _discovered_ that he has no equity in the property. If property is worth only "what it will bring in money," there are few pieces of mortgaged property in the West in which there still remains an equity. But many farmers are economizing and wearing rags in order to make interest payments, which can only result in putting the evil day a little further off.

The Westerner is a practical man. When he finds that the equity is all squeezed out of his property, and that it is still being squeezed at the same rate, he stops paying taxes and interest, uses the property free while you are foreclosing, saves up a little money, buys a house for about one-tenth of the money it cost to build it, moves it onto a "clear" lot, and is then ready to help you squeeze your property by voting for taxes for various purposes. Under like circumstances the farmer raises one or two crops without rent, taxes, or interest, clothes his family more comfortably, replaces worn-out machinery, rents a farm, and is in better circumstances than he has been for years.

THE PROPOSED REMEDY.

It may be that there is no remedy, but that will not prevent us from trying to find one. During the last ten years we have experimented. We have tried Democratic rule and Republican rule; the "McKinley bill" and the "Wilson bill"; "tariff for protection" and "tariff for revenue only"; a Treasury "surplus" and a Treasury "deficit"; yet none of these things have sensibly affected the squeezing process. We have lost our faith in the tariff and in tariff-tinkering, as well as in the leaders who recommend it. We have dismissed our old political leaders and chosen new ones; and as your "gold-standard" squeezing policy is the only rational cause "in sight" for the origin and continuance of our condition--to use an expressive Western phrase--we are "going for it."

We are willing that you should own and control the property which was ours, and in which your money was invested, but when you attempt to force upon us your financial policy, your politics, and your religion, we object. You may own and control the property, but not us; here we draw the line. This is what Marsh Murdock had in his mental view when he said at the St. Louis Convention, "You want to own the country and run it too." But the veteran editor of the _Eagle_ has changed his mind and consented to being "run."

You have bought the leading papers, caused our editors to "change their minds," flooded the country with a trashy literature that is an insult to our intelligence, and provided funds to pay third-rate preachers for preaching to us a religion which we do not want. We are not rich, yet we are able to pay for our education and our religion--if it is a kind that will be of any use to us.

We do not fear the result of our experiment. If we fail, the same old squeeze will continue; if we succeed, there is a prospect of relief. Without variation, there is not even a prospect of bettering our condition. If we should succeed in creating that financial paradox, a fifty-three-cent dollar, we are such political heretics as to prefer that kind of a dollar to none, or to "confidence." We have unbounded confidence in the dollars which jingle in our pockets, but very little in those which exist only in the imagination, and are represented by stocks, bonds, checks, drafts, clearing-house certificates, and other devices, which always fail to perform the function of money in the last extremity, when money is most needed.

Do not allow yourselves to be terrified at the ghost of a silver dollar, for the ghost of it is all that will ever trouble you. In the event of free coinage, the trains going East will not be loaded with silver dollars to pay off old mortgages. I have seen a statement in Eastern papers to the effect that we wanted cheap money with which to pay our debts. It is a base slander; every intelligent Western man knows that, whatever happens short of the miraculous, only a small share of our mortgage debts will be paid.

All the holdings you now have in the West, new and old taken together, are not worth fifty-three cents on the dollar; and you cannot now in any way realize that much from them; and if your present policy is indefinitely continued you have no prospect of ever realizing fifty-three per cent on your investments. If, then, you should be paid in silver dollars, or if a larger share of the loans should be paid under the new conditions, you would be a gainer and not a loser by the change. It seems to me that an increase in the volume of money and rising prices are the opportunity for you to realize from your holdings, for without some favorable change you will hardly realize twenty-five per cent.

You can test the truth of these statements. Take twenty holdings, not selected, and try to convert them into cash. Or offer them to some capitalist who has travelled extensively in the West during the last five years. Time will convince you, if nothing else will; but the knowledge may come a little too late for practical purposes. You ought to be with us in this free-silver movement, and you would be if you knew what we know. We are not fools, although we may appear so to you; we know what we want, and we are trying to get it.

You threaten "to draw in your money from the West." If you have any money in the West which you _can_ "draw in," the sooner you do it the better; it will be an heroic remedy instead of misery long drawn out. A "panic" will return like a boomerang upon yourselves, and make _your_ property still less valuable. You can cause a panic, break our business men, make more idle men and tramps, and, in short, concentrate three or four years of squeezing into a few weeks or months; but what benefit can _you_ hope to derive from it?

Whatever adds to _our_ prosperity will increase the actual value of _your_ holdings; our interests are identical, then why should _you_ desire the continuance of present conditions? Have the present conditions done anything for you, as far as Western investments are concerned? Is not your increase of capital simply an increase "on paper" which you can never realize? We cordially invite you to join us in our effort to bring on an era of prosperity; forsake your political leaders, as we have forsaken ours, and use at least as much common sense in politics as you do in business.

Save this article; it will be good reading after the election is over. It is not politics, it is business; it is the naked truth. The writer does not want to borrow any money; he seeks no office, is not a politician, has no axe to grind, and expects no reward, except to share in the general prosperity, as he has shared in the general adversity, in the capacity of a humble citizen.

WICHITA, KANSAS.

THE TELEGRAPH MONOPOLY.

BY PROF. FRANK PARSONS.

XIII.

10. _The Union of Telegraph and Post is needed for the Interests of the Post as well as for those of the Telegraph._ It will elevate the skill and competency of postal employees. When mails do not arrive on time, it will inform the public thronging the post office, not merely that the mail has not arrived, but when it will arrive. It will permit the employment of the telegraph in tracing a missent letter or package, rectifying an erroneous address, discovering the whereabouts of an absentee, etc. It will permit the more rapid extension of the free-delivery system by affording a larger basis for its sustenance. It will multiply many fold the rapidity in transmitting letters across the continent.

The telegraph is naturally a part of the post office,[3] as much a part of it as the sewing machine is a part of a dressmaking establishment. Suppose the government were in the clothing business (as it might have been to advantage during the war), and continued to sew the garments entirely by hand, leaving the sewing machine to private enterprise; it would be a charming situation for private enterprise, but not very delightful for the government. With such advantages private enterprise would be apt to deprive the government of the best part of its business in spite of its willingness to work for people at cost. The same thing has happened to some extent with the telegraph and telephone, and will happen to a far greater extent if they are allowed to continue in private control. If trunk lines for automatic transit were established by a private company, even at 25 cents per hundred words (a rate sufficient to pay a very large profit on a corporate investment, water and all), the post office would soon lose a considerable portion of its most valuable business, the letter mail between the large cities.[4]

[3] Mr. Hubbard says: "The telegraph and the post office are
two great pieces of machinery going on, both for the same
purpose, the transmission of intelligence" (J. T. U. p. 17).
Prof. Ely calls the telegraph the "logical completion of the
post office" (ARENA, Dec. 1895, p. 49). Cyrus W. Field says:
"Why should not the two branches of what is really one service
to the public be brought together in this country, as in other
countries, and placed under one management? It would certainly
be a great convenience to the people if every telegraph office
were a post office, and every post office a telegraph office"
(_N. A. Review_, Mar. 1886).

[4] Postmaster-General Cave Johnson said: "Experience teaches
that if individual enterprise is allowed to perform such
portions of the business of the Government as it may find for
its advantage, the Government will soon be left to perform
unprofitable portions of it only, and must be driven to
abandon it entirely or carry it on at a heavy tax upon the
public Treasury.... I may further add that the Department
created under the Constitution and designed to exercise
exclusive power for the transmission of intelligence, must
necessarily be superseded in much of its most important
business if the telegraph be permitted to remain under the
control of individuals" (Reps. of 1845 and 1846).

Postmaster-General Cresswell said in 1872: "If the effects of
rivalry between the telegraph and the mail upon the revenues
of the post office have not been serious, it is due alone to
the liberal management of the latter as compared with that of
the companies, a management which since the invention of the
telegraph has reduced the rates of postage from 25 to 3 cents,
and increased tenfold the correspondence of the country" (Rep.
1872, pp. 22-3).

One of Hannibal Hamlin's three great reasons for a postal
telegraph was "for the sake of the post-office system, which
may at any time be depleted by a strong telegraph in private
hands" (_Cong. Globe_, 42-2, p. 3554).

In times of pestilence the telegraph will save the post office from embargo. A letter from Port Gibson, Miss., says:

Whenever the yellow fever breaks out at any point, all cities and
towns, and some counties, having communication with the infected
districts, at once declare a rigid quarantine. The effect of this
is to cut off all communication between themselves and the outside
world. Trains and boats are prevented from receiving or delivering
the mails. Business men are unable to communicate by letter with
their correspondents, and all are prevented from hearing from
relatives and friends in the quarantined places, except by
telegraph, whose rates prevent many from using the wires.[5]

[5] Wan. Arg. p. 138.

The infection does not travel on an electric wire, and if the post office possessed the telegraph, its business would go smoothly on in spite of the plague, instead of being brought to a dead standstill throughout the region of disaster at the very time when hearts are breaking for daily news, and communication is of the utmost importance to alleviate the quarantine.

11. _Employees will be benefited_ by passing from a regime of oppression to one of elevation; from low wages[6] and long hours to high wages and short hours; from a service almost hopeless of promotion to a service of almost limitless possibilities to the man of character, brain, and energy; from an employment in which they are regarded as so much machinery to be obtained at the lowest market rates and worked for all the profit there is in them to an employment in which their comfort and advancement are among the main objects of solicitude with the management; from a business in which they have no share to a business in which they are equal partners with all their fellow-citizens; from serfdom to liberty and manhood. No more boycotting and black-listing, no more denial of the rights of organization and petition.

[6] In the last Congressional investigation, dated May 26,
1896, the great telegraph inventor P. B. Delayner testified
that the pay of American operators had fallen forty per cent
in the last twenty years; and he said that, "while the British
operator has had two increases of pay since 1891, his American
brother has had four reductions, and to-day the British
operator is better paid for the same amount of work, and by
his environment occupies a higher plane of comfort and
contentment, than the American operator. Good behavior and
diligence in his duties warrant him a life position, from
which the whim and caprice of no one can drive him. He is not
an itinerant wandering from place to place looking for work
and hired for a day or a week, to be again sent adrift, nor is
he permitted to work overtime to the detriment of his health
and the exclusion of another wage-earner from his share. His
increasing years of service are taken into account in various
beneficial ways. He has his yearly vacation. He is not cut off
in sickness, and, most important of all, he is not 'turned
down' in old age, but is retired on a pension, proportioned to
his years of service" (Sen. Doc. 291, 54-1, pp. 4, 6).

Some of the consequences will be the lifting of thousands to a higher plane of living, the annihilation of strikes by uprooting the causes of them,[7] the improvement of the service as already stated under the seventh sub-head of this section, etc., etc.

[7] Joseph Medill, the publisher of the Chicago _Tribune_,
expressed the opinion to the Blair Committee that, with a
postal telegraph, there would be no strikes any more than
among the clerks in the Treasury or the officers of the army.
Government employees do not resign _en masse_. Their pay is
good as a rule, and, anyway, they could not get it raised till
Congress thought it right; and a strike would not be apt to
hasten the achievement of their purposes, but would place them
face to face with the limitless power of the United States.
Instead of occupying a position of brave revolt against
corporate oppression, impervious to petition, the strikers
would place themselves in the position of deliberately
departing from ready and hopeful redress by peaceful petition
and discussion, to the very objectionable method of
obstructing the public business, defying the people's
government, and dictating terms to the nation."

The telegraph system would no longer be subject to such
disasters as that so well described by the Hon. Wm. Roche in
the Ohio legislature Jan. 29th, 1885: "A convulsion of the
trade and commerce of the entire country resulted, when, on
the 19th of July, 1883, 12,000 operators left their posts
after the flat refusal of the magnates to give audience to
their representatives to state their case."

12. _The press will be relieved of an ever present tyranny_ likely at any moment to transfer itself from the potential to the real.[8] Sen. Report 242, 43-1, p. 5, says:

[8] We have seen in Part VI (ARENA, June, 1896) how rates were
raised on papers that criticised the Western Union's president
or advocated a postal telegraph too vigorously, how papers
were ordered not to criticise news reports under penalty of
loss of news facilities, etc. It is interesting to note that
even the largest and most influential papers do not always
escape persecution. In his speech in the House, Mar. 1, 1884,
the Hon. John A. Anderson, of Kansas, tells us that "the
Chicago _Inter-Ocean_ had the lease of a private wire from
Washington to Chicago, and published Washington news every
day. A few weeks since, Senator Hill spoke for the postal
telegraph. The _Inter-Ocean_ published the speech verbatim.
That evening word was sent to the _Inter-Ocean_ that the lease
was terminated. The manager of the _Inter-Ocean_ said
afterwards that their relations with the Western Union were
still friendly, but he had to be, of course, in order to keep
the general despatches."

The operation of the postal-telegraph system would result in a
speedy termination of this alliance [between the telegraph and news
association, and groups of favored papers], and will be a very
important step toward the freedom of the press.

Sen. Rep. 577, 48-1, p. 16, says:

The bill [for a postal telegraph] will lessen the danger of a
concealed censorship of news whereby it may be colored and
distorted so as to subserve political purposes, to mislead public
opinion as to the merits or demerits of men and measures, to
pervert legislation, and to favor schemes of private gain.

The press of the nation will not be forbidden to criticise the news, nor will any paper be excluded from equal participation in the benefits of the telegraph service--equal rates to all, special privileges to none. Moreover, the rates will be greatly reduced for all press despatches, and papers will be able to buy the world's history every day for a fraction of what they pay now for imperfect and garbled reports.

As a result of National Ownership in England, "the press rates have been reduced so low that every country paper can afford to print the latest telegraphic despatches as it goes to press, and a telegraph or telephone is at every country post office."[9]

[9] Sen. Doc. 205, 54-1, p. 50; Report of U. S. Consul at
Southampton, Consular Reports, vol. xlvii, No. 175, April,
1895, p. 564. The press rate in England averages nine cents
per hundred words. In this country it is at least 40 cents per
hundred; the electrician P. B. Delany says it is 50 cents per
100 (Sen. Doc. 291, May, 1896, p. 3).

The Report last quoted contains the testimony of Mr. Bell of
the Typographical Union, May 20, 1896, in which he says: "The
news of this country is controlled by two great press
associations, and in any place in which either has a footing,
no new journal can be established and secure telegraphic news
except on such terms as may be prescribed by the paper or
papers that already occupy the field. In England, on the
contrary, all papers are on an equal footing." The
Typographical Union is fully alive to the benefits of a
government telegraph; in fact, labor and commerce in general
very strongly favor the reform. Mr. Bell says: "In this
movement of ours we are supported by all the organized bodies
of workingmen in this country. We are a unit on this question"
(p. 17).

13. _Discrimination will receive a serious blow._ No more telegraph rebates of 20 or 40 or 50 per cent to favored individuals and corporations. No more telegraph blanks for legislators, politicians, and lobbyists. No more delaying B's despatch until the rival message of C is sent. No more precedence for bucket-shops and gamblers over honest business and government despatches.

14. _Gambling in government stocks will cease_, speculators in wheat, corn, pork, copper, oil, and other products of industry will be unable to control the wires for their uses, or even secure a precedence over the lines, and the Louisiana Lottery and similar frauds will no longer find a refuge in the telegraph as they do at present. The post office has been taken away from the gamblers; it is time the telegraph were taken from them also. The telegraph in the hands of cunning men may be the means of abstracting millions of money from the producers of the country, and may even become a potent factor in the causation of panic and depression. On page 3 of his Argument for a postal telegraph, Mr. Wanamaker says:

The measureless body of producers, in order not to be manipulated
and robbed by the speculators, need to be nearer the consumers; and
the measureless body of consumers, in order not to be manipulated
and robbed by the same speculators, need to be nearer to the
producers.

Take the telegraph away from the speculators and give it to the producers and consumers, that they may come into the closest possible relations.

15. _Political corruption_ will lose an able contributor when the telegraph ceases to belong to a private corporation (See Part VII, ARENA, July, 1896).

16. _A Postal telegraph will be a step toward a fairer distribution of wealth_ and away from the congestion of power and wealth in the hands of a few unscrupulous men, which is one of the chief dangers threatening the future of the country (See Part VIII, ARENA, August, 1896). On this ground alone the establishment of a national telegraph would be justified, were there no other reason in the case.

17. _The public safety demands a national telegraph_, not merely as a precaution against corruption, speculation, and panic, congestion of wealth and power, strikes, and duress of the press, but also as a military measure and a valuable addition to the police power of the government,--a means of strength in time of war, and a conservator of law and order by aiding in the capture of criminals and in the general enforcement of the law. We have already quoted the opinion of Mr. Scudamore that the postal telegraph "will strengthen the country from hostility from without, and the maintaining of law and order within the kingdom." Let us call attention here to the weighty words of the New York _Public_, cited in Wanamaker's Argument, pp. 206-7:

The Government itself absolutely needs a telegraphic system for its
own protection. This will not seem the language of exaggeration
when it is considered that the ordinary enforcement of laws, the
capture of offenders, the success of fiscal operations, the
protection of the country against domestic insurrection and foreign
invasion, have come to depend in these days upon the instant
transmission of intelligence with certain and absolute secrecy. It
may at any time come to pass that the private interests of those
controlling a telegraph system shall require the non-enforcement of
the law, the prevention or delay of a financial operation, or the
partial success of a domestic outbreak or foreign inroad. It is
nonsense to say that this cannot happen. If Mr. Gould could
suppress for a few hours or days, news of an outbreak on the
Pacific coast or of the capture of a hostile ironclad from Europe,
he could make millions by it. The Government has no certainty that
he would throw away millions. It has no certainty that its orders
bearing on great financial operations may not be betrayed and its
aims thwarted. When the Government was hunting for the Star Route
offenders, how many would have been caught if its despatches had
been secretly betrayed? An important witness happened to be a
Government director of the Union Pacific Railroad, and it has
always been a mysterious fact that the officers in search of him
could never catch him.

18. _It will be a step toward civil-service reform._ Every increase of public business brings us nearer to thorough civil-service reform, because it enhances the importance of that reform, impresses the need of it more strongly upon the people, and deepens their sentiment in its favor. This has been the experience of European cities and states. A good reason why they are ahead of us in civil-service management, is because they are ahead of us in the public ownership of railroads, telegraphs, telephones, etc.

In the case of the telegraph there are special reasons to expect that government control would carry with it an extension of the civil-service principle. In the opinion of Mr. Rosewater the postal telegraph "would be an entering wedge for the greatest possible success of the civil service." He says:

It would bring into the postal service a large number of skilled
operatives whose services could not be easily dispensed with. They
would be divided in politics like every other class of citizens,
their experience and trustworthiness would be of great moment, and
their trustworthiness would be increased by the knowledge that they
could not be displaced by partisan politics. This has been the
experience in Great Britain, and would be the same here. Once get
the postal service under government control and the civil-service
act, and you would soon be able to place all departments of the
government under the same system, and a large share of the public
nuisance incident to office-holding would be done away with,
leaving the officers free to inquire into and learn their duties to
their office and to the public.[10]

[10] _The Voice_, Aug. 29, 1895, pp. 1, 8.

Prof. Ely says:

One of the strongest arguments in favor of a postal telegraph, is
that such a telegraph would carry with it an improvement in our
civil service. It would increase the number of offices in which
civil-service rules would be applied, even according to existing
law, and it would be an irresistible argument in favor of the
extension and elevation of the civil service. Some want to have us
wait until the civil service has been already improved, but the
purchase of the telegraph lines would inevitably carry with it the
improvement of the civil service.

The country would insist upon it. The acquisition of the telegraph lines by the nation would convert more people to civil-service reform in one day than all the speeches which have ever been delivered on the subject would win to this good cause in a year.[11]

[11] The total number of positions that must now be filled
from the classified civil-service lists is 85,100, out of a
total of a little more than 200,000 positions in the national
service, aside from the army and navy.

The plan advocated in this paper includes the civil-service act as one of its essential terms, for without it we run the risk of having, for a time at least, boss-ownership instead of public ownership of the telegraph. The recent extension of the civil-service act to 30,000 new positions, argues well for the future of this great reform.[12] That such an order should have come from President Cleveland, who has not been noted for his absence of partisan feeling, indicates that the election of a man of thorough independence would probably complete the transformation of our service. Even without that, the work will be done by the piece, each president ordering a section into line at the end of his term when the delay of justice can no longer aid his own political purposes, but may, on the contrary, strengthen his successor. Or he may act before the end of his term and from less selfish motives; the main thing for the nation is that he act.

[12] ARENA, Dec. 1895, pp. 51-2.

19. The public ownership of the telegraph will remove one of the antagonisms that weaken the cohesion of society and retard the development of civilization.[13]

[13] See Part VIII, ARENA, August, 1896.

20. It will be a step toward cooeperation and partnership, away from private monopoly, usurpations, and taxation without representation.[14]

[14] See Parts VIII and IX, ARENA, Aug. and Sept. 1896.

* * * * *

Let us now see what the defendants have to say; that means the Western Union, for, as Mr. Bell said to the Senate Committee on Post offices and Post roads, May 20th, 1896:

The only persons who have ever put in an appearance in opposition
to this measure, have been the officers, attorneys, and agents of
the telegraph companies. No representative of the people has ever
opposed it.[15]

[15] Sen. Doc. 291, 54-1, p. 18.

THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT OF THE CUBANS.

BY THOMAS W. STEEP.

When the recognition of belligerency was argued for the Cubans by the friends of Cuba in Congress, it became a question of pivotal importance as to whether the Cubans had a government to recognize as dual to that of Spain; whether the government, if any, was merely nominal or chimerical; whether, if existing and operating, it had the potency to receive recognition and thus justify such action by the United States.