Chapter IX (1)

Beneath a big oak Pole stood holding his bridle-rein and waiting, his earnest gaze on the long road leading to Jeff Wade’s farm. Suddenly he descried a cloud of dust far ahead and he chuckled.

“He’s certainly on time,” he mused. “He must ’a’ had his hoss ready out in the thicket. Mel made good time, too. The dern devil is thirstin’ fer bloodshed. Mel’s that sort. By gum, that hain’t Wade; it’s Mel hisse’f, an’ he’s certainly layin’ the lash to his animal.”

In a gallop Jones bore down on him, riding as wildly as a cowboy, his broad hat in one hand, a heavy switch in the other. He drew rein when he recognized Baker.

“Did you deliver that message?” Pole questioned.

“Oh, yes, I finally got him alone; his wife seems to suspicion some’n, and she stuck to ’im like a leech. She’s a jealous woman, Pole, an’ I don’t know but what she kinder thought Jeff was up to some o’ his old shines. He was a sorter tough nut before he married, you know, an’ a man like that will do to watch.”

“Well, what did he say?” Pole asked.

“Why, he said ‘all hunkydory.’ The spring plan ketched him jest right. He said that one thing—o’ bloodyin’ up the main street in town—had bothered him more than anything else. He admired it in Floyd, too. Jeff said, ‘By gum! fer a town dude that feller’s got more backbone than I expected. He’s a foe wuth meetin’, an’ I reckon killin’ ’im won’t be sech a terrible disgrace as I was afeared it mought be.’”

“But whar are you headin’ fer in sech a rush?” Pole asked.

Jones laughed as he put his hat carefully on his shaggy head and pressed the broad brims up on the sides and to a point in front. “Why, Pole,” he answered, “to tell you the truth, I am headed fer that thar spring. I’m goin’ to acknowledge to you that, as long as I’ve lived in this world, I hain’t never been on hand at a shootin’ affair. Mighty nigh every man I know has seed oodlin’s of ’em, but my luck’s been agin me. About the most excitin’ thing I ever attended was a chicken fight, and so I determined to see this un. I know a big rock jest above that spring, and I’m a-goin’ to git thar in plenty o’ time. You let me git kivered all but my eyes, an’ I’ll run the resk o’ gettin’ hit from thar up. Whar you makin’ fer, Pole?”

“Me? Oh, I’m on the way home, Mel. I seed the biggest rattlesnake run across this road jest now I ever laid eyes on. I got down to settle his hash, but I didn’t have anything to hit ’im with, an’ I’m done stompin’ at them fellers sence Tobe Baker, my cousin, over at Hillbend, got bliffed on the knee.”

“Well, so long!” Mel laughed. “I’ll hunt rattlesnakes some other time. Are you plumb shore you hain’t got the jimmies agin’, Pole? Take my advice an’ don’t tell about seein’ snakes; it sets folks to thinkin’. Why, I seed you once in broad daylight when you swore black spiders was playin’ sweepstakes on yore shirt front.”

“So long, Mel!” Pole smiled and waved his hand. He made a fair pretense at getting ready to mount as Mel galloped away in a cloud of dust. The horseman was scarcely out of sight when a pair of fine black horses drawing a buggy came into view. The vehicle contained Captain Duncan and his daughter Evelyn. She was a delicate, rather pretty girl of nineteen or twenty, and she nodded pleasantly to Pole as her father stopped his horses.

“You are sure that thing’s off, are you, Baker?” the planter said, with a genial smile.

“Oh, yes, Captain.” Pole had his eyes on the young lady and had taken off his hat, and stood awkwardly swinging it against the baggy knees of his rough trousers.

“Well, I’m very glad,” Duncan said. “I know you told some of the crowd back at the store that it had been settled, but I didn’t know whether it was reliable or not.”

Pole’s glance shifted between plain truth and Evelyn Duncan’s refined face for a moment, and then he nodded. “Oh, yes, it was all a mistake, Captain. Reports get out, you know; and nothin’ hain’t as bad as gossip is after it’s crawled through a hundred mouths an’ over a hundred wigglin’ tongues.”

“Well, I’m glad, as I say,” the planter said as he jerked his reins and spoke to his horses.

As he whirled away Pole growled. “Damned ef I hain’t a-makin’ a regular signpost out o’ myself,” he mused, “an’ lyin’ to beat the Dutch. Ef that dern fool don’t come on purty soon he’ll—but thar he is now, comin’ on with a swoop—looks like his hoss is about to run from under ’im, his dern legs is so long. Now, looky here, Pole Baker, Esquire, hog-thief an’ liar, you are up agin about the most serious proposition you ever tackled, an’ ef you don’t mind what you are about you’ll have cold feet inside o’ ten minutes by the clock. You’ve set in to carry this thing through or die in the attempt, an’ time’s precious. The fust thing is to stop the blamed whelp; you cayn’t reason with a man that’s flyin’ through the air like he’s shot out of a gun, an’ Jeff Wade’s a-goin’ to be the devil to halt. He’s got the smell o’ blood, an’ that works on a mad man jest like it does on a bloodhound—he’s a-goin’ to run down some’n. The only thing in God’s world that’ll stop a man o’ that sort is to insult ’im, an’ I reckon I’ll have that to do in this case.”

Jeff Wade was riding rapidly. Just before he reached Pole he drew out his big silver open-faced watch and looked at it. He wore no coat and had on a gray flannel shirt open at the neck. Round his waist he wore a wide leather belt, from which, on his right side, protruded the glittering butt of a revolver of unusual size and length of barrel. Suddenly Pole led his own horse round, until the animal stood directly across the narrow road, rendering it impossible for the approaching rider to pass at the speed he was going.

“Hold on thar, Jeff!” Pole held up his hand. “Whar away? The mail hack hain’t in yet. I’ve jest left town.”

“I hain’t goin’ after no mail!” Wade said, his lips tight, a fixed stare in his big, earnest eyes. “I’m headed fer Price’s spring. I’m goin’ to put a few holes in that thar Nelson Floyd, ef I git the drap on him ’fore he does on me.”

“Huh!” Pole ejaculated; “no, you hain’t a-goin’ to see him, nuther; that is, not till me’n you’ve had a talk, Jeff Wade. You seem in a hurry, but thar’s a matter betwixt me an’ you that’s got to be attended to.”

“What the hell do you mean?” Wade demanded, a stare of irritated astonishment dawning in his eyes.

“Why, I mean that Nelson Floyd is a friend o’ mine, an’ he ain’t a-goin’ to be shot down like a dog by a man that could hit a nickel a hundred yards away nine times out o’ ten. You an’ me’s close together, an’ I reckon chances ’ud be somewhar about equal. I hain’t a brag shot, but I could hit a pouch as big as yourn is about as easy as you could me.”

“You—you—by God, do you mean to take this matter up?”

Jeff Wade slid off his horse and stood facing Pole.

“Yes, I do, Jeff; that is, unless you’ll listen to common sense. That’s what I’m here fer. I’m a-goin’ to stuff reason into you ef I have to make a new hole to put it in at. You are a-goin’ entirely too fast to live in an enlightened Christian age, an’ I’m here to call a halt. I’ve got some things to tell you. They are a-goin’ to hurt like pullin’ eye-teeth, an’ you may draw yore gun before I’m through, but I’m goin’ to make a try at it.”

“What the——?”

“Hold on, hold on, hold on, Jeff!” Pole raised a warning hand. “Keep that paw off’n that cannon in yore belt or thar’ll be a war right here before you hear my proclamation of the terms we kin both live by. Jeff, I am yore neighbor an’ friend. I love you mighty nigh like a brother, an’ I’m here to tell you that, with all yore grit an’ good qualities, you are makin’ a bellowin’ jackass o’ yoreself. An’ ef I let you put through yore present plans, you’ll weep in repentance fer it till you are let down in yore soggy grave. Thar’s two sides to every question, an’ you are lookin’ only at yore side o’ this un. You cayn’t tell how sorry I am about havin’ to take this step. I’ve been a friend to yore entire family—to yore brothers, an’ yore old daddy when he was alive. I mighty nigh swore a lie down in Atlanta to keep _him_ out o’ limbo when he was arrested fer moonshinin’.”

“I know all that!” growled Wade; “but God——”

“Hold yore taters now, an’ listen! You mought as well take yore mind off’n that spring. You hain’t a-goin’ to git at Nelson Floyd without you walk over my dead body—an’ thar’s no efs an’ ands about that. You try to mount that hoss, an’ I’ll kill you ef it’s in my power. I say I’ve got some’n to tell you that you’ll wish you’d listened to. I know some’n about Minnie that will put a new color on this whole nasty business; an’ when you know it, ef you kill Nelson Floyd in cold blood, the law will jerk that stiff neck o’ yourn—jerk it till it’s limber.”

“You say you know some’n about Minnie?” The gaunt hand which till now had hovered over the butt of the big revolver hung down straight. He stood staring, his lip hanging loose, a sudden droop of indecision upon him.

“I know this much, Jeff,” Pole said, less sharply. “I know you are not after the fust offender agin yore family honor, an’ when I prove _that_ to you I don’t believe you’ll look at it the same.”

“You say—you say——?”

“Listen now, Jeff, an’ don’t fly off the handle at a well-wisher sayin’ what he thinks has to be said in justice to all concerned. The truth is, you never seed Minnie like other folks has all along. You seed ’er grow up an’ she was yore pet. To you she was a regular angel; but other folks has knowed all along, Jeff, that she was born with a sorter light nature. Women folks, with the’r keen eyes, has knowed that ever since she got out o’ short dresses. Even yore own wife has said behind yore back a heap on this line that she was afeared to say to you. Not a soul has dared to talk plain to you, an’ even _I_ wouldn’t do it except in this case o’ life an’ death.”

Wade shook back his long, coarse hair. He was panting like a tired dog. “I don’t believe a damn word of what you are a-sayin’!” he muttered, “an’ I’ll make you prove it, by God, or I’ll have yore life-blood!”

“Listen to me, Jeff,” Pole said gently. “I’m not goin’ to threaten any more. Believe me or not, _but listen_! You remember when Thad Pelham went off to Mexico a year or so ago?”

Wade made no reply, but there was a look of dawning comprehension in his great, blearing eyes.

“I see you remember that,” Pole went on. “Well, you know, too, that he was goin’ with Minnie a lot about that time—takin’ her buggy-ridin’ an’ to meetin’. He was a devil in pants; his whole family was bad. The men in it wouldn’t go in the gate o’ heaven ef a woman was winkin’ at ’em on the outside. Well, Thad started fer Mexico one day, an’ at the same time Minnie went on a visit to yore brother Joe in Calhoun.

“She went thar a year ago,” Wade said, “fer I bought ’er ticket at Parley.”

“She told _you_ she went to Calhoun.” Pole’s eyes were mercifully averted. “I met her an’ Thad in Atlanta.”

Wade caught his breath. He shook from head to foot as with a chill.

“You say—Pole, you say——?”

Pole pulled at his mustache and looked down.

“Well, I reckon they wasn’t down thar to attend a Sunday-school convention, Jeff—they didn’t have that look to me. But I was so worried fer fear I mought be doin’ a woman injustice in my mind that, after they left me—to make sure, I went in the office o’ the hotel an’ made sure.”

Suddenly Wade put out his hand and laid it heavily on Pole’s shoulder. “Looky here, Baker,” he said, “if you are lying to me, I——”

“Hold on, _hold on_, Jeff Wade!” Pole broke in sternly. “Whenever you use words like them you smile! So fer, this has been a friendly talk, as I see it; but you begin to intimate that I’m a liar, an’ I’ll try my best to make you chaw the statement. You’re excited, but you mustn’t go too fur.”

“Well, I want the truth, by God, I want the truth!”

“Well, you are a-gittin’ it, with the measure runnin’ over,” Pole said, “an’ that ought to satisfy any reasonable man.”

“So you think then, that Nelson Floyd never done any—any o’ the things folks says he did—that ’twas jest report?”

“Well, I ain’t here to say that, nuther,” said Pole most diplomatically. “But la me! what a stark, ravin’ fool you was about to make o’ yoreself, Jeff!” Pole went on. “You started to do this thing today on yore sister’s account, when by doin’ it you would bust up her home an’ make her life miserable.”

“You mean——?”

“I mean that Joe Mitchell, that’s been dead stuck on Minnie sence she was a little gal, set up to her an’ proposed marriage. They got engaged an’ then every old snaggle-toothed busybody in these mountains set in to try to bust it up by totin’ tales about Floyd an’ others to ’im. As fast as one would come Minnie’d kill it, an’ show Joe what a foolish thing it was to listen to gossip, an’ Joe finally told ’em all to go to thunder, an’ they was married an’ moved on his farm in Texas. From all accounts they are doin’ well an’ are happy; but la me; they wouldn’t be that a-way long ef you’d ’a’ shot Nelson Floyd this mornin’.”

“You say they wouldn’t, Pole?”

“Huh, I reckon _you_ wouldn’t dance a jig an’ sing alleluia ef you was to pick up a newspaper this mornin’ an’ read in type a foot long that yore wife’s brother, in another state, had laid a man out stiff as a board fer some’n that folks said had tuck place some time back betwixt the man an’ her.”

“Huh!” Wade’s glance was now on Pole’s face. “Huh, I reckon you are right, Pole, I reckon you are right. I wasn’t thinkin’ about that.”

“Thar was _another_ duty you wasn’t a-thinkin’ about, too,” Pole said. “An’ that is yore duty to yore wife an’ childern that would be throwed helpless on the world ef this thing had ’a’ come off today.”

“Well, I don’t see _that_, anyway,” said Wade dejectedly.

“Well, _I_ do, Jeff. You see, ef you’d ’a’ gone on an’ killed Floyd, after I halted you, I’d ’a’ been a witness agin you, an’ I’d ’a’ had to testify that I told you, in so many words, whar the _rale_ blame laid, an’ no jury alive would ’a’ spared yore neck.”

“I reckon that’s so,” Wade admitted. “Well, I guess I’ll go back, Pole. I won’t go any further with it. I promise you not to molest that scamp. I’ll not trade any more at his shebang, an’ I’ll avoid ’im all I kin, but I’ll not kill ’im as I intended.”

“Now, you’re a-talkin’ with a clear head an’ a clean tongue.” Pole drew a breath of relief and stood silent as Wade drew his horse around, put his foot into the heavy wooden stirrup and mounted. Pole said nothing until Wade had ridden several paces homeward, then he called out to him, and beckoned him back with his hand, going to meet him, leading his horse.

“I just thought o’ some’n else, Jeff—some’n I want to say. I reckon I wouldn’t sleep sound tonight, or think of anything the rest o’ the day, ef I don’t git it off my mind.”

“What’s that, Pole?”

“Why, I don’t feel right about callin’ you to halt so rough jest now, an’ talkin’ about shootin’ holes in you an’ the like, fer I hain’t nothin’ agin you, Jeff. In fact, I’m yore friend now more than I ever was in my life. I feel fer you _’way down inside o’ me_. The look on yore face cuts me as keen as a knife. I—I reckon, Jeff, that you sorter feel like—like yore little sister’s dead, don’t you?”

The rough face looking down from the horse filled. “Like she was dead an’ buried, Pole,” Wade answered.

“Well, Jeff”—Pole’s voice was husky—“don’t you ever think o’ what I said a while ago about shootin’. Jeff, I jest did that to git yore attention. You mought ’a’ blazed away at me, but I’ll be derned ef I believe I could ’a’ cocked or pulled trigger on you to ’a’ saved my soul.”

“Same here, old neighbor,” said Wade as he wiped his eyes on his shirt sleeve. “I wouldn’t ’a’ tuck them words from no other man on the face o’ God’s green globe.”

When Wade had ridden slowly away Pole mounted his own horse.

“Now, I’ll go tell Nelson that the danger is over,” he said. Suddenly he reined his horse in and sat looking thoughtfully at the ground.

“No, I won’t,” he finally decided. “He kin set thar an’ wonder what’s up. I was in a hair’s breadth o’ the grave, about to leave a sweet wife an’ kids to starvation jest beca’se of him. No, Nelsy, old boy, you look death in the eye fer a while; it won’t do you no harm.”

And Pole Baker rode to the thicket, where he had hidden his bag of cornmeal that morning, and took it home.

(_To be continued._)

_A Phase of the Money Problem Bankers Dare Not Discuss_

BY ALBERT GRIFFIN
_Author of “The Keynote: Substitute Honest Money for
Fictitious Credit,” “The Hocus Pocus Money Boon”_

Because of limited space, this paper contains little more than principles, facts and conclusions, without argument—and the subject is considered from the practical man’s standpoint rather than that of the theorizer. The one monetary proposition to which all schools agree is that “money is the medium of exchange.” To be used as such is its one and only universally admitted purpose—and no other characteristic is essential. No matter of what it consists, whatever is _willingly_ used by people as their medium of exchange is money, and should be so recognized by everyone—but unfortunately, the greater part of it is not.

There is honest money and dishonest money. None is strictly honest that is not as good as the best—for exchange purposes. Ideal money has the same exchange value at all times, and everywhere—and the best money is that which is nearest the ideal. Without discussing what it should consist of, I hold that the material ought to be more substantial than a banker’s “confidence” that he will always be able to pay the most of his debts with mere debits and credits. As business cannot be done without money, and as each person needs enough of it to enable him to exchange his services and products for the services and products of others, it goes without saying that there ought to be enough to supply each and all liberally—and that no man, or set of men, should be allowed to affect materially this supply for selfish purposes.

To most people, the soundness of the “quantitative theory” of money is self-evident. Concisely stated, it is that, whenever the quantity of money in circulation increases faster than the exchanges to be made with it, commodities tend to rise in price—and _vice versa_—which is but the application to money of the inexorable law of supply and demand. While the soundness of this theory is generally admitted, every business man knows that sometimes facts seem to disprove it. In 1890, when the failure of Baring Brothers so nearly precipitated a panic throughout this country, the quantity of visible money in circulation was increasing; and the same fact was true in April, 1893, when the proceedings agreed upon at the conference between Secretary Carlisle and prominent New York bankers precipitated a fearful panic on the next business day—and yet, in both of these cases, the apparent conflict resulted from the suppression of a part of the facts.

Now for the explanation: In comparing the size or weight of two masses the whole of each must be contrasted with the whole of the other, and in comparing two actively operating forces all of the factors of each must be considered together, without regard to names. But, strange to say, three-fourths of what is being used and paid for as money, and which really does the work of money, and does nothing else, is denied the right of being called money by some doctrinaires—and also by bankers, when talking to the public. Although between May 1 and October 1, 1903, the volume of metallic and paper money actually increased, this something which had been doing the work of money was contracted $500,000,000 in New York City alone—but as it was not called money its relation to the results was not generally recognized.

Deposit banks are little more than clearing-houses; and the laws permit their owners to pay nine-tenths of their debts with money literally made by themselves—out of nothing—which they coolly call “liquid capital,” or “bank credit,” although it is neither capital nor credit. The real nature and far-reaching effects of this modern practice are not clearly understood by one in twenty even of the bankers themselves—and none of them dares discuss it publicly. The most of those that do not fully understand it _feel_ that there is something wrong about it; and those that do understand it know that, if people once begin to study “the system,” they will demand radical changes in it—or its entire abolition.

Government reports for 1904 put the volume of metallic and paper money then in existence at $2,829,273,316—or $31.16 per capita; and the Comptroller’s report shows that the banks whose reports he consolidated were earning interest on more than $6,278,000,000 of money that had no existence—or $76.47 per capita. This stuff is what, for a dozen years, I have called “hocus pocus money.” It consists of nothing but, in the language of Professor Sidgwick, rows of figures on bank books; and yet it affects business, prices and values, exactly as that amount of real money would. Invisible, intangible and mythical, it is nevertheless very real—filling the land with prosperity, joy and song today, and disaster, tears and despair tomorrow, it is the most potent economic power ever known. Business men gladly accept it as money. _The courts treat it as money._ And, although, for technical reasons, most political economists do not do so, I insist that, to all intents and purposes, it is money, and should be so recognized. Indeed, until this shall be done, it will be impossible to frame a monetary system that will always work equitably and beneficently.

Between 1896 and 1904, as officially reported, the increase in the volume of visible money was, in millions, $1,322,000,000—or $9.75 per capita; but the quantity of hocus pocus money in use increased $5,275,000,000—or $43.42 per capita—the quantity of both kinds then actually in use being $107.63 per capita. This shows that four-fifths of the increase in the medium of exchange consists merely of the right given favored people to draw checks on banks to pay which no real money has been deposited.

In 1888, 5,866 bank reports showed that they were then collecting interest on $3.41 for each dollar of their capital available for “commercial loans”; but last year’s reports of the 13,772 national, state and private banks and loan and trust companies show that their aggregate capital (including surplus, undivided profits and bank-notes) amounted to $2,927,000,000. This was everything their owners had put into their business, and of it $2,743,000,000 had been paid out for bonds, stocks, real estate, real estate mortgages, etc., leaving only $183,000,000 available for “commercial loans.” And yet their “loans and discounts” aggregated $6,431,000,000, or $35.07 of “commercial loans” for every dollar of their not otherwise invested capital. If this is not “_getting something for nothing_” on a stupendous scale, I should like to know what would be so considered.

Remember, that these figures include all of the reported banks. Individual cases are incomparably worse. On December 2, 1899, the National City Bank, of New York City (the principal of the several hundred Standard Oil banks), had $6,709,216 of capital, surplus, etc.; its investments of capital aggregated $27,270,738; its available capital was therefore $20,561,519 _less than nothing_; and yet it was then actually earning interest on $60,906,034 of “loans and discounts,” making $81,467,553 of hocus pocus money. And remember further that, to make people more dependent on banks for this kind of money with which to do business, the volume of real money is kept as small as possible. This is the real reason why bankers engineered the contraction of the currency after the war and the demonetization of silver. But for them no class of business men would have consented to either of those economic crimes.

Here are a few more important facts:

1. Interest has to be paid _to the banks_ on every dollar of hocus pocus money as long as it lives.

2. It lives, on an average, only about two months.

3. Every payment of a note or draft extinguishes the hocus pocus money involved in that transaction and contracts its volume that much, making it the most constantly and wildly fluctuating money ever known.

4. Whenever, for any reason, bankers fear a demand for an unusual amount of real money they make fewer “loans” and “call in” some that are outstanding, which destroys that part of the “liquid capital” that was in actual use as a medium of exchange and cramps the money market.

5. Bankers sometimes do these things unnecessarily, for the purpose of making a “bear market”; but it is also true that business conditions sometimes compel them to do so, as was the case in 1857 and 1873.

6. If the banks had on hand as much money as they reported (which is not always true), they, in 1888, owed $6.01 for every dollar they reported; and last year the proportion was $9.98 to $1. The sixty-two national banks in the central reserve cities are required to keep nearly 25 per cent. of their deposits on hand in cash; the 285 in the other reserve cities only 12½ per cent., and the 5,065 in non-reserve cities only 6 per cent. State bank requirements vary greatly, private banks and loan and trust companies are under few or no restrictions, and the loan and trust companies keep only about 2 per cent.

7. Less than one-tenth of the “deposits” in banks are real money—the others being mere promises of the banks to pay money to those who have bought (with notes) the right to draw checks against them—and it is simply impossible to so regulate the system as to prevent it from frequently working disastrously.

8. Contracting the volume of any kind of money that is willingly accepted by producers always causes suffering. Indeed, modern conditions require a large annual increase in the volume of money; and, with an insufficient supply of real money, it is not now possible to prevent the use of hocus pocus money.

9. It is well known that, when their interests seem to require it, great bankers defy the laws made to restrain them.

10. There ought to be places in which people can deposit money and know it will remain there until checked out by themselves.

For ten years I have called attention to the fact that there never has been, in this or any other country, a widespread commercial panic that was not caused _solely_ by the sudden contraction of the hocus pocus money then being used by banks, and have challenged contradiction; but this challenge has never been accepted. Hocus pocus money _is the one and only seriously disturbing factor that has always and everywhere preceded_ these catastrophes. Other causes aggravate them, but, with it eliminated, panics would be impossible, because it is this sudden, absolute destruction of the bank’s manufactured “liquid capital,” used by so many as their medium of exchange, which paralyzes their business operations and makes “the bottom drop out of the market,” as it were.

No words are lurid enough to portray properly the terrible evils and personal suffering that its use causes, and I submit that it is time people should begin to consider earnestly the question, Had we not better insist that some kind of real money shall be substituted for the unreal now in use, and thus permanently remove the cause that so often produces such baleful results? Conditions were never so favorable for doing this as they are now. No election is pending; the two great parties are lazily talking on similar platforms; all financial organs insist that the country is prospering; and, although people are deeply stirred, they are not excited.

The use of hocus pocus money, and its evil results, have increased steadily from the beginning of the deposit banking system. From time to time methods change, but every change increases the power and profits of the few—and the helplessness of the many. The gravest of these changes began to be felt about a decade ago. Leading bankers had always used some of their hocus pocus money for the promotion of their own schemes, but from that time the Rockefellers, Morgans and others have been systematically getting control of the principal deposit banking institutions, and using, not only a rapidly increasing proportion of their depositors’ real money, but also more of the hocus pocus money made possible by those deposits. Mr. Lawson and others have shown how this has been done on a gigantic scale, in specific cases, and of all unfossilized, sober-minded people I ask, can 999 business men afford to permit the thousandth man to continue appropriating to his own use the hocus pocus money their own deposits have made possible—and, in addition, help him to keep the volume of real money ruinously small? Indeed, would it not be idiotic folly to do so?

To me the problem appears to be: How can hocus pocus money be safely eliminated—or so restricted as to be harmless—and the quantity of real money so increased that all will, at all times, be able to exchange their products and services; that commercial panics and long periods of business depression will become impossible; and that a few men in each community will no longer have the power to ruin all who refuse to obey their orders?

Space will not permit me to tell here how this can be done, but I will say that, fortunately, this greatest and most overshadowing of the economic problems that confront humanity is the easiest of all to solve; that, as bankers are the controlling spirits in—or back of—nearly all trusts and combines, settling the money problems will make the solution of all the others easier; that it can be done without wronging anyone, or imposing additional burdens on the people; and that economic and social conditions would improve during the entire process.

But suppose that some of my conclusions may not be correct, does not the experience of the last hundred years prove, beyond controversy, that our banking and financial systems must be radically unsound in some very important particulars? And, if so, should we not insist upon their prompt improvement—or the substitution of better ones?

Every business man knows that, if the banks were required to keep larger reserves always on hand, they would be safer places of deposit. And they are equally well aware that the more real money there is in circulation the more prosperous and happy are the people. And the vitally important question is, not how far or how fast shall we go, but, shall we not begin to move steadily and determinedly in the direction of less danger and more permanent prosperity?

_A Leaf From a Protective Tariff Catechism_

(OVERHEARD IN A PROTECTIVE KINDERGARTEN)

BY JOEL BENTON

Q. What is Protection?

A. It is placing a duty upon foreign goods, of many kinds, to enable American makers of similar goods who “plead the baby act” to get higher prices for those goods than they otherwise would. It is compelling all the people to pay taxes to a few of the people.

Q. Why is this favor given to the few people?

A. On account of the fact that they pay so much higher wages than foreign manufacturers do and to compel them to pay still higher wages.

Q. Is this necessary?

A. It is very necessary to the Republican Party; for it gives it an issue and its chief cause for existence. When it saw accomplished, by the fortune of war, the freedom of the slave, what could be more natural and glorious than its ready espousal of anti-freedom for commerce?

Q. Are “protective” duties always just equal to the difference between our wages and foreign wages?

A. That is what our argument implies; and, if our argument is true, that is all we can ask. But how is a noble army of patriots to be maintained, and how can election expenses be met if we do not—in our tariff—treble and more than quadruple this difference often?

Q. Are high wages given by our manufacturers without an equivalent advantage in return?

A. It is true of wages, as of other things—that they are ordinarily worth their price, so that our _high-priced_ labor is really labor of _low cost_. But it is a mighty convenient subterfuge to keep this fact out of sight and by this means hoodwink the poor laborer for his vote.

Q. Do manufacturers keep a lobby at Washington for securing a tariff that makes them pay _high_ wages and yet sell their goods at _low_ prices?

A. That is what we very often say, substantially.

Q. Can our manufacturers sell goods abroad?

A. They do very largely over other tariff walls, and bear the expense of transportation and insurance and secure handsome profits. But the question is too delicate a one to enlarge upon.

Q. Does Mexico have a protective tariff?

A. She does. The plea for it there is that it is a defense against our _high-priced_ labor. The Mexican peons work for very _low prices_ and at a more than correspondingly _high cost_. It is one of the beauties of Protection that, whether labor costs little or much, you can plead for it for either reason.

Q. Does Protection help Agriculture?

A. It puts a tariff on hay, grain, potatoes, eggs, etc. Very little of any of these commodities are imported by us. When they are imported to any extent the farmers are the chief buyers, as they are of peas, beans and other seeds for planting. By paying the duty on all these things themselves they not only feel certain there is a duty, but they have the satisfaction of knowing they are not forgotten in the great “protective” scheme.

Q. Why is Protection called the American System?

A. This was the question Daniel Webster asked Henry Clay, who so named it, when they were not in accord upon the tariff. Webster was puzzled by the name, for he knew the system was European and medieval; but “American” sounds well and makes us consistent in berating foreign things and ideas.

Q. How does Protection help commerce?

A. Commerce is so foreign we don’t need to help it. So we let it go to the miserable foreigners—what we permit to exist. It is really better to pay the two hundred million dollars we pay them yearly to carry our goods than to let that amount of money pervert our high and noble doctrine.

Q. What is meant by having the tariff “revised by its friends”?

A. That, as the English say, is a good “half-crown phrase.” But its real meaning is to oppose revising the tariff in any way whatever. Several elections have been carried by this plea, and we are still working it for all it is worth. Of course no one goes to have his shoes mended to a shoemaker who is in favor of their holes and lack of heels, and no one selects depredators of hen-roosts to watch chicken thieves; but we must not defer to ordinary rules when “the noble citadel of Protection” is in danger.

Q. Is it understood that to change the tariff injures business?

A. We always say that, and charge to Free Trade the calamity that ensues.

Q. Suppose someone tells us there has been no Free Trade, and if Free Trade existed there would be no tariff to change, and therefore no injury from tariff changes?

A. Then is the time to look wise and say little. For our main object is to make Protection the source of all good and Free Trade the cause of all evil.

Q. How did it happen that, when hides were freed from duty in 1872—and even by the McKinley bill—they were taxed under the Dingley bill?

A. Well—but—let’s see. Why shouldn’t hides enjoy prosperity? It’s certain the big cattle dealers, who use the Government pastures without cost, profit by the duty, while we can claim it helps the farmers.

Q. Why are works of art tariff?

A. Not because the artists ask for Protection. They’re such curious people that they all oppose it. So we choose to be benevolent to them in spite of their eccentric behavior.

Q. What other peculiar tricks have our Protection wise men?

A. A pretty good one is to say that we are not tied up to any present or definite “schedules,” but to remember constantly that, if any change is made in the tariff, it must be one that goes up and never one that goes down. It was a great mistake for Garfield to say, “I believe in a Protection that leads to Free Trade.”

Q. What is Reciprocity?

A. It is—well, suppose you should build a bonfire and then pour water on it, or build a levee on the Mississippi and then punch holes through it. It is a part of our consistent scheme. Blaine knew, and who can dispute Blaine?

Q. What is Free Trade?

A. It is any scale of duties for any purpose that is the least bit lower than the Dingley bill. Everything that preceded that “bravest tariff ever made” is Free Trade. If some day Protection should climb to loftier heights, those who should oppose it by the lower Dingley bill would be Free Traders.

Here a boy, who got surreptitiously into the class, asked this unauthorized question:

Q. But you say this country has prospered under almost unbroken Protection. Now, since everything tariff-like before the Dingley bill is either Free Trade or Free Tradish, why is not all our prosperity up to the passage of that owing to Free Trade?

A. A boy cannot be expected to understand the flexibility of our nomenclature or the grandeur of a great principle. We are struggling to help “American Industries.” Must so little a thing as mere consistency stand between us and our friends? Boys should be seen and not heard.

Q. What is meant by American Industries?

A. Mainly manufactures. Of course these, and all protected interests, represent only from 5 to 8 per cent. of the real and total industries of the country. But they are the ones having large capital and power—the ones that can hire attorneys and maintain a lobby, and that have abundant “fat for frying” when important elections are at hand. Doesn’t “American Industries” sound well, if you only mouth it right, and roll it from the editorial pen and the platform often enough?

Q. How about the industries that are left out, or get merely nominal Protection?

A. The question is quite irrelevant. What more can they ask than to live in a “protected” country and be saved from Free Trade?

Q. Why do we protect woolen goods, and then de-protect manufacturers by “protecting” wool?

A. For the same reason that the boy cuts off a shoestring on one end and ties the cut-off piece on the other end. It amuses the boy and very likely helps us to get rid sooner of a foreign shoestring.

Q. Mention the value of Protection to American shipping.

A. It doesn’t hurt it; for, by its aid and the help of our navigation laws, there is none to hurt. The way to have ships is first to make it impossible for us to build them, and then give enough subsidy to make it possible. Now you see the little joker and now you don’t. Didn’t President Harrison almost shed tears when he hauled up the American flag on a steamer rescued from a foreign register? It isn’t possible to have Protection and have everything, but isn’t it lovely to make things impossible at much expense and then make them possible at more expense, and at last call in a President and have a melodramatic time about it? Besides all this, it employs money and promotes labor.

Q. Does Protection make wages _high_ and goods manufactured _low_?

A. That is what our philosophers maintain. Manufacturers are so anxious to exist here, and it is so necessary that we should have them, that they must pay high for their labor and sell its product low. To avoid paying but a little for labor, and to be prevented from selling their goods at high prices, they are even willing to maintain expensive lobbies at Washington and contribute large sums for electing Protectionists to Congress, to say nothing of “hypnotizing” doubtful or opposing senators.

Q. Can the first part of the above answer be really so?

A. It must be. A Protection journal had for its headlines on a Protection article the other day the statement that for many years Protection had done for manufacturers just this: It has made the wages they give _high_ and the prices they get _low_, and so they would be splendidly off if it were not for the shadow of that wicked Wilson bill.

Q. Does prosperity then consist in enlarging your expenses and reducing your income?

A. It always does in Wonderland and Topsy-Turvydom, and under Protection.

Q. But do not “protected” manufacturers import laborers?

A. Manufacturers are held by us to be benevolent. Of course they import laborers, in order that there may be more here to get the benefit of our higher wages.

Q. How about invention under Protection?

A. It isn’t necessary. So long as you can run the old ramshackle machinery, and be defended by the Government, you are saved the trouble of inventing newer and better methods. Some way might possibly be found if Yankee wit were once to be let loose, whereby we could compete with other nations in our manufactures, so that everybody would admit it, and then what would become of Protection? Remember constantly it isn’t the welfare of the people that is paramount; it is Protection.

Q. Protection being so much more necessary than free government, free soil, free speech, and so cherubically philanthropic when compared with the dreadfulness of British Free Trade, the question arises, How shall we maintain its propaganda?

A. We must first of all be very careful to say that Free Trade is British. Of course Magna Charta, including trial by jury and many other good things, are British too, but we mustn’t lose so good a stock argument. It is true, also, that England has prospered far more under Free Trade than she ever did under Protection. But the glorious Blaine accounted for that by saying that Free Trade might be good for England, but it must never come here. In other words, two and two make five or six over there, but here they fail to make four.

Q. What next must we do?

A. As our country has been very prosperous from its commencement, and we have had more or less Protection within that period, the best way is to say that all this has happened “under Protection.” It has happened _under_ other things, too, both good and evil, because it couldn’t happen _over_ them. But never let us forget that it was all caused by Protection. The very slight fact that our country was most prosperous when we had very low revenue duties is purely accidental and irrelevant. In Mr. Blaine’s history of his career in Congress he described the period of our greatest prosperity. But there was no election in view then, and he was careless enough to say that this period coincided with what is called the period of the Free Trade tariff of 1846. It was a dreadful mistake, because the statement was altogether too true, and Protection has no use for that which is merely true.

Q. There are other arguments, are there not?

A. A very decisive one is to call Free Trade a theory. For it is a theory of the Creator, who seemed to favor the idea of commerce along with civilization. But He, of course, left something for men to find out. The Chinese found out in the twelfth century that a big wall around their country would keep off nations that were savage and hostile; but the Republican Party have gone the Chinese one better and have walled off trade. No doubt some college Free Trader will ask you ironically if it is really the man who walks on his feet who is the theorist and innovator, and if the one who walks on stilts, and who tries to get everyone else on stilts, and who thinks it is a mistake that people were not born already stilted—as nations should have been already walled—is not one. But levity like this is what a great cause must not notice.

Q. What more must be said?

A. We must take pains to compare the United States with some foreign country. As we have already shown that everything good that has occurred here is wholly owing to Protection, we must take some foreign country and charge all that is bad there, such as the costly armies, the despotic or kingly rule, the dense population, the illiteracy, etcetera, to Free Trade. There are no really Free Trade countries in Europe except England, and possibly Belgium. They are protective in part. But they are foreign, and that is sufficient for the argument. Only put the excess of our benefits over theirs to the benefit of Protection, and all will be right.

Q. What shall we say about cheapness and dearness?

A. Didn’t the Apostle Paul say we must be all things to all men? If we do seem to oppose somewhat the solidarity of humanity, we meet in our arguments a variety of mental difficulties. Our Apostle Harrison went for dearness by not wanting to find a cheap coat, for fear he should find a cheap man under it. Another Apostle thought “cheap and nasty go together.” At the final period of a Presidential election, however, it is better to say that Protection makes things cheap, and our editors almost always take that cue. To be sure, if cheapness were our intention, Protection could not be established, and we could not cry out against “cheap pauper labor.” The arguments must therefore be shuffled—and cheap and dear must sometimes be taken and at other times denied. The question is more or less of a crux, but it is the beauty of the noble doctrine of Protection that all trivialities of this sort it majestically sweeps away. Not being amenable to any of the laws of human reason, it is not disturbed by such trifles as truth and consistency.

Q. But can’t we say the foreigner pays the tax?

A. We certainly can and we do. But this argument needs very cautious handling. Sometimes duties are collected through the Post-Office, when the cat is let out of the bag and the duty comes directly to the man to whom the package is addressed. If he asks to have it charged to the foreign country his goods came from, even a Republican postmaster will sometimes laugh at him. Such perverse incidents as this are what Artemus Ward might call “in-fe-lick-et-us”—very.

Q. How was it when Congress removed the tax from sugar?

A. Well—sugar isn’t everything. It won’t do to be too one-sided. We could not resist telling the public then that we had removed a heavy burden from _its_ shoulders. We really hated to tax the foreigners so much.

Q. What can be argued about the terms Protection and Free Trade?

A. Argument is superfluous here. The very word Protection is an assumption that meets all our requirements. It forecloses argument and shuts off dispute. Who doesn’t wish to be “protected”? And how charming it sounds to say we are protected from burglars, from enemies and from the horrors of trade—that is, trade with a foreigner. It must be always understood that if you could stand near the Canada or Mexico boundary and make a good bargain on the other side—say, the purchase of a horse for fifty dollars less than you could purchase him in your own country—you would inflict upon yourself and your country just so much loss. But if you buy the horse here at a price higher by fifty dollars, or over a tariff, with the fifty dollars added, you enrich both yourself and your country. On this doctrine, which is our fundamental one, we must and can stake everything, and against it the frothy waves of Free Trade will beat in vain.

Q. Why is not Free Trade also a felicitous term?

A. Things that are in themselves good, and that are made free and abundant, are, we must admit, generally to be approved. Abundant health or abundant friendship or abundant money we have not yet thought it wise to consider objectionable. But there are exceptions to all rules. Abundant trade—or Free Trade—which is trade done voluntarily by shrewd and sane men in order to procure abundant money, is different. To have it otherwise would upset our whole system of philosophy. What was this land of the free made for, if its main purpose were not to put shackles on trade? What we want is to eat our own cake and have it too; to sell everything we can to foreigners and buy nothing from them, and finally to get fat by stewing in our own juice.

The term Free Trade—to refer to the original question—is now so asphyxiated by us, by our contempt of it, that it suggests a Pandora’s box of horrors the moment we mention it. To speak of it in this contemptuous way is really one of our strong arguments. What we want is to scream it out as a horror, to make it a bugbear. It is like telling children of some dreadful bogy lying in wait for them in the dark, or like Dr. Johnson’s experiment with the fishwoman of Billingsgate, when he called her a hypothenuse, a triangle, a parallelopipedon, and several other mathematical things of which she had not the faintest knowledge and which she consequently supposed were very bad.

No, whatever else we do, let us stick to our insistent and persistent screech against Free Trade.

_Monopoly; The Power Behind the Trust_

BY JOSEPH DANA MILLER

How comes it that a power in its unimpeded operations beneficent—namely, the force or forces of combination or co-operation—becomes under certain conditions so injurious to modern industry? Why is a union of two factories or many factories, of two companies or many companies, a signal to the community of anticipated extortion? And why should the development of natural laws—those of combination and co-operation—provoke a public demand for regulation, and those who avail themselves of these operations be deemed amenable to punishment?