HN 64 
 .G83 
 

 ** ^. 
 

 v <p * 
 
 a 
 
 
 /.. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ^r 
 
 ^ V "^ 
 
 • * <i> *<y , «> - « « > 
 
C; 
 
 e 
 
 confiscation 
 
 RU OUTJjIHE 
 
 WILLIAM GREENWOOD 
 
 Those palaces on the Nob Hills of these United States are 
 the toadstools of the decay that is going on in tbis Republic 
 to-day.— Page 42. 
 
 f 
 
 SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 JAMES H. BARRY, PRINTER, 429 MONTGOMERY STREET 
 
 1895 
 

 COPYK'GIITED 1895, BY THE AlTHoR. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The Emancipation Proclamation has only 
 718 words. 
 
 Lincoln's address at Gettysburg has only 266 
 words. 
 
 The works of Thomas Paine were not only 
 one of the important factors that brought suc- 
 cess to the struggle for Independence, but they 
 were also largely instrumental in the Declara- 
 tion itself being made. And those works, what 
 were they? — mere pamphlets. 
 
 Shakespeare, whose writings are said to be an 
 education in themselves, can be had in a vol- 
 ume not twice the size of " Progress and Pov- 
 erty." 
 
 Why, then, cannot a scheme of political 
 economy, even w T hen it is a radical departure 
 from our present system, be sufficiently out- 
 lined for working purposes in a volume of this 
 size, and also written so that it shall be intelli- 
 gible to those to whom all such works should in 
 a Republic be addressed; namely, the voter, 
 who alone has the power to bring about the 
 desired change? 
 
 The late Professor Tyndall was both an origi- 
 nal investigator of natural phenomena and a 
 
4 PREFACE. 
 
 teacher who could make his discoveries as 
 plain to the ordinary mind as he could to the 
 scientist working in the same field as himself. 
 
 Discovering a truth in Nature or in political 
 economics is work only half done if the dis- 
 coverer wishes to make it known to those in 
 whose interest he claims to be working. 
 
 Labor, iron labor, makes the scholar, says 
 Emerson. 
 
 Labor, iron labor, gave Tyndall the faculty 
 that made him intelligible and interesting to 
 the young, and the right to preside at a meet- 
 ing of Humboldts. 
 
 But there is pride of intellect as well as pride 
 of riches, and none shows this pride as do the 
 writers on political economy who have made it 
 the " dismal science," instead of having made 
 it the A, B, C of our mental furniture, as it 
 should be with the people of a republic. 
 
 Making a good use of our means in our home 
 and business affairs is good economics. 
 
 Making a poor use of them is bad economics. 
 
 That is all there is to this word, whether it 
 is our private affairs or those of the nation that 
 are being considered. 
 
 If we live up to our laws, and yet want and 
 privation exist while there is more than suffi- 
 cient for all, then the fault must be in those 
 laws. 
 
 Making a scapegoat of the foreigner for those 
 conditions because he will not buy our wheat, 
 or use a metal that we have an overplus of, 
 
PREFACE. O 
 
 places us side by side with the witch-burner of 
 old. We are just as ignorant in one way, as he 
 was in another. • 
 
 At his door who has been writing on this 
 subject does the blame of this universal igno- 
 rance of it belong. He takes up this plain, 
 simple subject, and becomes an intellectual 
 aristocrat and a snob of exclusiveness from 
 that time on, and, like the aristocrat of wealth, 
 will have nothing further to do with the com- 
 mon people, cutting off all former connections 
 by turning out a mass of intellectual mud that 
 only leisure and education can penetrate. And 
 dear to him is the dignity of bulk, the dignity 
 of paunch, using, as he does, twenty words 
 where three would do better work. The living 
 and the dead of his species are alike in this 
 hunt for the " Absolutely Pure " to puff out 
 their little dough. 
 
 Dissecting " Co-operation," the writer of 
 Progress and Poverty must drag the poor re- 
 mains through over 800 words — almost enough 
 to bury the single tax theory itself. Co-opera- 
 tion means getting rid of the middlemen. 
 With organized labor it means keeping out all 
 whose admittance would cause a surplus of 
 labor among those who have organized to pre- 
 vent that as well as injustice by the employer. 
 But what has become of that middleman and 
 black-balled laborer? One is ruined and the 
 other is a helpless chip that is drifting into — 
 some State prison for forty years. 
 
6 PREFACE. 
 
 Co-operation is the savior of some, but the 
 ruination of others, and her plea of justifiable 
 homicide cannot be accepted while this earth 
 has more than enough for her own. 
 
 Not a God-like wisdom, nor the assumption 
 of it, is needed to either conceive a remedy for 
 our present troubles, or to formulate laws for 
 its application. Plain sense we most all have: 
 let us use it then, and we will have no further 
 use for either the bookworm or the logic chop- 
 per. 
 
CONFISCATION. 
 
 I. 
 
 Running a republic under the economic laws 
 of a monarchy must of necessity result in pro- 
 ducing the same conditions — great wealth for 
 some and great poverty for the rest. This 
 may be a government by the people, but it cer- 
 tainly is no longer a government for the people. 
 Heretofore individual greed has had full swing 
 in the United States, and naturally enough the 
 ablest returned in possession of everything 
 worth grabbing. And naturally enough, too, if 
 a republic means a country owned by all its 
 people, it cannot be a republic if it is owned 
 by only a few. All the power of a country is 
 bound to be in the hands of those who own it. 
 If its wealth is in the hands of a few, its power 
 is there with it. In the hands of a few it must 
 be, if it would be a kingdom or empire. In 
 the hands of all it must be, if it would be a 
 republic. To insist on having the personal 
 liberty that goes with a republic, and at the 
 same time not to set a limit to the resources an 
 
O CONFISCATION. 
 
 individual can own, is a contradiction. A re- 
 public has economic laws that are essential to 
 her existence. Any others mean her destruc- 
 tion. And it is utterly out of the question for 
 any political party to improve the conditions of 
 the people, while they use the present economic 
 laws as the basis of their proposed legislation. 
 
 You must begin at the foundation. Individ- 
 ual greed should be made to respect the right 
 of others to exist, and made to conform itself 
 to laws that are as necessary to the life of a re- 
 public as is the ballot itself. The ballot, in fact, 
 has lost its power. It is the key to a house we 
 have lost possession of, and if we would regain 
 possession and make the ballot something more 
 than a mere symbol of a thing that is dead, 
 we have no choice but to resort to the one 
 process by which the resources of the country 
 can be returned to its people, and the blight of 
 poverty and pauperism that is settling down on 
 the country and is becoming permanent can be 
 removed — namely, confiscation. 
 
 Man, in the beginning, seeing annihilation 
 staring him in the face, combined and gave us 
 the Government of the Tribe; out of that 
 developed the Despotic form; out of that 
 developed the Constitutional Monarchy, out of 
 which developed the Republic, the highest type 
 of them all; and this work of development must 
 ever go on, if we would not lapse into former 
 conditions. 
 
 The founders of the republic could not have 
 
CONFISCATION. \) 
 
 expected their work to so soon come to the 
 Chinese halt that has overtaken it, until we 
 now find ourselves floating on an ebbing sea 
 back to the shores we thought we had forever 
 left behind. 
 
 The founders of the republic met the needs 
 of their hour, and expelled the foreigner. We 
 have failed to meet the need of our hour in not 
 discarding the economic laws that were of that 
 foreigner's bringing; the economic laws of 
 the monarchist and despotic forms of govern- 
 ment, that is making this republic a republic 
 only in name; the economic laws of the mon- 
 archist and despotic forms of government that 
 has built up an aristocracy of wealth here as 
 they have there, that must of necessity depend 
 here for its existence as it does there, on the 
 enslavement of the people. Do not let a mere 
 word further deceive you. The word republic 
 means a free people — we are slaves. For great 
 revenue, be it of king or millionaire, has the 
 same magician's wand — the overladen back of 
 the enslaved toiler. 
 
 In the face of our boasted intelligence what 
 an appalling sight does this country offer to 
 the All-seeing Eye. An abundance of every- 
 thing, and people starving by the thousands. 
 When our lawmakers in Washington learned 
 that the death penalty was to be inflicted on 
 those who were convicted of treason for trying 
 to overthrow the established government in 
 Hawaii, they said it must not be done, and 
 
10 CONFISCATION. 
 
 busied themselves to save those people's lives. 
 And during all their agitation to save these 
 men who were to suffer a punishment that is 
 meted out to such by all governments, thou- 
 sands of their own people were perishing for 
 the want of something to eat — not inhuman 
 or hard-hearted, bat simply do not see how they 
 can prevent it. There is no law by which they 
 can stop starvation. The legislator in a mon- 
 archy knows that poverty is inseparable from 
 that form of government and are reconciled 
 to it. 
 
 Our legislators are reconciled to the same con - 
 ditions. They do not see the incongruity of 
 conforming the legislation of a republic to the 
 economic laws of a monarchy. They do not 
 know what a government by the people and for 
 the people means. If they did, they would 
 know that there was something wrong when 
 one man has .$50,000,000 while another has not 
 enough to get his shoes cobbled: and another 
 has 50,000 acres of land, while others must be 
 buried four in a grave. 
 
 And none of the political parties shows a 
 way of escape out of this miserable state of af- 
 fairs, as a brief review of their positions will 
 show. 
 
 We once had the Free States and the Slave 
 States, and these two terms were designative of 
 two sections into which the country was then 
 divided on the question of slavery. To-day we 
 have " Free Coinage of Silver," '-'Protection.* - 
 
CONFISCATION. 11 
 
 and " Free Trade." These three terms, Free 
 Coinage of Silver, Protection, and Free Trade, 
 are as truly designative of three different sec- 
 tions into which the country is divided to-day 
 on economic or industrial questions as were 
 the terms Free States and Slave States designa- 
 tive of two sections in the past. Thus the 
 preponderating interest in one section is the 
 mining of silver, and this interest is repre- 
 sented by the Populist Party, who demands 
 the coinage of more silver. The preponderat- 
 ing interest of the second section, or East, is 
 manufactures, and is represented by the Repub- 
 lican Party, who demands protection.. The 
 preponderating interest of the third section, or 
 South, is agriculture, and is represented b} r the 
 Democratic Party, who demands free trade. 
 This is substantially correct, although the Pop- 
 ulists seem to be as strong in the agricultural 
 South as in the silver-producing West. The 
 Populist Party, indeed, originated among the 
 agriculturists of the South, and was the out- 
 growth of discontent among the farmers; and 
 in saying that Populism has its stronghold in 
 the West, or silver-producing section, we sim- 
 ply mean that the farmers' organization has 
 been captured by the silver interest. They 
 seem to think that their own prosperity is 
 linked w T ith that of the silver producers, and 
 that the free coinage of silver means the salva- 
 tion of both. With this political maneuvering, 
 however, we have nothing to do. There are 
 
12 CONFISCATION. 
 
 three political parties in the field, each with 
 the preponderating interest of some section in 
 charge, which it is bound to see through regard- 
 less of the interests of the other two. The in- 
 dustrial rivalry that is going on throughout 
 the whole world has entered these United 
 States, and each of the three different sections 
 are struggling to obtain legislation favorable 
 to itself, with the same indifference to the in- 
 terests of the others that is shown by France 
 to England or by England to the United 
 States. Even the naked savage has found that 
 it is a good thing to have something to sell, and 
 our agriculturists are brought into competition 
 with territor}' the New World over where a 
 plow or harvester was unknown ten years ago; 
 and instead of having a monopoly in the 
 European markets, as was the case a few years 
 ago, where they could dispose of their surplus, 
 they are now compelled to feed it to their hogs, 
 w T hich, as a source of profit, ranks even now 
 with the thing they are fed on. 
 
 But we are not depending on foreign mar- 
 kets for enough to eat and wear. Those things 
 are here, not there. We may have lost the for- 
 eigner as'a customer, but what prevents us from 
 eating that which he refuses to buy. We look 
 back a hundred or more years, and cry out in 
 horror at the inhumanity of those then in 
 power, in allowing human beings to be burned 
 alive and living creatures to be torn to pieces 
 on the rack. Those who will look back to 
 
CONFISCATION. 13 
 
 these times will be no less astounded at the 
 inhumanity and imbecility of those now in 
 power in allowing starvation while food is ac- 
 tually rotting for the want of consumers. The 
 question, then, is, can we not formulate a pol- 
 icy that will work harmoniously throughout 
 the whole country for the benefit of all sec- 
 tions and every individual? Can we not find 
 some way out of the swamp into which the 
 masterful greed of a few and the dense stupid- 
 ity of their legislative tools have mired us? 
 
 If we cannot, then let us submit with the 
 best grace possible to our masters who know 
 how to lay on the lash when their dividends 
 are at stake. 
 
 The resources of the United States have 
 hardly been touched upon; but in less than a 
 hundred years individual greed has done its 
 work, and the people are bankrupt. They 
 have been legislated out of everything, and the 
 one function of our government, as at present 
 conducted, is to see that this legislation is en- 
 forced. Yes, it is beyond the reach of contra- 
 diction that this government, that was founded 
 in the interests of All, has degenerated into a 
 merciless taskmaster, ever ready to beat into 
 submission the slaves of the country, when 
 their few owners give the word. 
 
 But this treatment should be expected. It 
 goes with ownership. Give me the ownership 
 of men, and all else goes with the title — how I 
 shall clothe, feed, and lodge them, and how I 
 
14 CONFISCATION. 
 
 shall keep theni on the grind. Of course, the 
 wise ones will say, Was it not our own chosen 
 representatives who made all those laws that 
 gave our resources and the people themselves 
 over to the favored few, and must not we, the 
 principals, grin and bear it, and live up to 
 whatever contracts those representatives, our 
 agents, made in our name? 
 
 It is not, however, how we were despoiled, 
 but how we are to recover the plunder, that is 
 interesting us just now. Is there a way out of 
 the night of despair ? is the question that should 
 be met, and, if possible, answered. Finding a 
 way out of a difficulty is one thiDg, however, 
 and having the courage to take it is another. 
 Modern surgery has discovered much, but 
 without the courage to use the knife mankind 
 would not have been the gainer. The prayer 
 meeting has its uses, but those who expect to 
 obtain political or industrial deliverance in that 
 quarter can set out their rain-gauges and go 
 there; but those who know the nature of the 
 fellow who has been grabbing all in sight will 
 make him let go in the old-time way by using a 
 force superior to his own — a force that he will 
 feel when it comes down, supposing the power 
 to feel is left in him. 
 
 We have no hatred of the rich — nor love of 
 the poor, for that matter. They are both fish- 
 ers for gain, and one gets it, and the other 
 don't; but his basket is just as large. But we 
 are a lover of justice, and if one is too much 
 
> CONFISCATION. 15 
 
 for the other would handicap him, and thereby 
 make the struggle for existence more even for 
 both. The weakling will always be a weak- 
 ling, whatever laws are passed for his benefit, 
 and the drudgery of the world w r ill ever be his 
 portion; from it he can never escape, but he is 
 entitled to his life, and if the able denies him 
 what is necessary to it, then Justice must step 
 in and take his part. 
 
 Volumes could be padded in showing how 
 this can be done, but w T e can demonstrate in 
 this brief work how poverty can be obliterated 
 as a feature of our national life, and if it does 
 not make justice more even-handed for all, and 
 the people of this country as prosperous as any 
 on earth, then the fault must be in the plan it- 
 self, and not in the resources which we possess, 
 for of those we have enough to empty every 
 poorhouse in the land, and eighty-five per cent, 
 of the jails and penitentiaries. 
 
 Let our wrongs be righted without physical 
 force, by all means. History, however, has 
 no encouragement for such a hope. The con- 
 tentions with those on top have ever been of 
 the blood-red order. Power once obtained has 
 never been surrendered only through con- 
 quest. The ballot should do much, and had it 
 been in use in the past history might have 
 had less of blood in it, as it should have less of 
 it in the future. But the ballot for a long- 
 number of years has, like a great many stom- 
 achs of late, been working on wind — the wind 
 
16 CONFISCATION. 
 
 of the Protectionist, the wind of the Free 
 Trader, and the wind of the latest cure-all, the 
 fellow who is hunting a market for his silver. 
 
 If something substantial to work on is not 
 soon given to this man with the ballot, he will 
 drop it — and then let the blame of it rest with 
 the fools and rascals who have been deluding 
 him so long. 
 
 The average man makes a better soldier than 
 he does a vcter. He can get the range of an 
 object easier than he can comprehend an eco- 
 nomic truth — this one. for instance: If the 
 capitalists have obtained possession of the 
 money issued in the past, what is to prevent 
 them from getting possession of all that will 
 be issued in the future? His answer will be 
 to issue more. He has been told so by his 
 political mentor. When the man with the bal- 
 lot loses confidence in this mentor, he will start 
 a game of his own, and then the jig will be up 
 with that idiot. We use the word idiot advis- 
 edly here. When a tax was assessed against 
 the incomes of the rich, this driveler would 
 score a point gained in favor of the people. 
 This claim of itself shows the institution to 
 which he should be consigned. 
 
 Victoria. Empress and Queen, rules a coun- 
 try where pauperism is steadily on the increase. 
 and the potter's field received the bodies of 
 eighty of her subjects that were frozen to death 
 in London in four days of January last. Yet 
 the rich have been paying an income tax in 
 that country for generations past. 
 
CONFISCATION. 17 
 
 When the rich merchant, or rich anything 
 else, insures what he is dealing in, he adds the 
 cost of his policy to the thing he sells. The 
 income tax is but another premium, and he 
 tags that on where he pinned the other. The 
 laborer has always paid the expenses of the 
 rich, and always will. The laborer can never 
 dictate terms to the rich. The labor leaders 
 even have come to recognize the hopelessness 
 of the unequal contest. The power of the rich 
 to do as they like can never be destroyed while 
 they are allowed to retain the riches that gives 
 them this power. A readjustment and a limit 
 set to the amount an individual can own is the 
 only remedy. And the sooner that unassail- 
 able truth is recognized and acted upon, the 
 sooner will you get rid of the lobbiest and the 
 pauper. 
 
 II. 
 
 We need more money per capita, say some 
 more would-be leaders, who have found the 
 only way out of the land of bondage. Increase 
 the currency to $50 per capita, and business 
 and prosperity will once more fill the land. 
 Money has become scarcer, they continue, and 
 therefore dearer. Those who contracted mon- 
 etary obligations last week find that they are 
 now paying more for the use of that money 
 than it was worth when the debt was made. 
 
18 CONFISCATION. 
 
 This is a hardship on the borrower, and can be 
 prevented by increasing the amount of money 
 in circulation. 
 
 This is the very essence of what is claimed 
 by those who are for increasing the volume of 
 money in circulation. Money has changed in 
 value, and those who are mortgaged, or other- 
 wise under interest-paying obligations, have 
 found that money is scarcer, in this instance 
 through contraction of the currency, and there- 
 fore harder to get. 
 
 There should certainly be enough money 
 issued for the smooth carrying on of the coun- 
 try's business, and when they determine the 
 amount necessary, it should be put in circula- 
 tion at once. But stopping money from fluc- 
 tuating in value is another thing. 
 
 The man who buys a barrel of flour one day 
 for $4.00 may find that it is worth only $3.50 
 the day after. The man who borrows money 
 at 7 per cent, one day may find it worth only 
 6i the day after. 
 
 To prevent these fluctuations in the value of 
 either money or commodities is a legislative feat 
 beyond the power of mortal man. And when 
 we see our Legislator trying to regulate the 
 value of anything that one man has to sell to 
 another, we are no longer surprised at his try- 
 ing to regulate the weather by exploding pow- 
 der in the air. Our Mark Twains and Bill 
 Nyes are flat indeed, when compared to that 
 straight-faced clown, the American legislator, 
 
CONFISCATION. 19 
 
 who would give an unchangable value to either 
 the shoes we wear or the money we use. 
 
 This whole question of currency has as little 
 to do with the prevailing misery as the miss- 
 ing button off your vest would have to do with 
 your being frozen to death. England not only 
 has enough money to carry on her own busi- 
 ness, but also has $15,000,000,000 to lend to 
 outsiders. It is not the wealth of a country, 
 but how it is distributed, that tells the story. 
 
 The single taxers, of whom Henry George is 
 the great apostle, are also claiming the floor, 
 but a patient hearing finds the distressed turn- 
 ing away for relief that the single taxer can 
 not give. They are cultivating a century 
 plant, and while we are w T aiting for it to bloom 
 three generations of human beings will have 
 met their millionaire masters and taken their 
 place in the line that leads to the soup house 
 and the pauper's grave. 
 
 The masterly logic of these reformers is the 
 work of serene-tempered and well-fed men, 
 whose cosy library with windows facing to the 
 south, and the open fire-place with its soothing 
 and cheerful glow, is conducive to the develop- 
 ing of a red-tape reform that must be an in- 
 spiring subject for discussion at an afternoon 
 tea. Because they are well fed is the reason 
 why they can play a waiting game, but the 
 despairing and maddened people, for whose 
 benefit this single tax contract, with its long 
 
20 ? - noN. 
 
 deferred pay: n ent, is ring drawn up, will b 
 as little use for it as they will have for the 
 plate-glass window when their bread riots be- 
 gin. 
 
 The land owner alone is the one these one- 
 horse-chaise reformers would start their Dob- 
 bin after. The large land-owner should be cut 
 down in his holdings, and their plan is jus: 
 one to fix him and make him let go. They will 
 tax him in such a way that he cannot pay, and 
 then they have got him. they tell us, as they 
 jog along over their pleasant high- 
 
 H :w, why this dilly-dallying with the large 
 lane or any one else, that has some- 
 
 thing that he should surrender for the general 
 . 
 
 When 30,000 acres of land by 
 
 one man is wrong, then rong to let him 
 
 .ere was one drop of the John 
 Brown blood in this crew of house-gown and 
 :pper refon: :>uld go into the 
 
 ip, and never let up on their open 
 warfare until what belonged to the people was 
 rued to them. 
 Taxing an to make him give up 
 
 plunder! 
 
 When hunger and plenty is found side 
 
 lution can there be but to set a limit 
 what the >ve rendowed can tag with his name, 
 and to put his forfeited surplus where the un- 
 derfed can, with reasonable labor, get posses- 
 sion of : 
 
CONFISCATION. 21' 
 
 If the single taxer is given plenty of time, 
 he will accomplish something, undoubtedly, 
 but the whole thing will be over long before 
 poor old Dobbin gets on to the scene. 
 
 The millionaire land-owner and the million- 
 aire capitalist are as much out of place in a re- 
 public as is the man with a title; and the laws 
 which permitted the growth of the two first are 
 the primary cause of the disgraceful conditions 
 that exist in this Republic to-day. When we 
 know that people in actual want are to be found 
 in every section of the United States, we ought 
 to be able to say that it is Nature that has failed 
 us for the time being; but it is not Nature, but 
 the wretched laws of man's own making that 
 are at fault. Had we the economic laws that 
 belong to a republic, instead of those that be- 
 long to a despotism, the foreign markets could 
 be entirely closed to us, and all our people 
 would still have enough of all things that are 
 necessary to life. And those able men who 
 have gone into the domain of natural philos- 
 ophy, to see what they could find to advance 
 and benefit the human race, have found so 
 much, and brought about such a change in the 
 industrial world, that they have completely be- 
 wildered our political philosophers, who have 
 been utterly unable to make room for the labor- 
 saving inventions and discoveries of those men, 
 until the confusion and distress resulting from 
 the incompetence of our political philosophers 
 
22 CONFISCATION 
 
 to adjust the laws to meet the changed condi- 
 tions are beginning to make us look upon the 
 inventors as our enemies, instead of our bene- 
 factors. 
 
 The work of the world consists principally 
 in raising food and manufacturing the things 
 w T e wear, and the forwarding of both to the con- 
 sumer. And the great inventions of the Mc- 
 Cormicks, Howes, Fultons, Stephensons, and 
 the rest have made this work so easy that the 
 labor done in two months now is equivalent to 
 the labor done in twelve months a few years 
 ago. That is why they are great inventions. 
 Yet our law-makers are still legislating for con- 
 ditions that disappeared with the ox-goad, hand 
 loom, lapstone, and sickle, and are continually 
 trying to devise ways and means by which the 
 labor of the country can be kept employed the 
 year round. What doing? When they find 
 out how to make you wear twenty pairs of 
 shoes at a time, they will have found out how 
 to keep the shoe factories running the } r ear 
 round, not before. 
 
 The natural philosopher can overcome ph} T si- 
 cal difficulties; the political philosopher cannot 
 overcome economic ones. 
 
 We would reside on a certain hill were it not 
 for the climb. A Hallidie lays his cable, and 
 puts us at the top without further trouble. We 
 find Egypt cutting into our cotton market, Ar- 
 gentine into our wheat market, France and 
 Germany have shut their doors against our 
 
CONFISCATION. 23 
 
 meats, and England will not approve of silver. 
 Many throughout this country find their very 
 bread falling short through these conditions 
 abroad, and the sufferers call in our political 
 economists to help them to at least keep the 
 necessaries of life within their reach. 
 
 Of the various nostrums prescribed by these 
 political quacks, two have been thoroughly 
 tried, but the aggravating results have only cut 
 the eye-teeth of the humbugged; and when 
 they take the field themselves as political econ- 
 omists, they will have a preparation of their 
 own that will be bitter enough to the taste of 
 those to whom they will apply it. 
 
 III. 
 
 What rainbow-chasers these McKinleys, Wil- 
 sons, and J. P. Joneses are ! Do they not see 
 this country with its limitless resources? Do 
 they not see the surfeited millionaire, and the 
 hungry laborer with his starving dependents? 
 Do they not see that they must break down the 
 one if they would build up the other? Do not 
 these miserable bunglers see that this noble 
 ship of the fathers is foundering because of 
 her uneven load? 
 
 See the imbeciles rushing hither and thither 
 in frantic despair ! This one with his wad of 
 wool to stop a leak that does not exist; that one 
 with his tears and kisses falling on the silver 
 charm that hangs about his neck; this other at 
 
24 CONFISCATION. 
 
 the masthead high shouting to foreign shores 
 for help we do not need. 
 
 Never did the black flag of a Csesar or a Na- 
 poleon IIT. bear down on a richer-laden prey 
 than this helpless hulk and its jabbering crew. 
 
 Through Confiscation, and Confiscation alone, 
 can we restore the conditions that are neces- 
 sary to the life of the Republic. 
 
 Confiscation is a forbidding word. We asso- 
 ciate it with the sheriff's writ, and with the 
 idea of distress in some form, and with bloody 
 war itself, its greatest field of operation. It is 
 one of the few words in the vocabulary of 
 Might. Without Might there would be no such 
 word ; and the weak have ever been the prey of 
 both. But it is a plain word. As plain as are 
 the conditions under which we are now living. 
 There is no mistaking its meaning. And hav- 
 ing the same momentous work -ahead of us — 
 of gaining our freedom, and throwing off the 
 yoke of our latest master — as that which con- 
 fronted the founders of the Republic, we can- 
 not go to a nursery rhyme for a word to de- 
 scribe that work. 
 
 It is the way in which Might is to restore our 
 lost liberties and resources that is of the grav- 
 est concern to all, and not the word used to de- 
 scribe the result of what Might shall do. 
 
 Justice is due. But how is it to arrive? By 
 way of the ballot, or over the same blood- 
 stained road in use before the ballot was dis- 
 covered? 
 
CONFISCATION. 25 
 
 If the plundered and starving have lost faith 
 in the ballot, and sheer want has brutalized 
 them until they see no way but the brute's way 
 of saving themselves, then place the horror of 
 it all at the doors of incompetence and grasp- 
 ing greed where it belongs. 
 
 It is a plain word. As plain as are the con- 
 ditions under which we are now living. As 
 plain as is the wide-spread want and hunger 
 that is in this land to-day, while there is more 
 than enough for all. 
 
 And those who have gained possession of 
 our resources are responsible for this hunger, 
 and are enemies just as much as if they were 
 invaders. Whatever progress external foes 
 could make in landing on these shores would 
 be only temporary, and not a blow could they 
 strike, or a step make, without our knowing it. 
 Not so the millionaire. His is the work of the 
 thief in the night, and we know nothing till 
 his work is done. And then, because we 
 would resort to the same process of recovery 
 that we would in the case of any common 
 enemy, we hold back, forsooth, because that 
 process is called Confiscation. 
 
 Those whom we find to be inimical to the 
 life of the republic will look upon an anarchist 
 as a cooing dove compared to the man who 
 would advocate Confiscation. They have 
 nothing to fear from the anarchist, except a 
 stray bomb now and then, for they know full 
 well that the "plain " people will always stand 
 
26 CONFISCATION. 
 
 between them and that wild-eyed dreamer of 
 the impracticable. 
 
 What those favored people think, however, 
 does not interest us. What is of more con- 
 cern to us, and to all others who have no doubt 
 but what there is something wrong in the pres- 
 ent scheme of things, is that the doctrine of 
 Confiscation should be first understoood before 
 it is rejected. If it is found to conflict with 
 law and order; if it is found to obstruct in 
 any way the material welfare necessary to any 
 man, woman, or child in the United States; if 
 it takes from any man, woman, or child in 
 these United States a solitary privilege or right 
 that is essential to their well being; if it 
 makes one more tramp, convict, or outcast of 
 the street: if it fills one more pauper's bed or 
 potter's grave, then our search is not ended, 
 for it is only another delusion, and of them we 
 have more than enough already. 
 
 If, on the other hand, it does away with 
 hunger and rags in a laud of plenty. Does 
 away with the cause of ignorance, namely, pov- 
 erty. Does away with the cause of eighty-five 
 per cent, of crime, namely, poverty. Does 
 away with the cause of strikes and rioting, 
 namely, poverty. Destroys the power of one 
 man to bribe one or fifty, and with his thumb 
 at his nose defies the law to reach him. Makes 
 robbery of the people by way of the lobby a 
 thing of the past, and makes unnecessary a 
 third house for the investigation of the other 
 
CONFISCATION. 27 
 
 two, a stage we have already reached. Does 
 away with the millionaire and his charity — the 
 beggar and Irs need of it. Gives the condi- 
 tions which makes individual and national im- 
 provement possible, and securing every such 
 national improvement by making all the people 
 its willing defenders, which they are far from 
 being now in their hunger and wretchedness. 
 Makfis employment easy to obtain, with just 
 wages in return for the labor done, putting 
 within the reach of all, those comforts and lux- 
 uries, which, in this age of the world with its 
 skill for quick and easy production, should be 
 looked upon as a matter of course, but which 
 in fact are unknown to a large part of the 
 working people of the country. 
 
 If Confiscation, then, can do all this, why 
 should it not be made to supersede all other 
 policies that have been tried, and all those that 
 are now courting public favor, but which, like 
 the rest, are based upon unrepublican econo- 
 mic laws, and must end, therefore, like the rest, 
 in failure and disappointment ? 
 
 With our resources restored to the people, 
 which can be done only through Confiscation, 
 prosperity would diffuse itself throughout the 
 country as easily as the sun scatters its light. 
 
 We will now outline, as briefly as we may, 
 what will be the effects of Confiscation, and 
 what Confiscation means. It means the limit- 
 ing OF EVERY INDIVIDUAL FORTUNE [iN THE 
 
 United States to $100,000. 
 
28 CONFISCATION. 
 
 And the excess of every fortune now exceeding 
 that amount to be confiscated and turned into the 
 public treasury. No exceptions to be made as 
 to persons or the thing owned. Money, land, 
 buildings, bonds, stocks, everything — where- 
 ever an excess is found, confiscate. 
 
 The anarchist! It is justice and the intelligence 
 of the people that these new tyrants dread. The 
 equity of this reform should be evident to 
 every one who knows that this government 
 was originally established for the good of all. 
 And the time has now come when the work 
 commenced in 1776 should be again resumed, 
 and our latest masters got rid of some way or 
 other. 
 
 But, it will be asked, will not a fifty times 
 millionaire give employment to as many men 
 as will 500 men with $100,000 each. No. Not 
 even if madam and himself are at home from 
 toadying up and down through Europe in 
 search of a princeling. (Stop this fad of the 
 spoiled darlings of fortune and you stop a leak 
 through which over $1,000,000,000 of American 
 money has already disappeared. We will sus- 
 tain this with facts in its proper place.) One 
 million dollars divided among ten men will do 
 ten times more good than if owned by one 
 man. One million dollars ow T ned by one man 
 is like one million acres owned by one man. 
 He will certainly make some kind of use of his 
 acres, but the very best he can do will be as 
 nothing compared to the use a thousand men 
 
CONFISCATION. 29 
 
 or more can make of them. It is the same 
 with a million of money. And an enterprise 
 calling for one million dollars of capital can be 
 carried on just as well if that capital is owned 
 by fifty men, as it could if it is owned by one 
 man. We will have more to say on this point 
 before we are done. 
 
 The American millionaire has also the power 
 to squander outside of our own territory that 
 which is much needed in his country. And 
 the thousands in money which he sends to 
 Europe for something to hang on his walls 
 would pay for a much needed improvement in 
 some city or town in the country where the 
 money was made. 
 
 The American millionaire is a detriment to 
 his own country any way you take him, al- 
 though a .great many people are thoughtless 
 enough to say that we cannot get along without 
 the millionaire. The capital which he controls 
 will be still here after he is legislated out of 
 office, just as it is when Father Time gathers 
 him in. 
 
 He not only injures our country by taking 
 its capital away, but he checks development by 
 tying up the resources which he has got title 
 to. He incloses thousands of acres for a few 
 deer or some such to browse in when the 
 whole should be thrown open, and those in need 
 of homes allowed to settle it. There can be no 
 doubt but what this is a great waste of land 
 when we remember how rapidly those reserva- 
 
co>~fiscat: 
 
 - rre settled when they were thrown open 
 within the last few years. Those large incis- 
 ures may or may not contain land suitable for 
 thosT in need of homes, but a look through the 
 : " Lhills and mountains of California will show 
 that homes can be made among the rocks and 
 cany us even — when people are forced to it. 
 And it is this j millionaire to com. 
 
 pel : that we have : 
 
 nd not i talitj :he land 
 
 in hi . ne preserves Strip him of this 
 er and i for his 
 
 wall/ 7 the leei park ' and the ** princeling 
 imp;--. - the people will once more h 
 
 mc .._■ theii own. Let him retain it, and 
 he will soon drive us to beat the bash for game 
 
 is he has alrea 
 bag^ vealth we produced. Let him re- 
 
 tain it, and fa lies of fencing may or 
 
 may not inclose worthless land, but it will not 
 be the land, but the : - re resented by the 
 leer inside rill set as to thinking of the 
 
 b and of the pauperism and 
 bis -'. : d gings where- 
 - :und. Let him retain it a little 
 
 _-;. and the soldier, who is steadily 
 ij on to the scene, will be here, 
 . - - •-. - help ourselves will be 
 gor_T for the gri] - it our throaJ 
 
 Those who are watching the mighty drama 
 that is slowly unfolding itself on the world's 
 of to-:* ... the -:rike of last 
 
CONFISCATION. 31 
 
 summer with what astounding ease a great 
 people can he subjugated by a few disciplined 
 men. And we no longer labor under the mis- 
 take of thinking that because they are our own 
 people they will not shoot to kill. Put your 
 brother — aye, your son — into a uniform, and 
 he needs but the word to snuff you out as 
 quick as he would a red handed Apache. He 
 has been drilled to believe that he himself 
 would be snuffed out if he disobeyed. And 
 this result of disobedience is ever present with 
 the man in uniform, and has been engraved 
 into his very soul, for his only God is the drum- 
 head court-martial. This is the creature that 
 has made the aristocratic parasite a fixture in 
 Europe, and he is all that is needed to make 
 the same curse a fixture in our own country, 
 and every attempt to increase his number 
 should be resisted with all the means in our 
 power, until the plunder he is wanted to guard 
 shall have found its way back to its rightful 
 owners. 
 
 IV. 
 
 We will now show how the principle of Con- 
 fiscation should work in the case of railroads. 
 This class of property, by the way, should never 
 have been given over to private ownership, to 
 begin with. They are for the convenience of 
 the public, just as much as any harbor or navig- 
 able river ever was. And if it was right that the 
 
32 CONFISCATION. 
 
 founders of the Republic should, in the inter- 
 ests of the country's commerce, deny the right 
 of private ownership in our navigable waters, 
 then it was wrong to concede the right of pri- 
 vate ownership in railroads. As for the cap- 
 ital to build them with, it was just as easy to 
 get it for that purpose as it was to get capital 
 to dredge harbors, build lighthouses, build forts 
 or the Stanford University. The first railroad, 
 or even the twentieth, never suggested to the 
 leaders of those times any idea of what this 
 rival of the winds and tides would develop into 
 in a few short years. Individual greed has so 
 little time to spare from the building of its own 
 nest that politics in the United States, where 
 the common good should be the aim of all 
 legislation, has become a hand-to-mouth affair, 
 and the morrow must shift for itself. Busy 
 hunting for spoils, like our own incompetents 
 of to-day, the legislators of the past cared noth- 
 ing for the morrow: and, without knowing 
 what they were doing really, surrendered a 
 principle to the railroad projectors that was but 
 a spark at the time, but which has spread until 
 we find the blaze devouring us to-day. The 
 statecraft that never found time to look beyond 
 the ringing of the curfew bells would have 
 starved to death had it to compete with those 
 who were then working the lobby, while it was 
 splitting hairs over the Constitution and ac- 
 cepting the " stuff" that would do it " the most 
 good." Xo class of propertv shows the justice, 
 
CONFISCATION. 33 
 
 and therefore the need, of Confiscation as much 
 as railroads. No class of property has done 
 as much toward absorbing and transferring the 
 whole country into the hands of a compara- 
 tively few men as railroads. But when Confis- 
 cation gets through with these monarchs of all 
 they survey, the town or section through which 
 these railroads run will not find themselves like 
 a sucked orange by the wayside. 
 
 Taking the Southern Pacific Railroad, we find 
 that it runs through Madera County, California, 
 but it is doubtful if ten cents' worth of its se- 
 curities are owned there. Madera County, 
 then, has property within her borders that 
 earns an income, not one cent of which goes to 
 the county where it was earned.* The prop- 
 erty is there, but the income from it is taken 
 elsewhere. This is the one great flaw in our 
 present economic life, and is the very root of 
 our present troubles. 
 
 The income from property is taken from the 
 locality where it was earned. And the farmer's 
 wagon sinks to the hubs for want of money to 
 build good roads. And the laborer is robbed 
 of the income that his labor earned, and he 
 sinks his manhood at the soup-house door. We 
 repeat it: The great defect in our economic life 
 is the taking of the income from the locality where 
 it was earned, and from the laborer, the source of 
 it all. This does not mean that the laborer must 
 
 *The railroad, of course, pays taxes to the county, but 
 it would have to pay taxes even if it had no income. 
 
34 CONFISCATION. 
 
 spend his income or wage? where it was n: 
 It does not mean that the income from pro] - 
 erty must be spent in the particular locality 
 where the property is located. It does not 
 mean, in short, that there shall be any restric- 
 tions placed upon the individual in any way 
 outside of limiting him to the owner-hip of 
 $100,000. With that he can do as he likes, and 
 go where he likes — title-hunting if he wishes. 
 when he will be sure to find many bargains,. 
 for it is our impression that there will be a 
 slump in that market when the American mil- 
 lionaire is no longer found among the bidders. 
 
 To the United States Government must be 
 left the winding up of the affairs of the rail- 
 roads, and all other paper-represented property. 
 as it is obvious that she can do it much better 
 than the many States of which the country is 
 composed: and the before mentioned excess 
 shall then be turned over to the different coun- 
 ties where the railroads are located, each county 
 to receive in proportion to the value of the 
 railroad property within her limits, and not 
 according to the number of mile 
 
 President Huntington does not own all the 
 jks and bonds of the Southern Pacific, but 
 illustration sake we will assume that he 
 does. I- it not plain then that Confiscation. 
 yhen it gets through with this railroad owner, 
 will have made the counties where it is loo 
 its owners, both of the property itself and the 
 income which it earns"? Is this Government 
 
CONFISCATION. 35 
 
 ownership of railroads? That term as now un- 
 derstood means buying the railroads, and it is 
 the millionaire we are trying to get rid of, but 
 he is still here if you take his railroads and 
 give him something better. We have already 
 said that private ownership should not have 
 been allowed, and we would now confiscate 
 them without any reservation whatever if it 
 were not for the thousands of small investors 
 in their securities and as these small investors 
 must not be injured, we are compelled to leave 
 the railroads in the hands of private owners, as 
 buying out even these small owners would 
 cause a national debt such as we had better 
 steer clear of. But it is not essential to the 
 welfare of the people that the Government 
 should own the railroads. The point we wish 
 to bring out is, that the wealth and resources 
 of the country has found lodgment in a few 
 hands, whereas it should be scattered among 
 all the people, and as long as they are getting 
 the benefit it will matter little to them whether 
 they own it in their Governmental capacity or 
 as individuals, and the counties even are not to 
 hold on to the forfeited excess, but must dispose 
 of it as fast as the people are able to buy. 
 
 But Huntington not owning all the securi- 
 ties of the railroad of which he is president, 
 we send for persons and papers and confiscate 
 as fast as the excess turns up, and distribute as 
 described above. " Oh my! oh my! " comes a 
 voice from out of the woods. " Is not this 
 
36 CONFISCATION. 
 
 robbery? " No ; nor armed revolution either, 
 but a peaceable solution of the question. Who 
 owns this earth anyway? 
 
 When persons and papers are sent for, and 
 one of the interrogated is found to possess, 
 say, $100,000 in money and securities, $100,000 
 of real estate, and $100,000 of other good things, 
 the right of choice should be given him as to 
 the $100,000 he wishes to retain. For the lim- 
 iting of every individual fortune to $100,000 
 does not mean $100,000 of one kind of prop- 
 erty and $100,000 of another kind, etc., but 
 $100,000 all told. 
 
 Those of our own country are, of course, 
 amenable to our laws, but many of the securi- 
 ties of the road under consideration are owned 
 abroad, and persons and papers there are not 
 responsive to our subpoenas. If it brings dis- 
 aster to a countiT to lose the income made 
 there, are we not close to one of the causes of 
 the wretched want that is confined to no sec- 
 tion of this land as we draw nearer to the man 
 abroad, who is fattening from income that is 
 drawn from all over this country? 
 
 Repudiation is unnecessary here. Simply 
 stop the interest on all American securities owned 
 out of the country. 
 
 This we have a perfect right to do, and when 
 it is done the foreign holders will be on their 
 way here as fast as the first ship can take them. 
 The despised steerage and all will be full of 
 him. 
 
CONFISCATION. 37 
 
 Here we are once more obliged to use a 
 word that is as hateful to us as it must be to 
 every one who has probed the wounds of this 
 bleeding country in the hope of finding their 
 cause. And probe where we will, and how we 
 will, it is Bonds; always Bonds — the interest 
 bearing bonds. And standing around are the 
 hyena millionaires, from far and near, lapping 
 their income from the dying form whose first 
 breath was the immortal Declaration. 
 
 Gas Bonds, Water Bonds, Sugar Bonds, Flour 
 Bonds, Telegraph Bonds, Railroad Bonds, 
 Bonds, Bonds, Bonds. 
 
 School District Bonds, Road Bonds, Munici- 
 pal Bonds, County Bonds, State Bonds, and 
 United States Bonds — chief offender anion 
 them all, whose issue is left to the sweet will 
 of one man — the political freak now in the 
 White House. 
 
 But we always get the money when the 
 foreigner gets the bonds. That is a lie. Here 
 is some sample evidence of it. 
 
 When our parasite hears of another large 
 jewel reaching London from the African 
 mines, he says he must have it for madam's 
 tiara, and taking a small matter of $500,000 or so 
 of securities, he goes over, and when we next 
 see him the securities are gone. But has he 
 money in their place? None whatever. Mad- 
 am's tiara is safe, but this country is not one 
 
DO WPISCATION. 
 
 cent of money the richer by the transaction. 
 
 And when it is time for a husband for Miss 
 Parasite, the two old birds start over with 
 bulging grip to get a mate for the sweet dam- 
 sel — for she is sweet, as they all are. bless 
 them, whether they belong to the millionaire's 
 brood or to the laborer's — and it freezes our 
 blood when we think of what is sure to happen 
 if the dread machine gets to work here as it 
 did over the way — to get, we say. a mate for 
 the damsel, and when he is found there must 
 be money down and this money is obtained in 
 exchange for the bonds, and remains in the 
 same country where the bonds and titles are. 
 
 This has been a losing transaction all round, 
 for, alas, the dear one herself goes over in a 
 few days, and when we next hear of her she 
 will be calling on her big brother to go and 
 thrash the whelp that our money purchased. 
 
 It does not look like business to make pur- 
 chases abroad with income producing prop- 
 erty. But when they buy. say $50,000,000 of 
 government bonds at a clip, as did the late 
 Win. H. Vanderbilt, they turn the interest as 
 fast as it comes in into more income producers, 
 and this leaves their cash-till comparatively 
 empty, so that when they need money quick, 
 for there is much competition among this gen- 
 try, as in the case of a big jewel or a princeling, 
 they have no option but to be up and away, 
 and our securities being pie to them over there 
 they grab a lot, and then the rush begins. 
 
% CONFISCATION. 39 
 
 Nevertheless there must not be the semblance 
 of injustice done to these foreign investors in 
 our securities when they arrive here to make 
 terms. We have the right to stop the interest, 
 but the securities themselves we must redeem. 
 But redeeming them all at once in gold being 
 out of the question, and as that is the only kind 
 of coin that is now acceptable to the foreigners, 
 they must either wait until we get enough of 
 gold, or until they think better of silver, and 
 are willing to take that metal in part payment, 
 and in the meantime while they are making 
 up their mind, about it they must accept the 
 best we are able to give them, namely non-inter- 
 est bearing bonds. 
 
 It is against the grain to bring the unsavory 
 Bond on to the boards again. But looking at 
 him closely, as he now appears, you will notice 
 that he is well broken, and as we have no better 
 we must use him to bring in the rest of the 
 untamed band to which he once belonged. 
 Neither should our visitors complain about this 
 form of payment. If all of our obligations from 
 abroad were paid in coin, assuming that we 
 had enough, it would fill Europe with idle 
 money, and as we have always been a good 
 customer, and always prompt in our payments, 
 they should be reasonable, and admit that it is 
 no worse to have idle bonds than it is to have 
 idle money, so long as final payment is assured. 
 Neither should they expect par value for what 
 did not, in many cases, cost them fifty cents on 
 
40 CONFISCATION. 
 
 the dollar. We will pay them market value ; 
 no more. And do not imagine that these people 
 have been kept waiting very long to find out 
 these terms. For so positive are these leeches, 
 here and elsewhere, of being able to maintain 
 their hold that those we have just finished with 
 will not make a move to come here until the 
 New Bill of Human Rights has become the law 
 of the land. 
 
 And this foreigner whom we are done with, 
 so far as his power to injure us goes, is the 
 counterpart of our own millionaire, and the 
 scowl with which lie leaves these shores means 
 another crunch of the iron heel on the necks of 
 his own slaves, and it is only the magnitude of 
 the work that is before us, which none but the 
 blind will deny, in the subduing of our own 
 masters, that makes it a sad necessity to refuse 
 our aid to the oppressed the world over. One 
 thing is certain however: whether Bunker Hill 
 led to the fall of the Bastile or not, the libera- 
 tion of the slave in the New World will show 
 the way to his liberation in the Old, and in 
 this way do we render him a service, even if we 
 cannot see our way to help him in any other. 
 
 The foregoing should make plain how the 
 principle of Confiscation will work in the case 
 of railroads, and all other paper-represented 
 property that can be, and is, owned elsewhere 
 than where the property itself is found. 
 
 And there is no need of interfering with or 
 
CONFISCATION. 41 
 
 changing any of the functions of the different 
 branches of our Government in order to make 
 Confiscation a part of our organic law any more 
 than there would be to increase the dut}^ on im- 
 ported wool and to collect it. The machineries 
 of the law making, judicial, and executive 
 branches of our Government, are sufficient for 
 any calls that Confiscation can make on them. 
 Any other construction that may be put on what 
 has been said heretofore or may be said here- 
 after, is an error. If insisted on, what then ? 
 Have we run up against the impassable? It is 
 sufficient to say that what is ours is ours to 
 change when the need is evident, and the Cons- 
 titution itself is not an exception to the truth 
 of this. 
 
 The laws regulating the rising and the set- 
 ting of the sun are not of our creating, and we 
 cannot hasten or retard its coming and going- 
 one iota of time, and we do not live in the age 
 when it could be done. 
 
 But the Constitution is a man-made thing, 
 and when growth has made it a straight jacket 
 then the time for ripping has come. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Once more resuming our pursuit of the mil- 
 lionaire, whom we have dispossessed of his 
 railroad plunder, we find the chase taking us 
 into town, where Confiscation will find many 
 problems which it alone can solve — where it 
 
42 CONFISCATION. 
 
 will find his sixteen story building, for his hours 
 of plotting, and his suburban palace for his 
 hours of ease, and the hiving humanity between 
 over whom he had to walk to reach either. 
 Those palaces on the Nob hills of these United 
 States are the toadstools of the decay that is 
 going on in this Republic to-day. 
 
 The master crime of all ages was the building 
 of those pyramids on the Egyptian sands, for 
 they were useless, but the whim and the slaves 
 and the lash of power were there, and the pyra- 
 mids went up. 
 
 Let us see to it that the power of our pyramid 
 builders is destroyed before it gets beyond five 
 million dollar palaces. 
 
 When we apply the principle of Confiscation 
 to the millionaire merchant, and turn his ex- 
 cess into the public treasury, it will be no more 
 destructive of the busines of which he has had 
 all the profits than it was of the railroads. 
 There will be more business done in the same 
 line than ever, but more will be doing it, and 
 consequently more will share in the profits. 
 But if our object is to break up these fabulous 
 fortunes, which mean certain death to our lib- 
 erties, and whose blight has paralyzed progress 
 and development, there should be no reason 
 why we should not allow the present owners to 
 take a hand in the breaking up. If the mer- 
 chant, or other millionaire, would rather divide 
 his millions among his relatives (barring his 
 
CONFISCATION. 43 
 
 wife and minors) and friends, than to resign 
 it over to the public treasury, let him do so. 
 Our aim will be attained whichever happens, 
 which is simply to bring about a better distri- 
 bution of the wealth of this country, and we 
 know of no way of making this even distribution 
 that will compare with Confiscation. Socialism, 
 in all its forms, means the surrendering of indi- 
 vidual liberty, and is a retrograde movement, 
 and the outcome of it can be nothing more or 
 less than despotism of the very worst kind. 
 
 Socialism enlarges the power of one indi- 
 vidual over another. This is incompatible with 
 the liberty that goes with a republic. Confis- 
 cation says, $100,000 is enough. When you are 
 found with more, it will be considered as proof 
 that you have been taking an unfair advantage 
 of some one, and the surplus makes you dan- 
 gerous to the Avelfare of a republic, and is there- 
 fore forfeited. There will be nothing more 
 disagreeable, so far as the right of the individ- 
 ual goes, in the enforcing of this proposed law 
 than there is in the collection of taxes on in- 
 comes. Cutting a fortune down to the $100,000 
 limit may be considered a very disagreeable 
 thing indeed, but when we are reminded that 
 it is all done for the common good, we become 
 reconciled at once, for we feel in our heart of 
 hearts that the altar at which we can cheerfully 
 make whatever sacrifices we are called upon to 
 make, is the altar of our brother's welfare. 
 
 The millionaire merchant will doubtless take 
 
44 CONFISCATION. 
 
 advantage of his right to divide his busi- 
 ness among his relatives and friends. Nat- 
 urally they would give him the manage- 
 ment, but the instinct to be master is 
 strong within us all, and this would soon 
 break up and scatter that dangerous accu- 
 mulation. Then there would be more Mar. 
 ket streets and Broadways. Every dollar 
 of business that would be taken from the one 
 or two principal thoroughfares, which is all 
 that is now found in any of the cities, would 
 mean an increase of value in the property of 
 the street where this transfer business is carried 
 on. And this increase in the value of city 
 property would continue on out to the city's 
 limits; and the limits themselves would be ex- 
 tended further out to find room for habitable 
 homes for the human beings that are supposed 
 to live in the tenements. There can be no 
 question but what merchandising would spread 
 itself more over the cities if this limited own- 
 ership of capital was in force: and this spread- 
 ing out will give employment to all in bringing 
 about the change; and prosperity, such as goes 
 with plenty of work, will take the place of the 
 wretched misery and want that now fill all the 
 soup-house infected cities of the country. 
 There will be no impairment in the value or 
 need of the big " dailies " that [are published 
 in these centres of population. They will 
 simply be owned by more people and read by 
 more, and the improvement in the times being 
 
*" CONFISCATION. 45 
 
 of a stable and permanent character their cir- 
 culation will be free from the rise and fall with 
 whio.h they are now only to well acquainted, 
 and the cheap-John business into which so 
 many have gone, in the last few years, wheed- 
 ling the ten cents and the dollars out of the 
 child-like poor for worthless truck, can be 
 thrown into the waste basket with the last offer 
 of money for a Wall Street editorial. It is a 
 mistake, by the way, to think we are a nation 
 of readers. Man is an interesting animal where- 
 ever found, and the desire to know what he has 
 done and is doing is strong in us all, but even 
 the little county paper is beyond the reach of 
 many. The writer, who is a common toiler 
 like the rest, finds the moving world a sealed 
 book to him, for he cannot spare the needed 
 dollar, and live. And those editors who will 
 fiercely rend and tear, with all the power of 
 their trained brains and skilled pens, at this 
 vital need of our times may live to see the day 
 when they too will believe this world is round, 
 and that calling the original believers fools, 
 thieves, scoundrels, rascals, and enemies to 
 civilization was a repetition of an old mistake. 
 It will be the day when they can be our guides, 
 philosophers, and friends without the itching- 
 palm stuck out behind. It will be the day when 
 we can accept, without doubt or a curl of the 
 lip, the admonition from the sixteen stories of 
 steel, because we will then know, that the con- 
 science of the man within is not itself all awry. 
 
46 CONFISCATION. 
 
 To whatever cause the existing rot is charge- 
 able the editor, at least, of all others, had the 
 power to stop or check it, and failure to meet 
 this great responsibility shows that the strut of 
 this great personage is assumed, and that, like 
 the rest, his necessities have been used by the 
 master to bend and break him till he no longer 
 dare call his soul his own. 
 
 We can expect the screech of this helpless 
 tool to fill the land as his desperate master nags 
 him on in the revolution that is coming. 
 
 VII. 
 
 The mammoth hotel where the parasite of 
 greater or lesser degree sojourns, w r here the 
 popping corks of the costly imported champagne 
 is heard, can still be a hotel, but the profits of 
 its millions of invested capital must no longer 
 be taken away by one or two men and it there- 
 fore must have many more owners than it has 
 now. It, too, must go to the people, if its mil- 
 lionaire owner can find no more relations to 
 share with and begins to suspect his " friends" 
 of having had a hand in bringing about the 
 upheaval. And if the ''plain" people never 
 expect to enjoy the material results of the in- 
 ventive wit of man as they are focused within 
 its luxurious interior, they at least have some 
 reason for being satisfied when they know that 
 the profits will stay where they were made and 
 help those who made them. This reference to 
 
CONFISCATION. 47 
 
 hotels brings to mind a corroborative fact that 
 proves the charge we make when we say that 
 all these colossal fortunes are nothing more 
 than the accumulations of able rascality of some 
 form or other: bilking, cornering, lobbying, 
 watering stock, or charging all the traffic will 
 bear. 
 
 The Palace Hotel in San Francisco was built 
 by a speculator and floater of mining shares, 
 and cost millions that he cashed in, after clean- 
 ing out the simple minded laborer and servant 
 girl, whom he deluded, with all the art known 
 to his tribe, into believing that there was still 
 more for their rainy day if they would only 
 invest the little they already had. 
 
 The law makes a felon of the rascal with the 
 bogus gold brick, but that clumsy worker in 
 the field of robbery does not get the returns 
 which the scienced work of his brother pro- 
 fessional brings in; therefore, when outraged 
 law gives this petty malefactor the knock-out 
 blow, the satisfied spectators, chattering about 
 the majesty of something, depart and the curtain 
 is rung down on another exhibition of what the 
 American people are said to like — namely, hum- 
 bug. Let us say in passing, that the American 
 does not like humbug. Take the average of 
 him as he is found in the little w T orld in which 
 the routine work of his life is done and you 
 will find him alert and close enough to deal 
 w T ith, and that in all things in which he has his 
 experience to rely on humbug (swindling) is 
 
48 CONFISCATION. 
 
 practically impossible. But when he gets out- 
 side of that experience, then, like the expe-, 
 rienced traveler, he patiently submits to imposi- 
 tion when resistance might mean a loss greater 
 than the original. But even the traveler must 
 have enough to continue on with, and when 
 imposition reaches that stage resistance begins. 
 So it will be with the man who is said to like 
 humbug (robbery), when he finds humbug 
 (slavery) closing in ou him. He too will resist. 
 He did before and the rightful owners gained 
 possession; as this same man, who is said to 
 like humbug, will again recover possession of 
 what is being so stealthily taken from him. 
 
 When outraged law is asked to administer 
 justice to the scoundrel who has deluded thou- 
 sands into buying worthless mining shares or 
 some such swindling bait, the victims are told 
 that the whole swindle has been legitimized by 
 the great seal of the state, and that their loss 
 is the profits of a business conducted by a 
 licensed trader. 
 
 The man with the bogus gold brick goes to 
 jail. The man with the bogus gold mine goes 
 free. 
 
 Why this difference when the principle in the 
 two crimes is the same ? Is it because the mil- 
 lionaire swindler has, in fact, been given rights 
 under the law that is denied to the smaller fry ? 
 Or is it because the larger bird of prey makes 
 enough to go all around? Certain it is, how- 
 ever, that Labor in its contests with Capital 
 
CONFISCATION. 49 
 
 never got a decision in its favor yet — in time 
 to be of any service. 
 
 These wholesalers found the concubining of 
 justice herself a necessity to the sucess of their 
 rascalities and the delays and decisions of this 
 harlot are but the echoes of her paramour's 
 orders. And at no time does the debasement 
 of this whited sepulchre display itself more 
 than when the miserable and friendless crim- 
 inal, whose crime is, assuredly, nothing more 
 than the natural and to be expected outcome 
 of the wrong and inexcusable crime developing 
 conditions under which he is compelled to live, 
 is at her altar for Justice, which She renders in 
 ringing tones such as are never heard when 
 Her paramour or his hirelings are before Her. 
 
 When Labor does finally get a decision it is 
 as worthless to it as is its pass-book on the gut- 
 ted savings bank. 
 
 Make the millionaire an extinct species, and 
 the above assertion will not have logic to sus- 
 tain it, and our courts will not be making 
 terrible " examples " of the friendless, while the 
 thief who ruins thousands is allowed to go free. 
 
 There must be a radical change made in our 
 laws if we ever expect to stop the sharks from 
 preying on us. Our laws, like a hole in a fence, 
 makes access easy, and the endless raids will 
 never cease until the holes are stopped up. 
 Constant watching, even with the light from 
 former experiences, will all count for nothing 
 
•:> M CONFISCATION. 
 
 while those holes and breaks a e left open. The 
 persistent work of the crew of sharpers that 
 hi s :Le Nicaragua canal steal in tow shows this 
 necessity for a change in the economic laws of 
 the country. Duplicating the scheme by which 
 the Huntingtons and Oakes Ameses robbed the 
 pie they submitted their prospectus for 
 endorsement, and. lo. this whole coast grovels 
 in the dust tc :hese new Moseses, who are to 
 show them the way out of the wilderness into 
 which their original.. Huntington, has led them. 
 The canal should be built. But the estimated 
 :■■ st oi the whole enterprise was $66] )(K 
 according to their own expert, whose report, 
 eight years ago. was published in "Harper's 
 Weekly" — (published as news, by the way. but 
 was an advertisement, and paid for as such. 
 And that Julian Ralph stuff that appeared in 
 that same weekly lately is more of that peculiar 
 kind of news that is being constantly ground 
 out by the capitalistic sharks to catch the un- 
 wary, and was paid for by Spreckels — another 
 Moses, that a come to the succor of our be- 
 leaguered coast. The •'Journal of Civilization" 
 is a fit organ for the millionaire corruptionist 
 and the civilization that he is degrading) — and 
 although they have gone over the ground again 
 and again since that report was made, the max- 
 imum estimate is still well inside .$100,000,000. 
 Yet they now want to issue $1(K )0( . M) in 
 stock: waut the people to guarantee principal 
 and interest on $70,000,000 of bonds, and the 
 
CONFISCATION. 51 
 
 right to issue $30,000,000 of bonds themselves. 
 No wonder it was called a steal on the floor of 
 the Senate. The public treasury will ever be 
 the objective point of such wholesalers until 
 the inducement is removed. Humanity, Honor, 
 Patriotism, each and all are powerless before 
 this all-conquering appetite of Individual Greed. 
 
 What can such people as they care for this 
 people, their country and its benign form of 
 government? What use have such as they for 
 a government that denies them the title that 
 distinguishes their kind over the sea? 
 
 Ay, what is to prevent them from using the 
 vast power that goes with the wealth they are 
 absorbing day by day, and to gratify the one 
 unsatisfied wish of their purse-proud and selfish 
 souls, and establish an Empire in place of the 
 Republic? The Republic is but a shell and 
 their work would be easy. 
 
 The sophistry about the inalienable right of 
 one man to crush another has had its day, and 
 their hypocritical wail about civilization and 
 this inalienable right, when these conscienceless 
 rascals find their race is run, will be like the 
 yelling of remorseless wolves that have been 
 trapped and kicked into the vanishing distance. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Understanding the principle of Confiscation, 
 it will be easily seen how it must work in every 
 individual case; and, therefore, it is needless 
 
52 CONFISCATION. 
 
 to dwell on or elaborate its workings when it 
 is applied to banks, breweries, sugar refineries, 
 water works, gas works, street railways, etc. 
 
 It will not destroy capital or business. It 
 ma}' lesseu the value of real estate on the prin- 
 cipal streets in large cities, and fall in values is 
 not certain even there. It will trouble no one, 
 however, if it does; not the present owner, 
 even, for the value of property in favored 
 localities is so great now that, however much 
 one man can own now, he can own but a frac- 
 tion of it under the proposed change. The 
 owner of, say, a $400,000 building and lot on 
 such a street as we are now considering may 
 rind a shrinkage of $100,000. This will give 
 him two partners instead of three. The shrink- 
 age, therefore, will be to his liking; for, be it 
 known, the aristocrat is a proud bird, and likes 
 to flock by itself. And any designs against 
 these two partners will be so fruitless of results 
 to himself that a word in his ear now and then 
 by his friends and well-wishers, about the pub- 
 lic treasury, will end in his cultivating such a 
 lamblike submission to the new dispensation 
 that his eloquence, born of the new light and 
 an awakened conscience, will make his titled 
 sister over the way give up her bauble when he 
 shows her the cost of its pomp to the struggling 
 poor. 
 
 Such will be the effect of the change on a 
 m in who now carries the law in his pocket, 
 when he hasn't it under his feet. 
 
CONFISCATION. 53 
 
 Moving the laborer so far away from the 
 centre of the city, and where there is room to 
 build habitable homes, will be a serious objec- 
 tion, it will be urged. They cannot get to their 
 work on time without getting up at all hours. 
 They can just have time to snatch a bite and 
 be away again. And the whole of Sunday 
 must be given to sleep they cannot get at any 
 other time. 
 
 They will be strangers in the near-by theatre, 
 and the near-by library will be given up to the 
 spider and his web, and the little garden of 
 flowers that the once half-starved women have 
 made a delight will be unknown to the worn 
 out bread-winner, who will be the same old 
 slave we promised to unshackle. Better clothes 
 surely, and his home shows what it is to be a 
 citizen of a republic that is a republic in fact 
 as well as in name; but he has only time to 
 snatch a bite and be away again. 
 
 Will it never occur to those critics that we 
 are here dealing with the greatest creation of 
 the Almighty, and of all time — civilized man; 
 and that we must make the conditions fit him, 
 and not he the conditions. 
 
 Everything he eats, wears, and uses in twelve 
 months can be produced in two. Why, then, 
 should he be compelled to labor twelve months 
 for that which can be produced or made in 
 one-sixth of that time? The reason is plain. 
 When two laborers make an exchange there is 
 wholesale robbery committed by the non-pro- 
 
54 CONFISCATION. 
 
 ducing and idle parasites, while the fruits of 
 Labor are on the way to those who alone are 
 entitled to the whole. "And I," says the mil- 
 lionaire, "say this robbery must go on, for I 
 am an impossibility without it." That gnaw- 
 ing canker never had any doubts as to where 
 his surfeit comes from. And now that it has 
 become a question of life and death with those 
 he has been plundering, he should be dragged 
 to the bar of justice and compelled to disgorge. 
 And then labor, too, can come in on the eight 
 and nine o'clock train, and be no later for its 
 work than is the banker and the rest of his 
 class that have had Labor under their heels so 
 long. 
 
 The capacity of the modern world to produce 
 has entirely outstripped her capacity to con- 
 sume, and trying to solve the economic prob- 
 lems of the day, by further denial or ignoring 
 of this fact, that should be self-evident, will be 
 to build a structure with only half the founda- 
 tion laid, and the inevitable collapse is bound 
 to follow. 
 
 There will always be plenty of room in the 
 heart of a city for those who must live close to 
 their work. 
 
 ' But the inventor has made night work, ex- 
 cept by the parasitical leeches, unnecessary to 
 the masses, a few hours of daylight being more 
 than sufficient to supply all the needs of the 
 country. We are not insisting, be it under- 
 stood, on a four-hour or eight-hour system of 
 
CONFISCATION. 55 
 
 labor. No industry or occupation will be ham- 
 pered or meddled with by doing justice to the 
 laborer in the way proposed. The railroad 
 employee, printer, baker, factory hand, etc., can 
 work on as now, but they must be compensated 
 with just wages for the labor done. This will 
 enable them to retire before decrepitude comes 
 on, and orders are left for the poorhouse am- 
 bulance to call on its way out. 
 
 If eveiy city occupied three times the ground 
 they now do, they would be gainers in all ways, 
 and the moral degradation into which large 
 sections of them have sunk would disappear 
 with the conditions that produced them. 
 
 The capacity of Europe to feed her people is 
 being crowded, we are told, and then our flag 
 is again run up, and during the whole exhibi- 
 tion the Chinese system of bunking is quietly 
 fastening itself in every city of consequence in 
 the country. When those sorely pressed people, 
 whose very existence is being threatened by 
 these foreigners of a degraded civilization, 
 awaken to the extremity of their danger, the 
 bunking system and its introducers will find 
 perjury and the habeus corpus mill powerless 
 to save them. Mark this, however. The big 
 capitalist imported the Chinaman, and his pow- 
 erful influence has defeated all attempts to re- 
 move him. It follows, then, that we must 
 break up the big capitalist, if we ever expect to 
 get at the thing behind him. 
 
 We are not indifferent to the hardships of the 
 
56 CONFISCATION. 
 
 oppressed of other nations, but we cannot get 
 out of our own perplexities by saying that we 
 are more favored in some way than are others. 
 There are rocks ahead of ourselves, and watch- 
 ing others going to pieces and firing congratu- 
 latory guns will not help them or save us from 
 a like fate. 
 
 Whatever is in the near future for Europe, 
 we, at least, have nothing to fear as to the 
 capacity of our country to support all her people. 
 And as it is with room for producing, so it is 
 with room in which to live. There is plenty 
 of both, and we should show ourselves worthy 
 of the legacy left us by that handful of brave 
 men who established liberty in our country, 
 and insist on getting plenty of both before the 
 armed hireling appears and it is too late. 
 
 IX. 
 
 We will now apply the principle of Confisca- 
 tion to land, and we will see that Confiscation 
 alone can undo the wrong that has of late 
 become apparent to even the law makers in 
 Washington. Up to within three years or so 
 there were two ways by which farming lands 
 could be obtained from the Government — hy 
 homesteading and preempting. 
 
 It is unnecessary to give the laws of either, 
 but so fast was this class of land going that Con- 
 gress repealed the preemption law. In other 
 words, the amount you could obtain was cut 
 
CONFISCATION. 57 
 
 down one half — from 320 acres to 160. What 
 was more significant still of their barn door 
 work after the horse was gone, they made the 
 owning of 160 acres, regardless from whom it 
 was got, private purchase or Government, a 
 bar to the taking up of Government farm land. 
 Prior to the repeal every citizen, and those in- 
 tending to become citizens, had certain land 
 rights, and owning half a State did not impair 
 them ; which all goes to show that even this 
 free and easy-going Government thought it 
 about time to call a halt. But that was all it 
 did do. As it was not necessary to give the 
 laws under which the homesteader and pre- 
 emptor got title, neither is it necessary to here 
 ask how some men became owners of all the 
 way from 1,000 to 60,000 acres, every acre of 
 which was Government land years after Cali- 
 fornia became a State. (We are using California 
 facts. The rest of the Western part of the 
 United States has an abundance of the same 
 kind.) Suffice it to say, that they now own 
 them; and suffice it too, that Confiscation is the 
 only way by which we can dispossess them of 
 plunder, that the welfare of the country 
 demands should be returned ? In Confis- 
 cation alone will the people find a servant who 
 will not condone the past, but will follow up 
 this breed of the grabber and restore what it 
 finds, as it has already done with others of his 
 tribe. 
 
 It will be the re-discovering of America. 
 
58 CONFISCATION. 
 
 Never did kind and beneficent laws show 
 what men, with the right kind of stuff in them, 
 could do, as did our land laws. Men who now 
 own territory as large as some of the Eastern 
 States started in without a dollar. They had 
 something better. They had consciences that 
 was good for any tests that the scoundrels could 
 put them to. Never did gangs of "floaters*' 
 help the political boss and ward-heeler rob the 
 public treasury with greater success than did 
 this other brand of the bastard citizen help his 
 boss to hog the public domain. 
 
 In the fertile valley of the Sacramento, land 
 that would give one hundred and sixty acre 
 homes to ten thousand families (fifty thousand 
 people) is owned by one hundred individuals, 
 an average of sixteen thousand acres to each 
 owner. This is but a fraction of the valley and 
 leaves out the owners of less than sixteen thou- 
 sand acres. 
 
 In the great San Joaquin valley, the laborer 
 in search of work can walk for days in one 
 direction alongside of fencing that incloses 
 land belonging to one firm. And this immense 
 fortune in land was obtained by robbery, just 
 as the other millionaire fortunes were obtained. 
 
 In the land office we see the miserable tool 
 and his master. 
 
 In the legislative halls we see the miserable 
 tool and his master. 
 
 And we see the leaves on Liberty's Tree droop 
 and wither as these deadly borers do their work 
 under the bark hp]ow. 
 
CONFISCATION. 59 
 
 Up among the peaks and valleys of the Sierra 
 Nevada lies the town of Mariposa, settled by 
 gold seekers whose rich findings gave world 
 wide fame to this hamlet among the mountains. 
 Aluvial gold and quartz bearing gold was scat- 
 tered with lavish hand through the surround- 
 ing hills, and in the beds of the summer-dried 
 streams. Generous laws of their own making, 
 gave ample room, and the eager workers toiled 
 on, forgetting the past hardships of the long 
 journey where so many fell by the way, and 
 the rugged hills became endeared to them as 
 they marked out the shaded spots on their shelv- 
 ing sides where their coming dear ones could 
 look down on the busy scene below. But the 
 camp follower with ready knife never finished 
 the wounded brave quicker than did the "land 
 grant" swindler finish Mariposa when her 
 riches became the theme of every gold camp 
 throughout the world. And to-day the big 
 hearted and stalwart miner goes to fever-laden 
 Africa and ice-bound Alaska, when there are 
 whole mountains of the best mineral bearing 
 land in the world in his own country, but which 
 our present laws forbid him to touch. 
 
 Our people should no more bow to a Mexican 
 land grant title than to a superstition of their 
 cave-dwelling ancestors. 
 
 What matters it, however, in what way these 
 colossal robberies were committed; by coffee- 
 stained lie from Mexico, or perjured oath of 
 faithless citizen; it has been done, and it is time 
 for the undoing. 
 
60 CONFISCATION. 
 
 Man developed the school house, and for this 
 each is indebted to the other, and the mutual 
 debt is acknowledged by making the school free 
 to all. 
 
 The Creator developed the Earth from chaos 
 to the habitable home of man, free to all, but 
 this debt is not acknowledged, and the many 
 are driven into the highway by the few. 
 
 Give us all the conveniences of modern life, 
 railroads, telegraphs, etc., etc., etc., but give us 
 back the land, that is our natural heritage as 
 much as is the water we drink or the air we 
 breath. 
 
 Give us back this birthright, or take your 
 railroads, and so on, and your civilization, and 
 sink them deep in the depths of hell, for the 
 starving have no use for them, and we'll take 
 the savage state that knows no hunger except 
 in the time of famine. 
 
 X. 
 
 Limit the ownership of land, be it arable, 
 grazing, timber, or any other kind, to 160 acres. 
 As no one shall own more than $100,000 worth 
 of property all told, this 160 acres will have to 
 be reduced as we get near to the centres of 
 population. This will still give the owner of 
 such convenient land an advantage over those 
 living further out, who will always be willing 
 to exchange should the first rather follow the 
 coarser grades of farming to dairying or garden- 
 ing. 
 
CONFISCATION. 61 
 
 Neither is there any reason why the owning 
 of great sections of timber land by one or two 
 men should be necessary to the running of saw- 
 mills and supplying the people with lumber. 
 The mills are capable of doing just as good 
 work if the fifty quarter sections are owned by 
 fifty men as the} r are if owned by one man. And 
 the waste of timber seen on ever} 7 hand where- 
 ever you find a mill owned and operated by 
 capitalists would have been unknown if there 
 had been an individual owner to each quarter 
 section. The wanton waste of this breed of the 
 capitalist, in his hurry to pile up, would have 
 been impossible had his mill been a " custom" 
 mill, to saw the timber from your quarter sec- 
 tion and mine instead of his fifty or five hun- 
 dred. And the poor unskilled laborer would not 
 have to go to make room for the chinaman, 
 or that member of a worthless tribe who sold 
 his "claim" to the "company" for so much 
 and the promise of a job. The small owner 
 cannot afford the waste of the large one. His 
 income will not be so great that he can afford 
 to waste the principal from which it comes. 
 As to any friction about whose turn it is to run 
 his timber through, it is only necessary to say 
 that the business will be then carried on by 
 those who are now doing the labor, and it will 
 be no worse to accept wages from the man on 
 the neighboring claim for helping him to make 
 lumber than it was to accept wages from the 
 man who was dethroned, and he will probably 
 
62 CONFISCATION. 
 
 pay you as much as you could make running 
 your own logs through. 
 
 If this is not satisfactory, sell out at once to 
 one of the many that are waiting to buy, and 
 go, for you will not find anything in what we 
 are advocating that interferes in the least with 
 the liberty of the individual. Some may think 
 differently, but then they are the ones who 
 brought all eyes to the window to see what was 
 going on in the street. 
 
 And as you travel on you will miss the once 
 eager dog at the farm house by the way, and no 
 palsied hand will be lifting the corner of the 
 curtain as you are passing by, for the tramp 
 has disappeared, and the rare survivor and in- 
 curable will be doing it on bread and water, for 
 he must be a useless thing not to have drawn 
 his last breath with his compatriot at the other 
 end of the scale. 
 
 The farmer who has children that are not of 
 age when the new arrangement goes into force 
 will see great hardship in the 160-acre law. He 
 intended to give this piece of land to one son 
 and that piece to another, and so on. He would 
 give each of these sons more, but some one else 
 owns the rest of the county thereabouts, and 
 these, say, 160-acre tracts, are the best he can do. 
 Leaving out of the question whether his sons 
 can locate alongside of himself or not, and con- 
 fining ourselves to their chance of being able 
 to get 160 acres, which is the vital point in the 
 whole matter, he must see that, if he must sur- 
 
CONFISCATION. 63 
 
 render his excess and all others must do the 
 same, there would be more land to take up than 
 there are people to take it. We are in a Repub- 
 lic, Mr. Farmer, and the interest of the many 
 who have called at your door call on you to 
 disgorge with the rest. 
 
 When we come to the land in the mountains 
 we find that it averages poor, yet the 160-acre 
 law must be applied there also. To allow more 
 would be to give an opening to the smart one, 
 who would take advantage as he has always done; 
 and as the country is pretty well tired of him 
 we will save future complications by tying him 
 down to 160 acres like the rest. The mountain 
 farmer or rancher, with rare exceptions, gets 
 his income from the raising of pork or beef 
 animals,which are rarely confined to the owner's 
 premises, but are allowed to roam and graze 
 where they will, at times as far as forty and 
 fifty miles away from where they belong. And 
 as the mountaineer makes little if any provi- 
 sions for the barn feeding of his animals, out- 
 side of one or two milk cows and his few work 
 animals, and these last only through the work 
 season and the bad weather of whatever winter 
 the locality may have, he will not find his 
 business of raising meat for the market cur- 
 tailed in any respect. Should he need more 
 hay or grain ground, or ground for orchards or 
 gardens, he will always find it inside of his 
 160-acre inclosure, for there are none yet among 
 them who knows the possibilities of a 160-acre 
 
64 : : sfescasios 
 
 h under the plow. And as none has yet 
 been forced to put the plow into outside ground, 
 it can he taken for granted that they never will. 
 Where, then, is the reason why this class of 
 farmers should, be allowed title to more land 
 than the others ? The range or grazing ground 
 among the hills and along the water bow 
 will still be open to their animals, and instead 
 of the proposed change injuring their business, 
 ]t will, in tL - ?f cheap barb-wire, stop the 
 
 ".tie ting and speculative grabber 
 
 i crippling : lesfci "together, a 
 
 not unknown to some who have tried in a 
 
 small way to make a living from cattle raisi _ 
 
 .ierefore, no reason why the farmer 
 
 in the hills should be allowed more land than 
 
 his less favored brother in the valleys and plains 
 
 w. He must fall into line with the : 
 and, as he takes his place at the foot the 
 ssembled multitude of liberated slaves, sees a 
 Heam of scorn in the eves of the once mightv 
 railroad king as this poorrelati: /.stupon 
 
 his not:; t 
 
 But it is not in a brave - le to humiliate 
 a fallen enemy, and the order to break ranks 
 is given, and the ex-slave and ex-master mingle 
 . T:her, and depart to work out a destiny com- 
 mon to both. 
 
 In the preceding pages we have briefly tried 
 
 show that Confiscation is the only peaceable 
 
 way that is now open to us by which the people 
 
CONFISCATION. 65 
 
 can again obtain possession of their country. 
 And we have tried to convey an idea of how its 
 principle should be applied, and we will now 
 turn our attention to its workings, and show, 
 as briefly as possible, how easy it is for the 
 people to be prosperous when they have control 
 of their country's resources. 
 
 There is not a railroad in the country that 
 would not be taxed to its utmost in carrying 
 settlers io the forfeited lands; and the work of 
 the land agent and boomer, the uphill work of 
 the town or section in trying to build them- 
 selves up by advertising far and near, and the 
 hauling of cars full of exhibition pumpkins 
 crossways and lengthways of the land, would be 
 needless. Government land, be it County, State 
 or United States, never requires booming in 
 these days of the anxious home-seeker, and 
 never will again. 
 
 At present when a new section becomes at- 
 tractive there is a rush into it, and then the 
 rush slacks up with an air-brake suddenness. 
 The speculator has got there and pitched his 
 tent, and his $100 to $500-acre signs — part down, 
 the rest at 8 per cent. — has taken possession, 
 and the stream is turned aside and goes else- 
 where. And then the pumpkin, with its 8 per 
 cent, tags plastered all over it, is put aboard 
 and hauled through the country on its mission 
 of deceiving the innocent. 
 
 With the land speculator out of the way, and 
 no expenses outside of office fees, there would 
 
66 CONFISCATION. 
 
 be a steady increase of population wherever 
 there is agricultural land, until the last acre is 
 in possession of an actual settler, whose home 
 would be on the place. (The principle which 
 allows a man living in New York, or somewhere 
 else, to own land in California, or somewhere 
 else, should set every law-maker to scratching 
 his head to see if he cannot get an idea out of 
 
 it.) 
 
 And do not plague yourselves about the nu- 
 merosity of the new settler, and where the whole 
 of him is to find a market. We are trying to 
 get rid of the pauper, and whoever heard of a 
 farm, free of the 8 per cent, night-mare, being 
 the breeding place of such as he? Whatever 
 else happens to the farmer he at least is sure of 
 enough to eat. Wheat may be down; cattle 
 without buyers; eggs a drug; potatoes left to 
 rot in the ground; milk wasting like water, and 
 not ten cents in money on the premises, but 
 the owner is not starving. The dude may not 
 see a brother in him, and he will be denied 
 entrance to the Inner Circle when Major domo 
 McAllister sees him in the rear. But he has 
 weight, and looks as if trying to get away with 
 this year's crop, to make room for the next, 
 agrees with him; and if he thinks now and 
 again of the days of the hungry tramp it must 
 be that the undertaking has proportions he 
 little dreamed of. 
 
 But he will have a market. What causes him 
 to need one? This. That he may be able to 
 
CONFISCATION. 67 
 
 get that which he does not produce or make 
 himself. And is there not some one else pro- 
 ducing or making those very things, and who 
 needs what the farmer alone produces or makes? 
 If yes, then we have found the whole secret of 
 what we call business — two producers or makers 
 of different articles making an exchange one 
 with the other. Stop that exchange, and there 
 would be no manufacturing; we would all be 
 living off raw nature once more, and our ball- 
 games would give way to the pelting of cocoa- 
 nuts and hanging by our tails. 
 
 XI. 
 
 The opening of these forfeited lands would 
 be the salvation of that pitiable creature, the 
 victim of the 8 per cent, grind. The homeless 
 wanderer can get shade and shelter from the 
 burning sun and driving storm, and with these 
 is content, for he has long since resigned am- 
 bition to those who are willing to continue the 
 hopeless struggle; but the man, on the 8 per 
 cent, treadmill, who has not yet acknowledged 
 defeat, has no way of escape from the glare of 
 the master's eye, except, by self-murder or the 
 pauper's grave. There is nothing that excites 
 our hatred against the infamous laws of our 
 times as much as does the sight of this brave 
 man struggling against the fate that is crush- 
 ing him, and whose patriotism will soon be 
 kindred to that of the Russian serfs, if it does 
 
6 N CONFISCATION. 
 
 not go to the other extreme and make him a 
 nihilist or some other brand of the political 
 desperado. [1 was from this quarter, forge 
 not, that the old flint locks came, " whose report 
 was heard around the world," and the serf will 
 r be his model, for the old spirit has still 
 enough of life left for another blair :hese 
 
 oppressors will find to their awful c 
 The burdens wbich these people are stagger- 
 ing under can be easily imagined wh 
 known that they have been paying interest on 
 mortgages for years that the places would not 
 now sell for, even after they were improved by 
 years of labor and the outlay of much mc: 
 In the San Joaquin valley, for instance, there 
 are homesteads by the thousands that will not 
 sell for what they are mortgaged for, and the 
 ^ordinary spectacle - witnessed in the 
 of San Francisco last year of a bank having 
 to close because it could not sell out the valley 
 farmers for the mortgages due it. Of course 
 ise farmers obtained money from the bank, 
 and the justice of. the bank's claim is not what 
 we are now trying to get at, but to show that if 
 we had the laws that belong to a republic the 
 people would not be the victims of bankers or 
 any one else. Had they been allowed in the 
 first place to take possession of all unimproved 
 land without having to give up the saving- : 
 years to some land grabber, whose theft was au- 
 thorized and sustained by law, and then loaded 
 down with interest obligations, they would have 
 
CONFISCATION. 69 
 
 had no more trouble in keeping their land 
 than they would in keeping an arm or a leg. 
 
 With every one limited to lt)0 acres there 
 would be so much thrown open to settlement 
 that it would practically wipe out all mortgages 
 on land, for the occupant of mortgaged prem- 
 ises could give his owner the option of accept- 
 ing what would be a fair price under the new 
 conditions, and if it were refused then the oc- 
 cupant could simply back his wagon up, put his 
 portables on and drive to some of the Govern- 
 ment land nearest to him. 
 
 And it should not be so difficult to get the 
 fencing and the lumber for the few small build- 
 ings that would answer till he could get better, 
 and, once started, his condition would be a steady 
 improvement, the interest he now pays remain- 
 ing on the premises where it is made. At pres- 
 ent there are the usual fences and buildings 
 put up when the land is bought (part down, the 
 rest at 8 per cent.), and these are the only im- 
 provements, outside of vine and tree growth, 
 that can be made; the wear of time even cannot 
 be repaired, for the occupant has nothing to 
 spare for repairs or improvements, and even 
 the necessaries of life are a tug, and as to decent 
 clothing for himself and wife and other depend- 
 ants that is not to be thought of while he is 
 loaded down with that bane of modern life, 
 interest obligations. 
 
 The cost of moderately sized buildings would 
 of course depend on circumstances, but it should 
 
70 CONFISCATION. 
 
 not exceed a few hundred dollars; and as it 
 would be a more profitable investment fori a 
 county to help a settler, that is already on the 
 ground, to get a start, than to spend the money 
 trying to get him there, as is the practice now, 
 there can be no serious reason why the voters 
 should not authorize their local Government to 
 extend the necessary aid, and make it optional 
 with the borrower whether he shall pay in 
 money or work; the length of time and other 
 details to be governed by circumstances, but no 
 interest to be charged. If this last causes some 
 apparent loss, let it be charged to the old pump- 
 kin fund. 
 
 There are people of small means who have 
 taken mortgages on land, and these must be 
 protected, as we have already done in the case 
 of like investors in paper-represented property. 
 But if these small lenders are already owners 
 of one hundred and sixty acres they must make 
 the best terms they can with their debtors, for 
 it is a cardinal idea of this needed readjustment 
 that no one shall own more than 160 acres. 
 But if the lender does not own that amount of 
 land, he can get and hold title as at present. 
 
 The result of the proposed change being to 
 keep the income of the whole country within 
 its own borders, it follows that every section 
 must find itself with an abundance of capital 
 such as was never known to them before, giv- 
 ing them the means to carry on improvements 
 
CONFISCATION. 71 
 
 that are entirely beyond them now. At the 
 present time, too, if a laborer, through errors 
 of judgment, should lose the savings of his 
 years of youth and strength, he can rarely re- 
 cover the ground lost, and finds that paying 
 his way from day to day thereafter is all he can 
 do, and when his work days are gone for good 
 he must either go to the poor-house or be cared 
 for by his relations, whose own load is about 
 all they can bear up under. With the income 
 kept where it is made all this would be changed, 
 for then, instead of having work only a part of 
 the time, and poor wages besides, the laborer, 
 when his work for private parties gave out, 
 could get work from the local Government, 
 which always has it to give, and the money to 
 pay for it. And should a laborer here and there, 
 through some unforeseen cause, be forced by 
 poverty and age to accept food and shelter that 
 he cannot pay for, his relations can provide for 
 him, for the getting of the mere food and cloth- 
 ing will not be the momentous question that it 
 is now. And this power of the local Govern- 
 ment to give work will save many a one from 
 a fate that should never overtake the honest 
 and willing. 
 
 Pauperism and crime can never be eliminated 
 from society, any more than the susceptibility 
 to sickness and disease can be eliminated from 
 flesh and blood, but as civilization grows older 
 its accumulating wisdom should be more than 
 a match for poverty, the parent germ of both 
 
72 CONFISCATION. 
 
 pauperism and crime: but the discouraging fact 
 is that these two diseases of civilized society 
 are advancing faster than civilization itself, 
 and we build larger poor houses and jails, and 
 then sit down and nurse the hideous disorders, 
 as if they were the incurable rot of leprosy 
 instead of being the result of economic laws 
 that allow the able to rob the weak. 
 
 There is not a county or State but what has 
 plenty of work had it the money to do it. The 
 question of good roads is becoming prominent, 
 but if they are ever built under our present 
 system of economics they will be built by slave 
 labor pure and simple. It is absolutely out of 
 the question for the people to raise the money 
 for running the Government ; pay interest on 
 bonds : pay for the bonds themselves ; pay 
 pensions; carry on the costly work of giving 
 the whole country macadamized roads, and 
 care for the millionaire, and remain free at the 
 same time. 
 
 Government expenses 
 
 Pensions. 
 
 Interest on bonds. 
 
 Matured bonds. 
 
 Macadamized roads. 
 
 Care of millionaire. 
 
 To think of carrying such a load and remain 
 free is madness. 
 
 We are contending that the coun try is already 
 crushed with debt : that she is saddled with 
 such a tremendous load, that, like the mortgaged 
 
CONFISCATION. 73 
 
 farm, improvement and progress is utterly out 
 of the question. We have the resources for any 
 and every improvement that the country needs, 
 hut they are wasted and squandered paying 
 interest to foreign capitalists, and supporting 
 our mushroom growth of millionaire parasites, 
 who are the cause of our poverty of capital, and 
 the foreigners' ability to lend us money. 
 
 Do away with interest paying and the mil- 
 lionaire, and the required roads could be com- 
 menced at once, and as for the Nicaragua canal, 
 we would make as light of it as does the farmer 
 in hoeing a hill of beans. 
 
 XII. 
 
 The silver interest asserts that we will never 
 stop our headlong rush to the devil if we do 
 not get free coinage of silver. Silver, like pork 
 or potatoes, is something for sale, and its owners 
 have given up their whole attention to finding- 
 it a market. Whoever heard of J. P. Jones 
 interesting himself in anything except silver. 
 Never in all of his twenty years of public life 
 did he show that he was anything more than 
 u a man from one of the silver States/' Ever 
 and always whenever he tills the air with his 
 noise, you have only to look and there you will 
 find him still knocking at the public treasury 
 for a customer that already has had enough of 
 him. 
 
74 CONFISCATION. 
 
 He ha? become a monomaniac on silver, and, 
 although one of the principal owners of the 
 Mariposa land grant, will not open it up be- 
 cause it is silver he wants and the grant only 
 shows gold. It is this dementia that secures 
 him a life-lease of the Senatorship from 
 Nevada. For Nevada has only one interest, 
 and that is silver. Silver is her wool, her 
 cotton, her wheat, her coal, her iron, her lum- 
 ber, her manufactures. It made her a State. 
 It made her first representative to Congress 
 and her last. It made Jones — Jones the 
 drummer whose one sample is silver, who 
 talks of silver, who sings of silver, who dreams 
 liver, and who gets his inspirations of the 
 past, present, and future as he looks down the 
 shaft of his silver mine in Nevada. 
 
 Never did the tail of the dog work harder 
 than does this little bob-tailed thing called sil- 
 ver, that we find moving around among our 
 legs, trying to trip us up every time the politi- 
 cal procession makes a move. 
 
 There is distress because there is not money 
 enough in circulation, say these peddlers of 
 silver. It is a well understood fact that every 
 sound bank in the country has idle money in 
 its vaults looking for investment. 
 
 Money is precisely like the laborer — it, too, is 
 on the lookout for work. Show money where 
 it can make interest, and it will come out of 
 those vaults as quick as the hungry laborer 
 will answer the knock at his door. 
 
CONFISCATION. 75 
 
 Whatever distress the laborer is suffering, 
 however, be sure that the millionaire owner of 
 that idle money feels it not. His belly is well 
 filled and his back well covered, and he knows 
 nothing of the jolt of the box-car as he listens 
 to the rhythm of the wheels of his Pullman 
 sleeper. And it matters little to this million- 
 aire, this flower of a foreign clime, when his 
 increase sets in again. He has millions, a 
 word we little comprehend the meaning of, and 
 he will never know distress, any more than 
 the laborer will know plenty again while this 
 vampire of progress is permitted to survive. 
 But the time must come when labor will get 
 to work again for a few months each year, 
 the usual thing now, to produce the needed 
 stock of necessaries for the country, and then 
 he will see the man of millions step off and col- 
 lect his usual toll, and enough besides to make 
 good any shrinkage in the principal. This 
 owner of immense capital, this traveler in the 
 Pullman, who makes his regular rounds 
 through the country collecting toll off every 
 laborer in every section, preparatory to his 
 flight to Europe, is twin brother to the great 
 land owner, and there is no hope for our coun- 
 try until both are legally or otherwise extermi- 
 nated. 
 
 We could undo the capitalist by making inter- 
 est illegal, as this would force him to draw on 
 his principal. We do not object, however, to 
 
76 CONFISCATION. 
 
 the interest capital receives. Banks have no 
 enemy in this proposed change, and we suspect 
 either the motives or the judgment of those 
 whose stock in trade is a howl against banks, 
 and what they call usury. Money has its place 
 in civilization, and the hank where it is dealt 
 in is a shop just as much as is the dry goods 
 store or grocery, and is entitled to its profits 
 just the same. If a man ec . -~ he should 
 
 be allowed to charge something for its use the 
 same as for the wagon he made or the house 
 he built. Xeither the wagon nor house is any 
 more the result of his labor than is this money,, 
 and no one will question his right to charge 
 something for the use of the first two. It is 
 here where the banks are of service — the man 
 with money takes it to a place — the bank — 
 where the man who wishes to hire it knows 
 where to look for it. Good sense will not deny 
 a market to a man with potatoes; neither will 
 it deny him a market for any other product of 
 his labor, be it capital or what not. Interest 
 is wrong only when it is being drawn by a mil- 
 lionaire, who. of course, did not earn the prin- 
 cipal. Those millions is where the danger lies, 
 when found with an individual owner, whether 
 they are in bank vaults or on the shelves of the 
 millionaire merchant. Besides, it is a slow pro- 
 jess, this breaking up the millionaire owner of 
 something by stopping his interest. This earth 
 should be ours while we are alive to enjoy it. 
 and there is no hope of getting it by applying 
 
CONFISCATION. 77 
 
 the graduated tax idea to either land or capital. 
 When a curse like poverty can be removed the 
 quicker it is done the better. 
 
 Interest is wrong (we are not justifying ex- 
 tortion) when it is drawn by the millionaire, 
 not only because his labor did not earn the 
 principal, but because he has the power to take 
 it out of the country where it was earned. And 
 he does take it out thereby impoverishing the 
 country of the capital that is needed to carry 
 on developments that should never be allowed 
 to stop. 
 
 There is, as has been said, idle money now, 
 but the millionaire owners care nothing for the 
 general welfare, and the people cannot get this 
 idle money because they find it impossible to 
 pay interest for its use, and carry at the same 
 time the fearful burdens they are now loaded 
 with. 
 
 An individual can be forced to submit to any 
 kind of terms when his necessities are driving 
 him. When those necessities are satisfied he 
 must stop and let development go, for he cannot 
 stand the terms. He is willing to go ahead, but 
 he simply finds his physical being unequal to 
 the task. As it is with one individual so it is 
 with a nation of individuals. They also can 
 be forced to submit to any kind of terms when 
 their necessities are driving them, and when 
 their necessities are supplied they too must 
 stop and let development so, for they cannot 
 stand the terms. In other words, the capacity 
 
t b CONFISCATION. 
 
 of people, singly or collectively, is limited, and 
 if they are compelled to exhaust that capacity 
 in supporting millionaire parasites at home, 
 and paying for their extravagance abroad, they 
 cannot improve themselves or develop their 
 country. 
 
 Complicity, then, and negligence on the part 
 of our law makers has made a few men the 
 absolute owners of the financial or money 
 branch of our economics, and the people find 
 it impossible to move except when these mas- 
 ters find it to their interests to let them. 
 
 Progress under such conditions will never 
 be more than a dream. 
 
 We could find use for all the capital that is 
 now in the country, and all that has been and 
 is being taken out of it, but we should first 
 loosen the grip of these legalized despoilers and 
 see how far what we have got would go before 
 we talk of issuing more, which would soon turn 
 up missing like the rest. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 AVe hear much about what we are losing by 
 the balance of trade being against us, but not a 
 word about that other floodgate through which 
 our capital is rushing, namely, our millionaire 
 class making its purchases abroad, and their 
 other expenses while living among the foreign 
 birds of a like feather. Their idle money is 
 left here for investment. They do not look to 
 
CONFISCATION. 79 
 
 that quarter for income. The world over there 
 is under the feet of a few as it is here, and the 
 result is the same — idle money looking for 
 interest. 
 
 No less an authority than the late Ward Mc- 
 Allister has said that up to last year two hun- 
 dred and eighty American women had married 
 foreign titles. 
 
 $1,000,000,000 was the war indemnity de- 
 manded of France by the Germans, and so vast 
 is this sum that the civilized world believed the 
 Germans wanted to retain possession of the con- 
 quered country and demanded what the French 
 could not pay. Yet the amount of American 
 money it took to buy those two hundred and 
 eighty titles is far in excess of that war indem- 
 nity. At four millions each it would exceed 
 $1,000,000,000. But the average cost must 
 have been more than four millions. One of 
 our millionaire flour mill owners, who is a mere 
 tallow candle in this constellation, paid $7,000,- 
 000 for the title his daughter is now wearing. 
 And this $7,000,000 must have been a mere 
 bagatelle compared to what it cost Huntington 
 to get the lively Hatzfeldt. The poor flour mill 
 man could not have paid that fellow's " debts 
 of honor." This buying of titles, however, is 
 but one way by which the millionaires are beg- 
 garing the American people. So much of their 
 time is now 7 spent over there that they have 
 come to look upon the United States as their 
 rented farm, and Europe as the place where 
 
BO CONFISCATION. 
 
 they, in their high roller way, must get rid of 
 its income. Call to mind the millionaire fam- 
 ilies who live a large part of their time in 
 Europe. Call to mind those who have made 
 pe their permanent home, with their in- 
 iwn from the United States. Call to 
 mind the great European estates, that have 
 been firs 1 of their peasantry, and then 
 
 leased by American mill hat they may 
 
 have the exclusive right to shoot at something. 
 Call 1 the New ' aire, 
 
 who purchased an English estate, one to fit the 
 title he is lick-spittling after, and where he can 
 after ail s lis great London 
 
 Daily and Monthly: all thre - and period- 
 
 3j being a source of loss, that is made good 
 by American earned money. Call all these 
 things to mind, and if we are poor in capital 
 have round the reason why ? 
 
 Euro] Broadway of tb >ple, and 
 
 they are there to squander money, not to make 
 it. And the European visitor to our shores 
 ike up the loss. He comes, looks at 
 some of our landscape, Xiagara. the Yosemite, 
 d \ is : iri : untry and home again. 
 
 H:~ is but a drop to the ocean we lo=e. 
 
 Need we wonder at our gold disappearing ? 
 Ou r b o n d s a n d s - : • v e r n m e n t a n d e o r p o r a - 
 
 tion, are scattered broadcast over the whole of 
 Europe, and those decrepit titles, that were dy- 
 ing out, have been put on their feet again by 
 American money, and are now living off the 
 
CONFISCATION. 
 
 81 
 
 interest of American bonds of one kind or 
 another. 
 
 Nor should we have to borrow foreign capital. 
 It is over a century since this government was 
 established, and it is time we had enough cap- 
 ital of our own. 
 
 But the United States Treasury is, and has 
 been for over thirty years, the clearing house 
 for the foreign holders of American securities. 
 We are a mortgaged nation, and the office of 
 our National Treasury is the place of all others 
 where our foreign owners should get their in- 
 terest. We are still in possession of the office, 
 however, and in this we are ahead of Egypt, 
 but it will take much hair-splitting to show 
 any substantial difference in the results. 
 
 History does not contain, the imagination 
 cannot evolve, a more damnable exhibition of 
 incompetence than this failure of our scrub 
 statesmen to extricate their country from the 
 clutch of its foreign masters. 
 
 Ruling one of the three principal gold pro- 
 ducers of the world, they are compelled to resort 
 to all the shifts known to the desperate bank- 
 rupt in order to keep a few millions of it in the 
 Treasury, and thereby save our whole monetary 
 system from going to the dogs. For let us not 
 delude ourselves; the moment the United States 
 Treasury cannot give gold for its greenbacks, 
 that moment will the history of the greenback 
 begin to repeat itself. And we are not saving 
 ourselves by making greenbacks lean on silver. 
 
82 CONFISCATION. 
 
 They cannot be made stronger than the thing 
 they lean on. Gold we must have as our stan- 
 dard. 
 
 We are in commercial relations with all na- 
 tions, and the laws of trade are inexorable, and 
 say: You must have money that is acceptable 
 to those you buy from. Bring any other, and 
 you can call the fifty cents it contains one hun- 
 dred, but your laws are for the United States 
 only, and you must accept the fifty cents or take 
 back the mongrel that in your own barnyard 
 crows so loud, for the United States has in- 
 dorsed a swindle that she is powerless to en- 
 force beyond her own borders. 
 
 No law is necessary to make us take gold. 
 Just out of the mine or just out of the mint, 
 we want it — the whole world wants it. 
 
 Finance, if not as old as the hills, is at least 
 pretty near as old as the graves at the foot of 
 them. There is nothing new to be learned re- 
 garding her laws. And those laws do not shut 
 out tin, copper, paper, rags, nails, or silver 
 from being used as money as long as it is 
 agreeable to the interested. But the wisdom of 
 the world comes from her experience, and if 
 she calls for gold money it is because she has 
 never found a better. All other kinds fade be- 
 fore it as fades the moon before the rising sun. 
 
 There is but one central orb in the world's 
 monetary systems, and that is Gold. And its 
 satellites, paper or silver, will never be able to 
 get out of their orbits where the fixed and un- 
 
CONFISCATION. 83 
 
 alterable laws of the world's financial systems 
 have placed them. Temporary disturbances 
 may deceive the searcher, but he has mistaken 
 his calling who cannot distinguish planets from 
 the sun around which they are moving. 
 
 The different governments of Europe, that 
 are not gold producers, have gold as the basis 
 of their monetary systems, and, what is more, 
 the gold is there. The United States, that is a 
 gold producer, would also have it as the basis 
 of its monetary system, but this nation, the one 
 independent nation that is an extensive and 
 the leading producer of the metal that the en- 
 lightened world approves of as making the best 
 of all moneys, cannot retain enough of it to 
 give future stability to her own currency. 
 
 This nation, the greatest of to-day, or any 
 day! 
 
 This nation, that has given more to the rest 
 of the world than it has ever received ! 
 
 This nation — of all others on this earth— 
 must be content with the money of the enslaved 
 East Indian coolie ; must be content with the 
 money of the decaying Chinaman ; must be 
 content with the money of the half savage re- 
 publics to the south of us ! 
 
 This nation, whose chief magistrate is the 
 embodiment of power never dreamed of by the 
 Osesars and Napoleons in their palmiest days ! 
 This nation, that is impregnable against the 
 combined armies of the world, is being sapped 
 and mined of its wealth under the very eyes of 
 
84 CONFISCATION. 
 
 its driveling lawmakers, and silver is becoming 
 the badge of its humiliation and inferiority ! 
 
 XIV. 
 
 The national debt of France is $7,000,000,000- 
 This exceeds the combined national debts of 
 the United States, England, and Germany. 
 
 In territory, France is not as large as Cali- 
 fornia. 
 
 Her population is* 37,000,000 
 
 The population of the United States 
 
 is.. 65,000,000 
 
 The population of England is 37,000,000 
 
 The population of Germany is 40,000,000 
 
 Total : 142..000..000 
 
 The French navy is a fairly close second to 
 that of England. 
 
 Her army is as large as that of Germany. 
 
 France, then, supports an army and navy of 
 the first class, and" has only 37,000,000 people 
 to do it with. And this same 37,000,000 people 
 pays interest on a debt that is greater than 
 that of the 142,000,000 people in the three 
 countries named. Yet there is no wail of dis- 
 tress, such as we are familiar with, heard in 
 this France, with its great army and navy, and 
 its fabulous interest-bearing debt. 
 
 What is the secret of it ? 
 
 *The writer is not within hundreds of miles of works of 
 reference ; but these figures are substantially correct. The 
 quibbler, however, is welcome to anything he may find. 
 
CONFISCATION. 85 
 
 France is the greatest producer of luxeries 
 in the world, and, of course, has the rich the 
 world over for her customers ; and she is a na- 
 tion of small owners, her resources, land and 
 all else, being subdivided among her people to 
 an extent unknown elsewhere. This is only 
 half the secret. 
 
 There is a natural increase of wealth in every 
 country. Keep that natural increase in the 
 country where it is made, and there will always 
 be a surplus left after the mere live and wear 
 expenses are paid, and this surplus can be used 
 either to support an army or to build macad- 
 amized roads. This then is the other half, 
 without which she would be where we are : 
 France legislates to keep her wealth in her own 
 country — and her loss on that canal is only one 
 plum out of her heeping bushel. 
 
 The foreign sapper and miner does no work 
 on French soil. His field of operation is the 
 whole American continent, beginning in Canada 
 and on down through, without a skip, till he 
 reaches Magellan and the Horn, scattering his 
 due bills all the way. 
 
 The French law-maker, in spite of his clatter, 
 is without a peer, and he dwarfs none so much 
 as our own, who will become the butt of his 
 own sneer if he ever gets his eyes open. 
 
 This foreign master of the art of governing 
 legislates in the interests of his own people, who 
 are the only source of his contry's power or 
 greatness, and he leaves the income of the large 
 
Ob CONFISCATION. 
 
 farm or small one where it is made. And when 
 the issuing of bonds is the only alternative he 
 issues them in sizes those small incomes can 
 buy. 
 
 Their labor pays the debt in the end, and it 
 is their interests that are first consulted when 
 profits from bond issues are considered. He 
 makes the size of the bond fit their ability to 
 buy, and not that of the millionaire syndicate, 
 as is the case in this misgoverned land, where 
 the matchless ignorance and complicity of the 
 law-maker is made to serve the matchless cor- 
 ruption and greed of its millionaire master. 
 
 No French syndicate makes its five to ten 
 per cent, profits off every issue of bonds. 
 
 Thousands among our toilers could have 
 secured their ten-dollar savings could they have 
 bought Government bonds of that denomina- 
 tion, but they could not, and were forced to 
 become the victims of swindling bankers. 
 
 Individual greed cares nothing for its victims 
 as they are thrown on the streets and its ways. 
 
 When this enterprising foreigner, with his 
 surplus capital, the result of wise laws, started 
 for Panama to do a much needed work for this 
 Western world, that this great gold producing 
 country could not find the capital to do, our 
 blackmailers worked the Monroe Doctrine on 
 him, and all the while he was quieting the ras- 
 cals, the sappers and miners were splitting their 
 sides at our treasury door. 
 
 Congress is opened by a chaplain. It should 
 
CONFISCATION. 87 
 
 be opened by a physician and a warrant — bibs 
 for the drooling chins of some and the rest to 
 jail. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 A policy that keeps our increase of wealth in 
 the country, and prevents it from lodging in a 
 few hands, can work no injury whatever. No 
 enterprise worthy of notice will languish for the 
 want of the necessary capital. The savings 
 banks are the depositories of the people, and 
 the capital of those institution in all the cities 
 of the country exceeds that of the commercial 
 or capitalistic banks, and the *' statements " of 
 the savings banks should dispel any fears as to 
 whether capital can be concentrated afterit once 
 gets into the hands of the people. $50,000,000 
 is the assets of more than one savings bank in 
 the City of New York. And our own San 
 Francisco has its Hibernia and other banks of 
 its kind, with from $5,000,000 to $30,000,000 
 of capital. And when it is remembered that 
 the total deposits of an individual in most of 
 those institutions is not allowed to exceed 
 $3,000, we can see that the people will not fail 
 us as " concentrators " when their help is 
 needed. 
 
 Those statements also show whether those of 
 small means are for concealing it, or for put- 
 ting it into ths hands of competent managers 
 for investment. And if these competent man- 
 
88 CONFISCATION. 
 
 agers approve of an enterprise they will not 
 neglect their client's interests by refusing to 
 make the required loan. 
 
 At present, they do not seek investment out- 
 side of corporate limits, and, of course, the 
 money they have been intrusted with, must be 
 about all invested, and cannot be called idle 
 money, or there could be no interest paid io its 
 owners. 
 
 There will be no friction in the management 
 of industrial enterprises when this savings- 
 bank depositor makes a direct investment. 
 The voter at the polls has his say as to who 
 shall fill a political office, but he cannot inter- 
 fere in the work of the office itself. Neither 
 will our investor have the right or power to in- 
 terfere. In short, the modern industrial world 
 would go to pieces even now, if it was run by 
 its million owners, instead of by its appointed 
 or elected superintendent. 
 
 These small depositors are either laborers or 
 in " business;" business that they would en- 
 large if business of all kinds was not already 
 overdone. It is not to be inferred from this 
 that the new law will cause factories to run day 
 and night, or keep the merchant's door always 
 on the swing. There will be an increase of 
 business surely; but this world is not like a 
 goose whose liver we are after. Her capacity 
 to absorb what we make or produce is limited, 
 and when we reach that limit, let us be con- 
 tent, and chain & down Greed for the moment, 
 
CONFISCATION. 89 
 
 that we may look out and see how beautiful is 
 this world whereon we live, when freed from 
 the crack of the master's whip. 
 
 Through Confiscation alone can the people 
 regain their liberty and possession of their re- 
 sources. 
 
 A readjustment means justice to all. 
 
 Without it the days of the republic are num- 
 bered, and the overwhelming disaster to man- 
 kind will mark the burial place of the aspira- 
 tions of its founders, and the latest conquest of 
 individual greed. 
 
 That disaster cannot be averted by Grover 
 Cleveland, the head of the Democratic party, 
 finding a foreign market for a few more ship- 
 loads of our products. And never should the 
 oppressed of other lands find an enemy here to 
 take their bread. Pinching nature has not made 
 wolves of this people that they should go and 
 show their teeth among the cabins and hovels of 
 Europe. Theirs is but a crust now, and a judg- 
 ment should wither the hand that would take 
 it from them. 
 
 This disaster cannot be averted by Thomas 
 B. Reed, the idol and recognized leader of the 
 Republican party, forcing the producers of 
 those few ship loads of products to consume 
 them themselves. The whole could be dropped 
 to the bottom of the sea, or sold for their value 
 a hundred fold, and it would not stay the doom 
 of the Republic one swing of the pendulum. 
 
90 CONFISCATION. 
 
 This disaster cannot be averted by Robert G. 
 Ingersoll — another idol — advising the mil- 
 lionaire to be extravagant. Or by taking the 
 labor-saving machinery away from the people, 
 and keeping them longer at their toil, as this 
 humbug has suggested. 
 
 THIS IS THE AGE OF BEEF. 
 
 Our leaders are incompetent. Argument here 
 is needless. We have plenty of everything, 
 and plenty of hunger at the same time, which 
 shows mismanagement. Our leaders, therefore, 
 must be incompetent. Nor should the blame 
 of this be charged to the people. Statecraft, 
 like the prescribing of medicine or the practice 
 of law, is a profession, and the unlearned in 
 their ways is at the mercy of the quacks of all 
 three. 
 
 When none but quacks offer their services to 
 the State a selection must be made, and the 
 people cannot be held to account for choosing 
 quacks when there was nothing to choose from 
 but quacks. 
 
 Whatever physical characteristics distin- 
 guishes the genius of leadership from the ordi- 
 nary man; whether it is long legs or short; 
 long nose or pug; big heads or little, one thing 
 is certain — history tells you on her every page 
 that leadership is never found in combination 
 with beef. Cleveland and Reed! How they 
 
CONFISCATION. 91 
 
 stew and swelter in positions they cannot fill. 
 How these Jonahs have grown till they have 
 become the whale itself. How their fat will 
 spot the pages to come, and float on the sea 
 where the Republic went down. 
 
 And Ingersoll — let us not forget Ingersoll — the 
 thumber over of past woes, whose five hundred 
 dollar opera ticket identifies the class to which 
 he now belongs, and proves his success as a 
 fifteenth century reformer. The peeple made 
 and keep up the acquaintance of this man by 
 way of the ticket office, but instead of consider- 
 ing him as they would any other footlight per- 
 former, who had struck a paying vein and was 
 working it for all it was worth, and who can 
 only be heard at so much per ticket, they have 
 come to look upon the character he has been 
 acting as the man himself, and their friend 
 who would make their cause his own. 
 
 No fee is collected at the door of the little 
 church that is found along the byways of every 
 Christian land, and its humble preacher can be 
 heard free of cost. But abuse of this follower 
 and disciple of Jesus, whose teachings are in 
 no way responsible for the crimes of Individual 
 Greed, has been the source of large profits to 
 this man, who has even gone so far as to tell 
 his hearers not to give a dollar to the support 
 <3f a preacher — meaning, doubtless, while you 
 could see his performance for half the money. 
 
 This man, whose audience is world-wide, 
 uses his great opportunity for helping mankind 
 
92 CONFISCATION. 
 
 by inclosing the scenes of former struggles, and 
 collecting the gate receipts. 
 
 This bogus friend of the people answers the 
 cry of distress that is heard all over this boun- 
 tiful land by a shrug, and a nod to the master 
 to drop a few more crumbs, as if the people 
 were hungry dogs under the table. 
 
 Ingersoll a friend of the oppressed ? He 
 would render justice to the enslaved toiler by 
 lengthening his hours of labor. 
 
 A sham reformer, who would destroy the In- 
 quisition of this day by plunging his spotless 
 blade into an Inquisition whose sun has set, 
 never to rise again. 
 
 Ingersoll of the tender soul, who shows the 
 sincerity of his exhibition-tears for the perse- 
 cuted dead by riding, rough-shod, over the sen- 
 sibilities of the blameless living. 
 
 "Warrior Ingersoll, furiously charging up and 
 down an abandoned battle-field, rattling the 
 bleaching bones of a dead and gone enemy — 
 for an admission fee. 
 
 Ingersoll the capper, who would turn all eyes 
 to the ashes of a burned-out hell, while another 
 is being dug in our rear. 
 
 CLEVELAND— REED— INGERSOLL, 
 
 THE THREE 
 
 CAGLIOSTROS. 
 
CONFISCATION 
 
 RJt OUTlilfiE 
 
 BY WILLIAM GREENWOOD 
 
 Those palaces on the Nob Hills of these United States are 
 the toadstools of the decay that is going on in this Republic 
 to-day.— Page 42. 
 
 fl. 
 
 
 PRICE, 25 CENTS 
 
 SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 JAMES H. BARRY, PRINTER, 429 MONTGOMERY STREET 
 
 1895 
 
219 89 
 
• j \g* 
 
 
 
 • . • A 
 
 ^ 
 
 v * ^» « • • • <V VI* «» • * - *' v 
 
 
 
 
 * A V ^ 
 * ^ ** 
 
 o , » • A 
 
 
 
 
 
 %4 
 
> m,% \* .. * •■• *° *> 
 
 
 w