EDUCATIONAL DEPARTMENT.
Gail, Texas, July 15th, 1908.
Dear Sir:
Enclosed find $1.00 for which send to my address both publications Weekly and Monthly for six months, after which I think I can send you some subscribers. It was an oversight in not sending it in before now. In a little discussion some time back some one spoke of there being no private titles to land in England, and several asked me to write and ask you in regard to the matter.
I saw enough in your last Magazine to convince me, but would like to have you write a piece on the subject.
Yours respectfully,THOMAS O. EDWARDS.
(Answer.)
The system of Land Ownership in this country was derived from England. Excepting crown lands, all real estate in Great Britain is held by private titles. Even entailed estates may be bought and sold but the procedure is cumbersome and costly. Stating the case broadly, no poor man can buy land in England, without the aid of the Government.
In Ireland the huge estates of the nobles are being purchased by the Government and parcelled out among the people, who buy the land from the Government, on long time with low interest.
Loganville, Ga., Nov. 9, 1908.Hon. Thos. E. Watson,Thomson, Ga.
Dear Sir:
Please answer the following questions in the Jeffersonian or Magazine or both: Has the Democratic party, at any one time since the Civil War, been in full control of the National Government? If so please give proof, not that I wouldn’t believe you in every particular, but I want to prove it to some “hot headed democrats” who don’t want to believe you; also please give the time in which they were in control.
Hoping for an immediate reply, I am,
Yours for the cause,W. G. STANLEY.
Answer:—In 1892, Cleveland was elected President as a Democrat, and the Democrats had a majority both in the Senate and in the House during Cleveland’s term of four years, 1892 to 1896.
The official records prove this, and no truthful Democrat who is posted will dispute the fact. Suppose you refer the skeptics to Senators A. O. Bacon and A. S. Clay.—T. E. W.
QUESTION:Why is it that the whole world presents the same general picture of unrest, hard times, business depression, and unemployed labor?
Answer: The Kings of High Finance have chained the whole world with the gold standard, the effect of which is to contract the currency. A contraction of the currency is invariably followed by the same results, to wit—the ruin of the debtor class, the curtailment of business, the suspension of work, and the creation of an army of the unemployed.
For three thousand years prior to the discovery of gold in California (1856) both gold and silver had been in use, over the world, as money metals. Now, however, gold alone is the standard of value, and the money of final payment.
QUESTION:Why were gold and silver selected as the money metals?
Answer:BECAUSE THEY ARE SCARCE. By confining money to these two precious metals, it was believed by the financiers that the volume of real money would never get so large that they could not control it.The limitation of money to these two scarce metals was a practical limitation to the supply.
So matters stood throughout the world until the discovery of such vast quantities of gold in California frightened the financiers. They feared that so much gold would be added to the currency of the world that prices would go down, bonds would decrease in value, and that they, the financiers, would be unable to control the supply of real money.
Consequently, they hired able writers, like Chevalier and MacLarren,TO WRITE AGAINST GOLD, in the same way thatTHE MONEY KINGS HIRED DAVID A. WELLS AND EDWARD ATKINSON TO WRITE AGAINST SILVER, more than a century later.
Germany and Austria excluded gold from their mints (1857) and Belgium and Holland adopted the single silver standard.
QUESTION:What checked the demonetization of gold?
The discovery of the rich silver mines in Nevada, Colorado and other Western States. The financiers saw that there would soon be more silver than gold, and they went to work to have the scarcer metal made the standard of value, and the money of final payment.
QUESTION:What nation led the others in the demonetization of silver?
Answer: Great Britain. She is the nation to whom the people of all other countries owe most. In other words, the whole world is in debt to Great Britain.
To make this debt harder to pay, Great Britain led the other nations in the world-wide war against Bi-metallism, which means the use of both gold and silver on equal terms.
QUESTION:What is meant by “making the debt harder to pay?”
A debt, contracted when the volume of currency is expanded by the use of both gold and silver as monetary metals on equal terms, becomes harder to pay when the currency is contracted to the use of but one of these metals. A bond, for instance, issued by the Government when the currency is expanded by the use of gold, silver and Greenbacks, is enormously more valuable after the Government has destroyed a thousand million dollars of the Greenbacks and has demonetized silver. Having to be paidTHENin gold, the bondholder gets money very much more valuable than the money he invested in the bond.
Now Great Britain wanted the nations of the earth to pay the debts they owed her in money that was more valuable than the money she loaned. Hence, her war upon Bi-metallism.
QUESTION:But why did other nations help Great Britain demonetize silver and establish the single gold standard?
Answer: Because these other nations were controlled by their High Finance rascals, who wanted to enhance the value of the claims which they held against their own Governments and peoples.
In each of these other nations, were bondholders and money changers who wanted to make money scarce, so that they could control it, and so that the money paid them to satisfy their claims against the Government and the people would be more valuable than that which they had loaned.
QUESTION:Is there any reason why the amount of metal in a dollar should be worth a dollar?
None. Money is a man-made product, like a cartwheel. Nature does not produce dollars nor cartwheels. Nature supplies the raw materials, but man is the manufacturer who turns these raw materials into dollars and cartwheels.
Dollars are made for the purpose of effecting the exchange of one product for another. It is a tool of exchange.
It enables Commerce to get along without the bartering of one commodity for another. In old times, a man who did not have a horse but wanted one, would get one in exchange for cows, of which he had more than he needed. There was inconvenience about this, because the man who had a horse that he was willing to swap for cows might not be easy to find. To get away from the cumbersome, unsatisfactory system of Barter, men agreed on something that should represent value in exchange. The substance agreed on, no matter what it was, became money.
Therefore, money was made by man for the special purpose of carrying on Commerce, just as wheels are made to carry on carts, wagons, carriages and railroad cars.
There is no more sense in claiming that the dollar—which is the wheel of Commerce—should be made out of a material of any particular value than there would be in claiming that a car wheel shall bear a certain proportion of value to the freight which is transported in the car.
The dollar is a tool, in the same sense that a hoe is a tool. With one hoe, you may cultivate cotton worth fifty dollars; but that is no reason why the hoe should cost you fifty dollars.
TWO HANDSOne Controls the Wealth; The Other Produces It
TWO HANDS
One Controls the Wealth; The Other Produces It