The Money Power

The Money Power

“All things come to him that waits.” Fifteen or sixteen years ago, when the Farmers’ Alliance was flourishing throughout the West and South, it was a matter of common occurrence to hear some old horny-handed farmer, on a Saturday at the county seat, disputing with his neighbor about existing conditions. Almost invariably the Alliance man blamed the “money power” for causing things to go criss-cross. Occasionally the country merchant or small banker would butt into the discussion. “The money power,” he would say, with infinite scorn, “Humph! Why, you poor fool, there ain’t any such thing as ‘the money power.’ Might as well talk of the agricultural power, or the mercantile power. There are rich bankers and rich farmers and rich merchants—but that don’t make them a ‘power’ in the sense you use that term.”

For a number of years the “money power” has been given a much needed rest in the West and South. Most of the pioneers there have substituted the term “plutocracy.” But in the East reformers are just now beginning to sit up and take notice. One hears the term frequently. “Roosevelt,” said Jacob Riis, in a recent interview in theNew York Herald, “is fighting the greatest tyrant of them all. Slavery affected only the South, but the Money Power means the enslavement of all human beings and all homes.” Many an old, long-whiskered farmer said the same thing just as well fifteen years ago—and theHeraldcalled him an anarchist.

“The Senate,” says Ernest Crosby in the MarchCosmopolitan, “is now the agent of the Money Power—the representative of Wall Street.” Absolutely true; and no one can doubt the sincerity of either Mr. Crosby or theCosmopolitan; but when the farmers of the West and South said the same thing fifteen years ago, they were greeted with hoots and jeers from the East. I don’t say that Messrs. Riis and Crosby joined in the hooting and jeering; I am quite sure they did not; but they are accorded a respectful hearing in making statements for the making of which thousands of respectable men fifteen years ago were branded as anarchists, wild-eyed fanatics, lunatics, and so forth.

The worlddo move.

L. H. B.

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