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PAGE EIGHT
THE
Weekly Jeffersonian
PUBLISHED BY
THOS. E. WATSON and J. D. WATSON
Editors and Proprietors
T»mple Court Building, Atlanta, Ga.
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Advertising Rates Furnished on Application.
at Pnttjut, Atlanta, Ga., January 11, IQO7, at st c and clan mail matttr
ATLANTA, GA., THURSDAY, DECEMBER 5,1907
Our National Financial System.
Does any one place a mortgage on his
property, if he can help it? Do not all of us
realize that we injure our credit and run the
risk of bankruptcy when we sign a mortgage
which must go to record?
The questions answer themselves.
As individals we never encumber our
property and burden our future in that way,
unless necessity compels.
Now, what is a bond issued by the Govern
ment, if it is not virtually a mortgage placed
upon the nation?
A bond issue of $35,000,000 is nothing more
nor less than a mortgage to that amount which
covers the national income and burdens our
future.
Not so very long ago the war-ships of Eu
ropean nations, sent at the instance of the
hungry creditors of Venezuela, trained their
guns upon Venezuelan cities. Acting as the
bill collectors for a lot of rascally usurers, these
proud war-ships threatened the Venezuelan
cities with the horrors of a bombardment if
these outrageously padded claims of European
creditors were not settled.
In the end, Venezuela was forced to mort
gage her custom house duties, to satisfy these
war-vessel bill-collectors.
We North Americans looked on, indignant
and ashamed, as the Shylocks of Europe rivet
ed their fetters upon helpless Venezuela.
But we now have enough to think about,
here at home.
Our custom house duties have been mort
gaged, and we have been so ready to accept
the fetters of our own Shylocks that our edit
ors, Congressmen and leaders, generally, have
loudly praised the Government for its “suc
cess,” in putting another mortgage on the na
tion!
If one of our leading business men should
hand out an interview in which he spoke boast
ingly of his “success” in floating'a mortgage
on his property, he would be universally re
garded as a lunatic whose family ought to
lock him up.
Yet the recent feat of Mr. Cortelyou was
nothing more the floating of another
3 per cent mortgage on the finest property on
earth—a mortgage as utterly unjustifiable and
wicked as the mortgage which Cleveland plac
ed upon us in 1893.
In the infamy of that transaction J. P. Mor
gan was the leading figure. In the infamy of
this last transaction J. P. Morgan was a lead
ing figure. At each crisis in the national
finances, it was J. P. Morgan who went to
the White House to tell the Government what
Wall Street meant to have.
And in each case, he got what he went
after. Neither Cleveland, the so-called Demo
crat, nor Roosevelt, the nominal Republican,
were able to resist the National Bankers,
whose power is intrenched in Wall street.
And even Mr. Bryan —for reasons * best
known to himself —did not have the courage
to tell the country what was the matter. He
shrank from the Money Question, with a fear
that partakes far more of the caution of a man
who wants to be President than of any worth
ier element. When 85,000,000 of his fellow
citizen® were being profoundly stirred by the
WATSON’S WEEKDY JEFFERSONIAN.
calamitous conditions into which our National
bankers and Gold Standard leaders have
brought us, Mr. Bryan could think of no better
plan of relief than a Government guaranty,
to be given to the silk hat conspirators who
had caused the panic.
These National bankers are already doing
business on the national credit, represented
by the bonds; and now, when they have putri
fied the whole system of national finance, Mr.
Bryan thinks these pampered pets should have
the benefit of further governmental endorse
ment.
That’s queer democracy truly.
Let Mr. Bryan cut out one or two Sunday
school speeches, and give himself time to read
a few pages of Benton’s “Thirty Years’
View.” Let him excuse himself to the Y. M.
C. A. for a night or two while he studies Jack
son’s “Farewell Address.” Let him omit two
or three of those perfunctory banquets, and
pore over Madison’s Messages of 1815 and
1816; over Calhoun’s compact, meaty speeches
on finance; over Jefferson’s letters to John W.
Eppes.
If he will do this, he will realize how far
he wandered away from democratic moorings
when he proposed to perpetuate the power,
the privileges and monstrous injustice of the
National banking system by a governmental
guaranty of their deposits.
The Government has always had the right,
inherent and unlimited, to create money.
Being nothing more than a medium of ex
change, money need never have intrinsic val
ue. All that it needs is the legal tender qual
ity. By legal tender is meant that lawful of
fer to pay, which the creditor must accept. If
he refuses to accept a lawful offer to pay, his
debt is dead. The creditor, it is true, can at
any time agree to reconsider, and to accept the
lawful offer, but he never can, under any cir
cumstances, get more than the lawful offer.
Thus, the currency which the law says is
“legal tender” is that which the creditor must
accept, if he wants to collect his debt.
No matter how much may be written on the
subject, that is all that money is—a lawful
offer to pay, constituting the legal medium of
exchange.
Nobody that ever understood the question,
has ever contended that a bushel measure, or
a gallon measure, should have the intrinsic
value of a bushel or a gallon. Measure is one
thing, value is another.
Now, when you consider the true intent and
purpose of adopting a national medium of ex
change, you can readily understand how easy
it is to confuse the measure with the value.
Money measures the exchange value of com
modities, just as the peck-measure, or the
gallon pot, tells how much wheat or molassess
may be in the sack, or barrel. But there is
no more sense in contending that a five dollar
bill shall itself be worth five dollars intrinsic
ally, than there wolud be in contending that a
gallon pot with which syrup is measured,
should be worth a gallon of syrup.
It is only the scheming financier, and his
interested allies, and his innocent dupes, who
contend that in choosing the standard of meas
ure for exchange values, the measure should
be equal in intrinsic value to the thing which it
measures.
But these scheming financiers, their allies
and their dupes, have had their own way and
the consequence is that we now have, in mon
ey matters, away of measuring values which is
just as unscientific and absurd as would be a
system of measuring cloth that required the
yard-stick to be equal in value to the yard of
silk, or cotton, or velvet, or Brussels carpet,
which it measured.
If the weights which indicated that a bale
of cotton weighed 500 pounds were required to
be as heavy as the cotton, we should see the
folly of such a system of weights and meas
ure®.
But we are not able to see that our schem
ing financiers, their allies and their dupes,
measure values in just that way.
They require that the dollar shall be worth
a dollar, else it is not “honest”; and you vote
it to be so, never stopping to think that you are
voting to make the yardstick worth a yard,
the quart measure worth a quart, the peck
measure worth a peck, the 500 pound weight,
on the scales, equal to the 500 pounds of cotton.
Why do the scheming financiers demand
that the medium of exchange shall have intrin
sic value? Why do they demand that, when
it comes to money, the thing which measures
shall be equal in value to the thing measured?
Because upon this vicious error they are
able to rear the colossal structure of their
own profit, power and prestige. When a five
dollar bill is required to be, itself, worth five
dollars in gold, those who can control the gold,
can master the situation. If a five dollar bill
were required to be “redeemed,” when de
manded, in five dollars’ worth of cotton, those
who controlled the cotton would rule the land.
If every dollar of the money in circulation were
required to be redeemed in wheat, when
the holder of the dollar so demanded,
thpse who control the wheat would be masters
of the situation.
Don’t you see it, son?
The scheming financiers always strive to
make the currency of a people, redeemable in
whichever metal is scarcest at the time, in or
der that they may be better able to control the
metal of final redemption. Whoever controls
silver, when silver is the metal of redemption,
rules the situation. It was that way some years
ago, in Europe.
But silver increased in quantity and then the
scheming financiers decided to make gold the
metal of final redemption. Therefore, we had
the long struggle which resulted in this uncon
stitutional, villainous, and crushing Single
Gold Standard.
In its last analysis, the Single Gold Standard
means that every other kind of money must
be “redeemed” in gold, when demanded.
The man who cannot understand what an
enormous power and profit this gives to the
few who have cornered the gold, may be deli
cately and accurately classed as follows:
(1) The scheming financiers;
(2) The interested allies of the same;
(3) The subsidized editors, politicians, of
fice holders, and camp-followers, generally;
(4) The innocent dupes;
(5) The fools.
*. * *
Our Nelv Railroad Commission.
Has been too busy to take hold of the
Southern Express Company.
Yet among the corporation horse-leeches
that are sucking the blood of the people, none
is more ravenous and insatiable than this Geor
gia concern.
In its relation to the Railroads it is the
favored shipper. The special rates which it
exacts are in plain violation of the law.
In its relation to the public, it is an arbitra
ry taxer, beyond all reasonable limits, of the
people whom it serves.
When will our new Commission lay its
soothing, take-a-seat-Major, touch on the
Southern Express Company?
A company which charges more for trans
portation than the goods are worth —such
goods as books, oranges, etc., etc. —is a compa
ny that needs attention, and needs it bad.
When will it get it?
Then, again, we are still shivering and catch
ing the colds that lead to Pneumonia, as we
stand around the passenger stations of country
towns to take the night trains. When are the
railroads going to be required to provide for
the health and comfort of their patrons?
Winter is upon us. Exposure at these pas
senger stations at night, will mean suffering,
I