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PAGE SIX O1 INTEREST TO WEALTH CREATORS HOW TO INCREASE OUR MONEY VOLUME. By Richard Wolfe. He who advocates a scientific money stands for the greatest issue ever presented to the people of the world! The question of money involves all other economic questions. The evils that arise from a shortage in the money volume have been with us from the dawn of civilization. Land has obtained in abundance for ages; and only here and there have we congested centers of population where land monopoly is felt; but go where you will-—search the wide world around —and wherever you find, even the lowest state of civilization, you will find distress arising from an in adequate supply of money. The Fiji Islander, or the wild man of Borneo, if he but exchange his product with civilized man, must bear his share of the interest burthen of the world, and while other monopolies may affect communities, or even a na tion, the monopoly of money carries its evil effects to the uttermost parts of the earth. The question of money has been acute so long it is astonishing that more progress has not been made to ward the solution of the problem. Hardly a step in advance has been made since Abraham purchased- a grave for Sarah. We use the same barbaric money today that was used by the Pharaohs. The ingenuity of man has been taxed to the utmost to devise makeshifts for real money. We have used many credit devices that have permitted an expansion of com merce. We now use bank credit cur rency to a greater extent than ever before in our history. And these de vices answer tolerably well so long as we have advancing prices; but when even a sharp decline in prices occurs this currency fails. If confidence in the stability of prices is lost this credit currency at once shrinks to nothing; and the struggle for the real money begins; and the magnitude of the devastation will depend upon the volume of the real money that will be at the command of the business world. Not only are credit devices dangerous, but they are expensive, permitting the idle few to gather in the surplus product of the many pro ducers of wealth through the interest charge. For though money may be, and often is, had without interest, credit currency always carries with it an interest charge. What is more uncertain than a busi ness venture today? We float our business on an atmosphere of bank credit as thin as ether, and as vola tile as the perfume of a rose. Is it any wonder that 95 per cent of our business men, sooner or later, fail? The uncertain currency volume, the constant extension and denial of cred it currency affects prices and keeps them in a state of unrest so that no business sagacity can guard against failure. Every business venture is a gamble, and the vain-glorious fool is as apt to win in the struggle as the wisest of the wise. It is a virtual tempting of Fate to enter the business world, and so the wise resort to petty larceny .>nd take interest—slow but Mure. Thus by making legitimate business uncertain we find it conducted by reckless adventurers who make it still more precarious. i« it any wonder that distress, want and misery sur round us on every hand, while as a na tion we are rolling in wealth? The cause is apparent—the great factor in exchange is wanting. The government refuses ar neglects to pro vide us with an ample supply of money. f e were a product of labor; or if it were a natural production, there might bo some excuse for not having a needed supply; but when we know it to be a product of legislation -a creation of law—a thing that can be created without cost, and in any quantity desired, one is at a loss to account for a money stringency. Why a people should struggle along without so needful a thing as money, when it can be so easily obtained, is one of the things past finding out. Let us examine into the matter and see how simple it is to supply our selves as a nation with money: First. The gold bullion owner is x permitted to take his gold to the mint and the government turns it. in to money without charge by the coin age process. Second. The United States bond holder is permitted to turn his bonds into money by the certificate pro cess. In other words, we allow these owners of wealth to monetize it at will; but this policy provides but a fraction of the volume we need, and so we are compelled to use credit currency that has no tangible exist ence, and for which we pay interest, while the bullion owner and the bond owner get money first handed with out an interest charge. Now if this same plan was car ried a step further and made to in clude other forms of stable wealth, as well as gold and bonds, it would permit an abundant supply of mon ey, so we could have a non-interest bearing currency, and thus make it possible to have a just distribution of wealth. The Holden plan is to extend the provision to land and permit the holder to monetize land values by the cartificate process. The con tention is that this would provide an ample supply and that the pro visions need not be extended to oth er forms of wealth. This plan is not open to the ob jection of being uncertain as to where the issue would stop; being limited to land values the volume could not be increased beyond that limit; and as the interest rate would drop it is probable that less than 50 per cent of land values would be mon etized. ( Today the United States bond holder has the privilege of monetiz ing his bond at its face value; and though the interest rate on bonds is very low, still we find quite a large percentage of the bonds are not mon etized; and as the process of mone tizing land values cannot be made so simple; nor is it intended to monetize land at its full value, but at an abso lutely safe valuation, there would not be, in all probability, so large a per centage of land used for currency purposes as there now is of bondg ( WATSON’S WEEKLY JEFFERSONIAN. The Holden plan has been tried and worked admirably The Penn sylvania Land Currency, devised and impr&ved by Benjamin Franklin, was used for. forty years and was better than coil money; but when the Brit ish Parliament passed a law prohib iting the American colonies from is suing paper currency, it did not dis criminate between the Franklin plan and the other colonial schemes and so it was destroyed with the rest. Like Old Dog Tray it was in bad com pany and so met the fate of the oth ers. So great was the prejudice against paper money that the Fathers did not dare risk placing a provision in the Constitution in favor of a paper issue. Though they did not deny that right to the people as a nation, they did prohibit the states from making anything but gold and silver a legal tender. But the framers of the Constitu tion by implication admitted that the nation could make paper money a le gal tender, and so it afterward did, and we have today 346 millions of legal tender paper that is as good as gold, and better, for it is far more convenient and does not represent a loss of value to the nation as gold does when it is taken for money uses. Neither are there constant inroads made on the volume of this 346 mil lions of paper as there are on our gold volume. Millions are taken from the money volume of gold by the arts, while other millions are carried out of the nation.' But this legal tender paper money is always with us do ing active duty as an exchange me dium, never having cost us a cent; nor doos it draw from the govern ment (that is the people) an annual stream of gold as interest; nor does it represent a loss of labor or men tal energy equal to its face value as does gold. It will pay a debt, or buy a Sa rah’s grave as well as if it were met il. But aside from all* this it has a still greater advantage over gold; an advantage that is unspeakable in importance. Its use permits the world to have the needed volume to answer every requirement of mon ey. Aside from a mere medium of exchange, we should have a vast vol ume of money for the purpose of conserving wealth. Statistics show that we have not money—real tangi ble money—enough to represent 20 per cent of the conserved wealth of the poor, or common people, to say nothing of the rich. > Our bank deposits amount to more than 12 billions of dollars, while the highest estimate of our currency vol ume, including all kinds of tangible stuff, is less than 3 billions. Is it any wonder that money commands in terest—an interest rate that makes thousands of enterprises unprofita ble and thus narrows the productive field and gives us a congested labor market, or a wage scale that makes conditions worse than chattel slavery. If we wish to escape the leveling down of Socialism on the one hand, or the destruction of civilization by the pauperization of the masses on the other, we must arouse ourselves to* the importance of the money problem. It is and ever has been the vital question of the ages! When will we wake up to the fact that there is no sin but ignorance? ■■ FARMER SAFE, IF HE HOLDS FIRM. Evidence is accumulating of the conspiracy to make the southern far mer part with his cotton for less than it is worth. The plot thickens every day. The effect of the manip ulations of the cotton gamblers has already been seen in the depressed price of futures—figures which it lies within the power of the cotton grower to make absolutely meaning less. Now comes one of the greatest known cotton bears, Theodore H. Price, who has circulated by mail a signed card which presents strong evidence of another prospective bear raid —if the farmers will submit to raiding. Here is what Mr. Price says in his circular, which seems to be a sort of preparation for his expected “I told you so,” later on in the game: “While I have estimated the Amer ican crop at 12,500,000 bales, I think it quite possible it may be 13,500,- 000 or more, and, in that case, with the manifest contraction in trade, I shall not be surprised to see cotton sell at 8 cents a pound or lower. It is because I Venture the suggestion* of this possibility at a time when nearly everyone is bullish that I ask those who receive this card, to pre serve it, that if I am wrong it may be a matter of record.” What a tempting bit of bait to lure the farmer to part with his cot tonton at present prices! This circular appears to have been ingeniously distributed in the rural districts, among the growers of cot ton, no doubt in the hope they will swallow the hook, sinker and all. The Farmers’ Union, when it met in Little Rock and fixed the minimum price of cotton at 15 cents, knew just as much about the situation as Mr. Price, and perhaps a little bit more. That minimum was not based on the world’s supply alone: it was based upon the world’s increased de mand. With a supply of cotton practical ly the same as that of last season, and a known demand of far greater proportions, it is unquestioned that cotton is worth more than then. It was worth more then than it brought and the farmers would have gotten it if they had stood firm, as they will get their price now, if they re fuse to fall into these traps which they will frequently find set in their way with the gathering of the new crop. Mr. Price cannot hope to cajole the farmers into selling by juggling with the supply figures and dealing in generalities about the “manifest contraction in trade,” when several million new spindles are waiting, hun gry for the staple. The southern cotton grower is the master of the cotton situation. The man who holds the raw cotton and who refuses to give it up until he re ceives his price will continue to occu py the role of dictator. No power can overthrow him so long as he