The Ottawa free trader. [volume] (Ottawa, Ill.) 1843-1916, 1878-06-01
OUR COMMUNISTS.

The Indiana and Pennsylvania Nationa
lGreenback Labor Party Conventions and tn
Iadd.ess of the State committee of the sam
party in Illinois, take especial pains to den,
that the party is infected by the teachings o
or in any way in sympathy with the Commu
nists. Communism, they say, means "th
abolition of private property and a communit,
of goods" On the contrary, say the Illinoi
address and Indiana resolutions, "we hold tina
property ought to belong to those who earn it
who produce it." How earned-how pro
duced? The answer is negative only but SUI
fciently significant. The money of the bank
ers and brokers-those who, like the Barlng'
and Rothschilds ma Ike their money by loaninG
and specializing, earn nohing-produce no
thing. Therefore they are robbers and should
be dispossessed and their accumuations di
vided among the producers whom they have
robbed.
The Barings and Rothschilds are named as
conspicuous examples, but the class Of which
they are typical is large and pcrmeatcs all lands
A man by years Of toll and sclfdcnial succeeds
in accommodating a hundred thousand dollars
or two. He is now past middle age, his physi
cal prime is gone, his form is bent and bowed
his manly vlgor broken and he desires to rest
but with possibly large and expensive family
on his hands he cannot afford to sit down and
eat up his capital. He therefore loans it to his
Ineighbors at good round per centagc, or in
vests it in bank stocks or otherwise makes il
bring him good income in the shape of IN.
tcrest or usuiy. He is no longer producer
he no longer earns or produces anything lie
lives, it may be, on the fat Of the land, and the
means by which he is enabled to do so are the
interest money wrung from honest, hard work
ing mechanics or tillcrs of the soil to whom he
has loaned money. Now this man-of whose
class every community is iull Of representa-
tives, from the poor widow who lives sparingly
off the III crest of few thousands frugal hus-
band was able to secure for her in the shape of
lite insurance by years of pinching sclfdenal,
to the proud owner of millions worth of pro-
ductive bonds and mortgages and bank and
railroad stocks. 1t may be true that commun.
ism-that which prevailed among the primi
tive christians, for instance, and which Fourier
taught may mean "the abolition Of private
property and a community of goods" but is
that communism in any sense as odious-in.
deed does 1t in any sense approach the odous
ness-of our to-day communists who teach that
not only what each man has earned is his own
but also that he owns a share of what the earn.
ings Of his ncighbor have accumulated.
In other words, as long as a man piles I'D in
his barn or cribs what he has raised, or stored
away what he has manufactured or the money
he has sold his produce or manufactures for, he
owns them and can use, eat or spend them at
his pleasure; but when he lends horse for
hire CT thousand dollars at interest he be-
comes robber, and the gain of his gains be-
longs to the producer whom he is robbing.
We submit that the communism of Fourier
and OWcn-that OF the Icarlans, of New Har-
mony, of the Shakers or even the Oneida CON-
means exactly the abolition
Of private property and community of goods"
is innocence itself, very social perfection, com.
pared with the hdeous agrariansm and rob
berry which these new light politicians avow
for themselves while dsclaiming to be com
munists.