The comet. [volume] (Jackson, Miss.) 1877-1882, 1879-05-31
THE DEMORALIzATION OF CAP
ITAL.

!
raso This is clearly shown by the TACT
that the par excellence reformers oil the
country-that is to say-the GreenbacKers
and ndependents--differ as much among
themselves as the other parties do. Every
distinguished reformer ''formulates' a
scheme of his own to relieve the country.
For example, Modest Mus, the originator
and organizer of the Greenback party IN
Mississippi, is satisfied with any formula
that will tickle the people, aud disintegrate
the Democratic party. Gov. Browns
scheme is different from any body else's,
and while it is immensely unanimous and
dazzling upon its surface, the only way to
put it in operation is to raise up great
Brown party, and the people may all be
sold out before they can do that. Then
comes Gen. West and DR.. Ruben Davis,
each with different formula, full OF
promiscuous announcements, just what
the ''party7 has settled or will settle on,
and lust how much, or rather how little,
they are going to be able to do, to carry
out their principles, are among the things
(which no fellah can find out. -
But the financial question is knotty
one. When it first doomed up we thought
we understood something about it, aud
would be able to throw a little light on it
from time to time, and if we couldn't, Gen.
West could. But the more we probed into
it the more it developed into problem,
and the more expansive the problem grew,
until at last we were compelled to make the
humiliating confession to ourselves that it
was too big for us.
Gen. West has the floor now, and let us
hope that he will be equal to it.
The two great parties of the United
States, and all the people of tho United
States, are now intensely interested In this
question of finance. But the people don't
understand it; and strange as it may APP
pear to our readers, ace don't understand 1t.
The people, with us and Gen. West to help
them, can't point out sound remedy The
mystery which is brought to light by tile
circumstance that one mans pocket is full
of money and another mans pocket is as
empty as wind-bag is only surpassed by
that other mystery shown in the fact that
one mans head is filled with brains and an
other mans head is filled with vacancy.
Providence may be to blame for the brain
mystery, and man may be responsible for
the money mystery; but we don't profess
to be able to explain either one of the
mysteries. We only know that they exist
and are subjects of daily observation.
Without being able to explain it the peo-
pie of this country feel and know that there
has been a whitening and blighting dis
elimination in our financial legislation.
You ask them to point out the remedy, and
they can't do it. They are not capable of
doing it. They don't understand the in
tricacies of finance. They simply feel the
injustice and the wrong. They know that
under the operation of laws confessedly
enacted for their protection. all the prop
erty of the land is swiftly passing into the
hands of favored few. They see this
change going OH daily, and are not able to
stay the process. Hence the universal gloom
and despair that hang over the country.
And hence the folly of closing both ears to
the loud complaints of the people.
Much has been said about the demoral>
ization of labor in this State, and while we
all stand ready to confess to the existence
of this decentralization, having lost for the
most part, our little fortunes, and having
been reduced to the necessity of hand-to-
hand contest with the wolf at our doors by
it, yet we propose now to speak of the de-
moralization of capital. We do this not in
any spirit of agrarianism, not with any
sly or selfish purpose of finding somebody
OR something to quarrel with on account of
our own individual misfortunes, but be-
cause our deliberate judgment aud obser-
walton for the last ten years convince us that
the decentralization of capital, or, in other
words, the unnaturally graspipg tendency
of capital, is one of the chief causes of
our retrogradatiJn and the dissatisfaction
the people.
Consider for a moment, and only just
a moment, the fact sustained by the Stats
ties of the world, that the agricultural
operations of the world-at no period of
the worlds history from the time of Gov
ernpr Cincinnatus, highly respected and
successful farmer of ancient Rome, down
to this disjointed era, have been able to de-
clare dividend above three per centum per
annum, on the average. This proposition
needs no elaboration to convince intelligent
and rejecting men of its entire soundness.
But what has been the rate of interest
charged by banks, money lenders and capt.
talists in this State? Think of it. jog your
memories and tell us. What per centum
has the local supply merchant charged upon
his goods furnished the poor farmer? Here
is a prolific source of our troubles. Here
is fruitful cause of the exodus of the
negroes, and the grinding poverty of the
poor white man.
Let your minds eye glance back over the
past decade of Mississippi. Did you ever
know little so-called savings institution"
in any little interior town that did not fix
the Uniform rate of interest at y per cent
per month? Was it not the rarest circum-
stance TO meet man with money, be he
farmer or merchant or what not, who did
not want the hard pressed, struggling farm
er to pay from Is to 4Oper cent per annum
for the use of his money? And then plas-
ter his estate or his effects all over with
mortgages and deeds of trust to secure this
ungodly usury. If the victim was a one
horse white man, or a negro who had sin.
g1llarly managed to escape the ''forty acies"
promised him by the Radicals, but who
had froze on to the mule, the poor mule or
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