Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1881-09-22


who wrote the editorial comment ur on
my last letter, in your issue of Sept. 8,
from any infraction of the rules of
modesty, but shall also thank him for
his friendly criticisms. Time and again
1 have publicly challenged criticisms,
but this is the first time any one has
done so. A friendly, earnest contro-
versy on these subjects would be, for
all, both interesting and profitable
but especially so for myself, for have
fallen into ways of thinking, and have
come to conclusions, very different
from those of any other writer or
thinker whose ideas L am acquainted
with.
Had your lieutenant read "Socialism
VS.. Democracy" or Bismarck as a
Socialist" ard perhaps other articles
from my pen and published in the
REGISTER, he would hardly have
charged me with even leaning toward
the doctrines of the Socialists, as for
mulated in their publications here.
/ have said that while we are now at
one extreme, Socialism was at the 9TH
er; and though both Marx and Lassalle
their specific measures of reform were
calculated to disturb and confuse.
/ hope your assistant in reading me
hereafter, will remember that he is
t,,l~ -
outside of all creeds, and in defiance of
all platforms.
The principles that have been acted
upon, with regard to property, for the
last thousand years, have been greatly
changed--in some cases reversed--sOme-
times for the better, and sometimes for
the worse; 50 that about the only prin-
ciple that, IN a general way, has been
adhered to, through all this thousand
years, has been the principle upon
which the robber chief acted
Those NAV get who have the power,
And those may keep who can.
1t has been sought to cover up and
disguise this principle under cloak of
law; but it's effects have cropped out
everywhere and continually, until even
William Ewart Gladstone, the present
British Premier, Was obliged to confess
that. with all our boasted civilization,
the tendency was to give to those who
already had, and to hold from those
who were striving to gain; so that with
nine out of every ten, life is a struggle
for bare existence.
How has this been done? Not open
ly, of course; but by creating at law GER
tain unearned increments for the rich,
and thereby anticipating labor, and
discuunting it, by absorbing its resour-
ces aud compelling it to pay for a
chance to work. Specifically the meas
ures to this end have been interest and
rent and taxing tie products of human
la Dor.
Whatever we may say OF the princi-
piles that have obtained, in regard to
property, for the last thousand years,
within that period it has been death to
take interest, jn what was then called
a civilized land; it is practice cursed
and Condemned throughout the Bible,
and one at which, when we come to
examine it, common sense and COM
mon humanity revolts. 1t is taking
something for nothing; for, SO far as it
gives another an opportunity to DO
something, it gives him something
that he ought to have without borrow
ing; and wheE the practice has become
general, as it now has, money absorbs
every resource; and, as an eminent En-
glish divine said every child born into
the world fin is that world pre-empted
a gainst himself
The greatest of American philosO-
piers said that "He who goes a bor-
rowing goes sorrowing." Yet Amer
lean Legislators have blindly and per-
sistently continued to make and retain
laws that compelled every man who
had to start with his bare hands for
capital, to go a borrowing. Yet, after
all, interest could do no great harm, if
it was not for it's effect upon the land.
All our gain and prosperity comes
from the land, and labor is the agent
that produces it.
Abolish rent, and capital would
mortgage the land, and take interest;
abolish interest, and money would buy
the land, and take rent in lieu of
interest; abolish both rent aud interest,
and tax no product of human labor, and
you do not change the form Of tenure.
but only the conditions under which
that tenure exists; SO that no man
could have any interest in holding the
land, except to till and cultivate it; aud
instead of studying how little improve
mant and labor q man can get along
with, as we now do, we should then
study how much improvement and la
Dor we could possibly use.
The great mistake at the bottom of