Nevada County picayune., 1889-08-07
The Reciprocity of Capital.

The rapid changes now in progress in our trade conditions promise to effect radical changes in our politics. The idea that we are to live scpa- rate and peculiar people, shut up from all other nations, has been abandoned. The closest relations with Europe have already been effected in the production and hand ling of some of our greatest staples of trade. We have recently seen this in beer, copper and salt, and extend it to other lines. The reel procity established is complete as far as it goes. It is between the moneyed men, the aristocrats and plutocrats of the two countries. Our capitalists go to England and find that there is nothing in the prejudice against the Englshmen they meet, They are first-ratc fellows with large i bank accounts, and all understand ing is soon reached. The result is commercial reciprocity between American capital and English capital.
 It is not contemplated by these good friends and neighbors to extend this reciprocity beyond capital. To extend it to the products of labor would be to establish a reciprocity of labor to the disadvantage of capi- tai and the advantage of the great mass of the people. who never have as much as S34. .51 at once. The reciprocity of capital contemplates nothing of the kind. The American capitalist simply says to his English friend: II have good thing here in closed market. It would be four times as good if had twice as much money. Put your money with mine and we will share and share alike in all we can squeeze out "f the American people under high Tariff Pressure
 This world in which surprising things happen in the most surprising ways. Good old Horace Greedy, for instance, attempting to make himself Providence for the American Union, gave the best efforts of his life to the work of driving the slave States out of the Union. He expected the matter to end there-where he, III his wisdom, had drawn the line. But it did not. The unexpected happened.
 It is not unreasonable to expect the unexpected here. What it is to be is not to be anticipated. In the United States of America in the clos ing years of the nineteenth century the possibilities are vast. 1t is not only poetry but a hard and incisive- it may be merciless-economical and political fact that this is "a grand and awful tlme." This much only is sure-these gentlemen capl- talists who arrange over their wine and walnuts their schemes for the international reciprocity of money, must reckon with their host. Their plans involve the oppression of the people. If the people are ignorant enough and servile enough to consent, the international reciprocity of capi- tai may end where it is intended and expected that it shall end.
 But it destroys the logic of q sys- tenn. When Europe draws from money invested here an interest product paid by the labor of Ameri- cans, Americans who labor must get something in return. Reciprocity must be complete. The barriers must go down. The people as we'll as the capitalists must have reciprocity.- Money reciprocity makes trade reef procity inevitable. If profit sharing between English and American capi- talists is good thing, profit sharing between English and American labor is better thing, Tear down the capital-creating and capital-protect- ing tariff f.- St. Louis Republic.