The representative. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1893-1901, 1893-12-13
money would be one of the most care
fully guarded functions of the gov


most of the money in the hands of
the American people is not issued by
the government at all, but consists
of the promissory notes of multi
tude of banks, as was the case with
US in the old competitive days. The
government bonds, which perpetuate
the national debt, that their circula-
tiOn may be based on them, are ex-
empted from taxation as sort of re-
ward for the usurpation of the gov
ernmental function by the banks;
and these banks are supposed to serve
the community by supplying business
men with the means of carrying on
the commercial warfare. But they
do this only at the heaviest rates of
interest, and in times of general pros
perity: at the first signs of adversely
they withhold their favors. You
might think that the government
which secures their notes would also
secure their deposits, but the govern
ment does nothing of the kind, and
the man who trusts his money to
their keeping, does so wholly at his
own risk. When they choose, or when
they are unable, they may cease to
pay it back to him, and he has no re-
course whatever. y X
Some of them the Americans are
beginning to fear that it will not
come out right in the end, if they
keep on their old gait, or that it will
at least come out Europe in the end.
l would not venture to say how COM
mon the doubt was, but it certainly
exists, and there is no question but
that some of the thoughtfullest and
best Americans are beginning to look
toward Altruria as the only alterna-
tive from Europe.
Such Americans see that Europe is
already upon them in the conditions
of the very rich and the very poor
Poverty is here upon the European
terms, and luxury is here upon the
European terms. There is no longer
the American workingman as he once
was; he still gets better wages than
the European workingman, but his
economic and social status is exactly
the same X x
Most Americans believe that money
can be innocently gathered into cne
mans hands by his cunning and his
skill, and as innOcently taken from
another's through his misfortune or
his weakness. This primitive notion
of money, which is known to Us, his
torically, is of actual effect among
them: and though | was aware of the
fact before came to America. as you
are now, I had no idea of the Internal
variety of the evil.
In Altruria we cannot imagine a
starving man in rags, passing the
threshold of another man surfeited
with every luxury and warranted in
his opulence by the same law that
dooms the beggar to restitution. But
this is spectacle SO common in this
great typical American city that no
one would turn to look at it. In fact
both the beggar and the millionaire
recognize the situation as something
almost normal. Charity, the love Of
man and the fear of God, as the
Americans know it, does not propose
to equaliZe the mOnStrous conditions,
or to do more than afford alienation
at the best, until the wretch in the
gutter can somehow win from the
wretch in the palace the chance to
earn misera bic wage. This chance
is not regarded as his right; it is his
privilege, and it is accorded him usu-
ally at the cost of half dozen other
Wretches, who are left outcast by it.
1t is money that creates this evil, land
yet the Americans think that money
is somehow good thing; and they
think they are the most prosperous
people on earth, because they have
more moneyed among them than any
other people.
My American sojourn has been a
passionate disappointment from first
to last: it has been grief which l
cannot express to you, for the people
are at heart SO generous, SO noble, SO
magnanimous, so infinitely better
than their conditions that my pity
for them has been as great as my de-
tesla tiOn of the terms on which they
accept life. / cannot convey to you
the pa thos with which the spectacle
of their contradictions fills me; can
only say that if | were an American
with nothing but cOmpetative con-
ception of life, as warfare in which
the strong must perpetually and even
invontarily Cypress the weak, as a
race in which the swift must sieZe
every advantage of the slow, as a
game in which the shrewd must out
wit the simple, would not accept
life at all. But, of course, speak as
an Altrurian, and l warn you that
q n 11tfor ohbnrronoo of tho cifnof