The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1895-11-27
TTVTD CAPITAL

When capital is tirnid or frightened,
and refuses to seek investment work will
be scarce and labor will have "hard
row to hoe" the markets for products of
all kinds will be restricted and low prices
will prevsil-Sound Currency.
Since all capital is created by labor we
have an instance here of placing the
creature above the creator. A system
which permits capital, because it is timid
or frightened to refuse to seek invest
ment and TO cause labor, its creator, to
have "hard row to hoe" needs chang
ing. Especially is this true when it is
considered that the owners of this CAPT
tai themselves in every instance set up
the bugaboo at which they become panic
stricken.
Certain capitalists, by their grasping
methods, by SO manipulating the curren-
cy OF the country as to produce decline
in prices, by continually reducing the
wages of labor lessen the power of the
masses to purchase the products of the
Industries of the country and then raise
a cry that it does not pay to invest their
money. The class of capitalists that
does this, however, is not the class that
ever invests in anything except bond
or a mortgage. 1t is not the class that
gives employment q to labor This
latter class never complains except as
the laborer does, of enforced idleness.
The era of hard times through which
the country has been passing since the
summer Of 1898 is without any question
the result of a cons piracy between these
owners of "timid" capital and the Demo
cratic administration. There can be no
doubt of it on the part of any body who
Will study the history of the great panic
of 1898. Whenever the bonds which
they were working for are offered for
sale all the timldity disappears at once,
even though the bonds are made paya
bic in deprecated silver at the op-
ton of the government.
The owners of capital who actually
furnish employment to labor are not
frightened or timid. 1t is a condition
which they find confronting them. and
not a theory. They have been compelled
to close their factories because they saw
their purchasers disappearing through
an inability at prevailing prices to earn
the wherewithal to buy. They see the
prices of their goods decline so rapidly
that they so below the cost of produc-
ton before they can be marketed. If
they discharge their workmen, lock up
their factories aud offices, put the keys
in their pockets and go home, it is not
the result of any timidity. They simply
succumb to the force of circumstances
which they cannot control, and stop pro-
duction for lack of a market,
Many of them, most of them, have
feared to cry out against so Ubiquitous a
financial system for fear that they might
want an accommodation from the "tim-
id" capitalist. who under sudden AID
excessive attack of timidity would de-
cline to grant it. They have been given
10 understand thai such resuld would
follow any protest on their part. Warn
ings of this nature were sent out system
atically over the country in 1898 to small
bankers, to manufacturers and to mer-
chants.
What the people who really employ
labor should 90 is to join hands with the
laborers themselves and secure such a
monetary system for the country as
would render them independent of the
''timid" sort. When there was no more
| prospect of profitable investments in in
4 terest bearing paper their alarm would
disappear in hurry and they would be
found along with the rest trying to dc
something toward hustling along the car
of progress and at the sames-time bring
ing some of the shekels into the Golfers.