The Black Hills union. [volume] (Rapid City, Pennington County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1889-1904, 1896-05-22

that they cannot find investment for it
all in loans. It has absorbed all rail-
roads, telegraphs, coal mines, oil fields,
lumber forests, and similar Industries,
and by the enormous advantage of i'm
mense combined capital has consoli-
dated the manufacturing and similar
branches Of business into three hun
dred gigantic trusts all controlled by
the few. 1t has thus swept the smaller
operators out of business and turned
profit from such business to the usur-
ers. This oligarchy, with control Of
banking, transportation and the trusts,
increasing it's income so rapidly has
but one other outlet. 1t turns to absorb
all valuable agricultural land. To this
end 1t raises firmly it's invincible
weapon, the gold standard, by which
1t can force prices of land and products
ever lower, until it has by foreclosure
OF mortgages or otherwise, swept all
such land to the hands OF plutocracy,
thus destroying all Independent Amer
lean farmers, reducing them to renters
n wage slaves, who in rags must toll
side by side with Cinnamon, and fast
hurrying all branches of labor to CON
dltlons, where a pure despotism of
capital shall grind ever deeper into the
dust of despair, slavery and misery
the once happy and hopeful millions Of
our land. With wages ever falling, the
masses become more Mretched, the
army of unemployed is greater. The
usurer despots object to giving to labor
the means of life by public employment
of the unemployed while they are yet
outside the Jail, but favor driving the
laborer first to imprisonment where he
may work as the slave of the state. To
this end they enact so-called vagrant
laws, by which all men without means
of support become criminals, and when
arrested and forced to prison for the
crime OF poverty, the usurers favor
furnishing public employment in pris-
ons to the victims whom they have
forced to that position.
This is the situation, and the prob
lem we are called to face in the year
1896. Therefore we are now face to
face with the crisis of the ages. We
enter upon this irrepressible conflict
from which We are to emerge with VIC
tory and industrial freedom, or in de-
feat and hopeless slavery. If we will
rise TO the occasion the contest cannot
be doubtful. The usurers have frankly
stated the process by which they have
enslaved the people, in the infamous
hazard circular issued by the London
capitalists to the New York bankers in
1862, which said:
Slavery is likely to be abolished by
the war power, and chattel slavery
destroyed. This l and my European
friends are in favor of, for slavery is
but the owning of labor, and carries
with 1t the care of the laborer. while
the European plan led On by England,
is capital control of labor by con-
trolling wages. This can be done by
controlling the money"
1t is, therefore, the control of money
which they confess has been the chief
weapon in destroying our people. This
control of money has been possible
only because these same despots have
controlled our government and our
people can never end their slavery I'M
til they hurl from political power the
organizations which have given, and
now give to usurers the control of
money. Mr.. R. M. Widney, a banker.
said in 1891: "a corner on money is a
corner on all other corners combined
and can control the social and political
as well as the producing, labor and
property interests of the nation" This
is the testimony of every honest states
mar and of all human experience. We
must have a financial system which
will place the control of money forever
beyond the power of any combination
or class. The remedy must be ade-
quate to the occasion a system which
will destroy usury is the only one
which can meet the demands of this
hour. THOMAS V. GATOR.
San Francisco, April 1. 1896.
The Way
First find tho Truth. and thap-