The independent., 1903-08-27
Money and the Taxing Power
BY W. 81. ASHBY.

with the great combinations OF capi-
talists, by whom they are employed.
The controllers of the capital, ignor-
ant of the secret source Of their own
discontinue, seek to realize profits by
depriving employees of fair return for
their service. The owners of that
capital, perceiving the incalculable
saving of human energy in the produc-
ton and distribution of commodities
endowed with power to perform ben
encial human service, through produc-
ton and distribution by labor r-saving
machinery and or vast scale, dream
ed of fabulous profits for themselves
and a fair wage for employees. They
were blind to the existence Of the
stealthy hand of the gold trust hidden
behind superstitions and statutes in
herited from ignorant savages, by
which the profits the industrial capi-
talists hoped for were silently trans
ferred, by this legal legerdemain, to
the gold trust, which has become the
bond-holding trust of the civilized
world.
1t is vain that they thus seek relief.
The human race must exist; and the
margin of wages, which the exactions
Of the gold trust will permit to be paid
employees of capitalists engaged in
manufacturing and transportation, is
insufficient to support human life in
fntn nf al 1Ct inn
ably compel return to savagery or
the overthrow of the present order
and the system of individual owner
ship.
Strange, indeed, does it seem that
capitalists engaged in the great indus
trial enterprises of modern times do
not see this and join forces with the
human race for the destruction of the
gold trust-by the repeal of the bar
tarian statutes which foster it, and
by establishing system Of taxation
under which al commodities should
bear an equal burden, and under which
each commodity taxable shall be able
to pay that tax levy, and any judg-
D.ent, at the price at which it is tax
able.
But the tragedy of errors, following
iIlvincibly upon the fundamental wick
edness of "free coinage of money, as
a gift to gold owners, making their
private gold thus impressed the sole
means of deliverance to the human
race from the universal burden of tax
levies and judgments, is not yet COM
pletely described. There is another
consequence flowing from that perpet-
ual fountain Of human misery which
must next be set forth.
Bear in mind that nearly every ma
ton that is factor in human af-
fairs, does, by it's laws, refuse to is
sue the receipts in universal and i'm
perious demand, which alone can bring
tc mankind deliverance from pauper-
ism and imprisonment, by satisfying
tax levies and judgments, except as
gift to private owners of gold: and
that by giving exclusive statutory
power to fixed quantity of that gold
by weight to perform the func-
ton of an arbitrary receipt by "ten-
Ger" as conclusive proof of previous
payment of fixed quantity of value
expressed in tax levies and judgments
those nations gave thus, by statutes
procured for that purpose (*), con-
cantrated upon gold alone the entire
overpoWering intensity of the force
cf demand, generated by the struggles
OF the whole human race, to procure
gold as the sole thing able to save
them from destruction at the hands
of the sheriffs and tax-collectors of
the world.
BY refusing to stamp those inds-
ransable receipts upon anything ex-
cept fixed weight of private gold, the
force of demand generated by the
struggles of the whole human race for
those receipts, is thus transformed in
to fierce demand for the gold trusts
gold. The force of demand caused by
tax levy or judgment for a receipt,
issued by the government for "Ten
Dollars" is thus transformed into a
force of demand for 232 grains of
some other mans gold, because the
statutes of nearly every nation.
stealthily procured for that purpose,
have made those urgently needed re-
ceipts, and the gold on which alone
they are stamped, inseparble. The
| thing actually in demand is re-