Aggrandizement of Money Power: General View
The Money Power has been continually widening its operations in each successive era of its rise. The first era was the era of the East India Company; and of commerce based upon tropical products, and the exchange of those products for the productions and the specie of the countries of the Temperate zone. In the second era, the Money Power added steam manufactures to the trade with the Tropics, which it previously held. In the third era of its rise, the Money Power added to its previous sources of wealth the vast power derived from the possession of steam transportation, in The railroads and steamships.The fourth era of the rise of this terrible Imperialism began in 1864. In this era, armed with the immense capital derived from all its sources of wealth, the Money Power of the World entered upon its vast investments in mortgages in real estate; and began its career of monopolizing, at a stroke, whole branches of industry and vast lines of trade. This era will end, if things go on as they are, in the Money Power taking possession of all business, and owning all the property of the earth.
Since 1864, the London Jew Money Kings have been continuing their operations on the basis of boundless capital. They have, in this era, vastly extended their operations, and widened the range of their monopolies. Their command of capital is so vast, that they dominate the whole sphere of industry and trade with absolute sway. As against individual enterprises, the power is irresistible.
Like a Great Serpent, the London Money Power is, in our time, enveloping the industry of the earth in the coils of its capital, and crushing all competitors in its folds and devouring them. And it has grown so great, and its monopoly of business is so enormous, that its annual income--from interest on loans--from rents of houses and farms--from profits of business--is so vast, that it is able to take possession of a whole line of business at once, destroying all competitors. Woe to the men who are operating in a line of business which these Money Kings desire to monopolize: they at once envelop the feeble rivals in the folds of their capital, and crush and devour them. They now have sufficient capital to seize upon and monopolize all the business of the earth. And they are rapidly doing it.
Parasite investments
Indeed, their capital is now so vast that business operations will not afford it adequate employment. They can no longer find adequate investment for their constantly increasing income--in extending their grand industrial enterprises--in loans to nations, states, and municipalities--in building ships and warehouses and railroads. They can only find investment--in building cities--in buying up city property--in purchasing and improving immense bodies of wild lands--in laying and foreclosing mortgages upon improved farms--and in buying up breweries, and flour mills, and lumber mills, and various business interest, all over the earth. They own almost all those business interests now: they will soon own the rest.These parasite investments of the Money Kings are like the fly eggs laid in the nose of the sheep: it is an addition to the amount of bioplasm in the sheep, but, instead of being sheep bioplasm, it is foreign. The eggs will hatch; and instead of new life adding to the health and vigor of the sheep, it consumes its life. The worms that breed from the eggs burrow into the head, and if they can not be gotten rid of, the sure result is the death of the sheep. In the same way, the ox fly lays eggs in the back of the ox, that breed worms; which, in their development, make the ox as lively as the investments of the Money Power make the nation where its investments are made. But instead of helping the ox, they feed upon his life: they fever him: and if there are so many of these ``wolves,'' as farmers call them, that the ox cannot bear the frenzy caused by their development, the ox will die.
But all these parasites, when full grown, do not continue to prey upon the animal whose life tissues have nursed them into growth. When full grown, they, fortunately for the animal, strive to leave the body on which they have preyed. But it is not so with the investments of the Money Kings. They keep planting more and more of their eggs in the body of all the nations; and, when the eggs hatch into parasite enterprises, the parasite enterprises continue to prey upon the country, until at last they will sap its strength, and devour its life.
These parasite enterprises of the London Money Kings are like the fly eggs deposited in the body of a caterpillar. If no egg is deposited, the caterpillar spins its cocoon, and at the proper time emerges as a butterfly. But when the fatal egg is deposited, the caterpillar lives on and spins its cocoon, as if in perfect health; but the parasite develops, and continues its work of destruction, and the caterpillar, instead of emerging from its chrysalis state, dies in its cocoon with its vitals utterly devoured. This is what the Money Kings are now doing for all the nations. They are laying parasite eggs of capital in the body of every nation. Either the parasite must be gotten ride of, or the nations will perish.
Devourings of the Money Power in India
The Money Power of the World was nursed into imperial grandeur by the trade and wealth of India. India was its primal seat of dominion. In India, its power has always been uncontrolled and absolute. There, it has been allowed to work its will more thoroughly than anywhere else; and in India we can best perceive the ultimate outcome of its policy.
Plunder of Hindoo Potentates
Until the middle of the Eighteenth Century, the East India Company was only a mercantile corporation, having a few trading stations in India, and deriving its revenues from traffic. Rising into political power through the courage and genius of Clive, it began its career as devourer, in India, by extorting the hoarded wealth of one Hindoo potentate after another, as the price of its aid or its tolerance; and as the native rulers were successively reduced to bankruptcy and impotence in the crushing coil of the East India Company, that corporation gradually substituted its own administration for that of the native governments. In every advance, it showed the subtlety, the crawling insidious guile of the serpent. It enveloped state after state in its coil, and crushed the native governments so relentlessly, and yet so quietly, that when it finally devoured the territory of the fallen potentate, the act attracted but little attention. The East India Company continued its course of quiet gradual appropriation of territory for a century, until the Sepoy revolt in 1857.
Monopoly of Industry
In the earlier period of its power, the East India Company took possession of all the trade and industry of the territories under its sway. But after the Age of Steam began, and the great British capitalists formed new joint stock corporations through which to carry on the grand industries arising out of steam manufactures, the East India Company lost its importance as a trading corporation. As we have seen, it finally restricted itself to its territorial sovereignty, and gave up to the new corporation the trade of India, giving them every advantage under its administration.Under this policy, the new corporation of the London Money Kings, advancing step by step, took possession of the business industries of India.
They first took possession of the internal traffic and the foreign commerce of the country. They bought the native products at prices which yielded the wretched Hindoo producers a mere subsistence; and they sold in the India markets native products and foreign merchandise at the highest prices it was possible to extort. They made all the profits; and the entire population of India, except the officers and the agents of the Money Kings, was reduced to utter penury.
They continued their encroachments, and gradually got the industry of the country completely under their control. They superseded the old hand manufactures of the country by manufactures wrought by steam, in which these capitalists have entire possession and reap all the profits. And they broke down the old system of transportation, and substituted it by railroads owned by themselves.
For a long time, the Money Kings raised opium, and indigo, and cotton, and rice and other India products, for their commerce, upon lands owned by Hindoos. They made their profit by putting down prices to the lowest point that would yield subsistence to the Hindoo laborer. They thus kept the Hindoo population on the verge of starvation; so that, during the last forty years, frequent famines have carried off millions of the population.
We know from the Irish famines, that a modern famine is not a dearth of food, so much as the lack of means to buy bread. During one of the famines in Ireland, an American vessel entering the harbor of Cork with provisions sent by American charity to the starving Irish, met two vessels sailing out of the harbor laden with food sent from Ireland to a foreign market. The millions of Hindoos who have perished of hunger, during the last forty years, were the victims of the Money Power putting down prices of labor, and putting up the price of commodities.
Jungle Plantations
But in the latter era of the growth of the Money Power, since the application of steam to transportation, the Money Kings have realized such vast profits from their world-wide manufactures and commerce, that they have made immense land investments in India. Vast areas of alluvial lands along the plains of the Ganges and the Bramapootra rivers have for ages been covered with the primitive jungle. Much of it is delta lands along the streams; much of it, broad alluvial plains and uplands, stretching from the sea to the foot of the Himalayan Mountains.The Money Kings induced the government to offer these jungle lands at a very low price, and those imperial capitalists bought them. They next wished to populate these jungle lands with a race of Hindoo serfs who would till the soil for wages barely sufficient for subsistence. They offered the Hindoos the alternative of emigration to the jungles in their employment, or of starvation in their village homes.
Some five million Hindoos died of famine before they submitted. But the Money Kings triumphed; transplanted the Hindoos; and opened up grand plantations in the jungle. They built railroads; founded cities; and now they own cities, railroads and plantations. They own in fee simple a vast empire in India--an empire of alluvial lands, more extensive than the ancient empires of Nineveh and Babylon in the valleys of the Euphrates and the Tigris--far more extensive than the Egyptian empire in the valley of the Nile--larger than Greece and Macedon combined--wider in extent than Italy--a broader domain than the whole of Great Britain. They find it cheaper to own the land and hire peasants to cultivate it, than to buy the products of free Hindoo labor. And in that wide empire of alluvial lands owned by them in fee simple, extending from the sea to the Himalayas, and from the heart of India into Burma, those capitalists are now producing opium, and rice, and indigo, and cotton, and india rubber, and quinine, and spices, and tea, and cotton and wheat.
All Markets Crushed by India Products
And they throw all these products of a teeming soil and pauper labor upon the markets of the world, making immense profits, and forcing down the price of production all over the earth to the pauper standard of Hindoo labor. They are now publishing in our papers that they can grow wheat so cheaply upon their jungle lands, that, in competition with them, our Western farmers can only be allowed, in future, fifty cents a bushel for their wheat! Will not Omnipotent Justice blast such wrong doing?!By the competition of their Hindoo plantations, tilled with Hindoo Ryot labor at five cents a day, they force down the price of Carolina rice and Southern cotton to the same level. Raising products upon their own lands with Hindoo pauper labor--shipping their products upon their own railroads into their own seaport cities--and transporting them in their own ships to their own warehouses in every country--these Money Kings are able to crush down the prices of productions in every country, and force the people of all countries to sell their products at any price they choose to offer!!
An important fact is learned from the course of the Money Power in India. The Money Kings find it more profitable to own lands and till them with pauper labor, than to buy the products reared by the free natives of the soil. They regard the purchase of cheap lands a good investment. They will doubtless continue the purchase of India lands, until the own all the lands of India, and all the property of every kind, and the Hindoos become serfs, cultivating their lands, and filling positions in various departments of their service.
How can it be otherwise? Every department of industry in that country, except agriculture in part, is in their hands. They have in possession every source of profit. They and their agents realize all the profits that are made: nobody else makes more than a subsistence. The Money Power has India enveloped in its coils. It is only a question of time when the Serpent will complete the devouring of all its lands and all its property.
And we shall perceive as we proceed, that the Boa Constrictor has our country in almost the same condition as India. If things go on, in a few years more the Money Kings will own a wider empire of farming lands in the United States than in India; and the American farmer will be reduced to the condition of the Hindoo peasant laborer working for a few cents a day, or he may look on and see the lands he has lost cultivated by Chinese and Hindoos. We shall be reduced to the condition of slaves. There is a bottomless pit before us. The Money Power is preparing to plunge us into it.