Confiscations; United States -- Social conditions -- 1865-1918
What those favored people think, however, does not interest us. What is
of more concern to us, and to all others who have no doubt but what
there is something wrong in the present scheme of things, is that the
doctrine of Confiscation should be first understood before it is
rejected. If it is found to conflict with law and order; if it is found
to obstruct in any way the material welfare necessary to any man, woman,
or child in the United States; if if takes from any man, woman, or child
in these United States a solitary privilege or right that is essential
to their well being; if it makes one more tramp, convict, or outcast of
the street; if it fills one more pauper's bed or potter's grave, then
our Search is not ended, for it is only another delusion, and of them we
have more than enough already.
If, on the other hand, it does away with hunger and rags in a land of
plenty. Does away with the cause of ignorance, namely poverty. Does away
with the cause of eighty-five per cent. of crime, namely, poverty. Does
away with the cause of strikes and rioting, namely, poverty. Destroys
the power of one man to bribe one or fifty, and with his thumb at his
nose defies the law to reach him. Makes robbery of the people by way of
the lobby a thing of the past, and makes unnecessary a third house for
the investigation of the other two, a stage we have already reached.
Does away with the millionaire and his charity - the beggar and his need
of it. Gives the conditions which makes individual and national
improvement possible, and securing every such national improvement by
making all the people its willing defenders, which they are far from
being now in their hunger and wretchedness. Makes employment easy to
obtain, with just wages in return for the labor done, putting within the
reach of all, those comforts and luxuries, which, in this age of the
world with its skill for quick and easy production, should be looked
upon as a matter of course, but which in fact are unknown to a large
part of the working people of the country.
If Confiscation, then, can do all this, why should it not be made to
supersede all other policies that have been tried, and all those that
are now courting public favor, but which, like the rest are based upon
unrepublican economic laws, and must end, therefore, like the rest, in
failure and disappointment?
With our resources restored to the people, which can be done only
through Confiscation, prosperity would diffuse itself throughout the
country as easily as the sun scatters its light.
We will now outline, as briefly as we may, what will be the effects of
Confiscation, and what Confiscation means. It means the limiting of
every individual fortune in the United States to $100,000.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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