The Forgotten Man, and Other EssaysSumner, William Graham
Science
The Forgotten Man, and Other Essays
Sumner, William Graham
Economics; Social sciences
The rise in prices would regularly occur only as the new silver or
paper was put out, but as the consequences would all be discounted it
would be sudden and rapid. It would not, however, affect all things
at the same time or to an equal degree. It is here that one of the
first disappointments would occur. It is not possible to put up prices
when and as one would like to do it, even when the rise is due to
inflation. The effect cannot all be distributed at once. An advance
in price reacts on business relations, that is, on the industrial
organization. Many people and many interests find that they cannot
push against others until long after they have been pushed against
themselves. The wages class and the farmers are the ones who are most
clearly in this position, at least as far as the latter do not produce
articles for export. It must be plain that in such a convulsion of the
market everybody will try to save himself at the expense of others. Who
will succeed? Those certainly who spend their lives in the market and
already possess the control of its machinery; not those whose time is
occupied in the details of production.
WHERE THE EXPECTED GAINS WOULD GO.
It is said that the farmer would sell his grain and cotton, as now, for
gold; that he would exchange the gold for silver; would get the silver
coined and would pay his debts with it. Would any individual farmer do
this? Would any one man go through the steps of this operation?--see
the buyer of his products, handle the gold and silver, go to the
mint? Certainly not. All these operations would go on through the
commercial and financial machinery. They would be executed by different
individuals, in the way of business, through the organization, and
every one of them would be lost to view. Every operation would have to
be paid for. Every operation would give a new chance for more middlemen
and more charges. Would, then, the gains of this grand scheme go to the
farmer? Not at all. They would go to the “brokers and speculators of
Wall Street.” They would be lost in commissions and charges. The type
of operator whom the Populist seems to think of when he talks about
“Wall Street sharks,” exists, although his importance in Wall Street is
not as great as that of the political farmer in agriculture; but this
type of man does not care what the currency legislation is, except that
he would like to have a great deal of it, and to have it very mixed.
Whatever it is, when it is made and he sees what it is, he will proceed
to operate upon it.
PLAYING INTO THE HANDS OF THE MONEY SHARKS.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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