CHAPTER V

YOU-YOURSELF

Ho There You!

Are you a farmer—a wage worker-or engaged in any of the occupations-required to be filled with industrious men and women in order to fulfil the many necessities of life?

If you are why do you let capital-a product of your own toil, sit on the throne of human industry as the master of all-to determine your place in life and assign you to drudgery, even to war if it chooses to.

There is a reason-you should know, for it is due to you, the real toilers and producers, to sit on the throne where provisions should be made to safeguard the rights of humanity.

Under the rule of the "dollar"-human life has fallen to its lowest value. But time heals all things. 'No longer will the masses accept, "Error for truth, darkness for light, wrong for right, or lust for love."

Oh No!

"The masses of humanity"-formerly "symbolized by the stupid ox, are awakening to1 a realization of their rights and long withheld privileges.'

1Take the war management, the financial end, who controls it? Not one of the plain toilers have anything important to say about it. Yet the expense of the war, as well as the men to fight it, falls mainly on them. But it is managed by the multimillionaires. Where do you suppose they got their millions to begin with? Not by being liberal with their employes and allowing them the proper measure of their earnings-no, sir, not that.

I do not seek to give you my opinions, but ask you to make a call upon your own. In the depths of your own soul is stored thousands of the best things in your life and that you have not yet called out to your conscious mind. When you call out your own natural talents, your country, too, will have additional splendor -a splendor which you cannot appreciate until you have discovered your own best self. Know more about yourself, for it will give you more confidence—a

Millionaires are not made in that way. Sharp and predatory practices manipulation-make millionaires. Why then tempt these sharpers with the financial management of the war? Unless they have changed their nature and their practices both— the evidence is against it-we need not expect them to manage it free from speculation.

Already since the war begun in Europe, the finance speculators have exported $6,000,000,000 in value of American products in excess of the products that we Americans got back in exchange, which fact the speculators have used as an excuse to raise the price to American consumers on the "trust'' controlled products approximately $17,000,000,000 over the former prices, which upon the latter item alone equals $170 on every man, woman and child. That is what the press calls a "favorable" balance of trade-favorable to starve the masses and to glut the speculators.

In line with this disastrous export policy, and as a part of the speculators scheme to mulch the public on a gigantic scale while the war should last, they started the war propaganda preparedness campaign. They knew that the people were favorable to the Government itself making proper arrangements to meet such emergencies as might arise out of the existing chaotic conditions, so they wanted it all done in a way that would give the greatest control to speculators who are in charge of the banking system, and with the aid of their press, they succeeded in lining things up to suit them.

After many intervening things had happened in which the speculators were always active, the declaration of war by Congress was made. The first bond issue was called the "Liberty Loan Bonds,' a name that suits us all. Here again, the finance speculators managed the sale. In Minneapolis,

better understanding of the world, because you do not differ from others so much as you may believe, besides you are much greater than you have yet discovered.

Dig out your innermost thoughts—the simplest of them, because they are the natural ones—and the greatest. They will help you-me and others to solve the disturbing elements in life-the things that bother us all. It is the arbitrary things—the ones that have been created by men contrary to what's natural, that makes most of our trouble.

for instance, where a Federal Reserve Bank is located, the Minneapolis Journal had the following to say:

"An inner committee, designated by E. W. Decker as the 'the big stick' committee, is to check up contributions and call parsimonious givers to account.

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"What is this I hear about slackers?' Mr. Decker rose to demand. 'Well, we're preparing to use the big stick. Any business house or individual who in the opinion of the solicitor is shirking his duty should be reported to the Executive Committee.'

Mr. Decker, referred to by the Journal, is the "big" banker of the Twin Cities. You know what it means to have the bankers use the "big stick' on a borrower at any bank and all business men are borrowers. The same thing that was done in Minneapolis was done in the other cities.

Then again came the Red Cross campaign for funds. We want our soldier boys who may be sent across the seas to fight in Europe, to be cared for in the best way possible. The purpose is one of the most important. Here again the “big finance speculators" are the principal leaders. It is not probable that they have any design to cripple the work of the Red Cross, or to filch from the $100,000,000 fund to which they have liberally contributed. What they want is to control the organization of the Red Cross, because it will be officered by able persons, and to control that organization will be worth billions of dollars. They will have a powerful influence in the reorganization of Europe. Out of that reorganization the "big financiers" expect to make very many billions of dollars profit. Therefore it is easy to see why J. P. Morgan, through his chief partner, H. S.

You may be a farmer; you may be a wage worker; you may be in any one of a thousand different occupations, but that makes no difference in what we are looking for. We look for the men and the women. We find them in you and in me. The point of interest is -what's in us, for there is much that is the same in

Davidson, is fitting up offices to be donated to the Red Cross for headquarters. It will not interfere with the good work of the Red Cross on the battlefield. It can and undoubtedly will be just as efficient in its work there in ministering to the needs of the soldier boys, notwithstanding that big finance is its main supporter. The Government itself, however, should have both financed and controlled the operations of the Red Cross, but this the "big financiers' opposed, and undoubtedly because of the desire to be independent in organizing the Red Cross for the advantage it hopes to get out of the organization in the reorganization of Europe.

It is the Federal Reserve Banks that have been the clearing agency for all the work of "the big financiers." They have been used as the spur where spur has been required. The Federal Reserve Banks are owned by the member banks, and the millionaires who own the big city banks control the Federal Reserve Banks. They plan the whole thing. In spite of the fact that the people themselves should direct all these matters through their own servants, instead of big business doing it they, the people, have responded to every call with noble patriotism. Honor to the people for it. But how much greater honor will be due them, and how much more enthusiastic and hopeful of the future they will be, when the management is changed as it should be from the greedy speculators to the people's "actual'' own representatives.

It has indeed been humiliating to the American people to see how the wealth grabbers, owners of the "big press," actually attempt by scurrilous editorials and specially prepared articles, to drive the people as if we were a lot of cattle, to buy bonds, subscribe to the Red Cross, to register for conscription and all the other things. The people will do their duty without being hectored in advance by the "big interest press. What right, anyway, has the "big press" to heckle the people as if we really belonged to the wealth grabbers and were their chattel property?

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us all.

We have mutual necessities unfulfilled which may be supplied if we understand each other. Every one of us can bring him or herself within the rule-high or low, rich or poor-all may be benefitted.

I grew up on a farm. There are many of you, and . but one of me. But since wherever we grew up-there are many things the same, the easiest way for me to understand you is to first know myself, and likewise, the easiest way for you to understand the public, is to first know yourself. I have already studied myself somewhat, so I will now briefly examine what you would find in yourself if you have grown up on a farm, and made a farm for yourself out of a wild tract of land. I do that because it is the best example that can be · given, on a unit scale, to show how our country grew up, or perhaps better stated should have grown up. I wish to examine the simple things, because the complex ones have gotten us into bad trouble and we shall have to rely upon the simple ones to get us out. If we had watched the necessities of the farmer on his farm, we should have known the principles for the development of a nation of more successful people. Don't desert these thoughts now, simply because its the farm, for wherever you are and whatever your work, I will soon reach your case as well.

Suppose a farmer with an average family owns 160 acres of wild land, moves on to make it a farm-he requires a house, a barn and other buildings, as well as livestock including a team, and implements and machinery to work with. He owns the land, but has no money to buy material for buildings, stock, etc. What happens in his case? I am asking about the pioneer days now. He was somewhat in the same fix that this nation was at the time of its birth. It was then mostly wild lands without farms or cities and but