they live. Fifty-two per cent of our people, who own $3,000,000,000 of wealth, would pay $156,000,000 of this tax if we raised $300,000,000, or 5.2 per cent on every dollar of what they have; and their property is almost entirely in clothing, household furniture, and personal effects.

They do not own their homes or real estate. Their property is perishable and ought not to be taxed at all. They pay, then, over 5,000 times on their property more than the very rich; for the very rich, who compose 4,000 families in this country, own $12,000,000,000 of wealth, and they pay under this bill, under an assessment upon necessities, upon consumption, the magnificent sum of $94,480 of a tax of $300,000,000, or less than eight ten-thousands of 1 per cent upon every dollar of their wealth.

They are the people from whom your officers are selected to receive big salaries and pretend to carry on military operations; they are the class who furnish the money for the contracts; they are the men who are selling to the Government yachts absolutely worthless for naval purposes and old, brokendown ships which are found to be only fit to obstruct harbors so that our war vessels can not get at the enemy. These people would pay, if they paid upon their wealth, $60,000,000 a year, instead of $94,480, which they do pay.

Mr. President, this result has been brought about by legislation; by unequal, dishonest taxation like that within the present bill; by granting monopoly privileges, special legislation, like the banking and transportation privileges, in the interest of the few. The Theban Sphinx destroyed all who refused to answer her question. If we refuse to answer this question, if we fail to answer it, such failure will destroy us.

The inexorable lessons of history prove what the result must be. I can not regard the talk about a popular loan as anything but hypocritical. How can the public subscribe when the public has no property? How can the 52 per cent of our people who own but $454 per family, or $90 worth of property each, and that in personal effects, such as worn clothing and second-hand household utensils, buy 3 per cent bonds? He who knows these facts and yet talks about a popular loan certainly

does not expect to do other than act the part of a demagogue and deceive the public.

Mr. President, it is because of the manner and method of taxation that I decline to vote for this measure. It is because the Senate voted down the income tax, the tax upon corporations, and almost every burden that could be laid upon the rich people of this country.

F

CHAPTER XXII

SUMMING IT UP

ELLOW CITIZENS: 1 We have just closed a very remarkable political contest, the most remarkable, perhaps, in the history of this country. For the first time in our career as a people, political parties were not arrayed so much against each other as were great interests. For the first time in our experience, the two leading parties divided. That portion of the democratic party which represented the great trusts and combinations, the accumulated wealth of the nation, united with that portion of the republican party which had been absorbed by the same interests. Arrayed against these forces were, as the votes show, over six million of the producers of our country. Arrayed against this combination were the toilers of the land to the extent of six million laborers, the majority of them engaged in agriculture, and a majority of small traders and merchants were allied with the farming classes, being interested with them in the successful prosecution of the pursuit of tilling the soil. What caused this great division? What caused this alignment of forces? These questions are the questions which will not down and are questions which can be settled only by the success of those who advocate the cause of the producers of wealth.

On the one side, then, was concentrated, in the hands of those who had not produced it, the amassed wealth and capital of this country, striving for mastery in an effort to completely dominate and control our affairs. On the other side was the great mass of the people who had produced the wealth, but still through the process of legislation had seen it slip from their grasp and drift into the hands of the few people who

1. A speech delivered at Sioux Falls, South Dakota, November 14, 1896.

control the other side. In a contest like this, with such forces arrayed against us, with every corporate interest reaching out to coerce the loyalty and support of its employees, with the creditor class everywhere browbeating and trying to intimidate our farmers, as they did throughout the length and breadth of this State, the wonder is that the people of Dakota were able to turn back the forces of plutocracy and rescue this State from the most corrupt combination that ever cursed any commonwealth. It was a victory worth our effort. It was a victory for which the people struggled without hope of reward, other than the public good. And we have occasion to congratulate each other to-night over our success. Root and branch, every portion of our State government is rescued from their hands. The legislature is at least sixteen majority on joint ballot and we have both houses. We must so handle our victory that we may remain in power. We must pursue that course of careful legislation which will retain for us the confidence of the people. The hope of South Dakota is in her ability to control her own affairs. In being able to secure that just consideration from the railroad companies which will not rob the people of the products of their toil. And while we should not favor legislation which would be discreditable in being extreme, we should legislate so that the question of justice and right between our own people and these foreign corporations shall be left in our own hands to decide. You will find that great vigilance and care is necessary to produce results which will hold in our ranks the conservative people of this country, and yet do even justice to all.

I believe to-night, as I have through this whole controversy, that those great principles for which we have contended must be solved in the interest of the toiling masses, if free institutions survive in this government. I believe that financial reform, far reaching and radical, is absolutely essential in order that the producing classes may reap the reward of their efforts. There should be no half-way measures in this respect.

The banking system of this country is so organized and constituted as to take from the producer the result of his

effort; purposely so organized; organized with the intention of controlling the volume of money; contracting and expanding credit so as to produce a panic, or apparent prosperity, as suits the purpose of its organizers and managers.

This system of banking was the invention of Lord Overstone, with the assistance of the acute minds of the Rothschild bankers of Europe, and was so constructed as to enhance the importance of capital and overshadow the importance of toil. The system is one based upon a small volume of legal tender money, and the limit of this volume they would make as small as possible, in order that they may control it absolutely, whatever it is. Expansion by the issue of credit, not legal tender; contraction by the withdrawal of credit. Expansion that they may sell the property of the producers, which they have taken in with the last contraction, and then contract again in order to wreck the enterprising and once more reap the harvest of their efforts. This is the banking system of Great Britain, and the banking system of every gold standard country in the world to-day except France. It is the banking system of the United States. This is the system the republican party is pledged to strengthen and perpetuate. There is no hope of relief for the people of this agricultural country in any possible thing the republican party can or will do. In 1873, fearing that the volume of metallic money would become too large, these manipulators of panics, these gatherers of the products of other people's toil, set about to secure the demonetization of silver and make all their contracts payable in gold. The result has been, as the thinking ones of every nation agree, that in every gold standard country on the globe, agricultural prices have fallen steadily from that time to this, until we have reached a point where the cost of production is denied the producer.

How has it been brought about?

First, by the demonetization of silver.

Second, by securing the adoption of the gold standard by one nation after another, through the pressure of debts due the combined bankers of Europe.