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Contents of this file page
HAS FREETHOUGHT A CONSTRUCTIVE SIDE? 1
HARD TIMES AND THE WAY OUT. 4
CONVENTION OF THE AMERICAN SECULAR UNION. 18
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This file, its printout, or copies of either
are to be copied and given away, but NOT sold.
Bank of Wisdom, Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
------
The Works of ROBERT G. INGERSOLL
**** ****
HAS FREETHOUGHT A CONSTRUCTIVE SIDE?
THE object of the Freethinker is to ascertain the truth -- the
conditions of well-being -- to the end that this life will be made
of value. This is the affirmative, positive, and constructive side.
Without liberty there is no such thing as real happiness.
There may be the contentment of the slave -- of one who is glad
that he has passed the day without a beating -- one who is happy
because he has had enough to eat -- but the highest possible idea
of happiness is freedom.
All religious systems enslave the maid. Certain things are
demanded -- certain things must be believed -- certain things must
be done -- and the man who becomes the subject or servant of this
superstition must give up all idea of individuality or hope of
intellectual growth and progress.
The religionist informs us that there is somewhere in the
universe an orthodox God, who is endeavoring to govern the world,
and who for this purpose resorts to famine and flood, to earthquake
and pestilence -- and who, as a last resort, gets up a revival of
religion. That is called "affirmative and positive."
The man of sense knows that no such God exists, and thereupon
he affirms that the orthodox doctrine is infinitely absurd. This is
called a "negation." But to my mind it is an affirmation, and is a
part of the positive side of Freethought.
A man who compels this Deity to abdicate his throne renders a
vast and splendid service to the human race.
As long as men believe in tyranny in heaven they will practice
tyranny on earth. Most people are exceedingly imitative, and
nothing is so gratifying to the average orthodox man as to be like
his God.
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
1
HAS FREETHOUGHT A CONSTRUCTIVE SIDE?
These same Christians tell us that nearly everybody is to be
punished forever, while a few fortunate Christians who were elected
and selected billions of ages before the world was created, are to
be happy. This they call the "tidings of great joy." The
Freethinker denounces this doctrine as infamous beyond the power of
words to express. He says, and says clearly, that a God who would
create a human being, knowing that that being was to be eternally
miserable, must of necessity be an infinite fiend.
The free man, into whose brain the serpent of superstition has
not crept, knows that the dogma of eternal pain is an infinite
falsehood. He also knows -- if the dogma be true -- that every
decent human being should hate, with every drop of his blood, the
creator of the universe. He also knows -- if he knows anything --
that no decent human being could be happy in heaven with a majority
of the human race in hell. He knows that a mother could not enjoy
the society of Christ with her children in perdition; and if she
could, he knows that such a mother is simply a wild beast. The free
man knows that the angelic hosts, under such circumstances, could
not enjoy themselves unless they had the hearts of boa-
constrictors.
It will thus be seen that there is an affirmative, a positive,
a constructive side to Freethought.
What is the positive side?
First: A denial of all orthodox falsehoods -- an exposure of
all superstitions. This is simply clearing the ground, to the end
that seeds of value may be planted. It is necessary, first, to fell
the trees, to destroy the poisonous vines, to drive out the wild
beasts. Then comes another phase -- another kind of work. The
Freethinker knows that the universe is natural -- that there is no
room, even in infinite space, for the miraculous, for the
impossible. The Freethinker knows, or feels that he knows, that
there is no sovereign of the universe, who, like some petty king or
tyrant, delights in showing his authority. He feels that all in the
universe are conditioned beings, and that only those are happy who
live in accordance with the conditions of happiness, and this fact
or truth or philosophy embraces all men and all gods -- if there be
gods.
The positive side is this: That every good action has good
consequences -- that it bears good fruit forever -- and that every
bad action has evil consequences, and bears bad fruit. The
Freethinker also asserts that every man must bear the consequences
of his actions -- that he must reap what he sows, and that he
cannot be justified by the goodness of another, or damned for the
wickedness of another.
There is still another side, and that is this: The Freethinker
knows that all the priests and cardinals and popes know nothing of
the supernatural -- they know nothing about gods or angels or
heavens or hells -- nothing about inspired books or Holy Ghosts, or
incarnations or atonements. He knows that all this is superstition
pure and simple. He knows also that these people -- from pope to
priest, from bishop to parson, do not the slightest good in this
world -- that they live upon the labor of others -- that they earn
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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HAS FREETHOUGHT A CONSTRUCTIVE SIDE?
nothing themselves -- that they contribute nothing toward the
happiness, or well-being, or the wealth of man-kind. He knows that
they trade and traffic in ignorance and fear, that they make
merchandise of hope and grief -- and he also knows that in every
religion the priest insists on five things -- First: There is a
God. Second: He has made known his will. Third: He has selected me
to explain this message. Fourth: We will now take up a collection;
and Fifth: Those who fail to subscribe will certainly be damned.
The positive side of Freethought is to find out the truth --
the facts of nature -- to the end that we may take advantage of
those truths, of those facts -- for the purpose of feeding and
clothing and educating mankind.
In the first place, we wish to find that which will lengthen
human life -- that which will prevent or kill disease -- that which
will do away with pain -- that which will preserve or give us
health.
We also want to go in partnership with these forces of nature,
to the end that we may be well fed and clothed -- that we may have
good houses that protect us from heat and cold. And beyond this --
beyond these simple necessities -- there are still wants and
aspirations, and freethought will give us the highest possible in
art -- the most wonderful and thrilling in music -- the greatest
paintings, the most marvelous sculpture -- in other words,
freethought will develop the brain to its utmost capacity.
Freethought is the mother of art and science, of morality and
happiness.
It is charged by the worshipers of the Jewish myth, that we
destroy, that we do not build.
What have we destroyed? We have destroyed the idea that a
monster created and governs this world -- the declaration that a
God of infinite mercy and compassion upheld slavery and polygamy
and commanded the destruction of men, women, and babes. We have
destroyed the idea that this monster created a few of his children
for eternal joy, and the vast majority for everlasting pain. We
have destroyed the infinite absurdity that salvation depends upon
belief, that investigation is dangerous, and that the torch of
reason lights only the way to hell. We have taken a grinning devil
from every grave, and the curse from death -- and in the place of
these dogmas, of these infamies, we have put that which is natural
and that which commends itself to the heart and brain.
Instead of loving God, we love each other. Instead of the
religion of the sky -- the religion of this world -- the religion
of the family -- the love of husband for wife, of wife for husband
-- the love of all for children. So that now the real religion is:
Let us live for each other; let us live for this world, without
regard for the past and without fear for the future. Let us use our
faculties and our powers for the benefit of ourselves and others,
knowing that if there be another world, the same philosophy that
gives us joy here will make us happy there.
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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HAS FREETHOUGHT A CONSTRUCTIVE SIDE?
Nothing can be more absurd than the idea that we can do
something to please or displease an infinite Being. If our thoughts
and actions can lessen or increase the happiness of God, then to
that extent God is the slave and victim of man.
The energies of the world have been wasted in the service of
a phantom -- millions of priests have lived on the industry of
others and no effort has been spared to prevent the intellectual
freedom of mankind.
We know, if we know anything, that supernatural religion has
no foundation except falsehood and mistake. To expose these
falsehoods -- to correct these mistakes -- to build the fabric of
civilization on the foundation of demonstrated truth -- is the task
of the Freethinker. To destroy guide-boards that point in the wrong
direction -- to correct charts that lure to reef and wreck -- to
drive the fiend of fear from the mind -- to protect the cradle from
the serpent of superstition and dispel the darkness of ignorance
with the sun of science -- is the task of the Freethinker.
What constructive work has been done by the church?
Christianity gave us a flat world a few thousand years ago -- a
heaven above it where Jehovah dwells and a hell below it where most
people will dwell. Christianity took the ground that a certain
belief was necessary to salvation and that this belief was far
better and of more importance than the practice of all the virtues.
It became the enemy of investigation -- the bitter and relentless
foe of reason and the liberty of thought. It committed every crime
and practiced every cruelty in the propagation of its creed. It
drew the sword against the freedom of the world. It established
schools and universities for the preservation of ignorance, it
claimed to have within its keeping the source and standard of all
truth. If the church had succeeded the sciences could not have
existed.
Freethought has given us all we have of value. It has been the
great constructive force. It is the only discoverer, and every
science is its child. --
The Truth Seeker, New York 1890.
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HARD TIMES AND THE WAY OUT.
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: -- The lovers of the human race, the
philanthropists, the dreamers of grand dreams, all predicted and
all believed that when man should have the right to govern himself,
when every human being should be equal before the law, pauperism,
crime, and want would exist only in the history of the past. They
accounted for misery in their time by the rapacity of kings and the
cruelty of priests. Here, in the United States, man at last is
free. Here, man makes the laws, and all have an equal voice. The
rich cannot oppress the poor, because the poor are in a majority.
The laboring men, those who in some way work for their living, can
elect every Congressman and every judge; they can make and
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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HARD TIMES AND THE WAY OUT.
interpret the laws, and if labor is oppressed in the United States
by capital, labor has simply itself to blame. The cry is now raised
that capital in some mysterious way oppresses industry; that the
capitalist is the enemy of the man who labors. What is a
capitalist? Every man who has good health; every man with good
sense; every one who has had his dinner, and has enough left for
supper, is, to that extent, a capitalist. Every man with a good
character, who has the credit to borrow a dollar or to buy a meal,
is a capitalist; and nine out of ten of the great capitalists in
the United States are simply successful workingmen. There is no
conflict, and can be no conflict, in the United States between
capital and labor; and the men who endeavor to excite the envy of
the unfortunate and the malice of the poor are the enemies of law
and order.
As a rule, wealth is the result of industry, economy,
attention to business; and as a rule, poverty is the result of
idleness, extravagance, and inattention to business, though to
these rules there are thousands of exceptions. The man who has
wasted his time, who has thrown away his opportunities, is apt to
envy the man who has not. For instance, there are six shoemakers
working in one shop. One of them attends to his business. You can
hear the music of his hammer late and early. He is in love with
some girl on the next street. He has made up his mind to be a man;
to succeed; to make somebody else happy; to have a home; and while
he is working, in his imagination he can see his own fireside, with
the firelight falling upon the faces of wife and child. The other
five gentlemen work as little as they can, spend Sunday in
dissipation, have the headache Monday, and, as a result, never
advance. The industrious one, the one in love, gains the confidence
of his employer, and in a little while he cuts out work for the
others. The first thing you know he has a shop of his own, the next
a store; because the man of reputation, the man of character, the
man of known integrity, can buy all he wishes in the United States
upon a credit. The next thing you know he is married, and he has
built him a house, and he is happy, and his dream has been
realized. After awhile the same five shoemakers, having pursued the
old course, stand on the corner some Sunday when he rides by. He
has a carriage, his wife sits by his side, her face covered with
smiles, and they have two children, their eyes beaming with joy,
and the blue ribbons are fluttering in the wind. And thereupon,
these five shoemakers adjourn to some neighboring saloon and pass
a resolution that there is an irrepressible conflict between
capital and labor.
There is, in fact, no such conflict, and the laboring men of
the United States have the power to protect themselves. In the
ballot-box the vote of Lazarus is on an equality with the vote of
Dives; the vote of a wandering pauper counts the same as that of a
millionaire. In a land where the poor, where the laboring men have
the right and have the power to make the laws, and do, in fact,
make the laws, certainly there should be no complaint. In our
country the people hold the power, and if any corporation in any
State is devouring the substance of the people, every State has
retained the power of eminent domain, under which it can confiscate
the property and franchise of any corporation by simply paying to
that corporation what such property is worth. And yet thousands of
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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HARD TIMES AND THE WAY OUT.
people are talking as though the rich are combined for the express
purpose of destroying the poor, are talking as though there existed
a widespread conspiracy against industry, against honest toil; and
thousands and thousands of speeches have been made and numberless
articles have been written to fill the breasts of the unfortunate
with hatred.
We have passed through a period of wonderful and unprecedented
inflation. For years we enjoyed the luxury of going into debt, the
felicity of living upon credit. We have in the United States about
eighty thousand miles of railway, more than enough to make a treble
track around the globe. Most of these miles were built in a period
of twenty-five years, and at a cost of at least five thousand
millions of dollars. Think of the ore that had to be dug, of the
iron that was melted; think of the thousands employed in cutting
bridge timber and ties, and giving to the wintry air the music of
the axe; think of the thousands and thousands employed in making
cars, in making locomotives, those horses of progress with nerves
of steel and breath of flame; think of the thousands and thousands
of workers in brass and steel and iron; think of the numberless
industries that thrived in the construction of eighty thousand
miles of railway, of the streams bridged, of the mountains
tunneled, of the plains crossed; and think of the towns and cities
that sprang up, as if by magic, along these highways of iron.
During the same time we had a war in which we expended
thousands of millions of dollars, not to create, not to construct,
but to destroy. All this money was spent in the work of demolition,
and every shot and every shell and every musket and every cannon
was used to destroy. All the time of every soldier was lost. An
amount of property inconceivable was destroyed, and some of the
best and bravest were sacrificed. During these years the productive
power of the North was strained to the utmost; every wheel was in
motion; there was employment for every kind and description of
labor, and for every mechanic. There was a constantly rising market
-- speculation was rife, and it seemed almost impossible to lose.
As a consequence, the men who had been toiling upon the farm became
tired. It was too slow a way to get rich. They heard of their
neighbor, of their brother, who had gone to the city and had
suddenly become a millionaire. They became tired with the slow
methods of agriculture. The young men of intelligence, of vim, of
nerve became disgusted with the farms. On every hand fortunes were
being made. A wave of wealth swept over the United States; huts
became houses; houses became palaces with carpeted floors and
pictured walls; tatters became garments; rags became robes; and for
the first time in the history of the world, the poor tasted of the
luxuries of wealth. We wondered how our fathers could have endured
their poor and barren lives.
Every business was pressed to the snow line. Old life
insurance associations had been successful; new ones sprang up on
every hand. The agents filled every town. These agents were given
a portion of the premium. You could hardly go out of your house
without being told of the uncertainty of life and the certainty of
death. You were shown pictures of life insurance agents emptying
vast bags of gold at the feet of a disconsolate widow. You saw in
imagination your own fatherless children wiping away the tears of
grief and smiling with joy.
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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HARD TIMES AND THE WAY OUT.
These agents insured everybody and everything. They would have
insured a hospital or consumption in its last hemorrhage.
Fire insurance was managed in precisely the same way. The
agents received a part of the premium, and they insured anything
and every-thing, no matter what its danger might be. They would
have insured powder in perdition, or icebergs under the torrid zone
with the same alacrity. And then there were accident companies, and
you could not go to the station to buy your ticket without being
shown a picture of disaster. You would see there four horses
running away with a stage, and old ladies and children being thrown
out; you would see a steamer being blown up on the Mississippi,
legs one way and arms the other, heads one side and hats the other
locomotives going through bridges, good Samaritans carrying off the
wounded on stretchers.
The merchants, too, were not satisfied to do business in the
old way. It was too slow; they could not wait for customers. They
filled the country with drummers, and these drummers convinced all
the country merchants that they needed about twice as many goods as
they could possibly sell, and they took their notes on sixty and
ninety days, and renewed them whenever desired, provided the
parties renewing the notes would take more goods. And these country
merchants pressed the goods upon their customers in the same
manner. Everybody was selling, everybody was buying and nearly all
was done upon a credit. No one believed the day of settlement ever
would or ever could come. Towns must continue to grow, and in the
imagination of speculators there were hundreds of cities numbering
their millions of inhabitants. Land, miles and miles from the city,
was laid out in blocks and squares and parks, land that will not be
occupied for residences probably for hundreds of years to come, and
these lots were sold, not by the acre, not by the square mile, but
by so much per foot. They were sold on credit, with a partial
payment down and the balance secured by a mortgage. These values,
of course, existed simply in the imagination; and a deed of trust
upon a cloud or a mortgage upon a last year's fog would have been
just as valuable. Everybody advertised, and those who were not
selling goods and real estate were in the medicine line, and every
rock beneath our flag was covered with advice to the unfortunate;
and I have often thought that if some sincere Christian had made a
pilgrimage to Sinai and climbed its venerable crags, and in a
moment of devotion dropped upon his knees and raised his eyes
toward heaven, the first thing that would have met his astonished
gaze would in all probability have been:
St. 1860 X Plantation Bitters."
Suddenly there came a crash. Jay Cooke failed, and I have
heard thousands of men account for the subsequent hard times from
the fact that Cooke did fail. As well might you account for the
smallpox by saying that the first pustule was the cause of the
disease. The failure of Jay Cooke & Co. was simply a symptom of a
disease universal.
No language can describe the agonies that have been endured
since 1873. No language can tell the sufferings of the men that
have wandered over the dreary and desolate desert of bankruptcy.
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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HARD TIMES AND THE WAY OUT.
Thousands and thousands supposed that they had enough, enough for
their declining years, enough for wife and children, and suddenly
found themselves paupers and vagrants.
During all these years the bankruptcy law was in force, and
whoever failed to keep his promise had simply to take the benefit
of this law. As a consequence, there could be no real, solid
foundation for business. Property commenced to decline; that is to
say, it commenced to resume; that is to say, it began to be rated
at its real instead of at its speculative value.
Land is worth what it will produce, and no more. It may have
speculative value, and, if the prophecy is fulfilled, the man who
buys it may become rich, and if the prophecy is not fulfilled, then
the land is simply worth what it will produce. Lots worth from five
to ten thousand dollars apiece suddenly vanished into farms. worth
twenty-five dollars per acre. These lots resumed. The farms that
before that time had been considered worth one hundred dollars per
acre, and are now worth twenty or thirty, have simply resumed.
Magnificent residences supposed to be worth one hundred thousand
dollars, that can now be purchased for twenty-five thousand, they
have simply resumed. The property in the United States has not
fallen in value, but its real value has been ascertained, The land
will produce as much as it ever would, and is as valuable to-day as
it ever was; and every improvement, every invention that adds to
the productiveness of the soil or to the facilities for getting
that product to market, adds to the wealth of the nation.
As a matter of fact, the property kept pace with what we were
pleased to call our money. As the money depreciated, property
appreciated; as the money appreciated, property depreciated. The
moment property began to fall speculation ceased. There is but
little speculation upon a falling market. The stocks and bonds,
based simply upon ideas, became worthless, the collaterals became
dust and ashes.
At the close of the war, when the Government ceased to be such
a vast purchaser and consumer, many of the factories had to stop.
When the crash came the men stopped digging ore; they stopped
felling the forest; the fires died out in the furnaces; the men who
had stood in the glare of the forge, were in the gloom of want.
There was no employment for them. The employer could not sell his
product; business stood still, and then came what we call the hard
times. Our wealth was a delusion and illusion, and we simply came
back to reality. Too many men were doing nothing, too many men were
traders, brokers, speculators. There were not enough producers of
the things needed; there were too many producers of the things no
one wished. There needed to be a redistribution of men.
Many remedies have been proposed, and chief among these is the
remedy of fiat money. Probably no subject in the world is less
generally understood than that of money. So many false definitions
have been given, so many strange, conflicting theories have been
advanced, that it is not at all surprising that men have come to
imagine that money is something that can be created by law. The
definitions given by the hard-money men themselves have been used
as arguments by those who believe in the power of Congress to
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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HARD TIMES AND THE WAY OUT.
create wealth. We are told that gold is an instrumentality or a
device to facilitate exchanges. We are told that gold is a measure
of value. Let us examine these definitions.
Gold is an instrumentality or device to facilitate exchanges.
That sounds well, but I do not believe it. Gold and silver are
commodities. They are the products of labor. They are not
instrumentalities; they are not devices to facilitate exchanges;
they are the things exchanged for something else; and other things
are exchanged for them. The only device about it to facilitate
exchanges is the coining of these metals. Whenever the Government
or any government certifies that in a certain piece of gold or
silver there are a certain number of grains of a certain fineness,
then he who gives it knows that he is not giving too much, and he
who receives, that he is receiving enough, so that I will change
the definition to this:
The coining of the precious metals is a device to facilitate
exchanges.
The precious metals themselves are property; they re
merchandise; they are commodities, and whenever one commodity is
exchanged for another it is barter, and gold is the last refinement
of barter.
The second definition is: "Gold is the measure of value."
We are told by those who believe in fiat money that gold is a
measure of value just the same as a half bushel or a yardstick.
I deny that gold is a measure of value. The yardstick is not
a measure of value; it is simply a measure of quantity. It measures
cloth worth fifty dollars a yard precisely as it does calico worth
four cents. It is, therefore, not a measure of value, but of
quantities. The same with the half bushel. The half bushel measures
wheat precisely the same, whether that wheat is worth three dollars
or one dollar. It simply measures quantity; not quality, or value.
The yardstick, the half bushel, and the coining of money are all
devices to facilitate exchanges. The yardstick assures the man who
sells that he has not sold too much; it assures the man who buys
that he has received enough; and in that way it facilitates
exchanges. The coining of money facilitates exchange, for the
reason that were it not coined, each man who did any business would
have to carry a pair of scales and be a chemist.
It matters not whether the yardstick or half bushel are of
gold, silver, or wood, for the reason that the yardstick and half
bushel are not the things bought. We buy not them, but the things
they measure.
If gold and silver are not the measure of value, what is? I
answer -- intelligent labor. Gold gets its value from labor. Of
course, I cannot account for the fact that mankind have a certain
fancy for gold or for diamonds, neither can I account for the fact
that we like certain things better than others to eat. These are
simply facts in nature, and they are facts, whether they can be
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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HARD TIMES AND THE WAY OUT.
explained or not. The dollar in gold represents, on the average,
the labor that it took to dig and mint it, together with all the
time of the men who looked for it without finding it. That dollar
in gold, on the average, will buy the product of the same amount of
labor in any other direction.
Nothing ever has been money, from the most barbarous to the
most civilized times, unless it was a product of nature, and a
something to which the people among whom it passed as money
attached a certain value, a value not dependent upon law, not
dependent upon "fiat" in any degree.
Nothing has ever been considered money that man could produce.
A bank bill is not money, neither is a check nor a draft.
These are all devices simply to facilitate business, but in or of
themselves they have no value.
We are told, however, that the Government can create money.
This I deny. The Government produces nothing; it raises no wheat,
no corn; it digs no gold, no silver. It is not a producer, it is a
consumer.
The Government cannot by law create wealth. And right here I
wish to ask one question, and I would like to have it answered some
time. If the Government can make money, if it can create money, if
by putting its sovereignty upon a piece of paper it can create
absolute money, why should the Government collect taxes? We have in
every district assessors and collectors; we have at every port
custom-houses, and we are collecting taxes day and night for the
support of this Government. Now, if the Government can make money
itself, why should it collect taxes from the poor? Here is a man
cultivating a farm -- he is Working among the stones and roots, and
digging day and night; why should the Government go to that man and
make him pay twenty or thirty or forty dollars taxes when the
Government, according to the theory of these gentlemen, could make
a thousand-dollar fiat bill quicker than that man could wink? Why
impose upon industry in that manner? Why should the sun borrow a
candle?
And if the Government can create money, how much should it
create, and if it should create it who will get it? Money has a
great liking for money. A single dollar in the pocket of a poor man
is lonesome; it never is satisfied until it has found its
companions. Money gravitates towards money, and issue as much as
you may, as much as you will, the time will come when that money
will be in the hands of the industrious, in the hands of the
economical, in the hands of the shrewd, in the hands of the cunning
in other words, in the hands of the successful.
The other day I had a conversation with one of the principal
gentlemen upon that side, and I told him, "Whenever you can
successfully palm off on a man a bill of fare for a dinner, I shall
believe in your doctrine; and when I can satisfy the pangs of
hunger by reading a cook-book, I shall join your party." Only that
is money which stands for labor. Only that is money which will buy,
on the average, in all other directions the result of the same
labor expended in its production. As a matter of fact, there is
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HARD TIMES AND THE WAY OUT.
money enough in the country to transact the business. Never before
in the history of our Government was money so cheap; that is to
say, was interest so low; never. There is plenty of money, and we
could borrow all we wished had we the collateral. We could borrow
all we wish if there was some business in which we could embark
that promised a sure and reasonable return. If we should come to a
man who kept a ferry, and find his boat on a sand-bar and the river
dry, what would he think of us should we tell him he had not enough
boat? He would probably reply that he had plenty of boat, but not
enough water. We have plenty of money, but not enough business. The
reason we have not enough business is, we have not enough
confidence, and the reason we have not confidence is because the
market is slowly falling, and the reason it is slowly falling is
that things have not yet quite resumed; that we have not quite
touched the absolute bed-rock of valuation. Another reason is
because those that left the cultivation of the soil have not yet
all returned, and they are living, some upon their wits, some upon
their relatives, some upon charity, and some upon crime.
The next question is: Suppose the Government should issue a
thousand millions of fiat money, how would it regulate the value
thereof? Every creditor could be forced to take it, but nobody
else. If a man was in debt one dollar for a bushel of wheat, he
could compel the creditor to take the fiat money; but if he wished
to buy the wheat, then the owner could say, "I will take one dollar
in gold or fifty dollars in fiat money, or I will not sell it for
fiat money at any price." What will Congress do then? In order to
make this fiat money good it will have to fix the price of every
conceivable commodity; the price of painting a picture, of trying
a lawsuit, of chiseling a statue, the price of a day's work; in
short, the price of every conceivable thing. This even will not be
sufficient. It will be necessary, then, to provide by law that the
prices fixed shall be received, and that no man shall be allowed to
give more for anything than the price fixed by Congress. Now, I do
not believe that any Congress has sufficient wisdom to tell
beforehand what will be the relative value of all the products of
labor.
When the volume of currency is inflated it is at the expense
of the creditor class; when it is contracted it is contracted at
the expense of the debtor class. In other words, inflation means
going into debt; contraction means the payment of the debt.
A gold dollar is a dollar's worth of gold.
A real paper dollar is a dollar's worth of paper.
Another remedy has been suggested by the same persons who
advocate fiat money. With a consistency perfectly charming, they
say it would have been much better had we allowed the Treasury
notes to fade out. Why allow fiat money to fade out when a simple
act of Congress can make it as good as gold? When greenbacks fade
out the loss falls upon the chance holder, upon the poor, the
industrious, and the unfortunate. The rich, the cunning, the well-
informed manage to get rid of what they happen to hold. When,
however, the bills are redeemed, they are paid by the wealth and
property of the whole country. To allow them to fade out is
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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HARD TIMES AND THE WAY OUT.
universal robbery; to pay them is universal justice. The greenback
should not be allowed to fade away in the pocket of the soldier or
in the hands of his widow and children. It is said that the
Continental money faded away. It was and is a disgrace to our
forefathers. When the greenback fades away there will fade with it
honor from the American heart, brain from the American head, and
our flag from the air of heaven.
A great cry has been raised against the holders of bonds. They
have been denounced by every epithet that malignity can coin.
During the war our bonds were offered for sale and they brought all
that they then appeared to be worth. They had to be sold or the
Rebellion would have been a success. To the bond we are indebted as
much as to the greenback. The fact is, however, we are indebted to
neither; we are indebted to the soldiers. But every man who took a
greenback at less than gold committed the same crime, and no other,
as he who bought the bonds at less than par in gold. These bonds
have changed hands thousands of times. They have been paid for in
gold again and again. They have been bought at prices far above
par; they have been laid away by loving husbands for wives, by
toiling fathers for children; and the man who seeks to repudiate
them now, or to pay them in fiat rags, is unspeakably cruel and
dishonest. If the Government has made a bad bargain it must live up
to it. If it has made a foolish promise the only way is to fulfill
it.
A dishonest government can exist only among dishonest people.
When our money is below par we feel below par.
We cannot bring prosperity by cheapening money; we cannot
increase our wealth by adding to the volume of a depreciated
currency. If the prosperity of a country depends upon the volume of
its currency, and if anything is money that people can be made to
think is money, then the successful counterfeiter is a public
benefactor. The counterfeiter increases the volume of currency; he
stimulates business, and the money issued by him will not be
hoarded and taken from the channels of trade.
During the war, during the inflation -- that is to say, during
the years that we were going into debt -- fortunes were made so
easily that people left the farms, crowded to the towns and cities.
Thousands became speculators, traders, and merchants; thousands
embarked in every possible and conceivable scheme. They produced
nothing; they simply preyed upon labor and dealt with imaginary
values. These men must go back; they must become producers, and
every producer is a paying consumer. Thousands and thousands of
them are unable to go back. To a man who begs of you a breakfast
you cannot say, "Why don't you get a farm?" You might as well say,
"Why don't you start a line of steamships?" To him both are
impossibilities. They must be helped.
We should all remember that society must support all of its
members, all of its robbers, thieves, and paupers. Every vagabond
and vagrant has to be fed and clothed, and society must support in
some way all of its members. It can support them in jails, in
asylums, in hospitals, in penitentiaries; but it is a very costly
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HARD TIMES AND THE WAY OUT.
way. We have to employ judges to try them, juries to sit upon their
cases, sheriffs, marshals, and constables to arrest them, policemen
to watch them, and it may be, at last, a standing army to put them
down. It would be far cheaper, probably, to support them all at
some first-class hotel. We must either support them or help them
support themselves. They let us go upon the one hand simply to take
us by the other, and we can take care of them as paupers and
criminals, or, by wise statesmanship, help them to be honest and
useful men. Of all the criminals transported by England to
Australia and Tasmania, the records show that a very large per
cent. -- something over ninety -- became useful and decent people.
In Australia they found homes; hope again spread its wings in their
breasts. They had different ambitions; they were removed from vile
and vicious associations. They had new surroundings; and, as a
rule, man does not morally improve without a corresponding
improvement in his physical condition. One biscuit, with plenty of
butter, is worth all the tracts ever distributed.
Thousands must be taken from the crowded streets and stifling
dens, away from the influences of filth and want, to the fields and
forests of the West and South. They must be helped to help
themselves.
While the Government cannot create gold and silver, while it
cannot by its fiat make money, it can furnish facilities for the
creation of wealth. It can aid in the distribution of products, and
in the distribution of men; it can aid in the opening of new
territories; it can aid great and vast enterprises that cannot be
accomplished by individual effort. The Government should see to it
that every facility is offered to honorable adventure, enterprise
and industry. Our ships ought to be upon every sea; our flag ought
to be flying in every port. Our rivers and harbors ought to be
improved. The usefulness of the Mississippi should be increased,
its banks strengthened, and its channel deepened. At no distant day
it will bear the commerce of a hundred millions of people. That
grand river is the great guaranty of territorial integrity; it is
the protest of nature against disunion, and from its source to the
sea it will forever flow beneath one flag.
The Northern Pacific Railway should be pushed to completion.
In this way labor would be immediately given to many thousands of
men. Along the line of that thoroughfare would spring up towns and
cities; new communities with new surroundings; and where now is the
wilderness there would be thousands and thousands of happy homes.
The Texas Pacific should also be completed. A vast
agricultural and mineral region would be opened to the enterprise
and adventure of the American people. Probably Arizona holds within
the miserly clutches of her rocks greater wealth than any other
State or territory of the world. The construction of that road
would put life and activity into a hundred industries. It would
give employment to many thousands of people, and homes at last to
many millions. It would cause the building of thousands of miles of
branches to open, not only new territory, but to connect with roads
already built. It would double the products of gold and silver,
open new fields to trade, create new industries, and make it
possible for us to supply eight millions of people in the Republic
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HARD TIMES AND THE WAY OUT.
of Mexico with our products. The construction of this great highway
will enable the Government to dispense with from ten to fifteen
regiments of infantry and cavalry now stationed along the border.
People enough will settle along this line to protect themselves. It
will permanently settle the Indian question, saving the people
'Millions each year. It will effectually destroy the present
monopoly, and in this way greatly increase production and
consumption. It will double our trade with China and Japan, and
with the Pacific States as well. It will settle the Southern
question by filling the Southern States with immigrants,
diversifying the industries of that section, changing and
rebuilding the commercial and social fabric; it will do away with
the conservatism of regret and the prejudice born of isolation. It
will transmute to wealth the unemployed muscle of the country. It
will rescue California from the control of a single corporation,
from the government of an oligarchy united, watchful, despotic, and
vindictive. It will liberate the farmers, the merchants, and even
the politicians of the Pacific coast. Besides, it must not be
forgotten so to frame the laws and charters that Congress shall
forever have the control of fares and freights. In this way the
public will be perfectly protected and the Government perfectly
secured.
Look at the map, and you will see the immense advantages its
construction will give to the entire country, not only to the
South, but to the East and West as well. It is one hundred and
fifty miles nearer from Chicago to San Diego than to San Francisco.
You will see that the whole of Texas, a State containing two
hundred and ten thousand square miles; a State four times as large
as Illinois, five times as large as New York, capable of supporting
a population of twenty millions of people, is put in direct and
immediate communication with the whole country. Territory to the
extent of nearly a million square miles will be given to
agriculture, trade, commerce, and mining, by the construction of
this line.
Let this road be built, and we shall feel again the enthusiasm
born of enterprise. In the vast stagnation there will be at last a
current. Something besides waiting is necessary to secure, or to
even hasten, the return of prosperity. Secure the completion of
this line and extend the time for building the Northern Pacific,
and confidence and employment will return together.
More men must cultivate the soil. In the older States lands
are too high. It requires too much capital to commence. There are
so many failures in business; so many merchants, traders, and
manufacturers have been wrecked and stranded upon the barren shores
of bankruptcy, that the people are beginning to prefer the small
but certain profits of agriculture to the false and splendid
promises of speculation. We must open new territories; we must give
the mechanics now out of employment an opportunity to cultivate the
soil -- not as day-laborers, but as owners; not as tenants, but as
farmers. Something must be done to develop the resources of this
country. With the best lands of the world; with a population
intellectual, energetic, and ingenious far beyond the average of
mankind; with the richest mines of the globe; with plenty of
capital; with a surplus of labor; with thousands of arms folded in
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HARD TIMES AND THE WAY OUT.
enforced idleness; with billions of gold asking to be dug; with
millions of acres waiting for the plow, thousands upon thousands
are in absolute want.
New avenues must be opened. All our territory must be given to
immigration. Greater facilities must be offered. Obstacles that
cannot be overcome by individual enterprise must be conquered by
the Government for the good of all. Every man out of employment is
impoverishing the country. Labor transmutes muscle into wealth.
Idleness is a rust that devours even gold. For five years we have
been wasting the labor of millions -- wasting it for lack of
something to do. Prosperity has been changed to want and
discontent. On every hand the poor are asking for work. That is a
wretched government where the honest and industrious beg,
unsuccessfully, for the right to toil; where those who are willing,
anxious, and able to work, cannot get bread. If everything is to be
left to the blind and heartless working of the laws of supply and
demand, why have governments? If the nation leaves the poor to
starve, and the weak and unfortunate to perish, it is hard to see
for what purpose the nation should be preserved. If our statesmen
are not wise enough to foster great enterprises, and to adopt a
policy that will give us prosperity, it may be that the laboring
classes, driven to frenzy by hunger, the bitterness of which will
be increased by seeing others in the midst of plenty, will seek a
remedy in destruction.
The transcontinental commerce of this country should not be in
the clutch and grasp of one corporation. All sections of the Union
should, as far as possible, be benefitted. Cheap rates will come,
and can be maintained only by competition. We should cultivate
commercial relations with China and Japan. Six hundred millions of
people are slowly awaking from a lethargy of six thousand years. In
a little while they will have the wants of civilized men, and
America will furnish a large proportion of the articles demanded by
these people. In a few years there will be as many ships upon the
Pacific as upon the Atlantic. In a few years our trade with China
will be far greater than with Europe. In a few years we will
sustain the same relation to the far East that Europe once
sustained to us. America for centuries to come will supply six
hundred millions of people with the luxuries of life. A country
that expects to control the trade of other countries must develop
its own resources to the utmost. We have pursued a small, a mean,
and a penurious course. Demagogues have ridden into office and
power upon the cry of economy, by opposing every measure looking to
the improvement of the country, by endeavoring to see how cheaply
nothing could be done. A government, like an individual, should
live up to its privileges; it should husband its resources, simply
that it may use them. A nation that expects to control the commerce
of half a world must have its money equal with gold and silver. It
must have the money of the world.
Whenever the laboring men are out of employment they begin to
hate the rich. They feel that the dwellers in palaces, the riders
in carriages, the wearers of broadcloth, silk, and velvet have in
some way been robbing them. As a matter of fact, the palace
builders are the friends of labor. The best form of charity is
extravagance. When you give a man money, when you toss him a
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HARD TIMES AND THE WAY OUT.
dollar, although you get nothing, the man loses his manhood. To
help ethers help themselves is the only real charity. There is no
use in boosting a man who is not climbing. Whenever I see a
splendid home, a palace, a magnificent block, I think of the
thousands who were fed -- of the women and children clothed, of the
firesides made happy.
A rich man living up to his privileges, having the best house,
the best furniture, the best horses, the finest grounds, the most
beautiful flowers, the best clothes, the best food, the best
pictures, and all the books that he can afford, is a perpetual
blessing.
The prodigality of the rich is the providence of the poor.
The extravagance of wealth makes it possible for the poor to
save.
The rich man who lives according to his means, who is
extravagant in the best and highest sense, is not the enemy of
labor. The miser, who lives in a hovel, wears rags, and hoards his
gold, is a perpetual curse. He is like one who dams a river at its
source.
The moment hard times come the cry of economy is raised. The
press, the platform, and the pulpit unite in recommending economy
to the rich. In consequence of this cry, the man of wealth
discharges servants, sells horses, allows his carriage to become a
hen-roost, and after taking employment and food from as many as he
can, congratulates himself that he has done his part toward
restoring prosperity to the country.
In that country where the poor are extravagant and the rich
economical will be found pauperism and crime; but where the poor
are economical and the rich are extravagant, that country is filled
with prosperity.
The man who wants others to work to such an extent that their
lives are burdens, is utterly heartless. The toil of the world
should continually decrease. Of what use are your inventions if no
burdens are lifted from industry -- if no additional comforts find
their way to the home of labor; why should labor fill the world
with wealth and live in want?
Every labor-saving machine should help the whole world. Every
one should tend to shorten the hours of labor.
Reasonable labor is a source of joy. To work for wife and
child, to toil for those you love, is happiness; provided you can
make them happy. But to work like a slave, to see your wife and
children in rags, to sit at a table where food is coarse and
scarce, to rise at four in the morning, to work all day and throw
your tired bones upon a miserable bed at night, to live without
leisure, without rest, without making those you love comfortable
and happy -- this is not living -- it is dying -- a slow, lingering
crucifixion.
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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HARD TIMES AND THE WAY OUT.
The hours of labor should be shortened. With the vast and
wonderful improvements of the nineteenth century there should be
not only the necessaries of life for those who toil, but comforts
and luxuries as well.
What is a reasonable price for labor? I answer: Such a price
as will enable the man to live; to have the comforts of life; to
lay by a little something for his declining years, so that he can
have his own home, his own fireside; so that he can preserve the
feelings of a man.
Every man ought to be willing to pay for what he gets. He
ought to desire to give full value received. The man who wants two
dollars' worth of work for one is not an honest man.
I sympathize with every honest effort made by the children of
labor to improve their condition. That is a poorly governed country
in which those who do the most have the least. There is something
wrong when men are obliged to beg for leave to toil. We are not yet
a civilized people; when we are, pauperism and crime will vanish
from our land.
There is one thing, however, of which I am glad and proud, and
that is, that society is not, in our country, petrified; that the
poor are not always poor.
The children of the poor of this generation may, and probably
will, be the rich of the next. The sons of the rich of this
generation may be the poor of the next; so that after all, the rich
fear and the poor hope.
I sympathize with the wanderers, with the vagrants out of
employment; with the sad and weary men who are seeking for work.
When I see one of these men, poor and friendless -- no matter how
bad he is -- I think that somebody loved him once; that he was once
held in the arms of a mother; that he slept beneath her loving
eyes, and wakened in the light of her smile. I see him in the
cradle, listening to lullabies sung soft and low, and his little
face is dimpled as though touched by the rosy fingers of joy.
And then I think of the strange and winding paths, the weary
roads he has traveled from that mother's arms to vagrancy and want.
There should be labor and food for all. We invent; we take
advantage of the forces of nature; we enslave the winds and waves;
we put shackles upon the unseen powers and chain the energy that
wheels the world. These slaves should release from bondage all the
children of men.
By invention, by labor -- that is to say, by working and
thinking -- we shall compel prosperity to dwell with us.
Do not imagine that wealth can be created by law; do not for
a moment believe that paper can be changed to gold by the fiat of
Congress.
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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HARD TIMES AND THE WAY OUT.
Do not preach the heresy that you can keep a promise by making
another in its place that is never to be kept. Do not teach the
poor that the rich have conspired to trample them into the dust.
Tell the workingmen that they are in the majority; that they
can make and execute the laws.
Tell them that since 1873 the employers have suffered about as much
as the employed,
Tell them that the people who have the power to make the laws
should never resort to violence. Tell them never to envy the
successful. Tell the rich to be extravagant and the poor to be
economical.
Tell every man to use his best efforts to get him a home.
Without a home, without some one to love, life and country are
meaningless words. Upon the face of the patriot must have fallen
the firelight of home.
Tell the people that they must have honest money, so that when
a man has a little laid by for wife and child, it will comfort him
even in death; so that he will feel that he leaves something for
bread, something that, in some faint degree, will take his place;
that he has left the coined toil of his hands to work for the loved
when he is dust.
Tell your representatives in Congress to improve our rivers
and harbors; to release our transcontinental commerce from the
grasp of monopoly; to open all our territories, and to build up our
trade with the whole world.
Tell them not to issue a dollar of fiat paper, but to redeem
every promise the nation has made.
If fiat money is ever issued it will be worthless, for the
folly that would issue has not the honor to pay when the experiment
fails.
Tell them to put their trust in work. Debts can be created by
law, but they must be paid by labor.
Tell them that "flat money" is madness and repudiation is
death.
END
**** ****
CONVENTION OF THE AMERICAN SECULAR UNION.
Albany, N.Y., September 13, 1885.
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: While I have never sought any place in
any organization, and while I never intended to accept any place in
any organization, yet as you have done me the honor to elect me
president of the American Secular Union, I not only accept the
place, but tender to you each and all my sincere thanks.
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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CONVENTION OF THE AMERICAN SECULAR UNION.
This is a position that a man cannot obtain by repressing his
honest thought. Nearly all other positions he obtains in that way.
But I am glad that the time has come when men can afford to
preserve their manhood in this country. Maybe they cannot be
elected to the Legislature, cannot become errand boys in Congress,
cannot be placed as weather-vanes in the presidential chair, but
the time has come when a man can express his honest thought and be
treated like a gentleman in the United States. We have arrived at
a point where priests do not govern, and have reached that stage of
our journey where we, as Harriet Martineau expressed it, are "free
rovers on the breezy common of the universe." Day by day we are
getting rid of the aristocracy of the air. We have been the slaves
of phantoms long enough, and, a new day, a day of glory, has dawned
upon this new world -- this new world which is far beyond the old
in the real freedom of thought.
In the selection of your officers, without referring to
myself, I think you have shown great good sense. The first man
chosen as vice-president, Mr. Charles Watts, is a gentleman of
sound, logical mind; one who knows what he wants to say and how to
say it; who is familiar with the organization of Secular societies,
knows what we wish to accomplish and the means to attain it. I am
glad that he is about to make this country his home, and I know of
no man who, in my judgment, can do more for the cause of
intellectual liberty.
The next vice-president, Mr. Remsburg, has done splendid work
all over the country. He is an absolutely fearless man, and tells
really and truly what his mind produces. We need such men
everywhere.
You know it is almost a rule, or at any rate the practice, in
political parties and in organizations generally, to be so anxious
for success that all the offices and places of honor are given to
those who will come in at the eleventh hour. The rule is to hold
out these honors as bribes for new-comers instead of conferring
them upon those who have borne the heat and burden of the day. I
hope that the American Secular Union will not be guilty of any such
injustice. Bestow your honors upon the men who stood by you when
you had few friends, the men who enlisted for the war when the
cause needed soldiers. Give your places to them, and if others want
to join your ranks, welcome them heartily to the places of honor in
the rear and let them learn how to keep step.
In this particular, leaving out myself as I have said, you
have done magnificently well. Mrs. Mattie Krekel, another vice-
president, is a woman who has the courage to express her opinions,
and she is all the more to be commended because, as you know, women
have to suffer a little more punishment than men, being amenable to
social laws that are more exacting and tyrannical than those passed
by Legislatures.
Of Mr, Wakeman it is not necessary to speak. You all know him
to be an able, thoughtful, and experienced man, capable in every
respect; one who has been in this organization from the beginning,
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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CONVENTION OF THE AMERICAN SECULAR UNION.
and who is now president of the New York society. Elizur Wright,
one of the patriarchs of Freethought, who was battling for liberty
before I was born, and who will be found in the front rank until he
ceases to be. You have honored yourselves by electing James Parton,
a thoughtful man, a scholar, a philosopher, and a philanthropist --
honest, courageous, and logical -- with a mind as clear as a
cloudless sky. Parker Pillsbury, who has always been on the side of
liberty, always willing, if need be, to stand alone -- a man who
has been mobbed many times because he had the goodness and courage
to denounce the institution of slavery -- a man possessed of the
true martyr spirit. Messrs. Algie and Adams, our friends from
Canada, men of the highest character, worthy of our fullest
confidence and esteem -- conscientious, upright, and faithful.
And permit me to say that I know of no man of kinder heart, of
gentler disposition, with more real, good human feeling toward all
the world, with a more forgiving and tender spirit, than Horace
Seaver. He and Mr. Mendum are the editors of the Investigator, the
first Infidel paper I ever saw, and I guess the first that any one
of you ever saw -- a paper once edited by Abner Kneeland, who was
put in prison for saying, "The Universalists believe in a God which
I do not." The court decided that he had denied the existence of a
Supreme Being, and at that time it was not thought safe to allow a
remark of that kind to be made, and so, for the purpose of keeping
an infinite God from tumbling off his throne, Mr. Kneeland was put
in jail. But Horace Seaver and Mr. Mendum went on with his work.
They are pioneers in this cause, and they have been absolutely true
to the principles of Freethought from the first day until now.
If there is anybody belonging to our Secular Union more
enthusiastic and better calculated to impart something of his
enthusiasm to others than Samuel P. Putnam, our secretary, I do not
know him. Courtlandt Palmer, your treasurer, you all know, and you
will presently know him better when you hear the speech he is about
to make, and that speech will speak better for him than I possibly
can. Wait until you hear him, as he is now waiting for me to get
through that you may hear him. He will give you the definition of
the true gentleman, and that definition will be a truthful
description of himself.
Mr. Reynolds is on our side if anybody is or ever was, and Mr.
Macdonald, editor of The Truth Seeker, aiming not only to seek the
truth but to expose error, has done and is doing incalculable good
in the cause of mental freedom.
All these men and women are men and women of character, of
high purpose; in favor of Freethought not as a peculiarity or as an
eccentricity of the hour, but with all their hearts, through and
through, to the very center and core of conviction, life, and
purpose.
And so I can congratulate you on your choice, and believe that
you have entered upon the most prosperous year of your existence.
I believe that you will do all you can to have every law repealed
that puts a hypocrite above an honest man. We know that no man is
thoroughly honest who does not tell his honest thought. We want the
Sabbath day for ourselves and our families. Let the gods have the
heavens. Give us the earth. If the gods want to stay at home
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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CONVENTION OF THE AMERICAN SECULAR UNION.
Sundays and look solemn, let them do it; let us have a little
wholesome recreation and pleasure. If the gods wish to go out with
their wives and children, let them go. If they want to play
billiards with the stars, so they don't carom on us, let them play.
We want to do what we can to compel every church to pay taxes
on its property as other people pay on theirs. Do you know that if
church property is allowed to go without taxation, it is only a
question of time when they will own a large per cent. of the
property of the civilized world? It is the same as compound
interest; only give it time. If you allow it to increase without
taxing it for its protection, its growth can only be measured by
the time in which it has to grow. The church builds an edifice in
some small town, gets several acres of land. In time city rises
around it. The labor of others has added to value of this property,
until it is worth millions. If this property is not taxed, the
churches will have so much in their hands that they will again
become dangerous to the liberties of mankind. There never will, be
real liberty in this country until all property is put upon a
perfect equality. If you want to build a Joss House, pay taxes. If
you want to build churches, pay taxes. If you want to build a hall
or temple in which Freethought and science are to be taught, pay
taxes. Let there be no property untaxed. When you fail to tax any
species of property, you increase the tax of other people owning
the rest. To that extent, you unite church and state. You compel
the Infidel to support the Catholic. I do not want to support the
Catholic Church. It is not worth supporting. It is an unadulterated
evil. Neither do I want to reform the Catholic Church. The only
reformation of which that church or any orthodox church is capable,
is destruction. I want to spend no more money on superstition.
Neither should our money be taken to support sectarian schools. We
do not wish to employ any chaplains in the navy, or in the army, or
in the Legislatures, or in Congress. It is useless to ask God to
help the political party that happens to be in power. We want no
President, no Governor "clothed with a little brief authority," to
issue a proclamation as though he were an agent of God, authorized
to tell all his loving subjects to fast on a certain day, or to
enter their churches and pray for the accomplishment of a certain
object. It is none of his business. When they called on Thomas
Jefferson to issue a proclamation, he said he had no right to do
it, that religion was a personal, individual matter, and that the
state had no right, no power, to interfere.
I now have the pleasure of introducing Mr. Courtlandt Palmer,
who will speak to you on the "Aristocracy of Freethought," in my
judgment the aristocracy not only of the present, but the
aristocracy of the future.
**** ****
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