Foreword
HONEST LEGISLATION ?
BONDS OR CHARITY ?
THE MARCH OF THE WORKERS
THE SUICIDE OF CAPITALISM
THE SALVATION OF CAPITALISM
GOLD — PRIVATE OR PUBLIC !
BANKS AND GOLD !
THE NEW DEAL AND THE NEW MEN
TO THE EX-SERVICE MAN
" From The Ashes We Shall Rise Again "
THE TRUTH MUST BE TOLD   

Foreword

This book contains the chief lectures delivered from the Shrine of the Little Flower beginning January 1st and ending April 16th, 1933.

It is a complement of a previous book published last year entitled “Eight Discourses on the Gold Standard.”

It was my aim to treat as plainly as possible the vital moral-economic financial condition which, more than anything else in a material sense, has caused our present misery.

The principles which are applied throughout these discourses are based on the teachings of Leo XIII and Pius XI. Contrary to a subversive propaganda which is widely spread throughout our country, be it stated that a clergyman has not only the right but also the duty to speak on such subjects.

Throughout these lectures which were broadcast through the voluntary subscriptions of Catholics and Protestants, Jews and Gentiles, there is a purposeful development of thought which centers around the one idea of economic justice and liberty.

Today we are living in the hopes of a new deal.  This hope is founded not only upon the promise of such but upon the actual presence of new men without whom the new deal would be impossible.

The people of this nation at present are filled with confidence and with determination.

The confidence is vested in our President, Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The determination is founded so securely that only deeds and not words will suffice to satisfy the nation.

It is my opinion that our confidence has not been misplaced.  It is also my observation that unless this economic liberty can be quickly achieved under our present system of government, there is no other prospect facing us than to alter that system if necessary in order to obtain justice and equity.

HONEST LEGISLATION ?

For three years the undeniable facts which I have expressed over this radio have been well known to the Seventy-Second Congress of the United States.  Sad to say have been artfully side-stepped by this august body.

Our national debt has risen to $235-billion.  Our losses directly due to the depression have approximated $265-billion—$96-billion more than the total cost of the World War.

Suffering and sorrow, idleness and poverty we submit to the outrages of a money famine.

Our leaders have become obsessed with the cult of gold worshipping.  Its sanctity must not be violated even though millions upon millions of victims are offered up within its fiery furnace.

II

For two months this last session of our Seventy-Second Congress has proven itself more interested, I fear, in beer than in bread ;  more interested in the liberation of the Philippines than in the restoration of prosperity to the United States. Meanwhile it becomes disheartening to read how our Representatives will spend time discussing everything from the correct spelling of Puerto Rico to the placing of a label, if any, that will be glued upon a can of macaroni !

Yet is becomes absolutely alarming when we read of the most dangerous discussion of all, which found its way to the floor of our Senate, in the nature of the Glass bank bill.  It takes its name from Senator Carter Glass of Virginia.

Every person in this nation realizes that from an economic angle, our depression was primarily caused by an injudicious, unintelligent and sometimes immoral financial system which not only produced a famine of money but which destroyed our credit and which almost has succeeded in reducing our nation to bankruptcy.

There must be a substantial corrective for these financial abuses which were responsible for marketing questionable bonds ;  for gambling with depositors’ money ;  and for turning the stock exchange of Wall Street into a resort alongside of which Monte Carlo and the corner crap game are sanctimonious exercises of virtue.

Now, instead of facing this problem with courage and with vision, it has been side-stepped and neglected.

In its place there has been injected into the discussion of the Senate the smoke screen called the Glass bill.  It is a bill, which in many of its articles, is commendatory, but which in its nineteenth article is the most subtley vicious bill that the entire Seventy-Second Congress has ever considered.

It is only just that those in this audience be appraised of the importance associated with the nineteenth article of the Glass bill in order to learn of the desperate effort being made by the organized minority to perpetuate their plunder.

Briefly, this bill pretends to abolish the financial abuses from which you have suffered so grievously, by establishing branch banks.  Briefly, it looks forward to the destruction of small independent local banks ;  it visualizes the establishment of great central banks with branches throughout the State ;  it presupposes the existence of the same banking system which we have today, including all its inherent abuses.

But before explaining any portion of this nineteenth article, let me first remind you that one of the current complaints which was voiced by Pius XI relative to the financial system of our civilization is identified with the cruel, unjust concentration and manipulation of credit in the hands of a few.

That this Glass bill in its nineteenth article is endeavoring to perpetuate this abuse is evident.

III

Before criticizing, let us pause for a moment to discover the history of this brilliant idea which, according to its sponsors, will eliminate our financial worries.

Scripture tells us that an evil tree cannot produce good fruit.  Well let us examine the tree.

The announcement of this most important theory is recorded in The New York Times under the date of December 8th, 1932.  It shall go down in the annals of politics as the climax of achievement ;  as the high water mark of do-nothingism which characterized the golden Mellon age through which we have passed.

Let me read it to you as it appeared in the paper.

“ Ogden Mills Urges a Move for Branch Banking” —that is the headline.  The article reads as follows :

“ In dealing with reforms in, the banking situation Mr. Mills suggested immediate authorization for trade area branch banking as a temporary expedient to aid national banks, and recommended that a joint committee of Congress study all available data with a view to legislation ‘that will remedy the fundamental weakness of our banking structure’.”

Secretary Mills is quoted as follows :

“ The developments of the last decade”, says he, “ have uncovered unmistakable defects in the American banking structure.  They constitute a source of weakness in our economic life and have been an important factor in the present depression.  They call for fundamental reforms.”

Mr. Mills agrees that the banking system has been “an important factor” in this poverty, this idleness, this confiscation that surrounds us.

Mirabile dictu !  What a wonderful expression !

The reform which he suggested in his own words is this :

“ I renew the recommendation looking to the extension of branch banking.”

This, then, is the curative for the financial sins which have demoralized our nation.  This is the restorative of peace and contentment and prosperity in our land !

Well has Mr. Ogden Mills lived up to his reputation.  On the eve of his departure from, perhaps, the most important cabinet post in our Government, he sings his swan song in the same key and in the same pitch which characterized the Melody of Mellon for a period of nearly 14 years ;  the chorus of which always ends with the couplet :  “ financial welfare is preferred to human welfare.”

If you trace it back far enough, perhaps this song will be found to originate in the heart of that great Tin Pan Alley known as Wall Street.

To be exact, it was sometime about the month of March, 1930, when Mr. Thomas W. Lamont, of the firm of J.P. Morgan and Company, expressed the identical idea that he was in favor of branch banking as the method of banking reform.  Thus you plainly see, my friends, that the music is by Mills ;  the lyric by J.P. Morgan and Company; and the obligato is by Carter Glass.

All this reminds me of a convention held inside the walls of Sing Sing Prison.  Everyone admitted that there was need for prison reform.  The citizens outside were complaining because of the laxity of the prison and because of the effeminancy of its rules.  The prisoners were complaining because of the raspiness of the radio.  Their laundry, so they charged, was returned improperly ironed.  Their food was not so tasty as that served in the better hotels.

Well, the outcome of it all was that the prisoners themselves were actually devising ways and means to reform the iniquitious system of prison punishment.

I am sure that the authorities of New York State Department would be as ready to adopt the decisions of the prisoners as the people of the United States would be willing to acquiesce to the suggestions made by those who, more than any other group, have caused this depression.

Now, let us see (since we have traced this fruit back to the original tree from which it has fallen) if this brilliant suggestion is in keeping with the spirit of the new day.

Speaking to the New York Legislature in January, 1930, President-elect Roosevelt issued a statement which is counter to the proposal of the nineteenth article of the Glass bill, the bill that proposes to abolish all our abuses by establishing branch banks.  He said :

“ We must by law maintain the principle that banks are a definite benefit to the individual community.  That is why a concentration of all banking resources and all banking control in one spot or in a few hands is contrary to a sound public policy.

“ We want strong and stable banks, and at the same time each community must be enabled to keep control of its own money within its own borders.”

That, my friends, was the opinion publicly expressed by the gentleman whom we have elected to give us a “new deal”.  We have no reason to believe that Mr. Roosevelt has altered this conviction in the face of the fact that branch banking is no curative to the financial ills which have aided and abetted the famine of money now threatening to overwhelm us.

Branch banking is no guarantee for the money of the depositor.  I dare say that the 4,850 failures which have marked the history of our financial institutions during the past few months would not have amounted to such great numbers had they not been encouraged both directly and indirectly through the initial failure of one of the great branch banks in the City of New York.

Do not forget that the first important bank failure in this country during the present depression was the Bank of the United States with its 59 branches.  It was followed by the Federal National Bank of Boston with its 8 branches.  In succession there are chronicled the oiher branch bank failures, namely, the Banco Kentucky group, with 7 branches ;  the A.B. Banks of Arkansas with 27 branches ;  the Manley chain of Georgia with 87 branches ;  the Bain Banks of Chicago with 12 branches ;  the Bankers’ Trust Company of Pennsylvania, with 20 branches ;  the United States National Bank of Los Angeles with 8 branches ;  the Security Home Trust of Toledo with 10 branches ;  the Peoples State Bank of South Carolina with 44 branches ;  the Arizona State Bank with 5 branches ;  the Foreman National group of Chicago with 6 branches.

Of course there is no necessity of even mentioning the other branch banking institutions, some of which would most certainly have failed had not the Reconstruction Finance Corporation poured millions of dollars into their vaults in preference to helping the small, individual banks such as we had in the municipality where I live.  Every bank in the City of Royal Oak exploded with disastrous effects to the depositors.

Branch banking which is confined to a city or to a municipality is in no wise harmful.  But when it is extended to the boundary lines of the State, it simply means the concentration of the wealth and of the credit of that State in the hands of a few for them to control ;  for them to use.

How in the name of justice, can the little farmer living at the extremity of the State line ask for a loan from some big bank in the State Capital.  He is not known and he is not cared for.  Certainly the farmers should have learned this lesson after three years of having been neglected.

More than that, it means that through the subterranean channels of the financial system which has been established in this nation it will be rendered more feasible for the several great national and international banks in lower Manhattan to control the credit of the entire country.

The advocates of this system of branch banking will point to Canada and to its financial institutions as a paragon of perfection.

Fortunately for the citizens of Canada their financial institutions are still banks where the depositors’ money is practically guaranteed by the Government ;  where the depositors’ money is limited to investment and not to speculation as happens in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred in this country where some branch banks have too often become bucket-shops and peddlers of worthless securities.  And to extend them throughout the United States is the cure of the Glass bill !

Already we have learned of the origin of national banks in this nation.  We are not ignorant of the fact that despite the Constitution of our country which maintains the right of Congress “to coin and regulate the value of money,” this substantial right was handed over fifteen years after our country was founded to private financiers and private corporations whose printed paper money we are forced to use in order that they may acquire profits, and from whom we are asked to beg credit.

We are not ignorant of the fact that the originators of national banks in this nation themselves subscribed to the theory that their institutions grow fat on bonds and blood debts which arise from war.  That is a matter of history.

And now like a simple little Red Riding Hood, do you think that the American public, bled white by this war of golden bullets, will stand before this wolf of the Glass bill and say in all simplicity :  “ What great teeth you have, grandmother! ”

If it should, the answer will be as of old :  “ The better to eat you with, my child ! ”

IV

Perhaps it would be appropriate to mention at this moment another attempt on the part of the banking monopoly of this United States to put through a bill similar to the proposed Glass bill.

I know that I am speaking heretically so far as the dogmatic teachings of bankers are concerned.  But it is about time somebody does.

The year is 1907.  The chief actors in the drama are Charles Augustus Lindbergh, father of the famous aviator, Senator Aldrich, and Congressman Vreeland, the latter two being identified with mighty New York banks.

It was well known that ever since the Civil War, Congress had allowed the bankers to completely control financial legislation.  This is what Congressman Lindbergh, the father of the “Lone Eagle,” had maintained.  This is what every one knows who is acquainted with the history of our country.

Now in 1907 our nation was in the throes of a money panic.

Hundreds of millions of dollars of watered stock and of depreciated bonds were stored away in the vaults of the great banks of this country.

Day by day the market value of these bonds and stocks was being depreciated.  Day by day the owners of national banks were becoming more and more excited because of the possibility and probability of their financial structures tumbling upon them.

At last they conceived a plan whereby they could be saved.  Here is the plan :

Cooperating with each other, Senator Aldrich and Congressman Vreeland proposed what was known as the “Emergency Law” to the United States House of Representatives.  The nature of this law was to permit national banks to deposit not only Government Bonds with the Government for their privilege of printing money at the face value of these bonds, but also the privilege of depositing industrial bonds and municipal bonds in our Treasury with the right to print money against their face value.

What a calamity had that Bill been passed !  Some of these industrial and municipal bonds were actually selling on the open market in 1907 for fifteen cents on the dollar and few of them as high as fifty cents on the dollar !

What a proposal to permit the bankers to print paper money not at the market value of their deposited municipal bonds but at their face value !

This bill was rushed through Congress.  Our representatives evidently were blinded to the fact that it was giving the national bank corporations of this nation the right to extend not only rubber credit money but to print rubber currency money.

Into the fray rushed Charles Augustus Lindbergh, who, in one sense is a greater hero in the eyes of this nation than is his illustrious son.

To this noble father and patriotic Congressman we owe the thanks of a grateful nation for exposing this terrible, nefarious plan which would have made a despot of Wall Street and a slave land of America.

Twenty-six years later we are witnessing an attempt on the part of this same group to do a similar thing by monopolyzing in an indirect manner the banking facilities of the nation along with its credit.  And that is something that the majority of you did not even suspect because they do not advertise.

Now as of then the Glass bill is being proposed to us as was the Aldrich-Vreeland bill as the means of rescuing a nation from a famine of money.

Now as of then, the bloated branch banks, wish to rewrite their bank stocks at double their value and enter them as such upon their books.  A system of dropsical bookkeeping !

But now as of then, some new Charles Augustus Lindbergh, please God, shall have the courage to rise in the seats both of Congress and of the Senate to prevent this “lame duck” assembly from rushing through in the last few hours of its mortal existence its so-called curative for the financial ills of the nation.

A “lame duck” Congress and Senate that for the last few years have closed their eyes to the starving, to the unemployed, to the distressed citizens of this nation while telling us that there was no depression and while preaching to us that prosperity was just around the corner !  At its best, the Glass bill is a half measure.  Like a half truth, which is worse than a whole lie, it bodes no good !

If the House of Morgan advocated such a measure in the year 1930 ;  if Ogden Mills proposes it in the year 1932, the people of the United States know from what tree this fruit has come.  They prefer to await the policies of their newly elected President and Congress who soon shall assume office ;  who promised to bestow upon every one of us a fair and equitable deal.

Thus, while people are starving to death ;  while industry is prostrate ;  while foreign trade has vanished ;  while the values of real estate have been decimated ;  while to every school boy in this nation it is a matter of common knowledge that we are suffering from a money famine mostly due to the manipulation of the mighty banks which are greatly responsible for flooding the country with worthless credit money and with spurious bonds, we witness a group of Senators today—pretending that they represent the people—a group of them devising ways and means to help, to protect and to extend the power of this financial octopus whose tentacles are grasping at the throat of our nation.

No wonder that the Independent Bankers Association has gone on record in a letter to Senator Thomas Schall with the following statement.  It says :

“ If section 19 of the Glass bill passes, it is going to place in the hands of the very few the entire credit machinery of the Nation.  Section 19 is so utterly opposed to the spirit of the times that it is bound to bring ruination to its sponsors.  The large banking interests o f the country should realize that legislation is becoming more and more socialistic ;  that if banking is concentrated into the hands of the few, the rank and file will eventually rise up against them ;  that it will give the common people something to shoot at ;  and that eventually the structure, which they are trying to raise to get domination of the credits of the country, will collapse, carrying the sponsors to ruination.”

If mass-productionism is a menace to our country the way it is being handled today, mass-financialism should hold greater terrors.

Certainly the American people are looking forward to a financial reform, but not the kind of reform that is couched in words of half truth.  The American people are not overly anxious that this reform come from the selfish suggestions which emanate from lower Manhattan and which are fostered by certain legislators who are devotees of the principle that this nation shall remain a financial Republic.

Concentration of wealth in the hands of a few can no longer be tolerated.

Concentration of credit by a small group must no longer exist !  These are reforms which we demand along with a sane inflation of money.

Thus, if there are mismanaged small banks existing throughout the State or throughout the nation, that is no argument why their charters eventually should be assimilated by mismanaged giant banks of the great cities through the agency of the Glass bill which refuses to rescue us from the real financial abuses.

It is about time, my friends, that we have some honest legislation.  It is about time that this wizardry of Wall Street and this double acting, half truth bill and measure similar to the Glass bill be eradicated from the seats of the Senate and from the Halls of Congress.  Lincoln did not say in vain that “this nation is of the people, by the people and for the people.”

Lincoln’s words will be put into practice despite what it is going to cost us.

The theories that have been expressed are rather peculiar.

For instance, the Glass bill subscribes to the principle that prosperity is associated with the thought that our national finances should be in the hands of a few.  Do you not see that it is identical with the principle stated by some, especially the adherents of George III in 1775, that our national politics should be controlled by a few ?  Both theories are counter to the democratic principles upon which our nation was founded.  Both theories are identified with an oligarchical form of government and with the error which we are striving to eliminate, namely, the concentration of wealth and of power in the hands of a few.

Today it is imperative that we de-centralize this wealth and this power of else the Socialists will do it for us.  Today we are struggling to destroy the famine of money by a policy of sound inflation.  Today we are aiming at restoring honest wages, honest prices and honest dollars through legitimate and constitutional means.  We are surfeited with bank failures, with cut wages, with increased taxation and with a financial system which regards money as the medium of control and not of exchange.

V

May I quote for you the sapient remarks of the revered ex-Senator Robert Owen, than whom no greater philosopher on finance exists in our nation.

He is an ardent advocate of sound inflation as the immediate salvation of our country.

He says :

“ It is futile to say that there is plenty of money and credit in our country when the money is congealed and the credit is frozen.

“ Those of you who desire to extend more currency money to the nation will be accused of advocating phony dollars.  You will be met with the cry of inflation.  But inflation means an unjustified expansion.  You are not inflating—you are expanding because of a great national exigency.

“ You will be met with the charge of fiat money.  But fiat money is money not redeemable in gold.  And the money you propose is redeemable in gold.

“ You will be met with the charge that there is plenty of money.  This is obviously untrue because the currency money of our nation has gone into hiding.

“ We all believe in an honest, sound dollar.  But the present dollar is not an honest dollar.  It is a dollar buying fifty cents more in commodities and 500% more in stocks and other forms of property than normal.  It is a thief stealing the profit of the debtor under the color and protection of law ;  it is stealing the savings of lifetimes from innocent people who are the victims of a financial mismanagement or worse.”

It is not pleasant to criticize those into whose hands the destiny of this nation has been placed.

But because we have had too much concentration of credit ;  because we have been victimized by a financial system which has brought about a famine of dollars ;  because we have grown weary of successful attempts to dodge the real issue of the day, it is about time that we demand our representatives to represent us and cease following the philosophy of the high priests of a broken down system of finance.

Not only the 12-million idle workmen ;  not only the 30-million partially employed laborers ;  not only the 40-million farmers and their families ;  not only the small banker and the industrialist whose factory is closed—every citizen is demanding legislation which will restore honest dollars to the entire nation.  We are weary of attempted legislation which aims at strengthening the position of those who control hoarded dollars and hoarded credit.

We are demanding legislation that will have some milk of human kindness in it ;  that will have some drop of God’s justice in it to care for a people of a land that is teeming with wealth, filled with wheat and corn, crowded with factories, all of which, as far as we are concerned, may as well be in the depths of the Atlantic Ocean as long as we are forced to worship at the altar of this god of gold.

Surely we are asking for nothing that is un-Christian or unconstitutional when we petition for work, when we raise our voices for an opportunity to pay our just debts or when we ask a guarantee for the savings of a lifetime which perforce we must deposit in some bank.

That there is a way to assist those Congressmen and Senators, who are fighting desperately to remove the cause of our sorrow, our poverty, our idleness, is certain.

Thus, I am trying to enlist your moral support ;  I am trying to marshal, into a solid army of action every voting citizen in this audience.

By your support I mean the assistance not only of every man but especially that of every woman in this audience.

Are you satisfied to suffer, to grumble, to raise your voice in childish complaint ?

You country bankers know not where to turn.  You industrialists are living on the bread of hope and on the milk of optimism not knowing how you can honestly pay your dividends or your taxes because the purchasing power of our nation has been ruined.

You farmers have become slaves of the soil forced to produce your wheat and your cotton, to raise your hogs, your sheep and your cattle at a loss ;  forced to face the sheriff who, perhaps, tomorrow morning will be on his way to put you out of your homestead.

You laborers in the city, I suppose, are satisfied to work incessantly at starvation wages ;  to raise your children in want and poverty ;  or to join the army of the unemployed.

You home owners and you landlords are happy, I presume, to see the value of our real estate melt under your eyes and the cost of your taxes mount month by month.

You women of this land, are you not anxious to help in this unequalled contest ;  are all of you willing to stand idly by ?  I believe the time has come to act in unison and in a constitutional manner.

BONDS OR CHARITY ?

It appears that religion has lost much of its charm and forcefulness in the scheme of our modern civilization.

This is so true that more than sixty per cent of our fellow citizens profess no allegiance whatsoever to any organized church.  They regard dogmas as unscientific presumptions.  They look upon morals as unreasonable impositions.

While the Bible is regarded as a book to be revered, it is oftentimes considered archaic to maintain that its contents are revealed truths.

This is most unfortunate especially when we are confronted with the momentous problems of the present day.

Unguided by faith or by biblical principles, what solution has science offered to liquidate the imponderable debts accumulated by the Great War or to stem the ever increasing tide of losses which threaten to engulf us ?

With all the gifted intelligence resident in the minds of the economists which one of them, divorced from religion, has approached the problem of unemployment with such clarity of thought as is manifest in the legislation of the Mosaic Law or in the verses of St. Paul’s inspired letter to the Corinthians, chapter the thirteenth ?

Not one of them !  These problems which are deep-rooted in man’s social relations, one to another, have baffled a Pericles and an Aristotle of old, and will continue to defy lesser minds today unless the dim, fluttering candle of reason gives way to the lustrous shining of the Light of the World !

God’s standard has been bartered for an impossible gold standard.  Debts and financial rights have been deemed more precious than love and human rights.

I

First, let us consider the stupendous debts which are devastating our farms, confiscating our homes, divorcing our life’s savings, destroying our industries and throwing into inevitable bankruptcy our once prosperous country.

As you are already appraised of the fact, our national and private debts have reached approximately $235-billion.

Definitely related to these debts is a conservative loss of $264-billion sustained by our citizens during the past three years.

This total of nearly $500-billion is so staggering that our capacity to pay has long since become an impossibility.

Now, with what solution do the sacred Scriptures supply us when we are confronted by such a perplexing situation ?

Read with me the twenty-fifth chapter of the Book of Leviticus.  There you find inscribed the following words :

“ Thou shalt sanctify the fiftieth year, and shalt proclaim remission to all the inhabitants of thy land ;  for it is the year of jubilee.  Every man shall return to his possession, and everyone shall go back to his former family.

“ In the year of jubilee all shall return to their possessions.

“ When thou shalt sell anything to thy neighbor or shalt buy of him thou shalt buy of him according to the number of years from the jubilee.

“ Do not afflict your countrymen.”

Here, then, both a principle and a practice are expressed.

The principle is plainly this, namely, that debts have a limitation and an ending.  They must not afflict your fellow countrymen, nor, in any event, may they endure in perpetuity.

It is a principle which plainly infers that financial rights have a termination and that human rights are eternal.

Is is a principle which was not abrogated under the Christian dispensation ;  for Christ came to perfect and not to destroy.

It is a divinely inspired principle which seemingly has not filtered through the minds of those into whose hands the destiny of our nation has been placed.

“ Do not afflict your countrymen ! ”  What care they for this economic inspiration that was born in heaven ?

If it conflicts with the philosophy of creditors, let it perish !  Let poverty reign, let stark starvation run rampant through our countryside ;  let evictions multiply !  In a word, crush out human rights !  Pillory them in every public place to teach a broken hearted people that financial rights are supreme !

How inconsistent we so-called Christians are !  Invokers of the Name of God in our political speeches !  Builders of churches with our ill-gotten gains !  Mumblers of prayers in public places !  And hypocrites when actions would be more eloquent than words !

II

Take up and read not only those of you who still cling to the outstretched hand of religion but also those of you who, oppressed by debt, have forsaken her guidance to wander aimlessly down life’s treacherous pathway—take up and read this twenty-fifth chapter of Leviticus in its entirety.

And what else shall you find ?

At least one more principle that is applicable in our present day when the budget is unbalanced, when taxes are being multiplied, when unemployment has reached a national crisis, and when the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few rides ruthlessly on under the whip and spurs of bonds and interest.

Let me read for you the passage at hand :

“ If thy brother be impoverished and thou receive him as a stranger and sojourner, and he live with thee, take not usury from him nor more than thou gavest.

“ Thou shalt not give, him thy money upon usury, nor exact of him any increase of fruits.

“ If thy brother constrained by poverty, sell himself to thee, thou shalt not oppress him with the service of bond servants.”

Usury !  Interest !  Bonds !  Taxation !

Were we religious minded, it would not be difficult to apply this principle today.

III

On the contrary, we have adopted a policy which is out of tune with the basic harmony of the scripture which I have quoted.

It is a long, sordid story, my friends, in the telling of which I shall try to be brief.

Many of our social and economic sorrows are traceable to the lust for power, and to the greed for gold which dictated the policies which culminated in the Great War.

No one seriously denies that this wholesale carnage was an inevitable sequence to the commercial and financial greed which characterized the Age of Reason.

This is a serious statement to make.  It is one which should not go unchallenged unless substantiated by facts.

For a moment, let us disregard the European nations and focus our attention upon America.

If you recollect, we entered the Great War on Good Friday in the year 1917.

On the eve of that eventful day our Senate was assembled.

Long into the hours of Holy Thursday night serious minded men debated both on grounds of patriotism and of righteousness whether or not we should take up arms against the Central Powers.

The night when nearly 1900 years before the Master supped with His Apostles and said to them :  “ This is the chalice of the new and eternal Testament which shall be shed for you and for many unto the remission of sins ! ”

The night when Judas betrayed Him for thirty pieces of silver !  The night of Gethsemane with is horrors, with its infuriated mob.

The night when was spoken the words “ Put up thy sword into its scabbard.  Know ye not that they who use the sword shall perish by it ? ”

The short-lived night when Annas and Caiphas gloried in their passing triumph !

The clock in the Senate Chamber moved towards midnight.  Frenzied words passed to and fro !

Voices were filled with emotion !

Was there ever such nervous tension before in the history of that august body ?  Never !  Never !

The hands of the clock ticked off the seconds, the minutes !

It was ten minutes to twelve—and yet no decision had been made.

From his seat rose a white plumed, fearless, honest man.  It was Senator James Reed of Missouri.

“ If you must declare war,” said he “ for God’s sake, do it now before it becomes Good Friday.”

And then the bells of midnight began to toll the yearly requiem for the Prince of Peace.

The Senate had waited too, too long !

Waited for the anniversary of His death day to declare the most iniquitious war that was ever waged !

It was the Good Friday of that memorable year of 1917.

It was the doomsday of thousands of America’s youths who, like the innocent Victim of old, were herded to their Calvary of sacrifice to be crucified between the two thieves of gold and greed.

On that eventful day the President of the Bank Board of the United States was Mr. E.P.C. Harding.

If the Senators knew not why they declared war, at least Mr. Harding was not ignorant.

On March the 22nd previous to the Declaration, mind you, he knew that eventually we would commit ourselves against the Central Powers.  He knew it and knew why as is evident from these historic words—words that shall go down to blot with shame the pages of American history.  Mr. Harding said :

“ As a banker and creditor, the United States would have a place at the Peace Conference table, and be in a much better position to resist any proposed repudiation of debts, for it might as well be remembered that we will be forced to take up the cudgels for any of our citizens owning bonds that might be repudiated.”

What a confession, my friends !  What a paradox to Christian teaching !  What a burlesquerie on human rights !  To think of it :  We must take up the cudgels ;  we must rush headlong into a sea of blood ;  we must sacrifice our boys ;  we must crush the hearts of their mothers ;  we must multiply barbarously the orphans in our fair land ;  we must crucify again the Prince of Peace ;  we must consign to hell the doctrines of charity—all for the sake of bloody bonds owned by private citizens and bought at their personal risk.  Bonds which today sleep in vaults where wealth lies buried, but which tomorrow shall rise like ghosts from graves in hell to haunt and to torment both us and our children !

Some future historian, my friends, will have both the courage and the honesty to analyze that statement of the president of the Bank Board of the United States and to tell fearlessly to the generations to come that our entrance into the Great War was motivated not to make the world safe for democracy, but to make the bonds and the debts collectable by our private lenders.

Christ was betrayed again for thirty dirty pieces of silver.  And once again they who thus used the sword shall perish by it !

IV

What had happened to evoke such a heinous, sinful statement from the official mind of the president of the Bank Board of the United States ?  Briefly, this is the outline of the facts :

We are discussing the year 1917.

For three years previous to this date American corporations had been waxing fat on the war materials which they were shipping chiefly to England and to France.

Already billions of dollars worth of wheat, of cotton, of arms and munitions had been poured into the lap of the Allies.  Hardly a penny in actual money had been extended to them.

Now in 1917, it seemed certain that Germany would be victorious.  If so, it seemed equally certain that England and France and the Allies would repudiate their debts.

Thus, it appeared that the private contracts entered into directly by American munition manufacturers with the Allied governments of Europe would be disavowed.

So we went to war to save our thirty pieces of silver ;  to guarantee that the Allies whom our wealthy citizens had staked for three years would win and therefore pay.

Now the United States as a nation, after 1917, was officially participating in the conflict.

Now the complexion of the loans to the Allies was undergoing a change.  Their payment was being made secure by the bodies and souls of innocent men.

More than ever in 1917 arms, munitons, coal and foodstuff were required by the Allies as well as by our army and navy.  But from this year on our Federal Government, which means the American taxpayer, undertook to carry the burden.

Roughly estimated $14-billion of war material was loaned to the Allies by the broad shouldered American taxpayer until eventually came the Armistice, and with it a second chapter of bond history was written.

For behold !  The $14-billion worth of material—of wheat and of cotton, of meat and coal and munitions which we shipped abroad to England, to France, to Italy, to the Allies—was summarily cancelled.  Their war debts were officially wiped out !

Meanwhile the American producers of these war materials had been paid in American dollars.

Meanwhile Government interest bearing bonds had been sold to our banks and to our citizens to raise these dollars.  Those who were crucified to the cross of poverty must offer up sacrifice to those, their fellow citizens, who sat upon the thrones of the Herods of wealth.

Do you understand ?  The taxpayers of the United States assimilated the debts cancelled so generously to the European nations.  We assimilated the debts, and the taxpayers, through the medium of bonds, began to pay back the manufacturers of munitions and bullets used to kill and to destroy.  Oh, indeed, if the debts had been cancelled in favor of the foreigners, the bonds representing them and piled upon the backs of the American public had not been canceled !  They still remained.  Our citizens were still pledged to redeem these bonds which our Government had issued to pay the great corporations of America for their profitable contribution in having made a shambles of the civilized world.

We who thought that the flower of our youth had been sacrificed to make the world safe for democracy now agreed with president Wilson when he disillusioned us with the statement :  “ This was a commercial war.”

Thus, once more I stress the point that as a result of the Great War the citizens of this, nation are, in one sense, debtors to the war profiteers of this country.

Their profits ran into billions of dollars.  And as a result of it all, there sprang up in our midst in a period little over one year and a half 16,500 more millionaires than we had before we entered the conflict.

Let me give you a few examples from the official records in our Federal archives.

First comes the Bethlehem Steel Company.  The profits of this corporation for the years 1911, 1912 and 1913 averaged $3,075,108 per year.  But in 1915 the profits jumped to $17,762,813.  In 1916 they totalled $43,503,968.  And in 1918 they pyramided to $57,188,769.

Second :  Twenty-nine leading copper producing companies from 1915 to 1918 had a surplus of $330,798,593 compared with the surplus of $96,711,392 on the same day of 1914.

Third :  The United States Steel Corporation with a capital stock of approximately $750,000,000 made a profit in 1916 and 1917 alone of $888,931,511.

Fourth :  In the senate document 259 of the Sixty-fifth Congress there is made manifest the profits gained by American business during the year 1917.  This document contains 388 pages of almost unbelievable facts.

In the meat-packing business alone half of the concerns admit profit of more than 50 per cent, and a sixth of them admit they made a profit of over 100 per cent.

Of the 340 coal producers in the Appalachian field, 79 of them reported profits between 50 and 100 per cent ;  135 of them testified that they profitted to the extent of 100 to 500 per cent ;  21 reported profits of from 500 to 1000 per cent ;  and 14 testified that they made profits of more than 1000 per cent.

Of course, my fellow citizens, immediately following the Great War $14 billion which Europe owed us at that moment in 1918 were summarily canceled.  But that does not signify that the United States Government Bonds which floated these debts and which eventually are payable by your tax money and by mine—it does not signify that these were cancelled.  For generations to come the American people will be paying out taxes to the dollar-a-year profiteer who already had grown fat upon the misery of a stricken people.

Perhaps the truthful historian to whom I referred a few moments ago will regard the Great War as the death knell to a system of irrational capitalism which greedily profiteered upon misery and to a system of financial control which waxed fat upon the bonded debts of a patient people.

And so today, my friends, the American people are demanding the normalization of the American dollar—a dollar that was abnormalized and rendered dishonest by the issuance of War Bonds, by the inflation of domestic credit at home, by the break-down of foreign commerce and trade and by the subsequent flight of currency money from the channels of circulation.

Today as in the year 1862, we are being terrorized and tyrannized by the philosophy which then was spoken by the House of Rothschild to the American bankers.

In a letter, known as the “Hazard Circular”, received by every bank in the State of New York and in New England on that date, we find the following statement :

“ The great debt that capitalists will see to it is made out of the war must be used as a means to control the volume of money.  To accomplish this, the bonds must be used as a banking basis.”

Thus, everyone is aware that money is controlled both by the debts and the profits arising from the war and by the multiplicity of bonds, bloody bonds, which bind us to the past and prevent us striving for the better things of the future.

No wonder that today following the Great War it is just as true as in the days following the Civil War that bankers are adverse to the issuance of currency money to replace the existence of interest bearing bond money that is sucking the life blood from our nation.

In 1872 a mighty group of New York bankers sent the following circular to every bank in the United States.  It reads as follows :

“ Dear Sir :  It is advisable to do all in your power to sustain such prominent daily and weekly newspapers, especially the agricultural and religious press, as will oppose the issuance of greenback paper money, and that you also withhold patronage or favors from all applicants who are not willing to oppose the Government issue of money ........ To repeal the law creating National Bank notes, or to restore to circulation the Government issue of money, will be to provide the people with money, and will therefore seriously affect your individual profit as bankers and leaders.”

V

Thus, the question of issuing non-interest bearing Government money to replace the interest bearing bond money has become a national issue.

The principle of Scripture supports Government non-interest bearing money.  The principle of bankers stands firmly behind the bond money.

“ If thy brother be impoverished”, says the Scripture—and God knows as a nation we are not only impoverished, but we are on the verge of bankruptcy—“ if thy brother be impoverished and weak of hand, take not usury from him nor more than thou gavest.”

By which principle do the people of this nation wish to stand ?

By the principle revealed by Almighty God to His chosen people or by the policy advocated in the financial documents which I quoted ?

Billions of dollars of War Bonds bearing interest and multiplying wealth at the expense of our misery !

Or the equivalent of these bonds handed to their present possessors in new currency at which they will scoff and say :

“Fiat money” as if it were not backed by gold ;  as if it were not cleaner and holier than the blood money of War Bonds to which they cling !

It would be billions of sterile currency dollars which the present bondholders would perforce invest in industry or in other tax bearing bonds.

It would help substantially to end the famine of money from which we are suffering.

Religion !  Faith !  Revelation !  These things, so taught the proud rationalist of the previous century, were relics of the uncultured past.  Let us replace them with the clay god of reason.  Let us substitute for God’s word the word of erring man.

If in ancient days it was taught that thou shalt not oppress thy brother, we of this new age shall shout from the house-tops and preach in the press that this absurdity must terminate once and for all.

If bonds and interest were forbidden even in the dim past of Mosaic days we of this age of reason shall teach a new doctrine that there can be no progress, no concentration of wealth in the hands of a few unless these instruments of tyranny are revived.

If there needs be such an illusion as religion, says the rationalist, bind it and cabin it up within the narrow precincts of a Sabbath Day ;  for it has no place in the bank, no place in the stock exchange, no place in the secular life of a world’s prosperity.

Oh, my fellowmen, what price have we paid for this philosophy, for our cleverness, for our rationalism ;  what sacrificial victim have we offered up at the feet of this dirty god of clay !

With tears in our eyes ;  with hearts filled with repentance we have sadly staggered under the weight of this cross ;  we became its victims until we were crucified between the thieves of greed and gold.  But today I trust that we are glimpsing the first rays of a new sunrise, of a revived faith, of a happy Easter morn of resurrection from the dead past.

Once more we shall take up and read the Scriptures.  Once more we shall turn to that beautiful letter which Paul inscribed to the Corinthians and read therein God’s philosophy of man’s relation to his fellowman as we put aside once and for all the rugged individualism, the pagan selfishness and the cursed exploitation which have temporarily replaced it in the days just passed.

“ If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.

“ And if I should have prophecy and should know all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I should have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.

“ And if I should distribute all my goods to feed the poor, and if I should deliver my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.

“ Charity is patient, is kind :  charity envieth not, dealeth not perversely is not puffed up, is not ambitious, seeketh not her own, is not provoked to anger, thinketh no evil ;  rejoiceth with the truth ;  beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

“ Charity never falleth away :  whether prophecies shall be made void or tongues shall cease or knowledge shall be destroyed.

“ For we know in part :  and we prophesy in part.

“ But when that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away.

“ When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child.  But, when I became a man, I put away the things of a child.

“ We see now through a glass in a dark manner; but then face to face.  Now I know in part :  but then I shall know even as I am known.

“ And now there remain faith, hope and charity, these three :  but the greatest of these is charity.” (I. Cor. XIII. 1-14).

And that, my friends, is the beautiful philosophy which God reveals to us—the doctrine of charity which is counter to the doctrine of rugged individualism.  Charity, which looks into the soul of your fellow man and sees there not only the facial expressions of another human being but the borrowed splendor of the God Who created him !

Charity bids us love our fellowmen not for what they are in themselves but because God dwelleth in the temple of their hearts.

Charity, greater than all things, greater than all power, all wealth teaches us to love the Lord our God with our whole heart, with our whole soul, with our whole mind and our neighbor as ourselves.  Charity teaches us that whatsoever we do unto the least of God’s little ones we do unto Him !

Without charity you cannot even pretend to Christianity.

Thus, shall we go down the highway of time perpetuating the hypocrisy of the past ?  Shall we endeavor to work hardship and exploitation upon our fellowman knowing that whatever we do unto him we are doing unto Christ.

Oh, rob, steal, profiteer and exploit, bend low and break your fellow citizens !  Every time you lift a lash of oppression ;  every time you raise a scourge of exploitation you are lashing Christ again at the pillar in Pilate’s hall, you are driving home once more the thorns of worry into His brow ;  you are crucifying Him upon the cross of Calvary !

Whatsoever you do to the least of His little ones you do unto Him !

 

THE MARCH OF THE WORKERS

Two weeks ago this afternoon I had occasion to address this audience on the nineteenth article of the proposed Glass bill.

This bill intended to legalize branch banking throughout the entirety of the United States.  It aimed eventually to assimilate all the small independent banks throughout any given State into one or two mighty central banks resident in the State’s financial capital.  It proposed to make possible the centralization of all banking eventually within the confines of lower Manhattan, New York City.

In a word, this short-sighted bill aimed at cornering all the credit of the nation in the hands of a few.  More will be heard about that in the present Senate investigation.

I pointed out how the head of the Catholic Church lamented this concentration of wealth and of credit in the hands of a few and regarded it as one of the major economic evils of our day.  I reminded this audience that the Glass proposal originated in the minds of those who for generations have grown fat upon the exploitation of the American public and was being advocated by a certain banking house whose ancestor multiplied his millions in the days of the Civil War by selling guns to the Federal Government ;  guns chat did not shoot and could not shoot, thereby prolonging the sufferings of that lurid conflict ;  thereby proving his patriotism to posterity in being partly responsible for the needless sacrifice of thousands of men.

If I may digress at the outset of this afternoon’s lecture, let me express a few words relative to war.  They come to my mind as associated with this mention of the Civil War.  Already you are appraised of the fact that there are existent in this nation almost $12-billion of Government Bonds whose origin is traceable to the commercial war which was fought between the years 1914 and 1918.  They are bonds upon which you citizens of this nation are paying approximately 3½ per cent interest both to the banks and to the individuals who hold them against you.  Your yearly tribute is almost $400-million in taxes to those who have invested in the debts which we have piled up to make the world safe not for democracy but for chaos, not for prosperity but for depression, not for liberty but for species of economic slavery where money, the medium of exchange, has been transformed into a scourge of control.

Meanwhile, the civilized nations of the world are at present spending approximately $4-billion each year in preparation for the next war—for the next commercial war that appears to be inevitable because we do not know how to trade in justice and in equity with each other ;  because the nations persist in upholding a policy of exploitation, of narrow nationalism both abroad and at home.

You are a patient people.  But there are times when patience, ceasing to remain a virtue, degenerates into a vice.

You are a childish people who grow enthusiastic over empty victories.  You become emotional with tears over needless slaughter.  You will permit again, I presume your husbands and your sons to be conscripted body and soul but you lack sufficient courage and leadership and intelligence to demand legislation that if ever another such war shall break upon the tranquillity of our nation not only men shall be conscripted but money and gold must likewise be conscripted to defend our shores.  Wake up !

Does it not seem most incongruous that both ex-service men and widows and sons of the slain victims be burdened with war debts when already they have sacrificed the best years of their existence and their most precious possessions before the altars of international, commercial greed ?  Does it not appear equitable that if precious lives shall be conscripted, we shall not fail to conscript precious dollars ?  Let us cease inflicting with starvation and confiscation a docile people who have borne the burdens of war and now are prostrate upon life’s Calvary Hill—prostrate and exhausted from carrying the Cross of Depression !

That is why the prophet Nehemias said when he beheld the misery of a stricken people—a misery that had been increased by burdensome debts :

“ And I was exceedingly angry when I heard their cry according to these words.  And my heart thought with myself; and I rebuked the nobles and magistrates, and said to them :  ‘ Do you every one exact usury of your brethren ? ’  And I gathered together a great assembly against them. . . And I said to them :  ‘ The thing you do is not good. . . Both I and my brethren, and my servants, have lent money and corn to many.  Let us all agree not to call for it again :  let us forgive the debt that is owing to us.  Restore ye to them this day their fields, and their vineyards, and their oliveyards, and their houses.  And the hundredth part of the money, and of the corn, the wine, and the oil, which you were wont to exact of them, give it rather for them.’ ”

So spoke the prophet of old according to the Scriptures of God, when the Jewish nation emerged from a war.

And so do we contrary in modern times according to the philosophy and devisals of godless man.

My friends, the time has come when like Nehemias we shall gather together a great assembly against the nobles of wealth and the magistrates who serve them !

II

But let us return to the Glass bill which supports the theory of the concentration of credit in the hands of a few.  After twenty-one precious days of what most news journals called filibustering, this bill passed the Senate in a modified form.  It has not yet even got into the halls of the Lower House.  Its viciousness was well advertised throughout the nation.  Only nine States in the Union which hitherto permitted branch banking will be permitted to continue this practice.  So passed the bill in the Senate.

Twenty-one days spent in hatching an empty egg !

Twenty-one days “destroying” the fundamental causes of our national misery !

Twenty-one days in refusing to admit that we are suffering from a famine of money !

Twenty-one priceless days which were crowned by the same Senator Glass who, defeated in the nineteenth article of his bill, introduced a motion on the floor of the Senate to table all inflationary proposals, everyone of which was designed to rid this country of the famine of money.  He even refuses to discuss this thing further !

Oftentimes, my friends, I have drawn to your attention the universally known fact that if there is hunger in our midst it is not due to a lack of foodstuffs ;  if there are idle factories it is not due to an absence of desire on our part to use their products ;  if there were more than one million farms confiscated during the past few months, this may not be attributed either to laziness or to inactivity.  The American agricultural class is too industrious to suffer this charge.

It is all due to a stupid, vicious and radical philosophy on the part of certain nobles of wealth that money must be used as a medium of control.

Any proposal to destroy this famine of money is called radical and unsound.  Any attempt to restore the purchasing power of the dollar to what it was when these damnable war bonds were launched upon a defenseless people is considered inflationary.  By force of logic it is therefore unsound for men to work, it is unsound for a farmer to earn enough from his produce to save his home.  It is unsound to clothe the naked, to feed the hungry, to keep open our schools.  It is unsound to earn enough money whereby the products of our factories can be purchased.  It is doubly unsound and heretical to cease worshipping at the altar of the man-made god of gold.

By the way, did your local newspaper comment upon the fact that any attempt not at inflation, which is a hypocritical word as used in this instance, but at normalization of the American dollar—did your newspapers carry an account that the United States Senate by a vote of 56 to 18 has refused to consider any proposal to increase our currency ?

If not, this is what was carried in the columns of “ The Detroit News” on Thursday, January 26th.  Mr. Jay Hayden, its representative in Washington, writes as follows :

“ The Democratic and Republican leaders on Capitol Hill, all opposed to any sort of direct tampering with the currency, now are agreed that there will be no further serious threat of legislation to debase the gold standard, at least until the beginning of the first regular session of the new Congress in January, 1934.”

Well, my friends, there is optimism for you—an optimism that tells you to tighten up your belt ;  an optimism that bids you smile and smile and be a devil as you look forward to the prospect of another year of idleness, of another year of profitless crops ;  of another year of confiscation ;  another year of closed factories ;  another year of loss to our industrialists !

Three years ago, in the face of incontestable facts, you were a radical if you even whispered aloud the word “depression.”  Today you are worse than a red Bolshevist if you even permit yourself to think that there is such a thing as a famine of money which can be corrected.

III

Is there a famine of money in this country or are we all deceived by a heinous misunderstanding ?

Before answering this question, let me once more remind you that money is divided into three parts.  First, there is your basic coin which you do not use directly :  this is called gold.  Secondly, there is your pocket money represented by silver coins and by paper bills :  this is called currency.  And, lastly, there is your check money, or your bonds, or your mortgages called credit or debt money.

Now all political economists agree that for every unit of basic money or gold which we possess, we may have in circulation 2½ units of currency money and not more than 12 units of debt money.

This formula of 1 to 2½ to 12 is the formula of sound money just the same as H²O in chemistry is the formula for pure water.

Now in our nation we have approximately $4½-billion of gold.  Work out your formula.  This permits us to have approximately $11-billion of currency and $54-billion of credit or debt money.

Well what are the facts existing at the present moment in this country ?  Instead of having approximately $11-billion of currency, we have in circulation nominally $5-billion of currency.  But if you subtract the money that has gone into hiding, the money that has been destroyed, we have no more than $3-billion in real currency.

On the other hand we have the stupendous sum of approximately $235-billion of debt money instead of $54-billion actually supported by our $4½-billion of gold.

The sound and scientific formula has been thrown aside by the modern manipulators of finance.  Against all precedent and experience they attempt to tell us that sound money exists in the ratio of 1 to 1¹/₃ to 117—just as sensible to say that the formula for water is C⁶H⁵OH, which, by the way, is the chemist’s terminology for carbolic acid.  Try to drink that for water and see what happens.  And try to use our present formula of money and watch the “march of the workers.”

Now there is actually more than $7-billion of a famine of currency money in this nation.  There is approximately an overweight of $180-billion of credit or debt money in circulation.  More than we can conservatively carry.

The Senators in Washington know this far better than do you in this audience recognize it.  And yet they have the effrontery to tell you through the columns of the press that those who desire inflation, as they term it incorrectly, are seeking to establish an unsound currency, as if it could be more unsound than that which exists today.

The truth of it is the system which they are endeavoring to uphold is so unsound that to it more than to anything else you can attribute the starvation and the idleness and the discontent which are so universal in this nation.

My friends, that is why for several Sundays I have been proposing the recall of the billions of dollars of war bonds.  That is why I have been advocating the issuance of currency money in place of these bonds.  This would not create on inflation but would only normalize the abnormal currency from which we are suffering.  Call that radical if you will.  But if you do, likewise call the Word of God radical after what you have heard as written by the Prophet Nehemias.

And still, by a vote of 56 to 18, the omniscient Senate of the United States refuses, under the leadership of Carter Glass, to entertain any consideration aimed at removing this menace !

Of course, he and his supporters are ably seconded by many financial institutions in our midst.  For this, they have their personal reasons—devastating and disconcerting reasons which you have not thought of :  First, by accepting currency in payment of the bonds, the bankers and the bondholders would be compelled to invest in American property and industry.  And secondly, these financiers who are opposing such a measure are playing hand in glove with the foreign debtor nations, hoping first to have our government make a readjustment or partial cancelation of these foreign debts ;  and then in 1934 or late in 1933 to permit a revaluation or normalization of debt cut.  This, so they think, is the only way possible to collect the private debts owed by foreign governments and individuals to these bankers.  But in the meantime, let American people suffer while the bankers play financial politics at the price of our misery !

Do you realize, my friends, that in the banks of this nation the American people have on deposit approximately $45-billion ?  Do you realize that these banks altogether have not more than $800-million of actual currency in their vaults ?  In other words, they have only one-sixtieth of the money on hand which you deposited with them.  This is the information made known to us in the pages of the Congressional Record for Jan. 24, 1933.

Of course, they have Government Bonds at par value, and municipal bonds, railroad and insurance bonds not at par value.  Of course, their vaults are filled with first mortgages and with notes payable, all of which have depreciated.  But from whom could these bankers expect to redeem in actual currency their bonds and their stocks and their notes to pay the American people who have deposited $45-billion with them ?

If the patient people of this nation have lost confidence in a Government whose Congress, according to the Constitution, has the right to coin and to regulate the value of money, and if the right, therefore the duty—a duty that they have tabled and side-tracked and refused to perform—if they have lost confidence, it is because this Congress has not only NOT exercised its duty, but now has gone on record with a resolution to discuss the normalization of the American dollar nevermore !

That is a most serious situation.  It means that hardly a single bank in this country dares to lend a sizable sum of money over a period of more than a few days.  It means that business is stagnant.  It means that profits are a thing of the past.  It means that debts must increase.  It means that foreclosures and confiscations must continue.  It means that our great industrial plants with their huge investments are seriously crippled.

How long can the banks of this nation survive if this famine of currency money continues ?

There are approximately 19,000 banking institutions within the boundaries of our country.  In the year ending June 30th deposits to the amount of 11,500,000,000 were withdrawn from them.  One more such critical year and it would require twenty Reconstruction Finance Corporations to keep open the doors even of the 42 banks of this country which hold 32 per cent of all its deposits or of the 195 banks which hold 47 per cent of the nation’s deposits.

I quote these astounding figures as a basis of argument against the mighty financial institutions of this nation who maintain so vigorously that we require no normalization of our currency, and yet who should be the first to recommend it if they desire salvation.

IV

The people are learning quickly.

The farmers of this nation realize that once before in our history we have had normalization of our currency.  They realize that the Federal Reserve policy put into effect in 1920 deflated agriculture $32-billion—$18-billion of it in land values and the balance of it on the crops of 1920 and 1921.

Nineteen hundred and twenty was the year when we had the largest volume of money in circulation.  It was the year when the dollar reached its lowest buying power.  In fact at that date a dollar was worth only 64 cents.

Here is the story :  Those were the days when the owners of Government Bonds were dissatisfied with the purchasing power of the dollar.

Thus, beginning with 1921 the bondholders and the financial powers of this country took out of circulation more than $100-million every month for seventeen months with the result that the buying power of the dollar increased.  By the year 1926 the dollar became worth 100 cents.

Had their program of inflation been concluded in the year 1926 there would have been no complaint.  It would have succeeded only in normalizing the dollar.  But by 1929 the dollar became worth $1.05.  In 1930 it in creased to $1.15.  And in 1932 it reached the price of $1.54.  Today your dollar is conservatively worth $1.60.  Today, therefore, we are suffering from a dishonest dollar !

As far as the farmer is concerned, the United States Department of Labor informs us that the dollar is approximately worth $2.03 in farm commodities.  In other words due to the inflation of the dollar, the farmers of this nation are paying $203.00 for every 100.00 worth of taxes they owe, for every $100.00 on the mortgage which they owe.  It also means that their 5 per cent interest has doubled to 10 per cent.

There, my friends, is a real demonstration of what inflation means.  To reduce the 203 cent dollar to a 100 cent dollar by the issuance of the currency money which has been taken out of circulation and sunk in bonds is what we mean by the normalization of the dollar.

But we are told that we must not tamper with the fictitious value of gold.

Now, when the dollar was equivalent to 60 cents or thereabouts, I remember how the bondholders and the influential public utilities who had contracts to sell light and power for so much per kilowatt ;  to carry passengers on street railways and on steam railways for so much either per ride or per mile—when these contracts were working to the disadvantage of the owners of street railways and public utilities, what happened ?

Bondholders and bankers approached the Supreme Court to have these contracts nullified on the grounds, to put it in plain English, that if the said contracts were maintained no profit would accrue either to the bondholders or to the public utilities themselves.

What did the Supreme Court decide when this case was presented to them ?  It said that the contracts made between the general public and the public utilities were not binding.  They decreed that the power to regulate can never be bartered away nor traded away.

Now when the shoe is on the other foot ;  when the dollar is worth anywhere from 156 cents to 203 cents, these same gentlemen oppose its normalization through the regulation and revaluation of our currency.  It was a blessed thing to regulate the value of money in 1920.  But to tamper with it in 1933 becomes a financial mortal sin.

Let us not become stampeded by catch words or by obsolete phrases unscientifically spoken.

Let not the worshippers of the dishonest dollar deceive us by singing the battle hymn of sound money at one moment and then by practicing the policies of brigands at the next.

Sound money, as far as an American is concerned, means 100 cents in one dollar, not 160, not 203, but 100 cents. Unsound money is that which exists today and which cannot be ousted from our midst until the formula of the ages is readopted—1 to 2½ to 12.  Otherwise your money is as carbolic acid is to water.  Today it is 1 to 1¹/₃ to 117.

Just yesterday Sir Reginald McKenna, perhaps, the greatest living economist and banker in Great Britain, has gone on record as stating :

“ Controlled inflation, from being a remedy of fools or knaves, has become widely regarded as the best solution of our troubles, since it has become realized that a substantial rise in wholesale prices need have no more than a slight effect upon the cost of living.”

It is the only sensible way and logical way to revaluate our gold ounce.  And without revaluation there is only one thing left—at least three months ago there was only one thing left—and that was repudiation.

V

Are you not apprized of what is happening in Iowa, in Illinois, in Ohio, in Minnesota, in Michigan, and in the middle-west generally ?  These men have rebelled against the dishonest dollar and those who attempt to use it.

Which one of you will condemn those hard thinking, hard working sons of toil from protecting their homes ;  from rising in revolution, if you like against the iniquities of a law and man-made contracts that under present circumstances have proven themselves immoral, unsound, unchristian and un-American ?

More power to those farmers !  They still retain that spirit of independence, that love of liberty, and that determination for fair play and justice which characterized the patriots of 1776 who for a lesser reason rose up in mighty indignation against a system of taxation that was not half so iniquitous as this system of exploitation which stamps the financial structure of our present life.

The precedent of the Supreme Court of the United States is on the side of the farmers.  The fundamentals of the moral law of God support them.

We have had enough of evictions.  We have been surfeited with confiscations.  We have been scourged long enough at the pillar of obsolete contracts and mortgages.

And the law of self-preservation, the first law that God gave to man and which ante-dates any man-made law, comes rushing with its support to the farmers in their righteous struggle.

A month ago or more we were satisfied with announcing the slogan of “revaluation or repudiation.”  But within a few months from today that slogan will be changed to “revaluation or revolution” simply because the American people refuse to pay their debts with dishonest dollars.

Let me read you an editorial which appeared in “The New York World Telegram” dated Thursday, January 26th.  It, too, is entitled “Workers on the March.”  It reads as follows :

“ When President Green of the conservative American Federation of Labor declares that his legion of 2,500,000 unionists ‘soon will be on the march’ for ‘perhaps such a battle as no labor movement has fought before’ the government and business leaders of the country must listen.

“ When President Edward O’Neal, of the even more conservative American Farm Bureau Federation, says :—‘Unless something is done for the American farmer we will have revolution in the countryside in less than twelve months’ the government and business leaders of the country cannot ignore, the warning.

“ Yesterday both of these spokesmen of the toilers of the city and the farm unfurled their battle flags.

“ When, last fall, Mr. Green on the federation’s convention platform in Cincinnati threatened the use of ‘forceful methods’ in achieving the thirty-hour week and higher wages, his words had an ominous sound.  Criticism broke forth.  Censure did not drive him to cover, for in an interview in Nation’s Business, organ of the United States Chamber of Commerce, he repeats that he meant what he said and more.

“ ‘We shall,” he said, ‘fight with every legitimate weapon at our command to restore the kind of America in which a man can have a chance in his own right.  There has been a fear that we are in earnest.  Let me use this opportunity to double rivet the assurance that we are in earnest.’

“ American labor, he explains, has not gone wild ;  it simply has come to what it is ‘determined shall be the end of the road of suffering.’

“ The significance of this defiant note is not that there is a new Mr. Green speaking.  It is that a new union labor is speaking.  Mr. Green never has marched ahead of his rank and file.  That he now speaks militantly, desperately, shows that he has been forced by his members to do so.

“ The same is true of Mr. O’Neal and his farmers.

“ These warnings are not bluff.  Behind them is the explosive desperation of a vast majority of American citizens.”

If that is not enough to disturb the smug complacency of individuals who think that man-made laws and man-made contracts take precedence over God’s laws and God’s contracts, we have come into desperate days.

You dare not impose more taxes upon a people whose back already has been bowed to mother earth.  You dare not permit to continue the starvation and the suffering, the unemployment and the distress which is so universal in a country that is teeming with the real wealth of the soil, the real wealth of industry and the real wealth of manhood.

Cease prating of what happened to Germany when that nation had recourse to the printing press to flood its country with worthless marks.  Germany and the United States are poles apart.  Germany had no gold upon which to predicate the printing of its worthless paper money.  America has more gold than all Europe put together ;  possesses so much gold that her currency money today is at least one and one-half times short of what it should be according to the Federal Reserve Act passed in 1918.

Who is unconstitutional ?  Who is illegal ?  Those who seek redress through revaluation or normalization, or those who, to build up their argument’s to, perpetuate oppression, twist truth and deform facts to suit their purpose ?

VI

My fellow Americans, you are being victimized by misinformation which flows like poison into your arteries from the hearts of those who blindly cling to the presumed inviolability of bonds and contracts and deified gold.  Once more human life and human rights are being conscripted on the battle front of depression to become food and fodder for the protection of a financial formula that is unscientific, unchristian and inhuman.

All that the prophet Nehemias said of old can be assigned to the scrap heap or to the gutter.  All that Christ said, too, can be given to the gods of war as useless and poetic because man’s way has become more superior and more expedient than God’s.

Perhaps the United States Senate can table any resolution that aims at inflation, as they call it, but it cannot eradicate the determination from the minds of the American public who today are aroused to demand justice instead of impudence from their duly elected representatives.

In bestowing life upon the creature man, Almighty God likewise bestowed upon him the right to sustain his life by the sweat of his brow.  The omniscient Creator conferred upon no man or upon no group of men the license to exploit, to starve or to curtail unjustly the efforts of an individual much less the activities of the agricultural and laboring class of a nation for selfish purposes.

The laborer is worthy of his hire.  And the people of this country have a right to the products of this country.  That right cannot be taken away from them by the obstruction of a man-made law of antiquated gold.  It is the first duty of this or any other Government to erect laws and statues which will render possible and feasible the employment of every individual citizen who is honest enough to work.  That is the business of every state.

That is Catholic doctrine—not socialism, not radicalism.

That is a doctrine that was born in the crib of Bethlehem and was sealed with the ruddy drops of Christ’s blood upon the cross of Calvary long before Karl Marx and his atheism ever attempted to gain the leadership of an injured people, and long before any act of Congress decided once and for all that gold is wealth, that gold has a certain value, while men and things that sustain their lives are valueless.

THE SUICIDE OF CAPITALISM

Last Sunday I had occasion to quote a passage from the Old Testament relative to the existence of war bonds and usury.

To refresh your memories the Scripture was taken from the second Book of Esdras.  The prophet Nehemias is addressing himself to the nobles and magistrates of Israel.

In no mild terms he rebukes them vigorously because they persisted in profiteering upon the misery of their countrymen who had just emerged from a war.

He said :  “ And I was exceedingly angry when I heard their cries” (meaning the cries of the people).  “ And my heart thought with myself ;  and I rebuked the nobles and magistrates and said to them :  ‘Do you every one exact usury of your brethren ?’  And I gathered together a great assembly against them.  And I said to them :  ‘The thing you do is not good. . . .’ ”

Now, it is generally upheld in modern America that it is sound and legitimate for our Federal Government to issue Liberty Bonds and similar war bonds to those who can afford to buy them.  They are tax free.  They are interest bearing.  Thus they are lucrative to those who can afford to buy them.  But in their analysis it means that the laboring and the farming class of America are bound to pay interest to their wealthier fellow citizens for the privilege of having fought and bled in the last destructive commercial war.  In its logical analysis it further means that the wealthy class of our country, or rather those able to purchase such war bonds have invested in the destructive debts incurred by their fellow citizens.

At the outset, may I draw to your attention the point which I have been stressing so insistently, namely, that we are engaged in dealing with each other in dishonest dollars, which our Federal Bureau of Statistics admits are equivalent anywhere from 163 to 203 cents in every dollar.

I have been pointing out to this audience that we are suffering from a famine of currency money ;  that our real currency has gone into hiding ;  has been traded for bonds ;  and has brought about a condition of affairs where we are starving in the midst of plenty.  Here is proof, then, that the fundamental law of supply and demand upon which economists are eternally harping has been sunk beneath the quicksands of indecision and unintelligence.  Starving in the midst of plenty !

The problem, therefore, which immediately confronts us is to restore currency money to our fellow citizens—not directly, not through any Bolshevik method, but through the channels of trade and commerce, of industry and of agriculture ;  to restore it so that supply and demand can operate.  This is the natural channel of restoration.  Unnatural means such as trying to borrow ourselves out of debt are unsound and fraught with disaster.

To solve this problem I advocated recalling these interest bearing war bonds ;  to pay off their present holders in non-interest bearing currency which would soon find its way into circulation and also save us approximately $400-million per year in taxation.

To this proposal considerable opposition was aroused because it was said my argument was based upon an obsolete doctrine of religion.

I was not so much surprised as one might suspect to discover this attitude among a group of men who conscientiously believe that the practices of religion should find no place outside the walls of a church or perhaps beside the hearth of a home.

For we have long grown accustomed to the modern financial policies which have divorced themselves from Christian charity and, therefore, from the less important teachings of the Master.

But I was greatly surprised when the conclusion was forced upon me that many of our modern bankers and economists failed to understand and to comprehend both the essence and the nature of usury and interest even from an intellectual and rational standpoint.

I fear too many men have succeeded in getting themselves appointed to the chair of bank presidents and to the board of financial directors who were better equipped to manage affairs where less learning, less education and less thoughtfulness are required.

This conclusion has been forced upon us in the last two years.  And because of this the American public has lost confidence in a leadership which is well characterized by the biblical expression of “the blind leading the blind.”

Before confidence can be restored—and our whole financial structure is built upon that one word of confidence—those engaged in the banking profession had better revise the personnel of their staffs and establish at least a primary school of economics within the halls where directors meet to manage the financial affairs of a nation.

If you will bear with me, I shall try to advance an argument from reason to advocate the recalling of interest bearing war bonds.  It is an argument based upon the nature of capitalism and upon the principles underlying interest.

Abstract and dry as it may appear, I am of the opinion that every citizen should acquaint himself with it.

But, before endeavoring to explain the principle which underlies the practice of renting out money for gain, let me rehearse briefly the attitude of the ancient world towards interest.  I shall do this only with the hope of elucidating the major cause of our present chaotic condition ;  only with the hope of pointing out specifically what immediate and scientific procedure must be taken if we seriously entertain any thought of removing the dire economic effects which we are experiencing and which, if allowed to continue, will shortly destroy our system of capitalism.

II

Despite this ancient concept of money we discover, however, that about the year 2000 B.C. the practice of charging usury became common amongst the Babylonians.  The interest charged by these people sometimes attained the rate of 33¹/₃ per cent.

To the credit of the Babylonians, their great lawmaker, Hammurabi, outlawed this piratical practice.

In Egypt the custom of charging interest became prevalent about the year 718 B.C. and remained one of their pampered theories of civilization until eventually that nation was subjugated by the Romans.

Remembering that the Jewish people had been led captive into Egypt, it is easy to comprehend how the progeny of Father Abraham readily acquired the evil habit of dealing in usury.

But if you open your Old Testament you will read in the Book of Exodus, the twenty-second chapter, in the Book of Leviticus, the twenty-fifth chapter, and in Deuteronomy, the twenty-third chapter—you will read that the practice of charging interest was regarded as immoral and unsound.

In fact you will find that this economic principle, namely, that money in itself was not fruitful and therefore interest charged on money must not be tolerated—you will find that this economic principle was upheld by the prophets and the kings of Israel and Judea who were very open in their condenmation of usury whenever it appeared.

Thus, in this brief review of the early history of usury and interest it is sufficient to remind this audience that the exaction of money for the hire of money was a pagan custom.

Wherever religion flourished, we find that its leaders always took up afresh the campaign against usury.  This was true for at least twenty-five uninterrupted centuries of the Jewish and Christian history.

While the Greek and Roman philosophers theoretically condemned usury or interest ;  while in the year 412 B.C. it was Abolished by a plebiscite in Rome, yet we find its practice flourishing in the days of the Caesars.

No wonder the great historian of Rome has exclaimed that the system of slavery wedded to the practice of usury planted the seeds of decay which ruined the ancient world.

III

Up to this moment I have been speaking of what took place in the ancient world in order to give us a clearer background on the question of modern interest.

Bear in mind that usury and interest for the ancients were identical terms for the simple ;  single reason that money was considered as something non-productive.

In modern times money is no longer considered non-productive.

In modern times there is an essential distinction between usury and interest.  This distinction arises, if I may bore you with repetitions, from the capitalistic consideration that money is now productive.  Please remember that word.  Money is productive !

Of course, everyone who is interested in the history of banking or in the history of economics well understands that the Catholic Church for twenty uninterrupted centuries has fought relentlessly against usury.  The Church adopted this attitude not only because it was fortified by the many texts of Scripture to which I have just alluded, but because reason itself dictated that no gain may be morally had from a non-productive thing.

Today the Church has not ceased its opposition to this unscientific and destructive usury any more than it has withdrawn its opposition to adultery or to murder.

But with the birth of capitalism, scarcely more than one hundred and twenty-five years ago, theologians, philosophers, economists and scientists began to distinguish between the two words “usury” and “interest”.  The distinction was not one of conventionality.  It was one based upon fact ;  founded upon the nature of things.

Money began to assume a new role in the affairs of life.  While it was still regarded only as a medium of exchange ;  while it was never looked upon as a medium of control, nevertheless, it appeared evident from the nature of the new structure called capitalism that money began to be fruitful, to be productive.

In the past, expenses of government had been conducted through the medium of taxation.  Portions of wheat, of oil, of wine were exacted by the feudal lords from their tenants.  Taxation was levied on the actual possessions of the citizens.  Wars were fought, universities were built, cathedrals were erected, roads were paved, all at the expense of the present wealth of the country.  Seldom was its future wealth ever thought of much less employed.

Perhaps this “pay as you go” method was accountable for the relatively slow progress achieved by our ancestors.

However, the system of capitalism under which we live today was partly predicated upon the theory that now it is possible for the present generation to expand, to build highways and railroads, to cultivate limitless acres of land, to erect churches and shrines of learning, to accomplish a multitude of things in the name of progress mostly at the expense of future generations.  Do you get the difference ?  Formerly it was present money, actual money.  Today it is future money, rented money.

Money, therefore, becomes not only the medium of exchange.  It also becomes the ambassador of future wealth.  It represents the labor to be expended by the future generation borrowed by the present generation.  It presupposes that we of today can use the unborn things of tomorrow—the wheat that is to be grown next year in our fields, the dwelling house which we are unable to pay for today but which we would be able to pay for ten years hence.  Now, instead of waiting for next year’s crop to grow ;  instead of suffering from inconvenience within the walls of a cabin until such labor could have been expended to erect a modern dwelling, capitalism devised a system of progress and of credit and of prosperity by which the present generation can enjoy at least part of the benefits of the future ;  by which a young man need not wait necessarily for old age before he can establish himself in comfort.

Capitalism was a new scientific advance.  The nature of money underwent a change.  Without capitalism and its power to borrow upon the future where would be such tremendous blessings as the Panama Canal, as our mighty railroads, as our paved highways, as our sanitary cities, as our modern dwellings, as those myriad things which we have called into being through our system of credit, through our confidence in the future both of which are identified with this thing called capitalism ?

If we borrow the labor from the future ;  and if the laborer is worthy of his hire, then interest money becomes the wage which we owe the future.

The “pay as you go” policy in ages gone by has been superseded by the “pay as they come due” policy in the age of the present.

In a word, the principal article of the faith of the capitalist is predicated upon the theory of debt, lending and borrowing against the future for productive purposes.  I hope I have made that plain.

In this theory there is nothing immoral, nothing unsound.  Likely it is the best theory that has been advanced for financial purposes.

The Christian Church was quick to realize what had happened.  She was just as quick to distinguish between usury and interest—usury which is identified with sterility and non-productivity ;  and interest which is associated with fecundity and progress.

I know this is frightfully abstract.  But, it is tremendously important to the citizens of this country to comprehend the principles which I am about to lay down.

My friends, the vulgar notion identified with usury is only a half-truth.  Most men, and perhaps not a few bankers as well as statesmen in this as in other nations, are of the improper opinion that usury merely means an overcharge of interest.  I restate that such a notion is only a half-truth, because usury is substantially related to the lending of money for gain on some project which is non-productive.  Of old money could not breed money because it was merely the medium of exchange.

Today money can breed money because it is not only the medium of exchange, it is also the ambassador of future wealth, of future crops, of future labor, which we of the present pledge to repay ;  use and promise not to destroy.

I feel that I am risking much in dealing with this dry as dust discussion.  But it is a risk well taken for I fear that unless we understand the true nature of capitalism, which during the last few years has gone on a financial spree, we are liable to fall into the error that to cure the headache which has followed on the morning after, we had better employ the services of a surgeon to cut it off and replace it with the block-head of Communism.

Then the Scriptural text which tells us that “the last state of this man will be worse than the first” will be quoted with much fervor.

My only aim is to invite capitalism and those who control its destiny to use the structure which our forefathers have builded for us ;  to cease abusing it before the same philosophy which predominated in the minds of well-intentioned prohibitionists regarding the use and abuse of wine and spirituous liquors shall once more crop up in our midst with dire results.

But let us return to our subject.

Now that money is fruitful, it becomes evident that it is just and ethical for the lender of money to be repaid for his services, as it was of old for the farmer who loaned his neighbor a bushel of seed to be repaid not only with the seed with which he accommodated his neighbor but also with a small measure of the fruitful crop which sprang from it.

In other words, interest is associated with loaning money for some productive enterprise—for building a factory designed to produce either the necessities or luxuries of life, for constructing railroads, for making possible tremendous public improvements, for accomplishing all the magnificent things which have marked the progress of this last one hundred and twenty-five years.  Usury, however, is identified with exploitation, with injustice, with the rental of money for non-productive enterprises.

May I emphasize that word “productivity”.  It is essentially associated with the morality of lending money at interest.  It is essentially related to the principle expressed by the prophet of old in his condemnation of usury, to the teachings of the Christian Church for twenty centuries, and to the sound principles of capitalism and political economy which should exist today.

I trust that I have made the principle plain.  It is the same today as in the beginning.  It must be the same tomorrow if our system hopes to endure.  Whatever is productive can continue gaining for its owner even though absent from its owner’s hands.  Such is money which is now considered not only as the medium of exchange but as the ambassador of future wealth.

These propositions are valid independent of the particular order which exists, be it the Mosaic Law, be it early Christian law, be it the law of feudalism, or be it the law of capitalism.

These principles were valid when the Church laid its veto on usury.

IV

But what has happened to capitalism during these last one hundred and twenty-five years or so ?

Why have I entitled this discourse “The Suicide o f Capitalism” ?

The answer is brief.&