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 YOURS OR MINE. 
 
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 TO SHOW THE TRUE BASIS OF PROPERTY, AND THE % 
 
 CAUSES OF ITS UNEQUAL DISTRIBUTION. § 
 
 —•-©-♦ — 
 
 BY E. H. HEYWOOD, 
 
 PRESIDENT OP • i/ 1 
 
 > 
 
 THE NEW-ENGLAND LABOR-REFORM LEAGUE, S 
 
 K 
 
 AXD AtJTHOE OP ^ 
 
 AN ECLIPSE OF FAITH;" "THE PEOPLE;" '"THE GOOD OP EVIL;" " COM- 
 MON SENSB-" "IS.MS;" "THE LABOR PARTY; " 
 WITH OTHER ADDRESSES.' 
 
 TWENTIETH THOUSAND. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 
 I 
 
 PRINTED AT THE OFFICE OF "WEEKLY AMERICAN 
 
 WORKMAN," 
 
 '§) 
 
 g, 37i» CORNHILL. 
 
 
 
 OT^ 18G9. 
 
 
 
 ^^T-^^ v § v e^8^ Th^ Greatest of A.11 Serves .All. 
 
 *^&W<Z/(v)S 
 
 _•._>-. .- .,..-- ... _.
 
 YOURS OR MINE. 
 
 a:n~ ESSAY, 
 
 TO SHOW THE TRUE BASIS OF PROPERTY, AND THE 
 CAUSES OF ITS UNEQUAL DISTRIBUTION. 
 
 BY E. H. HEYWOOD, 
 
 PRESIDENT OF 
 
 THE NEW-ENGLAND LABOR-REFORM LEAGUE 
 
 AND AUTHOR OF 
 
 ; AN ECLIPSE OF FAITH;" "THE PEOPLE; " "THE GOOD OF EVIL;" "COM 
 
 MON SENSE;" "ISMS;" "THE LABOR PARTY ; » 
 
 WITH OTHER ADDRESSES. 
 
 TWENTIETH THOUSAND. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 PRINTED AT THE OFFICE OF "WEEKLY AMERICAN WORKMAN,' 
 3 7 4, CORNHILL. 
 
 1869. 

 
 Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by 
 
 E. H. HEYWOOD, 
 
 In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Magaftchusetti.
 
 YOURS OR MINE 
 
 Everything, from the body one wears, to the world he lives in, is* 
 subject to the claim of ownership ; an object of common desire, and 
 the means of universal comfort, property, is yet the source of such 
 general and ominous conflict, that an intelligent sense, .both of its 
 just and unjust claims, should guide further steps towards order and 
 progress. Especially does an issue now interrogating us, an issue 
 fraught with gravest interests and threatening overturn, in comparison 
 with which, all former revolutions are insignificant — the labor ques- 
 tion require this. It is ot little use to discuss " The Rights of 
 Labor," " The Rights of Capital," " Eight Hours," " Demand and Sup- 
 ply,"" Free Competition," " Co-operation," " Cheap Money," " Specie 
 Payments," " Public Faith," " Repudiation," or other war-cries in- 
 scribed on the banners of hostile interests, until we have determined, 
 with some degree of exactness, what is right between these contend- 
 ing parties, on what grounds we may hold or dispose of property, and 
 what causes its unequal distribution. Whether the labor movement 
 turns out to be merejy anew assault of destitute assertion on vested 
 interests ; a raid of the have-nothings on the have-somethings, to end 
 in defeat, and the handing of the American people over to the dark 
 fate of masses in older nations ; or a decisive step towards fundamen- 
 tal equity, — depends much upon a correct answer of this inquiry. 
 Hardly hoping to succeed, when so many others have failed, I yet am 
 not at liberty to decline investigating a question which so deeply con- 
 cerns individual duty and social destin}'. 
 
 Most people see truth, but see it so rarely with a sense of moral 
 obligation to obey if, that reform is still the battle of a 
 few believers with many unbelievers. That service is the labor, 
 source of wealth, that labor creates all values equitably the 
 vendible, is so generally conceded in political science, and source 
 the popular sense of right, argument in its defence seems of 
 unnecessary. Yet struggle to make that truth the basis of wealth. 
 practical life, — perhaps the gravest moral issue which has 
 claimed the attention of men since Calvary — will stir all nations pro- 
 foundly. The claim of equality before God, in the sixteenth century, 
 followed by demand for equality before the law in the nineteenth 
 century, has now to prove its sincerity by establishing equality in law 
 and custom. What one finds in arriving on the earth, — air, light,
 
 4 YOURS OR MINE. 
 
 soil, sea, mines, forest, bird, quadruped, all objects of value or use, un- 
 modified by human skill, — may be classed as natural wealth, the free 
 inheritance which beneficent Providence bequeathes to all His children. 
 What this immigrant from the realm of space produces after landing, 
 here, — hearth, hammock, food, church, town, mills, roads, post-office, 
 newspapers, telegraph, all matter penetrated and improved by mind, — 
 is artificial wealth. The work done, sharpening a stake, building a 
 city, having a dream, writing a poem, service contributed, comfort sacr i- 
 liced, originates the claim to ownership or property, and defines its 
 nature and limits. In equity, one owns what he has earned, or re- 
 ceived as the free gift of another's earnings ; to claim more, is an 
 invasion of those natural resources which justice holds free and com- 
 mon, or fraudulent seizure of the fruits of others' toil. 
 
 But this possessive case has also an objective form : others labored, 
 we have entered into the results. Every stroke of work 
 pre-efeort is the resultant of numberless preceding forces. Many 
 and pre- fortunes were made by the use of machinery, the in- 
 occupancxl ventors of which died in the poor-house. One builds a 
 house in a week ; but in the materials, tools, and skill 
 used, centuries unite to construct and equip the carpenter for his work 
 — the clothes on his person, the food in his stomach — his body 
 brought into the world, at such cost of pain, that his mother expe- 
 rienced deeper meaning of the word " labor" than he ever dreamed 
 of — flesh and blood borrowed, for all animal substances coming from 
 surrounding elements, if plant, water, earth, air, should lay hands on 
 their own, they would leave him no body to live in — the spark of life 
 animating his house of clay — all derived. Though he drove every 
 nail, and bought eveiy fibre of material, will the man be impertinent, 
 impious enough, to say he built the house? Still, though many fore- 
 workers may dispute his claim, he produced the concrete result; and 
 societ} r allows him a title. The tenure of mere pre-occupancy, or pur- 
 chase, by shuffling the cards of "supply and demand," with little or 
 no valid labor-claim, is so general, that property is timid, fears ques- 
 tions, fears an interrogation-point more than a thousand bayonets; 
 goes info partnership with sin, with slavery, war, forgery, speculation ; 
 so that, looking into any popular evil, property slams the door in 
 your face. But pre-occupancy, as of land and tools, to use them, bene- 
 fits society and is acquiesced in. 
 
 Providence, however, holding stock in both men and things, teaches 
 
 individual self-sacrifice to the public good. In view of 
 puheic Deity being omnipotent, avarice wonders how one can be so 
 GOOD. strong, and not steal. Yet it is the essence of power to scorn 
 
 appropriation ; one is great in proportion to his ability of 
 self-support and to assist, others; deeds which live in history were 
 voluntary and gratuitous; those who work for money, cease when 
 the pay stops; those Who work for love of it, hold on. God is God, 
 because lie works for all, and for nothing. To see poverty successfully 
 dci'n-d, strengthens one. I was sad one day, having no money to buy 
 3, but recovered on meeting cheerful faces going barefoot. The 
 loafer, — who is I his free, fat, reckless fellow, in no anxiety about where 
 he shall get his dinner?
 
 YOURS OR MINE. 
 
 Our soldiers fought for the country, died to save property and gov- 
 ernment; yet the " army-blue " covers poor men, and from lowest 
 bog of " Dismal Swamp" to highest peak of Rocky Mountains, no- 
 where can the soldier's widow rest her foot, but property, in the name 
 of law, may not order her off. She may own a farm in dreamland, 
 though not in the "Union" it bereft her of all to save. That most 
 useful of human beings, the farmer, impresses a transient labor-title 
 only on the surface, and a few inches below, tills the mere rind, the 
 mould of earth ; but those who never turn, or intend to turn a sod, 
 fclaim to " own" land from centre of globe to stars. "The land shall 
 not be sold forever, for the land is mine, saith the Lord." Jewish 
 theocracy, in behalf of natural right, which existed before human 
 government, and will survive it, every fiftieth year, with trump of 
 jubilee, proclaimed liberty "throughout all the land unto all the in- 
 habitants thereof," — liberty of person, and also of property; houses, 
 lands, nothing could be sold beyond the day of Jubilee, when con- 
 tracts of sale ceased, debts were expunged, and "every man returned 
 unto his possession." Lev. xxv. 10, 23. 27, and 28. One of the ear- 
 liest ideas received from a deeply religious father, was, when over- 
 looking our mountain-side home, he said to the slip of a boy at his 
 side, " Those buildings, the land and stock, custom and the courts 
 call mine ; but I am only a trustee, holding them for others' good, not 
 merely for the use of a family, but the world at large, as the Lord, 
 wills." The followers of St. Simon, of Owen, Fourier; the Perfec- 
 tiouists of Oneida;. the increasing and marvellously wealthy disciple- 
 ship of Mother Ann Lee, called Shakers, — wherever devout souls 
 lift the standard of creative right against usurping 'fact, they obey the 
 same impulse with which immediate Divine presence, in the Pentecostal 
 scene, inspired believers to be "of one heart and one soul, none of 
 them saying that ought of the things he possessed was his own, for 
 they had all things in common." While these cases by no means 
 prove communism a solution of the property problem, they are most 
 conclusive evidence against the validity of individual or corporate 
 claim to ownership beyond actual earnings. The interests of living 
 creators and present public welfare overrule traditional titles; for 
 the more complete right to property, which present labor confers, is 
 valid against the transient claims of pre-elfort and pre-occupancy." 
 
 Of our workers, one raises wheat, another makes shoes, another 
 keeps house, or washes clothes. Since all produce more of 
 some lvalues, and no one creates the variety consumed, basis of 
 they exchange commodities. The farmer needs a dinner, ex- 
 a bed to sleep in, whole and clean clothing for his person, change. 
 The cook, the chambermaid, the seamstress, the washer, 
 supply his wants ; or the housekeeper, skilled in many ways, per- 
 sonifies all these artists in one. The shoemaker desires to trade his 
 goods for provisions, clothing, or carpenter-work. How shall com- 
 merce occur, so as to recognize the service of all, and defraud none? 
 Evidently, the cost of labor is the equitable basis of exchange. The 
 fanner and carpenter " change works ; " sewing-girls, rich in skilled la- 
 bor, say, "You trim my bonnet, and I will cut }'our dress ; " and present- 
 ly, on the sidewalk, thej' outshine daughters of Luxury, who have
 
 6 TOURS OR MINE. 
 
 nothing but money they did not earn. One boy helps another pick 
 chips, if he will help him play. The exchange of flour from the West, 
 for fabrics of the East ; of cotton from Carolina, for Massachusetts 
 " fanaticism ; " of tea from China, for English rebellion ; of American 
 reapers and mowers, for German ideas, legitimate trade, the world 
 over, is barter of service for service in the concrete form of com- 
 modities. Goods cannot be conveyed from producer to consumer with- 
 out labor ; so merchants are as necessary a*s mechanics, or farmers, 
 and their service and risk must be included in the full ultimate cost. 
 Since it is the right and for the interest of purchasers to choose, 
 what is cheapest and best, the most accomplished workmen will have 
 a natural precedence, while the unskilled will be ruled out of the trade 
 in question, and employed in what nature and culture tit them to do 
 best. To those, therefore, denying that u cost is the limit of price," 
 because labor is sometimes misdirected, we reply, that while their 
 objection is valid against paying the full cost of incompetent work, 
 it is more potent against one's right to take more than the full cost 
 of skilled labor. But this cost being arrived at, we have the maxi- 
 mum price which may be equitably put upon any commodity, and find 
 value in exchange, like the claim to property, limited by moral law, to 
 the amount of labor invested. 
 
 Service being the primary title to property, we will now notice its 
 
 rights in the form of profit, rent, and interest ; which may 
 'profit. be termed the secondary claims of labor, or the adjutant 
 
 services of property. Since products are distributed to 
 consumers through wages, rent, and profits, or dividends ; and since 
 the warmest partizans of capital admit that the wages class, under the 
 present regime, do not get any more than they earn, — the elements 
 of inequality we are in search of must be concealed in the distribu- 
 ting agencies now to be examined. Not to go to sea without a com- 
 pass, to arrive at correct conclusions, we must test them by the 
 cardinal principle agreed to in the outset, — that all wealth is the 
 product of physical or intellectual labor. Whether the reader is su- 
 perfluously rich or " independently poor," 1 ask him to join me in 
 flinging aside old opinions, and follow truth wherever she leads. Even 
 the noble desire to help others is sin, if it assumes to give what one 
 does not honestly own. The world needs justice, not benevolence ; 
 
 " For he that feeds men serveth few ; 
 He serves all who dares be true." 
 
 The right of the strong over the weak, is the right to assist them ; of 
 the well over the sick, is the right to cure them ; of the wise over the 
 ignorant, is the right to teach them. 
 
 If profit means what force and fraud can clutch, the ancient pro- 
 verbs, — " Trade is war ; " " As a nail between the stone-joints, so does 
 sin stick fast between buying and selling," — become true. But as an 
 honest agent of distribution, the merchant is a powerful aid to pro- 
 duction, and illustrates the modern maxim, " Exchange is civiliza- 
 tion." So the manufacturer, the banker, the landlord, each is a source 
 of immense good to society as a worker ; but, what sadder sight under 
 heaven, than a man of native ability, using the superior intellect
 
 T0UJ5.S OR MINE. 7 
 
 God gave him to overreach his weaker fellows ! To " make " mone}', 
 otherwise than by earning it, is the business of counterfeiters. Hence 
 profit is inadmissable, except for work done, or risk incurred. 
 
 It often occurs that creators of value are unable to exchange 
 products directly, and some representative is necessary. 
 The party in arrears recognizes the unadjusted balance nature 
 by giving an order on his own service or property : the and 
 order is current, or will be received, in further exchanges, office 
 so long as the issuer guarantees its redemption. In this of 
 way, what is called " currency " legitimately originates, monet. 
 Money, therefore, is an acknowledgment, a certificate of 
 value rendered, for which^ the issuer thereof (not community or gov- 
 ernment) is bound to pay equivalent for equivalent, to the holder, on 
 demand. It may consist of bricks of tea, as in Tartary ; red cloth, 
 as in Timbuctoo; codfish, as in Iceland or Newfoundland; nails, as 
 in Scotland ; tobacco, as in Virginia ; bullets and wampum, as in 
 Massachusetts; iron, as in Sparta; leather, as in Carthage; slaves 
 and cattle, as among Anglo-Saxons and Greeks ; or silver, as now, in 
 oriental , and gold and paper, in occidental nations. No matter what 
 the material, if the faith of the issuing party is kept ; if the thing 
 promised, the value signified, is forthcoming when the sign is pre- 
 sented. Since, in obedience to its derivation from the Latin verb, 
 moneo, to remind, mone} 7 represents unpaid service, and also is used 
 as a standard of common reference, in estimating value, a unit of 
 measurement is necessary. This should have some relation to what 
 is to be measured. A bushel is a given quantity, esti- 
 mated by the space it fills ; a pound is known by its what 
 weight or gravity towards the centre of the earth ; but a is a 
 "dollar" is a legal fiction, having no definite relation dollar? 
 either to quantity or quality. It is named from the Swed- 
 ish daler, from Dale or Dalebergh, where it was first coined ; or from 
 the German thaler, from thai, a vale ; because thalers were first coined 
 in the valley of Joachim. Since, as Adam Smith well observed, 
 " Labor was the first price, the original purchase-money, paid for all 
 things, and is the ultimate and real standard by which they must be 
 examined, and compared," evidently it should furnish the unit of 
 measurement. A day's labor, or some other conventional amount of 
 service, in the progress of. monetary science, will probably become 
 that unit. But it is within the purpose of this inquiry, to notice only 
 the fact, that a dollar serves the uses of business, just in proportion 
 as it is a reliable representative of labor or property ; and that the 
 inherent value of the substance of which it is composed, is of no ac- 
 count whatever in its use as money, provided it is portable, and so 
 cheap and unmonopolizable, as to be within the reach of all having 
 value to represent. 
 
 Before considering rent and interest, it is necessary to observe, that, 
 since property is purely an artificial creation, it has no 
 inherent right or power to increase. The impressions property 
 of human effort upon material substance soon fade out ; barns 
 left, alone, property decays ; frost, fire, rain, rust, — all its nothing. 
 natural enemies, — so incessantly invade it, that mere self-
 
 8 YOURS OR MINE. 
 
 preservation requires constant nourishment from its parent, labor. A 
 house, a railroad, a carriage, a coat, — all objects of human creation, — 
 in a very few years, decay and vanish. Labor tends to self-mainten- 
 ance and increase, originates the causes of its own growth ; the effort 
 of property even to breathe, kills it, for oxygen brings dissolution. 
 Labor begins naked, and becomes opulent ; property begins in wealth, 
 and ends in ashes. Hence, however much ma}' be credited to its 
 collateral service, property, by original motive-power, not only earns 
 nothing, but is dependent on labor for continued existence. The 
 same law of right which guarantees the owner his earnings to the 
 uttermost farthing, forbids him, even to keep his property alive, the 
 use of another's industry, without paying for it. The claim to rent, 
 therefore, is reduced to this : The owner of a house, after 
 rent. it has paid for itself, as most rentals do shortly, may 
 
 charge for its use, the cost of his labor, in transferring it to 
 you, and the amount of wear and tear, minus the cost of insurance, 
 the cost of defence against the natural enemies of houses. That is, if 
 3'ou return it to him as good as you took it, and pay him for the labor 
 of leasing, you not only owe him nothing, but he owes 3 r ou for keep- 
 ing the house in repair. ' The equitable rent of a farm, a spade, a 
 horse, or any other species of property, ma} r likewise be ascertained 
 by the amount of service rendered. 
 
 Since money is the representative of property, it has no rights su- 
 perior to that of which it is the exponent ; and interest, 
 interest, being the price or rent of money, is subject to the same 
 extok- laws as property, which money represents. Interest, 
 tion. therefore, like rent, contributes nothing to the support of 
 
 society ; but is a tax on labor. It is said to be the share 
 of capital in the profits of business ; but, truly speaking, it shaves 
 capitalists out of just earnings ; for, as the demands of usury increase, 
 the scope and profits of productive enterprise diminish. When banks 
 get into marble fronts, labor is crowded into tenement hovels ; as the 
 usurious few go up, the useful many go down. If Southern planters 
 pay twenty-live per cent on money, they cannot compete with Indian 
 cottonists, who have it from England for three, li' land pays two 
 per cent, and usury asks eight, the farmer is one man fighting against 
 four ; and is swept in among the 4 ' city poor," of whom purblind phil- 
 anthropy asks, " Why don't you go to the country ? " In life-insur- 
 ance, interest serves a direct and beneficent? purpose. When the service 
 and risk of the capitalist, as manufacturer, merchant, or banker, are 
 paid, what further claim has interest? Evidently, none ; for we have 
 already shown profit, except as it represents labor, to be only 
 another name for plunder. But has not one the same right to sell his 
 money as his property? Certainly ; he may sill what lie owns; and 
 he owns what he has earned. I loan you a hundred dollars on valid 
 security for one year; if it is promptly returned, when due, you owe 
 me for passing it out, and receiving it back — no more, since that is 
 the cost of labor iu the transaction. This money, if honest, repre- 
 sents definite value, as a house, a farm, or a year's labor ; but my 
 loaning it to you does not, in the least, disenable the property it 
 stands for to perform its natural functions. The house shelters its
 
 YOURS OR MINE. ? 
 
 occupants ; the farm loves and rewards husbandry the same, while it 
 is the basis of my credit which assists you. Luxurious mansions and 
 fragrant gardens, soft apparel and princely chariots, are beautiful 
 objects to look upon, which we do not envy owners' possession of ; 
 would that all who wish, could enjoy such ease and opulence, for that 
 is legitimate use of property. But in allowing these fine estates, 
 through interest, to enable their occupants to live without work, so- 
 ciety sanctions monstrous injustice ; which will awaken profound 
 indignation, when once popular thought is fixed on it. Some oppose 
 U»ury, or high interest, and defend low rates ; but the difference is in 
 degree, not in kind ; for the labor and risk involved being paid ; all 
 beyond that is extortion. As well argue that slavery was wrong in 
 ten states, but right and constitutional in two or three. Hence, as 
 an invasion of abstract justice, interest must be adjudged crime in 
 the court of conscience ; and the right to meddle with it, carries with 
 it the right to abolish it altogether. 
 
 To prove a thing essentially wrong, is quite enough to convince 
 those whose moral sense is not perverted by legal and cus- 
 tomary fraud ; — but so many find a rule of faith and prac- interest 
 tice in traditional authority, it is well to show that inspired forbid- 
 writings condemn interest, — the most emphatic among den by 
 which, are the stern denunciations of the Christian Bible, past 
 " Take thou no usury of thy brother ; but fear thy God. revela- 
 . . Thou shall not give thy money upon usury, nor tion. 
 lend thy victuals for increase " (Lev. xxv. 36, 37). 
 "Thou shalt not lend on usury to thy brother" (Deut. xxiii. 19). 
 "Lord, who shall abide in thy tabernacle? who shall dwell in thy 
 holy hill? He that walketh uprightly, and worketh righteousness. . _. . 
 he that putteth not out his money to usury" (Psalms xv. 1, 2, 5). 
 " He that hath not given forth upon usury, neither taken any in- 
 crease, hath withdrawn his hand from iniquity, hath executed true 
 judgment between man and man ; .... he is just, he shall surely 
 live, saith the Lord God " (Ezekiel xviii. 8, 9). " If ye lend to them 
 of whom ye hope to receive, what thank have ye ? For sinners also 
 lend to sinners, to receive as much again. But love ye your enemies, 
 and lend, hoping for nothing again ; and ye shall be children of the 
 Highest" (Luke vi. 34, 35). To those who quote in reply, the para- 
 ble of the usurious lord, and the example of Jews fleecing strangers, 
 I have only to say, that, in shielding sinful practice behind scripture 
 texts, they stand with defenders of chattel bondage, who thus proved 
 slavery a " divine institution ; " with advocates of war, who preach 
 Jesus, and practice Joshua ; with polygamists of Utah, and keepers 
 of brothels in our cities, who are good " Christians," because " the 
 wisest man," Solomon, and other patriarchs, had many wives, and 
 numerous concubines, or " fancy women," as they are now called. 
 Interpreted in the spirit of truth and humanity, the Bible sanctions 
 no such immoralities ; but condemns alike, slavery, war, libertinism, 
 and usury. The fellowship of Bouddha, Zoroaster, and Mahomet, 
 with the Greek and Roman churches, who compose a very large ma- 
 jority of the professedly religious world, all put usury in the category 
 of forbidden sin.
 
 10 
 
 YOURS OR MINE. 
 
 Turning to philosophers and moralists, we first meet that pro- 
 foundest of human reasoners, Aristotle : " Money, a me- 
 philoso- dium of exchange, is by nature sterile, and should have no 
 phers legal right to increase, except by passing through some 
 
 and form of labor." Cato : " Usury is murder." Dr. Wilson, 
 
 moral- an English writer of 1569 : " Taking interest is a greater 
 ists crime than taking life ; for while the murderer kills one, 
 
 against usury swallows whole families, communities, and na- 
 !T- tions." Masse: " God, nature, reason, scripture ; all law, 
 
 authors, and councils, are against usury." Fenton : "It 
 was never even defended, for fifteen hundred years after Christ." 
 St. Basil : " The griping usurer gets his victim's hand to paper, and 
 completes his wretchedness. How so? By dismissing him bereft of 
 libert}'." Buxton : " The tired earth becomes barren ; only the usur- 
 er's money, the longer it breeds, the lustier ; one hundred pounds, 
 put out twenty 3 r ears since, is grandmother to two or three hundred 
 children, pretty striplings, able to beget their mother again in a 
 short time." Bacon : " It exists through the hardness of men's 
 hearts." Roman law decreed it an aggravated species of theft, and 
 punished it with the utmost severity. English law, from Alfred the 
 Great, down till the moneyed aristocracy subsidized the moral sense 
 of that people ; and statutes in almost every American state, bear the 
 same testimoiry ; reason, religion, history, and legislation, unite to 
 condemn usury wrong in principle and extortion in practice. 
 
 A knowledge of the means by which property may be equitably ac- 
 quired, now enables us to find the causes of its unequal 
 what distribution ; to look into this millstone of poverty which 
 
 makes hangs about the neck of labor, and learn why wealth re- 
 
 workers volves into cunning hands, which produce nothing ; while its 
 rooR ? creators are poor. Of the three million three hundred and 
 
 fifty thousand inhabitants of London, sixtj^ thousand are 
 beggars. In New-York City, a careful observer, Peter Cooper, states 
 that poverty increases ten times faster than population, — a fact which 
 cannot be explained away by foreign influx, for our native population 
 is breaking down the most rapidly ; and Commissioner Wells proves 
 that immigration alone has added not less than five hundred and eighty 
 million dollars to the wealth of the nation, in the last three years. 
 In Boston, multitudes of working-women are in such extreme penury, 
 that life itself is a burden ; " they wait for death, and it cometh not ; 
 they rejoice exceedingly and are glad when they find the grave." 
 The floating statistics of life, in two of the richest and most enlight- 
 ened nations, reveal conditions and tendencies, which may well shake 
 one's faith in accepted principles of justice. Social classes are 
 made of one blood, children of the same impartial Creator, who is no 
 respecter of persons. To say poverty and crime among willing . 
 workers, are •■ necessary evils," is a reassertion of the old infidelity 
 to right, which declared chattel bondage the natural state of a weaker 
 race. The primary cause will not be found in depravity and idleness 
 of the industrial classes, for the opulent few, whose business it is to 
 get a living without work, have their full share of these disabilities. 
 Thriftlessness and vice cannot be charged upon the great mass of the
 
 YOURS OR MINE. 11 
 
 people ; there are deeper and subtler causes of their degradation. 
 Every one sees that those whose labor makes property, and whose 
 votes make government, have little enjoyment of either ; that one 
 rarely acquires a competence, unless he escapes from the wages class, 
 and somehow is enriched b} T others' earnings. It is so natural an im- 
 pulse to strive to throw off burdens of poverty and debt, that one 
 will not pay rent, interest, or profit to another, longer than he can 
 avoid it. By instinct, also, we help our weaker fellows, unless some 
 special bribe makes it for our interest to assist in keeping them down. 
 Hence, the inherent vitality of human nature, and its robust reap- 
 pearing individuality, which is at once the pillared strength, on which 
 social organism rests ; and an explosive protest against undue mon- 
 archism would prevent such centralization of property as has oc- 
 curred in older nations, and is rapidly taking place in ours, were there 
 not some special means by which speculative cunning gets control of 
 the main sources and channels of wealth, and forces them to bring 
 grist to its mill. 
 
 This injustice consists in reducing theft to the fine art of getting 
 more than you give ; in the practical abandonment of the 
 equitable title to ownership labor. Substituting advan- stealing, 
 tage for service, in accordance with the questionable a fine 
 maxim, " a thing is worth what it will bring," men hold art. 
 that might makes right ; that one may justly take from 
 another what his necessities compel him to yield. On this principle, 
 exchange becomes a species of pirac}' where there is not only no in- 
 tention to render equivalent for equivalent, but studied effort to get 
 the largest possible amount of another's service or property, for the 
 least possible return. Advantage-taking is erected into a system, a 
 " science; " and privileged parties, absolved from moral obligations, 
 cease to exercise the generous equity of rational beings, obedient to 
 essential right, and make cheating a matter of business. Justice and 
 liberty, supplanted by extortion and mastership, the producing classes 
 become vassal to the speculating classes ; the creators of wealth, to its 
 cunning possessors ; and prevailing fraud, infecting the whole body- 
 politic, makes men doubt even the possibility of honesty, and believe 
 poverty, crime, antagonism, and war, still in the realm of " necessary 
 evils "where the powers of darkness reign supreme. Hence political 
 economists, in ignoring cost, and attempting to build a science ex- 
 clusively on "value in exchange," have chosen a basis unstable and 
 treacherous, — a negation of honest service and moral right. 
 ' The art of overreaching, enacted into law, makes inevitable a 
 progressive inequality of wealth, the chief guarantee of 
 which is enforced currency. Since money is the common despotic 
 and indispensable agency to measure products and dis- money. 
 tribute them to consumers ; and since most contracts and 
 exchanges must be made through the accepted currency, it is apparent, 
 that if the speculating classes get control of this medium, and 
 dictate its nature, amount, and value, they are masters of both labor 
 and trade, and can compel us to pay them a special tax on the chance 
 to do business, and also for the privilege of living. Assuming that 
 money represents all property in the nation, instead of the property
 
 12 YOURS OR MINE. 
 
 of those only •who issue it, they bribe government to endorse the 
 gigantic usurpation, and thereby are enabled to produce hard 
 times, bankruptcies, panics, and wars to any extent. For, like thieves 
 and wreckers, who, on battle-fields and desolate coasts, prowl about 
 to plunder the pockets and denude the persons of dead men. money- 
 changers reap their richest harvests in public disaster. Knowing, 
 that, with an exclusive and irresponsible currency (though it is not 
 true when money is free and reliable, as I shall presently show), 
 prices will rise with inflation, and fall with contraction, they favor 
 large issues to carry them up to a high pitch, when they sell their 
 property, and cry out: — "Money is redundant; contract the cur- 
 rency ! " Banks refuse discounts, prices fall with a crash, whelming 
 credit, honest accumulations, and well-built houses in general ruin. 
 It is estimated that ninety-seven per cent of business men, in cities, 
 and eighty per cent in the nation at large, fail at least once. Holding 
 money, they have withdrawn from circulation for this very purpose, 
 these wreckers now appear on the scene, attend forced sales they 
 themselves have compelled, bid in all property they can grasp, and 
 then proceed to " expand the currency," until prices are again at 
 the top-notch, when they sell out, and precipitate another " panic." 
 Indeed, the specie-machine is so arranged, that of its own motion it 
 produces these results ; makes money scarce, interest high, and 
 wages low, to suit those who run it. 
 
 Such, in brief, is the history of commercial " crises" which occur at 
 intervals in America and Europe, but most frequently in Great 
 Britain ; for there, exclusive money has assumed its most despotic 
 form in a " specie basis," which, oscillating with every whim of the 
 stock exchange, like intermittent shocks of earthquake, inspires con- 
 stant terror and distrust. As India is the source of cholera, and 
 Egypt of plague, so England generates " panics ; " and a few leading 
 bankers, or the single house of Rothschild, can start a system of 
 manoeuvres, which, sweeping the earnings of millions into their coffers, 
 will carry ruin and destitution to merchants, manufacturers, and 
 aborers, throughout Christendom. 
 
 Forced currency is not only the base of operations for sorties of 
 guerilla war and legitimate enterprise, but the direct 
 interest and indispensable means by which a universal and per- 
 organ- petual system of theft is organized in the form of inter- 
 ized est on money. What a stupendous fraud this is, few 
 
 theft. even of those who oppose high rates seem to be aware. 
 The net annual income of all American labor, in the long 
 run, is about three per cent; in England, two. Our whole wealth 
 in 18G0, — slaves excluded, — was fourteen billion one hundred and 
 eighty-three million dollars ; of which, twenty-six and eight-tenths 
 per cent was estimated to have been produced in that single year. 
 Crediting ten per cent to capital, which is enough to allow its motive 
 power in production, leaves sixteen and eight-tenths per cent; or, 
 one-sixth part of the wealth accumulated since the landing of the 
 Pilgrims, two hundred and forty years, was produced by labor in 
 that one year 18G0. But such is the enormous consumption, the 
 nation devouring itself every 6ix years, that the net average annual
 
 TOURS OR MINE. 13 
 
 income is but three per cent. Yet the income of bare money, 
 which needs no food, clothing, or shelter, is all the way from seven 
 to thirty per cent. If at six per cent interest, we double capital in 
 the hands of its holders every eleven 3*ears, at the expense of labor, 
 think of the monstrous swindle of our national-bank system, which 
 nets ten, twelve, and even twenty, per cent out of the nation's credit. 
 A capitalist depositing one hundred thousand dollars in bonds, is 
 constantly paid interest on those, and also given the use of ninety 
 thousand dollars in currency. If a young man wanting to go into 
 business can borrow one thousand dollars, with wise use, it will be 
 the making of him ; yet he must pay interest on it. But government 
 gives these banks the free use of two hundred and seventy million 
 dollars, gives outright annually, from twenty-five to sixty millions to 
 this monopoly. The thirty-five million dollars capital, with ex- 
 clusive privilege, of the old United-States Bank, alarmed the nation 
 and revolutionized government. The wrath of an aroused and 
 defrauded people will create new Andrew Jacksons to abolish the 
 infinitely more oppressive system of today. Suppose bondholders 
 waive their present purpose to make the war-debt perpetual, and 
 postpone its payment only ninety years? It amounts now, in round 
 numbers, to two and one-half billions ; doubles at present rates (ten 
 per cent, including tax exemption) every seven and a half j-ears ; 
 would amount in three generations to ten billion two hundred and 
 fifty million dollars, and we should pay it five thousand times over. 
 But the profits which a special class clear through the continuance 
 of the debt, are a drop to the ocean, when compared with the bound- 
 less system of extortion, which, through usury, rents, and dividends, 
 devour the peoples' earnings. Property in the Union now amounts 
 to twenty billions ; which, reckoning the original land nothing, com- 
 prises the net earnings of American labor during two hundred and 
 fifty years. Yet, on present rates, interest, which earns nothing, 
 would absorb this whole property in nine years. Thus, by the per- 
 petual value and increase allowed money, capitalists acquire a kind 
 of supernatural power over laborers ; so that a man of one generation 
 can tax all future generations with the support of his offspring ; and 
 interest is the golden chain which binds the Prometheus industry, in 
 order that vultures of moneyed aristocracy may feed on its vitals. 
 
 Furthermore, within this single word is coiled the mainspring of 
 monopoly and speculation, the motive-power of fraud and 
 mastership, which gives overseers and capitalists their interest 
 despotic advantage, and makes money only another name compels 
 for tyranny. Legalized theft, interest, consecrates rob- high 
 bery as a principle, and enforces the practice of it on prices. 
 the community. Money being the exponent of property, 
 the rate of interest, which is the price of money, determines the price 
 of everything else ; or, at least, the price below which things cannot 
 be sold, unless dealers break and their assets are knocked off under 
 forced sales. Real estate, rents, provisions, clothing, all vendible 
 commodities, are now excessively high, chiefly because interest is 
 excessively exorbitant. Cost of capital is a part of the running 
 expenses, and must be added to the price of what one produces or
 
 14 YOURS OR MINE. 
 
 sells. When prices range above the means of people to buy ; 
 that is, when usury takes more out of him than he can get out of 
 consumers, he "fails," and money-dealers kindly devour him. Thus, 
 from the usurer to the shoulders of the manufacturer or farmer ; 
 thence, to the shoulders of the trader, who passes it on to the con- 
 sumer ; this burden is shifted, until, like poor Sinbad, bestridden 
 by the old man of the sea, laborers, under the whole weight of the 
 swindle, appear the bowed and dilapidated creatures you see in 
 factories and on street-corners. It is estimated that machinery in 
 England does the work of eight hundred million men ; that in Europe, 
 steam alone trebled human power during the last generation. 
 Yet the vast energies of inventive genius are compelled to serve 
 class interests by money monopoly. Interest now pays so much 
 larger profits in bonds and stocks, than in productive enterprise, 
 that capital inevitably flows there. A few wealthy manufacturers 
 and merchants, in alliance with banks, thereby secure immense 
 incomes, but crush out smaller ventures, intimidate young men 
 from going into business, and impoverish people generally. 
 
 Through systematic monopoly of land and money, English capital- 
 ists, for centuries, have compelled Irish people to pay over 
 absen- most of their earnings in the form of rent and interest. 
 teeism. In extending the franchise, Parliament took care to au- 
 thorize " household," not citizen, suffrage ; — land and 
 money dominate, society is vassal ; every blade of grass and bank- 
 bill votes, but no man yet. What England is to Ireland, the cities of 
 this and other nations, or rather the usurers, bondlords, and stock- 
 holders residing therein, are to laborers, — absentee capitalists, who 
 reap where they have not sown, and gather where the} r have not 
 strewn. Hence, five per cent of our city population now own more 
 property than the other ninety-five per cent ; and ten per cent of the 
 Union, more than ninety per Cent. Factory corporations ; coal, iron, 
 and copper mining ; railroads ; express and telegraph companies, are 
 avowedly controlled to enable absentee " owners " (who manufacture 
 " supply and demand " to suit themselves), to take all products above 
 what in barely necessary to keep alive the laborers thereon. Loud 
 clamorcrs for "protection," practice free trade in human beings ; for 
 their agents in Canada, Europe, Asia, collect and forward laborers to 
 crowd down wages here. In the stately mansion of the capitalist, 
 crowning every desirable eminence, with humbler dwellings of " the 
 people " spread around its base, we see dark barbarisms of the feudal 
 ages resident among us. And if, obedient to the same spirit which 
 induced Luther, Hampden, and Washington to resist wrong in their 
 day, workers ask more pay, public opinion branding it as a " strike," 
 allows the capitalist to go up to his gorgeous mansion, and the 
 laborer to go down to his hovel and his grave. An English sovereign, 
 invested by " the man in the moon "at six per cent compound in- 
 terest, in the year one of the Christian era, would amount now to a 
 mass of gold bigger than the earth ; ami our laws would surrender 
 this planet to him as his " property." Slavery sold the body of labor 
 on the auction-block ; interest gets the use of that body without the 
 responsibility or expense inseparable from ownership. The net an-
 
 TOURS OR MINE. 
 
 15 
 
 nual income of a man's work is, say one hundred dollars. One thousand 
 dollars, " well invested," pays at least one hundred dollars annual divi- 
 dend ; hence the holder of a thousand-dollars investment owns a man ; 
 smaller holders own women and children to the extent of what they 
 will " yield." Thus, while we have freed four millions of one kind of 
 slaves, interest holds such an infinitely greater number of human 
 chattels, that to this complexion it has come at last, we are all 
 negroes now. With all its abominations, the Southern idea produced 
 immense wealth ; but interest is a purloining system ; for, just in 
 proportion as absentee capitalists flourish, agriculture, manufactures, 
 and commerce, industry, in all its manifold relations, is crippled and 
 defrauded. 
 
 The effect of tariffs and other indirect revenues is to exempt prop- 
 erty, and throw the burden of taxation on labor. But the 
 startling facts and cogent arguments of our free-trader indirect 
 friends are even more potent against our financial and taxation. 
 private revenue laws. The annual sales of merchandize 
 alone in the States are reported to be ten billion dollars ; reckoning 
 two per cent as the amount which, over and above service and risk,' is 
 paid for the use of capital, we have two hundred million dollars annual 
 tax assessed on trade by a moneyed aristocracy, for which not one dol- 
 lar's worth of actual service is rendered. In chartering railroad com- 
 panies, government, by its right of " eminent domain," generally limits 
 their dividends to ten per cent ; but all leading lines pay immensely 
 more than that. Fares and freights have, of course, been reduced 
 accordingly, or the surplus paid into the public treasury ; not a bit of 
 it. The companies, by a process of " watering," as it is called, or in 
 plain English, by forging new stock, have pocketed the surplus, and 
 now collect ten per cent tax, both on the original and the bogus stock 
 Thus the Boston and Albany road are reported (N. A. Review, Janu- 
 ary, 1869,) to have stolen two million dollars on which travel and trans- 
 portation now pay them an annual tax of two hundred thousand dollars. 
 Vanderbilt forged some twent} T -two millions of stock on the Hudson 
 River, Harlem, and New- York Central roads, in which the annual in- 
 come at the same rate would be two million two hundred thousand 
 dollars. The Second, Third, Sixth, and Eighth Avenue Horse- 
 Railroads of New- York City are said to have thus increased 
 their stock fourfold, and thereby net from thirty to fifty per cent 
 annual profit on the original investment ; while wages paid to 
 their conductors and drivers for twelve and sixteen hours daily ser- 
 vice, are not sufficient to feed and clothe their families decently. An 
 humble employe steals a nail ; Massachusetts law lays hands on him. 
 A president or director plans and shares the theft of two million dol- 
 lars ; we pay him an annual premium on the amount stolen, send him 
 to Congress, or make him governor. These illustrative items, with 
 the vast amount, annually gathered in cities and towns from rent of 
 land, tenement, and warehouse privileges, not for work done, but on 
 property which has paid for itself many times over ; with the legal 
 right of money to even one per cent as interest, opening a wide and 
 effectual door to speculation, and increasing the price of commodities 
 on an average five per cent ; with the moral sanction thus given to
 
 16 TOURS OR MINE. 
 
 Vanderbilt, Fisk, Jr., Belmont, and lesser operators, to " make " mil- 
 lions in a day, furnish a glimpse of how the single wrong principle, 
 that one may take more than he gives, masses currency, banks, lands, 
 mines, railroads, factories, coerced labor, all the sources and instru- 
 mentalities of wealth into one gigantic system, to compel our people 
 to pay tribute to the centralizing power of usurped property. 
 
 Having discovered the true basis of property, and the causes of its 
 unequal distribution, we will now glance at methods and 
 kecon- measures of reconstruction. When the popular god gets 
 struc- into a tight pinch, good women and men are usually on 
 tion. hand to help him oat ; when traditional expressions of 
 
 truth — the church, the state — are captured by invad- 
 ing evil, natural right, the ever-living Overruler, incarnate in human 
 forms, goes forth again to redeem the world. Intuition and 
 memory, idealism and institutionalism, competition and co-operation, 
 vigilant self-interest and collective right, these are the two feet on 
 which the race gets forward, the two hands with which we wrestle 
 that good not understood, called " evil." The devil himself is said to 
 be the great " second best," and " evil, the cold end of good." It is 
 probable that the cruellest instances of social injustice are the fruit of 
 wrong relations. Of course, Deity understood the business of crea- 
 tion, made law right at first, and has neA'er changed His mind. How 
 prison and poor-house could be sincerely thought " institutions," 
 — permanent apartments in the social establishment, — how God 
 could have created men, masquerading in the livery of progress, de- 
 praved and' infidel enough to say, enforced poverty and degradation 
 of labor is " necessary ; " that is the mystery. Had we not enshrined 
 covetousness and theft in church and state, paupers would be un- 
 known, and men "would not steal, even if you should pay them for 
 doing it." 
 
 Since the privilege of association is a fundamental necessity of free 
 institutions, no one can disprove the right or duty of 
 combina- workers to form unions for their own protection ; but 
 tion. they should not waste their strength in abortive expe- 
 
 dients. What revolutions are in government, strikes are 
 to business, sometimes serviceable, often necessary, but never justifi- 
 able, except as the last resort of invaded right. Even then, if suc- 
 cessful, the gain is temporary, for the battle must be fought over 
 again next season. Hence combinations of laborers to raise wages, 
 or combinations of capitalists to reduce them, but aggravate and per- 
 petuate existing antagonisms. The effort to reduce the hours of 
 labor is founded in justice, beneficent in purpose, but can perma- 
 nently succeed only by abolishing the legal usurpations of property, 
 and securing to all parties a free contract. Co-operation, — the most 
 beneficent word this age has contributed to literature, — as generally 
 interpreted, means only a widening basis of advantage-taking capital- 
 ism, introduces no new principle, and is powerless to solve the labor 
 problem. You oppose " capitalists ; " and yet, to become a capitalist, 
 to join the enemy, is victory. If we are to be swindled, why not by 
 one as well as by a hundred men? Like the old protective union- 
 store movement, which spread over New England years ago, it will
 
 TOURS OR MINE. 1 ' 
 
 succumb ; for monopoly, as now entrenched, is master of the situation. 
 While gambling is the underlying principle of business, Jay Cooke 
 and John Morrissey will outwit smaller operators. The partnership 
 of labor, recognizing natural leaders in business, making men respon- 
 sible in proportion to their power, and allowing all to share results 
 in proportion to their contributions of labor or property, is more likely 
 to succeed. A new party on old principles, whether of " the people 
 or " working-men," could if succeed, would prove only a change of 
 masters. In the falling out of rogues, some honest men might come 
 to their own ; but that would not destroy the principle of roguedom. 
 Since the evil we seek to eradicate is fundamental, the remedy must 
 be radical and comprehensive. When William H. Sylvis, the honored 
 president of the National Labor Union admonished the Working-men's 
 State Assembly of New York that they would fail, unless they 
 addressed themseKes to the great problems of finance, he uttered 
 grave truth, eloquently and impressively stated. We present issues to 
 which people will leap like dust of iron to magnet, and ultimately be 
 marshalled in the coming labor party. But you cannot pick a newly- 
 furnished house out of a lumber-yard, or find broadcloth suits in a 
 wool-sack ; artistic processes must convert the raw material into 
 desired results. So a revolution in the ideas of trade, of finance, and 
 of honesty itself, must prepare the way for party action. First the 
 blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear. While, therefore, 
 the time for general success in politics has not come, the time for 
 moral action, the time to move on the enemies' works, has come. 
 By petitions, conventions, lectures, tracts, newspapers, and concen- 
 trating our votes on measures and men favorable to productive ser- 
 vice, we make right public opinion, and stereotype it into statutes, 
 But no organization can or ought to succeed until you have an honest 
 idea to run it. 
 
 Most men were unoubtedly born, but few ever get into the world. 
 Imprisoned within the four walls of ignorance, poverty, 
 superstition, and prejudice; shut up in factories, in compe- 
 shops, stores, or serfs on land, the mass do not share the tition. 
 life free institutions were intended to afford. The most 
 atrocious claim of slavery was its asserte d right to sacrifice men to 
 property. Abolishing one form of that claim, it is but the initiative 
 step in a revolution which will strip property of its purloining power, 
 and make it the loyal servant of creative intelligence. Before the 
 war, an able-bodied, intelligent laborer at the South, would " bring 
 two thousand dollars ; under our conscription law, the commutation- 
 fee was three hundred dollars ; those lacking in patriotism, or having 
 too much of it, could pay that, and be let off; that is, the price- 
 current of an honest able man North, was three hundred dollars. 
 If a fat, handsome factory horse dies, to the whole corporation it is an 
 expensive bereavement. If a man tumbles from the fifth story, to be 
 taken up dead, or is drawn and quartered in the machinery, a dozen 
 others will beg for the chance to be killed the next day at one 
 dollar and a half each. Human life is cheaper, under the capital 
 system, than it was under the chattel system. Omnipresent, irre- 
 sponsible property, is a many-headed master, empowered to increase
 
 18 YOURS OR MINE. 
 
 inimitably at labor's expense. To talk of free competition under 
 present laws, is as absurd as it would have been to expect free labor 
 inside the old slave system. If a new railroad is chartered for 
 the " public benefit," the old lines combine, buy it up, and raise fares 
 all around. If a new express starts, it " co-operates " with the old 
 ones. If a man opens a provision-market or coal-yard, old dealers 
 conciliate, or drive him from the field. Over all is a banking-system, 
 able to crush any enterprise, large or small, and make money out of 
 it. What are free speech, free press, free trade, in the presence of 
 Vanderbilt with his railroads, backed by seventy millions ? What is a 
 feudal baron, or an English landholder, compared with the super- 
 intendent of a corporation, who, president of a national bank, and 
 wanting to go to Congress, can say to his four thousand " hands " : — 
 " Break up your trades-unions, vote for me, or leave the mill and go 
 home to starving families ! " What papal domination was to 
 Luther ; what the Stuarts were to Puritans ; what George III. was 
 to the colonies ; what slave oligarchy was to republicanism, — that 
 our money-system is to legitimate enterprise. Approved b}^ morals, 
 defended by political economists, consecrated in law and public 
 opinion, overreaching makes society a conspiracy against an honest 
 man. 
 
 Though he never studied mechanics, an ox yet understands the 
 fact of gravitation, as well as Newton, and cannot be 
 labor driven off a precipice. Constructing its cell strictly 
 
 for according to the principles of solid geometry, a bee three 
 
 labor. months old, knows higher mathematics than most college 
 students ever climb to. So, surely, will the instincts of 
 men gravitate towards law, order, and fair-dealing. If they can 
 be trained to peril life and limb in fire-companies, if they can 
 be trained in armies to stand up and be shot at for thirteen dollars a 
 month, can they not be trained to be honest? When Ave meet as 
 brothers, lovers, friends, who does not scorn to take advantage of 
 another? who would not blush, if he charged anything, to take more 
 than the bare cost of service? These necessities to cheat, exist by 
 statute, not by nature. Broadly stated, the objects of labor-reform 
 are opportunity and reciprocity ; to " live, and let live," co-operation, 
 based on the utmost liberty to create, and on equity in the exchange 
 of products, the world over. If society exists for anything, it is to 
 guarantee the security of persons and property ; that one who works 
 for a thing shall get it, and hold it, if he chooses. But the right of 
 men in multitude or unitude to hold or sell what they do not earn, the 
 genius of fraud and mastership which overrules and falsifies all 
 human affairs, must be exterminated from off the planet. If one 
 writes a book, or invents a machine, government allows the patent 
 or copyright to run until he is fairly rewarded for his work ; no longer. 
 A father ceases to control the earnings of his daughter at eighteen ; 
 of his son, at twenty-one. Yet property compels working-people to 
 pay perpetual tribute to its unrighteous usurpations. As is well 
 known, most of the government bonds were purchased at from forty 
 to sixty cents on a dollar, in gold ; and have drawn on the full cur-
 
 YOURS OR MINE. 19 
 
 • rency amount, interest in gold equalling from eight to twenty per cent 
 in currency, on the original gold investment. Not to mention that 
 interest being essentially extortion, all claims to exact it are morally 
 wrong, and therefore void ; not to urge that, according to the laws 
 against usury, above certain rates at that time, in almost every state 
 of the Union, both principle and interest, are forfeited ; consider the 
 fact, that the full amount originally loaned to government will soon, 
 in interest, have been more than paid. When labor has been fully 
 returned for labor, those who think that debt can be perpetuated, 
 know little of the claims of justice, or of the spirit to resist oppres- 
 sion which lives in the hearts of the American people. That recent 
 purchasers of bonds may not suffer, it should be assessed upon the 
 whole property of the people, and discharged at once. These em- 
 pires of mining and prairie lands " given " by Congress and states 
 to corporations, must be returned to their rightful owners those, 
 and those only, who can till them. One failing to show a deed from 
 the Creator, that is, a labor-title, has no more right to hold land, [than 
 to hold slaves. 
 
 But since, under present money laws, those given lands cannot 
 live on them, the one indispensable means to enable all to 
 create and hold property, is free currency. The use of free 
 one's credit, as of his conscience, or his vote, is a natural money 
 right, antecedent to, and independent of, government. 
 The evil of existing sj-stems does not reside entirely in that de- 
 lusive cheat, a " specie basis," but also in enforced paper currency. 
 The right to make any kind of money a legal tender, which is not 
 natural tender, receivable on its own merits, is purely imaginary. 
 For government to issue all money based on the property of the 
 people is a usurpation and a fallacy ; it is usurpation, because the 
 people never have, and never can place their property, except in cases 
 of extreme public peril, at the disposal of government ; it is a fallacy, 
 because such money is irresponsible, representing neither the whole 
 property of the people, nor that of any one citizen. "The govern- 
 ment " is composed of one class of men this year, and another next ; 
 the capitol, the department biddings, forts, arsenals, custom, and post, 
 offices — these comprise its " property." But to the extent of its legiti- 
 mate business, government has right to issue money based on service ; 
 and we therefore favor the withdrawal of the notes of the national 
 banks, and the issue instead of treasury certificates of service, re- 
 ceivable for taxes and bearing no interest. These would never de- 
 preciate, because, like postage stamps, always good for the purpose 
 proposed, and would answer the uses of a national currency. . To 
 render monopoly of them impossible, to demonitize gold and silver, 
 and as the exercise of a natural right, the privilege of states, com- 
 munities, and individuals to issue money on their own responsibility, 
 and to any extent they deem best, must never be surrendered. 
 Whether this would be " constitutional," I do not pause to ask ; hav- 
 ing amended the Federal constitution to abolish one kind of slavery 
 South, we can, if need be, amend it to abolish other kinds of slavery 
 North.
 
 20 YOURS OR MINE. 
 
 Thus, marching on Wall Street in two columns, one under the ban- 
 ner of " Union," the other of " State Rights," we shall 
 it abolish interest, by making money so reliable and plenty, 
 
 abol- that no one can get more than the bare cost of issuing it. 
 
 ishes A letter dropped in a Maine office is carried across the 
 
 interest, continent to San Francisco, up four flights of stairs, and 
 delivered, for three cents ; because that is the average 
 cost. Containing news from a sick friend or urgent business informa- 
 tion, a letter would "bring" one hundred or one thousand dollars; 
 you would pay that, rather than not have it. What an injustice to 
 speculate on letters ! Yet that is nothing compared with the incalcu- 
 lable fraud government authorizes and sanctions in speculation on 
 money. With an exclusive currency, usury laws are not worth the 
 paper written on. The only way to protect slaves was to abolish 
 mastership ; so we shall remove the necessity for usury laws, by anni- 
 hilating despotic money. But they asked, " What shall we do with 
 the slaves? " We replied, " Let them employ their masters, and pay 
 honest wages." So now, the question is not ; whether it is safe to 
 trust people with their earnings ; safe to allow farmers, mechanics, 
 and merchants, to issue and manage money — for none but those lack- 
 ing faith in liberty and honesty, will ask that — the real question is — 
 what shall he do with those who uphold, defend, and fatten on this 
 slave-money system? Based on actual values, issued under free 
 banking laws, or by voluntary associations, on principles of mutual 
 insurance, where individuals draw against property and labor, regis- 
 tered and guaranteed, as banks now draw against bonds deposited ; 
 and cumulative credit is represented in great central clearing-houses 
 — money will be backed by, and convertible into, the only thing it 
 was ever entitled to represent, — service in the form of commodities. 
 Gold, like gravel, can go for what it is worth. If it has the merits 
 claimed, it will stand on them ; but the fact that bullionists urge the 
 intrusion of law to make it legal tender, is confession that they 
 have no faith in those merits. All agree that the price of money, 
 like that of other things, ultimately must be the cost of production. 
 The cost of ours will be that of clerk and office hire, paper and 
 printing, from one-fourth to one per cent. That it will encounter 
 and put to flight, both in argument and practice, the expensive swin- 
 dle of bullionists, we have not the least doubt. 
 
 A. T. Stewart's note is good ; the note of any solid man in j'our 
 midst is good ; because, known and definite, value backs 
 it lib- it. A bill of exchange, drawn by one leading house on 
 erates another, is good ; every new indorser increases its relia- 
 business. bility in geometrical ratio. We propose to make the note 
 of hand and bill of exchange universal. Drafts, checks, 
 and bills of exchange already constitute the wholesale currency of the 
 world ; bank-bills and coin, the retail. Gold, between nations, is com- 
 modity, not money ; the government-mint stamp merely shows how 
 much bullion it contains. Whatever may be said of its intrinsic 
 utility, — which is far less than that of iron, and the world could 
 much easier get on without it, — its exclusive use, as money, is 
 born of fraud and unscientific confusion. In " panic," the assets of
 
 TOURS OR MINE. 21 
 
 merchants are more reliable than those of banks ; government coming 
 to the rescue of business by allowing banks to " suspend specie pay- 
 ment," is simply the intervention of commodity credit, to save the 
 sham credit of bullionists, when their •* specie basis " drops into the 
 hoarder's strong box. Even in " specie times," there is barely more 
 than one dollar in coin in the vaults, to five or ten paper cheats flying 
 about the country. Gold fails just when it has a duty to perform. 
 When more needed than in 1862 ? Yet just then, this Mr. " Specie" 
 deserted, and has not been seen since. Mr. " Hard Dollar " snuffs a 
 battle further than a war-horse, remains or flies, as victory inclines, 
 to or from the flag ; because, by hypocritically assuming to have both 
 representative and intrinsic worth, he does not honestly, as money, 
 have either. It is high time government cease inflicting misery on 
 peoples by " antiquated prejudice for bits of yellow dross." Were 
 there less noisy tongues, and more thinking heads at Washington, 
 there would be an end of this talk of " regulating currency." Regu- 
 late wind and tide, tornado and earthquake ; limit the amount of air 
 for the lungs, and blood for the veins, of fort} r million people, but 
 talk not of regulating money, which must obey the higher laws of 
 creative energy. Under the exclusive system, whose avowed purpose 
 is speculative control, increased currency goes into speculation, and 
 carries up prices. But pay off the bonds, abolish interest through 
 free banking, and you force money into legitimate enterprise, make 
 increase impossible, except as it passes through some form of labor. 
 That increases production ; increase the supply, and prices fall, ex- 
 cepting that of labor, which will go up ; for the more production, the 
 greater the demand for workers. Depositors in savings-banks would 
 lose their small gains ; but putting their earnings into business, they 
 would gain a hundred dollars where they lost one in interest. Hence, 
 without further entering the discussion of finance, which is not the 
 object of this essa} 7 , it is evident that free money, giving full play to 
 the beneficent laws of supply and demand, would offer all a chance, 
 bring machinery to the side of labor, enlist vast and varied energies 
 of man and nature lying idle, and make wealth so abundant, and ac- 
 cessible, as to almost shame us out of the weakness of calling any- 
 thing " ours." 
 
 That Mecca of sharpers, the cit} T , now a desperate scramble of well- 
 dressed gentlemen to get more than they give, will become 
 an equitable agency of exchange, a free public market, liberty 
 where producers and consumers can meet without the ex- and 
 pensive intrusion of advantage-takers, who now combine union. 
 to plunder them both ; that monument of unjust taxa- 
 tion, the custom-house, be sent down to keep company with British 
 taxed tea, at the bottom of the harbor — our protectionist friends 
 will not, of course, hesitate to put their principles on their own 
 merits, and collecting the needed amount by direct tax, like the " Freed- 
 men's Bureau " for poor negroes, furnish a manufacturers' bureau to 
 aid destitute capitalists ; travel and transportation, now invaded by 
 numberless byway and highwaymen ; railroad, express, and tele- 
 graph lines, — all must cease to enrich special interests at popular ex- 
 pense, and serve the general welfare at cost. Thence, we will reach
 
 22 YOURS OR MINE. 
 
 that grand consummation to which civilization tends, — free land and 
 free homes ; so that one can not only " read his title clear to man- 
 sions in the skies," but to ground to stand on, and a roof to live 
 under, in these States. Free contracts, free money, free markets, free 
 transit, and free land, — these five points of our creed, not idle theo- 
 ries, but asserted as what we believe, and for no other reason than 
 because we believe them, are living issues, to be test-questions at the 
 ballot-box. United on the central question of honest money, the 
 mediator between capital and labor, knowing these ends are a com- 
 mon need and a common right, great in numbers, strong in reason, 
 national labor union will level every barrier to reach them. 
 
 But it is union to liberate, not to coerce ; no class movement, it 
 fights the battle of the manufacturer, of the merchant, of the farmer, 
 of legitimate enterprise in all its manifold relations ; promotes that 
 coincidence of interests, which, uniting all by giving each back to 
 himself, weds individual right to general welfare, and makes it its most 
 powerful coadjutor. A reform to conserve ; at once " a return to the 
 past, and effort towards the future," it overcomes evil with good, 
 succors the weak with the creative energies of the strong, inspires 
 the greatest of all to serve all, and hastens the day, when men will 
 have neither the power nor the wish to own more than they earn.
 
 LABOR FOR LABOR. 
 
 A project is on foot for laying out new towns for the 
 direct exchange of services between all the useful classes : 
 cutting off all speculations and giving to all labor its full and 
 complete compensation, and tending towards universal co-opera- 
 tion, peace, and abundance; without "communism" or any 
 other ism or organization in conflict with personal liberty, with- 
 out disturbing the individual ownership of property, and without 
 diminishing Individual Responsibility. 
 
 For printed documents, giving particulars, commence 
 with sending Ten Cents to J. "Warren, Counsellor in Equity, 
 Cliftondale, Mass. 25 cents required for each page of 
 written answers. 
 
 Eefer to the " INDUSTRIAL COUNCIL," Boston, Mass. 
 January, 1869. 
 
 TRUE CIVILIZATION. 
 
 A Profound and Elaborate Exposition of the Elementary Prin- 
 ciples of Labor Reform and Social Science. 
 
 BY JOSIAH WARREN. 
 FRZOE, SO CENTO.
 
 3STEW ENGLAJSfD 
 
 MUTUAL LIFE INSURANCE CO., 
 
 TVo. 39 STATE STREET, 
 BOSTON. 
 
 Accumulated Fund, Jan. 1, 1868. 
 $3,200,000. 
 
 SURPLUS TO BE DISTRIBUTED TO MEMBERS, 
 $763,000, 
 
 to be allowed in settlement of notes or credited in payment of premium where parties have 
 paid all cash. 
 
 DISTRIBUTIONS l>Vt A1LV. 
 
 All Policies Non-Forfeitable under the laws of Massachusetts (See Statute of April 10, 
 1861.) to the extent of their value. 
 
 The following Table will show the time that a Life Policy, issued by this Company, will 
 continue in fouce after the annual cash payment of premium has ceased, no other con- 
 dition of the policy being violated. Only four different ages, and seven payments are given; 
 but they will suffice to show the practical working of the law referred to above. 
 
 PAYMENTS IN CASH. 
 
 Age 
 when 
 
 One 
 Payment. 
 
 Two 
 
 Payments 
 
 Three 1 Four 
 Payments Payments 
 
 Five Six 
 
 Payments Payments 
 
 | 
 
 Seven 
 Payments 
 
 insured. 
 
 Yr. | Dys. 
 
 Yrs. | Dys. 
 
 Yrs. | Dys. 
 
 Yrs. | Dys 
 
 Yrs | Dys Yrs | Dys 
 
 Yrs |Dys 
 
 25 
 30 
 
 a5 
 
 40 
 
 293 
 
 329 
 
 1 3 
 
 1 49 
 
 1 228 
 
 1 300 
 
 2 12 
 2 93 
 
 2 170 
 
 2 277 
 
 3 27 
 3 123 
 
 3 119 
 
 3 259 
 
 4 46 
 4 123 
 
 4 72 
 
 4 246 
 
 5 56 
 5 86 
 
 5 31 
 
 5 23S 
 
 6 41 
 6 16 
 
 5 360 
 
 6 229 
 6 359 
 6 276 
 
 Policies issued to the amount of 
 
 $20,000 
 
 on a single lifo, on the life or endowment plan. 
 
 This Company is now entering upon its 25th year, and has at risk 
 
 $50,000,000. 
 
 This, the oldest purely Mutual Lifo Insurance Company in the United States, has been 
 uniformly successful, always making large and regular returns in cash to all policy-holders. 
 Last cash dividend, forty per cent. It is strictly an institution for mutual protection, en- 
 tirely beneficent in all its workings and tendencies. 
 
 Economy, cautious in its risks, and prudent investments, characterize this Company. 
 Being purely mutual, it insures at the lowest possible rates, and, if the premiums paid exceed 
 the actual cost, the surplus is returned. 
 
 Parties at a distance may insure from blanks, which will bo forwarded free of expense. 
 
 Documents showing the benefits of Life Insurance with tho advantages of tho Mutual 
 Plan, and tho superior position and marked success of this Company, and explaining tho 
 different kinds of Policies, with their methods of paymont, may be obtained, free of expenso, 
 upon application, either personally or by mail, to the officers or agents of the Compan}". 
 
 BENJ. F. STEVENS, President. 
 
 Wm. W. Morland, M.D., Modica.1 Examiner. 
 
 JOSEPH M. GIBBENS, Secretary. 
 Walter C. Wright, Actuary. 
 
 UNITED STATES LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY. 
 
 ORGANIZED 1850. 
 
 ASSETS $3,000,000. 
 
 New and important plans for the relief of old ago have boon adoptod by this Company, 
 whereby policies issued on tho Life rate may he converted into Paid-up or Self-Endowing 
 Policies. Policy-holders share in the profits without incurring any of the liabilities of the 
 Company. Tho last dividend was fortv percent to tho policy-holders, and an extra of 
 twenty per cent on all previous dividend*. Activo Agents wautod for cities and country . 
 
 N. E. Branch Office, 76 State Street, Boston. 
 E. J. LONG & CO., GENERAL AGENTS.
 
 THE ESTABLISHED SUCCESS 
 
 OF \VF W THE 
 
 WTLLCOX & GIBBS 
 Silent Family Sewing Machine, 
 
 And the large increase, in sales for the past eight years, has fully established the 
 beal advantage of a simple Family Sewing Machine, and peoved the buperiob 
 mebit of the 
 
 TWISTED LOOP STITCH. 
 
 The WILLCOX & GIBBS is now one of the most popular Machines in the 
 market. It is safe to say that a larger proportion of the Willcox & Gibbs give more 
 perfect satisfaction, than any other machine, because every one can use it, it is 
 always in order, and ig capable of doing a greater variety of work, than any other 
 Family Sewing Machine. 
 
 Jg|p" We keep first-class Secondhand Machines in perfect order to rent by the 
 month; also sell them cheap, with privilege of returning, at same price, towards any 
 new machine at any reasonable time. 
 
 5^" We take all kinds of Sewing Machines in exchange, as part pay for ours, 
 
 |j^* We attend to the repairs of our machines, 
 
 COTTON SILK, NEEDLES, AID SEWIMAill HJfftllfiS 
 
 ALWAYS ON HAND. 
 
 AGENTS WANTED IN ALL UNOCCUPIED TERRITORY, 
 
 WILLCOX & GIBBS 
 
 SEWING MACHINE OFFICE, 
 
 393 WASHINGTON STREET, 
 
 BOSTON.
 
 3 1205 00080 4995 JHUkPU 
 
 JO P. 
 
 Two Editions — Weekly and Monthly. 
 
 Call on your News dealer for it. If he says he does not keep it, ask him to get it. 
 
 The '• American Workman" is the friend and champion of every honest labofer> 
 of whatever trade, sex, color, or condition in life, and of whatever political or religions 
 faith. It favors every plan of co-operation or combination that aims to make the laborer 
 and his family more self-reliant, more intelligent, more hopeful, more temperate, and 
 henco more independent of circumstances. 
 
 fifty thousand Crispins are interested in tho •' American Workman," besides a 
 great army of mechanics in other tradra. We devote a part of our paper exclusively to 
 Workings women. 
 
 Advertisers wil find this paper one of the most profitable mediums in the country for 
 their use. Tho rates_are very reasonable. 
 
 Subscription Price, Monthly Edition, $1.50 per year; or, in Clubs often or more, 
 $1.00. Weekly Edition, $3.0O per year; or, in Club3 offlveormore $2.5©. On the 
 Weekly Edition, we pat the postage ourselves; on the Monthly Edition, the Subscriber 
 will pay the postage. 
 
 Besides our Working-men's Organ, we make a speciality of the printing of Constitutions 
 and By-laws, Membership Cards, Transfer Cards, Travelling Cards, Treasurer's Blanks, 
 Lodge Ode3, Circulars, Programmes, Order of Dances, Ball Cards, Posters, etc. 
 
 UFaf* Orders for Officers' Emblems, Crispin Pins, Regalias, Lodge Seals, or any kind of 
 Lodge furniture, may be sent to our care. 
 
 Labor Books and Documents always on sale at our office. French and German print- 
 ing done to order. 
 
 All kinds of machinery and other wood cuts engraved and electrotyped very cheap. 
 
 We are desirous of opening comnpiupication with every Trade Cnion in the land, and 
 should be glad to heaf by" lettgr, ;or .personal interview, from every working man or 
 woman who has given the Labor-question Any thought. 
 
 The "AMERICAN WORKMAN" is the best advertising mediun of its class in the 
 country,. It reaches the Shoemakers of America moro generally than any other paper. 
 
 Send ten cents, and we will mail you Specimen copies of the AMERICAN WORKMAN. 
 
 jgpWe offer good inducements for Clubs. Our Premium List sent free. 
 
 Address, 
 
 AMERICAN WORKMAN PUBLISHING CO., 
 
 37£, COBNHILL, BoSTOM. 
 
 OCR PRINTING OFF" ICE is " run » in the interest of Labor; and every kind of 
 
 JOB PRINTING 
 
 will be Neatly, Cheaply, Expeditiously, and if necessary, Confidentially printed. Wo 
 give special attention to printing 
 
 Blanks and By-laws for Secret Societies, Lodges, &c. 
 
 as well as Co-operative Stores and Manufactories. 
 
 CALL AT 37j, CORNHILL, BOSTON.
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 AA 000 769 996 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 Santa Barbara 
 
 THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE 
 STAMPED BELOW. 
 
 Series 9482 
 
 BICFEB 1J?9« 
 
 »P3 7ftT- 
 
 JfOm NOV Z 6 )997 
 *0|D NOV 181997 2