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 The Automatic System 
 
 TREATING OF 
 
 The Doctrine of the Triple Tax 
 
 By I. CRANE CLARK 
 
 "Every cAmerican should read it." 
 
 "Reduces political economy to an exact 
 science," 
 
 "Places labor on the pedestal long occupied 
 by gold." 
 
 "Will prevent money stringency." 
 
 "The remedy for the present chaotic eco- 
 nomic conditions." 
 
 "The most important document presented to 
 the American people since the Declara- 
 tion of Independence." 
 
 "Not a pessimistic note; no censure for the 
 capitalistic class; no knifing of the labor 
 unions; no curses for the captains of in- 
 dustry; no condemnation of the agitator; 
 helpful to all classes." 
 
 "It is a prophecy sprung fi*om the heart of an 
 cAmerican Patriot." 
 
 CLOTH BOUND, $1.00 A LIBERAL DISCOUNT 
 
 PAPER BOUND, .50 TO ALL DEALERS 
 
 ALL ORDERS MUST BE PREPAID 
 ADDRESS 
 
 D. S. CLARK, Publisher 
 
 PIONEER BUILDING 
 DENVER
 
 >'=^ 
 
 IRA CRANE CLARK
 
 SIfp Automattr i>gfitem 
 
 TREATING OF 
 
 ®lfj? l0rtntt^ of tifi? Sriple Sax 
 
 BY I. CRANE CLARK 
 
 
 D. S. CLARK. PUBUSHER 
 DENVER. COLO.
 
 Copyrighted, 1908, 
 
 By D. S. Clark, 
 
 Denver, Colo.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Introductory & 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 A Brief Discussion of Various Prevalent Reform Ideas. ... 24 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 Calling Attention to the Principal Defect of Our Present 
 
 Commercial System 37 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 Showing the Inefficiency of Various Reform Movements as 
 Remedies for the Defect Pointed Out in the Preceding 
 Chapter, and Suggesting a Proper Remedy, Consisting 
 of Three Co-Operative Laws Relating to Money, Ma- 
 chinery and Pensions 54 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 A Description and Partial Discussion of the Proposed Law 
 
 Relating to Money 62 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 A Description and Partial Discussion of the Proposed Law 
 
 Relating to Taxing Labor When Done by Machinery. . . 71 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 A Description and Partial Discussion of the Proposed Law 
 
 Relating to Pensions 77 
 
 CHAPTER Vlil. 
 Containing a General Discussion of the Three Proposed 
 Laws and Showing Their Application to the Social 
 Problem 8S 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Trusts 12» 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 Recapitulation, Showing the Simplicity of the Remedy 
 
 Suggested 131 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 Conclusion 13$
 
 DEDICATION. 
 
 To Andrew Carnegie, Poor Boy, Energetic Youth, 
 Man of Iron, of Success and of Millions: 
 I believe that you are a representative of the 
 capitalistic class, who sincerely feels and acknowl- 
 edges the responsibilities which are incident to the 
 powerful position which you occupy among men, and 
 that you are honestly working for the good of society. 
 I believe, also, that the bringing about of that good 
 can best be accomplished by the capitalist and the 
 laborer approaching the solution of the questions 
 between them in a spirit of friendliness and of mu- 
 tual forbearance, and subjecting those questions to 
 the calm reasoning which men possess in moments 
 of peace. 
 
 Hence it is that I, representing the laborer, and 
 working also for the good of society, conceive that 
 the only true solution will be one beneficial both to 
 the laborer and his employer, and in presenting such 
 a plan to the public, am willing to ignore the dis- 
 parity existing between your eminent position and 
 my own obscurity, and dedicate this work to you. 
 May the efforts of both of us be productive of good. 
 Shake!
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 In presenting to the public this work, some 
 seven years after its completion, the author does so 
 without the slightest fear that the lapse of that in- 
 terval has rendered it in any sense behind the times. 
 He felt when he wrote it that its pages were fraught 
 with advanced thought, and now^ at the date of its 
 tardy appearance, he believes that it is still some 
 years ahead of the period in which it is published. 
 
 Several months after writing it he entered into 
 a contract for its publication, but finding that the 
 publishers were unable to do the advance advertising 
 which their contract called for, he cancelled the con- 
 tract, paid them for the work as far as it had pro- 
 gressed, and stored the electroplates away in a closet. 
 The preface to the book as then proposed was as 
 follows : 
 
 "As indicated by the date attached to the closing note of 
 the author, this work was completed by him October 1, 1900. 
 Some months elapsed before he attempted to make arrange- 
 ments for presenting it to the public, and hence it is that it 
 now appears, almost a year after its completion. The work 
 covers a large field in reform ideas lying between the present 
 system of government in this country and a Socialistic form of 
 government, and demonstrates that, without resorting to a 
 state of absolute Socialism, and without giving up any of their 
 personal liberties, individual rights or great public institutions, 
 the American people may, within a comparatively short tii^e, 
 hope for relief perfectly adequate to their needs, and far more 
 desirable and beneficial than such a state or Socialism could 
 possibly be." 
 
 The above explanation is made in order that the 
 reader may understand why, in the case of the few 
 statistics used, the figures relate to a period over 
 seven years ago. 
 
 Respectfully, 
 
 T. CRANE CLARK. 
 November 2, 1907.
 
 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 Laying aside, for the time being, that becoming 
 modesty which has always graced my acts in private 
 life, I now enter upon a public career and announce 
 myself a leader of mankind. I have long waited for 
 an unobserving public to penetrate my humble ex- 
 terior and recognize for itself my fitness for the posi- 
 tion I now assume, but time has convinced me that 
 the great ability which I possess as a statesman and 
 leader of men is destined to pass unnoticed by those 
 who might otherwise profit by it, unless by some act 
 of my own I cause the light of publicity to fall upon 
 me; and hence it is that, disregarding mj naturally 
 retiring disposition and sensitive feelings, I present 
 myself to my fellowmen in the following pages. I 
 beg, however, that none of my readers will for a 
 moment attribute my action to a desire for personal 
 glory, but that all will accept my statement when I 
 say that I am the most humble and unassuming of 
 men and that nothing but the strictest sense of duty 
 impels me to my present labor. If, from reading the 
 daily press, from hearkening to the voice of the pul- 
 pit, or in scanning the laws that come from our va- 
 rious Legislatures, national and state, I could note 
 any indication that the sons of men were about to 
 solve the problem of harmoniously living in peace 
 and prosperity, my pen would remain inactive; but
 
 10 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 
 
 the hopeless manner in which affairs are drifting 
 along, and the very apparent inability of mankind to 
 properly use the advantages which art, science and 
 mechanics, by the grace of God, have given us during 
 the century now closing, lead me to believe that the 
 time has arrived when I should put aside all false 
 ideas of modesty, and courageously take uj) the bur- 
 den of teaching my fellow citizens how to govern 
 themselves. I am aware that many books have been 
 written on the subject, and I will state that the more 
 of them I have read the more helpless has mankind 
 appeared to me, for while those books have been 
 very eloquent in describing the conditions which con- 
 front us, and while some of them have quite closely 
 (although not fully) analyzed the causes which have 
 led to those conditions, still not one of them has sug- 
 gested a satisfactory remedy capable of being imme- 
 diately put into effect under our present form of gov- 
 ernment. It is my purpose in this book to supply 
 such a remedy. 
 
 Think not from any statements here made that 
 I loc'i: back upon the glorious history of men and 
 event -^ from the beginning of time and conceive my- 
 self to be the greatest character that has appeared 
 upon the scene — not at all! The past has had its sit- 
 uations and no one has more admiration and respect 
 for the great and honorable men who have dealt with 
 its difficult problems than I have; and as for my con- 
 temporaries, the world abounds with eminent men, 
 too numerous to mention, who are infinitely superior 
 to me in everything but the subject on which I now 
 write; but that subject is one that has become of par- 
 amount importance to the great body of the peopk,
 
 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 11 
 
 and I must, therefore, modestly, but firmly, insist 
 upon taking my position as the man of the hourl 
 
 Those who turn the pages of history in search 
 of an object lesson to guide them at this time will be 
 disappointed, for there is nowhere in the annals of 
 history a situation which presents a parallel case to 
 the present. Conditions have changed. The situa- 
 tion is unique and the problem is larger than it has 
 ever been before. Today steam locomotion on water 
 and on land quickly and cheaply transports the peo- 
 ple and the products of every part of the world to 
 every other part. Today artificial refrigeration 
 gives assurance that such of those products as are 
 perishable will arrive at their destination thousands 
 of miles away in as good condition as when they 
 started. Today machinery not only augments the 
 producing ability of labor in almost every line of in- 
 dustry, but in many instances actually displaces 
 labor. Today electricity exercises its mysterious 
 potency to the end that the happenings of the utter- 
 most corners of the earth are known to the inhabi- 
 tants of the entire world upon the same day that they 
 occur, and the price prevailing in one market on the 
 face of the globe determines the price that must pre- 
 vail in all. Today the daily press of the world gives 
 to every man information as to the doings and the 
 markets of every country and of every clime. Today 
 the starting or closing of a certain factory in Maine 
 may raise or reduce the wages paid to laborers in 
 California. Today what a man will pay in America 
 for Minnesota wheat depends on whether another 
 man in England is buying wheat in Russia or buying 
 it in the United States. Todav men, women and chil-
 
 12 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 
 
 dren are learning, not trades, but simply parts of 
 trades. Machinery is not used to assist people, but 
 people are hired and paid poor wages, as "unskilled 
 labor," to assist machinery, and there is every rea- 
 son to believe that the inventive faculty of the age 
 will continue to improve machinery so that it will 
 need the assistance of human labor less and less. 
 Today laboring men and women, and people gener- 
 ally, are more dependent on the .social system under which 
 they live than they have been at any time in the history of 
 men, for, while they are more learned in literature, in 
 the arts and in science, still we have fewer persons 
 who are thorough in any trade than v/e ever had be- 
 fore, because, from the very necessity of the case,, 
 industries are being carried on on a larger scale, and 
 divided up into departments, and all that any work- 
 man is required to know or learn is simph^ what per- 
 tains to his own department; and in a factory or 
 institution employing hundreds of hands it often is 
 the case that the only one familiar with the entire 
 business is the manager, superintendent, or foreman; 
 and this is becoming true on the farm as well as in 
 the factory. Thus you see that the great class 
 known as ''unskilled labor" has become very num- 
 erous, and will become more so. Today those who 
 belong to this class are weak and helpless, and a 
 great number of them are unemployed, and their 
 only hope is in just government. These people, who 
 are in many instances well educated and intelligent 
 and anxious to be good citizens, are absolutely de- 
 pendent on whether or not some one will give them employ- 
 ment. They are destined to constitute the great mass 
 of the people of all countries, for there is less and
 
 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM V.\ 
 
 less call (in proportion to the population) for labor- 
 ers who are thorough masters of any trade, and the 
 professions are being overrun. The man who wishes 
 thoroughly and honestly to probe the question of 
 whether or not a country is in a state of general pros- 
 perity will do well to examine the condition of this 
 class of people. The laboring classes of today, as of 
 all ages, are humble and lowly, of necessity; but they 
 are not (in one respect) so distinctively a class as 
 formerly. We already find the artist, the profes- 
 sional man and the college graduate struggling in 
 their ranks, side by side with the horny handed son 
 of toil. Today the straggle for livelihood and wealth 
 is becoming fierce and men are being strained to the 
 breaking point. Today the depth to which a man 
 may fall in poverty and privation is limited only by 
 his power to endure distress and his ability to resist 
 criminal impulse. The common ground upon which 
 men may sink when they fail in the great struggle 
 for wealth and position is too cold and too hard. 
 This is the ground from which the common people of 
 all countries must operate, and the successful gov- 
 ernment of the future will be the one that takes steps 
 to raise this ground to a higher plane, to the end 
 that its citizens may have the satisfaction of knowing 
 that even the weakest among them are prosperous. 
 Today we are troubled with that which an ordinary 
 honey bee would hail with joy, in that we have a 
 thing known as over-production, and are face to face 
 with the ridiculous fact that, because mankind is 
 able to produce a great deal, therefore we must have 
 hard times. Today, if God, in His goodness, were to 
 o'ive a bountiful crop of corn, wheat or cotton to one
 
 14 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 
 
 part of the world, and refuse it to other parts, tiie 
 part thus favored would be prosperous, but if He 
 were to give to every part of the world a good crop 
 of com, wheat or cotton, we are face to face with 
 another ridiculous fact, and that is that many 
 planters and farmers all over the world would, on 
 account of the large supply, experience very hard 
 times. 
 
 Let me put a question to the reader: Are you a 
 laboring man, a professional man, a farmer, or are 
 you engaged in mercantile business? And, whatever 
 you are, let me ask you this: Do 3'ou turn every day 
 to the market quotations in your daily paper? Do 
 you know how to use the telegraph to your profit? 
 Do you know how to scheme around and procure 
 special freight rates f Do you know how to corner a 
 market? Do you know how to form a trust? Do you 
 know how to obtain knowledge of mercantile events, 
 and do you know how to use that knowledge after 
 you get it? I venture to say that you do not. Few 
 men do. Yet I want to say to you that there are men 
 and sets of men who are masters of this art. Are 
 they using their knowledge today for your good or 
 for their own? You are a clerk in some office or you 
 are a workman in some factory. Can you cope with 
 those men? You have a boy seven years old. He has 
 just started to school. Can he cope with those men! 
 Who is looking after your interest? Who is looking 
 after the interest of that boy? When he gi'ows up 
 and wants to get married, who will give him work! 
 What kind of work will it be? What wages will he 
 receive ? How much will he have to pay for a pound 
 of beef! How much will he have to pay for a ton of
 
 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 15 
 
 coal ? Shall we go drifting along until we are on the 
 breakers, or shall we begin to guide ourselves? 
 
 Many writers have given us voluminous works 
 containing valuable statistics and minute informa- 
 tion on subjects that come under the head of polit- 
 ical economy, but we have had few works which draw 
 correct deductions from those statistics. Many who 
 consider themselves well up in the study of political 
 economy, after a great deal of labor, have gotten 
 little farther into the subject that to be the compilers 
 of great masses of statistics and material. They are 
 like a student of hydraulic engineering would be, who 
 limited his efforts in the mastery of that science, to 
 the discovery of the location of and general infonna- 
 tion concerning numerous bodies of water, thinking 
 that, because hj^draulics is a science pertaining to 
 water, the preliminary study is never finished until 
 he has discovered all the water *in the universe. Cer- 
 tainly his work would be of value for the purposes of 
 geography or naval survey, but would it be valuable 
 in connection with the science of hydraulics? 
 
 Students of political economy who exhaust them- 
 selves in the preparation and study of statistics 
 make a mistake. Conditions are always changing, 
 and even if they were not, the work of preparing 
 information of this kind would never be finished. In 
 this work I shall endeavor to tire the reader with but 
 few statistics, and shall boldly undertake the task of 
 treating the subject of political economy from a sci- 
 entific standpoint. 
 
 If we will look around us today we will see that 
 the powers that be have surrounded us with hun- 
 dreds of the most useful advantages. Men of sci-
 
 16 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 
 
 ence and of geniuvS have given to us discoveries and 
 inventions of great value, and in all the professions 
 there has been great progress with the exception of 
 one, but that one is an important exception: I refer 
 to the fact that today we have for lawmakers men 
 who are for the most part simply politicians, and 
 totally unfit to perform the duties devolving upon 
 them, being in many instances the representatives of 
 boodle cliques and the willing tools of political gangs 
 composed of the lowest order of society. I think I 
 <?an hear many of my readers ask: "Does not this 
 insufferable ass know that the United States is the 
 greatest nation on earth ? ' ' Yes, thank God, it is ! It 
 is greatest in its past, greatest in its present and 
 greatest in its hope for the future ; great because we 
 have free speech and a free press; because we have 
 guaranteed to us our civil and religious liberty and 
 the pursuit of happiness ; because of our grand public 
 school system ; because of our efficient postal system ; 
 because of our jury system; because of onr right to 
 ballot, and because all men are equal under the law. 
 But these things were all set in motion years and 
 years ago. Our public men of today hold positions 
 and follow out systems for the inception of which we 
 are indebted to our ancestors. While in every branch 
 of science and mechanics new ideals have arisen, for 
 our statesmen we turn to the past. We look upon 
 those old fellows with regret. We would like to have 
 them with us today. They were men of progress, 
 and the nation has moved forward as the result of 
 the impetus they gave to it. The laws with reference 
 to immigration, with reference to patents, with refer- 
 ence to corporations, with reference to revenue £ind
 
 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 17 
 
 with reference to money and banking institutions 
 which those men put into force paved the way for 
 private energy and private capital to accomplish all 
 that has been done in the way of the laying of most of 
 the railroad lines which penetrate every part of this 
 country today; in the way of opening up mining and 
 farming lands and in the way of bringing about those 
 vast manufacturing establishments which have 
 shown the world what perfected machinery and or- 
 ganized industry can do. ■ But some of those laws 
 have served their usefulness, and although very ben- 
 eficial in their day, are absolutely harmful at the 
 present time. Governments can not stand still. As 
 conditions change the slack in the rope must be taken 
 up. Who is attending to this matter ? This is a gov- 
 ernment of the people. You are one of the people. 
 Now I want you to scratch your head and answer me 
 a question: Are you taking any particular interest 
 in running the thing? Do you know any of your 
 friends who are? Do you think the little blow which 
 you strike on the governmental machine with your 
 vote makes much of an impression? It is a grand 
 thing to have a vote, but it is absolutely useless to 
 have it unless that vote accomplishes something 
 more than gratifying a feeling of Fourth of July sen- 
 timent. 
 
 This may appear to be pessimistic, but it is 
 really my purpose to carry to mankind a message of 
 hope. When compared with its glorious future, hu- 
 manity is today in but a state of chaos. Blink-eyed 
 out of the dark past come the troubled races. The 
 leaders of the various hordes are just beginning to 
 realize that they are marching them toward a com-
 
 18 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 
 
 mon point where shines the great light of truth on 
 the heights of idealism. They are just beginning to 
 realize that the affairs of men, although complicated, 
 have nevertheless a limit and a scope which may be 
 brought within the workings of a perfected system. 
 Humanity is but now emerging from its "Tower of 
 Babel" period in the working out of such a system. 
 In an article recently appearing in the daily press it 
 was stated that over 900 different dialects contribute 
 to the ' ' confusion of tongues ' ' of the sons of men and 
 hamper the exchange of their ideas and knowledge. 
 Can you not see that the great vine of civilization 
 has only now succeeded in sending its tendrils 
 around the world and under the quickening influence 
 of this age of electricity and steel is just beginning 
 to gather its parts together preparatory to putting 
 forth the perfect flower of an ideal humanity ? 
 
 I bid thee hope ! The time is coming when men 
 and women will be beautiful, perfect, healthy beings ; 
 when that the body will be a fit receptacle for the 
 soul, and when that a worthier race will survive, to 
 whom will be revealed the secret of life and the rea- 
 son of our existence. If among all the millions upon 
 this globe there existed but one breast in which the 
 seed of that ideal humanity were implanted I should 
 not doubt the ultimate survival of that God-given 
 spark. How then can I doubt the future of the hu- 
 man race when I see the fight for progress and bet- 
 terment which is being made by noble men and 
 women of all races and all climes'? 
 
 However, any system under which men operate 
 to be a success must be a system comprehending all 
 the interests of mankind on the subject sought to be
 
 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 19 
 
 controlled, and yet mnst be a system so devoid of 
 complications as to be of simple operation. I con- 
 ceive (and will hereafter state my reasons therefor) 
 that at this time there is no subject which it is so 
 important for the human race to have controlled as 
 that relating to their commercial dealings with one 
 another, including as it does the great questions of 
 finance, property rights, labor, corporations, trusts, 
 etc., and I propose to treat the matter as an 
 exact science and present for your consideration a 
 perfect system. Don't you realize that you have 
 practically no system at all? Your machine as now 
 constructed has not in its whole makeup one perfect 
 wheel. Its parts do not begin to reach the materials 
 with which it must work. All is friction and strain 
 and break-down. See the railroad magnates put 
 through a deal and boom a certain stock! See the 
 money kings produce a stringency and bring that 
 stock down again ! See a labor union succeed in hav- 
 ing wages raised in one particular line of industry! 
 See a trust put up the prices of the output produced 
 by those laborers to offset the raise! See them yank 
 the commercial machine back and forth! See the 
 suffering and crime and desolation accompanying 
 these operations! Do you not realize that one part 
 of the machine is torn down in order to let the other 
 part work 1 Would it not be better if it were a per- 
 fect and smoothly running machine designed to work 
 without friction by reason of the fact that those who 
 had constructed it had carefully studied the commer- 
 cial proposition as a whole and taken into considera- 
 tion those things which had theretofore caused the 
 strain and friction?
 
 20 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 
 
 In laying before you later on in this work the 
 l^lans of a perfect commercial system it is my pur- 
 pose to take up the question of political economy and 
 at the point of its juncture to the problem of civil 
 government, reduce it to an exact science; but I 
 think it well at this portion of the work that I should 
 partially outline the system, without, however, at- 
 tempting to set out the entire plan, or to show its ap- 
 plication to present day conditions until I reach the 
 discussion of that subject in its proper order in a 
 later chapter. Taking the doctrine of equality 
 among men as being the underlying principle of a 
 republican form of government, I shall propose a 
 practical application of that doctrine to the three 
 things of most importance to the physical welfare of 
 man, to-wit: land, labor and money — land being 
 necessary to the existence of humanity at all, labor 
 producing from the land the means of livelihood, and 
 money being the medium by which the various prod- 
 ucts are interchanged. By taxing each of these in 
 the manner which I shall suggest, a continual process 
 of equalization will be kept up with reference to all 
 of them. In the case of the labor of the individual 
 man, this tax is unnecessary, as there already exists 
 a natural equalization of labor in that respect, but 
 where labor-saving machinery is used, the labor rep- 
 resented by that machinery will be taxed. The tax 
 on money will be a small automatic monthly tax, not 
 depending for its collection upon the honesty of the 
 holder of the money, but the money itself, showing 
 plainly whether it has been taxed or not. However, 
 the tax will not result in the money becoming of odd 
 or disproportionate denominations or in the loss of
 
 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 21 
 
 the decimal system in our money. The tax will, how- 
 ever, prevent money from being used as a means of 
 hoarding wealth and will insure its being constantly 
 in use as a medium of exchange. The products of 
 labor, on the contrary, will not be taxed, and men, 
 instead of trying to become rich in money, will thus 
 be encouraged to become rich in the products of 
 labor, i. e., buildings and improvements on their 
 lands, in diamonds and precious stones, in gold and 
 silver (which will not be money under the proposed 
 system), in libraries, works of art, stocks of goods, 
 etc. The government will then be in charge of all 
 railroad and street car lines, of all electric light and 
 power plants, telegraph and telephone systems, water 
 works, coal and iron mines, oil and gas wells, and all 
 such industries which are of a semi-public character, 
 and the money then in use will be redeemable in the 
 service of products of any industry operated by the 
 government. 
 
 Henry George, in his doctrine of the Single Tax, 
 has evidenced a faint perception of how important a 
 factor for equalization among men the power of tax- 
 ation vested in governments can be made to become ; 
 but the Single Tax would simply be a faint blow in 
 the right direction. It is an implement entirely too 
 short to reach the object striven for. It ignores the 
 co-relative importance of that great physical trinity: 
 land, labor and money ; and by controlling the affairs 
 of men with reference to simply one of them, seeks 
 to cover the whole situation. In contradistinction 
 to this the plan of government which I am advocat- 
 ing in these pages might be called ' ' The Triple Tax, ' ' 
 or ''Advanced Henry Georgeism." Before you will
 
 22 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 
 
 believe in it, you must read its application to present 
 day conditions as set forth in the pages which follow. 
 I would also state that I present this plan to you not 
 as a suggestion or a piece of advice, but as a proph- 
 ecy. In other words, I believe that while at certain 
 times certain men loom above their fellows and are 
 made the instruments of providence for the time 
 being, still they are but incidents in a great general 
 plan that moves along, directed by a higher impulse 
 than any one man can possess. In that view of the 
 case the true reformer should do as the wise physi- 
 cian: that is, he should realize that he can not con- 
 trol, but can only aid nature. Therefore, in present- 
 ing to you this plan, I am only, as I conceive it, stat- 
 ing to 3^ou a future state of affairs that will surely 
 come to pass, irrespective of the jDublication of this 
 book, it simply being my object to call your attention 
 to the true conditions through which the social body 
 is about to pass, in order that we may aid and make 
 less painful that passage. Can you not see the signs 
 of the times? Is it not evident that in the case of in- 
 dustries of a semi-public character the social body 
 has ceased to reap benefit from having those indus- 
 tries controlled by private capital? That benefit in 
 the past we must admit was so great as to be almost 
 incalculable, but do you not realize that the great law 
 of progress, like all natural laws, is an inflexible and 
 not a sentimental one! Today i^rivate control of 
 public utilities has become a menace. Both expe- 
 diency and the permanent good of society demand a 
 change. Can you not see that that change will 
 surely come and that it is well for us to expect and 
 prepare for it so that the shock of making it will be
 
 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 23 
 
 less to the social structure and so that there will be 
 no unnecessary straining of private rights in the in- 
 terests of the public good? Do you draw no infer- 
 ence from the growing sentiment in favor of munici- 
 pal ownership of street cars, water works and elec- 
 tric light and power plants in the various cities of 
 this country today? Is it not apparent to you that 
 a man who is not in favor of public ownership, in 
 order to he consistent, should advocate the sale to pri- 
 vate individuals of the United States postoffice sys- 
 tem, and should advocate a similar sale of all utili- 
 ties under municipal control in the particular city 
 where he lives ? I say to you that the day is coming 
 when the national government is going to need a 
 great many of these industries to use as a basis of its 
 monetary system and the various cities sJioiiId start in 
 and build up public ownership in every part of the country, 
 so as to have them ready to turn over some day to the na- 
 tional government under an amendment to the Constitu- 
 tion of the United States. By so doing, you will insure 
 the success of the plan and will lessen the social dis- 
 turbance incident to the change. As for the great 
 unlawful trusts that now exist in this country, they 
 have already assembled certain public utilities into 
 handsome, large, well-working packages signifi- 
 cantly convenient for being handed over to and run 
 by a government. Ponder well my prophecy.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 A BRIEF DISCUSSION OF VARIOUS PREVALENT REFORM 
 
 IDEAS. 
 
 Did you ever listen to laborers talking over tlieir 
 pipes? They can not come to an agreement. They 
 agree on very little except that a rich man is a bad 
 thing. They do not reflect that a rich man is only 
 doing what a poor man is doing, that is, putting as 
 big a space as possible between himself and misery. 
 My friend, what this country needs is not less rich, 
 but less poor men. Some rich men get their wealth 
 very honestly, and some of them get it in a manner 
 far from honest, although it may be well enough to 
 say right here that stealing is not confined to rich 
 men. There are many poor men who are quite ex- 
 pert at stealing. Did it ever occur to you that we 
 make a bigger bugaboo out of a rich man than he 
 really is ? These men of wealth have more influence 
 in the world than you and I have, and it is true that 
 they are using their influence for their own good, 
 but they are not so wise and powerful as they are 
 given credit for. If they are, why is it that men are 
 out of work ? Instead of making a profit on the labor 
 of simply a part of the people, why do not these men 
 who control the industries of the world give work to 
 every man, woman and child that is willing to work, 
 and make a profit on the labor of all of them ? Why 
 don't they run day and night shifts, if they can get 
 people to work, and make a profit on every hour of 
 labor that men are willing to perform? Labor, when
 
 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 25 
 
 employed with that end in view, will always produce 
 wealth, but under our present system, if these capi- 
 talists were to employ labor to the extent that I have 
 above suggested, there would be such an over-produc- 
 tion of wealth that these men would not know how to 
 make a profitable use of it, and the fact that they do 
 not possess that knowledge, but on the contrary are 
 even now forming trusts with the purpose of limiting 
 and restricting the production of material wealth in 
 certain lines of industry, shows that these men of 
 capital, who have the reputation of controlling the 
 situation, in reality, do not understand it themselves, 
 but that the whole thing is drifting and carrying 
 with it both the rich and the poor. 
 
 Another thing that the laborers agree on over 
 their pipes is that most of the trouble is caused by 
 the very thing I have just mentioned, to-wit: over- 
 production. They seem to accept it as a philosoph- 
 ical conclusion that the market must become glutted 
 with goods, and then that the factory must shut 
 down and the laborer quit work. They also are smart 
 enough to see that combinations of men are at work 
 who get control of a certain product and then delib- 
 erately shut down the factories which produce that 
 product (even before the market is glutted), for the 
 purpose of securing an artificial price for such of the 
 product as is in existence in their hands. They seem 
 to think that if they can only stop these combina- 
 tions or trusts from operating, that that is the best 
 they can do, and that they will have to submit to it 
 when the factories shut down from what they con- 
 sider a good reason — that is, from over-production. 
 They say that can't be helped. They say it is "only
 
 26 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 
 
 natural. ' ' Now, in my limited study of natural his- 
 tory, I have found no animal, excepting man, that 
 experiences hard times on account of over-produc- 
 tion. Certain it is that I have never found any ani- 
 mals which allowed certain members of their species 
 to nearly starve on account of over-production, and 
 I refuse to believe that the shutting down of factories 
 on account of over-production is the result of natural 
 laws. I think the laws of man are responsible for 
 the situation. 
 
 These men also agree that machinery is a bad 
 thing, and they suggest remedies. They say: ''Let 
 us have a law reducing the hours of labor." They 
 appear to think, just as rapidly as machinery is per- 
 fected and improved so that men can do more work 
 with it, that just that fast the legislatures of the 
 country ought to reduce the hours of labor. Their 
 object is to have it so that all men will have employ- 
 ment, and there is no doubt in the world but that if 
 we reduce the hours of labor to a great enough 
 extent, all men will get employment a certain number 
 of hours each day. But, my friends, this is wasteful 
 of the gifts of God; this is the wrong road to prog- 
 ress. It is like building a line of railroad by tearing 
 up the track at one end and putting it down at the 
 other. It is a sorrowful thing to think that men 
 want to waste the possibilities of machinery in this 
 manner. The eight-hour workday does not consti- 
 tute such a waste, because eight hours are as many 
 as any man ought to work in a day in justice to his 
 own health, but the remedy of shortening the hours 
 of labor would not stop at eight hours, for as the 
 producing power of labor was increased, the process
 
 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 27 
 
 of shortening the hours of labor would go right on. 
 Would it not be better if all men, while in their 
 prime, could work a reasonable number of hours, 
 and reap the benefit of their hours of labor by having 
 more for themselves, and more for their families, 
 and preparing themselves for the future by getting 
 a home of their own and like comforts 1 "Oh ! but, ' ' 
 you say, "it is useless to talk like that. Over- 
 production can't be gotten around." 
 
 My friends, one of the principal objects of this 
 book is to show you that over-production can be 
 gotten around and so manipulated as to become a 
 great blessing to humanity. 
 
 Then these men have had another idea: They 
 have formed labor unions. It is well that they have 
 done so. It shows that men are thinking, and not 
 only thinking, but that they are trying to do some- 
 thing. However, looking at the efforts of labor 
 unions, we can not help but observe that, while they 
 have in their ranks some very bright intellects, still 
 the intellectual portion of their forces comes into 
 play only in organization, and in compromises and 
 arbitrations, and when these fail, and a strike is de- 
 clared, and a battle is actually on with capital, then 
 the resources of the strikers are found to consist 
 only of determination and stubborn endurance, and 
 it is readily seen that the contest is an unequal one 
 and that capital has the longer sword. The striker 
 may starve. The capitalist will not. Nothing exists 
 without a reason or cause, and the fact that labor 
 unions exist is an indication that the general laws of 
 the country were not sufficient to protect the labor- 
 ers, but that they found it necessary to organize in
 
 28 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 
 
 order to protect themselves. While I am not a 
 calamity howler, neither am I a prosperity howler, 
 and I must say that if the laborers had been generally 
 prosperous there would have been no necessity for 
 forming labor unions. The successful government 
 of the future will see that it has so much of the na- 
 ture of a labor union in its own makeup that men 
 will not be compelled to form labor unions on their 
 own accord. 
 
 Now, take a group of professional men and men 
 of wealth: When they sit down and discuss these 
 same matters, you will find that they come no nearer 
 to an agreement than their humbler brothers do. 
 They speak of the restoration of credit and of the 
 scarcity of good investments for capital, and they 
 criticize the foreign relations of our country, and 
 draw wise conclusions from the fact that the trade 
 balance is for or against us with another country. 
 Some of them are well satisfied and some of them 
 agree that things do not go to suit them, but what 
 remedy do they suggest on ivhich they agree? 
 
 There has grown up a class of thinkers who 
 claim to have discovered that the trouble has not 
 been caused by over-production of commodities, but 
 that all business stagnation and poverty results from 
 the fact that there has been an under-production of 
 that in which commodities are measured, to-wit: 
 money, and that all we have to do is to have more 
 money, and presto! commodities will change hands. 
 This set of thinkers is divided into two classes, prin- 
 cipal of which is the class advocating free coinage of 
 silver. The free silver people make a vigorous claim 
 of being as much in favor of sound money as their
 
 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 29 
 
 opponents (the advocates of the gold standard), one 
 of the principal differences of opinion between them 
 being that one insists that the silver dollar under 
 free coinage would be of equal value with a gold 
 dollar and the other insists that its value would be 
 less. The second class of those thinkers who are of 
 the opinion that the trouble is caused by under- 
 production of money is that class of people known 
 as fiat money advocates. They are a set of people 
 who advocate the foolish idea that if a government 
 would stamp upon a piece of paper a declaration to 
 the effect that said piece of paper is a dollar, and 
 then declare said dollar to be legal tender, that there- 
 upon said so-called dollar would become as valuable 
 as a gold dollar. It is plainly to be seen that these 
 people would be able to produce their dollar in quan- 
 tities sufficient to cure the alleged under-production 
 of money, but it is equally plain as to what would 
 be the future of a money which had neither intrinsic 
 nor representative value, and the attempted injec- 
 tion into which of a legal value (by giving it an 
 equal debt-paying ability with good money) would in 
 the end turn out to be an operation as dishonest and 
 as ruinous as the watering of the stock in any com- 
 pany that ever "busted" and carried its victims into 
 bankruptcy. 
 
 Then there is another set of thinkers. They are 
 going to make a great big family affair out of the 
 whole thing and live in the community style. They 
 are going to have a learned doctor examine the 
 bumps on a man's head as he grows up and decide 
 whether he shall be allowed to waste his time trying 
 to convince society that he is a poet or his energies
 
 30 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 
 
 be more properly used for the benefit of society by 
 putting him at work shoveling manure in a livery 
 stable, for which he may be better fitted, according 
 to his bumps. They are going to take away every- 
 thing a rich man has. They are going to disregard 
 the fact of any man being less lazy, or having more 
 ability or being more deserving than another man. 
 They are going to try to have society progress as a 
 whole without the individual citizen having any in- 
 centive to progress ; in other words, they are going to 
 set a high-water mark for individual endeavor, so 
 that no man can get up higher than that mark. 
 They are going to have a board of managers, and a 
 great many of those I have talked with were going 
 to be members of that board. However, this class of 
 thinkers is far from malicious in its intentions and 
 its efforts are prompted by a sincere solicitude for 
 the good of society, while some of the premises on 
 which it bases its teachings are absolutely true and 
 unanswerable. The world is not ripe for the remedy 
 these men suggest, nor is the remedy which they 
 proi^ose free from features seriously ol)jectionable. 
 It is absolutely necessary to progress that the gov- 
 ernment should fix, not a level of jorosperity higher 
 than which no man can rise, hut a level lower than which 
 no man can fall and he trampled under foot, and from 
 that level let an independent and liberty loving peo- 
 ple work out the problem of individual prosperity 
 and happiness. Socialism, in the form in which it is 
 usually advocated, suggests too sudden a change. It 
 ignores facts. It is a fact that classes do exist. They 
 can not be abolished at one blow, unless that blow is 
 one terrible in its force and in its consequences. The
 
 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 31 
 
 better way is to start in and lift up all classes, and 
 let the process of lifting be continuous, gradual and 
 sure, and let it be done without the pulling down of 
 classes, and without that social disorder which has 
 always accompanied the latter method of reform. 
 The duties which the remedy suggested by Socialism 
 impose upon the citizen, would not at this time be 
 regarded by the majority of men as compatible with 
 the sense of personal liberty which they value so 
 highly. Man has reached a point in the process of 
 evolution where (in the family relation) he will ren- 
 der services, for instance, to his own father, and will 
 regard such services simply as duty, and will not 
 dream of complaining that such duty is interfering 
 with his personal liberties, even although he has to 
 change his own plans in order to perform that duty, 
 but he has not yet reached a point where the duties 
 demanded by Socialism can be placed upon him by 
 his government without eliciting his complaint. 
 Mr. Benjamin Kidd in his work on Social Evolution 
 seems to be of this opinion also. 
 
 Then we have the anarchist. He sometimes 
 claims to be a Socialist, but be it said to the honor 
 of Socialism, it denies this claim. I may be excus- 
 able if I fail to understand the prejudice which this 
 unreasonable creature has against law and govern- 
 ment, but, if he can be said to have any ideas at all, 
 I suppose he operates on the theory that it is the 
 duty of those who rule to please him, and while he 
 is neither competent to suggest a plan of ruling well, 
 nor industrious enough to work in a legitimate way 
 to put such a plan into force even if he knew what 
 he wanted, still he goes on the theory that by terror
 
 32 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 
 
 he will stimulate those who do rule into devising 
 some plan of government more suitable to his 
 anarchistic tastes. His efforts will always recoil on 
 his own head. 
 
 Then we have the Single Taxers and followers 
 of Henry George who tell us of the great good that 
 will result from removing taxation from every form 
 of property produced by labor and taxing land alone. 
 This class of thinkers has long hovered on the out- 
 skirts of a great truth, and not far beyond the limits 
 of their teachings has lain the secret of reducing the 
 subject of political economy to an exact science. 
 
 Amongst the people composing all these parties, 
 as well as amongst those belonging to the more con- 
 servative parties of the day, there is growing in 
 favor the idea that we should have public ownership 
 of all our railroads and similar industries, and to the 
 careful student of social evolution this concurrence 
 of opinion by so many different classes of reformers 
 is significant, not only as a hopeful sign of early ac- 
 tion, but as indicating the probable direction the re- 
 form movement is about to take. 
 
 But the fact that I have been seeking to draw 
 your attention to is that (with the single exception 
 of public ownership just mentioned) people do not 
 know what they want and can not agree on what is 
 best for themselves. If two men can not agree over 
 their pipes, how difficult a task it will be for all the 
 voters of the United States to agree ! Is it any won- 
 der that sometimes men falter in their faith and 
 doubtfully ask whether popular government is a suc- 
 cess ? How shall we unite the voters of this country 
 on a plan of improvement? It is evident that they
 
 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 33 
 
 must have submitted to them by someone a plan of 
 improvement so superior to any that they have ever 
 read or heard of that their minds will instantly be 
 struck with its feasibility and good points — a plan 
 explained in such simple and plain language that it 
 will appeal alike to the philosopher and the fool — a 
 plan that men will see through and understand, and 
 that will be so desirable as to stop the mouth of argu- 
 ment — a plan, the details of which will be so clear 
 and convincing and the promised results of which 
 will be so beneficial to rich and poor alike that all 
 classes will instantly unite on it — a plan so practical 
 and so easily put into operation by men that no po- 
 litical party can safely oppose it. Then, and then 
 only, will men cease their idle talk. Then will they 
 say to their representatives and lawmakers: ''The 
 road lies before you, the way is straight and the door 
 is open. Why do you not give us this improvement 
 in government 1 ' ' and then will the votes of men be 
 efficacious accordingly as they elect or do not elect 
 men who will put the plan which they demand into 
 operation. We must all unite on one single plan! We 
 must not be divided. The interests of ninety-nine 
 per cent, of us are identical, and there is no reason 
 why we should be divided. 
 
 I appreciate the fact that he who attempts to lay 
 before the people a plan which will meet these re- 
 quirements must be a man whose patriotism is jDure 
 and whose singleness of purpose is undoubted, and 
 a man whose love of country and his fellowmen is 
 equalled only by his love of truth and of justice, but 
 I say to you that in the pages of this book such a 
 plan is disclosed and that in myself such a man
 
 34 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 
 
 exists; and all I ask is that that plan be put into 
 operation, and that I be permitted to live an humble 
 private citizen under that improved form of gov- 
 ernment. 
 
 I say to you that there is no reason why both 
 the rich and the poor, the employers and the em- 
 ployed, should not be more prosperous in this coun- 
 try; there is no reason why there should not be the 
 highest co-operation between capital and labor; 
 there is no reason why a man who is willing to work 
 should ever experience poverty during the whole 
 of his life from the cradle to the grave; there is no 
 reason why in his childhood days he should not have 
 proper food and clothing; there is no reason why he 
 should not go to school properly clothed with com- 
 fortable shoes upon his feet; there is no reason why 
 he should not remain in school until he has received 
 a good education; there is no reason why in the days 
 of his prime he should not have labor for every hour 
 that he wants it; there is no reason why he should 
 not receive good pay for his labor; there is no reason 
 why his labor should not be sought by capital as a 
 valuable thing, instead of begging for employment; 
 there is no reason why, when ill, he should not have 
 proper medical treatment; there is no reason why, 
 when married, he should not have a home of his own; 
 there is no reason why his life should not be pleasant, 
 and refinement, art and culture find a place in his 
 home; there is no reason why he should not be able 
 to afford an occasional vacation from work, and he 
 and his family take pleasure trips ; there is no reason 
 why he should look forward to old age with despair 
 or see his children grow up with doubt; there is no
 
 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 35 
 
 reason why any man should have an incentive to be- 
 come a criminal, or any woman to become a prosti- 
 tute; there is no reason why men should not live to- 
 gether in harmony and prosperity, casting from 
 themselves those things which in the past have com- 
 bined to produce disease and crime and discord, 
 there is no reason why mankind should not have the 
 full benefit of machinery and the wheels of industry 
 turn faster and faster to the advantage alike of cap- 
 ital and labor; there is no reason why, as the years 
 roll around, under proper government, our land 
 should not be filled with store houses, bursting their 
 walls with plenty, nor why the laborers who pro- 
 duced that plenty should be thrown out of work be- 
 cause of its existence. It has long been accepted by 
 people as a philosophical truth that some of us must 
 be poor. This was true in the days when the produc- 
 tive power of labor was in its infancy, but I say to 
 you in these days when labor, by the aid of machin- 
 ery and scientific process, can produce much more 
 than the requirements of the people demand, that 
 while it is necessary for the great majority of us to 
 work and labor, yet there need be not one single man 
 who is so poor as to cause him to suffer. I say to the 
 people of the United States that if they will follow 
 the advice given them in this book, they can have the 
 blessings, and I say to them further that there is no 
 need for a bloody revolution to accomplish this re- 
 sult, and no need to take from any man that which 
 he now holds title to without making just payment 
 therefor, but that the government need take no steps 
 other than those which are honest, just and proper. 
 I say to you that the people of any country are
 
 36 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 
 
 strong and powerful and productive enough (if they 
 have a proper system under which to work) to grow 
 rich of their own efforts, from the time that system 
 is put into operation, without demanding that any 
 rich man give up something for nothing. Our rich 
 men are citizens and as such they are entitled to pro- 
 tection under the law. We should respect their 
 rights the same as we do those of a poor man, and we 
 should do nothing except by a vote of the people, 
 counting the votes of the rich as well as those of the 
 poor. It is my purpose to tell you how to accomplish 
 these results, not by a far-fetched plan requiring the 
 pulling down of our present government and an en- 
 tire change in the relationship of our citizens, but by 
 a plan which, though radical of necessity in some of 
 its features, will be found upon examination to be 
 perfectly practicable and one that can be put into 
 operation smoothly and without disturbing the gen- 
 eral run of business and without making any 
 changes other than those which are absolutely neces- 
 sary and indisputably beneficial. Having presented 
 to you such a plan, I shall have performed my duty, 
 and it will remain for my fellow citizens to do the rest 
 with their votes. If they are wise they will not sit 
 down and dream over this book with the idea that 
 possibly their grandchildren may operate under 
 some such condition, but they will take action imme- 
 diately and get the benefit of this plan now.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 CALLING ATTENTION TO THE PRINCIPAL DEFECT OF 
 OUR PRESENT COMMERCIAL SYSTEM. 
 
 Before calling your attention to a cure for pres- 
 ent disorders, I think best to state to you what is the 
 real cause underlying those disorders. The real 
 trouble is not ore/--production of commodities, nor is 
 it under-pvoduation of money. It is simply a lack of 
 proper system. The commercial system under which 
 we work absolutely produces, of its own action, glut 
 in market and stagnation in trade. Let me ask you 
 something: When you want to make a profit, what 
 do you want to make it in? You want your profit in 
 money. Your neighbors are the same way. The 
 wide world over every man wants his profit in 
 money. It is not the man with money who is your 
 enemy, but it is money itself which is the enemy not 
 only of the laborer, but of his employer, for it keeps 
 both from being better off. Now, don't understand 
 me as wanting to abolish money. I don't want to do 
 anything of the kind. Don't jump at conclusions. 
 Before I get through you will see that I want you to 
 have money — not ridiculous fiat money and not ridic- 
 ulous gold or silver money, but money a dollar of 
 which will be easier to get and will purchase more 
 than any gold or silver dollar of today is capable of 
 purchasing. And don't think that I am a man with 
 one idea which is going to act as a cure for all the 
 ills of society. The fact is that I shall herein suggest 
 to you laws on three different subjects before I have 
 
 38931'?'
 
 38 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 
 
 done, and you people should sit quietly and give me 
 your attention. You have been puzzling your 
 heads long enough and looking wise and arguing 
 around in a circle; and it is time that you sat still 
 and let someone draw the ends out of the tangled 
 mess you have gotten into. 
 
 Now, let us see what over-production really is: 
 We have a careless way of dividing society for the 
 purpose of these discussions into two great classes, 
 i. e., capitalists and laborers; but for the purpose of 
 a really intelligent understanding of the subject, we 
 must subdivide capitalists into two classes: first, 
 that class which simply lends its money and draws 
 interest; and, second, that class which invests its 
 money in various industries and which sometimes 
 pays interest to the first class. Having divided capi- 
 talists into these two classes, we find that the second 
 class again subdivides itself into, first, a class com- 
 posed of comparatively few persons who are in con- 
 trol of public utilities of great value and whose grasp 
 on the general situation is becoming so powerful that 
 when they enter into the ordinary lines of trade, they 
 are ena])led by unlawful combinations to create ex- 
 traordinary and abnormal conditions favorable to 
 themselves and absolutely harmful to the rest of 
 society; and, second, a class composed of that great 
 body of our citizens who are engaged in operating 
 legitimate industries, both great and small, and 
 whose energies and resources are already being taxed 
 to the limit by the manipulations of the combines or 
 trusts which I have mentioned. This last class em- 
 braces by far the greatest number of individuals en- 
 gaged in employing labor, and is a class that would
 
 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 39 
 
 be of great value to humanity under proper condi- 
 tions, and it is this last class which I propose to use 
 in illustrating to you how that thing which we now 
 regard as over-production is brought about. In other 
 words, I will show you that even if society were rid 
 of those persons who live off the community by 
 drawing interest on their money and those powerful 
 trusts and combines which have been referred to, 
 nevertheless, the system under which we operate, of 
 its own action, would still produce glut in market 
 and stagnation in trade, and every era of prosperity 
 would be followed by its reactionary era of business 
 depression, sometimes affecting the whole business 
 world and sometimes only certain industries. Let 
 me present to you, briefly, a working model of a com- 
 munity composed of laborers, merchants, farmers, 
 manufacturers, etc., all of them legitimate business 
 men, some of them employed and some of them em- 
 ployers. Examples could l)e cited which would con- 
 tain a greater number of elements, but as those addi- 
 tional elements would only make the proposition 
 more difficult to understand while the solution would 
 be the same, consideration of simplicity have led me 
 to select the following: We will say that our com- 
 munity has twenty men who employ laborers. One 
 runs a coal mine; another a shoe factory; and so on, 
 all being engaged in some useful line of industry. 
 Each employer has 100 laborers in his employ. Now, 
 in this same little community we will say that there 
 are twenty merchants or storekeepers dealing in va- 
 rious kinds of merchandise. It therefore follows that 
 we have a community consisting of twenty manufac- 
 turers, etc., twenty storekeepers and 2,000 laborers.
 
 40 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 
 
 Now, we will start our community with the money 
 in the hands of the manufacturers or in the hands of 
 the laborers, just as you wish, but before we get 
 through with our example you will see that the 
 money will get into the hands of the manufacturers, 
 and that the community will suffer from over-produc- 
 tion. During one month the manufacturers pay out 
 to their 2,000 laborers, we will say, $50.00 each as 
 wages, or a total of $100,000.00. In addition they 
 pay for coal and for raw material and for other ex- 
 penses, we will say, $50,000.00 amongst them all. 
 Now, what do these men get for the $150,000.00 they 
 pay out? They get the result of labor in the shape 
 of goods. Now, do they sell those goods for $150,- 
 000.001 No, Sir! They want a profit of 10 per cent., 
 which on $150,000.00 amounts to $15,000.00. In 
 other words, they want to sell the goods produced 
 that month for $165,000.00. Now, who buys the 
 goods from the manufacturers! Well, in our exam- 
 ple above we have estimated that some of them are 
 engaged in a business in which they sell coal or ma- 
 terial or goods of some kind to their brother manu- 
 facturers, and we have placed the amount thus dis- 
 posed of at $50,000.00. This leaves $115,000.00 worth 
 of goods to be disposed of. These are sold to the 
 storekeepers. Now, what are the storekeepers going 
 to do with these goods? They are going to sell them 
 to the laborers. Will they sell them to the laborers 
 for the same amount that they paid for them, to-wit: 
 $115,000.00 ? No ! They want a profit of 10 per cent., 
 which on $115,000.00 amounts to $11,500.00. In other 
 words, the storekeepers want to sell the goods for 
 $126,500.00. Now, who will buy those goods? The
 
 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 41 
 
 laborers will. Will they buy them? Most assuredly 
 they will. They need them. They have children. 
 They are the most numerous class in the community. 
 There are 2,000 laborers while there are only twenty 
 manufacturers and twenty storekeepers. What will 
 the laborers buy the goods with? With the money 
 they received as wages. How much wages did they 
 receive for that month? In the aggregate they re- 
 ceived $100,000.00. Can they buy $126,500.00 worth 
 of goods with $100,000.00? No. Who will buy the 
 other $26,500.00 worth ? ' ' Well, ' ' you say, ' ' I guess 
 the twenty manufacturers and the twenty storekeep- 
 ers will buy that much." If they would, and do it 
 promptly, then everything would be all right, but 
 they will not, my friend. From the beginning of 
 mercantile-history it has been demonstrated that they 
 will not. They will buy what they actually require 
 in their business and (properly) charge it up to the 
 price they are going to ask for their goods, but they 
 are very reluctant to spend or reinvest their profits. 
 Almost every one strives to accumulate a large cash 
 surplus. Therefore a certain portion of the goods 
 produced in our example given above will not be sold, 
 and this will be the case each month, and as the 
 months roll around there will be gradually accumu- 
 lated in warehouses and on shelves a large quantity 
 of goods which the market reports and trade journals 
 will call over-production, because the great consum- 
 ing class, consisting of the common people of the 
 community, can not purchase them. It becomes evi- 
 dent that if this system worked itself out to the end, 
 and the money were to all lodge in the hands of the 
 employers and not any of it remain in the hands of
 
 42 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 
 
 the laborers, things would tighten up so as to almost 
 come to a standstill, for the only consumers would 
 be the holders of capital ; but things never reach this 
 stage, for as the tightening up process goes on, it 
 comes in contact with other natural laws which pre- 
 vent the tendency of the process from reaching a 
 consummation. In other words, it is a fact that capi- 
 talists in any event require the services of certain 
 kinds of laborers, and in that manner put money into 
 circulation, and it is another fact that, no matter how 
 much the employing class desires to hoard money, 
 a great many employers find that they have them- 
 selves fallen victims to the condition which hoarding 
 money has produced, and they do such a small busi- 
 ness and make so little profit, that in order to live 
 and maintain their position in society they pay out 
 more than they take in, and the goods which they 
 hold in the shape of over-production at such times 
 are often sold by them at such a low price that they 
 lose instead of making a profit, and the consuming 
 class deals with them at such times as much as pos- 
 sible, and the laborer may even procure goods in this 
 manner at a less price than it cost to produce them. 
 It is also a fact that goods go out of fashion, and that 
 stocks grow old and that fires occur, and other things 
 of that kind occur which cause the capitalist to rein- 
 vest, and thus loosen up the situation, and prevent 
 the grand centralization of capital, which is the con- 
 summation that would be reached, if the tendencies 
 of the system under which we work were allowed to 
 carry themselves to their natural conclusion. Now, 
 my friends, this thing called over-production would 
 not hurt anything if its owner regarded it as that
 
 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 43 
 
 much wealth and went ahead and promptly rein- 
 vested his money and re-employed the laborers and 
 had still more manufactured. Over-production would 
 not hurt if a merchant would look up at his loaded 
 shelves and say: "This is valuable stuff. This is 
 wealth," and instead of putting his money in the 
 bank, would use his surplus profits to buy more stock, 
 feeling that the manufacturer would invest the 
 money in labor and that it would go into circulation 
 again immediately amongst the great consuming 
 class, and that the laborers would come around and 
 pay him (for such portion of his stock as their 
 money would buy) prices which would enable him 
 to buy a larger and more valuable stock. If the man- 
 ufacturer and the merchant, as a class, would do as 
 the Bible tells them, and ''cast their bread upon the 
 waters," by promptly reinvesting their surplus 
 profits in the wealth which is produced by labor, the 
 laborers would surely carry out the Biblical proph- 
 ecy and return the money to them for only a portion 
 of the goods which they had produced by their labor, 
 and the manufacturers and merchants would acquire 
 more over-production and more over-production 
 until finally the great quantity of goods that they 
 would store away in the shape of this so-called over- 
 production would be more valuable than all the gold 
 and silver that men can ever hope to mine, and the 
 manufacturer and the merchant would still be cap- 
 able of acquiring as large a cash surplus as he now 
 has. He would turn it over quicker than he does 
 now, however. Each man would not have to invest in the 
 over-production of his own line of industry, but he could 
 invest his money in such form of material wealth as
 
 44 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 
 
 he thought advisable, and other people would have 
 the same incentive to invest in his line. It would 
 not matter what he invested it in, just so he invested 
 it. That's the main point. I am aware that gold 
 and silver money is itself a form of material wealth ; 
 but inasmuch as in its capacity as money it possesses 
 many characteristics not possessed by other forms 
 of material wealth, I have felt justified throughout 
 this work in treating money as forming a class of 
 its own, distinct and separate from ordinary mate- 
 rial wealth. Now, I suppose, my impatient reader 
 has about come to the conclusion that what I desire 
 is a law preventing a man from making a profit of 
 10 per cent, on goods that he handles. Not at all, 
 my friend, not at all. ''The laborer is worthy of his 
 hire," but he is not the only one. Manufacturers, 
 storekeepers and middlemen all deserve to make a 
 profit, and all I want to do is to give them more 
 profit, not less profit, and I want them to have three 
 times as many sales as they now have. I want trade 
 to go along in its usual channels, and I want sales 
 to be made for profit, and I want the medium of ex- 
 change to be money, and I want the money to be good 
 money; in fact, better money and of higher purchas- 
 ing power than any money we have today; but I do 
 not want to work under a commercial system, the 
 constant tendency of which is to tighten things up, 
 and which requires failures and fires and business 
 mistakes to loosen it up, and which moves slowly and 
 unwillingly, and with a wear and tear and an effort 
 and a grind, and under which it is plain that hu- 
 manity lives at its lowest ebb. Nor do I want people 
 to become foolish spendthrifts or to become waste-
 
 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 45 
 
 ful, and in that connection I want you to remember 
 that that system is most wasteful under ivliich inankind 
 as a whole produces the least in material wealth, and that 
 system is most economical under which manhind as a 
 whole produces the most in material ivealth. 
 
 The secret of the whole trouble is that money, 
 as now constituted, performs a double function: It 
 is, first, a medium of exchange, and, second, a con- 
 venient form in which to hoard wealth. In its first char- 
 acteristics it is capable of the utmost usefulness to 
 mankind, and in its second characteristic it is di- 
 rectly responsible for more of the ills from which 
 humanity suffers today than any other agency. In 
 its first capacity it is to the world of trade as the 
 easy-going wheels are to a wagon, and in its second 
 capacity it is as if a malignant fate had attached an 
 invisible chain to those wheels and laughed at the 
 efforts of men as they forced the wagon along by 
 sheer strength and grit. In these days science sepa- 
 rates into their component elements the very water 
 we drink and the air we breathe, and it is just as 
 possible for scientific legislation • to remove from 
 money its objectionable features and retain its desir- 
 able characteristics. But in order to do this, we 
 will have to send men to our legislative bodies who 
 wish to do it. They will have to lose some of the 
 oppressive and ponderous statesmanship which is so 
 fashionable today and gain more of the simple spirit 
 of our forefathers. 
 
 All I advocate is a system under which all men 
 will reinvest their money and not let it lie idle, or, 
 worse still, draw interest on it. If all men insist on 
 having their profit and their savings in the shape of
 
 46 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 
 
 money, then the savings of the entire world are in a 
 great degree limited to the amount of gold and silver 
 money there is in the world and to those forms of 
 material wealth which aid their owner in earning 
 money. Tims capitalists will build houses for people 
 to live in, because they receive rent for them. They 
 build lines of railroad and valuable machinery be- 
 cause they make money out of them, but under our 
 present system (as is the case when over-production 
 causes stagnation in certain lines of business), the 
 moment the holders of money cease to demand a cer- 
 tain product or article for purposes of present con- 
 sumption that product or article instantly becomes 
 a drug on the market, and is regarded by all capi- 
 talists as a very undesirable form of wealth in which 
 to invest, and hence it is that factories close down 
 when this condition arises. "But," you ask, "why 
 should not the production be stopped when the de- 
 mand has ceased?" My friend, I did not say that 
 the demand had ceased. I spoke of "//ze holders of 
 moneif^ ceasing to demand a certain article. You 
 see a good deal depends upon who are the holders of 
 money at a given time. If the money is in the hands 
 of the people generally in sufficient quantities, there 
 will be a demand for much sugar and coffee and 
 shoes and cotton and woolen goods, and such things, 
 but if a certain portion of the people are out of work 
 and receive no wages, and those who do work receive 
 small wages, as the result of competition with those 
 who are out of work, then their capacity to demand 
 the kind of articles above mentioned will diminish, 
 and the capitalists, who are the principal holders of 
 money at such times, will diminish their demand for
 
 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 47 
 
 laborers, and what is known as a condition of gen- 
 eral business depression will ensue, from which the 
 business world usually recovers slowly after a series 
 of failures, fires and famines. The entire material 
 wealth of the world under our present commercial 
 system will always be limited and kept down by that 
 thing known as over-production until we devise a 
 monetary system under which it will be more profit- 
 able for men to promptly reinvest their money in the 
 products of labor than it is for them to hoard any 
 considerable quantity of it. We must arrange it so 
 there will be a demand for the products of labor 
 to be hoarded as wealth, even when there are sufficient 
 of those products in existence to satisfy the current 
 demand of consumers. 
 
 Perhaps instead of drawing your attention to 
 the fact that the amount of wealth in the world is in 
 a great measure limited by the amount of money in 
 existence under our present commercial system, I 
 would do better if I drew your attention to the great 
 amount of material wealth, the production of which 
 is prevented by the action of money. It operates in 
 this way: Under our present system, with the aid 
 of machinery and improved methods, the persons 
 engaged in almost every line of industry are able to 
 produce more than enough to supply the current 
 needs of the whole population for purposes of pres- 
 ent consumption. The people engaged in all the 
 different lines of industry would like to have steady 
 employment. I say to them that as reasonable per- 
 sons they can not expect to have steady employment 
 unless they consent to demand goods and thus keep 
 the people in other lines of industry employed stead-
 
 4S THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 
 
 ily and open up new lines of industry, but under our 
 present system the i^eople of no line of industry will 
 consent to this. A man gets his money out of his 
 line of production, and then instead of investing all 
 of his money in some form of wealth other than 
 money (in other words, in the output of some line of 
 production), he usually prefers to keep it in the 
 shape of money. In other words, instead of invest- 
 ing the money and keeping other people employed, 
 he says to himself: ''No, I want other people to in- 
 vest their money in the material wealth produced by 
 me and thus keep me steadily employed, but I will 
 only reinvest such portion of my money as I am 
 forced to through necessity, and thus I will not keep 
 other people employed, and then I will put my money 
 away so I can let those people starve now and put 
 them to work again just when when I need them 
 some time in the future." Of course, this would be 
 very nice if it worked out, hid it does not work out. 
 The people in other lines of industry go on the same 
 basis, and they all help to starve one another. This 
 book is not written from the standpoint of a moralist, 
 and I have no objection to offer (here) to the man 
 who worships Mammon, but I want to call his atten- 
 tion to the fact that he who worships gold or silver 
 money is in reality worshipping not the real Mam- 
 mon, but a god that is even much falser, for the use 
 of those metals as money in the world of commerce 
 has prevented the production of billions of dollars' 
 worth of material wealth. It is not a question of 
 whether a man would rather have a hundred dollars 
 in cash than in property, but the real question is 
 whether that hundred dollars shall be allowed to cir-
 
 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 49 
 
 culate and stimulate production to the end that all 
 men may in time amass quantities of material wealth 
 many times more valuable than the average man 
 could hope to obtain in the shape of money. We can 
 not eat money. We can not wear money. The most 
 useful purpose for which we can use money is as a 
 medium of exchange to the end that mankind may 
 produce material wealth in great quantities and ex- 
 change it amongst themselves all over the world. 
 You must remember that there is hardly a line of 
 industry that would support the people engaged in 
 it unless those people entered into exchanges with 
 the people engaged in other lines of industry. Thus, 
 a coal miner is one of the most useful members of so- 
 ciety, but, if left to himself and his coal, would per- 
 ish in a few days for lack of food and clothing, which 
 he does not produce. He would soon cease to pro- 
 duce coal if the rest of society did not patronize his 
 line of industry, and it is upon this same principle 
 that the different lines of industry grow dull and 
 shut down. The people engaged in any line must ex- 
 change their products for the products of other lines. 
 Our present kind of money is preventing this. People as a 
 whole are trying something that is impossible; thus 
 almost every member of society is trying to get 
 society to take from him all he produces and give 
 him in return money, and instead of using this 
 money by investing it in the material wealth pro- 
 duced by the rest of society, he says to the rest of 
 society: *'I will use of your material wealth just 
 what I am forced to through necessity. Stop pro- 
 during your material wealth. When I need a little 
 more T will spend a little more of this money and you
 
 50 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 
 
 can produce a little more." The great majority of 
 people work on this basis and the production of ma- 
 terial wealth is kept down, and, as elsewhere said in 
 this book, society lives at its lowest ebb. What 
 would you think if a family had a valuable farm and 
 would only produce enough off of it to meet their 
 current wants'? You would say: ''How wasteful 
 and foolish." My friends, the world is a great big 
 valuable farm. The members of the human family upon 
 it are operating under a system which tends to limit their 
 production to just enough to meet their current wants. 
 I say to you: ''How wasteful and foolish!" 
 
 Under the jDresent system you can not blame 
 men for holding to their money. They have to hold 
 to it for self -protection. The only time you can ex- 
 pect a man to invest his money is when he sees a 
 chance of making a profit. Some men do spend their 
 money freely to the detriment of themselves and 
 their own families, but to the great benefit of the 
 rest of the world, and if all men were liberal spend- 
 ers within their means, the world would be better, 
 but if any man or set of men were to operate on this 
 principle and spend their money freely for the prod- 
 ucts of labor they would be foolish, because most of 
 the people would not co-operate with them. People, 
 as a general rule, will spend money for just what 
 they need to live on, and just what they need to 
 wear, and for household furniture, and if a man be- 
 comes wealthy, of course, he will indulge in extrava- 
 gance to a certain extent, but it never occurs to any 
 man to put his money into the products of labor as 
 a safe way of hoarding wealth. He will put his 
 money into those products as an investment if he
 
 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 51 
 
 can see a sure profit, but not otherwise. Under our 
 present system, if all men were good business men, 
 and practiced economy and made no mistakes, they 
 would all have very hard times, and would grind 
 each other right down into the earth. To a very 
 large extent, it is the drunkard, the spendthrift, the 
 fool, the inexperienced man — in other words, the 
 man who takes the worst of it — that enables the rest 
 of mankind to live and loosens up the situation so 
 that the wheels of trade may turn. That genial 
 author and scholar, Mr. Henry Fielding, whose writ- 
 ings show him to have been a man of most liberal 
 thought and wide experience, had recognized this 
 fact as early as the year 1749, and in his ''History 
 of Tom Jones, a Foundling," which first appeared 
 in February of that year, referring to the spend- 
 thrift, he criticizes humanity for the little respect 
 commonly paid to a character "which really does 
 great honor to human nature, and is productive of 
 the highest good to society." 
 
 Now, as I stated before, I do not want the whole 
 world to become spendthrifts, but the sooner people 
 discover that there are other forms of wealth besides 
 money, that much sooner will people be relieved 
 from the heavy gold and silver heel that has been 
 goading them on to a struggle in which they destroy 
 one another — a struggle in which the poor and the 
 weak are always miserable and the rich and the 
 strong are far from safe. I do not mean that they should 
 eat or drinh or smolce up everything that they have, but if 
 all men were forced to hoard their wealth in other 
 things than money, then the material wealth of the 
 world would not be limited (as it is at present), but
 
 52 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 
 
 the production of material wealth would steadily 
 increase, and instead of being a bad thing, would be 
 a good thing. Money w^ould perform its real work 
 as a medium of exchange, and the wheels of industry 
 would hum and buzz, and the world would grow 
 wealthier every day. But how shall we get all men 
 to immediately reinvest their surplus profits in ma- 
 terial wealth? It is evident that in their individual 
 capacity they will not thus ''cast their bread upon 
 the waters" and place their reliance on things going 
 well. It remains for the strong arm of the govern- 
 ment to present to mankind a system under which it 
 will be more profitable for a man to invest his money 
 than to hoard it. I believe that all men would spend 
 or invest their money, and, with their families, live 
 comfortably, if they were assured that they could 
 get more money any time they were willing to work, 
 or wished to sell something in which they had in- 
 vested, and if they did not have such doubts about 
 their existence a year or so hence. Over-production 
 has not yet reached a stage where it can be said to 
 be caused by the fact that the consumers in this coun- 
 try do not need the things that are produced. While 
 it is possible for the aid of mankind, with the aid of 
 machinery, to produce more than mankind could pos- 
 sibly use, yet this is not now being done in many in- 
 stances. It may be that at times more has been pro- 
 duced than could be sold, but that has been because 
 the people could not buy all they wanted, and even 
 those that were able to buy what they wanted did 
 not feel at liberty to spend their money freely in 
 doing so. There is a large class of people who do 
 not buy or invest in anything unless it is absolutely
 
 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 53 
 
 necessary. Can you not see that the wheels of com- 
 merce are turning spasmodically and with an effort? 
 
 Can you not see that just in proportion as men have sur- 
 rendered to the power of the almighty dollar, and have made 
 all their efforts subserve to its acquirement, just to that ex- 
 tent has the almighty dollar enslaved and hound them with 
 its golden chains?
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 SHOWING THE INEFFICIENCY OF VARIOUS REFORM 
 MOVEMENTS AS REMEDIES FOR THE DEFECT 
 POINTED OUT IN THE PRECEDING CHAPTER, AND 
 SUGGESTING A PROPER REMEDY, CONSIST- 
 ING OF THREE CO-OPERATIVE LAWS, 
 RELATING TO MONEY, MACHINERY 
 AND PENSIONS. 
 
 Now, if we were to issue money (either gold or 
 silver) much faster than we at present do and in 
 larger quantities, would that correct the trouble 
 growing out of so-called over-production, and (what 
 is of more importance) would the remedy be a per- 
 manent one ? Mr. J. Laurence Langhlin, of scholastic 
 fame, and a prolific writer on these subjects, in his 
 '' Elements of Political Economy," i^ublished in 
 1887, correctly states as follows: '** * * value is 
 a ratio. The value of money is a relation of money 
 to all things which are exchanged for it. A change 
 in any one of the thousands of articles for which 
 money is offered every day modifies the relation be- 
 tween money and other things." This is true of 
 any money based on a commodity, and from this we 
 see that our joresent money partakes of the nature 
 of a commodity, and that the relation between it and 
 other things would also be modified by a change in 
 its own quantity. Therefore if we have a great deal 
 of money, money will be cheap, and a dollar will not 
 have as large a purchasing power as formerly. Out 
 of this fact the free silver people drew some of their 
 most hopeful conclusions. They claimed that if
 
 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 5 5 
 
 money would go down in value, like any commodity, 
 it would no longer be desirable for men to hoard 
 money, but that money going down in value only 
 meant that commodities (other than money) were 
 going up in value, and therefore, it would be profit- 
 able for men with money to invest their money in all 
 sorts of such commodities, and the consequence 
 would be a great boom in trade and a ready market 
 for the products of labor and of the soil, and, that 
 therefore, the laboring men and the farmers would 
 prosper, and through them the whole country would 
 prosper. Now, suppose we admit that, at the time 
 this change in the purchasing value of money were 
 to take place, there would be improved conditions 
 in certain Hues of trade. Does anyone really think 
 that after the world had adjusted itself to the new 
 value of money that the good times in those certain 
 lines of trade would continue? Don't you know that, 
 even if money were not worth as much in purchasing 
 power as it once had been, it would still be the thing 
 in which every man would want to take his profit, 
 and that in a very short time the old conditions 
 would prevail? But some of my readers who are 
 students of political economy will have pricked up 
 their ears at about this point, and they will ask: 
 ** Didn't you tell us a while ago that you were going 
 to produce great invigoration in trade by means of a 
 dollar that would purchase more than any gold or 
 silver dollar of today, and now have you not just 
 admitted that perhaps a dollar which would pur- 
 chase less would also invigorate certain lines of trade 
 for a short time? Are you not blowing hot and cold 
 in the same breath ?" My friends, if yon will be pa~
 
 66 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTHM 
 
 tient, I will explain. You see, the dollar I propose 
 to tell you about is in most respects a different kind 
 of a dollar from any you ever heard of before* 
 
 Now, let us suppose that the fiat money people 
 had their way about the thing: In the first place, 
 even if their money were good money, it would be 
 subject to the same objection as a remedy for present 
 evils as free silver; and on the other hand it requires 
 little argument to convince one of sound and logical 
 mind that fiat money is morally and theoretically 
 wrong. It is true that there are a great number of 
 debts owing in this country, and that if the United 
 States government made such fiat money legal ten- 
 der, the same as gold for the payment of this great 
 amount of debts, then a certain quantity of fiat 
 money could be floated, but even the floating of a 
 limited amount of that fiat money would be the same 
 operation that some of our dishonest financiers in- 
 dulge in when they ' ' water the stock " of a corpora- 
 tion. People are becoming practical and business- 
 like, and fiat money is not the remedy they want. 
 
 Now, let us suppose that our friend who has 
 ideas about reducing the hours of labor has his way 
 about the thing: Is that going to cure the difficulty 
 which arises out of men taking their profits in money 
 and hoarding them? Not at all. While the reduction 
 of hours of labor would do some good by giving 
 
 •PUBLISHERS' NOTE. — At first blush, some readers may 
 confound the money suggested by the author in this work with 
 the money based on service which has been mentioned by va- 
 rious Socialistic writers, but a very slight examination will 
 convince them that the taxable money here suggested is en- 
 tirely new and different, possessing every Indication of being 
 a practical success and devoid of those ear-marks of failure 
 which have always accompanied the others.
 
 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 5 7 
 
 every man a limited amount of work for which he 
 would receive a fair amount of pay, and while the 
 hours of labor might properly be shortened by law 
 to such an extent as would make them compatible 
 with the health of the laborer, yet, on the other hand, 
 to shorten them to any further extent would be 
 wasting the goodness of God by wasting the produc- 
 ing power of mankind, and it would not prevent 
 over-production because peoj^le would still make a 
 profit in the form of money which profit they would 
 refuse to promptly reinvest during glut in market, 
 as they have always refused, and because the labor- 
 ers would still only receive wages enough to pur- 
 chase simply a portion of the goods they had pro- 
 duced, and because the other portion of those goods 
 would still be regarded by the employing class as 
 over-product io7i to he gotten rid of, instead of as icealth 
 of which it luas desirable to quickly accumulate more and 
 more, by reinvesting their surplus profits promptly 
 and having more jDroduced. 
 
 I say to you that what we want is a system by 
 which men can not only amass great quantities of 
 gold and silver, but such a system as will make them 
 also appreciate the value of all the other products 
 of labor (for you must know that gold and silver are 
 products of labor, being gotten out of the earth and 
 refined by means of labor and by means of machinery 
 produced by labor). I want men to hoard gold and 
 silver to their heart's content, for I know it is valu- 
 able stuff, but I also want them to have store houses 
 full of goods, granaries full of grain, lumber yards 
 full of lumber, orchards full of trees, pastures over- 
 run with stock, land with valuable improvements
 
 58 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTR.M 
 
 Upon it, liuuks and linen closets full of clothing and 
 libraries full of books, as well as valuable paintings, 
 statuary, jewelry and gems. These things have 
 value, and should not be regarded as over-produc- 
 tion. I want to see the various factories in this 
 country produce to their fullest extent. 1 want to 
 see the people at large prosperous and able to be con- 
 sumers of that production. After the production is 
 up to what it ought to be in quantity, I want to see 
 the quality begin to improve in every article that 
 people wear, eat or use. I want to see good roads 
 and buildings and works of art multiply, and new 
 industries opened up. I want to see our children 
 educated in the arts and sciences, and when they 
 have received that education, I want what they pro- 
 duce to be regarded as having value. I w^ant to see 
 the houses which our working people own and rent 
 and in which they live built on better plans, and sur- 
 rounded by larger, cleaner and healthier grounds. 
 I want to see improvement and progress. The way 
 to accomplish this result is by the passage of several 
 laws which I shall now present for your consider- 
 ation. 
 
 One of them is a law in favor of some real 
 money — not gold and silver money, and not fiat 
 money — but real money — money which, in addition 
 to possessing many other advantages and good 
 points, would be a money based upon labor, which is 
 a thing the relation of which to the population 
 always remains the same, and any variation of the 
 value of which money with reference to any of the 
 thousands of articles measured in it would be caused 
 by such natural phenomena as properly affects those
 
 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 59 
 
 various articles, and would not be caused by any va- 
 riation in the value of the money itself, which would 
 remain a stationary standard of value, to which other 
 things would adjust themselves in accordance with 
 those natural laws which govern value. Did you 
 ever reflect that, if the production of gold were to be 
 suddenly augmented nine or ten hundred per cent, by 
 the discovery of some new process or rich fields, the 
 purchasing value of our present money would be so 
 reduced as to ruin every man whose estate consisted 
 of money? The only man who would be unaffected 
 would be the man whose wealth consisted not of 
 money, but of land, or of the material wealth of the 
 world consisting of the products of labor. Well, 
 there might be another man who would weather the 
 storm. That would be the man who had wits enough 
 about him to go around to the postoffice and put all 
 of his money into j^ostage stamps, and the govern- 
 ment itself would have to stop the sale of postage 
 stamps under the present postal rates to keep from 
 losing heavily by this source, or else, later on, violate 
 its implied contract by refusing to honor the stamps 
 at the postal rates that prevailed on the day of sale. 
 Those stamps would have marked upon them 
 *'2 cents," but while every other kind of 2 cents in 
 the world would have fallen in actual purchasing 
 value, those postage stamps would remain the same 
 in purchasing value (if the government kept its 
 faith) because those postage stamps would be redeem- 
 ahle in labor. In other words, the United States gov- 
 ernment, through its mail department, would stand 
 ready to render service for those stamps.
 
 60 THK AUTOMATIC 8Y8THM 
 
 This law in reference to money would provide 
 that the national government should (by purchase) 
 take charge of all public utilities, consisting of rail- 
 roads, steamboats, bridges, street car lines, water 
 works systems, telegi'aph and telephone systems, gas 
 and electric systems, etc. It would also provide for 
 an automatic tax on money, which money would be 
 of the new kind hereinafter mentioned. 
 
 The second of these laws is a law witli reference 
 to machinery. 
 
 The third law is one with reference to pensions. 
 
 I will now explain these various proposed meas- 
 ures in their entirety, and when I have done so, I 
 think you will believe in them; nor do I believe that 
 any teacher of political economy the world over will 
 be able to change your opinion on the subject after 
 you have once thoroughly digested the matter, and 
 especially after you have read the application of 
 these proposed laws to existing conditions contained 
 in the latter portion of this book. 
 
 These laws must be laws of the national govern- 
 ment.* It will not do for any state or community 
 to try to cope with the situation alone. Your vote 
 may do some good in your own commimity in the 
 way of filling your public offices with good and hon- 
 est men, and in the way of having your local govern- 
 ment properly administered, and of sending honest 
 men to your state legislatures and municipal coun- 
 cils; but I say to you that the situation is too large 
 
 *The recent utterances of our distinguished President, 
 Mr. Roosevelt, indicate that he is strongly of the belief that 
 laws dealing with the commercial situation, In order to produce 
 proper results, should be laws of the national government.
 
 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 61 
 
 to be coped with by any state or small community. 
 A community or a state may be managed all right 
 within itself, and yet it will have many unprosper- 
 ous citizens, because of the fact that influences from 
 without which are far-reaching and beyond the con- 
 trol of the community or of the state are at work and 
 have a bearing upon the affairs of its citizens, and 
 hence it is that the strong arm of the national gov- 
 ernment must take some action.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 A DESCRIPTION AND PARTIAL DISCUSSION OF THE 
 PROPOSED LAW RELATING TO MONEY. 
 
 The government must not only take possession 
 (by enforced purchase) of those railroads that go 
 from one state to another, but it must also purchase 
 those railroads and street railways that have their 
 lines entirely within any one state. Exercising the 
 i-ight of eminent domain in behalf of the public, it 
 must purchase all water works systems, all telegraph 
 and telephone systems, all gas and electric light, 
 power and heating systems, all coal mines, etc., and 
 it must pay to the men and corporations who now 
 own them the just value thereof. This is a large 
 purchase for the government to make, and will re- 
 quire the issuance of bonds. The signs of the times 
 point unmistakably to the fact that this move must 
 sooner or later be made by the government, and the 
 sooner it is done, the easier will be the task. 
 
 What has gone before in this book will have 
 suggested to your mind, as has been my intention 
 that it should do, that what we need among other 
 things is a different kind of money. It is evident 
 that we need a money, the current purchasing value 
 of which and the commercial need for which will be 
 such that people will strive to get it just as they do 
 our present kind of money, and yet this money will 
 have to be of such a nature that men will not want 
 to cling to it or hoard it. To produce this result, the 
 money will have to decrease slightly in value every
 
 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 63 
 
 month, and it is also apparent that this lessening in 
 value must not be accomplished by means of any 
 real waste, but that whatever the holder of the money 
 loses in its value, instead of being wasted, should 
 remain in existence and be applied to the benefit of 
 society at large, and it is also apparent that, in order 
 to be practicable, any decrease in the value of the 
 money each month should not result in the money in 
 the hands of the people becoming of different and 
 irregular denominations or value, nor being one 
 month of less general value than it was the preceding 
 month, but all the money in circulation will have to 
 be of definite and regular denomination and value. 
 A solution of this problem will be found in simple 
 and satisfactory form by an examination of the kind 
 of money I am about to present to you. 
 
 When the government becomes the owner and 
 manager of the different industries heretofore men- 
 tioned, it should demonetize both gold and silver. A 
 large number of people today say that gold acquires 
 no value from being money, but that the whole value 
 of gold is its intrinsic value. If they are right, no 
 gold interest will be damaged by the demonetization 
 of gold, because gold will still be just as valuable and 
 people can still get it, and hoard it, and enter into 
 contracts to furnish it and to be furnished with it. 
 
 Having demonetized gold and silver, the govern- 
 ment should issue a kind of money, a dollar of which 
 would read as follows: 
 
 "Washington, D. C, (Date) 
 
 The (government) hereby promises 
 
 to pay to the holder hereof, if applied for at the proper place 
 according to law during the month above mentioned, one 
 dollar's worth of service in its postoffice. telegraph, telephone,
 
 «4 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 
 
 railroad, street railway, steamship, water rates, light or heating 
 department, or In the goods or service of any other Industry 
 which said (government) may own and con- 
 trol at the time this dollar shall be presented for payment. 
 Said payment shall be made at the rate fixed by the Depart- 
 ment of Industry for the current month. This dollar Is legal 
 tender during the month for which it is Issued for all taxes and 
 impost duties and all debts, public or private, in all territory 
 
 subject to the laws of the (government) 
 
 "If the holder hereof does not desire to have this obligation 
 redeemed in goods or service during the month for which it is 
 issued, he must, at the end of such month, have it redeemed in 
 the money of the next month, less the tax provided by law, and 
 he is hereby cautioned that if he fails to present the same 
 within the first three days of such next month, it will be sub- 
 ject to an increased penalty tax as provided by law. 
 
 "Secretary of the Treasury." 
 Here is a paper dollar that would be as valuable 
 as any paper dollar we have today promising to pay 
 gold or silver, because it promises to perform labor, 
 and a promise to perform labor is just as valuable 
 as a promise to pay gold or silver, but, on other 
 grounds than that, this dollar would be more valu- 
 able than any gold, silver or paper dollar we have 
 today, for the reason that this dollar would purchase 
 more than a dollar now purchases. Why should it? 
 Because the United States of America would run all 
 these industries, just the same as it now runs its 
 opstoffice department. It would not try to make a 
 large profit on its different lines of business. All it 
 would want would be a slight margin of safety over 
 and above running expenses, and you can, therefore, 
 readily see that a railroad company, a gas company 
 jmd a wattr works company run by the United 
 States government would give more for a dollar than 
 a railroad company, a gas company or a water works
 
 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 65 
 
 company gives today, when it is run by some profit- 
 making monopoly or trust. Do you catch the idea? 
 
 ''Oh, but," you say, "if we can have money in 
 that manner, why not issue a lot of it, and make mil- 
 lionaires of us all?" 
 
 Now, my friend, be sensible. If a savage were to 
 take an umbrella and hold it over his head during a 
 rainstorm, he might say an umbrella was a good 
 thing, but if he walked along in the rain dragging 
 the umbrella under foot, he would say that an um- 
 brella was no good for rain. In other words, in 
 order to get the benefit of the umbrella, he would 
 have to use it in a proper manner. So it is with this 
 monetary system that I propose. The government 
 •will have to make a proper use of it. What would 
 you think of a common, ordinary little one-horse 
 milk company that had been in the habit of doing 
 business in one of your cities, using milk tickets in 
 the business, if that company were to suddenly go to 
 work and give everybody in town a thousand dollars' 
 worth of milk tickets free of charge ? Of course, the 
 company would not be able to redeem the tickets. 
 But no milk company is going to be foolish enough 
 to do this, and I don't think the United States gov- 
 ernment will do it, as I assume that the affairs of 
 the government will always be in charge of men who 
 have intelligence to run an ordinary milk wagon. 
 
 "But," you say, "the people would hoard this 
 money just the same as any other and it would all 
 get out of circulation by being centralized in the 
 hands of the capitalists, and we would have to have 
 more and more issued all the time, and, finally, there 
 would be a great amount outstanding, as an obliga-
 
 66 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 
 
 tiou against the govermnent, and it would decrease 
 in value and ultimately involve the government in 
 financial ruin." 
 
 No, my friend, the government of the future will 
 be too vigilant for anything of that kind. There will 
 be a law taxing money automatically. I have for a 
 number of years been trying to drum into the heads 
 of my friends the fact that money is the belting 
 which turns the wheels of commerce, and that no one 
 should be allowed to roll it up and put it away and 
 spring it on us when it can do the most damage. 
 The government of the future will tax money, so 
 that if any man hoards his money instead of putting 
 it into the channels of trade, he will gradually lose 
 his money. 
 
 "Well," you say, "that's nothing new. The 
 different states and counties and cities tax money 
 right now as part of a man's personal property tax, 
 and that does not keep men from hoarding money, 
 nor do men return a full valuation into the assessor's 
 office." 
 
 Why, my friend, you are thinking of the old- 
 fashioned method of taxing money in vogue now. 
 The government of the future will be too shrewd to 
 tax money by simply asking a man to hold up his 
 hand and swear to how much money he has once a 
 year. That way of taxing money will not do, because 
 the man who does the swearing always thinks some 
 other man ought to pay the tax. I remember a good, 
 old-fashioned, hard-working and self-respecting 
 neighbor of mine who at one time got me quite ex- 
 cited and worked up by a harangue which he deliv- 
 ered to me over the top of his front fence on the
 
 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 67 
 
 subject of street ear corporations not paying taxes 
 on a large enough valuation and not carrying licenses 
 for all their cars. As he turned to go in his house he 
 anxiously whistled to an ugly bull pup that had wan- 
 dered out of his yard, and as the dog darted through 
 the opened and closed gate very innocently and 
 blandly remarked to me that he didn't like the dog 
 to run on the street, as it had no license tag and he 
 was afraid the dog-catcher might nab it. No, the 
 government of the future will not tax money in that 
 way. It will collect taxes automatically on every 
 cent of its money, because if a man holds out his 
 money and does not pay the tax on it, the money 
 itself will disclose this fact, and the most ignorant 
 washer-woman or unposted Chinaman in the country 
 will be able to see that it is not of full face value. 
 The government will require every man (or his 
 banker for him) to take his money on the first of 
 every month to the postoffice, or such place as shall 
 be provided, where there will be a force of clerks on 
 hand to wait upon him. Now, suppose that I am one 
 of the clerks and you are the fortunate possessor of 
 the money that is going to be taxed. 1 shall say to 
 you: "How much have you!" You will lay down 
 your money (for instance, $4-1.00) and will say: 
 ''Forty-four dollars." I shall pick it up and say: 
 ' ' That 's correct. One per cent, of $44.00 is 44 cents. 
 You are entitled to the other 99 per cent., which 
 amounts to $43.56. How do you want it?" You will 
 probably answer me: "Two tens, four fives and the 
 rest in change." T shall thereupon hand you two 
 ten-dollar bills, four five-dollar bills, three one-dollar 
 bills and 56 cents in smaller money of paper. You
 
 68 THE AUTOMATIC 8T8THM 
 
 will say: '*It looks like it's going to rain," and I 
 shall say: ''Yes, it does," and I shall turn your old 
 money over to the government to be destroyed, and 
 the government will get, by way of taxation, the 
 other 44 cents of new money which you did not get. 
 Now, if you will look at your $43.56 of new money, 
 you will see that it is different in date, color and de- 
 sign from the old money. The government will have 
 different colors and designs for the different months, 
 so that the most ignorant man in the country can i^er- 
 ceive at a glance, when you offer him money, whether 
 he is getting money that has been taxed or not, and 
 if a man is behind time in getting his money down 
 to be taxed, it will no longer be of face value or legal 
 tender, and no one will be willing to receive it from 
 him except the government, which will redeem it by 
 charging him a tax of 2 per cent, a month instead of 
 1 per cent. So, you see, the government of the future 
 will know-how to collect its tax on money. 
 
 Now, if you are a man out of work, when we 
 have this kind of money, you will soon get work, 
 because a man who has an income of $1,000.00 a 
 month will spend, as he does now, say $200.00 in his 
 living expenses, and then, instead of hoarding the 
 other $800.00, or being able to put it out at interest, 
 he will have to pay interest for the privilege of 
 hoarding it, and hence, rather than do that, he will 
 spend it, and put it in the shape of cattle, or wheat or 
 some product of labor, on which he will not have to 
 pay any taxes under the government of the future. 
 Of course, when the law first goes into effect, prob- 
 ably the first thing that rich men will invest their 
 surplus money in will be gold and silver, but don't
 
 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 69 
 
 let that bother you. It will not take them long to get 
 a comer on that, because, to tell you a secret, they 
 now own about all of it there is in existence, and can 
 call it out of circulation any time they desire. You 
 can see that, of necessity, men will soon take to try- 
 ing to get rich by giving laborers work and contin- 
 ually reinvesting their surplus profits in the products 
 of labor, and, if they show too big a disposition to 
 invest in land, Henry George and the Single Taxers 
 have suggested the proper remedy. When the prod- 
 ucts of labor become the most desirable form in 
 which men can hoard wealth, then the laborer will 
 get work. Now, a laborer usually spends most of 
 his money to live on, and at the end of the month he 
 will not have a very large amount to pay taxes on. 
 If the amount he has left is $20.00, the tax on it will 
 amount to 20 cents. But a man who has a large in- 
 come, while he may live nearly as cheaply as a 
 laborer does, will have to pay taxes on all the surplus 
 money which he attempts to hoard, and he will not 
 hoard it. He will invest it. What you want is a 
 money that is useful in the channels of trade and 
 keeps moving. Then you will find out that it was not, 
 after all, a large quantity of money that was wanted, 
 but simply a reasonable quantity of the right kind 
 of money — in other words, real money — money that 
 takes labor, which is the only thing that produces 
 wealth, and puts that labor in the- pi ace that gold has 
 occupied for too long a time. To what a sorrowful 
 state have things come when we hear upon the lips 
 of civilized men and women such an expression as 
 ' * pauper labor ! " I would just as soon hear a man 
 accuse his own sister of dishonor as to hear him call
 
 70 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 
 
 labor a pauper! Labor should not be a pauper, for 
 she is the Goddess to whom all men must go for their 
 riches! God from on high has endowed her with a 
 wand of almost infinite potency. With it she strikes 
 upon the mountains and they crumble; she points to 
 the sea and its waters recede and dikes and new land 
 take its place; she stirs the sands of the desert and 
 they bloom as a garden, and, delving deeper, the very 
 bowels of the earth give up their treasures. Oh, 
 Labor, if thou art indeed a pauper, how dishonest 
 have been thine enemies! How incompetent thy 
 priests! I say to you that if Labor is a pauper, the 
 time has come when we must put a stop to the loot- 
 ing of her shrine and the mismanagement of her re- 
 sources. 
 
 But at present I shall not dwell too long upon 
 this part of my plan. I shall go on and explain to 
 you the working of the laws with reference to ma- 
 chinery and with reference to pensions which I say 
 that men should have.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 A DESCRIPTION AND PARTIAL DISCUSSION OF THE PRO- 
 POSED LAW RELATING TO TAXING LABOR WHEN 
 DONE BY MACHINERY. 
 
 Heretofore the favorite remedies suggested as 
 a solution of the machinery problem have been 
 shorter hours of labor and the plan of living as a 
 great family in communities. The first plan would 
 be an unnecessary waste of human energy, and the 
 second plan would operate to thwart all personal 
 liberty and individual ambition. By the plan I sug- 
 gest, all men can get the benefit of machinery and 
 still live just as they do today, without making any 
 great change in affairs at all. There should be added 
 to the duties of the patent office at Washington the 
 duty of declaring whether or not an invention is 
 labor saving in its nature. Of course, there are many 
 useful little devices invented that are not labor sav- 
 ing, such as pen holders, smoking pipes, stoves, etc., 
 and then again, there are other little mechanical con- 
 trivances which, although essentially labor saving in 
 their nature, still do not belong to that class of ma- 
 chinery which has become so dangerous by displac- 
 ing labor and by reducing the grade of the laborer 
 from that of a skilled workman to that of a common 
 machine hand. Thus, a corkscrew may be said to be 
 labor saving, but it would not come under the class 
 of machines which mankind wants controlled. One 
 of those small sausage grinders which the housewife
 
 72 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 
 
 fastens to her kitchen table and uses in the prepara- 
 tion of mincemeat and Hamburger steak may be 
 said to be labor saving, but it would not come under 
 the class of machinery that is menacing the laborer 
 of today; nor would it be desirable to include in the 
 classification to be controlled any labor-saving ma- 
 chine or tool which is designed to be used in every 
 household or to become part of the kit of tools of the 
 individual workman in any trade, for it is plainly 
 to be seen that men already receive the full benefit in 
 a general way of that class of labor-saving machines 
 and tools. But when the patent ofiice at Washington 
 (or some commission appointed for the purpose) 
 shall decide that a machine is of such a labor-saving 
 nature as to do a certain amount of work with less 
 men than theretofore, or as to do a larger amount of 
 work with the same number of men, or of such auto- 
 matic nature as to disjDlace the labor of man entirely, 
 or as to reduce the grade of the men employed about 
 it from skilled to unskilled labor, either in the fac- 
 tory, the mill, the slaughter house, the foundry, the 
 mine, or in any other line of industry employing 
 labor, then it shall be the duty of such patent office 
 or commission to so declare and to say to the in- 
 ventor of that machine : ' ' The United States govern- 
 ment will exercise a supervision over the manufac- 
 ture of that machine for you as long as there is any 
 demand for its use, and the government will collect 
 a rental tax on it from such manufacturers as want to 
 use it, and will pay you (the inventor) a certain per- 
 centage of the first $10,000 of rent which the govern- 
 ment receives per year for it, and a certain smaller
 
 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 7S 
 
 percentage of all over $10,000 per year which it re- 
 ceives as rent. ' ' Now, let us see how this would work 
 out: We will say that a machine is invented, by the 
 use of which a man in a shoe factory, who could for- 
 merly turn out five pairs of shoes a day, could, with 
 the aid of the new machine, turn out ten pairs of 
 shoes a day. It is evident that the shoe factory would 
 formerly have had to pay two workmen for produc- 
 ing ten pairs of shoes in a day, which ten pairs of 
 shoes they now procure by paying only one workman 
 for a day. Therefore the shoe factory, by the use 
 of this machine, gains the labor of one man per day 
 on each machine of the new kind that it puts into 
 operation, or a total gain of 365 days of labor per 
 year for each machine. Of course, the cost of main- 
 taining and operating the new machine, as compared 
 with the cost of maintaining and operating the old 
 machine, or process theretofore used, would have to 
 be computed also in order to arrive at the exact 
 amount gained by using the new machine. But we 
 are principally interested in the labor saved by the 
 machine. Now, if the government were to charge as 
 rent for the machine an amount equal to the amount 
 it saves the shoe factory in wages, etc., there would, 
 of course, be no incentive for the factory to use the 
 machine, and neither the inventor, the proprietor of 
 the factory, nor anyone else would receive any bene- 
 fit from the machine, if not used. If, however, the 
 government would charge a rental equal to one-half 
 the labor-saving value of the machine, then the shoe 
 factory, which could not get the machine in any 
 other way, would be glad to pay the government that
 
 74 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 
 
 amount. "But," you say, "while I can not at pres- 
 ent see what good it would do for the government to 
 get this rent, there is another thing to be considered. 
 The different countries in Europe would not charge 
 their manufacturers rent for the use of machinery, 
 and therefore the manufacturers of Europe would 
 have the advantage and would supply the people of 
 the United States with goods, to the exclusion of 
 our home manufactured goods." My friend, that 
 matter can be regulated and controlled by a high 
 tariff. A great many people in this country today 
 believe that a high tariff is a good thing as a pro- 
 tection against cheaply paid foreign labor. I ask 
 these people if a tariff is a good thing to protect us 
 against the importation of goods manufactured by 
 foreign workmen, why then is a tariff not a good 
 thing to protect us against the importation of goods 
 manufactured by foreign machinery? The trouble 
 right now is that, no matter how much we protect 
 our workingman against the competition of poorly 
 paid foreign labor, we do not get .the full benefit, for 
 the reason that our workingmen are not protected 
 against the competiiion of machinery in our oiun country. 
 We have succeeded in protecting the American man- 
 ufacturer and his workmen from competition with 
 cheaply paid foreign labor, but we have not succeeded in 
 protecting the American workman from the American man- 
 ufacturer who utilizes Icibor-saving machinery. When the 
 American manufacturer sells his goods he does not 
 have to compete with the European manufacturer, 
 and he can, therefore, sell his goods for a high price, 
 but when the American mauufacturer produces his
 
 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 75 
 
 goods, the American laborer, who does the work of 
 producing those goods, finds that he (the laborer) 
 has to compete with machinery in this country, and, 
 therefore, the tariff on foreign-made goods does not 
 protect him (the laborer) as much as it does the man- 
 ufacturer, and he (the laborer) has to protect him- 
 self by forming labor unions and such means. What 
 I propose is equivalent to a tariff on goods manufac- 
 tured by machinery in this country, but not a large 
 enough tariff to be prohibitive, as it is desirable to 
 manufacture goods by machinery in this country if 
 the whole people will get the benefit. Of course, the 
 government would not have to actually engage in 
 the manufacture of machinery itself, but it could 
 have a supervision over the manufacture of labor- 
 saving machinery, and could require that every such 
 machine in existence be registered and numbered, 
 and the government, instead of charging a rental, in 
 such a case could simply assess a tax of the same 
 amount that the rental would have been in the other 
 case. Of course, an allowance should be made for 
 such time as any machine might stand idle. When 
 we have such a tax on goods made by machinery, 
 then the individual workman with his small work- 
 shop will be able to compete in some measure with 
 the capitalist who possesses a large machinery plant, 
 and the workmen in the large machinery plant will 
 receive higher wages, while all of our citizens will 
 participate more equally than they 'do now in the 
 benefits arising from a protective tariff. But the 
 advantages mentioned above do not constitute by 
 any means the full amount of good that will be ac-
 
 ;6 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 
 
 complished by this law with reference to machinery. 
 In order to explain to you how the whole people will 
 get the benefit of machinery when the government 
 supervises and taxes the same, it will be necessary 
 for me to enter into that portion of my plan of im- 
 provement which relates to pensions in the following 
 chapter.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 A DESCRIPTION AND PARTIAL DISCUSSION OF THE 
 PROPOSED LAW RELATING TO PENSIONS. 
 
 You will have noticed that by means of the 
 various measures advocated in this book, the govern- 
 ment would receive quite a large and excessive reve- 
 nue in addition to the revenue it receives at present : 
 First, the impost duties collected by the custom 
 house department would be higher; second, there 
 would be a slight percentage of profit over and above 
 operating expenses from the various railroads and 
 other industries controlled by the government; 
 third, there would be a revenue from the money tax 
 amounting monthly to 1 per cent, of all money in cir- 
 culation; and, fourth, the government would receive 
 a large rental tax from individuals, firms and corpor- 
 ations using labor-saving machinery in their busi- 
 ness. Now, the proper use for the government to 
 make of this great amount of surplus revenue would 
 be to give to every citizen of the United States a pen- 
 sion, whether such citizen be a male or a female, 
 white or black, adult or child. That pension should 
 be the same in amount for all. The rich man would 
 receive the same as the poor man. If there should 
 be any special reason why any particular person 
 should receive a larger amount, that matter could be 
 regulated by a separate special pension in the same 
 manner that pensions are now granted, and the gov- 
 ernment would be just as strict in the matter of 
 granting special pensions as it now is, and would not
 
 78 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 
 
 graut such special pensions for any other reasons 
 than such i^ensions are now granted or may in the 
 future be found to be the policy of the general laws 
 on that subject. Now, while I contend that 99 per 
 cent, of our citizens will, by the operation of the 
 various laws I have mentioned, make much larger 
 profits than they have heretofore made, still in all 
 likelihood, that portion of each man's income which 
 will be covered by his share of the general pension 
 will amount to only a small sum each month, and it is 
 not my contention that anyone is going to be greatly 
 benefited by the mere matter of having a small sum 
 of pension money added to his other income each 
 month. That is not the reason I suggest this pension, 
 although I will say that if a man were the head of a 
 family of eight, consisting of himself, his wife and 
 six children, even if the pension amounted to only 
 $1.50 a month for each individual, still it would 
 aggregate for the family a total of $12.00 a month, 
 and might come in very handy. The principal reason 
 for which I suggest the pension is that it would take 
 a vast amount of money once each month and put it 
 right down at the bottom of the channels of trade and 
 allow it to percolate up in its natural course through 
 the hands of that great mass of small trades people, 
 through the hands of the middlemen, and right on up 
 to the hands of the wholesale ] merchants and manu- 
 facturers. In other words, this pension is a neces- 
 sary part of the great automatic system which this 
 book advocates. This pension would also have a 
 very beneficial effect in stopping crime, because the 
 government would have the name and address of 
 every citizen, and any man who was a criminal and
 
 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 79 
 
 fugitive from justice would either be captured when 
 he drew his pension or he would have to forfeit his 
 pension. Men who were sent to prison should have 
 their pensions stopped during their terms of impris- 
 onment. At that time the knowledge of the govern- 
 ment as to the personnel of its citizens would be so 
 accurate that it would be found advantageous to 
 have the national government supervise the voting 
 of the people at all elections, and there would then 
 be just as few instances of false votes being put in 
 as there are now of wrong persons drawing pensions, 
 and cases of false voting would be as surely and 
 strictly punished as pension frauds now are. 
 
 This pension would be proper also for the rea- 
 son that there would be so many different sources 
 of taxation that it would not be right for the govern- 
 ment to retain and squander its immense revenue by 
 having an expensive administration of its affairs. 
 The excess taxes should be returned to the people in 
 the shape of an equal pension. The object of the tax 
 is not to give the government a revenue, but to pre- 
 vent money from centralizing and to keep any one 
 man from controlling a large amount of labor, as 
 represented by labor-saving machinery, and making 
 human labor compete with it, and that, too, without 
 giving humanity in general its proper proportion of 
 the profits, and the object of the tax (on money) is 
 also to prevent the factories from shutting down 
 simply because at any time there happens to be 
 enough of the output of those factories in existence 
 to satisfy the current needs of the consumers of that 
 output. If we can so arrange matters that that out- 
 put will be a valuable form in which to hoard wealth.
 
 80 THE AUTOMATIC SY8TBM 
 
 then the factories will continue to run, and the 
 laborer keep his job, even after enough has been pro- 
 duced to satisfy the current demand of the people for 
 purposes of consumption. Money under our present 
 system always has a tendency to centralize in the 
 hands of a few, and the only remedy for this evil 
 tendency is to tax it (which will keep people from 
 hoarding large amounts of it) and then give the peo- 
 ple back their tax (and at the same time keep up a 
 continual process of equalization) by means of a 
 pension to every man, woman and child. There 
 would be nothing wrong with this pension, because 
 every person would get it. It would be fair for all. 
 Under our present system goods made by machinery 
 are cheap in price, but men are thrown out of work 
 and can not buy them even at the cheap price. A 
 man can not be a consumer unless he has money, and 
 that fact not only injures the man himself, but it 
 injures all merchants and manufacturers in business, 
 and if we can have a system by which even a man out 
 of work would receive for himself and his family the 
 means of becoming a consumer to at least a small ex- 
 tent, all the merchants and manufacturers will be 
 benefited where they were before injured. Men in 
 their individual capacity do not seem to have enough 
 faith to make them loosen up so as to cause things 
 to run smoothly, and hence it is that it is necessary 
 for the government to take upon itself this burden. 
 If we are to continue under our present competi- 
 tive commercial system, under which each citizen 
 enjoys so much of the personal liberty so dear to his 
 heart, to go where he pleases and engage in what 
 occupation he desires, then this pension will become
 
 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 81 
 
 an absolute necessity in connection with the machin- 
 ery problem, for the time is surely coming, though 
 perhaps far distant, when the machinery used in 
 mining, farming and manufacturing will be so per- 
 fected that it will require only about 10 per cent, of 
 the laborers now engaged in those different lines. 
 Of course, at that time many of the laborers consti- 
 tuting the remaining 90 per cent, will be engaged in 
 nobler pursuits and in the production of works of 
 art, etc., but they will be affected by the fact that 
 machinery will be doing so much of the work, thus 
 tending to keep them from getting employment, and 
 they should participate in the benefits of machinery 
 at that time by receiving this pension, which at that 
 time will amount to quite a large amount for each 
 individual. In other words, not one dollar of the tax 
 on labor as represented by machinery should be so 
 used as to be an expense to the people, but every dol- 
 lar of it should be returned to them in the shape of 
 the pension. It is a necessary part of the automatic 
 system. If you have gained the impression that it 
 is an expensive system, you are mistaken. The new 
 system costs the people absolutely nothing over and 
 above what they now pay as taxes. Every dollar 
 collected as taxes over and above that now collected 
 under our present system is returned to the people. 
 I once stood by while two gentlemen, one of 
 them a United States senator, were discussing mat- 
 ters of political economy. In the course of the con- 
 versation the senator said to the other gentleman: 
 ' ' Oh, you fellows are a lot of cranks. Some day we 
 will run this government to suit you and we will give 
 every man a pension ! ' ' He said this in a very scorn-
 
 82 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 
 
 ful manner, as being about the most ridiculous thing 
 imaginable, but I say to you that in the simplicity of 
 his mind he spoke better than he knew, and that he 
 may yet live to learn that the wisest part of his dis- 
 course was that which he exploited as most ridic- 
 ulous.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 CONTAINING A GENERAL DISCUSSION OF THE THREE 
 PROPOSED LAWS AND SHOWING THEIR APPLICA- 
 TION TO THE SOCIAL PROBLEM. 
 
 Under date of July 2, 1900, the United States 
 Treasury Department issued its Circular No. 113, 
 containing "Information Respecting United States 
 Bonds, Paper Currency, Coin, Production of Pre- 
 cious Metals, etc." On page 62 of that circular the 
 amount of money in circulation in the United States 
 for the year 1900 is given at $2,062,425,496.00. The 
 population of the country is placed at 77,816,000, and 
 using these figures as a basis, the circular shows that 
 the per capita of money in circulation for the year 
 1900 amounts to $26.50 for each individual. 
 
 It must be apparent to every one that when the 
 government controls and operates the great indus- 
 tries contemplated by this book, it will be perfectly 
 able to redeem its promises to pay in labor and ser- 
 vice to an amount much greater than the present 
 sum of money in circulation, and especially is this 
 true when we consider that it will make a slight 
 profit on each promise to pay that it redeems. It is 
 very apparent, also, that should the government 
 adopt this kind of money, in all probability, the 
 amount outstanding or in circulation would never 
 reach a sum as large in proportion to the population 
 at any time in the future as the amount now in cir- 
 culation of our present kind of money bears to the 
 present population. I say this because it is a self
 
 84 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 
 
 evident proposition that money which wonld be 
 taxed automatically would not be hoarded by the 
 people, but that the man who had his business in a 
 healthy state would keep on hand only such amount 
 of money as would be necessary to run his business, 
 and further, that commerce would not require as 
 much of a kind of money which would circulate prop- 
 erly as it does now of a kind of money which by its 
 very nature does not circulate properly, but is clung 
 to by everyone, and valued not alone on account of 
 its present purchasing ability, but because people 
 want to hoard it. This money would not be dishon- 
 ored or refused by the public. Indeed, if an insuffi- 
 cient amount were in circulation, the great produc- 
 ing and consuming class of the United States would 
 make a vigorous demand that the matter be cor- 
 rected. In fact, at such a time the great demand 
 for it would cause the matter to adjust itself. Thus : 
 The money would consist of promises to pay by the 
 government, and, of course, the government would 
 be constantly and continuously engaged in the work 
 of redeeming those promises as they were presented 
 at the various offices where its railroad, street car, 
 gas, electric light, water works, coal and other lines 
 of business were conducted, and of necessity (after 
 the money had once been properly put into circula- 
 tion) there would always be a certain large amount 
 of it outstanding which would be circulating from 
 hand to hand amongst the people, who, of course, re- 
 quire money for purposes of commerce. The infu- 
 sion of a large amount of circulating medium into the 
 general commerce of the country would be assured 
 by the fact that the government would continually
 
 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 85 
 
 be paying out these promises to pay to its large army 
 of employes at work in the various industries con- 
 trolled by the government. These employes would 
 not present the money directly to the government for 
 redemption in the particular branch which employed 
 them, but would put it into circulation by spending 
 it with grocers, butchers, clothing merchants, land- 
 lords and the like, who would have it redeemed in 
 any of the many lines of industry controlled by the 
 government, or would circulate it among themselves, 
 knowing full well that it had behind it all the valu- 
 able commodities and service of those great indus- 
 tries and not simply a limited amount of one com- 
 modity, to-wit: gold. The government itself would 
 be the largest business concern in the country, and 
 would always be in a position to feel the financial 
 pulse of the country. The growth of commerce under 
 this system would be large, and, of course, the popu- 
 lation would increase as it has done in the past. 
 When the government, through its own business' 
 connection, discovered that there was inconvenience 
 experienced in procuring enough money with which 
 to do the business of the country, it would be its duty 
 to cause a large quantity of coal to be mined, or to 
 have betterments made on some of its property, in 
 payment of which it should issue an additional 
 amount of money commensurate with the needs of 
 commerce. Now, one of the great distinguishing 
 points between this money and the money we have 
 at present would be that the quantity of the new 
 money in existence at any time would not be the 
 thing which regulated its value, whereas at present 
 the value of our money, like the value of any com-
 
 86 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 
 
 modity, depends to a great extent on the amount of 
 money in existence. The regulation of the amount 
 of money in existence, under the plan which I sug- 
 gest, would not be for the purpose of regulating the 
 value of the money, hut simply for the purpose of 
 having the quantity of money in existence adapt 
 itself to the convenience of the people in view of 
 their commercial needs; but the value of the money 
 would not be changed by the quantity. When a 
 written instrument (issued by a solvent concern) is 
 by its terms a representative of value, its value con- 
 sists in the fact simply that the thing of which it is 
 a representative is a thing of value, and its value is 
 not changed by any change in the quantity of the 
 written instruments outstanding, as long as the con- 
 cern which issues it remains solvent, but any change 
 in order to affect its value would have to be some 
 change which affected the value of the thing repre- 
 sented. Thus you see that in this respect the same 
 rule would apply to this money as applies to a gov- 
 ernment bond. The value of a government bond 
 does not consist in the intrinsic value of the paper 
 and ink of which it is composed, and therefore the 
 value of a government bond today (issued by a 
 solvent government) does not depend on the supply 
 or number of bonds outstanding issued by that gov- 
 ernment, but depends on the amount of principal and 
 interest which that solvent govermnent is to pay un- 
 der the terms of the bond. Of course, if too great a 
 number of bonds is outstanding, that fact will alfect 
 the solvency of the government, and then a further 
 element has necessarily to be considered in arriving 
 at the value, but that forms a question of itself else-
 
 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 87 
 
 where discussed in this work so far as it applies to 
 our government. At present I am arguing the case 
 from the standpoint of a government of perfect 
 solvency. Of course, it is also true that the value of 
 such bonds could be sUgldhj changed by their becom- 
 ing the subject of manipulation or jobbery in the 
 market. But the idea which I have been trying to 
 convey is this: Suppose a government at one time 
 has outstanding $1,000,000 of bonds, and that it 
 issues an additional $49,000,000 of such bonds, mak- 
 ing the total amount $50,000,000, the said govern- 
 ment being perfectly solvent for either amount: The 
 law of supply and demand does not apply to such a 
 case, as bonds are simply representatives of value, and 
 therefore the fact that the outstanding amount is 
 fifty times as great as before does not necessarily 
 cause any change in the real value of the bonds what- 
 ever; but if, from some source, the amount in exist- 
 ence of the thing in which those bonds are payable 
 (gold) could be multiplied fifty times, the law of 
 supply and demand would have full sway, and the 
 real value of those bonds (while they would still call 
 for the same amount of money or gold) would never- 
 theless be much depreciated because of the fact that 
 gold had become so plentiful as to lose greatly in pur- 
 chasing power. The value of the money which I 
 advocate would always depend ON HOW MUCH 
 SERVICE THE GOVERNMENT WOULD PER- 
 FORM FOR A DOLLAR. Please do not lose sight 
 of the fact that this money is based on LABOR, and 
 that God Himself regulates the quantity and that He 
 has provided manual labor in exact proportion to 
 the population. The only way this money would
 
 88 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 
 
 appear to change in value would be for labor itself to 
 become more productive — that is, the labor of one 
 man capable of producing more than it did before. 
 At that time all things produced by labor would 
 properly sustain a less relative value to labor, or to 
 money based on labor, and at that time the govern- 
 ment would give more service for a dollar and the 
 people would get the benefit. Any change in the pur- 
 chasing power of money that was caused by that 
 fact, however, would not be a change that worked 
 injustice to any man, and would not be a change in 
 the relationship which the value of money would 
 sustain to a stationary standard of value. The real value 
 of an article depends on what sacrifice or labor a 
 human being has to undergo to get it. This rule 
 does not conflict with the rule which says the in- 
 trinsic value of an article depends on the supply and 
 demand, for you will see that when the supply is 
 great and the demand is small, a man ordinarily does 
 not have to undergo much sacrifice or labor to get 
 the article. Now, to make the application: If a 
 manufacturer were one year to borrow from another 
 manufacturer 10,000 pairs of shoes which it had re- 
 quired an amount of labor equal to the labor of one 
 man for 4,000 days to produce, and if the first manu- 
 facturer were to pay the second manufacturer a sim- 
 ilar 10,000 pairs of shoes back, after a lapse of time 
 of two years, and if, in the interval, improved meth- 
 ods in shoe manufacture had rendered it possible 
 for those 10,000 pairs of shoes to be produced by an 
 amount of labor equal to the labor of one man for 
 only 2,000 days, which change had resulted in a less- 
 ening of the value of shoes, it will be seen that while
 
 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 89 
 
 the last manufacturer had received back the same 
 number of shoes of the same kind, still he had lost by 
 the operation, because of the change in value during 
 the two years that had elapsed. Now, in the case of 
 the money I propose, its purchasing value will only 
 increase in exact i^roportion as the producing ability 
 of labor, on which it is based, increases, and men 
 borrowing and paying in this money, although the 
 payment may be made many years after the loan was 
 procured, will find that the money itself, in its pur- 
 chasing value, has taken into account the change in 
 the amount of labor or sacrifice necessary to produce 
 all those different kinds of articles for which money 
 is exchanged. Professor Laughlin, in his "Elements 
 of Political Economy," heretofore mentioned, and 
 in the same paragraph from which we have before 
 quoted, states as follows: "Hence the value of 
 money (gold or silver) does not remain the same for 
 any length of time; and the precious metals, while 
 they are very satisfactory for exchanges which do 
 not take very long to complete, can not serve as a 
 proper measure of value during a long term of years. 
 * * * Nor is there another article any better, or 
 even so well, adapted for this purpose." I agree 
 with him when he says that gold and silver are unfit 
 as a measurement of value to be used in long time 
 contracts, but I do not agree with him when he says 
 nothing better can be used. I will say right here 
 that under our present monetary and commercial sys- 
 tem there is absolutely no connection between the 
 means by which money is produced and the demands 
 of the commercial world for money. In his next par- 
 agraph (74), Mr. Laughlin goes hopelessly astray
 
 90 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 
 
 and endorses what is known as the ''multiple 
 standard." He contends that in order to pay back 
 the exact amount in value that was borrowed, when 
 the i^ayment is made a long number of years after 
 the loan, the borrower should only pay back such 
 amount of money as would be necessary to purchase 
 in a given market a quantity of various kinds of 
 goods exactly equal to the quantity of such goods 
 that could have been purchased for the amount of 
 money loaned, at the time of the loan. One can see 
 how this would work out: If you lend me $100.00 
 in the year 1900, for which I can purchase a certain 
 amount of twenty different kinds of standard arti- 
 cles, and if, in the year 1920, I desire to pay you 
 back, and if a list of exactly similar articles can be 
 bought for $50.00 at that time, it is his contention 
 that under a just standard of value, I should only 
 pay you $50.00 back. (Of course, the amount of in- 
 terest that may have been paid every year is not to 
 be considered in this proposition. We are speaking 
 now only of a repayment of the principal.) This is 
 absurd. Professor Laughlin forgets that in a pre- 
 vious portion of his work, '' Elements of Political 
 Economy," (paragraph 58), he said: "To have 
 value, a thing must be such that we are obliged to 
 undergo some sacrifice in order to get it. * * * 
 The sacrifice undergone is greater in getting a pearl 
 than in getting a piece of coal of much larger size; 
 in fact, the number of days' labor spent in finding 
 a large pearl would, if spent in coal mining, produce 
 several tons of coal. Then, if the pearl costs more 
 labor to get it than a piece of coal, it is evident that 
 more sacrifice is required in the case of the pearl than
 
 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 91 
 
 in the case of the coal. ' ' If Professor Laughlin had 
 read his paragraph 58 before he wrote his paragraph 
 74, he never wonld have written the latter paragraph. 
 Instead, he wonld have argued as follows, to use his 
 own language in paragraph 58, substituting in place 
 of the pearl and the coal, the matter dealt with in 
 paragraph 74 : " The sacrifice undergone in producing 
 a cei'tain amount of certain articles now may be greater 
 than it ivill be twenty years from now to produce a larger 
 quantity of those articles; in fact, the number of days' 
 labor spent in producing those articles now would, if 
 spent m production twenty years from now, produce 
 a much larger quantity of those articles. Then, if the 
 articles as now produced cost more labor to produce them 
 than the same amount of articles produced twenty years from 
 now, it is evident that more sacrifice is required in 
 the case of producing that cei-tain quantity of articles now 
 than in producing the same quantity of the same article 
 tiventy years from now.''^ In other words, the finely- 
 spun theory of Multiple Standard," when subjected 
 to the light of the truth contained in Professor 
 Laughlin 's rule of value in paragraph 58, develops 
 the fact that under said ''Multiple Standard" there 
 is no assurance at all that a man would be paying 
 back the same in value. The ''Multiple Standard" 
 goes on the theory that the sacrifice or labor neces- 
 sary to produce a list of articles is the same at pe- 
 riods of time far separated from one another, which 
 is a mistaken idea, and should not be taught to stu- 
 dents of political economy. 
 
 The "Multiple Standard," partly comprehends 
 the relationship in value of commodities to each 
 other, hut it docs not comprehend the relationship of the
 
 92 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 
 
 value of commodities to a stationary standard of value. 
 It strikes a blind average, and uses that as a stand- 
 ard, notwithstanding that that average must surely 
 jump up and down in answer to every change in 
 value of commodities, and it ignores the fact that a 
 scientific stationary standard of value may be arrived 
 at by simply considering the amount of labor or sac- 
 rifice which a human being will undergo to produce 
 or obtain those commodities, in relation to which sta- 
 tionary standard of value it is very j)roper that the 
 value of all commodities should change as the result 
 of phenomena affecting themselves and one another. 
 I have called your attention to the matter of the 
 amount of money in circulation because I am con- 
 vinced that those men who are capable of controlling 
 the money market today (either gold or silver, or 
 both) will try to make you believe that this money 
 which I am advocating is no better than fiat money, 
 and that if the government should adopt it, it would 
 ruin the credit of the government. These men sim- 
 ply lie to you! They know that the government is 
 solvent and strong, and they know in their hearts 
 that if the government owed in interest-bearing 
 bonds ten times the amount of the present money in 
 circulation in this country, they would still be willing 
 to buy those bonds and pay a premium for them. 
 Then whj^ should anybody question the solvency of 
 the government if it were to issue some money re- 
 deemable in service, on which it made a profit every 
 time it redeemed any, and which, instead of bearing 
 interest like bonds, would itself be a source of reve- 
 nue to the government, because it would be auto- 
 matically taxed f These men will not fight this money
 
 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 93 
 
 because they have a tender solicitude for the credit 
 of the government, nor because they are afraid 
 money based on the credit of the government (with 
 a provision for actual redemption in value) would 
 not be good money. What these men are afraid of 
 is that their corner on the money market will be dis- 
 turbed, and that's all they are afraid of.* 
 
 The laborer is worthy of his hire, and this ap- 
 plies all the way up through the lines of industry, 
 from the workman in the shop to the manufacturer 
 in his office, but there is one man who does not earn 
 what he receives. That is the man who lives by col- 
 lecting interest, and he is the man who will oppose 
 the plan advocated herein. Those of you who are 
 manufacturers, merchants and middlemen will not 
 oppose it when once you understand it. You should 
 ask no more of money than that it be a representa- 
 tive of value and a medium of exchange. You are 
 men whose prosperity peculiarly depends upon the 
 rapidity with which commodities are exchanged in 
 the channels of trade, and upon the ability of the 
 great mass of the people to act as consumers of the 
 wares in which you deal. You, of all classes of people, 
 should demand thai ive have a money incapable of being 
 hoarded. Then those amongst you who are progres- 
 sive and enterprising, and who desire to go ahead 
 
 *The above contention of the v/riter, made seven j-ears 
 ago, has been borne out by the attitude assumed by recent con- 
 ventions of bankers, at v.hich was most favorably discussed the 
 proposition that the national banks should be permitted to issue 
 money, based simply ou their own credit and limited only by 
 their own rules and ideas. Surely the people of the United 
 States will never be so weak as to surrender this important 
 function of government to those having selfish interests to 
 serve, nor so weak as to admit that the government would be 
 less responsible than the bankers.
 
 94 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 
 
 and reinvest your money in your business, can do so 
 without fear of becoming a sacrifice to the rest of 
 society, because all of your competitors will also be 
 forced to put their money back into circulation and 
 make things lively. Under the present system you 
 gentlemen cut a very ridiculous figure, and resemble 
 nothing else so much as you do a lot of fishermen, 
 sitting on their lines and hooks and hoarding them 
 instead of catching fish with them. You people must 
 not hoard money and try to get rich in that way. 
 There is only a per capita of money in this country of 
 about $26.50. That is not enough to permit many 
 people to become very rich ; and even if the percapita 
 were very much larger, thus enabling many joeople 
 to acquire large sums of money, they would find out 
 that they had not succeeded in getting rich, because 
 if all of us had large quantities of money, the money 
 would be practically worthless. The only rational 
 way in which any large proportion of humanity can 
 become rich is in material w^ealth — not in money. 
 What you need is not more money, but a proper sys- 
 tem. To make the comparison which I have above 
 mentioned between yourselves and the fishermen 
 exactly fit the case, it would be necessary to put the 
 fishermen in a condition where the amount of lines 
 and hooks which they could get would be limited, 
 just as the supply of money is (and should be) lim- 
 ited with the business world of today. Then I think 
 the dullest of you gentlemen would be able to see how 
 ridiculous the fishermen would look if they tried to 
 get rich by hoarding fish lines instead of catching 
 fish with them. You would say: "There is only a 
 cei'taiu number of fish lines in existence; therefore
 
 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 95 
 
 the combined wealth of those fishermen will never 
 be any more than it is now. Why don't they make 
 a rational use of their lines and catch fish with 
 them?" I say to you, gentlemen, that you are standing 
 upon the banks of an ocean of labor, and that if you are 
 willing to cast and re-cast your monetary lines into that 
 ocean, it will throw you up wealth as continuously and 
 plentifully as ever the salt waters of the sea were able to 
 deliver up fish to fishermen, but in order to make this 
 possible you must take your wealth in fish — not in fish 
 lines. All the lines that any fisherman needs is 
 enough to do his fishing. The picture of the fisher- 
 men which I have presented to you looks absurd, be- 
 cause we all know that there is no reason why fish- 
 ermen can not go on and fish, but with you gentle- 
 men the case is different. It is a fact, under our 
 present system, that those of you who are our best 
 citizens and realize that the laboring classes, by 
 whose labor you live, can not themselves live unless 
 you reinvest your money, are not able to safely carry 
 out your public-spirited impulses without becoming 
 sacrifices to the greed of your brothers in trade ivho 
 refuse, from selfish motives, to let go of that convenient form 
 of wealth known as money. Therefore, you benefit their 
 business by putting your money into circulation, but 
 ruin yourself, because you receive no compensatory 
 benefit, as you would receive if they would also re- 
 invest their money. What I recommend is a plan of 
 government patterned after the work of God Himself. 
 See how He has constructed the human system with 
 its heart and its blood vessels. When the heart 
 pumps the blood into the system, the system just as 
 surely allows it to pass back into the heart. Here
 
 96 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 
 
 there is that perfect co-operation between the heart 
 and the system as to blood that there should be be- 
 tween the employer and the employed today as to 
 money. The heart does not try to hoard up the blood 
 by taking a percentage of its quantity each time it 
 passes into the heart. If it did, then indeed would 
 all parts of the system set up a free silver agitation"' 
 and say, "We have not enough circulating medium," 
 and the heart would answer back, "Oh, I don't see 
 how that is. I have plenty of circulating medium. 
 What we want is not more circulating medium, but 
 we do want confidence and good credit established, 
 so that when I send blood down into the rest of the 
 system I will know that I will be able to get it back 
 again, with some more besides as interest on it." 
 No, God did not make the human system that way. 
 If he had, human kind would have stopped about 
 where it started, for the first man who was produced 
 would have only lasted long enough for his heart to 
 beat about ten times. You people need never expect 
 to have confidence restored in this way, because it is 
 absolutely impossible for you employers to keep on 
 hoarding your profit in money, until you get about 
 all the money there is in circulation in your hands, 
 and then still have confidence of getting more. There 
 isnH any more for you to get. What you want is a 
 proper system. Then you will have confidence. You 
 must look to the government for that proper system. 
 I have heard a great many so-called statesmen, 
 who were sent by the people to represent them in 
 
 *"Free silver agitation" — this phrase has reference to the 
 agitation at recent presidential elections In favor of increasing 
 the circulating medium by admitting silver ore to free coinage, 
 the same as gold, in the United States mints.
 
 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 97 
 
 law-making bodies, complain that people made them 
 sick and tired by expecting them to legislate pros- 
 perity. They say: "Why, prosperity comes from 
 God. You can not legislate prosperity. ' ' My friends, 
 God has given us all we need to make us prosperous. 
 Don't let these men fool you. Apply the same rule 
 to them that you would apply if you wanted to hire 
 a man to shake a carpet. You would not hire a man 
 to shake a carpet who said it couldn't be done, would 
 you? Then why do you send men to Congress who 
 say they can not legislate prosperity? Why don't 
 you pick out men who can do the work ? 
 
 But to return to the human heart and the blood 
 vessels of the human body. There we find that con- 
 fidence is complete. The heart knows that the blood 
 can not get away when it passes into the system. It 
 knows that the blood will come back, even though it 
 comes back through different channels than those 
 through which it was distributed, as in the plan pro- 
 posed in this book. And as for the system, it, too, 
 has confidence. It knows that the blood can not get 
 out at the heart end of the business, but that God has 
 so fashioned the heart that it will promptly return 
 the blood. You will notice also that when God per- 
 mits the human body to become prosperous and well 
 nourished, it is done mostly by means of fat. The 
 body becomes prosperous not merely in blood, but 
 by the acquisition of great quantities of fat. The 
 same principle of perfect co-operation would apply 
 to our monetary and commercial system today, if 
 you gentlemen, who represent in that system what 
 the human heart does in the human body, would send 
 back the money into the channels of trade as
 
 98 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 
 
 promptly as the human heart sends back the blood 
 into the system. The trouble is that you are using a 
 commodity for money to which the principles laid 
 down in this book can not be applied. 
 
 The most responsible students of the money 
 question unite (and very properly) in saying that 
 money should not be a mere fiat, but should repre- 
 sent value. There is, however, a distinction between 
 intrinsic value itself and a representative of value. 
 Thus, neither a promissory note for the payment of 
 a certain amount of gold, nor a contract of delivery 
 for the delivery of a certain number of bushels of 
 potatoes, contains any intrinsic value in the paper 
 and ink of which it is composed. Yet, contracts of 
 such a nature, if signed by a responsible person, who 
 will carry out the terms of such instrument, are true 
 representatives of value, and no man would part with 
 title to them unless he received their full value. It 
 will be conceded, therefore, that if a government is 
 solvent and responsible, while the simple printing 
 by it of a declaration to the effect that a piece of 
 paper is money would not give that paper any real 
 value, either intrinsic or representative, yet, if that 
 government will actually enter into a written promise 
 to pay value, then such written promise to pay, se- 
 cured by the property of and signed by such a sol- 
 vent and responsible government, activelj^ engaged 
 in actually redeeming such promises to pay, would be 
 a true representative of value and medium of ex- 
 change, and as such, would be all that men have a 
 right to demand as money. Now, if we have money 
 at all, we want that money which is best for the peo- 
 ple in general, and the question then arises, in accept-
 
 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 99 
 
 ing these promises to pay of this responsible govern- 
 ment, what do we want the promises to be payable 
 in I I think I can hear every money lender in the 
 country saying *'gold," or, perhaps, "gold and sil- 
 ver. ' ' My friend, gold and silver are only commodi- 
 ties, and are entitled to no more consideration at the 
 hands of the government than any other commodity. 
 A farmer might just as well demand that these prom- 
 ises be made payable in wheat, and his demand would 
 be fully as justifiable (except upon the score of con- 
 venience in handling and preserving, which is not of 
 itself of sufficient importance to allow it to have a de- 
 ciding influence in the matter). As shown elsewhere, 
 gold, while it never varies in value when measured 
 in itself, nevertheless does vary in value in its pur- 
 chasing ability of other commodities, said variation 
 being caused not alone by changes affecting the value 
 of those commodities, but by changes in the produc- 
 tion or demand for gold itself, as the value of gold 
 is dependent upon those ordinary laws which are ap- 
 plicable to all commodities. If the supply of gold 
 could be diminished or increased in exact proportion 
 to the demands of the population, it would thereby 
 be enabled to sustain such an even and unvarying 
 value as money should have, but, of course, that is 
 impossible. On the contrary, it is possible and even 
 probable that advanced processes in mining and in 
 chemistry will, in the near future, cause very erratic 
 variations in the value of gold. We, therefore, see 
 that in using gold as money, we are violating one of 
 the simiDlest laws of mechanics, which demands that 
 the material out of which an article is constructed 
 shall be that material which is best adapted to the
 
 100 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 
 
 uses to which that article is proposed to be put. 
 Those nations which use silver as money are violat- 
 ing the same rule. At the present epoch in the his- 
 tory of man (speaking now simply of his material 
 interests while in this life) three certain different 
 things constitute the most important matters with 
 which he has any relationship. Those things are 
 land, labor and money. Land, of course, was a neces- 
 sary condition j)recedent to the existence of human- 
 ity at all in its present form. Labor is the means by 
 which man gains from the land those products neces- 
 sary for his material welfare; and money is the 
 means by which, living in a state of society, he is en- 
 abled to organize a division of labor amongst his 
 kind and to exchange the product of one class of 
 laborers for the product of another class. This be- 
 ing the true use of money, does it not appeal to your 
 reason that if such a responsible government as I 
 have above mentioned is going to issue its promises 
 to pay to be used as money, that such promises ought 
 not to be made redeemable in any particular product 
 of labor, such as gold or silver (which are just as 
 much products of labor as iron or steel), but that the 
 money ought to be redeemable in that thing which 
 produces all commodities, and which God has pro- 
 vided in exact proportion to the population, to-wit: 
 labor or service itself? When yon have such a 
 money, and enact a law levying an automatic tax 
 upon it, under a system by which the tax can not be 
 evaded, then 3'on will have real money — money that 
 will act like the blood in the human system — money 
 which (because of the ability of the government to 
 do more service for a given price than a private cor-
 
 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 101 
 
 poration is willing to do) would be more valuable 
 when spent than any money which we use at present 
 (but which, if hoarded, would be automatically 
 taxed) — money w^iich you employers of labor, 
 through self interest, would reinvest as fast as you 
 got it. In other words, you would get your profit in 
 money, but would promptly reinvest all suriDlus 
 above a working capital in some form of material 
 wealth; and as all material wealth, aside from land, 
 is the product of labor, the money would be contin- 
 ually sent down into the hands of the laborers. You 
 gentlemen know that it can not get out at that end, 
 but that it must come back up through the channels 
 of trade into your pockets again. In other words, it 
 is my contention that our i3resent commercial system 
 is in a sickly condition, and what I am trying to do is 
 to improve and correct the quality and circulation of 
 its blood, to the end that the system may acquire 
 more fat than it has at present. It is, to the interest 
 of such of you as are merchants, middlemen and 
 manufacturers, in legitimate business, to have this 
 done, and hence it is that I say you will be in favor 
 of this plan, it being a law in human nature for a 
 man to be in favor of that which is to his advantage. 
 But to go back to those men who are the bond 
 holders and stock holders of the large industries 
 which so man3^ people think the government should 
 run; Those men are going to laugh very heartily at 
 the idea of giving every citizen of this country a 
 small pension. Yet those same men do not think it 
 is at all ridiculous when they receive dividends on 
 their stock, but their dividends are not called ''pen- 
 sions." Well, my friend, if vou so dedre, you can
 
 102 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 
 
 call the small amount which you will receive from 
 the government each month a ' ' dividend ' ' instead of 
 a * ' pension. ' ' In the future, the people at large will 
 be the stockholders in the industries controlled by 
 the government, and if the government shall run 
 those industries with a small profit as a margin of 
 safety, then, after enough has been accumulated to 
 guarantee that safety, each citizen should receive his 
 share of any surplus in the shaj^e of a dividend once 
 a month, and the matter will be no more laughable than 
 it is now, when those profits are paid into tlie pockets 
 of a few. 
 
 ' ' Oh, but, ' ' these men will say to you, ' ' you poor 
 people have always talked about what a terrible 
 thing interest is, and now yow are going to have to 
 pay a great big interest all the time on money." 
 Well, now, let us see: Suppose you are a farmer 
 and need money. You go and borrow $1,000.00. 
 Now, you don't borrow that money to hoard, and if 
 you don't hoard it, you will not have to pay any tax 
 on it. You borrow it because you need it to spend. 
 After you have spent it, someone else will have to 
 pay the tax on it, and if anybody gets hold of that 
 money and tries to hoard it, it will be taxed once 
 each month. You go to a man today who has money 
 and he will charge you interest for a loan, but in the 
 future, with the money I suggest, a man will lend 
 you $1,000.00 for a year without interest on condition 
 that you will pay him back $1,000.00. He will be 
 glad to do that, because by that means he will be 
 able to hoard that much money for a year without 
 having it diminished in amount by the automatic tax, 
 that is, the money will go on circulating and being
 
 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 103 
 
 taxed, but at the end of the year, when you pay the 
 man back, he will be in the same position as if he 
 had succeeded in hoarding $1,000.00 without having 
 it taxed. He will not pay the tax on it, and neither 
 will you pay the tax on any considerable portion of 
 it, because, if you borrow it at all, it will be for the 
 purpose of spending it. You will spend it at its full 
 thousand-dollar face value, and you will get more 
 for that $1,000.00 that you borrow without interest 
 than you can get today for any $1,000.00 that exists, 
 because, as before explained, when the government 
 operates these different industries, $1,000.00 will 
 have a larger purchasing capacity than it has now. 
 You will only have to pay tax on it for that portion 
 of the time when you are accumulating a fund to re- 
 turn the loan and then not upon the full amount, 
 but only on such portion as you may have accumu- 
 lated towards the i^ayment of the loan, and if you 
 should have misfortune and not be able to accumu- 
 late any money for awhile, you would not be paying 
 a tax during that time, but today, no matter how un- 
 fortunate you are, the interest on a loan keeps right 
 on running on the full amount. It will be found that 
 the man of ordinary means will always receive more 
 in the shape of pension than he pays out as money 
 tax. 
 
 The kind of interest that will have to be paid by 
 the man who hoards the money is not the kind of 
 interest that will injure humanity. Let me tell you 
 what kind of interest it is that is harming society 
 today: Do you know that there is scarcely a toll 
 bridge, a water works system, an electric light or gas 
 system, or a railroad in this country at the present
 
 104 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 
 
 time which was not built largely out of funds raised 
 by issuing bonds? Do you know that when extensive 
 betterments are required to be made on this class of 
 property that those betterments are frequently made 
 by issuing bonds ? Do you know that when these va- 
 rious bonds become due they are usually paid by a 
 re-issue of bonds ? Do you know that when they are 
 issued in the first place they often provide, in addi- 
 tion to the annual interest, for a sinking fund of only 
 one or one and a fraction per cent.? Do you know 
 that a computation of the time which the bonds have 
 to run in connection with the sinking fund often de- 
 velojDS the fact that the sinking fund is not sufficient 
 to retire the bonds'? In other words, that when the 
 bonds are issued it is not contemplated that they will 
 be paid in full, but that new bonds will have to be 
 issued for part of the payment? Do you know that 
 the stock holders who own the valuable franchises 
 under which these great public utilities are built and 
 operated usually furnish only a small percentage of 
 the money necessary to build them, and that the issu- 
 ance of bonds provides the remainder of the neces- 
 sary money! And do you know that the bonds are 
 seldom sold at their full face value, but that it is a 
 fact, in order to get capitalists to invest, a greater 
 amount of bonds has to be issued than the amount 
 which the stock holders require to assist them in 
 building the property? In other words, that these 
 great public utilities are often not only loaded down 
 with interest-bearing bonds to the amount of the 
 money borrowed to build them, but, in addition, out 
 of their earnings there actually has to be paid inter-
 
 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 105 
 
 est on money which never went into their construc- 
 tion at all ? 
 
 I do not blame anybody in particular for this 
 state of affairs. It has simply come about in a 
 natural manner. It is a condition born out of the 
 womb of the past, but it is a most serious condition. 
 Who pays the interest on these bonds? The people 
 of the United States do ! How much longer are they 
 going to pay it? It disgusts me when I think of the 
 great number of public speakers and newspapers in 
 this country today that get up a great argTiment for 
 or against either party based on the fact that some 
 national or state administration spent one or two 
 million dollars of the people 's money more than some 
 other administration did in a given length of time, 
 or less than some other administration did. The 
 eyes of the great intelligent people of the United 
 States flash with indignation when they discover 
 that there has been a small waste of public money, 
 but they stand by like stupid oxen and pay the in- 
 terest on these bonds, and most of them don't even 
 know they are paying it. They are paying it, how- 
 ever, for before the stock holders get their profit they 
 are forced to pay out of the earnings of the property 
 the interest on the bonds, and on account of these 
 bonds the general public pays more for what it re- 
 ceives from the franchise holders, and the laborer 
 receives less i^ay. There is not a bite of bread or a 
 pound of steak that you eat and not a piece of cloth- 
 ing that you wear but what is higher in price today 
 because of exorbitant freight rates, than it would be 
 under proper freight rates. The various state Leg- 
 islatures are beginning to protect the general public
 
 106 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 
 
 by placing a maximum rate on the services of rail- 
 roads. On the other hand, the employes of railroads 
 are forming unions to keep from being too much 
 oppressed on their end of the proposition. These two 
 things, working from opposite directions, of course, 
 have a tendency to curb the greed of the stock 
 holders and bond holders of railroad corporations, 
 but it is plainly to be seen that if the various state 
 Legislatures were to become severe in this matter 
 with reference to both freight and passenger ser- 
 vice, the strain would be so great that something 
 would have to give way. Supposedly the law of the 
 state would be the strongest element in the proposi- 
 tion. Therefore either the stock and bond holders 
 would have to suffer or else the wage rates fixed by 
 the labor union would have to be broken, and the 
 money to pay the interest on the bonds would have 
 to be gained by grinding down the employes of the 
 railroad. When things reached that strained condi- 
 tion, I tremble to think what the fate of the poor 
 employes will be. As things are now, the employes 
 frequently find it necessary to strike, and even when 
 the strike is submitted to arbitration, they sometimes 
 lose it, for the officers of the corporation are enabled 
 to bring in their books and make a showing to the 
 effect that they can not pay higher wages. They 
 show that their gross earnings for the year past were 
 so much. Then, as against those earnings, they show 
 that the interest on honds was so much; that taxes, 
 repairs, betterments, etc., amounted to so much. 
 Then they add in the wages paid to their employes, 
 and show that the total adds up to such a large sum 
 that they are able to declare a dividend of only one
 
 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 107 
 
 or one and a half per cent, for the poor stock holders, 
 and the board of arbitration is asked to decide in 
 favor of the company. Why does not some represen- 
 tative of the strikers force the company to show how 
 much cash was ever put into that railroad by the 
 stock holders when it was originally started and how 
 much since that time, so that tlie board of arbitration 
 may know whether that one per cent, dividend is on 
 money really invested or on watered stock ? Why is 
 the company not required to show whether the bonds 
 on which it pays interest were sold for full face value 
 or whether interest is being paid on money which 
 never went into the road? Why is it not required to 
 show the amount of the dividends paid to its stock 
 holders in the past, so that the board may see 
 whether or not the stock holders have long since re- 
 ceived dividends which sucked the blood from the 
 corporation, and part of which might well have been 
 invested for the corporation as an offset to the out- 
 standing interest-bearing bonds? Why does not the 
 board investigate and see who are the bond holders 
 and who are the stock holders, so that they may 
 know whether the bond holders have bought out the 
 stock holders, or whether the stock holders have 
 bought out the bond holders? A bond holder whose 
 interest had ruined the company, and forced its stock 
 holders to sell him the stock at a low i3rice, could 
 afford to pay an assessment in his new capacity as 
 stock holder, and thus let the men have fair wages, 
 and a stock holder who had received such big divi- 
 dends in the past as to enable him to purchase the 
 bonds could also afford to pay an assessment. 
 
 Now, do not think for a moment that I favor any
 
 108 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 
 
 plan by which this vast amount of bonds should be 
 repudiated. The honor and integrity of this nation 
 and of its people must be preserved at every cost. 
 Repudiation is the weak expedient of the coward. 
 I say to you that the great common people of America are 
 strong enough and resourceful enough to work out the prob- 
 lem of their future prosperity by means which are honest 
 and just, both in theory and in practice; but I do 
 say that the matter should be taken in hand and so 
 managed that conditions in this respect will improve 
 instead of growing worse. If the United States gov- 
 ernment had run these great bonded public utilities, 
 they would be on a cash basis by this time. Every 
 dollar of these bonds would have long since been 
 paid, and the people would not now be paying inter- 
 est on them. In addition to this, the United States 
 would not want a profit, as in the case of a private 
 stock holder. Therefore the public would be served 
 better and cheaper and the laborer would work less 
 hours and receive more pay and more laborers 
 would be employed. 
 
 But to return to the money tax : The poor man, 
 who does not handle much money, will pay a very 
 small sum in taxes on it, while the rich man, who 
 handles more money, will pay more. This tax, it 
 may be mentioned in passing, will accomplish all 
 that is sought to be accomplished by those who advo- 
 cate a graduated income tax, but it will not be class 
 legislation, because it will apply to every citizen. It 
 will be more beneficial than a graduated income tax, 
 however, as (in the case of an income tax) the re- 
 mainder of the money, after the tax has been paid, 
 will be hoarded, or held at interest, while in the case
 
 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 109 
 
 of the automatic tax which I propose, the entire cash 
 capital of a man will be whacked at by a 1 per cent, 
 automatic tax once every month until he learns that, 
 while money is a representative of value, it is also a 
 medium of exchange, and that its usefulness to mankind 
 consists in the latter quality rather than in the former. 
 As against the small amount which a poor man will 
 pay on account of the money tax, he will every month 
 receive a great deal more than that amount in pen- 
 sion money, and in addition will be benefited in his 
 ordinary source of income by receiving higher 
 wages and doing better in whatever line he may be 
 engaged. Now, I suppose that some people will 
 think they see a point at about this place : 
 
 "How can it be," they will ask, "that both the 
 employed and the employers will be benefited! It 
 sounds very nice, but we all know that if we give one 
 class a larger profit, the other class must suffer for 
 it." The reason that both classes will be benefited 
 and make a larger profit is that there will be more 
 profits to be divided. In other words, there will be 
 more material wealth produced. There will be more 
 labor employed, and every line of industry will be 
 more active, and mankind as a whole will joroduce 
 more from the earth, and, therefore, mankind as a 
 whole will have greater prosperity. The old-fash- 
 ioned way has been for people to try to live off of one 
 another. Instead of co-operating in the production 
 of wealth, they are content to let as small a portion 
 of the community as possible produce the wealth, 
 and then try to get it way from them in the channels 
 of trade, even if they have to stop the production of 
 wealth to do it, as in the case of the large trusts.
 
 110 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 
 
 which are closing up factories in this country today. 
 The plan I advocate is desirable because it is automatic in 
 its operation. It does not force mankind to wait until 
 each individual citizen becomes a good citizen and a 
 public-si^irited citizen before we reach that stage of 
 social welfare which such an ideal condition would 
 pi'oduce, but, recognizing the greed and selfishness 
 and weakness of the individual members of society, 
 it puts those individuals in a situation where they 
 are compelled to follow out a system of unquestion- 
 able advantage to humanity as a whole, enforcing 
 upon them only such regulations as will benefit them, 
 leaving them in full and perfect control of the per- 
 sonal liberties which they value so highly, and pre- 
 venting them from harming the rest of society in the 
 exercise of those liberties, by means of absolutely 
 just and self-enforcing laws. Nor will the pension 
 mentioned above be class legislation, because every 
 citizen under the government will receive the same 
 amount of pension, except those who will receive 
 special pensions for special reasons, as at present. 
 
 Now, you business men may be of the opinion 
 that it will be a great bore to stand in line once a 
 month and wait to get your money exchanged for 
 the next month's money, but it will not be necessary 
 for you to do that at all. The banks of the country 
 or government banks established for that purpose 
 will do that business for you once a month, and your 
 account in bank will be debited by the bank with the 
 amount of the tax which it, the bank, had to pay the 
 government on your funds. These proposed laws 
 which I mention are very good laws for the well-to-do 
 men of this country, as well as the poor men, because
 
 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 111 
 
 after these laws are in force, rich men can still hoard 
 gold and silver and precious stones. There is no ob- 
 jection to that. I don't care if they get possession 
 of every ounce of gold and silver now mined and all 
 the precious stones that have been discovered since 
 the beginning of time. What I am trying to do is to 
 arrange it so that, after they have gotten all that, 
 they can still go on and become richer, by becoming 
 rich in all classes of material wealth which labor can 
 produce. At present they are like the fishermen I 
 mentioned awhile ago. They limit their ability to 
 become rich, because, instead of using money actively 
 as a means of exchange, which will make them rich 
 in material wealth, they value it as a convenient form 
 of hoarding wealth. In addition to becoming rich 
 in money, if men will operate under a system that 
 will keep labor employed, and keep the wheels of 
 machinery turning, they can become rich in material 
 wealth also, as they did in biblical times, when men 
 considered themselves wealthy if they owned great 
 herds and wool and wine and spices in addition to 
 their gold and precious stones. The only difference 
 is that now the means of becoming rich in material 
 wealth are much more numerous than in those olden 
 days. The proper use of money by a business man is 
 for him to stop hoarding it, and make it his servant, 
 to the end that he may become rich in the manner I 
 have mentioned. 
 
 Men of large business interests have gotten into 
 a habit of thinking that the community depends 
 upon them, when, as a matter of fact, like all other 
 citizens, they depend upon the community. Appear- 
 ances have the reputation of being deceiving, and it
 
 112 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 
 
 is not always that a man who appears to be of gi'eat 
 importance in a community is actually so. We will 
 take the case of three hat manufacturers. We will 
 say that they are men of high social position, are 
 well educated, have large bank accounts and are 
 generally regarded as pillars of society and the 
 church. Now, these manufacturers meet and try to 
 do business with one another. One of them says, 
 ''Here is a style of hat that I will sell you for one 
 dollar per hat." The other two manufacturers say, 
 **No, we can't give you a dollar per hat. We sell 
 that kind for a dollar apiece ourselves, but we will 
 give you eighty-five cents per hat for that style." 
 ''No," the first hat manufacturer says, "they cost 
 me as much as eighty-five cents each to manufacture 
 them, but I'll tell you what I'll do, since you gentle- 
 men also manufacture this same style of hat, rather 
 than have the trouble of manufacturing them myself, 
 I will give you eighty-five cents each for them." 
 "No," say the other two, "we want to get a dollar 
 apiece for them." In other words, each wants the 
 best of it. At any rate, it is against self interest and 
 human nature for either to take the worst of it, and 
 the case would be the same if the group of men I 
 have mentioned had been composed of shoe manu- 
 facturers or manufacturers in other lines of business. 
 No manufacturer would knowingly pay more for a 
 thing to another manufacturer than he could produce 
 the article for himself. Now, does a single wheel of 
 commerce turn as the result of any dealings these 
 men have with one another? Well, yes, when one of 
 them is forced by temporary necessity or through the 
 superior business sagacity of a rival to patronize that
 
 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 113 
 
 rival, the wheels do turn stiffly and unwillingly. 
 But in order to have the wheels turn briskly, we 
 have to have one of the workmen who is employed 
 in one of those hat factories, or in some other factory, 
 go down town Saturday night and pay for one of 
 those hats, not only the one dollar which the manu- 
 facturer wants, but also a profit to the merchant who 
 sells him the hat. Then we have found a man who is 
 willing to take the worst of it; then we see that a 
 trade is made and that the wheels of the hat factory 
 turn, and then we have discovered that the man who 
 works in the factory is as valuable to society as the 
 man who owns the factory. Now, while this is true, 
 it is not my intention that the illustration which I 
 have just given you should prejudice your mind 
 against the employers of labor. I am not seeking to 
 produce discord, but am endeavoring to bring about 
 co-operation. There is a reason why the employer 
 will not enter into a contract under which he gets 
 less than he gives. He can not afford to! The 
 laborer can afford to! This may not be the way in 
 which you have been in the habit of thinking of this 
 subject, but it is true, as I will show you: If an 
 employer does business at a loss and continues to do 
 so, his ultimate failure will be the result. But if a 
 laborer produces a certain value in the products of 
 labor, and receives for his labor a less sum than those 
 products are worth, nevertheless, if the sum which 
 he does receive is large enough to support him in com- 
 fort, then he can go on laboring as long as he lives 
 (constantly giving more than he receives) and yet 
 be prosperous and become richer every day. Under 
 proper conditions, laborers can do this as a class
 
 114 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 
 
 and still be very prosperous, but if the employers as 
 a class were expected to do business at a loss, the 
 whole commercial world would totter and fall. It 
 becomes evident, then, that the employers can not 
 in reason be expected to supj)ort the laboring classes, 
 because of the simple fact that the employers are un- 
 able to do so. It, therefore, follows that the laboring- 
 classes are the ones who must, and do, support both 
 themselves and their employers. The reason for this 
 is very simple: The laboring classes are in them- 
 selves the source of all wealth. They produce all 
 wealth. God gives them the ability to produce 
 wealth and charges them nothing for their stock in 
 trade, which is labor. If you employers will only 
 realize this fact, you will see that a proper co-opera- 
 tion between employers and laborers is just as much 
 to be desired by the employers as by the laborers. 
 And as for the laborers, if they will give me their 
 attention, I will convince them that (under a proper 
 system) employers are very valuable to them, and 
 that they can well afford to give a part of the product 
 of their labor to men who will organize and manage 
 industries employing labor, if those men will only do 
 so under proper conditions. The efforts at labor of 
 the primitive man must have had little about them to 
 justify their being dignified by the name of labor, or 
 to distinguish them from mere animal habits. I can 
 imagine a man of that period. Living in a savage 
 state, guided largely by instinct, and but little by 
 reason, I see him in my mind's eye at a time when 
 society was so much a thing of the future that he was 
 without tribal connections, and even the family rela- 
 tion wai but poorly developed. I see him clamber-
 
 THB AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 115 
 
 ing down the mountain-side, pushing his way- 
 through the underbrush, leaping over the trunks of 
 huge trees and entering into the dark shadows of 
 some mammoth forest. Volcanic forces have per- 
 haps long since bodily lifted and overturned both 
 the mountain and the forest and converted them into 
 beds of mineral, but in my vision of the interminable 
 past, I can see this primitive man approaching the 
 entrance to the cave which has supplied himself and 
 family with a den in which to live. I can see him 
 pause before it and examine a large rock which has 
 detached itself from the clilf above and now blocks 
 the passage to his domicile. Now, I can see a faint 
 light of reason flash across his countenance. He 
 looks upward. He sees the place from which the 
 rock was detached. The falling of rocks from cliffs 
 has been a matter within his experience, and hence 
 he looks upward for the cause of this rock being 
 where he finds it. This is a hopeful sign. It is a 
 little circumstance which indicates a slight reason- 
 ing faculty. My imagination does not tell me whether 
 my primitive man takes the situation philosophically 
 or, clenching his hand and raising it on high, curses 
 some unfriendly power for the situation in which he 
 finds himself, but I can see him approach the rock 
 and attempt to move it. He fails. He tries again 
 with redoubled effort. He grunts in his struggle. 
 He stops and sits down upon a fallen limb and all 
 the physical and mental forces within him acknowl- 
 edge defeat. And now I can see another primitive 
 man appear upon the scene. He may be the brother 
 or father or son of the first one. Perhaps even their 
 own memories are cloudy on that point, but I can see
 
 116 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 
 
 the second man repeat the performance of the first 
 with the same result. I can see first one and then 
 the other make renewed efforts to remove the offend- 
 ing rock. And now, by what some people would call 
 accident, I can see that the forces which underlie 
 all human action have caused those two men to make 
 the attempt at the same time. They both try to re- 
 move the rock, and before either has exercised his 
 full strength, the rock trembles and moves and rolls 
 away, and during the operation I have seen intellect 
 again at work. It has lighted the faces of both men. 
 It has flashed from the eyes of one to the other, and 
 now they know the value of combined effort. Labor 
 has been accompanied by reason instead of grunts, 
 and that fire of intellect has been kindled which in 
 later ages is to enable the mind of a Darwin to throw 
 light back upon the dark prehistoric era in which 
 my primitive man lives. 
 
 I am not able, and it is not my intention, to start 
 in and trace the history of social evolution back to 
 the period of the poor savages whom I have used in 
 my illustration above, nor is it necessary, for with- 
 out my doing so, it must be apparent to every laborer 
 that the value of his labor does not consist in the 
 mere brute-like strength which his muscles possess, 
 but that labor is only valuable when intelligently 
 directed and properly organized. Not going into the 
 question of wiiat constituted the earliest tendencies 
 toward the proper use of labor, but restricting my 
 observations to the century now coming to a close, 
 it will take but little effort on my part to convince 
 my laboring friends that during that century the 
 most effective force at work in developing the pos-
 
 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 117 
 
 sibilities of labor as a welth-producing agency has 
 been private capital, which in its own interest has 
 been continually devising means of getting the best 
 results from the least labor. Now, understand me, I 
 do not claim that labor has received its just portion 
 of the wealth it has produced, or that it has been 
 given the opportunity to produce as much wealth as 
 it could, of which it might have received a portion, 
 but I do claim that, if the government will put into 
 force a system under which the laboring classes will 
 receive their just proportion of the wealth they pro- 
 duce, as outlined in this book, and under which they 
 will all receive employment, then the valuable ser- 
 vice which private capital and enterprise has 
 rendered to labor will become apparent, and in the 
 future, as the employing class continues to devise 
 means of increasing the wealth-producing capacity 
 of the laborers whom they employ, both classes will 
 profit by the process and poverty will become a thing 
 of the past. Although all laborers who desire it will 
 receive work, and although their wealth-producing 
 capacity will be continually augmented, nevertheless 
 none of this wealth will be regarded as over-produc- 
 tion, but the wheels of industry will turn faster 
 and faster. 
 
 My friends, we can do without gold and silver, 
 but we can not do without labor. If gold were to be 
 produced in large quantities, the law applicable to 
 all commodities would apply, and gold would lose its 
 value. Of course, a quantity of gold equal to the 
 gold in a dollar would always be worth a dollar, but 
 what I mean is that the purchasing ability of the 
 dollar itself would be decreased. The interest-
 
 118 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 
 
 drawing capitalist of today may hug his gold bags 
 to his bosom and fondly imagine that the time is far 
 off when this will take place, but if he is wise, ad- 
 vanced processes and improved mining machinery, 
 coupled with a larger field of operations, available 
 to a greater number of persons, will open his eyes 
 to the fact that some day the children to whom he 
 will leave his gold may awake to find that their 
 heritage has lost its magic power, and that all they 
 have of value is, not that which they received from 
 their father, but that which they received from God 
 — their ability to labor. Gold should not be used as 
 money. It is a commodity, and as such, can not be 
 a proper standard of value, for its own value is sub- 
 ject to the same laws which affect the value of all 
 commodities, and it, therefore, can not maintain that 
 even and unvarying value which money should pos- 
 sess. Human labor is the only thing that God pro- 
 duces in exact proportion as he produces the human 
 race, and it is the only proper basis for money. Labor 
 is convertible into wealth. A man who is able and 
 willing to work (even if he is out of emploj^ment 
 and has no money) should not be stigmatized as a 
 pauper. He has an equal share of wealth-producing 
 power which God gives to every man whom He sends 
 into this world. I have somewhere heard it said that 
 one who takes more from a community than he gives 
 to that community is a pauper on the community. At 
 first blush this would seem to be a justifiable defini- 
 tion of a pauper, but on sober second thought we will 
 see that one of the reasons men settle in communities 
 is that, by existing in a state of society, they may be 
 enabled to obtain a livelihood by their own labor and
 
 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 119 
 
 by transactions and exchanges with the rest of the 
 community. Therefore, if we gave too much weight 
 to this definition of a pauper, we would have to say 
 that the whole community were paupers. It would 
 seem that the better version of the definition would 
 be to say that all those who get their living from a 
 community without rendering in return those duties 
 which good citizenship demands are paupers on the 
 community. I have shown you elsewhere in this book 
 that at present an employer of labor is prevented 
 from performing one of the duties which the good of 
 society demands, that is, reinvesting his money, be- 
 cause of the fact that if he did so, he would become 
 a sacrifice to other employers who would refuse to 
 invest, and therefore, not through any fault of the 
 employer, but because of the very system under 
 which we live, many a man who rides in his own 
 carriage is today in reality a pauper on the community, 
 in accordance with the rule above laid down. 
 
 In writing this work, it has been my endeavor 
 to say nothing that was harsh in its nature, or calcu- 
 lated to appeal to the prejudice of any man, being 
 well content to present my ideas in the simple light 
 of the truth as it appears to me, and even where I 
 have mentioned certain men who are harmful to 
 society, it has only been my intention to treat the 
 question as a political one — not as a moral one. In- 
 deed, from a moral standpoint, under present condi- 
 tions, I can understand how a man can occupy the 
 position of a money lender, and feel that self defense 
 and duty to himself and family demand that he 
 should invest his money so as to draw the very 
 highest rate of interest possible. My whole desire
 
 120 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 
 
 is to be honest and truthful with you, but I am afraid 
 that some of these men are not going to be so candid 
 with you. The majority of them will fight the meas- 
 ures I advocate, forgetting that (no matter what 
 their justification is under present conditions) it is 
 their duty to welcome new conditions, from which 
 old evils would be eradicated, thus changing the 
 moral aspect of the question, taking from them the 
 justification of self-defense and placing them in the 
 position of men who wilfully and wantonly, through 
 self-interest and greed, oppose that which is destined 
 to abolish poverty and uplift the human race as a 
 whole. These men will accuse me of the very great- 
 est dishonesty when I advocate the enforced sale of 
 all public utilities to the national government. They 
 will call it confiscation. They will howl about indi- 
 vidual liberty and property rights.* They will act- 
 ually weep. They will forget the days when they 
 themselves asked the government in their behalf to 
 exercise the right of eminent domain. Then they 
 sang a different song. Then they said that the good 
 of the public was the only thing to be considered, and 
 nothing was so sacred or important but that the good 
 of the public and the right of eminent domain were 
 not of greater importance ! Not one thing! The old 
 homestead and its cherished memories, where in 
 childhood's happy days we romped through the 
 sweet-faced rooms and out into the flowery garden, 
 and where in later years we knelt by the bed of a 
 
 ♦During the bankers' panic late In 1907 (seven years 
 after the above was written), the bankers took the view that 
 property rights could be ignored in the interest of the general 
 good and refused to pay depositors on demand.
 
 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 121 
 
 dying parent! The village church whose bells once 
 gave glad acclaim to our happiness, and again sor- 
 rowfully tolled forth the tidings of our bereavement! 
 The family burial lot, where we had thought that our 
 dear ones might rest with ashes undisturbed! All of 
 these, it was argued, were properly subject to en- 
 forced sale when that sale was necessary for the good 
 of the public in the laying of a railroad. I say to you 
 that those men were right in so arguing at that time. 
 What is it that will make them change their song at 
 this time? Self interest, my friend, self interest. 
 Don't let them fool you. 
 
 If it shall be urged that the kind of money advo- 
 cated by me is impracticable, I answer that even 
 today its practicability is being demonstrated. We 
 pay small bills with postage stamps very frequently, 
 and every manager of large concerns employing mes- 
 senger boys in large cities will tell you that they have 
 great trouble when they send a boy on a long or a 
 hasty trip, for which they give him a car ticket, by 
 reason of the fact that the boy very often walks and 
 spends his car ticket in a candy store or bake shop. 
 Ask the messenger boys themselves. They will tell 
 you that a street car ticket is as good as money and 
 can be spent as such. If this is true of a small street 
 car company, how much more would it be true if the 
 national government ran all of the great public utili- 
 ties and issued money redeemable in service?* 
 
 It will also be urged that money bearing an auto- 
 matic tax can not be circulated. I say to you that 
 
 *During the bankers' panic late In 1907, Capt. Robert 
 McCulloch, In charge of the street railway lines of St. Louis, 
 advocated the issuance by his company of many thousands of 
 dollars' Tvorth of street car tickets, tp be used as nickels.
 
 122 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 
 
 money should be of that kind which is most valuable 
 to the great common people of the country engaged 
 in honest avocations and legitimate business enter- 
 prises. Do not think that this money will be refused 
 by any class of people because of the fact that it is 
 automatically taxed. If a man had a hundred dollars 
 in his pocket at a given date, would the mere fact 
 that in thirty days he must exchange that hundred 
 dollars for ninety-nine dollars cause him to throw it 
 away or refuse to take it? Would not the ninety-nine 
 dollars be some object? And if, through the opera- 
 tion of this kind of money, he would be enabled to 
 get dollars more easily, and if a sum much less than 
 ninety-nine dollars of the new money had a greater 
 purchasing power than a full hundred dollars of our 
 present kind of money, would not these facts cause 
 him to be in favor of the new money and glad to 
 accept it? If a man had to have some of this new 
 kind of money before he could buy his coal, or pay 
 his street car fare, or pay freight charges, or railroad 
 fare, or mail a letter, or use the telegraph, or have a 
 telephone in his house, or have electric light or 
 power, or burn gas, or pay his water rates or his 
 taxes on land and all other taxes, don't you know 
 that he would not refuse this money, but that he 
 would accept it just as eagerly as he does our present 
 kind of money? The only difference would be that 
 he would not try to hoard a large quantity of it, but 
 would reinvest it, and money would circulate much 
 faster than it does now. 
 
 Money, to be of service to the people, must be 
 constituted with particular reference to having Us 
 value da a m^iwm of ds^'ciidn^e elxC^M vts v^altce ows: fi wi^tts
 
 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 123 
 
 of hoarding wealth. This should be accomplished by 
 having the present purchasing value of the money 
 absolutely perfect, but its future purchasing value 
 impaired, and having the process of impairment so 
 gradual that it would not destroy the perfection of 
 the present j^urchasing value. The money advocated 
 in this work will accomplish all these things. 
 
 If it shall be urged that public ownership of the 
 great public utilities will be harmful in opening up 
 to political gangs new fields of corruption, I answer 
 that while I believe in municipal ownership of cer- 
 tain of those utilities as a step leading to the result 
 of national ownership which I recommend in this 
 work, still the objection mentioned above is more 
 applicable to municipal ownership than to ownership 
 by the national government, which is advocated by 
 me. I refer you to the i30stofiice department. What 
 corporation has so many employes and yet has so 
 few instances of rascality? The inspector goes to 
 any part of the country; he goes without warning; 
 he examines the books and he is an expert at his 
 work; he is a stranger absolutely in most instances 
 to the employes whose work and accounts he is to 
 examine, and those employes have no political pull 
 or influence which they can exert on him, and the 
 result is, that although he has every facility for dis- 
 covering wrongful actions on the part of employes 
 or officials, experience of many years has taught us 
 that very little of that sort of thing is discovered. 
 The objection made to governmental ownership is 
 that it is a future possihility that great corruption will 
 prevail. I call your attention to the fact that now, 
 not as a matter of theory, but as a matter of actual
 
 124 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 
 
 fact, the profits arising from railroads and other 
 great utilities are openly and as a matter of law 
 divided amongst a few persons. You fear that under 
 governmental ownership some of these profits may he 
 wrongfully used. At present you stand idly by with 
 the knowledge that aJl of these profits are actually 
 going into the pockets of a small number of indi- 
 viduals. Your attitude strikes me as rather ridicu- 
 lous. Let me ask you as a sensible person: Suppose 
 you now pay five cents as a street car fare. Under 
 government ownership (if the same result vi re vails 
 as prevailed in the United States mail service) you 
 will only have to pay a street car fare of two and 
 one-half cents. At that time you will be saving two 
 and one-half cents which now goes into the pockets 
 of a few. Do you think the two and one-half cents 
 which you thus save will be divided amongst a gang 
 of politicians ? I hope you do not think so. Let me 
 ask you again: Suppose you are now working for 
 a railroad and receive a certain amount of salary. 
 Under public ownership (judging from the result as 
 shown in the operation of the United States mail ser- 
 vice) you, as an employe, will receive an increase in 
 salary of ten per cent, and upward. Will that ten 
 per cent, be divided amongst a gang of corrupt poli- 
 ticians, as it is now divided amongst a few manipu- 
 lators of public utilities? If not, why do you try to 
 make yourself believe that more will be stolen from 
 the public under public ownership than is today 
 taken from the public through the operation of the 
 foolish laws which allow a few individuals to pocket, 
 as a matter of alleged right, the profits arising out of 
 these important public utilities t
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 TRUSTS. 
 
 I suppose at this date any work on political 
 economy which failed to discuss the matter of trusts 
 would be incomplete. Trusts, like all other things, 
 exist for a reason. They are the result of a cause. 
 Their growth is easily traceable. There was once a 
 time when the different mercantile concerns of this 
 countr}^ were comparatively small. It is true that the 
 population at that time was small also, but even with 
 the population such as it was, it was found that a lim- 
 ited territory was all that any firm needed in which 
 to do business, but as our postal service was per- 
 fected, and as our telegraph and railroad lines began 
 to thickly interlace and penetrate all sections of our 
 land, the facilities for commerce became such, and 
 at the same time, the growth in wealth and impor- 
 tance of some of our business firms became such that 
 it was found that the trade territories of those firms 
 began to interfere with one another, while the firms 
 multiplied in number and produced so extensively 
 that under our present system their output was re- 
 garded as over-production. Indeed it became evident 
 that one large firm in any line of industry would be 
 able to supply the demands of the whole country in 
 its line. Now, in the natural course of trade there 
 would have been a great commercial war, involving 
 the ruin of most of the different firms, ruthlessly 
 oppressing the workmen in the different lines of 
 trade, as each firm made an effort to capture the
 
 136 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 
 
 market, by producing its goods at a smaller price 
 than the others ; and finally ending up with all of us 
 at the mercy of the successful firms. But the usual 
 course of trade was departed from. We poor fool 
 common mortals have long smacked our lips over a 
 stock phrase in commercial parlance to the effect 
 that "competition is the life of trade," and it has 
 sounded so good that we have accepted it as true 
 without pausing to consider that, while competition 
 in one direction is a good thing, if the competition be 
 in another direction, it is a very poor thing. Thus, 
 if firms compete with one another to produce a high 
 class article for the public, and vie with one another 
 in rendering the public good service, the result is 
 of undoubted benefit to trade, but, if the competition 
 is in the other direction, and each firm seeks simply 
 to produce a cheaper article than the others do, and 
 seeks to lessen its expenses in every way, the result 
 upon the trade, and upon the firms and laborers en- 
 gaged in it, is undoubtedly harmful. Competition is, 
 therefore, usually accompanied by bad results as well 
 as good results, because, when firms compete at all, 
 they do not content themselves with competing in 
 the manner mentioned in the first instance above, 
 but the fierce fight goes right on, and the harmful 
 effects ensue which result from the second class of 
 competition instanced above. It did not take our 
 big business men long to find this out, and they de- 
 cided that, instead of fighting the thing out to see 
 which would be the surviving firm, the best thing 
 for them to do would be for the most powerful 
 amongst them to unite and make one big, strong 
 aggregation of capital, capable of immediately de-
 
 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 127 
 
 ciding the question of survivorship, and powerful 
 enough to dominate all the smaller firms in business. 
 There are two favorite methods of forming trusts. 
 One of them is undoubtedly criminal on its face, 
 while the other has such a startling resemblance to 
 a lawful corporation that to distinguish it from a 
 lawful one we have to look beyond the mere form 
 and substance in which we find it and go into the 
 matter of the intent and purpose of its creation. In 
 the first instance the various members continue to 
 exist as individual firms, but boldly enter into a 
 criminal agreement with one another. In the other 
 instance, the firms actually abandon their individual 
 capacity and invest their assets in a mammoth con- 
 cern usually incorporated under the laws of the state 
 of New Jersey. This latter organization is in due 
 form of law, and its criminal feature lies only in the 
 fact that it was formed to create an abnormal condi- 
 tion in the line of industry which it seeks to control. 
 Now, we common people might be very thankful to 
 these trusts for preventing a ruinous commercial 
 struggle in which all of us would have suffered were 
 it not for one thing. That thing is pie! The fact of 
 the matter is that these gentlemen have not given us 
 a finger in the pie at all. They have not run these 
 trusts exactly as they would have been run if the 
 people could have had their say. In fact, it is becom- 
 ing evident that the gentlemen who formed them had 
 some selfish motive in view aside from the matter of 
 preventing a big commercial war. The trusts remind 
 me of a lot of great big lemon squeezers. The * ' dear 
 public" acts as the lemon and the stock holders of 
 the trust get all iMe Juide. Some df y^ jxmy tfot
 
 128 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 
 
 have been squeezed yet, but the situation is enough 
 to make a fellow feel "powerful uneasy." The trust 
 operates by running smaller firms out of business, or 
 by forcing such firms to carry out its instructions; 
 by closing down the sources of production of a com- 
 modity before they would ordinarily be closed, and 
 by maintaining a fictitious price on the articles in 
 which it deals. When it is perfectly organized it 
 possesses an awful power. It has absolute control of 
 a certain line of industry. If all industries were con- 
 trolled by trusts, humanity would be helpless. The 
 trusts would be masters of the situation. They could 
 even play the joke of raising the wages of workmen 
 ten per cent. All they would then have to do would 
 be to raise the price of their product twenty per cent, 
 and it might look at first blush as though they were 
 helping the laboring man, but in reality, the opera- 
 tion would only be an extra hard squeeze upon the 
 lemon squeezers. The trust causes money to cen- 
 tralize much quicker than it would if the various 
 mcjnbers of the trust competed with one another. 
 
 The trust is a bad thing. The people say it must 
 go. Under our present system, when it does go, we 
 will have in its stead the most ruinous war of competition 
 that the commercial world has ever ivitnessed, but even 
 that may be preferable to having the whole country 
 under the control of a few men. The fact of the mat- 
 ter is that people need not hope for much relief under 
 any of the old conservative political parties under 
 their present platforms. However, let us see by what 
 means we are to do away with trusts. The current 
 idea of the matter is that criminal statutes of some 
 sort should be passed under which prosecutions may
 
 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 129 
 
 be brought against the men constituting their mem- 
 bership, looking to the imprisonment of those men, 
 or to the dissolution of their corporate body, or to 
 the confiscation of their property. This is another 
 old-fashioned idea governments have. They attack 
 crime in its results and pay no attention to its causes. 
 It is very much like trying to remedy a break in a 
 water pipe by catching and carrying away the water 
 day after da}' instead of having a i3lumber fix the 
 break in the pipe. Would it not be better to stop 
 the cause of trusts and the incentive to form trusts 
 than to try the almost impossible task of defeating 
 these powerful capitalists in a never-ending series 
 of law suits? One of the causes of trusts, as stated, 
 is the fast development of the commercial facilities 
 in this country, and I do not mean that that should 
 be stopped. The other elements in the makeup of 
 the cause of a trust are the centralization of enough 
 capital to absolutely handle a line of industry 
 throughout the whole country, and the incentive 
 which manufacturers have to cause them to enter 
 into a combine to limit production in their line of 
 industry. When the laws which I suggest are put 
 in force, it will be found that these vast aggregations 
 of money capital will be unmanageable and will soon 
 melt away, giving place to the old healthy condition 
 of smaller firms controlling less territory, and as for 
 the incentive to stop the production of commodities, 
 which now exists amongst the members of a trust, 
 the incentive will at that time be the other way, be- 
 cause the products of labor will be the most desirable 
 form of wealth in which to invest, and at that time, 
 if any set of men strives to control the situation, it
 
 180 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 
 
 will be the object of that set of men to procure as 
 much of the products of labor as possible. In order 
 to do this, they will have to go to the laborer. There- 
 fore, if a trust is attempted to be formed, it will be 
 absolutely powerless, because the source of wealth 
 and the balance of power will be in the hands of the 
 great common people who constitute the laboring 
 classes. My friend, you should think well before you 
 turn aside from the message of hope which I here de- 
 liver to you. The formation of trusts indicates that 
 the situation has worked itself to a point where it has 
 to be managed. Should the government manage it 
 or should we let a few men manage it for their own 
 selfish purposes'? Make your choice now ! Certain men 
 in this country at certain times (very properly) cry 
 out for law and order and good government, but at 
 other times, when the shoe is on the other foot, and 
 they think their own ox is going to be gored, they 
 solemnly shake their heads and say, ''That govern- 
 ment governs best which governs the least." In 
 other words, it is all right to bring the strong arm of 
 the government to bear upon the poverty-crazed 
 striker who threatens to riot, but when the govern- 
 ment seeks to pass laws which will keep certain men 
 from producing poverty and distress by their crim- 
 inal methods, why then — ' * That government governs 
 best which governs the least."
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 RECAPITULATION, SHOWING THE SIMPLICITY OF THE 
 REMEDY SUGGESTED. 
 
 And now I will indulge in a short recapitulation, 
 as from it you will get a much clearer idea than it has 
 been possible to convey to you in the necessarily 
 separate treatment above given to the various laws 
 which I suggest : If, in my description of the plan of 
 government which I advocate, I have presented it in 
 a light which makes it appear to be complicated, I 
 have indeed been unfortunate in the use of language, 
 for its simplicity is one of its leading features. Upon 
 careful examination it will be found that, as prom- 
 ised in an earlier chapter, I have taken up the com- 
 plicated question of political economy, and at the 
 point of its juncture to the problem of civil govern- 
 ment, have discussed it along the lines of an exact 
 science. Thus, taking the doctrine of equality 
 amongst men as being the very foundation and basic 
 principle of a republican form of government, I have 
 made a practical application of that doctrine to the 
 three things of most importance to physical man, 
 to-wit: land, labor and money — land being necessary 
 to the existence of humanity at all; labor being the 
 means by which man procures from the land his ex- 
 istence, and money being the means by which the 
 products of labor are exchanged between men. By 
 taxing each of these in the manner suggested in this 
 book, a continual process of equalization will be kept 
 up with reference to all of them. ' ' What I ' ' you ask,
 
 132 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 
 
 "do you mean to say that you have anywhere sug- 
 gested a tax on labor ? ' ' Certainly I have. It is true 
 I have not done so in the case of the labor of the indi- 
 vidual man, for there is no necessity for such a tax, 
 there having always been a perfect equalization of 
 labor in that respect, but where machinery is used, 
 and one man is thus enabled to control what is equiv- 
 alent to the labor of many men, it will be seen that 
 my plan provides for a tax upon labor as represented 
 by that machinery. It is a plan which discards the 
 old-fashioned idea of "taxation for revenue only" 
 and puts in its place a scientific taxation. The savage 
 chieftain of the African interior is just as far ad- 
 vanced in statecraft as the American politician of 
 today who advocates "taxation for revenue only." 
 Having provided for a beneficial tax on the three im- 
 portant things mentioned above, my plan of govern- 
 ment develops itself in a natural manner and right in 
 line with the idea of equalization, provides for a dis- 
 tribution of all excess taxes by means of an equal 
 pension. Thus, you see, it not only prevents the 
 harmful centralization of capital, but, on the other 
 hand, absolutely insures that at least once a month 
 a vast sum of money shall be placed down at the bot- 
 tom of the channels of trade in the shape of a small 
 sum in the hands of each citizen, and enabling every- 
 one, no matter how unfortunate or poor, to be a con- 
 sumer of the products of labor to at least a small 
 amount. Another feature about the plan is that, 
 although simple, it is adequate. In other words, 
 when a people can once properly regulate and control 
 land, labor and money, other things with reference to 
 their physical welfare are of such little relative im-
 
 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 133 
 
 portance that the problem of civil government may- 
 be said to have been solved. If we can prevent the 
 acquisition and speculative holding of land by capi- 
 talists, and if we can fix things so that the products 
 of labor will be the most desirable form in which to 
 hold wealth, either for hoarding or for speculation, 
 and so that the laborer will be aided and not harmed 
 by machinery, and if we can have a money which will 
 circulate and be a real medium of active exchange, 
 and be at the same time of higher purchasing ability 
 than any money we have today, then I say to you 
 that we need not worry about other affairs of govern- 
 ment, but that, when these important matters are set- 
 tled, matters of police and fire protection, elections, 
 public schools, public trials, etc., will be found to be 
 amongst the simpler problems which have already 
 been almost perfectly solved. When commerce was 
 in its infancy throughout the world these other mat- 
 ters were of more importance and they have long 
 since received the attention of lawmakers and been 
 dealt with in a manner comparatively satisfactory 
 to all persons. But from a small beginning, that 
 great thing known as commerce has grown and 
 grown until today it rules the destinies of men and 
 of nations, and the people of every country base 
 their hope of prosperity and success in every line 
 upon their hope and struggle to become a great com- 
 mercial people. Such being the position which com- 
 merce occupies among all civilized people of today, 
 it must become evident to everyone that what a great 
 commercial people needs is a system of laws which 
 looks after and protects the commercial welfare of 
 that people — not a system which by means of trade
 
 184 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 
 
 balances in its favor with other nations enables it to 
 fatten on the suffering masses of those other nations, 
 but a system by which a great people with a great 
 country can be prosperous within themselves, no 
 matter how the trade balances may be. That, and 
 that alone, should be the paramount issue in this 
 country today. Writers upon the subject of political 
 economy have long deplored the fact that it was a 
 subject which was not readily reduceable to the rules 
 and limits of an exact science, and have apparently 
 held up their hands in despair at the task. Such be- 
 ing the position taken by the professors and students 
 of a subject so important in the affairs of men, it has 
 been well said that "the price of liberty is eternal 
 vigilance." When there is chaos and complication, 
 and lack of scientific system, men must indeed keep 
 a vigilant eye upon their rights and liberties. The 
 reason that men have desired to reduce civil govern- 
 ment to a science, and one of the most beneficial fea- 
 tures of the plan of government which I advocate in 
 this book, is that such a scientific form of government 
 will relieve men from maintaining this ' ' eternal vigi- 
 lance" with reference to their rights and liberties, 
 and will permit them to turn their whole attention to 
 those nobler and higher aims for which they were 
 undoubtedly created, safe in the knowledge that 
 their mere physical and corporal welfare is being 
 provided for by a scientific and mighty system, 
 which, because of its automatic nature, is absolutely 
 proof against mistake and impervious to corruption. 
 The world is going ahead. Not only is it going 
 ahead, but it is moving at a speed which is marvel- 
 ous. Governments can not stand still. Already has
 
 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 135 
 
 the ship of state tugged too long at the anchor of 
 conservatism. We must up with the anchor and un- 
 furl the sails of advanced statecraft to the strong 
 winds of the new era. Even now can the sullen roar 
 of the storm of popular discontent be heard afar. No 
 government can stand still and weather that storm. 
 The successful government of the future will be the 
 one which rides abreast of the times. Something 
 must be done in the United States today. The mighty 
 influence and j^ower possessed by corporations indi- 
 cate it. The awful grasp of the trusts indicates it. 
 The riots, distress and failure which follow in the 
 wake of the great unsuccessful labor strikes of the 
 day indicate it. The apparent intention of citizens 
 to take the situation into their own hands by forming 
 great labor unions indicates it. The foreign element 
 at work, as represented l)y our citizens naturalized 
 during the last quarter of the century, indicates it. 
 The buying and stealing of elections indicates it. I 
 say it is the duty of all true Americans to take the 
 situation in hand while it can be managed. We 
 want to keep our present form of government. We 
 don't want anything similar to a French Revolution. 
 Neither do we want a foreign Socialism. If we must 
 have that which smacks of Socialism, let it be a 
 sober, intelligent, x\merican Socialism, grown up out 
 of the calm reasoning which men possess in times of 
 peace, and a Socialism over which our liberty-loving 
 citizens may be proud to have their flag wave, happy 
 in the knowledge that there has been a great stride 
 in the march of progress which, since its birth, that 
 Qag has led, and that i^eir individual rights and) grand
 
 136 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 
 
 public institutions still remain with them, strengthened 
 and not weakened by that Socialism. 
 
 Having mentioned in this work land, labor and 
 money as the three things of most importance to 
 physical man, some curiosity may have been aroused 
 as to what subjects I consider as coming next in 
 order. Undoubtedly the next in importance is the 
 privilege of trading or doing business by the indi- 
 vidual with a view to amassing wealth by means of 
 operating industries that are of a public nature, such 
 as railroads, etc. The next in importance is the priv- 
 ilege of doing business in the ordinary lines of pro- 
 duction and trade. The first of these last mentioned 
 subjects needs no tax to control it, as it is controlled 
 under the plan I suggest by turning the entire matter 
 over to the government. The second constitutes that 
 great network of legitimate business enterprises 
 which it is the design of this work to save from a 
 state of absolute Socialism and to protect and 
 strengthen, together with the laborers employed both 
 in it and in the industries of a public nature men- 
 tioned above as constituting the first class. The 
 plan I have suggested will be found adequate for 
 this purpose. There are some people, however, who 
 think that, in order to have a large number of firms 
 of average importance in this latter class, and in 
 order to prevent any of them from becoming too 
 powerful, or any one man becoming dangerously 
 rich, the country should be districted with reference 
 to each line of industry and each firm restricted to its 
 own district or charged a tariff on all goods it ships 
 into another district. Should the American people 
 at any time in the future deem it wise to put in oper»
 
 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 137 
 
 atiou such a tariff between such trade districts, this, 
 too, would constitute a tax which would be consid- 
 ered burdensome by the people unless it was returned 
 to them by means of the pension mentioned in this 
 work.
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 I had intended to touch upon some other matters 
 in this work, and in addition, to set forth in detail 
 the various steps which it will be necessary for the 
 government to take in order that the plan here sug- 
 gested may be put into operation without undue jolt 
 or jostle in making the change, but as my work is 
 upon a subject which unfortunately is considered 
 dry and uninteresting by a great niunber of people, 
 I have determined to leave those matters as subjects 
 for consideration in some future work, feeling that, 
 if I make this book too lengthy, it may prevent its 
 being read by a class of people into whose hands I 
 very much desire that it shall fall. People are but 
 human, and even the greatest students would hesi- 
 tate before they essayed to read a lengthy work by 
 an obscure author. As Holmes puts it in his ''Elsie 
 Venner," ''The boldest thinker may have his mo- 
 ments of languor and discouragement, when he feels 
 as if he could willingly exchange faiths with the old 
 beldame crossing herself at the cathedral door — nay, 
 that he could drop all coherent thought and lie in 
 the flowery meadow with the brown-eyed, solemnly 
 unthinking cattle, looking up to the sky and all their 
 simple consciousness staining itself blue, then down 
 to the grass, and life turning to a mere greenness, 
 blended with confused scents of herbs — no individual 
 mind movement such as men are teased with, but the
 
 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 189 
 
 great calm cattle sense of all time and all places that 
 know the milky smell of herds. ' ' 
 
 Men and women of America, you are asleep; I 
 wish to awaken you. You are drifting; I wish to 
 guide you. 
 
 Stand up, ye laboring classes, of all races, both 
 men and women, in the city and on the farm ! Assert 
 your rights with intelligence and with dignity. Let 
 not cynics and pessimists lead you to believe that 
 there is no hope for you. Agree upon the feasible 
 and practicable action which this book advocates, 
 and then all pull together with only one end in view. 
 Form public ownership clubs in every city and town 
 in the United States, with a view to turning the prop- 
 erties thus acquired and created over to the national 
 government, when the time comes, as a basis for the 
 money system herein advocated. Let your motto be, 
 "Now is the time." Co-operate to the end that the 
 blessings promised you in these pages may be yours, 
 and that you may live under the benign j^rotection 
 of a government that has a warm personal interest 
 in every citizen — a government alive and quivering 
 with human impulses, and a government whose just 
 laws will reflect the calm reasoning of an advanced 
 age, and the mighty pulsations of whose monetary 
 system will resemble the action of a great human 
 heart, thoroughly and often pumping life and energy 
 into both the weakest and the strongest channels of 
 trade, correcting the disorders of commerce, and dis- 
 pelling business stagnation wherever it may 
 threaten to form. 
 
 Stand up, ye ministers of the gospel and fathers 
 of religion, of whatever faith ye may be! I ask of
 
 140 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 
 
 you your co-operation. This is a work you may well 
 take up, and I want to hear a sermon on this subject 
 from every pulpit in the land. While crime or sin 
 is abnormal, yet it is not unnatural, but follows from 
 logical causes. Hence it is that in our prayers we 
 ask God to "Lead us not into temptation." Those 
 who are in abject poverty are continually surrounded 
 by temptations. If you will help to abolish poverty, 
 you will not only lead men from temptation, but you 
 will strengthen their souls as well as their bodies. 
 
 Stand up, ye professional men and teachers of 
 art and of science ! I know that you are in the front 
 ranks of progress and that the condition of society 
 is loathesome to your senses. I know that you need 
 no argument to convince you of the innumerable 
 crimes nad misfortunes which accompany yjoverty, 
 and that you are intelligent enough to see that the 
 prosperity of all classes depends upon the prosperity 
 of the great mass of the people, and I know that I am 
 safe in relying upon your co-operation. 
 
 Stand up, ye bookkeejoers, telegraphers, stenog- 
 raphers and clerks! I ask your co-operation. You 
 are laboring men and you should always vote in 
 favor of those laws which will most protect labor- 
 ing men. 
 
 Stand up, ye manufacturers, merchants and 
 middle men! I ask your co-operation. The road to 
 success has always been uphill work with you. No 
 matter how honest, or talented, or energetic, or in- 
 dustrious you have been, your burden has neverthe- 
 less grown heavier as the inflexible commercial laws 
 of the day have pressed you toward the wall. Many 
 of you have gone to your beds at night in a solvent
 
 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 141 
 
 condition and have risen in the morning mined men, 
 and many of you who today call yourselves success- 
 ful men have left to you as the scars of battle shat- 
 tered nerves, ruined health and uneasy consciences. 
 I know that you will welcome any plan by which 
 men aid instead of ruining one another. 
 
 Stand up, ye labor unions ! I ask your co-opera- 
 tion. You have already made praiseworthy efforts 
 in behalf of the laborer and I know that you will 
 hail with delight a plan of government which places 
 labor in the position now occupied by gold. 
 
 Stand up, ye charitable societies, and men and 
 women of benevolence! I ask of you your co-opera- 
 tion. With all your work and all your prayers, you 
 have been able to make but a slight impression on 
 the poverty, distress and crime in this world. I say 
 to you that when we have in operation the great pul- 
 sating governmental machine which this book advo- 
 cates, so powerful and strong will it be, that it will 
 be just as difficult for any man or set of men to harm 
 society at that time as j^ou today find it difficult to 
 aid society and battle with its evils. 
 
 Stand up, ye mothers, sisters and daughters I I 
 ask your co-operation. I know that if you had in 
 your hands the ballot, you would vote for a system 
 of government under which labor would become so 
 valuable that a woman would receive the same salary 
 as a man for the same work. I know, too, that your 
 tender sympathies would prompt you to vote for a 
 system which protected the weak. 
 
 Stand up, ye school children of America, ye 
 bright-eyed, quick-witted, ambitious and stout- 
 hearted sons and daughters of liberty! You are the
 
 142 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 
 
 hope and pride of a race. On your shoulders will 
 soon descend the burden of meeting some of the 
 gravest situations that have ever confronted hu- 
 manity. I know that you will take up the work 
 bravely and cheerfully, and I know that you will suc- 
 ceed. On the one hand the great money powers and 
 trust magnates may plot against you in secret, while 
 on the other the fiery-headed advocates of anarchy 
 and bloodshed may wildly wave their red flag of re- 
 volt, but I know that you are too strong to let the 
 one class oppress you, and not so weak as to yield 
 to the foolish and ruinous teachings of the other. 
 I invite your close study to the plan of government 
 suggested in this book, and T know that I can count 
 upon your co-operation. 
 
 Stand up, oh Omnipotence, from Thy Judgment 
 Seat, and grant aid to the struggling races Thou 
 hast created! Extend Thy Beneficent Hand over 
 this, my work, and if it be worthy in Thine Eyes, 
 grant it Thy blessing. Thou Who hast showered 
 Thy manifold gifts upon humanity, grant to it the 
 key of using those gifts. Grant that men may not 
 offend Thee longer with their rapacity, but that they 
 may live in brotherhood, practicing not greed, but 
 benevolence; building up instead of pulling down, 
 and competing not in sordid price, but in excellency 
 and endeavor. Strengthen Thou with Thine Infinite 
 Love the bonds of harmony to the end that earth may 
 be drawn closer to Heaven, and if there be those 
 whose regard for the fleeting things of this world is 
 so strong as to cause them to oppose their individual 
 interests to the good of a race, ''Forgive them; they 
 know not what they do. ' ' With Thine aid humanity
 
 Every reader of The Automatic 
 System, who so desires, is requested to 
 send his name, to be recorded as a 
 member of the 
 
 NATIONAL PUBLIC OWNERSHIP 
 LEAGUE 
 
 We desire the name and address of 
 every citizen who favors National Public 
 ownership of public utilities. 
 
 You need not necessarilly concur in 
 all the reforms su^^ested in this work; 
 but if you are friendly to the movement, 
 and take the trouble to send us your 
 address, you can aid materially in a 
 matter that w^ill soon interest every 
 citizen of the United States. 
 
 Address 
 
 I. CRANE CLARK, 
 
 Denver, Colo.
 
 THE AUTOMATIC SYSTEM 143 
 
 will care not for the opposition of these men, ''For 
 Thine is the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory, 
 forever and ever. Amen I * ' 
 
 NOTE.— The better nature of the author of this 
 book will not permit him to quit his labor without 
 some apology for the egotistical style in which it is 
 written, and for the contemptuous manner in which 
 it affects to treat the opinions of other men. I wish 
 to say, in this closing note, that while I do not re- 
 tract one syllable which I may have written as to the 
 merits of the plan of government advocated in this 
 work, and while I am sincere in every suggestion 
 which I have made, still that part of it which gives 
 undue prominence to the alleged personal ability and 
 individual importance of the author was inserted 
 solely that attention might be attracted and a certain 
 portion of the American public thus coaxed into 
 studying a subject which it is prone to overlook in 
 its readings. In view of the habit which has of late 
 years manifested itself amongst my contemporaries 
 of merging their ideas on political economy into the 
 pages of an alleged novel, I think I am excusable 
 for adopting my present style. 
 
 With continued good wishes for the future wel- 
 fare of the American people, I am, 
 
 I. CRANE CLARK. 
 
 October 1, 1900.
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below 
 
 MAY SI 6 195b 
 
 Form L-9 
 
 20m-l, '12(6510) 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 AT 
 
 LOS ANGELDS 
 
 LinnARV
 
 C53a Clark - 
 ^e autom atic. 
 
 system. 
 
 ;gi^^ UCSOUTHER_N REGIONAL UBRARYFAQ^^^ 
 
 HN64 
 C53a 
 
 AA 000 821907 3
 
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