AG, \06 F&a»x 1 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY < ^ OOO LOCO CO OlOi- co m The New Economy ».•"• Mfl I AT LOS ANGELES THE NEW ECONOMY HOW TRUSTMAKERS Have Capitalized HE AMERICAN PEOPLE And Made Dollars WORTH FIFTY CENTS . a . * • « ' O • H * • ROBERT FLEMINQ PUBLISHING CO. POTTER BUILDING, NEW YORK All right* rcMrved by copyright May 1904 ;e 10 CENTS V t fe- C c t i C i k - C t . • • • •• a • • • • • • « • t • • '■•• « t • » • • • • m • • • • • * • • ,•• • • t •_ > t . • * ' '».' !•• • • • • •• • • ••••••■ M C lOCo THE NEW ECONOMY Q3 The resources of the United States are its wealth. The wealth of the American people is like a loaf of bread. Its size is limited, and every slice taken by non-producers for nothing leaves less for all the others who produce and earn and do something. Every piece of plundering by which schemers obtain vast riches for nothing is so much wrong done to every member of society, and to the well-being of the nation, in which every American is concerned, whether he will or not. Every misappropriation of the country's riches is a disorgan- ization of human forces, whereby not only the innocent and confiding are pillaged, but the workers and producers of the nation are made poorer, and put under industrial enslave- ment, and the plunderers are made more depraved and de- graded, although they are enriched. When a country's resources are small, its people must i struggle to live. When a country's resources are large, J like Russia, and when nearly all have been grasped by the f imperial family and the nobles, the people must be poor, and Jj must struggle to live. When the country's resources are \ great and rich, like the United States, and nearly all have been grasped by a few, using bogus capital and charging it as real money, all Americans must face higher prices; and millions must face lower wages, in order to make up the difference ; other millions must retrench and econo- mize ; other millions must suffer privation and want ; and children and women must be called in to do the work of the men, because they are cheaper. The Russian peasant, like the American, is bled at every footstep, but not by Trusts. He is punished in the vilest form by the officials of the Russian Government. When the officials purchase the sup- plies for the Government, they obtain three roubles of $89259 money with every rouble of purchase, and all must be in eluded in the bill, although only one rouble's worth is de- livered. This is as debasing to the officials as it is oppressive to the Russian peasants, who have to make it up. But it is not more vile or base than the charging of four dollars of bogus capital to every dollar of real capital, as is so often done in the United States to grasp the country's resources, and as was done in the making of the Steel Trust and the other Trusts. By this atrocious method the American, although living under a Democracy, is plundered more than the Russian peasant. For this same work Whittaker Wright was sentenced in England to seven years' penal serv- itude because the law authorities there have not been pur- chased or demoralized. The resources of a country are of vital importance to all the people. They are its wealth. The wealth of a country consists of its railroads, industries, mines, lands, buildings, farms, forests, fisheries, ships, etc. These are as necessary for existence and well-being as air to breath. When a country's resources are charged with debts, or when they are put in pawn, the people must be deprived and harassed, in order to provide the yearly charges for the debt, like a man who owes money, and must provide the interest regularly, and always be confroned with his debt. When a man is in debt he is not free ; he is more or less the slave of his debt. This is not so apparent, but it is equally true, that when a country is in debt the people of that country are not free, and all of them are more or less the slaves of the debt. Because of it the people are poorer; they must work more and receive less ; they must spend less and use less, because some of their money has to be paid regularly for the debt. All the resources, or wealth, of the United States have been valued at $90,000,000,000. In the year 1900, 71 cents of every one of all these dollars were in the possession of a few, and a very large portion was obtained, not by industry, or the honest trading of equivalents, whereby something was done for the good of society, but by scheming jugglers, who have charged bogus capital stock and mortgage bonds as real money upon the country's resources, and fixed them under perpetual debts, for thousands of millions of dollars, and scampered off with the proceeds. This atrocious system, whereby thousands of millions of dollars have been alienated for nothing from the Ameri- can people, was started when railroads were first con- structed, when every nefarious method was allowed, and often participated in, bv the Government. It was developed in the creation of the Standard Oil Company ; it was ampli- fied and perfected by Jay Gould ; and now it is an established custom of the country, reveled in by lawyers, and the per- petrators are now called Captains of Industry when the volume of the plunder is enormous. It is seen in its most matured form in the charging of more than a thousand million dollars of bogus capital as real money, and putting nearly all the steel industry of the country under its con- trol. Capital must, to be real, possess the power of reproduc- tion. Capital is necessarily and entirely saved labor, and when it is considered, this will be seen to be inevitable. Therefore, when men print pieces of paper and call them capital stock, they are no more capital than air bubbles, although they are charged as real money to the country's resources, and demand regular interest, like the worst of debts. In consequence of more than a thousand million dollars of bogus capital, as well as excessive mortgage bonds taken by Andrew Carnegie and charged as actual money to the country's steel industry, higher and prohibitive prices were charged for steel products and reduced wages were paid to the steel workers, in order to provide divi- dends for a bogus capital which never existed, and provide the interest for the excessive mortgage bonds which were issued, so that the makers of the bogus capital could create the bogus capital stock and sell it, and put the money into their own poskets. In the year 1900 only 29 cents of every dollar of the country's wealth or resources remained for 91 in every 100 of the American people. Since the year 1900 the same means have been used to grasp most of the remaining 29 cents of every dollar. Since 1900 the capital stock and mortgage bonds of new and old stock companies, charged as real money to the resources of the country, amount to more than 20 cents of the 29 cents left for the 91 in every 100 of the population. Therefore, when the capital stock and mortgage bonds created since 1900 have been matured and made earners of dividends and interest by higher prices and lower wages, there will remain for every 90 in every 100 of the American population only 9 cents of every dollar of the country's wealth or resources, because all besides have been taken by the ten others, and mostly by the fictitious process of charging bogus capital as real money. This is the cause of the "desperate fight" in American cities, de- scribed by Bishop Sheehan, when he urges the Irish people to keep away from the United States. All the evils of this atrocious and oppressive system can- not be told upon printed pages. Whenever an individual worker, as well as the nation as a whole, depend for exist- ence and well-being upon their country's resources, it is of the first importance that they shall not be in debt, but it is of prime necessity that their country's resources shall not be in debt by a method so nefarious and detestable as creating bogus charges and charging them as actual money. For the future of the American people this changes everything from good unto evil. When prices are put up to provide dividends, the people must be deprived, and this is an evil for the trade of the nation. When the people's wages are re- duced to provide dividends, the squeeze comes a second time, and the consumption of the country's products is restrained in doubled proportions. By this vile system another evil is created. The enrichment of an indolent, luxury-using class of non-producers is accomplished, and their proportion to the number of the producers of the nation becomes more and more inconvenient and pernicious. In 1900 the idlers and incompetents of the nation were 62 in every 100, even when we include in the number of workers 5,329,292 children and women workers. This number of idlers and incompe- tents in every one hundred of the population is larger than any other country of the world. Were the children and women workers deducted, the idlers and incompetents of the nation would be 69 in every 100, and were the numbers who live in foreign countries, often supported like princes by the American producers, placed among the idle and incompe- tents, the proportion of the workers is reduced and becomes more distressing. Many Americans imagine that luxury-users are an ad- vantage to society, and that when a man "blows in" ex- travagantly for luxuries which never produce, he is a bless- ing. This is a delusion, and the contrary is the fact. He is a destroyer of wealth, and the amount must be made up somewhere by extra work and extra sacrifice. The recip- ients of the riotous spending are temporarily enriched, but there is no reproductive use, but a waste, and the waste must be made up by the others — by the earners and producers of the nation. Whoever contributes nothing, directly or in- directly, to the production of wealth, is a consumer who does not produce, a mere waster of wealth. All consumption of unnecessary luxuries by the idle or industrious is non-productive and interferes with the pro- duction of necessaries, and consequently, many of those who need the necessaries obtain them with greater difficulty, and often must go without. No labor tends to the enrich- ment of society or mankind which is employed in producing things for the use of consumers who do not produce. A legitimate capitalist is a producer, because he is a factor in the production. But a bogus capital maker, who charges it as real money — and it is never made for other purposes — is the worst of all non-producing consumers, because he pro- duces nothing; he consumes extravagantly and consumes with other people's money. Were a nation to consist of non-producing consumers, it would soon cease to exist. Were half the nation non-producing consumers, the other half would have to provide for them by carrying a burden, requiring extra work and extra sacrifice. Were the pro- ducers of a nation only 30 in every 100, and the non-pro- ducers 70 in every 100, excepting the women and children, as in the United States, and were some of them extravagant consumers, the encumbering burden becomes oppressive for all who do not belong to the privileged class, and intolerable for many. In the number of idlers and incompetents of the United States in every 100 of the population we have excluded all who are occupied for gain, although many are not directly producers. We have included in the number of producers actors, artists, clergymen, musicians, lawyers, barbers, nurses, saloon-keepers, bankers, brokers, soldiers, sailors, hostlers, messengers,, sales-people, stenographers, teleg- raphers, shoeblacks, officials and others. The burden upon the Amt rican producer is enormous and incomparable. It is shown by the few workers in all our in- dustries, which number only 9 in every 100 of the popula- tion. It is shown by the value of the products of each average industrial worker in the United States, which, ac- cording to the Census of 1900, was $2,450, while that of the average industrial worker of England was only $500. It is shown in his labor-saving appliances, in his high speed, as well as in the quantity and value of his output, and yet the bogus capital and other bogus charges of Trusts are treating him more and more as a human machine, and displacing him, whenever they can, by children and women, and by inferior alien races, dumped upon this country with a vicious impunity. Until all this bogus capital and other such charges upon the resources of this country are remedied and undone, it will be an inferior country for all who are not rich, and an intolerable country for all who work and are poor. The enormous debts upon the country's resources created by juggling bogus charges into the real, is not only debilitat- ing and oppressive, but the means used to create them have degraded government, have demoralized politics, have cor- rupted youth and the private life of the nation, as well as given us a trade which is good for a few years of each decade. The more the Trust-makers can reduce the workers to a state of privation and want, the more they can grind the people down by higher prices and lower wages, the cheaper can their votes be got. The Trust-maker cares not for manhood or womanhood. The more the labor-saving ap- pliances can be perfected, the more useful will be the inferior races which are being landed in this country. The more ignorant and gullible they are, the more available will they be for corruption at election time. Whenever a man or woman, a boy or girl, is degenerated in body or brain, in home life or ideals, by being made a human machine to pro- duce dividends for bogus capital for private enrichment, they necessarily become inferior fathers and mothers, as well as inferior American citizens, and their progeny must be inferior Americans. Even were the American people willing for their country's wealth and resources to remain under the control of bogus capital, charged as real money, for the benefit of the few and the punishment and the privation of the many, it would be an injustice and a crime to the Americans unborn, that they and their descendants forever must exist with shackles around their necks, slaving to support an increasing bogus capital aristocracy. The vast and rich resources of the great Republic have, in large measure, been alienated from the people, not by giving equivalents in honest trading, but by diabolical pillaging, by means of financial juggling of capital stock and mortgage bonds into money, when they were merely charges, creations of the brain, dependent for realization by squeezing the people by new prices; and governmental authority has been winking, or actively co-operating; and unless a remedy is applied without delay, the pawning of all the country's resources will be completed. It is a deplorable fact that the resources of every past and present Democracy are looked upon by the cunning and avaricious, as spoils which can be secretly appropri- ated. Those in power obtain power, not for the better- ment of the people, but for themselves. Every Democ- racy appears deficient of vested immutable responsibility. Men are vested with a sacred trust, and they abuse it by weakness or infidelity. This is illustrated by the signing of the Elkins Law by President Roosevelt, who must have been mentally or morally irresponsible, because that law was intended, and could only be intended, to serve tTie guilty, at the expense and suffering of the innocent and honest. It is illustrated by the open defiance of law by the wealthy citizens, without restraint, and by the fact that more than the value of this country's exports of manufactures for two years was charged to the country's steel industry, as fictitious capital, and the money appro- priated with impunity. Nothing will effectually deter the pillagers of the coun- try's resources by capital stock and mortgage bonds charged as real money, except the unconditional extinc- tion of all of them, whenever made, by a special law, which will also make the creation of more of them a criminal offence. The absence of vested immutable authority in a Democ- racy was seen in George Washington's time. On the 28th of November, 1775, George Washington wrote from Boston : "Such a dearth of public spirit, or such a want of virtue, such stock- jobbing, and fertility in all the low arts, to obtain advantages of one kind or another, I never saw before, and pray God's mercy, I may never be witness to again." On the 30th of December, 1778, he wrote from Philadelphia: Speculation, peculation, and an insatiable thirst for riches seem to have got the better of every other consideration and almost of every other order of men." The foregoing is sufficient proof that for the good of the spoilers, as well as the well-being of the people, the enforcement of law cannot be too rigorous, and ought to be mandatory, and that when the laws are indifferently applied the moral force of the people becomes degraded, and then, the public pillagers not only debase themselves, but impoverish and grind the people. The situation in the United States is one which every righteous and reflecting man and woman will view with horror. In Washington's time there was not sufficient enforcement of law, and this condition has been con- tinued until to-day. In consequence, the wealth and re- sources of the country have been grasped by a few, by means of charging the fictitious as the real. It is true that most of the farming land of the country has been left for the farmers, but with such conditions that every farm of the average size of 146 acres, obtained, for all its farm products, less than $13 per week for the year of 1900, and the average farm hand obtained less than $65, for the year, for his wages, or less than 43 cents per acre, although he produces farm crops four times as much 8 as the average farm hand of Europe. This is because the farmer and the farm hand have been enslaved by pillaging jugglery, and the law authorities of the government have stood by and winked. When the farmer transports his farm products, he is confronted with charges for divi- dends for bogus capital, and in consequence his farm products often rot upon his farm, while the people in cities are starving for them. When the farmer buys clothing and other necessities of life, he obtains about fifty cents' worth for a dollar, because the other cents are necessary to support and maintain a bogus-capital aristocracy, which neither toils nor spins, but consumes and wastes enor- mously. Because of nearly everything in the country being charged with bogus capital as real money, and in order to provide it with dividends, the farmer has so little for himself, and so little for the average farm hand; and when the average farm hand spends his $64 per year he obtains about $32 worth, so that he also can contrib- ute largely to the support of the bogus-captial aristocracy. The industrial enslavement of the producers of the na- tion does not end with its application to the farmers and the farm hands. The industrial worker of the United States is the foremost of all countries in the quantity and value of his and her industrial production. The United States Census of 1900 states that he produced five times the value of industrial products of the industrial producer of England, and yet the average wages paid to the 5,316,- 000 men, women and children workers in our industries in 1900 were only, per week, $9.44 to the men, $5.25 to the women, and $2.92 to the children. But this is not all. Without detailing here the disastrous effects to the industries of the country, by these under-paid people be- ing made small consumers of the country's industrial products, the fact remains that when the man wage- earner receives $9.44, he obtains only about $4.72 worth of the necessaries of life; when the woman worker re- ceives only $5.25, she obtains only $2.63 worth of the necessaries of life, and when the children receive $2.92, they obtain only about $1.46 worth of the necessaries of life. In other words, these workers, who work so long and so fast and produce so much more than in all other countries, must, when they spend their wages, pay about fifty cents of every dollar in order to maintain and sup- port a bogus-capital aristocracy, the largest and the most extravagant in past or present history. The Bible is distinguished for the lore and the travail of the Children of Israel. They were in sad bondage in Egypt. There is such a book of bondage in the United States. It is the United States Census of 1900, when read between the lines. The facts are more excruciating than any of the bondage experiences of the Israelites in Egypt. Gaunt figures and haggard faces; under- fed and ill-clothed; grinding for long hours at high speed for a miserable existence, in order to provide for a bogus-capital aristocracy. Because the body of the serf and slave were worth something, and were a marketable article, they were better treated, they were better fed, and they were less harassed about their to-day and the uncertainties of their to-morrow, than the average wage earner. By the few of this country having grasped about ninety cents of every dollar of this country's wealth and re- sources, by means, mostly, of bogus capital, charged as real money, which will be completed when the recent cre- ations of bogus capital have matured, every ninety in every hundred of the population are left without indus- trial freedom, and exist in a state of increasing industrial enslavement, for themselves and their descendants for ever, unless a mandate to Congress is made in the ballot box, to undo the crime. From Introduction to "Depraved Finance." 10 It is of the first importance to every American man and woman to know those conditions of their country which make life hard and often unbearable. In the United States, with its incomparable resources, with its unexampled labor-saving appliances and modern machinery, with the best of labor, working the longest hours at the highest speed, and thereby producing the most for the least of all countries, the most natural question is : How is it that the dollar buys so little ? How is it that the work- ers and producers of the nation obtain only a struggling ex- istence while there is so vastly much for those who only juggle and scheme and never produce or contribute to the making of wealth ? How is it that the industrious are beset with terrible uncertainties of to-day and to-morrow in a country of vast abundance and unusual means of happiness and well-being for all, while others are permitted to steal millions of dollars? Every American who seeks to know the economic facts of his country will find food for every-day thought and re- flection in the new book, DEPRAVED FINANCE, and how since 1895 twenty of the principal necessaries of life have been increased in their prices at wholesale more than 58 cents on the dollar, as well as many important explanations and answers to the following and other questions : Why is the best Bread, made of American flour, sold in London, England, for less than 2.y 2 cents, while the same Bread is sold in the cities of the United States for more than double ? Why is the same quantity and quality of Sugar sold in England for 100 cents, which cannot be bought for less than 174 cents in the United States? Why is the same refined Petroleum now sold at more than 8 cents per gallon at wholesale, which in 1893 was sold at 3^4 cents per gallon at wholesale? Why is Anthracite Coal now sold at wholesale for $4.50 per ton, which in 1879 was sold for $2.50 per ton? Why can the same quality and quantity of Coal be bought at retail in London for 8 cents, which cannot be bought for less than 20 cents in Philadelphia, and which costs more in New York? Why are single rooms, without air or light except by the doorway, rented in New York for $8 per month, while more sanitary and better single rooms are rented in England for less than $4 per month? Why cannot the United States, with its own vast natural resources and superior labor and machinery, compete with the old machinery and inferior labor, working shorter hours, of England? 11 Why are Steel Rails sold in the United States for $28 per ton, which cost, including $2 per ton to labor, less than $12 per ton? Why are the people in American cities compelled to pay 5 cents for a ride on an Electric car, and often to stand, while the same ride is obtained in England for less than 2 cents, and often for 1 cent? Why are the people of the United States confronted with higher and higher prices, which make the dollars buy less and prohibit the use of farm and industrial products for home and for export? Why were the exports of our Manufactures in 1902 less than $5 per head of the population? Why were the exports of Agricultural products $13.60 per head of the population in 1880 and only $10.50 per head of the population in 1902? Why has the Merchant Shipping dwindled from 92 tons in every 100 tons of our Foreign trade, when there was no bogus capital charged as real money, to less than 9 tons of every 100 tons of our Foreign trade? Why is our country thus going backward in the amount of its exports, and in the quantity of its products which it delivers for a dollar, while our average farmhand is pro- ducing four times as much as the average farmhand of Europe, and while our average industrial worker is pro- ducing five times as much as the average industrial worker of England? How have ten persons in every 100 of the population cor- raled 90 cents of every dollar of this country's wealth and resources, mostly without giving any equivalents ? How is it that 90 in every 100 of the population have been left with only 10 cents of every dollar of this country's wealth and resources, while they have done so much to create and develop them? Why are there only 38 in every 100 of our population who are workers for a livelihood, while there are so many non- producers living in indolence, extravagance and luxury? Why are the non-producing idlers of this country more in every 100 of the population than in every 100 of the popu- lation of every other country of the world? Why are the workers in Canada more than 50 in every 100 of its population, and why were the total exports of Canada in 1902 $80 per head of its population, while the total exports of the United States for 1902 less than $30 per head of the population? Why did more than 24,000 of our best farmers leave the United States in 1902 and settle in Caanda? Why were there 44 in every 100 of our workers engaged 12 in Agriculture in 1880 and only 35 in every 100 of our work- ers engaged in Agriculture in 1900? Why are the farm products rotting on the farms, while hundreds of families in New York are forced to meals of only coffee and bread? Why is our Government like that of Turkey and Russia, while the people are blackmailed and given conditions of serfdom by the alienation of their country's resources? Why were the total capitalizations of Great Britain in the years from 1879 to 1902, with all her financing of foreign countries and her vast colonies, less than $910,000,000 and less than the bogus capital charged as real money to the steel plants of the Steel Trust? Why are our best bishops viewing our immoral conditions with fear, and our best ministers of religion speaking of our moral degeneracy with alarm ? Is not the cause to be found in ill-gotten riches and the abusmg of them in wanton in- dulgence ? Why are so many American families leaving the moral and political wreck and the financial rottenness, for a more wholesome asylum in those foreign countries, where lives of quietude and reflection are posssible? Why is it only a question of a decade or two, unless a remedy is applied to the disease, when all Americans, ex- cept those enjoying the proceeds of the plunder, will be the abject serfs and dependents of a bogus capital aristocracy? Why have Cardinal Gibbons and Bishops in the United States and in Ireland advised the Irish people not to come to this country to "face the desperate fight in American cities"? Are Irishmen advised to shun our country because it is bar- ren or the food is scarce, or the people are not industrious? Do not the Trust makers prefer the inferior alien and igno- rant races, which are being dumped here in hundreds of thousands, which can be driven like mules and put to the labor-saving appliances for small wages ? All these questions, and more, affecting the present and future lives of all Americans are explained in detail in the new book, DEPRAVED FINANCE. The toiler for long hours at high speed for dollars which buy only 50 cents' worth of the necessaries of life will find the reason why in DEPRAVED FINANCE. All tradespeople struggling to exist because of higher and higher rents and prices for everything will find why in DEPRAVED FINANCE. Professional men, judges as well as lawyers, will find why in the midst of vast abundance and reduced costs of produc- tion prices for commodities have been increased and made prohibitive for home use and for export, and why our Mer- 13 chant Shipping has been dwarfed ; why our exports per head of the population are so small and discreditable, and how sweetness and light, as well as redemption, are still possible, if the remedies of DEPRAVED FINANCE are adopted. Railroad men and Seamen, Merchants and Traders, Bank- ers and Brokers, the Educators of Youth and the Ministers of Religion, all, whoever they may be, if they are concerned for the future of their country and the just reinstatement of its resources for the people, will discover the great enslaving and demoralizing forces of ill-gotten wealth which are un- dermining the foundations of our Republic if they will read DEPRAVED FINANCE. Every woman who values womanhood, every mother who cares for the future of her children, and every American boy and girl who can be ambitious for real well-being ought to become familiar with the live truths and principles explained in DEPRAVED FINANCE. How unfortunate for the Great Republic that American men and women are careless and indifferent upon the purity of Government and the proper administration of law, while they are being deprived of the common birthright of man- kind ! But both men and women of America must be aroused or the shackles which have been put upon them by a bogus capital aristocracy will soon be more intolerable than the serfdom on serf estates in former times. 14 DEPRAVED FINANCE BY ROBERT FLEMING The people of a Nation are poor when their country is barren of resources, for then, they have only poor means for tlieir existence. But the mass of the people are equally poor when their country has large resources of wealth, which a few have corraled for themselves, by charging bogus capital as real money. Whoever is silent upon public chicanery; or upon the defects of government, by which combination the people are being impoverished, is morally asleep, or a coward; and ■whoever does not look proudly upon these tivo poles of human life is fit only for serfdom. The proper object of government used to be, to get tivelve honest men into a jury box, in order to get a rogue into jail. In the United States, the object of government is to get a rogue into ivealth, and tivelve honest men into poverty. THE ROBERT FLEMING PUBLISHING CO. Potter Building, New York Postal Telegraph : Telephone : Flammasia, N. Y. 83Z4R Cortlandt, N. Y. All rights reser-ved Copyrighted May 1 904, by Robert Fleming Publishing Co. CONTENTS PAGE. Introduction 5 How Bogus Capital Has Been Charged as Real Money Upon the Resources of the Nation 20 How the American People and Their Country's Re- sources Have Been Capitalized Under the Control of Bogus Capital, Which Has Been Charged as Real Money 52 How Trust-Makers Make High Prices, and Make Dol- lars Worth Fifty Cents 78 Examples of Trusts — The Oil Trust — How the Sinews of War Were Extracted from Oil 139 The Copper Trust — How Beatitudinal Windows Were Extracted from Copper 148 The Steel Trust — How the Plunder Was Ex- tracted from Steel 157 The Railroad Trusts — How Inalienable Public Properties Have Become Private Estates. . 179 The Remedy for Trusts and Trust-Makers 205 j F62n The new economy. JUN 6 19M, HC - 106 F62n j.- 5m-6,'41(3644) 0FJW ,; m