Confiscation | Page 9

world, that
they have completely bewildered our political philosophers, who have
been utterly unable to make room for the labor-saving inventions and
discoveries of those men, until the confusion and distress resulting
from the incompetence of our political philosophers to adjust the laws
to meet the changed conditions are beginning to make us look upon the
inventors as our enemies, instead of our benefactors.
The work of the world consists principally in raising food and
manufacturing the things we wear, and the forwarding of both to the
consumer. And the great inventions of the McCormicks, Howes,
Fultons, Stephensons, and rest have made this work so easy that the

labor done in two months now is equivalent to the labor done in twelve
months a few years ago. That is why they are great inventions. Yet our
law-makers are still legislating for conditions that disappeared with the
ox-goad, hand loom, lapstone, and sickle, and are continually trying to
devise ways and means by which the labor of the country can be kept
employed the year round. What doing? When they find out how to
make you wear twenty pairs of shoes at a time, they will have found
out how to keep the shoe factories running the year round, not before.
The natural philosopher can overcome physical difficulties; the
political philosopher cannot overcome economic ones.
We would reside on a certain hill were it not for the climb. A Hallidie
lays his cable, and puts us at the top without further trouble. We find
Egypt cutting into our cotton market, Argentine into our wheat market,
France and Germany have shut their doors against our meats, and
England will not approve of silver. Many throughout this country find
their very bread falling short through these conditions abroad, and the
sufferers call in our political economists to help them to at least keep
the necessaries of life within their reach.
Of the various nostrums prescribed by these political quacks, two have
been thoroughly tried, but the aggravating results have only cut the
eye-teeth of the humbugged; and when they take the field themselves as
political economists they will have a preparation of their own that will
be bitter enough to the taste of those to whom they will apply it.

III.
What rainbow-chasers these McKinleys, Wilsons, and J. P. Joneses are!
Do they not see this country with its limitless resources? Do they not
see the surfeited millionaire, and the hungry laborer with his starving
dependents? Do they not see that they must break down the one if they
would build up the other? Do not these miserable bunglers see that this
noble ship of the fathers is foundering because of her uneven load?
See the imbeciles rushing hither and thither in frantic despair! This, one
with his wad of wool to stop a leak that does not exist; that one with his
tears and kisses falling on the silver charm that hangs about his neck;
this other at the masthead high shouting to foreign Shores for help we
do not need.
Never did the black flag of a Caesar or a Napoleon III. bear down on a

richer-laden prey than this helpless hulk and its jabbering crew.
-
Through Confiscation, and Confiscation alone, can we restore the
conditions that are necessary to the life of the Republic.
Confiscation is a forbidding word. We associate it with the sheriff's
writ, and with the idea of distress in some form, and with bloody war
itself, its greatest field of operation. It is one of the few words in the
vocabulary of Might. Without Might there would be no such word, and
the weak have ever been the prey of both. But it is a plain word. As
plain as are the conditions under which we are now living. There is no
mistaking its meaning. And having the same momentous work ahead of
us - of gaining our freedom, and throwing off the yoke of our latest
master - as that which confronted the founders of the Republic, we
cannot go to a nursery rhyme for a word to describe that work.
It is the way in which Might is to restore our lost liberties and resources
that is of the gravest concern to all, and not the word used to describe
the result of what Might shall do.
Justice is due. But how is it to arrive? By way of the ballot, or over the
same bloodstained road in use before the ballot was discovered?
If the plundered and starving have lost faith in the ballot, and sheer
want has brutalized them until they see no way but the brute's way of
saving themselves, then place the horror of it all at the doors of
incompetence and grasping greed where it belongs.
It is a