The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Complete Contents...

Another remedy has been suggested by the same persons who advocate fiat money. With a consistency perfectly charming, they say it would have been much better had we allowed the Treasury notes to fade out. Why allow fiat money to fade out when a simple act of Congress can make it as good as gold? When greenbacks fade out the loss falls upon the chance holder, upon the poor, the industrious, and the unfortunate. The rich, the cunning, the well-informed manage to get rid of what they happen to hold. When, however, the bills are redeemed, they are paid by the wealth and property of the whole country. To allow them to fade out is universal robbery; to pay them is universal justice. The greenback should not be allowed to fade away in the pocket of the soldier or in the hands of his widow and children. It is said that; the Continental money faded away. It was and is a disgrace to our forefathers. When the greenback fades away there will fade with it honor from the American heart, brain from the American head, and our flag from the air of heaven.

A great cry has been raised against the holders of bonds. They have been denounced by every epithet that malignity can coin. During the war our bonds were offered for sale and they brought all that they then appeared to be worth. They had to be sold or the Rebellion would have been a success. To the bond we are indebted as much as to the greenback. The fact is, however, we are indebted to neither; we are indebted to the soldiers. But every man who took a greenback at less than gold committed the same crime, and no other, as he who bought the bonds at less than par in gold. These bonds have changed hands thousands of times. They have been paid for in gold again and again. They have been bought at prices far above par; they have been laid away by loving husbands for wives, by toiling fathers for children; and the man who seeks to repudiate them now, or to pay them in fiat rags, is unspeakably cruel and dishonest. If the Government has made a bad bargain it must live up to it. If it has made a foolish promise the only way is to fulfill it.

We cannot bring prosperity by cheapening money; we cannot increase our wealth by adding to the volume of a depreciated currency. If the prosperity of a country depends upon the volume of its currency, and if anything is money that people can be made to think is money, then the successful counterfeiter is a public benefactor. The counterfeiter increases the volume of currency; he stimulates business, and the money issued by him will not be hoarded and taken from the channels of trade.

During the war, during the inflation—that is to say, during the years that we were going into debt—fortunes were made so easily that people left the farms, crowded to the towns and cities. Thousands became speculators, traders, and merchants; thousands embarked in every possible and conceivable scheme. They produced nothing; they simply preyed upon labor and dealt with imaginary values. These men must go back; they must become producers, and every producer is a paying consumer. Thousands and thousands of them are unable to go back. To a man who begs of you a breakfast you cannot say, "Why don't you get a farm?" You might as well say, "Why don't you start a line of steamships?" To him both are impossibilities. They must be helped.

We should all remember that society must support all of its members, all of its robbers, thieves, and paupers. Every vagabond and vagrant has to be fed and clothed, and society must support in some way all of its members. It can support them in jails, in asylums, in hospitals, in penitentiaries; but it is a very costly way. We have to employ judges to try them, juries to sit upon their cases, sheriffs, marshals, and constables to arrest them, policemen to watch them, and it may be, at last, a standing army to put them down. It would be far cheaper, probably, to support them all at some first-class hotel. We must either support them or help them support themselves. They let us go upon the one hand simply to take us by the other, and we can take care of them as paupers and criminals, or, by wise statesmanship, help them to be honest and useful men. Of all the criminals transported by England to Australia and Tasmania, the records show that a very large per cent.—something over ninety—became useful and decent people. In Australia they found homes; hope again spread its wings in their breasts. They had different ambitions; they were removed from vile and vicious associations. They had new surroundings; and, as a rule, man does not morally improve without a corresponding improvement in his physical condition. One biscuit, with plenty of butter, is worth all the tracts ever distributed.

While the Government cannot create gold and silver, while it cannot by its fiat make money, it can furnish facilities for the creation of wealth. It can aid in the distribution of products, and in the distribution of men; it can aid in the opening of new territories; it can aid great and vast enterprises that cannot be accomplished by individual effort. The Government should see to it that every facility is offered to honorable adventure, enterprise and industry. Our ships ought to be upon every sea; our flag ought to be flying in every port. Our rivers and harbors ought to be improved. The usefulness of the Mississippi should be increased, its banks strengthened, and its channel deepened. At no distant day it will bear the commerce of a hundred millions of people. That grand river is the great guaranty of territorial integrity; it is the protest of nature against disunion, and from its source to the sea it will forever flow beneath one flag.

The Northern Pacific Railway should be pushed to completion. In this way labor would be immediately given to many thousands of men. Along the line of that thoroughfare would spring up towns and cities; new communities with new surroundings; and where now is the wilderness there would be thousands and thousands of happy homes.

The Texas Pacific should also be completed. A vast agricultural and mineral region would be opened to the enterprise and adventure of the American people. Probably Arizona holds within the miserly clutches of her rocks greater wealth than any other State or territory of the world. The construction of that road would put life and activity into a hundred industries. It would give employment to many thousands of people, and homes at last to many millions. It would cause the building of thousands of miles of branches to open, not only new territory, but to connect with roads already built. It would double the products of gold and silver, open new fields to trade, create new industries, and make it possible for us to supply eight millions of people in the Republic of Mexico with our products. The construction of this great highway will enable the Government to dispense with from ten to fifteen regiments of infantry and cavalry now stationed along the border. People enough will settle along this line to protect themselves. It will permanently settle the Indian question, saving the people millions each year. It will effectually destroy the present monopoly, and in this way greatly increase production and consumption. It will double our trade with China and Japan, and with the Pacific States as well. It will settle the Southern question by filling the Southern States with immigrants, diversifying the industries of that section, changing and rebuilding the commercial and social fabric; it will do away with the conservatism of regret and the prejudice born of isolation.

It will transmute to wealth the unemployed muscle of the country. It will rescue California from the control of a single corporation, from the government of an oligarchy united, watchful, despotic, and vindictive. It will liberate the farmers, the merchants, and even the politicians of the Pacific coast. Besides, it must not be forgotten so to frame the laws and charters that Congress shall forever have the control of fares and freights. In this way the public will be perfectly protected and the Government perfectly secured.

Look at the map, and you will see the immense advantages its construction will give to the entire country, not only to the South, but to the East and West as well. It is one hundred and fifty miles nearer from Chicago to San Diego than to San Francisco. You will see that the whole of Texas, a State containing two hundred and ten thousand square miles; a State four times as large as Illinois, five times as large as New York, capable of supporting a population of twenty millions of people, is put in direct and immediate communication with the whole country. Territory to the extent of nearly a million square miles will be given to agriculture, trade, commerce, and mining, by the construction of this line.

Let this road be built, and we shall feel again the enthusiasm born of enterprise. In the vast stagnation there will be at last a current. Something besides waiting is necessary to secure, or to even hasten, the return of prosperity. Secure the completion of this line and extend the time for building the Northern Pacific, and confidence and employment will return together.

More men must cultivate the soil. In the older States lands are too high. It requires too much capital to commence. There are so many failures in business; so many merchants, traders, and manufacturers have been wrecked and stranded upon the barren shores of bankruptcy, that the people are beginning to prefer the small but certain profits of agriculture to the false and splendid promises of speculation. We must open new territories; we must give the mechanics now out of employment an opportunity to cultivate the soil—not as day-laborers but as owners; not as tenants, but as farmers. Something must be done to develop the resources of this country. With the best lands of the world; with a population intellectual, energetic, and ingenious far beyond the average of mankind; with the richest mines of the globe; with plenty of capital; with a surplus of labor; with thousands of arms folded in enforced idleness; with billions of gold asking to be dug; with millions of acres waiting for the plow, thousands upon thousands are in absolute want.

New avenues must be opened. All our territory must be given to immigration. Greater facilities must be offered. Obstacles that cannot be overcome by individual enterprise must be conquered by the Government for the good of all. Every man out of employment is impoverishing the country. Labor transmutes muscle into wealth. Idleness is a rust that devours even gold. For five years we have been wasting the labor of millions—wasting it for lack of something to do. Prosperity has been changed to want and discontent. On every hand the poor are asking for work. That is a wretched government where the honest and industrious beg, unsuccessfully, for the right to toil; where those who are willing, anxious, and able to work, cannot get bread. If everything is to be left to the blind and heartless working of the laws of supply and demand, why have governments? If the nation leaves the poor to starve, and the weak and unfortunate to perish, it is hard to see for what purpose the nation should be preserved. If our statesmen are not wise enough to foster great enterprises, and to adopt a policy that will give us prosperity, it may be that the laboring classes, driven to frenzy by hunger, the bitterness of which will be increased by seeing others in the midst of plenty, will seek a remedy in destruction.

The transcontinental commerce of this country should not be in the clutch and grasp of one corporation. All sections of the Union should, as far as possible, be benefited. Cheap rates will come, and can be maintained only by competition. We should cultivate commercial relations with China and Japan. Six hundred millions of people are slowly awaking from a lethargy of six thousand years. In a little while they will have the wants of civilized men, and America will furnish a large proportion of the articles demanded by these people. In a few years there will be as many ships upon the Pacific as upon the Atlantic. In a few years our trade with China will be far greater than with Europe. In a few years we will sustain the same relation to the far East that Europe once sustained to us. America for centuries to come will supply six hundred millions of people with the luxuries of life. A country that expects to control the trade of other countries must develop its own resources to the utmost. We have pursued a small, a mean, and a penurious course. Demagogues have ridden into office and power upon the cry of economy, by opposing every measure looking to the improvement of the country, by endeavoring to see how cheaply nothing could be done. A government, like an individual, should live up to its privileges; it should husband its resources, simply that it may use them. A nation that expects to control the commerce of half a world must have its money equal with gold and silver. It must have the money of the world.

Whenever the laboring men are out of employment they begin to hate the rich. They feel that the dwellers in palaces, the riders in carriages, the wearers of broadcloth, silk, and velvet have in some way been robbing them. As a matter of fact, the palace builders are the friends of labor. The best form of charity is extravagance. When you give a man money, when you toss him a dollar, although you get nothing, the man loses his manhood. To help others help themselves is the only real charity. There is no use in boosting a man who is not climbing. Whenever I see a splendid home, a palace, a magnificent block, I think of the thousands who were fed—of the women and children clothed, of the firesides made happy.

A rich man living up to his privileges, having the best house, the best furniture, the best horses, the finest grounds, the most beautiful flowers, the best clothes, the best food, the best pictures, and all the books that he can afford, is a perpetual blessing.

The rich man who lives according to his means, who is extravagant in the best and highest sense, is not the enemy of labor. The miser, who lives in a hovel, wears rags, and hoards his gold, is a perpetual curse. He is like one who dams a river at its source.

The moment hard times come the cry of economy is raised. The press, the platform, and the pulpit unite in recommending economy to the rich. In consequence of this cry, the man of wealth discharges servants, sells horses, allows his carriage to become a hen-roost, and after taking employment and food from as many as he can, congratulates himself that he has done his part toward restoring prosperity to the country.

The man who wants others to work to such an extent that their lives are burdens, is utterly heartless. The toil of the world should continually decrease. Of what use are your inventions if no burdens are lifted from industry—if no additional comforts find their way to the home of labor; why should labor fill the world with wealth and live in want?

Reasonable labor is a source of joy. To work for wife and child, to toil for those you love, is happiness; provided you can make them happy. But to work like a slave, to see your wife and children in rags, to sit at a table where food is coarse and scarce, to rise at four in the morning, to work all day and throw your tired bones upon a miserable bed at night, to live without leisure, without rest, without making those you love comfortable and happy—this is not living—it is dying—a slow, lingering crucifixion.

What is a reasonable price for labor? I answer: Such a price as will enable the man to live; to have the comforts of life; to lay by a little something for his declining years, so that he can have his own home, his own fireside; so that he can preserve the feelings of a man.

I sympathize with every honest effort made by the children of labor to improve their condition. That is a poorly governed country in which those who do the most have the least. There is something wrong when men are obliged to beg for leave to toil. We are not yet a civilized people; when we are, pauperism and crime will vanish from our land.

I sympathize with the wanderers, with the vagrants out of employment; with the sad and weary men who are seeking for work. When I see one of these men, poor and friendless—no matter how bad he is—I think that somebody loved him once; that he was once held in the arms of a mother; that he slept beneath her loving eyes, and wakened in the light of her smile. I see him in the cradle, listening to lullabies sung soft and low, and his little face is dimpled as though touched by the rosy fingers of Joy.

There should be labor and food for all. We invent; we take advantage of the forces of nature; we enslave the winds and waves; we put shackles upon the unseen powers and chain the energy that wheels the world. These slaves should release from bondage all the children of men.