OCR Text |
Show Hj Finance of War UNDER the above heading the Mirror of St. Louis has this: Exchange goes on lowering the value of the British pound, measured in dollars. French gov- W eminent securities are down and German finances Bf , are confused and precarious. It looks as if Eu- B:v rope is drifting to a paper basis "scraps of paper" w: for money, everywhere. Production minimized Btf everywhere, diverted to war purposes. England K expects her debt soon to go to two thousand mll- B'L. lions. Where is the money coming from? From Bfji the .people, of course, in taxation! Can they, will they stand it? Revolution and repudiation loom in H the1 .future. BB Of course the people will. They always do. Hfl When the paper promises are redueed to half HB promises and the war ceases from utter exhaus- HB tion then the gentlemen who understand the mir- HB acle, of interest, will come out of hiding with their Bu gold, Buggest to the governments that they take HB up tire dishonored paper and issue interest-bearing HB borids for the full amount of the promises printed Hi on 'the paper, then they will buy the half-price paper promises and exchange them for the bonds, and the people will pay the interest right along until the next war makes it necessary to repeat the performance. This was improved upon after our great war. The paper was bought at about 45 cents on the dollar, then exchanged for the bonds; then half the money of the people was converted into a commodity, and when the commodity, com-modity, measured in gold began to fall and the people murmured, those interest-gatherers, hired orators, writers and newspapers to ask the unreasonable un-reasonable people who pay the taxes, if they would cheat the philanthropists who bought their bonds by paying them in half-weight dollars. Then the poor deluded fools who pay the taxes becamo indignant that any reproach should be cast upon their stainless integrity and declared by their ballots that they were impervious against any such dishonest proposition. And they have been paying the interest on those bonds ever since, and those philanthropic interest-gatherers have been taking the money and with it have made panics or good times as they pleased; they have held congress and the country in their grip, and have fixed the leading press so that it is ready to jump upon anybody that ventures to express the belief that they are not all angels, and the people have never awakened to the fact that they were fooled and robbed and wronged worse than any generous people ever were before, and they are like Falstaff's soldiers, food for the stomachs of the cormorants that pick their bones. |