L.B. Woolfolk

V .  The Money Power Devours Our Oil Industry

Upon the discovery of oil in Pennsylvania, many Americans embarked in the new enterprise ;  spending millions in prospecting for oil, and millions more in operating successful wells, engaged in active and healthy competition in the oil market .  The aggregate profits of the business attracted the attention of the Money Power, which promptly took steps to crush the American well owners, and monopolize the business .

The measures adopted were as quiet, as sudden, as effectual, as the coil of the boa constrictor about its victim .  A railroad was built to the oil regions ;—but it was not built to the oil wells, so that all the well owners might ship by it, but its terminus was fifteen miles away on one side .  A few wells were purchased, to start the business ;  and a pipe line company was organized, and a pipe line was laid from the wells purchased, out to the railroad, with steam engines stationed at intervals, to force onward the sluggish flow of oil .

At that time, six thousand wagons were hauling oil over corduroy roads out to the railroad .  Of course, the well owners, hauling on wagons, could not compete with the pipeline, after it went into operation .  The profits of oil were put down to a point that barely covered expenses, with the best facilities .  The individual well owners had to plug up their wells, waiting for another railroad to be built into the oil regions, over which they might ship . But these Money Kings never jostle each other .  No other railroad was built .  The oil well owners, in despair, had to sell out to the Money Kings, at any price they chose to offer .

The Great Standard Oil Company, operating with a capital of $90,000,000 in the United States, has now, by a long course of oppression crushing all competitors, taken possession of the entire oil industry of the country, and established a mighty monopoly .

A number of striking facts point out the Standard Oil Company as one of the monopolies of the London Money Power :—

I .  The monopoly of the oil industry is part of a grand system .  We find the Money Kings engaged in establishing monopolies all over the world, and especially in our country . We naturally conclude that the oil monopoly is also a part of their system .

2 .  A detective can identify a burglar by his method .  This oil monopoly was established in perfect accordance with the method of the Money Power .  The combination of cunning, secretiveness and the deadly coil of omnipotent capital is unmistakable .

3 .  No American capitalists were powerful enough to break down the oil well owners by dint of unlimited capital .

4 .  No American capitalists would have engaged in such an enterprise, when the oil well owners might have foiled the attempt by obtaining English capital to counterwork them .  Only the Money Kings would have engaged in an attempt that required such an immense outlay ;  for only they could be sure of being able to carry out the design without interference from other capitalists .  They are thoroughly organized, and never interfere with each other .

5 .  It is manifest that the Standard Oil Company is not an American corporation .  The method and the extent of its operations show that it is an enterprise of the Money Kings .  For the Standard Oil Company is operating in Russia as largely as in the United States .  It owns hundreds of millions of acres of Russian oil lands, and is supplying the neighboring markets from those oil wells, just as it is supplying the American markets from the oil wells of Pennsylvania .  The Standard Oil Company, like all the monopolies of the Money Kings, is world-wide in its operations .  Unlimited capital behind it enables it to construct facilities for carrying on its business,—a grand pipe line from the oil wells to the seaboard—grand refineriestank cars for transportation of refined oil,these and other things gave it such advantages as enabled it to put down all competition and maintain a monopoly of the business .  It evidently aims to secure a monopoly of the oil trade for centuries to come .

Unlimited capital has enabled the Money Power to crush in its coil the original proprietors of the oil wells without the possibility of resistance .  The same unlimited capital enables the Money Power to crush competition in every line of business, and thus to devour every business interest in the country .  And it has been successively devouring one branch of business after another, until its grand imperialism now covers our land throughout its whole extent .

VI .  The Money Power Devours Chicago

The Money Power, owning the railroads, and seeking to get into its clutches all our industries, as we shall see it has done, needed to have a great city, upon which to center the railroads and the trade controlled by it .

In 1870, Chicago was rapidly becoming a railroad and business center for the Northwest .  It was the city best adapted to become the trade center of the country, except perhaps, St. Louis .  But St. Louis was out of the question, its business being operated by home capital well established .  In order that the Money Kings might be able to centralize the trade of the country in their hands, it was necessary for them to get a secure clutch upon Chicago .

The great fire of 1871 afforded them their opportunity .  Nobody ever knew how it originated .  A high wind prevailing at the time swept the flames through the heart of the city, leaving a path of desolation three-fourths of a mile wide .  The business center of Chicago was reduced to ashes .

The business community had been doing business in cheap two-story houses .  In rebuilding, they would, no doubt, have preferred to erect cheap two-story buildings again ;  for the lower stories furnished all the room needed for business purposes .

But there has never been any money to be obtained for building, in this country, public improvements on a large scale, except in London .  Chicago could only be rebuilt with London capital .  The Money lenders could dictate the style of buildings to be erected,—splendid structures, from six to ten stories high, the upper stories of which could only be rented for offices or lodgings .  Before the rebuilding was completed, the hard times of 1873 came on ;  the crisis being engineered, as we shall see, by the London Money Power .  The panic caught the Chicago business men in the trough of the sea .  Business was prostrate :  renters were lacking for the upper stories :  payments could not be made :  mortgages were foreclosed ;  and the most of the grand Chicago business blocks became the property of the Money King mortgagees .

It was said that Chicago was rebuilt by loans of Eastern capital .  We have learned, of late years, that Eastern capital means London capital .  London is the point from which we have always had to get money for all improvements .  At the time of the Chicago fire, the Money Kings had established many loan agencies in the Eastern states, as a part of their policy for concealing their money-loaning operations .  And these loan agencies were the source whence the money was obtained to rebuild Chicago .

The railroads of the West and South are now concentrated upon Chicago in such a way as to center upon it in a wonderful manner the trade of those sections .  Pushed forward with the might of the unlimited capital of the Money Kings, Chicago is growing at an unprecedented rate .  It is now the second city in the country, and it is confidently declared that, in a few years, it will surpass New York .  And it is very probable ;  for railroads now bring to it the trade of Canada and the Northwest, to Puget Sound ;  of the West, to San Francisco ;  of the Southwest, to the Gulf of Mexico and San Diego ;  of the South, to New Orleans and Mobile ;  of the Southeast, to Atlanta, Savannah and St. Augustine .  Chicago is the great center of the traffic of the London Money Kings in this country .

Kansas City was planted as the outpost of Chicago, to take away the trade of the Southwest from St. Louis and carry it to Chicago .  And Kansas City is springing up like a giant, with its growth pushed with all the might of London capital .  Like New York it has an elevated railroad ;  in cable roads it is not surpassed by any city in the country .  It is not suffered to lack anything for its growth that capital can give it .

If anyone wishes to see how these grand capitalists build up cities by the might of capital, such curiosity will be gratified by observations in Chicago and Kansas City .  Every suburb is planted, not by pioneers, as in other new towns, but by capitalists, who spend millions before they invite a settler .  A railroad is first built to the prospective town ;  then the streets are graded :  gas and water pipes are put down :  the sidewalks are laid :—and then, settlers are invited to make their homes in the new suburb .—Nobody can lay out towns in such a style of princely expense but the London Money Kings .

VII .  The Money Power Crushes all our Industries by Inducing the Crash of 1873

We have now come in the order of time to the crash of 1873, which ruined many thousands of our business men throughout the country .

The crash of 1873 was brought on by the failure of the House of Jay Cooke & Co .  Jay Cooke was a London banker, and the agent of the Money Kings for building the Northern Pacific Railroad .  The failure was arranged in such a manner that it did not involve the London house of Jay Cooke & Co. at all .  But the failure of the American house accomplished its purpose .  It started a crash whose influence lasted five years, prostrating all our industries, and sweeping the country with a deluge of bankruptcy ;  enabling the Money Kings to hold carnival in the purchase of our produce at low prices, and in buying up property cheap at bankrupt sales .

All prices went down so low that, though we had $900,000,000 of currency in the country, it only needed $300,000,000 to carry on all the business of the country, and the other $600,000,000 was locked up and retired from circulation .

The London Money Kings certainly prepared and engineered the panic of 1873, just as they did the crash of 1837 and 1857 .  We find their motive in the fact that it gave them an excuse for locking up $600,000,000, and thus causing the ruin that followed, with the hard times and low prices, in which they reaped a rich harvest of profit to themselves .

They Can Make Good Times or Hard Times whenever they please ;  so completely have they gotten our country in their hands .  They hold our prosperity completely in their grasp .  We are become entirely dependent upon them .  When they wish to make good times, they put out their money freely, in building railroads, in making city improvements, in establishing new enterprises all over the country, and in lending money to everybody who wishes to borrow and has property to mortgage as security .  Then we have flush times for several years ;  and everybody, under their leading, rushes into speculation, and everybody gets into debt .

Then, in Order to Make Hard Times, the Money Kings have only to lock up the money they make as profits out of their various enterprises in the country .  They stop building railroads :  they stop all outlays for city improvements :  they stop all investments in new enterprises ;  and they stop loans to borrowers .  They simply lock up their profits, and let the money lie idle .—And at once business is at a stand still :  the improvements which had given activity to business cease :  established businesses, such as farming, manufacturing, railroading go on :  everything else stops .  There is universal stagnation :  prices fall :  a flood of bankruptcy sweeps over the land :  thousands are ruined :—and the Money Kings revel in low prices of produce, and cheap purchases of bankrupt property .

This was the way in which the Money Kings operated the hard times of 1873, and several years afterwards .  But they had to have a visible cause that would account for the hard times to the public, on accepted business principles .  The failure of Jay Cooke did this . It destroyed confidence, and in the eyes of the public justified the locking up of the money, with all the subsequent ruin .  They thus made our people believe that the crash was an unavoidable disaster, due to regular business causes, and not to their own malignant intention .

But it was done on purpose, with malicious intent to bring about the very result that followed .  That it was the work of the London Money Kings is demonstrable .—They were building the Northern Pacific Railroad .  Jay Cooke was their agent in doing that work .  They had engaged to build the Northern Pacific Railroad, and had started the work .  Jay Cooke failed, and his failure brought on the panic .  The failure was a trick, a sham .  Does anybody believe that the London Money Kings who had undertaken to build the Northern Pacific Railroad were unable to carry out their contract ?—that they had not money enough to complete the work, if they chose ?  The idea is too absurd to be entertained for a moment . They let the enterprise drop, because they chose to do so :  they had their agent Jay Cooke, to fail, because they knew that his failure would bring on a crash which they were resolved to produce, and in whose ruin they desired to glut their avarice .

They stand convicted before the eyes of the world, of an atrocious crime against the country, and against humanity .  They did not even have the grace to let the London house of Jay Cook share in the failure .  They sent him to America as a dynamite bomb, to explode and destroy the prosperity of the United States .  And they sent him carefully disconnected from his London house, so that the ruin he wrought would not effect the London house with which he wax connected .  Jay Cooke may have been an innocent victim of their purpose .  They do not inform their agents of their designs .

The time may come when all the particulars of this infamous plot will be revealed to the world .  They may hide their tracks as carefully as they can ;  but the eye of history may, in the future, be able to gather many facts now hidden, and make the plot stand out, as St. Bartholomew stands, revealed to the loathing of mankind .

It is a dreadful thought that the Money Kings have our industries so completely in their power that they can cause another panic such as that of 1873, whenever they choose .  They could start one to-morrow far worse than that, as their control of our industries is far more complete now than then .  Our prosperity is entirely at their mercy .

VIII .  The Money Kings Devour our New England Mills

Having brought on the hard times of 1873, and caused a broad wave of bankruptcy to oversweep our country, the Money Kings prepared to reap their harvest .  Everything was so arranged that ruin, however wide-spread, would attract no special attention, but would be regarded as the natural consequence of the hard times .  The time was ripe, and Money Power began at once a grand campaign against the New England Mills .

It was in its devouring the mills of New England that I first came upon the track of the Money Power, after 1873 .  I knew that the Money Kings had brought on the panic of 1873, by the failure of Jay Cooke, and I was sure that they were engineering it to suit their own interests .  But such was their prudence and skill that for two years I looked in vain .  I first came upon their track in 1875 .  I then found that the New York merchants were putting down cotton goods to an extremely low price,—one-tenth of a cent a yard below the cost of production .  Drummers were everywhere urging merchants through the country to buy, on account of the low price, which they said would not last very long .

I at first wondered how, with the protection of a high tariff, the price of cotton goods could be so very low .  I knew it was not accidental, for the fixed price,one-tenth of a cent a yard below the cost of production in New England,—showed that it was done by design .  I began to think out the cause of the remarkable fact .  In finding it, I found the trail of the Money Kings .  Being familiar with the operations of our tariff system, I soon made the discovery of

Their Method of Attack

upon the New England mills .  They had discovered a flaw in our tariff system, which enabled them, owning the English factories, and warehouses and shipping, to crush the mills of New England, despite the protection of the tariff .

In the old days of Democratic rule, before the war, Congress, in order to accommodate the import merchants New York City, so arranged the tariff that duties were payable, not when the goods were placed in the warehouse, but when they were taken out for sale .  The London merchants, under our warehouse system, could store their goods in the New York warehouse, free of charge, and let them lie there for any length of time ;  and might then, if they chose, withdraw them without payment of duty, and ship them to any other market .  It was cheaper for them to store their goods in the New York Custom House than in their own warehouses in London .  For they had to build their own warehouses, at considerable cost ;  while the United States government was so accommodating as to build the warehouse and offer them free use of it for the storage of their goods .

The Money Kings availed themselves of the privilege given them by our warehouse system .  They stored millions of dollars worth of goods, not really for sale, but to be offered at a nominal price, for the purpose of “bearing”down the price of goods in the New York market .

The New England Mill owners would have to sell their goods as cheap as the English goods were offered in the custom house,—at one-tenth of a cent a yard below the cost of production .  They had to keep on running, even at a loss ;  for the delicate machinery, if suffered to lie idle for six months, would become lobsided and worthless .  They continued to run on at a loss until they failed .  Sprague, of Rhode Island, was the richest of the mill owners of New England .  When he failed for ten million dollars, the tide of bankruptcy swept over New England .  The newspapers at the time were filled, not with business advertisements but, with bankrupt notices .  Amid the thousands of bankruptcies throughout the country the ruin of the New England mills attracted but little attention .

But the mills did not cease operations .  New companies were organized, of which capitalists from abroad had control :  the mills were set in operation again :  prices were stiffened up to a point that yielded a fair profit ;  and the manufactories resumed their prosperity .

Nobody in this country wished to break down the New England mills .  And nobody on earth was powerful enough to do it but these London Money Kings .  When the mills had broke their former owners, no American capitalists would have embarked in a losing business .  But these Money Kings knew how they had broken them down, and how easy it would be to make them profitable .

The system of the Money Kings is not known to the public .  When they break a man, or a company, they do not always set the head of the business aside .  They do not wish to make a commotion in business circles by many changes ;  and they need the experience of the old business managers .  Their system is, not to destroy, but to subordinate .  Their method is the method of the Romans in extending their conquests :  the Romans always left a subjugated state with a modicum of power, until the time came to reduce it to a province .  The Money Kings can always kick out their allies whenever they wish, the companies being under their complete control ;  and they can afford to be seemingly generous for a while, till the time comes to take entire possession .  In the present era of the growth of the Money Power, the Money Kings keep in partnership with their Gentile agents :  in the next era, they will kick out the Gentile agencies, and put the business in the hands of their countrymen, the Jews .

IX .  The Money Power Devoured Our Iron Industry

Our iron industry, like the other manufactures of the country, is protected by our tariff, so that whatever iron is sold usually brings a remunerative price .  The Money Power could only crush our iron industry by so crushing the prosperity of the whole country that there would be no building, and no demand for iron .  Even in hard times, people must have clothing and fuel ;  so that textile manufactures and the coal industry continue to maintain some degree of activity .  But iron products are chiefly used in construction,building houses and factories and railroads .  Hard times which put a stop to improvements close up iron mines, and foundries and machine shops .

The Money Power, by the crash of 1873, prostrated the whole country .  For years, all improvements stopped .  Mechanics were thrown out of employment by the hundred thousand, in cities, in mines, in shops, and roamed as tramps over the country .  The repairing of railroads was almost the only use for iron ;  and, as the Money Kings owned the railroads, they could send iron from England at any price ;  for, selling to themselves, the price made no difference .  For railroad iron, the protection of the tariff was ineffectual .

For five years after 1873, all business was crushed and lifeless .— But it was the harvest of the Money Kings .  They bought our products at extremely low prices, and made unusually large profits :  as iron works failed, they bought their plants :  as lumber companies broke from the long stagnation of business, they bought mills and forests ;  and they had a grand harvest foreclosing mortgages, and taking possession of mortgaged property .

When the harvest was reaped,—when the Money Power had devoured all the weak iron and lumber companies, and had gathered in all mortgaged property, the Boa loosed its coil .  By beginning to build railroads and to make city improvements, and by loans to start new enterprises, the Money Power, about 1879-80 started the country upon a new cycle of prosperity .

Possessed of boundless capitalpossessed of our railroadspossessed of the great trade centers of the countrythe Money Power has imperial control over our industry, and has monopolized the traffic in all the great products of the country .

X .  The Money Power Has Devoured The Cotton Trade

The agencies of the Money Power in the Cotton States have been reduced to a perfect system .  Agents have been established in every district, who make full semiweekly or weekly reports as to the condition of the cotton crop in each district .  The reports begin with the plowing season, and go on through the entire year, giving every fact having any bearing upon the condition of the crop .  They report the number of acres plowed—the weather—the number of acres planted—any blight ;  army worm, excessive rains, drought—the prospect of crops—bolling of the cotton—the quantity picked—the amount of yield .  And every morning, the telegraph brings from Liverpool, to all the agents, the price to be paid for cotton that day .

A general agent told a gentleman who was my informant, that his business was so mean and arbitrary and despotic, he hated it .  He said the planters frequently struggled against the low prices which were ruining them .  “But,”said he, “they had just as well fight against the course of the seasons ."”  They have no alternative but submission to the prices offered by the Money Kings .  And those prices mean poverty to the planter, and penury to the colored laborers who barely subsist upon their share of the crop .

XI .  The Money Power Has Devoured The Wheat And Grain Trade

The construction of elevators has given to the railroads complete possession of the wheat and grain trade .  At first, there was a pretence of individual purchase of grain .  The Money Kings perhaps feared that the open monopoly by them of the wheat trade of the country might cause discontent and murmuring, and they at first tried to hide their monopoly of the trade .  The former custom was for some man to build an elevator at a depot, and figure as its owner, buying up the wheat of the surrounding country on his own account .  But those agents frequently illustrated the proverb of a beggar on horseback .  Beginning to drink, they had to be removed ;  thus showing that they were only agents of the railroads .  This plan failing, the railroads adopted the plan of granting to some wealthy individual the exclusive right to build elevators along the line, with of course the exclusive right to buy and ship grain over the railroads .  This man, who is, of course, the agent of the railroad, appoints his agents at each depot, and has a monopoly of the wheat and grain trade along the line .

In this way, a few men buy all the wheat of the country .  There is no competition ;  the railroads fix the price of wheat and grains to suit themselves, and grind the farmers down into absolute poverty .  And they not only plunder the farmer in the price, but they cheat in the measurement which fixes the quality of the wheat .  For instance, several years ago, No . I wheat was 90 cents a bushel, No. 2, 75 cents, and No. 3, 60 cents a bushel .  The wheat was so graded by the buyers, that all wheat weighing 60 lbs. and over to the bushel was rated No. I ;  all wheat weighing 56 lbs. and over, No. 2 ;  and all wheat weighing 52 lbs. and over, No. 3 .  Now, if the wheat were measured in the good old fashioned way in an honest half bushel measure, most of the wheat would weigh 60 lbs. to the bushel, and be rated as No. I .  But these monopolists cheat systematically in the measure .  They use an oval gallon measure, easily battered, by accident, to diminish its capacity .  Into such a small measure the wheat will not pack close, when poured very gently out of a pitcher into it .  They then weigh the gallon and multiply by 8 to find the weight of a bushel .  By this system of measurement little of the wheat rates as No. I ;  and very much of it is rated as No. 3 .  In this way, when No. I wheat was selling at 90 cents a bushel, this system of measuring caused much of it to be rated as No. 3, which brought only 60 cents a bushel .

But afterwards, when these monopolists sold the wheat out of the elevators, where it was under pressure, all of it would weigh 60 Lbs. to the bushel, and was sold as No. I ! 

The monopolists have now progressed so far with their system of oppression, that they at present only pay the farmer for wheat about 60 cents a bushel .  And the farmers have to endure this system of cheating and oppression, because there is no competition, and the railroads arrange matters to suit themselves .

XII .  The Money Power Has Devoured The Live Stock Trade In Cattle

Ten years ago, there were in Chicago fifty buyers purchasing cattle for the Eastern markets on their own account .  Two years ago, I was informed that four buyers were doing practically all the business .  The live stock trade in cattle is in the hands of the Money Kings .  No individuals can compete with them .  They have broken down all the cattle buyers engaged in the business, and have either driven them out of the business, or forced them to become the agents of the Money Power .  In the cattle trade, the Money Power reigns supreme, having crushed all competition and established a complete monopoly .

XIII .  The Money Power Has Devoured The Trade In Hogs And Pork And Bacon

Thirteen years ago, there were pork packing firms in all the great cities of the West, doing an independent and profitable business .  But in the hard times following 1873, pork packing became a losing business .  For several years, hogs were high at the time the packers in St. Louis, Louisville and Cincinnati were buying and killing ;  but when the bacon was put upon the market, immense capitalists put down the market, and the packers lost money .  This continued for several years, until the individual packing companies, buying hogs high and having to sell bacon in the market depressed by dominating capitalists, broke .

The King of All the Pork Packers of America is Armour of Chicago .  His has been an extraordinary career .  A few years ago, he was a poor butcher, doing an ordinary business like many others of his fellows .  But suddenly he became rich .  In a year or two after his packing house was built in Chicago, he was killing six thousand hogs a day, and operating his business with a capital of $120,000,000 .  These sudden fortunes, as we have seen in the case of the Railroad Kings, are suspicious .  Where did Armour get his money ?  He could not have made it in the ordinary way of business .  It was impossible .

His sudden wealth is easily explained on the hypothesis that he is the chosen agent of the Money Kings to take possession of a grand line of American production for them .  This explains his immense business, which sprung up like a creation of Aladdin's lamp .  This explains the hundred and twenty million dollars so suddenly embarked in his business !

Besides the business in Chicago, Armour has packing houses in Kansas City and Omaha almost as extensive as the Chicago establishment .  And, in Kansas City, he has a bank with such immense resources that, in a time of stringency in the money market, other banks in the city were compelled to lean upon it for support .  All this unlimited capital is fully explained, if Armour is an Agent of the London Money Kings .

It also explains another singular fact :  when the other packers, in St. Louis, Cincinnati and Louisville, lost money by their operations year after year till they broke, Armour made money all the time .  As they grew poorer and poorer till they failed, Armour grew grander and grander, till he became a very colossus between whose legs pygmies creep .  Indeed, Armour was the storm king who ruled the storm which swept down the other packing houses .

The position of Armour in the Board of Trade, controlling prices, not only of pork and bacon and beef, but also of wheat and grain, is such as would be assumed by a chief and trusted agent of the Money Kings .

When we know that it is in accordance with the method of the Money Kings to employ such agents, and when we see a colossal American house which sprung up from nothing, like a mushroom in a nightwhich grew when all others broke—which thrived amid the disasters which prostrated other houses in the same line of business—the mind which seeks a cause for every effect is driven to the conclusion that Armour is a grand agent of the London Money Kings .

Another Fact shows that the London Money Kings are now controlling our pork and bacon trade through a system of agencies :—Some of the packing houses in Louisville, Cincinnati and St. Louis which broke, continued the business .  Where did they get the Money ?  They had, after their failure, no money with which to continue the business .  Friends would not furnish them money to continue a business in which they had lost their own wealth .  But they got the money somewhere, and kept on in business .  Did they get their capital from the London Money Kings ?  Did those imperial capitalists, when they had broken down the packing houses, subordinate them, and use their skill and energy, subsidizing them as agents ?  If such was the fact, it will explain the state of things in the business world, otherwise inexplicable .

XIV .  The Money Kings Devoured The Dressed Beef Traffic

There are many men in Chicago and other cities engaged in the fresh meat business who, ten years ago, were worth $10,000, and who are fortunate if they are now worth $50,000 .  But all the great dressed Beef companies have had phenomenal successsuccess so remarkable as to be truly phenomenal .

I. Swift Brothers—one of the firms engaged in the dressed beef trade, when they started in the business were worth only $8,000 .  Three years after, they were running seven hundred refrigerator cars costing $700,000, and were operating their business with a capital of $3,000,000 .  Another house started on nothing, and, in ten years, was operating with a capital of $3,000,000 .

We can not account for this phenomenal accumulation of fortune by any natural business laws .  But if such firms are agents of the London Money Kings for monopolizing the dressed beef trade, it accounts for it all and nothing else will .

2. Their being agents also accounts for the fact that these gigantic firms do not jostle one another—have no feeling of rivalry—do not cut one another in prices—nor seek, as individual competitors do, to gain superior advantages over each other for carrying on their business .

3. It also accounts for the dressed beef trade gaining no greater advantages over the live stock trade in the Eastern markets .  Within a few years after it was started, the dressed beef trade had taken entire possession of the New England markets, and entered the markets of the Middle states .  But it has made but little progress since its first success .  Private enterprise that had succeeded to such an extent and with such rapidity, would have pushed on to complete possession of all the Eastern markets .  But the various corporations of the Money Kings never destroy each other .  They pool their interests, and compromise their differences .  This looks as though there had been an understanding between the dressed beef companies and the railroad companies shipping live stock to the Eastern markets, that the dressed beef companies might proceed to a certain extent with their industry, but should not press their competition to the full control of the Eastern markets .

XV .  The Money Power Has Devoured Our Whiskey Trade

The whiskey ring is a grand monopoly, involving many millions of capital .  Many Americans went into distilling after the War, and for a time made a great deal of money .  But about the time that the Money Power was crushing out the other industries of the country, the distillers almost all broke .  Of course the thing could be explained as the result of ordinary business causes :  The Money Kings always produce their results through the operation of natural causes :  they have the capital to set any cause in operation they wish, for the accomplishment of any object .  Soon after the distillers broke, the distilleries were set in operation on a greater scale than before .

The Grand Whiskey Ring was formed, strong enough to influence national legislation, and by increasing the tax on the whiskey, to add several cents a gallon to the value of the whiskey in stock, amounting in the aggregate to many millions of dollars .

In the breaking of the old distillers we see the method of the Money Power ;  we see its method in the organization of the vast whiskey ring :  in the reorganization of the distilleries ;  and in the control of national legislation .  There is no monopoly in the country that shows plainer marks of the methods of the Money Kings than the grand whiskey ring .

XVI .  The Money Power Has Devoured Our Export Trade

The Money Kings have possession of every branch of traffic in the products of the country :  of the railroads :  of the ocean transportation .  They have the export trade so hemmed in on every side that they can not fail to have possession of it .  It necessarily follows from their buying up our cotton, our wheat, our pork, our bacon, our beef, that they export all these articles that are sent to the foreign markets .  And, of course, they have established export houses through which they export the products they have purchased .

XVII .  The Money Power Devours Our Currency

It follows from the facts already stated that the Money Power has possession of the great bulk of our currency .

I. It is a Money Power .  Its magnates are money kings .  One of the English writers calls the quarter in London where these operators have their places of business, “a city of money dealers .  ”It is by their possession of money that the Money Kings control trade .  Most of these Money Kings are Jews :  the Jews have been money dealers for centuries .  They take possession of the money of a country, first :  then by means of their monied capital they devour everything else .

2. All Banks, have Immense Deposits .  There are two classes of depositors,—individuals who have a moderate surplus of cash over the requirements of their business ; and the Money Kings and their agents, who are buying all our produce and doing almost all the business of the country .  These Money Kings are too shrewd to allow other people to bank on their deposits .  It is a vast gain to own the banks, and make the profit of banking on their deposits themselves .  Thus Armour has his bank in Kansas City .  No doubt the other great trading and manufacturing corporations which are paying out many millions of dollars every year, also own the banks where the capital is held with which they do their business

3. When the facts are known, it will be discovered that a large number of our National Banks, especially in the East, are owned by the Money Kings .

It is certain that they have our currency in their grasp .  The profits of the immense business they do are realized in money .  And they are constantly loaning these cash profits to our people on mortgage .  They own all our money .  Our people only get it from them in exchange the farmer for crops :  the employee for labor ;  and the borrower for a mortgage on property .

Owning our money, these capitalists can make hard times and low prices whenever they please, by withdrawing the money from circulation .  They only need to hold their cash profits in their possession, and stop lending them back, and stop making improvements, and then stop the manufactures of iron and lumber for which the demand will have ceased :—and, at once, all business will be paralyzed, and millions of people will be out of employment .  The Boa has its folds around us, and can tighten them for our destruction whenever it may choose, just as it did in 1873 .

Thus the Money Power has advanced step by step in this country, until it has devoured almost every branch of our national industry : 

1 .  For years it has kept our currency constricted ;  and it has devoured thousands of millions of dollars worth of our produce at half price, by maintaining panic prices through scarcity of money .

2 .  It has thus kept us constantly in debt through an adverse balance of trade, and has devoured our gold and silver as fast as produced from the mines .

3 .  The Money Power has devoured all our mercantile shipping ;

4 .  Our import trade ;

5 .  Our railroads ;

6 .  Our oil production and trade ;

7 .  Our New England Mills ;

8 .  Our iron industry ;

9 .  Much property in Chicago and other cities ;

10 .  Our cotton trade ;

11 .  Our wheat and grain trade ;

12 .  Our live stock trade in cattle ;

13 .  Our trade in hogs, pork and bacon ;

14 .  Our dressed beef trade ;

15 .  Our currency ;

And it has, throughout all its operations, conducted its encroachments with such cunning, craft, stealth, and subtlety, that its amazing course of ravage has not been known or even suspected by the outside public