An Influencer Extols Cheap Money & Dreams of Sheep

AN INFLUENCER EXTOLS CHEAP MONEY AND DREAMS OF SHEEP

RETIREMENT OF A SELF-STYLED INFLUENCER—THEN AND NOW

With this post, I end—for now—my wild ride with Dr. Samuel P. Townsend, Sarsaparilla magnate, Quaker radical abolitionist, man-obsessed-with-sheep, and self-styled influencer. I will continue here to refer to him as Samuel rather than by his surname, as I began these posts, to distinguish him from his wife, Nancy.

In the nineteenth century, what we would now call “influencers” wrote pamphlets or had their sermons or speeches transcribed, rather than posting to the internet, as influencers do now. Samuel wrote fifteen pamphlets in about 7 years, and had at least two speeches published in the same time period. And then he called it quits. Was the reason he stopped his efforts at being an influencer because he burned out, or perhaps couldn’t take the pressure of the constant haters? I pondered these questions after reading an article in the New York Times this weekend.

New York Times article entitled Shining Bright and Then Burning Out Online, ¹ author Mattie Kahn notes that, according to a Morning Consult report done in 2019, 54% of Gen Z and millennial Americans were interested in becoming internet influencers. Fueled by stories of people whose posts have gone viral without apparent effort or even, perhaps, talent or skill, many are dreaming of being discovered and followed by million of internet users, whose attention will make them magically famous (and rich) overnight. As the article shows, someone who has thus become an influencer faces the grinding reality of the need for constant posting and promotion, and the attendant need to maintain numbers of followers and to deal with the criticism—often very nasty—which invariably occurs.

In her first full time job after giving up her career as an influencer with 400,000 devoted followers, Lee Tilghman was faced by a nonplussed co-worker, who could not understand why she would give up a life without a boss, one in which she could set her own schedule, and not be chained to a desk between 9 and 5. Ms. Tilghman told him: “You think you’re a slave, but you’re not. . . When you’re an influencer, then you have chains on.”

Ms. Tilghman is now offering Zoom workshops to help influencers transition away from a lifestyle that may be impacting their health and sanity. I immediately thought of Samuel Townsend, would-be nineteenth century influencer, and his (apparent) last pamphlet—his last post, as it were.

Samuel, as with many authors of his time period—and today—was self-published, steadfastedly publishing a series of 15 voluminous pamphlets in just seven years, from 1861 to 1868. I have found two pamphlets (of about 60 pages each) and two transcribed speeches, giving me Samuel’s thoughts from the years 1862, 1864, 1867 and 1868. It is less clear whether the speeches were self-published or published because of the interest of another individual—the first has an identified individual as publisher, and a company in New York as printer.

Self-published pamphlets actually figure large in Feltville’s history, since the original industrial village, operated from 1845 to 1860 by David Felt, did an considerable amount of printing for various individuals as they self-published speeches or sermons and even a complete genealogy.

Samuel includes a “Notice” at the end of his avowed “last” pamphlet:

This Pamphlet is the last we shall publish on the subject of the National Finances. When we wrote the first we had no thought of writing a second, or third, or fifteen. But “the exigencies of the times” seem to call for them. And we are elated to know that the doctrines and principles which we began to promulgate in 1861, are now, and will be hereafter, fully discussed by the people of the United States. Thorough discussion by an enlightened people will elicit the truth. And the important truths that have been demonstrated by the free use of Government Paper Money—Bills of Credit—cannot be hid from the public…..

A large number of gentlemen have requested complete sets of our pamphlets, which we could not furnish. Believing that they contain considerable original though and a large amount of important and valuable information . . . we expect to republish them this coming Summer, in an elegant volume. We propose to print it with superior type and paper, and have them splendidly bound in cloth, and ornamented with gold, which is only fit for ornament. The book will contain about 400 large pages. Price $2. Persons desiring to procure a copy will be supplied by sending their orders to our Printer.

Throughout the pamphlet, he quotes his former pamphlets liberally, and in each case, finds his previous words to be still absolutely correct and spot on, noting where he believes his words have been heeded and also the dire consequences that have resulted when they were not.

Likewise, in his 1867 pamphlet, Samuel also spends a considerable amount of space quoting his own (by his views) correct writings. In speaking of a previous pamphlet he “flattered himself, this little work had no inconsiderable influence in staying the tide of evil forebodings.” ²In the same pamphlet, he was pleased that General Garfield was referencing his nom de plume—“Patriot”—in a speech. ³

Did Samuel, as Ms. Tilghman did, weary of the influencing life (which may have been considerably less successful, even by Nineteenth Century standards, than her influencing was)? Did he ever publish the complete, approximately 400-page, bound set of pamphlets that he envisioned?

MAKING SENSE OF SAMUEL’S FINANCIAL DISCUSSIONS

Samuel’s chief topic in all his pamphlets and speeches was the state of finance in the United States at the time. In order to make sense of Samuel’s pamphlets and speeches I turned to Roger Lowenstein’s recently published Ways and Means: Lincoln and His Cabinet and the Financing of the Civil War, ⁴which received the 2022 Harold Holzer Lincoln Forum Book Prize, and which, In his New York Times review of Eric Foner notes that Mr. Lowenstein “examines a topic long overshadowed by military narratives.” ⁵ I read the Lowenstein book (slowly, with lots of notes), with a growing wonder, because Samuel’s speeches and pamphlets seemed to be parroting Mr. Lowenstein’s writing. The discussion of Samuel’s writings and speaking that follows relies for context on Mr. Lowenstein’s book along with a 2001 article entitled The Economics of the Civil War by Dr. Roger Ransom, Professor Emeritus at University of California, Riverside ⁶ and John Kenneth Galbraith’s 1975 book Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went. ⁷

At the start of the Civil War, the South had a monumental financial interest in the value of slaves as property. Dr. Ransom indicates that the “value of capital invested in slaves roughly equaled the total value of all farmland and farm buildings in the South.” ⁸ Mr. Lowenstein estimates the market value of slaves at 2.7 billion—”more than the combined capital invested in the United State’s railroads and manufacturing.” ⁹ The value of slaves had been rising year by year; moreover, it was the basis of a very prosperous economic system in the South. ¹⁰

Slave labor underpinned the cotton industry, keeping it inexpensive to grow cotton, with southern plantations producing three fourths of the world’s cotton, and, in turn, 60% of the nation’s total exports. ¹¹ Britain and France relied on the southern exports of cotton to support their textile industries. ¹² The South also shipped much cotton to the North, since the South had few factories, and had to count on the sale of the raw cotton to make its money. Slave labor was the basis for producing cotton cheaply.

The continued market value of slaves was in a kind of economic bubble—one that relied on continually growing markets for the new slaves who were born enslaved, or, decreasingly, imported as captives from Africa. Slave owners in the South were looking to the new western territories as new markets for their growing numbers of slaves. One of the things at issue in the United States before any secession just before the Civil War was whether slavery would be allowed in these new territories in the west, where Americans were being recruited to go and work land to be entitled to homesteads. Mr. Lowenstein indicates that northern whites—first Whigs and later Republicans—who were advocating a system of “free labor” were doing so from a purely northern white point of view, with no great regard for the fate of southern slaves. Indeed, the majority of northerners did not have abolitionist leanings, and abolitionists were considered, as Samuel observed, “radical” ¹³—see last post. The “free laborites” envisioned that few white settlers would be inclined to go west if they would be competing in the market with products produced on plantations which were using unpaid slave labor. Slave owners in the South feared that the slave “bubble” would burst if slavery were curtailed, either in the West, or by a potential ban on some or all interstate commerce in slaves—and, of course, even more, by abolition. ¹⁴

At the same time, only a quarter of the white population in the South actually owned slaves, and the number of large slaveholders was even smaller ¹⁵–but it was these white slave-holding individuals who had the biggest stake and voice in preserving the slave-based economic systems of the South. Personal descriptions of visits to the South suggest that non-slaveholding whites in the South were living in only marginally better conditions than slaves—although it appears that many of these observations were being made by Northerners who did identify as Abolitionists. For example, after a visit to the South, the famous landscape architect Frederick Law Olmstead returned north to describe, in meticulous detail, his observations of the conditions in which slaves were forced to live, noting that poor whites lived in barely better conditions, with little access to education or opportunities. ¹⁶

Perhaps in step with the low level of approval for abolition at the outset of the war, Lincoln’s expressed reason for the war was not immediately to achieve abolition, but to “save the Union.” ¹⁷ Mr. Lowenstein says the South was fighting both for its independence and to perpetuate slavery. ¹⁸ But no one on either side had any notion of how long the war would last. It was as the war dragged on with increasing costs in both lives and money that Lincoln felt the need for a more visceral motivation for the war, and increasingly evinced abolitionism as that motivation.

In terms of monetary costs, both sides started the war with virtually empty treasuries. Both governments started, also, with limited mechanisms for raising funds, and those available—the selling of bonds, often at unfavorable rates, or the imposition or increasing of tariffs on imports—almost immediately proved to be vastly insufficient. The war was mainly fought in the territory of the South, which, while it caused that region greater physical and psychic devastation, required the North to have overly long and costly supply lines and complicated logistics, vastly increasing the already previously undreamed of cost of fighting for the North. Mr. Lowenstein cites to evidence provided by famed Civil War historian James M. McPherson who found that for every 100,000 Northern soldiers serving, 35,000 animals and 2500 supply wagons were required as support—costly, indeed. ¹⁹

Money is, of course, a human invention. We started by using materials like gold and silver for money because of the value we have long imputed to them, and which has inspired wars and conquests. Lowenstein demonstrates the mid nineteenth century “era’s reverence for gold” by noting that “Hugh McCulloch, a banker who would become Lincoln’s third Treasury secretary, wrote that precious metals had been devised by the Almighty to give civilizations a standard of value.” ²⁰ It is worth noting that paper has never had the same value in human eyes.

What passed as currency for individuals and businesses in the North at the outset of the Civil War were “specie”—gold and silver—and paper notes, both interest-bearing and otherwise, which were issued by State banks, and which were in theory redeemable in specie. Such notes were only as good as the banks that issued them, which might fail at any time, leaving the bearer of the notes with worthless paper. There were no national banks, since Andrew Jackson had discontinued those institutions during his presidency. The federal government could borrow money using interest bearing bonds, but in terms of payments, was restricted to the usage of specie, including for payments to finance the Civil War. There simply was not enough gold and silver in the entire country—let alone in the possession of the government—to finance the increasingly costly war.

John Kenneth Galbraith summarizes the crazy state of money in the United States at the outset of the Civil War in his book Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went:

Still, by the time of the Civil War, the American monetary system was, without rival, the most confusing in the long history of commerce and associated cupidity. . . An estimated 7000 different bank notes were in greater or less degree of circulation, the issue of some 1600 different or defunct state banks. Also, since paper and printing were cheap and the right of note issue was defended as a human right, individuals had gone into the business on their own behalf. An estimated 5000 counterfeit issues were currently in circulation.

After the first Battle of Bull Run, in which a Confederate Army, with fewer soldiers and fewer supplies soundly defeated the Union Army within 30 miles of Washington, D.C. Union Generals George McClellan and General Winfield Scott each separately began to envision and campaign for a huge and greatly strengthened army, with which they hoped to crush the Rebels quickly. As the war went on and on, the costs of waging it only increased, so that extraordinary measures were needed to pay for the costs of war and keep the country going. These were spearheaded by Lincoln’s Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase, and an exceptionally active Republican-led Congress, the 37^th Congress. Lowenstein sees Chase, with the help of Congress, as having three opitons to raise revenue: taxes, borrowing, or by printing money. In the end, he used all three, but the success of his efforts is most significantly tied to helping create the first nationally recognized printed money (which he later tried to invalidate as unconstitutional, when he was Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court).

Taxation options included tariffs—customs duties or taxes on incoming goods. These could be increased or decreased or imposed or removed on various types of goods. In the North, tariffs were more popular in the industrialized northeast since this generally allowed American goods, which were produced largely in that region, to compete more favorably with foreign ones. In the developing and less affluent western territories and states, where fewer goods were being manufactured, tariffs could simply make purchasing necessary goods more expensive.

Tariffs quickly proved insufficient, so Chase worked with Congress to pass the first national income tax in 1861, initially 3% on incomes above $800, at a time when few American households made that much money. The income tax, which was considered provisional (for financing the war, to expire when no longer needed), was not well enforced, and did not even raise the initial somewhat conservative funding estimates for revenue production. Later incarnations of the income tax during the war made it more enforceable and provided some graduated tax levels and deductions.

Government borrowing, as mentioned above, was achieved through selling of interest-bearing bonds—evidenced by “government paper.” Revenues raised through bond sales were, of course, dependent on how much of each issue of bonds the government could sell. Typically, the government tried to sell to or through the banks. Chase wanted to sell directly to Americans, appealing to their sense of patriotism, lending support to the war effort by purchasing bonds. I was pleased to learn that Jay Cooke, the businessman and financier who lent Thomas Moran money for his trip to Yellowstone (see https://feltvillefeatures.com/the-persistence-of-the-deserted-village-part-3/), was the major promoter of these bonds—it is rather gratifying to have characters pop up in different chapters of my series.

But, just like tariffs and other taxes, bond sales proved to be vastly insufficient to financial requirements. Chase turned to a more radical mechanism “legal tender”—printed paper money, which was, for the first time “government paper” which paid no interest, and would not be automatically redeemable in specie. The Treasury and the banks had already, in 1861, suspended the requirement of exchanging specie—gold, more than silver—for notes. People hoarded gold and a speculative market arose.

Chase believed that issuance of currency was the provenance of the federal government, not of the states or of state banks. In 1862, Congress passed the Legal Tender Act, which allowed the government to print paper money and make it “legal tender” for paying salaries, debts, and purchases for goods.

Mr. Lowenstein notes that today we think of paper money as having intrinsic value, but at the time the bill was passed, people were used to exchanging paper—which had previously been interest bearing notes—for gold or silver. Now, paper money would have its own imputed value. Naysayers pointed back to paper money printed during the early days of the French Revolution, which later became worthless.

Because the legal tender notes were colored green on one side, they became known as “greenbacks.” The government progressively printed and issued more and more of these bills, as the cost of war continued to grow.

The Legal Tender Act was passed on February 25, 1862; later that same year, Congress also passed the National Banking Act, creating the first national banking system since an earlier experiment in national banks had been scuttled by President Andrew Jackson. The national banks so created allowed for deposit of at least a portion of the new currency, for distribution into commerce across the country.

After the war, the Treasury started retiring greenbacks, creating what Galbraith says was “not a popular policy” with Government expenditures so high and the prices for many commodities falling. ²¹ Galbraith notes that many tied the retirement of the greenbacks to the financial difficulties being experienced.

Samuel’s pamphlets span both these periods; I will let him tell you what he thinks about greenbacks—Government money—treasury bills—himself.

SAMUEL’S FINANCIAL TEACHINGS

Of Samuel’s I have only found two so far, from 1867 and 1868, but I also have two transcribed speeches, one from 1862 and one from 1864. Even without missing pamphlets or speeches, I have a window into Samuel’s thoughts—at least those he was revealing publicly—over a span of years. Legal tender was his favorite topic in all the documents I have. I will follow his thoughts on this subject chronologically through each of the four documents, noting some of what was happening in the United States at the time.

The title page of the first document indicates that it is a verbatim representation of a speech given on November 25, 1862 at a gathering in Plainfield, New Jersey ²² (a town near Feltville, where the Townsend were apparently already living, and were likely in the process of acquiring). The speech is called “The Great Speech of the Late Political Campaign,” although Samuel refers to some candidates being present at the gathering, and perhaps suffering political damage due to his remarks—he hastens to say his views are his own. Whoever was promoting the speech deemed Samuel’s remarks on finance to be the most important part, since a huge red note is printed diagonally across the cover: “Read what the Doctor says on Finance.” At the time of this speech the legal tender experiment was still less than a year old (Legal Tender Act passed by Congress on February 25, 1862). Samuel calls the bills “cheap money” and lauds the fact that they are plentiful—and the government can easily print more at any time. Samuel suggests that the opponents of “cheap money” are men who “live entirely on their incomes,” by which he means people who perform no labor for their work, but live solely on investments. He calls them “drones of society,” having “very little benefit to themselves or the nation,” and goes on to accuse them of creating “a profound sensation for their sufferings,” while at the same time having “no sympathy for the poor widows and penniless orphan girls, or the poor needle women or the sewing girls that make shirts for six cents each and who have not incomes and frequently no work ofr food, because there is a panic in the money market and money is scarce.” ²³

In this speech, Samuel calls legal tender “cheap money,” saying “let the price of money go down; it is just what the people and the nation require in order to be happy and prosperous. Why should our merchants, manufacturers, traders and mechanics pay a higher price for money than England or France?” Later he says:

Cheap money is the life-blood of a nation. It is that which gives vitality to all industrial systems, and diffuses animation and prosperity to all the veins and arteries of society. To accomplish this, the circulating medium or currency must be abundant (not plethoric), steady, and constant. And this can only be accomplished by the national Government. I say—and I regret that every thinking man in America can not hear me—that the administration, whatever may be their principles, professions, or politics, that does not protect American labor and manufactures, and provide a safe and abundant paper currency, is not worthing of the support of an American citizen, and should not receive it. Thanks to the war, self-preservation and imperative necessity impelled our rulers to give us both. Their continuance in spite of adverse circumstances, will make the nation rich, independent, and prosperous, unequaled in its previous career.

The second document is a speech which was given to an audience in Elizabeth City, New Jersey, on November 3, 1864, just before the election in which Abraham Lincoln was elected to his second term. The Civil War is still raging, Lincoln is still alive, but Chase, the Secretary of the Treasury who worked so hard to finance the expensive and protracted war has resigned (actually, Lincoln finally accepted his offer of resignation—to Chase’s surprise—after rejecting several previous such offers by Chase). ²⁴

In his 1864 speech, Samuel dismisses the opposition of those suggesting that the legal tender will become worthless, like French assignats during the original French Revolution:

The fact is, these men are not so much opposed to paper money, but hate it because it is Government paper money; not because it is bad money, but because it is good, and costs the Government only the printing; they detest it because it makes money plenty and reduces the rate of interest, and enhances the price of labor and the productions of labor; and they abhor it for the reason it will enable the Government to smash this Rebellion; and especially as the Treasury Notes have caused these prosperous, flourishing times, which will cause the re-election of Lincoln as sure as fate. 25

Samuel counts as evidence of the success of legal tender the widespread preference for it over other types of monetary instruments, with “every man and every bank, without exception, . . . eager to exchange the bills of the wealthiest and soundest State banking institutions for [Treasury Notes].” ²⁶ He also includes one of my favorite of his passages:

Furnish our people with ample capital, cheap money, and we shall rapidly increase in wealth, education, improvements and refinement. Restrict it to narrow limits, and the interest on the public debt will be burdensome; the taxes will be collected with difficulty, causing weakness, wretchedness and poverty. I love to hear, as at present, the farmer’s daughter making glad sounds on the piano. I love to witness, as we do now, the mechanic’s wife, dressed in silk, going to the savings bank, to deposit the surplus earnings of her husband. Why should not these people who create wealth have the privilege of enjoying some of the luxuries of life? Why should the capitalist and his family—many of them never earned a dollar—have the exclusive privileges of wealth?

Samuel reminds his listeners that government issued legal tender, taking the place of interest bearing notes, will save the government millions of dollars of interest upon the money needed to finance the Civil War. ²⁷ In the same speech, Samuel tells the audience that cheap money will promote building of railroads and steam power.

In his 1867 pamphlet, Our National Finances: No. 13. A Review of the Late Report of the Secretary of the Treasury, which is primarily a response to a report issued by Secretary of the Treasury Hugh McCulloch, Samuel repeats these last assertions, saying that cheap money will ” multiply railroads and steam power, and reduce the price of coal, the expense of travel, and a thousand articles manufactured by iron nerves.” He also reiterates that It will save the government millions in interest, since it carries no promise to repay with interest.

. . .the reason why we escaped “financial trouble” . . . is no secret: It was the legal-tender money, coined or stamped by the government, and nothing else, that gave us power, life, and unequaled prosperity. 28

McCulloch has begun to some of the legal tender from circulation, causing great concern to Samuel:

Every intelligent person is aware that Mr. McCulloch, in every one of his reports to Congress, and in his speeches and letters to the public, has predicted that if he was not allowed ot destroy the Government money, that a great calamity and general bankruptcy would certainly occur. And ever really intelligent business an in the country has been indignant at this continued and persistent efforts to make his predictions good by endeavoring to get the permission of Congress to allow him to destroy the Treasury notes,–the only certain power or remedy that would or could avert the calamities he predicts and endeavors to promote. It is amusing to witness the shifts the Secretary is obliged to make to hide his false prophecies. He is compelled to confess he did not understand the subject, for he says: “Nothing in our history has created so much surprise, both at home and abroad, as the reduction of our national debt.” If the Secretary had studied our former pamphlets, and heeded the statements made therein, he would not have been surprised. 29

Samuel sums up the impact of legal tender:

Those Treasury notes filled the land with plenty, and literally made our prairies and farms to blossom as the rose. They created our present great navy, that will compare and cope, if required, with that of any other in the world. They organized and equipped the mightiest army of modern times. They have erected thousands of manufactories and furnaces; opened hundreds of new coal, lead, copper, silver and gold mines; settled tens of thousands of new farsm; banished want and beggary; vitalized our great and small Public Improvements. The people are prospering, are better clothed and fed. The workingmen and mechanics are deposition, so the statistics prove, more money in the Savings banks than ever before. Farmers and tradesmen, who were crushed with debt and mortgages, have paid them. Churches in all parts of the country are liquidating and extinguishing their obligations. In fact, and in short, the country was never in a more highly prosperous condition than it is at this moment; and yet the dismal howl is still reiterated, “Bankruptcy! Ruin!” &c., &c. 30

Samuel summarizes his feelings on legal tender near the end of the pamphlet with these words (quoted from one of his own previous pamphlets, italics and emphasis in original):

We solemnly declare to the world that the greatest, the cheapest and most beneficent power on the earth, excepting THAT OF GOD, IS PAPER MONEY. 31

Samuel’s last pamphlet is dated 1868, and carries the title: Our National Finances. A Mirror in which “Trees can be seen as Men Walking.” ³² Curious about the title, which seems to be nowhere referenced in the text, I did internet research. It appears that Samuel is referencing a New Testament account of Jesus healing a blind man by laying his hands on him, in Mark 8:22-26. Jesus asks the previously blind man if he can see anything, and the healed man says “I can see people, but they look like trees, walking.” ³³ After Jesus lays his hands on the man a second time, the man can see everything clearly.

Perhaps Samuel is hoping that, similarly, people are seeing more clearly the points he has been making in his series of pamphlets. Indeed, he has changed the author attribution for this last pamphlet from “Patriot” to S. P. Townsend. In the “Introduction and Explanation” to Men Walking, Samuel is still calling on politicians and individuals alike to continue the use of treasury notes, and to oppose their retirement from use and a return to the use of specie. He warns of the economic harm already caused to workers and corporations alike because of paper currency being withdrawn, and is hoping the country will avoid doing more harm. But, he includes the following notes about his own pamphlet series which might explain both the title and the fact that this is his last pamphlet:

We have stated that we published these works to elicit discussion and call public attention. How far we have succeeded, or how much we have helped to arouse attention tot these important subjects is not for us to estimate. Though the cost has been considerable, we do not regret that we incurred it, and are rejoiced the Nation is at last aroused to the mighty importance of the questions involved in our “National Finances.” [The latter is a reference to the overall title for his series of pamphlets.] 34

In this pamphlet, Samuel continues steadfastly to make the same kinds of assertions as previously, and again cites liberally to his own past pamphlets, indicating that he is standing by his opinions about the value of paper money. For instance, he excoriates those whose “sympathy seems to be entirely with the few thousands who live in idleness on their incomes; mine is with the toiling millions, who have no capital, except their hands, and in times past and, I trust past forever), [sic] have been frequently without work or bread.” ³⁵

Here he also differentiates the federal government’s legal tender from “the worthless stuff and system of State Bank and wild-cat currency fostered by the old Democratic party, which professed to pay specie, and issued ‘convertible dollars.’ Hundreds of these institutions failed, and swindled the people out of hundreds of millions of dollars, inspiring confidence because they professed to redeem with specie.” Samuel indicates that the Secretary of the Treasury regrets that this “rotten system of banking” was not retained.

Samuel uses statistics showing growth in key industries and other evidence to show “positive proof of the rapid increase of wealth created by the use of an irredeemable Government currency.” ³⁶

Samuel sees Government money as the basis for creating a more robust consumer economy, saying that increased paper money circulation will lead to increased production and increased demand for the things produced.

Clearly paper money has survived to this day. We will give Samuel the influencer, Samuel the financial expert, Samuel the champion of the worker, the last word:

The former class [wealthy millionaires and drones who live on their incomes] insist that the present Congress shall follow the beaten track of the old Democratic Administrations, and allow the millionaires of New York and Boston to mould the affairs of the Government, to restrict the circulation of money, and give the Money Kings the exclusive control of the finances, and allow them to depress the price of labor and the products of industry; to make money scarce and dear which is their beau ideal of “healthy times.” The working millions, on the other hand, by the sudden contraction of the currency last season, received an unexpected blow which opened their eyes. The cause was so plain, and stood out in such bold relief, that none but the most stupid and stolid failed to see it. They not only saw, but felt. They were alarmed, and have made up their minds that Labor, before Capital invested in gold-bearing bonds, drawing extortionate rates of usury, should be, and must be, protected, and woe to the politician or party of whatever name or profession that ignores this just and righteous verdict. Dainty or bloated capitalists, with money-bags and jewel-cases filled with gold and diamonds, and iron safes filled with Government bonds must stand aside for the toiling millions, who raise the bread, make the cloth, and build the housed that shelter, feed and clothe mankind. Capitalists, please stand out of the way, and give these men an opportunity. Stand back, gentlemen! Stand back! 37

1^ Kahn, Mattie. Shining Bright and Then Burning Out Online. New York Times, Sunday, April 16, 2023. P. ST 3.