Strange Death of Franklin Roosevelt - Emanuel Josephson




The Remedy—A Surplus Economy

A conspiracy to destroy democracy might have been motivated either by lust for power or by fear of destruction and ruin. In the case of John D. Rockefeller both factors were involved. Initially fear played a larger role than the Napoleonic complex. But as Standard Oil grew and flourished, conquest became a predominant factor; but fear still loomed large.

John D.'s fear of want, amidst all his wealth, is evinced by the penurious and penny-pinching training he gave his children. His fear of being crushed by the weight of his own wealth and public resentment against it, is evidenced by his pretense of philanthropy. In the present Rockefeller Empire, this fear has been compensated for and supplanted by a Napoleonic complex. There is security neither for the rich nor for the poor in any of the present scarcity economies. But toay these fears should be as anachronistic as the scarcity economies which give rise to them.

In the past, not so many decades ago, there gripped the whole world a historic fear—the fear of want and starvation. It was very real. It arose from the inability of mankind to produce enough food and other necessities of life. Periodic droughts, or disasters, produced famines of the type that still scourge China, India and Russia, even in this modern era. In times of famine the short supply of necessities caused a rise in their prices. Only the rich and more fortunate who could find food and other necessities, and had the money to purchase them, could manage to survive. Supply and demand operated with direct and overwhelming force in influencing the prices of commodities in times of shortage.

Today the same fear grips the world under circumstances that make it very strange. Modern science and technology have so tremendously increased the world's productive capacity of necessities of life that the usual fear is no longer production of too little food and necessities of life but production of too much, in most parts of the world.

Though man's life-span has been extended to little less than the "three score and ten", it is a curious fact that modern-day society looks little beyond the immediate present under its present economic organization. The production of food, and other necessities, in excess of its immediate needs has repercussions and sequelae that are as drastic and, ultimately, are identical with those produced by shortages in primitive society. It matters not that an excess over immediate needs is essential to provide for tomorrow, to furnish a reserve against times of disaster and shortage. It matters not that such reserves are essential for security and for continued existence of man and society. Such excessive production of necessities, however slight, is labelled "overproduction".

"Overproduction" is converted by a perversion of the economic organization of society whether it be Capitalist or Communist (Super-Capitalist), into a major disaster. It leads to a drop in prices because of competition of producers in attempting to dispose of their production immediately, in order to "make them liquid". That means to sell them immediately to convert them into money.

The rush of all producers to sell causes a drop in prices. The function of carrying over the momentary surpluses is relegated to speculators, whose purchasing capacity is limited and who are forced to seek a profit by buying cheaply. Sellers compete with one another and force prices down. As a consequence the marginal producer sustains losses and drops out of production. That sets in operation a vicious cycle of reduced production, unemployment, lowered consumption, lowered prices, a further drop in production and so endlessly. The eventual outcome is production of less food and necessities than the nation requires, the same condition as was faced in the less advanced stages of society, and the wiping out of surpluses that spell security.

This situation comes about solely as a result of the mechanics of faulty economic organization of society, which is designed as a cut-throat, starvation, race suicide scarcity economy. It leaves but three alternatives—sustaining prices either by a monopoly which means private enforcement of scarcity, public enforcement of scarcity by a "managed economy", or a scarcity resulting from the interaction of supply, price and production. Fear of too little results from fear of too much.

The remedy for this absurd situation requires clear, untrammelled and unequivocal thought on the subject of the economic organization of society. In final analysis it is thought and ideas which rule the world. Unfortunately, there has been so little thought given to the problem, that the solutions that have been offered whatever their labels, especially if they be Communism or Fascism, are in their ultimate form merely identical aggravations of the evils of our traditional system.

Any quest for a solution must begin with a clear and concise expression of the problem.

What is the axiomatically basic function of Government? The reply is obvious:

Without life, there can be no government

Therefore the basic function of government is to enable its citizenry to live. Since raw materials of the necessities of life are essential for existence, the corollary basic functions of government requisite for its continuity are:

First: To make available stores and reserves of the necessities of life both for immediate needs and against times of disaster.

Second: To make it possible for its citizenry to obtain the wherewithal to purchase those necessities.

No government now undertakes to perform these basic functions except in the case of emergency and war. The reason for this is obviously that the character of the economic organization of society bars the way. The idea which is the cornerstone of that economic organization is the so-called "law of supply and demand."

The fallaciousness of this "law" is most simply revealed by the illustration used in elementary textbooks on economics for the very purpose of demonstrating its validity. It reads:

Three men are stranded on a desert island. Only one of them has barely enough of the necessities of life for his own needs. Consequently, the economist relates, the price of those necessities would rise to a high level.

For the demand exceeds the supply and scarcity lends value, he reasons.

But the conclusion which the economist draws is obviously fallacious. Any man who under those circumstances would undertake to sell the irreplaceable commodities which he requires for the preservation of his own life, as a matter of business, would be either stupidly avaricious or insane. He might share them with his fellows as a matter of humanity: but to trade in them would be equivalent to trading in his own life.

Quite as absurd is it for nations to permit their commerce in the necessities of life to be dominated by the supposed operation of the "law of supply and demand." It is absurd not only because it means a scarcity economy that is rendered entirely needless by the abundance which man can now derive from Nature; but also because it bars the government from performing its function of making available to its citizenry the raw materials of the necessities of life by enabling the creation of reserves and surpluses.

The idea of a "supply and demand" economy is even more absurd because it exists only for today and gives not a thought to tomorrow. The demand of a nation for the necessities of life, like population, remains relatively constant. Likewise, though vagaries of Nature may cause variations of supply from year to year, the average productivity of the land remains constant. Even primitive man realized this clearly, as is illustrated in the Biblical story of Joseph and Pharaoh.

In reality, a study of the events of the past twenty years reveals that it is neither supply nor demand that determines prices of the raw materials of the necessities of life. This becomes apparent from the fact that the price of wheat was ten times higher during 1919, when there was a bumper crop, than it was in 1932, when there was an actual shortage. These facts impelled Professor Warren, the Cornell authority on chicken and "New-Deal" economics, to advance the explanation that it is the relation of the supply and demand of a commodity to the supply and demand of gold that determines prices. But this is a rather complicated formula for the simple fact that it is neither supply nor demand but speculation that determines prices.

Speculation prevents the setting up of surpluses of the necessities of life, which constitute the only real security for the nation and the individual. The holding of reserves by the government or by individuals acts on the speculative market as an excess supply, and depresses prices. Drop in price reduces profits and forces a reduction in production, which in turn forces using up of reserves.

Applied to labor and human values, as justified by Karl Marx's Socialism, by Communism and by labor unionism, the so-called "law" is even more destructive. In its converse expression, "scarcity alone lends value," the "law" demands restriction of the supply of human beings. The term "social" cannot be applied to such an organization which makes man serve it as victim and sacrifice. The birth control movement, the purges of Hitler and Stalin, the merciless condemnation to misery and death of refugees, the destruction of the livelihoods and futures of younger generations, national and racial antagonisms—sacrifices to the Moloch of human scarcity—are all natural outgrowths of such economic concepts.

Roseate and sanguine peace discussions always ignore what human experience has proved invariably true: that war is an absolute necessity for the maintenance of scarcity economies and is made inevitable by them. Under scarcity economies a certain portion of the people of a nation, and of the nations of the world must do without a sufficiency of the necessities of life, must live a submarginal existence, and in some cases must actually starve—because scarcity economies mean that there must not be enough to go around, if values are to be maintained. It is inevitable that violence breeds among the groups that are condemned to want or starvation, and if and when those groups become sufficiently large, war readily emerges from their struggles for survival.

The factor that precipitates war, however, is the necessity of destroying accumulated surpluses of both men and materials in order to avert complete breakdown of the scarcity economy. For inevitably the vicious inverted spiral of lowered production, resulting in lowered employment, which results in turn in lowered consumption, that involves again a further lowering of production to maintain scarcity and value, ultimately brings about the state of widespread unemployment that means a surplus of labor, as well as surpluses of commodities. This cycle generally reaches its climax at intervals of about a quarter of a century. As a consequence of the intolerable stagnation, unemployment and hunger that results from it, war is eagerly sought by nations as a solution of the impasse created by politicians, on the counsel of malicious propagandists or of stupid fools who parade as "professors of economics".

Side by side with the more active destructive forces operating in scarcity economies actively to destroy surpluses of men and materials, there operates a slower, more insidious but even more basic destructive force—voluntary birth control and race suicide. It is this factor that has been responsible for the destruction of every empire and every civilization in history. Individuals either can not afford to have children as a consequence of the cost of living in relation to earnings under a scarcity economy, or else they voluntarily undertake to avoid bringing children into a world already cluttered with large numbers of unemployed. They thus aid in the effort to attain a scarcity of human beings. Since such voluntary efforts at birth control are usually adopted by folks of a higher level of intelligence and culture, the consequence is a lowering of both the population and its level of intelligence.

There are two types of scarcity economies.

Gold Standard, or Laissez-Faire, type of scarcity economy makes no effort to restrict, or manage, production directly. It operates through the interplay of gold supply and production: with a fixed volume of gold as the basis of value, the more there is produced of commodities and necessities of life, the less they are worth as measured against the fixed supply of gold. Or if the supply of gold is restricted by manipulation or speculation, the price of commodities and necessities of life can be forced down without regard to the adequacy of the supply. Naturally when the price is forced down below the level of the cost of production, production falls off because it no longer pays to produce; discontinued production means unemployment with consequent lessened consumption; and that in turn means further reduction in production and repetition of the vicious cycle. Consequently, under the gold standard economy, the breakdown that leads to depressions and wars is precipitated by prosperity and by the approach of production to adequacy.

"Managed" economies are manipulated to attain the most rigid form of scarcity economy whether they be Fascist, Communist or "New Deal". The motive of these types of economy are variously expressed for ideological or propaganda purposes. Thus the Fascists make no humanitarian representations for their managed scarcity economies but frankly advocate them to serve the purposes of the State. The so-called Liberal, i.e. the Communist, New Deal and Labor economies, profess to manage their economies for the purpose of preventing the accumulation of reserves and surpluses in order to avoid unemployment that they regard as the inevitable consequence of "overproduction." Their shibboleths are "Production for use not for profit" and "Labor must get all that it produces". The fallacy of this type of thinking is obvious: Use is in itself a form of profit; but for the maintenance of an economy other forms of profit are essential: there must be the profit to provide for the maintenance of surplus and reserves against times of need, which is the only true form of security; and the profit that must repay human ingenuity for its task of creating and must provide for production and maintenance of other machinery of production. Without these forms of profit, an economy must inevitably break down.

The obvious remedy of the evils of a scarcity economy is to remedy the basic defect—the more there is produced, the less it is worth. This would make it possible to set up the surpluses and reserves that spell security without destroying thereby the price of the commodities—a surplus economy.

To accomplish this purpose, fortunately, it is not necessary to resort to another of those economic experiments that have trifled with, and endangered, the lives and livelihoods of many millions of people that have characterized the 'New Deal" in the past decade. The setting up of vast surpluses and reserves without depressing the price of the commodity involved has been accomplished for long periods of time in the case of one commodity—gold. Vast surpluses of gold have been stored up without depressing its price. Even when the production of gold was lowest, in 1929, its real overproduction relative to the amounts required for technologic uses was more than 90% of the total production. This overproduction has been buried in a hole in the ground at Fort Knox. So far as goes the nation's actual need of it for fabrication into necessary devices, it can remain in that hole forever, or until some technologic use for gold is discovered that requires the large surplus that has been built up in the course of world history. (This amounts to a block of gold about the size of a thirty foot cube that could be contained in the average thirty-five foot, three story building.) In spite of this real overproduction the price of gold actually has been raised by the New Deal.

The mechanism that has defied the speculative influence of supply and demand on the price of gold is the monetization of gold. It has been accomplished by the Currency Act of March 14, 1900 and its recent amendments.

Through the Currency Act, the nation alleges that it regards gold as absolutely essential for the existence of the nation—that it can not live without gold, it can not eat or drink without gold, it can not clothe itself without gold, it can not shelter itself without gold. These allegations implied in the Act, are obviously false. Nevertheless, the Act provides that in order to stimulate the production of gold to the nation's maximum capacity, no producer of gold shall have to rely upon speculators for marketing his production. It provides that all gold produced would be stored by the Treasury and warehouse receipts, in the form of gold notes, shall be issued for it at a fixed price, originally a dollar for each 25.8 grains of gold. The result has been complete stabilization of the price of gold no matter how great the overproduction; and the creation of a huge surplus of useless gold without impairing its market price.

Despite the allegations implied in the Currency Act, gold is not essential for human existence. If the men stranded on a desert island had all the gold in the world and all the money in the world with them, they would still starve to death. King Midas who mythology tells us was endowed with the gift he prayed for—that everything he touched be converted to gold—nevertheless starved to death. What then gives gold and money based on gold their value?

Obviously the only thing that gives gold, or any form of money, its value is solely its acceptance in exchange for the things required for existence: food, clothing, shelter and other necessities and luxuries. When gold or money can not buy these things it has no value. Therefore the only real security behind gold and money, that give them their value, are the raw materials from which the necessities of life can be made.

Though gold, silver and the national debt are the basis of the currency issued by the Treasury, that money constitutes only a small fraction of exchange medium of the nation. Currency created by the private banker constitutes the bulk of the currency in use. In 1929, for each dollar created by the Treasury on the basis of gold, the private banker created two hundred dollars. Without credit currency, the nation's business would come to a standstill.

The bulk of that credit currency is created by the private banker, when he desires to create it, on the basis of the things that people require for their existence. Therefore the real basis for this credit currency and the security behind it is the raw and fabricated materials constituting tbe necessities of life.

This credit currency is produced in violation of the Constitution and law. The Constitution states that Congress alone shall have the power to issue money and determine its value. It prescribes gold and silver as the basis for money. Credit currency and its creation by private bankers are implicitly prohibited by the Constitution.

This situation was brought about by the efforts of Alexander Hamilton, at the behest of George Washington, to win over the Tory elements, such as the Roosevelts, to the support of the Constitution. They insisted upon retaining the control over the real wealth of the land, the raw materials of the necessities of life, through the device of private banking credit, and the speculative manipulation it made possible. This was granted them and the limitation of the monetary powers of Congress was written into the Constitution. Though the exclusive "power to issue money and define its value" was reserved to Congress, this provision of the Constitution was disregarded from the very start. Consistently since, the real security behind money and wealth, the nation's commodities, has been ignored by the law, and the currency based upon that wealth is denied the status of legal tender.

Before this had been done, however, the Colony of Massachusetts Bay had coped with the problem of inflation and had arrived at a true Yankee commonsense solution of the problem. Massachusetts, like the rest of the Colonies, had sought to evade its obligations to the Continental Army, the payment of wages and pensions to volunteers, by the issue of unsecured paper money. The money rapidly became so worthless as to give rise to the expression "not worth a Continental"; and the Colonial governments were bankrupt.

By 1780 the number of returned, unpaid veterans of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay had grown large. They threatened to seize the government if they were not paid. This was an emergency that stirred Yankee ingenuity to its full depths.

The Massachusetts Yankees reasoned soundly that the best way to stabilise prices and stop inflation was by direct action rather than by roundabout methods. They defined money in terms of the things that folks wished to purchase with it, the staple necessities of life. In that manner the lender would be sure to receive back the same purchasing power as he had loaned. They therefore defined the money in terms of the staple commodities produced in the Colony—beef, corn, sheep's wool and sole leather. These notes, a reproduction of one of which appears on the frontispiece, were issued in 1780 and came due in 1784. They were accepted as legal tender.

While this monetary plan prevailed, Massachusetts alone among the Colonies prospered. By 1784 it had been agreed that currency would be issued by the Federal Government. The Massachusetts Yankee staple product notes were redeemed at the same value at which they were issued. Yankee staple notes were the only currency ever redeemed at the value at which they were issued by any American governmental agency. All the other forms of currency issued were either wiped out completely, like the greenbacks, or were so tremendously inflated like the Continental and the Roosevelt dollar, that they were redeemed at a mere fraction of their value at issuance.

The only measure that can block the wiping out of the major part of the wealth of the rank and file of Americans by this conspiracy is re-adoption of the Yankee staple product currency base. Since the only real security that lies behind the dollar and gives it its value is its acceptance in exchange for the raw or fabricated staples constituting the necessities of life and luxuries, it is essential that the fact be recognized. Money must be based upon those staples directly just as it is now based upon gold and silver directly. The staples that constitute the raw materials of the necessities of life can be kept in storage, with modern technology, almost as safely as can gold.

[Book Cover] from The Strange Death of FDR by Emanuel Josephson

STAPLE PRODUCT NOTES ISSUED UNDER 'YANKEE PLAN' FOR FIGHTING REVOLUTIONARY WAR, DEPRESSION, AND INFLATION

Money was stabilized by defining its value in terms of the things that people wished to purchase with it, in terms of beef, corn, sheep wool, and sole leather. By incorporating these staples in the monetary base, inflation was also controlled in a direct and sensible manner. If the technology of the times had permitted of adequate production and safe storage, as is possible today, a surplus economy would have been attained by the colony, and true freedom of employment and consequently true demoncracy might have been effected.


Widening the monetary base to include all staples that can be stored over periods of years would mean the inclusion in the base of the grains, such as wheat, corn, and soybeans; the elements, such as uranium, copper, tantalum, coal, tin and sulphur; minerals such as feldspar and phosphates; petroleum oil; the fibres, such as cotton, wool, hemp, rayon and silk; leather; rubber, and a wide array of other staples. The large number of staples included in the base would serve to prevent unbalancing the economy by a rush into production of the staples that were thus made liquid wealth. The liquidity of the staples would serve to stabilize the values of products fabricated from them. The entire economy would be stabilized and the dread of production of the staple necessities for fear of "overproduction" would vanish. The nation's economy will recognize what common sense teaches the individual: intrinsic values are not impaired by the amounts produced; momentary excesses in production over immediate utilization of staples, do not constitute overproduction from the viewpoint of long term needs; folks need not starve and want, as when rationing prevailed, if there is at hand too much of necessities, but they must starve if there is too little.

It is questionable if in a constantly expanding economy and steadily maintained prosperity, that such a program makes inevitable, there can be any tremendous actual overproduction. But even if there should chance to be such an overproduction in some staple or another, any losses implied could be written off by a slight increase in seigniorage or taxes, and would involve no significant loss. Since free exchange of staples between the nations of the world would become possible as a result of stabilized values, such excessive surpluses should be few and far between.

The Yankee staple product currency would enable the government to perform the first of its axiomatically basic functions—the setting up of surpluses and reserves to insure the citizenry against want and starvation. It would also make possible its performance of the second function—enabling the citzenry to obtain the wherewithal to purchase. For when production of staples can be expanded to the maximum capacity, and the production has become liquid wealth, there is inevitably stimulation of the entire economy by the increased wealth. This would make for greater employment. More important still, widening the currency base and the monetization of staples, would enable a government to put an end to unemployment by creating absolute freedom of employment. Without this freedom, all other types of freedom assured citizens by documents—freedom of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness—are meaningless. For without the absolute right to employment and to earn an adequate living the citizen cannot even enjoy the freedom of life.

Until the government has created and given substance to the ideal of freedom of employment that is implied by our Constitution, we cannot claim to have fulfilled its letter, nor can we claim to be a democracy.

By freedom of employment is not meant the "right to organize" into labor unions. For that implies the substitution of one form of coercion, economic, by another, that of labor unions.

Freedom of employment also can not be effected by placing a host of persons on the Government payroll. Quite as ominous as the Relief rolls is the steady growth of the number of government employees, and the spectacle of hordes seeking Civil Service employment because it alone offers security of employment to many. Government employees, as a rule, do not produce or increase the resources of a land but deplete it. Parasitic bureaucratic systems eventually destroy the lands on which they prey.

Freedom of employment can be produced only by a social organization which gives man the freedom of choice between accepting employment offered him by another or of creating adequately profitable employment for himself.

That a form of social organization which creates freedom of employment is possible, is indicated by the fact that our law and government do create it in one direction. Under our present law, the men who can go out and pan gold in sufficient amounts are given freedom of employment that is adequately and assuredly profitable. No matter how many men engage in the production of gold, no matter how much is produced, its price remains unaltered. They can be certain that if they can pan a definite amount of gold they will have enough for all their needs. This contrasts sharply with what would happen if an equal number of men engaged in any other form of production; for them the more they produced the less it would be worth.

It is truly absurd that gold should be the only commodity the production of which, and the producers of which, are adequately protected by a law which gives form to the dictates of our Constitution. For it alone among the commodities is useless—so useless that it is taken out of one hole in the ground and buried in another at Fort Knox.

The monetization of gold has created freedom of employment and has also tremendously stimulated employment and wages in its production. Widening the monetary base to include a wide array of commodities, the staple products that are the raw materials of the necessities of life, would obviously stimulate employment in many different directions.

Creating freedom of employment in directions other than self-employment in producing gold is not popular with the Labor Barons and their "Liberal" henchmen. It would wipe out any excuse for their activities. They therefore allege that freedom of employment can not exist because, they say, "sixty families and a few hundred companies own and control all the machinery of production". This is a Marxist myth that is proved obviously false by an examination of what, in ultimate analysis, constitutes the basic machinery of production. Some glibly state that labor is a basic machinery of production. But labor as often destroys as it produces: unthinking and plodding labor may produce little; and monkeys labor all day long and produce no wealth. It is the thing that differentiates man and monkey that constitutes the most important basic machinery of production.

The ultimate machineries of production are two—human ingenuity, and the earth and elements, which are the sources of the raw materials. It would be ridiculous to pretend that any six hundred families or ten thousand corporations have a monopoly of human ingenuity. The elements are relatively uncontrolled. Of the other machinery of production, the land, this group controls scarcely one percent in the United States. The largest owner of land in the United States is the Government, the people themselves. The governments control well over fifty percent of the nation's land. Over twenty percent are included in the Federal parks and reservations alone.

With regard to government lands there exists in the United States a curious situation. They are carried on the Government's ledger as liabilities together with the many billions of debt. As they are handled today they are really liabilities. They produce nothing, cost much to maintain and police, and eventually are given away to speculators or to homesteaders on the speculation that they will be able to hold out.

But this land situation is unquestionably absurd. The land could be converted readily into a very real asset that would salvage the nation's solvency and credit by a very wide margin if the disposition of the Crown Lands of England were followed as an example. The Crown Lands are usually not alienated from the Crown, but are leased for production for a percentage of what is produced in some instances.

Following the example of England, the United States could lease its lands for production and thus convert them into assets. With the widening of the currency base to include the staple products, it could go even further. It could utilize these lands for the creation of true freedom of employment. It could offer to lease to all who care to do so, as much land as each individual can work, for the production of staple products, at a rental consisting of a percentage of the production. Instead of frittering away the national wealth on a dole system, and stimulating sloth and shiftlessness, it could undertake to lend the money for financing purchase of machinery of production with the proviso that the loans be amortized in kind with a part of the staples produced. The incorporation of staples in the monetary base under the Yankee plan would make this possible.

Under the Yankee plan no depression or unemployment could ever exist. A bit of commonsense thinking makes clear the irrationality of these problems. The consideration of them has been so stereotyped, that no one has stopped to reflect that the unemployed, like the rest of mankind, require their share of the necessities and luxuries of life. In producing those items for themselves lies the obvious solution of their unemployment.

The Antigonish movement that has converted a pauperized group of fishing villages in Newfoundland into a prosperous and model community, attests to the potentialities of such a solution. It contrasts sharply with the persistent accentuation of the unemployment problem that has resulted from the plans of the subversive, radical and "New Deal" groups that are more bent upon stimulating class hatred and wars than employment, prosperity and peace. The country was well on the way to arriving at such a solution in the barter plans of 1933, when the advent of the "New Deal" put a stop to the rational solution, resuscitated the banks and then rescued the old economic setup which repeatedly has proved unworkable.

Such a plan would satisfy every legitimate element in the community. It protects those that have, in the possession of that which they have. It also enables those that have not, to produce that which they need. It would make obvious the absurdity of the idea that the only possible solution is the dishonest concept of "distribution of wealth", which in ultimate analysis is merely a distribution of poverty. It eliminates the idea that accumulations of reserves or wealth are a menace to the nation. It does this by eliminating the only real danger of such accumulations, which is the paralysis of the currency system resulting from irrational restriction of currency.

At the same time it would dispel forever that irrational attitude which demands security, and at the same time decries the setting up of savings and reserves of the necessities of life, which alone offer real security. The current idea that bookkeeping balances offer security is absurd. Above all else it would eliminate the real basis for strife between the "haves" and "have-nots", whether those groups be within the same community or in different nations.

It is only such a plan that could make the United States the capitalist state that many folks falsely fancy that it is. It obviously is not "capitalist" in the sense of making the private ownership of property secure, for there has been no real security in ownership, especially during the past decade. Ours has been a speculative economy that is as much the antithesis of true capitalism as are the theories of Communism or National Socialism. Communism in its ultimate development assumes the form of a super-capitalistic super-dictatorship. The only difference between these rival and supposedly antagonistic economies is the name of their masters.

Capitalism, it is safe to predict, is the only form of social organization that ever will be secure. For it is rooted in the very trait of possessiveness inherent in human nature which theorizing radicals have pretended it is possible to root out, merely to find that it had mastered themselves. If a form of social organization that is rooted in human nature cannot succeed, certainly no other has any chance whatsoever.

It is as absurd to say that "democracy (or republicanism) is a failure" as it is to say that "capitalism is a failure". The U.S. has never had either of them, in the correct sense of the terms. The nation has never carried out the blueprint of human organization drawn up by the wisest group of men that ever assembled for that purpose—the Constitution. They defined democracy in terms of "freedom of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness." These are the goals that man has striven for from time immemorial.

The authors of the Constitution were close enough to slavery and feudalism to keenly appreciate the value of freedom and the attributes of democracy. Unfortunately the present generation are so hedonic and lacking in insight that they fail to realize the meaning of slavery though they have witnessed it in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany and of Russia. They are willing to surrender, and have surrendered, "freedom" for the bait of slave-masters—a mirage of "security",—even before they have attained the measure of freedom called for by the Constitution. They actually believe the shibboleth "Democracy is a failure", though the nation has never attained it.

Democracy has not been attained in the U.S. because it has never created the basic freedom—absolute freedom to earn a living, or freedom of employment. This freedom was taken for granted by the framers of the Constitution. Frontiers, all about them, provided freedom of employment for anyone who cared to work. It was implied in the expression "freedom of life . . .". For there can be no "freedom of life" if there is no freedom to earn the wherewithal to live.

Likewise, a true capitalism is a form of social and economic organization which makes the private ownership of property secure. The speculative gold standard scarcity economy, latterly replaced in part by a "managed" scarcity economy, offers no security in the private ownership of property. The experiences of 1929 attest to that. It is reasonable to assume, in view of the experience of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, that if the development of our economy had been untrammeled by treacherous Tories who were in a position to impose their will, the Yankee surplus economy plan, which is the only possible basis for a true capitalism, would have been adopted as the pattern intended by the framers of the Constitution. It would have made the world a happier place to live in.

The Yankee surplus economy plan would eliminate the fear of starvation and want that results today from either under- or over-production, both at home and abroad. The adoption of the plan by any one nation would force its adoption throughout the world. For if any one nation offered, for instance, to pay three dollars a bushel for any wheat that might be turned over to its Treasury, every other country would have to do the same, or else lose the wheat its people require for their existence. No matter how high the barriers that might be set up to prevent the outflow of the wheat, it would be sure to make its way to the highest market. This would imply eventually an equally high standard of living in all lands.

When staples sell at the same level in all lands and the standard of living become equally high, barriers which are set up to prevent impairment of living standards, or jeopardy of employment, would disappear. Free trade on a world-wide basis would become possible and desirable. Such a plan offers the only practical solution of the impasse created by the breakdown of the gold standard system in international trade. It would eliminate the struggle for raw materials which underlies wars and alone could make possible international amity by making trade barriers unnecessary and anachronistic.

Fear of starvation and want would vanish rapidly in a world placed on a surplus economy basis. Humans would no longer be regarded by nations as liabilities, to be avoided—by race suicide, by retarding the younger generation in its start in life, by immigration barriers, by labor unionism, by DP camps, and by the massacres of the concentration camps which are the most eloquent expressions of the ultimate in scarcity economy.

This age-old solution of the problems of economic organization has been adopted, as in Massachusetts, whenever emergency brought to the fore the realization that the real basis of wealth is not gold but the necessities of life. In the story of Joseph and Pharaoh, it is one of the most important lessons the Bible has to offer, but one which our "economists" and "men of learning" refuse to learn.

The question arises: Why has not the Yankee plan been adopted during the decade and a half of absurd scarcity economy experiments of the New Deal? Foreign ideas are as popular and fashionable in the "social sciences" (made in Germany) as are the French gowns among the fair sex. And homely, commonsense American ideas on economics, are as deprecated as domestic gowns.

The state of the world, however, has become so critical, and the impasse so absurd, that mayhap folks will stop, look and listen long enough to adopt the sound idea and rational solution of the Yankee plan. In garbled form it has been advocated in recent years by diverse characters. Thus Sir Maynard Keynes was chief Bank of England propagandist for forcing the gold standard, scarcity economic concepts on the New Deal. In his "Treatise On Money" and in his address before the British Association for Advancement of Science in August 1938, he belied the scarcity propaganda he was paid to foist on the U.S. by urging the adoption of the staple product plan in England. Father Coughlin advocated a garbled form of the plan, as it was described in an article by this author, and made it the basis of his Social Justice plan; but he unfortunately confused it with the highly speculative Irving Fisher gold-index dollar, which is the exact antithesis. Wise and scholarly Senator Robert Owens, author of the Federal Reserve Act, attempted to introduce the Yankee staple product dollar into that Act; but Irving Fisher and Senator Carter Glass frustrated his plan. Had Senator Owens succeeded, the Federal Reserve Act would have served the interests of the nation instead of merely the Dynastic bankers and their allies; and World War I might have been averted.

If the U.S. and the world can be shifted onto a surplus economy base, the destruction of democracy and human freedom, the advance of Communism, managed economies and other forms of dictatorships and slave states, and the further advance of World War III can be averted. The drive behind the Dynasty and the Rockefeller Empire for an American monarchy can be checked; and the fear that filled the world and motivated John D. Rockefeller and other monopolists could be completely dispelled. With this out of the way the Napoleonic complex will fail to gain support.

To put the Yankee plan into operation in the U.S. will require another amendment to the Currency Act widening the monetary base to comply with existent realities; a change in the policy of the Interior Department with regard to public lands; supplanting Relief and bonus measures by a plan to finance folks who desire to produce, with loans to be repaid out of production; and enlargement of elevator and storage facilities to the point of adequacy.

The value to be given in the base to staple products should be the average historic value multiplied by the same factor as the price of gold has been increased. The advantage of the plan to the farmer and the other producers of staples are obvious. The fabricator would benefit from the stable value of raw materials and the enlarged market created by the high stable earnings of the producers of staples. The worker would benefit by earning all that he produces, or else by stabilization of his wage at the level of his ability to earn if he wished to resort to production of staples; and he would be free to earn as much as he is willing to work for. The rich would be secure in their wealth because their holdings would not constitute a barrier to others acquiring as much as they are willing to work for. Banking and industry would benefit from the liquidity of wealth and from the general prosperity. The nation and the world would benefit from the stabilization of its economy and the accumulation of the unlimited riches that Nature has to offer. These things could be accomplished in the brief period of six months, if there is a will to accomplish them.

This solution would defeat the purposes of the Dynasty to destroy democracy and freedom, and would render fruitless the martial plans for world conquest of both Russia and the Rockefeller Empire.