SOCIAL EVOLUTION 283 



about one-half thrown out of circulation by the de- 

 monetization of silver. 



This making money scarce has no doubt been a great 

 advantage to the money-lending class, but it has had 

 the effect of enslaving, degrading, and ruining masses 

 of the producing classes a most important illustration 

 of the want of feeling and principle in the ever-growing 

 and too powerful capitalist class. Mr. Adams con- 

 tinues : 



" These bankers conceived a policy unrivalled in 

 brilliancy, which made them masters of all commerce, 

 industry, and trade. They engrossed the gold of the 

 world, and then, by legislation, made it the sole 

 measure of values. What Samuel Lloyd and his 

 followers did to England in 1847, became possible for 

 his successors to do to all the gold standard nations 

 after 1873. When the mints had been closed to 

 silver, the currency being inelastic, the value of money 

 could be manipulated like that of any article limited 

 in quantity, and thus the human race became the 

 subjects of the new aristocracy which represented the 

 stored energy of mankind." l 



Such an act by a department in civilization cannot 

 be right ; it is cruel, inhuman but it is Christian, 

 that is, in harmony with fashionable Christian ideas ! 



We live in a beautiful world. The human mind is 

 absolutely not able to conceive anything which is more 

 beautiful than surrounds us, for whenever we attempt 

 to conceive anything beyond this beauty we are deluded 

 by some mental monstrosity which has no reality in 

 Nature. Therefore, what we have to do is to so regulate 



1 Idem, p. 289. 



