IO8 HISTORY OF THE WHEEL AND ALLIANCE. 



have the people looked and appealed in vain for relief 

 from this form of taxation, so grievous and oppressive in 

 some counties that the revenue collected therein for the 

 support of State and county governments sinks into insig- 

 nificance compared with that annually gathered by the 

 railroads of the state for transporting the products of the 

 country to market. 



* ' We submit that what is true in Texas in this regard 

 is true throughout the States of the Union. 



"The net earnings of the Western Union Telegraph 

 Company for the past twenty years aggregate the sum of 

 $85,840,089. If we add to these vast sums the interests 

 and profits that are paid to other corporations and trusts, 

 together with the vast amount of interest on private 

 indebtedness, it is easy to discover why the condition of 

 labor is daily becoming more intolerable. The substance 

 of the people is eaten out by usury. The public debt of 

 the United States at the close of the war between the 

 States was $2,773,236,173.69, or $50 per capita, princi- 

 pally in the form of treasury notes circulating among the 

 people as money, and costing them no interest. These 

 served a beneficent purpose. They furnished an abundant 

 circulating medium. The people were individually out of 

 debt. Productive labor and legitimate business enter- 

 prises prospered. The people were making and gaining 

 homes, not losing them. Churches and schools were well 

 sustained. 



"The government entered upon a contracting policy 

 at the close of the war, in order to resume specie payment. 

 The treasury notes were converted into interest bearing 

 bonds and national bank notes, and gradually substituted 

 for them in circulation. This contracting policy, coupled 

 with the hoarding policy, ostensibly maintained to success- 

 fully maintain resumption, has withdrawn the circulation 

 from the people and congested it in the United States 



