Wisconsin State Agricultural Society. 777 
it myself. They are ideas that I have been thinking upon in 
regard to financial affairs for years, and I do think they are emi¬ 
nently sound. We have reached a stage in our existence and a 
time when we must do something. If it is true that there are 10 
billions of debt on the United States, it becomes an important ques¬ 
tion, can we shoulder that debt and pay the interest annually out of 
our industry? Every intelligent man present knows that every 
dollar is earned by labor, and not produced by the loaning of money. 
Money loaned never produced any wealth. 
Money has certain values, and one of those values is to represent 
value, and another is to accumulate value by interest, and another 
is to distribute values by commodities. Those are some of the values 
of money. We have been taught from our earliest boy-hood 
that there is some intrinsic value in gold and silver; that there is 
an actual value there, but the truth is, unless for mechanical pur¬ 
poses, gold and silver have no actual value, but have a legal value 
when coined into money. This is one of the errors of the age. If 
I had in my pocket a ten dollar bill and a ten dollar gold piece, the 
gold might be the more valuable, but if I go into a store and spend 
the two, the value is gone and one is of no more value in the world 
than the other. 
We use money as a circulating medium. We must not permit 
ourselves to be taxed and burdened heavily because our progeny 
would like to see a few shining dollars. Here is 10 billions of debt; 
if it is 5 per cent it would be 5 millions of dollars a year. How many 
working men would it require to earn that amount of interest a 
year. We do not have perhaps over 5 millions of laboring men in 
the United States, and each of them would have to earn $100 over 
and above what is necessary to support his family, to pay that 
rate of interest. Can we pay that enormous interest? And 
why have we allowed such wealth to be accumulated in the 
hands of the few? Because we have permitted the few to make our 
laws and rob labor and enlarge capital. So long as you will send 
to Congress 270 lawyers and only a dozen farmers, and a large num¬ 
ber of bank presidents, they will make laws in their own in¬ 
terest, and not in our’s. Does not every one know that the capi¬ 
talists of the country are all organized, and if they cannot pass 
their laws themselves they send lobbyists to the legislatures to buy 
their laws? And would it be wrong to have an organization of 
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