Saturday, June 29, 2019

#119.1: 1900 or The Last President by Ingersoll Lockwood


Every now and then, another piece of literature gains wider attention and has something to say with relevance to this blog's proposal, though of course that wasn't the author's original purpose. We'll get to that too. Ayn Rand's John Galt speech, was similarly critiqued, so that everyone interested in this blog's proposal and our perspective could review it, as this was another piece of literature that had something to say to us about our enemies (yes, we certainly have THEM, every bit as much as every predator has its prey) as well as something to say about ourselves. Anyone who has bothered to read our take on Rand would certainly be surprised how we see it, I promise. Go ahead, it's part of your continuing real education.

So, since this is a spoiler piece; if you don't want to know what this short piece of historical literature is about, I suggest you take the time to read it first. After all, it's under 50 pages. We'll describe the action of this piece and how and why it is relevant to our proposal. This is the first episode, so expect a few more to get this piece covered. 

1900 or The Last President was a 48 page pamphlet that was copyright 1906 by Ingersoll Lockwood, of the New York Bar (he was a lawyer) and was printed by the American News Company in New York in a slim red cloth bound volume that sold for ten cents. It consists of ten chapters spanning its 48 pages. 

Garret A Hobart
Before the action begins, there is a quote by Garret A Hobart. Hobart was the 24th vice president of the United States, serving from 1897 until his death in 1899. The President was William McKinley, the 25th under the Constitution of 1787 [2/26/21: under the corporation of 1871]. It ran as follows: 

The Chicago Platform assumes, in fact, the form of a revolutionary propaganda. It embodies a menace of national disintegration and destruction.” 

Hobart is saying that the Chicago Platform = revolutionary propaganda. 

Revolutionary propaganda = going round and round with deliberate lies to the general public, bamboozling while going round and round. Believe me folks, there is no political solution to what this blog's proposal addresses. 

William Jennings Bryan
The Chicago Platform turns out to be the planks adopted in 1896 in Chicago by the Democratic Party, who ran William Jennings Bryan for President against Hobart's Republican President, William McKinley, who six months into his second term was assassinated. That was in 1901. By then, Hobart himself had died in office (in 1899) and been replaced by Theodore Roosevelt, who would become the 26th President. So William Jennings Bryan is the pivotal character in Lockwood's short fiction; in it, he is elected President of the United States in 1900, from whence the title derives. So it's easy to see this piece as a political tract clearly featuring the hated Bryan as the country's last president. 

There were many proposals in this Chicago platform that would seem ridiculously socialist to most of us, like nationalization of all railroads. But further research into the political movement Bryan represented reveals this from Britanica, which of course will suffer my usual cautions: 

Throughout the 1880s local political action groups known as Farmers’ Alliances sprang up among Middle Westerners and Southerners, who were discontented because of crop failures, falling prices, and poor marketing and credit facilities. Although it [sic] [they] won some significant regional victories, the alliances generally proved politically ineffective on a national scale. Thus in 1892 their leaders organized the Populist, or People’s Party, and the Farmers’ Alliances melted away. While trying to broaden their base to include labour and other groups, the Populists remained almost entirely agrarian-oriented. They demanded an increase in the circulating currency (to be achieved by the unlimited coinage of silver), a graduated income tax, government ownership of the railroads, a tariff for revenue only, the direct election of U.S. senators, and other measures designed to strengthen political democracy and give farmers economic parity with business and industry. 

In 1892 the Populist presidential candidate, James B. Weaver, polled 22 electoral votes and more than 1,000,000 popular votes. By fusing with the Democrats in certain states, the party elected several members to Congress, three governors, and hundreds of minor officials and legislators, nearly all in the northern Middle West. In the South, however, most farmers refused to endanger white supremacy by voting against the Democratic Party. Additional victories were won in the 1894 midterm election, but in 1896 the Populists allowed themselves to be swept into the Democratic cause by their mutual preoccupation with the Free Silver Movement. The subsequent defeat of Democratic presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan signaled the collapse of one of the most challenging protest movements in the U.S. since the Civil War. Some of the Populist causes were later embraced by the Progressive Party.” 

OK, so you notice the things that caught my attention. We have heard the term populism of late. We said recently that populism is essentially that the average person should not be held down or prevented from exercising his/her natural right to free PRIVATE enterprise by some elite with special interests above the average person. Our argument with respect to this and THEIR money is that precisely due to how it is issued, it represents a STOLEN FIAT from those regular folks like us, by a group of long time organized criminals, call them what you will, the Deep State perhaps, or as we have identified THEM, as Mystery Babylon, yes, the last Beast empire before Shiloh comes. 

Yes. But to continue, clearly Garret Hobart was not a populist in the sense the framers of the Chicago platform had outlined it, in terms of promises of government policy. We consider that the author, Ingersoll Lockwood, wasn't one either. Both men and others were aware of what the Farmers’ Alliances wanted; affordable insurance against crop failures, some control over farm prices, and better marketing and credit facilities. Transportation costs figured into it too, which is why farmers went to other forms of transport as soon as they became available. Getting free of rail transport meant that farmers usually got better prices and greater control over the timing of delivery geared to the exigencies of the harvest rather than to railroad schedules. 

Many of these changes developed over the years, so that large enough farmers could become more productive over the long haul. It has traditionally been production unpredictability associated with agriculture that has been the basis of a natural friction between farmers and financiers. Finance likes stability and predictability and anything that makes the unknowns of agriculture easier to predict has driven standardization, hybridization, GMO's, etc. ultimately by those specializing in financing farmers. 

The goal of these financiers has been to predict what the prices of agricultural commodities would be out into the future based on projected crop yields. The farmer's insurance in part is covered by his participation in the buying and selling of futures contracts or derivatives on them. Prices are determined based on product yield and market size. Supposedly, the wider the market, the fewer price fluctuations over the widest area. 

As usual, we'd prefer to take the small farmer's side of things; to produce what one can and offer it for sale locally, but use our own money rather than THEIRS to do it and only collect in THEIR money what is required in taxes, where relevant. One would get relatively anonymous transactions using our V-Checks and the sources would all be local and redundant so that variety and freshness are promoted. Always organic, of course and heirloom seeds and their gathering would be encouraged. All we need do is set up every small producer as a series of accounts within the locally owned and truly democratically run Valun exchange system and perhaps a few would purchase ads that would be seen on the backs of our V-Checks. 

Countless other branches of ordinary human activity can be facilitated in organized to operate this way. But notice, our proposal does not require any state action or responsibilities, nor does it require any bank. None of our exchanges will ever loan anyone money so they aren't banks. Rental fees for the rent of money over the usual terms of bills, notes and bonds always paid up front from existing money are determined by those finance businesses organized outside the local exchanges to carry on such businesses all as private enterprise capitalist concerns, which cannot engage in any share selling as that creates limited liability and absentee ownership, both to be eliminated from our monetary system. Likewise, absolutely none of them may ever rent out any money that they do not have. Call it a 100% reserve system if you like. We will not tolerate special privileges for those who may be able to make money on their money without work, which is capitalism, over the rights of the rest of us who are actively engaged in providing actual goods and services to the general public through our free and PRIVATE enterprise. 

If we are advocating a parallel monetary system to THEIRS, and we are, every bit as much of a natural right as some people seem to think access to healthcare is, then we are aware of the very structurally fluid nature of labor is at the moment. There are plenty of freelancers out there, all of whom should look into and champion drives to enroll as many of their own members as possible. 

This is about moving away from THEM (usual suspects) and THEIR systems of manipulation, control and predatory consumption and accepting another system that one uses as well as THEIRS until THEIRS in all its varied brands, is discredited and fails. While we're at it, we develop our own networks of supply and detail that do not use the internet, or rely on it, do not use cell phones, and renew what we are always on the point of losing; that meaningful face to face human contact. Here's something else we're gong to have to face; there is s limit to digitalization and that limit is fast approaching. More people want OUT of THEIR system and have nowhere to imagine themselves but in some kind of perpetual nomad existence or perhaps end up homeless in some disease infested inner city. Only the return of sensible “brick and mortar” arrangements is going to matter long term and after THEY and THEIRS are gone. Say what one will, one can only defy Nature so long and most every “too big to fail” organization is already running out of balance with the “diminishing returns to scale” law that proportions every activity to its optimal sizes. Until next time. Best. 

David Burton 

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