two and a half million tons of various commodities.This storage included all kinds of foodstuffs, and also machinery, automobiles and raw materials such as rubber, copper and tin. We have also stored large quantities of furs coming from Alaska and Siberia in our cold storage plants. Efficient "Public Ownership" As stated all of these ocean terminals, including the piers and warehouses are publicly owned, but more important they are publicly operated. The three Port Commissioners, elected by the people of the district, serve in a capacity to that of director in a large business corporation. We determine questions of general policy, but like most successful business institutions, we employ a staff of trained men to operate the properties. The question always arises, "Can the public operate a business of this kind, having a gross turnover of two and a half million dollars a year, as efficient as a private institution?" We believe we have demonstrated that we can operate these public terminals as a going business concern with an efficiency equal to that of any private corporation of the same size and character. In fact this is today the almost unanimous verdict of the business patrons of the Port District. I am free to confess that this was not the case in the beginning, but today the whole business public of Seattle are standing enthusiastically behind the Port Commission, and you will find very few men who would advocate any other policy than the public operation of these terminals. There is one interesting fact which is well worthy of notice. As you know in a great port like Seattle, many difficult problems arise. These problems center about the fourfold relation of the rail carriers, the water carriers, dock opeators and the shippers. Complex questions respecting ocean rates, railroad rates, terminal charges and absorption require constructive, though active cooperation between all parties. It is a significant fact that the Port Commission in charge of the public properties have come to occupy a very high position in respect to the solution to these complex questions, and act as a mediator in bringing these interests together when points of conflict arise. This is a subject upon which one might deliver a whole paper. Suffice it to say that these competing private interests feel that the Port Commission operating a public institution, has a more disinterested view point than that of any private interests. This arises from the fact that the public which the Port Commission represents does not exist primarily for profit but for service. Its object is to own and operate a system of terminals for the up building of the commerce thru Seattle. Considering we have been looked upon as a disinterested body representing the public interests rather than a private one, we have been instrumental in bringing about the solution of many difficult questions, and I feel that in the future this will be one of the great services which this public corporation will render. I wish to assure you that it has been a pleasure to be present on this occasion. You all know of the hospitality of the west, so it is unnecessary, for me to assure you that the latch string is always out and if any of you have occasion to visit Seattle do not overlook calling at the general offices of the Port Commission. We will be only too glad to take you over our properties and give you an actual demonstration of the success of public ownership and operation in this most interesting field. Note: For further discussion of public elevators, storage facilities, etc., see address of Governor Lynn J. Frazier. In VI. Money and Credits NATIONALIZATION OF MONEY AND CREDITS 1816, Thomas Jefferson, former President, writing to George Logan, said, "I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of the moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our Government to trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country"; to James Monroe he wrote, "We are completely saddled and bridled, and the Bank is so firmly mounted on us that we must go where they ill guide" and to John Tyler, "Banking institutions are more dangerous than standing armies." This testimony of our first great democratic President is fully borne out by the testimony of President Wilson as to conditions in 1910, given in his book, "The New Freedom", showing that we are suffering now from money domination to an extent that few of us had dreamed of, and that many have been ruined because they did not support, or yield to centralized Money: President Wilson Describes Money Power "Since I entered politics I have chiefly had men's views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation." The methods by which this Money Power operates to strike ter ror into even these "biggest men in the field of commerce and manufacture" are also shown in "The New Freedom": "The dominating danger in this land is not the existence of great individual combinations-that is danger enough in all conscience-but the combination of combinations, of the railways, the manufacturing enterprises, the great mining projects, the great enterprises for the development of the waterpowers of the country, threaded together in the personnel of a series of boards of directors into a 'community of interests' more formidable than any conceivable combination that dare appear in the open (p. 187). "There has come about an extraordinary and very sinister concentration in the control of the business of this country.. It is more important still that the control of the credit also has become dangerously centralized. It is the mere truth to say that the financial resources of this country are not at the command of those who do not submit to the direction and domination of small groups of capitalists. The great monopoly in this country is the monopoly of big credits. So long as that exists our old variety of freedom and individual energy of development are out of the question (pp. 184-185). "I have seen men who, as they expressed it, were 'put out of business by Wall Street," because Wall Street found them inconvenient and didn't want their competition (p. 186). "I cannot tell you how many men of business, how many important men of business, have communicated their real opinion about the situation in the United States to me privately and confidentially. They are afraid to make their real opinions known publicly; they tell them to me behind their hands (p. 258). "We have been dreading all along the time when the combined power of high finance would be greater than the power of the government. Have we come to a time when the President of the United States, or any man who wishes to be the President, must doff his cap in the presence of this high finance, and say, "You are our inevitable master, but we will see how we can make the best of it?" (p.200). "We have not one or two, but many fields of endeavor into which it is difficult, if not impossible, for the independent man to enter. We have restricted opportunity, we have controlled development, and we have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the civilized world-no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and the duress of a small group of dominant men (p. 201)." It is not necessary to add anything to this analysis. If this was true in 1910, when "The New Freedom" was written, it is doubly true today, and we have seen many proofs of it in the past ten years. The nationalization of money and credits is the most important question facing the modern world. How did we get into this plight? and what can we do about it? These are the important questions that will have to be answered before the campaign of 1920, or left unsolved at our peril. Money is the conjuring wand with which the enchanters of the Money Power compel the modern world to do their bidding, and until it is taken from the hands of the bankers and restored to the Nation we shall not be able to win back the freedom which has been taken from us, to make advance, or progress, even if Land in all of its forms, including Mines, Oilfields, as well as other resources and natural monopolies should become national property, important as that would be. How The Banking Trust Began First let us look to the history of our Money. In earlier times Money was national in all of the modern nations, that is, the national Treasury received all profits on Coinage, Exchange, and regulation of circulation, and spent them for national purposes; but in 1666 the thin edge of a wedge was driven in, to pass Money into private and corporation control, to the great enrichment of certain classes and the impoverishment of the people. This happened in England just after the Puritans failed, under Cromwell, to abolish Kings and establish a Commonwealth, and when the most corrupt of the Stuart Kings, Charles II had been recalled to the Throne. The nobles, landlords, and corporation men of the time were working together as a "Ring" and each of the conspiring parties was enriched by the legislation that they passed: the landlords were able to keep the land that they had fenced in from the peoples' Commons and to collect rent on it from its former unpaid owners ever after; the burden of feudal taxes was taken from the nobles and laid on the people in the form of indirect levies on things that the people use, so raising the cost of their living; and the octopus corporation of that day was given a limited "right" to coin money and ship money out of the kingdom. For his consent to these laws the King was given a larger income to be paid out of taxes collected from the people. Gradually the control, and issue, and profits on Money were taken away from the Treasury and given over to "bankers" as they now began to be called, and all of this was accomplished without letting the people know how important it was or what it involved for the future. The bankers have given an impression that Money is a difficult matter which common people could not understand, but even a stupid man should be able to see that they were shifting what should have been public profits into their own private pockets. This change involved the building up of an unproductive mon eyed class, in which groups, or "corporations" would soon control both the money and business of the country for their own profit and, acting together through "community of interest" also control politics and dominate those "below", a silent Revolution of tremendous importance. Before the end of that century the Bank of England was formed, the real power behind the throne, which Parliament and Kings obey, also the ways by which people have been made to pay greater and greater sums of interest on "bonded and "funded" debts have been increased, and more people have been able to live without useful labor. The English Mint Law of 1666-1667, with later additions, was made the law of the United States in 1792 under the influence of Hamilton, who believed in building up a priveleged class, and has been copied in all of the great modern nations, establishing the modern bad system of banking and business-we have only to compare it with the system of national money in Greece in the period of her greater glory to see how much we have lost by the change. Under Solon, Athens adopted the system of national Money at a time when she was threatened with class war, a small class having usurped the control and profits of her Money for a time to the impoverishment of the rest, and when her Treasury was filled with the profits again that they had been diverting to themselves, she began her Golden Age, with kinds of development never equalled in the modern world. By our system, or lack of system, untold sums have been paid by the people to those who have not worked for them, in the form of "dividends," "discounts," "water" poured into "stock", windfalls from speculation, and the mere dishonest juggling that has come to be known as "frenzied finance". Has the present system of private and corporation money, which began in political corruption, justified itself in benefits that it has conferred on the nations as a whole? Have the old wrongs become right? and are legal privileges that were secured by corruption really "rights"? What The People Lose Through Private Banking The answer to all of these questions seems to be, No, especially when we look to the signs of our times and find all of the modern nations living in daily fear of class war, the many in poverty, dependence, and restricted opportunity, while the few have excessive riches and exercise unreasoning domination. These are results which threaten civilization itself and imperil the future of the white race. Evils equally alarming are seen in the world of the spirit: an excessive regard for money, increasing scaly means of acquiring it, and hardened disregard of human health, decency, and beauty. In London, where Ruskin and Morris worked through two generations for a hearing for social justice, witness the housing conditions, and these could be matched in other cities, per |