Home -> James H. Barry Press -> Confiscation -> Chapter 14
XIV. The national debt of France is $7,000,000,000. This exceeds the combined national debts of the United States, England, and Germany. In territory, France is not as large as California. Her population is[2] ....................... 37,000,000 The population of the United States is ..... 65,000,000 The population of England is ............... 37,000,000 The population of Germany is ............... 40,000,000 ____________ Total .................................. 142,000,000 The French navy is a fairly close second to that of England. Her army is as large as that of Germany. France, then, supports an army and navy of the first class, and has only 37,000,000 people to do it with. And this same 37,000,000 people pays interest on a debt that is greater than that of the 142,000,000 people in the three countries named. Yet there is no wail of distress, such as we are familiar with, heard in this France, with its great army and navy, and its fabulous interest-bearing, debt. What is the secret of it? France is the greatest producer of luxeries in the world, and, of course, has the rich the world over for her customers; and she is a nation of small owners, her resources, land and all else, being subdivided among her people to an extent unknown elsewhere. This is only half the secret. There is a natural increase of wealth in every country. Keep that natural increase in the country where it is made, and there will always be a surplus left after the mere live and wear expenses are paid, and this surplus can be used either to support an army or to build macadamized roads. This then is the other half, without which she would be where we are: France legislates to keep her wealth in her own country - and her loss on that canal is only one plum out of her heeping bushel. The foreign sapper and miner does no work on French soil. His field of operation is the whole American continent, beginning in Canada and on down through, without a skip, till he reaches Magellan and the Horn, scattering his due bills all the way. The French law-maker, in spite of his clatter, is without a peer, and he dwarfs none so much as our own, who will become the butt of his own sneer if he ever gets his eyes open. This foreign master of the art of governing legislates in the interests of his own people, who are the only source of his country's power or greatness, and he leaves the income of the large farm or small one where it is made. And when the issuing of bonds is the only alternative he issues them in sizes those small incomes can buy. Their labor pays the debt in the end, and it is their interests that are first consulted when profits from bond issues are considered. He makes the size of the bond fit their ability to buy, and not that of the millionaire syndicate, as is the case in this misgoverned land, where the matchless ignorance and complicity of the law-maker is made to serve the matchless corruption and greed of its millionaire master. No French syndicate makes its five to ten per cent. profits off every issue of bonds. Thousands among our toilers could have secured their ten-dollar savings could they have bought Government bonds of that denomination but they could not, and were forced to become the victims of swindling bankers. Individual greed cares nothing for its victims as they are thrown on the streets and its ways. When this enterprising foreigner, with his surplus capital, the result of wise laws, started for Panama to do a much needed work for this Western world, that this great gold producing country could not find the capital to do, our blackmailers worked the Monroe Doctrine on him and all the while he was quieting the rascals, the sappers and miners were splitting their sides at our treasury door. Congress is opened by a chaplain. It should be opened by a physician and a warrant - bibs for the drooling chins of some and the rest to jail. [2] The writer is not within hundreds of miles of works of reference; but these figures are substantially correct. The quibbler, however, is welcome to anything he may find.