Introduction
An Imperialism of Capital has grown up within the last two centuries from small beginnings, until it is now the mightiest power that has ever existed on earth. It is an Imperialism mightier than the empire of the Caesars, grander than the empire of Napoleon in the hour of his highest glory. In comparison with it, all other empires sink into comparative insignificance. This titanic power is the Imperialism of Capital, which I call, by way of distinction, the Money Power.
Money Power Defined
I do not mean by the Money Power to include any persons possessed of property, who are engaged in independent business enterprise. I do not mean any American business men, or business Companies engaged in independent business enterprise, whether they be farmers, merchants, manufacturers, bankers, miners, builders, or persons engaged in any department of business enterprise.The Imperialism of Capital to which I allude is a knot of capitalists--Jews almost to a man--who have their headquarters in the Money Quarter of London, in Threadneedle street, Lombard, and other streets in that vicinity, where bankers have their habitat. These Jew capitalists have succeeded in centralizing, in their own hands, the industry and commerce of the earth. They own almost all the debts of the world, the debts of nations, states, counties, municipalities, corporations and individuals, amounting in the aggregate, it is estimated, to seventy-five billion dollars, on which they are annually receiving about four billion dollars of interest [1889].
They own the manufactories, the shipping, and the commerce of Great Britain, and most of the manufactures, shipping and commerce of the whole world. They have attained control of the industry and trade of the whole earth; and are rapidly centralizing all business in their own hands. They hold possession of all the great lines of trade and business of all kinds, and they regulate all prices by their own arbitrary methods. These Jew Money Kings have established a Grand Imperialism of industry, commerce and wealth, which is thoroughly organized, and rules in the sphere of industry and trade with autocratic sway.
In our age, Capital is King. This Money Power of the Money Quarter of London is the only grand pre-eminent Imperialism existing on the earth. Monarchs severally rule their own dominions, and no one of them has pre-eminent power. The Imperialism of Capital, in our time, stretches the arms of its power over the whole earth: it alone sways the nations with pre-eminent rule. It buys all of the products of the earth: it fixes all prices of all commodities without regard to the law of supply and demand, by its own arbitrary will. It is Imperial over industry and trade, and none can resist it. It is rapidly progressing toward its ultimate aim, of possessing itself of all the world's wealth and all the world's property. If things remain as they are, these Jew Money Kings will, at no distant day, have achieved their aim, and will own the earth in fee simple.
Discovery of Existence of Money Power
The world will be surprised at the statement that such a grand Imperialism of Capital exists. For it has grown up so silently, and has veiled its operations in such secrecy, that its very existence is unsuspected. The Author was as ignorant of the Money Power as all the rest of the world outside of the ring, until, when visiting England many years ago, he, through a combination of circumstances unnecessary to mention here, became acquainted with the existence of this grand centralization of Capital in England, and was given a pamphlet that was intended for private circulation. This pamphlet, and the boastful statements of the Englishman who gave it, imparted to the Author information which is carefully kept from the general public. Quotations will be made from this pamphlet later on in this work. No confidence is thereby violated, and its statements ought to be known to the world.Thus informed of the existence of the Money Power, the Author has watched its progress for over twenty years. As events occurred, his mind, strongly magnetized, as it were, by this subject, seized upon and gathered to itself all facts bearing upon the question. A newspaper item, meaningless to others, was to him an important historical fact in the rise and growth of the Money Power. He has thus, point by point, gathered the materials for the sketch which here follows.
Before quoting form the pamphlet just mentioned, it will be better, in order to give consecutiveness to the subject, to first trace the rise of the Money Power; and then to make quotations, to show that it was already a grand Imperialism in the decade extending from 1860 to 1870.
First Era in the Rise of the Money Power
The Money Power of the World had origin in small beginnings, in the 18th century; but it has reached its grand development in our own age. It had its origin in the British East India Company, and has grown up so quietly that its grand centralization has not attracted the attention of mankind. Indeed, it has only become powerful enough in our own age, to produce startling effects upon the industry of the world.In the ages before the invention of the steam engine, the chief commerce of the world consisted in the interchange between the Temperate zone and the Tropics. There was but little interchange between the different countries of the Temperate zone; for all having the same climate and agricultural productions, each country produced sufficient for its own consumption; and, all manufactures being wrought by hand, each country had enough manufactures for the supply of its own needs, except a few articles of luxurious consumption. The chief commerce of the world consisted in the exchange of some of the products of the Temperate zone, especially specie, for articles of luxurious consumption, sugar, tea, coffee, indigo, opium, and the spices, contributed by the Tropics to the commerce of the world.
This commerce has always enriched the nation which carried it on, and made its merchants the great commercial magnates of the earth.
In Ancient Times, the Phoenicians possessed it for two thousand years, and it made them the great merchants of the earth. The share of Egypt in the traffic gave to that country its great wealth in the early eras of the monarchy. In the age of Solomon, the Jews possessed the Eastern end of the traffic for a generation, and it so enriched them that silver was in Jerusalem as stones. The development of this commerce was the sphere in which was displayed the proverbial wisdom of Solomon, and it constituted the chief glory of his reign.
The power of the Assyrian Empire was largely based upon the possession of the Eastern end of this commerce; the conquests of the Empire along the Mediterranean, having broken up the old line of the trade by way of the Red Sea.
To obtain possession of this commerce was the aim of the conquests of Nebuchadnezzar, the founder of the Babylonian Empire. He carried the traffic through Babylon, and up the Euphrates, across Syria and Asia Minor, and gave the Western end of the traffic to the Lydians and the Ionian Greeks. This was the origin of the proverbial wealth of Croesus, which the Greeks, in their ignorance of the commercial relations of the East, attributed to the gold washed from the placer mines of the river Pactolus. The possession of the Western end of the trade, at this time, awakened the Greeks from the lethargy of barbarism, and started the race upon its grand career of civilization.
The hostility of the Greeks to Persia, which caused the burning of Sardis, and led to the Persian wars, no doubt originated in the fact that Persia gave the traffic back to the Phoenicians, who restored it to its old route by way of the Red Sea.
After the Christian Era, the Venetians took possession of the traffic and it made them the great merchant princes of the Middle Ages.
The discovery of the passage around Cape Good Hope gave the traffic into the hands of the Portuguese, who kept it for a century. Then the Dutch, the French and the English organized trading companies which competed with each other for the possession of this great East India trade, now, since the passage around Cape Good Hope, swelled into much larger proportions than in former times. Britain was slow to engage in it, and during the Seventeenth Century made only feeble efforts, productive of little result. In the early part of the Eighteenth Century, the British East India Company was reorganized and put in successful operation. In return for a loan of fifteen million dollars to the British government, a large sum for those days, it received a charter, giving to it the exclusive right to trade with all countries of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, between Cape Horn and Cape Good Hope. From this time the East India Company made rapid growth in prosperity and power.
In the various wars of the Eighteenth Century between Great Britain and her commercial rivals on the Continent, the bull-dog pluck of the British sailors, and their superior nautical skill gave to British vessels so great an advantage in naval combats as secured to Britain a maritime supremacy. The British East India Company prospered, not only by the usual gains of traffic, but also by taking possession of the trading stations of its commercial rivals from which they were dispossessed by conquest.
In the great Seven Year's War, continuing from 1757 to 1764, Great Britain dispossessed France of all her colonial possessions. In India, at the same time, through the genius and energy of Clive, the British East India Company laid the foundation of its imperial greatness. Historical authorities date the rise of the East India Company to imperial power at the victory of Plassy, 1757. In 1764, it was an empire exercising imperial sway in Bengal over a territory containing a population of forty millions, and yielding larger revenues than those of the Austrian empire, at that time the greatest European power.
In 1764, the British East India Company was the grandest and richest corporation in the world. It was the only corporation which ruled a territorial empire. It was enriched by traffic, by the extension of its trade through the conquest of the trading stations of its Continental rivals, and by the wholesale plunder of India.
It had been from the first the best investment of capital to be found in the British Islands. Its stock was eagerly taken by all who had the means. The mercantile class took as much stock as they could afford; but, as we know, merchants usually have little more capital than they need for their regular business. The British Landed Aristocracy had large incomes from their estates; and being under a necessity of seeking the best investments, in order to portion their younger children, they made large investments in the East India Company. But the great Capitalist of that age were the Jews. They were the money holders. They subscribed largely to the stock; and as, in each generation, the stock of the Aristocracy was sold to portion younger children, the Jews, always economical, always full of money, and always in search of the best investments, bought the stock thrown upon the market. Thus it came to pass that the greater part of the stock of the East India Company, and of the other companies afterwards organized out of the dividends of that great company, fell into the hands of the Jews. The Jews became the great Money Kings of the world.
Under the impulse of Jew exactions, the career of the East India Company in India was a continued series of trickery, wrong, exaction, theft, robbery and murder. In the Eighteenth Century, the Mogul empire was in the last stages of decay; and the East India Company, in its dealings with the native states and Princes of India, constantly shifted its ground as expediency required, sometimes treating them as independent states, and sometimes, as dependencies of the Mogul empire. It hired its soldiers to one native prince, to enable him to conquer another: it sold its favors on every side; and when the opportunity came, it devoured the treasures and the territory of friends and foes alike.
History presents no career of conquest, in which fraud, deceit and rapine were so blended as in the conquest of India by the East India Company. It was the first example in the history of the world of a trading corporation becoming an imperial power; and its imperial rule was marked by the rapacity, chicane and fraud that characterizes a great corporation in the soulless and conscienceless pursuit of gain.
From 1764, the East India Company had control of the grand trade between the Temperate zone and the Tropics. It continued its conquests in India until, in 1857, the date of the Sepoy mutiny, it ruled almost the whole peninsula. The Money Kings who controlled it, possessed an empire compared with which the possessions of the Phoenicians and Carthaginians, and all their predecessors were as nothing, and they attained a domination over industry and trade without a parallel in the annals of the world.