Chapter Two
Rise of the Money Power -- Second Era

The Money Power of the World entered upon a new and grander era of development when steam was applied to manufactures. In 1774, Watt perfected the steam engine; and this new servant of man, mightier than the Genii of oriental fable, was at once set at work propelling manufactures. The power loom, the spinning Jenny and the cotton gin were soon afterward invented, and gave a great impulse to steam manufacturing industry.

The conditions of the time threw steam manufactures entirely into the hands of the London Money Power. Great Britain was the only country in Europe which had coal and iron for steam purposes. The capitalists of the East India Company were the only people in the world with capital to engage in the new industry; for the great trading companies of other countries had been broken down by British conquests. Enriched by the trade of the Orient and the Tropics, these London capitalists at once seized the opportunity events offered them, and embarked energetically in steam manufactures.

The East India Company, as such, did not engage in these manufactures. All the stockholders would not wish to invest in them: so large a corporation would be unwieldy; and the immensity of the monopoly might excite alarm and provoke opposition. It would be much better to operate through smaller corporations. A few capitalists might hold the stock of a great number of them without exciting jealousy; and their management would be quiet and easy. The different corporations were like the regiments of an army: it was easy to form them into brigades, and divisions, and army corps, so as to give them the compact solidity of a grand military organization. It had the flexibility of individual enterprise, and the solidity of a despotism. The Money Kings adopted the policy of single corporate companies for each special enterprise.

They built manufactories of all kinds: they started iron mills, woolen mills, cotton mills. Manufactures of all kinds sprung up on every side. The Money Kings organized new joint stock corporations which built mills and manufactories: new companies which operated mines of coal and iron; and, as commerce wonderfully expanded through manufactures wrought by steam power, they organized new companies which built vessels to plow the waters of every ocean, and built new warehouses, and established new trading stations all over the earth.

Commerce had languished in previous ages, because the Temperate zone had not sufficient cheap products suited to tropical demand, to offer in exchange for tropical productions. Steam manufactures opened up a new commercial era. They greatly stimulated tropical production, by offering manufactures in those markets. They also greatly stimulated industry in the Temperate zone. In all the countries of the Temperate zone, the demand for the manufactures of Britain was far beyond the ability to pay for them with exports.

The first effect of this state of things was a wave of excitement that swept over Great Britain. An industrial boom was started. Everybody who had money invested in the stock of manufacturing companies, shipping companies, trading companies. In companies for steam manufactures, the Money Kings took care to have the majority of stock: outside companies they knew they could devour at their leisure.

The grand Money Kings had such advantages in their immense capital and in their perfect organization, that in commercial crises, often originated, and always manipulated by them, they managed systematically to break down rival companies, and buy them out, and to rob and plunder the minority stockholders; until, in the end, these organized capitalists got into their own hands and very cheap, all, or the greater part of the stock of the various companies, manufacturing, mercantile and shipping, that originated in steam manufactures.

They thus reduced to a system and a science the art of crushing rival companies, and freezing out minority stockholders. Their whole career was a systematic course of treachery, fraud and plunder, without a parallel in history. They advanced step by step, always causing a boom in every new enterprise that enlisted much outside capital, and always managing to operate seasons of business disaster, in which they lost a few hundred thousands by falling prices, a loss which they were abundantly able to stand, while making many millions by getting cheap the stock of broken corporations and the stock sold by minority stockholders.

Dealing in futures in Boards of Trade, was then started on a grand scale, a system originated for the purpose of enabling large capitalists to force stocks up or down as they choose, by dint of capital, without any regard to the actual value--the most satanic engine of trickery, fraud and oppression ever devised to enable the strong to plunder the weak. It is the drag net with which the Money Kings destroy multitudes of men of small means, as the fisherman takes fish in his seine. They are fishermen: the rest of mankind are their prey. They are always seeking after spoil. They are always dragging their net for the destruction of the unwary.

But aside from this plunder of the weak and the trusting, the regular profits of the new age of industry were very large. In every country of the Temperate zone, the demand for British manufactures was much greater than could be paid for by exports. And the difference in the balance of trade was always systematically arranged by lending money on mortgage for that amount, or by spending the amount of the deficit in starting some business enterprise in that country. In this way, the adverse balance of trade was not felt by the country falling behind. It bought all it wanted, and the adverse balance of trade actually made the times better; for it caused the profits of the Money Kings to be invested in the country, stimulating business into activity. It only had the disadvantage that the business investment did not belong to the nation, but to the Money Kings: and the prosperity it caused was not national prosperity, but was the bloated gains of the Money Kings.

This has been the regular method of the Money Kings for the last hundred years. Starting new manufactures, new shipping companies, new trading companies: getting in all the outside capital possible, and then freezing out minority stockholders, and throttling outside corporations: getting all the nations in debt to them, and making parasite investments to the amount of the deficit of the balance of trade: putting in the profits derived from the East India Company, first: and then, not only putting in its profits, but continually re-investing all the profits of all their enterprises in the country; until their investments, accumulating like a rolling ball of snow, at last becomes an avalanche to bury beneath its weight the prosperity of the world.

The Rothschild Syndicate

Even in the beginning of this second era of the growth of the Money Power, it realized immense profits--profits so great as enabled the Money Power to loan the money necessary on both sides to sustain the immense armaments of the wars of the French revolution. They let the British government and the powers warring against France have all the money they required; and they supplied Napoleon and his allies the loans necessary for his campaigns.

At that time, for the convenience of the Money Kings, the great House of Rothschild was established. The rise of the house of Rothschild has always been shrouded in the mystery that veils all operations of the Money Power. The house took immense contracts on both sides; and made to both sides immense loans. Where the money came from has always been a mystery. The common explanation given of it is wholly inadequate to account for the sudden rise of the house of Rothschild into such enormous wealth. The only way to account for it is to suppose that the Rothschild family was chosen by the Jew Money Kings as the head and fiscal agency of a grand Jewish syndicate formed at that time, to concentrate under one management the money of the Jew capitalists.

It was a great convenience, and a great source of power. The Rothschilds were chosen, perhaps, in part, on account of their superior business qualifications; and perhaps, in part, because there were three brothers, who could be heads of separate banking houses in London, and Paris and Vienna. By such a syndicate the Jews could lend money and take army contracts on both sides. And if, in the end, one side should achieve a decided triumph, the Rothschild on the winning side could save the Rothschild on the losing side, and thus the money of the Jews would be safe in any event.

It was a grand stroke of Jewish skill and policy, the organization of this grand syndicate; but it was the first instance of the organization of a syndicate in the world; and it was never known as such; but, with the usual readiness of mankind to believe in the sudden growth of vast fortunes from nothing, the world accepted the rise of the house of Rothschild as an individual fortune, and not a syndicate. In our time, when combination of capital into syndicates is common, the house would be recognized at once as the head of a syndicate.

The rise of the house of Rothschild is memorable as the first grand combination of the Jews in a syndicate, for the transaction of a vast business in which all their capital might be combined. The Rothschilds became the head of the Jew Money Kings, and have ever since been the head of the Jews, acting as a syndicate. That house is probably at the head of the Jew Money Power of the world [1889].

When Napoleon fell, there remained but one grand imperialism in the world--the Imperialism of Capital--the Jew Money Power, centered in the Money Quarter of London. Since the fall of Napoleon, the nations of Europe have been maintaining war military establishments in time of peace, at an expense far beyond their revenues. The London Money Kings have loaned them the money to make up the annual deficit. They have invested in national debts alone about twenty-six billion dollars. Besides these national debts, are the loans they have made to states, and counties, and municipalities, and corporations and individuals, amounting in the aggregate, as it is estimated, to over fifty billion dollars more [1889].

And then, there are the immense amounts of their own investments in all the countries of the globe. The wealth of the Money Power is simply beyond calculation. It can not amount to less than $160,000,000,000. It is probably nearer two hundred billions [1889].

To Chapter Three.
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