Gość: Binderup
IP: *.nycmny83.covad.net
06.10.04, 16:19
http://www.thenewamerican.com/tna/2004/10-18-2004/911.htm
Category: News & Opinion (General) Topic: Government
Synopsis: Benjamin Franklin tells what made New England prosperous
Source: Oak Tree.com
Published: January 18, 2004 Author: Congressman Binderup, et al
For Education and Discussion Only. Not for Commercial Use.
Much of the following historical material is taken from a radio address given
a half century ago by the late Congressman Charles G. Binderup, of Nebraska,
and compiled by Mrs. Lucie Boulrice, 1133 Liberty, Springfield, MA 01104. For
more information, you may write or call her at (413) 737-3080.
Colonies were more prosperous than the home country
Before the Declaration of Independence (1776) and the war that followed, the
colonized part of what is today the United States of America was a Crown
possession of England. It was called New England, and was made up of 13
colonies, which became the original states of the great Republic.
In 1750, this New England was very prosperous. Benjamin Franklin
wrote: "There was abundance in the Colonies, and peace reigned on every
border. It was difficult, even impossible, to find a happier and more
prosperous nation on all the surface of the globe. Comfort prevailed in every
home. The people, in general, kept the highest moral standards, and education
was widely spread."
When Franklin went over to England to represent the interests of the
Colonies, he saw a completely different situation; the working population of
the home country was gnawed by hunger and plagued by inescapable
poverty. "The streets are covered with beggars and tramps," he wrote. He
asked his English friends how England, with all its wealth, could have so
much poverty among its working classes. His friends replied that England was
prey to a terrible condition; it had too many workers! The rich said they
were already overburdened with taxes, and could not pay more to relieve the
needs and poverty of this great mass of workers. Several rich Englishmen of
that time actually believed what economist Thomas Malthus later wrote, that
wars and epidemic disease were necessary to rid the country from "manpower
surpluses."
People in London asked Franklin how the American Colonies managed to collect
enough money to support their poorhouses, and how they could overcome this
plague of unemployment and pauperism.
Thanks to debt-free money issued by the colonial governments
Franklin replied; "We have no poorhouses in the Colonies, and if we had some,
there would be no one to put in them, since in the Colonies there is not a
single unemployed person, not a beggar nor a tramp."
His friends could not believe their ears, or understand how this could be.
They knew when the English poorhouses and jails became too cluttered, England
shipped the wretched inmates like cattle, to be dumped on the quays of the
Colonies if they survived the filth and privations of the sea voyage. (In
those days English debtors went to jail if they could not pay their debts,
and few escaped, since in jail they could not earn money.)
Franklin's acquaintences, in view of all this, asked him how he could explain
the remarkable prosperity of the New England Colonies.
Franklin told them: "Why, that is simple! In the Colonies, we issue our own
paper money. It's called 'Colonial Scrip.' We issue it to pay the
government's approved expenses and charities. We make sure it's issued in
proper proportion to make the goods pass easily from the producers to the
consumers. In other words, we make sure there is always adequate money in
circulation for the needs of the economy.
"In this manner, by creating ourselves our own paper money, we control its
purchasing power, and we have no interest to pay, to anyone. You see, a
legitimate government can both spend and lend money into circulation, while
banks can only lend significant amounts of their promissory bank notes, for
they can neither give away nor spend but a tiny fraction of the money the
people need. Thus, when your bankers here in England place money in
circulation, there is always a debt principal to be returned and usury to be
paid. The result is that you have always too little credit in circulation to
give the workers full employment. You do not have too many workers, you have
too little money in circulation, and that which circulates, all bears the
endless burden of unpayable debt and usury."
English Bankers impose poverty on the Colonies
Franklin should not have been so free with his advice, which soon came to the
attention of the powerful English Bankers. They quickly used their influence
to have the British Parliament pass a law that prohibited the Colonies from
using their Colonial Scrip money. The new law ordered them to use only credit
redeemable in gold and silver coins that were provided in insufficient
quantity by the banks of England. And so began in America the plague of debt-
based money, which has ever since brought as many hardships to the American
people, as it has to Europeans.
The first law regulating Colonial money was passed by the British Parliament
1751, then expanded by a more restrictive law in 1763.
Franklin reported that only one year after implementation of the prohibition
on Colonial Scrip, the streets of the Colonies were filled with unemployed
and beggars, just like those he had seen in England, because there was not
enough money to pay for their goods and work. The English Banker's new laws
had reduced the circulating medium by half.
Franklin added that this was "the original and true cause of the American
Revolution;" and not the tax on tea or the Stamp Act, as has been taught our
children for generations in "history" books. The Financiers (bankers) of
every generation manage to have removed from school books any information
that can throw light on their own schemes and fraudulent actions that protect
their power over the people.
Franklin, one of the chief architects of American independence, put it
clearly: "The Colonies would gladly have borne the little tax on tea and
other matters had it not been for the poverty created by the bad influence of
the English Bankers on the Parliament, which has caused in the Colonies
hatred of England and the Revolutionary War."
Other great statesmen of that era, including Thomas Jefferson, John Adams,
and George Jackson confirmed this point of view held by Franklin; and later
by Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren. Abraham Lincoln and John Kennedy both
issued sovereign money, James Garfield tried, and all three died in office.
A remarkably honest English historian, John Twells, speaking of the money of
the Colonies, their Colonial Scrip, wrote: "It was the monetary system under
which America's Colonies flourished to such an extent that Edmund Burke was
able to write about them: 'Nothing in the history of the world resembles
their progress. It was a sound and beneficial system, and its effects led to
the happiness of the people.' "
John Twells added: "In a bad hour, the British Parliament took away from
America its own scrip money, forbade any further issue of such bills of
credit, these bills ceasing to be legal tender, and ordered that all taxes
should be paid in British coins. Consider now the consequences: this
restriction of the medium of exchange paralyzed all the industrial energies
of the people. Ruin took place in these once flourishing Colonies; most
rigorous distress visited every family and every business, discontent became
desperation, and reached a point, to use the words of Dr. Johnson, when human
nature rises up and asserts its rights."
Another historical writer, Peter Cooper, expressed himself along the same
lines. After saying how Franklin had explained to members of Pa
