Triumphant Plutocracy.Cwk (WP)

8/8/2019 Triumphant Plutocracy.Cwk (WP)

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X. WHO MADE THE CONSTITUTION

I have written in some detail of theeconomicchanges and of the changes in economicpolicy thathave occurred in the United States duringthe past 50years. The first year that I went toWashington(1870) the population of Chicago was298,977; today (1920) it is 2,701,705; the population of Detroitwas 79,577; today it is 993,739; thepopulation of Minneapolis was 13,006; today it is380,582; the

population of Dakota was 14,181; today it is1,281,-569. I have watched the Middle West growfrom a


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rich.

In the halls of the Capitol at Washington, Ihavewatched these plutocrats, through theirrepresentatives on the floor of the Senate and theHouse, erectthe governmental machinery that theyrequired forthe preservation of their power. Step by stepandmove by move I fought the system of imperialismwhich the McKinley administration enabledthem toestablish as the accepted policy of thecountry. The

fight lasted twelve years. When it was over,the interests that I had opposed were thetriumphant mas


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ters of the field.

When I entered the Senate, I did notunderstandwhat it was that I was facing. When I left theSenate, because Mark Hanna and the forcesbehind

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Mark Hanna willed that I should leave, Iknew thatthe forms of our government and themachinery of its administration were established andmaintained

for the benefit of the class that held theeconomicand political power.


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I realized that the machinery of governmenthad

been constructed by the ruling economicclass to preserve and guarantee its own economicinterests.Documents like the Constitution, which I, asa child,had been taught to regard as almost divinein theirorigin, stood before me for what they wereplansprepared by business men to stabilizebusiness interests.

At the time that our Constitution was drawnup,

Adam Smith wrote of the government in the"mothercountry" (Wealth of Nations, Book V., Ch. 1,pub


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lished in 1776), "Civil government, so far asit is

instituted for the security of property, is inrealityinstituted for the defense of the rich againstthe poor,or of those who have some property againstthosewho have none at all." Again he stated (Book1,Ch. 10) , "Whenever the legislature attemptsto regulate the differences between masters andtheir workmen, its counsellors are always the masters."

Concerning this same epoch a well-knownmodern

historian writes : "During the period we arediscussing (1760-1832) . . . the classes thatpossessed au


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thority in the State, and the classes that hadacquired

the new wealth, landlords, churchmen, judges, manufacturers, one and all understood bygovernmentthe protection of society from the fate thathad overtaken the privileged classes in France." (TheTownLaborer, J. L. & B. Hammond, N. Y.Longmans,1917, p. 321). It was this government bylandlordsand manufacturers that the framers of theConstitution knew, and they knew no other. Theiridea of

government was the British idea a machinefor protecting the rich against the poor; a device forsafe-


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guarding and defending privilege against theclamorous and revolutionary demands of thepopulace.Their goal was the protection of thepropertied interests and they drew the Constitution withthat endin view.

Furthermore, it was the leading businessmen of the colonists, in their own persons, who

drew up theConstitution and forced through itsratification."The movement for the Constitution," writes


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CharlesA. Beard, the distinguished student of

AmericanGovernment, "was originated and carriedthroughprincipally by four groups of personalityinterests,which had been adversely affected under theArticlesof Confederation money, public securities,manufacturers, and trade and shipping." (AnEconomicInterpretation of the Constitution, New York,Mac-Millan 1914, p. 324.) These events transpirednearlya century-and-a-half ago, and ever since that

timewe have been building up the kind of agovernmentthat bankers, manufacturers and merchants


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neededfor their enrichment.

This point is so fundamental to a properunderstanding of what I have to say about themachineryof American Government that I desire toemphasizeit. School teachers talk to children andpublic menharangue their constituents as though theConstitution were a document drawn to establishhuman liberty. By these means our ideas as to theintentionof the framers of the Constitution have been

utterlydistorted. Anyone who wishes to know thefactsshould examine the Journal of the


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ConstitutionalConvention. There the record is as plain as

the roadat noonday. The Constitution was not drawnup tosafeguard liberty. Its framers had propertyrightsin their minds eye and property deeds intheir pockets, and its most enthusiastic supporters weretheleading bankers, manufacturers and tradersof theFederated States.

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The Constitution was made to protect therightsof property and not the rights of man.


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These facts are neither secret nor hidden.

Theyare a part of the public record that may beconsulted in any first class library. Properlyunderstood, they furnish the intellectual key thatwill openthe mind to an appreciation of many of themost important events that have occurred in theUnitedStates during the past century.

The convention that framed the Constitutionof the United States convened at Philadelphia

in 1787behind closed doors. All of the delegatesweresworn to secrecy. Madison reported the


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proceedingsof the convention in longhand and his notes

werepurchased in 1837 by Congress andpublished by theGovernment nearly half a century after theconvention had finished its work. These notesdisclose theforces that dominated the work of theconventionand show that the object which the leadersof theconvention had in view was not to create ademocracy or a government of the people, but toestablisha government by the property classes in the

interestsof the rights of property rather than the rightsof man. All through the debates ran one theme


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however dirty, to carry their point againstmen who

are superior to the artifices practiced." This istheburden of the debates through page afterpage of thetwo volumes.

The chief contention in the ConstitutionalConvention was over representation in the UnitedStatesSenate. The smaller states feared that theywouldbe dominated by the larger ones and, aftermuch debate, it was agreed that each state, no matterwhat

its wealth or population, should have twovotes in theSenate of the United States, while the Houseof Rep-


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representatives should represent the peopleand the

number of delegates from each state shouldbe inproportion to the population. As aconcession to thelarger states, a provision was insertedrequiring thatall money bills should originate in the Houseof Representatives, and this was consideredimportant, inview of the fact that the states of small areaandsmall population, such as Delaware andRhodeIsland, had an equal voice with large stateslike Vir

ginia and Pennsylvania in the Senate of theUnitedStates.


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The southern states believed they hadobtained pro

tection for their peculiar institution (slavery)by securing representation in the House of Representatives forthe slave population. At the same time, thesouthernslave-holders and the northern slave-traderscombinedto secure the insertion of a clause (Article 1,SectionIX, Clause 1) permitting the slave trade tocontinueuntil 1808.

At the time of framing the Constitution, andfor

many years thereafter, it was supposed andintendedthat the Senate should represent the stateswhile the


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House represented the people. No vestedinterest ever

thought of gaining control of the Senate forthe pur-

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pose of advancing the commercial orfinancial positionof any combination, corporation orindividual. It wasnot until a third of a century after theadoption of theConstitution that the southern states began tolookto the Senate for the protection of their

interests andto insist upon the admission of a slave statewhenevera free state asked for admission to the Union.


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The immediate purpose behind the creation

of aSenate that was not elected by the people,but thatcame from the state legislatures and thusspoke inname of states rather than of masses of citizens, wasthe protection of the small colonies againstthe largeones. The interests that dominated both the.small andthe large colonies, however, were thebusiness interests. Therefore, this struggle between thosewhowanted one form of Senate and those who

wanted another was a struggle between contendingand competing business groups. It was not in any sense


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a strugglebetween the champions of liberty and the

advocates of property rights.

This fact is made evident by an examinationof theinterests of these men who made up theConstitutionalConvention of 1787. There were fifty-fivedelegatespresent in the Convention. A majority werelawyers ;most of them came from towns; there wasnot onefarmer, mechanic or laborer among them;five-sixthshad property interests. Of the 55 members,

40 ownedrevolutionary scrip ; 14 were landspeculators ; 24 weremoney-lenders; 11 were merchants; 15 were


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slaveholders. Washington, the big man of the

Convention,was a slave-holder, land speculator and alarge scripowner.

Jefferson was in France!

The Constitution, as framed by theConvention, saysnothing about the rights of man. It containsno guarantee of free speech, of free press, of freeassemblage,or of religious liberty. It breathes no singlehint of freedom. It was made by men who believed

in the

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English theory, that all governments arecreated toprotect the rights of property in the hands of thosewho do not produce it.

The revolutionary scrip-paper money, tofinance theRevolutionary War, had been used to pay forsuppliesand to pay the wages of the men that did thefighting.In the years that followed the war, this scriphad beenbought up by the financiers and great land-owners and

their attorneys for about nine cents on thedollar. TheConstitution, as adopted, made it worth onehundred


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cents on the dollar. This is but one of themany facts

which prove that the Constitution, as drawnup by theConvention, was made to protect the rightsof propertyrather than the rights of man.

Throughout the document the framers werecarefulto guard against too much democracy. TheGovernment was erected in three parts legislative,executiveand judicial each with a check on the othertwo. TheHouse of Representatives alone was electeddirectly by

the people, but all of its legislative acts weresubjectto revision or rejection by the Senate, themembers of


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which were to be selected, not by popularvote but by

the vote of the state legislatures. Thus, eventhe legislative branch of the Government did notrepresent thepopular will. If the legislative branch hadbeen responsible to the people, there were still thePresident,elected, not by the vote of the people, but bythe voteof electors, who were elected by the people;and, lastof all, and by no means the least, from thepoint of viewof the vested interests, there was theSupreme Court

its members selected by the President,confirmed by theSenate, sitting for life. Over these supreme

judges,


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the people could not exercise even anindirect control.

This was the Constitution drawn up whileThomas

Jefferson was in France. It was submitted tothe statesfor ratification and the states refused toaccept it. Inall probability it never would have beenratified hadThomas Jefferson not returned from Franceandthrown his great influence in favor of thefirst ten

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amendments the Bill of Rights that wasadded to the


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Constitution by its business backers, as thenecessary

price of its adoption by the people.Article I of these Amendments reads :

"Congress shall make no law respecting anestablishment of religion, or prohibiting thefree exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press; or theright of the people peaceably to assembleand to petition the Government for redress of grievances."

Article IV of the Amendments provides :

"The right of the people to be secure intheir persons, houses, paper and effects,against unreasonable searches and seizures,

shall not be violated; and no warrants shallissue but upon probable cause, supported byoath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons


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or things to be seized."

These are the principal guarantees of liberty,inserted in the Constitution after theConvention of business men had finished its work, and insertedbecausethe people insisted upon having them there.

Even at that, the Constitution is a lukewarmdocument. In it there are no such burning wordsas thosewritten by Thomas Jefferson thirteen yearsearlier andpublished as the Declaration of Independence: "We

hold these truths to be self-evident, that allmen arecreated free and equal and are endowed bytheir Cre


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ator with certain inalienable rights; thatamong these

are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.That tosecure these rights, governments areinstituted amongmen, deriving their just powers from theconsent of the governed ; that whenever any form of governmentbecomes destructive of these ends it is theright of the people to alter or abolish it, and toinstitute a new

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government, laying its foundations on suchprinciplesand organizing its power in such form as


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shall seemto them most likely to effect their safety and

happiness."

It was not until 1861, when AbrahamLincoln delivered his first inaugural address, that the rightof revolution was definitely proclaimed by aresponsible statesman, acting under the Constitution. "Thiscountry,"Lincoln said on that occasion, "with itsinstitutions belongs to the people who inhabit it.Whenever theyshall grow weary of the existing government,

they canexercise their constitutional right of amendment, ortheir revolutionary right to dismember or


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erty rights, and, through the century and aquarter

that it has endured, it has served its purposeso wellthat it stands today, not only as the chief bulwark of American privilege and vested wrong, but asthe greatest document ever designed by man for thesafeguarding of the few in their work of exploiting androbbingthe many.

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