Chapter XII Creditalism Vs. Capitalism

gone to war — sure, it would have been a total war, and we would not have had the rank abuse of rank that some would get more pay — private to general, janitor to superintendent would have been well fed and clothed, and paid a small stipend for fun and recreation. Oh! You wouldn't like that? I didn't think you would. Neither did those privates who slithered on bellies in mud to reach the foxhole only to be mangled by a bomb. If a boy 18 may be compelled to face that, why should you escape? Yep; that's right. There'd be no war, if every person had to serve without profit or hope of reward other than victory. Cut out blatant flag-waving, battle-dodging, profit-stealing patriots, and you'll cut out war? 2. At the close of the war, the re-adjustment would have been an easy, a painless, and an inexpensive task. All persons would have returned to their pre-war stations. Everyone's business would have been restored to him as it was before the war — same invoice, same location, farm, forest or whatever the business was before the war: same stock, implements, tools or equivalent values of each. Every pre-war employed person would return to his pre-war job and pre-war pay, picking up threads of life where he left them when the war took over. No one would be any richer or poorer, unless he had saved some of his war pay. Every depositor would have his pere-war account unfrozen and added to such deposits as he saved from his war pay. A short while ago the vice-president of a Dallas bank said, "Another depression is ahead, and when it comes it will be a honey." He must have felt that his dumb slaves would do nothing about it. Remember what the President of the American Bankers Association said to his fellows assembled in Baltimore, in 1931: "We the men assembled in this hall, we men who control the economic destiny of this nation, knew in 1927 this terrible depression was coming, and we did nothing about it." And he could have quoted the American Bankers as having said, in a circular to all bankers, in 1891: "We authorize our loan agents in the Western States to loan funds on good real estate to fall due on September 1, 1894, and at no time thereafter. And on and after that date we will not renew our loans under any consideration, but