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Interest Collection Swindle. When you see the picture of the financiers’ tout in the newspapers and read how his great-grand-father fought, bled and died for your sake you become enthused and excited over that picture and you feel as if you would bleed, and die for the tout. And woe unto anyone who would say anything against him. Now, let us look into your organizations for a minute or two. You merchants, for instance, belong to Merchants’ Associations. Well, I want to tell you Merchants that I know more about Merchants’ Associations than you do because I have had greater experience with a larger number of them than you have had. When I was engaged in building the foundation of the Aircraft Industry and Airlines, I received invitations from Merchants’ organizations in every city, town and village of the United States to visit them in reference to locating an airplane factory or airport in their respective vicinities. I was a guest at their luncheons. What did I learn after I had finally succeeded in digesting their lunches? Well, I found out that those Merchants’ Associations were not run by merchants at all but by financiers. All that the merchants had to do was to pay their monthly dues, appear at the lunches, and the financier did the rest. Of all the Merchants’ Associations that I visited in the United States during a period of a quarter of a century I cannot recall one that was run by merchants. I found in each and every case that it was the financier who pulled the strings of the organization. |
Merchants are Merchants and the most of them have to keep
their noses at the grind-stone from twelve to sixteen hours a day just
to meet their interest and taxes. They do not have the time to
learn the tricks of the financier. They never know why everything
seems to work against them. They don’t know that the financier
uses their so-called Merchants’ Association to put them out of
business and makes them pay dues to do it. They don’t know
that the financier that runs their Merchants’ Association intends
putting them out of business so he can put his own stores in their
places. But Merchants’ Associations are not the only organizations that the financier controls. He controls all organizations, as far as I can learn, except the Direct Credits Society. He has the manufacturer by the throat and is choking the life out of him. Poor devils—I was a manufacturer myself, so I know what I am talking about. The manufacturers are the goats who stand between the Devil and the deep sea. The financier is the Devil and the deep sea is Labor. The workman wants more pay and the financier says less pay and more interest. Today it is the financier who decides the wage scale and the purchasing power of wages, but the laboring man does not know that and blames the manufacturer for his low wages and lesser purchasing power. The financier says to the manufacturer, “Pay labor less wages or I will lend you no more money,” and the manufacturer has to do it. Then Labor goes on strikes and ruins the manufacturer and the financier takes his plant for back interest. |