Direct Credits for Everybody
By Alfred Lawson

CHAPTER 13

The Benefits of Direct Credits

The benefits that will come from stopping the interest outpour and adopting Direct Credits for Everybody, will have such far-reaching effects that the character of man will be lifted to a higher and better plane, both intellectually and spiritually.

Humans, from the lowest to the highest level, will be able to elevate themselves. Those who are down will have a chance to get up, and those who are up, will have a chance to stay up.

Unlimited opportunities will be unloosed for everybody. The cruel machine of the money snatchers will no longer grind out the lives, hopes, and ambitions of men, women and children.

The chain that strangles people of all stations will be broken, and they will be free to expand and grow as they have never been permitted to grow before. What heights will man not reach when the financial shackles are removed from him?

In the first place, children, from the helpless little creatures just born, up to those 21 years of age, will enjoy equal credits from the government. These credits will be sufficient to pay for everything necessary for their development to the highest point of efficiency within the power of each to reach.

Is there anything more humane, sensible or practical than that?

From the humane standpoint, surely nobody will begrudge the children the nourishment and attention necessary to build up their little bodies and minds to the utmost capacity.

Still, when we uphold the present financial system that is just what we are all doing. We are cheating children, all over the world, out of their nourishment and a chance to develop properly. We do it because we are thoughtless and selfish and will not change the monstrous system that does it. To uphold such a system makes us all guilty of the bad results caused by it. No use saying we are not responsible; we are, individually and collectively.

How can we expect the Greater Power that has been kind to us, to let us have continued health, success and happiness if we uphold this barbarous system of child mangling? Remember this when misfortune overtakes you.

To give a bite to a starving baby on Christmas may be charity, and some people may derive pleasure from knowing that they are better situated than the tiny neglected starving infant, but that kind of charity must stop. Yes, stop forever. And by all of the decent instincts within us, it will stop just as soon as we realize our fiendish deeds and abolish the degrading system of interest grabbing and adopt the scientific and unselfish system of Direct Credits for Everybody.

Under Direct Credits for Everybody children will not get charity but justice. They will get what they are naturally entitled to. They will be fed, and clothed, and housed, and trained properly because it is right, and because it is due them according to all laws of common decency.

And this newer treatment for all children, will not only be humane, just and decent, but it will also be the most sensible, practical and economic thing to do for the benefit of everybody.

To make all children well and strong, instead of allowing most children to become sick and weak, is to increase the strength and character of the whole nation as well as to increase the quantity of its wealth.

All children brought up under the most favorable conditions will return to the nation rearing them, after reaching maturity, a hundred times more wealth, to be enjoyed by everybody, than the original cost of their early training, besides paying back the amount given them in credits.

Even the most ignorant and selfish stock breeder knows that he must feed his calves until they grow up and are able to give him milk. And even the calf knows that after it matures it will be its duty to repay with milk the cost of its early care and attention.

And under the Direct Credits system the child will grow up with the knowledge and understanding of the responsibilities before it, and will appreciate, as it grows older, the opportunities afforded it to pay its way through life instead of having had to accept charity in all of its hideous forms.

So the nation that treats all of its children right will live to see all of its children treat everybody right. As we do unto the children when they are young, so they will do unto us when we are old.

Just as children need physical nourishment, so do they require mental training. Equal opportunities must be given to every child to develop its intellect through the process of education. Not alone through the lower grades of schooling, but through the higher grades as well.

To those who have shown exceptional ability for intellectual pursuits and a desire to continue study after reaching the age of 21, special extra credits will be arranged by the government for that purpose.

But for the great majority of healthy human beings, the period for serious work will begin at the age of 21, and end, for those who want it to end, at 65 years of age.

That will give to each individual 44 years in which to earn his complete living expenses for life. And it will put him upon a self-supporting basis whereby he can respect himself and everybody else.

It will do away with the fear of the future and eliminate the cause for cheating, stealing, hoarding and all forms of prostitution.

The greatest honors will go to those who have done the best work and not to those who have hoarded the largest portion of wealth.

Man will never amount to much anyway until he can look upon wealth as we now look upon air and water—something to be denied to no one.

Think of the terrible injustice done to the individual over 65 years of age who has given 44 years of his best efforts to the production of everybody's wealth, and then, without means of support, is left to shuffle and die for want of nourishment and the comforts that he worked so hard to furnish others during his strongest years.

Charity? No! He doesn't want that abominable stuff from people he has given his life's services to and then who throw to him a bone out of pity as is flung to a homeless cur. He wants justice, for during those 44 years of service he has earned his upkeep for the entire period of his life. Moreover, he is honestly entitled to it, and it must be given to him.

And that is just what he will get according to the modern system of Direct Credits for Everybody. He will get justice when he is old and feeble just as children will get justice when they are young and feeble.

The old and feeble of today, who were the middle-aged and strong of yesterday, fed and cared for the young and feeble then, and if those who were fed and cared for then, will not, when middle-aged and strong, turn about and care for their former care-takers when they have grown old and weak, then they are as dogs who bite the hands that have fed them.

The system of Direct Credits will work for everybody. It will give work to everybody, opportunities to everybody, credit to everybody, money to everybody, nourishment to everybody, comforts to everybody, education to everybody, character to everybody, intelligence to everybody, and justice to everybody.

It will let Capital live in a clean way. It will let Labor co-operate with Capital on a fair basis. It will make Capital and Labor staunch friends who will work together in harmony for the benefit of everybody.

It will allow reasonable profits to the manufacturers and merchants. It will give high wages to workmen so they can purchase what they need from the merchants and utilize every useful thing made by the manufacturers.

It will develop the most economic wealth producing inventions and machinery. It will make wealth as cheap as water and eradicate the cause of human beings quarreling over it.

It will reduce the number of hours workmen toil, and afford them more time for intellectual pursuits. It will permit mankind to rise above this petty civilization and develop the intelligence necessary to understand the greater things of life.

Return to Contents.
Return to Home Page.

Please mail to: WebMaster@Lawsonomy.org should you have questions or concerns about this site.