There has always been on earth, since the days of Cain and Abel, men who tried to dominate their brethren in ways other than by legitimate authority. Besides, the latter is a function of the common good, whereas the domination by private individuals is a function of pride or covetousness.
The shepherd peoples were fighting for pasture lands; the Indians of America, for hunting and fishing grounds. The Danes, the Norse, like the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths, were seeking for territories of more abundant or easier wealth than in their countries of origin.
At least, it was for wealth, for useful goods, that they were fighting for, not for the sign.
The sign, money, has taken primacy over the real wealth.
There again, if we are not misled in reading between the lines, it seems to us that, for a long time, they exerted themselves to keep the sign scarcer than the thing. The money controllers have seen to it that money was absent, even though the product was there.
We see, for example, in the Gospel, Judas who made this remark: "For this ointment might have been sold for much, and given to the poor." (cf. Matt 26:9.)
The sale of the ointment and the distribution of money to the poor would not have placed one more loaf of bread on the shelf of the storekeeper, and yet money in the hands of the poor would have allowed them to eat. Does this not mean that, even in that time, there were more things offered than of money to buy them?
The life of Saint Augustine shows us the young man, who was not yet in the priesthood, seeking for the position of Rhetor at the University of Milan, because of the remuneration attached to the function. They were eight aspirants; all eight were competent. He obtained the position, thanks to the patronage of the city prefect. Therefore, there was also in that time an abundance of services to offer, compared with the capacity to pay the employments. One would also practice patronage.
Moliere was a famous French comedy playwright who lived in the seventeenth century. In his play L'Amour medecin (Love is medicine), Sganarelle, not knowing how to dispel the melancholy of his daughter, seeks advice from his two neighbors – one, a tapestry-maker; the other, a goldsmith. The tapestry-maker answers: "Give her tapestries." The goldsmith says: "Give her jewels." Both seek the sale of their merchandise. In the seventeenth century, was the problem then already of selling, more perhaps than of producing?
Obviously, with the growing specialization of work, which claims a parallel increase of the system of exchanges, and particularly with mechanized production, motorized today, the contrast between the abundant wealth and the rare sign is much more striking and more exasperating.
Before also, it was individuals or localized groups who exploited the others in a territory rather limited. Often in the margin of the law. Such as the usurers of the Middle Ages.
Today, usury is legalized, exploitation is centralized and enjoying the protection of the governments in all of the civilized countries.
How were we brought to that?
An important stage was certainly the foundation of the Bank of England and the privilege given to private individuals to issue the nation's money by getting the nation into debt. The year 1694 could be considered as the birthday of the international monster. Even though there have been precursory monsters everywhere, there was wealth to distribute or to sweep off.
This is how Christopher Hollis relates the foundation of the Bank of England in his book The Breakdown of Money, pages 49 and 50:
"In 1694 the government of King William III (of England) was in sore straits for money to pursue a war. He was not in a rather strong position to raise enough money by taxes.
"A London company of rich men under the leadership of one William Paterson offered to lend King William £1,200,000 at 8 per cent on the condition that'the Governor and Company of the Bank of England', as they called themselves, should have the right to issue notes to the full extent of its capital.
"That is to say, the Bank got the right to collect £1,200,000 in gold and silver, and to turn it into £2,400,000; lending £1,200,000, the gold and silver, to the Government, and using the other £1,200,000, the bank-notes, themselves.
"This was to confer to the Bank a privilege all the way to royalty — that of making up money for England.
"William Paterson knew very well all the significance of the obtained privilege, and he wrote:
"If the proprietors of the Bank can circulate their own foundation of'twelve thousand pounds without having more than two or three hundred thousand pounds lying dead at one time with another, this operation will actually bring to the nation from nine hundred thousand pounds to a million pounds of fresh money."
"In practice they did not even keep a cash reserve of two or three hundred thousand pounds. By 1696 we find them circulating £1,750,000 worth of notes against a crash reserve of only £36,000 (barely 2% reserve)."
This is therefore a private company, the Bank of England, which became more powerful than the king, more powerful than any governments of England.
From the very beginning of this exploiters'seizure on the common good, it is found that the new monetary machine functions especially to finance wars.
The machine extended to other civilized countries, and it functions with the same spirit: keep money tight so that we be always at the doors of the money creators, who are at the same time the debt creators. In wartime, the machine takes speed to finance the slaughter. Moreover with appreciable profits.
President Roosevelt well said, in a speech: "I do know of one single war that has been won or lost by the very fact of its finance". It is men and the material that decide the war. That does not prevent us from paying it to some financiers when the war is ended.
The monster therefore received a charter in England in 1694. It has been consolidated in 1844, and perfected by Mr. Baldwin in 1928.
In the next article, we are giving some information on the way that the monster stretched out its claws on America.
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