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Title: Our Social System
Author: David Andrew Andrade
Date: 1890
Language: en
Topics: anti-capitalist, Australia, individualist, mutualism, Melbourne Anarchist Club
Source: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Our_Social_System

David Andrew Andrade

Our Social System

“I have said a hundred times, and I will repeat it till I die, that our

old form of society is dying.” To many, these words of Chateaubriand may

sound ridiculous, and merely the pessimistic wail of a false prophet;

but others, who have carefully studied the world in which they live, and

taken account of the violent internal struggles which are torturing the

society of the present day, will know that the statement is any but a

rash one, and that there are forces now at work in our midst which, if

they succeed in developing their influence much more fully, will ere

long wreck our civilization as they have wrecked so many grand

civilisations in the past.

What is the nature of our civilization? What is the controlling force

which is guiding our destinies, and regulating our actions towards our

fellowmen? What is the nature of the system; is it operating for good or

evil; could it be replaced by a better, or a worse, one; are its

elements preservative or self-destructive? Is our social system a

success, or is it a failure? These questions are to be considered in the

following pages, and considered fairly and squarely. This is recognized

to be a scientific age—an age of facts: let the facts then answer.

We pride ourselves on our system, which we call “civilized,” and compare

it with those primitive forms of society which we call “barbarian.” We

point at our grand works of art, our wondrous discoveries in science,

our massive buildings, railways, telegraphs, tunnels, bridges, shipping,

mining appliances, and machinery of all kinds; and then we drop a

sympathetic tear on the poor heathen who haven’t these luxuries. Oh, the

glories of civilization!

But when we begin to ask more about it, we see things in a slightly

different light. The grand works of art are here, true enough; but we

soon find out that those who have been most active in their production

are rarely the ones who can afford to enjoy their beauty. Wonderful

scientific discoveries are constantly being made, but the reward is to

the speculating capitalist and not to the inventor. No sooner is a thing

produced than it passes into the hands of others: the builders of ships

cannot afford to travel in them; those who construct our railways cannot

afford the luxury of steam locomotion; tramways are constructed, and

they build fortunes for those who do not make them; builders do not

inhabit the fine houses they build, but live in wretched tenements only

fitted for the population of the farm yard; engineers and mechanics make

machinery with which to drive themselves and their fellow-workers from

remunerative employment; the miners bring up coal, which heats the

boilers of capitalists, while their own hearths are fireless; they delve

into the bowels of the earth for iron which they afterwards forge into

guns and cannons for their own destruction; and they toil beneath the

earth’s surface to bring up gold and silver, which they then convert

into coin to hamper their exchanges with their fellow-laborers, and to

make them poorer wherever it circulates. Notwithstanding all the giant

strides which are constantly being made in all the branches of invention

and industry, the worker’s condition only seems to get worse, and he

finds himself at the mercy of those who work not themselves but

accumulate the wealth of others. Oh! The glories of civilization!

Civilization is the dwelling together in society; and a civilization is

successful so far as it is associated with harmony. Civil warfare,

political intrigue, and internal strife of all kinds, are its

destruction. Mutual peace and individual prosperity mark its success.

Which course are we now pursuing?

Surely, if ever a people were well ruled, we of the present day may

claim to be so. Centuries ago, Aristotle is said to have perfected the

art of government, and we have been improving on him ever since, until

the individual has become almost forgotten and the State is supreme.

Whether it be a theocracy, autocracy, limited monarchy, or republic,

which keeps guard over our actions, we find in all alike the one common

political basis—the division of the people into the rulers and the

ruled. The government may differ in form, but they are alike in fact:

whatever they may be called, presidents are virtually kings,

plutocracies are intensified aristocracies, elections are conquests, and

elective rule is not better than hereditary rule. Whatever the form of

government, they are all marked by this general characteristic—they all

rest upon APPROPRIATION and EXPLOITATION.

Wherever the fiction of political property has been allowed to become

carried into practice, there slavery, in some form or other, is found to

underlie the social structure. It may be a primitive form of chattel

slavery, where the unfortunate toiler is bartered as so much merchandize

by those who have deprived him of his natural heritage in the world’s

wealth; or it may have developed into a form of feudalism, where he

becomes part of the soil he cultivates and is bought and sold along with

it by the baron who owns him; or it may have still further developed

into the modern system of landlordism, where the disinherited is free to

work for the proprietor, upon the latter’s terms, but with the only

alternative of starvation if he refuses. It is ever the same in effect;

those who have appropriated the world to which all are justly entitled,

hold in slavery the millions whom they have expropriated and live upon

the results of their toil. Mulhall[1] estimates that in the countries of

Europe, with the exception of some holding very small areas, only 6 in

every 100 of the population own the land in many instances; 14 in one

instance; 4 in every 100 in three cases; and in the United Kingdom, only

1 in every 200. In Australasia,[2] a similar monopoly of the land

prevails. Out of a population of three million people, there are 167,000

landowners and 19,011 squatters in possession of the land, of which

64,100,000 acres are held freehold, and 539,040,000 acres are used as

sheep runs, while the remaining 1,365,119,840 acres are held by the

respective governments, who keep them for the most part in idleness.

There is a situation for a newly-settled community to be placed in! Only

6% of the population owning land in Australasia; or 117 of the entire

population possessing ⅓ of the entire soil! Of course, from such a tree,

we must expect unpleasant fruits. The many, who have not a share in this

monopoly must reward those who have, in order to obtain access to the

soil from which they must necessarily draw their subsistence. For the

privilege of being permitted to work, they pay to those who have stolen

their birthright a part of what they produce by their exertions, and it

is called rent. Rent is the amount paid by the laborer to the usurper

for the right to use the soil which he has appropriated. And the State

holds guard behind him, and with all the machinery of law, police, and

executive, compels him to render up the blackmail which the idle

proprietor extorts from him.

Not only does the laborer find his efforts checked by the almost

unsurmountable monopoly which the creation of property has put in his

way but even when he has passed that barrier, when he has succeeded in

satisfying the demands of the proprietor, by agreeing to work for the

latter’s profit, he instantly confronts a new obstacle. He dare not

exchange his product with the product of another, without first paying

toll to privilege. There is only one medium of exchange which he is

permitted to use, and that is scarce and difficult of acquirement,

besides which he cannot borrow it without returning increase upon it as

recompense for its use. But as this monopolized money—this gold—has no

inherent power of increase, and he cannot return more of it than he has

borrowed, he is compelled to give up more of the products of his labor

to satisfy the demands of those who lend him the legalized means of

exchange. He may not know that a little bit of paper issued between

himself and those with whom he exchanges would answer all the

requirements of the case equally well, if not better, but those who rule

him know it also, and as it is their function to protect the interests

of property, and as property is the right to exploit labor, by the

creation of monopoly, so the ruler steps between them and enacts a bit

of human insolence called a law, which legalizes the monopolized means

of exchange and prohibits the recognition of a more just one, and thus

enables the monopolizers of the currency to extort an increase for a

loan of the money, which to the borrower is worse than useless, but

which he is compelled to employ. This increase for the use of money is

called interest, or more correctly, usury. Of course, those who own the

money, can buy the land; and those who own the land can often borrow the

money and pay the increase out of the proceeds of the laborer; while the

poor laborer himself, exploited by landlord and usurer, remains the

slave to both of them, and provides all the nourishment for them as well

as himself. The monetary possessions of Australasia are calculated to be

£19,000,000—£13,000,000 of which are in gold, £1,000,000 in silver, and

£5,000,000 in paper. The total banking power is estimated at

£85,000,000. For the “use” of this, the bankers of Australasia draw

dividends averaging 12%; or, in other words, they fleece the public out

of about £10,000,000 per annum. Not only are the usurers enabled to

extort increase upon the gold they put into circulation (and gold is the

only legal tender), but they are actually empowered to take interest

upon their paper issue, which is not money at all, but only a promise to

pay money—a printed acknowledgement of a debt! J. Sandlant[3] gives some

very instructive particulars on this point; “A banker is allowed by the

State for a merely nominal consideration to issue two of paper to one of

bullion he may or is supposed to possess. On this principle, the six

different private banks in New Zealand, holding two millions of bullion,

could issue four millions of paper money... Now these four millions of

paper note issue become interest-bearing bonds to these banks directly

they are issued... Since then, by the act of issue, they become

interest-bearing bonds, let us see how they react upon society. When £5%

is charged, a depression will occur about every ten or twelve years,

that is when worked in conjunction with profits arising from discount on

bills of recommendation, varying in the rate of time with the charge

made for discount. The Bank of England returns for 1847, 1857, and 1866,

convincingly prove the truth of this statement. These depressions were

by the unthinking attributed to the scarcity of money, but were not; in

reality depressions are the offspring of interest and the revertionary

powers of interest. So then the two millions of bullion held by the six

different Colonial Banks, by the addition of four millions of paper note

issue which the possession of this two millions of bullion empowers them

to employ, would, if fully used at 5%, give them a capital of eight

million in a little over fourteen years, and that without any of the

coin lying in the coffers of these banks; and this result is obtained

without taking into consideration or account the profits arising from

the discount on bills which could much more than pay the expense of

management.” That is the way the financiers amass their unearned

fortunes wherever the monopoly of money exists. They succeed in

demanding every year an ever-extending increase on the gold they lend

out, and the promises to pay the gold which they have not; and this, in

spite of the fact that the world’s gold supply is diminishing each year,

and is totally useless to measure the increasing commerce between the

nations. And the workers never cease toiling to satisfy the insatiable

demands of usury, and to pay the interest upon the millions they are

supposed to owe. Of course, the whole of this is paid for by the

laborers out of their own products. Not even do the capitalists pay any

portion of it, for they are only speculators interposing between the

usurer and the laborer and joining in the plunder of the latter. All the

interest which the capitalist is called upon to pay for the money

loaned, he first takes from those he employs or from those laborers who

purchase the product of his employees. Labor not only pays all rents,

but it pays all usury as well. Thus is the laborer bled. Monopoly first

checks production, and usury follows to check consumption.

It is labor alone which supplies all human wants. It has produced in the

past all the capital it now employs, and it is producing all the capital

which will be employed in the future. Capital is ephemeral; but labor is

always creative. The total estimated wealth of Australasia, in 1882, was

£590,000,000; and income was £133,000,000, or nearly 1/4 of the capital.

In other words, the workers produced in one year a quarter of the wealth

that was around them. So that had it been possible for production to

cease, and for everything to be consumable, in 4 years, not a shred

would have been left to show that capital, or product, had ever existed.

It is the laborer alone who carries on civilization, satisfied all human

wants, and keeps the race alive.

And what about the capitalist—the good, kind, benevolent employer, to

whom the expropriated and exploited laborer goes hat in hand, cringing

for the privilege of being permitted to work? What is his place in our

social system? It is to extort another huge slice out of the worker, by

buying his services as much beneath their true value as he can possibly

procure them, and selling them as much above their worth as the

circumstances will permit him to extort. The more extensive his trade,

the greater will be his power over his employees. The wealth he has

accumulated from his laborers gives him the power to regulate commerce.

He can make trade dull or brisk as he desires. He has so much wealth

stored by him that he can rest on his oars when he wants to do so,

living on the reserves. This the laborer cannot do, for his earnings

have nearly all gone to others, and he only retains for himself enough

to sustain him for the day. If the capitalist wants to swell his

profits, he can form a ring with other capitalists and raise the prices

charged to consumers, or he can combine with them to make a corner on

the market by buying up an article of necessity and charging an

unusually exorbitant price for it. If the laborer wants to better his

condition under the existing conditions he cannot do it. His wages—that

is a small fraction of his product which is returned to him by his

so-called employer—are kept down to the lowest level on which he can

subsist, and he is worse off than a chattel slave. As John Adams said,

when drawing up the Constitution of the United States of America, “What

mattes whether you give the food and clothes to the slave direct, or

whether you just give him enough in wages to purchase the same?” The

laborer need not hope for a reasonable wage. The capitalist has but to

dismiss some of his hands, or fill their places with labor-saving

machinery which other laborers have invented and constructed, and those

thrown out of employment will immediately underbid those employed in

order to be reinstated. If the latter do not accede to a reduction of

wage, he will be dismissed to make room for the one who offers his

services cheaper. If the workers form a union, and strike for higher

wages, they cannot hold out as long as the capitalists to whom they have

given up nearly the whole of their product, but surrender as soon as

their idleness reduces them to poverty. Under the present system, where

the wage-receiver works for a profit-taker, he can never retain his

independence, or retain the fruits of his labor. If he is paid £1 for

his work, and the product thereof is sold for £5, he is unable to

re-purchase it, but must be content with a fifth part. The census of the

United States of America, for 1880,[4] shows that the daily average

product of each wage-worker in manufacturing industry was valued at $10,

while the daily average wage he received was but $1.15. That is not

one-eighth of his earnings. And that is the very home of industrialism.

It is probably a shade better elsewhere, but only a shade. The available

statistics do not show the Australian laborer’s position in this dismal

picture; but it may be safely concluded that his condition is not much

better than that of his American comrade, for his is a profitable field

for commercial speculation; and, of course, where the speculator’s

profits are large, the laborer’s losses must be large in the exact

proportion. The annual commerce of Australasia is £90,000,000; the gross

earnings of labor in 1882, were £133,000,000. Let us try to make an

approximate estimate of how those earnings are spent. The laborers paid

in that year for taxation, £15,000,000;[5] the rent they paid to the

land monopolists, estimated at say 10% on the value of estates, amounted

to £19,000,000; the interest they paid to financiers for hampering their

exchanges was £10,000,000; and business profits, calculated at 75%[6] on

the merchantable commodities, were £67,000,000. This will leave the

remuneration to the laborers at £22,000,000, or about 1/6 of their

product, which is probably a fair estimate. The following will

accordingly represent, as nearly as possible, a statement of

How the Australasian Laborers Spend Annual Earnings.

Taxes - £15,000,000

Rent @ 10% on estates’ value (£190,000,000) - 19000000

Interest @ over 12% - 10000000

Profits @ 75% on merchantable commodities - 67000000

Remuneration to labor - 22000000

———————

Total earnings of Labor - £133,000,000

Henry Thoreau has splendidly shown by his own experience how prolific

are the rewards of labor, and in what ease, comfort, and luxury, the

worker may live where his fellow does not prey upon him. Living as he

did in the woods, almost isolated from his fellows, deprived of the

advantages which contact with them and their products would bring him,

and at the mercy of wild creatures who constantly destroyed his crops,

he enjoyed a life such as not one in a thousand of the city laborers has

any taste of, and was never troubled with the demon of Want. “For more

than five years,” he wrote, “I maintained myself thus solely by the

labor of my hands; and I found that by working about six weeks in a year

I could meet all the expenses of living.” If this solitary individual

could produce so much with so little labor living under conditions of

relative freedom, how much more could these poor city wage-slaves

produce by their united efforts, assisted by the wonderful industrial

appliances of civilised life, were they also free to produce their own

necessities without having to bear the yoke of legalized robbery?

But have we not a government to protect us? some will ask. Yes: and you

have seen how it protects you from the aggressions of others, by making

you subservient to the landlord and the usurer from whom you are unable

to extricate yourselves. But, alas, that is not all. Government not only

fails to protect you against the ravages of others, but it does not

protect you against the ravages of itself. It taxes you at every turn;

and dearly do you have to pay for its services—always paying more than

its worth for what you need, or else paying for what you do not need.

And the whole taxation is paid by the laborer, as we have already seen,

out of his own products. No one else pays any taxes. If a merchant pays

a tax, he charges it to his customer, who may be a laborer, or who, if

he is not, will charge it to the laborer he employs. Government grants

you “protection,” does it? Yes, it erects a custom-house barrier at your

boundaries to protect the local capitalist, who employs you, from the

competition of the capitalist afar off, as it would tend to reduce the

price which the local capitalist charges for the goods you re-purchase

of him. The tariff your Government collects is charged for the buyer,

plus the usual profits, and labor again pays the whole bill. Perhaps you

may boast of the glorious “free trade” which your Government bestows

upon you. Poor deluded creatures! how do you expect to trade freely,

when you own nothing to trade with, when the land on which you work

belongs to others, when the tools and machinery you employ are theirs,

your exchanges are hampered by a monopolized money system, you are bled

by interest, and capitalistic monopolists form rings to defeat and rob

you and eternally extort profit out of your labors? Free trade, indeed?

No: there is no Government which affords Protection to labor, or allows

it facilities to enjoy Free Trade; they all exist to enforce the very

reverse of these things, by fostering Monopoly and Exploitation. The

Australasian Governments tax an annual revenue of £15,000,000 from the

working people of these colonies, and expend £20,000,000 in the same

time, leaving the laborers a deficit of £5,000,000 to be met with loans

payable with interest. The expenditure in 53 years (1830-82) was

£420,000,000, and the revenue collected only £315,000,000, leaving labor

indebted for the sum of £105,000,000, owing for nothing at all. All

public debts are fictitious obligations which are owed by labor to

idleness. The National Debt of Australasia in 1882, was

£97,000,000,—equal to £34 per inhabitant owing to the usurers for no

services rendered. It was also equal to 16% of the total wealth of the

colonies, and paid interest at the rate of 4 7/10 % or 3 1/2% of the

total income. All these so-called “debts,” and all the loans we receive

from the usurers, may be demanded in gold when the time comes for their

repayment; but of course the demand could never be met: the National

Debt alone is more than seven times the amount of gold we possess. So

the only way these bogus debts can be met is by borrowing fresh loans to

pay them with; and these, of course, bear interest and grow

eternally,—while the bankers live in idleness and affluence on the

products which they filch from labor in the name of interest.

The worker’s indebtedness to the idler is getting worse and worse as

time goes on. England’s experience in the last half-century shows what

will be the certain fate of the civilized world if some remarkable

change does not take place in the nature of our social system. There the

worker’s lot has steadily got worse. Between 1837 and 1887, the

population of the United Kingdom increased 42%, and had other things

remain relatively equal they would have shown a like increase. But such

was not the case. While the increase in population during the

half-century[7] was but 42%, the revenue had increased 73%; or in other

words, the worker’s burden of taxation had become 31% harder to bear.

And yet the country as a whole had become proportionally 82% wealthier.

But it need not be wondered at that the laborer’s condition did not

advance, considering that the trade, resting as it did on

profit-plundering, had grown to be 430% more extensive (still allowing

for the increased trade due to increased population); and the banking

transactions, which all the time were plundering the laborers, had made

an advance of 530% in excess of the advance of population! Everything in

the way of labor’s exploitation had advanced with prodigious strides.

But the lot of the laborer had become worse. The worker’s earnings,

since 1840, had only increased 25%, while the rents alone had increased

150%. Add to that the losses enumerated above, and then say whether such

“national progress” is progress on the part of the producer or of the

thief.

What the world’s money may amount to, and how it is distributed, can

never be accurately known; but it is a certainty that it is steadily

becoming concentrated into fewer hands. It has been estimated that

twenty millionaires (out of a population of nearly 600,000,000), alone

own wealth amounting to £145,000,000 (many authorities say much more);

and the world’s coinage is said to be £1,190,000,000, and its total

money, £1,946,000,000. If such is the case, it follows that 1/30,000,000

of the world’s population own wealth equal in value to 1/8 of its

coinage, or 1/14 of its money. However that may be, these facts are

certain: the world’s wealth is concentrating in fewer hands;

millionaires and paupers are both on the increase; trade is increasingly

dull, and employment becoming more scarce; employers are sending the

workers adrift to starve; insolvencies are increasing, and the big

capitalists are swallowing up the little ones; the Governments of the

world are at the beck of its plutocrats; life is getting intolerable to

the many and precarious to the few; homes are unhappy and woman and man

alike wretched; discontent is everywhere, and even the most comfortable

are beginning to ask whether life is worth living, and whether slavery,

dependence, marriage, and the other institutions of our civilization are

not failures after all.

That the present social system has failed must be apparent to all who

have studied it. It has rendered the many subservient to the few; it has

checked the best human endeavours, and facilitated every method of

exploitation; it disinherits the great mass, and foreordains their

lifelong misery before they are even born; it makes one man dependent

upon another’s caprice, instead of making him dependent on his own

energies; it is a premium to idleness, and an incentive to plunder; it

is responsible for the bad morals of the many, who are the creatures of

the vile surroundings in which it has placed them; it unites the sexes

when the requirements of nature would set them apart, and keeps them

apart when the healthiest impulses of their nature would have them

together; it creates jealousies, hatreds, and mutual injustice. All our

political institutions are destructive and reactionary; the opportunity

to control the actions of one’s fellow, which lies at the base of every

governmental system, tends surely and certainly to make those in power

self-seeking, dishonest, and tyrannical, and ever ready to dominate and

oppress those over whom they exert authority; and not only does it

corrupt those who rule it, but its evil effects extend to those whom

they govern, for every extension of governmental function assists in

decreasing and dwarfing the energies and self-reliance of the people

themselves and making them more helpless, cowardly, and servile than

before. Our social system, by its politically-fostered monopolies, is

continually driving men to poverty, intemperance, and debauchery, and

driving women to prostitution or the slavery of unhappy marriage; its

exploitations render the parents so poor, and their struggles for

existence so keen and uncertain, that they have neither the wealth,

time, inclination nor ability, to properly clothe, feed, educate, and

make moral their children, but allow them to grow up a criminal and

vicious generation, and one too well qualified to perpetuate the present

evils.

No political machinery can destroy the evils which the political

machinery has brought into being; for it is the nature of ruling

institutions to conserve the bad, to support and extend conventional and

reactionary opinion, and to check all progressive thought in religion,

sociology and philosophy. Laws are made to be obeyed—not to be repealed

for the public good. They are essentially conservative of privilege. All

law is made to protect property and proprietors alone. There is no law

for the poor. Legal victory is a luxury which it requires money to

purchase. If you have no money, you cannot go to law; or if you manage

to, you may safely reckon on coming out on the wrong side of the ledger.

The justice of a thing has little to do with a legal decision—that

decision has previously been inscribed on the Statute Books on the basis

of property and its right of exploitation. Plutocracy rules the world.

The existing evils of society are too gigantic to toy with. It is

useless to appeal to an extension of suffrage, when the suffrage can

offer nothing more than a choice of masters elected to carry on a system

of destruction. It is equally useless to pin your hopes on fine-spun

theories of the taxation of land-values, when those values exist only in

the imagination and all taxes are paid in the products of labor. It is

useless to preach thrift to those who have nothing to save, or to hope

for universal prosperity when the enrichment of the few is caused by the

plunder of the many. Again is it foolish to imagine that a general

patronage of savings banks, building societies, sharebroking

institutions, and the like, will ever tend to ameliorate social wrongs;

for their gains always implies someone else’s loss. Speculations in

investments in stocks, shares, railway, mining and other companies, are

all speculations on the possible future of losses of labor. Dividends do

not create themselves—they are all filched from labor. If the laborers

ceased to be plundered, there will be no dividends. These “remedies” are

no remedies at all.

The present system cannot hold for ever. Every day sees its power

waning. It is the self-interest of everyone who hopes for the dawn of a

brighter day to assist in dispelling the darkness which overhands and

threatens to engulph us, and to work together to substitute in its place

a system that shall be more just, more merciful, more equitable, more

harmonious. The slavery of the workers by the politically-created and

politically-fostered monopoly of property, and the robbery of the

laborers by rent, interest, profit, and taxation, must be

abolished—abolished peacefully, expeditiously, and permanently. And to

do so, we must start from where we now stand, and despite all the

disadvantages which surround us, and with all the ignorance, all the

bigotry, all the intolerance, and all the debasement and cowardice which

characterize the down-trodden millions, we must side by side make our

way along the path which so many have found slippery, until we reach the

long-cherished goal of Labor’s Emancipation.

But how can we do it? How can we get from the present unjust,

destructive system, into one in which justice and happiness shall be the

distinguishing characteristics? How shall we fight out of the present

blood-thirsty system without the shedding of blood and without the

disastrous reaction which has marked the bloody rebellions of the past?

How shall we walk from bondage into liberty?

That is the problem which awaits our immediate solution. We cannot avoid

it: we must face it. We dare not ignore it, for the present system is

destroying us. We, slaves as we are, have to emancipate ourselves. It

can be done. It must be done. It shall be done. But how?

[1] Mulhall's Dictionary of Statistics, 1886, p. 267.

[2] These figures and a number that follow are taken from Hayter’s

Victorian Year Book, 1886-7.

[3] State Banks, by J. Sandlant Gisborne (N.Z.) 1886.

[4] Quoted in Parson’s Anarchism: its Philosophy and Scientific Basis,

p. 17.

[5] This is Mulhall’s computation. Hayter makes it nearly £22,000,000.

[6] Whether this estimate is an accurate one, the merchants and

speculators themselves will know best; however, without more accurate

data, it is safe, I think, to say that a paying business usually “turns

over” its stock in three to four months, and brings in an average of

something like 25%. I have heard a successful tradesman assert that his

stock doubled itself in twelve months, and I know that his calculation

could not have been far out of the truth.

[7] See Mulhall’s Fifty Years’ National Progress.