TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION

ONE DOLLAR for 12 consecutive issues. Single copy, 10 cents. Postage paid to all countries within the postal union.

United States postage stamps acceptable. Cash or money orders preferred. Address communications and make remittances payable to Edward H. Fulton, 1227 Prospect Ave., Clinton, Iowa.

THAT THE READER MAY KNOW

The Mutualist advocates the maximum of liberty compatible with equality of liberty, and holds that all the affairs of men should be managed by individuals, or by voluntary associations instead of coercive organizations; and to this end it favors the extension of liberty and the curtailment of the powers of authority over the non-invasive individual, until the most highly satisfactory form of society possible is attained.

The paper will feature articles by various writers on mooted political, social and economic questions, particularly those of the more fundamental and important kind.

LITERARY CONTRIBUTIONS

Literary contributions should not exceed 350 words, except on special arrangement. Adverse criticism of the paper's advocacy will be answered, if brief and to the point, but lengthy propaganda articles, in guise of criticism, will not be printed.

IMMEDIATE PROGRAM

Mutual Banking and interest-free money.

We [the people of the United States of America] fight for democracy—for liberty—for the right of men everywhere to pursue their ways of life, said the late Woodrow Wilson, and the United States proceeded to spend several billions of dollars in helping France and England resist the aggression of Germany, and to extend the British empire and make France the military despot of Europe. But when the British soldiers murder unarmed, defenseless Chinese in Shanghi, their own country, and when France aggresses on the Riffians, in their own native land, the United States makes no protest. Old Art Brisbane sides with the dirty French and Spanish despotisms; says they are fighting for civilization, for Christianity, against the bloody Mohammedan religion. He forgets that Christians, only recently, murdered 20 millions of each other, according to his own figures, in the world war. He tells how the Sultan, a few centuries ago, would divorce one of his wives by having a eunuch strangle her to death. The Sultan now does nothing of the kind, but proceeds in a non-violent manner, only he doesn't falsely accuse her of consorting with negroes and Indians, as in American divorce proceedings. Arthur forgets that at the time the Sultan was most bloody, some of the ancestral stock from which President Coolidge so proudly traces his descent, were engaged in burning witches at the stake! The Mohammedans have been bloody—and so have all races and religions. Those of the Christian religion, and of the Jewish religion from which it sprang, have been and are as bloody as the next. Not many years ago the Christian master would take his wine from the hand of his trembling slave in whose veins coursed his own blood, and every year or so they burn a few negroes at the stake for trying to vote.

Charles Vail owned a humble residence, an old furniture van, turned into a dwelling, and Vail was a squatter on the land beneath his van. But it was Vail's home, his piece of earth. When the van burned, at Brunswick, N. J., Vail cut his throat and died. This tragedy contains information for single taxers and others that oppose individual ownership of ground. Owning land makes men fight as the French did at Verdun, and taking it from them makes men kill themselves. You can't conquer that with a theory, says the Chicago Herald-Examiner. That fling may apply to single taxers and others who would, by taxation of all the rental value from farmers for pork-barrel replenishment, keep the farmer forever in a primitive or pioneer condition, and the present system, favored by Hearst and Brisbane, which makes tenants, or slaves, instead of owners. But it doesn't apply to The Mutualist's proposition, which would reduce tenantry and increase the number of individual owners, by making [13] occupancy and use by the owner necessary to validate title. Vail was not a squatter, if the land his van was on was unoccupied. It was his by moral right; that is, his to occupy and use, not otherwise. It is not a mere theory of land right that the Mutualist favors, but a necessary expedient to insure rightful ownership and prevent the virtual slavery of the dispossessed.

What honest purposes does a man want land for, anyway? To build a home upon; as a location for mill or shop; to cultivate and grow food upon. Occupancy and use covers all these items. He desires to leave all to his children or to a friend when he dies. He could do so, if they occupy and use it. He wishes to retire from all or part of his land and sell his use-right. He could do so if he could find a buyer who would occupy and use the place himself, but with use-tenure as the custom he could get only the value of the improvements he had put on the land. He desires security in his use-right. He has to defend it himself, or pay some one else for defending his title, either as taxes or an assessment. There is nothing fair and honest that the occupancy-use condition stands in the way of. What other things make land ownership desirable? These are things that would cease the moment use-occupancy became a requirement; they depend on absolute property in land—non-resident, non-use ownership. This gives power to hold title until increasing population makes land more useful, enabling one to sell at a high price, or keep it and exact tribute from those who must use it, have products from it, or die. These landlords do no work on the land, but live upon the fruits of the toil of others—their tenants. This is slavery, and no less indefensible than that of chattel slavery; only more subtle, hidden or sneaking. Your banker-farmers, usurers, politicians, financiers, and respectable exploiters of all sorts stand for this iniquitous form of landlordism. This paper opposes it and favors the abolition of tenantry, while others who professedly oppose it, merely propose to make ALL farmers serfs of the State.

The publisher of The Mutualist is unable, physically and financially, to print a paper even large enough to cover the field of advocacy proper to the doctrine he accepts. It is absolutely impossible to make it a vehicle for all the different and adverse theories submitted for publicity. Enough stuff to fill a paper twice as large as this issue is received every month, and has to rest in peace. Some of it is not without merit, but much of it seems absolute nonsensical or incomprehensible metaphysical palaver.

Mr. H. J. Stuart of Montrose, Alabama, in a letter to the editor says While Queen Silver's article on From Monkey to Bryan, may not be without some flaws, it should set reasonable people to thinking. In his weekly, Brokaw has taken issue with Queen. Some points are well taken, but evolution has not, in my opinion, been given a knock-out blow. Man still remains kin to all that swims, crawls and stands upon its hind legs. Evolution, like religion, or any theory, is a matter of individual choice, and all of them are interesinginteresting in the various phases set forth. Editor Brokaw has Annular Evolution as related to the Equitist Plan. This theory is accredited to Isaac Newton Vail, a rather influential name because of the known high order of learning, of the great Sir Isaac Newton. Neither Vail, nor his annular evolutionary theory is mentioned in any of the six large reference books I have, though Sims and Volivia are named in two of them, so evidently his theory is not widely known. His writings as set forth in Equity give me the impression that he is only a loquacious, intellectual montebank, but others may give him a different definition. His view that no species changes into another species (as from monkey to man) is not new nor original with him. From the time of Darwin, thousands have held the view that species are analogous growths—and although man may have changed in form, and may have lived in forms that would now be looked upon as very different animals, he was always a man in the making. And the same is true of other species, also; that is, kinds that from [14] the first were sterile with all other kinds. This view is weakened by the fact that in some cases hybrids of different, but similar, species are perfectly fertile animals. Science is ever in quest of the truth. Evolution, in some manner, is a theory well supported by scientific evidence—by a world of facts.

Whatever definition may be given of the word right, one thing is certain—and that is that superiority of might determines which concept of right shall prevail.

General Pershing in making a plea for preparedness (for another war of slaughter) tells how it pains the heart of a commander, thinking of the anguish of the mothers and the sweethearts of their soldier boys, to order their inadequately equipped and trained heroes into action. If they are prepared, of course, it means more anguish to the mothers, wives and sweethearts of the enemy soldiers and no less anguish to the mothers, wives and sweethearts of our own heroes. Besides, there is no difference between the women of America and Europe, the Americans being from or descendants of lands across the seas. The slam-down given Mobilization Day was a fitting answer to the Pershings of the land.

Mr. Channing Severance sends a lengthy essay in support of pessimism. It contains nothing that every intelligent person has not thought of. He takes the same view of the land question that many others do—that property in land is the foundation of nearly all the artificial ills of society; that man must have free access to land or be a slave or a robber. Many jews, who have in many countries been denied ownership of land, even for use, have suffered poverty and slavery, while some of them have fairly conquered nations through usury on money—a form of robbery held respectable and legal. Severance holds that there is no hope for ending the iniquity of land monopoly or landlordism, and sees no chance of improvement in the world. Well, even if a higher degree of economic justice is a forlorn hope, it is a worthy thing to try for, and there is pleasure in the effort. But is it true that improvement is impossible? Has there been no improvement in the past? How about direct white chattel slavery? How about negro slavery? How about feudalism? Can a man still disembowel a white slave to warm his child feet in his slave's guts, and be immune from action? How about the ancient torts, from which the word torture comes? Can fathers still sell their daughters as concubines? Have not all men now some rights of property once denied them? How about the right of trial by jury, even though yet somewhat faulty, compared with the days when the noble's accusation stood as proof against a commoner? How about attainder, or legal corruption of blood? How about ex-post-facto laws and punishment of old? How about cannibalism? How about the right of a master to drown his slave in a pond to suit his whim? How about the right to kill a disbeliever as if he were a dog? How about the ancient right of search and seizure without cause? How about even some limits on the powers authority? There has been improvement in the past, and there will be improvement in the future, pessimists to the contrary notwithstanding. Men do not change much in character or nature, but they grow wiser, and as they grow wiser they will change things for the better. It's slow but sure.

Due to the opening of vast areas of land in the west, the number of individual owners of land in this country increased in the decade 1910-1920, but in the older States, from Maine to the Mississippi, the number of individual owners decreased by thousands.

There is no confliction between capital and labor when the laborer owns his own tools of production, or capital. But there is a division of interests when the capitalist and the worker are separate individuals. Their attitudes of imposition and resentment respectively are heightened when the worker holds marked cards and the capitalist has a sleeveful of government-monopoly jokers.

[15] There is little material benefit in the study of astronomy, evolution, deep-sea animals, ancient civilizations, and many other things, to but few of the millions who take pleasure in the study or the reading of them, but the study of society, economics, the institution of government, also interesting aside from the question of material benefit, is screamed at by the pessimist as vain, a waste of time, useless, and so on. The liberal pessimist generally subscribes for a number of popular trash magazines whose political and economic views he does not at all endorse, but papers that do hold views agreeable to him he passes up as unworthy of support, except in the way of a belly-aching contribution occasionally he expects to have given publicity at the publisher's expense. The Mutualist is for the living, not for the dead.

The publication of the income tax payments is a good thing. It gives the workers ocular proof of what reform and radical papers have been telling them all along—that they are unmercifully exploited. The worker who does not own anything, but depends on his hands, and works for wages, is bound to get the short end of it in any condition, but with the great advantage of State-maintained monopolies, the employers, the beneficiaries, are enabled to pursue the most ferocious and astounding kind of exploitation. A corporation near Clinton recently locked out its workers, who were about to ask a 10 per cent increase in wages. THe company published the claim that a 10 per cent increase would more than wipe out its profits. The income tax it paid shows that it could have paid a 100 per cent increase in wages and still have an income large enough to make a Ponzi look like a piker.

Ten years ago the World War commenced. It cost in lives ten million soldiers and about the same number of men, women and children who were not soldiers. It cost to all nations $168,333,637,097; it cost the United States $22,625,252,843. The war did not make the world safe for democracy, nor for anything else, except tyranny. We have less freedom than before the war. In the war craze, prohibition was put across by a minority, and it is responsible for most of the great increase in crime since its passage. Every law that assaults a non-invasive liberty increases crime. Did the World War end war? There have been about thirty since then, two going on now and another (Russia-Roumania) coming up. More money is now being spent for militarism than in 1913.

Those who think that government is necessary to protect life, liberty and property should study the records of slaughter in wars, the news report of crime and murder now going on in the presence of government, and read the income tax report for proof of robbery that outrivals all the Jesse James gangs that ever carried on.

The ancient Icarians of Peru had laws only against theft, assault and plain crimes—no moral laws or laws against vices. They were said to be more moral and less vicious than people of nations having little else than such laws. They were civilized.

The American aviators aiding the French in their war on the Riffs are violating the laws of their land. The government has so notified them. Soldiers and policemen are not supposed to know the law.

The report of a committee of the Federated churches shows prohibition to be a failure—the condition is exactly what a writer in Tucker's liberty thirty years ago said it would be if it ever became a law.

One who has some theory requiring compulsory taxation or some form of coercion to impose on the individual, is always strong in the belief that government is a necessity. Of course it is—to him.

The United States upholds land feudalism in the Philippine islands. All the land there is held by a few families, whose ancestors held it as a royal, hereditary right.

The Shenandoah and the plane that ducked in the sea did not scare Japan overly-much.