The Two Aristocracies of America [pp. 461-465]

THE TWO ARISTOCRACIES OF AMERICA.
real, substantial, visible or tangi;ble whatever. This aristocracy
have no money, and never had any. The law has made their
otherwise worthless credit subserve the purposes of money.
They have the power of taxation-nothing more. The real
material wealth, the actual visible and tangible capital, and all,
or almost all, the productive industry of the country, is to be
found in the North-West and the South, but all the profits of
this wealth and this industry are transferred by the tricks of
trade, by legislative contrivance, and financial legerdemain. to
the holders of fictitious capital in the North-East. Aristoc racy! why the world has never seen an aristocracy half so
powerfil, half so corrupt, so unprincipled, and rapacious, nor
one-tenth so vulgar and so ignorant, as the rnoneyectd aristocracy
of the North-East.
The North-West is taxed, cheated, exploited, enslaved by
it, yet continues to glorify a Union that has built up and sus tains this aristocracy, and to abuse and fight the shades of de fulnct slavery, and of a defunct Southern aristocracy. Better
change their tactics, unite with the South, always their best
friends and customers, and make war upon our common ene mies, the moneyed aristocracy of the North-East. Nay: the
whole agricultural and laboring interests of the nation should
unite, and, as one compact party, strenuously endeavor to check
the aggressions and mitigate the tyranny of this new aristoc racy. For we stake our honor as a man, and our reputation
as a philosopher and political economist, to the truth of the
statement, "that if slavery consist in the fact that one set of
men labor, whilst another set, without paying an equivalent,
appropriate great part of the results or products of that labor,"'
that then the agriculturists, we mean the laboring class of
them, of America, are at this (.lay and hour more grievously,
cruelly, and degradingly enslaved, than ever were the negroes
of the South.
None but a fool will deny the proposition. Everybody
knows that the white agricultural laborers, the men who own
but little or no land, and cannot command other people's labor,
are virtually enslaved. But nobody cares for, or sympathizes
with, white slavery. It is unfashionable to deny or oppose
such slavery, and fashion rules and regulates our sympathies,
feelings, and opinions, just as it regulates the cut and color of
our clothes. All common laborers stand on the same footing
with agricultural laborers, and all should unite to oppose and
put down the rule of the North-Eastern moneyed aristocracy.
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