machine-envy

But these evils, though great, were small compared to
those far more deep-seated signs of disease which now
showed themselves throughout the country. One of these
was the obliteration of thrift from the minds of the ***
people. The *** are naturally thrifty; but, with such
masses of money and with such uncertainty as to its future
value, the ordinary motives for saving and care diminished,
and a loose luxury spread throughout the country. A still
worse outgrowth was the increase of speculation and
gambling. With the plethora of paper currency in *** ap·
peared the first evidences of that cancerous disease which
always follows large issues of irredeemable currency,—a
disease more permanently injurious to a nation than war,
pestilence or famine. For at the great metropolitan centers
grew a luxurious, speculative, stock-gambling body, which,
like a malignant tumor, absorbed into itself the strength of
the nation and sent out its cancerous fibres to the remotest
hamlets. At these city centers abundant wealth seemed to
be piled up: in the country at large there grew a dislike
of steady labor and a contempt for moderate gains and sim-
ple living.

…

This outgrowth was a
vast debtor class in the nation, directly interested in the
depreciation of the currency in which they were to pay their
debts. The nucleus of this class was formed by those who
had purchased the church lands from the government. Only
small payments down had been required and the remainder
was to be paid in deferred installments: an indebtedness of
a multitude of people had thus been created to the amount
of hundreds of millions. This body of debtors soon saw, of
course, that their interest was to depreciate the currency in
which their debts were to be paid; and these were speedily
joined by a far more influential class;—by that class whose
speculative tendencies had been stimulated by the abun-
dance of paper money, and who had gone largely into debt,
looking for a rise in nominal values. Soon demagogues of
the viler sort in the political clubs began to pander to it;
a little later important persons in this debtor class were to
be found intriguing in the Assembly—first in its seats and
later in more conspicuous places of public trust. Before long,
the debtor class became a powerful body extending through
all ranks of society. From the stock-gambler who sat in the
Assembly to the small land speculator in the rural districts;
from the sleek inventor of canards on the *** Exchange
to the lying stock-jobber in the market town, all pressed
vigorously for new issues of paper; all were apparently able
to demonstrate to the people that in new issues of paper lay
the only chance for national prosperity.