The Arena

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The writer has met old farmers, during the last twelve months, who are
as well posted in the history of finance as the Shermans and the
Allisons of the country, and who read the lessons of that history with
as clear a vision. They do not get their facts from demagogical
documents, as many suppose. We call to mind a laughable incident in
the last campaign. A joint discussion was progressing between a bright
member of the legal fraternity, who was advocating the present order
and extolling the Republican past, and an uncouth but clever old
farmer, who took up the cudgel in behalf of financial reform. The
lawyer vociferously declared the demand notes never sold at par with
gold. The farmer calmly insisted that they did, and read from an
authority. The lawyer demanded the authority. The farmer asked the
lawyer if he would read to the audience the name of the authority, if
it was shown him. The latter could only say yes. The pamphlet was
opened at its title page, and the lawyer read with best grace he
could, to an audience that fairly rolled in the chairs with merriment,
"Report of the Treasurer of the United States." The farmers are going
to a school where imagination is given small play, and facts are
studied, uncolored by party traditions. Shall we not expect from this
some good? Have we not reason to believe that the reading, intelligent
majorities of the western prairies are to bring us some light and
benefit?

It is useless to deny that these farmers have some intense prejudices.
What class has not? And these prejudices must necessarily color
opinion, and somewhat determine action. The farmer is bound to look at
things from the standpoint of the poor man rather than from that of
the corporation and the money loaner. The latter have had the thought
and service of our statesmen for years past. As a consequence, the
account between the rich and the poor is in an abnormal condition.
Perhaps it is only right that the selfishness of the laboring classes
should have its own way for a time, and even things up somewhat,
before a new start is made.

But the class prejudice and selfishness of the farmer has been greatly
over-estimated by his political enemies. His sub-treasury bill and
plan for loaning money on real estate, to be sure, are intended to
afford immediate relief to the farmer; but he believes, in his soul,
that they would result in great advantage to the whole business world.
He says, moreover, that condemnation of his plans comes with bad grace
from the men who are even now supporting a financial system which
delivers the money of the country over to the few and trusts them to
distribute it among the many. His plan may have the same selfish
ear-marks, but they are not so deep. We have been trusting a few men
to distribute the currency of the nation, and have made it extremely
profitable for them to do so. He asks now that this trust be
transferred to the many, and gives good assurances, in the nature of
things, that the many will touch the remotest needs of our people, and
so diffuse currency that competition, if such a principle ever can be
effective, will keep interest at a rate where labor can live and
prosper.

That the independent movement is not considered a class movement, in a
bad sense, but decidedly in the interest of all the middle classes, we
have some proof in the citizens' alliances and the labor unions, which
have united forces everywhere with the farmers, brought about by a
recognition of the simple fact that where the farmer has money, the
tradesmen of his market town have money and industries of all kinds
thrive. Here lies the strength of the movement. The farmers are,
perhaps, the largest distinctive class of citizens, and can exercise
great political influence by themselves; but they are not numerous
enough to work radical changes without aid from other classes. As it
is, however, in the strictly political movement among the farmers, all
who sympathize with their political views are welcomed. The best
evidence of this is the election of such men as Rev. J. H. Kyle and
editor Peffer to the United States Senate. While the farmer has a
great deal to say about the utter absence of farmers from the national
halls of legislation, he is not disposed to say that farmers alone
should be sent there. He is willing to send the men who are best
fitted to do the work that is to be done, but they must be
worshippers of the common people as distinguished from the bankers and
"financiers."

It is not possible to discuss the platform of the new party at any
length within the necessary limits of this article. We shall be
content to undeceive, if possible, those of our readers who have been
charging that the platform is indefinite.

One of the chief recommendations of the Independent platform, to the
voters of the West, was its brevity and definiteness, refreshing
qualities in the minds of a people who had been accustomed for years
to the platitudes and straddles of the old parties. Most of the
Independent county and State platforms could be summed up under three
heads, money, transportation, land. They declare in favor of a full
legal tender currency to come direct from the government to the
people, in volume sufficient to meet the demands of business; the
government ownership and control of railroads and homes for the
American millions. The main planks were summarized in the flaring
posters which announced the great rallies of the party last fall.
"Money at Cost! Transportation at Cost!" These were the headlines
which everywhere caught the public eye, and drew the crowds. Opponents
saw in these advertisements traces of a demagogue's hand. If it is
demagogism to awaken curiosity, arouse thought, and in a terse
sentence to express the party faith, then are the Independent leaders
guilty of it. But whether guilty or not, these two expressions have
awakened echoes that will not cease reverberating until our ideas and
systems of finance and transportation are quite revolutionized. As we
are not proposing here to discuss the wisdom of the farmer's demands,
we need waste no time on the land and transportation questions. So
much has been written on these questions, and the dividing line
between disputants is so clearly drawn, and farmers have settled down
so decidedly on one side of that line, that they are no longer open to
the charge of juggling with words when they declare in favor of
"homes" and "transportation at cost."

With the money question it is different. "Money at cost" is one of
those essences of thought which will bear analysis. We desire to show
that with the farmer's party it means but one thing,--that it is a
declaration of war with the piratical system of the present. "Money
at cost" is a sentiment and conviction which has grown up in the minds
of the producing and laboring classes of this country out of a deep
sense of the injury done them during the last quarter of a century,
and a pretty clear conception of the nature of money and the duty of
government.

Money, they say, is a medium of exchange necessary in the transaction
of business between citizens; that it is the first duty of government
to provide this medium for its citizens directly and at the minimum
expense; that it should not be considered property in any sense, and
that every incentive to the hoarding of it should be removed; that
there is no such thing as "cheap money" under a proper system, because
only commodities are cheap or dear according to the market price of
them, and money is not a commodity; that money can be issued by
government or by authority of government, safely and honestly, in but
two ways: in return for services rendered, or as a loan on adequate
security, and should always represent days of toil or material of
value; that the present bank systems by which money is farmed out for
private gain, furnishes a fairly reliable currency but an unreliable
means of distribution; that loans should be made on lands or
imperishable products to the many who have personal need of the money
with which to improve homes and develop enterprises, thus giving not
only a safe currency but providing also for a wide and safe
distribution of it; that government creates money out of anything it
chooses; that it should create only the best money, by which is meant
a stable, full, legal tender currency; that the curse of an unstable
currency is now upon us blighting our people; that an unstable
currency is one whose volume is regulated by the owners of private
banks, dependent upon the uncertain output of mines, and varying with
the caprice of the few who hold and control it; that a material scarce
by nature is not fit to receive the stamp of government, because it is
sure to vary in supply; that the medium of exchange should be of
material so plentiful that blind nature or designing men cannot reduce
the supply of it below the government demand for it; that the money so
created should be durable, easy of transportation, and difficult of
counterfeiting; that paper money is the easiest of transportation, the
most difficult to be counterfeited, and in a sense the most durable,
because so easily replaced when lost; that to base the medium of
exchange upon value is as effectual as to stamp it upon value; that
out of deference to foreign customs and the necessities of foreign
trade, our government should buy up the gold and silver bullion of the
country and hold for resale to those who have foreign balances to
settle; that the country to-day is suffering from a contracted and
contracting currency, on account of which the debtor class has had its
burden doubled, to the corresponding advantage of the creditor class;
that if contraction has been good for creditors, inflation must be
good for debtors; that any measure, therefore, which looks toward an
increase of the circulating medium is to be favored; that free silver
coinage is to be favored; that instead of flying to the relief of the
stall-fed speculators of Wall Street in times of financial stringency,
it is time that the government was coming to the relief of the common
people; that loans from the government should be made at a merely
nominal rate of interest, not to exceed two per cent., because any
higher rate is a congestor of wealth and gives capital a leverage over
labor; that money-loaning as a business, except on such a basis from
the government to its subjects, should go out of fashion, and might be
expected to disappear under a proper financial system; that the
unemployed capital of the country would then seek investment, labor
would then be employed, factories would hum and the credit system
might go to the dogs; that rates of interest cannot be satisfactorily
regulated by law until we have banks that are national in fact as well
as in name, managed by salaried officials of the nation whose duty it
shall be to make loans at cost, under wise and conservative rules, to
those needing them who can bring themselves within the rules; that the
proposed sub-treasury and land loan plans are suggestions in the right
direction and calculated, when perfected, to bring the government into
touch with the needy citizen, and make of it a distributor as well as
a creator of money; that paper in the shape of checks and drafts
already transacts ninety-one per cent. of the business of the country,
and might be trusted to properly supplement our currency and make
supply equal demand, were it not that the great bulk of our people are
not known beyond the communities in which they live, and therefore are
debarred from using checks to any extent in the outside world; and
that each piece of national currency, issued as a full legal tender,
in the hands of the people, would be in the nature of a certified
check, enabling the citizen to do business with despatch anywhere.

Running through the above statement of the independent doctrine of
finance, we see that three ideas are most prominent. First, a desire
that the government supersede avaricious man and blind nature in the
creation and distribution of money, in order that money may be a
stable purchasing power. Second, a determination that money shall no
longer be a commodity to be bought, and sold, and manipulated, a leech
upon labor in the hands of a few, but a convenience of trade,
accessible to the many at first cost. Third, a demand that the
misnamed national bank system of the present shall have its spirit of
greediness exorcised, so that it may hereafter serve the people
instead of its management. Are these ideas indefinite? Do they not
mean "money at cost"?

We would now call attention to those facts which the western farmer
says have opened his eyes, made him indifferent to the sneers of the
banking class and its servitors, and fixed him in his purpose to
effect a permanent change in the financial system of the country.

He says that the average profits of business enterprises in this
country do not exceed three per cent.; that money loaning at six and
seven per cent. of necessity congests the wealth of the nation; that
eighty cents' worth of silver, stamped by government as a dollar, or a
cent's worth of paper, bearing the same stamp, buys as much for him in
the markets of the country as a gold dollar; that it is easier for him
to pay his debts when money is plentiful; that the paper demand notes
of '62, a full legal tender, stood at par with gold while the
greenbacks, repudiated in terms by the very bill which created them,
went skyward; that a contraction of currency has preceded every
serious financial panic in the history of the country; that prosperity
for the laborer, the producer, and the debt-payer has always
accompanied currency expansion; that money loaners are strangely
interested in keeping money scarce, and for that purpose fought gold
in '50 when California and Australia threatened to flood us, the
greenback in Lincoln's administration, and silver in '73, '78, and
'91; that the farmer's products have been refused a market within a
year past because there was not money to handle them; that present
rates of interest consume him; and that, with good security to offer,
he is obliged to pay exorbitant rates for money and in many cases is
refused it altogether.

Let us remember that the last word has not yet been spoken upon the
financial question; that the world, even the financial world, has not
seen all of truth and wisdom yet; that reason is better than
authority, especially if the authority is open to a suspicion of
prejudice; and that there may be a financial bigotry as hateful and
unprogressive, and as much out of sympathy with this growing age, as
is the dry-as-dust ecclesiasticism of the day. Every citizen should
give courteous attention to the new voices that come to us from the
West, and be careful that his decision, on the whole matter, is not
influenced by his position as one of the creditors of the land.

PSYCHIC EXPERIENCES.

BY SARA A. UNDERWOOD.

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS BY B. F. UNDERWOOD.

The statements in this paper as to what was written in my
presence purporting to be communications from "spirits," and
as to the circumstances under which it was written, are
scrupulously correct. The "communications," it is certain,
are from an intelligent source. Mrs. Underwood is the person
by whose hand they are put in form. That she is not laboring
under a mistake in thinking that she is unconscious of the
thought expressed until she has read the writing,--if,
indeed, such a mistake in a sane mind is possible,--I am
certain. Sometimes, owing to the illegibility of the
writing, she has to study out sentences. The writing varies
in style, not only on different evenings, but on the same
evening; it is apparently the writing of not fewer than
twenty persons, and generally bearing no resemblance
whatever, so far as I can judge, to Mrs. Underwood's
handwriting, which is remarkably uniform. The communications
are unlike in the degrees of intelligence, in the quality of
thought, and in the disposition which they show. Detailed
statements of facts unknown to either of us, but which,
weeks afterwards, were learned to be correct, have been
written, and repeated again and again, when disbelieved and
contradicted by us. All the writing has been done in my
presence, but most of it while I have been busily occupied
with work which demanded my undivided attention. The views
expressed are often different from my own, and quite as
frequently, perhaps, opposed to Mrs. Underwood's views.

Some will, doubtless, interpret these facts as evidence and
illustrations of the multiplex character of personality, and
will regard these communications, apparently indicating
several distinct intelligences, as manifestations of
different strata, so to speak, of the same individual
consciousness. Knowledge of the facts unknown to our
ordinary consciousness was, nevertheless, some will say, in
the sub-consciousness of one of us, or perhaps of both. On
this theory, of course it must be supposed that the mind has
stored away in its depths knowledge acquired in ways
unknown. By others all the phenomena related by Mrs.
Underwood will be regarded as the work of disembodied,
invisible, intelligent beings who once dwelt in the flesh
and lived on the earth, but who are now in a higher sphere
of existence, yet able under certain conditions to make
their presence and their thoughts known to us. It is not my
intention here to advocate any theory as to the cause of the
phenomena described by Mrs. Underwood. I simply testify now
to the accuracy of all those statements in her paper in
regard to her automatic writing.

B. F. UNDERWOOD.

* * * * *

"The known is finite, the unknown is infinite;
intellectually we stand on an islet in the midst of an
illimitable ocean of inexplicability. Our business in every
generation is to reclaim a little more land; to add
something to the extent and solidity of our
possessions."--_Huxley in "Reception of the 'Origin of
Species.'"_

Public attention at this time especially is being called to various
forms of psychic phenomena measurably through the efforts of the
Society for Psychical Research in investigating and sifting the
evidence for the stories of apparitions, hallucinations, forewarnings,
etc., but more because so many who have heretofore scoffed at and
doubted such stories, or who have been foiled in their efforts to
obtain for themselves any satisfactory evidence that such phenomena
really occur, are now able to testify from their own experience, in
one form or another, that such are real facts of our existence.

The questions raised by the class of facts already elicited through
this investigation are of supreme importance, and it becomes the duty
of every serious-minded enquirer who has had experience of this kind
to give the result of his investigations to the public, and thus aid
those searching for the underlying cause of all such phenomena.
Therefore after considerable hesitation, and with some inward
shrinking from an obvious duty, I have concluded to take the
consequences of publishing my own recent experience. A word of
personal explanation may here be necessary. A sincere believer in
Orthodox Christianity until my twentieth year, I have been led by
careful study and unfaltering love of truth to give up my belief in
Christian dogmas, and have for some years known no other name by which
to designate my state of mind in regard to religious belief than that
misunderstood and often misapplied term, agnostic. But at no stage in
my mental progress have I ever felt sure that I had reached any
conclusion which was final, and at no time have I been a believer in
spiritualism, or been convinced that we survive the present state of
being; while always I have felt an interest in every undecided
question in science and religion, and earlier have had some
"intimations of immortality," which have caused me to think seriously
on the subject and to long for more light. I have decided to lay the
simple facts of my most recent experience before the readers of THE
ARENA, and allow them to draw what conclusions they will without
offering any theory of my own. More than a year ago my interest in
psychic phenomena was awakened by reading the reports of the Society
for Psychical Research, but it has been my own personal experience
which has created a profound impression on my mind. If any one who
reads this will try to imagine in what spirit he would greet an entire
stranger or group of strangers, who through the telephone, for
instance, should send him genial messages full of commonsense,
philosophy, humor, and friendliness, giving him interesting details of
a strange land, he can partially understand the state of mind in
which, after many months of such intercourse, I find myself. Except on
two or three occasions no one has been present but my husband, B. F.
Underwood, and myself.

The _modus operandi_ is the simplest possible. As I remembered that
Mr. U. was rather averse to the planchette experiments of former
years, thinking them unwholesome and deteriorating in their tendency,
I at first said nothing to him of my new psychical experiments, though
these were made oftenest in his presence in the evening when we both
sat at one writing table, near each other, busied with our individual
literary work. As I experimented in his absence as well as in his
presence, I soon found that I got the most coherent writings when he
was present. Indeed I could get nothing coherent, and very frequently
nothing at all, when he was away, but when he was present the
communications began to grow strangely interesting, and as he was
called upon repeatedly, I felt obliged to invite his attention, when
the most surprising answers were given, which roused his curiosity and
interest. It has been explained that his presence is necessary for me
to obtain writing, as "blended power is best." Two or three times, at
the suggestion of this intelligence, we have asked two of our intimate
literary friends--non-spiritualists--to be present, but each time
with comparative failure; afterwards we were informed that the cause
of failure was the introduction of persons unused to the conditions,
who broke up the harmonious relations necessary to communication; in
time they could be of help.

It would take a volume to present all the interesting statements as to
an advanced stage of existence, only hidden from us because of the
inadequacy of our sense perceptions, and by the conditions imposed
upon us at this stage of our progress, which have been given from this
source. Explanations have been made why communication through the
agency of certain persons, though not through all, are possible. The
conditions, it is alleged, are not entirely dependent upon the
superior intelligence or morality of the persons with whom the
intelligences can become _en rapport_. These invisibles declare that
they are as seriously and anxiously experimenting on their side to
discover modes of untrammelled communication with us, as we on our
side ought to be, if what they write be true, and if such a thing is
possible. "Spirits" they persistently insist upon being called. In
this paper I can give only a statement of some things which do not
seem explicable on the hypothesis of mind-reading, thought
transference, hypnotism, or subconsciousness. In all these experiments
I have been in a perfectly normal state. The only physical indication
of any outside influence is an occasional slight thrill as of an
electric current from my shoulder to the hand which holds the waiting
pen. Step by step I have been taught a series of signals to aid me in
correctly reading the communications. I have no power to summon at
will any individual I wish. I have repeatedly, but in vain, tried to
get messages from some near and dear friends. It has been explained
that on their side, as on ours, certain "conditions" must exist in
order to get in "control." When "eh?" is written I know that the
operator at the other end of the line is ready to communicate. When in
the middle of a sentence or a word "gone" or "change" is written, I
understand that the connection is broken, and I must not expect the
completion of that message. When a line like this ---- is drawn, it is
a sign that that sentence is completed or the communication ended. So
with other things. Rhymes are often unexpectedly written, especially
if the "control" professes to be a poet, and they are dashed off so
rapidly that I do not understand their import until the close when I
can read them over. Impromptu rhyming is a feat utterly impossible to
either Mr. U. or myself. Names persistently recur which are unknown to
us. Many different handwritings appear, some of them far superior to
my own. When I first began to get communications I destroyed, in a day
or two after they were written, the slips of paper containing the
writing, but as the developments became more interesting, Mr. U.
suggested that they be preserved for reference. I acted on this
suggestion, and thus in the instances of facts given outside our own
knowledge, I am enabled to give the exact wording of each
communication. Our questions were asked _viva voce_, and as they were
often suggested by what had been previously written, I either at the
time or soon afterward wrote them just above the reply. I am not,
therefore, trusting at all to memory in the statements I shall make.

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