"In the great Seven Years' War, continuing from 1757 to 1764, Great Britain dispossessed France of all her colonial possessions. In India, at the same time, through the genius and energy of Clive, the British East India Company laid the foundation of its imperial greatness. Historical authorities date the rise of the East India Company to imperial power at the victory of Plassy, 1757 A.D. In 1764, it was an empire exercising imperial sway in Bengal over a territory containing a population of forty millions, and yielding larger revenues than those of the Austrian empire, at that time the greatest European power.
In 1764, the British East India Company was the grandest and richest corporation in the world. It was the only corporation which ruled a territorial empire. It was enriched by traffic, by the extension of its trade through the conquest of the trading stations of its Continental rivals and by the wholesale plunder of India. It had been from the first the best investment of capital to be found in the British Islands. Its stock was eagerly taken by all who had the means. The mercantile class took as much stock as they could afford ; but, as we know, merchants usually have little more capital than they need for their regular business. The British Landed Aristocracy had large incomes from their estates ; and being under a necessity of seeking the best investments, in order to portion their younger children, they made large investments in the East India Company.
But the great Capitalists of that age were the Jews. They were the money holders. They subscribed largely to the stock ; and as, in each generation, the stock of the Aristocracy was sold to portion younger children, the Jews, always economical, always full of money, and always in search of the best investments, bought the stock thrown upon the market. Thus it came to pass that the greater part of the stock of the East India Company, and of the other companies afterwards organized out of the dividends of that great company, fell into the hands of the Jews.
The Jews became the great Money Kings of the world. Under the impulse of Jew exactions, the career of the East India Company in India was a continued series of trickery, wrong, exaction, theft, robbery and murder.
In the Eighteenth Century, the Mogul empire was in the last stages of decay ; and the East India Company, in its dealings with the native states and Princes of India, constantly shifted its ground as expediency required, sometimes treating them as independent states, and sometimes, as dependencies of the Mogul empire. It hired its soldiers to one native prince, to enable him to conquer another: it sold its favours on every side ; and when the opportunity came, it devoured the treasures and the territory of friends and foes alike. History presents no career of conquest, in which fraud, deceit and rapine were so blended as in the conquest of India by the East India Company.
It was the first example in the history of the world of a trading corporation becoming an imperial power ; and its imperial rule was marked by the rapacity, chicane and fraud that characterizes a great corporation in the soulless and conscienceless pursuit of gain. From 1764, the East India Company had control of the grand trade between the Temperate zone and the Tropics. It continued its conquests in India until, in 1857, the date of the Sepoy mutiny, it ruled almost the whole peninsula. The Money Kings who controlled it, possessed an empire compared with which the possessions of the Phoenicians and Carthaginians, and all their predecessors were as nothing, and they attained a domination over industry and trade without a parallel in the annals of the world.
For a long time, the Money Kings raised opium, and indigo, and cotton, and rice and other India products, for their commerce, upon lands owned by Hindoos. They made their profit by putting down prices to the lowest point that would yield subsistence to the Hindoo laborer. They thus kept the Hindoo population on the verge of starvation ; so that, during the last forty years, frequent famines have carried off millions of the population. We know from the Irish famines, that a modern famine is not a dearth of food, so much as the lack of means to buy bread. During one of the famines in Ireland, an American vessel entering the harbor of Cork with provisions sent by American charity to the starving Irish, met two vessels sailing out of the harbor laden with food sent from Ireland to a foreign market.
The millions of Hindoos who have perished of hunger, during the last forty years, were the victims of the Money Power putting down prices of labor, and putting up the price of commodities. Some Five Million Hindoos Died of Famine before they submitted. But the Money Kings triumphed; transplanted the Hindoos; and opened up grand plantations in the jungle.
They built railroads ; founded cities ; and now they own cities, railroads and plantations. They own in fee simple a vast empire in India,—an empire of alluvial lands, more extensive than the ancient empires of Nineveh and Babylon in the valleys of the Euphrates and the Tigris—far more extensive than the Egyptian empire in the valley of the Nile—larger than Greece and Macedon combined—wider in extent than Italy—a broader domain than the whole of Great Britain. They find it cheaper to own the land and hire peasants to cultivate it, than to buy the products of free Hindoo labor. And in that wide empire of alluvial lands owned by them in fee simple, extending from the sea to the Himalayas, and from the heart of India into Burmah, those capitalists are now producing opium, and rice, and indigo, and cotton and india rubber, and quinine, and spices, and tea, and cotton and wheat.
All Markets Crushed by India Products. And they throw all these products of a teeming soil and pauper labor upon the markets of the world, making immense profits, and forcing down the price of productions all over the earth to the pauper standard of Hindoo labor. They are now publishing in our papers that they can grow wheat so cheaply upon their jungle lands, that, in competition with them, our Western farmers can only be allowed, in future, fifty cents a bushel for their wheat! Will not Omnipotent Justice blast such wrong doing ?
By the Competition of their Hindoo Plantations, tilled with Hindoo Ryot labor at five cents a day, they force down the price of Carolina rice and Southern cotton to the same level. Raising products upon their own lands with Hindoo pauper labor—shipping their products upon their own railroads into their own seaport cities—and transporting them in their own ships to their own warehouses in every country—these Money Kings are able to crush down the prices of productions in every country, and force the people of all countries to sell their products at any price they choose to offer.
An Important Fact is learned from the course of the Money Power in India. The Money Kings find it more profitable to own lands and till them with pauper labor, than to buy the products reared by the free natives of the soil. They regard the purchase of cheap lands a good investment. They will doubtless continue the purchase of India lands, until they own all the lands of India, and all property of every kind, and the Hindoos become serfs, cultivating their lands, and filling positions in various departments of their service. How can it be otherwise? Every department of industry in that country, except agriculture in part, is in their hands. They have in possession every source of profit. They and their agents realize all the profits that are made: nobody else makes more than a subsistence. The Money Power has India enveloped in its coils. It is only a question of time when the Serpent will complete the devouring of all its lands and all its property.
India is completely in the coils of the Money Power. The Monster killed five million Hindoos with Famine in order to compel them to become its serfs upon its plantations redeemed from the jungle. And now, under the control of industry in India by the Money Power, half a million Hindoos die of starvation, every year. It is said that, in the wars of Napoleon, waged during twenty years, all over Europe, and in Egypt and Syria, two million men perished. In a time of profound peace, the Money Power, in a single country, destroys as many lives every four years, as Napoleon destroyed in twenty years!"
Excerpt From
The Great Red Dragon or London Money Power
L.B. Woolfolk
(Click on the above image to get the book)
