The following historical story is taken from a radio
address given by Congressman Charles G. Binderup of Nebraska, some 50
years ago and was reprinted in Unrobing the Ghosts of Wall Street:
Colonies More Prosperous Than The Home Country
Before the American War for Independence in 1776, the colonized part
of what is today the United States of America was a possession of
England. It was called New England, and was made up of 13 colonies,
which became the first 13 states of the great Republic. Around 1750,
this New England was very prosperous. Benjamin Franklin was able to
write:
“There was abundance in the Colonies, and peace was
reigning on every border. It was difficult, and even impossible, to
find a happier and more prosperous nation on all the surface of the
globe. Comfort was prevailing in every home. The people, in general,
kept the highest moral standards, and education was widely spread.”
When Benjamin Franklin went over to England to represent the
interests of the Colonies, he saw a completely different situation: the
working population of this country was gnawed by hunger and poverty.
“The streets are covered with beggars and tramps,” he wrote. He asked
his English friends how England, with all its wealth, could have so
much poverty among its working classes.
His friends replied that England was a prey to a terrible condition:
it had too many workers! The rich said they were already overburdened
with taxes, and could not pay more to relieve the needs and poverty of
this mass of workers. Several rich Englishmen of that time actually
believed, along with Mathus, that wars and plague were necessary to rid
the country from man-power surpluses.
Franklin’s friends then asked him how the American Colonies managed
to collect enough money to support their poor houses, and how they
could overcome this plague of pauperism. Franklin replied:
“We have no poor houses in the Colonies; and if we had
some, there would be nobody to put in them, since there is, in the
Colonies, not a single unemployed person, neither beggars nor tramps.”