﻿Debts 
 
If I owe you money or breaking your nose or far any other reason, and I cannot pay a[it] and you big hearted sap that you are cancel that debt, just how will that improve the condition of my purse?—Empty it was, and the cancellation thown into it ain’t going to make it clink—my buying power is still non-existent, heigh ho. 
If I owe you money and can pay only the interest rate, 6 per cent, and you, you great humanitarian cancel the debt, that leaves me six per cent alive, doughnut?—I can buy six cents worth for every dollar cancelled, eh? Sounds like petty larcency, don’t it? Well it isn’t, it’s petty thinking—that’s how the big boys are going to bring back the prosperity stolen from you—if successful, it means, 6 per cent prosperity for somebody—I wonder what’s the rake-off? (That last question is generally left to the investigation years later—I’m very thoughtless in springing it just at this time when the beans are all over the permanto). 
Our troubles in this country are primarily over-expansion in needless utilities—needed buying power sunk into them; over-expenditures in wars and war-making materials. (our own and others) at a low ratio of return—needed buying power sunk into them, needlessly. 
Primarily though, over-expansion is the cause for the disappearance of prosperity—further production under present conditions, long hours and short pay, can only aggravate the situation—one week’s pay without production does more to remedy the depression than does six months or six years steady employment. How come? Because six years employment under present conditions will make it worse—over-expansion is a swelling that cannot be reduced by adding thereto. The buying power is in that over-expansion—how are you going to squeeze it out` 
By letting the squeezing of it in. 
By organizing to keep the wealth in your own mitts, as you produce it, you are making it impossible for anyone to over-expand; you obviate the need for to make out fight-bills and cancel them. Productionless servitude on pay cannot be carried on only to the limits of over-expansion—when that is all used up the boys again would have “lean on the shovel”. It’s the age old quarrel, “20 per cent to labor; 80 per cent, minus expenses, to expansion”—and expansion has its limit; productivity has no limit as yet. 
What is over-expansion? 
Let us put it this way; twenty years ago one engine and separator threshed twenty farms; today 20 engines and 20 separators thresh 20 farms—19 of those engines and separators are over-expansion—needless—vanity. At 3,000 a set the farmers of U. S. A. have sunk something like $30,000,000,000—quite a row of eggs—thirty billion dollars into over-expansion—my figures are mild. 
Had that gird thirty million, that was needlessly thrown away, been handed to labor it would buy, say, 5,000,000,000 bu. of wheat at a dollar a bushel—2 [½] billion bushels at $2 a bushel—1¼ billion bushels at $4 per bushel. That, mind you, is only one and the tamest over-expansion we have. 
I’m not saying had the farmer given this money to labor instead of to over-expansion, the depression would have not come—it would, but it would have come so slowly he never would have seen it, and the recuperative powers of society might have prevented it for all time. I could sit me down and prove beyond all reasonable doubt that over-expansion in industries is so great in value, now worthless, that if wealth could be squeezed out the present generation of workers need never again turn a wheel. 
As it is, instead, they must, spend energy in endless begging expeditions—this, too, because they were not organized strongly enough in the right union. For me to name the figure that has been lost in over-expansion I’d have to go to Work People’s College in Duluth for a winter, and be very careful not to overload my stomach—it runs way out of the billions. I could though exceed my learning and put down any figure, say 9 and add 0’s behind it till my arm played out and my fellow worker, far smarter than I, would say: “Gimini Cripes, but that Slim has had lots of schoolin!—they certainly wasted not birchwod branches on him! 
It would look big: $9000000000000 . . . —you say it. 
Still I would hit below the mark. 
I see your eyes are beginning to shine. Ohhoh, your going to organize and go after some of that jack? And brush your teeth with a T-bone steak? Keep your shirt on, don’t get excited—I’ve just now told you the wealth tossed into over-expansion is worthless—those 19 threshing outfits are nothing but a row of nineteen-hundred kinds of expense. 
Organize, is right—but organize to stop throwing any more wealth into that sink-hole.