Only a banker or someone funded by them can see any advantage to allowing the federal reserve to even exist.
TRIUMPHANT PLUTOCRACY
The Story of American Public Life from 1870 to 1920
By
R. F. PETTIGREW
Formerly United States Senator from South Dakota
Prin'ed by THE ACADEMY PRESS
112 Four'h Avenue, New York Ci'y
XI. Lawyers
The Constitution of the United States was made by business men. The work of managing and directing the government machinery that has been erected in pursuance of the Constitution has been placed almost exclusively in the hands of lawyers, who sit in the legislatures and make the laws; sit in the executive chairs and enforce the laws, and sit on the bench and interpret the laws.
Lawyers dominate the city, state and national governments to an astonishing degree. In one sense, they are the Government, at least in so far as manipulating its machinery is concerned. The lawyers have become a governing caste in the United States. Their official position is out of all proportion to their number.
The total number of "lawyers, judges and justices," as given in the census of 1910 (the latest one available at this writing) was 114,704. The same volume of the census reports that there were more than 38,167,000 gainfully occupied persons in the United States. That would make three lawyers for each ],000 of the gainfully occupied population. Therefore, if the lawyers had their proportional share of the governing positions, they would get less than one- third of one per cent of the Government jobs.
The actual situation is far different. In the affairs of government— particularly of the Federal Government—the lawyer plays a leading part, He is only one one-three-hundredth of the gainfully occupied population, but he is the majority of those upon whom falls the duty of making and enforcing the laws.
Take the situation in the Federal Congress. There has never been a time during the fifty years that I have known Washington when the lawyers constituted less than half of the membership of both houses of Congress. Usually, they made up two-thirds of the membership. The proportion varies, but the principle holds. The present Congress (the 65th) reports in the House 263 lawyers out of a total of 388 who gave their occupations. (No occupations were given for 47.) In the Senate, there are 60 lawyers out of a total of 89 Senators who reported their occupations. The census shows that the lawyers constitute only three in every thousand of the gainful population. In the Senate, they are in the proportion of 674 per thousand; and in the House in the proportion of 677 in the thousand. Thus, two-thirds of our national law-makers are lawyers.
The same thing holds true of our Presidents. Since the United States has become a government by the corporations, their presidential candidates have almost invariably been lawyers. Harrison, as President, was a a lawyer, and reputed to be a good one. He had been preceded in that high office by Grover Cleveland, a lawyer irom Buffalo, New York. Harrison was followed by Cleveland. Cleveland was followed by another lawyer—McKinley, who was elected and assassinated, and thus Theodore Roosevelt, who was his Vice-President, and not a lawyer, accidentally became President. He was succeeded by another lawyer, Taft, who was not a good lawyer. He had neither the judgment nor the ability to make a good lawyer, and he was therefore a very satisfactory representative of the predatory and exploiting corporations which, during all of my time in public life, have been the real force in control of the Government. Taft was followed by Wilson, a lawyer, and after his eight years the people elected Harding, another lawyer—giving him a plurality of more than six million of votes.
There is no question of party politics involved. Of all the Presidents that I have known, two were Democrats (Cleveland and Wilson) ; the rest were Republicans. With the exception of Roosevelt, all of them since Garfleld — and including Garfield — have been lawyers.