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PAGE EIGHT
the JEFFERSON IAN
PUBLISHED BY
THOS. E. WATSON and J. D. WATSON
Editors and Proprietors
Temple Court Building, Atlanta, Ga.
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Bnttrad at Ptiftfitt, Atlanta, Ga., January /I, IQO7, at ttttnd
tian mail matttr
Atlanta, Ga., Thursday January 30, 1908
Au Reboir—Soap-Wrappers.
“Goodby, until we meet again” —the
Clearing House Certificates are goihg
home to roost.
New York, alone, issued $97,000,000 of
this unlawful, dishonest, counterfeit mon
ey, and forced the country to use it for
three months, while New York took the
real money of the depositors and loaned it
to Wall Street gamblers to speculate on.
The $97,000,000 of soap-wrappers, which
we were compelled to use as money for
three months, took the place of $97,000,-
000 of our good money which,the New
York banks were lending to Wall Street
gamblers at from 20 to 300 per . cent.
Therefore, the net result was that the
banks compelled us to lend them $97,000,-
000 of our good money, free of interest,
for three months, and to accept the Clear
ing House Certificates in lieu thereof.
We had, to use soap-wrappers, while Wall
Street gamblers used our good money;
and the rascally bankers raked off enor
mous usury on our good money, while we
were made to use the soap-wrappers.
Isn’t that lovely finance? You put your
money into the bank; the bankers go in
with the speculators and use your depos
its ; and then, when you call for what is
y ours, you are made to use $97,000,000 of
counterfeit money, for three months,
while the criminals in the banks are gam
bling with your money!
For the first time in the history of our
country, the maker of counterfeit money
has quit cover. Heretofore he has felt
guilty, has worked in secrecy, and has
feared the law.
It is no longer so. The Wall Street
dealers in bogus money have made the
old fashioned counterfeiter look like thirty
cents. The “Green Goods” man, and his
“Come on” letter, and his elaborate pre
caution in exchanging a box of sawdust
for a few bills of good money, are all dis
tanced and laid in the shade.
The counterfeiter is now the cock of
the walk. He wears a silk hat and con
fers with Cabinet officers.
He is not .content with a paltry five or
ten thousand dollars. He wants' millions.
And he counterfeits millions. New York
counterfeited nearly one hundred mill
ions, Chicago put out about fifteen mifl-
THE JEFFERSONIAN.
ions. Just how much the counterfeiters
of Atlanta, St. Louis, and other cities put
out, we do not know. The aggregate
was very large.
But they are now calling the soap
wrappers in. A forced loan of hundreds
of millions was as far as they dared to go
this time. They were afraid to go too far.
There were signs of danger at Washing
ton, and the rascals became alarmed.
The counterfeit money is being “re
tired.” The counterfeiters are satisfied
with this their first raid.
The booty to be divided among the
criminals is rich. It represents the amount
which they got from the gamblers FOR
THREE MONTHS’ USE OF THE
GOOD MONEY IN PLACE OF
WHICH THE COUNTERFEIT MON
EY WAS ISSUED.
Don't you ever forget that the hundreds
of millions of Clearing House Certificates
meant this:
The bankers forced you to use that
stuff as money, while they were lending
your good money to the gamblers of Wall
Street at tremendous usury.
R R *
A Wall Street Threat.
In talking with Mr. Cortelyou, at the
Treasury in Washington, I did my utmost
to convince him that the worst of the
Panic would come in the spring, when
Southern and Western merchants, farm
ers and local banks applied for loans. -I
told the Secretary that, in my judgment,
those Street rascals were “laying
for” the administration, intending to re
fuse to extend the customary credits, thus
creating a situation which would raise a
popular clamor, embarrass the Govern
ment, and make it apparently necessary
for Congress to yield to Wall Street, as it
did in 1893.
Those ravenous national bankers mean
to have some sort of “asset currency”
bill which will enable them to add other
billions of bogus dollars to the billions
which are already in circulation.
Their dream is to base watered money
on watered stocks!
Wouldn’t that be a happy time for these
monsters of rapacity—these heartless
manufacturers of counterfeit money, arti
ficial panic, and national calamity?
With such unscrupulous scoundrels as
Harriman, Ryan, Morgan and Belmont
pouring billions of dollars of water into
all sorts of corporation bonds and stocks,
wouldn’t it be a heavenly sight to see
these same chaps issuing bogus money on
the bogus securities?
That is precisely what the Aldrich bill
proposes to give those fellows the legal
right to do.
Think of Harriman, as railroad king,
watering the stocks and bonds of his rail
roads by the hundreds of millions of dol
lars and then, as a national banker, issu
ing watered currency on the watered
stock!
Think of Ryan and Belmont, as street
car magnates, pouring $108,000,000 of wa-
ter into the* Metropolitan system, at one
time, and then, as national bankers, issu
ing bogus money on the bogus stock!
Think of J. P. Morgain pouring forty
million dollars of water into a railroad
—the Central of Georgia, foY\ example —•
and then, as national banker, issuing cur
rency based on the fraudulent sto&ks and
bonds! \ "v
Think of Amalgamated Copper, or
Common, issued by promoters at one of
fice and then used by the same promoters,
at another office, as a basis for the money
system of a great nation!
Yet that is precisely what the Aldrich
bill, now on its way through Congress,
offers to the country as the proper solu
tion of the financial problem.
- To enable us to escape from the calam
itous conditions which gamblers, promot
ers, stock-jugglers, and bogus money
manufacturers have brought upon us, it
is proposed that we give those greedy
and unprincipled financiers additional
power to inflate the belly of the business
world with wind.
To cure the ills caused by class-privi
lege and bogus money, we must have an
extension of class-privilege and an in
crease of bogus money.
Why do I say that we must have it?
Because Wall Street is determined on
it.
And never, since the Civil war began,
has Congress had the pluck, the honesty,
the patriotism to defy Wall Street.
Invariably, Wall Street has got what it
wanted, and it will do so again.
Did you not hear the threat?
This time, they have been bold enough
to talk it, straight from the shoulder.
Speaking through one Glover, Presi
dent of one of the New York National
banks, they declare that if Congress
adjourns without giving them the law
they demand the situation will immediate
ly grow worse.
In other Wall Street will put on
the screws. Wall Street already has pret
ty nearly all of the real money of the
Country, and New York will keep it.
Then what?
A panic in the spring that will make the
flurry of 1907 sink into insignificance.
I told Mr. Cortelyou so —predicting
has happened —and urged him
to defeat the plans of those soulless
wreckers by issuing $100,000,000 of na
tional treasury notes, under the Acts of
1862 and 3.
“How would you get them into cir
culation,” the Secretary inquired.
“Put them into the state banks of the
West and South,” I replied. “Then they
will immediately get into circulation, and
the result will be immediate return of con
fidence. Wall Street will see that the Gov
ernment means business, and will begin
*to turn loose its own hoarded millions to
prevent the Government from continuing
to issue the Greenback treasury notes.”
If Mr. Roosevelt doesn’t want his ad
ministration to- incur what Van Buren’s
encountered—the apparent responsibility