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tell the state of affairs throughout the
kingdom. Wherever we find that the
feudal lord exercised the right to hold
his own courts, and to coin money, there
was almost no governmental power in
the hands of the king. As the central au
thority grew in strength, one of the very
first things which marked that growth
was the taking away from the feudal lord
the right to coin money and administer
justice.
The Aldrich bill proposes to give to
the national banks additional powers to
expand and contract the currency. This
is a tremendous advantage, which should
never be allowed to private citizens or cor- -
porations. Just as it is a sovereign right to
declare war and make peace, to maintain
the army and the navy, to regulate for
eign commerce, to make treaties with for
eign nations, to make laws and execute
them—so it is a sovereign right to sup
ply the nation with its currency. We
should no more delegate to private in
dividuals or corporations the sovereign
function of supplying the' country with
money —or with paper to be used as
money—than we should delegate to pri
vate citizens or corporations the sover
eign right to control the army or to regu
late foreign commerce. The historic po
sition of the Democratic party is that the
government alone should exercise gov
ernmental functions; and to no principle
was the Democratic party, prior to the
Civil War, more emphatically committed
than to that of the exclusive right to
supply the nation with money.
When the government issues its own
treasury notes to supply the need of pa
per money, every one of those notes is
based upon the credit and the wealth of
the entire nation. It is folly to say that
the credit of the nation, represented
in the bonds issued by the govern
ment, affords a safe foundation for
paper money, but that notes issued di
rectly by the government would not be
safe. Whatever it is that makes the
bond good, would make the note good.
We hear it said that the government
might issue too many notes. Why can
it not be said, with equal force, that the
government might issue too many bonds?
It is the government that has to decide,
after all. The government has to say
how many men shall serve in the army;
how many in the navy; how many ships
we shall have; how many post-offices we
shall have; how many custom houses we
shall have; how many public buildings
we shall have; how many offices and sal
aries we shall have.
When we have to trust the government
with the tremendous power of declaring
war —which carries with it the death
knell to untold thousands of citizens —
it is the merest nonsense to say that the
same government shall not be trusted
with the discretion of saying how many
treasury notes shall be issued.
Another reason'why a direct issue of
treasury notes by the government is pre-
THE JEFFERSONIAN.
ferable to notes issued by or through the
banks, is that under such a system it
would be practically impossible for any
clique of bankers to make a corner on
the nation’s supply of currency, as they
did last Fall; in other words, if the gov
ernment were supplying the country with
its currency, it would be impossible for
the national banks to bring about panics,
as they have done on three occasions
since the Civil War.
The cry for “elastic” currency is based
upon an incorrect idea of the function
of money itself. In any nation the sup
ply of real money should bear some pro
portion to the population, and to the vol
ume of business. There being no such
thing in nature as money, and money it
self being a mere creation brought into
existence by legal decree, for the purpose
of effecting exchanges in some better way
than that of bartering one commodity for
another, it is a tool with which people
do certain work; and therefore this tool
of exchange should be proportioned to
the work which it was intended to do.
At present we have in actual
circulation only about $1,000,000,000
where we have about 85,000,000 of
people doing business on property
worth something like $115,000,000,000,
with a volume of commercial ex
changes every day of the year which
is so large that the figures can hardly
be grasped by the human mind. Now,
it ought to be apparent that if we had an
adequate supply of currency, it would
circulate as the adequate supply of blood
circulates in a healthy human system.
Nature takes care of the circulation of
our blood, and where we are in health,
the automatic action of the blood vessels
does not attract our attention. If a con
gestion occurs we know that something
is wrong with the circulation, and it is
then that we try to restore that natural,
healthy circulation which for some cause
has been disturbed.
The thought which I want to express
and illustrate is that a healthy currency
system circulates automatically, accord
ing to the law of supply and demand, just
as our blood circulates when we are in
health. We do not need to have the ar
teries opened and an artificial supply of
blood pumped in. Such a performance
is not elasticity in any true sense of the
word, and the bankers know it as well as
the people know it. What they mean to
do by their so-called “elastic” feature of
the currency system, is to always regu
late the amount of money available for
circulation in such away that interest
will never be low. If our currency sys
tem were in a healthy condition there
would be times when there would be lit
tle demand for money, and therefore the'
interest rate would drop. At other times,
for instance, when the crops are moving,
there would be a greater demand for
the money, and the natural consequence
of that greater demand would be that
interest would advance.
What the bankers want to do by the
Aldrich bill is to prevent what, to them,
would be a dull season. Whenever by
reason of Wall street gambling, or other
wise, there is a great demand for money,
and interest soars skyward —as it did last
Fall —they would, under this Aldrich bill,
take out “emergency currency” in order
to reap the golden harvest of 100 per
cent interest, or 200 per cent, or 300 per
cent, as the case might be.
The amount of the tax which is pro
posed for this emergency currency would
be as nothing compared to the profit
which the bankers would gain by it. The
moment the abnormal demand for money
passed away and business resumed natu
ral conditions, the interest rate sinking
as the demand decreased, these specially
privileged bankers would call in the
emergency money, thereby decreasing the
supply, and the immediate effect would
be that the interest rate on the supply of
money which was left, would rise. Thus,
these favored bankers would inflate or
contract at will. Under the provisions
of this bill the power which would be
given to them over the markets is simp
ly incalculable. By the inevitable law of
supply and demand, the increase in the
volume of currency would send the
prices of commodities upward. The sud
den retirement of currency which this
bill allows the bankers to effect would,
of course, send values down —thus the
markets of 85,000,000 people would be
see-sawing up and down all the time, at
the pleasure of a handful of remorseless
exploiters of a governmental prerogative.
This Aldrich bill puts all the power in
the hands of a few bankers, and leaves
none to the government; for while the
bankers will have the right to increase
the currency at any time by $500,000,000,
the government will not have the power
to increase it 5 cents. The bankers can
compel the government to allow them to
inflate the currency, but the government
can not compel the bankers either to is
sue or to retire a single note. The gov
ernment might desire an increase of act
ual money, but it would be powerless to
take a step in that direction. The gov
ernment might think that the emergency
currency had been out long enough and
ought to be called in, but it will have no
authority to issue any mandate to that ef
fect. Thus we have the astonishing
spectacle of our great Republic deliber
ately surrendering its prerogative to a
handful of irresponsible financiers and
usurers who have shown that they are
willing to exploit both the government
and the people without scruple and with
out remorse!
Consider how this Aldrich bill would
operate. In part, the emergency cur
rency is to be based on railroad bonds.
We know it to be a fact that the greater
number of railroad presidents are also
in control of national banks. This is true
of Harriman, Gould, Ryan, Belmont, and
(Continued on Page Twelve.)
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