THB ADVOOATE.
10
THE DEAD LINE.
( Continued Jrom pagt 3.)
and living a true, useful life must stay
outside, or get outside, all these social
circles and be self-ostracized. Chains,
none the weaker for being silken or in
visible, enslave all who enter these en
chanted circles. The true man, the
true woman, content with that great
society which God organized and which
embraces the human race, will refuse,
in these days of hone, to know any
"set" but human kind; but will cherish
most the miserable for whom fashion
able society knows only scorn, and for
whom it builds prisons and scaffolds
after driving them to desperation and
crime.
(To be continued.)
PANICS AND HARD TIMES.
The Legitimate Result of Our Ban
System.
NO VIw
Editor Advocate: Who would be
lieve that the,-American people would
longer tolerate a banking system that
"V Jffould "play such fantastic tricks in
the sight of high heaven" as were
charged by Senators Coke, Vest and
Voorhees in our last on this subject, if
we had not seen similar acts and crimes
on their part condoned heretofore, and
they allowed to go on again as if noth
ing had occurred to mar the equa
nimity of community and much less
to spread ruin and devastation broad
cast over a continent and throughout
society. For the scenes depicted by
senators have been enacted every ten
years at farthest during the existence
of our government, as history proves
repeated again and again, and the
country victimized in the same manner
and to a similar extent on each occa
sion. Peter Cooper bore testimony as
we have heretofore shown, that he had
passed through ten great panics that
paralyzed business and prostrasted in
dustry for years, in each case. Ilather
would one suppose, that as the Savior
scourged the same elements from the
sacred temple, so outraged society
would visit them with the besom of
wrath and annihilation. It is an ex
"nmnitt nt t.hft creature makincr war with
its creator waving a flaming sword
over the congress of the United States
and threatening death and destruction
unless its selfish purposes wore com
plied with. It ought to be summarily
dealt with, and a punishment awarded
these "bodies without souls" as they
are denominated, such as inflicted upon
bodies with souls.
The fact is, the whole system is cor
rupt and rotten, and its product can
only be of the same nature and char
acter. Colonel Benton well described
them in a great speech in the senate in
1837, as follows: "Banks of circulation
are banks of failure. It is an incident
of their nature. Those without circu
lation rarely fail. The Bank of Venice
stood 1,700 years, and those of Ham
burg, Amsterdam, and others, have
stood for centuries. The Bank of Eng
land, the great mother of banks of cir
culation, besides an actual stoppage of
a quarter of a century, has had her
crises and convulsions in average
periods of seven or eight years for the
past half century, and has only been
saved from repeated failure by the
British government flying to its rescue
and furnishing its powerful support.
Her numerous progeny of private and
joint banks of circulation have run the
6ame career, and not being supported
by the government, have sunk by hun
dreds at a time. The most of our banks
are banks of circulation, and as such
are subject to the same inherent dan
gers and to new dangers peculiar to
themselves. In a word, our paper sys
tem has become an appendage of that
of England," etc. And it has been de
nounced by every one of our prominent
statesmen who was not suborned into
its support by personal interest, and
among them by James G. Blaine, as
follows: "Could there be a scheme de
vised that would enable a certain class
of men to lay up treasure legally and
without work, or to grow rich by rob
bery of the people and to swallow up
the earnings of the masses more effect
ually than the system of banking in
vogue in this country up to the time of
the introduction of t& greenback cur
rency?" If I was called upon to an
swer his question I would say, "Yes,
I the vejysystem since inaugurated and
I antVMnXnA in fViia niMintpv linflpr tilA
in operation nere.
This specie basis system (as it is
called) is a system of alternate expan
sion and contraction, and as a conse
quence our country has never enjoyed
the advantages of a sound, reliable and
unshaken currency outside of the green
back. Pecuniary distress, deranged
currency, panics and convulsions have
characterized our whole financial his
tory. Our banks, though professing
to pay coin, have been in almost a
chronic state of suspension. Mr. Pitt,
an Englishman, but a friend of our
newly established nation, sounded the
alarm in 1791 when Hamilton was
weaving his web of bonds and banking
around the American people, as fol
lows: "Let them adopt their bonding
schemes and establish their banking
institutions, and their boasted inde
pendence will be a mere phantom. For
they will be laying up an inheritance
of poverty and serfdom for themselves
and their children. Our predecessors,
therefore, were not without warning
of the evils of the bogus specie basis
system, but they allowed the money
power to gain control of the linancial
affairs of the country and they have
held it ever since. January, 18U, pre
vious to the crisis of that year, Jell'er
son wrote:
"Everything predicted by us as op
ponents of banks in the beginning is
now coming to pass. We are to be
ruined by a deluge of bank paper. It
is cruel that revolutions in private for
tunes should bo at the mercy of avar
icious adventurers, who, instead of
employing their capital in manufac
tures, commerce, and other useful pur
suits, make it an instrument to disturb
and disrupt all the interchanges of
property with their swindling profits,
which are the price of no useful indus
try of theirs. I am an enemy
to all banks discounting bills or notes
for anything but coin or treasury
notes."
And again two years later he wrote:
"We are still under the bank bubble
as England was under the South Sea
bubble, and as every nation is liable to
be under the British banking system.
That teaches that legerdemain tricks
with bank paper will produce as solid
wealth as honest labor. It is vain for
common sense to urge that nothing
can only produce nothing, or to at
tempt to reason bedlam to rights.'
The end came, of course. In April,
1818, less than fifteen months after the
Bank of the United States went into
operation, it was tottering to its fall;
and a committee was appointed by
congress to investigate its affairs and
condition. But it resorted to vigorous
measures to save itself from bank
ruptcy, and after a little recovered and
was able to go on. But it had ruined
the country. The amount of bnk
note circulation in 1817-18 was $100,-
000,000; in 1819 about $45,000,000. And
contraction had done its work. The
devastation it produced was deep and
widespread. Twenty thousand persons
(equal to 100,000 in our day) were seek
ing work in Philadelphia, and a similar
condition of affairs prevailed in New
York, Baltimore, and other cities of
the Atlantic sea board; and in the west
the suffering was intense. Wheat was
20 cents a bushel in Kentucky. At
Pittsburg flour was $1 a barrel and
pine lumber 2 a thousand. It took a
barrel of flour to get a pound of tea,
and a bushel and a half of wheat would
buy a pound of coffee, etc. And this
continued with slight modifications for
years. A terrible penalty to pay for
the indulgence in such a system, and
one that common sense would dictate
as sufficient to cure mankind from a
further indulgence in it. But no; shys
ters and speculators those who prey
upon labor and production can't
forego the opportunity that such a sys
tem furnishes them to feather their
nests without work and from the sweat
of the. faces of other and better men,
and, therefore, it is patched up, de
clared now to be perfect, and set
agoing anew, only to repeat the same
operation on a new generation as in
1837 and 1857, which the writer well re
members, with their terrible and heart
rending results. Just so in England
every few years. In the latter part of
1824 and beginning of 1825, the Bank
of England found it necessary to cur
tail its discounts to check the overflow
of bullion. This occasioned a most
serious crisis in that country. Seventy
banks failed and two-thirds of her
merchants and manufacturers were
prostrated, causing great distress
among the working class. Gold began
to flow from the United States and our
banks were obliged to suspend specie
payments. A hundred failures oc
curred in New York and Boston, and
banks went under all over the country.
The crisis, however, was not so severe
here as in England, because our banks
had not had time since 1819-20 to in
flate their credits and circulation to
any very great extent.
You ask my remedy for all this? I
answer a currency issued by the gov
ernmentits volume and amount con
trolled by government. I would have
such an amount that interest would
never rise above the percentage of the
net product of all the industries of the
country 3 or 3 per cent, as hereto
fore. Because interest is the great
cormorant that swallows up the pro
ceeds of. labor and bankrupts the coun
try, as we have seen every few years.
Listen to Wendall Phillips on these
points:
"The power of inflation must rest
somewhere. Where would I trust it?
I answer, with the government;
whereas to-day it is in the hands of the
money kings of State and Wall streets.
In 1873 the banks New York added
5,000,000 to the currency, and three
weeks later contracted it $3,500,000.
Bank advocates would trust the power
of inflation to a hundred money kings
in New York and Boston the very
men to be regulated and controlled
and thus place the whole country at
their disposal. I wouldn't."
A Linn County Farmer.
United Stites Btlance Sheet.
Editor Advocate: Below is given
a "balance sheet" of Uncle Sam's cash
account. The amounts of the ready
cash and debts is taken from Gold-bug
Carlisle's February 28 report. The as
sets, as given, are taken from the Con
gressional Record, save one, now over
due the government. In John Carlisle's
statement he "don't say turkey nary
time to Indian:"
CASH ON HAND.
Gold, coin and bullion,-. ..$177,462,797
Sliver, coin and bars 508,570,076
National bank notes K4.722.132
Bonds and currency 16,320,828
Total $787,073,903
DEBTS.
Loan, 1891 $ 25,364.500
Loan, 1907- 559,615,250
Refunded certificates Feb
ruary 26, 1879 61,100
Carlisle illegal bonds 40,831,150
Total $025,922,000
Balance $161453.903
ASSETS.
Cash deposited national
banks $ 25.000,000
Tax due on whisky, 117,000,000
Pacific railroad bonds and
interest 115,200,000
Total $257,200,000
Add to cash bal
ance in treas
ury $418,453,903
So if the United States treasury was
not run in the personal interest of the
railroads, banks, whisky ring, com
bines and Jews, there would be now,
after liquidating all our national debts,
$418,453,903 balance in the treasury,
and it would not amount to the skin of
a gnat's heel whether that balance was
silver, paper or gold, if this govern
ment was run in the interest of the
whole people. The people have got to
blot out this demo-republicrat force, or
it will relegate them to slavery.
Jim M. Kane.
Osawatomie, Kas.
'Advocate" List ot Premiums, Books and
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DBS. THOKNTOX &, MINER.
Bunker building, Kansas City, Mo., the well
known specialists in the treatment of all
reotal troubles, have established a principle
in connection with their ever-inoreasing
oliental that is well calculated to inspire
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