Nashville union and American. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1853-1862, 1859-06-23

IS most proosDle II would have, even at that date
without any requistiOn to keep on hand any specie
or to give any security, worked out better results
in currency, and would unquestionably have been
more consistent with those principles Of equal JUS
tice, which are the very basis On which free gov
ernments must be administered But the bill fail
ed. At the next session. Clsl6) charter for bank
ing purposes was struggled through the Legislature
under the guse Of q charter for purposes Of insu-
rance, as has since been done in Ohio, Kentucky,
and other States. This fraud on the Legislature
1 produced the additional restraining act of 1918,
which stopped the newly discovered leak, and
guarded more carefully the monopoly of existing
exemptions aud privileges.
These corrupt and eorrupting practices, carried
on during series of years. pro luced the provision
in the constitution Of 1921, which required maj r-
ty of tWo-Ihirds of each House to create or to
tinue a corporation, provision afterwards copied
into the constitutions of Florida snd Texas. "Ths
alteration was (saJs Hunts AdgaziRe,) either
political blunder of men who wished to remedy an
evil without knowing how, or it was q strategem of
interested men to perpetuate monOpOlieF, BY render
ing almost eopeless the creation of new completing
institutions; IConrary 10 every reasonable expec-
| GdtiOh1 POSeu no ENSlidlub VI tucl AhO.Sdoe-
1t however, increased the exerlions and oOrrup-
tons necessary to success. ''The value of bank
charter" says the Superintendent of the Bank
ing Department in report, "cOuld be cAlcula,-
ed to a dollar The business Of procuring
bank charters was reduced to a corrupt science,
slys q lmen1. Every session was b;sieged by
applicants. Ia 1926, there we're twenty-five
charters passed. The imitation was great, and
speculation ragged through the State. The Jersey
Shore was lined with incorporated companies, and
frauds AID failures, to an immense extent, of
eyed and and other corporations, took pscein 1896
Gouge, p. 81. In 1926, SIXTY bank charters were
applied for, with capitals Of thirty millions.
They were, however, defeated by the strenuous ex-
ertions of CLISToN, then Governor. ''The voting
of a bank charter was voting money into the hands
of the owners of the franchise and the granting of
bank charters had become subsidies TO the political
parLi, ans Of the day. The downfall Of charters
was looked upon as the means of removing from the
halls of legislation one of the greatest sources of
political and party corruption. bank Report.
The Editor Of the New York Enquirer said, in
1926, that certain men, by their bonds and by by
pothecaton of stock, managed to control four mil
ions of dJllsrs in different companies aud do not
believe" continued he, " the whole ooufederaey is
worth 500, OOO." The same gentleman afterwards
gave list of thirty -four banking. insurance and
other companies, all of which he asserted were
"under the control of gang of stock jobbers."-
GOuqe Banking, &c.
The extensive failures of 1926 disclosed many
felOnOus frauds, and produced prosecutions in the
courts of justice. One of the judges of the courts
Of the city of New York, said, in charge, 81 We
have witnessed diplays of depraVi:y amongst the
agents of these institutions Of the most appalling
nature, who have beer found combining and conspr-
ing together to carry out their nefarous purposes
Four of them from the city, sent TO the States
Prison.
1t was at this period that Governor WALCoTT, in
a message to the Legislature of Connecticut, said,
that the whole currency was in the hands Of mo
nOpOlies, which hal the exclusive right to issue
notes for their ewn benefit; that these mOnopoliea
so exercised their power that neither the amount Of
their notes which they issued the amount which
they suddenly withdrew was subject to any praeti-
cal limit; that the price CT all property was de-
pendent, not on the standard CT value established
by the constitution, but by the amount of paper
afost that there was specie in the country ex-
cept the fractional parts of dollar; and that no
man could travel fifty miles in any direction with
out receiving notes, the value or authenticity Of
which he had any means Of ascertaining."
1t was in reference to the period from 1920 to
$780, that HoMANs, in hsVauable Dictionary of Com
merce, says: Throughout this almost entire pc
riod, a rapid succession of unloward events occur
red, leading to embarrassment, insolvency, Gtga-
ton, dishonesty, and crime. 1t is a continuous
history of bankruptcy throughout large portion
of the country, and frauds upon the country,
without any previous parallel. Money mills were
established in New York and Philadelphia, which
were based on the system Of the celebrated
MALEAPR the keeper of an oyster cellar in New
York, who had the adroitnessto swindle the com
muniiy out Of $5OO,OOO"
Governor CLINTON, the author Of the system of
canal improvements in New York; system which
gave him q reputation co-extensiSe with the Union
and which will carry him down 10 the most distant
posierity-was distinguished by his opposition to
the system of unrestricted paper money monopolies.
| He condemned them in a series of messages In
one of them he said: "The proposition to invest
banks with the power to coin money would meet with
no advocates; and yet it might not be perncious
go "N'AOA4'J SiAS@ey SAahtSu bhehuJ VI
ting bank no'es."
1t was in the year 1927, during the gubernato-
rial administration of Governor CLINTON, after the
splendid schemes of the imaginary wealth prcdlced
by bloated paper currency, followed in 1926, by
bankruptcy and crime, that the Legislature of
New York began the assault on mOnied monopolies
and corporate power in the proper manner to re-
duce them to subsection to the sovereign authority
of the State, without which rampant abuses would
continue to stalk unchecked through the land
The Legislature in the act which sanctioned the
Revised Statutes of the State, enacted that the
charter of every corporation that shall hereafter
be granted by the Legislature shall be subject TO
alteration, suspension, or repeal in the discretion
81 the Legislature"
While the people of the State Of New York saw |
the wrecks of bankrupt and iusOlvent corporations
slreWed around them, they found themselves una
be to prevent succession of these abuses without
a multitude of lawsuits with these institutions.
They determined, therefore, practically TO Dulify
the decision in the Dartsmouth case, made in
1919, and to prevent, in the future the surrender
of the sovereign authority of the State by the Gre
alton of charter contracts, creating independent
soVereignt;es within their midst