The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-02-10

counted and accommodation paper, are the |
favored customers of the banks, for the rea-
son that the penalty of suspension and bank
ruptcy greatly corroborates their credit with
money institutions. Banks do not lend on
real estate securities. Speculative prices do
not begin there; and the moment that the
tide of import sets in at low prices, the credit
of manufacturers is shaken Agricultural
lands and products do not rise till money is
cheapened by its abundance. Bank credits
must lead in the rise of domestic property
and products; and what leads the bank credits
il il be not the demand made by the dealers
in foreign commodities when they take pos
session of the home markets These credits
as we have said, are multiplied at every stage
of the subsequent sales Of the imports; and
this doubling, trebling, and quadrupling of
credits upon the principal stock accounts
fully for that expansion of the circulation
whose connection is invariable, both in rise
and fall, as we have seen.
But If any doubt remains about the primal
agency, it is all removed by the working of
our public land sales in the times when they
were sold for money by the Government.
What but an influx of foreign fabrics could
drive capital and labor from the Eastern to
the Western States and Territories in sudden
and enormous overflow Low tariff duties,
a food of goods from abroad, and rush from
the manufacturing States to the prairies, work
their effects upon the treasury; first producing
O gorge of the national fund then national
bankruptcy straightway. This is the chain of
sequences and thus the first link is found in
the failure of our tariffs to preserve the labor
of the nation from invasion. Senator Fenton
may be, or he may not be, right about ''the
relation of the volume and value of the cur
rency," but he is not right in tracing the i'm
ports to the currency of the country There
are enough of other agencies at work, and
| they are abundantly sufficient to explain the
| excess of imports from which we are now
suffering in every department of domestic in
| dustry, and in none so much as in the farm
| ing interest, which, curiously enough, is at
once calling for an expansion of bank money
and reduction of the tariff rates.
One word more upon our present enormous
imports from Europe. In the last three and
half years we have taken about thousand
millions worth, and they have taken our
| bonds to the like amount at q nominal value
for the price of the goods. Those bonds they
have at rates ranging from say 20 to 81 cents
on the dollar; at tho highest about even with
the British consols, and the general rate of
three per cent. funds in those parts of Europe
which supply the great bulk of our imports.
In current productive value our six per cents
are worth about one hundred and eighty for
the hundred. Need we look any further for
the cause of the great influx of goods which
are charged with duties that do not in fact
approach fifty per cent. in effective averagesi
Tho stupid general average which puts the
rate above 40 per cent. under the present
tariff, when stripped of the enormous rates
upon tea, Coffee tobacco, and sugar, which
Europe does not produce, would show tina
our manufactures in general are not covered
by quite 40 per cent. But our bonds are nov
paying to the foreign holder the norma
European interest upon one hundred ant
eighty dollars for every hundred that the
cost him. He can afford to send his good
here under an impost charge of less than fort
upon the hundred.
1t is not what we are paying for thes
goods, measured by orr currency or our gol
standard, but what the foreign producer
receiving by his standard of money value
that his sales are governed by; and the cond
ton of our home currency gives no help i
solving the commercial question. Reduc
our purchases abroad to harmony with ou
home industry, and if experience may be Re
lied upon, the regulation of the volume
our paper money will follow. Without thi
either bank notes, bank credits, or som
other form of currency will keep the virtu
circulation up to the demand. Legislatio
must deal with causes, and take care not
mistake effects for them.
|