The Daily state journal. [volume] (Alexandria, Va.) 1868-1874, 1873-09-25
ELECTION-DAY
TUESDAY NOVEMBER A, 1873.
OUR MONETARY CRASH AND WHAT
HAY COME OF IT

NAY COME OF IT. Il
1t is to be hoped that the thunderbolt
which has descended upon Wall-street and
produced such monetary panic through
out the country will have the effect Of puri-
flying somewhat the financial atmosphere OF
that locality. 1t has been at best but
nest Of INSCRIPTIONS gamblers whose
operations have been less creditable
to its occupants and habitues than
those of our faro banks and keno
bells, which the laws attempt to sup
press with so much severity. From being
place where the barometer Of exchange
should be hung up justly to mark the
extent of commercial and monetary
operations, and fix the relative values of
gold, silver, currency, exchange, and COM
mercial paper generally, it has become
regular den of stock-gamblers who have
made highway robbery. cut-throat poker,
and ordinary thieving respectable occupa-
tons in comparison with their own.
Instead of advancing or seeking to advance
country, or give stability and character
to commercial and other operations, such
as are dependent upon uniform and fair
adjustment of values in exchange, it has
been the theatre Of wild and reckless adj
venture, where legitimate bushes interests
ceased to be fostcred, and the most villain
Gus speculative enterprises set on foot and
made the special object of safeguarding.
Wall street has been, in fact, a regular bear
garden and bull-bating ring wherein to
lacerate and mercilessly toss about the pro-
ductiye industries of the country, as we'll
as its commercial and manufacturing inter-
ests, and nobody need regret monetary
crash which sends the chief operators of
that locality to the financial wall. The
result will be essentially beneficial one in
the end to all the material interests and
lcgitmately -lostcred industries of the coun.
try.
Our present vicious system of finance is
one of the evil results of the war. 1t was
forced upon us by the very men who are
now seeking to control the political and
financial destinies of our state, and who
glory in the record Of military achieves
ments which flooded both sections of
the country with legalized system of
paper currency that has been more
fatal to the great labor-interests of
our people than the war itself.
Under this system the people are
being taxed some thirty millions of dol
lars year, which goes to the national
banks in the shape Of bonus to them for
the privilege Of banking. This enormous
tax the government pays without any
equivalent advantage, on the false and
pernicious theory that paper system of
currency is the perfection of monetary
science. We mean a system that is built
on paper only, and that piles indebted
ness upon Indebtedness as the basis of
state and national credit.
The war, as we have said, forced this
pernicious system upon the country, and
the men chiefly responsible for it are your
fire-eating Kempers, who care no more for
the interests of the great laboring classes
now than when they sought to force this
system upon The people in contest that
drained the best Industrial blood Of the
land, and will not cease to drain il
until we get rid Of the vicious in.
finence of paper currency which makes
Wall-street the great national vampire,
sucking the lfe-blood out of the produc-
tive industry of the country. For every
fictitious loss or gain in the monetary
operations of Wall. street must come out of
the labor wages of the people, precisely
the Same as in the operations of faro
bank Or keno table, where money
passes, more remotely at each loss and
gain, from the hands of those who
actually produce it, or produce that which
alone gives representative value to it.
The immediate cause of the crash is no
doubt due to the oyer-gambling operations
OF Wall-street, to the carrying Of nom
legitimate business interests, to the en-
couragement given to speculative and
concentrating rings, and to the failure on
hepart Of the New York and other lead
ing banks of the country, to aid in the
advancement Of the great labor-int
ests and industrial enterprises of our peo-
pie. Heretofore their whole effort has
been to rob labor Of its legitimate rewards.
and to pile up colossal foi tunes in
the hands of the few at the expense
of the many. The crash has come from
their oyer-greed and anxiety to drain the |
blood of their victim frster than the great
industrial heart of the nation would pump
1t into the public veins. That the effect
will be to renoyate the financial and moral
atmosphere of Wall-street, and to open the |
eyes OF our people to the vicious monetary
system now pressing upon the material
industry OF the country, few persons can
Doubt who are at all familiar with the |
history of financial bubbles in the past. |
1t viii have Che effect to bring US back to !