The Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1877-1885, 1877-03-28
For the Rock Island Argus.
To the Producing Glasses, irrespective
Of Party Bias.

FELLOW CITIZENS If THE ARGUS can
spare me the room, | propose to address
you on the critical pecuniary situation
which threatens to involve millions ID
bankruptcy. In the late canvass for the
presidency the Republican and Democratic
parties repudiated the Greenback legal
tender notes as currency for the people
They advocated the DatiOnal banks as the
return to wild cat" state banks. The
Republican party by Hayes's inaugural,
now demands the prompt resumption of
specie payments. If this succeeds it will
fill the Golfers of the gold gamblers, and
the untaxed bondhOlders, and ruin inan-
cially the debtor portion Of the people in
all the states of the Union. The leaders
of the Republican party, if not those of
the Democratic, are pledged to support the
interest of the Money Power" both
foreign and domestic, in its fraudulent
schemes to rob the industrial classes OF
their just rights. To secure these rights
it is necessary to continue the Greenbacks
as a legal tender in the payment of all
debts public and private. Nearly all our
early statesmen were decided enemies of
banks of circulation. So general was this
opposition that the states, by adopting the
Federal constitution, pledged each state to
its co-states not to issue bills of credit. "
In other words, not to issue paper cur
rency The states delegated the entire
question of currency to the Federal Gov
eminent, but they refused to delegate the
power to charter banks. See Elliot De-
bates. And every unconstitutional law to
charter banks of circulation has proved to
be a scheme to enrich the capitalists and
rob the producers Let us look at this
system Of legalized plumber. On the
question of banks vs. treasury notes, in a
letter to Thos. Cooper (Sept. 1914 Jeffer-
son said
The crisis of banking is arrived.
The banks pronounced their sentence OF
death. Between two and three hundred
millions of dollars of their notes are in the
hands of the people for property sold and
they formally declare that they will not
pay. From the start of the u. s. Bank to
this day / have pI cached against the sys
TEN, but have been sensible that no cure
could be hoped save this catastrophe. We
are now without medium; and necessity,
patriotism aud confidence, will make us al
eager to receive treasury notes. The rem
edy was to let the banks drop at the ex
riration OF their charters. And Congress
then could have issued treasury notes
founded on a specific tax"
On another occasion, Jefferson said
From the letter of the president see an
idea Of branch bank of the United States
in New Orleans. This institution is one
of the most deadly hostility against the
principles and form of our constitution
In order to meet a general combina
ton of the banks against us, in {
critical emergency. could we no
make a beginning towards an indie
pendent use of our own money, toward,
holding our own bank in all the deposit,
where it is received, and letting the treas
urer give his draft or note for payment
which, in we'll conducted government
ought to have as much credit as any pri
Vate draft, bank note or bill; and it would
give US the same facilities which we hav,
received from the banks"
The present legal tender Greenbacl