The examiner., 1882-02-18
National Banks vs. The
 Republic.

It IS announced 1TOm WHSAluSeOA that the banking and currency commit tee have agreed to extend the charter o1 national banks twenty years longer The country will wait to see whether Congress is so dead to every serse oi duty as to ind ,rse the action of this committee, which hands over for the next twenty years fifty millions of Americans to the tender mercy of ?, 100
 national banks.
 If Congress consents to perpetuate this crime, will the Americans tamely submit to it? Their patience in the past has encouraged the money power to keep on in the wholesale robbery that has flched from labor the millions which have enabled the national ban CTS to make Congress their servant.
 The national bank system was born daring time when the republic was engaged in life and death struggle for it's existence. With the public at tention absorbe1 in the task of SUD- pressing the rebellion the people had no time to inquire into the nature of the power the government was intrust- ing to few thousand noney-leaders. They had as yet no practical experience of that power, and if, therefore, their representatives in Congress gave the national banks the right to dictate what shall be the value of every piece of property in the country if they made them judges as to how much or how little every workingman shall receive of the fruits of his labor-and this they did when they allowed the national banks to expand and contract the vol tune of currency at their pleasure-if, we say, the representatives of the peo- plo intrusted few men with such an enormous power of oppression, they might be excused on the grounds that they knew not what they were doing. But what was blunder in 1862 will be crime, if repeated, in 1882.
 Twenty years experience has shown what national banks cln do, and there is not an intelligent man in the United States who has given the subject any thought who does not know that their continued existence is standing threat to cur republican form of government.
 We do not now touch upon the money loss the people have suffered from the twenty years existence of system that has been cupningly devised to make every workingmau in the land help to contribute some out of his labor to build up the enormous fortunes national bankers have accu- mulated during the last twenty years. Leaving aside for ths moment all thought of ths millions that have been stolen from labor through the operation of the national bank system, and turn ing our attention to the consideration of the danger threatens our republican form of government from the continua- ton of this system, we shall find sufi cient justification in denouncing as a traitor to the republic every con- gressman who votes to continue for another twenty years the rule of the na- tiona1 bankers.
 These b1nkers have already made Congress their servant. What will they not do in the next twenty years if they are to retain autocratic power that the control of the currency has placed in as- l., Ua 1,o they threatened to bring upon us another financial panic if Congress dared to lessen their profits even to the extent of one per cent Let Senator Vest, of Missouri, tell how these cor porations bullied Congress into sub mission by their will:
 "They came here at the last spring session of Congress and took the govern ment by the throat and told the repre- sentatives of the people. We will have none of this legislation; we defy you to enact it; we willpull the temple about your ears, and bury us and yourselves in our common ruin before ycu shall enact any such bill as you have pro- posed.' Now, I ask the representatives of the people-Do you propose to sub init to this thing? Do you propose that any power shall exist in this country greater than the government itself-a power which attacks us here in the citadel of the peoples rights, ard says to us, the representatives of the people: You shall make legisla tion which suits us and our interests, or else we will destroy tie financial prosperity of the entire country ?"
 In these words of Senator Vest we have placed before us the character of the power that the banking and cur rency committee has consented to ex. ;end nominally fer twenty years longer out in reality forever-for the banks at ,he expiration of the nex. twenty years will have becor1e too strong for the | government to deal with them.
 Shall this conspiracy against the life ,f the republic, connected by the banks and carried out by their ! ools in Congress, be allowed to sue. ,eed ?-Irish World.
 Tho P0nIoxe