The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1891-07-09
BANKING FROM BEDLAM.


The Lane County (Oregon) Farmers Al
lance the other day passed resolutions
demanding that the government shall issue
money and lend it direct to the people on
approved security in sums of $1,000 and
less to any one person q. per cent. per
annum. This proposition is born of bed
lam. The business of the people is to sup
port the United States government, not
the government the people. The govern
ment borrows money of the people as it
did during the war by the issue of its
bonds; the government does not lend
money to the people. This kind of crazy
finance is characteristic of a certain kind of
ill-informed. impulsive. ill-arranged kind
of minds who are either unwilling to think
or incapable of thinking through any
question, but always crawl and climb or
wind greenly around it like hop vine,
Virginia creeper or the aspiring pole bean.
These are the kind of folk that think the
immutable laws of sound trade and finance
are really capable of salutary violation
with every change of climate, form of gov
eminent or triumph of party. They are
as infatuated and deluded as the young
lady in Charleston, who, when her North
ern visitor expressed admiration for the
moonlight effects upon the waters of the
harbor, fervently said: "Ah, yes: but you
should have seen it before the war" This
breed of tepid. half-baked dreamers always
talk as if the experience of the world had
never established any such thing as eternal
verities; that right and wrong are acct
dents subject to the vicissitudes of the
weather, the time, the scene, the people,
the government and the situation.
The approved security" upon which
the Oregon Farmers Alliance would have
the government issue money to the people
would be either land or farm products we
may fairly assume. This is in principle the
scheme of Senator Stanford of California,
who proposes that the government shall
lend an unlimited amount of money for
twenty years at 2per cent interest on land
pledged as security at half its value; that
the value of the land shall be fixed by
appraisers appointed by a land loan
bureau in every county in which 8 loan is
applied for; their services to be paid by
the mortgages; that there shall be no
limit TO the amount of the money issued
as loans, except the needs of land owners
and the ability to pledge the land, and
that the bills so issued shall be receivable
for all taxes and all debt. As is well
known, Rhode Island in 1856 made this
experiment and in consequence CONNER
complete loss of credit quickly followed.
It is not perhaps so generally we'll known
to the average reader that France made
the same experiment on a larger scale in
I7iS-20 under the persuasion of notori-
Gus Scotch adventurer and gambler, John
Law, who made the regent of France be-
lieve that the nation could double its capt.
tai. increase its wealth and resources, pay
off its national debt of three billions and
become the richest nation in the world by
simply establishing a bank on the basis of
all the actual property of the state. So
the government established the ROYAL
Bank, with Law as its manager and di-
rector-general. Laws idea was to
combine all the capitalists of France
and put under their control, as a
loan, all the elements of public wealth
including the ventures of colonial
trade; that is, he proposed to mortgage
the whole capital, real and unreal. of
France. In pursuance OF this scheme.
on the basis OF Louisians, which then
represented all the territory on the Missis-
sippi river from the falls of s.. Anthony
in Minnesota 70 the Gulf of Mexico
claimed by the French, Law founded
commercial company with capital Of
ioo,ooo. 600, divided into 10000 shares a,
so francs each. The Canada. Senegal
East India and China trading companies
were also taken into the bank, and their
territories, property and business made a
basis for the issue OF notes. The rovsl
mint, the business Of collecting the GOV
eminent taxes and the receipts of the ROYAL
income were also included in this s1heme
Of Law TO get all the receipts and all the
issues Of the nation into the same hands.