Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1892-08-29
DEMOCRATIC EVASION.

A very striking case of shallow evasion
is furnished by the editorial reply of the
Philadelphia Record to a correspondent
who asks what is the aim and conse-
quences of the adoption of section of the
Democratic platform. Section s is that
deliverance which calls for the repeal of
the 10 per cent tax on the issues of notes
by banks other than national banks.
Our free trade Democratic cotem-
porary essays to give reply by saying
that, as the national banking system must
give way to some other because Of
the cancellation of the bonds of the Gov
ernment, some safe substitute must be
found. "To this end, the first movement
must be the removal of the tax on the
issues of the State banks" The Record
then goes on TO enlarge on the varied
needs of the country for currency, the
fact that interest is high in one section
and money drug in another, and the
growth of business In all parts of the
country. From which it winds up with
the assertion that a safe State banking
system is the solution of the monetary
problems, including the silver question;
and that "the Democratic party will
always insist that a dollar, whether of
paper or silver, shall always have a
dollars worth of value in gold behind it. 4"
All of which is careful and painstaking
misrepresentation.
There are in this deliberate befogging
of the question no less than six assertions
on which it depends to make that remark
able plank appear even plausible. They
are: First, that the cancellation of the
United States bonds must wipe out the
national banking system. This is untrue.
The Record knows very well that the sys-
TEN can be preserved by the selection of
other securities on which the national
banks may issue notes, or by permitting
the system to continue as banks of dis
count and deposit, with circulating notes
issued by the Treasury. Second, that the
first step is the repeal of the tax on State
bank issues, when it is obviously the last
step that should be taken without some
guarantee for the stability of the circula-
tion to be put afioat by that repeal. Third,
the talk about the need Of the country for
more elastic currency system is mere
verbiage if it does not carry the assertion
that the national system prevents
the formation of banks of issue where
more money is needed. The contrary is
the case. Under the national system
capitalists can organize banks in accord
ance with well-known and prescribed re-
quirements wherever they can find re-
munerative and safe employment for their
funds. Under the State system they
would be subject to the vagaries of legis-
lation in A different States. Fourth, the
assertion that safe State system is pro-
posed is entirely without foundation.
There is no such qualification in the plat
form. 1t simply proposes to reopen the
door to the old State system, notoriously
the most unsafe and inflated known in
financial history. Fifth, the idea that
giving everybody the right to issue bank
notes will settle the silver question is
gratuitous exhibition of monetary ignor-
aDce. Even supposing that the redemp-
ton of these notes In coin was provided
for, the question what coin should be
available for their redemption would be
just as pressing as before. Sixth, the
statement that the Democratic party will
always insist that the dollar issued by
State banks "shall always have dollars
worth of value behind it" has not sylla-
BILE in the Democratic platform to support
it.
The fact is, as the Record well knows,
that this plank in the platform was yielded
to the demands of the South and the
Southwest, where the hankering of the
influential people, who could run wildcat
banks and get the usufruct from them, is of
equal strength with their hatred for the
uniformity and stability of the national
system. By SO doing the Democracy in
dorsed the most outrageous scheme of
imitation and fat money that this country
has confronted for a generation. The
of the free silver men are sound
financial sense compared to this. They
simply wish to change from one positive
TO another somewhat lower;
while the Democratic platform consents to
fill the country with paper money without
any guarantee that it shall have value at
all. The theory of the Greenbackers that