The herald., 1894-11-11
CURRENCY REFORM.

Inc objections to our present plan OF
supplying money for business needs
are plain and well founded. To make
the volume of currency to depend upon
the bond issues has been objected to
both in principle and practice. The in.
superable objection is that it 10 an iron
rule. 1t takes away all the elasticity
that ought to belong to the currency,
and tends to confine it by hard and fast
lines.
Besides, it now takes STA to get per.
mission to issue 500, the way rates are
getting to be. This will never do, nor
can the system last long at the best.
We are driven, then, to do something to
quiet the natural demand for more cur
rency that should be based on credit,
which is the basis of all business. The
desire to accomplish this has been ex-
pressed by the advocates of free silver
coinage, and lies at the bottom of their
theory. They have looked to silver as
an enlargement OF money volume and az
a distinct and additional supply. They
have not been content to use silver as q
subsidiary coinage; but because of the
plain needs for money currency they
have struck 80 heavily for help from the
white metal that they have endangered
its credit-have, indeed, threatened the
life of the goose that lays the silver egg.
Friendly as is the feeling for silver, the
financial differences that have arisen
ought to be settled upon some broader
and more lasting plan OF enlarging and
improving the currency than can come
OF any near prospect OF harmonizing
and adjusting permanently the conflict
as to the two metals. The scheme set
out by the Baltimore convention ia re-
ceiving support all over the country.
OF this plan the New Orleans Times
Democrat, a ruling power in the south,
says:
The plan will give that elasticity to
the currency the lack OF which mas been
painfully felt in all times of money
dreadful year 1898. This elasticity ia
to be obtained through the % per cent
issue referred to in the plan as the
emergency circulation; and this emer-
gency circulation will be taxed 80 go.
verely that it will never be thought OF
but when real necessity arises. Thus
are both safety and elasticity secured by
the propositions of the Baltimore plan,
which. from it's mplicity and the
splendid Endorsements OF all the bankere
as we'll as of the present comptroller of
the currency aud ol his last predecessor, !,
is almost certain to receive the fsvora-
bic consideration OF congress.
1t would seem that we have a plan in
sight here that may. if perfected, solve
our currency troubles, and that, too, in
a way to settle the unnatural and waste.
full war over bimetallsm, and even to
take the whole 1ueation out OF party
politics at once and forever. One can
hardly ovefeatimate the gain such a re-
suit would bring to the country.
Still more pronounced in it's favor is
the Columbia State Is. O. from which
we quote:
AS the scheme has been unanimously
endorsed By body so conservative end
so influential as the American Bankers
association and will be pressed by it
upon tne attention OF congress, we NAV
be sure that some legislation on this line
will be had at the next session. Indeed,
it must be had. 1t is the only possible
alternative to a swamping flood of bad
money. But the friends of state banks
must see to IL that it is amended 30 as to
be oil that it purports to be. and to give
in truth the elastic and sufficient cur
rency of home issue which ia required.
The Nashville American also endorses
the scheme with great heartiness. These
are good signs. They show that tie
south was notso unreasonable ss charged
in its demands for rehabiitating state
banks. that is, it did not want "a swamp
ing food of bad money!" and believed
that somehow the banks could help out
the pressing necessity.