The Coconino weekly sun., 1894-12-27
A COMPLICATED SCHEME.
Secretary CarlisIe's Plan for Currency
 Reform.

Secretary Carlisle's Plan for Currency Reform.
 The chief features of Secretary Car lisle's highly complicated and involved scheme of currency reform may be out lined thus: It allows national banks to issue circulating notes to an amount equal to seventy-hve per cent. of their paid up and unimpaired capital, upon guarantee fund of green- backs or sherman currency equaling thirty per cent of the circulation, these notes to constitute a first lien on all the assets of the banks Two taxes are to be imposed by the govern ment on each bank-one of half of one per cent. per year, payable half year ly, on it's average circulation, to pay for printing of notes, official super vision and like expenses, and the other tax, which is also on circulation, but of rate not stated, is to provide a safety fund for note redemption, the tax to cease when the fund reaches five per cent. of the circulation out standing. Each bank is to redeem its own notes. When a bank fails, the
 
 safety fund and used in note redemp- tion, but if this is not sufficient, pro rata assessments on the basis of circu- lation on the other banks for the sum required will be made, the contribut- ing banks to hold first lien for the amount on the assets of the wrecked bank.
 This is the part of the scheme which relates to national banks Another feature of it permits state banks to issue circulation on nearly the same terms as the national banks after com plying with somewhat similar require ments, their notes to be exempt from the national tax which was imposed on state bank circulation thirty years ago All notes of the same denomina- tion under the national plan are to be similar in appearance, but state bank notes are to be different in looks both from the national bank currency and from the greenbacks and sherman notes. Another feature of the system provides for the redemption and re- tirement of greenbacks and Sherman notes at the discretion of the secre- tary of the treasury, the surplus rev enue, when there is any, being used for that purpose, the retired notes not to exceed 70 per cent of the new cir culation, national and state, provided by this scheme. The state bank notes are, of course, designed to furnish the local currency which the enemies of the national banking system have been for so many years demanding.
 It is easy to see that the country will not take kindly to the Carlisle scheme. In providing two new sorts of money it makes a needless addition to our al- ready embarrassingly variegated and diversified circulating medium. One kind of new currency, to be sure, we must have, for the government bond deposit feature will necessarily have to be absent from that form of circula- tion, whatever it may be, which will soon have to be devised to supplement- and succeed the national bank cur rency. Two new sorts of circulation, however, is rather more than the coun- try desires at present. The absence, too; of a direct governmental liability for circulation will arouse prejudice against it Perhaps the safeguards SUIT ounding the circulation might in actual operation turn out to be ample, but there will be a popular suspicion that the scheme is weak in this par ticular, and this feeling is likely to be fatal to all chances of its adoption In regard to the state bank feature of the scheme, the wildcat currency advo- cates will think the secretary does not go anywhere near far enough in his con- sessions to them, while all the rest of the country will think he goes too far. The proposition is on the lines laid down in the so-called Baltimore cur rency plan to the extent that it bases on bank capital instead of on bond deposits, but it is much more complex than that system and much less satisfactory. - St. Louis Globe Democrat