The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1894-01-09
COLD RuG &
"A Western Democratic Newspaper Says
It Means Ruin for the South
and West.

G40 bWSSSs
The financial policy which would be
gratifying to those who believe that
the Democratic party ought to be con
Quoted in the interests OF the Standard
Oil Company and other corp orations
whose leading stockholders may have
contributed to individual campaign
funds is gradually taking shape 80 that
it is possible to understand it clearly.
The attempt is to be made to main
tain q single gold standard at all haz-
ards, and as a means of doing this the
people who are ''bulling" gold will seek
to establish under national control
State banks of issue which will be
national banks in everything but the
name, and in fact that if the attempt
to perpetuate the national debt fails
almost any sort of collateral will be
used as the basis for bank notes.
The whole issue here turns on a single
peint-that under the Federal Consti-
tuition the State cannot make a bank
nete legal tender.
It is intended to issue a food of bank
notes under alleged State authority,
bat really under a national banking
act, which, however, will not make
these notes necessarily current outside
of the State in which they are issued.
While the single gold standard Is
maintained for the national currency
the necessary result Of the issue of
bank notes, to be ultimately redeemed
in gold if redeemed at all, will be to
increase the demand for gold and thus
to further increase the already exag-
gerated and ruinous premium on it.
Bnder this beautiful arrangement
the same people who control the i'm
mense mortgage debt on the farms and
hemes of the South and West would
come out here and through their local
agents start Estate banks" and flood
us with wildcat currency issued on the
steek of trust companies or on the
mortgage bonds held on our own farms
and homes. And not a dollar of this
stuff would we be able to pay in dis
charging the immense mortgage debt
we owe them. They would held the
Federal Treasury to the gold standard,
and their own conduct in causing local
imitation with their bank notes would
furnish them additional arguments
against ''eheap money" and against
relaxing the gold standard in national
finance.
IL this plan could be put in force, if
we could be subjected to this local in
hstion accompanied by national con
traction, it would increase the price of
all we have to buy from the Northeast,
while the increased demand for gold
caused by the issue of bank notes re
deemable in gold would surely and
swiftly decrease the price Of ali our ex-.
ports. Our cotton, our wheat, our
corn and our provisions would be
down as gold was forced higher and
higher by the conspirators.
Unless the South and West stand to-
gether to resist this Infamous attempt,
unless they speak out to open the eyes
of the good but ignorant men who are
being used as the tools Of these Shy
locks we will be ruined. No greater
danger ever threatened the country
than is threatened by this conspiracy
TO force silver cut Of the national cur
rency and to supply its place withlocal
notes redeemable in gold.
The attempt is made to turn the
flank of the advocates of popular
rights, to divide the South and West,
to scatter the forces which have made
the stand for free coinage and to assure
~PlHtocratic control of the national
finances for many years to come, 1t
ia believed that all this a be done by
this seductive scheme Of plenty of
wildcat bank notes.
For our own sake, for the interest of
the people, for the maintenance of the
rights of the earners of the country,
we must insist that the sovereign
power of issuing all forms of money
belongs only to the sovereign people
and is not to be delegated to any bank
ing corporation, National or State.
The issue is distinctly made between
the free coinage of silver as national
money, good to pay all debts, and the
free printing of unlimited wildcat
paper as a local currency good to pay
nothing.
The "Napoleons of finance" who are
behind this %impudent and indecent
scheme know that it would ruin the
country, but they know, too, that
there would be immense profit in it for
the gold manipulators and for the
capitalists who through such local