Kansas agitator. [volume] (Garnett, Kan.) 1890-1905, 1895-02-15

country, OppoSiuR tHc ueStruCeioh VI
the greenbacks by converting them
into interest bearing bonds to make
room for bank issues.
This appeal should be widely circu-
lated to rivet the attention of the peo-
pie of the whole country upon the
diabolical scheme which the money
power is trying to force through con-
gress.
The circular is as follows:
1.-THE bill now before congress to
radically change our currency system
by destroying the greenback and coin
note circulation, with the view of
turning over to the banks the entire
control of the paper currency of the
United States, is the most radical and
dangerous measure ever seriously pre-
scented in this country-at any rate,
since the covert act demonetizing sill
yer in 1873. So sweeping and radical
a change in the monetary system of
any country can not be carried out
without profoundly disturbing all in
dustrial conditions, unsettling prices,
and creating confusion in every line
of business. Besides, the proposition
to tax the people to take up and ulti-
mately cancel our entire legal tender
paper currency, and leave it to bank
ing associations, organized for private
gain, at their will and as their inter-
ests alone may dictate to supply its
place with promises to pay, ought to
arouse the most anxious concern of
the whole people. The greenback
currency costs the people nothing, is
legal tender, of the same value in
every part of the country, and good
anywhere in the world. To ask the
people to tax themselves-fo that is
what 1t amounts toto take up this
currency, In order that banks may fill
its place with their notes, is PROPOSE
ton, which, if it had not come from
the treasury department, would have
been deemed insane, If not indeed dia-
bolical. This proposition, too, comes
to the country as bolt from a
clear sky. No political platform ever
contained such propositions; nothing
purporting such change was given
out before the late election. The peo-
pie have had no opportunity to express
themselves respecting it. 1t comes as
all conspiracies do, as did the act de-
.aonetizing silver, like n thief in the
night.
"There are more than ten thousand
banking institutions that under this
act may issue notes to circulate MS
money. BY what principle will they
be governed in the issue of this cur
rency9 BY none in the world but their
own interests. Make it profitable to
them and they will put out any amount
of currency regardless Of consequences,
immediate or remote. In turn, let it
become their interest to contract the
currency, and they will contract it re-
pardless of the effect on the business
world. That is the only kind Of
elasticity there is In this form of cur
rency. Banks will issue it as long as
there Is profit to them in doing so and
no longer. The experience of the world
has been that, under such system,
there will at first be expansion-expan-
sion here, there, everywhere, all over
the country, needless of the export of
gold except, perhaps, in the seaboard
cities, till with continued loss of gold,
the limit of tension is reached, when a
Collapse will come, followed by long
continued contraction, general bust
ness stagnation and the ruin of debt
ors.
"This has been the history of such
currency, not only in this country,
but in every other country that has
tried it; and nearly all commercial
countries have tried 1t, one time or
another.
1.-THE creation and proper regulation
of paper money is inseparable from
the power to coin money; otherwise
paper money may be issued In such
quantity as to displace coin altogether,
as different periods of our own history
abundantly prove, and as stated by
Webster in 1888.
Neither power can be safely en-
trusted to private interests. The Sec
rotary of the treasury, Mr. A. ]. Dali
las, as long ago as 1916, said The
authority which is alone competent to
establish the national coin is alone
competent to create a national substi'
tute' Alexander Hamilton early ex.
pressed the same opinion.
THE principle of regulating money
supply for the whole people as the in'
terests Of q few may dictate, regard
less of the vastly greater public inter-
ests, is essentially bad, and has been
proven by experience, over and over
again, to be utterly unsafe and ruin
Gus.
mo principles in monetary science
are better settled than that neither
security of final payment of bank notes,
nor conyertibility alone, can be relied