The Manning times. [volume] (Manning, Clarendon County, S.C.) 1884-current, 1895-02-27

/ inGY are most IN Q6nlanQ. lnaI IS lNt
place of the greatest public of the great
est public receipt. If you want cen
tralization, sir. and enough of it. il
you desire to dry up the small stream:
of commerce and fill to overtiowing
the deep and already swollen main
! channels, YOU viii act very wisely tc
F., that enc if you keep out Of the receipts
Of the Treasury all money but such
paper as the government may furnish
| and which shall be not otherwise re
deemable than in receipts for debts
due tie govrnment, while at the sar!c
time YOU depress the character of tht
| local circulation. The correctness OF
my proposition SO fully confirmed by
past experience and endorsed by the
/ contemporaneous utterance Of our alb
lest statesmen, is also thoroughly sus
tanned by the conditions in our present
financial situation We now have
only national money! circulation
equally current in every section Of the
where every dollar is as good
everywhere as every other dollar :
And what do we behold? 4 thorough
| repetition of past experience, the am,
plest confirmation of the authority ]
have quoted Our circulation congest
ed in the great trade centres, freely &C.
cessible only in the great channels of
trade, while in ths rural districts and
more remote sections we have unex,
ampled scarcity and a most usurious
! rate Of interest.
In the great trade emporiums of the
Northeastern cities it is piled up by
hundreds of millions, and, while al
most drug on that market at the
very lowest interest, yet it is only tc
be had on reasonable terms in the
great arteries Of trade; in the rural
districts money is scarce and only tc
! be obtained at an eXorbitAnt interest.
In this section the farmers cannot bor
row it for less than 10 and Is per cent
AS was stated in the memorial of the
| English country bankers it has to be
borrowed from these great centres by
local operators and reloaned at dou
! bic charge of interest, one charge al
| the trade centre and another at the
point of local disbursement. Under
the present system of finance. money
! is distributed in the rural districts and
more remote sections only after sew
eral transfers, aud at every transfer
an additional interest rate is charged,
so that by the tine it rerches the rural
borrower it is frightened down with
| such heavy brokerage that no avcca
ton except successful mining or gam
bling can long survive it.
To those organizations which are
sincerely endeavoring to better the
! condition of the agricultural classes
and to those modest men who publicly
claim to be statesmen, and are yet
fighting the establishment of a loca
currency, protesting to believe thai
our only relief is to be had by e1ces
sive issues of government notes, made
legal tender, I desire to commend fol
their consideration in addition to the
quotations already cited, the follow
ING, first, flcm VIM. H. Crawford's
report, as Secretary Of the Treasury
made to the House of Representatives
February d, 1920: If a national cur
rency should be established the de
mand for it in the Southern and West,
ern States, for the purpose of trans
missions, would be incessant, whist
| its return by the ordinary course Of
trade, especially in the latter, would
be slow and in some degree uncertain
1t is, then, believed that the
evils which are felt in those sections
| of the Union where the distress Is
most general, will rot be extensively
relieved by the establishment of ma
tional currency" Second, from
Thomas Benton, who, in a speech IN
the United States Senate, 1884, allud
ing to petition from North Carolina,
praying for an additional issue Of the
notes of the Second United States
Bank. to relieve stringency existing
in that State, said: IF a hundred mil
lions of United States bank notes were
carried to the upper part of NORTH
Carolina and put into circulation Ii
would be but a short time before the
whole would have fallen into the cur
rent which sweeps the paper of tka'
bank to the Northeast" Mr. Benton
''held it TO be fully established, first Dy
argument, founded in the nature Of
bank circulation over an extended
territory and secondly, by proof, de-
rived from the operation of the pres
ent bank of the United States, that
neither the present bank nor any one
| that the wisdom of man can devise,
can ever succeed in diffusing gen,
eral paper circulation over the States
of this Union"
In my next article I shall attempt
to show that our hope for low rate
of interest and prosperity in the rural
sections mainly depends upon the es
tablishment of a local currency-that
| it is our only hope to decentralize oul
circulation and relieve US from tnan'
cial thraldom. L. W. YoUMANs.
Fairfax, S. c., Feb. II, 1895.