The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1895-09-27
LIVE ISSUES.
Why the Boycott on National Bank
Notes How Will 1t Benefit
Labor?

is DRIVING THE CoUN-
TRY TO RUIN.
The following questions and the
answers thereto, which appeared in
the Cleveland Citizen, will no doubt
interest all our readers:
1. Be kind enough to tell us
why Master Workman Sovereign
asks the Knights of Labor to boy
colt national bank notes.
2. What benefit will accrue from
this to labor? L. S.
1. Because, as Mr.. Sovereign
says in his manifesto, the bankers
propose to perpetuate the gold
standard and demand that the
monetary prerogatives of govern
ment be farmed out to them. "The
national banks are responsible for
the destruction of the greenback,
the payment of the bonds in coin,
the funding acts, the demonetiza
ton of silver, and all the corrupt
financial legislation in this country
for the past thirty years. They
have boycotted and Disseminated
against every kind of money that
promised relief to the debtor class
and prosperity to the industrial
masses. They are boycotters of the
most cruel and merciless kind.n
National bank notes are not
money-a legal tender between in
dividuals. They are an evidence
of debt, which means slavery; they
are Legitimate monstosities con-
ceived and born in sin and corrup-
ton at time when the best blood
of this country was being sacrificed
upon fields of battle and the trait
orous money power had its clutches
upon the governments throat; they
are the cheats and frauds that JEFF
ferson exposed and Jackson thought
he had strangled forever-which
Lincoln, Stevens, Chase, Sumner
and other patriots opposed until
they were forced to surrender or
see the Union destroyed. National
bank notes are the most brazen
kind of "fiat" money-they are
class privilege currency. There is
not a banker in the country to-day
who dare get upon the same plat
form with an intelligent reformer
and defend his bank rags. They
know they have no case.
2. "What benefit will accrue
from this to LAHORE" Bless your
soul, the greatest of benefits. 1t
will serve, in the first place, to
educate the masses as to what con-
stitutes money and what are it's
uses. 1t is question around which
such old frauds as Sherman and
Cleveland have cast a great air of
mystery, and pretend that it is too
deep for the common herd to solve.
1t is the superstition of witchcraft
encouraged by kingcraft over again.
The boycott will show great many
people that bank money is based
upon bonds; that bonds are based
upon the fiat of the people; that
the bankers get their stuff called
money from the government at L
per cent; that those who are not
lucky enough to have been born
bankers must pay all the way from 7
per cent. a year to - and Is per
cent. a month for the use of what is
little less than counterfeit money;
that the interests of the bank ring
and honest labor, therefore, are not
"identical;" that bankers who are
interested in other businesses have
tremendous advantage over COM
petitors, and, in "hard times" the
latter are forced to the wall while
the bank owned concerns, fed by 2
per cent. loans, stand solid, gobble
up the "weaklings," and trade and
fatten by the misery of others; that
the average business concern can
not stand more than 5 per cent.
and exist; that the failure of from
fifteen to twenty thousand business
firms each year is that much capital,
labor power and effort wasted, and
largely in the interest of the bank
ing class; that every panic that has
taken place in this country, due to
the profit withheld wages) system
has been intensified by the hoard
ings and ono confidence" cry of the
banks; that after loaning money to
workingmen and farmers and plas-