The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1896-11-06
STORY OF A ADO EXCHANGE.
4 Western Cooperative cheme Said
to Have Spread Widely.
Boston TranScript.

One of the strangest things about the
present financial and economic agitation is
the way in which Ii ignores every issue but
one, though it is impossible even to think
of that issue apart from several others.
Under the surface of all this storm over sill
yer and gold. Tor instance, there Is in prog
ress a remarkable movement which prob
ably not one Bostonian i'm 3. thousand has
ever heard of, and yet which threatens to
absorb utterly in a few years all labor and
financial and social reform movements. 1t
is the Labor Exchange curious sort Of
mutual. bank and employment guaranteer
which has spread all over the Western
country. 1t is strongest on the Pacific slope,
but has active branches as far East as
Ohio, and its headquarters are at indie
pendence, Mo. 1t takes the productions Of
its members. and pays them for these pro-
auctions in deposit checks which are re-
ceivable in m at retail prices, for
anything the exchange has on hand. This
institution has often established factories
and hires its members as employees, paying
them in it's checks.
Every one of these checks explicitly and
conspicuously declares on its face that il is
not redeemable in money, and on this ac-
decided that the obligations are not subject
to taxation. Nevertheless. the exchange
often gives legal tender money for them.
since they are commonly received at par
by the retail stores wherever a successful
branch of the exchange has been estab-
lished, and at two places in the West they
have been publicly quoted at a premium
above United States money. so that il may
sometimes be convenient for the exchanges
W DdTleT SOlU lot It's own CHECKS.
Each local exchange employs one super
intendent to manage it's business. and il
there is a surplus profit in the business the
benefit goes TO the members in proportion
to the amount of their deposits and the
time they are left on deposit. Far from be-
ing a fiat money institution, the Labor Ex-
change is bitterly hostile to the legal-tender
system altogether, declaring it to be the
worst enemy the workingman ever had. 1t
is a sort of cooperative scheme. whose
paper" is based wholly On actual COM
modities, and is good for nothing else ex-
cept the obtaining of commodities.
In some of it's essential features the La
Dor Exchange is very much like the Pro-
vincial Land Bank, which became such a
notable factor i'm the affairs of Massachu-
sets in the early part of the eighteenth
| century. This was no South Sea bubble,
but an entirely solvent thing; ii was
based on the mutual principle, and made
commodities really serve as money. and
the Governor of the province. after mega
tiving" the elections of thirteen counseiors
and a Speaker of the House because they
We're directors in the bank. had to appeal
to Parliament to uDpress il. which it did,
by law, and Governor Hutchinson declared
that if Parliament had not interposed, 1.-The
authority of government would soon
have been entirely in the Land Bank Com
pany." Is it conceivable that some such
prominence will be attained by the Labor
Exchange?