The pioneer express. [volume] (Pembina, Dakota [N.D.]) 1883-1928, 1896-07-10

majority are people Of small means.
The savings banks of this country owe
81, ,8l0, ,597 coo to 4,875, 900 depositors,
or an average of $371 to each deposit
or-almost all the savings of laboring
men. The state and private banks
and trust companies owe $1,34O, $685.
600 to / SOC, co people. The insurance
companies Of all kinds, including the
mutual benefit, assessment, co-opera.
tive and ffaternal companies. owe
their policy holders and members the
vast total Of, $s,3s7 .52S, ,259 In ad-
dition to all this the industrial COM
panies Of the United States have q
membership of $685. ,59s, with insur-
ance amounting to $s16,65O,O7s. The
building and loan associations owe
their 1900. 900 shareholders $500, 900, :
900.
These are the financial institutions
whice deal directly with the masses of
the people and are the custodians and
investors of their money. These are
the great debtor institutions of the
country, and they owe in the aggre-
gate to the people of this country,
most Of them poor people, or people in
very moderate circumstances, nearly
sixty billions Of dollars. Free silver
would enable them to nay all these
millions of depositors and policy hold
ers in deprecated coin, worth half
the good money put into their vaults
by the working people Of this country.
1t would swindle the working people
Of America, through their agency, out
of $4,000, 900, ,OO0-a sum exceeding
twelve times the capital stock of all
the national banks in America.
The debtor class, who would be
benefited by the ability to pay their
debts at SO cents on the dollar, con-
sists mainly Of the financial institu-
tions we have enumerated and of the
people to whom they have loaned the
money deposited with them or paid
over to them in the shape of pre-
miums on insurance policies. These
borrowers are not the mechanics and
wage-earners or even the farmers, ex-
cept in very limited way. They are
mainly the merchants and manufac-
turers of the country, the men who
have to borrow money to carry on
their enterprises. The railroad COM
panfes owe the people of this country
and of Europe about $l1, 600, 600, 900 on
the stocks and bonds purchased large
ly by people of small means to furnish
the money for their construction and
operation. 1t is safe to say that fully
three.quarters of the vast aggregate
of debts in this country is owed by
the banks and insurance companies
and other financial institutions and
corporations to the people Of the
United States and for the most part
to the wage earning classes and the
small tradesmen. These debts are
probably ten to one of those owed by
mechanics and farmers.
Whv do not this great body of debt
ors join in the dishonest clamor for an
opportunity to swindle their credit
ors? If there we're no other reason
there is a commanding one Of self-in.
terest which towers above all other
considerations. And this reason is
that every debtor would lose infinite
ly more than he would gain by the
swindle. Before he reached the day
when it would be lawful for himself
to pay his debts at so cents on the
dollar he would have to pass through
a hell-fire of universal liquidation and
bankruptcy to get there-a fire which
would burn up all the assets and re-
sources which might have been avail
able to pay his debts. just as soon as
1T became manifest that there was
any reasonable ground to apprehend
that president and congress would
be elected likely to favor the free
coinage of silver, arpanic would set in
the proportions and disastrous conse-
quences of which cannot be measured
/ rx .r-.,1l H.. go, ,o,,,ol