The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1898-01-26
1.-THE PROPHET OF THE SHIN. PLASTER. ;

Mr.. John w. Fries at the banquet of
the Massachusetts Reform Club. Mr..
JOSEPH Bryan's speech was largely de-
voted to showing that the SOuth's CAPT
| tai had been Outlawed for banking pur-
poses. He showed that before the war
Virginia had q local currency of ten
| million dollars and banking capital of
sixteen million with population of one
million whites. How rs it in 1898?
Mr. Bryan answers:
1.-THE situation is now that the great
| faluns have generally been broken up
and are titled by small farmers who
| have no connections at large cities, and
however good their credit may be in
their own neighborhood are utterly I'M
known to the city bankers. These are
the people who complain of the scarcity
of money"
The speaker then went on to COM
pare Massachusetts with Virginia in the
matter of accessibility, pointing out that
in the former State, with an area of
about 5000 square miles, there is some
locality for every fifty-fiye square miles
where banking is done. within the ter
ritory lying mainly east Of the Freder-
isksburg railroad and north of Hamp-
ton, there were twenty counties contain
ing about 5000 square miles without
one single place in which man could
make n deposit, draw a check or make
a Loan"
''In the superb James river valley,
as fertile and fruitful a section as could
be found in any eastern State, between
Lynchburg and Richmond, distance OF
140 miles the solitary place of deposit
was at Scottsville, about midway where
there was a small State bank of So,
900 capital In this same valley there
were State banks in 1860 with resources
of nearly 100000" "These people,
added Mr.. Bryan, knew perfectly well
that they are now in a state of terrible
restriction He did not stop there
and declared:
'"T'here was no doubt sentiment
that the vanquished deserved what
they got, and that the conquerors
were mild and nlerciGul; but ! would
say to yOll-and l am not alone in
the belief-that it would have been
less disastrous and more merciful to
have decimated the captive Southern
army and then given their surviving
comrades their natural liberties,
than TO have passed, first the ma
tional bank act, and the restriction
rf
negro suffrage and the confiscation
of credit accomplished by those bank
laws have retarded the progress of the
South and turned that section over to
the free silver delusion, bringing I'M
told ills upon the whole Union from
which you, yourselves, have not been
exempt"
This is a remarkable utterance from.
u man who joined hands with Republi-
cans in the last campaign to elect the
party guilty of this 'confiscation of
credit, the party that makes one section
rich by unjust treatment of another. Mr..
Bryan told his Boston hearers much
unpalatablc truth, but every day that
he stands with the Hannas and McKin
leys he helps to force the chain of ICON
fiscation" under which the South has
lived only by such industry and hero
ism as no other section ever before
showed The Norfolk Daily Pilot does
not take much stock in Mr.. Bryan's
speech, for, under the heading THE
Prophet of the Shinplastcr" it says:
MIR. Joseph Bryan, in his recent
address before q club in Boston,
showed very clearly that we need
more money in Yirginia-much more
than we have; and it is just as easy
a task land a very easy one any
where) to show the same need every
where. Yet, that Mr.. Joseph Bryan,
the head-degil of contraction in Vir-
ginia, should DE going about demon
strating the evils of contraction and
how to cure that of which he was a
principal engineer in bringing about
is somewhat cheeky-especially ais
Mr.. Bryan is still seeking to contract
with one hand, and palm off on us
with the other, a boundless supply
of sllinplasters from wildcat banks.
Mr.. Bryan, we suppose, profits by
this sharp method OF taking our good
money anu 0HemnS us Dan money
i'm exchange. For our part, we pre-
fer silver and greembacks, and so
do all the people, and they intend to
have one or the other, or both, des-
pite Mr.. Joseph Bryan and the Bos-
ton Reform Club"
On the other hand the Norfolk Land
| mark, which is an anti-silver paper, ap-
proves of Mr.. Bryan's utterances, and
says:
1.-The case has never, in our opinion
been better put. Before the war; as
Mr.. Bryan declared to his Massachu
sets hearers, the South was considered
| the centre of conservatism in nearly all
| things, and the cry of scarce money was
unknown. The people had the right
then to employ their own capital as a
| basis for currency. If this currency
| had only a local circulation, what of
that? 1t was good wherever the bank
issuing IT waS known to be SOunl and