Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1898-03-31
A LESSON FROM HISTORY.
Let the Government Go Into the Bank
ing Business and Run Its own
Financial Affairs.

| banking business" is the shibboleth of
| the monocrats. Leave the financial af-
| fairs of the nation to the control of prac-
| teal business men who are in touch
with the commercial interests and will
regulate the currency to suit the de-
| mand. Let the men who understand the
| laws of finance fix the volume of money
| and supply us with an elastic" cur
rency that can be expanded or con-
tracted in response to the actual needs
| of the people.
These are the doctrines that are now
being promulgated by the advocates of
honest" money. They have been
| heard before. 1t is the same old de-
mand of the money lenders that the
| people shall be turned over to their ten
| der protection; the howl of the wolf
asserting his right to be let loose in the
sheep fold as the protector of the lambs.
We need not search far into the rec
ords of history to learn what the result
of such a policy would be. Abundant
examples are to be found in our own
country, and in proof of this we again
offer the evidence of one whose state
ments will not be disputed.
Thomas Jefferson was a student of
history, as we'll as of the science of
| finance. He was also a ready writer of
strong, clear and forceful English; and
a coiner of apt and expressive phrases.
One of the best of these was Mono
| crat," meaning an amalgamation of
"monarchist" and "Moneyist." Then,
as now, the money party wanted a
| strong, centralized and brilliant gov
eminent, that would protect the rights
of property holders against the en-
| croachments of the ignorant and shift
less rabble." John Adams carried this
idea so far that he had wooden throne
constructed and sat upon it during his
levees and public receptions. He was
the first of the monocratic presidents,
and there have been but few since his
day. Jefferson convinced him of his
error, and for years before his death
he was almost as good democrat as the
great commoner himself.
Jefferson took the side of the people,
demanded a democracy pure and sim
ple-and he was called an anarchist.
But the people were with him, and in
the end he won.
He bitterly opposed the establishment
proposed by Hamilton, on the ground
that it would create a privileged class
and endanger the liberties of the peo-
pie. But his warnings were not needed,
the bank was established, ran its course
of evil, and came very near wrecl1ing
the republic.
The opposition to the war of 1912,
particularly in the eastern states, put
new life into the almost defunct federal
party, and with its regeneration came
the old demand for a bank and the
supremacy of the mOnocrats. Jefferson
sent forth his warnings from Month
cello, but he had grown old and a new
generation, that knew him not, was
strutting its brief period on the stage of
public affairs. Madison was president,
and he vetoed the first bank bill. But
a new one, modified in some of its worst
features, was presented to him, and he
signed it on the Sd day of April, 1916.
Immediately its evil effects began to
be felt. Jefferson's soul was stirred to
its very depths. On the 21st of March,
1919, he dipped his virile pen in gall and
wrote as follows to his old friend, John
Adams, who, as stated, had become a
good democrat:
1.-The evils of this deluge of (banlO pa
per money are not to be removed, until our
citizens are generally and radically in
structed in their cause and consequences,
and silence by their authority the interested
clamors and sophistry of specializing, shaw
ing and banking institutions. Till then we
must be content to return, quoad hoe, to the
savage state, to recur to barter in the eX-
change of our property, for want of a
stable, common measure of value, that now
in hAin fN-n6 har hn hpa and
wampun of the Indian, and to deliver up
our citizens, their property and their labor
passive victims to the swindling tricks of
bankers and mountebankers."
But the bankers and mountebank-
ers' were in the saddle, and they cared
little for what Jefferson and the people
thought of their piratical schemes. A
new twist was given to the thumb
screws; those who dared to cry out or
resist were put to the rack; men who
were rich to-day became paupers by the
rising of to-morrow's sun; enormous
wealth (for those days. rapidly concen
trated in the hands of a few, while the
masses of the people were stricken with
dire poverty. The results are given in
this extract from Il letter written by
Jefferson on the 2Sth of November, 1919:
Certainly no nation ever before aban-
doned to the aVarice and jugglings of
private individuals to regulate, according
to their own interests, the quantum of cir
culating medium for the nation, to initiate
by deluges of paper, the nominal price of
property, and then to buy up that prop
erty at shillings in the pound, having first
withdrawn the floating medium which
might endanger competition of purchase. |
Yet this is what has been done, and will be |
done, unless stayed by the protecting hand |
of the legislature. The evil has been pro- |
duced by the error of their sanction of this |
ruinous machinery of banks; and justice, |
wisdom, duty, all require that they should !
fnterpose and arrest it before the schemes |
of plumber and spoilation desolate the |
country. 1t is believed that harpies are |
already boarding their money to commence |
these schemes on the separation of the leg |
islature; and we know that lands have al |
ready been sold under the hammer for less |
than a years rent"
The evil continued, and the distresses
of the people became so acute that revo- |
luton was threatened. The conditions
are luridly portrayed in letter written |
by jefferson on the 18th of March, 1920. |
He says:
This state CVirginia) is in condition |
of unparalleled distress. The sudden re-
duction of the circulating medium from a |
plethora (of bank paper to all but annihila- |
ton, is producing an entire revolution or |
fortune. In other places ! have known |
rent: beyond the mountain we hear OF good /
slaves selling for 500, good horses for nVe |
dollars and the sheri6S generally the pur-
chasers. 1 fear local insurrection