Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1900-02-14
GOVERNMENT BANKS.
OF whatever Material Money May BE Made
Those who Control Bank Credits
Rule the Country.

and support the speculative markets,
Secretary Gage has done much. And
yet the speculative cliques and the
banks that stand behind them, have
identified themselves with specula-
tive schemes, are not out of troubled
waters. Despite what Mr.. Gage has
done for them they remain under Sc
we're strain,s with their future clouded
with doubt. After the crash of stock
values in mid-December and Mr..
Cages announcement, on the morrow
thereof, of a purpose to give support
by increasing the deposits of public
funds with the banks, bull specula-
tors plucked up some courage. For,
as reads special dispatch to the
Philadelphia Inquirer, a Mckinley or
gan, acts such as those of Mr.. Gage,
referred to above, showing that the
administration is watchful of Wall
streets welfare are wonderfully in
huential in Strengthening Wall
streets welfare are wonderfully in
fuential in strengthening Wall
streets confidence" Yet all that Mr..
Gage has done has not put strength
under the speculative markets or
given any assurance that such mar
kets will not collapse. That which
he has done momentarily checked the
calling of loans, stopped the forced
liquidation, halted the downfall. But
the flood having it's source in the
rage of speculative imitation and
threatening to overwhelm the fnan-
cial world has not been turned aside.
1t has simply been damned back to
gather force, with the certainty that
when the flood overtops the dam it
will break upon the speculative world
with accumulated fury.
Of course, Mr.. Gage, with all the
resources of the treasury, may toll
| manfully to build up this dam higher
| and higher, to prevent it's overtop-
| ping by the flood. But the higher he
builds the higher will he have to build
| and the greater will be the pressure,
and to his ability to build, give sup
| port to the speculative markets by
| putting out money in the treasury
| there is an end.
| And the stock market itself is only
being helped to higher fall.
| Let the stock of money in the New
! York banks be increased and they
will build higher the inverted pyra-
mid of credit. And it is upon this
| pyramid of credit that speculative
rests. Without a broadening of this
inverted pyramid speculative infia-
tion must be impossible. So it is
that with congestion of money in
| New York, a congestion that -inevita-
bly, follows industrial depression in
the rest of the country, there will
come credit and speculative imitation.
And following such imitation there
must inevitably come collapse when
ever there comes industrial revival
and drawing away of money from
| New York to the industrial CEN
ters, a collapse that must injuri-
ously effect industry, give a setback
to enterprise, aye, lead to Industrial
depression and starting again of
cycle congestion of money in the
| financial centers, imitation, collapse
and again depression.
| Now, if we had proper money
system, regulated SO as to maintain a
stability of prices, collapse of specu-
lative imitation would not be followed
by industrial depression. AS things
are now such collapse and forced
| liquidation in the financial centers
| puts strain upon the whole country,
and producers being shut off from
needed accommodation industrial ex-
pansion is put an end to be followed
by industrial depression. But if the
| fall in prices, following on the cut
ting off of such accommodation, such
| curtailment of bank credit money,
were promptly followed by the en-
ployment of the idle and the putting
of more money in circulation, the
| trade depression would soon be put
| an end to. In short the industrial
| community would not suffer the con-
| tinued injury from collapse in the
| speculative markets, and collapse
| consequent on speculative debauch
that it does now. Moreover, the basis
| for speculative debauches now found
in the congestion of money in the
financial centers, consequent on in
dustrial depression, would not recur
SO periodically. Indeed, it would not
recur at all.
| But it needs to be remembered that
| though credits are generally ex-
| panded and contracted co-incidentally
with the stock of money in circula-
| tion, that this is not an invariable
rule and that although-if we firmly
controlled the issue of money and
were free to regulate such issue by
| the movement of prices-we could in
the long run and in great measure
neutralize the effect of any arbitrary
contraction of credits by an increase
in the volume OF money, or a wild
| imitation of credits by decreasing the
issues of money, that those who had
the power to regulate the volume of
credits would have power to cause,
arbitrarily, fluctuations in prices,
though not the power they now
possess, and that to secure the people
absolutely against the evil of specula-
tions in the prices of their commod-
tiles, the government must not only
control the issue of what we now
know as money, but of what we
know as credits, really but another
form of money. And this means that
there must be a government bank;
that we must create truly national
banking system. This may sound
like a far cry. But let us establish
| <al