The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-09-17

against the guaranty system proposed by 1 the democrats, MT. Taft has made lu- 1 dicrous mIstake He has cited the eN- perience of New York as an argument against the guaranty system. In 1929 a l law was passed in the state of New York which provided for the issue of bank notes by state banks and the law pro- vided a fund for the insurance of tho circulation
 ''Fhe law was loosely drawn, and after about twelve years the court held that the guaranty fund covered deposits as well as circulation. A panic came on and the guaranty fund was not sufficient and that ought not to be a matter of l surprise. A guaranty fund intended to , protect note circulation would hardly be sufficient to protect deposits, and yet because this fund failed to do a thing that was not intended in the beginning, MT. Taft argues that it would be i'm possible to devise a successful guaranty system.
 Tried In Oklahoma.
 Tn Oklahoma the plan has been put into operation and 1t has resulted in the pest regulation of banks that any state has yet attempted, and although some seven months have passed, the guar anty fund has not been reduced a dol lar, the only failure was promptly set tied without loss to depositors, and with out inconvenience to the community and the assets of the bank when collected were sufficient to reimburse the fund. Jt is sometimes asserted that a new bank being able to promise absolute security would draw depositors away from the older banks by paying a higher rate of interest. This would be unfair because the new bank credit would rest upon the guaranty fund established by the older banks, and because it would be unfair 1t is not permitted in Oklahoma. There the banking board fixes the maximum rate of interest which can be paid on deposits at four per cent on deposits running more than six months. This completely answers the most plausible argument that has been made against the guaranty system.
 The Third Scare.
 "The third scare presented by MT. Taft is in the discussion of the trust ques- tion. He says that MT. Roosevelt would compel the trusts to conduct their bus mess in a lawful manner and secure the benefits of their operation and the main- tenance of the prosperity of the country of which they are an important part, while MT. Bryan would extirpate and de- stroy the entire business In order to stamp out the evils which they have practiced.'
 In using this emphatic language, Taft has rendered us a service, because he admits that the republican party does not intend to prevent trusts. It only proposes to regulate them and if We can judge the future by the past, that regulation will not be effective. If MT. Roosevelt with all his strenuosi- ty, has not succeeded in imprsoning a single trust magnate, how can the com placent MT. Taft hope to accomplish anything in the way of regulation?
 The democratic plan is to bring manufacturing and trading corporations under the surveillance of the general government when they reach a polnt where their control of business becomes a menace. The limit is fixed arbitrarily at 25 per cent, and it is needless to say that this limit is so high that an insignificant fraction of the corpora tons would be brought under the op- eration of the law, but those brought under the operation of the law would be the very ones which have been ex- plotting the country and evading the officers of the law. This plan, in- stead of q istnrhine husipess -~o'il1 n~"- tect multitude of legitimate corporc- of being bankrupted by the unscrupu- lous methods of the monopolistic cor porations.
 The Fourth Scare.
 "The fourth scare which MT Taft pre- sents is excited by the democratic declaration on the tariff question. Speaking of our platform pledge to make such radical reductions as may be necessary to restore the tariff to a rev enue basis, he declares, in his notii-