The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1910-01-24

and it would often be within it's pow CT to put stocks up or down by rals- ing or lowering the rates for money sharply on stock collaterals. It could suddenly call in an immense amount of stock exchange loans to force a fall in stocks; and later glut the market with money at low rates to help them to rise again. ManlpuIa- ton to any extent in the stock market could meanwhile be employed to ald these purposes.
 All this would be great national evil, and we should guard with in- finite care against giving any instltu- tion possession of the power to ac- complish it, for such power would of itself breed abuses of that power. | Opportunity makes the thief. 1 A Central National Bank would al- so be, in some degree, discouraging 1 to all the other banks in the country, 1 and especially in the reserve cities, by subjecting them to @ new form of competition, and to an all-pervading | and dominant over-lord in the shape of an institution invested with privi- ! leges and powers superior to their l own.
 Bank officers generally would feel | this to be detracting from their own | official prestige as well as from that of their institutions. It would tend l to lessen both their own and their banks importance, ,and create jealousy and hostility where there should be | harmony.
 ] As it is, the National banks are all | working together in peace and har- [ mOny and there is no clashing be- tween these and the State banks, but 6 Central Bank would be certain to prove a flrebrand or a marplot. | Men, particularly officers of pros- porous banks in country towns, where they are looked up to as citizens of OY Ir1Tn fo oTo1n 11h 1ic1s1 xn to have any of the wind taken out of I their sails, or to be taken down a peg in public esteem by having the importance of their own institutions lessened, even the least bit, and noth- ing should be done to hurt their pride, their ambition and their enter prise, or to provoke their ill will, or interfere with the prosperity of their banks by creating a superior power over them, so making them appear subordinate, whether actually so or not.
 | We should guard against the crea- ton of 8 Central National Bank, too, because of one thing in particular, and that is the stimulus it would give to the further concentration of the money power in the United States. Already that power has assumed very recently seen fresh illustrations of it's growth in the practical con- solidation of several of New York's large Trust Companies. The Guar anty Trust Co.,, the Bankers Trust O., the Morton Trust Co.,, the Fifth Trust Co.,, and the Equitable Trust Co.,, not to mention others, have pass
 ad by purchase into the control of a single banking interest, which con- trols the Equitable Life Assurance Society, and. is also closely affiliated
 with several of the largest so-called Wall Street banks.
 and so quietly that nothing was known of it, outside of the buyers and sellers, till it was publicly an- nounced. So it can be readily ima- gined that this process of concentra- ton and consolidation could be car- ried indefinitely further without any hindrance, or protest, because it is rot in violation of any existing law. For Congress to pass a new law creating the proposed Central Ma tional Bank would be to directly stimulate this tendency of capital to combine with capital, and so add fuel to the fire that is destroying institu- tions of ordinary magnitude to build up one institution of hitherto un- known and colossal proportions.
 The unlimited extent to which this centralization and consolidation might
 
 corporations, may be inferred when we glance at the vastness of our in- dustrial, transportation and franchise corporate interests. There are in the United States 440 large, active and important Trusts covered by these descriptions, with a floating capital aggregating more than twenty thou sand millions of dollars.
 So wide a field for the exploits of High Finance in welding corporations together, or at least bringing groups Of them under a single management was never seen before in this coun- try or the world, notwithstanding the great trade and banking consolida- tions that we have already witnessed The power and resources of a Gen. tral National Bank would almost surely be used by the so-called Cap tains of Industry and speculative
 multi-millionaires, to bring about new and more gigantic combinations to add to their enormous wealth, and build up a Money Oligarchy that might become more powerful than the Government itself, and finally en- danger if not overturn our Republi- can institutions.
 Meanwhile, it would be, if not omnipotert in our politics, a constant and formidable menace to the rights, the liberty, and the welfare of the people. It would also be a drag up- on National progress, in so far as it tended to crush or handicap corpora tions and individual traders of small capital by it's fostering of practical monopolies; and despite our laws, speculative capital of great magni- tude generally finds a way to carry out it's own objects regardless of in jury to others.
 The Government should, therefore,
 be careful not to give it any more power to perpetrate wrongs and abuses, or industrial oppression, than it has already, while placing no
 obstacle in the way of legitimate en- terprise.
 Then, as a nation, we should guard against the individual will power for
 evil of any one of these multi-miI- lionaires, or combination of them. The amassing of great wealth in a
 few hands, and it's use and abuse, in
 this generation, presents a problem to
 the American people which they have not yet satisfactorily solved; and,
 therefore, Congress should not only
 do nothing to make the Money Power , more colossal than it is, but impose l barriers of safety for the people where l found necessary. It, certainly would be paving the way to the real, or possible, abuse of capital if it author iZed Central National Bank, with all