The Farmington times. (Farmington, St. Francois County, Mo.) 1905-1926, 1922-03-17

country. while Controller of the Cur
rency in 1892, said that the public
should see and realize show small a
percentage of business transactions
are represented by actual money, and
how Impossible it is for the govern
ment to furnish a volume of currency
| sufficient to meet the wants of the
people at all times-that is, in times
of general distress or quasipanic."
Mr.. Hepburn vouched for the fact that
30 years ago "more than 80 per cent
of all business transactions are done
by means of credit" If credit is i'm
paired or refused, sit is easy to real
ize how impossible it is for the re-
naming 10 per cent of money to car
ry on the business of the country
| financial distress" Business done
solely for cash would ruin the system.
The inquiry of 1882 was directly
aimed at the non-liquidity of currency
under the laws of that time. Since
then the laws have been amended and
added to, but although panic has been
avoided, it does not mean that there
has not been money stringency and
financial distress. Ask any humble
business man. Try to get loan at
the banks. Pawn a bit of jewelry.
When one of the largest pawnbrokers
of New York City announced max
imum loan of 500 on any one pledge,
regardless of its value, it was because
the banks would not provide enough
loanable funds. Yet there was gold,
silver, platinum, precious stones, in
these pledges. If gold is money why
the discrimination
| If metals and precious stones, ad-
hitting their slow marketability dur
ing the defation period, were not good
collateral, intrinsically as raw mater
ials, what possible good could be the
gold and silver in the bank vaults?
That is merely one of the involved
and incomprehensible incidents of our
| financial system 1t is self-contra-
dictory on the face of it. 1t is more
than that. 1t is policy that repudi-
ates gold and silver and platinum
and precious stones, all of which at
one time or another have been and are
media of exchange, and have fairly
fixed value, because paperm oney-
money that means nothing, if one
must take the bankers at their word
would not be given for one or two
of the very metals that are supposed
to guarantee the paper sought 1t
was not a question of a glutted mar
ket and trying to sell with no demand;
it was merely a case of collateral.
Of course, all these points are
quite involved. To follow each one to
its lair is no mean accomplishment.
But such a mastodonic attempt would
not lead to very much with the pres
ent temper of the industrial and bank
ing world, and with the people per-
fectly content to get whatever money
the government provides. 1t is not
for them, in their own minds, to ques-
ton the fundamental values, mythical
and actual, of the coin that makes
life so easy for them as long as the
required supply is not interrupted.
They "pass the buck" to the legislat-
! ors: the Legislators return it tn the
people. And the bankers get the
lions share of the profits.
Government officials are afraid of
nothing so much as of establishing
pfeCeuenJS, WneIHeF dangerous VI
harmless. The influence Of practical
ly the entire financial world would
confront them in any attempt to re-
form or improve the situation. This
alone is discohraging enough--and
they fear the possibility of being
made ridiculous. The effects of the
war have fortified, albeit enormously,
the ultra conservatives. In plain, UNI
adorned language, they know now
what they have, but they do not know
what they would have in the end.
1t is a fact that if the government
issued all money, contracting or ex-
banding the currency in accordance
with the nations economic needs, It
would eliminate that choice bit of in
vestment paper-the government
bond. Every ambitious investor hopes
and hopes to have few government
bonds-even when the net return was
less than two per cent. before the
war upset the rates. No government
bonds-no public debt-and there
would be no interest. That is an ex-
cellent outlook, a perfect theory, but
only to the man who is not bond in