Jasper County Democrat, Volume 11, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 August 1908 — FRENZIED CRITICISM. [ARTICLE]

FRENZIED CRITICISM.

As soon as Mr. Van Cleave's heated speech cools sufficiently for a real near view other things may he discovered in it. For example, does not it look like an unfortunate thing to use language like this in flaying Mr. Bryan for approving the guaranty of bank deposits? Can he not see that this scheme would remove all the safeguards which our present laws have raised up against such plungers and grfters as have worked their way into the control of many of our banks * * * and percipitate an era of extravagance, wild speculation and corruption which would wreck our whole financial system? Let us see. Just what was it happened last fall—and is still happening with our prostrated industries? Was it not somethjng of the kind that Mr. Van Cleave inveighs against? Did not plungers work their way into control of banks and use them to plunge with some more; and did not the other banks defend themselves against the plungers by shutting down on the people’s money and make them stand for it? Now, if under a guaranty law those banks had had to make up the “water margins" of the plungers’ banks so as to hold their depositors safe, would they have been so free and easy with shutting down on everybody’s money and letting everybody look out for himself, recking nothing as long as they were safe? It looks thus as if this superheated remark of Mr. Van Cleave might be ot the kind to burn his own fingers. When it cools off perhaps it may shrink into something else, but meantime he study on It. Might he not also give space to the thought that under guaranteed de-

posits there would be no run on banks? There is that element in the situation. If the people knew that their deposits were safe, as the Government deposits in the same banks are guaranteed, they would be as serene as Uncle Sam is nt a crisis; or rather there would be no crises. It is because they know now that it is their money that the bankers will seize at the first tpnell of smoke that they become possessed of unreasoning and unreasonable fears and at the repetition of an idle word or the misinterpretation of a harmless act will go on a wild rush for their money, i, Remove the cause and would not effects cease? For the present certain knowledge that their money will be taken at the first alarm substitute the knowledge that it can not be taken, that it is just as safe as their Government’s money now is (which is their money raised by taxes on them) dhd we should have none of the scares, panics, runs, etc., that we may have nt any time. The question is an academic one as yet. The Democratic platform recognized practical difficulties when it said if not able to get a guaranteed bank system it favored a postal savings bank system, which is a “guaranteed" system. The Government would .have to lend its deposits as any private banker has'to lend his. Wherein then is that'Bystem any the less dangerous than the guaranteed system for national banks in which Mr. Van Cleave sees “chaos and ruin quicker and larger than the silver debasement of the currency would have wrought”? Does he thus hold postal savings banks? Yet England and France have got along very well for a generation with postal savings banks and there has been none of the fearful shapes that the gentleman sees lying in wait for us. Looking it all over had not Mr. Van thing? If he is not careful he will Cleave better let a cooler nead and a steadier hand take hold of this thing? If he is not careful he will succeed in so popularizing the guaranteed deposit idea that his party will find Itself tied up to the proposition before election hard and fast.—lndianapolis News (Rep.).