People's Pilot, Volume 2, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 April 1893 — CARLISLE AND CURRENCY. [ARTICLE]

CARLISLE AND CURRENCY.

The Remedy la Worse Thau tho Dinaaae The Nation Must Look to the Omaha Platform For Relief. Reports from Washington state that Secretary Carlisle has arranged a plan for a banking system, which he proposes to urge upon the country through congress at the next session. The outlines of the plan are not given very distinctly. The principal features, however, appear to be provisions for the issue of state bank currency, under virtual control of the national government, and the permanent suspension of both silver purchase and silver, coinage by the treasury. As indicated by the information at hand the secretary’s plan for regulating state bank issues is to have the banks chartered by the different states and have the issues based upon securities whose sufficiency is to be determined by the national government

Such a plan, if adopted, would result in the same thing as would follow if the present national banking law were amended by giving the national banks the right to deposit other securities than government bonds or money as a basis for circulation, and is, therefore, merely an extension of the present na* tional bank act in that one particular. All the objections, therefore, which may be urged against the present law will obtain equally against the one now said to be favored by Secretary Carlise, with another very strong one added, that is, it will be impossible to keep the security as good as that now required, and hence there will always be danger of loss, either to the state or national government, whichever is required to make such guarantee, then the liability to loss is with the holder of the notes. The attempted appeal to sticklers for “state rights,” which is evidently intended to be made by allowing the proposed banks to be chartered by the states separately, while continuing the power to prevent them from going into actual business in the hands of the national government by giving it power to pass finally upon the security offered as a basis for circulation, seems to be very clumsy, and can hardly have much effect, especially against the strong objection which we have suggested. The same objections which are now so strongly urged against a further depreciation of the price of silver bullion would still remain under this enlarged banking scheme, if it should foolishly be adopted by congress. These objections are based upon the well ascertained fact that the price in foreign markets of all our agricultural exports—and these form about seventenths of our annual exports, besides what are exported in the form of manufactured articles, which makes nearly another tenth—is regulated by the price of silver bullion, and there is certainly no reason why this country should desire to lower the price of the products with which the interest and principal of American securities held abroad, must be paid. Yet if Mr. Carlisle’s scheme were adopted that is precisely what we would be doing. Both the changes proposed, if correctly reported, are very objectionable, more so than the present arrangement The financial disease with which the country is now afflicted is bad, very bad, but Dr. Carlisle’s proposed remedy is worse.—lowa Farmers’ Tribune. —The intrinsic value idea of money has been abandoned by the best writers and thinkers. Coin is not a safe basis for money. The base is too small. •• Encyclopedia Brittanica. ~