People's Pilot, Volume 2, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 June 1893 — GOVERNMENT BANKS. [ARTICLE]

GOVERNMENT BANKS.

They Should Have Power to Issue Abolute I.egul Tender Taper Money to Meet All Demand* of Depositor*. In like manner as the United States has received from Australia its perfect ballot law, it is to the Antipodes we must now look for a rational and scientific monetary'and banking system. I find floating about this item: “The government of Victoria has taken a long step toward nationalism in a decision to concentrate all savings banks into one system and attach them to the postal savings banks.” While from the Chicago Mail I clip as follows: “The government of New South Wales has thrown up the sponge in regard to gold and proclaimed bank notes legal tender currency as the only way out of the financial stringency there. From gold to flat money at one jump is a distinctively Kangaroo performance.” Putting this and that together, I conclude that Australia is to have a system of governmental or people’s banks, which being the case, the notes or bills issued by them, such notes or bills being given the legal* tender quality or money function, would be, as the Chicago Times puts it, flat or absolute paper money. As recently as April 20 bank depositors in London, England, were paid interest at the rate of only one per cent., while borrowers were charged but two per cent, and this under a private banking system. If we could establish a system of governmental banks Of deposit, exchange and loan, and guarantee to depositors absolute security, such depositors would be satisfied with one per cent., while borrowers could obtain money at two per cent, and the banking system would be self-supporting and entail no tax upon the people. Then, if these banks were given the power, in case of a run, or an extraordinary demand for money, to issue United States certificates of deposit possessing the full legal tender quality, such a thing as a panic would be an impossibility, while borrowers would never be called upon to sacrifice their property in order to raise money to pay their indebtedness to the banks.

GEORGE C. WARD.

—ls the money gamblers of this country are playing for more bonds they want to get them at once. This is the 'lart administration that there will be any ehance pf getting any from in the next hundred years.—Lamas I (Mo.) Industrial Union.