People's Pilot, Volume 4, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 February 1895 — The President Criticized. [ARTICLE]

The President Criticized.

The Hon. William J. Bryan, the leading congressman from Nebraska, contributes a severe but judicial and unimpassioned criticism of “The President’s Currency Plan” to the February Arena. These are some of his points: He says Mr. Cleveland raises an issue in his message that will not be finally disposed of until bank notes are substituted for government paper, or until government paper is substituted for all bank notes. His position is exactly opposite to that taken by the first democratic president, Thomas Jefferson. Mr. Cleveland has declared the issuance of paper* money to be the function of the banks. Jefferson regarded the issue of paper money as more properly a function of government. Mr. Cleveland declares that “the absolute divorcement of the government from the business of banking is the ideal relationship of the government to the circulation of the currency of the country.” Jefferson, on the other hand, fought for such legislation as should make the banks go out of the governing business and attend only to the legitimate business of banking. This, with the currency, or any portion of exchange, in their control, they will never do. Jefferson wrote on this matter: ‘ 'lnterdict forever, to both the state and national governments, the power of establishing any paper banks, for without this interdiction we shall have the same ebbs and flows of medium, and the same revolutions of property, to go through every twenty or thirty years.” Congressman Bryan shows how utterly disastrous to every interest in the community, except that of the bankers, the ClevelandCarlisle plan would be in operation, and how all the old evils of the state bank system, with its loss and inconvenience, and its pressure upon the debtor would be upon us again. In the case of any great panic, say such a fearful panic as that of 1893, the value of bank notes would sink almost to zero and gold would be at a greater premium than ever. The evil to be remedied is the appreciation of gold. The president’s plan only aggravates this, and Congressman Bryan’s final point is that the only thing that will bring relief,

and an adequate volume of stay-at-home money for the people is the restoration of silver at the present legal ratio of 16 to 1, and a proper system of national paper invested with legal tender qualities and acceptable for all the purposes of commerce.