Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 41, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 September 1908 — THE GUARANTY NOTION. [ARTICLE]

THE GUARANTY NOTION.

In Bryan’s novelty store this season the guaranty of bank deposits Is displayed on the front counter In the best light to attract the political shoppers, those of the Western country especially. It looks well to them and they seem willing to try it out there, taking its wearing quality on faith. It is not all that it seems, and we doubt If It will wash. Wildcat bankers may boost it and encourage its sale. They think It would be a boon to them as an aid in speculation; it would. The goods were woven on the loom of socialism, and we are sure that Indiana’s Democratic candidate for governor is pained to look on the broad stripe of paternalism that runs the length of the web. But it is Bryan’s favorite. Bryan’s speech delivered in Topeka on Thursday evening gives proof that the smooth speaker has not cast off his old demagogic trickery. He is our aptlst and most plausible Autolycus of the day, prince of peddlers of political notions. In an Oklahoma bank failure the depositors were paid their money promptly. He has a picture on the other side. A bank? No. He calls it one, % but it was only an Italian “banker,” trusted with the cash of many of his poor compatriots in Cleveland, who skipped and left his deluded “depositors” holding their empty banks. And that common thievery he holds up as proof of the need of guaranteeing deposits in banks! Can he never be fair in argument? Is it an instinct with' him to fool most of his hearers and readers most of the time? Some big banks of New York that closed their dtsors last winter long ago paid all depositors calling for their cash and are open and running again. Bryan did not mention this fact in Topeka. In choosing Kansas for the opening display of his latest novelty, he chose shrewdly. In the new state south of it there is a state guaranty law and banks in Kansas are finding that their smaller depositors, attracted by the glare, are withdrawing their cash and sending it over the border to Oklahoma This is natural and nd'pfddf of th e solid efficacy of the new nostrum. Let the Kansas banks raise their interest rate one point above Oklahom’s and back the cash will come. We are getting to be quite a big country and temporary sectional Interests should not be confounded with permanent national needs. The Republican party calls for the establishment of postal sayings. banks. They are designed mainly to induce the foreign-born population to save money and make something by saving it With the banking habit acquired, it is expected that they will gain confidence in our national and state banks and do as their American neighbors do. The postal savings bauk is not meant to compete with or usurp the place of the savings bank as now known and appreciated. It is put forward as a kindergarten aid to education of the people who save in the use of the regular banks. But, hollow ah Bryan’s copied cry for guaranty of bank deposits is, it will have its hurrah. If the plan were realized, interest rates would fall promptly and the speculative spirits of bankers who fish In streams without the pale of present banking laws would rise. The honest banker would have to pay, which means that depositors in honestly conducted banks would have to pay.

Talklng of "tariff reform,” a Democratic newspaper of Indianapolis says it would approve the project more ardently if it could think that it would reduce the prloe of beef and all farm products. The statement Is very Democratic. Of the farmers it says: “Hanged If we like to see them got all the money, while the rest of ns are living on ’wind pudding."*