Image provided by: University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries, Lincoln, NE
About The Conservative (Nebraska City, Neb.) 1898-1902 | View Entire Issue (Dec. 21, 1899)
'L . " * * ' . * * * fj I * t t bc Conservative. & * niid against these as n resource issues certificates of stock to the amount of their value , unless , perhaps , bonds or mortgages are also issued. The ordinary corporation follows the same process as to its property. The securities thus created are easily handled , and are transferred with the greatest facility ; and the banker in advancing money on them needs only to satisfy himself of their value , which he may easily do by inquiry , or by keeping posted on market quotations. Under such conditions the responsibility of the borrower and his distance from the banker count for but little. If the banker live in Boston it is of but little importance whether the industry represented by the securities is located in Massachusetts or in Cali fornia. Ready money and easy credit are necessary adjuncts in the prosecution of any bnsinpss ; and if these cannot bo had in one way , they will bo in another. And whatever bo the other motives or inducements in the formation either of "trusts" or corporations , the singular character of present bank resources is one of the strongest of these motives and inducements. This , too , is at the expense of independent , ordinary enter prise , not only by the merger of many such businesses , but by the unnecessary restrictions against those remaining in obtaining such cash or credit , and their inability thereby to survive the condi tions of competition. This comes about by the inability of the local banker to furnish such cash or credit. To the extent he has capital of his own to spare , or scant deposits , he may do so , but no further ; and if more is needed local enterprise must stop , the laborer cease to work and the community suffer. It is herein that the banking laws are mostly at fault. The issue of bank notes is cut off , and this right of the banker abrogated to the government , which issues and circulates greenbacks , bank notes as against its bonds , and more lately silver certificates. These are not a credit resource of the banks , but of the government ; they are not an ad vantage , but a disadvantage to the local banker and the community in which he lives ; they possess a greater centralizing ten dency than bank deposits. Bank de posits and bank notes are similar in two respects ; both are credit resources of the banks , and both are bank obligations payable on demand. But they are dissimilar in this , that the former possesses a centralizing , and the latter a discentralizing tendency. The former find their home in the great trade centers ; the latter in the bank that issues them , and consequently in the small cities and towns. Could the local bank issue its notes and loan them on com mercial paper to its customers , such notes would answer all the purposes of large deposits , every legitimate enter prise , however small , might be carried to success , labor kept employed , and the full benefits , including cheaper interest , secured to the community. "Trusts" and corporations are de nounced because they are monopolies , and tend to maintain high prices and prevent competition. Whatever the extent of evil in this direction , it will not compare with the evil consequences caused by the loans of money by the banks upon their stocks and bonds. The former can only be of a personal or local affectation , but the latter affect the country at large. While apparently good security for bank loans in times of prosperity , their concurrent openess to speculation in such timeq shortens the prosperous period , and precipitates , pro longs and intensifies the period of panic and depression which follows. This is so far true as to put in question the legitimacy of such loans as an incidental function of the banks. It is now a well settled principle that banks doing commercial business should not and cannot with safety make loans of money upon real estate security ; and the banking . .laws contain restrictions against the eamo. History is full of sad experience and incident as a consequence of such practice. But what real differ ence is there between these and loans on stocks and bonds ? What do such securities represent except property of the most permanent , immovable and unchangeable character ? When panic , depression and necessary liquidation come they do but little in the way of meeting and paying the obligations which they are the means of creating , and that when payment is necessary , not only to avert distress , but to insure the return of prosperity. The banker and the foreign holder put them on the market ; they depreciate and become more undesirable than real estate itself. "Commodity" property , alone , is the security for real prosperity , and the only certain means of redemption from distress. This is true , not so much from its stability in vahie , as from the-fact that it is consumable , constitutes the necessities of life and meets with ready sale both at homo and abroad. It is the security that ordinarily stands behind short-time commercial paper , makes certain of its early payment , and enables the banker and the country to avoid the evils of over-speculation on the one hand and bankruptcy on the other. The conclusion is that present political questions are correlative , the solution of one being dependent upon the solution of the others. The solution of the "trust" question is certainly dependent both upon tariff reform and monetary reform ; and granting the truth of this , present politics presents a most ludicrous picture. On the one hand , neither the tariff reformer nor the monetary re former is iu politics ; neither has a party ; On the other hand , both the dominant parties , while professing the greatest antipathy to "trusts , " are enemies to the only remedies which would bring relief. There is emergency either for revolution in one of these parties , or the formation of a now one. one.JAMES I. RHEA. . Holdrege , Neb. , Dec. 11 , 1899. A WflS A IIAUD QUESTION. among us a few days ago ; its mother was a young woman of vile life. To some charitable women who visited her she expressed her wish that they would kill the child , saying that she would do so herself as soon as she should bo upon her feet. The child fortunately died from natural causes. That is to say , it is fortunate that it died , for what save further sin and misery could have resulted from its living ? And it is fortunate that the wretched woman was not left to the temptation of performing what she had spoken , for then she would have been a criminal , liable to the heaviest penalties of the law. Nobody must kill it , for the law says that it must be left to grow up along with the offspring of the temperate and orderly ; the weed springing up in the flowerbed must not bo molested. It must develop , nntended and unpromis ing , to full maturity and potentiality of crime ; if its life is to be ended , it must only be by the act of the law itself , and after the child has boon given oppor tunity to work its full capacity of harm. This is because it has been born ; its claim to full human rights rests on the bare fact of its human existence ; its fellownien may not judge it in its infancy , nor exorcise any selection between the desirable and the hopeless stocks of mankind. The only one who , from intimate knowledge of the facts , is able to form a judgment as to whether the child is wanted and welcome , is ex pressly barred , both by the law and by public feeling , from acting upon that judgment ; because she is the child's mother. It is a mercy such and such a person died , we say ; we do not hesitate to ex press our relief that this or that source of future evil , of contamination to the school-children of ten years from now , or of crime a few years later is removed from among us ; but wo stop short before the logical next step. We do not formulate our wishes into timely de mands and action beforehand. We study and debate over the problem of the criminal classes , but we pass it on enhanced to our children. We main tain courts , prisons , penitentiaries and hangmen for those classes , but we never question their sacred and inalienable right to perpetuate their infected race to any extent to which their impulses may incline them. The Russians will purchase nothing in any other color which can be had in red ; the Chinese will have nothing to do with goods which are offered in groeu.
