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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.
