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About The Conservative (Nebraska City, Neb.) 1898-1902 | View Entire Issue (Feb. 21, 1901)
Conservative. NEBRASKA CITY , NEBRASKA , FEBRUARY 21 , 1901. SINGLE COPIES , 5 CENTS. I'UHLISHED WEEKLY , OFFICES : OVERLAND THEATRE BLOCK. J. STERLING MORTON , EuiTOii. A JOUBNATi DEVOTED TO THE DISCUSSION OF POLITICAL , ECONOMIC AN1J SOCIOLOGICAL QUE8TIONH. CIRCULATION THIS WEEK , 10,000 COPIES. TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION. One dollar and a half per year in advance , postpaid to any part of the United States or Canada. Remittances made payable to The Morton Printing Company. Address , THE CONSERVATIVE , Nebraska City , Nebraska. Advertising rates made known upon appli cation. Entered at the postofllce at Nebraska City , Neb. , as Second Class matter , July 20 , 1898. THE CONSERVA- BANK TIVE oommiser- WICKEDNESS. ates the ignorance and malice with which a certain sort of journalism assaults all bankers and banks. The constantly published averment that there should be , by statute , a fixed rate of discount for all customers , is no less absurd than a demand that in fire insurance all risks shall have one uni form rate of premium. When a judi cious banker discounts a note he con siders two things before he names the rate. The first is the profit to be made for the use of the money. The second is the risk of the loss of the principal the sum to be loaned. Can an abundant circulation , say such as populistic leaders demand , of fifty dollars per More or Less. capita either diminish or in crease the general rates of interest or the risk of possible loss ? If the quantitative theory of money is correct , and a redundant circulation lowers the purchasing power of dollars ever so much , can it lower or mitigate these two principal elements which con trol a wise banker in making a loan ? Because money is very plenty must it be necessarily very cheap for hire ? Because money is abundant will the risk of discounting doubtful paper be re duced ? In other words can the financial vagar- ists of Bryanarchy by legislating their pipe-dreams into the vigor of operative law , make money so cheap that a worth less vagabond , whose note no banker will now discount , can then borrow money with a facility only enjoyed today by men of ! character and worth ? ' T1 Is not all the twaddle about making money very cheap for the creditlesa , in expressibly poor man the most inane charlatanism ? How can intelligent voters be made to believe that money can become , by legislation , so gloriously plenty that it will enhance the value of paper now worthless and enable the makers of it to get discounts at regular rates ? Is not all reasoning in favor of such a redundant currency the merest rot ? . Hume says , and A CERTAIN SIGN. McLeod quotes him in his "Ele ments of Economics : " "Nothing is esteemed a more certain sign of the flourishing condition of any nation than the lowness of interest. " But money , however plenty , has no other effect , if unfluctuating in pur chasing power , than to raise the price of labor. Silver is more common than gold and therefore you get a bigger weight of it when you sell for silver your wheat , corn , pork or beef. But can you borrow silver at a less , rate of interest than you pay for gold ? If all the gold in the United States was ex changed in a single day for. silver , at the sacred ratio of 16 to 1 , would interest be lower the next day ? Would the credit of a man without good name , without character for honesty , without property , be better at bank than it now is ? If gold becomes as common as silver and silver as common as copper , will interest rates necessarily be lowered , and all the howling , rag-tag-and-bob-tail of Bryanarchy be able to have their notes discounted at the banks ? THE CONSERVA- FICTITIOUS TIVE has had VALUES. forty-five years' experience on the farm lands of Nebraska. It bought land it had claimed and lived on two years , in Otoe county in 1857 from the United States for one dollar and twenty- five cents an acre and has been at home on that quarter-section ever since. More than ten years ago apiece of state school land adjoining Arbor Lodge was sold at public auction and THE CONSERVATIVE bid it in at two hundred dollars an acre , cash down , and received a deed for the same signed by John M. Thayer , gover nor of the commonwealth at that time. This'school land had no improvements upon it at all. The state had expended no money for its betterment. Was this last a factitious , fictitious or "watered stock" valuation ? If not , is the Bur lington , Union Pacific , Illinois Central , Rock Island , Northwestern , or any other prosperous and paying railroad- really worth more now than it was ten years ago ? If worth more why may it not sell- for more just as legitimately as land ? Why is an enhanced value in' land right and a correspondingly en hanced value in corporate stock wrong ? When a farmer WATERED STOCK , borrows ten thous and dollars on a farm of half a section of land which cost him , at $1.25 an acre , only four hundred dollars , but is now valued at twenty- five thousand dollars , does he bilk the money-loaner with watered stock ? He certainly does not. The farm is worth that sum because it pays interest on that sum. When a railroad that cost only twenty- thousand dollars a mile is earning enough to pay dividends on forty thous and dollars a mile and issues stock to represent its increased value , does it bilk the public ? Most assuredly not withstanding it earns four per cent , on that amount and is actually worth that amount it is a corporation and there fore wrong. But the farmer is only one of us com mon people and therefore right. There are rail TERMINAL roads in the north PROPERTIES. western states , not ably in Illinois , Iowa , Missouri , Nebraska and Kansas , which own today , terminal properties worth more money than the amount for which said , roads were originally stocked and bonded. The depots , warehouses , and office buildings of the Burlington system in the cities of Chicago , St. Louis , Kansas City , Omaha , Denver , Burlington , Nebraska City , Plattsmouth , . Lincoln , Grand Island , , Hastings , Bulo and hundreds of other important stations along its six or seven thousand miles of lines would sell at auction today - . day for a greater sum of money than the whole system originally cost. Butte to issue dividends upon enhanced rail road values belonging to a corporation is ' 'watering' ' stock. The state may and does constantly increase by assessment the valuation of railroad real estate for