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.
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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
