of the bank paper permanently afloat. Soon must the business of our country require not less than two billion dollars paper currency all the while afloat. Thus it would require twice over the amount of our present interest-bearing debt to fill the requirement, leaving no interest to be paid. Why not use the nation's credit for money rather than that of banks? There is in using the nation's credit for money more than two billions saved to the people. Who does not see this? (2) The limiting the amount of money of debt-payment (gold coin) below the amount of the entire circulation, the creditor class able at any moment to ship this gold money abroad to be melted over, as I have said, into foreign coin or bullion bars, is a standing menace not only to our prosperity, but to the life of the republic.

(3) To accept on the part of the government in payment of taxes money that the government is not as free to pay out as to accept is to abrogate sovereignty. Debts to the government are just as sacred as debts of the government. If barred paying out to its creditors the same kind of money it is compelled to accept from its debtors, it is vitally handicapped. It lives only by the grace of the creditor class, and that grace is the sword of Democles. A government so administered is a mere instrument of robbery and oppression in the hands of the creditor class.

For the people to create lawful money (greenbacks) is for them to issue their checks for whatever is theirs of value placed in the market. Who accept these checks? The people themselves, who issue them. They honor their own paper by giving in exchange for it whatever of products or property they have to sell. Have they not a good moral (as well as legal) right to issue their own checks for what is theirs? And why do the people honor bank paper-checks of bankers for property not their own?

But what does a government bond represent? The same. The difference between a government bond bearing interest and a greenback is the interest and the legal tender quality. Legal tender stands in lieu of interest, and to the people is more than an equivalent. Let us do as Secretary Chase advised: "Cut the bonds up into little bits of paper made legal tender without interest" to forever circulate as money of final payment. Then will they be no longer a burden to the people, but a blessing. It is certainly more "unlawful" for the government to issue interest-bearing bonds than non-interest-bearing paper;-bonds than greenbacks; for the bonds destroy while the greenbacks "promote the general welfare." Even Thomas Jefferson denied the right of congress to issue bonds to burden the unborn. "Neither the representatives of a nation," said he, "or the whole nation itself assembled can validly engage debts that they may not pay in their own time."

YE 285TH LESSON.

Let the Gold Kings be Dethroned.

The commercial value of coin and its legal value are so much dif ferent from each other-are so far from having relation one to another are so opposed in office, that when the one is considered and made precedent the other is covered up or obliterated and destroyed. While the legal value of the coin is operative, the commercial value of the coin is hidden; when the commercial value is operative the legal value is destroyed. Commercial value demonetizes the coin as effectually as an act of government could demonetize it. Is not every dollar of American gold coin when carried abroad, lost to us as effectually as if buried in the bottom of the sea? What carries it abroad? Commercial value. But for this, instead of our

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coin as commodity being shipped out of our country, American prodducts-wheat, corn, cotton, pork, etc., etc., only-could go abroad. Our money, void of metal quality and commercial value, never goes abroad to stay; but coin goes abroad to be melted into bullion bars or re-coined in foreign mints. If our paper money ever reaches a foreign shore it is sent back again to our own country very soon; but if gold coin goes abroad it is doubtful if it ever comes back. If the metal of the coin becomes more valuable than the legal price of it, of course the coin is hidden away out of sight and ceases to circulate as money.

I can only see legal value and commercial value of metal coin to be deadly foes to each other, like parties that have challenged each other to mortal combat; and the existence of the two qualities in the same coin is like two mortal foes fully armed thrown together in the bloody arena and bent on mutual murder. The real truth is the two qualities are incompatible with each other, and have no right to be placed together. Metallic money is an infliction on mankind in an enlightened state. Among barbarians it served its turn, but with the advance of ideas and the growth of more highly organized society it has been outgrown, and is become a hinderance to progress and a menace to the common welfare. Instead of its being a god worthy of worship it is a reptile more deadly than any slimy, scaly, hydra ever conceived in the imagination of mediaeval poet. All the poverty of Christendom-all the inequality of fortune among men—all the want-may be traced to metallic money as its primal cause. Destroy metallic money and the Rothschilds would be bankrupt in a day. But what effect would it have on the rest of mankind? There would soon be no poverty. This is no over-statement. It is the truth.

The power of the metal to destroy legal value-to demonetize the money of mankind, is the deadly war-club of the giant money-power with which he brains the unwary. Does this giant see fit to destroy all the money of Christendom? He melts all the coin into bullion bars. Can he do it at will? He, by a submarine telegraph message, can command (and his command will be instantly obeyed) every dollar of gold coin in America to be melted into bars and shipped to Europe to be hidden away in the vaults of the Rothschilds' banks. The whole world can be denuded of money of payment in a day at the command of the executive of the gold trust domiciled in Lombard street, London. Who will deny this? No man can deny it. Any American that favors as "money of final payment," exclusively gold coin, is the enemy of his country and of the human race.

The power to destroy "lawful money" without lessening the wealth of the bullionist is a power for evil so great that I tremble to contemplate it as existing in the selfish will of the meanest, most heartless, most unpatriotic of the human race the Shylocks of Wall and Lombard streets. Every dollar of "lawful money" in the United States subject to be driven-presto! begone! out of all observation, and beyond the reach of the debt-burdened people! "What has become of our money of payment"-the debtor asks. "It has all been shipped across the seas and melted into ingots of gold" is the answer that comes back. Any government that will by law make it imperative that the debtor pay "money" and at the same time not provide and have ready and within easy reach of the debtor class a certain and sufficient amount of money of payment, but leaves its very existence discretionary with the creditor class to enable them to foreclose and seize upon all the property of the people-that government, it is surely the right of the people-it is their duty-"to alter or abolish and to institute new government laying its foundation in the consent of the governed."-a new government that will create "lawful money" to "stay at home" and never go abroad to be hidden away

or melted into metallic bars leaving the commonwealth denuded of all "money of final payment" and the people bankrupt.

If there is anything that should be stable and always abundant, never liable to be hidden away at the will of designing conspirators and plunderers of the people (as the bullionists are) it is the money of the realm. That money, if gold coin alone, is the most unstable, most uncertain, most liable to be hidden away out of reach when most needed, of any species of money conceivable. How may we declare our independence of the bullionists? By declaring every form of currency full legal tender without reference to the material on which the legal stamp is placed-then will every dollar whether paper or metal have the same value as every other dollar "when the legal test is applied"-and the legal test is the only test the people have any right or interest in considering.

YE 286TH LESSON.

Money Payments Suspended.

The people have placed their money in the banks. What do they think they have done? They think they have left their money where it will be out of reach of burglars, and when the depositors want it themselves they, on presentation of their "checks," will receive it back "on demand." But this is not so. Every dollar placed in the bank on deposit the banker uses as it were his own money-puts it out again into other hands-speculates on it. And so it is tied up and out of his reach. It is where the depositors cannot get at itcannot have it returned to them. The banker, every day but Sunday, receives deposits. A tithe of these he uses to "bank on," that is to say, pay out to those who may want a little of their money back and to accommodate this or that patron with a loan. But the great debt the bank owes depositors cannot be paid them, except in driblets, if by any means there is a general demand for deposits. The bank can no more pay its obligations in bulk than a tramp can pay for a night's lodging in a first class hotel or for a dinner at Delmonico's.

There is but one thing the banks can do, "to relieve the situation." What is that? The same thing, substantially, that Secretary Chase proposed that should be done with government bonds-"Cut them up into little bits of paper and put them afloat as money." This the banks propose to do with their debt to the depositors for money entrusted to their care and keeping deposit certificates cut up fine for their pay-to circulate as money-not legal tender for debts or taxesmay be refused on mortgage, and so the debtor lose his home-his lands his all. These little bits of evidences of the debt the banks owe the depositors are dubbed “Clearing House Certificates." What is their basis? Gold? No, no-gold basis is non est. What, then. is their basis? It is only the depositors' money non-come-at-able— gone out of reach. That is their basis.

It is like this: I owe you a thousand dollars. You want your money. It is due. I cannot by any means, pay it. So let me take the thousanddollar note and give you in lieu of it one, two, five, ten and twentydollar notes to pass as currency--my own notes. "I may be able to redeem the notes some day." I say. But as long as they pass for current money they are all right and need no redemption. That is the way the banks propose to "tide over the money panic." That is to say, they will pay their debts in chips and whetstones-"promises to pay."

Are the people idiots? It seems so to be so buncoed. Government savings banks are the only banks of deposit that will or can assuredly

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pay depositors their money on demand. Let the general government distribute money to the states, the states to the counties, the counties to individuals as the school fund is distributed. Let bankers lend, as do the Jew usurers, their own money and only their own money! That is "business." There are fourteen billions on deposit in the banks today of the earnings of the American people and hardly two billions of dollars of money in the United States, including what is hidden out of sight. What does this money-debt of the banks rest on? Confidence. In whom? Bankers. Confidence is the only security for this money. As long as very little of it is wanted by the depositors there will be no trouble. The Bank of Venice, for three hundred years had the confidence of the people, who believed that there were millions of gold bullion in the bank's vaults for the redemption of its notes, when there was not an ounce of gold there-the notes all the while circulating as money. But when Napoleon Bonaparte took the city and searched for the gold he discovered that there had not been any gold in the vaults of the Bank of Venice for time out of mind. So the miser who had buried his money and was tearing his hair in grief because it was stolen was told by a neighbor just to think that the money was still in the ground where he had left it and he would be just as well off, as he would never use the money anyway. So with the money the people have deposited with the banks and that has been dissipated in loans in New York, Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City, etc., etc., just still imagine and believe it is in the banks all right, and they will be as well off as if they had possession of it themselves. Take "clearing house certificates" for pay, the bankers keeping your money in his business O. K. That is "gold basis finance"

--the acme of wisdom.

YE 287TH LESSON.

Banking on "Confidence."

It is admitted by all men that the depositors have no security for their money placed in banks but "confidence." Greenbacks may be based on gold; but gold, greenbacks, bank notes, gold certificates, silver certificates and coin and paper money of all nations, when deposited with bankers, national and state, have no other basis of value to depositors but "confidence"-a spiritual entity-evanescent. And it altogether evaporates, and evaporates altogether, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, if any portion of it escapes anywhere and for the slightest cause. If one bank in New York becomes insolvent and fails to pay money to depositors all the banks in America suspend money payment. And the "confidence" has but one hair to hang upon and that is "acquiescence"-another spiritual entity-not so evanescent, for it can't get away. It's a "have to.". You must acquiesce or accept "clearinghouse certificates" for your money deposited. Deposited? No; thrown away-given over to "confidence" and "acquiescence"-bulls and bears!

Great heavens! What a howl went up at the close of the Civil War from the Wall street "confidence" men about "inflation of greenbacks" and the crime of Uncle Sam's issuing any money but specie, which howl did not cease until gold alone was made "the only money of debt payment," nor has the howl ceased that "silver shall be redeemed in gold." Let Uncle Sam pay fifty cents for silver to write his "promise to pay" a dollar on. There must be "intrinsic value" in the material on which his promise is written. Poor Uncle Sam -a weakling-must hang on to Wall street's apron strings! Don't talk about his competency to care for the people's money. Government savings banks would not be safe. Though England for more than

half a century has cared for the savings of the many in government banks and President Grant advised, in a message to congress nearly forty years ago, their establishment here. "Oh, no"; Wall street said, "it is socialistic!-a dangerous precedent!"

There can be no safety for the people's money until every moneyorder postoffice has become a savings bank and Uncle Sam advances to the states money at one per cent; the states to the counties at two per cent, and the counties to the people at three per cent-loaned to them as is the school fund on real estate security. Let the banksas do the Jew usurers—lend their own money. Let the power to issue money be where it legally belongs-with the national government alone.

What does ex-Secretary Shaw propose? That the banks receive money on deposit, lend it out on interest, after doubling the amount by water, that is to say, for every dollar received issue a bogus dollar to circulate as money and to pay depositors-paying to Uncle Sam a bonus of five per cent of it. But how may Uncle Sam know how much of water the banks have diluted the real money with? "Confidence!" Uncle Sam must have "confidence." But Uncle Sam lacking "confidence" may set his own print mill grinding out this bogus money for the banks, as he does the national bank notes. The government holds the bonds in its safe-pays interest on them-prints the bank money and endorses "receivable" on the back of it-then gives the banker as a gratuity the full value of the bond, exacting onehalf of one per cent "interest." It was at first one per cent; but the bankers could not bear up under the "usurious burden." Does any one suppose for a moment that those men would submit to pay five per cent interest on "emergency money?" It would soon be reduced to one-half of one per cent-not enough to pay for printing the bills. Confidence! Let it be reposed in the government. Let it be withdrawn from Wall street. Let us have only legal-tender governmentscrip for paper money. Too much cannot be put afloat, if government alone receive deposits; for whoever has more money than he can invest in business profitably would place it in Uncle Sam's safe. Then it is not afloat. When Uncle Sam suspends money payment it will be when his mill gets out of order and cannot grind out any more legal tender scrip. Now it is proposed to give this privilege to the banksto "create" ad libitum money of payment. But this power rests legally only with the general government. In fact, though, who is the government, or, rather, where is the government? where it was when Washington was inaugurated. been since 1862 when the national bank-act was passed. "Confidence!" to the shades with it!

In Wall streetThere it has ever

YE 288TH LESSON.

Money Management.

Is it safer to place money in the care of the cashier of a bank than in the care of the government of the United States? Is it better that a bank issue scrip or the general government? The answers, "yes" or "no" to these two interrogatories define the money question. Confidence in the honesty of a bank cashier is all the security any depositor has for his money, and it is proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the cashier can steal practically all the surplus deposits of a bank-all the money of a bank, and so cover up the thefts, that, until after he has absconded, no discovery can be made of his wrongdoing, not even by governmental bank-examiners, and then only after a long while may the full extent of his crime be known. For years the stealing goes on and nor bank nor government officials can by any