CURRENCY CONDITIONS.

The Hill-Fowler bill changes present currency conditions by a very small degree, and would not effect a reduction of interest on loans sufficient to enable banks to be formed in country districts.

The Walker bill provides for such a change as to allow banks to issue "true bank currency," viz, against their assets, and reduce interest in those districts from one-third to one-half.

Under the Hill-Fowler bill a bank of $100,000 capital will have to surrender from $25,000 to $40,000 of its capital in the purchase of bonds as a license fee to do business, when it commences business.

The Walker bill does not require the bank to become a bondholder by a single dollar in order to do business, and not to surrender any part of its capital, excepting in case of insolvency.

Under the Hill-Fowler bill the Comptroller can not know what the condition of a bank was, as shown by its books, on any given day, excepting the days on which the "bank examiner" went through it.

The Walker bill provides for a daily report of its condition to the Comptroller, and the examiner will have before him the condition of the bank on every day to verify when he goes to the bank.

The Hill-Fowler bill isolates and makes peculiar each bank, and makes it liable itself alone to be called upon for gold for every note it issues and by every banker who gets one. This isolation makes it unsafe for any bank to pioneer in the system even if it would be safe when the system was in full operation, which it is not. This is true of all banks that go into it until all are in, and then the country bank will be in a perilous condition.

Under the Walker bill every bank is absolutely safe during the transition, as the condition of no bank entering the system is affected in its obligations or duties until a given time, when the system becomes instantly in full operation.

No bank that enters into the system is affected by the provisions of the bill until all commercial banks in the country come under its provisions.

Immediately upon that event, existing United States notes assumed by any bank lose their identity so far as they belong to any particular bank that has its name printed on the back of them as responsible for their current or ultimate redemption, gold being massed in the national clearing house to redeem all of them.

They are then to the bank as the gold they hold, only appearing with gold in their cash reserves.

CHARACTER OF NOTES.

The Hill-Fowler bill not only compels the bank to buy "national reserve notes" of the Government (strictly a bank note) and pay United States notes for them, which provision may put them at a premium, but it requires the bank to put up a 5 per cent gold current redemption fund for them, so the bank only gets $95 for every $100 it pays out.

The Walker bill keeps the identity of the present greenbacks and only prints the notes of the bank on the back of the identical greenback. It allows the banks to give nearly every kind of money for them excepting bank bills. All money can not be "cornered," as United States notes. The Walker bill requires the Government itself to put up the 5 per cent current redemption for its own notes. Thus the bank gets $100 legal-tender money in exchange for each $100 it pays in.

The Hill-Fowler bill continues the present law forbidding banks under any circumstances to use their "reserves" for the very purposes for which they are kept.

The Walker bill permits banks to use their "reserves" in any legitimate way.

Under the Hill-Fowler bill, as under the present law, every operation of the Treasury would expand or contract the currency to the serious injury of the business of the country. Witness the outcry all over the country that the Treasury is contracting the currency and injuring business in collecting the pay on any debt due the Government.

Under the Walker bill whatever sum the Treasury had or failed to have available, would not affect the volume of the currency of the country by the smallest fraction. It would be in the national clearing house where the people could use it.

Under the Hill-Fowler bill, as under the present law, national-bank currency notes, which are certificates of deposit and the people's money, are a freak money. They are forced out of circulation when the credit of the Government is best, business most active, and the people need the most money; they are forced into circulation by the banks when the people do not need them and can not use them, and the Government is distressed, as in 1893 and 1894.

Under the Walker bill it would be for the interest of the banks to issue the most money when the people needed it, and to just as large an amount as the people could use. The competition between banks in forcing it out will make it just as cheap as money can possibly be issued under any system and kept "good" and honestly used by the people, and when they most need it. That part and only that part of the currency which the people can not profitably use will be forced back to the banks.

Under the Hill-Fowler bill, as under the present law, the United States will have the highest interest rates in the most expensive currency system of any first-class nation.

LOW INTEREST UNDER THE WALKER BILL.

Under the Walker bill interest on loans will be as low, and this all over the country, as anywhere in the world. Currency will be issued to the people by the Government, not at 2 per cent interest, as the Populists want, but for nothing, to any five persons that get together capital enough to guarantee the safety of the currency they take and to the amount of their combined capital, as is done in every country, the United States alone excepted.

BOARD OF ADVISERS.

Under the Hill-Fowler bill, as under the present law, there is no way for the Secretary of the Treasury to avail himself of the expert assistance that is absolutely necessary to him to properly discharge his duties, and that every banker in the country has in his board of directors his clearing-house committee and banking associates, etc. To-day, if the Secretary seeks any advice he thereby inaugurates a panic-the very panic he may be seeking to avert.

Under the Walker bill the reverse is true. It provides for the assistance of the Comptroller, nominally, but really for the Secretary of the Treasury, a board of seven men-men who have risen to the very highest eminence in their profession. They have not attained to their places

by favor, but have conquered them by hard, diligent, continuous work for years. Their position at the head of the greatest financial institution of the world, developed in the Walker bill, not by appointment, but by conquest, will place them in a position not only equal to that of the directors of the Bank of England, but far above them.

Their attainments will rank in finance and banking with the justices of the Supreme Court of the United States in law. Their salaries will come to them naturally, as their duties are met, and from the banks, not from the United States Treasury.

The prizes for party workers provided in the Hill-Fowler bill, at an expense of $23,000 to the Treasury in the triple-headed Comptroller, make more conspicuous by contrast the excellence of the provision in the Walker bill for this board of advisers. In the Walker bill the interests of the plain people of the country find protection in the hands of their special representatives, viz, the President, Secretary of the Treasury, and Comptroller of the Currency, who are given ultimate control. On the other hand, the highest efficiency and economy of service are secured to the banks by their officers and by the board of advisers.

PROTECTION OF GOLD RESERVES.

The Hill-Fowler bill affords no chance to the United States Treasury or to banks to protect its gold by banking methods, while united banks can protect themselves surely and safely.

The Walker bill affords banks the same chance to protect themselves against unreasonable depletion of their gold as the banks of France, of Germany, of England, and other countries do. Under it no call for gold under any circumstances can be made on the United States Treas ury. It would be of as much indifference to the country what the Government paid out as what John Jones, Sam Smith, or anyone else paid out.

The Hill-Fowler bill provides no way of ending the liability of the United States Treasury to furnish to anyone demanding it all the gold needed by banks, or by domestic or foreign brokers, for speculation or to ship abroad.

The Walker bill ends it the day it goes into operation.

NO RELIEF TO THE TREASURY BY THE HILL-FOWLER BILL.

The Hill-Fowler bill holds out no inducement in any form for the banks to assist in relieving the United States Treasury of the current redemption of one dollar of United States notes in addition to the amount their bill forces them to take, viz, $157,872,024-less than half of them. The Walker bill, in addition to what it requires banks to take, has so large an inducement to banks to assume them and wholly and immediately relieve the Treasury of all of them, in allowing banks to issue an amount of currency equal to the amount of United States notes they assume the current redemption of, that the banks are restricted by the bill in the amount they can take.

PROTECTING REDEMPTION GOLD.

The Hill-Fowler bill, in full operation, makes the isolated and helpless country banks furnish to the isolated but powerful city banks not only all the gold they need but all the gold needed in the whole system.

The country banks, in turn, would demand the gold they needed of the United States Treasury, making conditions worse than now-in the city banks putting the country banks between them and disaster, while now the city bankers or brokers, or foreign brokers wanting gold to ship, go straight to the Treasury and not to city banks or country banks.

The Walker bill combines all the commercial banks in the country into one whole to furnish gold and maintain "parity," and masses all the gold in the country in two or three centers of trade to protect each and every bank with these masses of gold coin.

The Hill-Fowler bill compels the division of gold in 3,000 to 10,000 small parcels and the isolation of a little gold in each bank.

Each bank is required to keep its gold in its own vault for itself alone and redeem its own notes in gold only. The country bank can not, in the nature of the case, keep enough gold to protect itself against a senseless scare among its customers or from being blackmailed by any powerful bank, broker, or any operator, either for revenge or for pelf.

The Walker bill compels all the banks to combine to maintain parity and to protect the gold of each solvent bank.

CLEARING-HOUSE CONDITIONS.

The Hill-Fowler bill requires as for twelve years, from 1879 to 1891, the United States Treasury to take all the risk and be at all the expense of the clearing-house system and the current gold redemption of legal-tender and Treasury notes. Then, and it will be the same again, confidence could not be maintained in such empirical practices without a surplus in the Treasury as large as was then held-hundreds of millions, a large part of it in gold. In every other country in the world the banks are required to assist and sustain the Government. The HillFowler bill would, as now, compel the Government to support the banks. Under the Walker bill the United States Treasury would only touch the national clearing house as a fiscal agent and depository of public moneys, having as a guaranty of the safety of such deposits the whole $2,000,000,000 of cash reserves and banking capital of the country as a guaranty fund for its payment by the national clearing house. The Treasury could in no event incur any loss or be put to any expense, as it would be the only depositor of money in that association. Except in the Walker bill, or its equivalent, there is no possible way of avoiding the continuance of enormous loss to the people.

It provides a more effective and far safer connection of the Treasury of the United States with the principal banking clearing house in the country, and relieves the United States Treasury from taking all the risks and being subject to all the losses that are involved in the clearing-house business of the country, which risk it carried from the resumption of specie payments in 1879 to about the middle of 1891, at an expense to the people, incurred in taxation, of about $12,000,000 a year.

The Hill-Fowler bill contemplates the continued use of the New York clearing-house certificates, which are sure to prove at some time a most dangerous and unsatisfactory emergency currency, as compared with legal tender currency, to all excepting the banks which compose it. Banks in other parts of the country have already been brought into very great peril by their use.

Under the Walker bill United States legal-tender notes are the emergency currency issued to allay panics. Their advantage over "bank currency," as emergency money, is incalculable.

OFFICE OF THE COMPTROLLER OF THE CURRENCY.

The Hill-Fowler bill abolishes the office of Comptroller of the Currency and creates a "triple-headed" executive department, thus violating every principle of prompt, efficient, and responsible executive action in the head of affairs, and still further by limiting their terms of office. It perpetuates this gross injury to the service at an increased expense of $20,000.

Under the Walker bill the office of the Comptroller of the Currency remains as now, excepting the Comptroller is made many times more efficient.

The Hill-Fowler bill assumes that a whole community can be arrested, tried, and punished, in providing that every bank in the country shall be put in liquidation immediately, if gold payments are suspended by banks, for any cause, or for any time, longer or shorter. If an earthquake occurs in Charleston, S. C., the whole city shall be razed to the ground, because earthquakes thereafter may be normal to it. Such extravagant remedies overreach themselves, and are equivalent to no opposition to the thing deprecated, and no penalty at all.

Under the Walker bill a penalty tax of one-half of 1 per cent on deposits in all commercial banks, amounting to $13,401,836 per annum, is imposed during the default.

CURRENT REDEMPTION.

The Hill-Fowler bill provides the most cumbersome, expensive, annoying, and impracticable machinery for the current redemption of the three kinds of bank currency it creates that could be devised, and it makes it so inflexible by legal provisions with one class of notes redeemed in one manner and two kinds in another place and manner, as to create endless confusion.

It provides for the division of the United States into territorial 66 current redemption districts." This division of the country into redemption sections is made to apply to only one of the three kinds of bankcurrency notes provided for in the bill-"national currency notes." It also provides that these notes shall be redeemed in one way and at one place, and the "national-bank notes" and the "national-reserve notes " shall be redeemed in another way and at another place--and much more of the same sort.

It makes all three kinds of its bank notes a legal tender between banks, but provides that no bank shall pay over its counter on a check, etc., to a citizen or to other banks a" national currency note" if the note is not in the same district that the bank issuing it is located in, unless its redemption in that district is provided for.

Territorial divisions rigidly fixed and the notes to be issued in that division to be made for that division only, is as impracticable as to restrict the mail service of the country in the same way.

Under the Walker bill the banks are simply required to "do the thing," and left absolutely free to do it in the cheapest, quickest, and safest way possible-in any way satisfactory to them and agreeable to the Comptroller. It is for them to decide and to change the way and place as often as a new railway, turnpike, or city road is built, or one town outstrips its rival. Banks must vary from time to time their ways of doing, in the nature of the case, always subject to the approval of the Comptroller.