Under the Walker bill the one kind of bank note provided for, paid out by any bank anywhere will naturally, immediately, and instantly, after it has done its work, find its way back to the bank that issues it as a letter dropped in the post-office in any hamlet finds its way to its destination. Each bank bill will find its way back to the bank that issues it in precisely the same way and in the same package with the check, draft, bill of exchange, or other money obligation issued by the same bank after it or they have done their work and at a tithe of the expense in time and money of the Hill-Fowler plan. It never will occur to anyone to ask what they are redeemed in. They will be redeemed in "bank funds" that all banks agree on and that maintain parity, or all banks will incur the penalty tax.

UNREASONABLE USE OF GOLD IN HILL-FOWLER BILL.

The framers of the Hill-Fowler bill see only gold in our monetary system. They see little in it to preserve to the people who made it. They do not hesitate to assume the duties and exercise the right of the Committee on Coinage, Weights, and Measures. They demonetize silver. They destroy the United States legal-tender notes. They reverse the policy of the country, not only as to gold and silver, but as to paper money, adding two more kinds to the present bank-note money.

They remove the guarantee of the Government from a large part of the bank money used by the people. There is not the slightest excuse for such radical measures.

In the Walker bill there can not be found a section, a paragraph, a clause, a line, or a word that makes the slightest discrimination between any two of the various forms of our coin and paper money, gold, silver, United States notes, Treasury notes, bank notes, etc.

Its author sought only one end, viz, to compose the ills and to correct the injustice in existing conditions, created by law, and in doing so not to unnecessarily antagonize the views of a single citizen in the whole country.

VISIBLE GOLD.

There was in the country "visible gold" (that is to say, besides all the gold in private hoards and in the pockets of the people) in banks, in the United States Treasury, etc., in 1896, $421,236,388. It has increased since to nearly $600,000,000. Not a dollar of these millions of gold was available to our banking and currency system excepting that in the United States Treasury, and no one is responsible for "maintaining parity" but the Treasury. We have more gold in proportion to our requirements than any other country, only a fraction of it in touch to keep the parity of our $1,000,000,000 currency.

The Hill Fowler bill continues the same inexcusable policy and aggravates it. It requires an immense amount of gold, but still leaves the United States Treasury ultimately responsible for maintaining "parity" and to furnish to banks all the gold they demand of it.

The bill requires the banks to carry one-half the cash

$144, 000, 000

136, 000, 000

280,000,
280, 000, 000

Treating silver and United States notes simply as currency, it requires the banks to redeem their notes in gold on demand.

The allowing the use of "national reserve notes" in redemption is only nominal. Each bank stands alone to redeem in gold its notes. Assuming that country banks will take out 60 per cent of currency to capital, it works out in this way:

The reserve city banks keeping 50 per cent of this required

cash reserve in gold and on notes will keep in gold.... $119, 282, 035 Country banks, 50 per cent of cash in gold

Country banks, on $267,913,749 bank notes, 5 per cent in gold

Total of....

27, 466, 179

13, 395, 687

160, 143, 901

As currency and deposits are identical, this is equivalent to requiring 51.2 per cent of cash reserve in city banks to be in gold and an equivalent of 74.3 per cent of the cash in the country banks to be in gold. The $13,395,687 fund to be kept in the United States Treasury.

HILL-FOWLER BILL FAVORS CITY BANKS.

The city banks will escape all responsibility for maintaining "parity," for they will take out no currency. They will keep the " national reserve notes" they are required to take in their "cash reserve," changing them with each other for that purpose, the national reserve notes required in the central reserve cities being only 12 per cent to their cash reserve, in all other reserve cities only 53 per cent to their cash reserve. Not a dollar of their notes will ever be presented to the "gold current redemption fund" to draw out one dollar of gold.

On the other hand, the national reserve notes country banks are required to take, being 182.6 per cent to their cash reserve, and the amount of bonds they are required to take for "national bank notes," will make 335.2 per cent to their cash reserve, they can use only 14.3 per cent of these notes in their cash reserve. They will therefore be compelled to "pay out" all the balance, the whole equaling about $158,000,000, besides the $100,000,000 bank notes.

Under the old Suffolk system the total currency used averaged to be redeemed five times a year.

CURRENCY FLOWS TO COMMERCIAL CENTERS.

All currency flows to the commercial centers, to be returned to the country banks through "current redemption." The bill compels every dollar of this $158,000,000 each time it is presented for redemption to be paid in gold. It puts the gold redemption fund outside of banks and into the United States subtreasury. This is done to make sure that the mandate of the law compelling actual gold redemption is obeyed. The actual gold or gold drafts must be used in redeeming it. Five times a year on $158,000,000 makes about $70,000,000 of gold a month used in redemption and constantly flowing from country banks into city banks; $800,000,000 each year if only $158,000,000 of nationalbank currency and national-reserve currency is used.

How do you like this bill, wholly in the interest of the city banks! Will a bank ever be organized under it?

Where are the country banks to get their gold? Out of the United States Treasury? How is the Treasury to get this gold? Of course the city banks will kindly hand it over to the Government in pleasant times, when everything is balmy. How when it storms? How about

1893? How about another Cleveland-Carlisle administration? It is as sure to come as history is to repeat itself. Sell bonds, of course! Sell $163,000,000 bonds at a loss of $40,000,000, as Cleveland did, or $1,000,000,000, and just as many as unscrupulous banks or foreign brokers may determine.

The Hill-Fowler bill leaves the United States Treasury absolutely unprotected, the sport of the most unscrupulous money changers and gold brokers that can be found anywhere in the world.

A cablegram costs but little. The door of the United States Treasury opens, for the delivery of gold, into every European broker's officeIsraelite or Christian.

PROBLEM OF SILVER REDEMPTION.

If

But one of the most remarkable hallucinations developed in the bill is the belief that with $500,000,000 silver in circulation, averaging to pass through banks in deposits from traders five times a year, or $200,000,000 a month, the people will pay the traders in certificates or in coin. the banks can not get them to present to the United States Treasury for gold, all existing banking customs must be reversed. Remember, the bill demonetizes silver dollars and provides for their gold redemption at the Treasury. It provides only $25,000,000 gold, and that the Treasury must keep good, to redeem in gold all silver presented to it. The only way the country bank can get the gold to make the compulsory gold redemption of the circulating notes is to get it out of the United States Treasury or beg it of the city banks. Problem: With $25,000,000 gold stock in the Treasury to redeem $200,000,000 a month of silver, how many bonds must the Treasury sell per month to do it? Or, how much gold must it buy directly or indirectly of the banks? Or, how will it run the New York clearing house as an adjunct to the United States Treasury? How long will Andrew Jackson lie quietly in his grave, or who cares whether he lies quietly or uneasily?

ASSUMING UNITED STATES NOTES.

Under the Walker bill not one of the present unjust or objectionable banking or Treasury conditions will remain. The city bank will have to assume the current redemption of United States legal-tender notes equal to 12 per cent of its actual capital, and the strictly country bank, just formed, 12 per cent of them to actual capital.

The central reserve city bank will not be let off with buying 2.4 per cent to its actual capital of bonds and 12.8 per cent of national reserve notes, and the new country bank have to buy 25 per cent of both, as in the Hill Fowler bill, and the other central reserve cities only 5.5 per cent of bonds and also of 16.5 per cent of national reserve notes to new banks 25 per cent of both bonds and notes. It requires no bonds whatever, and serves every bank alike.

The Hill-Fowler bill provides for the disposition of only $157,872,000 United States notes by banks. It only requires the taking of them by national banks. It holds out not the slightest inducement for banks to assume one dollar of them more than the law compels them to take. The Walker bill requires all commercial banks, national and State, to assume an amount equal to 123 per cent of their actual capital, which would dispose of $168,071,000. From paying out the Treasury gold $146,000,000 would be disposed of. The losses are estimated at $12,000,000, leaving a balance of only $20,000,000 for banks to assume.

The Walker bill allows banks to issue currency against their assets at once for every dollar of United States notes they assume. This inducement is so great, that among the six thousand State and national banks and new banks there would be found enough to immediately take up many times this amount.

The Walker bill immediately adjusts the holding of United States notes among all banks, so that any bank having an excess will be relieved of the excess immediately-as soon as any bank is in the system.

The Hill-Fowler bill provides no protection to the specie of any single bank. Any excitement in its neighborhood is liable to wreck the most solvent isolated single bank.

Under the Walker bill, the gold of all the banks is massed to defend the gold of each individual bank, by the combination of all banks, so that no "run" could possibly be made on any one bank, and all the banks combined are too strong to meddle with.

HILL-FOWLER BILL UNFAIR TO COUNTRY BANKS.

The unfairness of the Hill-Fowler bill as between city banks and country banks is further illustrated by the percentage of bonds to their actual capital each is required to buy. The bill is carefully drawn in the interest of banks that are interested in speculation in bonds as much as it is in the interest of banks faithfully serving their business customers.

It requires of the central reserve city banks, as a license fee to do a banking business, the buying of United States bonds to the amount of 2.4 per cent of their actual capital. Newly formed banks must buy bonds to the amount of 25 per cent of their capital. Other reserve cities the amount of 5.5 per cent of their actual capital, against 25 per cent of capital of banks newly formed.

This bill would not have gotten out of the committee if it had not been so drawn as to meet the wishes of those who were determined that no bill should be reported that did not first of all protect this bond privilege to banks, and this to the sacrifice of the legitimate commercial bank, and of the advantages of a true bank currency.

Banks that bought bonds at 80 to 90 cents on the dollar of their value in prosperous times must have preserved to them the privilege of taking out currency on the bonds while waiting for the 10 to 20 per cent profit, that they may loan the currency they take on these bonds to country districts that are prohibited from having their own banking funds by the national law. And this to add to the profits of banks in speculating in bonds or still more to favor banks in localities which have an excess of banking funds for commercial uses and are investing them in bonds.

BRANCH BANKS.

The Hill-Fowler bill authorization of branch banks is very bad economics as compared with encouraging the local independent bank, and still worse statesmanship.

It finds no justification in the policy of our free banking system or in any amendment of it proposed in this bill.

It is unwise to permit powerful city banks to establish branches in places of 4,000 inhabitants or less. The putting its local agent in a place with no interest in it other than the money he can make out of it for his nonresident employer, means that no independent local bank,

managed by its citizens, can be established in the town, and if one is there it must go out of business.

In nine cases out of ten local banks in towns are formed by public spirited citizens to get a fair return on the capital they put in the bank, but still more to build up the town, by assisting other citizens to capital with which to do their business.

The agent of the city bank may for a time loan money, in "good times," at rates to drive out the country bank, and in times of strin gency the funds with this country agent will be sure to be immediately returned to support the city bank. The customers of the country agency will be sacrificed to the necessities of the parent bank.

Generally there are two stores in a town. In times of excitement each is the headquarters of one political party. The agent of the parent bank knows the politics of his city employer, and again the bestowal of his favors is liable to be influenced by his own politics.

But our choice must be made between one great "United States Bank" with ten thousand branches, and on the other hand ten thousand independent local banks, united together, that all in union may support each, and thus all together make each secure in times of stringency or in threatened or actual panic, as in the Walker bill.

There is no possible relief of the Treasury condition or any other way of saving to the people a loss now made of $50,000,000 to $60,000,000 annually in excessive interest charges. It can not be done by the isolated banks of the Hill-Fowler bill.

INDEPENDENT LOCAL BANKS.

Under the Walker bill independent banks will be formed in every considerable town by its leading citizens and in the immediate future. Each bank will necessarily have in its direction the two storekeepers. It will necessarily have Republicans, Democrats, and Populists in its management. There are not enough men in either party alone so situated as to maintain the bank.

The four chief agents in civilization are the home, the church, the school, and the bank. To-day every man, rich or restricted in his means—merchant, manufacturer, farmer, or what not-must at times have more or less assistance with money borrowed of banks, or suffer great loss in lower prices for his products or shrinkage of value of his property. Millions are thus lost every year by farmers and others in the United States because banks can not live in country districts under the law as it now is.

But still more the bank is the greatest instrument of substantial progress, in helping forward wise schemes and advising against the unwise.

It is in the directors' room of the country bank that talk never ceases as to how the progress of a town can be secured, property be made to increase in value, and a greater home market for the products of the farm secured; better and cheaper freight rates, better markets everywhere for the home, shop, and factory; better county roads; a gas plant; better country and town buildings; better schoolhouses, better church edifices, better everything. When five or more reputable citizens of a town get their capital together to form a bank, it means that the town must take on new life and every citizen of the town will be more enterprising and successful.

In the bank not only all theories of coinage, paper money, credit, and business methods are discussed by the directors and officers of the