A New Banking System: The Needful Capital for Rebuilding the Burnt DistrictSpooner, Lysander
General
A New Banking System: The Needful Capital for Rebuilding the Burnt District
Spooner, Lysander
Banks and banking -- United States; Paper money
We, as yet, know very little what wealth mankind are capable of
creating. It is only within a hundred years, or a little more, that any
considerable portion of them have really begun to invent machinery, and
learned that it is only by machinery that they can create any
considerable wealth. But they have not yet learned--at least, they
profess not to have learned--that money is indispensable to the
practical employment of machinery; that it is as impossible to operate
machinery without money, as it is to operate it without wind, water, or
steam. When they shall have learned, and practically accepted, this
great fact, and shall have provided themselves with money, wealth will
speedily become universal. And it is only those who would deplore such a
result, or those who are too stupid to see the palpable and necessary
connection between money and manufacturing industry, who resist the
indefinite increase of money.
It is scarcely a more patent fact that land is the indispensable capital
for agricultural industry, than it is that money is the indispensable
capital for manufacturing industry. Practically, everybody recognizes
this fact, and virtually acknowledges it; although, in words, so many
deny it. Men as deliberately and accurately calculate the amount of
machinery that a hundred dollars in money will operate, as they do the
amount of machinery that a ton of coal, or a given amount of water, will
operate. They calculate much more accurately the amount of manufactured
goods a hundred dollars will produce, than they do the amount of grain,
grass, or vegetables an acre of land will produce. They no more expect
to see mechanics carrying on business for themselves without money, than
they do to see agricultural laborers carrying on farming without land,
or than they do to see sailors going to sea without ships. They know
that all mechanical, as well as agricultural, laborers, who have not the
appropriate capital for their special business, must necessarily stand
idle, or become mere wage-laborers for others, at such particular
employments as the latter may dictate, and at such prices as the latter
may see fit to pay.
All these things attest the perfect knowledge that men have, that a
money capital is indispensable to manufacturing industry; whatever
assertions they may make to the contrary.
They know, therefore, that prohibitions upon money are prohibitions upon
industry itself; that there can be no such thing as freedom of industry,
where there is not freedom to lend and hire capital for such industry.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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