In coin-paying eras corrupt governments and Shylocks have debased coins to make them go further. In these credit-mongering times they try to bring their coin basis down to one metal, gold, and clamor for extreme fineness of that, in order to make their inverted pyramid of credit go further and sell dearer. The policy of Great Britain, for instance, has been to make gold, its standard, so dear and inaccessible to the foreigners and debtor class that they would find the other commodities in the market cheaper than the gold in the market, so that settlements in other commodities would be preferable. The retention of gold in the Bank of England, by raising discounts in panicky times, though murderous (“kindness,” says Mr. Laughlin) to individual active business men, is a necessary factor in this piratical scheme, and the fulcrum upon which England derricks into her treasure vaults the plunder of the whole world. Business is made a lottery, turning out dazzling prizes that keep merchants from rebellion. Long-headed American Shylocks hope to see the United States as much more successful in plundering the globe, in this way, as our country is larger than England. Finally, as to Laughlin, with what bitter scorn this statement from the “closet scholar” will be greeted by the thousands of manufacturers who, during panics, have had to shut their factories for lack of cash “to pay the hands”—though they had all but gilt-edge collateral: “The monetary function has to do solely with exchanges of goods; it hasn’t anything to do with their production.” The Washington “Currency Reformers.” In finishing this bird’s-eye view of the financial history of this country, a brief review of the current financial plans cannot well be avoided. It may be said of them, in a general way, that no other set of robbers ever before attempted to secure a law guaranteeing them unrestricted right to plunder with unlimited government protection. The out and out black-flag pirates, as represented by Walker of Massachusetts, have a plan as simple and explicit as a patent medicine. It runs thus: “Retire the greenbacks, kill silver once for all, and let the bankers manage the currency.” This obsolete idea, that banks should issue money, is showing all the vim of a death struggle. But a thousand columns of speeches in the _Congressional Globe_ on the safety of the national bank system are answered by this solitary fact: In the year 1893, three hundred and sixty banks west of the Alleghanies, owing $125,000,000, went to smash, and about a dozen bankers are now in prison or exile, while many more escaped as by fire.