1. =The Exception Clause.= (Feb. 25, 1862.) In 1861 and 1862 demand treasury notes to the amount of $60,000,000 were issued by the government and made legal-tender money for all debts, public and private—equal to coin. Wall Street could not gamble in legal-tender paper money; so, as soon as the legal-tender act passed the House and was sent to the Senate, the Shylocks placed on the greenback what is known as the “exception clause”—“Except duties on imports and interest on the public debt.” This practically demonetized the United States treasury note, and cost the producing classes millions of dollars. The greenback “went down,” or, more correctly speaking, gold “went up,” until $1 in paper money was valued at only 37 cents when compared with gold. John Sherman said: “We purposely depreciated the greenback, to get sale for our bonds.” He was willing to destroy the people’s money to appease the greed of gold gamblers at home and abroad. 2. =The National Bank Act.= (Feb. 25, 1863.) This scheme was introduced in the Senate and advocated by John Sherman in the interest of bondholders and capitalists, just one year after legal-tender notes were authorized by law, and before sufficient time had been given to test their utility. The express object was to have the bank notes supersede the legal-tender notes, after the investment of legal tenders in bonds. “I look upon the national bank, as now recognized by law,” says Myers in his “Money, Its History and Functions,” “as one of the most gigantic schemes for robbing the people ever devised by man. I cannot conceive of a single reason for perpetuating the system one day beyond the time required to settle its affairs. The national banks of this country have cost the people, in thirty years of their existence, over $6,000,000,000. The credit which the banker sells at from 7 to 15 per cent. costs him only 1 per cent. on actual circulation; hence it is virtually a present to him. He draws interest on this credit; on what he himself owes. His note is not money, nor is it in any sense a legal tender between man and man. It is simply a ‘promise to pay.’ The banker _lends his credit_, with which he has supplied himself by gift from the government, and the borrower _pledges his wealth_; the banker being far more secure than the holder of the banker’s paper. The banker takes pay for something he does not furnish; for the capital (wealth) is furnished by the borrower. So the banker gets something for nothing, and the borrower pays for that which he never receives.” Banks are run on the deposits, rather than on any capital the banker himself may have. The patrons of the bank furnish the capital, and also the security. The banker lends other people’s money to other people; on this he draws interest; he conducts his business on _your_ money and _his_ credit, which _you_ furnish him.