These, however, were far from being the worst features. The most innocent of their great privileges was that of playing fast and loose with the money confidingly entrusted to their care by a swarm of depositors who either worked for it, or for the matter of that, often stole it; bankers, like pawnbrokers, ask no questions. The most remarkable of their vested powers was that of manufacturing money. The industrial manufacturer could not make goods unless he had the plant, the raw material and the labor. But the banker, somewhat like the fabled alchemists, could transmute airy nothing into bank-note money, and then, by law, force its acceptance. The lone trader or landholder unsupported by a partnership with law could not fabricate money. But let trader and landholder band in a company, incorporate, then persuade, wheedle or bribe a certain entity called a legislature to grant them a certain bit of paper styled a charter, and lo! they were instantly transformed into money manufacturers. A MANDATE TO PREY. The simple mandate of law was sufficient authorization for them to prey upon the whole world outside of their charmed circle. With this scrap of paper they could go forth on the highways of commerce and over the farms and drag in, by the devious, absorbent processes of the banking system, a great part of the wealth created by the actual producers. As it was with taxation, so was it with the burdens of this system; they fell largely upon the worker, whether in the shop or on the farm. When the business man and the landowner were compelled to pay exorbitant rates of interest they but apparently had to meet the demands. What these classes really did was to throw the whole of these extra impositions upon the working class in the form of increased prices for necessaries and merchandise and in augmented rents. But how were these State or Government authorizations, called charters, to be obtained? Did not the Federal Constitution prohibit States from giving the right to banks to issue money? Were not private money factories specifically barred by that clause of the Constitution which declared that no State "shall coin money, emit bills of credit, or make anything but gold or silver a tender in payment of debts?"