Seventeen Talks on the Banking Question: Between Uncle Sam and Mr. Farmer, Mr. Banker, Mr. Lawyer, Mr. Laboringman, Mr. Merchant, Mr. ManufacturerFowler, Charles N. (Charles Newell)
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Seventeen Talks on the Banking Question: Between Uncle Sam and Mr. Farmer, Mr. Banker, Mr. Lawyer, Mr. Laboringman, Mr. Merchant, Mr. Manufacturer
Fowler, Charles N. (Charles Newell)
Banks and banking -- United States; Currency question -- United States
Will any one deny that the same power that passed the "food and drugs
act," giving the Government power to stop the use of poisons in
medicines and food; the "insecticide act," giving the Government power
to prescribe the character of poison to be used to kill bad bugs;
the "plant quarantine act," giving the Government the right to stop
lice from traveling across a State line; the "meat inspection act,"
giving the Government power to insist upon decent meat; the "live
stock quarantine act," giving the Government the right to prevent a
man from driving his cattle under certain conditions over a State
line; the "twenty-eight hour law," requiring shippers to treat cattle
humanely; the "employers' liability act," the "safety appliance act,"
the "white slave act," the "hours of service act," the act regulating
the transportation of explosives; will any one deny, I say, that the
same power that passed all these acts cannot be exercised to protect
forty-seven States in the Union against such bank practices in the
forty-eighth State, as will at any moment throw the entire country into
a panic and destroy all public confidence in our banks and bring in its
wake the destruction of credit and consequently the destruction of vast
property values?
Certainly no one will deny that any State has the power, and that it
is its duty to compel every person, firm or corporation using the word
"banker" or "bank" to submit themselves to jurisdiction, supervision
and control of that State. Every State has the power to protect any of
its citizens against the wrongdoings of other citizens, and one bank or
banker against the evil practices of other banks or bankers.
In eighteen States no bank reserves are now required by law, and
in many States there is no supervision whatever of State banking
institutions by the State. Is it possible that the National Government
has no power to act in the light of these facts when the banking
business of the country is essentially not only one kind of a business,
but, indeed, one single business, each one being a wheel in the great
credit machine?
_It is so interlaced, and so interwoven that one rotten spot map prove
as dangerous to the whole fabric of credit as a box of dynamite under
one's chair. Is it possible, I say, in the light of all these facts,
that there is no redress, no protection to our vast commerce, and to
labor through the National Government? Is it possible that we could be
compelled to continue for a thousand years in the midst of our present
terrors from bad supervision and want of adequate reserves?_
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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