As banking is now conducted, the owners of the banks receive annually of the people of the State not less than two millions of dollars in their paper money (and it might as well be pewter money) for which there is and can be nothing provided for its redemption on demand....
The mockery that went up from all that was held influential, respectable and stable when these resolutions were printed, was echoed far and wide. They were looked upon first as a joke, and then, when the Workingmen's Party began to reveal its earnestness and strength, as an insolent challenge to constituted authority, to wealth and superiority, and as a menace to society.
RADICALISM VERSUS RESPECTABILITY.
The "Courier and Enquirer," owned by Webb and Noah, in the pay of the United States Bank, burst out into savage invective. It held the Workingmen's Party up to opprobrium as an infidel crowd, hostile to the morals and the institutions of society, and to the rights of property. Nevertheless the Workingmen's Party proceeded with an enthusiastic, almost ecstatic, campaign and polled 6,000 votes, a very considerable number compared to the whole number of voters at the time.
By 1831, however, it had gone out of existence. The reason was that it allowed itself to be betrayed by the supineness, incompetence, and as some said, the treachery, of its leaders, who were content to accept from a Legislature controlled by the propertied interests various mollifying sops which slightly altered certain laws, but which in no great degree redounded to the benefit of the working class. For a few bits of counterfeit, this splendid proletarian uprising, glowing with energy, enthusiasm and hope, allowed itself to be snuffed out of existence.
What a tragedy was there! And how futile and tragic must inevitably be the fate of any similar movement which depends not upon itself, not upon its own intrinsic, collective strength and wisdom, but upon the say-so of leaders who come forward to assume leadership. Representing only their own timidity of thought and cowardice of action, they often end by betraying the cause placed confidingly in their charge. That class which for these immemorial generations has done the world's work, and as long has been plundered and oppressed and betrayed, thus had occasion to learn anew the bitter lesson taught by the wreckage of the past, that it is from itself that the emancipation must come; that it is itself which must essentially think, act and strike; that its forces, long torn asunder and dispersed, must be marshalled in invulnerable compactness and iron discipline; and so that its hosts may not again be routed by strategy, no man or set of men should be entrusted with the irrevocable power of executing its decrees, for too often has the courage, boldness and strength of the many been shackled or destroyed by the compromising weakness of the leaders.
THE PANIC OF 1837.
Passing over the Equal Rights movement in 1834, which was a diluted revival of the Workingmen's Party, and which, also, was turned into sterility by the treachery of its leaders, we arrive at the panic of 1837, the time when Astor, profiting from misfortune on every side, vastly increased his wealth.
The panic of 1837 was one of those periodic financial and industrial convulsions resulting from the chaos of capitalist administration. No sooner had it commenced, than the banks refused to pay out any money, other than their worthless notes. For thirty-three years they had not only enjoyed immense privileges, but they had used the powers of Government to insure themselves a monopoly of the business of manufacturing money. In 1804 the Legislature of New York State had passed an extraordinary law, called the restraining act. This prohibited, under severe penalties, all associations and individuals not only from issuing notes, but "from receiving deposits, making discounts or transacting any other business which incorporated banks may or do transact." Thus the law not only legitimatized the manufacture of worthless money, but guaranteed a few banks a monopoly of that manufacture. Another restraining act was passed in 1818. The banks were invested with the sovereign privilege of depreciating the currency at their discretion, and were authorized to levy an annual tax upon the country, nearly equivalent to the interest on $200,000,000 of deposits and circulation. On top of these acts, the Legislature passed various acts compelling the public authorities in New York City to deposit public money with the Manhattan Company. This company, although, as we have seen, expressly chartered to supply pure water to the city of New York, utterly failed to do so; at one stage the city tried to have its charter revoked on the ground of failure to carry out its chartered function, but the courts decided in the company's favor.[124]