“You would go back to the days of State banks and unlimited currency, Mr. Turpin, with a wild-cat bank at every crossroads, when the man who traveled never knew whether the bank bill he got in change, when purchasing his breakfast in Alabama, would buy him a supper in Tennessee,” said the cashier.
“Well, suh, I remembah those days, and while they may not have been so agreeable foh those that traveled, they war a heap better foh folks as stayed at home. A wild-cat bank at the crossroads on White Creek, that would let me have $3,000 of its missuble money, which my neighbors would take in exchange foh mules, and the stohkeepah would take for goods, so that I could put in a crap on foh hundred akahs of the puttiest cotton land in Noth Alabama, would be a heap bettah foh me just now, suh, than a national bank with a plate-glass front, in Buhmingham, that won’t even look at the security I offah foh a loan. Good-day, suh.”
And Mr. John Turpin, of White Creek, arose, and, with a heavy and sorrowful step, walked out of the Tenth National Bank of Birmingham, Alabama, and the rotund cashier smiled at the episode, and adjusted his gold-rimmed eyeglasses, and resumed his interrupted labors.
Yet relief was in store for Mr. John Turpin, for on that very day the mail from New York to Washington carried the following communication:—
Offices of David Morning, }
39 Broadway, N. Y., Dec. 15, 1895.}
To the President of the United States—
Sir: Under certain conditions I will donate to the Government of the United States the sum of $2,400,000,000 in gold bars, which I will deliver to the treasury department at the rate of $100,000,000 per month, during the ensuing two years.
The money coined from, or issued upon, these gold bars, shall constitute a perpetual fund, to be loaned at two per cent per annum to the farmers of the country, the fund never to be diminished or appropriated for any other purpose, although the interest received from it may be used to aid in defraying the ordinary expenses of government.
The amounts to be loaned may be apportioned among the several States and Territories, according to their populations as given by the last census, but the loaning must proceed from, and be under the control of a department of the Federal government, to be created by Congress for that purpose. Loans may be made payable at any time, at the option of the borrower, and may remain indefinitely, so long as the interest is paid, and must be secured by pledge of productive land.