The National Banker.
Why?
Because the National Banker would like to have the monopoly of supplying the paper currency. The Government circulates $346,000,000 Greenbacks; the National Banker circulates $400,000,000 of his own notes.
The bank-notes earn compound interest for the banker; the Greenbacks earn no interest at all. Therefore, they compete with the notes of the banker. They interfere with his business. As long as they exist, he has no absolute monopoly.
Therefore what?
The National Banker hates the Greenback just as the Standard Oil detests the independent companies. For the same reason which moves the Coal Barons, the Beef Trust and the Tobacco Trust to wage relentless war upon the independent dealer, the money power demands the suppression of the Greenback. If the National Bankers can destroy the Greenback, they can fill its place with their own notes. Loaned out at lawful interest, compounded at the usual periods, they will wring from the people a yearly tribute of nearly thirty million dollars. In other words, the country now gets Greenbacks free of charge, whereas the bank-notes to replace them will cost $30,000,000 per annum. I can see how this will benefit the bankers; but whom else will it benefit?
One of the strangest hallucinations that ever entered the legislative mind is that a banker’s note, based on national credit, is good, safe, sane currency, while the Government’s own note, based on national credit, is unsafe, unsound and not to be tolerated. The first legislators who saw the thing that way were probably hired to do it. The example having been set, ignorance, prejudice and self-interest helped to swell the numbers of the converts, until now the men who cling to the belief that a Government note, issued by the Government itself would be as good as that which it authorizes the banker to issue, are in a helpless minority.
If the Government buys paper, sets up a press, stamps a note and issues it as currency, the banker howls “Rag Money!” The subsidized editor takes up the dismal refrain, the limber-kneed politician tunes his mouth to the echo, the wise men of the academy quit gerund-grinding to talk finance, and with one accord the orthodox repeat the jeer of “Rag Money,” “Rag Baby” and “Dishonest Dollar,” until the Government lets the banker take the paper, the press, the stamp and issue the notes as his own! Then it is all right. The editor’s soul is soothed; the politician purrs with satisfaction; the savant of the academy returns to his Greeks and Romans. All is well. The bankers issue their currency, grow fat on usury, and the principles of high finance are vindicated. The paper currency of the Government is a “Rag Baby”; the paper money of the National Banker is “Sound Money.”
So, we let the bankers exploit a governmental function to their immense profit, when the Government could use the function itself, to the injury of nobody, and to the vast benefit of the people at large. But if the Government did this thing, the National Banker would lose his special privilege, his unjust advantage, his huge gains.
Hence, he not only refuses to permit the Government to supply the country with any more Greenbacks, but he demands the destruction of those already outstanding. I regret to see President Roosevelt lending himself to this wicked proposition.