If now it be asked in what manner will the opportunities of the Captains for robbing the community be restrained or curtailed by substituting Government money for bank-notes, the reply is that the beneficial effects of such restraint will not arise so much from a difference in the money as from a difference in the power to issue or retire it. And in a future article will be shown, by practical examples, the difference between the working of an elastic currency when such elasticity is controlled by the Government, and when it is controlled, as it now is, by the Chevaliers of Industry.
“MY agency in procuring the passage of the National Bank Act was the greatest financial mistake of my life. It has built up a monopoly that affects every interest in the country. It should be repealed. But before this can be accomplished the people will be arrayed on one side and the banks on the other in a contest such as we have never seen in this country.”
Hon. Salmon P. Chase.
“IF it is possible to inaugurate a greater system of robbery of the people’s money [than the state banks], that system has been inaugurated in the present system of national banks. The money lost by the people under the old system of state banks is a mere bagatelle when compared to that which has been and will be taken from them under the present system of national banks.”
Hon. James G. Blaine (1880).
“ATTEMPTS to monopolize wheat, copper, sugar and other commodities have been dealt with by writers and politicians as conspiracies against society.
“But the monopolization of money, the medium of exchange, is strangely regarded as essential to the welfare of society.