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ANSWER
(1) I don’t think I have been “too hard on the darky.”
Doctor Booker Washington, spoiled by too much praise, got too gay in his statements concerning the rapid progress of the negro in civilization. The Doctor’s idea seemed to be that as soon as you caught a young African, washed him, combed him, put clothes on him, and taught him how to read, write and cipher, he was at once civilized.
I knew better than this, and the Doctor does now. He will be more particular how he claims superiority for the negro race, hereafter. Especially since his brethren in Santo Domingo have given that “Republic” another push hellwards.
On that island, one of the most favored spots on the globe, the negroes had the advantage of beginning with an elegant civilization which the French had taught them.
The negroes expelled the French, set up a government of their own, and the record of their republic has been one of the foulest blurs on the history of the human race. They get worse and worse and worse. There are not a sufficient number of whites in Santo Domingo to keep the negroes straight: in this country there are. That makes all the difference.
(2) If I were President and could do away with the Gold standard, restoring the currency to the constitutional status, depriving the National Banks of the privilege of creating paper currency, and exercising that power directly by the use of Treasury Notes, why should the banks “totter and fall?”
A good many of them have tottered and fallen; many more of them are going to “totter and fall.” Why? Because the system is rotten. Thousands of individual banks and bankers are as sound as gold dollars, but the system isn’t, for the reason that too much bank-made currency, of various sorts, is afloat; the line of credits has been lengthened until it is about to snap; wild-cat speculation is rampant; and thousands of banks are dabbling in business which isn’t legitimate banking.
I am in favor of Banks of Deposit and Discount—so long as we cannot get Postal Savings Banks.