Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/510

492 notes of profit, and, even were the banks willing to keep out their circulation for the small recompense which now comes to them, little reliance can be placed upon a continuance of the present conditions. The reduction of the Government debt will be resumed, nor is the delay likely to give more time than will be needed in which to devise and put into operation some other plan for furnishing a currency supply.

There are many men—so many as to constitute a party considerable in number—who have an ever-ready remedy to administer for this or any similar trouble which threatens our financial system; that is, an additional supply of legal-tender notes. It is not intended here to discuss this proposition. The evils which are certain to attend an unlimited or largely increased issue of legal tenders have so often been shown, and the greenback clamor has so far died away, that there are grounds for the hope, which let us cherish, that a majority will not call for a Government paper circulation, albeit the United States Supreme Court has decided that Congress has uncontrolled power to create and regulate such an issue. For the purpose of this paper, therefore, it will be assumed that resort will not be had to legal-tender notes for a supply of paper money when the bond-secured national-bank notes shall be withdrawn.

There is a school of economists a title that can not properly be applied to the greenbackers—who hold that it is radically unsound and productive of evil for banks to assume the function of furnishing money; who maintain that there should be no money other than a metallic currency, or one which would in all respects act precisely as a metallic currency acts, because not only based upon but actually representing specie of a like amount deposited and held for its redemption. This school would doubtless regard the time of the retirement of national-bank notes as presenting an opportunity for inaugurating their system too good to be lost. Very recently suggestions in this line have been made and widely considered as, perhaps, offering solutions of both the paper currency and the silver problems; and, indeed, if the experiment were a wise one, it never could be made with less prospect of serious disturbance during the transition period, for the process is already begun by the issue of gold and silver certificates which could be increased, if specie were forthcoming, as bank-notes were withdrawn. If any plan embodying this idea were adopted, we should then have a system somewhat similar to that by which England has been supplied with paper money since the adoption of Peel's act in 1844. Under that act the Bank of England is now authorized to issue notes to the amount of fifteen million pounds sterling upon Government securities; beyond this sum the amount of circulation is determined solely by the amount of bullion which the public chooses to deposit, for the bank is bound to buy gold bullion at the mint price, whenever offered. The banking department and the issue