Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/522

502 be established where the capital is with greater facility than where it is not.

Mr. . Once more I will say capital will go where it can be most profitably exercised; and therefore I do not think it will go to New York or the East, but to the West, where it is most wanted.

Mr. . Have not New York banks and the moneyed men of the East every facility now to establish banks in the West as much as they please? Why do not they do it? What prevents a New York banker to-day from establishing a branch of his establishments in Chicago or St. Louis or at Saint Joseph? Nothing in the world.

Mr. . Because he can do better in New York now.

Mr. . Precisely; because he can do better with his bank where there is the most business, and there he remains; and for the same reason more banks will be established where there is the most business. If we complain now, I say, of the grasp of the monetary power of the East over the West and South, we shall see that grasp not weakened, but rather strengthened, by what is here proposed.

I have made these remarks in order to explode that most extraordinary notion of the Senator from Indiana, that if we only permit the establishment of more national banks in the West and South, more currency will go and stay there, because the loans and discounts of the banks will return every thirty, sixty or ninety days; and to dispel that general and almost incomprehensible delusion, that by the establishment of such banks, under such laws as we have, the amount of loanable capital in the West or South will be increased and not diminished. Whatever results free banking under the national-bank act may have, it will certainly not produce those effects which the