Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 3.djvu/214

188 of you, or any association you may form, having the necessary capital, can start a bank of issue. A general license to that effect, through the free-banking act, was given by Congress last winter. We heard so much of the West and the South wanting more local circulation and starving for greater banking facilities. Now you can make yourselves comfortable. All legal impediments are removed. You can issue any amount of currency. But behold! the currency will not inflate one cent's worth. And you, worthy patriots, who clamor for more currency, do not lift a finger to create more. Why not: Here is a reason given by the Cincinnati Enquirer: “There is not currency enough in circulation to buy the bonds to deposit with the National Government and obtain from it National currency in exchange.” This is genius. It ranks with the most brilliant financial utterances of Governor Allen himself.

But I appeal to you, business men, laborers, farmers, who honestly desire to do right, and look up to your party leaders for instruction, if you want an instance of the impudent, insulting assurance with which these men depend upon your being too ignorant and stupid to tell obvious fact from obvious falsehood, look at this: Here is the great representative organ of the inflation Democracy, the tabernacle of its brains, the feeding-pipe of its wisdom; and now, while everybody knows that millions and millions of money are lying unemployed in the business centers of the country, East and West, looking for investment sufficiently safe; while everybody knows that in every large city in the land there are dozens of capitalists with abundant means which they might devote to the creation of bank-paper issues if it were profitable; while everybody knows that there is scarcely a town of respectable size without men of means fully able to form a combination for that purpose, that organ, fighting the truth as its personal