Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 3.djvu/498

472 business men of Cincinnati make a great deal more money on their capital than these bloodsucking institutions, and thus it is explained why you do not rush into national banking.

Now for the earnings of 5 62-100 per cent. on their capital and surplus which the national banks make, what do they give us? They give us the safest banking system we ever had. Suppose the profits on their circulation were 5 per cent. instead of 2½, and their average earnings, as to capital and surplus, 12 per cent. instead of 5½, would it not still be folly to forget that this banking system, by its safety, is worth many times the interest on their bonds every year to the business interests of the country? Can you expect to have a banking system like this without any profit at all to the men investing their money in it? You speak of saving to the people the interest on the bonds deposited by the national banks by the destruction of this system, and you call it economy; you call it economy to wipe out this safe system and substitute for it, as would inevitably be the case, the old State banks again, with their wildcat and yellow-dog currency, which robbed the people by the wholesale. You might just as well call it economy to abolish your paid fire department, and intrust your property again to the boys who run with the machine, because the paid fire department costs something. Are the business men of the country unreasoning children that they should act thus?

But you may say, why not deprive the national banks of this currency, thus saving the interest on their bonds, and then still keep them under the strict Government supervision which makes them so safe? I will tell you why not: Because the benefit arising from circulation was the principal thing which induced those corporations to come into, or organize under the National system, and to submit to the rigorous Government supervision, which is by