Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 3.djvu/502

476 currency, and then it sees to it that every dollar of that currency be safe; that the stock be paid in, that the reserves be maintained according to law, that the books be regularly and honestly kept, and so on. In one word the Government sees to it that no tricks be played by which the billholder or the depositor might be defrauded. And, when the Government has to make a loan, the banks sometimes aid it in peddling it out. That is all, and there is your monopoly, and your grinding money-power.

And now, my fellow-citizens, I ask you in all candor and soberness, would it not be an act of wicked folly, for reasons so flimsy, without the least prospect of any real advantage, wantonly to destroy a banking system which, as every man in the country knows, is not only the best we ever had, but better than any other we are likely to have; to destroy it at a moment when with it the resumption of specie payments is easy, and without it impossible, so that it would have to be invented if it were not there; destroy it while the industrial energies of the Nation, after a long, painful period of paralysis and distress, are at last slowly and timidly venturing forth again, and when, above all things, confidence is needed to quicken the circulation of the blood in the social and economic body—and then just at such a moment to destroy the only great institution that has successfully passed the crucial test of a terrible crisis, and, therefore, justly does command universal confidence; and that institution the banking system, the most indispensable financial agency in all business transactions—aye, to start in a revival of business with the general breaking up of a good, reliable banking system; to inspire confidence with an earthquake! Why, gentlemen, the idea is so utterly childish and preposterous, that every sane man who ever thought of it must blush with shame at his own folly, when he calmly inquires into the full meaning and consequences of the proposition.