ions of business. The comptroller of the
currency has publicly said that about one half, on an average, of the
means of the national banks, in one chief city--institutions, observe,
created by government, and charged, in effect, with one of its most
distinctive functions, that of supplying a medium of exchange--are
loaned to speculators; that is, to men who subsist largely on
artificial disturbances of credit, upon corners in the stock market
and money market, upon alternations of inflation and stringency, the
ups and downs of a disordered constitution. Without going into the
matter closely, which is aside from my present purpose, I leave before
the reader the main facts of the case: that the system of credit
centred in the modern banking system plays a vast and increasing role
in our civilization; that while of a utility not easily overstated, it
affords peculiar opportunities of fraud and exaction; that aside from
these, its unregulated condition is dangerous, resulting in
alternations of inflation and depression, like the alternate extremes
of fever and ague; that vast and growing combinations exist for
producing artificially this disorder; that those institutions which
credit has created under the express sanction of government, at once
to supply its necessities and hold it healthily in check, are managed
only as private property; that much oppression, alike of labor and
capital, and also, I fear, much demoralization--which is an interior
and worse oppression--are suffered in consequence; and that hitherto
our statesmanship wants the studious leisure, and our method of
government the stability and precision of operation, which these
exigencies demand."

[22] "The New Type of Oppression," in "Essays: Religious, Social,
Political." Lee & Shepard, Boston.

A truer statement of the case never was made, and these words should
be well pondered by patriotic citizens.

Probably the reason why the feeling against our present banking system
has not yet taken shape in legislation is because no sound
constructive measures have been proposed. Faulty as the system is,
what is there better that can take its place? is asked, and to this no
satisfactory reply has been given. Even though the notes of the
national banks should be retired, and currency issued directly from
the national treasury should take their place, we must have banking
facilities of some kind.

Absolute security of bank deposits is what is desir