bers of
people, enriching the owners of the banks and virtually giving them a
life and death power over the worker, the farmer and the floundering,
struggling small business man alike. The laws were but slightly
altered. "The great profits of the banks," reported a New York Senate
Committee on banks and insurance in 1834, "arise from their issues. It
is this privilege which enables them, in fact, to coin money, to
substitute their evidences of debt for a metallic currency and to loan
more than their actual capitals. A bank of $100,000 capital is permitted
to loan $250,000; and thus receive an interest on twice and a half the
amount actually invested."[123]

THE WORKINGMEN'S PARTY PROTEST.

It cannot be said that all of the workingmen were apathetic, or that
some did not see through the fraud of the system. They had good reason
for the deepest indignation and exasperation. The terrible injustices
piled upon them from every quarter--the low wages that they were forced
to accept, often in depreciated or worthless banknotes, the continually
increasing exactions of the landlords, the high prices squeezed out of
them by monopolies, the arbitrary discriminations of law--these were not
without their effect. The Workingmen's Party, formed in 1829 in New York
City, was the first and most ominous of these proletarian uprisings. Its
resolutions read like a proletarian Declaration of Independence, and
would unquestionably have resulted in the most momentous agitation, had
it not been that it was smothered by its leaders, and also because the
slavery issue long obscured purely economic questions. "Resolved," ran
its resolutions adopted at Military Hall, Oct. 19, 1829,

in the opinion of this meeting, that the first appropriation of
the soil of the State to private and exclusive possession was
eminently and barbarously unjust. That it was substantially feudal
in its character, inasmuch as those who received enormous and
unequal possessions were _lords_ and those who received little or
nothing were _vassals_. That hereditary transmission of wealth on
the one hand and poverty on the other, has brought down to the
present generation all the evils of the feudal system, and that,
in our opinion, is the prime source of all our calamities.

After declaring that the Workingmen's Party would oppose all exclusive
privileges, monopolies and exemptions, the resolutions proceeded:

We consid