So, we let the bankers exploit a governmental function to their immense profit, when the Government could use the function itself, to the injury of nobody, and to the vast benefit of the people at large. But if the Government did this thing, the National Banker would lose his special privilege, his unjust advantage, his huge gains.
Hence, he not only refuses to permit the Government to supply the country with any more Greenbacks, but he demands the destruction of those already outstanding. I regret to see President Roosevelt lending himself to this wicked proposition.
Cleveland, during the whole time he was in office, was hostile to the Greenbacks and recommended that they be destroyed. Nobody was surprised at this. In fact, Cleveland had exhausted the capacity of honest men to be surprised.
But the country hoped for better things from Mr. Roosevelt. He was thought to be too strong a man to be the blind tool of the National Bankers.
The Greenback is hurting nobody, is doing great good; its only enemy is the National Banker, whose motive is sordidly selfish. LET THE GREENBACK ALONE!
If the President will take the trouble to study for himself the financial statements issued by his own subordinates, he will discover a state of things which would otherwise be incredible.
He will find that _the bankers are drawing compound interest on more money than there is in existence_!
He will find that _they reap usurious revenues from three times as much money as there is in actual circulation_!
He will find that _they have drawn interest upon seven times as much money as_ THEY ACTUALLY HAVE!
Under the law of its birth, the Greenback is real money. Like gold and silver, it comes direct from the Government to the people. If you burn it, and do not supply its place, _you contract the currency at a time when such contraction means national disaster_. If you burn the Greenback, and allow the National Banker to supply its place with his own notes, then _you rob the people of thirty million dollars annually and give the spoils to the banker_!
He already earns about $50,000,000 per year on his special privilege of issuing currency.
He already enjoys the use of one hundred million dollars of the tax money which _other people pay into the treasury_; and he fattens on the luxury of getting this money free of interest and of lending it out at compound interest to the “_other people_.”