“Their country’s wealth, our mightier misers drain.”
It was a bright, warm day in December, 1895, when a tall man, with iron
gray hair surmounting a wrinkled and careworn face, paused for a moment
before the plate-glass front of the Tenth National Bank of Birmingham,
Alabama.
Making his way into the building, he walked to the cashier’s office in
the rear, which he entered without knocking. A short, stout gentleman of
forty years looked up from the desk at which he was writing, and
inquired of the stranger who it was that he wished to see?
“I kem in, suh, to see the Kashyea,” was the reply.
“I am the cashier of this bank, sir. What can I do for you?”
“Well, I allowed to bowwow some money foh to stock my fahm foh a cotton
crap, and to cahy me ovah the season, suh, and I heard as how the money
might be had heah.”
“Take a seat, sir. What is the name?”
“John Turpin is my name, suh.”
“And what amount do you wish to obtain, Mr. Turpin?”
“I reckon about $3,000 would answer the puppus, suh.”
“Where is your property, Mr. Turpin, and what does it consist of?”
“It is on the White Creek, in Madison County. There are foh hundred
acres of cotton land. There is a house, bahn, and outbuildings in faih
condition, suh, but I don’t count them as much, in a money way.”
“What do you estimate to be the value of the land?”
“Befo the wah it sold for fohty dollahs an acre. Land went very low
aftahwuds, but the land has not been crapped, and of late yeahs,
business has picked up mightily in old Alabama, and it ought to be wuth
as much now as it ever wor.”
“How long have you been farming it there?”
“Well, not at all, suh. The place was owned by my uncle, and he jest
lived there since the wah, and never tried to make a crap. He was
Captain of Company K of the Ninety-third Alabama. He was wounded at
Chickamauga. Both of his sons were killed at the second battle of the
Wilderness; his wife died while they were all away, and when he kem back
he seemed to lose all interest like. He couldn’t abide free niggahs
ever, and there were no othahs, and foh twenty-seven yeahs he jest moped
around the old place, raisin’ only a little cohn, and a few hogs and
some geyahden truck. Last spring he died, and the place has fallen to
me. There is no debt on it, and it’s prime cotton land, but it will take
right smaht of money to clean off the land and put in a crap.”
“Are you farming elsewhere, Mr. Turpin?”
“No, suh, I have been wuking for several yeahs for the Louisville and
Nashville Railroad Company, as their station agent at Coosa, but I was
raised on a cotton plantation, and I know all about the wuk. I have two
likely boys; one is twenty and the othah eighteen. My wife is a wohkah,
and so is our daughtah. We all want to go on the old plantation and live
thar.”
“Will $3,000 clear the land and stock it?”
“Yes, suh. It will buy us mules and fahm implements, and seed, and
supply us with provisions and foddah, and pay the wages of such niggahs
as we will hiah to help us.”
“How soon could you repay the $3,000.”
“Well, in the old times we could moh than pay it with one crap, but thar
ain’t the money in cotton that thar used to be. Cotton is powerful low,
I do allow.”
“And it costs more to raise it now than it did when you had slaves to
work for you, does it not, Mr. Turpin?”
“Well, I allow that don’t make much diffahence, suh. I can hiah niggahs
now for $16 a month, and they find their own keep, while befoh the wah
we had to pay that much and moah, and feed them beside. The interest on
the value of a good niggah then was nigh onto as much as we pay him now
foh wages. The niggah don’t get much moah now than he did when he was in
slavery. He just gets his keep and a few clothes: No, suh, I can raise
cotton now cheaper than I could befoh the wah, but cotton kain’t be sold
foh no such prices. Still, thar is some money in cotton, and my boys and
I can pay off the $3,000 with interest, out of the profits on the craps,
in three yeahs, and if we live powerful close mebbe we can do it in two
yeahs.”
“Why do you not get the money you want from the bank at Huntsville?”
“Well, suh, I went thar before I kem yeah, and the kashyea thar tole me
that they wah not fixed to make any but shote loans. He said as how they
wah a nayshunal bank, and couldn’t loan money on land nohow, and he
advised me to come heah, suh.”
“But this is also a national bank, and subject to the same restriction,
Mr. Turpin.”
“Yes, suh, I know; so he tole me, suh. But he said as how you wah also
loan agents for Northern capitalists, who had money to invest in long
loans, on good security.”
“We are such agents, but our instructions do not permit us to loan on
anything but improved city property. Our clients do not like to put
their money in plantations.”
“But, suh, what will become of the cities if the people do not help
those in the country? My place is wuth easily foh times the money I want
to bowwow, and every dollah of the money bowwowed will go into the
place.”
“It does look, Mr. Turpin, as if money ought to be had for such
purposes. But all of our local capitalists have their money tied up in
the city, and outsiders won’t loan on farms.”
“Then I kain’t bowwow the money, suh?”
“I am afraid not, Mr. Turpin. You might try elsewhere, but, to be candid
with you, I do not believe you will succeed.”
“Well, suh, then I will have to go back to my wuk at the railroad
station, and let the land lie idle. Why kain’t the govuhment loan us on
our fahms the money needed to cultivate them? ’Pears like I hearn tell
thar was a man out in Calafohnea what wanted the govuhment to do that
likes.”
“Yes,” replied the cashier, “there is such a scheme, but it is totally
impracticable. Of course the government cannot embark in the business of
loaning money on landed security.”
“But ain’t the govuhment in the loanin’ business now, suh? Whar do you
get the circulatin’ notes of youah bank? Don’t you bowwow them of the
govuhment, without interest, by puttin’ up United States bonds as
security?”
“Oh, that, you know, is quite a different thing,” answered the cashier,
smilingly.
“Whar’s the difference in principle?” persisted the man from Coosa. “If
a govuhment bond foh $1,000 air good secuhity foh $900, what is the
reason that a piece of land wuth $1,000 kain’t be good secuhity foh
$500?”
“The bond,” said the cashier, “could always be sold at par. It is not so
easy to find a purchaser for land, even at half its value; it might be
worthless, you know.”
“I am not supposin’, suh, that the govuhment would loan money on
wuthless land any moah than on counterfeit bonds. I’m talkin’ about sich
land as ain’t wuthless, and kain’t evah be wuthless. I’m talkin’ about
land that has an airnin’ capacity, when human labor is applied to it. I
allow that sich land, when valooed honestly, and not countin’ any
buildings or improvements, or anything that can be burned up or carried
away—I allow that sich land is just as good security foh a loan of half
its value, as any govuhment bond is security foh a loan of nine-tenths
its valoo. If the land ain’t wuth nothin’, I’d like to know what the
bond is wuth? As I argefy, all the valoo’s on the yearth, suh, bonds and
banks and govuhments theyselves rest upon the land and the labah that
tills it.”
“But the amount of national bank notes that can be issued on government
bonds is limited by law,” remonstrated the cashier.
“Suppose they be. Kain’t the govuhment limit the amount of greenbacks it
would loan on the fahms? Kain’t it allot jest so much to each State or
to each county, or to each numbah of folks? I don’t see no use of a
limit nohow. Govuhment don’t limit the bales of cotton or bushels of
cohn, or numbah of hogs a man can raise, noh the tons of ihon he shall
smelt, noh the numbah of days’ wuk he shall do in a yeah. What foh do
they want to limit the numbah of dollahs that shall be made? Why not
leave that to be settled outside of papah laws? If you raise cohn for
which there is no demand you kain’t sell it, and if you print dollahs
for which there is no demand you kain’t lend them. A dollah ain’t got no
nateral valoo nohow. Ye kain’t eat it, noh drink it, noh weah it. Ye
kain’t sleep on it, noh ride it, noh drive it around. A dollah is just a
yahdstick foh the cloth, a scale foh the sugah, a quart measure foh the
vinegah. Suppose govuhment went to limitin’ the numbah of weighin’
scales and yahdsticks and gallon cans thar should be in the land, and
then didn’t allow enough to be made foh to go around!—A nice fix the
country stohs would be in wouldn’t they? You city folks would corral all
the yahdsticks, and all the scales, and all the pint pots that the
govuhment allowed to be made. You’d organize measurin’ companies and
bowwow all the scales that the govuhment made, and pay nothin’ to the
govuhment for the use of them; and then you’d hiah them out to folks at
a big rent, and make the folks as hiad them leave half the measures on
deposit with you, and you’d hiah that half again to other folks, and
you’d squeeze the people, and squeeze ’em, and squeeze ’em, until you
turned every man who wasn’t an ownah of measurin’ tools into a puffeck
slave to them as was ownahs. That’s what you hev been a doin’ with us
right along. I mean no disrespeck to you, suh, puhsonally, for you have
treated me moh politely than a bankah usually treats his bowwowin’
customahs; but you bankahs and capitalists have jest been a monkeyin’
with the currency until you have got every fahmah, and wukin’ man, and
stoahkeepah in the country tied hand and foot, with no chance to wuk at
all unless they wuk foh you. We have been a lot of everlastin’ fools,
suh, to stand it, and we aint a goin’ to stand it much longah.”
“What will you do about it, Mr. Turpin?” said the cashier, quietly, but
with a shade of satire in his tone.
“I allow, suh, that we’ll tell the yawpers who run political conventions
to get along without our votes, and we’ll elect men to the Legislatoor
and to Congress, and mebbe a President, who’ll take their ideahs from
the fahmas and wukahs of the Sooth and West, and who won’t go to Wall
Street foh ohdahs; and we’ll give all the old questions a rest, and
we’ll make it lonesome for the politicians who fight us, and we’ll kind
o’ resolute that so long as this govuhment won’t let any State or any
puhson go into the business of manufacturing money to supply the
necessary wants of the people, it is likely that the govuhment itself
ought to do it, and we’ll fix it so that no man who is willin’ to wuk as
I am, and knows how to wuk as I do, and has land to plow as I have, will
have to see his land lie fallow, and his boys loafin’ around, just
bekase he kaint bowwow from nobody, even at ten per cent a yeah,
one-fifth of the valoo of his land, to buy a few mules, and a plow or
two, and some seed cohn.”
“You will compel the government to go into the business of printing and
loaning all the money that anybody wants, will you?” said the cashier.
“Well, suh, I’m no bankah, and no lawyah, but I take it that it is the
business of govuhment to provide all the money necessary foh the use of
the people, and if the govuhment itself won’t do it, then let it untie
the cohds it has put around States and people, and suffah them to do it
foh theyselves.”
“You would go back to the days of State banks and unlimited currency,
Mr. Turpin, with a wild-cat bank at every crossroads, when the man who
traveled never knew whether the bank bill he got in change, when
purchasing his breakfast in Alabama, would buy him a supper in
Tennessee,” said the cashier.
“Well, suh, I remembah those days, and while they may not have been so
agreeable foh those that traveled, they war a heap better foh folks as
stayed at home. A wild-cat bank at the crossroads on White Creek, that
would let me have $3,000 of its missuble money, which my neighbors would
take in exchange foh mules, and the stohkeepah would take for goods, so
that I could put in a crap on foh hundred akahs of the puttiest cotton
land in Noth Alabama, would be a heap bettah foh me just now, suh, than
a national bank with a plate-glass front, in Buhmingham, that won’t even
look at the security I offah foh a loan. Good-day, suh.”
And Mr. John Turpin, of White Creek, arose, and, with a heavy and
sorrowful step, walked out of the Tenth National Bank of Birmingham,
Alabama, and the rotund cashier smiled at the episode, and adjusted his
gold-rimmed eyeglasses, and resumed his interrupted labors.
Yet relief was in store for Mr. John Turpin, for on that very day the
mail from New York to Washington carried the following communication:—
OFFICES OF DAVID MORNING, }
39 Broadway, N. Y., Dec. 15, 1895.}
_To the President of the United States_—
SIR: Under certain conditions I will donate to the Government of the
United States the sum of $2,400,000,000 in gold bars, which I will
deliver to the treasury department at the rate of $100,000,000 per
month, during the ensuing two years.
The money coined from, or issued upon, these gold bars, shall
constitute a perpetual fund, to be loaned at two per cent per annum to
the farmers of the country, the fund never to be diminished or
appropriated for any other purpose, although the interest received
from it may be used to aid in defraying the ordinary expenses of
government.
The amounts to be loaned may be apportioned among the several States
and Territories, according to their populations as given by the last
census, but the loaning must proceed from, and be under the control of
a department of the Federal government, to be created by Congress for
that purpose. Loans may be made payable at any time, at the option of
the borrower, and may remain indefinitely, so long as the interest is
paid, and must be secured by pledge of productive land.
Not more than one-half the actual cash value of the land, without
estimating improvements, must be loaned, or more than $10,000 to any
one borrower, or more than $20 per acre in any case.
The celerity with which Congress, during the War of the Rebellion,
created an effective system of revenue and finance, leads me to the
conclusion that it will be equally apt in the creation of the
necessary legal machinery to speedily effectuate a permanent and safe
system for making loans to the people. I shall trust implicitly to the
wisdom and patriotism of Congress to carry out details if my gift is
accepted, as I think I may assume it will be, and I shall attempt no
interference with its action, even by suggestion, beyond stating the
conditions upon which the fund of $2,400,000,000 will be provided.
It will, possibly, not be out of place for me to assign here a few of
the reasons why I require that loans be limited to the owners of
productive land, and why I do not permit dwellers in towns and cities,
and those engaged in commerce and manufactures, to share in the
opportunity for procuring cheap money.
To this very natural inquiry I might answer that I have already
arranged in San Francisco, in Chicago, and in New York, for aiding
co-operative labor corporations to procure, at a low rate of interest,
the money necessary for their use; that I design extending similar aid
in other localities, and that I hear of several instances of other
gentlemen conveying large sums in trust for such purposes.
But the duty of aiding the farmers to cheap money is so great, and so
pressing, and extends to so many persons, and over so large an area,
that any concerted effort in such direction is not only beyond the
capacity of individual wealth owners, but requires the machinery and
power of government for its adequate discharge.
The farmers, of all men, most need the aid of capital, and of all men
they find it most difficult to secure such aid. For years before the
accidental, or, rather, providential, discovery of an immense deposit
of gold-bearing quartz in the Santa Catalina Mountains in Arizona
enabled me to attempt alleviation of some of the evils under which the
world suffers, I had observed that even when the manufacturing and
commercial interests of the land were in a fairly prosperous
condition, the farmers did not share in the general bounty, and I
observed that usually the produce of the farmers’ land could only be
sold at such low prices as left them, at the close of the season, a
little more in debt, and much more discouraged.
The official report of the Illinois State Board of Agriculture for
1889 exhibited the distressing fact that the corn crop of that State
for that year actually sold for $10,000,000 less than it cost to
produce it, and conditions since then have only slightly improved.
Even as I write, there are thousands of families all over the land,
not merely in a few localities where the crops have failed, but on the
virgin prairies of Dakota, on the rich soil of the Mississippi
bottoms, and in the fertile valleys of Virginia, who are in distress,
not because they have been idle or dissolute, but because their last
crops did not sell for enough to pay the cost of their production and
transportation to market, including interest at six, eight, and ten
per cent per annum on the value of the land.
Low prices, according to all standard writers on political economy,
are the direct results of a contracting currency, and a consequent
increasing scarcity of money, and the cost of production is not only
greatly increased by inability of the producer to obtain money except
at high rates of interest, but the terms upon which money can be had
at all are often so exacting as to discourage permanent improvement.
The farmer will not cultivate except for immediate crops if he sees no
hopeful outlook for the future, and not only fears but expects that
the mortgage he has given will, in the end, cause his home to be
transferred to a purchaser at sheriff’s sale.
The yield of the Morning mine has already largely increased the volume
of standard money all over the world, and this may do much toward
removing some of the unfortunate conditions to which I have referred;
but such yield may also have a tendency to discourage the loaning of
money on long loans, for men who have means to invest may prefer to
place them in property, the value of which must advance with the
increase of the volume of money, rather than in loans, the value of
which must remain stationary absolutely, and cannot but diminish
relatively.
It has been and will continue to be my purpose to use the gold
produced at the Morning mine, either in the purchase of existing
loans, or the making of new loans, so that whatever of loss may come
from diminution of the purchasing power of a dollar may fall not
altogether upon those who have loaned money, but in part upon those
who have deliberately or accidentally caused such increase. I suggest
that if such increase in the currency be caused by the government, a
similar moral obligation would rest upon it.
The addition of $2,400,000,000 to the currency of the country will
unquestionably largely increase all values. It will at the same time
encourage—nay, almost compel—capital to seek investment in active
industries rather than in dormant funds. For the present it will
supply those who can use money to advantage with a sure and convenient
method of obtaining it at a cheap rate of interest, while its ultimate
tendency must be to eliminate interest on money from the world’s
transactions, and bring money to what I conceive to be its true
function—a measurer of values only.
When no interest can be obtained for the use of money, then money will
cease to be the most valuable and become the least valuable form of
property, and the investor will be required to share the risk, if not
the labor, of producing values, instead of leaving this to others,
while he absorbs the profits to himself.
I believe that civilization is ready for this forward step. The
discovery of gold enough to compel it may have precipitated the
movement, but the movement would have come all the same if the Morning
mine had never been discovered.
There is not a single benefit which the donation of twenty-four
hundred millions of gold will confer upon the people of the United
States that might not equally be conferred by an act of Congress
providing for the issuance and loaning of the same number of paper
dollars, not based upon gold at all.
The credit of this great government used for the purpose of
accommodating the business, increasing the resources, and stimulating
the industrial activity of this great people, and, supported by the
indestructible and undepreciable security of land, would be quite as
solid a basis for twenty hundred millions of paper dollars as five
thousand tons of yellow metal.
I am, Mr. President, your obedient servant,
DAVID MORNING.