a notion that the "redistribution" was as simple an operation as carrying bags of money from one room to another. A supplementary act was necessary to put the enterprise in any practicable shape. In the report of the Secretary for 1836 he showed how the undertaking had caused him to be importuned by Congressmen seeking favors for their States or their banks. He had redistributed about $40 millions, withdrawing $18 millions from the States in which the banks had more than their proportionate share. In the last six months of 1836, $22 millions more had been paid in, chiefly where there was an excess before, and this also had been redistributed. Biddle, in a public letter to Adams, November 11, criticized mercilessly these proceedings. Indeed we find it very difficult to understand what was done. The surpluses were in the great cities of the East. The deficiencies (according to the way of looking at the matter) were west of the Alleghanies. But, if it was proposed to transfer any money from the former to the latter, the latter would at once say: We do not want money sent to us from there. If we had any money to spare we would send it there. Give us rather eastern exchange.—This was the point of Biddle's criticism, and no one was in a better position than he to understand the ignorant blundering of the process which was going on. His mind at once ran over those refined and skillful operations by which he would have made such a redistribution if he had been called on to do it. Even in September, 1836, the local currency at New Orleans was depreciated and the banks had to unite to import specie.[1]
In the six months before the suspension of 1837, although the amount of the currency was greater than it had ever been before in the United States, yet the scarcity of money was so great that it commanded from one per cent. to three per cent. per month.[2]
