of stockholders. The interests of stockholders are antagonistic to those both of depositors and borrowers, while the interests of the two latter may be antagonistic to each other. In strong, sound, and well-conducted banks these interests come to harmony, and illustrate well the true relation between social antagonisms and social harmonies. It is the interest of depositors that the bank shall be as strong as possible, even to a degree which would make it impossible that it should gain anything. It is the interest of the stockholders to make the borrowers pay as much as possible and to pay to the depositors nothing. It is the interest of the borrowers that the bank should fail, since they could then buy its obligations at a discount and pay their own debts to the bank with them. The debtor interest, so soon as the high and correct relations of sound banking and currency operations are abandoned, is a bank-wrecking, currency-debasing interest. It is these facts which make the play of interests through and around a bank so interesting. The strongest currents of interest there are in the economic organization run through it. The financial machinery, of which banks are one of the most important parts, keeps all the parts of the industrial organization in due correlation, discipline, and order. This is why the coercion of the financial system produces, upon occasion, so much irritation; it is also the reason why the banks, if they fail of their function, do so much, mischief.
The great Banks of the States illustrate the truth of all these remarks. The debtors and taxpayers were at war. The latter were generally opposed to the bank schemes when they were first proposed, but were sometimes. deluded into acquiescence by the hope of profits which would do away with the necessity for taxation. In time, when a great body of debtors had been formed around a bank, and when a large group of politician bankers had come into existence, the Bank of the State became a formidable political power. Two factions were then formed. One wanted to make the bank profitable. The other wanted to use it for "higher" purposes; to "develop resources," to "accommodate," to "give equal facilities," etc. This latter series of hollow and high sounding phrases meant that it was to be sacrificed. to its debtors. When crises arose, "relief" was called for, which always meant wrecking the bank that the debtors might be relieved from their obligations to it. Politicians sought popularity by bringing about that result. All these measures involved oppression to the taxpayers, but taxpayers are the one group who can be oppressed without exciting sympathy and almost with impunity. When the whole folly was over, they still had the bonds to pay, for the bonds were extant somewhere bearing the seal of the State.
If the taxes were repealed, and the State tried to live on the bank, perhaps at the same time with all the preceding—loading it up with payments for interest on the debt, for "education," for "internal improvements," etc.—the ruin was manifolded and hastened. As the president of the Bank of Tennessee set forth to the Legislature in 1845, they could not expect to live on the bank and plunder it too.
