bank's own stock; twenty-four have no requirement for a cash reserve. Three States own investments in bank stock.
These facts show that the local bank systems are now still as heterogeneous and crude as they ever were, that it is as vain to hope for concord and co-operation between the States, in reference to banks of issue, as it ever was, and that State legislation is far behind national legislation in respect to sound and intelligent treatment of this subject.
On the first page of this history we found the public preoccupied with the question: How shall we get a currency? Throughout the history we have seen them struggling with the question: How shall we get enough money to do our business with? They have believed that somebody must provide a currency, that there would not be any, or would not be enough, if banks did not provide it. They have also believed that there was some great economy possible in the use of paper for money. Hence they have wanted money, plenty of money, and they have wanted it cheap. Scheme after scheme has been proposed and tried for realizing the gain which it was believed that cheap money could produce for the public; that is, for those who buy and use currency. This gain has been pursued as the alchemists pursued the philosopher's stone, by trial and failure. Whether there be any such gain or not, our attempts to win it have all failed, and they have cost us, in each generation, more than a purely specie currency would have cost, if each generation had had to buy it anew. The privilege of selling to the public the cheap money on which they had set their hearts, either in the form of paper or base metal, has been fought for with rapacity, and with social and political abuses of the gravest character. States which provide coinage of the most perfect kind win no profit from it; on the contrary, it comes under the head of a useful and necessary public expenditure. The State can win only by treason to the high function which it has assumed, for no other reason than to guarantee to the public absolute integrity in its money; it must debase the coinage and set its seal on a lie. Banks which furnish a bank-note circulation of the best kind can win nothing from it but payment for furnishing a convenience to such an extent as the public may want it. To win more they must perpetrate some fraud on the currency, such as those which banks did perpetrate throughout this history. The history shows that they did not win by it. The revulsions to which the system was subject overwhelmed them in every decade. The notions on which the system was based, and which are mentioned at the beginning of this paragraph, are proved to have been delusions, disastrous to everybody concerned, including those who tried to profit by them.
At the moment of this writing, the turmoil and confusion, the conflict of opinions and projects, the clash of political schemes, in and around the currency, are as great and mischievous as they ever were. The banks have
