Gentlemen, instead of the panic of 1907 costing us $53,000,000 a year, it costs the people of the United States more than ten times as much as that every year. God only knows what these commercial tragedies mean in the life of a nation like ours, and it is up to us to prevent them, if possible, and it must be possible. It looks to me as though Mr. Banker was on the right track.
UNCLE SAM: Well, you fellows have got to show me a thing or two, before we make the proposed changes, because I am from Missouri, as well as from forty-seven other unsuspecting states, and don't you forget it. In the first place, I want you to show me why my I.O.U.'s or the United States Note, so-called Greenbacks, are not a good currency. In the second place, I want you to show me why the present National Bank Notes, which are secured by my bonds, dollar for dollar, are not the best currency in the world. I have been told this for the last fifty years, and if it is not true, it is about time I waked up.
MR. BANKER: Well, Uncle Sam, they've been fooling you, for both the United States Notes and these bond-secured Bank Notes are the worst form of currency in the world, and I can prove it.
UNCLE SAM: Well, you will have to prove it, that's all.
MR. BANKER: In the outset, I will tackle the United States Note, and incidentally, I will state all the other objections to them, as well as the objections to them as currency.
_First_: They are demand obligations against you amounting to $346,000,000, and you must stand ready at all times to redeem them in gold. This fact always has and always will imperil your credit. It was the same greenbacks that sent your credit down to 35 cents on the dollar during the war, and again they came within an ace of wrecking your credit in 1894 when the gold in the treasury went down, down and down, until there was only $41,000,000 left, between you and national dishonor. Don't you remember that you then sold $262,000,000 of your bonds to protect your credit which was being sapped by these very same United States Notes? Pretty expensive business that, when you could have had a currency that the banks of the country, and not you, would have been compelled to redeem in gold whenever necessary.