GOVERNMENT CONTROL OF MONEY. 263 



through government hands, as postage stamps, for example, are given? 

 In the first place, money belongs to the people; the people's general 

 agent, the government, makes the money, every dollar of it, by authority 

 of the people and for them ; why, then, should banks or any trafficking 

 agency be permitted to trade in it before it reaches the people to whom 

 it belongs, and for whose use it is intended? That practice is not 

 adopted with respect to anything else which the government does for 

 the people. Whatever else it delivers to them passes through govern- 

 ment hands only. What reason can be assigned for delivering treasury 

 notes to the people through banks, that would not apply with equal force 

 to the issuing and delivering to them of patents to public lands, or postage 

 stamps? The object in making and issuing money is, that the people 

 shall have it to use in their business affairs. It would reach them quite 

 as easily and early if sent out through direct channels from the treasury 

 as it does by passing through banks, and it would not cost the people 

 more than from one-tenth to one-eighth as much as the banks and loan 

 agencies compel them to pay. It is believed that this exorbitant charge 

 for the use of money, more than any other one thing, is responsible for 

 the general depression of agriculture. 



A change must come. It is inevitable/ Farmers cannot pay the 

 principal of their indebtedness if present rates of interest are continued. 

 To pay interest and taxes absorbs all their profits and more. The inter- 

 est on the indebtedness secured by farm mortgages in ten of the North- 

 western States, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, 

 Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, and Nebraska, it is estimated, is equal to 

 a tax of three per cent on the assessed valuation of all the farms in 

 those States. The estimate is based upon the assumption that one-fourth 

 of the farms are mortgaged for one-third of their value. A large propor- 

 tion of the farms are not mortgaged, and that makes it harder on the 

 owners of the farms which are mortgaged. The average rate on loans 

 in these States is eight per cent. The owner of the money loaned does 

 not receive more than six to seven per cent perhaps, but the borrower 

 pays at least eight ; the difference goes to the loan agents. The average 

 rate of taxation for all purposes is three per cent. To this add the in- 

 terest tax, and it is plainly impossible for a two per cent business to pay 

 out. The average net profit in western and southern agriculture, the 

 last six years, has not exceeded two per cent. Some remedy is abso- 

 lutely necessary, and one proposition is to reduce the interest rates to 

 what farmers can afford to pay. 



But there is a deeper foundation for the doctrine than this, a broader 

 view of the subject, and there is a good affirmative reason for the de- 



