CHAPTER IV. 



MUTUAL BANKING. 



In the title-page of a book on "Money and Banking,*" pub- 

 lisliod at Cincinnati, tlie name of William Beck appears, not as 

 antlior, but as publisher; yet there is internal evidence in the book 

 sufficient to prove that Mr. Beck is the author. But who was or is 

 Mr. Beck? What were his experience and history? Is he still liv- 

 ing? No one appears to know. He seems to stand like one of 

 Ossian's heroes, surrounded with clouds, solitude and mystery. In 

 the [)ages of Froudhon, socialism appears as an avenging fury, 

 clothed in garments dipped in the sulphur of the bottomless pit and 

 armed for the punishment of imbeciles, liars, scoundrels, cowards 

 and tyrants; in those of Mr. Beck, she presents herself as a con- 

 structive and beneficent genius, the rays of her heavenly glory 

 intercepted by a double veil of simplicity and modesty. Mr. Beck's 

 style has none of the infernal tire and i>rofanity which cause the 

 reader of the "Contradictions Economiques" to shudder; you seek in 

 vain in his sentences for the vigor and intense self-consciousness of 

 Proudhon; yet the thoughts of Proudhon are there. One wovild 

 suppose from the naturalness of his manner, that he was altogether 

 ignorant of the novelty and true magnitude of his ideas. 



MR. beck's bank. 



In Mr. Beck's plan for a Mutual Bank — which consists in a 

 simple generalization of the system of credit in account that is well 

 described in the following extract from J. Stuart Mill's "Political 

 Economy" — there isone fault only; buttliat fault is fatal; it is that 

 the people can never be induced to adopt the complicated method 

 of accounts which would be rendered necessary: 



"A mode of making credit answer the purposes of moncsy, by 

 which, when carried far enough, money may be very completely su- 

 perseded, consists in making payments by checks. The custom of 

 keeping the span; cash reserved for immediate use or against con- 

 tingent demands, in the liands of a banker and making all pay- 

 ments, except small ones, by orders on bankers, is in tliis country 

 spreading to a continually larger portion of tlie |)ublic. If the i)er- 

 son making the payment and the person receiving it kept their 

 money with the same banker, the payment would take place witii- 

 out any intervention of money, by tin; mere transfer of its amount 



•"Money and R.'inkiiin, or Tlielr Nature jind Effects ("onsidcriHl; To- 

 RCther With a Plan for tlie Universal nifTiisioii of Tlieir Lcj^'itimato 

 Benefits WItlioutTlieir Evils." Hy A Citizen of Oliio. Cincinnati: Pub- 

 lished by William Keck, IKJl).: Ifinio, pp.212. 



