State Bank Notes. 71 



would pass into otlier states and carry annoyance with 

 them; and the repute of good notes would be injured out- 

 side of the state of their origin, because many men would 

 not take the trouble to remember which states were sound, 

 and would look with distrust upon any notes of a distant 

 state, perhaps of any state but their own. Unless all the 

 states agreed upon the same paper and similar printing, 

 the detection of counterfeits would once more become a 

 fine art, and the unskilled man and woman would be daily 

 exposed to loss. It is not enough to answer that there is 

 no danger of the return of the absurd and dangerous bank 

 money of the first half of the century; if there is any 

 failure to redeem notes, any discount upon some notes of 

 distant origin or of tarnished fame, the opportunity of 

 petty fraud upon the ignorant and careless is thrown wide 

 open, and every man must choose between possible loss 

 and the vexatious in'ecaution of examining every note he 

 receives. Moreover, the workman in taking wages, the 

 retail dealer in taking payment from a customer he is 

 anxious to retain, is often reluctant to give offense by ob- 

 jecting to money on the mere chance that it is depreciated, 

 and will sometimes take it when he knows there will be a 

 small depreciation, rather than raise the objection. The 

 presence in any money system of elements that are dis- 

 trusted, that must be looked for and chaffered over or sub- 

 ject the recipient to loss, is so wearisome an addition to 

 the friction of trade that a clear case of beneficence in 

 other directions (and no small beneficence) must be shown 

 to give such kinds of money any claim to consideration. 

 And when such beneficence as state bank notes are capa- 

 ble of can be had without the friction and annoyance by 

 using national bank notes instead, the attempt to substi- 

 tute the former seems a ludicrous folly. Even if we im- 

 agine the prodigy of wise concurrent action of all the 

 states at first, what guaranty is there against the appear- 

 ance from time to time hereafter of those legislatures whose 

 pride it is to desjjise experience, to brush aside the sophis- 

 tries of prejudiced conservatives, and to open short cuts to 



