190 WISCONSIN STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
that the financial affairs of the country shall be made to conform 
to their wants and necessities, so far as can be done in justice to 
other interests. This will lead us to inquire what those 
wants are and how they can be best supplied. They cannot 
be supplied by contraction, but may be by that much feared word 
(to those who worship the golden calf), Inflation. In other words, 
we should demand, that so long as our government control the 
currency, we should have a sufficient amount of it furnished 
to transact our business to the best advantage, and reduce the 
present exorbitant rates of interest to a rate that our business can 
afford to pay. 
This, I claim, we have a right to demand of those we send to legis¬ 
late for us, as the farmers, not the capitalists, will have to redeem 
and make good all the legal tenders, and pay them in gold. It is the 
farmers that have to create nearly all the wealth, and furnish all 
other classes the raw material to work upon, and, finally, they have 
to pay for all. Therefore it is not unreasonable to ask that the 
legislation shall be such as to give us the best facilities to accom¬ 
plish that upon which the prosperity of all the people so much 
depend. 
What I conceive to be one of the greatest wants, of not only 
the farmers of the west, but also of the business men, is more 
money at low rates of interest. The state of Wisconsin, outside 
of Milwaukee, has only $2,000,000 of bank circulation, or only 
two dollars to each person. Boston has $26,000,000 of circula¬ 
tion, or about $104 to each inhabitant, and has loans to the 
amount of $84,000,000, or about $316 to each person. It will be 
seen that Wisconsin has but a small portion of the $700,000,000 
of currency said to be in circulation. In the New England states,, 
where nearly all the business is done in cities and villages, and 
can be done through bank checks and exchange, they do not 
need as much currency to do the same amount of business as we 
do in the west; but they have got what may be called the lion’s 
share of the present bank circulation. The west and south ought 
to demand their proportion of the banking capital. The legisla¬ 
tion of the country, however, has been under the control of the 
eastern capitalists, and the laws have been made to enrich them 
at the expense of the producing classes of the west and south.- 
