130 
Wisconsin' State Agricultural Society. 
$100,000 of notes, that there remains still outstanding and unre¬ 
deemed $200,000 more of notes, they perform the act which is called 
suspending specie payment. 
The u specie-paying ” banks of the United States have suspended 
and resumed specie payment ten times within the last fifty years; 
in 1811, 1814, 1819, 1825, 1834, 1837, 1839, 1841, 1857, 1861, and 
currency payment in 1873, add that averages once every five years; 
and every suspension causes a financial panic, and every resump¬ 
tion is effected after the stoppage of all business and a temporary 
return to the uncivilized system of swapping off' in settlement, com¬ 
monly called barter. And when the “ specie-paying banks 11 have 
called in their loans and have “ swapped around 11 and got hold of 
the other two hundred thousand notes promising to pay gold, they 
then announce that they are ready to redeem their notes in gold, 
their notes being all in their own vaults, in case the bank has not 
concluded to jfcil. Having no notes outstanding they are safe in 
saying they will redeem in coin. This is resumption. 
Let us endeavour to go to the bottom of this matter; let us see 
what are the underlying causes of these financial, commercial, and 
industrial disasters, which have occuredin England and the United 
States at least on an average of once during each decade of the 
last century. 
If a man is not in debt himself and has no one owing him, he 
may not be a very great sufferer from a crisis, but in civilized coun¬ 
tries most people are both debtors and creditors; this is especially 
true of those who are engaged in manufactures and commerce. 
Debt and credit are incident to civilized society, and under proper 
conditions may not be a serious evil, but when it is to the interest 
of one important and very influential class of societyito get in debt 
to the utmost possible extent, to keep in debt as long as possible, 
and to get others in debt, the disturbances and consequent disastrous 
results will be measured by the power and activity of this debt-cre¬ 
ating and debt-enforcing class. 
Now, I make this broad assertion, that the primal cause of these 
ever-recurring crises is that the circulating medium in general use 
has been supplied by corporations and individuals instead of the 
national government. No bank or banker will commence the is¬ 
sue of circulating notes unless satisfied that such issue will be prof¬ 
itable to the issuer. A circulating bank-note is evidence of the 
