I 
State Coxyenticw—Agricultural Rag-Baby. 199 
manner enabled to pay in cash for the food and clothing required 
by his family and himself. 
“The farmer, now selling his crops for live money, was thus en¬ 
abled to place the store-keeper in a position to buy for cash in the 
distant cities. Almost at once, and as if by magic, the usurious 
charges disappeared, thereby lightening the burdens of working¬ 
men, farmers, mechanics, and laborers, to an annual extent thrice 
exceeding the amount of greenbacks issued. Of all financial meas¬ 
ures on record, there has been none, which has so much tended to¬ 
ward elevation of the laborer, and toward establishing harmony in 
the relations of labor and capital, as has been the case with that by 
which $400,000,000 of live money, free of interest, were made to 
take the place of thousands of millions of dead money, for whose 
use our people had been paying interest at twice, thrice, and even 
twenty times the legal rates.” 
Seeing, then, that the system we propose to set up has worked 
so well and so safely in detached, fragmentary forms, what hinders 
it being immediately set at work? 
There are several reasons: 
1. Party interests. 
2. Misrepresentation by the bulk of the press. 
3. Prejudice arising from ignorance and misunderstanding. 
4. It is considered altogether new by many, and, therefore, op- 
posed on the general ground of conservatism. 
5. The banking interest. 
6. The bullionists, who hold that gold and silver were created for 
the express purpose of money use, and that nothing is money 
which has not as a commodity the full value fixed by coinage as its 
legal value. 
7. The money-lenders and all money-brokers generally. 
There may be other minor hindrances, but we will pass them by 
and consider how those above enumerated may be removed or over¬ 
come. The most powerful, because of the immense financial re¬ 
sources it commands, and the most persistent, because actuated by 
selfishness, which is perennial in the human breast, is the banking 
interest. It was this power which manipulated the finance com¬ 
mittee in the Senate, and depreciated the greenback in advance, by 
curtailing its legal-tender power and finally repealed its converti¬ 
bility power, and set up its rival, the national bank-note, which has 
