he landowning and trading class
which was excluded from holding the same privileges. The banker became
the master of the master. In that fierce, pervading competitive strife,
the banks were the final exploiters. Sparsely organized and wholly
unprotected, the worker was in the complete power of the trader,
manufacturer and landowner; in turn, such of these divisions of the
propertied class as were not themselves sharers in the ownership of
banks were at the mercy of the banking institutions.

At any time upon some pretext or other, the banks could arbitrarily
refuse the latter class credit or accommodation, or harass its victims
in other ways equally as destructive. As business was largely done in
expectations of payment, in other words, credit, as it is now, this was
a serious, often a desperate, blow to the lagging or embarrassed
brothers in trade. Banks were virtually empowered by law to ruin or
enrich any individual or set of individuals. As the banks were then
founded and owned by men who were themselves traders or landholders,
this power was crushingly used against competitors. Armed with the
strong power of law, the banks overawed the mercantile world, thrived on
the industry, misfortune or ruin of others, and swayed politics and
elections. The bank men loaned money to themselves at an absurdly low
rate of interest. But for loans of money to all others they demanded a
high rate of interest which, in periods of commercial distress,
overwhelmed the borrowers. Nominally banks were restricted to a certain
standard rate of interest; but by various subterfuges they easily evaded
these provisions and exacted usurious rates.

BANKS AND THEIR POWER.

These, however, were far from being the worst features. The most
innocent of their great privileges was that of playing fast and loose
with the money confidingly entrusted to their care by a swarm of
depositors who either worked for it, or for the matter of that, often
stole it; bankers, like pawnbrokers, ask no questions. The most
remarkable of their vested powers was that of manufacturing money. The
industrial manufacturer could not make goods unless he had the plant,
the raw material and the labor. But the banker, somewhat like the
fabled alchemists, could transmute airy nothing into bank-note money,
and then, by law, force its acceptance. The lone trader or landholder
unsupported by a partnership with law could not fabricate money. But let
trader and landholder band i