handle paper money. By 1819 the banks in New York had issued
$12,500,000, and the total amount of specie to redeem this fiat stuff
amounted to only $2,000,000. These banknotes were nothing more or less
than irresponsible promises to pay. What became of them?

WHAT THE WORKER GOT AS WAGES.

What, indeed, became of them? They were imposed upon the working class
as payment for labor. Although these banknotes were subject to constant
depreciation, the worker had to accept them as though they were full
value. But when the worker went to buy provisions or pay rent, he was
compelled to pay one-third, and often one-half, as much as the value
represented by those banknotes. Sometimes, in crises, he could not get
them cashed at all; they became pitiful souvenirs in his hands. This
fact was faintly recognized by a New York Senate Committee when it
reported in 1819 that every artifice in the wit of man had been devised
to find ways of putting these notes into circulation; that when the
merchant got this depreciated paper, he "saddled it upon the departments
of productive labor." "The farmer and the mechanic alike," went on the
report, "have been invited to make loans and have fallen victims to the
avarice of the banker. The result has been the banishment of metallic
currency, the loss of commercial confidence, fictitious capital,
increase of civil prosecutions and multiplication of crimes."[122] What
the committee did not see was that by this process those in control of
the banks had, with no expenditure, possessed themselves of a
considerable part of the resources of the country and had made the
worker yield up twice and three times as much of the produce of his
labor as he had to give before the system was started.

The large amount of paper money, without any basis of value whatever,
was put out at a heavy rate of interest. When the merchant paid his
interest, he charged it up as extra cost on his wares; and when the
worker came to buy these same wares which he or some fellow-worker had
made, he was charged a high price which included three things all thrown
upon him: rent, interest and profit. The banks indirectly sucked in a
large portion of these three factors. And so thoroughly did the banks
control legislation that they were not content with the power of issuing
spurious paper money; they demanded, and got through, an act exempting
bank stock from taxation.

Thus year after year this system went on, beggaring great num