Show REDEMPTION OP NATIONAL BANK NOTES Currency reform will be the great bone of contention in congress this winter no matter what the result of the contention may be Chairman Walker of the house finance committee has made it plain that there is far more subterfuge than anything else in the plea of many currency reformers that the government should go out of the banking business The Herald showed this to be the case only the other day in its comments on what the Massachusetts Massa-chusetts representative had to say in his comments upon the presidents mes sage The San Francisco Chronicle takes substantially the same view on this subject that we tool It says Mr Walker is aiso outspoken in his opposition to another suggestion which appears in the message of the president presi-dent He says The recommendation that banks be required to redeem their notes in gold with no other provision of law would cause every bank in the country to surrender its circulation and then he asks what agency would keep the country on a gold j basis The chairman of the house committee here rudely touches the sore spot in our financial system and it will make the advocates of elastic banking wince if they try to answer his query The attempt to do so will disclose the fact that the national banks are not seeking for the present at least tp drive the United States out of the Jianking business but that their i aim is to confine the governments op I j I erations to guaranteeing the circulation of the notes Issued by it to them and for it to assume the responsibility of maiitaiinng gold payments What they wish to secure is the profitable privilege privi-lege of controlling the emission of all the money required t > y t people wi lout l-out being hampered with the obligation of redeeming in gold the currency circulated cir-culated by them if they find it incon veiiient to do so There is a world of truth in the last two sentences pf the above If banks of issue are only to be required to redeem re-deem their notes in government currency cur-rency it is nothing but the substituting of one promise fgr another There I is no reason in the world why I a bank that is permitted to issue notes that are to circulate as money should not be required to redeem re-deem them in gold if that is to be the money of redemption To compel the government to furnish the gold is to compel the government to pull the chestnuts out of the fire for the banks In the matter of this particular recommendation recom-mendation the president is right and I Chairman Walker is wrong |