The Coming Battle

Chapter III - National Banks and Silver

Chapter I
Origin of the Money 
Power in America

   The outlines of that great scheme of the national banks, which aimed to throw the entire business of the country on a credit basis, were now plainly apparent, and it become patent that the plan was to be consummated by the entire volume of currency in the hands of the bankers.

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   All the industries were compelled to pay usury to the most traitorous class of our citizens. The banks were enabled to lay the foundations of that colossal structure of credit, which has plunged the people into an abyss of indebtedness from whence they will not emerge for generations.

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   Under the free coinage of gold and silver, the national banks could not control the volume of money, and, therefore, the position taken by this monopoly was an essential part of that gigantic conspiracy to demonetize silver, and thus maintain its grasp on the property of the people; furthermore , a fight must be waged against the standard silver dollar as a part of the scheme to sustain the supremacy of New York City as the great money center of the country.

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   The national bank autocrats saw, in the rich deposits of silver in the Western States, the danger that menaced their power, and they made haste to strike down the silver dollar, which, in their fears, would become the regenerator of the financial condition of the people. Silver dollars meant cash, national bank notes meant credit, and therefore the bondholders and bankers of London and New York City decreed that silver must die.

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