A MANDATE TO PREY.
The simple mandate of law was sufficient authorization for them to prey upon the whole world outside of their charmed circle. With this scrap of paper they could go forth on the highways of commerce and over the farms and drag in, by the devious, absorbent processes of the banking system, a great part of the wealth created by the actual producers. As it was with taxation, so was it with the burdens of this system; they fell largely upon the worker, whether in the shop or on the farm. When the business man and the landowner were compelled to pay exorbitant rates of interest they but apparently had to meet the demands. What these classes really did was to throw the whole of these extra impositions upon the working class in the form of increased prices for necessaries and merchandise and in augmented rents.
But how were these State or Government authorizations, called charters, to be obtained? Did not the Federal Constitution prohibit States from giving the right to banks to issue money? Were not private money factories specifically barred by that clause of the Constitution which declared that no State "shall coin money, emit bills of credit, or make anything but gold or silver a tender in payment of debts?"
Here, again, the power of class domination of Government came into compelling effect. The onward sweep of the trading class was not to be balked by such a trifling obstacle as a Constitutional provision. At all times when the Constitution has stood in the way of commercial aims it has been abrogated, not by repeal nor violent overthrow, but by the effective expedient of judicial interpretation. The trading class demanded State created banks with power of issuing money; and, as the courts have invariably in the long run responded to the interests and decrees of the dominant class, a decision was quickly forthcoming in this case to the effect that "bills of credit" were not meant to cover banknotes. This was a new and surprising construction; but judicial decision and precedent