It was by the aid of the banking system that the trading class was greatly enabled to manipulate the existing and potential resources of the country and to extend invaluable favors to themselves. In this system Astor was a chief participant. For many years the banks, especially in New York State, were empowered by law to issue paper money to the extent of three times the amount of their capital. The actual specie was seized hold of by the shippers, and either hoarded, or exported in quantities to Asia or Europe which, of course, would not 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."11 What the committee did not see was that by this process those in control of the