Finally the resolutions told what the Workingmen's Party thought of the bankers and the banking system. The bankers were denounced as "the greatest knaves, impostors and paupers of the age." The resolutions went on:
As banking is now conducted, the owners of the banks receive annually of the people of the State not less than two millions of dollars in their paper money (and it might as well be pewter money) for which there is and can be nothing provided for its redemption on demand....
The mockery that went up from all that was held influential, respectable and stable when these resolutions were printed, was echoed far and wide. They were looked upon first as a joke, and then, when the Workingmen's Party began to reveal its earnestness and strength, as an insolent challenge to constituted authority, to wealth and superiority, and as a menace to society.
RADICALISM VERSUS RESPECTABILITY.
The "Courier and Enquirer," owned by Webb and Noah, in the