These smooth gentlemen got the
people's money to build their institutions. They got the Government
to deposit money with them, and they paid the Government nothing,
and charged the people interest for it. They had the privilege of
issuing a few hundred millions of bank-notes, and they charged
interest for these and paid the Government nothing. And then, to cap
the climax, they used their profits to buy up the Government! They
filled the Treasury Department with their people, and when they got
into trouble, the Sub-Treasury was emptied into their vaults. And in
the face of all this, the people agitated for postal savings banks,
and couldn't get them. In other countries the people had banks where
they could put their money with absolute certainty; for no one had
ever known such a thing as a run upon a postal bank.
"Sometimes," said Bates, "it seems almost as if our people were
hypnotised. You saw all this life insurance scandal, Mr. Montague;
and there's one simple and obvious remedy for all the evils--if we
had Government life insurance, it could never fail, and there'd be
no surplus for Wall Street gamblers.
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