Marble Hill Press

Savings Banks Politics.

From New York Daily News: The
gold-bug newspapers and orators give
symptoms of proposing again to appeal
to the depositors in savings banks to
vote against the Democratic party. It
is true that savings banks depositors
are small capitalists, but we think the
gold bugs are in error if they think
they can be influenced to associate
themselves with the millionaires and
usurers who are urging war against
the people's money and endeavoring to
contract the volume of the currency
of the country for their own profit.
The same endeavor was made in 1896
but without effect, for there was no
perceptible savings bank vote then diverted
from the Democratic ticket by
any apprehensions thus sought to be
spread abroad. The votes of wage-earners
which McKinley gained on the
currency issue were got by compulsion
and extorted by fear, not obtained
by reason, argument and conviction.
And so it will be again.

A threat has been attributed to a
silver Republican senator that any organization
of savings bank depositors
in the interest of gold monometallism
will be met by the enactment at an
early day of a law establishing government
postal savings banks. It is not
true that any such threat has been
uttered in the senate. It is true, however,
that the activity and prominence
in gold-bug politics of the directors of
certain savings banks have been deprecated
and would be better intermitted.
The establishment of government savings
banks is still a debatable matter,
but the settled convictions of the
American people are tending towards
the resumption of silver coinage and
towards the increase of the volume of
currency, with the better times such
a policy will bring. The hostility of
savings banks directors would only
therefore have the effect, if it has
any, of hastening the time when such
a policy will be adopted.