Article Text
We commend the following candid article to our readers' attention.We take it from the Rock Island Argus, a paper which is well known to be sound on all financial subjects: FLORENCE GOING, GOING.- Yesterday Mesers. Macklot & Corbin, bankers in Davenport, threw out Florence, and refused longer to recognize it as money. We have repeatedly warned our readers to beware of the stuff. We had hoped that Rock Island, with but few dissenting voices, would abate the nuisance before the people of Davenport, at the threshold of the "marble bank," would take steps in that direction. Those who have acted on our suggestions are now ready for anything that may turn up; while those who have been afraid that Davenport would get all the trade if the people of Rock Island should refuse to handle the stuff, must look out for breakers. Since the failure of Cook & Sargent to redeem their owl creek money, or in other words, since their suspension, the banking house of Macklot & Corbin has been the leading one in Davenport, and this move. ment of theirs will doubtless be followed by all the other houses of that place, which have the nerve to act for themselves and the business public, and money enough to meet their own engagements in anything but this worthless trash. The ball has been commenced rolling in Davenport. Will not our bankers on this side who continue to receive it throw it out at once, and give the suffering community the full benefit of their position as bankers in getting this bastard currency out of circulation? We were informed some days ago, by Messrs. Mitchell & Cable, that their custo. mers without an exception, approve of their course in refusing to take it even on special deposit. We feel warranted in saying that nine-tenths of our business men are anx. iously hoping that Messrs. Buford & Co., and the Rock Island Bank, will take the same position, and that they will use their influence in throtling this base iniquity.So long as our bankers recognize it as money, men doing business are almost compelled to receive it. One of the most sacred duties committed to bankers is to properly regulate the currency; and it is with regret that we have to say, that all the bankers of this city and Davenport who have been receiv ing it on special deposit payable in like funds, have dodged the legitimate responsibility of their positions. The people of Davenport have been clamorously holding up for the abomination during the winter. Let them now have the full benefit of the rotten trash. Some of them still cry as they have cried all winter, that the money is good and that the whole difficulty grows out of the scarcity of exchange. This, perhaps, may be true in part, but exchange is not that mysterious hobgoblin they would have us believe. It is nothing more nor less than money at a distant point. The only qualification we would make to their exclamation is, the difficulty grows out of the fact that Cook & Sargent have no money either at home or abroad, with which to pay their debts or withdraw their circulation. This being the true state of the case, the most sensible thing they can do, is to close their doors and stop the farce they have been playing all winter.they persist in keeping an open shop, as they have been doing, without making provision for the redemption of their money, and if our business men continue handling must as make enuff they their travel with their Jawa with material
