On Oct 24, 2008, at 5:42 PM, Michael Perelman wrote:
Peyton, John L. 1869. Over the Alleghenies; extracted in Warren S.
Tryon,
ed. A Mirror for Americans, 3 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press,
1952): III, pp. 589-607.
605: Visiting Chicago in 1848, Peyton objects to taking wildcat notes
from an obscure Atlanta bank. The hotelkeeper responds, is discussing
notes: "Why, sir, ... this hotel was built with that kind of
stuff .... I
will take "wild cats" for your bill, my butcher takes them of me,
and the
farmer from him, and so we go, making it pleasant all around. I
only take
care ... to invest what I may have at the end of a given time in
corner
lots .... On this kind of worthless currency, based on Mr. Smith's
[the
issuer's] supposed wealth and our wants, we are creating a great city,
building up all kind of industrial establishments, and covering the
lake
with vessels -- so that suffer who may when the inevitable hour of
reckoning arrives, the country will be the gainer, Jack Rossiter [the
speaker] will try, when this day of reckoning comes, to have "clean
hands"
and a fair record .... A man who meddles, my dear sir, with wild-
cat banks
is on a slippery spot, and that spot the edge of a precipice."
Aren't people spouting a lot of piffle about how unprecedented the
current melodrama is? This country was built on bubbles and security
fraud.
Doug
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