[PDF]COOGAN, Gertrude - Money Creators (1935)

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CREATORS


Using the word "'create"’ in its original
sense, viz., ‘to make something out of
nothing," fits to perfection the world's
present money system, by which sums
too enormous for the many to imagine
but never too great for the privileged
to grab, are created by the simple en-
try of figures on the bankers’ books, on
which we, in our ignorance, pay inter-
est, as if it were real U. S. money.


That our money system is vulnerable to
vicious and secret distortions is ob-
vious. This book shows up the system
and its faked mysteries. Any one of
average intelligence can easily under-
stand this swindle and the corrective
steps outlined.


Until Americans learn the source of the
International Bankers’ power, there is
little hope that Bolshevism can be
stemmed.


SOUND MONEY PRESS, Inc.
120 W. Adams St.
CHICAGO, ILL.


Price $2.00


"We are suffering from almost univer-
sal abysmal tenacious ignorance which
refuses to be enlightened upon funda-
mentals so simple that they are well
within the grasp of the average adoles-
cent. It is a stupendous tragedy of


ignorance."
—Robert H. Hemphill.


''Permit me to issue and control the
money of a nation, and | care not who


makes its laws."
—Meyer Amschel Rothschild.


"The man who is broken down by
poverty can neither speak nor act; his


tongue is tied and his feet are chained."


"But if thou standest listless in spirit
before thy duty; ere long the Great
Avenger shall take the work from out
of thy hands."


MONEY CREATORS


Who Creates Money?
Who Should Create It?


by
GERTRUDE M. COOGAN


Published by


Sounp Money Press, Inc.
120 W. Adams Street
Chicago, Ill.


1935


Copyright
1935
Sound Money Press, Inc.


All rights reserved. No part of this book
may be reproduced in any form without
permission in writing from the publisher.


First Printing February 1935
Second Printing April 1935


Printed in U. S. A.


PREFACE


How long shall we allow our leaders, spiritual
and political, to pretend that they see nothing, hear
nothing, and know nothing? How long shall we
tolerate organs of education and information, public
and private, commercial and religious, which are
drugged? How much longer shall we silently consent
to have the strong kept in a trap, the wise surrounded
by fog, and the sincere millions caused to suffer need-
lessly?


There can be no Liberty without Economic Free-
dom — America can have no Economic Freedom
without an honest money system-——one removed
from the controls of the socially irresponsible private
Money Creators,


The problem facing us today is not the formation
of a new political party. It is to inform the constitu-
ents of every Congressional District so that they may
put such pressure upon our Congressmen and Sena-
tors as to leave them no alternative but to do the will
of the people. The people must demand of them
an honest money system. The illicit political ma-
chines and numerous rackets will pass into oblivion
when an honest money system is set in operation. The
controllers of our money system are the controllers


of our illicit political machines.


IIl


Victms!


Do you want money made honest for you by
the National Government; or kept “sound” for the
Money Creators by mis-government?

Do you want U. S. dollars in sufficient number
to keep the “wolves of depression” from your door;
or do you want dollars in such overwhelming num-
bers as to deprive them of all value, as the Money
Creators have done in other countries?

The reader will ask: “Why have not business
leaders known that our money system is dishonest?
They are intelligent, aggressive people who seem
equal to anything.” The answer is found in the fact
that with few exceptions business men are honest,
and, as honest men, believe that few men are dis
honest.

The situation resulting from this concept has set
the stage for any confidence game, large or small. The
Money Creators have truly operated a confidence
game.

Our home town and city bankers are, with few
exceptions, honest men. Through intrigue and manip-
ulations of gold and government debts they have
become mere pawns in the world monetary confidence


e.

They and their predecessors inherited a system
which, because it is, they believe always was. If
they would look into the origin of the system, and
examine its nature, originated sub-rosa and only
through centuries of legislative trickery congealed
into Law, they would demand that the system be de-
mystified, made non-collapsible, and honest in essence;
for they would see that the near-by destiny of the
system is ruin for them as well as for others.


January 29, 1935


FOREWORD


To THE AMERICAN PEOPLE:


It gives me special pleasure to have the opportunity to
explain the principles and purposes of this book, written
by Miss Gertrude M. Coogan of Chicago.

The facts that Miss Coogan was awarded a Master's De-
gree in Economics and Finance by Northwestern University;
was for eight years a Security Analyst for The Northern
Trust Company of Chicago; that from the beginning she
had a deep desire to understand the fancied enigma of
money, have given her a great insight into monetary science.

The basic principles of monetary science are simple. It
is a sound axiom of monetary science that the value of
money depends upon the available supply of money in re-
lation to the goods to be exchanged with it. Knowledge of
the science has been made difficult by those who have con-
verted these simple principles into an enigma. They have
done 60 with ponderous volumes written on prices and on
the processes of production, transportation, distribution and
allied topics; weaving into the subject matter deceptive terms
so that the public has been grossly misled by the use of
words which contain accepted false premises,

The intentional use of deceptive terms has made monetary
science obscure. For example; the so-called monetary ex-
perts and financial writers use the word Inflation to stigma-
tize justified expansion in the volume of money, when In-
flation actually means unjustified expansion. They use De-
flation, which means justified contraction of a previous un-
just expansion; that is, contraction of previous inflation, as
synonymous with unjustified contraction, in order to com-
mend that unjust contraction.


Vv


TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE


They use the word Money as meaning gold and currency
alone, when the word Money really means, as Webster's dic-
tionary truly saya: “anything having a conventional use as a
medium of exchange and a measurement of value.” That is,
Money means bank checks and bank demand deposits prin-
cipally. It is through this deceptive use of the word Money
that they say there is no relation between the volume of
money and our domestic price levels. It is with this false
use of the word Money that they deny the quantitative facts
of money.

They use the term Gold Standard deceptively because the
weight of the gold exchangeable for a currency dollar has
no standard measure of value, and cannot have. The value
of a fixed number of grains of gold exchangeable for a dol-
lar, fluctuates directly with the expansion or contraction of
bank credit money. It was easy to fix the currency price
of gold, but the creators and controllers of bank credit
money fixed the goods price of gold.


The number of grains of gold exchangeable for a cur-
rency dollar is of very minor importance from a domestic
standpoint. It is only in the purchase of foreign exchange,
the currencies of other countries, that the number of grains
of gold exchangeable for a dollar is of vital importance.
When other countries change the grains of gold exchange-
able for their currency units, it is necessary that the United
States do likewise, if we wish to enter export markets.

In a really scientific money system, gold should not have
a fixed price. The number of grains of gold exchangeable
for a unit of currency, in reality, should fluctuate as the pur-
chasing power of the dollars themselves change. Fixing the
weight of gold exchangeable for a unit of currency has been
the means by which the price levels of each country have
been altered at the pleasure of foreign Bankers.


My own interest in this matter arose when I was a boy


VI


TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE


of 17 in the Panic of 1873. Then, the value of my father’s
property was completely destroyed and my mother, from a
life of abundance, was suddenly compelled to earn her liv-
ing by teaching music.

I determined to solve that question and have continued
to give it consideration throughout my whole life.

Opportunity favored me. In 1877, I was graduated in
six languages; was awarded the Degree of Master of Arts;
was Valedictorian of my class; received the Debater's Medal;
and later had conferred upon me the Degree of LL.D. and
was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. During my entire life I have
been a serious student.

In 1890, I had the opportunity of establishing the first
national bank chartered in Oklahoma; was its President ten
years, and have been elected a Director for 45 successive
years. I knew the causes of the Panic of 1893 and conducted
that bank through that panic.

I was a delegate to the National Democratic Convention
in 1896 and made a resolute fight to commit the Democratic
Party in its platform to a pledge to protect the people of
the United States against panics and depressions. An at-
tempt was made to remonetize silver. Hon. William Jen-
nings Bryan himself strenuously demanded the establish-
ment of an honest money system—money whose purchasing
power should remain the same. Bryan was defeated solely by
a studied and expressive campaign of deception and ridicule,
the threat of panic and the use of money.

In 1898 I went to Europe and studied the methods by
which Europe stabilized credit and the value of money.
After having studied at first hand the Bank of England
through its Governors; the Bank of France through its Gov-
ernor and expert advisers, and the Reichsbank through its
Directors, I wrote many articles describing how the pur-
chasing power of money could be stabilized in America.


Vu


TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE


Many articles were written by me at that time to show
what principles could be applied to an American system.


In 1900 I devised a plan to protect this country against
the evils of monetary panics by providing for the issuance
of United States legal tender money when national produc-
tion necessitated an increase in the supply of money.


In December 1907, I entered the United States Senate
and served there for 18 years. Within ninety days after
I entered the Senate, on the 25th day of February 1908, I
analyzed completely the Panic of 1907; showed its causes,
how it could be cured, and how depressions could be pre-
vented in the future. My text was stability in the value of
money.

I was made Chairman of the Committee on Banking and
Currency of the United States Senate on March 5, 1913, and
immediately drafted a Bill called the Federal Reserve Bill.
In drafting this Bill I was greatly assisted by the results of
four years work done by the National Monetary Commission.
That Commission's report consisted of 32 volumes, and an
auxiliary library of 2500 volumes. It had been established on
my request from the floor of the United States Senate.

In July 1913, Hon. Carter Glass joined me in present-
ing to the Senate and to the House the so-called Federal
Reserve Bill which had been prepared by me the previous
March, but which had been expanded, and contained pro-
visions with which I was not entirely content. My Com-
mittee was immediately called together to take testimony
on this Senate Bill, and after 3,000 pages of printed testi-
mony had been taken, my colleagues in the Senate authorized
me to write another Bill. I thereopon had the Senate strike
out the Bill that had been prepared in the House and sub-
stitute the Bill which I had originally prepared. The Senate
adopted the Bill written by me without a change of word. In
the Bill introduced in July, in which the Hon. Carter Glass


Vill


TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE


joined me, I had inserted a provision requiring that the
powers of the Reserve System be employed in the service
of commerce and to promote a stable price level. The mean-
ing of this, of course, was to establish and maintain the
stable value of money under mandate. This mandatory pro-
vision was stricken out in the House under the leadership of
Hon. Carter Glass. I was unable to keep this mandatory
provision in the Bill because of the secret hostilities de-
veloped against it, the origin of which at that time I did
not fully understand.

Under the administrations of Wilson, Harding, Coolidge
and Hoover, this Act was diverted from its proper purpose
on the advice of some who controlled the policies of a num-
ber of the largest banks.

In the campaign of 1920, under the pretext of lowering
the cost of living, those in charge of some of the largest banks
demanded the contraction of credit and currency. This was
done in spite of nine protests I had made on the floor of the
Senate between January and June of 1920. Policies pur-
sued by those in charge of the Central Federal Reserve
Banks resulted in raising the value of money 80%, from an
index of 60 in May 1920 to an index of 107 in June 1921.


Again, under President Hoover, the contraction of credit
took place on such a colossal scale as to force the dollar
index (purchasing power) to 166. The consequence was
universal bankruptcy, every bank in the United States be-
ing forced to suspend operations at the close of Hoover's
services.

The purpose of this book is to bring before the American
people the knowledge that they must have regarding the
nature and manipulations of their money system. In my
opinion, America faces a crisis which may result in the loss
of our Representative Constitutional Government unless
every man and woman, rich or poor, young or old; doctor,


Xx


TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE


lawyer, merchant, laborer, educator, clergyman, social work-
er, society leader; will bestir himself or herself toward the
problem of bringing the fundamental truths of monetary
science to every fireside.

It is time for intelligent Americans to examine their
money system and learn how to make simple but funda
mental changes. Those who own insurance policies and sav-
ings accounts must bestir themselves to protect those accumu-
lations. It is an obvious fact that the value of savings ac-
counts and insurance policies will be destroyed unless cor-
fect measures are taken to restore property values, employ-
ment, and equitable raw material price levels. Instead of
allowing our entire social order to be changed, we should
examine the fundamental cause of our economic chaos. Mak-
ing a few intelligent and scientific changes in the operation
of our money system will eliminate the dangers of our being
afflicted by false principles.
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