Shaw Abrogates The Law

SHAW ABROGATES THE LAW.

While the republicans are claiming what wonderful things that party has done for the country and how stable it has made the money market of the country, it affords a little diversion to turn the limelight on the act ion of the secretary of the treasury in his effort to prevent a panic in Wall street. Things had come to such a pass that a panic was imminent. Heroic measures were required to prevent it. The danger was so great that the secretary, acting on the principle that the end justified the means, actually went beyond the scope of the law in his effort to stave it off. Of his illegal course we will let the Baltimore American, a newspaper friendly to the administration and with undoubted republican proclivities, speak. It says:

"Secretary Shaw decides that in the absence of direct prohibition he may abolish the reserve clause as it applies to government deposits. No sooner thought than done - done illegally, done by riding roughshod over the acts of congress, done in such a manner as to constitute an assault upon the integrity and stability of our national banking system.

"And this from the secretary of the treasury! The man of all men who should teach respect for the wisdom and righteousness of our laws in relation to finance, goes out to hobnob with the waterers of stock, the clippers of the coupons of inflation and the manipulators of markets, and comes back to teach our national bank officials to entertain contempt for the reserve clause. How soon will it be before Secretary Shaw goes to still greater extremes in the execution of his fantastical ideas- ideas fraught with the elements of disaster to the nation's finances?

"We know not; but we do know that before he has had a chance to do further mischief President Roosevelt should remove this official, who is a monomaniac on the subject of inflation and a public menace. Pack him up, Mr. Roosevelt, and send him back to Iowa, and give us a man and a financier for our secretary of the treasury."