The Emperor Norton Bridge
Woo hoo! The Emperor Norton Bridge may finally get its rightful name. He ordered it built in 1872, but his subjects didn’t do so for another sixty years. Officially it’s the James “Sunny Jim” Rolph Bridge, named for a California governor (and former San Francisco Mayor) who died in office in 1934, while the bridge was being constructed. But no one knows that. I usually hear it called the Oakland Bay Bridge. And, oddly enough, Oaktown isn’t wild about the idea of renaming it.
The Wikipedia has a good article on Norton.
The Emperor would also issue his own money on occasion in order to pay for certain debts, and this was generally accepted as legal tender by local businesses. (Typically these notes came in denominations of 50 cents to five dollars, and the few notes still existent have fetched thousands of dollars at recent auctions).
In Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea’s The Eye in the Pyramid, they note:
Joshua Norton, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico… He lived in the [19th] century and got to be emperor by proclaiming himself as such. For some mysterious reason, the newspapers decided to humor him and printed his proclamations. When he started issuing his own money, the local banks went along with the joke and accepted it on par with U.S. currency. […]
Well, chew on this for a while, friend: there were two very sane and rational anarchists who lived about the same time as Emperor Norton across the country in Massachusetts: William Green and Lysander Spooner. They also realized the value of having competing currencies instead of one uniform State currency, and they tried logical arguments, empirical demonstrations and legal suits to get this idea accepted. They accomplished nothing. The government broke its own laws to find ways to suppress Green’s Mutual Bank and Spooner’s People’s Bank. That’s because they were obviously sane, and their currency did pose a real threat… But Emperor Norton was so crazy that people humored him and his currency was allowed to circulate.
I think that California had more tolerance and a better sense of humor at that time, too. San Francisco in the 1860s, although it was the major city on the West Coast, was still very much a frontier town and was a long way from the authority of Washington.
On the more practical monetary side of things, I don't know much about these other competing banks, but I believe it was well known in the 19th century that you can't go introducing currency into the economy wily-nilly, or nasty things like hyperinflation and runaway interest rates will result. It'd be interesting to read more to find out just what the arguments were in favor of these banks.
Also, a currency has to be backed by something, especially in the 19th century when people were quite suspicious about paper money. Emperor Norton's currency actually did have a backing in his novelty value and his power to grant titles of nobility. It was an abstract sort of capital but it worked because people believed in it. And it didn't hurt that the economy of California was rapidly growing at that time because of the gold rush, railroad building, and the China trade, so the introduction of a little extra money wouldn't have as much of a negative impact and might have actually brought some benefit.
Posted by Jimcat on December 20 2004 05:41