Edward Kellogg

Edward Kellogg 1790-1858, American economist, b. Norwalk, Conn. He advocated a financial scheme to abolish interest, which was often usurious at the time he wrote. Kellogg devised a system of financial control whereby the government would issue legal tender notes and then lend them on the security of real estate at a low rate of interest. At the same time the government would issue, at the same rate of interest, bonds that could be exchanged freely for the notes. By that system Kellogg hoped to keep the interest rate close to the estimated rate of accumulation of wealth in the United States. His pamphlet Currency: The Evil and the Remedy (1844) was circulated with Horace Greeley's aid; it was revised under the title Labor and Other Capital (1849) and went into many editions after Kellogg's death as A New Monetary System; the 1883 edition includes a biographical sketch by his daughter. Kellogg's views were favored by agrarian and labor organizations and led to the formation of a number of political parties (e.g., the Greenbacks, the Populists) whose aim was a national economy and currency not manipulable by banking and financial interests.