It is well known that contemporary critics of the National Banking System complained about its failure to meet peak demands for currency. Less often discussed are complaints about the system's inability to remove excess notes from circulation during periods of slack demand for currency—a problem that critics attributed to the lack of an effective redemption mechanism. Beginning in 1864, important attempts were made to reform redemption arrangements, both privately and through legislation, and redemption reform was a key component of the “asset currency” movement to deregulate note issue. This article examines the motives and outcomes of redemption reform efforts up to the passage of the Federal Reserve Act, which substituted a discretionary control over the currency stock for the automatic elasticity that the asset currency movement had originally sought.

In 1909, the leaders of the American Association for Labor Legislation launched a campaign to eradicate phosphorus matches from the American market. Because phosphorus match workers often contracted a hideous disease called phosphorus necrosis (or “phossy jaw”), many European countries had already prohibited the poison matches from their markets. In the United States, nearly all interested parties supported legal abolition but found that the nation's federal system constituted a formidable obstacle. No state wanted to be the first to act (for fear of driving industry from its borders), and the federal government lacked the power to regulate intrastate economic activity. This article examines how, in order to circumvent the federalism obstacle, an alliance of academic reformers and business leaders worked to tax phosphorus matches out of existence—that is, to use the federal taxing power as a regulatory instrument.