The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1868-08-10
The Airline Route to Financial Ruin


From the ~ Y. Tribune.
correspondent, recently writing to the
Tribune, says:
"W @ favor the payment of he five.twen ties in
gTeenbacks You ask us how. then. will we pay
the greenbacks? In gold. to the uttermNst far
thing, when we can; but meantime we will
avoid the ruinous interest we pay at present"
Let us analyze the effects which would result
from this blunder, if it should be consum-
mated. The above statement is step in ad-
vance of the Pendleton theory. The writer
has discovered, by dint of hard pounding, that
when the bonds have been all withdrawn and
greenbacks issued, the principal of the debt is
as large as ever ...+ -. .
Net dollar OF it has been paid. The United
States still owes the holders of the greenbacks
s. 500, ,00Q 600, which our correspondent says
should be paid in gold. But he says we have
stopped the payment of the interest. Waving
the point that it would be as just to repudate
the principal as the interest of any debt on
which we have agreed to pay interest, and
hence the plan, If a good one, stops short Of
its full fruition by 81 500 600, ,000 we will sup
pose the Job done. The bonds are recalled
The greenbacks are issued. The blow is struck
whom has it felled 2 - ..-. -.....-
First. We have agreed to pay 81 SOC, 600, 900
in gold on demand for debt which we could
buy to-day for 72 cents per dollar, or for
81 200, 900, 900 in gold altogether, thus losing
at the outset Gt the greenbacks are ever to be
paid) $500, 100000 in gold, or 81 years. inte-
rest on the national debt. ......-.
Secondly. The national debt could not be
| paid out of the surplus earnings of the people,
after paying for the wear and tear of working
capital and the support of the people, in less
| than twenty years. note without interest,
payable in twenty years, is worth that sum
which, If placed at compound interest for
twenty years, will produce the sum for which
the note is given. The note of the Govern
ment for 800, due in twenty years, without
interest, and sure to be paid in coin, would be
worth only $40.
Byen were there absolute certainty,
therefore, that every greenback note would be
! paid in full in gold, at the end of twenty years
it would be worth only twenty cents on the
| dollar. II used as currency in which prices
were to be stated and debts paid, all prices
would 60 up $50 per cent. above what they
now are, or 400 above the gold price, and all
| debts would be payable with less than one
third the actual value which would now pay
them. II all values would rise at the same
| time, the extent of the evil could be arrived
! at by computation. But they would not.
Imports and exports, dry goods, wheat, pork,
! beef, and other exportable merchandise, would
| rise in price long before wages and rents, and
these still long before real estate, and real
estate in commercial cities would rise long
before, and more than, country property.
| This would set on foot general gambling and
speculatiDg era such as the country has never
seen. Gold would go up from l40 to 500.
The poor man who to-day sells his shop or
cottage that has heretofore been worth $1,000,
for $500, thinking he has made great advance,
finds before long that he ought to have sold it
for $4,000 in order to make himself whole, and
that he has lost threefourths of ell he was
worth, unless he can swindle somebody as
badly as he has been swindled. In such a
chaos and wreck of prices and OF business, the
honest workingman is ruined; the hard earned
property he has accumulated melts like the
dew-he scarcely knows why. Such cOndi-
ton of things Is favorable only to the gam
bier and land-shark, and fatal to all honest
and legitimate industry. Talk of saving
$40, ,000, 600 of interest per annum 1t would
unsettle and tumble into chaos the entire
property of the country, so that no mau
could be certain of saving anything.
The twenty thousand millions of dollars,
which the entire real and personal PROPERTY OF
the country is worth, would rise to one hun
dred thousand millions, and in the rise