The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1868-08-10

eighty thousand millions of Il, at its advanced
values, would pass from the hands of those
who have honestly earned IL into the hands Of
speculators. This proposition launches us on
q shoreless sea. II has no element in IL but
certain destruction, widespread aud terrible
disaster. The very existence of business
and industry depends on preventing the
fools from running our finances upon
this rock of reputation. 1t is not a
question of mere honor but OF overwhelming
interest-nay, of selfpreservation. The So
called payment of the debt in greenbacks,
even il they were certain to be paid in gold in
twenty years, and therefore depreoisted only
to twenty cents on the dollar, for this is the
basis ON which we have thus far calculated,
would speedily ruin every non-speoulator in
the country. The most reckless gambling
would be the only salvation of any man of
business. But it is not true that the green-
backs would be paid in coin in twenty years,
and consequently it is not true that the depreoi-
alton would stop at twenty cents per dollar.
When they had fallen to twenty cents, they
would be three times more deprecated, aud
consequently further from being paid in coin,
than the national bonds now are. The PEN
dletons and Vallandighams, who cry out
against paving bonds in coin that are depre-
ciated TO 20 cents, will find it to be Just three
and half times as unjust and oppressive to
redeem the greenbacks in coin in full when
were to be any redemption Of them at all, they
would only buy them in at market prices, bs-
cause that would be all they need pay to get
them. Just as Mexico is now buying in her
debt at elk, and as Russia redeemed her debt
of 1915 at seven. Hence, when the greenback5
have sunk to 20 cents per dollar, the prospect
is, not that they will be paid in full in gold at
the end of twenty years, but that they will be
redeemed at some future time at the rate OF
G,a Io1 in rs for nf
prospect is no sooner apparent than the green
backs 60 down from 20 to 5, gold goes mp, as
it did in the Rebel Confederacy, to 4000--all
values burst together, the whole national debt,
bonds and greenbscks, and bank notes and
private notes, are exploded, the people
are left without any medium of exchange
except gold and silver, and not more
than $500, ,000,0 900 of that in the whole
country. How much business could
be done in the United States with currency
suddenly reduced TO five dollars per capita for
the whole people ? Our farms, mines, fac
tories, and stores would be paralyzed as il
universal palsy pervaded the business men Of
the country. Famine would stalk through
the land. The operative willing to work
would find nobody able to furnish him any
thing with which to buy food. The merchant
| would refuse to sell on a credit that bore nc
evidence 'ot being secure. All securities
| would have vanished, and no means of doing
business for cash would exist. Such return
to barbarism, such a general and overwhelm
ing crash, such widespread and destructive
suspension of industry, with the carnival Of
crime and holocaust of suffering which would
accompany it, has never been witnessed in this
country. Yet this is the 'danty dish" which
some would set before the people under the
gaudy and specious pretense of "saving in
terest" on the public debt. 1t is the airline
route to ruin.