Western Reserve chronicle. [volume] (Warren, Ohio) 1855-1921, 1868-04-29
Currency Debasement and
Public Generalization.

HuOLLC
We admit the proposition that the
issue of paper money by the Govern
ment has caused public Generalization,
and that this is its inevitable effect.
1t was the great cause of the extraya-
gsnce and corruption in the war TX
penditures. 1t actually made the be-
lief that the country was growing
richer while the producers of one half
the country were turned to the de-
struction of the producers and proper
ty of the other half. We have had
articles from sage financial writers,
proving that the country had grown
rich under this destruction. Sudden
wealth almost always breaks down all
rules of economy, either 10 public or
private affairs. We were like a beggar
who had suddenly come to a large
estate. There were not a few among
our public financiers, our legislators,
and our public writers who thought
that we had grown richer on our own
expenditures of borrowed money.
And likewise a great rise in prices
causes Generalization. 1t makes the
profits of speculative so much greater
than the slow gains of regular trade as
to draw it all into the line of specula-
ton. 1t makes the profits in all trades
SO e~xtravagant, by the mere rise in
stocks on hand, as to draw the people
from productive labor to trade. 1t
thus tends to diminish production.
And this oVer-trading and speculation
stimulate the expansion of credit and
reckless ventures. The failure of these
bring lax ideas of the pecuniary obliga-
tons created by them. Times of great
speculation always result in an indiffer-
ence to the payment of debts created
by them.
We see, also, the laxity of morals
from the issue of paper money, in the
doctrines in regard to the nature of
public pecuniary obligations which
men deliberately lay before the
country, which once they would have
called knaverY; the doctrine, for
instance, that the Government may
satisfy its bond to pay money by issuing
a broken promise to pay the doctrine
that the Government may make money
of paper, chips, straw, stones, rags, by
putting its stamp on them, and that in
this way rubbish becomes payment of
its obligations to pay money the doc
trine that the Government may COM
pei the holders of IFS bonds to exchange
them for others at a lower rate of
interest; the doctrine that it may sell
its bonds with the condition of a fixed
rate of interest, and then withhold the
interest in the name of taxation; the
doctrine that because the Government
was made by hard necessity in the war
to issue irredeemable promises as
money, that therefore it may honestly
issue them in quantity to take up
1000 millions of bonds and make the
notes worthless, robbing the people at
last of the whole sum.
There are but a few instances of this
widespread decentralization by the issue
of vast amount of irredeerable paper.
with 8 forced circulation as money.
There are greater consequences than
all these yet hanging on 1t. The values
of property and the trade of the whole
country depend on the issue which is
now the tool of political demagogues
and corrupt party manages; the ques-
ton whether there shall be stable
money, o. q vast initiation of legal
tender currency whether the business
of the country shall be built upon the
foundation of steady industry, or
whether it shall be turned into the
whirlpool of speculation, upon the
prices of a currency initiation,
controlled by party managers in part
nership with gamblers. Under such a
we should become a nation of
thieves. The agitation of the scheme
has brought all the notorious political
knaves to the top. Corruption in
Office is little thought of, in view of the
immense prospect of plumber from the
by speculations upon the de-
basement of the currency.-Cincinnai
Gazette.