The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-01-09
The Irredeemable Paper Dollar.
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From the NJ Y. Times.
The great mass of consumers and they, of
course, form the majority of the community
will perhaps take q deeper interest in the dis
cussions on the currency, and will press their
representatives more earnestly towards the
right conclusion, if they consider that this
question in political economy touches their
every day bread and butter. For the worn
pieces of paper, which are promises to pay"
of our Government that cannot be redeemed,
circulating from hand to hand, each one of
our readers pays in his morning coffee, his
sugar, his tea, his broadcloth, his furniture,
his silks and wines, and the material of his
buildings and his house rent. 1t is tax paid
almost universally-not only on all foreign
articles, but on all labor and all the results of
labor. Nest of all, it is a tax which benefits
no one, except perhaps the foreign importer
and the home speculator, and often it ruins
them. 1t pays no debt and accumulates no
savings for the future.
We have now no fixed standard of value.
The Government puts out note which it
calls "a dollar" 1t is in reality huctuating
value, worth once forty cents, worth now
seventy-twO cents, to be worth in year per-
haps eighty or eighty-fve cents. All the
salaried classes, such as clergymen, profess
sors, clerks, teachers, and the like, who are
paid the old rates, do not receive thousand
dollars or two thousand, as the case may be,
but some considerable fraction less, perhaps
not more than half the old value Those
who have increased salaries, and the wage
class whose wages have risen, really enjoy
most uncertain incomes, and less in value pro-
! badly than their former, for they must pay
not only the regular profits of retailer and
importer, but also the additional profits
| there demanded for the risks of
an uncertain standard of value. The
merchant who buys his coffee on credit with
dollar at seventy two cents, with the chance
| hof hon I, he
two cents, must evidently charge percent
age on the risk, and each consumer pays that.
No business man knows exactly what his
property will be year from now, and there
fore he must exact from customers some
equivalent for his uncertainties. We all pay
tax continually on this paper dollar, which
| is the heaviest and least remunerative of our
taxes. All exchange becomes uncertain under
it, and business slackens. The man who
would buy fears that when he comes to pay
he must discharge his debt in specie; and he
who would sell breads to receive what is only
worth fraction Of its apparent value. One
great addition to country's capital-building
lis everywhere obstructed by these uncertain
values.
The irredeemable paper dollar, too adds to
! all our other taxes. We are all paying, in
one shape or another, portions of one hundred
and forty millions of interest money annually,
the great bulk of it being at the rate OF six
per cent. in gold. Were our credit reestab-
iished, and the paper equal to the gold dollar,
this annual taxation could undoubtedly be
reduced one third, or some forty y-hve millions,
by funding.
AS illustr atipg the effect of the irredeem-
able dollar on foreign commerce, Mr.. Commits
soner Wells gives striking instance in his
report OF one OF our manufacturers who made
cane bottom chairs adapted for warm lati-
tudes, and exported them to the West indies
and South America. When gold and cur,
rency were at par, in 1861, $1,000 in gold
would obtain Ill 10 dozen of chairs. In
1864 $1,000 could purchase l43 dozen, aud
trade increased but, as labor and commodl-
ties rose in pI ice, the purchasing power OF gold
fell, and in January, 1867, $1,000 would only
buy S9S; now, with the paper dollar at "
cents, $1,000 will only purchase lO2 dozen, or
nine dozen less than it would buy in 1861,
when paper and gold were equal. The con-
sequence is that the foreign purchaser goes to
another market, and trade is turned away,
perhaps never to resume its old channels.
And this country, which must have sugars,
spices, and dyewoods from these tropical
regions, can no louger pay for these with this
manufacture, and must send gold in return,
, thus diminishing still further our basis OF
specie for future resumption. This particular
article of cane-bottom chairs is only one
instance of many manufactures which are
crippled by the irredeemable paper currency.
The manufacturer IN the above instance
could only furnish lO2 dozen chairs for $1,000
(eold). as against III dozen in 1851, because
the changing standard raised all his expenses,
whether for material, rent or labor, above
even their legitimate rate in gold value, while
he must compete with foreign manufacturers,
who have a fixed standard of value, and can
cut every expense down to an exact and low
rate. 1t must not be forgotten that every
business man must charge profit on an un-
certain standard.
Every article of manufacture or produce
which is exported, and enters into competi-
tion with foreign articles, suffers from pre-
cisely this difficulty which has broken up
the cane-chair export. Each producers ex-
: penses in the United States are relatively
greater than those of foreigner living under
: a specie standard, and the consequence is
! the home producer is gradually driven out
| of foreign markets, and in some cases is
undersold even in our own, in face of a heavy