New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1873-10-27
DOES PAPER MONEY INFLUENCE Nd
TIONAL CHARACTER'

|
ifs technical sense for irredeemable paper cur
rency. The habit of using as value anything
which has no value naturally exerts an lhlu-
ence on the mind of the man who does IT,
He loses the ability TO distinguish value where
| il exists and finds it where II is not
! lie forgets that there are two KhuS
| of cOnfdence-that which Is well iOnnueu
and that which is unfounded. me
former is true mercantile credit; the
latter is tbe basis of swindling. He comes To
eulogize confidence" as the one great thing
necessary i'll business, without stopping to re-
fleet whether he is asking for confidence
which ne deserves or one which he has for
foited. He is accustomed TO use n thing in
busincss every day which is not dollar but
a debt of a dollar, and yet apparently answers
the purpose of the real thing. 1t Is most
natural for him TO believe that if he can carry
! the process a step further and gain Tor MS
| own promise TO pay the baseless character OF
a PAYMENT he will only extend and increase
the good. A check for which there are = no
" funds is n disgrace to the drawer; ccrtlheu
| 10 be good, it is a buttressed falschood II II Is
! only cOnstructivcy good. Yet 1t IL legltl-
mate offspring of paper money. When men
| IN legitimate business come to believe in sus-
| tanning baseless credit, and banks regularly
certify when there are no funds, as mere
husiness routine, it seems to us that great
decentralization exists, and we trace 1t easily to
| its source.
paper money such as ours necessarily re-
drces business TO something of the nature OF
Gambling. Investments no longer depend for
their issue on natural laws, but on currency
| "A of bo
cliaues. syndicates, &C. Two men who make
contract bet on what Congress or the Secre-
tary of the Treasury will do before the con-
tract is fulfilled. 1t has been said that the
men who have not looked over twenty-1ou
hours ahead have. during the last ten
years. made fortunes, while those VINO
have tried foresight have made nothing or
been ruined. This is literally true. The most
reckless have been most successful, aud the
result has been to draw nearly everybody into
the fashionable methods of business. Pru-
dence has been neglected Sagacity i'll bust
ness has declined. The comments on the
panic of portion of the press have shown
this clearly. Sharpness and bOldness have be-
come prime business qualities. The same de-
cline in business sagacity and banking sound
hess was one Of the marked features during
the bank restriction in England. Moral effects
are almost always secondary, and II seems to
us that this decline in business qualities is
legitimate result of currency which has
altered the character of business.
Paper money is false pretensc. II deals
in big names for little things. 1t gives the
appearance of wealth where wealth is not. 1t
fatters a man with the idea of growing
wealth, while larger and larger figures are re-
Quired to measure the same value. Rxtrava-
gance and sensationalism seem to follow nat
uraly from it, just as so-called sterling quail
ties seem to be educated by the use of real values
The motto of paper money is that a lie well
stuck to is as good as the truth. Men are more
consistent than they know in transferring their
notions from one department to another.
| 1t has been said that property of immense
value has been transferred by nod or a wink
on pure trust. This way of doing business
seems to us of doubtful benefit. The nearer
we come to legitimate and safe modes, the
more strict are the legal forms. The nearer
we go to gambling and stealing, the greater is
| the element of honor in transactions Stock
dealing is gambling only by kind of exag-
| geration, but in departing from legitimate
! business it departs from law. IT sets up code
| of its own and enforces il by the limited
standards and the public opinion of a cOterie
If we still hold to the old-fashioned notions of
the utility and universally of law We must
recognize in everything which escapes law and
| seeks refuge in limited codes a decline in
public character.
| Under paper money the most profitable form
OF business is speculation in paper values of
! all kinds. Money is made by manipulating the
stock of a corporation rather than out of its
| industrial operations. Hence stock specula-
| tons multiply, while legitimate industry is
comparatively neglected. Men whose minds
| fall under the dominion of this state of things
are educated to care for paper names more
than for actual production. They study stock
maneuvers rather than industrial laws, and
develop Iefnements in Stock Exchange manip-
uation rather than business enterprise. Ii
seems to us that all this has very important
efiects-eflects which are open to daily obserya-
| tion--On the morale of the business community.
Under paper money, with active speculation and
rising prices, the opportunities for those who
have capital enough to enable them to incur
debts are very great The temptation to all
who hold trust funds TO borrow them is
enormous. All feel it all but the strongest
fall under it. When the shrinkage comes we
are enabled to infer, from the number who are
detected, because they speculated recklessly
or too long, something as to the number who
have succeeded, and have replaced their
borrowings. We have seen 1t mentioned that
only score or so of cases have been discov-
cred during the panic We have not counted
them. We wait for some sign that the list il
ful he of iah I'll