New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1873-09-08
TILE LITTLE JOKER.p

We consider ourselves still under obligations
to show that of the coin balance of eighty
seven millions, asserted to be in the Treasury
ON the 3lst of August the round sum of ten
million dollars is purely fictitious. That ten mil
lion dollars is the "little joke" in the game at
which Secretary Richardson is showing such
wonderful sleight of band. On the 18th of
August THE TRIBUNE gave reasons for its
suspicion that the Syndicate were settling for the
fifty millions of the Funded Loan which they
contracted to pay for on the list of june IN
coupons which did not fall due until the
list of July. Those reasons WERE in brief, the
unaccountable falling off in the gold interest
payments at New-YOrk from sixteen millions
in the month of July, 1872, to ten millions in
July, 1873, and the utter impossibility of
accounting for such decrease from natural
causes. The movements OF money which
arise from the payment of the regular dlvl-
dends on Government debt are extremely
regular, and may be predicted from experience
with the utmost certainty.
1t probably struck the Secretary of the
Treasury that it might be little
awkward to confess that he had ac-
cepted July coupons as gold in payment
% Il
on the 1st of June, an entire month before
the coupons did. This would probably make
even an investigating committee of Congress
open their eyes. But what was to be done
The coupons were in the "adjusting" works,
slowly passing thrOugh-much more slowly do
they pass than the stuff of which they are
made passes from dirty rags into clean paper.
The Syndicate in the existing condition of the
gold market, could not have provided gold with
out sacrificing themselves on the cory altar of
Jay Gould. 1t was certainly at a date subse
duent to the Goth of July that Secretary Rich
ardson allowed the Syndicate to break their
contract and settle with the Government by
turning in any bonds of the outstanding, in
terest- bearing fve-twenties they could get
hold of. We beg the reader to observe the
great importance of dates in this inquiry.
Remember that payment in gold coin, or past
due bonds and coupons, was due from the
Syndicate on the LIST of June. They had con-
tracted to pay promptly on that day. Now
we are ready to give satisfactory proof before
court of law that, as late as
the Goth of July, the acceptance of
any bonds, aside from those included in
the call of March list, or in previous calls,
in payment of the subscription of March was
not contemplated either by Secretary Richard
son or by the Syndicate. This statement, we
repeat, we are prepared to make good before
any competent tribunal.
We cannot prove that the plan agreed on
between Mr.. Richardson and the Syndicate
was to accept July coupons in payment of a
June debt nor that that plan was abandoned
in consenupnce of THE TRIRUNF'S article Dub-
lished Aug. 10, and another adopted by which
miscellaneous lot of -matured five
twenty bonds were accepted by Secretary
Richardson in place of the nonmatured
coupons. The latter method of payment,
though doubtless coming within Secretary
Richardson's powers to accept, was not per-
mitted by the contract which was made be-
tween the Secretary and the Syndicate last
Winter. They were driven to it by the force
of circumstances.
We now return to the trail of the ten
million dollars of fictitious coin. Five
millions of it we are satisfied is concealed
under those very coupons of which we made
mention on the 18th of August. The unpaid
past due interest on the active interest-bear-
ing debt is reported in the last Debt State
| ment to he more than nine million dollars
On the 3lst of August, 1872. it was less than
| five million dollars, and the Understanding
debt was over forty millions larger then
than it is now. Why should bond
holders thus neglect to draw their interest !
| Why should they do so this year more than
lasti That interest, too, is mainly on the
| January and July bonds. which are the issues