Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1873-10-23
Our Currency.

THE system by which currency is now
supplied in the United States is in most
respects admirable, and with some modi-
fications which experience has suggested,
or will suggest, it will become the best
system that the world has ever known
While our currency affords undoubted Sc
curity to the ll-holder, it IS at present
deficient in leading and essential ele-
ment of currency fully applicable to the
wants of great commercial country.
That deficiency is the absence of any
present provision for contraction and ex-
pansion with the fall and rise of the in
ternal exchanges of the country at differ
ent seasons of the year. this deficiency
causing, alternately, pinch and plethora,
distress and speculation, and during the
movement Of the great crops of Northern
and Southern agricultural regions, abso-
lutte currency asphyxia.
This deficiency IN our currency system
! is too well understood by all classes to
need any elaboration IN proof of its exist
ence. No business man can have failed
| to observe that however abundant curren-
CIV may be in midsummer, as soon as the
| cotton crop of the South and the grain
| crop of the West begin to move in the
| autumn, the movement Of those crops di-
| verts the currency from other uses. The
movement of such abundant crops as
those of the last and of the present year
is embarrassed and delayed by the want
of currency, and the tendency is to re-
duce prices and deprive the agricultur-
lists of a full remuneration for their pro-
ducts. \ mere expansion of the currency
by free banking, or otherwise,
If the currency were expanded this fall
| cto VT \, o,,lI
be liable to the same pinch next autumn
Higher prices for everything would alb
sorb the increased volume of currency in
the summer, and when the time arrived
to move the crops the supply Of currency
for these movements must be collected,
as now, from other branches of business,
causing great inconvenience. Under
| present circumstances, our currency is
always of the same volume; it never con-
| tracts, but at certain seasons each year
business contracts. Is the currency for
the benefit of business? or is business
done for the benefit of currency? Is it
better that business should contract and
expand to adjust itself to the volume of
the currency? or that the currency should
contract and expand to adapt itself to the
wants of businesss
If the last question is answered in the
affirmative, it remains to be considered
whether this result can be reached in a
simple and practical way, without injuri-
ously affecting any interest, without dis
turbing any of the admirable features OF
our present system, without tearing down
but by building upon, what we have.
During the time that Mr.. Mccullough
was Secretary of the Treasury of the
United States, forty-four millions of dollars
of legal-tender notes were withdrawn
from circulation, and are now in the
treasury of the United States. 1t is claim
ed by the present Secretary Of the Treas
ury that he has right to reissue these
notes and withdraw them again at pleas
, ure. About five millions Of these notes
were re-issued and loaned without inter
est to certain banks in the city of New
| York, both after the Chicago fire, ano
after the late Boston fire, and were subse
quently withdrawn. The power to issue
and withdraw such an amount of currenc,
is too great power to rest in the hand.
of any one man. The issue of these notes
was probably judicious, and may at tht
time have averted general financial dis
, tress. They were perhaps withdrawn will
equal good judgment. Is there not, how
, ever, mode by which the currency need
] of the business public OF the United State.