Nashville union and American. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1868-1875, 1875-07-13
ESTABLISHED MARCH 80, 1886.
HON. WILLIAM ID. KELLEY ON
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Hon. VIM. z. Kelley, of, Pennsylvania,
addressed a large audience on the cur
rency question. Though an Eastern
man and a Republican, his financial
views harmonic in themain with the
Ohio Democratic platform, and on this
account he is roundly abused by the
Cincinnati Gazette (Rep.) and the Com
nssrciaI (Ind) both hard money organs,
while the Enquirer Dem endorses
him "from the word Co." The Com
n1erciaE goes so far as to term him a
rank Communist.
Referring to the present depressed
condition Of business throughout the
country, Mr.. Kelley said;
Already more mills, furnaces, forges,
factories and workshops are idle than
ever before, and more honest labOring
men are living in want and despair than
ever before within ths limits of the
United States. Fools points to these
deposits and say that money IS abun-
dant, and call myself and those
who agree with me sans culotte,
and intimate that we are
capable of the most atroeious
crimes that characterized the French
revolution. They had better pause be-
fore reducing the working people to
the last measure of despair. There is
no less property in this country than
there was in 1866, but by the juggling
of the bullionists and the bOndhOlders
and their legislative creatures, it has
b en- concentrated IN fewer hands. The
work of plundering the masses still
goes on, and they are beginning to un-
derstand how it is being done. The
greenbacks and bank notes that
lie unused in their bank vaults
have ceased to be money; they
are dead capital, held by cormorants
un'il the time when, by the public dis
tress, each dollar will buy three or four
times as much as it now would. At
present they have none of the at
tributes Of money. Money is a circu-
lating medium thing, as Bonamy
Price SAID, to run from hand to hand.
Money is a representative Of values, a
medium Of exchange. These are its at
and uses, and the greenbacks |
now lying dead IN the vaults of the |
banks are not notwithstanding |
from hand to hand are not a medium |
by which men exchange commodities.
They have been demOnetized.
He insisted that the distress Of the |
country could not be relieved until the
provision fixing the arbitrary date for
less than three years hence
should be repealed, and the world be
given to understand that, all such mad
experiments had been denouncedb by the
American people; that this was the
first step toward happier times. The
next would be to restore the volume Of
,reenbacks to S4OO.O00,O00, coupling
With it the issue Of convertible bonds,
bearing a low rate Of interest in
paper. With such bonds ac-
2essibIe to the people, ii was
highly probable that a less amount Of
greenbacks than now exist would serve
III the purposes Of our industries and
stimulate them all. In his peroration,
after referring to the French Revolu-
ion, in which he said the people, sans
sans food, starving, naked,
rushed to the earth, rose and through
blood worked the regeneration Of
France, he exclaimed, 81 warn you,
bankers and bullionists, that unless you
lesist from your plunder and robbing,
4 mob may be at your doors and knife
1t your throat" >"