Litchfield enquirer., 1875-10-21
PHILLIPS vs. scHuRz.
Phillips to the Legal Tender Club.

EUGENE BEERS, Esq, Secretary of the United States Legal Tender Club, New York :- -
 My DEAR SIR-In compliance with the request of the Honorable Richard Schell and other prominent members of the Le- gal Tender Club. of which you are the Secretary, have to submit the following to the gentlemen of your club and the country at large:
 MR. scHURz's SPEECH CONSIDERED.
 Draining off from MT. Schurz's speech the whipt-syllabub-excuse, apology, per sonal abuse and his own history, four sub- stantial matters remain.
 Erst-The charge that Gov. Allen and his friends do not know that ninety-three per cent of business transactions are by checks. notes, and bills of exchange, while only seven per cent of such transactions are affected by bank currency and green backs. If Emperor Carl could have af- forded to come home little earlier from his European festivities and informed himself of the actual state of the discus slon he filings himself into the middle of, he would not only know that Governor Allen and his friends were aware of this fact, but that they were the first to bring it out and publish it in this discussion. He would know also that this is the cor ner stone of one of their gravest charges against our present system of finance. This it is that leaves in the hands of the Bank Directors the power to infiate at their sovereign will and pleasure. In one city, New York, the banks inflated the currency Sl, ,70O, 900 ;n one week of last February and contracted it S5, GOO, 900 in one week of last March. Can government take in or force out currency much faster tliaD that? This is the aristocracy of money manufacture, resting in some 5000 bank directors, that we resist. Our sys- tenn - greenbacks and interconvertible bonds-leaves the power of imitation and contraction in the hands of the whole mass of business men this is where it should rest-and where it always does rest until law and force interfere with business by creating monopolies like the national banks. Would Ohio submit if only few capitalists, residing in Cincinnati and Columbus. were allowed to plant wheat and every one else forbidden? Iet this is our present system of money manufac- ture. Banks raise or lessen the price of every farm as they please. They manu-
 
 own interests. Indeed, onr present sys- tenn of finance is a one-sided device-not to say trick-by which capital gets con- stant and uniform advantage over bus mess and labor.
 SecOnd-The second point of the speech is, if the government increases the num- Der of greenbacks they will depreciata and gold will advance. Mir. Schurz for gets that our system does not contemplate any necessary increase of the whole cur rency made up of bank bills, greenbacks, deposits, checks and bills of exchange. We mean to have more greenbacks and less checks more democracy and less aristoOracy in the money market; more money in everybody's reach and less of bank favors for the petted few. But sup pose we do double the real currency, as Mir. Schurz. fears, will that of itself. and necessarily, increase prices, and especially the price of gold? Listen to facts in our own history, related by the ablest of. liv. ing economists, H. 0. Carey, in his letters to Secretary Bristow in 1874, pp. 5, 6. ' and 8 8:-