The Leavenworth weekly times. [volume] (Leavenworth, Kan.) 1870-1880, 1875-10-21
GREENRACKS.
Wendell Phillips Reply to Carl
SchurZ.
IredeemabIe Paper in the Light
of European History.


Eugene Beebe Esq, Secretary Of the United
SAFES Legal Tender CluJ, Neu York:
Ny DEAR SIR-In compliance with the |
request OF the Honorable Richard Schell |
and other prominent members OF the Legal |
Tender Club, of which you are the Secreta-
r., / have to submit the following to the
gentlemen Of your club and the country at
large:
Mr.. sCHURZs SPEECH CONSIDERED.
Draining off from Mr. Schurz's speech
the whipt-syllabuh, excuse, apology, per-
sonal abuse, and his own history, four SUBJ
stantial matters remain.
FiTa-The charge that Governor 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 transac-
tions are effected by bank currency and
greenbacks. Ii Emperor Carl could have
afforded TO come home little earlier from
his European festivities and informed him
self Of the actual state of the DISCUSSION he
filings himself into the middle of, he would
know not only 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 corner stone oil
one Of their gravest charges against our
present system OF finance This 1t Is that
leaves in the hands Of the bank directors
the power to initiate at their sovereign will
and pleasure. In one city, New York, the
banks inflated the currency Sl,1OO,OOO In
one week of last February, and contracted
il - 100000 in one week OF last March.
Can government take in or force out cur
rency much faster than that? This is the
aristOcracy of money manufacture, resting
in some 5000 bank directors, that We re-
sist. Our system-greenbacks and lncon-
trovertible bonds-leayes this power OF in
flation and contraction in the hands OF the
whole mass Of business men; this is where
il should rest and where it always does
rest until law and force interfere with bust
ness by creating monopolies like the Ma
tional Banks. Would Ohio submit il only
few capitalists, residing in Cincinnati
and Columbus, were allowed to plant wheat
and every one else forbidden? Yet this is
our present system Of money manufacture.
Banks raise or lesson the price of every
farm az they please They manufacture
and destroy currency as suits their own in
terests. Indeed, our present system OF f.
nance is a one-sided deyice-not to say
trick-by which capital gets constant and
uniform advantage over business and labor.
!Seoond-The second point Of the speech
j., If the government increase the number
Of greenbacks they will depreciate and gold
will advance. MIR. Schurz forgets that our
system does not contemplate any necessary
increase of the whole currency made up OF
bank bill OF exchange. We mean to have
more greenbacks and less checks more
democracy and less aristocracy in the mon
ey market more money in everybody's
reach and less OF bank favors for the petted
few. But suppose We do double the real
currency, as Mr.. 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
abiest Of living economists, Henry {. Car
ey, in his letters 10 Secretary Bristow in
1874, Up. ), 6, Z, and s:
FACTS BY H. c. CAREY.
"Thc currency, however, was then (du-
ring the war;, as We are now constantly as
sured, greatly deprecated, gold having
commanded heavy premiums, as certainly
had been the case. How little, neverthe
less, had been the connection between the
supply OF circulating notes and those OF
premiums, ii is proposed now TO show, as
follows:
AT the close Of 1862 the government
circulation amounted TO very little less
than S5UOUnOUJ1. As yet the State bank
circulation remained undisturbed, and TO
obtain the actual quantity of circulating
notes il Is needed now to add to the above
the sum Of SlS0,V0O, 0OJ, giving total of
SiS0,O0Q,0o0. We have here prodigious
and most rapid increase, and vet the gold
premium has scarcely passed beyond 33.
Two months later, in February, 1865, it
stood at 6l, with scarcely any perceptible
increase in the circulating medium. In
July the greenbacks had largely increased,
their amount having reached Si00,O00,0 900,
the premium meanwhile falling TO "a At
the close OF that year the legal tenders
in circulation had reached S500,O00,O00,
exhibiting an increase of S200,000,000, at
tended with decline Of premium TO the
extent Of 20 per cent; the February prem
ium OF Il having been replaced by the De
cember one of 81. The following year, 1864,
exhibits in June all emission OF compound
interest legal tender notes, attended with
rise in the price OF gold from 100 in May
10 251 in August, and decline to 2lS in
December. Five months later, in MAY, the
premium had fallen TO %, and this without
even the slightest reduction in the quantity
OF circulating notes in Use. In the follow
ing October, although the quantity of notes
ON hand, and therefore out OF circulation.
had become, as then stated by the Comp
-troller Of Currency, very large, the premium
had risen TO 46. In view oil all these facts
there is, As | can conceive, no possibility of
exhibiting any necessary connection between
the price OF gold and the circulating note.
AS difficult would it be to exhibit any
such connection with the prices of commod-
tiles of home production, all changes in
these latter having resulted from circum-
stances wholly apart from the supply of
notes. Cotton and wooden goods were high
from the fact that cotton and wooden
famine had been brought about Labor
was high because of the rapid extension of
manufactures consequent upon the adoption
OF protective policy, and upon the de-
mands Of the government for service in the |
field. Meat OF every kind was higher be-
cause Of the vast demand caused BY mil |
lions of men in arms. Horses were higher
becsuse of army demands, and SO was il |
with hundreds of other commodities that |
could be named. Real estate, however, re-
manned unafiected-land in Pennsylvania |
and houses in Philadelphia having been
purchased as cheaply as could have been
the case before the greenback idea had first |
been started.
From that day Qs65l to the present
there has been an incessant war upon the |
money Of the many, the circulating note,
leaving wholly out of view the action Of |
money known by the name of 'deposits,' by |
means of which the few are enabled to profit |
at the expense of the many
who need to live BY the exer
else of their physical and mental powers
Fierce as has been the war, 50 slight has
been its effect that at the date of the crisis
in September OF last year the circulating
notes in use, with gold at Is, were greater
in amount than they had been in 1864 with
gold at 80, the total having been S759, OOO.-
900. Making from this, deductions similar
TO those made by the Comptroller in 1865.
the net amount may be taken at 5000, 600,
600, or about SIS per head, being but Sl.5l
in excess of that Of 1852, when paralysis
reigned throughout the land when almost
all business was transacted on long credits.
and when that vast West, which has since
been occupied, remained almost as complete
teTTeiRcognitid as is now the heart of Al