Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1876-02-11

the wild spirit of speculation, the undue ex-
ransion OF credits, enormous investments in
premature enterprises, have worked out their
legitimate and inevitable results, and with
iull volume OF paper money the crash came !;
prices have fallen, settling day has arrived,
painful liquidation proceeds, and the whole com
mercial and financial fabric is settling down on q
solid foundation Experienc eonvinces where
precept falls only on deaf ears and day we have
men by the thousand longing and asking for
return to specie who, three years ago would have
violently opposed it. To attempt now to build up
business by further initiation OF the currency is
theory so wild and destructive that it requires
man OF great nerve, or of great ignorance, to pro-
pose it. Indeed, the shock to confidence by the
panic OF 1873, was so great that many commodi-
ties, and especially many fabrics, are far below
their normal price, and frm clear, decisive step
in the direction of q sound redeemable currency,
nparting stability to our financial system and con-
hdencs to the people, would be followed by . rise
In prices, by quick and widespread demand for
labor, and by a generous and general revival Of
trade and business throughout the country. And
beyond that we should enter upon an export trade
in our fabrics such as We have not dreamed of in
the past. The time is ripe for it, outward circum-
stances are all propitious, and it only remains for
Congress to give to the country a steady currency,
and The bounding energy and enterprise Of our
people will do the rest.
There is rot cotton plantation in the South,
not grain or grazing farm in the West, not
coal pit or iron furnace in Pennsylvania or Ohio,
not manufactory in New England, not ship
yard on the Atlantic coast, not a lumber camp
from the Penobscot to the Columbia, not q mile Of
railway between the two oceans, that would not
feel the quickening, Rainful influence of a final
and general acquiescence in measures looking TO
specie payment. The Republicans mediate no
harsh or hasty or destructive policy on this
question-but one that shall be firm, consderate
and conclusive. The Democracy, by refusing to
cooperate in the good work, can keep the matter
in agitation and prolong the era of dullness and
inactivity in the county. Having stubbornly
fused to vote for legal tenders when the salvation
of the Union demanded them, that party can now
tltiingly complete its financial record by resisting
all honest efforts TO restore the specie standard to
the people.
We are told, however, Mr.. Chairman in tones
of most solemn warning, that this country is not
able to maintain specie payment. Sir, reject the
suggestion with scorn, and it seems to me if
could be persuaded Of its truth | should be
ashamed 10 lise in the American Congress and
proclaim it. Here is California, one of our young
est States (thirty members Of the Union being
senior to her), with q vast territory and sparse
population, able to maintain coin payment and
maintaining it through financial storm OF terrific
force, and by reason Cf it regaining position Of
solvency and safety with rspdity and q certainty
to which the paper basis affords no parallel, but
only contrast Here to the north of us lies the
Dominion of Canada, stretching from Newfound-
lana 10 tne pordefS oI Alaska, Win sn lnnospIaole
climate, soil in great part inferior to ours COM
merce checked and suspended half the year by
frozen rivers manufactures scant, crude and un-
developed, with population throughout the whole
territory not so large as that OF New York, and
with wealth greatly inferior to that of the Empire
State; with debt as large, in proportion to peo-
pie and product and property, as our own; and
yet Canada finds no difficulty in maintaining specie
payment. And at Toronto, Montreal and Halifax
The American tourist is Knocked and made ashamed
by the sight of coin dollars and gold eagles from
our own mint, Circulating freely as currency
among people whose wealth and resources are
but An uncomfortable fraction of our own magnif-
cent Inheritance and possessions.
When the National Government was organized,
in l7S9 the liberal estimate of the property of
the entire thirteen States placed it at six hundred
millions of dosrs-ess than the wealth of Boston
of Chicago to-day. The population four mil
hons, showing property OF one hundred and nifty
dollars to each inhabtant. By the census Of 1870.
our population had increased to thirty eight mil
lions and our wealth to thirty thousand millions,
showing eight hundred dollars per capita for the
whole people. Our population had increased in
the eighty intervening years not quite teniold-
but our wealth had increased fftyfold. The
patriots of 1890, with their slender resources, did
not hesitate to assume national debt Of ninety
millions Of dollars, being more than one-seventh
Of their entire possessions; and it never occurred
to them that an abandonment of the specie basis
would make their burden lighter. They knew
from their terrible experience with Continental
currency that all their evils would be painfully in
creased by resort to paper money. And IN their
poverty, with no accumulated capital, with manu-
factures in feeblest infancy, with commerce un-
developed, with low prices for their agricultural
products, they maintained the gold and silver
standard they paid their great debt, they grew
rich in the property which we inherited, but far
richer in that bright, unsullied honor which they
also bequcsthed to us.
To-day the total debts of the American people,
National state and Municipal, not so large in
proportion to a.reacy acquired property was the
National debt alone in 1890. And when we take
into the account the relative productive power Of
the two periods our present burdens are absolutely
inconsiderabe. When We reflect what the rail
way, the telegraph, the cotton gin, and our end
less mechanical inventions and agencies have done
for us in the way of increasing our capacity for
producing wealth. we should be ashamed to pre-
tend that we cannot bear larger burdens than our
ancestors. And remember Mr.. Chairman, that
our wealth from 1890 TO 1870 increased more than
five times rapidly as our population, and that
the same development is even progressing
with continually accelerating ratio. Remember,
also, that the annual income and earnings of our
people are larger than those Of any European
country, larger than those of England, or France,
or Russia, or the German Empire The English
people stand next to us, but We are largely in ad-
vance of them. The annual income of our entire
people exceeds six thousand millions in gold, and
despite financial reverses and revulsions, is stead
lily increasing.
In view OF these facts, it would be an unpardon-
able moral weakness in our people-always heroic
when heroism is demanded-to doubt their own
capacity to maintain specie payment. l am not
willing, myself, to acknowledge that as people
we are less honorable, less courageous, or less
competent than were cur ancestors in 1890. Still
less am ready to own that the people of the en-
tire Union have not the pluck and the capacity of
our friends and kinsmen in California; and last of
all would l confess that the United State. Of
America, with forty-four millions of people, with
a ritory surprising all Europe in area, and
might almost say all the world in fertility of re-
sources, not able TO do what handful of Brit
ish subjects, scattered from Cape Race to Van
couvers Island, can do easily, so steadily and
so successfully.
Mr.. Chairman, one great trouble in this whole
financial question has been the general and for
many years the growing disposition Of our people
not TO regard the legal tender notes as a debt of
the Government, but rather something which is
never to be paid. Such was not the feeling among
the people when the legal tenders first appeared,
and think this erroneous and injurious concep-
ton resulted from act Of Congress, which in
most vital point changed the character of the notes.
When the first three hundred millions of legal
tenders were issued, they could be funded at
the option of the holder, in $40 bonds in sums
of fifty dollars and any multiple thereof. This
provision gave fixed, determinate character TO
he legal fender connected If with nthpr