Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1878-08-10

Slec-SpFeau Repatriation VI puOllc UeDUSs
The howl of Imitation" raised against all
who resist contraction and loweringo of values
springs from the craft of the Money Power,
and not from either honor or craftsmanship.
War necessity increased the currency and
raised prices. fsome creditors were wronged,
theirs were among the least of the inevitable
sutferings caused by the war. That they
suffered was not the fault of the mass of the
people. On the basis of these prices most of
the great public debts were made and public
expenditures fixed-and when fees and sal
aries are once fixed there is no such thing as
lowering them. On scale of prices greatly
reduced by the destruction of the interest
bearing treasury notes in 1867, the private
debts existing when the resumption law
passed were incurred. Honesty, honor ard
sound policy demanded that, as the govern
ment had no power to scale debts and es-
penditures, it should abstain from reducing
the currency, and thereby the value of labor
and products with which debts and taxes
were to be paid. But such considerations
of common honesty and sound policy are
utterly ignored and spit upon by the ''honest
money men who invented this subtle
scheme to break down values and rob the
masses of their labor and their property. To
repeal this most rascally law and restore
the volume of TIE currency, and restore the
prices of commodities TO where they stood
when it was enacted, is demanded alike by
every consideration of justice and sound
policy.
Can the country be harmed by such resto-
ration OF the currency and values to where
they stood in January, 1875? Is it not now
rather being destroyed by the opposite poll
cy: Look abroad over the land from Maine
to Florida, from Cape Cod TO the Golden
Gate. What do you see but ruin? Idleness.
starvation and beggary of labor; a pestilence
OF Insolvency: business stagnant; enterprise
dead; and all in the midst of every bounty a
kindly heaven can pour on its faYorite land
Even the blessing of Northumberland by
God to alleviate the curse of slayish toll by
substituting the forces of nature for the
muscle of man by the devilish alchemy of
this scheme is changed to curse. In ordi
nary times production. increased and cheap
ened by invention, is met by consumption
increased by the lessened cost OF products;
and an equal amount of human labor, but
lighter and less drudging, is re-
quired to fill the growing demand. But
now the cunning of invention, forced
by the abnormal fall of prices, is compelled
to fill the shriveling markets by employing
hands of steel instead of hands of fiesh and
blood, thus hourly swelling the ranks of the
unemployed. So thst, with invention stimu-
lated and consumption stopped, our society
drifts like q Mississippi steamer with one
wheel broken and the other moving, while
the heady current sweeps it helplessly along
restoration of the currency, and, conse
quently of prices, to where they stood in
January, 1875, means justice to debtors and
taxpayers, public and private solvency. re-
vival of business, increased production and
consumption, with full employment and fair
pay to labor, and the rewakening of every
dormant energy Of our industrious and pro-
gressive people.
The assumption that this great nation
must be paralyzed to keep it from rushing
to Wild excess of paper money-must be
crushed with double debt and taxes and i'm
poverished, by enforced idleness, so as to
chain its currency to gold as the only method
of saving it from illimitable infation-is an
error too monstrous and insulting to be toll
Grated by elf-governing people. If re-
sumption could now be reached without cost
ing another pang of hunger, or another
groan from a broken heart, we would have
paid for it a thousand times more than it is
wo th. Be it worth much or little. it is, un
der existing conditions, wholly unatta,nable,
and the struggle for it must be indefinitely
postponed.
Whether currency kept by convertibility
at par with gold were desirable, if practical
BILE, is a question on which there is differ
ence OF opinion among the opponents of the
resumption law. For myself, believe that
government paper currency-full legal
tender except for pre-existing contracts, re-
deemabie only by receivability for public
dues, fixed in amount by constitutional pro-
vision (as suggested in the Ohio Democratic
piatform) and increased each year in q
ratio equal to the annual per cent. on in
crease of business-would be far moro
stable measurer and exchanger of values
than any currency which tuctuates in quanti-
ty with the fitful ebb and flow of gold, and
losses the business of the country up and
down in see-saw of alternate prosperity and
panic.
In addition to the repeal of the resumption
law and the restoration of values to their
status when 1t was enacted, the chief meas
ures of currency reform are the full remone-
tization of silver and the substitution OF
greenbacks for national bank notes. Yhe
partial reconciliation of silver was the re-
suit of what | regarded as an unnecessary
and lnexpedient compromise with the money
power. If that concession had not been
made, and the force Of public sentiment
broken by it. believe we would have to-day
acomplete restoration of our great product to
its equal rank with gold as a money metal
The question can not be settled until that
act of justice is accomplished.
BY the substitution Of greenbacks for ma
tional bank notes, and the purchase with the
new issue of about ss300,O00,000 of pei
cent. bonds for cancellation, we will stop
SlS 100000 of annual interest. Deducting
the tax on circulation now paid by the ma
tional banks, the sl.saslig to the people Will be
near 15,000,000 annually. To accomplish
this need not disturb the business of tie
country, nor interrupt the legitimate func-
tons of single bank. The banks can re-
tain their charters, and 60 on with their
business of deposit, discount and exchange
precisely as they do now. In fact, many
national banks never had a circulation, and
many more have voluntarily surrendered all
or nearly all they originally had. and still
keep OH in business as national banks. The
profit on circulation is mere subsidy
which about 1900 national banks enjoy
against 5000 State and private banks which
flourish without a subsidy. Why should ma
tional banks have the bounty when all other
banks, which pay the same taxes, State and
national Except the tax on circulation have
none? Why should the banking business be
singled out from all others, and favored
part of it be subsidized, when it is far more
generally prosperous than any other bust
ness, and hourishes most when all eise
decays?
The division of the circulation between
the government and the banks toward the
close of the war was the first step to the de-
struction of the greenback currency and the
control of the whole paper circulation by the
Money Power. The resumption law was the
second step, and if the Democracy had moi
raised the hue and cry against it, the tota
destruction of the greenbacks and complete
monopoly of circulation by the banks woulG