The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1878-10-26
Honest Money for Honest Labor.

Honest Money for Honest Labor
Not abundance nor scarcity, but
uncertainty Of currency, brings great
loss to labor,
All experience teaches that expan-
sion brings greater distrust, gamb-
ling, and fluctuation. This evil
greater expansion can not and does
not pretend to cure. Yet it is insis-
ted that more money is required by
the wants of trade.
Convertibility in the currency is
like cOnscientiousnesS in man-it has
many grades and is valuable in pro-
portion as it is strict and pure.
Our currency works harm to labor
by its quality, its uncertainty. Vary
ing ever. and yet paying debts, it
robs somebody continually, and,
most of all, farmers and laborers.
How will it give such paper fixed
value to issue more of it?
Many fancy that much currency
means high wages. They forget that
inflated prices hurt more than infla-
ted wages help them. In times of
fiuctuation "wageS, of all things, go
up last and least, and fall first and
lowest"
Paper promises, and the slow re-
sponses Of retail prices to downward
changes of the market, have been
robbing our labor Of its earnings for
ten years. Every year destroys yet
more of the vitality of our industry.
And yet we are told to wait still lon
ger, until the country grows up" to
a specie basis.
Why should millions of creditors
be robbed in order TO enrich a few
thousand great borrowers Democ-
racy once believed in the greatest
good to the greatest number. What
sort of Democracy, not to say of pol
icy or justice is it to take half their
savings from millions of farmers,
laborers, artisans, mechanics, and
thrifty tradesmen, in order to re-
live the debtor class?
How is it that nearly every Demo-
cratic paper at the South is for intla-
ton? How is it that Bourbon Dem
ocrats, who pronounced the war a
failure and the greenbacks uncOnsti-
| tutiOnal, are now the l0udeSt to de-
mand more of them ? Men who
wanted the Union to fail, and pro-
phesied that its pledges would be
worthless, are in this way striving to
make their predictions'goOd.
The Government and thu Republi-
can party stand pledged to reach spe-
Gle payment by January next. For
that, thanks and honor. Any road
that will lead to that is infinitely
preferable to any that will not.
"No desperately indebted people
can long endure regular, sober gov
ernment.n These words were used
in relation to the Shay rebellion OF
1885 &c, in Massachusetts. 1t was an
instruction of debtors, clamOring
for an emission of paper, because
they were suffering from an effort tc
restore the equilibrium, broken by
the collapse of a "non-exportable
currency" Is this what the people
desire now?
To do nothing is to be impoverish
ed. We must emancipate labor from
this hideous bondage to a varying
currency, or universal bankruptcy is
near. To the Republican party which
has destroyed one cruder form o
slavery, let white labor, also enslav.
ed by false money, stretch forth its
hands for freedom. Not until we
make coin or its equivalent the only
money which the poor man need
ever see or touch will labor in this
land be free indeed.
Hutchinson, a Colonial historian,
commenting on the various schemes
for creating currency in vogue dur
ing the early colonial period, en-
ploys the following pertinent figure
in relation to using paper as a RENE
dy for "hard tines" at would be
just as rational, when the blood in
the human body is in a putrid and
corrupt state, to increase the quantity
by luxurious living, in order to re.
store it to health" There is consid.
cradle force in this figure of speech
at the present time.