Litchfield enquirer., 1878-10-10
Greenback Ethics.

MILWAUKEE, Wis. Sept. 3Oth, 1878. ED. ENQUIRER. article in the last weeks Enquirer, on Mortgagor ys. Mortgagee, was very interesting, but of course you would admit that it is poor subject indeed which 1 has only one side. You say ''the greenback was originally only a desperate war shift. |" We say, if greenbacks could close ports and harbors, silence terrible threatenings and par alyze and destroy the industries and people of country, in a time of war, they would be equally potent to improve our places of safe ty for ships and vessels build up the dead in- dustries and thus restore the prosperity and and happiness of a people, in time of peace. | You say that feverish excitement and col lapse are the result of fiat" money. We point you to England when she had only fiat money for twenty-seven years after her war, fifty years ago, and during this twenty seven years her prosperity was greater than ever, be- l fore or since, and that when her contraction and destruction of her fiat money was com menced and a coin basis desperately prepared for, then commenced the feverish excitement and collapse in all quarters of production.
 We also refer you to France for an unparal- ed illustration of national prosperity, on pure Jelly andonly fiat money, since her late war with Germany, also that France in all this time did not contract her currency but in a single instance, when she took in sixty five millions, but the result of it commenced to cause such degree of ''feverish excitement and collapse" that she immediately put out one hundred millions instead, and there were no more ''collapses" It is true that she has since resumed specie payment but it was not forced resumption, nor was it the result of contraction of the currency, but it was the natural and easy effect of putting out and keeping out an unlimited supply of fiat money in time of peace, which so filled her treasury with coin that resumption was merely nom- inal thing, and was almost rather a creature of fancy than of fact, and her full, original vol tune of currency is still out:
 It is proven that financial crashes are ever periodical on coin basis, in all countries but that they never occur on full and unlimited greenback basis. Since our war there was no ''feverish excitement and collapse" until after contraction commenced.
 President Hayes and Secretary Sherman are making a great amount of talk over the fact that the balance of trade is over two hundred millions in our favor, but they do not state that this balance is caused by selling our pre- ducts under the cost of manufacture and gen. eral depreciation, everywhere, the result of contraction. They do not show that England had the same balances in her favor during her time of contraction, after her twenty-seven years of fiat money prosperity. Suppose a farmer says he must and will have gold, and so goes to work contracting, selling his farm, horses and cattle at whatever price they will bring, he will have balance of gold in his favor truly, but what sacrifice has he made to accom- plish it?
 Also in speaking of the complaints of the mortgagor, you have omitted to speak of the fact that England's forced policy of getting down to a coin basis, forced her landed prop erty from the hands of hundred and sixty | five thousand owners down into the hands of less than one half that number. If party is compelled to resort to such terms as precious breed" is it not an evidence that the salvation of the nation requires just such "breed' to | rise up? E. w. B.