Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1878-10-16
SHORT FINANCIAL ESSAY
WHAT rs A GREFNBAGK IND WY
GREENBACKS WERE ISSUED.
The Reputation Policy of the Republican
Party--The Greenback as Good as Gold
and Silver Until it was Repudiated--
What the Bond Luxury Has Cost--some
Suggestive Figures.

took occasion few days since to de-
clare that if the government of the United
States had confined itself to the issuing of
greenbacks as a full legal tender and issued
no bonds, we should to-day be free from all
Indebtedness, and that, if we had funded
the gold we have paid for interest, we should
be able to redeem every dollar of our out
standing Indebtedness and have a surplus of
coin in the treasury. / now propose to
prove the assertion, and through the proof
of the fact demonstrate what it has cost the
people to propitiate the money power-in
other words, to show that slavery and sub
serviency to old dogmas forced upon the
government by bank magnates and foreign
usurers have cost the people more than
81, OOO00O,OOO.
One fact is indisputablc. 1t is this, that
so long as the greenback was a full legal
tender it passed everywhere as an equivalent
for gold and silver. The correlatiYe fact is
as undeniable, that from the moment the
greenback was repudiated by the law which
stamped upon the back of every bill the dec
laratlon that the government would not re-
celve Its own currency for its own import
duties, and that it would not pay interest on
the public debt, it at once became a depre-
clated currency, and was forced to endure
the fate of all other repudiatcd currencies
until, in the strength of its sovereignty, its
power and its representative value it could
overcome the abuse of capital, wear out the
stigma of depreciation and nIllify the DO
tent insolence with which accumulated
wealth has divided and cursed the green
OF I>o11 "a
OF credit and swimming false moneys from
the crucible called debit consigning them
to the fate of continental currency and de-
claring that they would be as worthless as
the cart loads of French assignats which a
beggar would have disdained to accept.
This cry did not come from the people: it
did not come from the farmer, the mechanic.
the laborer, or from any of the producers of
the land. 1t did not come from the soldier
who fought our battles, nor from sonless
mothers or widowed wives whose hust ands
gave their lives for liberty and. the country.
but it came from bankers, brokers and
capitalists who were determined to force the
government into issuing interest bearing
bonds, instead of bills, as sovereign money.
Every possible appliance was used to re-
duce the value of the repudiated greenback
on the one hand, and to cry up the necessity
of bonds on the other, and yet it will be
borne in mind that up to Jan. 9, 1864, the
whole Indebtedness, except that existing
prior to the war, was in treasury notes, used
as currency, except the S5oo,0Oo,ooO of Feb.
%, 1862, when the real bond debt commenced
to pile itself into huge proportions In 1864
the greenback was at its lowest point, vary
ing in value as forced down by the money
power from 38115 cents on the dollar to 42115 (.
The bonds then issued were all paid for in
treasury certificates, OF in greenbacks, at gold
basis