The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1878-09-02
The Greenback FaIIacy.

The whole Greenback doctrine appears to
be based upon the one great fallacy that
money-real, not representatives. not a
commodity, and that any material which the
Government chooses to label s'money" there
| by acquire value far beyond its intrinsic
worth, becomes, irrespective of any attrib-
| utes OF weight or size, equal in worth to 9TH
er commodities of much greater intrinsic
| value, and is perfectly fitted to be medium
of exchange, a store and standard of value
| and standard for deferred payment that
is, the Government can take slip of paper,
mark it some dollar'' and so make it equal
in value to a bush el of corn, and then
can take another slip of the same size,
weight and texture, mark it "one hun
dred dollars" and so make it equal in
value to one hundred bushels of corn.
This basic fallacy exposed, the whole green
back structure falls to the ground. The
Greenbackers seem to think they make a
strong point in favor of their doctrine when
they point out that where our gold dollars
are received in a foreign country, they are
not taken as dollars, but as commodities.
Certainly they are, for the fact that they are
commodities make them money Money is
a commodity. That is its very essence.
That quality is what gives it its value, makes
it money. It is received throughout the
world in exchange for other commodities, by
general agreement,-and only by general
agreement. There is no law that can COM
pei man to give away his property for mon
ey. He only does it because he feels sure
that all other men will do exactly the same
thing Jas he has done, and will give their
goods for money as readily as he gave his
goods for it. The Greenbacker confounds
the voluntary affixing Of money prices on
goods with the obligation imposed by the law
of legal tender of discharging debts with
money. The test of money is not: Is it
legal tender? Governments can, unless re-
strained by their own laws, make anything
legal tender; but they cannot make some
thing out of nothing-that is a prerogative
of the Almighty. They cannot give value
to something that has no value. They can
not create values. The government stamp,
the mark on coin, is simply this: It certi-
fies that "a gold dollar-piece, for example,
really contains dollars worth OF gold; that
if you choose to melt it you can sell the gold
in it for dollar; that il you give it in ex-
| change for any article the man with whom
you trade has received something as valuable
as the article which he gave. When the Gov
ernment makes this coin legal tender it SIM
ply declares that its coinage shall be accepted
by all itsi citizens in their transactions at the
| weight and purity which it has certified.
This is in order that no man shall put his
| neighbor to trouble, in making payments, by
disputing these qualities of the coin. But it
| is evident that this does not give Government
right to debase the coinage by certifying
that to be dollar which contains less than a
dollars worth of gold, for this would be to
cheat the people; still less can it afix arbitra-
| ry denominations to things, as pieces of
| birch.bark. or of paper, and command them