The Portland daily press., 1878-08-23

chants chants with stocks of goods on hand, bat
Wouiu % raise prices faster than it would
hanee tase wage g, and thus impoyerish aud not
s"rh ons Le workngmen. Mr.. Schwab said:
% . Jo IS to help the middle classes of society,"
ner;tr r Ig back for few years the hollow pros
,";ti OF the war times by flooding the country
rs W" paper money and giving these classes
1er 10 chance to speculate and make for
'unnes qulck'y. The working people would
not be benefited. Everything they eat and
wear would go uD, but not as high as their ex-
penses. Badly off as they are now they might
be worse off then. Though it might give them
few years of higher wages. but always high
er prices, the reaction would leave them worse
off than ever.
IVA correspondent who is evidently q
Greenback-la Labor man. writes us:-"In a recent
visit to Massachusetts-Fall River, Lynn,
Essex county and Boston-I find that the
laboring. people, who are living on starvation
wages, the small dealers and shopkeepers who
see the accumulation of years melting away
before the dry rot; the real estate men who
owe mortgages on dead property-all, all are in
favor of the 'Ohio idea,' or the expansion Of
the currency. Give US another chance to make
money; give us few years of prosperity. even
if it is followed by another collapse. Things
cannot be much worse than they are now. We
have tried the experiment of forced resump-
ton long enough. That is the way they talk
down there, and that is the way they will
vote"
1t is a fond and foolish saying with
drunkards, when they wake up with a head
ache, that "a hair OF the dog thas bit you is the
best medicine" Bat there are people who
think they had better eat the whole dog The
laborlng people, the small shopkeeper, speak
out OF Ignorance, aud repeat what has bseu
told them. But our correspondent mentions
one class Tho undoubtedly are very Influential,
not in Massachusetts only, bat in all the other
states in urging new initiation. These are
the real estate men who own mortgages on
dead property" These are the men who are
everywhere the leaders in the new imitation
movement. Let an honest Greenbaek-lsbor
farmer or workingman ask the leader of his
party, be it General Ewing, or General Cary
or Mr.. Shupe, or whoever he may be, whether
he is not in debt for real estate, and he will get
but one honest answer, "Yes." In the last
Congress this was so notorious that it became
a joke when any representative was especially
Jealous for an initiation of the currency
to ask him how much real estate
he held; and Senator Jones Of Nevada, who
was one of the foremost leaders of the initiation
movement did not even conceal the fact that
one of the main objects of those acting with
him was to make a market for real estate.
But surely it is not to the interest of the mass
of workingmen that real estate shall bear
high price, That means to them exorbitsnt
rents il means that their families shall be
stuffed into mean tenements; it means that
they shall pay spectators high prices for the
little village lots they ought to own. Cheap
lanuS mas always anu rlghtiy Deen tne cry oi
the workingmen in this country, yet they are
allowing themselves to be deceived into a
policy which has for its chief object to raise
the price of real estate.
V. But even the real estate spectators de-
ceive themselves. A new initiation will not
help them.
INITIATION WILL NOT INITIATE.
The balloon burst in 1873; it will hold no new
| gas. The panic of 1873 and the succeeding de-
| preston came about not by contraction, be-
| cause paper money was then most abundant
| as we have shown; it came about becaus =,
| over speculation, over trading and IT, 49,
alarm which seized prudent men ev .,,a.hs, Jeop
as they saw whittier we were drift pnhl;e
| confidence received a great -,oct. ths -,an
| who had anything buttone' nn thar nocL s,s
and the men who had ching Pnt dah,Ip ss1sS
OF late confidence hs.s begun slowly to revive: ve
Dut new lnns-.on would only send US back
ihto tne o'seress of 1873-1S74< 1t is because we
nave eot near to specie basis that men are
oSg1nhing to venture timidly on new enter
I prises 1t Is because labor is shocked at these
| greenback-labor demands for new imitation
that times remain hard. There is no better
times for the workinsmen or even for the
| speculators, until resumption is accomplished
and the initiation movement is finally defeated,