River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1878-02-21

BY A. EARrRMAN.


In accordance with the provisions of
the Constitution, Congress has power
"to lay and collect taxes, duties, inn
posts, and excuses, to pay the debts
and provide for the common defense
and general welfare of the United
States; to borrow money on the cred
it of the United States" This Ian
guage is certainly explicit enough to
be understood. If by laying and coll
lecting taxes, either director indirect,
revenue enough is derived to carry on
the government, what necessity is
there of borrowing money! Now,
everybody knows that for series of
years, the revenue has been sufficient
not only to defray the running ex-
penses of the government, but also
to pay off a portion of the nations in
debtedness, even prior to the maturi-
ty of such Indebtedness. With this
constitutional provision against the
Issuing of bills of credit and the we'll
known position of the U. S. Supreme
Court upon the greenback question, it
will be long time before our ultra
greenback friends will succeed III
flooding the country with the money"
they propose.
But, the Greenback Platform de-
p,a,eJo Isfba i,,apoadia+o oaIjipU in Of
all q. S. bonds, and payment of them,
principal and interest, in legal-tender,
lawful greenback paper money of the
United States, which is '.never to be
converted into bonds of any rate or
class This procedure will make
payment of bonded interest unneces-
sary.''
As this is the emanation of the
mouth-piece of the greenback party
it is fair to presume that the language
has been carefully considered. That
being the case, it is evident that our
greenback friends are laboring under
two serious misapprehensions one the
result of ignorance as to what consti-
tutes money; and the other, the result
of dishonesty in proposing to oblige
people to exchange lawful interest
bearing notes for unlawful non-inter-
est-bearing notes. And when the
greenbackers further demand that
''every dollar of such issue of legal
tender lawful money shall be protect
ed by the Government as at par with
other lawful money in gold or silver
coin,' they again manifest ignorance
of the fact that it is altogether beyond
the power of the government to create
value. No government can do that.
But to be more explicit. AS already
stated, a greenback is not money, much
less lawful money. 1t is simply d GER
tificate of Indebtedness, drawing no in
terest, payable at no particular time.
having no intrinsic value. tits Meth.
er money nor legally drawn note.
What gives it value then!
The government has power to coin
money; what does this mean? 1t
means, in the first place, that the
trainers of the Cons titutioa did not
consider paper currency ''money, =
although such paper currency may
pass as circulating medium. What
does the government do in coming
money! In stamping piece of gold
or silver, it simply certifies to the
value of the metal contained in the
coin. That is all. 1t does net create
the value of the ten-dollar gold piece,
but simply certifies to such value.
The sooner people understand this
point, the sooner they will rid them
selves of the erroneous idea that the
government can ''coin money by
stamping a comparatively worthless
piece of paper.
Other considerations follow.