Middletown transcript., 1878-09-14

for all debts public and private, ex-
cept duties on imports and interest on
the, public debt, and 1t Is erchangeablB
for United States 6 per cent. bonds, re-
deemaUe at the pleasure Of the United
States after fOe gears" That was on
the 10th of March, 1862, when the first
of these notes were issued, but on the
1st of July, 1868, the right to convert
these notes into bonds was repealed.
In 1854 the amount of such notes ''is-
sued and to be issued" that is to say
the amount then outstanding and such
as might thereafter be issued, was linn
tied at four hundred million dollars.
In December, 1866, the House of Rep
resentatives voted to reduce and pay
for these notes, and l want, for one
moment, to show you the true history
of this matter which the people seem
nowadays wholly to have forgotten
in their distress and in looking for a
remedy which l know to be delusive
and unreal.
On the 4th of December, 1865, Mr..
MoCulloch, Secretary of the Treasury,
in his report, says:
That the legal tender acts were war meas
ures passed in great emergency; that they
should be regarded only as temporary that
they ought not to remain in force day
longer than would be necessary to Unable Il tie
people to prepare for return to the gold
standard, and that the work Of retiring the
notes which have been issued should be COM
menced without delay and persistently con-
tinued until all are retired.
On December 18th following, IA
days after that time, the House of
Representatives passed the following:
Resolved, That this House cordially con-
ours in the views Of the Secretary Of the Treas
ury in relation to the necessity of q contract
of the currency with view to early resump-
ton of specie payments, as the business in
terests Of the country will permit and we
hereby pledge cooperative action to this end
as speedily as possible.
One hundred and forty-four men
voted for that resolution and but six
voted against it. I cite this to you to
show you what is the history of these
things cannot draw your attention
to anything more important, and what
was truth then is truth to-day. The
laws of health do not change because
men become sick-indeed it is then
they must be most obeyed.
And this policy continued. On the
18th of March, 1866, both houses of
Congress, by overwhelming majorities,
passed the following resolution:
''That Oft. S. notes not more than SIO,-
900, 900 should be retired and cancelled with
in six months from the passage of the act,
and thereafter not more than $4,000, 900
should be retired in any one month"
That went on till January 1868.
At that time Mr.. McCulloch's plan
was endorsed by both parties, over
whelmingly, in Congress. It reduced
S400,000,000 demand notes down to
1856, 100000. 1t retired and can
celled S44,000.000 of these notes, SO
that we had $356,OOO,OOO demand
notes to pay, and no more. In 1872,
under some pressure or other under
the administration of Mr.. Boutwell,,
$4,000, ,000of these notes were reissued,
but so strong was the feeling at that
time that the act was unWarranted
that the notes were recalled into the
Treasury before Congress met, and
when Congress had met the Commit
tee Of Finance of the Senate, upon
which have been assigned for duty
since l was a member of that body,
agreed that the reissue of these notes
was without warrant of law.
But in 1873 a great crash came.
The system of credit-the over-blown
system of conference.-the system that
had stimulated men to believe that
Gods great decree that men should
eat bread by the sweat of their face
was in some way to be repealed, and
that people could grow rich without
labor and that Congress could ordain
that people should be prosperous and
happy without following natural laws.
| need not tell you the history Of that
wretchedness and misery. You re-
member the terrible failure of Jay
Cooke & Co., Of Philadelphia. You
know the failures that followed all
over this land. I have seen the list
of creditors of bankrupt bankers which
I think no humane and feeling man
could read unless heread them through
his tears. The hard-earned savings of
whole life time, the little sum that
some frugal working woman, that some
pains-taking wife had gathered up to
protect her and her children was
swept away. 1t will be always the
necessary consequence of the disregard
of those laws in regard to property
which are beyond human repeal and
which human contrivance never can
expect to evade. But in 1878, under
that state of things, Mr.. Richardson,
then Secretary of the Treasury, suff-
cred 28.000,000 of these demand
notes, which had been retired and can
celled by law, to go back into circula-
ton, which, under certain permis-
sive act Of Congress was allowed to
remain, thus bringing the volume of
legal tender notes from $356,00O,000
to $3S4,0O0,000. Under the opera
tions of the law passed in February
1875, commonly called "The Resump-
ton Law" thirty-six million dollars
of these notes were retired, but as they
were retired upwards Of $40,0OO,00O
Of national bank notes were put out in
their place, so that to-day the amount
of outstanding demand notes of the
Treasury is about S347, 100000.
The act of 1875 commonly called the
Resumption act, provided that all these
notes should be redeemed and paid in
coin at the Treasury on and after Jan
uary LIST, 1879. Under this belief, with
the very prosperous condition Of our
crops and foreign exports, and with the
belief that there was honesty and good
sense in the American people, and that
there would be an execution ofa these
ideas of American finance, which no one