The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1879-08-07
the values of your labor and property to

the values of your labor and property to
suit itself.
Our experience has demonstrated that
no matter how plentiful may be the sup
ply of gold and silver, the greater part
of the money actually current will
always be paper. On the volume OF
money actually current depends the
prices of labor and commodities. AS
that volume rises prices 60 up, and as it
falls they 90 down. The whole volume
of the money current has rarely been
over fftieth part of the aggregate value
of the property of The country; yet,
when the money in actual circulation is
reduced one hundred millions, that re-
duction shrinks the value of labor and
property to fifty times the sum of the
currency reduction; and, so, when the
current money is increased a hundred
millions, it adds fifty times that sum to
the aggregate selling value of other
property. So, too, when the volume of
currency diminishes and prices conse-
quently fall, all business becomes unpros-
porous; while when the currency is be-
ing increased, values rise and business
becomes good again. The power to con-
troll the volume of currency, affecting as
it does so profoundly the general pros
perity, is in its nature q sovereign power.
The welfare of the people demands that
this power to expand or contract the
currency, to raise and lower the values,
to give prosperity or infict distress, shall
not be committed to the hands of private
individuals or corporations, and least of
all to corporations representing the hold
ers of public and private debts whose
wealth is increased by every fall of prices
and is diminished by every rise.
Aside from this reason against giving
private corporations control over the
volume of currency, it is to be borne in
mind that the substitution of legal ten
der treasury notes for bank notes will,
even since funding, save to the people at
least ten millions of dollars per annum.
With the treasury notes so issued in
place of national bank notes, United
States bonds can be bought in the mar
ket and cancelled and the interest there
by stopped, while the government will
lose nothing whatever in taxes by such
substitution, except only the one per
cent. tax on circulation, that being the
only tax which national banks pay that
is not paid by all other banks of deposits,
discount and exchange.
Had the Republican party desired 10
diminish as rapidly as possible the pub
lie debt, it would, when the war ended,
have prohibited the incorporation of any
more banks of issue ard gradually SUBJ
stituted treasury notes Tor bank notes
the power to make such substitution
having been reserved in the national
banl, law. If they had thus promptly
given the people an exclusive govern
ment currency in place of bank notes,
our bonded debt would now be at least
seven hundred millions less than it IS.
No reason which will bear a moments
consideration can be given why this
thing should not have been done. No
body pretends that the greenback which
redeems the national bank note is not
better than the thing it redeems. There
is but one reason why it failed to thus
reduce the debt, and thai is this: that
these two thousand national banks were
needed by the party as breakwater
against the people. Hence, since the
close of the war, the people have been
practically robbed of about seven hun
dred millions of dollars to prevent them
exercising their free choice of their own
servants.
The question of free electors is then
fearlessly and frankly discussed, and the
struggle in Congress touching this mat
ter is fully and squarely set forth. The
following conclusion touching the rights
of the States and appeal to the opinions
of his father, leave no doubt as to the
views of Thomas Ewing, and, as we con-
fdently believe, of Ohio and the Union:
Follow citizens, / was not brought up
in the school of strictest construction of
the constitution, and far less in the
school known as Estate rights" My
venerated father, under and about whose
roof you are assembled tonight who
gave large part of his life to the study
of our complex form Of government,
taught his sons to learn from the consti-
tuition, as eypounded by the fathers and
the courts, that the general government
is supreme only within the scope of its
limited and defined powers, and the
States and The people thereof also su-
preme in the exercises of all powers not
granted to the Federal government. Flo
taught them that it was equally the duty
of the patriot to maintain in full vigor
all the powers reserved to the States re-
speetively or to the people; so that our
dual form of government might not be
lost through either the ccntripetal or the
centrifugal forces of the system. He will
lingly saw his sons go forth to battle for
the constitutional powers of the Federal
government and now, were he yet among
us, he would, I believe, approve their ef-
fort to resist, by peaceful methods, the
attempt to impair the distinctive feature
of our system of government on which
depends the perpetuation of popular lii
erty.