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

the values Of your labor and property to
suit itself
Our experience has demonstrated that
no matter how plentiful may lie 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 go up, and rs it
falls they go down. The whole volume
OF the money current has rarely been
over fiftieth part of the aggregate value
OF tho property of the country; yet,
when the money in actual circulation is
reduced one hundred millions, that re-
duction shrinks the saluo of labor and
property to fifty times the sum of the
currency reduction; and, SO, when the
current money is increased hundred
millions, it adds fifty times that sum to
the aggregate selling value Of other
property. So, too, when thc volume of
currency diminishes and prices conse-
quentiy 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 tue volume Of currency, affecting as
it does SO profoundly the general pros.
perity, is In its nature 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 inflict distress, shall
not be committed to the hands of private
Individuals or corporations, and least Of
all to corporations representing the hold
crs 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
mild 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 aud 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 to
diminish rs rapidly 8 possible the pub
lie debt, it would, when the war ended,
have prohibited the incorporation of anv
more banks of issue and gradually sub
stltnted treasury notes iu. bank notes
the power to make such substitution
having been reserved in the national
bank 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 that is this: that
these two thousand national banks were
needed by the party as a 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
tearlessly 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 rs to the
views of Thomas Ewing, and, as we con-
fidently 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 State rights" Ny
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-
tuiion, as expoundcd by the fathers and
the courts, that the general government
is supreme only within the scope of its
limited and defined powers, and tho
States and the people thereof also su-
prcme in the exercises of all powers not
granted to the Federal government. He
taught them that it was equally the duty
of the patriot to maintain in full yigor
all the powers reserved to the States re-
spectively or to the people; SO that our
dual form of government might not be
lost through either the centripetal or the
centrifugal forces of the system. He will
lingly saw his sons 60 forth to battle for
the constitutional powers of the Federal
government and now, were he YET among
us, he would, l believe, approve their ei-
fort to resist, by peaceful methods, the
attempt to impair tho distinctive feature
OF our system of government on which
depends the perpetuation of popula- III
erty.