The Labor enquirer., 1884-06-21

hung trembling upon the issue of the
greatest civil war the world ever knew
OF may eyer know, by wisdom born Of
necessity, financial system,
springing from patriotic impulse to
save the nations life and rescue the hope
of free institutions for all men from
going down forever in darkness and
death, was devised by the great and good
men of that day, tofvhose care the re-
publican governments to be administered
for the people and by the peo-
pie had been confided. That sys-
tenn oflfinance for free people in its in
fancy saved the life of the nation, which
was perishing without it, and broke the
chainlwhich enslayei 100000. Of men
It gave the country while war was
raging, a prosperity it had never known.
It enabled the people to assess upon
themselves and pay taxes of an extent
before unknown in !, any country. It
made it possible for the government to
repay threefold all it received in loans
from any creditor, or gave to him
security more profitable and stable than
was ever issued by any power in the
world. This was done by legal tender
currency. While questions as to its
stability were variously raised, and
many wise men still doubt whether a
legal tender currency not resting on the
intrinsic value of the material in which
it is coined, was within the competency
of the legislative branch of the govern
ment, that question has been decided
affirmatlvely by the highest tribunal
under the constitution. One purpose OF
your organization was to sustain this
money as the currency of the. people.
This system being thus established, its
friends may well say, let us go on with
equally important unsettled measures
for the public welfare. We may turn
from this as the country has turnedfrom
the settled questions of war and slavery
But, alas party convention by rehash
of exploded resolutions formulated into
platform, threaten to revive the contro-
versies which will unsettle the business
of the people, with apparently but a
single object, to extend a system of
purely paper currency, issued by corpo-
rations, which currency itself is 10 be val
liable orly because it is made redeem
able in the very greenback which this
agitation seeks to repudiate and destroy.
Such currency Andrew Jackson, sus-
taine;l by the democracy of more than
generation ago, had brushed out as one
of the grieYous errors of the administra-
ton, which had crept into the govern
ment for the aggrandizement of few to
the destruction of the people.
T"As democrat taught in the Jackson
school in my early years, with my judg-
ment matured by subsequent observa-
tion, I am constrained, in view of this
attempt to undo what Jackson had so
well done, to say to you, gentlemen, that
there seems a necessity for further con-
tinuance of your organization in renewed
exigency, and in this l am with you, and
if there were but two of us we ought to
stand together against this great wrong.
II thank you for your suggestion, that
in other matters toward which your Or
ganization turns, the interest of labor,
the preservation of the lands of the peo-
pie for the benefit of the people, the con-
troll of the agencies created by the gov
ernmentto be used for the good of the
people, to regulate and control a system
of interstate commerce which shall
control and cheaper the transportation
OF persons, freight and intelligence, and
to protect all in their just right and con-
fine all to their true duties, to the end
that there may be in this country
equality of rights, equality of burdens,
equality of privileges and equality of the
powers of all persons under the law, has
been the political rule of my life.
Respectfully your friend and servant,
II u BENJAMIN F. BUTLER"