Workmen's advocate. (New Haven, Conn.) 1883-1891, 1888-08-18
INGERSOLL'S SUPERSTITION.

Perhaps there is no man living who
can say a nonsensical thing in a
more bclIcvable way than the Colo
mel Several fair samples of this are
to be found IN that readable and ar
tistically compounded melange of
which he uttered as
eulogy Of Roscoe Conkling. Let us
take one of many of these samples.
He said; " Conkling knew that a
promise could not be made often
enough Or emphatic enough to take
the place Of payment. He felt that
the promise Of the Government was
the promise of every citizen-that a
national obligation WAS a personal
debt, and that no possible comblna-
ton of words and pictures could
take the place Of CON-"
This was, of course, by way Of ex-
cuse or justification of Conkhng's
course in supporting the funding
scheme swindle of the Wall street
gamblers. The idea Ingersoll seeks
to convey is, that as paper money is
not payment but merely promise
to pay, therefore the making of the
bonds payable in coin was not only
just but something absolutely de-
manded by common honesty. Now,
even his enemies do not believe the
Colonel to be fool, and he is pretty
well versed in the history Of his
country, especially with the history
of his party and its leaders, and so
he knows that the debt which
the bonds represent was contracted
in greenbacks, and that it was
thoroughly understood by all the
parties to the transaction that it was
to be payable in greenbacks. He
also knows that his own party,
through its acknowledged leaders,
held, after the war was over, that it
was payable in greenbacks, Mr.. Sher-
man decla. ing that for the bond
holder to demand payment in coin
would be arrantly dishonest. To be
sure, the republican party shifted its
position when it fell under the con-
troll of the money power; but truth
is not dependent upon the faith of
parties.
The Colonel, being no fool, knows
that coin does not actually pay a
debt any more than paper money
does, for all money, whether coin or
paper, is merely promise, ratified
and endorsed by the Government, to
give or find quantity of the prod
ucts of Labor in exchange for like
value. Ingersoll has much to say
from time to time about supersti-
ton, but he would find it difficult to
point out more degrading and non
senslcal superstition than the gold
idea Of which he is the slave, and
which he upholds and defends by
cant phrases which do his intellect
as little credit as the mummery of
negro hoodooists do theirs. He has
much to say of the degrading and
brutalizing effects of religious super
stitions, but there cannot be much
to choose between even the worst of
these and that blind fetishism in
which he confesses belief, and which
teaches that the activity of Labor
and the comfort and happiness of
the whole human race shall be made
dependent on the accidental discov-
cry of a yellow metal. Say to him
that the harmony which is seen in
nature, from the blade of grass to the
solar system, demonstrates the pres
ence of a design and the existence
of designer, and he will laugh YOU
to scorn and sheer at you as blinded
devotee of superstition. But he be-
heves, or says he does, that gold ex-
lists for the purpose of enabling us
to make our exchanges, and that
the volume of those exchanges ought
to be regulated not with reference
to our needs, but with regard solely
to the quantity of that metal which
may be found from time to time.
We say he says he believes this, for,
when We remember his position at
the close of the controversy with
DIR. Bland, We cannot think that he
actually does believe Canadian
Labor Retormer.