Fort Worth gazette. [volume] (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1891-1898, 1891-06-20
THE sUB.TREAsURY BILL.


THE GAZETTE has never been an adj
mirer of the sub-treasury bill. This
paper favors financial as well as tariff
reform. But it cannot and will not
lend its countenance to visionary, crude
and half baked theories that on their
very faces bear the imprint of the
prentice hand that made them.
What is the sub-treasury idea? What
do its advocates propose to do, and
how? These are queries that call for
an answer. They are made in good
faith. and are addressed to men OF
sense and knowledge, not to political
parvenues and charlatans. We know
very well what the orators say about it,
how they dilate on the virtues of it and
eyult over the financial millennium it
is to inaugurate. But Darius Green
and his flying machine promised as
much until both met with dull thud.
The friends of that measure are not
ingenious. They employ only glitter
ing generalities in talking about it.
They decline to say how it is to be
operated-what specific plan shall be
employed for that purpose, what the
exact mode of execution. ''Oh, that is
a mere matter of detail,' they say.
''All we urge now is the principle. The
rest can be determined later Can it?
Was that the way Chase conceived the
plan OF the national banking system, or
Sherman the plan of specie resump-
ton? Is that the way in which able
men announce grave theories of reform
or amelioration? Is that the way in
which theories or hypothesis in science
or politics are given out? Is that the
way in which the financial theory of
the sub-treasuryites was originally
preached? Is it not fact that it came
before the people formulated in bill
in congress. in which bill every detail
of the plan was specified? Is it not
true also that the moment the bill was
introduced it was severely criticised on
every hand-that lawyers, statesmen,
politicians, the press and all thinking
men made sport OF it. and treated it
with mockery and derision? Is it not
a fact that, in consequence of the ridi-
cule heaped upon it, the friends Of the
bill dropped it, ran away from it, and
have never since ventured back to even
give their deserted bantling decent
burial?
Ever since they abandoned the bill,
its friends have been prattling about
principle" They are mighty stick
lers for the principle of the bill. Well,
as to that, all we have to say is, that
any bill that comes before congress
with as grand and glorious principle
as that said to be the groundwork OF
the sub-treasury bill, would never fail
to become law. Whatever errors of
detail it may contain would speedily be
corrected, and the measure be given
practical shape and effect. No bill con-
tanning radically sound principle of
financial reform would ever be treated,
in congress or out of it, with contempt
and ignominy merely because of faults
in the details of it. A legislative body
that would refuse to consider. or con-
temptuously ignore a bill for that rea-
son alone, would manifest no better
sense than would the man who should
throw his gold chronometer in the
river because the hair spring was
broken.
If, therefore, there is a valuable prin-
ciple in the sub-treasury bill, it must
of necessity be working principle:
one that can easily be put into opera
ton. Unless the advocates of the
principle" give us some definite idea
of the ''how," the modus operandi of
their bill, the country is bound to rest |
in the belief that congress treated it as
well as it deserved.
HOW THEY WON THEIR WIVES