The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1894-05-04
The ASS, the Fool and the Knave.

The Ass, the Fool and the Knave.
When it is urged by the Populist party |
or anybody with common intelligence
and common sense, that the government
possesses ready and lawful means of sup
plying the people with an abundant vol
ume of money to conduct the perishing
business of the country and employ the
idle, starving laborers, the corporation
daily press and its little village satellites.
lift up their eyebrows in feigned wonder,
as a rogue caught with goods in his
pocket and declares the thing mystery
to him, and ask how car the government
do such thing? Well, the government
did just that thirty odd years ago, when
it issued five hundred and ten millions
legal tender currency and greenbacks,
three hundred and forty six millions
reported by the Treasurer in December
every year to be still in circulation, and
by the national banks to be held i'll var
ious sums i'll place of gold as their re-
serve. And these same patrons of honesty
and fair dealing report in the aggregate
covering a series of years, four thousand
millions of these same greenbacks, which
they have f'held' so often in place of gold
as their reserve, and i'll consequence have
saved the tax on that amount, greenbacks
being exempt from tax by the law-making
power which created this money, which
the banks prefer to gold when they can
shirk paying taxes, and load their share
of the tax on the people.
And now if the government has created
such money which has circulated for over
thirty years, and is preferred to gold by
the banks when they can shirk paying
their taxes by placing the greenbacks
between them and the assessor, no person
should be either COMPOUNDED or dumb
founded, when it is proposed that the
government should issue some, more of
this same kind of money to supply the
loss which has surely taken place in a
period of more than thirty years con-
slant use.
|
mate, been destroyed and lost in various
ways in this long period of time, fifty
million dollars of that three hundred and
forty-six millions which the Treasurer
yearly report insists is still in circulation.
But how can the government get the
proposed money in circulation? There is
likely to be deficit in the Treasury of
close to one hundred million dollars this
year. Supplying this deficit, in place of
selling bonds, would place that much in
circulation and then there would be not
more than the Treasurer reports, includ-
ing the loss of gold, silver and postal
currency which his false reports represent
as being in circulation.
A postal telegraph has been recon-
mended since Grants first administration
by Post Master Generals. Fifty millions
of greenbacks would be fairly snapped up
by the manufacturers of wire and other
materials needed for building telegraph
lines, and the men to do the work would
rush for the job and take greenbacks in
preference to gold as pay. Fifty million
dollars-all in greenbacks, crisp and new
would place government telegraph in
every post Office and place of business
where one is now located, in the country
That would distribute fifty millions more
of much needed money in the country
And then telephone lines could be estab-
lished wherever needed for the public
business and furnished to private persons
and business houses for less than one half
the rent they now pay.
And electric lights could be furnished
all the public buildings and places need
ing such lights in the country. And we
could go on enumerating many more
ways by which the government could
very readily distribute greenbacks, and
not give them to the people free gratis
for nothing, as the gold ring party sug.
gest with feigned establishment, but re-
ceive solid value in return for every
dollar thus expended. Oh no, there
would be no difficulty in the government
SettlnS rio OF S5oo, ooo 900 or more green
backs, and receive value for every dollar,
and those additional millions would be
just as good as the $346, 200, 900 at present
out and which are as good as gold every
where.
With this array of plain undenied and
undeniable facts before us there is but
one of three things we can compare our
Congress, the administration, in short
our government under its present man
agement to the ass, the fool or the knave.
They may partake of smattering of all,
but it is evident there are no other objects
under the sun which will serve as a
comparison.