The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1895-07-27

your morse ne would FeIuSe you lis
wheat. You would then have to con-
tinue looking for a man having wheat
who wanted a horse, and the number OF
bushels of wheat thus exchanged Tor
the horse would then be the exchange
value as between the wheat and the |
horse. Under these conditions, there !
being no money, commerce would be
sluggish, if it scarcely moved at all. II |
you were shipping property by railroad,
you would have to give up portion OF
the property in payment for freight |
and if the property was not divisihle, |
Three Points at Issue.
as threshing machine and thousands
of other kinds of property, you would
have to pay the freight income in some
other kind of property The railroad
company would have to have places to
store the property until it could again
dispose of it; would have to refuse all
kinds of perishable property, and would
have no practicable method for paying
its employees. Merchants would have
to exchange the goods for paying its
| employees. Merchants would have to
exchange the goods on their shelves for
all sorts of property and provide stor-
age for it till they could again exchange
it for other property.
Where Mr.. Horn and myself do not
agree, is as to what money should be
made of, its quantity, and laws which
operate to protect or divert it from the
channels of trade. We thus have three
points of difference: First-As to what
money should be made of. Second
The quantity. Third-The laws defining
its use, and intended to protect it from
! being diverted from the function for
which it is created.
Horn Money Functions.
Mr.. Horr-It is true that
money is the life blood of
| commerce and of business. It isn't
true that money can exist only when it
is created by law. Money was in use
and we'll understood long before there
were any laws upon the subject. Money
does not have to be made a legal ten
der to make it good money even; that is
a mistake of Brother Harvey. AS a
rule legal tender laws are never needed
except to make somebody take some
money that is poor: No one ever yet
had to enforce legal tender enactment
to get somebody to take the best money
| in existence.
| Thomas Jefferson hit upon the plan
of devising a system of money which
i should make our notation Of money
precisely the same as our notation in
arithmetic. In arithmetic the people
have become accustomed to starting
with L and going each way; one dollar,
ten dollars, twenty dollars, one hundred
dollars, one thousand dollars. Or go
ing down, one dollar, half, quarter, ten
cents. Always either a multiple of
a unit or else a decimal multiple of a
unit, fractional multiple. You have
! no idea of the immense amount of lit
erature that was written by the think
ers of that time, before any record even
was made in the Congress of the Con-
federal States-that is, our Confeder-
ate States, not the new one-upon that
question of money. And finally they
adopted Jefferson's idea You will find a
report of their actions in the fourth vol
ume of the Journal of Congress, running
from April LIST, 1852, to November LIST,
1888. The first law that was ever
passed in this United States upon the
subject of money was on the 9Th day of
July, 1885; that was two years after the
subject had been discussed in every
shape and form by the people and press
of the United States. Congress then,
will say the exact words: t'And on the
question that the money unit of the
United States of America be one dollar,
the yeas and nays being required by Mr..
Howell, every member answering aye,
it was resolved that the money unit of
the United States of America be one
dollar. Resolved, that the smallest
coin be of copper, of which 200 shall
pass for one dollar. Resolved, that the
several pieces shall increase in a deci-
nal ratio"
First Coinage Act.
That was the first action taken by
the American Congress. They first
fixed the unit, that is, the name of the
thing that should be used as the meas
ure of value, deciding that it should
be called one dollar and that the
smallest division of that should be a
half-cent piece; that it should take 200
of them; that it should be copper and
that it should be, of course, the value
that it should take 200 of them to
make the unit. That was the first eff
fort of the new government to estab-
lish a monetary system. Now every
one will say they had not yet stated at
all what the dollar should consist of,
except that 200 copper half-cents should
be one of them, and that was the first
unit of measure that Congress estab-
lished-200 half-cent coppers That is
all the law there has ever been on the
subject and all that has ever been said
about it anywhere. (Applause.)
So we had first the money of the
daddies of copper, no doubt about it,
This work in Congress then was post
poned until Tuesday, August 8th, 1886,
on the report of the Board of Treasury.
| At that time the Board of Treas
ury corresponded to our present COM
mittee of finance On the report OF