Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1895-12-22
CURRENCY REFORM.
The Obstructive Elements in the National
 Legislature.

The Obstructive Elements in the Hntiona
 Legislature.
 The free silver owners and agents
 say coin unlimited silver, compel the
 government to maintain it at par witl
 gold, and that is all the reform the
 monetary arrangements of the United
 States require.
 Only second to the obstructiveness od
 silver properties in the senate is the
 blind partisanship in senate and house
 which needs only recommendation by President Cleveland on the currency question to resist it's adoption with to- tai indifference to it's merits. With the
 standard of intelligence that is sup
 eosed to prevail in the United States, and the standard of patriotism that has
 been sorely but successfully tried in the past, it is humiliating to Americans that such an admission as this should have to be made.
 The question of national currency ought to be outside the pale of parties. It belongs only in the high, broad and clear field of national logic and unfal- tering patriotism. That it should not De SO dStlltl III blAC PlISNlie SObs5 AN'9 stamps that congress on the threshold of it's career as lacking in the first vir- tue which should animate it's history patriotism; the lack of it eonyicts the congress of want of intelligence, judging by present indications, to be menace.
 Senator Gear, of Iowa, touched the idea of reyiving state banks in eonnec- tion with the retirement of United States notes. He said the people are ac- customed to government notes and want them. They don't want to go back to using money good in Georgia or somewhere else, but want money good everywhere. They do not want to go back to "red dog, blue pup and wildcat" Senator Gear is right as to the latter conclusion. Neither will they ever go back to 50 cents worth of white metal and pretend that it is dollar when they know perfectly well that it is not dollar, and that, smile the silver kings never so brightly, to try to make it so would be to cheat the labor of the country of half it's wage and lessen by half the purchasing power of dollar at the same time. But if the national banks should have on deposit with the United States bonds of the nation equiv alent to every dollar of their note is- sues, would not the people still have the equivalent of government notes? Would not the substitute pre- serve all the virtues of the gov ernment notes and at the same time take the government out of the costly, cumbersome and always dangerous anomaly of doing banking business, although not bank except for the burdens and risks, without the benefits or privileges of banking?
 One plausible argument offered against retirement of the greenback is that by substituting bonds for it and letting the national banks be the sole banks of issue, we should be paying in- terest for currency instead of having currency as we have now without pay ing interest. Comptroller Ecl.els dis poses of this fallaey in few words. He shows that the government would be $90,oo0, 900 better off to-day if on Jan uary i, 1879, the greenbacl1s had been paid by the issuing of 9o-year four per cent. bonds.
 Ultimately the greenback must go. When it goes it must be succeeded with a currency ample and flexible, with the credit and wealth of the nation for it's unfailing foundation. Ultimately sil- yer will be placed in its true relative place in the currency. There will never come a time in the history of the country when the United States will offer cent less in payment of it's debts than was stipulated or understood when the debt was contracted.
 As for the driftwood that has foated into the 54th congress on a political tidal wave, it will be carried out in time, and the pathetic ignorance so many representatives of it indicated on tho question of currency reform will be succeeded in due time by knowledge as we'll as by patriotism. There will be more thought expended by the people in selecting the 55th congress than there was in neglecting to choose in so large part the 54th.-Chicago Times Herald.