People's voice., 1895-05-02
FIGHT FOR LIBERTY.
THE FINANCIAL PLAN OF THE
AMERICAN COLONIES.
British lnterferences-Robbed of Gold
and Silver by Taxation the People De-
vised Monetary System and Enjoyed
4 Unequaled Prosperity.

Il
from the pen Of Hon. John Davis of
| Kansas:
THE currency of Pennsylvania was
both a success and a failure. and de-
serves special attention. 1t succeeded
as long as it possessed the quality of
legal tender. 1t failed when the Brit
ish government forbade it having that
quality. Its use was compelled by the
absence of coin, which had been drawn
away by the British trade. Coin money
being an exportable article, was al
ways a fugitive in those colonial days.
1t could not be relied on as a basis for
non-legal paper. Having no coin,
Pennsylvania adopted legal tender
paper in 1923. 1t came to an end
through an act of the British parlia-
ment depriving it of the quality of legal
tender. Being called before a COM
mittee of parliament, Dr. Franklin de-
scribed the Pennsylvania money sys-
TEN as follows:
Pennsylvania, before it made any
paper money, was totally stripped of
its gold and silver, though it had from
time to time, like the neighboring colo
nies, agreed to take gold and silver
coins at higher nominal values, in
hopes of drawing money into and re-
tanning it for the internal use of the
province. During that weak practice,
silver got up by degrees to IS Cd. per
ounce-lOng before paper money was
made. The difficulties for want of
cash were accordingly very great, the
chief part of the trade being carried
on by the extremely inconvenient
method of barter, when in 1923, paper
money was first made there lin Penn
sylvania), which gave new life to busi-
ness, promoted greatly the settlement
of the new lands (by lending small
sums to beginners, on easy interest, to
be paid by installments) whereby the
province has so greatly increased in
inhabitants that the export from thence
hither Ito England is now more than
ten fold what it then was"
Gov. Pownall, colonial governor of
Massachusetts, discussing the subject
in hand, said:
81 will venture to say that there
never was wiser or better measure
never one calculated to serve the in
terests of an increasing country; that
there never was measure more
steadily pursued or more faithfully ex-
ecuted for forty years together than the
loan Office in Pennsylvania, founded
and administered by the assembly of
that province"
Rev. John Twells of London, an able
English writer, speaking of the Ameri-
can colonial finances, said:
"This was the monetary system
under which the American colonists
prospered to such an extent that Burke
said of them: Nothing in the history
of the world is like their progress 1t
was wise and beneficial system, and
its effects were most conducive to the
happiness of the people. Take the case
of family, industrious and enterpris-
ing, driven by persecution or misfor-
tune to seek refuge in the wilds of the
new world. With their scanty means
they purchase a tract of land Many
years of hard labor, privation and
anxiety would have been necessary to
bring that family into state of decent
competency, had they been required to
purchase gold and silver by labor and
by the produce of labor, before they
could effect the improvements
of their property. But half the
value Of his land was advanced to the
head of the family in notes, which cir
culated as money. With these notes
he could hire labor and purchase i'm
plements of husbandry and cattle; and
thus, where without these notes one
acre could be cleared, cultivated and
stocked in year, ten would by the as
sistance Of the paper money advanced,
be reclaimed from the forest and rem
dered productive. Thus hope entered
the dwelling of the poor emigrant.
Ten years found him with the whole
of his debt to the government dis
charged, the proprietor of a happy
home. And the kind hand of paternal
government was stretched out still, to
advance him again one half the in
creased value of his land and thus en-
able him to clear more Of the forests,
and to settle his children in new homes.
Such was the system by which set
of miserable outcasts were converted,
in short space of time, into happy,
contented, and prosperous colonists.
IN an evil hour the British govern
ment took away from America its rep
resentative money, commanded that no
more paper bills of credit should be is
sued, and those out should cease to be
legal tender, and collected the taxes in
hard silver. This was in 1913. Now
mark the consequences. This contrac-
tion of the circulating medium para
lyzed all the industrial colonies; the
most severe distress was brought home
to every family; discomfort was urged
on to desperation, till, at last human
nature as DR.. Johnson phrases it,
arose and asserted its rights"
This is a truthful and fair descrip-
tion of the money which served the
people in time of need, when coin had
fled beyond the sea, or was locked up
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