The Colfax chronicle. [volume] (Colfax, Grant Parish, La.) 1877-1981, 1896-02-08
CURRENCY REFORM.

CURRENCY REFORM.
The Obstructive Elements In the National
Legislature
The free silver owners and agents
lay coin unlimited silver, compel the
government to maintain it at par with
gold, and that is all the reform the
monetary arrangements Of the United
States require.
Only second to the obstructiveness of
silver properties in the senate is the
blind partisanship in senate and house
which needs only q recommendation
by President Cleveland on the currency
question to resist its adoption with to-
tai Indifference to its merits. With the
standard of intelligence that is sup
POSED to prevail in the United States,
and the standard of patriotism that has
been sorely but successfully tried in
| the past, 1t is humiliating to Americans
that such an admission as this should
have to be made.
The question of a national currency
ought to be outside the pale of parties.
1t belongs only in the high, broad and
clear field of national logic and unfal-
tering patriotism. That it should not
be SO deemed in the present congress
stamps that congress on the threshold
of its career as lacking in the first-vir-
tue which should animate its history
patriotism; the lack of it convicts
the congress of want of intelligence,
Judging by present indications, to be
a menace.
idea of reviving state banks in connec-
ton 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 so cents worth of white
metal and pretend that it is a 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 a 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
eminent notes and at the same
time take the government out OF
the costly, cumbersome and always
dangerous anomaly of doing a 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 9
currency as we have now without pay
ing interest. Comptroller Ecl.els dis
poses of this fallacy in few words
He shows that the government would bt
$90,000,000 better off to-day if on Jan
uary 1, 1870, the greenbacks had beer
paid by the issuing of 30-year four pei
cent. bonds.
Ultimately the greenback must go
; When it goes it must be succeeded will
a currency ample and flexible, with tn,
: credit and wealth of the nation for it
unfailing foundation. Ultimately sill
yer will be placed in its true relativ,
place in the currency. There will
never come time in the history of tn,
; country when the United States will
offer cent less in payment of its debt.
!, than was stipulated or understood whe1
the debt was contracted.
As for the driftwood that has foatet
into the saith congress on a politica
! tidal wave, it will be carried out il
time, and the pathetic ignorance 81
many representatives of it indicated OF
the question of currency reform will b.
. succeeded in due time by knowledge a
well as by patriotism. There will b.
: more thought expended by the peopl,
in selecting the 55th congress thar
there was in neglecting to choose in 81
large part the 54th.-Chicago Times
Herald.
A SHOT AT SILVER.