The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1897-08-30

udllOndI lIaue, anu the eulcCS lIldC II
puts forth unconsciously are not to be
reversed
LIKE CAUSE AND LIKE EFFECT.
The editorial "a Fool for Luck" in
which we recounted the several in
stances in which good if undeserved,
fortune had come to extricate the Re-
publican party from the embarrass-
it, has been variously commented on by
our exchanges, but their general tone
is one of complete contentment with
their present happy escape and a SUI
similar luck in the exigencies of the
future. Nowhere is there serious eff
fort to refute the facts or the argu-
ment and conclusion based upon them.
The prosperity that is coming when
the products of the fields are marketed
and their proceeds flow back into the
channels of trade, the delights of which
they are now enjoying in anticipation
guarantee that even the incredible
folly of the Dingley act will not COM
pei them to repeat in 1900 the humiliat-
ing retreat from Moscow of 1892
The danger that confronted the Re
publican party in 1879 grew out of the
seed it had sown in 1862 in the installa-
ton of the treasury as bank of issue,
the stimulative effects of the tariffs
for protection and the whirl of specu-
lation that was bred by these forces,
which eliminated in the panic of 1873.
Then history repeated it's lessons The
sreenback issues gave occasion for the
gathering of those Missionaries of finance
who always get hearing from the dis
tressed, pressed for the payment of
debt, or investors in enterprises whose
sustaining power was only in the fe-
vered imaginations Of their promoters
and deluded investors, whenever those
revulsions come which we call panics.
The logic of the greenback was ire
sistible. If money can be made by the
paper, and the one importunate need
is more money, why should not the
presses turn out all that is needed
for general relief?
The Greenback party grew with
alarming rapidity in those dismal six
years of punishment for financial and
other legislative follies. It assailed the
national banks and was compromised
with by adding burdens that made note
issues less profitable, and that form Of
currency entered on it's decline. There
had come a decline in silver prices, and
its interests Joined the greenbackers for
a restoration of the dollars of the dad
dies. The Allison-Bland act of 1878 was
a compromise with folly All was a
concession to the imperious demand for
more money. Then came the day fixed
in 1875 for the resumption of specie
payments. No ample provision had
been made for it. The sensible course
advocated by McCulloch of retiring the
notes had been rejected and their per-
petuity assured as one Of the compro-
misses Of 1878. The situation was most
serious. So far from being appeased
by the concessions the appetite for
cheap money had strengthened on
them. There is no doubt in any candid
mind that there would have been no
resumption of specie payments on the
first day of January, 1879, had not luck
come to again help the fool out of the
consequences of his folly It was the
big crops and good prices that rem
dered specie resumption possible.
The effect of resumption was to fur
nish precisely what the greenbackers.
or the sentiment in which they found
their support, demanded 1t set loose all
the gold and silver that had been mere
ly commodity since 1862. It doubled
the volume of money in circulation.
GreenbackiSm as an organization melt
ed away before it. We are witnessing
now the beginnings of a repetition of
the same experience, which will carry
with it the same results. Since 1893
greenbackism has reappeared plated
with silver. 1t was stronger because
silver has been current money for
ages, and men could not see why it
should not continue so. There has been
/ the same distress, the same poignant
individual need for money and the same
arguments for more of it made by gov
eminent that there was in 1879. If
it was depreciation Of the greenbaolz
that sent gold and silver into retire
ment, then it was the apprehension of
change combined with the dcpres-
sion Of the panic that sent money into
hiding this time. Fer four years there
has been a general boarding Of money
by those who had it. The effect has
been the same on the currency that
was produced by the depreciation of
the greenback. The crops here and the
failures abroad are operating again as
they did in 1879, to bring out the