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Show H It Might Have Been A CORRESPONDENT writes us objecting to our idea that the government should issue H one or one and a half per cent gold bonds, H payable say in fifteen years, in amounts sufficient H to relieve the present stringency In money mat- B ters, hae the issues in small denominations that the people might use as money; pay for government govern-ment w6rk with them and rush public work that ought to be hurried like building ships and reclaiming re-claiming barren lands, and give the idle men who want to work employment, and give to the country a currency that cannot be cornered by the gold combines. The correspondent reminds us of the inflation of values by the issues of greenbacks in the great war and the depression that came with their collapse col-lapse after the war. The cases are not parallel in any way; the greenback was born of the necessity of having some medium of exchange in the stress of a great war after gold and silver had fled to cover, and it was not redeemable in hard money at all, moreover its value depended upon the success of our armies In the war. Notwithstanding all that the business of the northern states was more prosperous on that irredeemable paper medium of exchange, even in the stress of war than it had been before for years. The people had something that they could call money to use. Then the greenbacks did not collapse after the war, Congress Con-gress made the mistake of calling the greenbacks so fast and destroying them, that there was no medium of exchange left, and of course men could realize nothing on their holdings. Had Congress decreed that in every year a certain amount of greenbacks should be called in and 80 per cent of the amount should be returned to the people in 15 year one per cent specie bonds to be circulated as money, they all would have been called in before ten years; there would have been no panic or loss and specie payment would have been resunled fifteen years sooner than it was. Had that been done and had silver been held in our country as it was in France, by this time the United States 'would have been richer than any other nation ever dreamed of being. |
