Democratic Sentinel, Volume 2, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 April 1878 — THE “HONEST" MONEY LEAGUE. [ARTICLE]

THE “HONEST" MONEY LEAGUE.

A National-Bank Swindle. Half a dozen national-bank officers, and a few money-shavers at Milwaukee and Chicago, have organized what they call “The HardMoney League,” which is to be addressed as the “Honest-Money League of Chicago.” This organization, like the Bankers’ Association, is a fraud. Its object is to swindle the public. It has so little faith in its own honesty that it finds it necessary to herald itself as “honest,” well knowing that the organization is created to deceive the people, cheat the public, and propagate the old lies by which hard money has so long enslaved labor, crippled industry and bankrupted nations. I propose to take up each of the resolutions through which it appeals to the public, and dissect its fallacies, its cheats, its frauds and its lies, hanging the guilt of its purpose on the gibbet of public opinion, for men to stare at. These wise Shylocks unanimously adopted as the platform of their principles: “ Opposition to all paper inflation and consequent depreciation. In favor of coin and paper of equal value and equal purchasing power, and convertible into each other at the will of the holder.” Here is concentrated, as the basis, as much bosh, utterly without meaning or definition, as hard-money impudence could well crowd into five lines. Opposition to all paper inflation and consequent depreciation ! This, as applied to the present condition of affairs, is about the coolest piece of red-shield impudence ever undertaken to be designated as principles. For six years we have had nothing but contraction. Our own money, through foreign and Wall street influence, has been robbed from the people and burned, for the sole purpose of making money dear. Every man who has education enough to read, and brains enough to know that withdrawing circulation and burning it is contraction, knows that we have had the exact opposite of inflation. And that we have no depreciation is proved by the fact, printed and heralded every day from a thousand presses in every quarter of the nation, that our paper money has constantly appreciated from a point when, as compared with tbe fictitious value of gold, it stood as 100 to 247—that is, one dollar in gold would buy $2.47 in greenbacks—to where it stands to-day, but 1 per cent, below g»ld. And those differences have always been based upon the fictitious value of gold, not its real value. For nothing but the absolute inability and impossibility of gold to perform the offices of money gave it a fictitious value. No man dare say that the Government of the United States, in the darkest hour of the Rebellion, was not sound in its credit, honest in its faith and reliable in its resources; and that in its entirety of property, honor, credit, and faith, it was rot worth as much, as a measure of value," as one of its inferior products. To say so is to lie and cheat and defraud the people. Gold and silver were not to be had. Usurers had bid them to make tyrants of them, and we had to yield to these tyrants, or give up the ship, or find a better, a safer, or more reliable money. We found it in the greenback. There has never been an nour . when its issue was inflated beyond our necessities; never a day it has not appreciated since the people knew that they were the money of the people; never a day that it has not teen worth more than specie; and nothing but the repudiating halter hung round the neck' and printed on the back of the greenback, “ Not receivable for revenue duties or for interest on the public debt," has kept them from being at a premium above gold. It is false, then, to say that we have had and have an inflated currency. It is equally false to say it was, by consequence of inflation, depreciated. A cause which is driven to announce a lie as the principle of its action needs to call its adherents “honest," for no one else will. These honest-money men resolve: “First. — Theindustrial interests of the country, and consequently the welfare and happiness of the i eople, require stability in the standard of value and uniformity in circulating mediums of exchange.” There is not a doubt but what the people require stability in the standard of value and uniformity in their circulating medium. It is for this reason they demand the greenback; for this reason they demand national ’.esources, national stability, national responsibility, instead of individual liability, on a pretended gold basis, which has eternally failed whenever it has been called for. Gold and silver are held by the few. The few control them, and the few make them scarce or plenty, just as suits their greed. A pint measure can’t fill the office of a hogshead, nor can gold and silver give us a stable currency. The quantity of coin is as inadequate as the pint measure. Haid money resolves: “Second. —The experience of all civilized and commercial nations proves that gold and silver possess stability of value in a greater degree than any other commodities, and are, therefore the best standard of value, and in connection with paper representatives convertible into them on demand, the only safe and uniform circulating medium.” This is a fallacy tyrants have lived on since the flcod ; but it is so mixed with truth as to readilv deceive the unthinking. Admit gold and silver possess value. They are products of labor. So are wheat and corn and cotton, and all the tndless products oi our country. It is false that coin is stable in value. Nothing has varied so much ; and its utter inadequacy in amount makes it the most dangerous, the most unreliable, and the most tyrannical measure of value that it is possible to adopt. England had to discard it in 1694 or lose her liberties. She had to adopt her own credit in the notes of the Bank of England from 1796 to 1822, or be swept from the nations of the earth. In 1825, in 1848, and in 1857, the attempt to rely on gold cost her more than her present national debt. The paper of the Bank ot England saved England. * France, in 1789, 1830, 1848, and 1871, and to this day, has had to discard coin or lose her national existence. She had to adopt her own credit, her own paper money, or lose her liberties. She trusted herself, and is to-day, financially, the most stable, reliable, and prosperous government in the civilized world. The United States in the Revolution would have been crushed by the Hessians of George 111. if we had been forced to rely on gold. From 1811 to 1816 we should have been crushed as a power if we had trusted to gold. In the Mexican war we conquered Mexico, liberated California, and established the vigor and energy of our arms on our treasury notes. They won the battles, they discovered California. From 1861 to 1865 there was not gold enough in the country to pay for our soldiers’ boots. Silver there was none. We should have been enslaved by slavery, lampooned and derided by England, and whipped as a people and as a nation if we had been forced to fight our battles with gold. Gold was the tyrant to enslave us. It would have starved our armies; it would have allowed our army to have gone naked, unsheltered, without hospitals, into inhospitable graves, if it had had the power to control. It is a cheat; it is a fraad; it is a lie ! It flies the moment it is demanded. It disappears the hour you require it. It is a cut-throat usurer. So much for its “ stability” and “measure of values” in “the experience of all civilized nations.” But these “honest-money” men resolve : “ Third.— lt is the duty of the Government to establish and maintain a sound and uniform currency system. The establishment and maintenance of such a system was one of the ends contemplated by the founders of our Government in framing the constitution, and, to secure the advantages of such a system, requires only a firm adherence to tbe principles and spirit of the constitution.” For a resolution this is a good one. We agree with every word of it The Government has established and maintained the greenback and the national currency system. They established it as a constitutional measure. Just such as the founders of the Government, in framing the constitution, contemplated; and we have only to adhere to the greenback to keep sacred the obligation of constitutional liberty. Let me prove what 1 say. Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay, Benjamin Franklin and George Washington sustained the. treasury-credit system. Hamilton, with his clear head, his great brain, his comprehensive intellect, felt and saw at once that we must have a currency of our own—a currency which was free from the intrigues, interferences and impudence of foreign control. His report on the United States bank and on American coinage comprehended and expounded the phi’o ophy and settled the principle, Madison, and Jay,, and Franklin, and Jefferson and Washington agreed with him. Jefferson said : “ Treasury bills, bottomed on taxes, bearing or bearing interest, may

be found necessary, and, when thrown into circulation, will take the place of so much gold and silver. Bank paper must be suppressed, and the circulation be restored to the nation, to whom it belongs." Mr. Calhoun declared that the Government must establish a paper credit, totally separate from gold and silver, as a medium of circulation, based on ite power of taxation, the resources of its people and their products. Mr. Webster fully concurred with Mr. Calhoun. Mr. Olay was of the same opinion. Judge Story, Judge Kent, Chief Justice Jay, Marshall and Chase —commencing with our constitutional history and coming down to the Rebellion, when it was a question of national existence—have each and all settled the constitutional power. The exercise of the power was so essential that we could not exist without it. Public welfare demanded it. Public prosperity cannot exist without it. Labor s dependent upon it. Industry is its child. Independence cannot exist without it. It has saved our national life. The people created it. The people will sustain it. It is stability itself. “ But,” say these half-dozen Shylocks of the West (where they could not, to save their pecunious souls, get a corporal’s guard of the people to sustain them), by way of resolving : “Fourth.— The constitution contemplates only the use of precious metals as a standard of value. These principles were strictly observed by the Government until a great national emergency comnelled a temporary departure from them. That departure was solemnly and repeatedly declared to be only temporary and only justifiable on the ground of extreme necessity in time of national peril, and most positive assurances had been given by the legislative and executive departments of the Government that’when the exigencies of the war should pass away the Government would- as soon as practicable return to the constitutional and stable metallic standard and measure of value.’’ I have just shown that the first assumption of this fourth proposition is false. Our whole history is a lie, or it is a lie. We have never relied on coin. Five or six. times we have tested it, but we always found it was wanting. It wasn’t there. In 1816, 1825, 1837, 1842, 1857, 1861, and all the time since, it has been a minus quantity—a fraud, a delusion. Any basis that can not stand a test is a false basis. Gold and silver have never stood a test. They can’t; there is not enough of them to do it. In ’6l the Government would have been totally swamped if it had not bottomed' its circulation on taxes and national credit. Balky horses won’t work ; they always stop at the foot of the bilk A basis that always fails is no basis. Currency bottomed on taxes and national credit in the United States can not fail. It is impossible. It is stable as government and as certain as time. These wise heads (honest hard-money Shylocks) resolve: * ‘ Fifth. — The emergency that made it necessary for the Government to force upon the people an irredeemable paper currency having passed away, to now perpetuatejthat system as a permanent financial policy would be a violation of the spirit of the constitution and of the spirit of the laws under whi«h our war currency was issued, and, as the experience of the world has proved, would necessarily be followed by still further depreciation, to the great injury of all legitimate business and to the suffering of the laboring classes upon whom the evils of depreciated currency inevitably fall most heavily.” The Government never forced a dollar on any man. Everybody but knaves and usurers welcomed the greenback as our savior. It came when the battle for life and dqath came. It fed our soldiers. It made our guns. It clothed and paid our army. It built our transports. It made our powder. It saved us from having our throats cut when gold and silver gave out. I stand by the currency that stood by us. Itapbold the nation’s money that saved the nation. If it was created by the emergencies of the war it was because gold and silver failed to answer the emergencies of the war. They deserted us in the time of need. They were tried and -were found wanting. They were traitors to liberty. We will depend on the traitor coins' no more. No ; never more. We have national credit—the grandest in resources, tho purest in faith and the moat abiding in its stability the world ever knew. The greenback represents it. The nation gave it birth in its hour of trial. It cradled it in the blood of rebellion. It chris • tened it with liberty. It sanctified it by victory. It will stand by it as long as the nation stands. The man or men (hard money, imperialist, honest or dishonest) who say that the greenback has or can depreciate know 'hat they deliberately fal-ify the truth. Its basisls the $40,00'), 000,000— making S4O of resources for every dollar issued, even if we had what the necessities and prosperity of the people demand—but now $65 for every dollar issued. Indeed, the yearly accumulated profits ofi the nation, which go into the accumulated wealth of the nation, are larger" by $500,00o,00() yearly than all the currency demanded by the people. The nation may die out, its population may diminish, but the national liability and property.cannot be exported or dissipated or exhausted so as to endanger the absolute security of the greenback. To talk about depreciation is worse than false. It is wicked, it is infamous, and these “honest,” hard-money bank monopolists know it. But they resolve : “ /Sixth— National honor and both national and individual prosper ty demand a return to the standards of value recognized in the constitution, and, with our present paperfcurrency almost at par with coin, to delay such return and authorize new issues of irredeemable paper would only add to further depreciation, until, as in all past experiments of the kind, paper will become worthless, leaving us without any reliable circulating medium, anil' entailing destruction on all industry and misery and poverty on the masses of the people.” This is the weakest delusion of red-shield twaddle, this appeal to national honar to create national dependence cn usurers and moneygamblers, ever invented. It is like old Shylock with the scales in hand, sharpening his knife, impatient to cut out the pound of flesh—the very heart-blood of Antonio, when he says: “ The pound of flesh is mine. I have bought it, and in honor you must give it me.” ’Tis mine, tnd I will have it. If you deny me, fie upon your law; There is no force in the decrees of Venice. I stand for judgment. Answer: Shall I have it ? This was the same kind of national honor Shylock demanded that his hard-money followers now demand. It was their honor to demonetize silver by a contemptible fraud, and so make resumption impossible; and then, by a baser fraud—a fraud which, if they could have succeeded, would have banKrupted onehalf the nation, and, by forced sales and collections, have robbed the debtor class of their property at a quarter of its value—getting a forced law of resumption. They got it. And then these honest men feloniously went to work to make the bonds, payable in legal money, payable in gold. It was a swindle; but they were guilty of it. It was an attempt to steal hundreds of millions from the taxpayers to place it in the pockets of these honest usurers. This is the kind of honor they prate about. It is the thief crying “Stop thief!" And, thank Heaven, the people have made up their minds to stop the thieving felons from carrying out their games ! They have been the chief ornaments in the train crying “Rag baby!” and “Contraction!” They have plunged the countiy in doubt, in misery, and in idleness, and now charge the crimes their own selfish greed has brought upon the land to the money which has saved it. They resolve :

"Seventh.— We have now an abundance of money to supply all the wants of trade. Our paper currency is rapidly approaching the uniformity and itxbility of the coin standards. If left, free from further legislative change it will soon, by force of natural laws, go into general circulation, and general confidence and prosperity will be restored to the country.” They reiterate the cry of Wall street and Boston capitalists that “ We have an abundance, of money to supply the wants of trade.” If they know enough to be disputed, they know this statement to be false. They know that contraction has been going on’ here (precisely as it went on in England in 1819,1825,1847- 8 and’ 1858), under the alarm created by the approach of tbe time for “ specie payment”—a cry which cost England at her four crises more than her national debt, and yet ended in the acknowledged incapacity of England to pay' in specie. Centuries have proved the fact that specie cannot be relied upon as a basis, and that the moment it is understood that it is to be. demanded contraction commences—just as it* did in 1870, going on and on until the country - has less than $8 per capita of circulatiQn. France has S4O per capita. France is prosperous. We have SB, and 3,000,000 of our laboring population are without labor, homes—almost without bread. The Sheriff is the only man with more business than he can attend to. Money is plenty in the hands of the capita ists, but all faith is dead, all credit is gone, ami one might us wall undertake to stop the plunging waters of Niagara as to attempt to borrow unless he can give United States stocks, or their equivalent, as security. The fact is, capital is determined to bulldoze the people into doinn as it bids. It says, •* become my slaves; anq

then, if you will give us security which suits us (like the pound of flesh), we will accommodate you, and not without.” Money is the tyrant. All tyrants shall be put down. The people swear it. The people mean it. Finally, the “Honest-Money League” resolve: • ‘Eighth -We invite all our fellow-citizens, who concur in these views of the nature of money and the medium of exchange and the functions of the Government in relation thereto, to unite with us in an effort to maintain the honor and welfare of our common country, and in a protest against the adoption of an irredeemable paper-money policy, which would certainly, sooner or later, be followed by all the evils of fluctuation and depreciation, ending only in ultimate repudiation and general financial min.” That is they, like the spider, invite the fly into their parlor. They invite the 40,000,000 American people, with an accumulated capital of $40,000,000,000, and with an annual profit of $2,000,000,000, to admit that they are slaves to $200,000,000 of specie. They invite the American people to acknowledge that they are fools, and not competent to create a financial policy of their own. They invite them to become the subjects of the Rothschilds and German Jews, who hold our bonds ; and to permit them to dictate to us what shall be money, and how much we shall have. It is enough to make an American’s blood boil with indignation to hear these money-bags, and panderers to gold kings propose that the United States shall yield up its independence and walk into the Jew's parlor to be chained with usury, hungered by want, and be killed by the oppression of the money power. The American people will not do it. Revolution, anarchy, bloodshed—any disaster is better than financial slavery. The greenback is the money of the people. It redeems itself, precisely as the gold.dollar or the silver dollar. It is the nation, and therefore not to be swapped off. It is sovereignty in money, and therefore has no superior. It is E Pluribus Unum — may God bless and protect it! One word more: This Hard-Money League originated, as it appears, in the West, where it cannot, with drum and fife, get out 500 adherents in the States it pretends to represent. It is a mere blowing the wind to keep up courage. Its real origin can easily be traced to the Bank Association, that league of cormorants, who are stealing $30,000,000 of bounty annually from the overtaxed people; that league of monopolists which, with $135,000,000,000 of surplus profits now in reserve to battle liberty and defy government, proclaim through their Jay Gould organ, that “No act of Congress can overcome or resist the decision of the Amer - can Bankers' Association." They lie. They know they lie. Congress has just told them so. If Congress cannot resist them the people can. And if Congress does not cut off the last dollar of their stealing monoply, the people will—fairly if they can, forcibly if they must.

STEPHEN D. DILLAYE.