Democratic Sentinel, Volume 2, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 May 1878 — An “Honest-Money” Fallacy. [ARTICLE]

An “Honest-Money” Fallacy.

The Secretary of “The HonestMoney League of the Northwest,” among the platitudes of the pamphlet he has had published for the enlightenment of the people in currency matters, has the following: “A financial system, if good, is good for all alike; if bad, it is bad for all alike. As well talk of one kind of atmosphere being healthy for the rich, and unhealthy for the poor, as of one kind of money being for the benefit of the rich and injurious to the poor.” The pamphlet is full of such fallacies. A financial system may be good for one class and bad for another, as may a tariff system be very beneficial to one class and injurious to all other classes, and as a Government may bring to the laps of luxury the fruits of toil, and allow to the producers of wealth a meager subsistence only. History is full of such instances, and equally as full of arguments from the mouths of the favored classes that what is good for them is good for all, and what is bad for them is bad for all. It is the soothing song always sung by the money power when it has got legislation fixed to suit itself. The policy which McCulloch persuaded Congress to adopt, of contraction of the currency in order to come to specie payments, was good for the moneyed classes, but very bad for the people generally. The misery, the suffering, the bankruptcies, the suicides that followed in the train of that policy, and that were caused by it, and the wealth it added to the coffers of certain classes, show, with the clearness of sunlight, the fallacy of the statement made by the Secretary of the league.—Cincinnati Enquirer.