Democratic Sentinel, Volume 2, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 September 1878 — PAPER MONEY. [ARTICLE]

PAPER MONEY.

Until the Advent of Paper Money the World Never Had a Currency. A certain plant, charged with being poisonous, was formerly tolerated in private gardens because of its pretty fruit called “love-apples.” Could the owners of those gardens revisit the world they would be very much surprised to find their evil-reputed fruit not only credited with being exceptionally wholesome, but everywhere a favorite article of food; and, were our earlier ancestors permitted to look in upon us, they would be astonished to learn that a substance dispensed by the apothecaries of their day, in grain doses to suffering humanity, had become an article of leading commercial value, and that many thousand tons of it were annually consumed at the tables of all classes, from the highest to the humblest, throughout the world. Likewise, it shall come to pass that our descendants will wonder how we, their forefathers, could regard their favorite, indispensable greenback as a poison to be avoided like the oncecontemned tomato, and as a drug of the political pharmacopeia to be sparingly used only for the cure of national distempers, even as, in old times, sugar was classed nowhere but among the materia medica for the cure of febrile complaints. Popular prejudice and the want heretofore of favorable opportunities have thus far prevented more than a limited recognition of the fact that a paper currency can, under certain conditions, become of permanent, of inestimable value to the political and industrial economies of a great nation The general impression concerning it is similar to that entertained of a nauseous medicine to be reluctantly accepted as a remedial agent, but to be gotten rid of as quickly as possible if only to confirm the convalescence of the patient. That this prejudice, this unfavorable impression, should not exist would seem strange, indeed when we consider the circumstances which have invariably inspired and attended the appearance of a paper currency; for there are no well-authen-ticated instances of a government paper currency having been issued except in great national emergencies, except when the political existence of the people was at stake and every other consideration had to be subordinated to the paramount one of rescuing (he vessel of state from the perils of surrounding shoals and breakers ; or, if not so critical, the emergency has always been sufficiently grave to arouse those serious apprehensions which are thought to justify a resort to paper currency as one of the last heroic methods left for averting an impending general calamity; a kind of Caesarean operation that sacrificed everything for the preservation of the parent state. Thus it is not surprising the people should have been led to associate the presence of a paper currency with the idea of there being something abnormal in the condition erf the commonwealth, and to deem the absence of it a sure indication of national wealth and strength.

It should, however, be borne in mind by those who are inimical to the use of paper currency that the issue of it upon the occasions above referred to implies for it no .inconsiderable amount of virtue; otherwise it would not have been resorted to so frequently as a means of safety in times of danger, and therefore, if beneficial upon occasions when all kinds of money, not excepting gold coin, are the least capable of doing good, it follows that a proper knowledge of its inherent qualifications ought to enable ns in times of peace to make it one of the most efficient and valuable of all currencies. It should also be borne in mind that the mere fact of a paper currency being put forth in seasons of general distrust and uneasiness would very naturally cause it, however intrinsically good it might be, to acquire the bad reputation attached to its surroundings, and suffer the same vicissitudes to which all other things are then subjected, and therefore it is neither just nor logical to condemn its use during peace and prosperity merely because it has heretofore been, through no fault of its own, associated with periods of anarchy and ruin. Nor should it be overlooked that paper currency has been more often issued by those who were incapable of properly using it and of comprehending its legitimate office than by those in whose hands it became an instrument for the accomplishment of much good. People with an outer crust of civilization, to conceal the inner mass of their barbarism and ignorance, have, monkey-like, imitated their more enlightened fellow, creatures in this as in other respectswith no better idea of what a paper currency really is than a dim, chaotic notion that it is in some sort the offspring of a combined modern alchemy and necromancy, whereby, through the use of certain cabalistic characters, ordinary paper is transmuted into a precious metal; whereby an ounce of dried pulp is metamorphosed into an ounce of virgin gold. Under such auspices and because it failed to meet the extravagant expectations of its projectors, this currency rapidly came into bad odor, and so tainted the financial atmosphere with its violent death and decay, as to utterly disgust many of the warmest friends of monetary reform. I am fain to reluctantly admit that even in this land, this paradise of the peripatetic school-master, there is, in certain quarters, concerning this subject, as much benightedness as exists in the minds of the most outwardly polished of barbarians. Publications supposed to reflect the intelligence of their writers ventilate opinions about the nature and characteristics of a paper currency that remind one very much of those which were uttered when the feasibility of using steam as a propelling force was under discussion. Among other objections was one from a very learned writer who demonstrated, with the aid of the highest mathematics, that, owing to atmospheric resistance, the faster a locomotive Went the slower it would go. Many of the Objections urged against a greenback currency are of this description. They have a potent influence upon that large class which never reflects and always accepts what is false in preference to the truth; but there are other objections, which, because of the few grains of truth scattered through their mass of errors, pervert minds that do think; and it is for the benefit of these I have in this paper endeavored to point out where the few grains of truth, made to serve a false cause, really belong, and what little or no connection they have with the great issue at stake in this country. It is no argument against the use of a paper currency that it has not been voluntarily used by any government until very recent times. This is an argument that applies with equal force against the employment of every modern invention; neither steam nor

electricity were in use one hundred years ago, but does anyone in his senses contend that they should be discarded, be laughed and sneered at, because the world, from the beginning down to the days of our grandparents, got along with an immense degree of comfort and happiness without them? I know some would reply : The two cases are not identical; that steam and electricity are wholly new motors applied to the car of progress; that they are new because the world had not previously been prepared for them, and were adopted because the age in which they appeared was ripe for their application; but that currency is as old as the hills, has stood the tests of hundreds of generations, and, therefore, when you ask us to adopt greenbacks instead of gold and silver, you are simply asking us to place confidence in a stranger to perform the same duties Which have from times immemorial been faithfully discharged by a long-tried friend and servant. I would answer : That longtried servants, be they never so faithful, must succumb to the same fate of change and death that ultimately overtake all things, however immutable and fixed they may seem; and that, so far from proposing to supersede any metallic currency heretofore in use, we utterly deny having such an intention, for the plain reason that there is no currency of the kind to supersede; that until the advent of paper money the world never had a currency. Currency, like the steam engine and telegraph, is a modern, a very modern invention.

WILLIAM HOWARD.

Philabelphia, Pa.