Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 December 1896 — CARLISLE IS HOPEFUL [ARTICLE]

CARLISLE IS HOPEFUL

SECRETARY REVIEWS NATIONAL FINANCES. Despite a Deficit of $25,203,243 at Present and Larger Deficiencies Probable in 1897 and 1898, He Takes * Cheerful View. , Talka of Money. The annual report of the Secretary of the Treasury, as transmitted to Congress, deals extensively and in detail with the financial situation. Mr. Carlisle summarizes the condition of the treasury, and after reviewing his former recommendations for early and effective legislation to provide for the retirement of treasury notes, goes on to say: “The maintenance of a policy which necessarily imposes upon the government the burden of furnishing gold at the public expense to all who may demand it for use or hoarding at home, or for export to other countries, cannot be justified upon any ground of expediency or sound financial principles, and even if the periodical and frequently recurring demands for gold did not weaken the foundations of our entire currency system, thus imparing confidence and depressing business, it would nevertheless be the duty of alj.who are charged with any degree of responsibility for the adoption of proper financial methods to insist upon the reformation of our laws on this subject at the earliest possible day. “The issue and redemption of circulating notes is not a proper funcfion .of the treasury department, or of any other department of the government. While she government has power to borrow money, it is not its duty to issue public obligations merely for the purpose of providing a paper currency for use in the transaction of business, nor has it the constitutional power, in my opinion, to make its promise legal tender in the payment of private debts.

The Secrethry refers to the “peril” in which the entire financial system has been placed by the “constant agitation" of the currency and favors the retirement and cancellation of government notes. He says the people will not consent to be taxed merely for the purpose of accumulating and holding a large and useless surplus in the treasury. He claims tha,t no system of coinage that can be devised will furnish the government with either gold or silver, unless it pays for it with means already collected by taxation, or by contracting an indebtedness to be paid by the people in the future. He goes at length into the subject of the demand and supply of money, the matter of imports and exports as affecting currency supplies, and the crops in Europe. The Secretary holds that without a reformation of our currency we cannot safely rely upon permanent accessions to our stock of gold from abroad in settlement of trade balances in our favor. He refers to his recommendation of last year that the Secretary of the Treasury be authorized to issue from time to time bonds payable in gold and to exchange them for United States notes and treasury notes, and again indorses that plan, but adds that it may be that so radical a measure would not receive the assent of Congress, in the present state of the public mind on the subject. Mr. Carlisle renews his recommendations for such amendments to the national banking laws as would permit the issue of circulating notes equal in amount to the face value of the bonds deposited and reduce the tax on notes to one-fourth of 1 per cent, per annum, and that authority be given to establish branch banks for the transaction of all kinds of business now allowed, except the issue of circulating notes. No good reason now is perceived, he says, why this limitation upon the required amount of capital should not be reduced to S2S,(MX), without regard to population. He again refers to and renews his suggestion that the issue of United States notes, treasury notes and national bunk notes of lower denominations than Jen dollars be prohibited in order - to secure a large and more permanent use of silver coin and certificates.

In ctosing he says: “For more, than a century our tariff legislation has been designed, to a great extent, at least, to acomplish objects other than the raising of revenue for public purposes. The protection of capital invested in our native industries and the protection of labor employed in the United States against the competition of the products of foreign industries and foreign labor have been alleged as the paramount objects in many eases, and urged as a justification for the progressive increases of tariff takes and commercial restrictions when revenue was not needed, or when the rates imposed were so higli as to reduce the revenue. In other instances, revenue duties have been abolished in order thaf protective duties might be retained or increased. and the necessities of the government and just principles of taxation have been subordinated to the demands of special interests.”