Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 92, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 April 1912 — FRAUD IN OLD BILLS [ARTICLE]

FRAUD IN OLD BILLS

Confederate Money Still Used to Swindle Immigrants. First Issue of Currency In SouthProblems That Confronted the Treasury of the Confederacy During the War. Boston. —Confederate money is still a favorite medium of the confidence man in his dealings with the raw immigrant, though it is hardly a currency to deceive any naan acquainted with the country’s history or even with the negotiable paper money of today. It Is not surprising that confederate money is so plentiful after a half a century as to make it more valuable to the confidence man than., to the collector when one realises the immense amount turned out by the industrious presses of the Confederacy. " ' . -v- -;^'n- . The Confederate treasury kept on printing paper money almost up to the fall of Richmond. ▲ note dated Richmond, February 17, 1864, declares upon its faee: “The Confederate States of America will pay $lO to bearer two years after the ratification of a treaty of peace between the Confederate States and the United States of America.” When the Confederate treasury began business there was a clear enough perception the public men of the Confederacy that cheap money would be one of their government’s perils. They had been brought up in the old democratic monetary theory of a currency composed of gold and silver at a fixed ratio intended to correspond with their relative bullion value, and paper money based upon such currency. Almost exactly fifty years ago the issue of $1,000,600 in interest-bearing notes was authorised. This was the earliest Confederate paper money issued. By July of that year the treasury had exceeded the authorised amount, and the issue of doable the original issue was then sanctioned by law. The smallest denomination of these early issues was SSO, for the treasury hoped that means might be

found for using silver and gold in minor transactions. Before the end of the year the authorized issue had again been exceeded, and in spite of oft renewed good resolutions the Confederacy by July, 1863, had $1,000,000,000 of notes outstanding. For a few months devoted Confederate patriots permitted their gold deposits to get into general circulation, but soon everybody who had gold hoarded it or sent .it out of the country to a place of safety. Almost at the very end of the Confederacy Jefferson Davis vetoed a bill for the issue of $80,000,000 in paper and congress passed the measure over his veto. The funding plans resulted in a temporary contraction of the currency and a fall in prices, with the consequent enrichment of some Of the desperate gamblers that hung about Richmond and fattened upon the hardships of the Confederacy. After each contraction of the currency the convenient presses were set going again, and instead of a circulating medium

of $175,000,000 as the treasury once planned, of of $200,000,000 as it planned at another time, the outstanding paper money swelled and swelled until It had exceeded-the $1,000,000,000 of midsummer, 1863. The banks of Virginia tried to protect themselves and the treasury by refusing to receive the depreciated currency, but in vain. When soldiers in the trenches of Petersburg were paying $lO for a tin plate from which to eat their frugal meals, and ■ S6OO or SBOO for a pair of boots, the people were still clamoring for larger Issues of paper. You may still buy crisp, fresh leaking Confederate notes at prices varying from two cents to two dollars per hundred notes.