Jasper Republican, Volume 2, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 October 1875 — How Inflation Works. [ARTICLE]

How Inflation Works.

In Hayti a paper dollar is worth three cents, and storekeepers are not anxious to receive them at that price. How the average Haytien must rise up and call blessed the Sam Cary of that favored isle, who first demonstrated to him the great truth that the way to make money plenty was to print lots of it—all that was necessaiy was for each man to vote himself a competence, and then retire on the fruits of his honorable industry. Why don’t some of our inpoint out to us Hayti as a fair example of the ’ prosperity superinduced by unlimited issues of paper money? Can they tell us that the harbors are filled with shipping, the cities teem with busy shops, the merchants are prosperous, the farmers growing wealthy, the laborers contented and happy ? Far from it. Poverty pervades that fruitful land like a miasma. And yet Hayti has tried every resource to preserve her credit that inflationists recommend to us. She has made the most stringent laws to enforce the acceptance of the State’s due-bills at par; she has at intervals shot contumacious merchants in order to restore public confidence. She has diligently hanged those who spoke against the robbery of issuing more paper, and yet despite all this her credit has steadily declined, until now a well-to-do Haytien goes to market with his money in a market basket, and brings home what he buys in his pocket-book. Such is life, at least in Hayti.— Toledo Blade. ■* \ ....The New York Herald illustrates the practical working of Congressman Kelley’s rag-money theory in this striking fashion: “Moses Hawks, of Allegan, Mich., thought so highly of Judge Kelley’s views on the currency question that he issued a lot of his own paper promises to enrich his fellow-townspeople. They worked beautifully until Hawks was called upon to redeem them, when he indignantly replied: ‘Redeem them! What adsurdity! They were made to circulate, not to redeem !’” What is inflation of the currency? It is bankruptcy. It is a contrivance to enable dishonest men to pay their debts at some lower rate than 100 cents on the dollar. Hence, if justifiable at all, it is justifiable to any extent. If it is right to cancel debts by paying ninety-eight cents it is equally right to get rid of them by the payment or seventy-five, or fifty, or even ten cents on the dollar. He who steals an insignificant sum is as much a thief as it he had robbed a rich man of millions.— Communication in Boston Advertiser. ....The St. Paul (Minn.) Chamber ol Commerce has recently adopted a resolution declaring it to be “ the duty of every citizen, the business of every merchant, to use his utmost endeavors toward securing at the earliest possible moment a medium of exchange which is fixed in value and convertible at the pleasure of the holder into coin.” “ Sailors’ big hearts” must be in their boots. A schooner lay outside of Chicago all day with a signal of distress living and not a soul went to her aid. ]£ight steamers passed within half a mile of her. A bolt of lightning struck a tree in front of a Chicago Alderman’s house the. other night and in his fright the Aiderman remarked: “Hold on! I’ll restore the money!” There are preparations which will remove freckles, but they leave the girl so limp and lifeless that a dozen picnics might be held behind the house and she wouldn’t have the least interest. Hard, horny hands, embrowned by the sun and roughened by labor, are more honorable than white ones that never reached out to help a fellow-creature or added a dollar to the world’s wealth.