Jasper Republican, Volume 2, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 October 1875 — Benefiting the Debtor Class. [ARTICLE]

Benefiting the Debtor Class.

Tn his recent speech at Cincinnati Mr. Schurz turned to the argument that an expansion of the currency and its consequent depreciation will benefit the poor, inasmuch as it will benefit the debtor as against the creditor by enabling the former to pay off bis debts in a less value than that in which they were contracted. He denied that the poor man was the debtor. “ If we had the statistics of private indebtedness in the United States before tis they would unquestionably show that more than 75 per cent of it is owing by men commanding comparatively large means, and that the laborers for wages are the least indebted class of sociey, even in proportion to their earning, and savings, and next to them the farmers and the small business men. , “ I venture to say that there is neither a manufacturer, nor a merchant, nor a professional man of means in this assembly who is not a debtor, and among his creditors are, in ninety-nine cases out of 100, his workmen or his servants, to whom he owes wages for a part of a week ar a month. It has been calculated by good authority that the wages thus constantly owing for an average of half a month’s service or work amount, in the whole country, to $120,000,000. There is, then, a sum of about $1,200,000,000 owing to the laboring people and men of small means, constituting their savings. To that amount that class are creditors. And you pretend that for their benefit you will expand the currency. Gold being at 15 per cent, premium, those savings have a value of $1,020,000,000 in gold. Expand the currency until the gold premium is 30 and you have robbed those people of $180,000,000 of their savings; expand it until the gold premium is 50 and you have stripped them of $420,000,000 of hard-earned money. “ There are the pensioners of the United States, the orphans of those who died for all of us. They receive $80,000,000 a year, at present representing a gold vaiue of $25,500,000. Expand the currency until the gold premium is 30, and you have filched away $4,500,000 a year from what the Republic considers a debt of honor, and robbed the wounded and the widows and orphans of so much of their sustenance. Precious friends of the people those who, under pretense of protecting the debtor against the creditor, rob the laborers of hundreds of millions of their hard-earned savings, and despoil even those who have suffered for their country I"