Jasper Republican, Volume 2, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 November 1875 — Hon. Carl Sehurz on the Effects of “More Money.” [ARTICLE]

Hon. Carl Sehurz on the Effects of “More Money.”

Can that he “the people’s money” whose value in the people’s hands is apt to vanish into nothing and is sure to vanish into nothing if much more of it is issued? A paper money of ever-changing value as tbe principal element is not a game for the laboring man, the poor man, to play. In that game only those win who deal. Who does not know when the crisis in 1873 came that work stopped and wages went down a good while before the cost oi living did ? And who had to lose the difference ? The laboring man. Of all agencies which human ingenuity can invent there is none that so insidiously robs human labor of its earnings and makes the fortunes of the poor man the football of the rich as a currency of fluctuating value. Who will deny that when the depreciation of such a currency drives up prices the laboring man’s wages rise last and least? Who will deny that when the bubbles of paper speculation burst the laboring man’s earnings are Gat down first and lowest? Is our country an exception to the rule ? The least reflection will certainly convince you that, whatever our financial policy may be, whether there be much or little money, he who wants to get it must earn it The capitalist will gain it by profitable investments, the trader by buying and selling, the farmer by raising crops, the laborer by the work of his hand. Nobody will get it for nothing. But if under all circumstances you must gain it by hard work must you not see that it is manifestly for your interest to have money the value of which is certain ? Let me tell the laboring men that they have no more heartless enemies than those pretended friends who, with artful catch-words playing upon their credulity, seek to make them believe that they possess the secret of alchemy with which to create wealth out of nothing, and with that nothing to make those happy who serve their purposes. If their schemes, unfortunately, should prevail, then the time will surely come for their poor victims to curse the day when they foolishly followed such treacherous counsel, and curse the men who administered it.

Suppose they succeed in their scheme; suppose, by inflation, the speculating fever be revived, and they not only get rid of their liabilities, but make millions of profit on their gambling enterprises, who will lose the millions they gain ? Who will pay the cost ? Not the victims alone, who are foolish enough to take the speculating enterprises off their hands, and then are caught by the final crash inevitably to come. Such victims would, perhaps, deserve their fate. No, the cost would be paid by the laboring men of the country, whom the depreciation of the currency would plunder of the difference between the rise of the prices of necessaries and the rise of wages. The cost would be paid by the industrious and frugal, whose deposited savings would he robbed of their value; by the pensioners, the disabled soldiers, the widows and orphans of the slain, whose slender incomes would be despoiled of their power to buy bread; by every honest man in the land, who would suffer in the game of over-reaching which the inflated currency would bring with it.