Jasper Republican, Volume 2, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 November 1875 — Inflation Not a Means of Relief. [ARTICLE]

Inflation Not a Means of Relief.

Col. Grosvenor, under the auspices of the New York Board of Trade, gave his views Monday night at the Cooper Institute on the all-important subject of the circulating medium. Mr. George Opdyke, President of the board, introduced Col. Grosvenor. On the platform were Peter Cooper, Isaac Sherman, G. W. Amerman, George A. Shaffer, James T. Van Rensselaer, D. H. London, Benjamin H. Welles, Henry Kemp, 8. Taneda, Thomas Holland and others. The speaker’s address earnestly advocated hard money and combated the ideas of Mr. Kelley and Gen. Butler on behalf of the 3.65 bond-issue scheme. He showed clearly that the loss which must come from the issue of new greenbacks will fall upon the whole people, pressing most hardly upon those who have saved a little money, deposited perhaps in a savings bank or invested in a life insurance. He discredited the notion that the debtor class formed the larger portion of the community, and ridiculed the idea of inflation as a means of relief. Of the greenback he says: On that bit of paper hangs the honor of this great nation with 40,000,000 of freemen. In the crisis of war, when gold bonds sold for less than seventy cents on the dollar, there remained but one conceivable security which Government could give—limitation of volume. In the act of June 30,1864, the Government gave this pledge: “Nor shall the total amount of United States notes issued or to be issued ever exceed $400,000,000.” On the strength of that pledge new issues were accepted, even in those dark days. At the very first session after the war closed, Dec. 18, 1865, the House declared (Judge Kelley and 143 others voting yea and only six voting nay) “ the necessity for contraction of the currency, with a view to the resumption of specie payments.” This is the same Judge Kelley who now asserts that the legal-tender “ never was to be redeemed.”— N. Y. Expi'ess.