People's Pilot, Volume 6, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 September 1896 — The Bond Issue. [ARTICLE]

The Bond Issue.

The recent issue of 262 millions of bonds in time of peace illustrates another serious evil of the present monetary system. The necessity the government is under of redeeming greenbacks in gold upon demand enables scheming men to draw large amounts of gold 'from the treasury and then sav to the government* *‘Your reserve is getting low; you must have gold or you will be in danger of failure to keep your promise in respect to specie payments—issue bonds and get the gold back again.” So the schemers get bonds for their gold, sell the bonds at a premium, take the greenbacks they get for the bonds and draw the gold out of the treasury again, till the government is frightened into a new issue of bonds, and so on in an endless chain, with a premium profit for Wall Street on every issue of bonds, and nothing but accumulating debt for the nation. When bonds aije issued in time of war the government gets a substantial equivalent, but these millions of bonds that are issued to keep up the gold reserve have secured to the people nothing at all of any real worth to them. The speculators lender ao service to the government—they simply draw out gold in order to speculate on the bonds that would be issued to get it back. The government might start with thirty millions of gold in the treasury and, through the repetition of the above process, issue a billion of bonds, and at the end be just where it started, with thirty millions of gold in the treasury, and not a thing to show for the billion of debt but the keeping of a foolish promise that i£ of little advantage to any one except the schemers who have-found out how to gear it to a bond-printine press and make it turn the people’s millions into their coffers as fast as they dare to turn on the current. Prof. Frank Parsons, of Boston University, in October Arena.