Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 July 1884 — JAMES G. BLAINE [ARTICLE]

JAMES G. BLAINE

His Resumption Record Malignity a. Overreaching Itself. [From the Boston Journal.] Every man who remembers political events must know that Mr. Blaine was pne of the foremost advocates of specie resumption and honesty in financial affairs. As long ago as 1868, when Mr. Pendleton proposed to pay the Government bonds by issues of greenbacks, Mr. Blaine, as Chairman of the Maine Republican Committee, caused a special circular to be cast broadcast over that State, and was criticised for so doihg. When the resumption act was passed it was not discussed in the House, so that all the expression of opinion on the subject is to be found in the roll-call. It was strictly a party measure, reported on and passed first by the Senate by a strict party vote, such men as Bayard voting against it. In the House its passage was resisted by Democratic leaders, and the roll-call shows that several Massachusetts members voted against it because it was not sufficiently strenuous to meet their approval, and Gen. Butler voted the same way because he did not believe in specie resumption at all. Mr. Blaine did not vote because the Speaker of the House rarely votes. He was known by his friends to be heartily in favor of the measure. The next Congress was Democratic, and it was given out that the Democrats would undertake to repeal the resumption act. Hearing of this, Mr. Blaine, before the new Congress met in December, 1875, prepared an elaborate speech in favor of resumption and against inflation, to be delivered on the first occasion that offered. Before that speech -was delivered an enemy stole a copy of it, and it was published in advance of its delivery in one or two papers. Jan. 10, 1876, in committee of the whole, Mr. Blaine delivered his speech. It fills over three close columns of the Journal. It is unnecessary to quote much of it, but the following sentences will show where Mr. Blaine stood at the very outset of the fight for the resumption of specie payments: The honor of the National Government and the prosperity of the American people are alike menaced by those who demand the perpetuation of an Irredeemable paper currency, lor more than two years the country has been suffering from the protration of business; confidence returns but slowly; trade revives only partially; and to-day, with capital unproductive and labor unemployed, we flrd ourselves in the midst of an agitation respecting the medium with which business transactions shall be carried on. Until that question is definitely adjusted,it is idle to expect the full measure of prosperity to which the energies of our people ana the resources of the land entitle u£ as to the value of the currency from day to day is injurious to every honest industry. And, while that which is known as the debtor class should be fairly and generously considered in the shaping of measures for specie resumption, there is no justice in asking for inflation on its behalf. Rather, there is the gravest injustice; for you must remember that there is a large class of deserving people who would be continually and remorselessly robbed by such a policy. I mean the labor of the country that is compelled to live from and by its daily earnings. >,. . There is not a cotton plantation in the South, not a grain or grazing farm in the West, not acoal pit or iron furnace in Pennsylvania and Ohio, not a manufacturer in New- England, not a shipyard on the Atlantic coast, not a lumber camp from Penobscot to the Columbia, not a mile of railway between the two oceans that would not feel the quickening, gainful influence of a final and general acquiescence in measures looking to specie resumption. . -

I am told, Mr. Chairman, in tones of most solemn warning, that this county is not able to maintain its paper money at par with coin. Sir, I reject the suggestion with scorn! and it seems to me if 1 could be persuaded of its truth I should be ashamed to rise in the American Congress and proclaim it. . . . It would be an unpardonable moral weakness in our people—always heroic when heroism is demanded—to doubt their own capacity to maintain specie payments. . . . To-day we are suffering from timidity of capital, and so long as the era of doubt and uncertainty prevails, that timidity will continue to Increase. Steps toward inflation will make it chronic. ... In any event, Mr. Chairman, whatever we may do or whatever we may leave undone on this wtjole financial question, let us not delude ourselves that we can escape a specie standard. No nation has ever succeeded in establishing any other standard of value. No nation has ever made the experiment except at great cost and sorrow, and the advocates of irredeemable money to-day are but asking us to travel the worn and weary road traveled so many times before—a road that has always ended in disaster, and often in disgrace. This speech was widely commented on. Indeed, the Nation, which was edited by one Of the present editors of the New York Evening Post, the paper which told all inquirers that it could not find that Mr. Blaine had any resumption record, and repeated the statement after the Journal had called attention to it in the issue of Feb. 17, 1876, quotes Mr. Blaine as declaring that “the policy of the Republican party is to get back to specie payments by a firm and consistent course.” The only occasion in the House when Mr. Blaine had an opportunity to vote against the repeal of the resumption act was Jan 17,1876, when Mr. Holman presented a resolution declaring for its repeal. Mr. Blaine, with all of the Republicans except four, voted against the resolution. Columns of extracts might be given from Mr. Blaine’s speeches during the period that specie resumption was threatened to show that he was one of the ablest and stanchest champions of that measure. The course of the papers which have raised this issue fitly illustrates the methods which his foes have adopted to defeat Mr. Blaine. Either of the papers named could easily have ascertained Mr. Blaine’s record on specie resumption. Indeed, it is difficult to believe that the intelligent men who write and supervise the editorial work of those journals can be so ignorant of current political history as to declare that they do not know that Mr. Blaine was in favor of the resumption act. Their course in this respect is in keeping with that which his foes are pursuing. They will stop at nothing which unscrupulous malignity can suggest It is “anything to beat Blaine.” In this case malignity has put on the dunce’s cap.