Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 August 1876 — More Currency. [ARTICLE]

More Currency.

This is the cry afl over the country, tad especially in the West, of those who look only at tlieir own wants irrespective of the means of supplying them. There was, as shown by a recent bank statement, some seventy-three millions of currency lying Idle in the banks of this city for want of borrowers who could give fair security for its repayment. The nominal rate wasseven per cent., but much good paper was discounted at five per cent, per annnm, and even at that there was and is no adequate demand. Of what use to the country would a hundred millions more currency be if the existing supply is in excess of its legitimate business wants ? Though Government were to manufacture any amount of greenbacks it would not give them ont for nothing, but only in paying for services or supplies; ana it has enough for these purposes now. If, indeed, another civil war were to occur, that would increase its expenses a hundred feld. It could in that case keep the stamping mills going and flood the country with greenbacks till the dollar bill would be only worth forty cents in gold, as it was at one time of the war. But who wants a repetition of such a dreadful and ruinous way of making currency plenty ? Anyone who has anything to sell now can get as good a price for itln cash as the state of the market will permit, and he could not and should not get more if there were twice as much currency. If the currency were to be so inflated, indeed, that what is called a dollar in p&Ser should be really worth only half a ollar in gold, every one might think he was getting big prices or big wages, but it would amount to precisely the same result upon the average aa if each received and paid half as many gold dollars for the xame produce and labor. There would be this difference, indeed, that the gold dollar would be a permanent measure of value, whilst the paper dollar might not retain its value of fifty cents for a month. The only class which would gain lty such an iniquitous depreciation of the currency would be debtors who could pay bonds and mortgages with fifty cents on the dollar. But the gains of this class would be set off by the losses of the creditors, who. would be defrauded to an equal extent. What advantage would -ft be to the country if the Witness were enabled to pay its bondholders in a currency worth thirty or forty per cent, less than the currency now paid for the bonds. The injustice wpuld be obvious and great. Yet this [p just what Western inflationists, if they understand their own policy, are aiming at. We are thankful to be in a position where we can, without any imputation on our motives, advocate with all earnestness the earliest possible resumption of specie payments—not depreciated silver worth eighty-two cents on the dollar, but actual gold dollars worth 100 cents, or bills payable on demand in gold dollars. One other fallacy should be exposed; Namely, the assumption that any government could regulate its issues of irredeemable paper called legal-tenders, so as just to supply the business wants of the countiy. These wants vary greatly in different years and in different months of the same year, and how is Congress or the Trcasuty Department to decide that now we must call in fifty millions, and now we must let out a hundred millions ? Such a power would be ruinous to the business interests of the country, all ui which would be sitting on amine ready to explode at any moment. Politicians are able to do a vast deal of damage now in a petty larceny way, but then they would be able in older to promote party or personal interests to damage the Nation by wholesale. We do not forget that the advocates of a never-to-be-paid paper currency have a double-action, self-regulating safety-valve for a redundancy of currency on the one hand, or a deficiency cm the other, namely, the convertibility of currency into 8.65 interest bearing bonds and bonds into currency. That is changing about pieces of paper, neither of which is ever to be paid except in the other. But in the first place the interest on these bonds would be constantly requiring a fresh manufacture of currency, thus doubling the portion of the National debt held In bonds live times in a century, and of course depreciating the currency just in proportion as it increased in value beyond the wants of the country. The expenditures of the OovernmeLl would increase just in proportion as the value of its currency diminished, and it would have to issue more and more legal-tender, thus still farther depreciating its currency. All transactions with foreign countries would become difficult A Dank might have millions of legal tender notes and 3.65 bonds in its chest without being able' to pay for a bill of exchange, except by buying gold at 100 or 200 per cent, premium. It might, indeed, bny and ship wheat and cotton at two or three times the price they were worth in gold, but it would only lie able to draw bills in gold for naif or one-third of the prices it had paid. The times of Continental money, which was the scourge of this country a hundred years ago, ana which made the founders of the Republic require in the Constitution that no currency should be legalised except gold and silver coin, would just be brought back again.— N. Y. Witness.

A boy at the “West End” had a birthday party. A six-year-old guest thus describes it to his mother: ‘‘First we all had some bread and butter. Then we had some lemonade cold enough to freeze you. Then we all had a piec* of birthday cake. Then we all had a lot of Ice-cream; and then all the little boys had the stomachache. The big girl* told us to go into the house and lie down on the floor, and they made us drink peppermint and water until we felt better. Then we all went out to play.” —Boston Paper. The Albany Law Journal furnishes some of the freshest specimens of forensic wit, to'‘the cultivation of which the hot weather does not seem to be very favorable: “A lawyer by the name of Frean (pronounced Fraln) Is a number of the bar in one of the counties in this State, and Mr. Croak is the Diafrict-Attorney. During a discussion on some subject the District. Attorney wished Mr. F. ‘tore/V-an* from any other remarks.’ Mr. F. (promptly), ‘I will when you stop Croaking.’ *’