Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 August 1876 — The Contraction of The Currency. [ARTICLE]

The Contraction of The Currency.

[Extract from Pater Cooper’s open Latter fir The panic of *7B and all the consequent distress of the industrial classes of OUT country and Us baffled enterprise is distinctly due to the contraction of the currency to this- enormous extent during the eight years preceding 1878. It stopped credit, production' and consumption, and made much* of what currency was left rush, in a panic, ts» the head money-cen-ters—as the bloodp in an apopletfc fit, rushes to the' head--where this money is now vainly seeking investment in “ firstclass security," at two per cent., whilethe country at large is palsied in its enterprises and industries' for the want of this very currency. And what was all this done for? To change the debt of the country without reducing its real amount, from a shape beneficial to'the people and incorporated as an integral part of the very life-blood of all their rising industries and their growing trade—this paper currency was turned, almost with the suddenness of k conjuration, and by the forms of an arbitrary construction of law, into another shape, twice in amount as measured by the same paper, and taxing the people interest on it in gold, to the amount of $94,684,269 per year. (See statement of the public debt, June, 1876.) And what is the specious reason tor this change? “ To retain to specie payments!” What can this policy, result in but a further distress and impoverishment of this people and the building up of the interests of a class whose business it is to invest or to lend money, and whose policy it will be to get the highest rate of interest? Such are apt to forget that the immediate gain of such a policy is far less than that which arises from the prosperity of the whole people, and the multiplication of wealth that comes from enterprise unimpeded and industry constantly employed. We may concede all that is claimed of the necessity of “specie payments,” and our currency being made on a par with gold; but this disastrous and ill-judged method of reaching specie payments, by the past and present contraction of our currency is very unjust and cruel to otir people, for it shrank the value of all property so that it could not be sold on mortgages obtained on it for more than onenaif the amount the same property would have brought three years previous, and reduced the wages of labor to the same degree. This return to “specie payments’* may be made without such injury, by honoring the currency in everyway; by making it exclusively the money as well as the legal tender of the country; by receiving it fen- all forms of taxes, duties, debts to Government, as well as the payment of all private debts; by establishing its valne on a firm basis at a fixed ana Suitable rate of interest, which it may ways find in an interconvertible bond, and by determining the volume of the currency, where the unobstructed laws of the internal trade and industry of this country may require it to be under the free use of the interconvertible bond. This great National debt ought to be held as a great trust by the Government of this people, and made the receptacle of all the trust funds and the savings of all the poor among our own people. It should be an investment put within the reach of our own people, instead of being sent abroad to swell the coffers of the rich in other countries.