Rensselaer Union, Volume 10, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 April 1878 — THE INFAMOUS RESUMPTION ACT. [ARTICLE]

THE INFAMOUS RESUMPTION ACT.

For several years tlie assertion has been made persistently that all of the gold and silver coins of the United States, and a largo proportion of tl>3 greenback currency, were locked up in tlie vaults of Wall Street brokers and being hoarded by the capitalists and wealthy corporations of the New England states; the railroad companies, the life, fire aud accident insurance companies, express companies, and similar institutions of tlie East. A class of journals and of men of various degrees of caj ae.itj and shades of honesty and prominence have made this statement very conspicuous in publications, writings and speeches' They have made use of it to play upon tlie envy and oilier selfish propensities of tlie uncultivated, uutliinking, impulsive and revengeful. With it they have labored, industriously to kindle tires of sectional jealousy, discord and hatred. They have hissed it in tlie ears of tlie laborer, the producer, the small trader, The -i4oOE.~ai:tisau and the ambitious but impecunious professional man. Tlie statement though often repeated, lias seldom, if ever, been contradicted. Either because the diilieulties to be surmounted before tlie facts could lie arrived at were so great that men were by them deterred from making an investigation, or nobody has thought - The subject one of sufficient, publie importance or general interest to employ tiieir time in tiiat direction, or for whatever reason, certain it is no refutation has been, met by those whose pleasure add industry lias been to circulate tlie assertion. They have liever been Confronted by a denial nor challenged to produce evidence. It lias been accepted as a truth, self-evi-dent and self-sustaining, by the people of the Middle, Northwestern and Southwestern states- those who inhabit the great and fertile Mississippi Valley. They have been told by sages iuid prophets aud philosophers and many other schools of philanthropists that the Resumption Act was a measure to place the Government at tlie mercy of the money dealers of the Noitheust, who had the power and the dispositon to compel her to buy their hoarded coin at an enormous premium ; and in this manner enrich themselves still more, bring disaster and humiliation upon the Government, and overwhelm with increased burdens the people of every other section of the countlyo- They declared that the resumption of specie payments was physically impossible for the Government, and absolute destruction to every Western interest. This theory and these statements were substantially ninde by numbers of tlie speakers at tlie silver meeting in Rensselaer on the 19th of last January; they have been the burden of tho argument (?) of tlie soft-money advocates —republicans, democrats and independents alike—ever since the question of resumption began to be agitated. They formed the salient features of tho Peter Cooper platform two years ago; in a grotesquely distorted condition they are found in tlie platform of tlie Indiana democracy this year; they are tlie foundation, pith, essence, heart, life of the nationals’ Toledo platform!; they were the pivotal ideas around which the Jasper county nationals feebly revolved in convention last Saturday. By this sign they declared Their, intention to conquer. With it they would be invincible. Mere is tire theory, now for a couple of singular and stubborn facts. Although tlie Government of tlie United Stutes will not begin to .redeem her promissory notes iu specie until the lapse of more than eight months; Tiblwlthstandiiig the statements ti lat tlie gold of this country is hoarded iu the Eastern commercial centers; in liefiunee of thruuieu’ing ruin ; the banks, railroad companies and manufacturing corporations of the gofdless, tributary and exhausted Mississippi Valley are 1 the first to pay out gold to their customers aud employes. It has been more than a mouth since the KtudebaUer tyfanufucturlng company at South Bend paid their mechanics, [ bookkeepers aud other workmen iu

| gold «n<J silver coins—-dollars In subVance and fact. Last week banks In the States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Missouri, the region of country that was snld to have been drained of tlie precious metals by the rapacious Shylocks of New Bnglnud, paid gold coin to their customers; paid out gold upon the chocks of customers who had deposited greenbacks and national bunk currency in their safes. Is not this an unnmalous circumstance, if the logic of the antl-reMuniptionists bo true? Is it not somewhut miraculous Unit people who have no gold ut all should be the first, and voluntarily too, to put gold into circulation ! Mr. Voorhecs thinks it is remftrliable, Dr. Ititchey thinks it singular, and the advocates of iiillatiou geuerally are surprised thereat, fed they tell us it is u trick, a decoy, an artifice in a cunningly devised conspiracy and mysterious damnable plot to plunge tire Government into destruction. It is possible ilnit the facilities enjoyed in earlier days for becoming familiar witli the details of the plots of those \ylio were conspiring to destroy the Government may fur nisi) Mr. Voorliees a clew by which he will be able to explain to us the object that bankers and other men who derive incomes through the use of their money have in view as they pay out their gold at pgr for greenbacks, when by keeping it a few months longer they might compel the Government to pay tire in a handsome premium for it. It must not be forgotten that tire people who are pursuing this unbusiness-like course, for it is unbusines.s-like if the theory of the imttonulx and anti-re-sumptionlsts be true, have been called Shylocks, sharks, and every other epithet that could be invented to denote grasping avarieiousness. They belong to a business class that are pointed at as supremely selfish. It is told Hint they have no consciences, that they hate the poor and despise tho laborer. This makes the plot, whatever it may be, doubly mysterious in its unfolding. Here we have two remarkable phenomena discovered in a plot to destroy The GovernmentTTrTeopTeUnil Have’ no gold paying out gold. 2- People who have the will and the power to embarrass the Government and oppress the poor voluntarily throwing away the means, or bestowing it upon those whom they despise, hate and seek opportunities to oppress. And there is a 'bird phenomenon connected with the operations of the resump* tion act which is equally as wonderful as either of those named. It is this: Although for five years the superhonest soft-money people and the pure unsubsidised press of - America have been industrious to tell the Shylocks of the world what an abundant harvest they would have in 1879, and what an easy prey and fat victim Miss Columbia would be at that time, and although these very, very nice people and these very, very good newspapers have been telling tliose very, very wicked money-sharks exactly the way to swindle tlie Government, the sharks will a'etually loan her fifty millions of gold at four and a half per centum interest per annum, in order to prepare her for tho “run” they design to make on her treasury! Will not the Hon. Mr. Voorhees or some eminent local financier of tlie same school, please say if this four and a half per centum interest is not also a “trick of the Shylocks to head off tlie ‘‘opposition "to the resumption act? ! > The infamous resumption act lias made greenbacks as good as gold, so that now there is no longer an 8-5-cent dollar for the operative, agriculturist, and a 100-eeiiD dollar for the banker and capitalist. .. The infamous resumption act lias made greenbacks as good as money, u quality which they had never before possessed. - The infamous resumption act has reduced the rate of interest, which the Government has to pay, from five and one-fifth per centum down to four and a half, or in the proportion of more than thirteen and live-eighths per centum. Here are three great practical benefits which the infamous resumption act tuts brought to tfte nation, long before it becomes an actual operating law; and which aro participated In and enjoyed ulike by rich and j>oor, individual and corporation, laborer and 1 capitalist, throughout the length and breudth of the Union, excluding none from its largess however humble or great, or whatever may have been their nativity, neither excepting.age, color, religion or sex. .One thing more: Tire resumption act is tlie offspring of tlie republican party; the party whose fame its loyafty to the cause of human liberty has made immortal, whose record wisdom and magnanimity have made glorious, whose policy'’and laws are resplend'ent with mercy, honesty and justice. It has been and is still'the party ofthe whole people—of tlie poor man and the rich impartially. Its policy ever lias been to elevate and ameliorate the condition of the working man, to make labor nud industry respected, to educate the poor and common people, and to protect the rights of property from the lawlessness and depredations of the indolent and vie to us.