Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/158

146 In order to be able to pay these notes on demand when demand is made, the treasury of the United States holds a special reserve of $100,000,000 in gold coin; but the amount of notes due is in round figures $350,000,000. The United States, therefore, owes substantially $250,000,000 on demand, for which it has as yet made no specific provision either in gold coin or to any considerable extent, even in silver coin which can be made available for such payments. The remainder of its gold held in the treasury above the special reserve of $100,000,000 is either subject to payment on demand in liquidation of gold certificates of deposits, or else it constitutes a part of the necessary daily balance of money necessary to the ordinary conduct of business. The larger part, if not the whole, of the silver dollars held by the treasury are held to meet the payment of the silver certificates which have been issued against them. There are, therefore, substantially $250,000,000 of United States notes due on demand, for which no specific provision has yet been made and to the payment of which the so-called surplus revenue could now be applied. Yet the public mind has become so accustomed to the common use of a debt currency, which under a fiction of law has been declared to be lawful money by the Supreme Court of the United States, as to have lost sight of the fact that the greenback or legal-tender note is not true money, but that it is an evidence of debt to be paid. Therefore, no consideration is given to the possible application of surplus revenue, so called, to such payment of these notes now due on demand.

In order that this subject may be made clear, it becomes necessary to recur once more to the original purpose of the Government in issuing United States notes and compelling their acceptance as lawful money by means of the legal-tender act. These notes were issued in time of war for the purpose of collecting a forced loan and for no other purpose. The necessity for a forced loan has ceased; the revenue of the Government is in excess of its necessary expenditures. When the revenue derived from taxation is paid to the Government in its own notes, that forced loan, to the amount of such notes paid in, has been liquidated by way of taxation. Each note returned to the treasury in settlement of a tax becomes like a common bank-note when redeemed by the bank; it is a note paid. It is functus officio. Its reissue by the treasury of the United States is in fact the collection of a new forced loan without authority of law under any act authorizing such a new loan, without necessity, without benefit to any one, and with positive danger to the whole community.

If the executive officers of the United States were to take the ground that these notes should not be reissued when they had once been paid into the treasury of the United States in