Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/159

Rh of a tax, except under a specific act of Congress authorizing the collection of a new loan—i. e., without an act being now passed authorizing a new loan of money, for which purpose a specific act is required on the part of Congress under the existing statutes—could Congress itself compel the Executive to reissue these notes even as the laws now stand? Could Congress meet the case by a mere mandatory act, instructing the treasurer to reissue the notes, without passing an act for borrowing money or for negotiating a new loan on the terms named in these notes?

If not, then, so far as the excess of revenue received by the treasury of the United States over and above its necessary expenditures under the appropriations made by Congress consists of legal-tender notes, such notes cease to be money when they come back into the treasury. They no longer constitute a surplus; they are simply evidences of a demand debt which has been paid.

What objection is there to this course being taken? Simply this: Under a fiction of law, sustained by a decision of the Supreme Court, these evidences of debt have become a part of the circulating medium—i. e., a part of that which is used as money in that portion of the transactions of the people in which actual money is required; also, under the provisions of the bank act, these notes may constitute a part of the bank reserves held by them to meet their obligations when demand is made upon them for payment in money. Why should banks not be required to hold coin only for that purpose?

Upon what ground can a rich and prosperous nation hold to the belief that it can not afford to pay its debt due on demand lest it should be unable to supply itself with real money in place of this mock-money which has been forced into circulation under the stress of war and under an alleged necessity which has ceased? The instruments of exchange or currency which serve the purpose of money in the United States now consist of seven different kinds, viz., gold coin of full legal tender; Government certificates of gold coin; silver dollars of full legal tender; Government certificates payable in silver dollars; legal-tender notes redeemable on demand and receivable for taxes; national-bank notes convertible on demand into lawful money on presentation at the banks; subsidiary coin of limited legal tender.

The proportion of the transactions of the country in which actual money of either of these seven kinds is necessarily used, constitutes but a very small fraction of the transactions of all kinds. A vast proportion, far exceeding ninety per cent of all the transfers, bargains, sales of goods, stock, and real estate, are liquidated and settled by the use of checks, bills of exchange