Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/504

484 of business on which they are based are wholly different. The true test, as I stated it, stands therefore absolutely unimpeached by it.

But I am met with the assertion that in some sections of the country a scarcity of money is sometimes actually felt by legitimate business. That has undoubtedly been so at certain periods. I showed the other day by numerous and impartial market reports that in the business centers of the country money is at present in abundance, if not in superabundance. There has been much excited squirming about this fact on the part of the advocates of inflation, and attempts were made to deny it, but the evidence was so overwhelming that at last gentlemen took refuge in the assumption that this abundance of money in the business centers of the country was owing to the expansion of the currency by the drafts that have been made upon the $44,000,000 reserve, and that assertion was put forward in a somewhat triumphant manner.

A single statement will suffice to show the falsity of that assertion. On the 15th of February, 1873, the outstanding greenbacks amounted to $356,000,000, of which the banks in the three cities of New York, Boston and Philadelphia held $63,797,982. On the 16th of February, 1874, the outstanding greenbacks amounted to $381,327,327, of which the same banks in Philadelphia, New York and Boston held $87,228,654. The currency had been inflated to the amount of $25,327,327, and three cities—New York, Boston and Philadelphia—had absorbed the whole of the increase with the exception of $1,896,645. This shows that almost the whole increase remained in three cities in the East, and the States of Rhode Island and Connecticut, with their great banking establishments, are not even taken into account. A large portion of the balance undoubtedly remained there, so that probably something far short of a million has gone