Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/547

Rh “there are many persons in the United States who want money; the difficulty is, of course, there is not money enough to go around. What is to be done? Inasmuch as we make money by printing it, let us print more until it will go around.” But you may say: “Mr. Tatum——

Mr. . Was not Tatum a hard-money man?

Mr. . No; unfortunately he was not. I will show the Senator what he was; and, in fact, the Senator himself has heard him quite frequently.

You might say: “Mr. Tatum, these bits of money are not proper money at all; they are promises to pay money; and the more you print of them the less they will be worth, and the less they are worth the less you can do with them in business; you cannot make the country rich in that way.” Such talk would not trouble old Tatum at all. He would laugh right in your face. “Do we not call these paper notes dollars?” old Tatum would say. “Are they not dollars? Cannot I read it with my spectacles in big print upon them, one dollar, ten dollars, one hundred dollars? and is not the country better off when it has fifteen hundred millions of these dollars than when it has only seven hundred and fifty millions of them? Ah, you can't fool old Tatum, I tell you.”

Neither would the question of interest give old Tatum the least trouble in the world. He would settle it with the same ease with which the Senator from Indiana settled it the other day. He would say: “Money is capital; do you not call it so? And these paper dollars are money; do we not call them so? therefore these paper dollars are capital. Must not everybody see that?” You see old Tatum is a logician. “Now,” old Tatum would continue, “when these paper dollars are plenty, then capital is cheap, and you can hire it at a low rate of interest; when these paper dollars are scarce, then of course” he would say, “capital is dear and you would have to pay much more