Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 3.djvu/198

172 the Pacific Ocean.” And he sagely proceeds to stow his away in an old stocking or an earthen pot under the bed, for circulation; for, if he lends his money to anybody, or pays it out in a business transaction, the man who gets it, if it is a considerable quantity, will forthwith deposit it in a bank, and even if paid out in small sums, it will eventually get there.

Yes, this is a perverse age when people will insist upon depositing their money in banks. “Now,” Governor Allen will say, “this experiment not having answered, the great mass of this new issue of greenbacks having gone into the banks, or which is the same thing, into the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, of course, we must issue more greenbacks, and more and more, until the money stays out of the banks.” And, finally, Governor Allen would accomplish his purpose—that is, when the greenbacks will have become so utterly worthless that it will no longer be of any use to deposit them in banks at all. Then, I suppose, the greenbacks would, in his sense, be “better than cornstalks”; they would, at last, “serve the purposes of money and currency,” and really “circulate as a medium,” according to Governor Allen's enlightened financial conception.

This would, as Governor Allen gives us to understand, be “making and keeping the volume of the currency equal to the wants of trade,” in pursuance of the Ohio platform. I desired to prove that the Ohio platform means inflation. Will any follower of Governor Allen deny it yet?

But, O citizens of Ohio, I ask you now in all soberness, would it not be a burning shame for the people of so great a State, an intelligent, educated people, at a critical moment, when so much depends upon their decision, to designate a man, who claims their votes just because he is the exponent of such a policy, as their chosen chief, thus putting the seal of their approbation upon financial