Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 3.djvu/206

180 out new greenbacks, with the prospect of a large emission, the greenbacks will rapidly depreciate as to gold; and as the bonds are payable principal and interest in gold, they will maintain their gold value, and their price in paper money will thereby become so high that the method of putting out greenbacks by purchasing bonds will soon become very unpopular and be dropped. Or, if you mean to repudiate the bonds, of which, as I understand, there is at present no declared purpose, then, of course, you will simply repudiate them, and not buy them up at all.

But there is another way to put afloat new issues of greenbacks; it is by carrying the expenses of the Government beyond its revenues, and this, I have no doubt, will be resorted to as the favorite method. Do you know what that means? Imagine a Congress making appropriations of money for the avowed purpose of getting out, putting afloat, spending, as much money as possible, adopting systematic extravagance in expenditures as a necessary measure of financial policy to the end of “making and keeping the volume of currency equal to the wants of trade.” What a day of jubilee there will be among the thieves and rascals, who think they can gain not only wealth, but respectability, by stealing as much as possible of the public money! Let it be known that ditches must be dug, that embankments must be thrown up, that mountains must be tunneled, that railroads and steamboat lines must be subsidized, for the very purpose of spending money that “the volume of the currency be made and kept equal to the wants of trade,”—what a harvest of jobs, what a crop of rings this blessed country will bear! What a glorious time for enterprising contractors, what a seductive season for Congressmen to help a friend for a little share in the profits, what a carnival of fraud, what a flying about of stray millions! For, mind