Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 3.djvu/215

Rh enemy, coolly asks you to believe that there is not currency enough in the country to permit the purchase of bonds as a basis for further national-bank issues. When I read such things I do not know what to admire most: the audacity of the inventors or the pitiable weakness of the invention.

But the absurdity of that statement appears in its full glory when we look at all the circumstances of the case. Not only did the business of the country not show that it needed more, when it refused to issue more in spite of its opportunities, but it proved that it had more than it needed by surrendering a large portion of the bank currency in circulation. On the 1st of July of this year new currency had been issued to new and old banks, amounting to $7,780,000; but, according to a letter addressed to me by the Comptroller of the Currency, $23,579,134 of legal-tender notes have been deposited with the Treasurer for the purpose of retiring national-bank notes under the act of June 20, 1874, while under the redemption system created by the same act over $4,000,000 of national-bank notes have been retired—by far the largest part of this reduction taking place in the West and South, which, we are told, were starving for more circulation. By the 15th of September that figure had risen to nearly twenty-nine millions. How is this? The business of the country, as they tell us, suffering most terribly for want of currency, and that same business of the country not only not accommodating itself by issuing more when it has an opportunity, but voluntarily surrendering many millions of what it has.

Let the Enquirer explain. Perhaps that exponent of inflation wisdom will say now that we have not currency enough, to keep us from giving up that which we have got.

But there are the facts. There is contraction; not