Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 3.djvu/227

Rh upon their guard. Knowing that the expansion of the currency will subject their out standings to progressive depreciation they will at once seek to anticipate that event. They will use every means in their power to get hold of their money, or, without mercy, clutch the property that secures it, and foreclosures, executions, sheriff's sales will be the order of the day. The creditor, to save himself, will appear in his most relentless temper, and in thousands of cases the debtor, thus getting rid of his indebtedness, together with his property, in the manner most disastrous to him, will have reason to curse those who pretended to relieve him by “making and keeping the volume of the currency equal to the wants of trade.”

But I am sure that it is not from that class of honest debtors that the cry for inflation comes. It is another set of men of different character. I know them, for I have seen them haunting the lobbies of Congress and the avenues of the Capital when the financial question was under discussion and I am sure you have seen them here among the most clamorous advocates of inflation. I do not point to the political demagogue alone, who seeks to make some capital for himself by joining what he believes a popular cry. But I mean the disappointed speculators, who, instead of following the path of frugal and steady industry, tried quickly to get rich on their wits, by getting up large financial operations on a small capital of their own or on borrowed money, and who finding themselves baffled by an unfavorable turn of things, and involved in heavy liabilities, now want “the people's money” to help them out of the lurch and to pay their bills. Here it is a speculation in city lots; there a paper town at a river mouth or a railroad junction; then again a large operation in coal lands, or silver mines, or fancy stock or what not. What they desire, is by a large expansion of the currency, to plunge the country once