Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 3.djvu/235

Rh than a continuance of the present diseased condition of uncertainty and distrust, which wastes the working energies of the people in desolate stagnation, and, like a dry rot, eats up our prosperity. And surely, even the severest cramp to which resumption might subject the economic body will be nothing compared with the universal disaster, ruin and disgrace with which the madness of inflation would inevitably overwhelm us.

Indeed, is there any choice? We shall inevitably have a resumption of specie payment sometime; if not by a careful method, embodied in well considered legislation, then surely in another way. Then we shall drift on until our present system bears its legitimate fruit; until by a destructive convulsion our paper money is swept out of existence, and, suddenly finding ourselves without any currency, except what little specie there is left in the country, we commence business again on a very small scale. But will you not then, sitting upon the wrecks of your fortunes, wistfully look back to these days and say: "Then we should have been resolute enough to do what was necessary, and all would be better now"?

I appeal once more to the farmers, the small traders, the laboring men of the land: Will you really permit the world to think you so weak-minded as to believe that the increase of paper money would be equivalent to a Government officer going round the country with a large bag full of greenbacks to put some into the hands of every one who wants them? Or that, when you have a mortgage which troubles you, or a note to pay, or desire a loan, the Government will step in and hand you the funds? Or that the Government will, by issuing more paper money, constitute itself a sort of a rich uncle, whose business and pleasure it is to keep the pockets of the boys full of cash? Surely you are too sensible to believe in so glaring an absurdity. And yet, such are the impressions those seek to create