Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 3.djvu/236

210 who, as advocates of inflation, call themselves the special champions of the laboring man and the poor.

The least reflection will certainly convince you that, whatever our financial policy may be, whether there be much or little money, he who wants to get it must earn it. The capitalist will gain it by profitable investments, the trader by buying and selling, the farmer by raising crops, the laborer by the work of his hand. Nobody will get it for nothing. But, if, under all circumstances, you must gain it by hard work, must you not see that it is manifestly for your interest to have money the value of which is certain? Must it not be clear to you that, while the capitalist may operate with money of changing value to his advantage, you with money whose purchasing power may dwindle in your hands to less and less and, maybe, finally to nothing must always be the losers in the game? Are there not many among you who remember that in the times of wild-cat banks, in working for such money, they worked not unfrequently for nothing? And does it not occur to you that if the inflation scheme prevails, the same thing may, nay, surely will, happen to you also? For do not indulge in any delusion about it, the gambling in which an irredeemable currency, a paper money of ever-changing value, is the principal element, is not a game for the laboring man, the poor man, to play. In that game only those win who deal.

An attempt is made to deceive you with a well sounding catchword. They call gold the bondholders money, and our irredeemable paper money “the people's money.” Can that be “the people's money” whose value in the people's hands is apt to vanish into nothing, and is sure to vanish into nothing if much more of it is issued? I, too, am in favor of a people's money, but it is of another kind. No, it is not right that the people should have a money of less value than the bondholder. It should be