Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 3.djvu/464

438 true or not that when, under the pressure of war necessities an irredeemable paper money was issued, and gold and silver done away with, all of you thought it a great danger, fraught with misfortune? Surely you cannot fail to remember this. What was it that made you all regret so much the disappearance of coin money and the substitution of an irredeemable paper currency for it? Simply the instinctive feeling that when you had a gold dollar in your pocket you knew what you had, but when you had an irredeemable paper dollar you didn't. And that apprehension has been justified by subsequent events. You may tell me that for ten years after the first heavy emissions of the paper legal-tenders in 1863 you prospered. That is true—at least it looked so. But in 1873 the fearful day arrived when the balance sheet was struck, and where were you then? All of a sudden the balloon burst, and we came to the ground so heavily that our bones are still aching. And I repeat that this collapse was not brought about by a contraction of the paper currency. I have sufficiently shown, by proving with official figures, that for the five years preceding the crash the currency had been, not contracted, but steadily expanded until in 1876 there were over fifty-six millions more of it out than in 1869.

You will remember, also, that during that whole period of so-called prosperity it was as if an evil conscience had haunted the American people on account of that very paper money; that for years following the close of the war every political convention, every meeting of merchants, every respectable board of trade or chamber of commerce declared and resolved again and again that the country must rid itself of the curse of an irredeemable and fluctuating paper currency; that every consideration of National honor, of good policy and business interest demanded a speedy return to the specie basis. As late as