Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 3.djvu/474

448 in your business transactions, will appear as one of the most absurd and childish conceptions the human brain has ever been guilty of.

At last, when your fiat dollar, having been made very plenty to accommodate the people, has run down so low in its purchasing power, and cut so sorry a figure in the inevitable comparison with gold, that you begin to grow uneasy about it, you remember that it is based upon the wealth of the American people, and that some forty or fifty thousand millions' worth of property stand as mortgage security behind it. Of course, with such security, the fiat dollar ought to be worth its face in gold, and thus you may think of foreclosing that mortgage on the wealth of the country. Maybe you are a laboring man who have some money in a savings bank, which formerly was worth enough to buy a little house with, but in its fiat condition, money being plenty, appears just sufficient to pay for a jack-knife. You may go to the next best public building to see whether you can find any of the wealth of the country there, which is security for your fiat money, to lay your hands upon. I would not, however, advise you to seize upon a specific article of property as part of the wealth of the country, for you would be in danger of being arrested and put in jail for larceny. The wealth of the country, although it is security for your fiat money, cannot be handled in that way. You may think it best to present your fiat money to the Secretary of the Treasury who must be presumed to be a sound fiat man, and knows what the mortgage on the wealth of the country means. You ask him to give you good dollars for the bits of fiat paper you present, or so much of the wealth of the country as required to make that fiat paper worth something. What will be the answer? “My dear sir, you desire good dollars; these are good dollars; they are the only dollars we have. The Government has not promised you anything else.