Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 3.djvu/487

Rh view of the case inclines me strongly to the opinion that had Congress been courageous and strong enough to insist upon raising money by taxation instead of resorting to the expedient of an irredeemable paper money, which universally inflated all prices, the war would have cost us from one thousand to fifteen hundred millions less, and we would all be the better for it, had we never seen the glorious greenback. For this I have excellent authority. In a message approving an act to issue $100,000,000 in greenbacks, January 17, 1863, that genius of common-sense, Abraham Lincoln, spoke these memorable words, foreshadowing it all: “While giving this approval, however, I think it my duty to express my sincere regret that it has been found necessary to authorize so large an additional issue of United States notes, when this circulation and that of the suspended banks together have already become so redundant as to increase prices beyond real value, thereby augmenting the cost of living to the injury of labor, and the cost of supplies to the injury of the whole country.” There is, then, absolutely no reason for worshipping the greenback with that idolatrous adulation. We had better take a sober, common-sense view of it.

Now, suppose after the resumption of specie payment you present a greenback dollar to the Treasury, and you get a gold dollar for it, and the greenback is then canceled and destroyed, will the volume of currency be thereby contracted? Not at all. The greenback dollar has disappeared, but the gold dollar has gone in its place for circulation, and the volume of the currency remains just the same. Is there any horror about that? Will anybody lose anything by it? It is simply the substitution in the circulating medium of a gold dollar for a promise to pay. That is all. Now, suppose this operation be repeated many million times, and the greenbacks so redeemed by