Carl Schurz

“ On the other hand, there are multitudes of men in active politics who, while honestly wishing to maintain the gold standard, and while painfully sensible of the perils caused in the past by the pouring of greenbacks into the Treasury for redemption in gold, as well as of the possibility of the recurrence in the future of such perils in times of business distrust, still nervously recoil from any remedy of which anything looking to the direct or indirect retirement of the government paper money or the substitution of bank-notes for Treasury paper forms part. ”

“ But are these notions stronger or more popular than was during the first years after the civil war the notion that the government bonds should be paid off in depreciated greenbacks? Are they stronger or more popular than was during the early seventies the notion that the people could be made rich by multiplying the issues of irredeemable paper money, that the resumption of specie payments meant contraction of the currency, that this contraction by way of resuming specie payments would ruin the debtor class, and that it must therefore be prevented at any cost? ”

“ Can it not be conclusively shown by facts and figures that the legal-tender notes, such as they are, have cost the people infinitely more by the commotions, and uncertainties, and distrusts, and disasters their relation to the Treasury has caused, than the interest on the same amount of bonds would have cost; that they have thus proved an immensely expensive sort of currency; that contraction is not hurtful but beneficial when it consists in the retirement of redundant currency not needed by the business of the country ”

“ It is this moral poltroonery that inspires — of course not all — but very many of the arguments advanced by sound-money Republicans in favor of maintaining the greenback circulation in any event — arguments sometimes so piteously illogical that they can be explained only on the hypothesis of nervous agitation. ”

“ And because they believe the people to entertain such notions, politicians, especially members of Congress, in most instances anxiously accommodate themselves to the popular prejudice or even foster it, lest they lose their popularity and their chances of preferment, or lest their party be weakened in popular favor. ”