Carl Schurz

“ When the banks of the country possess these qualities, they are a blessing to the business community worth untold millions year after year. When the banks do not possess these qualities they are the source of infinite distrust and restlessness; for then business walks as if on a thin crust of ice, in danger of breaking through every moment. You all know this. Now compare the State-bank system as it existed before the war with our national-bank system as it exists now, and what do you find? ”

“ To decree by law that the proportion of value between silver and gold shall be and remain as sixteen to one, or fifteen and a half to one or whatever figures you may adopt, while the bullion value of silver in the commerce of the world is constantly fluctuating, would be like making a law that the water in your river shall never rise above, and never fall below a certain water mark. ”

“ No man can make an investment, no merchant can sell or buy a lot of goods on time, no manufacturer can accept an order, no contractor can make a contract for a railroad or building, without Congress having it in its power to determine their profit or their loss, by regulating the volume, and consequently the value, of the currency, up or down. Can Congress, can any body of legislators, be depended upon to exercise so tremendous a power with wisdom? ”

“ If in 1865, after the war was closed, the Government had possessed some power of sorcery to transform overnight without pain to anybody our irredeemable paper currency into a money system based upon the precious metals, is there a single individual in the United States who would not have clapped his hands for satisfaction and joy to be thus rid of the decayed tooth and to feel once more like a well man? ”

“ It has become the fashion of many politicians and public agitators to cry out against the bondholders, and thus to excite a prejudice against the bond, which is an embodiment of National faith. The bondholders are represented as a set of “bloated” individuals residing down East or in foreign countries, who bought their bonds at thirty-five or forty cents on the dollar and now demand one hundred cents and high interest in gold. Thus the bondholder is pictured as a sort of criminal bloodsucker, who, with cold-blooded cruelty, fattens upon the sufferings of a downtrodden people. ”

“ You see how little reason there is under the specie payment system to fear contraction as a cause of financial disturbance and depression. And it is very much to be regretted that the vague apprehensions produced by a diligent parading of that same bugbear has misled so many well-meaning men into the support of inconsistent and dangerous measures of legislation. The less the Government has to do with the volume of the paper currency, the better that volume will regulate itself, and the less shall we hear, and the less will the people be afraid of contraction as the source of all human ills. ”

“ The fiat dollar will not promise anything, and just that is the beauty of it. According to the fiat money doctors, it was the weakness of the greenback, that it promised something. The fiat dollar does not promise anything, for it is in itself the performance of the promise—it is a dollar. The fiat money promises nothing beyond itself, for it does away with all other things. Gold and silver are antiquated stuff, entirely unsuitable for this progressive age and country. The fiat money once out, gold and silver will no more be thought of. ”

“ But whether there be or not, let the solemn duty of this hour unite all patriotic men in an earnest and active endeavor to prove that the American people are an honest people, scrupulously faithful to their National obligations, and a wise people, who, although not always exempt from temporary gusts of excitement and the invasion of erroneous doctrines, yet at last always follow the dictates of calm judgment and sovereign common-sense. ”

“ I have no doubt that when this crisis is successfully passed, the laboring man will be the first to acknowledge that those who defended honest money, even against his own errors, were the truest defenders of his interests.
But at present the duty of the hour calls upon every patriotic man for an honest effort to put an end to the senseless and destructive agitation which prevents the revival of business and the return of prosperity. There is scarcely a sane man in the country who will not admit that at some time the restoration of the specie system must come. ”

“ The sense of honor of a nation is the source of its credit, and its credit is one of its best paying investments.
The second prerequisite of a revival of business and prosperity I stated to be a sound currency, a currency of real and stable value. Let me put to any thinking man in this assembly, be he farmer, or laborer, or tradesman, or merchant, or banker, or manufacturer, a plain, simple question, and ask for a candid answer. ”

“ You speak of saving to the people the interest on the bonds deposited by the national banks by the destruction of this system, and you call it economy; you call it economy to wipe out this safe system and substitute for it, as would inevitably be the case, the old State banks again, with their wildcat and yellow-dog currency, which robbed the people by the wholesale. You might just as well call it economy to abolish your paid fire department, and intrust your property again to the boys who run with the machine, because the paid fire department costs something. ”

“ The Government has nothing to do with it but to see that the coin struck in its mints be of the prescribed standard value; it prevents and punishes counterfeiting; it regulates the banking system, so as to make it safe, and then it lets currency and trade in their relations take care of themselves, without assuming any arbitrary control over volume and value. These are the simple principles of a sound money system under which business can regain confidence in itself and prosperity will revive. ”

“ You yourselves admit that the value of your irredeemable paper currency will depend upon its volume. Congress is to fix that volume, and by increasing or diminishing it, Congress is therefore to determine what every dollar in the land shall be worth. The value of every piece of property, of every article of merchandise, of every private fortune, of every chance the contractor has in his contract, of every dollar the laboring man has in the savings bank or the merchant on deposit, will be at the mercy of the Congress of the United States. ”

“ The very fact that Congress is to dispose of so tremendous an interest by mere legislative act cannot fail to have a most disquieting and enervating influence upon the business of the country. Are we not all witnesses to the fact that for years, during every session of Congress, the whole business community stood on tiptoe, with fear and trepidation, lest some tinkering genius in Congress should get up and push through some measure interfering with all their business calculations and arrangements? ”

“ Every business man knows better than that. Nearly $150,000,000 of 4 per cent. bonds have, within two years, been sold. They are scattered all over the country, especially the West; and who owns them? Mostly small people, who consider the Government funds a better depository for their savings than the savings banks, and who thus invested in small amounts, from $50 upward. You honest farmer or laboring man, who put your little surplus into a Government security, are you aware that you have sunk down to the level of the bloated bloodsuckers, who fatten upon the sweat of the people? ”

“ But it is not the only question whether such a power is likely to be wisely exercised or not. The question is whether any Government should be intrusted with so tremendous, so far-reaching, so tyrannical an authority at all. Oh! my Democratic friends, who pretend to be so jealous of the power of the General Government, how are you fallen from the high estate of your ancient principles, that you should now be willing to give to that General Government the power to dispose of every citizen's private fortune. ”

“ But while we have the National debt will it not be well to put it to the best use we can? When at last, after twenty-five or thirty years, we have paid it off until we come down to the last four hundred millions, will it not then be time enough to discuss whether it may be best to pay off that little amount too, or to keep it as a basis for bank circulation? ”

“ After a while it will turn out that a million of men engaged in active warfare have consumed and destroyed wealth, but not produced any; that a railroad running from Point Nowhere to Point Nowhere can not pay dividends until it has passengers and freight to carry; that the value of real estate does not depend upon the imagination of its owner, but upon the use that can be made of it; that corner lots in paper towns, where nobody lives and nobody intends to live, will not bear heavy mortgages; that articles of industry produced beyond actual demand will become a drug in the market ”

“ They thought there must be some artificial remedy to cure it within the reach of human ingenuity. That the results of the unproductive consumption, the improvident wasting of wealth, can be cured only by the production of real wealth in a slow and steady way, did not strike them as promising in their case. They wanted some quicker and more ingenious method of getting rich again. Like the alchemists of the middle ages, they thought there must be some way to make gold out of dross. The first thing that struck them as promising was an inflation of our greenback currency. ”

“ Even most of the very men who advocated inflation as a means of temporary relief loudly protested that the restoration of specie payments was their ultimate aim. And why all this? Whence this almost universal concurrence? Simply because every candid man admitted to himself that this country would have to rest; that there could be no confidence in our economic movements; that there could be no firm and safe foundation for National prosperity until our money system should be based again upon the rock of precious metals ”

“ Is there an individual in this broad land who, from the foundation of the National banking system to this day, ever hesitated a single moment to take a national-bank note at its face value, no matter in what corner of the country the note was issued? You know there is not. Is it not true that business men deposit their money, as a general thing, in national banks with a greater sense of security than they ever felt with regard to any other banking system? ”

“ Can it be that there are men in this State ready to shed blood in order to escape the dreadful chance of exchanging their greenback for a gold dollar? If there are indeed persons who give such counsel, and victims so violently demented, the delirium must have reached a phase where it is impossible to draw the line between the sublime and the ridiculous. ”

“ Can the national banks be called a monopoly? Monopolies are exclusive, and national banking is free to any person in the land who has money to invest. There is, then, a monopoly of which everybody can become a party and beneficiary. There are at present 208,000 shareholders in the national banks in the United States. More than one-half of them hold shares to the amount of $1000 and less. They are presumably people of limited means, who have thus invested their little surplus. And any five of you, if you can raise the necessary capital, may, under the laws, organize a national bank. ”

“ That a man thoroughly wedded to the irredeemable paper mania should make such a platform his own, I can understand. But how a man, who thinks the resumption of specie payments at all desirable, can adopt it, is to me utterly incomprehensible. For any intelligent mind will see at a glance that its execution will render resumption absolutely impossible, and perpetuate the regime of an irredeemable paper currency for an indefinite period. ”

“ Our inflation friends may not relish that kind of reasoning; but what have you to answer? Those who know me will bear me witness that I have never hesitated to criticise those in power for things I thought wrong; but I candidly think to charge those in power with having brought on the crisis of 1873 by a contraction of the currency would be just as reasonable as to make them responsible for the equinoctial storms, or for the depredations of the locusts in the West. ”

“ You all will agree that we do not want more currency than the requirements of business demand. For every greenback dollar withdrawn and held back by the Treasury a coin dollar will unfailingly appear in circulation, if that dollar is demanded for circulation by the requirements of business. It will either come out of the Treasury, and stay in circulation, or, in obedience to the same law which makes water flow down hill, it will come from some part of the world where it has less profitable employment, or its place will be supplied by bank emissions always ready to fill a gap. ”

“ The best thing we can do after such a collapse is quietly to gather up our five senses and go to work like men to repair our shattered fortunes. And how can these shattered fortunes be repaired? First, by recognizing the errors of our ways and discarding all self-deceptions and delusions; by remembering that our wealth must consist in what we produce and have, and not in what we dream of; by abstaining, consequently, from all windy schemes to make ourselves rich by printing the word dollar upon a piece of paper ”

“ Why, gentlemen, no assembly of human beings, even if you get together the shrewdest financiers in the world has ever been found wise enough to determine how much money the business of a great country needs in its multifarious fluctuations. But if so awful a power should fall into the hands of such financiers as made this Ohio platform—then let us devoutly pray that the Lord preserve us. ”

“ Why, gentlemen, the idea is so utterly childish and preposterous, that every sane man who ever thought of it must blush with shame at his own folly, when he calmly inquires into the full meaning and consequences of the proposition. Certainly no man of common-sense need be told that under such circumstances it is the only wise policy to keep the good things we have, and to let well enough alone. ”

“ The business of the country has again the foundation of a rational and stable value currency under its feet, and, with full confidence in the money it handles, it can now enter upon a new career of enterprise and prosperity. This we have accomplished, and, as I firmly believe, we can maintain it, provided, always, we act like a sensible people and abstain from foolish and mischievous legislation. ”