Dollar bill

“ That the Republican party had the best of the argument, so far as sound finance is concerned, [Pg 405] there can be no question or doubt. There lingers yet, in the minds of many voters, recollections of the debased currency in use prior to the National Banking Act, passed by the Republican party. A bill issued now by a bank has the guarantee of the credit of the Federal Government behind it. Such would not be the case should the penalty tax of ten per cent. upon State banks be repealed. Every dollar of currency to-day in use in America is worth a hundred cents. ”

“ Two commodities like gold and silver make a better standard than one and many make a better standard than two. The dollar standard should be worth a specified bill of goods such as one board foot of lumber, fifteen pounds of coal, half a pound of sugar, half an ounce of butter, a quarter of an ounce of leather, a quarter of a pound of steel, etc. Such an aggregate of goods, selected on the basis of their relative importance in trade, may be called a goods-dollar or a market-basket dollar. ”

“ When a man did occasionally get a dollar he was not sure it would be worth its face value when the next boat would arrive with a new Bank Note Reporter. Married men considered themselves very fortunate when they could get, on Saturday night, an order on a grocery or dry goods store for four or five dollars, and the single men seldom received more than $2 or $3 cash. That was not more than half enough to pay their board bill. This state of affairs continued until the Press was started in 1861, when Gov. ”

“ If we just stay with the same trends of the last 4 years, by the end of the decade the deficit will be $635 billion a year, almost 80 percent of our gross domestic product. And paying interest on that debt will be the costliest Government program of all. We'll still be the world's largest debtor. And when Members of Congress come here, they'll be devoting over 20 cents on the dollar to interest payments, more than half of the budget to health care and to other entitlements. And you'll come here and deliberate and argue over 6 or 7 cents on the dollar, no matter what America's problems are. ”

“ During the years 1785 and 1786 a paper money craze ran through the country; most of the states issued paper notes, and passed laws obliging their citizens to receive them in payment of debts. Now a paper dollar is not money, it is only the government's promise to pay a dollar. As long as you can send it to the treasury and get a gold dollar in exchange, it is worth a dollar. It is this exchangeableness that makes it worth a dollar. When government makes the paper dollar note a "legal tender." ”

“ Clipped shillings, French assignats, and Continental and Confederate currency, were no more fiat money than are American double eagles or five-pound Bank of England notes. It is the stamp of the government, the fiat of its power, that turns the metal or the paper into money.”
“But do not all financiers consider inflation a disaster, Mr. Morning?”
“Inflation,” replied the gentleman, “whether of metallic or paper currency that is accepted by the world or by a great commercial nation as a legal tender, can do no harm except to those who loan money. A dollar is a mere term. ”

“ 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 fact of there being millions of dollars in the Treasury does not mean that such a tremendous sum of money is lying idle, while thousands are in want of it.
Practically, every dollar of the money in the Treasury is in circulation in the shape of the paper bills which we use as money. ”

“ More than ever, as a Nation and as individual consumers, we need to make every dollar count. Yet, despite the consumeroriented quality of the U.S. marketplace and the concerted efforts of our law enforcement agencies, marketplace fraud drains at least $100 billion from the economy every year. ”

“ But it is of the highest importance that such guesses should not be wrong, for if they are wrong, issues of paper money made upon them will seriously affect all current values in the country. For instance, if more currency is issued than business really requires, the currency, as it has done, will depreciate as to gold, and the prices of commodities will be inflated. Thus the purchasing power of every dollar of paper money in the hands of the people, as well as the cost of filling every contract, and the value of all things you have to buy and to sell will be changed by act of Congress. ”

“ At certain times there are greater and less demands for money, which, under our present practices, make a dollar, to-day, worth four per cent. per annum interest, and to-morrow increase it to ten per cent. It must be remembered that we are now speaking of an irredeemable currency, the representative of the wealth of the nation: that the government representing the nation has uttered it, in behalf of the people, upon the soundest and, in reality, the only sure basis of value any money can have—the productive power and capacity of the nation. ”

“ The Government can resume specie payment to-day, more than three months before the time fixed by the law, and if we do not proclaim resumption to-day, it is only because the law stands in the way. The word has only to be spoken, and our paper dollar, irredeemable for fifteen years, is again virtually as good as gold. The laborer's and the pensioner's dollar is as good as the bondholder's dollar. ”

“ A bill of exchange, when merely discounted, and kept in the portfolio of the discounter until it falls due, does not perform the functions or supply the place of money, but is itself bought and sold for money. It is no more currency than the public funds, or any other securities. But when a bill drawn upon one person is paid to another (or even to the same person) in discharge of a debt or a pecuniary claim, it does something for which, if the bill did not exist, money would be required: it performs the functions of currency. ”

“ Every one of them expresses upon its face an engagement of the nation to pay to the bearer a certain sum. The dollar note is an engagement to pay a dollar, and the dollar intended is the coined dollar of the United States; a certain quantity in weight and fineness of gold or silver, authenticated as such by the stamp of the government. No other dollars had before been recognized by the legislation of the national government as lawful money.
Would, then, their usefulness and value as means to the exercise of the functions of government, be injuriously affected by State taxation? ”

“ That's a good investment no matter how you measure it.
I recommend that the women, infants, and children's nutrition program be expanded so that every expectant mother who needs the help gets it. We all know that Head Start, a program that prepares children for school, is a success story. We all know that it saves money. But today it just reaches barely over one-third of all the eligible children. Under this plan, every eligible child will be able to get a head start. This is not just the right thing to do; it is the smart thing to do. For every dollar we invest today, we'll save $3 tomorrow. ”

“ The first symptom of the depreciation of our present paper-money, was that of silver dollars selling at six-shillings, which had before been worth but five shillings and nine pence. The assembly thereupon raised them by law to six shillings. As the dollar is now likely to become the money-unit of America, as it passes at this rate in some of our sister states, and as it facilitates their computation in pounds and shillings, & e converso, this seems to be more convenient than its former denomination. ”

“ This is a dollar—a unit of money—part of the great instrumentality created by society to effect the multitudinous exchanges of property and services among men. The amount of its command is constant, because the increase in the volume of money is regulated by the sovereign authority of the nation, with strict regard to the increase of population and demand—hence the value of this unit remains unchanging through time. ”

“ Danger and toil have always attended the explorers in finance, and they always will. Nevertheless the path is the way of civilization. The greater the development of civilized life, the larger will be the values in paper and credit."
The pathway to our present monetary standard is lined with the wrecks of different forms of currency, country pay, debased coinage of the Boston mint, credit bills of the Colony of Massachusetts, fiat money of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, legalized fiat money, inflated currency, land bank bills, silver notes, treasury notes, continental currency. ”

“ I suggest this subject for the consideration of Congress, and also, simultaneously with this, the propriety of redeeming our currency, as before suggested, at its market value at the time the law goes into effect, increasing the rate at which currency shall be bought and sold from day to day or week to week, at the same rate of interest as Government pays upon its bonds.
The subjects of tariff and internal taxation will necessarily receive your attention. The revenues of the country are greater than the requirements, and may with safety be reduced. ”

“ To-day we have at Washington a Bureau of Standards where the modern yardstick is determined by a bar of metal alloy kept in a room of constant temperature, under a glass case, and not approached by the observer, lest the warmth of his body should cause it to vary, but sighted by a telescope across the room!
Except the dollar, none of the old rough-and-ready units are any longer considered good enough for modern business. The dollar is the only survival of those primitive crudities. ”

“ Thus, the Bureau of the Mint, which would regulate the weight of the dollar, would do so merely by buying and selling gold at specific prices fixed for it by the Computing Bureau ; and it would have to buy or sell at the pleasure of the public. It would have no more choice than does a broker who is ordered to buy or sell at specified prices. ”

“ But, nevertheless, Congress should later pass a permanent currency bill, a bill which will settle every question as to the finances of the nation, at once and for a century to come. Such a bill is possible, and in fact it would be the simplest kind of measure for the Government to adopt—one to provide for just the kind of currency, and the amount of currency the business of the nation, the banks, and the people should have; one to provide for a perfectly elastic currency without creating the slightest depreciation of money or danger of loss to banks or Government. ”

“ Provision, it must be conceded, is not there made, in express terms, that the money unit of the United States shall be one dollar, as in the ordinance passed during the confederation, but the act under consideration assumes throughout that the coin called dollar is the coin employed for that purpose, as is obvious from the fact that the words dollars and units are treated as synonymous, and that all the gold coins previously described in the same section are measured by that word as the acknowledged money unit of the constitution. ”

“ We wonder that so great a subject could be dismissed with the suggestion of a few petty restraints.
"If the State legislatures," remarks the President, summing up his entire thought, "afford us a real specie basis for our circulation, by increasing the denomination of bank-notes, first to twenty, and afterwards to fifty dollars; if they will require that the banks shall at all times keep on hand at least one dollar of gold and silver for every three dollars of their circulation and deposits ”

“ A constant but unperceived rise in the value of the dollar with which those payments must be made, baffles all plans, thwarts all calculation, and destroys all equities between debtor and creditor. If we can not intelligently regulate our money volume so as to maintain unchanging the value of the money unit, if we can not preserve our people from the blighting effects which an increase in the measuring power of the money unit entails upon all industry, to what purpose is our boasted civilization? ”

“ Each, therefore, serves equally to supply means of speculation to the merchant. So far, moreover, as bills and notes constitute what is called the circulating medium, or paper currency of the country, and prevent the use of guineas, the fictitious and the real bill are upon an equality; and if the price of commodities be raised in proportion to the quantity of paper currency, the one contributes to that rise exactly in the same manner as the other. ”

“ The grounds, upon which the general power to coin money, and regulate the value of foreign and domestic coin, is granted to the national government, cannot require much illustration in order to vindicate it. The object of the power is to produce uniformity of value throughout the Union, and thus to preclude us from the embarrassments of a perpetually fluctuating and variable currency. Money is the universal medium or common standard, by a comparison with which the value of all merchandise may be ascertained, or, it is a sign, which represents the respective values of all commodities. ”