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CONGKESS, UNITED STATES. 



also only equaled by the silver bill, as is perfectly 

 apparent to all who know the present condi- 

 tion of the commerce of our country with other 

 leading nations. The currents of trade have 

 set strongly in favor of resumption for more 

 than two years, and now the miseries of two 

 great nations engaged in war unite, as by a 

 special providence, to assure the restoration of 

 our currency to a gold standard. It is almost 

 universally believed by men most largely and in- 

 timately connected with our foreign exchanges 

 that but for the meddling by Congress gold will 

 cease to be merchandise in New York, and be 

 restored to use as currency within ninety days. 

 There is nothing improbable in this belief. The 

 currents have all run in that direction for a 

 long time, and it becomes more and more evi- 

 dent, day by day, that they will so continue to 

 run. Some of the promoters of this bill can not 

 be ignorant of the true state of things. They 

 see that they have not a moment to spare if 

 they are to make greenbacks forever irredeem- 

 able, as their bill, if enacted, will do. The 

 crisis is upon them. It is now or never. With 

 bank notes once again at par with gold, the 

 people will understand the case, and not only 

 insist upon maintaining the resumption act in 

 its integrity, but also upon such other legisla- 

 tion as is necessary to secure the withdrawal 

 of greenbacks slowly but surely. 



" It is moreover reassuring to recall the per- 

 fect unanimity of public sentiment in respect 

 to the true character of irredeemable paper 

 when the legal-tender notes where first issued. 

 The Government, charged with the national 

 life, in the darkest hour, without money and 

 without credit, shut up the Constitution, and 

 seized the only weapon within reach, as a man 

 for want of a gun might seize dynamite and 

 hurl it in bulk at the head of a burglar attacking 

 his house at midnight. Then all intelligent men 

 in both of the great political parties deplored 

 the use of legal tender. The party immediate- 

 ly responsible for Government frankly appealed 

 to history, warning the people against the dan- 

 gers we now realize, urging them at the same 

 time to avert such dangers by cheerful submis- 

 sion to taxation. 



" Mr. Speaker, I believe that the greenback 

 is the most powerful enemy our country has 

 ever encountered, slavery only excepted. I 

 wish I were master of words to express its 

 true character. It is not money, but a device. 

 It does not pretend to represent capital or la- 

 bor. It is debt, representing the exigency of a 

 great civil war. It is a device in its nature, 

 and in its influence on mankind, precisely like 

 the paper-money devices of the days of our 

 colonial dependence in the early part of the 

 eighteenth century, of John Law's Mississippi 

 so.heme, the assignat of the French revolution, 

 and the continental money of our own revolu- 

 tionary times. There is nothing in the history 

 of these several paper-money delusions to war- 

 rant the belief that the greenback will ever be 

 fully paid. I denounce in words I have re- 



cently uttered in another place the greenback 

 in place of money as a fraud. It is a sham. 

 It familiarizes the individual and public con- 

 science with shams. It has muddied all our 

 springs of honest thrift and solid enterprise, 

 confused and misled the public judgment, 

 sapped the courage and wisdom of the Fed- 

 eral Treasury, and given immense comfort to 

 demagogues. 



" Mr. Speaker, it can not and will not be 

 denied that the indications all point to the 

 greenback as the future shibboleth and rallying 

 cry of the most aggressive, vicious elements of 

 society throughout the land. How, then, shall 

 we dispose of the greenback, and uproot the 

 mischief of it? The substitute I have offered 

 for the pending bill will do it as by magic. It 

 will do it efficiently and instantly, without 

 alarm or harm to any one. If adopted, gold 

 and bank notes will be equal in value before the 

 executive ink is dry. It is the original and 

 fundamental principle underlying the legal- 

 tender act. No other method of paying the 

 forced loan was ever talked about by any 

 clear-headed man of either party for years. It 

 has ever been, and is now, advocated as the on- 

 ly practicable method by the most distinguished 

 political economists and eminent merchants 

 in our country. It has been so recognized again 

 and again by the present Secretary of the 

 Treasury, as it was by two of his immediate 

 predecessors, and the principal argument we 

 hear against it is the scandalous one that fund- 

 ing is unpopular." 



Mr. Felton, of Georgia, said: "It is wrong 

 and criminal for productive labor to conspire 

 against corporations, against bondholders, 

 against capital. It is equally wrong and crim- 

 inal for capital to combine and to conspire 

 against labor, and by its superior power make 

 labor a mere serf to minister to its exorbitant 

 demands ; to seek by unhallowed and fraudu- 

 lent combinations to rob agricultural, manufac- 

 turing, mining, and all the wealth-making in- 

 dustries of their legitimate rewards. I submit 

 that the financial legislation of this country 

 since 1870 has been the result of a deliberate 

 conspiracy on the part of the creditor class to 

 rob, defraud, and impoverish the debtor class, 

 I submit that the act forcing resumption of 

 specie payments in 1879, by contracting the 

 circulation of legal-tender notes, and the act of 

 1873, demonetizing the silver dollar, were as 

 unjust and wicked as the labor strikes which 

 have recently startled and alarmed all good 

 citizens. The only difference was, the last 

 was illegal and violent; the other sought to 

 cover the outrage they perpetrated by the forms 

 and sanctions of law. The only difference was, 

 one was speedily and justly suppressed; the 

 other, panoplied in gold and protected by po- 

 litical influence, smiles in its bloated security 

 upon the wrecks of fortune the blasted hopes 

 and the suffering poverty it has created. 



" The act demonetizing silver, in my opinion, 

 was the most deliberate and inexcusable fraud 



