CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



191 



the size of Toledo and Dayton, in the State of 

 Ohio. In the third group, if I may coin a 

 word, I selected the ' countriest ' banks, the 

 smallest that could he found at points away 

 from railroads and telegraphs. The order was 

 that all those banks should analyze all their 

 receipts for six consecutive days, putting into 

 one list all that can be called cash, either in 

 coin, greenbacks, bank notes, or coupons, and 

 into the other list all drafts, checks, or com- 

 mercial bills. What was the result? Dur- 

 ing those six days $157,000,000 were received 

 over the counters of those fifty-two banks; 

 and of that amount $19,370,000 was in cash 

 12 per cent, only in cash and 88 per cent, of 

 that vast amount, representing every grade of 

 business, was in checks, drafts, and commer- 

 cial bills. Does a country that transacts its 

 business in that way need as much currency 

 afloat among the people as a country like 

 France, without banks, without savings insti- 

 tutions, and whose people keep their money 

 in hoards ? I remember in reading one of the 

 novels of Dumas, when an officer of the French 

 army sent home his agent to run his farm, he 

 loaded him down with silver enough to con- 

 duct the business for a year ; there was no 

 thought of giving him credit in a bank, but of 

 locking in the till at the beginning of the year 

 enough coin to do the business of the year. 



"So much for the difference between the 

 habits of France and those of Anglo-Saxon 

 countries. Let us now consider the conduct 

 of France during and since the German war. 

 In July, 1869, the year before the war be- 

 gan, the Bank of France had outstanding 

 $251,000,000 of paper circulation, and held in 

 its vaults $229,000,000 of coin. When the 

 war broke out they were compelled imme- 

 diately to issue more paper and to make it a 

 legal tender. They took pattern by us in their 

 necessity, and issued paper until on the 19th 

 of November, 1873, four years ago next Mon- 

 day, they had $602,000,000 of paper issued 

 by the Bank of France, while the coin in the 

 bank was reduced to $146,000,000. But the 

 moment their great war was over they did 

 what I commend to the gentleman from Penn- 

 sylvania (Mr. Kelley) : they commenced to re- 

 duce their paper circulation, and in one year 

 reduced it almost $100,000,000, and increased 

 the coin circulation $120,000,000. In the year 

 1876 they had pushed into circulation $200,- 

 000,000 of coin and retired nearly all their 

 small notes. They are at this moment within 

 fifty days of resumption of specie payments. 

 Under their law, fifty days from to-day France 

 will again come into the illustrious line of 

 nations who believe in a sound currency. I 

 commend to the eloquent gentleman from 

 Pennsylvania (Mr. Kelley) the example of 

 France. 



" Waiving all that may be said in regard to the 

 merits of these two writers (Alison and Dou- 

 bleday), I say in reply that the overwhelming 

 and fixed opinion of England is that the cash- 



resumption act of 1819 was a blessing, and not 

 a curse, and that the evils which England suf- 

 fered from 1821 to 1826 did not arise from the 

 resumption of cash payments. 



" I now proceed to notice the second point 

 that has been made in favor of this bill. It is 

 assumed that specie payment will injure the 

 debtor class of this country and thereby op- 

 press the poor; in other words, that the en- 

 forcement of the resumption law will oppress 

 the poor and increase the riches of the rich. 

 It is assumed that the laboring men are in debt, 

 and that the rich men constitute the creditor 

 class. I deny this proposition in toto. I affirm 

 that the vast majority of the creditors of this 

 country are the poor people ; that the vast ma- 

 jority of the debtors of this country are the 

 well-to-do people, in fact, people who are mod- 

 erately rich. As a matter of fact the poor man, 

 the laboring man, can not get heavily in debt. 

 He has not the security to offer. Men lend 

 their money on security, and in the very na- 

 ture of the case poor men can borrow but lit- 

 tle. What then do poor men do with their 

 small earnings ? When a man has earned out 

 of his hard work a hundred dollars more than 

 he needs for current expenses, he reasons thus : 

 ' I can not go into business with a hundred dol- 

 lars ; I can not embark in trade ; but as I work, 

 I want my money to work.' And so he puts 

 his small gains where they will earn something. 

 He lends his money to a wealthier neighbor or 

 puts it in the savings bank. There were in the 

 United States on the 1st of November, 1876, 

 forty-four hundred and seventy-five savings 

 banks and private banks of deposit, and their 

 deposits amounted to $1,377,000,000, almost 

 three fourths of the amount of our national 

 debt. Over two and a half millions of the cit- 

 izens of the United States were depositors. In 

 some States the deposits did not average more 

 than $250 each. The great mass of the de- 

 positors are men and women of small means 

 laborers, widows, and orphans. 



" Gentlemen assail the bondholders of the 

 countr-y as the rich men who oppress the poor. 

 Do they know how vast an amount of the pub- 

 lic securities are held by poor people ? I took 

 occasion, a few years since, to ask the officers 

 of a bank in one of the counties of my district, 

 a rural district, to show me the number of hold- 

 ers and amount held of United States bonds on 

 which they collected the interest. The total 

 amount was $416,000. And how many people 

 held them? One hundred and ninety-six. Of 

 these just eight men had over $20,000 apiece, 

 and the other one hundred and eighty-eight 

 ranged from $50 up to $2,500. I found in that 

 list fifteen orphan children and sixty widows, 

 who had a little left them from their fathers' 

 or husbands' estates, who had made the nation 

 their guardian. And I found one hundred and 

 twenty-one laborers, mechanics, ministers, men 

 of slender means, who had kept what they had 

 and put it in the hands of the United States 

 that it might be safe. And they were the 



