THE GREENBACK INTERLUDE 81 



reformers were, it appears, to lower the rate of inter- 

 est on money and to reduce taxation by the trans- 

 formation of the war debt into interconvertible 

 bonds. The farmers, on the other hand, were inter- 

 ested primarily in the expansion of the currency in 

 the hope that this would result in higher prices for 

 their products. It was not until the panic of 1873 

 had intensified the agricultural depression and the 

 Granger movement had failed to relieve the situa- 

 tion that the farmers of the West took hold of 

 greenbackism and made it a major political issue. 



The independent parties of the Granger period, 

 as a rule, were not in favor of inflation. Their 

 platforms in some cases demanded a speedy return 

 to specie payment. In 1873 Ignatius Donnelly, 

 in a pamphlet entitled Facts for the Granges, de- 

 clared: "There is too much paper money. The 

 currency is diluted watered weakened. . . . 

 We have no interest in an inflated money market. 

 ... As we have to sell our wheat at the world's 

 price, it is our interest that everything we buy 

 should be at the world's price. Specie payments 

 would practically add eighteen cents to the price 

 of every bushel of wheat we have to sell!" In 

 Indiana and Illinois, however, the independent 

 parties were captured by the Greenbackers, and 



