270 HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL 



free and unlimited coinage or use of silver, at present weight and fineness, 

 using the coin or bullion as basis for the circulation of paper certificates. 

 This fresh money could be used for the immediate relief of persons whose 

 homes are mortgaged to secure debts which are due. They would 

 pay their debts, and the money would at once begin to circulate where 

 it is most needed, among the toilers. Instead of being used for spec- 

 ulation, it would be used in building, in manufacturing, in mining, in 

 transportation, in making homes, in erecting permanent improvements, 

 and in every legitimate way, where poor as well as rich would receive 

 equal benefit from its use. Being worth less as a commodity to traffic 

 in, because production and traffic yield a profit greater than one per 

 cent per annum, there will be no temptation to deal exclusively in 

 money. And the banks will receive as much profit on the same amount 

 of business as they do now, because relieved from all taxation on their 

 notes and other moneys, and without risk of loss from " corners " and 

 "runs" the work of gamblers. Money not being taxable, the banks 

 would enjoy an advantage from that source equal to an average of about 

 three per cent per annum in the new States a little more, in the old 

 ones a little less. 



This particular scheme is not presented as that of the farmers or of 

 any association. It is an individual contribution to the discussion of 

 the question, how to get money from the government directly to the 

 people, and at cost. As before intimated, the details have all been 

 thought out, but it is not possible to give more than a skeleton of the 

 plan in this place. 



It may be objected that a sudden reduction of interest would be 

 equivalent to the confiscation of a large amount of property now invested 

 in money. That, too, has been considered. Did those who thus object 

 estimate in advance the effect of contracting the currency to resume 

 specie payments, increasing the value of money and reducing the value 

 of everything else ? Did they think about how much farmers would lose 

 by the operation of that dreadful process ? And if they did think of it, 

 did they care ? When they now look out over the four and a half million 

 farms of the country, and see that everything there is depressed by 

 reason of low prices, and when they learn that this condition has been 

 present some half-dozen years, are their hearts troubled, and do they 

 feel that the debtor has been wronged and that they are responsible ? 

 Millions of dollars have been sunk by this heartless forcing down of 

 prices, adding to the gains of the already rich. The government is not 

 under obligations to furnish investments for its citizens, but it is bound 

 to supply them with money. The poor have lost enough. Let them 

 have some benefit now from the just protection of the government. 



