GREENBACKS AND BONDS. 525 



But this power was what the Shylocks dreaded. Their 

 strength and independence, as full legal tenders, would 

 preclude the possibility of their being monopolized by the 

 money ring. A full legal tender money created and issued 

 by the government, would remove entirely the necessity 

 for banks, and destroy the office and profits of banker. 

 Alarm and dismay had seized the Shylocks, for, in the 

 House bill they saw that, while it would save the country, 

 it would ruin them; so acting upon the first law of nature, 

 they determined at all hazards to save themselves, though 

 the flag of the nation trailed in the dust, and the Goddess 

 of Liberty sweat great drops of blood in her struggle to 

 save the Union of States. They besieged the Senate. 



They said : ' * We will be compelled to go into a for- 

 eign market to raise money to prosecute the war, and 

 unless we provide to pay the interest on all loans in a cur- 

 rency recognized by foreign nations, we cannot do it 

 Therefore, to create these notes full legal tenders would be 

 virtually to tie our hands and cut off all hope and chance 

 of borrowing a dollar abroad. To provide for meeting this 

 coin interest, all that is necessary is to lop off another leg 

 of the legal tenders and 'except duties on imports.' n 



The original House bill had but few friends in the 

 Senate. Senator Wilson saw that it was doomed, and 

 made but little resistance. However, he left on record his 

 opinion .of the amended bill. On page 789, of the Con- 

 gressional Globe of the second session of the thirty-seventh 

 Congress he says: 



U I look upon this contest as a contest between the 

 curbstone brokers, the Jew brokers, and the money 

 changers, and the men who speculate in stocks on one side, 

 and the productive toiling men on the other. " It was a 

 struggle on the part of the Shylocks to maintain their 

 ungodly ascendancy over the labor and liberties of the 

 toiling masses; and while the latter were bleeding upon 



