76 Colorado College Studies. 



the summer and the winter, when it is wanted. Again, the 

 pensions are paid quarterly, but are distributed in groups 

 upon different sets of quarter-days. These might be so 

 grouped, probably without serious inconvenience to the 

 pensioners,* that the payments in two months of spring 

 should be about twice as large and in two months of autumn 

 about three times as large as at other times. With pen- 

 sions amounting to 160 or 180 millions annually, such an 

 arrangement could be made to " plump " an extra 30 or 40 

 millions in the autumn and half of that in the spring. 

 Without recommending these particular methods, one may 

 take them as illustrating the possibility of such adjust- 

 ments. Other means, some of which are applied by the 

 Treasury, are the purchase of bonds at the end of summer, 

 the increase of Treasury deposits with the banks, the ar- 

 rangement of contracts so as to make the principal pay- 

 ments for supplies in the autumn and spring. 



It is a fair question for debate whether this paternal- 

 looking behavior of the Treasury would be good policy in 

 the long run. The objection to it as government inter- 

 ference is sound. But as compared with the present Treas- 

 ury methods, it would be only a better arrangement of ebbs 

 and flows that exist already in considerable degree and 

 often at the wrong times.f Whatever evils it has, the 

 Treasury method of obtaining elasticity is perhaps better 

 than any known bank-note system, and is far better than 

 any possible state bank system. In the long run, among 

 fallible men, expensive money is the most economical; 

 money that cannot be duplicated without a liberal expense 

 of labor; metal, or certificates known to have their full 

 equivalent of metal behind them. In the sacrifice a coun- 

 try necessarily makes to obtain such money, as compared 



* Crudely, by making a part of the pensions semi-annual, with the autumnal 

 payment larger than the other; an inequality that fits tolerably well the needs of 

 indigent pensioners. 



tSee illustrative figures in Mr. Kinley's article on the Independent Treasury 

 in the Annals of the A7nerican Academy of Political and Social Science, Septem- 

 ber, 1892. The figures are for operations at New York, but are a suflacient indica- 

 tion of what happens in the whole country. 



