220 
Wisconsin' State Agricultural Society. * 
find the bond worth just as much as the note, but the chances are 
as infinity to one that neither of them will equal the standard coin- 
dollar of the republic. 
Again, we are told that the greenback is as good money as the 
best, because it will purchase anything that is in the market to be 
sold, which is true in a certain sense. If the sole function of a 
dollar be to buy things, without reference to how much it will buy, 
then is the greenback all-sufficient, otherwise not. But we do not 
want to measure our dollar by pork or flour, or cloth or paper. 
No such measurement would satisfy our suppositious skeptic, the 
holder of a greenback. It would be very much as though he were 
to go to a store to buy a yard of cloth; upon getting it he suspects 
it to be short measure, and asks the clerk to measure if once more. 
This is done by laying it on a bolt of yard-wide sheeting, but this 
does not wholly satisfy him, and he requests that it be laid on a 
certified yard-stick. The shop-man assures him, however, that 
this is superfluous, and indeed out of the question. Yard-sticks are 
relics of a barbarous age; the nominal measures as fixed by the 
manufacturers are correct and sufficient for all purposes, and our 
friend departs still doubting. Gen. Butler, from whom the idea of 
a yard-stick illustration is borrowed, asks, with fine irony, if we 
want millions of yard-sticks and quart-pots with which to redeem 
the measured articles? No, we do not; but we do want every 
trader to have enough sealed weights and measures to enable him 
to see to it that he gives honest measure. And this is what we 
want in connection with our money; an honest measure that will 
not vary according to locality, or stretch and shrink with every 
i 
change in the financial barometer. 
If it can be converted into the minted coin, it will have unequal 
purchasing power, and then will the u blood-sealed greenback” be 
something more than a mere rhetorical flourish. It will be a meas¬ 
ure of value, bearing a certificate of correctness, that can be used 
with confidence. As has been well said, u the fact that a tattered, 
dirty bill of some unknown, one-horse banker, in a little Canadian 
town, commands a high premium, or any premium over the mone}^ 
of this republic, is a national shame and disgrace.” The money of 
a government like this must be above suspicion or reproach. We 
have a right to know that the paper token actually represents the 
standard dollar which it professes to, and for this reason there should 
