First: They are demand obligations against you amounting to $346,000,000, and you must stand ready at all times to redeem them in gold. This fact always has and always will imperil your credit. It was the same greenbacks that sent your credit down to 35 cents on the dollar during the war, and again they came within an ace of wrecking your credit in 1894 when the gold in the treasury went down, down and down, until there was only $41,000,000 left, between you and national dishonor. Don't you remember that you then sold $262,000,000 of your bonds to protect your credit which was being sapped by these very same United States Notes? Pretty expensive business that, when you could have had a currency that the banks of the country, and not you, would have been compelled to redeem in gold whenever necessary.
You will no doubt remember that in 1879 when you began to keep your promise, and redeem these greenbacks in coin, and make your old due bills as good as gold, you issued $100,000,000 of bonds for a corresponding amount of gold to establish your reserve or guarantee fund, in order that you might keep your promise good in the future. If you add this $100,000,000 to the other $262,000,000 you have issued since to protect your credit against these United States Notes, you will find that you have issued altogether $362,000,000 of your bonds, or $16,000,000 more than the total amount of the greenbacks, $346,000,000, and that you have also obligated yourself to pay interest on these bonds from first to last amounting to $362,000,000 more. Now, the astounding fact is that these old due bills, these I.O.U.'s, these United States Notes, or so-called greenbacks, are still out and you still owe them, just as you did in 1879, when you began keeping your promise to redeem them in gold.
One of your expert clerks in the Treasury Department at Washington, the Chief of the Loan and Currency Division, published a calculation in the Congressional Record of April 29, 1908, Page 5638, that showed that, if the greenbacks had been funded on the 1st day of January, 1879, into 4 per cent 30 year bonds, and canceled and destroyed, the total cost to the Government for principal and interest to July 1, 1907, would have been $741,897,340, whereas the total cost and liability actually incurred on account of them has been $1,081,881,562; the difference in favor of converting into bonds being $339,984,222.
Now, don't you think, Uncle Sam, that as a matter of business you'd better get rid of these demand debts, these United States Notes?
Second: Don't let this most important fact escape your attention either; that if you should be called upon to use your credit extensively, as would be necessary in case of a great war, these demand notes would be a very black cloud upon your credit, and your loans would cost you vastly more, on account of the interest you would have to pay, because they were still outstanding. I hope that you are not hugging that sweet delusion that war is impossible.
Third: These United States Notes, as you are aware, are made legal reserves for the national banks, who hold them against their deposits. Now, if your credit goes to pieces, the credit of the banks will go with it of course; because precisely to the extent that the banks hold these debts of yours as reserves, they are driving gold out of the country, and therefore instead of being better able to help you, they will attack your credit by demanding gold from you for these old demand debts.
You are also, of course, familiar with Gresham's law, so-called, under the operation of which, the poorer money always drives out the better. I assert without any fear whatever of successful contradiction, that if you had paid off these United States Notes in 1879, you would not only have saved $340,000,000 by so doing, but that today there would be in the United States in our banks, and in circulation among the people, $346,000,000 more gold than we now have. In other words, instead of our gold amounting to $1,850,000,000, it would now amount to $2,196,000,000.
Uncle Sam: Well, you have certainly demonstrated that I have made some very expensive mistakes. Let's see just what the net result of this blundering has been. I have lost $340,000,000 on account of the greenbacks and I have lost the great advantage of having $346,000,000 more gold to further strengthen the commercial credit of the country; and yet, I still owe every cent of these due bills and what seems to me equally certain is this: that if I should get into a great war, these very greenbacks will make me more trouble by injuring my credit in the future to a much greater extent than they ever have done at any time in the past. There is no doubt whatever about that. By the eternal, something must be done to get me out of this apparently bottomless pit.
But you have not told us yet why these I.O.U.'s of mine, or United States Notes, are not fit for currency, as you declare. You know that you sort of hurt my feelings, and for half a minute I was fighting mad, but as I said I am from forty-seven states, besides Missouri, and therefore I am ready to be shown.
Mr. Banker: I am coming to their use as currency right now. There are three distinct reasons why the United States Notes are a bad form of currency.