A real paper dollar is a dollar's worth of paper.
Another remedy has been suggested by the same persons who advocate fiat money. With a consistency perfectly charming, they say it would have been much better had we allowed the Treasury notes to fade out. Why allow fiat money to fade out when a simple act of Congress can make it as good as gold? When greenbacks fade out the loss falls upon the chance holder, upon the poor, the industrious, and the unfortunate. The rich, the cunning, the well-informed manage to get rid of what they happen to hold. When, however, the bills are redeemed, they are paid by the wealth and property of the whole country. To allow them to fade out is universal robbery; to pay them is universal justice. The greenback should not be allowed to fade away in the pocket of the soldier or in the hands of his widow and children. It is said that; the Continental money faded away. It was and is a disgrace to our forefathers. When the greenback fades away there will fade with it honor from the American heart, brain from the American head, and our flag from the air of heaven.
A great cry has been raised against the holders of bonds. They have been denounced by every epithet that malignity can coin. During the war our bonds were offered for sale and they brought all that they then appeared to be worth. They had to be sold or the Rebellion would have been a success. To the bond we are indebted as much as to the greenback. The fact is, however, we are indebted to neither; we are indebted to the soldiers. But every man who took a greenback at less than gold committed the same crime, and no other, as he who bought the bonds at less than par in gold. These bonds have changed hands thousands of times. They have been paid for in gold again and again. They have been bought at prices far above par; they have been laid away by loving husbands for wives, by toiling fathers for children; and the man who seeks to repudiate them now, or to pay them in fiat rags, is unspeakably cruel and dishonest. If the Government has made a bad bargain it must live up to it. If it has made a foolish promise the only way is to fulfill it.
A dishonest government can exist only among dishonest people.
When our money is below par we feel below par.
We cannot bring prosperity by cheapening money; we cannot increase our wealth by adding to the volume of a depreciated currency. If the prosperity of a country depends upon the volume of its currency, and if anything is money that people can be made to think is money, then the successful counterfeiter is a public benefactor. The counterfeiter increases the volume of currency; he stimulates business, and the money issued by him will not be hoarded and taken from the channels of trade.
During the war, during the inflation—that is to say, during the years that we were going into debt—fortunes were made so easily that people left the farms, crowded to the towns and cities. Thousands became speculators, traders, and merchants; thousands embarked in every possible and conceivable scheme. They produced nothing; they simply preyed upon labor and dealt with imaginary values. These men must go back; they must become producers, and every producer is a paying consumer. Thousands and thousands of them are unable to go back. To a man who begs of you a breakfast you cannot say, "Why don't you get a farm?" You might as well say, "Why don't you start a line of steamships?" To him both are impossibilities. They must be helped.
We should all remember that society must support all of its members, all of its robbers, thieves, and paupers. Every vagabond and vagrant has to be fed and clothed, and society must support in some way all of its members. It can support them in jails, in asylums, in hospitals, in penitentiaries; but it is a very costly way. We have to employ judges to try them, juries to sit upon their cases, sheriffs, marshals, and constables to arrest them, policemen to watch them, and it may be, at last, a standing army to put them down. It would be far cheaper, probably, to support them all at some first-class hotel. We must either support them or help them support themselves. They let us go upon the one hand simply to take us by the other, and we can take care of them as paupers and criminals, or, by wise statesmanship, help them to be honest and useful men. Of all the criminals transported by England to Australia and Tasmania, the records show that a very large per cent.—something over ninety—became useful and decent people. In Australia they found homes; hope again spread its wings in their breasts. They had different ambitions; they were removed from vile and vicious associations. They had new surroundings; and, as a rule, man does not morally improve without a corresponding improvement in his physical condition. One biscuit, with plenty of butter, is worth all the tracts ever distributed.
Thousands must be taken from the crowded streets and stifling dens, away from the influences of filth and want, to the fields and forests of the West and South. They must be helped to help themselves.
While the Government cannot create gold and silver, while it cannot by its fiat make money, it can furnish facilities for the creation of wealth. It can aid in the distribution of products, and in the distribution of men; it can aid in the opening of new territories; it can aid great and vast enterprises that cannot be accomplished by individual effort. The Government should see to it that every facility is offered to honorable adventure, enterprise and industry. Our ships ought to be upon every sea; our flag ought to be flying in every port. Our rivers and harbors ought to be improved. The usefulness of the Mississippi should be increased, its banks strengthened, and its channel deepened. At no distant day it will bear the commerce of a hundred millions of people. That grand river is the great guaranty of territorial integrity; it is the protest of nature against disunion, and from its source to the sea it will forever flow beneath one flag.