“As I was saying,” the Senator began, taking up the conversation where he had dropped it to answer the knock, “I am fully convinced that $10,000,000 will see it through. Out of that the expenses of engineering the deal will amount to, say, a million. The actual expenses of collection should not exceed more than ten per cent., and I believe with Mr. Connors that a good part of it can be done with five per cent. That million is all we stand to lose, for the rest will be invested in goods worth their face value, whether the plan succeeds or fails. I believe that it will succeed and I am ready to guarantee one-fourth of the sum needed. If each of the others present, with the exception of Mr. Connors, will do the same, we will have the money. As Mr. Connors is the originator of the plan and will have to superintend the carrying out of the details, I think that without being expected to invest any money he should receive one-tenth of the net profits, and the residue can be divided equally among the rest of us.”
There were no dissenters to the Senator’s proposition, least of all Tom Connors. After some little discussion as to details, the date for carrying out the plan was fixed as the first Friday in October, or rather the first Friday and Saturday, as it was calculated that two days would be required to consummate the work.
When the conference adjourned an hour later Mr. Higgins, the former comptroller, Representative Woods and the Senator each had agreed to have by the first day of September $2,500,000 in available cash, which Mr. Martin, the banker, joining with $2,500,000 of his own, could utilize in carrying out the scheme proposed by Tom Connors, who in lieu of capital had pledged himself to an immense amount of hard work, in consideration of which he was to receive one-tenth of the profits.
There was no good reason for calling it the Fractional Currency Bill, for in reality it was an anti-fractional currency bill. It provided that after the fifteenth day of September the Government of the United States should not issue or cause to be issued, or coin or cause to be coined, any half-dollars, quarters, dimes, nickels, two-cent pieces or pennies, and also that none of the fractional currency already in existence in the possession of the United States should be put into circulation for a period of five years after the date on which the law became operative.
The bill made its appearance in the House and Senate a few days after the opening of the special session called by the President to meet on the twelfth day of July. Strange to say, neither the Senator nor Representative Woods seemed to be much interested in it. Both voted for it after having made brief speeches in its support, but they were only two of many that did the same. The father of the bill in the House was Hicks, of California, and in his State the measure was known as the Hicks bill. The patron of the measure in the Senate was Gordon, of Maine. Neither of these men heretofore had been recognized as having much influence with their associates, but in this instance their pet bill at once found favor in the eyes of their colleagues.
It is a peculiar thing about the American law-maker—the real author of legislation—that he seldom, if ever, appears at the front. He is content that some of the small fry shall have the distinction of fathering the laws and be recorded in history as the men who did this or that for their country’s good. The real leaders of American political life and actions seem to think that post-mortem fame is more than outweighed by more substantial ante-mortem things.
Simple as the measure seemed to read, so equally simple were the strongest arguments used in its support. The actual metal in a penny was worth perhaps the tenth of a penny. There was a startling difference between the face value and the bullion value of the nickel. Even the silver coins if offered as metal in the open market would fetch less than half the amount that they called for. Eventually, if more and more of these “tokens of value” were issued, the people would refuse to accept them except far below par. The time to stop such depreciation was before it had begun, the supporters of the measure in both houses declared, and there was none to gainsay them. Those who had always opposed the greenback theory could not consistently oppose this line of reasoning. So the bill in its transition into law met little opposition.
Strange to say, the newspapers, not even the tragedy-shrieking, sensation-making, scandal-hunting ones, saw aught in the Fractional Currency Bill to make it worth more than a casual mention. What was said about it was good. One or two of the Far West publications who had viewed with dismay the gradually increasing number of pennies in their vicinity, welcomed it openly and gladly, for they felt that it would avert the possibility of reducing their prices to the one, two or three cent standard of the East. The Eastern newspapers that had been cutting each other’s throats by selling twelve and sixteen pages of printed matter at less than the cost of the white paper itself, saw in the measure, if as predicted it resulted in the gradual withdrawal of the penny from circulation, a chance to demand and receive a higher price for their issues without being hurt by the lower prices of rivals. Naturally, the newspapers did not oppose the measure.
As for the people—what do the American people, individually, know or care what is done in Washington? For the most part the knowledge of the community at large is confined to what it reads of the doings of Congress in the Washington letters and to the criticisms it sees in its pet editorial columns. If nothing is said about a particular bill, the public knows nothing. Merchants, bankers, shipping interests, railroads, labor unions, are aroused to action only when they see in a bill an attempt to work injury to themselves. In the case of the Fractional Currency Bill those who knew of it saw nothing in it likely to injure them, and so there was no opposition.
Thus it was that the bill prohibiting the issue of the fractional currency of the United States for a period of five years from the fifteenth day of September received the signature of the President and was duly recorded among the laws of the nation.