In either case, the creditor got what his contract entitled him to get—COIN.
But Mr. Cleveland’s “Government” was not so robust. He took it into his head that “the bankers had the country by the leg.” In fact, he told Mr. Oates of Alabama that such was the case.
Absurd!
No real Government would ever get into that kind of blue funk.
Mr. Cleveland should have shown some of the “back bone” that we have heard so much about. He should have said to those Wall Street Raiders, “I’ll give you COIN—get anything else if you can.”
When the Government had the gold, the yellow metal should have been handed out. When the Government did not have the gold, it should have handed out silver—saying to the Raiders, “Take it, or leave it. Your contract says COIN. There is coin. We make you the legal tender of it. If you don’t take it when so tendered, your claim against the Government is as dead as Julius Caesar.”
Then the Government would have had the Bankers “by the leg.”
But, you see, Cleveland was standing in with the Wall Street crowd—and that makes all the difference.
Suppose our friend, the Doctor referred to by Mr. Hairston, owed ten different notes of ten dollars each, every one of them containing the plain statement that they are payable in “coin.”
