No further mention is needed here of the schemes of Carlisle, Springer, Vest and others. They seem all dead at this writing, and they certainly should be damned. Even the New York Tribune, a monopolists’ own, says of one of the safety-fund schemes:
“The bankers are to have free issue; and when one fails the government is to collect from the other banks and redeem its currency. But in time of panic the government would not and could not do that.”
On the other hand, the New York Sun, edited by a man who was a radical socialist in his youth, and now a bitter, hardened, cruel cynic, although lately a Greenback paper, is as rabid as the New York Evening Post in advocacy of gold and gold only. It says of the latest safety-fund humbug:
“The new bill, like the old one, authorizes an inflation of our paper currency, by at least $550,000,000, without providing for its redemption in gold, and without any effectual provision for diminishing the volume of outstanding legal tender. Our New York financial magnates, who have put up, this year, $116,000,000 in gold, to save the treasury from suspending gold payments, ought to bestir themselves in opposition to this latest administration folly, if they would not see all their efforts go for naught and the catastrophe which they have labored to avert rendered inevitable.” [!!]
In Chicago we have Lyman Gage’s plan. Mr. Gage is a man of intellect who resembles some of those orthodox clergymen who, by a long course of theological dissipation, i. e., reasoning from false premises, have impaired their naturally fine faculties. Mr. Gage, if we must credit him with sincerity, has come to the same condition by financial dissipation. But his plan is not as vicious as some. To furnish the needed foundation for national bank circulation he would have the treasury issue $250,000,000 of 2½ per cent. bonds, for which greenbacks or Sherman notes should be paid. The money paid would not become an asset of the government. It would be canceled, destroyed, burned up. Of his scheme the Chicago Times well says:
“Like other bankers, he thinks the chief end to be sought is to relieve the government of the duty of issuing the circulating medium of the country. Upon this point we must note an emphatic disagreement with Mr. Gage, and with the whole school of financiers of which he is a type.”
A specimen of the demoralization and danger of the times is seen in a recent statement of Senator Gorman, that he and Quay had settled in their minds that a certain government bond scheme, like that of Mr. Gage, in eight items, including some about silver, was about the only proposition that could pass the present Congress. No. 3 among the eight items coolly dismisses the greenback thus: “The legal tenders to be retired and canceled as the bonds are put out.”
On the other hand, the Chicago Inter Ocean, which is repenting of some of its financial sins, and remembering what a good Greenback paper it was in 1878, says:
“One of the perils of the present financial situation is the disposition shown to reopen the greenback question. It took fifteen years to fight the great battle. Secretary McCulloch attempted to take snap judgment against legal-tender notes, paying them off at a rapid rate. Illinois, through one of its Congressmen, E. C. Ingersoll, stepped in the very first day Congress convened after that payingoff process had begun with a resolution which stopped it. Then began the intriguing of the Eastern bankers to destroy the greenbacks, and when the last decisive conflict occurred Illinois was again in the leadership, G. L. Fort being the especial champion of the greenback cause as against both the contractionists and the expansionists. There was a great victory. For half a generation the anti-greenbackers have been quiescent. They have come to the front again with this session of Congress. The knock-out received in caucus Monday ought to satisfy them that the greenback is here to stay. There never could be a better money. It is good for its face the world over. In that uttermost end of the earth, China or Japan, the United States legal-tender note is good for its face value, and, whatever changes are made, that part of our currency should remain intact. Should the current of Congressional events occasion a show of hands in the Republican party on this question, no doubt an overwhelming majority would say, as did the Democratic caucus, let the greenbacks alone.”
An extraordinary scene in the House between Representatives Hepburn and Hendrix so fairly illustrates the muddled stupidity and impudence of the gold-bugs that it deserves notice here as a sign of the situation. Mr. Hepburn described Mr. Hendrix as a self-heralded national banker, who came here with oracular utterances to tell the House what to do. Mr. Hepburn said his self-laudation was impaired by the recollection of his speech sixteen months ago, when the same conditions existed. Mr. Hendrix then found the panacea for all financial ills in the repeal of the Sherman silver law.