The desire to accumulate property is one of the noblest that nature
has implanted in man, and it is through the successful results of
this desire, we are enabled to point with unerring certainty to
the disembarking line, which so surely characterizes the advanced
educated, refined and civilized man from that of the wild savage,
whose highest desire is to slay and rob his fellow men, and proudly
exhibit their scalps, or the plunder he has acquired, as evidence of
his cunning or courage.
It is through this inborn desire to accumulate that man is willing to
labor, toil, suffer, and forego present gratifications for the hope
of future greater satisfactions; that has resulted in the building and
equiping the mighty ships of commerce, whose white, spreading canvas
dots every sea where commerce may be known, or where the interests of
God's creatures may best be served. It is through this desire, coupled
with unremitting toil, that we owe everything of permanent enjoyment,
of enlightenment and of prosperity. The millions of dollars of paper
money which is handled every day as the natural fruit of toil and
saving through the many and diversified transactions in the vast,
illimitable and ever rapidly developing field of commerce, is but the
representative of ownership of property.
If this representative is what it purports on its face to be, each
and every one who receives it in exchange for services or commodities,
owns not merely a piece of paper, with designs, words and promises
printed or engraved thereon, but an interest or an undivided whole in
a farm, a block of buildings or a store well stocked with merchandise,
which, in his estimation, at least, is more desirable to him than the
labor or commodity for which he has voluntarily made the exchange;
but, if on the contrary, it is other than what it purports on its face
to be, he finds that he is the owner of a piece of paper whose value
is _nil_.
There is, at the present writing, 1884, nearly eight hundred million
dollars of paper currency in the United States, consisting of
greenbacks and national currency, a great portion of which is in
actual circulation, and it has been estimated by eminent authorities,
who occupy positions of trust in the various departments through
which the financial machinery of this vast sea of paper money is daily
circulated, that there is in circulation nearly one-fifth of this
amount in counterfeit money, or about one hundred and sixty million
dollars; and not one dollar of this counterfeit money owes its
circulation to any excellence of the work in its manufacture, but
wholly to the general ignorance of those who handle it, as to what
is required to constitute a genuine bill. The time will come when the
United States will redeem all of its issue of paper money, when those
who are holding any of this counterfeit money will have to stand the
loss to the extent of the sum in their possession. To all of those who
are willing to take a small portion of their time each day for a few
weeks in learning just what it takes to constitute a genuine bill,
there need be no necessity of ever losing anything by counterfeiters,
as it is impossible for them to make bills which will in any way
approach the beauty and exactness of the genuine ones. There is not at
the present time, nor has there ever been in the past, nor will there
ever be in the future, a counterfeit bill made that cannot be detected
at sight; and the positive knowledge of how to know at all times when
a bill is genuine and when not is within the reach of all those
who may have the privilege of reading the following information
or infallible rules with a genuine desire to be benefited thereby.