If gold, as a medium of exchange, is behind the requirements of the
times—and that it is has been pretty fully demonstrated—some reform
should be instituted to supply the failure; some reform—not merely to
meet the exigencies of present time and circumstances—which should be
inaugurated as a permanent change.
Our government, during the last war, was obliged to resort to what was
considered then by nearly all people, and is still considered by many
people, as very extreme measures, in order to furnish the material by
which the war might be carried on. Without the greenbacks we never could
have succeeded as we did. To the person who conceived this project we
are as greatly indebted as to our generals, who successfully prosecuted
the war upon the means furnished through his financial foresight. This
was one means of resorting to the credit of the country. If the credit
of the country was sufficiently good to furnish it with the means to
carry on such an exhaustive war as ours was, it surely should be good
for any peaceful time.
For our part, we cannot see the propriety of returning to specie
payment; and there is one insuperable objection to it. Gold cannot
furnish the circulating medium for the world, and credit must be
resorted to; and the necessity of having two kinds of circulation
involves difficulties which the mercantile world would be glad to have
forever done with.
Why should people be obliged to use one kind of circulating medium to
purchase another kind with, and then use this second kind to pay his
debts to another party, who will sell it again to obtain what the first
person used to purchase it? This is the logic of specie payments. If it
is argued that the actual transfer of the gold is not necessary, we
would then ask why is specie payment desirable at all? The facts
regarding this question are that people have become wedded to the idea
that gold is the only possible thing that can be made money, while all
their practice has been that it is the least entitled to the name of
money of anything they have ever used as such.
As has been said, the real standard value of a country is its capacity
to produce, and it is this production that requires to be moved,
exchanged, bartered or sold. The use of something to represent this, for
which it can stand responsible in general terms, is what is required of
money. That kind of money which will best meet all these requirements is
the best money. That kind of money which has elasticity, that will be
plenty when business is active, and that can be readily put to other use
for profit when business is less demanding, is the kind the prosperity
of a country demands. With a money of this kind, all financial crises
would be impossible. It is the possibility of making a stringent market
that unsettles financial matters and causes financial destruction. And
it is because we have not a financial system of our own that it is
possible for exigencies in other countries to unsettle values here.
To-day, the price of our securities in London determines the price of
gold here. In view of the possible complications in which Europe is
liable to be involved any time, and which she must within a very few
years be involved in, it becomes a matter of considerable moment,
whether our finances are to be governed and guided by the condition of
things there, when these things shall come.
As a nation we are or can be, were it necessary, independent of the
world, and are the first and best representative of a republican form of
government. Why should we not be the nation to give to the world a
reformed currency? The world—or that part of it which has grown to
appreciate our kind of freedom—involuntarily turns its eyes to us for
patterns of all things that a people during a change of government
require. One of the first things a government requires is money. Why
shall we not show the nations how to make the best use of their means,
and give them a system that will do more for them than any system that
has yet been tried, and by so doing also meet our own needs?
The capability to do this would instantly place us at the head of
nations, and financially to stand thus, is to complete the measure of
our greatness. Politically, we can never be subdued. During our late war
there were two millions of men under arms. Just in this proportion,
also, should we be powerful financially, and to become so would be to be
allotted by the world the lead of it and all its nations.