Professor Laughlin has the gall, as few of his confreres have, to appeal to “the example of France,” after the Prussian war of 1871, in not “interfering with her media of exchange.” It is hard to tell whether his statement is based upon impudence or ignorance. She interfered with all the ideas of propriety entertained by his clique in a way that has been secretly their despair ever since. Yet hear his glorification of a scheme that cuts all the ground from under him. He says: “France borrowed largely, collected large amounts of capital by the creation of her national debt, and, on the other hand, retained her circulating medium in so perfect a condition that the moment the war was over she slipped along smoothly upon the wheels of industrial success and prosperity, without any derangement of her business. And, during that time, she carried through one of the most magnificent schemes of exchange, in the form of the payment of indemnity, that has ever taken place in history. She actually paid that foreign indemnity of the war to Germany practically without deranging the rate of exchange in France.” He don’t tell how. Don’t tell that she flooded all the avenues of trade with her paper money, and thus made her goods so plenty and cheap that Germany bought them instead of her own, and was then in turn nearly bankrupted; so that France paid three quarters of the “milliard” in French goods! But hear the true story from Wendell Phillips, an all-round, up-to-date reformer, whose motto was, “Act in the living present.” When the monopolizers of black men were beaten he turned to face the monopolizers of all men and women. Here is his eloquent picture: “France has just paid Germany one billion dollars. Her chief cities have been sacked and plundered. Humiliated by defeat, torn by civil dissensions, she laughs, while all the rest of Christendom wade through the mire of bankruptcy. Her ships are full busy, and what little other nations do is in carrying to and fro her manufactures. Her homes are happy, her streets crowded with passing trains loaded with goods; all her mills hurrying night and day to get even with her demand upon them. Labor walks rejoicing and capital sleeps easy, fat with its gains. What magician has done this? Paper money. Like the rest of the nations, she ran to its protection during the stress and strain of her German war. Unlike and wiser than the rest of us, she has not hurried back to coin. Wiser than we, she received the paper she offered to others. This honesty has its reward. Her paper is, to-day, more valuable than gold.” Among the great results of this policy were an abundance of gold and silver coming from abroad, until $1,200,000,000 was found to be in the country. Lest some may doubt the statement about the Germans only getting a little gold for that indemnity, an extract is here given from “Our Money Wars,” p. 152.