_George S. Coe_ (“Financial History of the War”): “As the war progressed and the country became poorer, the currency increased. It is strange that all other property was eagerly sought for in preference to this, and that prodigal expenditure became the law of the land.” _Report of George S. Coe, John J. Knox, James Harsen Rhoades and W. P. St. John_ (committee of New York Chamber of Commerce, 1891): “The enlarged volume [of legal-tender money], besides disturbing the equitable relations of men to each other, at once adjusts itself to the prices of all commodities and relatively enhances their cost, so as to absorb at once whatever advances their cost.... This is why thoughtful men see in any issue of legal-tender notes the way to inevitable destruction.” _Robert G. Ingersoll_: “We have passed through a period of wonderful and unprecedented inflation. For years every kind of business has been pressed to the very sky line. A wave of wealth swept over the United States. Tatters became garments and garments became robes. Walls were covered with pictures, floors with carpets, and for the first time in the history of the world the poor tasted all the luxuries of wealth. But monopoly changed that paradise into hell by creating a money famine.” _John J. Ingalls_: “No people in a great emergency ever found a faithful ally in gold. It is the most cowardly and treacherous of all metals. It makes no treaty it does not break; it has no friend it does not sooner or later betray. In times of panic and calamity, shipwreck and disaster, it becomes the agent and minister of ruin. No nation ever fought a great war by the aid of gold. In the crisis of the greatest peril it becomes an enemy more potent than the foe in the field.... In our own civil war it is doubtful if the gold of New York and London did not work us greater injury than the powder and lead and iron of the rebels. It was the most invincible enemy of the public credit. It was in open alliance with our enemies the world over, and all its energies were evoked for our destruction. But, as usual, when danger has been averted and the victory secured, gold swaggers to the front and asserts supremacy.” _Hugh McCulloch_, Secretary of the Treasury (1866): “The process of contracting the circulation of the government notes should go on just as rapidly as possible without producing a financial crash.” _John A. Logan_ (Feb. 17, 1874): “You may theorize and argue to the farmers until you are hoarse, and you will fail to get them to prefer low prices to high ones for their products.... The people have and do realize that their most prosperous times were when currency was the most plentiful....