State of the Union AddressesGrant, Ulysses S. (Ulysses Simpson)
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State of the Union Addresses
Grant, Ulysses S. (Ulysses Simpson)
Presidents -- United States -- Messages; United States -- Politics and government -- Sources
Unlimited inflation would probably bring about specie payments more
speedily than any legislation looking to redemption of the legal-tenders in
coin; but it would be at the expense of honor. The legal-tenders would have
no value beyond settling present liabilities, or, properly speaking,
repudiating them. They would buy nothing after debts were all settled.
There are a few measures which seem to me important in this connection and
which I commend to your earnest consideration:
A repeal of so much of the legal-tender act as makes these notes receivable
for debts contracted after a date to be fixed in the act itself, say not
later than the 1st of January, 1877. We should then have quotations at real
values, not fictitious ones. Gold would no longer be at a premium, but
currency at a discount. A healthy reaction would set in at once, and with
it a desire to make the currency equal to what it purports to be. The
merchants, manufacturers, and tradesmen of every calling could do business
on a fair margin of profit, the money to be received having an unvarying
value. Laborers and all classes who work for stipulated pay or salary would
receive more for their income, because extra profits would no longer be
charged by the capitalists to compensate for the risk of a downward
fluctuation in the value of the currency.
Second. That the Secretary of the Treasury be authorized to redeem, say,
not to exceed $2,000,000 monthly of legal-tender notes, by issuing in their
stead a long bond, bearing interest at the rate of 3.65 per cent per annum,
of denominations ranging from $50 up to $1,000 each. This would in time
reduce the legal-tender notes to a volume that could be kept afloat without
demanding redemption in large sums suddenly.
Third. That additional power be given to the Secretary of the Treasury to
accumulate gold for final redemption, either by increasing revenue,
curtailing expenses, or both (it is preferable to do both); and I recommend
that reduction of expenditures be made wherever it can be done without
impairing Government obligations or crippling the due execution thereof.
One measure for increasing the revenue--and the only one I think of--is the
restoration of the duty on tea and coffee. These duties would add probably
$18,000,000 to the present amount received from imports, and would in no
way increase the prices paid for those articles by the consumers.
These articles are the products of countries collecting revenue from
exports, and as we, the largest consumers, reduce the duties they
proportionately increase them. With this addition to the revenue, many
duties now collected, and which give but an insignificant return for the
cost of collection, might be remitted, and to the direct advantage of
consumers at home.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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