Presidents -- United States -- Messages; United States -- Politics and government -- Sources
The necessity for such an addition to the silver currency of the nation as
is compelled by the silver-coinage act is negatived by the fact that up to
the present time only about 50,000,000 of the silver dollars so coined have
actually found their way into circulation, leaving more than 165,000,000 in
the possession of the Government, the custody of which has entailed a
considerable expense for the construction of vaults for it deposit. Against
this latter amount there are outstanding silver certificates amounting to
about $93,000,000.
Every month two millions of gold in the public Treasury are paid our for
two millions or more of silver dollars, to be added to the idle mass
already accumulated.
If continued long enough, this operation will result in the substitution of
silver for all the gold the Government owns applicable to its general
purposes. It will not do to rely upon the customs receipts of the
Government to make good this drain of gold, because the silver thus coined
having been made legal tender for all debts and dues, public and private,
at times during the last six months 58 per cent of the receipts for duties
has been in silver or silver certificates, while the average within that
period has been 20 per cent. The proportion of silver and its certificates
received by the Government will probably increase as time goes on, for the
reason that the nearer the period approaches when it will be obliged to
offer silver in payment of its obligations the greater inducement there
will be to hoard gold against depreciation in the value of silver or for
the purpose of speculating.
This hoarding of gold has already begun.
When the time comes that gold has been withdrawn from circulation, then
will be apparent the difference between the real value of the silver dollar
and a dollar in gold, and the two coins will part company. Gold, still the
standard of value and necessary in our dealings with other countries, will
be at a premium over silver; banks which have substituted gold for the
deposits of their customers may pay them with silver bought with such gold,
thus making a handsome profit; rich speculators will sell their hoarded
gold to their neighbors who need it to liquidate their foreign debts, at a
ruinous premium over silver, and the laboring men and women of the land,
most defenseless of all, will find that the dollar received for the wage of
their toil has sadly shrunk in its purchasing power. It may be said that
the latter result will be but temporary, and that ultimately the price of
labor will be adjusted to the change; but even if this takes place the
wage-worker can not possibly gain, but must inevitably lose, since the
price he is compelled to pay for his living will not only be measured in a
coin heavily depreciated and fluctuating and uncertain in its value, but
this uncertainty in the value of the purchasing medium will be made the
pretext for an advance in prices beyond that justified by actual
depreciation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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