The Greenback Movement of 1875-1884 and Wisconsin's Part in It

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1911. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... Appendix No. 1 The Currency Question. By G. M. STEELE, President of Lawrence University, AppUton, Wis. The difficulties of the currency question are perhaps greater than those of almost any other with which the political economist is called to deal. The complications and mysteries involved in it give rise to wide differences of opinion among candid men. Few probably undertake to discuss the subject without, to a greater or less extent, contradicting themselves as well as one another. I find in the works of Bastiat, the wellknown French economist, a malediction which he puts in the mouth of a man who has evidently studied the subject till he has grown quite desperate. He says: "I curse money because it is constantly confounded with wealth; and from this confusion arise errors and calamatics without number. I curse it because its functions are ill understood and very difficult of comprehension. I curse it because it confuses all ideas, causes the means to be taken for the end, the obstacle for the cause, alpha for omega; because its presence in the world, beneficial in itself, has introduced a false notion, a begging of the question, a fallacious theory, that in its numerous ramifications has impoverished man and crimsoned the earth with blood. I curse it, because I feel myself incapable of wrestling against the error to which it has given birth otherwise than by a long and fastidious dissertation to which no one will listen." Yet, notwithstanding all the bewilderments and confusions with which the subject is fraught, there must be some truth to which study and experience should bring us; some proper and practicable and efficient financial system. That the systems and methods which have been tried in modern times are vastly imperfect in their character, and that t...