III. THE GREENBACK PARTY PLATFORM OF 1878

WHEREAS, Throughout our entire country the value of real estate is depreciated, industry paralyzed, trade depressed, business incomes and wages reduced, unparalleled distress inflicted upon the poorer and middle ranks of our people, the land filled with fraud, embezzlement, bankruptcy, crime, suffering, pauperism, and starvation; and

WHEREAS, This state of things has been brought about by legislation in the interest of and dictated by money-lenders, bankers, and bondholders; and

WHEREAS, The limiting of the legal-tender quality of greenbacks, the changing of currency bonds into coin bonds, the demonetization of the silver dollar, the excepting of bonds from taxation, the contraction of the circulation medium, the proposed forced resumption of specie payments were crimes against the people, and, as far as possible, the results of these criminal acts must be counteracted by judicious legislation;

Therefore, We assemble in National Convention, and make a declaration of our principles, and invite all patriotic citizens to unite in an effort to secure financial reform and industrial emancipation. The organization shall be known as the "National Party," and under this name we will perfect, without delay, national, State, and local associations to secure the election to office of such men only as will pledge themselves to do all in their power to establish these principles:

First: It is the exclusive function of the General Government to coin and create money, and regulate its value. All bank issues designed to circulate as money should be suppressed. The circulating medium, whether of metal or paper, shall be issued by the government, and made a full legal tender for all debts, duties, and taxes in the United States at its stamped value.

Second: There shall be no privileged class of creditors. Official salaries, pensions, bonds, and all other debts and obligations, public and private, shall be discharged in the legal-tender money of the United States, strictly according to the stipulations of the laws under which they were contracted.

Third: Resolved, That the coinage of silver be placed on the same footing as that of gold.

Fourth: Congress shall provide said money adequate to the full employment of labor, the equitable distribution of its products, and the requirements of business, fixing a minimum amount per capita of the population, and otherwise regulating its value by wise and

equitable provisions of law, so that the rate of interest will secure to labor its just reward.

II2. THE POPULIST PARTY PLATFORM OF 1896

1. We demand a national money, safe and sound, issued by the General Government only, without the intervention of banks of issue, to be a full legal tender for all debts, public and private; a just, equitable, and efficient means of distribution direct to the people and through the lawful disbursements of the Government.

2. We demand the free and unrestricted coinage of silver and gold at the present legal ratio of 16 to 1, without waiting for the consent of foreign nations.

3. We demand that the volume of circulating medium be speedily increased to an amount sufficient to meet the demands of business and population, and to restore the just level of prices of labor and production.

113. A REVIVAL OF "GREENBACKISM"

An incident of crucial significance in connection with the effort for banking reform is, however, seen in the well-authenticated attempt of Mr. William J. Bryan to secure the adoption by members of the Democratic party in Congress of a banking plan of his own in opposition to each and all of the various rival banking plans that have been thus far suggested. Mr. Bryan's plan relates almost entirely to the issue of notes. He desires to have the power of note issue placed exclusively in the hands of the government, and would require that, in order to get notes, banks be compelled to make a showing that they possess an adequate amount of commercial paper of specified kinds. When this had been demonstrated to the satisfaction of the designated local officers, the government would deposit in the bank making the application circulating notes to an amount equal to that for which the bank had made application. These notes would be redeemable at the Treasury and would constitute a single uniform government currency. On the whole, the plan thus suggested, although refined in various particulars as compared with the various Bryan plans that have been urged in the past, is a revival, under a different name, of the orginal greenback or government legal-tender-currency idea that Adapted from "Washington Notes" in Journal of Political Economy, January, 1913, pp. 75–76.

has figured so largely in times past in connection with the proposals of the radical wing of the Democratic party.

114. NATURAL MONEY, THE PEACEFUL SOLUTION'

BY JOHN RAYMOND CUMMINGS

The adoption of a system of natural money such as is suggested below will accomplish the following ends:

1. It will make panics impossible.

2. It will enable the government to take over all the land and all the privately owned public utilities on terms very liberal to present owners, without issuing a bond and without hardship or injustice.

3. It will enable the government to build during the same period

a million miles of highway at a cost of $10,000 the mile.

4. To irrigate and drain a large proportion of the area needing irrigation and drainage.

5. To develop tens of millions of horse-power from water and distribute it throughout the country.

6. To develop internal waterways on a scale hitherto unattempted and undreamed of.

7. It will raise wages and end strikes and lockouts. It will establish natural wages and secure absolute equity as between employers and employees.

8. It will pay off the government debt and make future debt impossible.

9. It will end our present industrial warfare and bring all now discordant classes into harmonious co-operation, inaugurating an era of progress and prosperity such as the world has not even conceived of.

For our purpose we will assume an isolated community of a thousand men and their families. We will assume that our colonists brought with them a limited amount of gold and silver, and that they have no thought of inventing or adopting any other than the coin system with which they have been familiar, but they do intend to build a substantial community and desire to have an orderly and efficient government, with the largest possible measure of public benefits and of personal freedom.

Let us assume that they arrive in a body in the early spring, and that for the time being they decide that all work shall be communal.

'Adapted from Natural Money, The Peaceful Solution (summarized from various chapters). (Bankers Publishing Co., 1912.)

They must have enough houses for protection before the coming winter and must grow food and provender, so they decide that those who are handy with the broadax, saw, and hammer shall assist the few artisans in the building of houses, while the other men, with the assistance of some of the women and the youths, shall grow the crops. But it is understood that when there are houses for all, the work is to be individualistic, except for such work as is of a public character.

When they have reached the point of individual work they hold a meeting and decide that each man of voting age shall render thirty days' public service yearly or pay the equivalent into the public treasury, and shall be subject to call for from one to thirty days additional.

Many individuals rather than perform this public service would prefer to hire substitutes in order to save their own time for the private employments in which they are particularly efficient. The payment for substitutes establishes a minimum common labor wage. In the beginning a man who desired a substitute made arrangements with him and notified the overseer of public works, giving the name of his substitute. The overseer gave the receipts accordingly to the workman, who delivered them to his employer and received his pay; but after a time, probably to save work in making the receipts, they used printed blanks requiring only the filling in of the worker's name and the overseer's stamped signature. These each worker delivered to his employers-the men whose public service he had engaged to work out. The substitutes at first took the receipts in the names of their various employers, one laborer doing the public work for several individuals.

Still later even this was found to be unnecessary, for it involved personal engagements to perform the service, and subsequent settlements of each worker with his employers. Perhaps by the accident of some workman's failure to settle with his employers at the usual time; possibly by the natural and necessary development of the situation, the workmen came to be quite indifferent and careless as to settlements and used the receipts with the grocer, the butcher, the merchant, in fact, everywhere they had dealings.

But most of the receipts were for a week's work, only a few of them being for a less amount, so after a time, on the suggestion of a committee of the workmen, the receipts, or certificates, as they were commonly called, were given in various denominations, from the fourth part of a day to one, two, two-and-a-half, and five-day cer

tificates, and were printed on their best paper and as ornamentally as their facilities allowed.

Very soon after this was done the certificates constituted the larger part of the circulating medium and the people realized that unwittingly they had invented a new money. Gradually as the volume of the certificates increased, the gold disappeared from circulation and silver was used only as fractional currency. Coin did not disappear by "emigration" nor by hoarding, but by finding its way into the public treasury and remaining there because people preferred the certificates.

Let it be noted that these certificates were not "promises to pay," nor were they money in any legal sense; not legal tender, yet they performed all the functions of money. Probably no one of the colonists ever so much as thought of providing by ordinance that anything should be a legal tender.

Thus this money based on service performed came naturally to be the medium of exchange without anyone even raising a question as to its soundness or safety. The certificates passed current on the same basis as coin (a full-day certificate as $2.00). A purchase of goods from a foreign community, however, raised the question as to the safety of the certificates. It was proposed to use the coin that had accumulated in the government vaults in the purchase of the foreign goods, and this at once provoked discussion as to the basis of the circulation power of the certificates. Some thought that every currency should have a coin basis, and the banker thought that the coin in the community had really served as a basis for the certificates, which passed as token money upon the tacit understanding of a return to coin at any time the certificates might prove unsatisfactory. He was very sure a crisis would come before long if the coin were sent away. He raised the question of limiting the issue of certificates, and soon it was evident that this was the crux of the whole question. How to limit them had never been considered, and now it was evident that this was the one point to be made sure of-if it could be.

A board of experts to determine the limit was suggested, but discussion indicated that a board could not tell how much money was needed any better than a single expert could; that in the very nature of things the amount of currency required cannot be settled abstractly, but is governed only by the demands of trade.

A perfect currency is not only elastic in the sense that it will expand to the fullest requirements of trade, but it is as perfect in