Click image to open full size in new tab
Article Text
From the Kxonville Chroniele. A meeting of the friends of greenbacks has been called at Nashville on the 18th of this month, We do not understand just what is proposed by the friends of this movement. We learn that it is proposed to run a candidate for Governor in this State next summer. But the "greenbacks" feature of the movement is not 80 clear. If they want greenbacks kept up to their present standard of value or made equal to gold, that isif they want good greenbacks, we are with them. Our present currency is the best we have ever had. It has now, or soon will have, a permanent, fixed value. It is uniform in all parts of the country. In former days, within the recollection of many of our readers, we had State banks and local banks, with circulating notes, current only in certain localities. A man might start to travel over the country with a pocket full of money, but he would have to change his currency every time he crossed a State line. Ever and anon these banks were breaking and whoever had these issues when they broke lost them. We had a notable example here in Knoxville in the case of the bank of East Tennessee, which failed about twenty-five years ago, It was just after the farmers in this section had disposed of their wheat receiving for It the issue of the Bank of East Tennessee, all of which was to them a clear loss. There are doubtless farmers who read the Chronicle who have some of these issues on hand yet, worth no more than any other waste paper. Now, we prefer greenbanks or National Bank notes to such a currency as that. If a National bank fails, as many of them have, their circulation remains good and the note-holders lose nothing, because the Government has made them secure their issues before allowing them to circulate. We want greenbacks, and "plenty of them;" but we want them issued so they will have a fixed value. We want the dollar of the poor man to be equal in value with the dollar of the Wall Street millionaire. If the dollar has not a fixed value, there will be combination of rings of speculators who have plenty of money, and who can raise or depreciate the value of currency at pleasure, for their own selfish ends. They can make it ninety cents one day, or ninety-five another, or par another, as it suits them, just as the rings have treated the Tennessee bonds. Who is profited by this gambling? Not the poor man, because he does not gamble in the Stock Exchange. He has no money to speculate upon, if he would. But the rich stock gambler has plenty of money, and gambling is his business. We do not want a currency made for