479

CHAPTER 18

I9TH CENTURY MONETARY

CRIMES - THE GREAT DE-
MONETIZATIONS

“The conspiracy...formed here and in Europe to destroy

...from three-sevenths to one-half of the metallic money of the
world, is the most gigantic crime of this or any other age.”
John G. Carlisle,
U.S. Treasury Secretary

By 1800 the Bank of England had been operating for over a centu-
ry, transferring the power and wealth of society to the People of the Bank
- the bankers and associated “financiers.” Though previously sub-
servient to government, they soon came to dominate government and
society by usurping the nation's monetary power. Great concentrations
of wealth were accumulated through macro usury - the structural misuse
of society's monetary mechanisms. As this power and privilege was
immorally gained, so was it irresponsibly used to further pillage soci-
eties from within and from across national boundaries, utilizing the
monetary weapons best understood by these miscreants. Thus the l9th
century witnessed monetary crimes on an immense scale.
We've traced American developments through the mid-1860s and
now examine their international context, as so much of what happened
in the U.S. originated abroad.
The world was about to witness vast, consciously executed defla-
tions, staning in England, then Europe's Latin Monetary Union, the
480 The Lost Science Of Money

U.S., and finally Japan. While the primary mechanism of deflation was
the gold standard, each country's situation presented diffefent opportu-
nities for bankers to reduce the money supply and increase the value of
the nation's currency units which were owed to them. But first we must
understand the motive.
WHY SOME BANKERS DEFLATE
Ideally (and admittedly oversimplifying), society should expand the
nation's money supply to keep up with population growth, and the
growth in commerce and industry, with the value of the unit of currency
remaining fairly stable, or declining slightly in value over time.A
Privately controlled money has no motive to give this optimal result.
It usually starts by over expanding the money supply, causing excessive
loss in the value of the currency (“inflation” or more accurately, depre-
ciation of the currency), forcing the nation into debt to those holding the
monetary power. Historically, the new money is usually created mainly
for production that will be destroyed in warfare rather than becoming
additional productive machinery and infrastructure in the society.
Then when it becomes clear to all that they are harming the curren-
cy, private control overly restricts or contracts the money supply. This
increases the value of the currency unit, making it difficult or impossi-
ble to repay the accumulated private and public debts. This dramatically
transfers wealth and power from the society as a whole to its wealthiest
elements, the bankers and other debt holders.
Of these two private money “games,” over-restriction and deflation
are by far the worse, directly and indirectly causing severe problems in
all areas of life. For one thing it keeps large numbers of potentially work-
ing people unemployed. The loss of these billions of man hours of pro-
ductive work is never made up; neither is the harm done to the unem-
ployed and their families.
Deflations that go out of control also often take the weaker banks
down, but generally not those that are within the society's controlling
power structure.
WORLDWIDE DEMONETIZATION AND DEFLATION MOVES
The 1849 discovery of gold in California caused panic in some
financial circles. They feared a repeat of the 1500-1700 AD experience
A) The Austrian School erroneously asserts that any expansion of a flat money
system must lead to growing inflation, and then inevitably to a collapse. But this
error arises out of their incorrect commodity-like definition of money, and thelr
failure to properly distinguish between money, credit, and wealth, as we'll show.
 18 19TH CENTURY MONETARY CRIMES-THE GREAT DEFLATIONS 481

where gold and silver lost over 80% of their value and never regained it,
as the metallic plunder from America poured into Europe as we described in
Chapter 8.
In his 1853 book, the Frenchman Michel Chevelier warned readers
that their bonds would lose value:
“The probable effects of the increased supply of gold, are now
assuming a preponderance over all other subjects. The anxious pause of
curiosity is latent but it is nevertheless felt by everyone.. .In our day we
seem destined like our fathers of three centuries ago and from the same
causes to witness the shock and crisis of a universal rise in prices.”I
He advised that either gold or silver should be demonetized - that
one of them no longer be sanctioned as money by governments.
France was suffering from a poor coinage situation with much clip-
ping and culling. Wise men argued that the coinage was a public institu-
tlon, and urged the enforcement of the existing severe penalties against
coin clippers, but Chevalier advised his readers to break the law and pick
out the heavier coins and melt them down. He argued that the problem
was the government's fault for not maintaining the coinage. This blaming
of government for the monetary mischief of private persons is not new.2
Save yourself, he advised his readers, and let your neighbors and
society fall, rather than attempt to remedy the social and economic ills.
But in fact, nothing was really happening. The new gold production
was easily being absorbed in money systems, as industrialization pro-
gressed. Thus Chevelier's odd comment: “It is...remarkable that up to this
time the fall in gold, as compared with silver, has been hardly perceptible.”
Yet Chevelier was taken seriously. The Germanic Confederation
went so far as to de-monetize gold in the treaty of Vienna in 1857.
They reversed themselves 14 years later, in 1871, re-monetizing gold
and de-monetizing silver.
Chevelier's predictions of the coming inflation never materialized.
In fact the world was about to be pushed in exactly the opposite direction.
ENGLAND STARTS THE WORLDWIDE
DEMONETIZATION OF SILVER
The primary deflationary technique was to implement a gold stan-
dard, and to demonetize silver, declaring it not a legal tender for debt
payments. This had begun in England in May, 1774, when the first legal
tender law in England limited payments in silver to £25. In June, 1798,
coinage of silver was suspended at the English Mint and in 1816 a law
482 The Lost Science Of Money

limited silver legal tender payments to £2 (see Chapter 12).

Monetary theorist Henri Cernuschi would later label this “A disas-
trous and chimerical operation...invented by Lord Liverpool. 3 In his
classic State Theory of Money, George Knapp would observe that:
“England's reasons for going over to the gold standard have never
been fully explained. 4
THE PROBLEMS OF BIMETALLISM
Bimetallism as then practiced was susceptible to private manipula-
tion. From about 1825 problems arose once again in Europe out of coin
clipping and the slightly different gold/silver ratios resulting from the
differing values assigned to the metals by different nations. “Financiers”
would export gold and silver back and forth on a large scale to take risk-
less advantage of these tiny differences in their official values.
W.A. Shaw's The History of Currency 1252 to 1896 clearly
described the process by focusing on the activities of speculators:
“Such is the nature of the bimetallic law that any overshooting of the
ratio on no matter which side - in favor of silver or in favor of gold -
establishes a differentiation, and the differentiation at once gives to the one
metal a fulcrum or lever point - a purchasing power - against the other, and
the undervalued metal, whichever it is, at once tends to disappear.”
Shaw noted that in centuries of coinage laws:
“There is no idea of separating the two metals.. .there is no intention
to declare a ratio; there is no conception of bullion apart from coin...The
advantage which was to be derived from a trade in bullion, and from an
understanding of the effects of differently prevailing ratios in different
countries, was known only to the Jew and Italian. They plied their trade
in secret, and the legislature was only apprised of the result by sudden-
ly finding a slipping away and dearth of coinage...”
The real problem to the nation under such attack was that:
“The danger of arbitrage transactions to the medieval legislator lay
in the fact that they stripped the country, which suffered from them, not
merely of a bullion reserve, but of her actual currency, and rendered even
internal trade impossible. 5
THE ANCIENT RATIO MECHANISM STRIKES
ONE LAST TIME
An added threat to Europe was the ancient disparity in gold/silver
ratios between Europe and Asia, described in Chapter 3, which had
plagued monetary systems from antiquity, and once again demonstrated
 18 19TH CENTURY MONETARY CRIMES-THE GREAT DEFLATIONS 483

its power to affect modern capitalism.

This will be the last time we see this mechanism having a substan-
tial monetary impact on the West, for India had been conquered by the
British and in 1821 Britain had raised the ratio in India to 15 to 1.
However, from 1852 only silver coins were legal tender in India, reflect-
ing the higher esteem in which the Indian populace held silver. This
drew silver from Europe.
France was bimetallic, but mainly used silver money from 1803 to
about 1848. Belgium, which had separated from Holland in 1830, was
using French money for nearly all (870/) of its circulation by 1860.
Switzerland also used France's money system and had made it legal ten-
der. Italy also adopted the French system in 1862, abandoning inde-
pendent principality money.
THE LATIN MONETARY UNION DEMONETIZES SILVER
In 1858 an international commission was formed to study and rem-
edy the monetary problems. It suggested tariffs on exporting silver and
recommended harsh punishment of illegal money speculation. None of its
proposals were acted on and silver exports to India grew: 91 million Rupees
in 1862; 126 million Rupees in 1863; and 129 million Rupees ln 1864.6
This Commission evolved into the Latin Monetary Union (France,
Switzerland, Belgium, Italy, and Greece ) and it quickly shifted away
from gold demonetization toward silver demonetization, from 1865-73.7
Since there were approximately equally valued amounts of gold and
silver coinage available for monetary purposes in the West, demonetiz-
ing either metal would eliminate about one half the West's metallic
money supply. The impact on the wealthy bond holders in all countries
would be a large gain of money and power for decades as the value of
the currency unit rose.
By 1867 the Latin Monetary Union's conference included most
European countries, the U.S. and Russia; 19 in all. Significantly,
England never joined this monetary union.
Germany would finally be the catalyst for action. She warred with
France in 1870 and won. Bismarck extracted an unprecedented war
lndemnity of 5 billion Francs. Having just demonetized gold in 1857,
Germany reversed course in December, 1871 and went onto the gold
standard in order to receive payment from France in gold rather than sil-
ver. France had to dump silver to get the gold.
The new German monetary system required German banks to sell
484 The Lost Science Of Money

their silver by February, 1873, adding to the market pressure on silver. 8

Finally Germany demonetized silver altogether in July, 1873, leaving
France as the only major European nation still using silver money. H.
Parker Willis ridiculed France's long standing use of both gold and sil-
ver money from medieval times as a “bimetallic cult.”
In 1873 France was forced to limit silver coinage; in 1876 she canceled
her law on free coinage of silver; in 1878 she agreed to redeem her silver
coins in gold if requested, and agreed to stop minting new 5 Franc silver
coins. For practical purposes all of Europe was now on a gold standard.
THE DEFLATION EVEN REACHES JAPAN
The worldwide deflationary attack reached Japan when the Central
Bank of Japan was established in October, 1882 and immediately adopt-
ed a deflationary course:
“Entering upon a policy of contraction in 1882, the government
firmly persisted in its measures,” wrote Masayoshi Takaki in The
History of Japanese Paper Currency, “But this wholesome end was not
and could not be this rapidly attained without great disturbances in all
9
other business, and:
“With the fall in prices, distress and desolation extended over the
land, and millions of people who had supposed themselves to be on the
high road to wealth suddenly found poverty staring them in the face,
while exacting creditors an all sides demanded the liquidation of debts.”
Two points deserve special mention: First, the establishment of a
Japanese central bank under the advice of Finance Minister Ito Hirobumi
did not start with the normal expansion phase as in all other such central
bank foundings. Hirobumi had been smuggled out of Japan with four
other students by the Jardine Matheson company in 1863 to study in
London. The Bank was founded after he returned from a U.S. visit to
study the American money system.
Japan's central Bank was privately owned, under the dominance of
the Mitsui group, the world's oldest commercial enterprise, established
in 1616 when its founder Sokubei Takatoshi renounced his Samurai sta-
tus to become a merchant. By 1882 it was the most powerful organiza-
tion in Japan and its leader was an enigmatic figure, Minomura
Rizeamon, known as the “Man From Nowhere.” He kept Japan in line
with the prevailing worldwide deflationary policy.'0
Second, the deflation was accomplished without using the gold stan-
dard as the normal deflationary agent, but by withdrawing the legal
 18 19TH CENTURY MONETARY CRIMES-THE GREAT DEFLATIONS 485

tender “Han satsu” - the paper currencies that had been issued by about
250 clans, starting from the 1600s. It was not until 1899 that Japan was
effectively on a gold standard.
HALF THE WORLD'S METALLIC MONEY DESTROYED
Alexander Del Mar, estimated that the silver demonetizations cut
Europe's money supply in half:
“Mr. Carlisle (later Secretary of the Treasury, 1893-97) said in the
House of Representatives, February 21st, 1878, ‘The conspiracy which
seems to have been formed here and in Europe to destroy by legislation
and otherwise, from three-sevenths to one-half of the metallic money of
the world, is the most gigantic crime of this or any other age.”’11
The literature of the time indicates that Americans, with their wider
monetary heritage, were more aware or at least more vocal than the
Europeans about the harmful effects of these reductions in the metallic
money supply.
These demonetization episodes demonstrate that the financiers’
insistence on gold or silver for money was not part of an honestly held,
though incorrect, monetary viewpoint, that the precious metals were
really money. Its purpose was not to optimize production, trade, employ-
ment, or the progress of humanity. It was in large part a ruse by which
they assured the monetary power would remain in their hands. The
episodes show that the old gold standard was not an automatic market
mechanism, or one to be allowed to depend on natural developments
such as new gold finds. It was a controlled and managed system - man-
aged for the benefit of its managers.
GROWING AMERICAN POWER
America was foreseen to become a superpower as early as the 1700s
by Philip Cantillon (see Chapter 12). In the early 1800s Alexis De
Tocqueville predicted America would become the ruler of the seas.
Europe's financial establishment would probably have preferred to deal
with an America divided into North and South, which could more easi-
ly balance against one another by European intrigue. But President
Lincoln made the difficult and bloody decision to fight:
“From the outset of the war, therefore, the great body of the aristocra-
cy in England was anxious to see the U.S. go to pieces,” wrote Randall.12
Elements in England, France and Austria intrigued against the North.
For a time England allowed warships to be constructed for the South,
though it was a circumvention of her laws. The only European power to
486 The Lost Science Of Money

support the North was Russia, which sent a fleet of warships to its aid.
Disaster struck England when it became clear the American union
would be preserved:
“It might have been thought that the ship carrying England and her
fortune had suddenly sprung a leak,” wrote Woloski in August, 1866. Sir
Strafford Northcote called it a “run upon England” as her markets
crashed on Black Friday, May 11, 1866.’3
BANKERS FEAR THE GREENBACK EXAMPLE
Issuing the Greenbacks was based on legislative authorization rather
than the caprice of bankers. It required no debt or interest payments. A
specific number were authorized and it was never exceeded.
“In 1868 [there was] strong sentiment in favor of the retention of the
greenbacks as a permanent feature of our monetary system,” wrote
Bullock.14
This currency was very popular among Americans, and very unpop-
ular among bankers, including foreign bankers, who were concerned that
their own nations would observe the benefits of a well operated govern-
ment money system and follow the American example.
To disrupt this progressive system the bankers would launch three
deflationary attacks on America.
THE FIRST ATTACK - AGAINST THE GREENBACK BONDS
To help pay Civil War expenses the U.S. had issued bonds that were
purchased with Greenbacks and were supposed to be redeemed in
Greenbacks, but which paid interest in gold.
Del Mar noted that after about 1 to $1.5 billion worth of these bonds
had been purchased by what he called “universal financiers” at half
price, they began agitating politically to have them redeemed for gold
which was then trading (in 1868) about 30% over the Greenback.15
The markets had always treated the bonds as redeemable in paper
Greenbacks:
“At the peak of the premium on gold (mid 1864) when railroad
bonds were yielding less than 6%, the gold yield on the 6% government
bonds of 1881 exceeded 16%....the bonds were being treated as iI
they were predominantly paper bonds,” wrote Friedman and
Schwartz.16
The soldiers and sailors were paid in Greenbacks for their sweat,
blood and shattered bodies. Nearly two-thirds of a million died. But the
bondholders, supported by preacher and professor, pretended that the
 18 19TH CENTURY MONETARY CRIMES-THE GREAT DEFLATIONS 487

honor of the United States required that they be paid in gold! They agi-
tated and conspired to have the rules changed.
Payment in gold would give the English Baron James Rothschild,
his clients, and other bankers, two undeserved benefits: first - the obvi-
ous 30% gain; second, the U.S. did not have the gold and would have to
borrow it from the only possible source - Baron Rothschild and the other
bankers, and their wealthy clients in Europe. The U.S. would then have
to pay them interest on that gold loan.
The gold would ultimately be transferred from Baron Rothschild
and other bondholders to Baron Rothschild and other bondholders; but
the United States people would be financially raped in the process. Our
own Government's laws would be manipulated to support this demon-
strably pernicious gold money system, helping to keep it dominant over
humanity by paying them interest on their sterile gold holdings, which,
like the ancient temple cults, they probably hoarded in useless oversup-
ply (see chapter 1).
Since the physical gold would go from the bankers to the bankers,
lt s clear that what was important to them about gold was not any “intrin-
sic” qualities, but how they could use it to fleece American society.
We've singled out Baron Rothschild for a reason: it is possible to
trace the actions of his intermediary in America (his only primary agent
here), August Belmont, in the Greenback political struggle. Belmont was
a major factor in the Democratic Party of that day.
BANKERS SABOTAGE THE DEMOCRATS IN
THE 1868 PRESIDENTIAL RACE
In order for the “financiers” to succeed in their attacks on America's
money system, it was necessary to sabotage the Democratic Party - the
logical defender of the average citizen. The Republicans could already
be counted on as the bankers party. The Democratic candidate, Horatio
Seymour, was undermined thanks to Belmont's position as Chairman of
the party's National Democratic Executive Committee. Belmont had the
assistance of Manton Marble's The World newspaper in New York, which
according to Del Mar was beholden to Belmont financially. We have a
unique picture of how this occurred because Alexander Del Mar was a par-
ticipant in the actual events and recounted them in his book Monetary
Crimes.17
The Democratic Party platform opposed redeeming the bonds in
coinage, while their candidate Seymour personally favored it. But the
d88 The Lost Science Of Money

conspirators decided to take no chances and destroyed Seymour. The

World, according to Del Mar, was seen as the Democrats' paper, specif-
ically pledged from 1867 to support the Greenbacks. Out of the blue, on
October 15, 1868, The World advised dropping Democratic candidate
Seymour, claiming that he couldn't win.
At an emergency meeting of Democratic leaders, called the next day

18a. Alexander Del Mar (1836-1926), tke greatest monetary historian of

all ttme. His brilliance was lgaored while nonsense was advanced as
"political economy" by the English school. Del Mar's monetary con-
cepts provide the weapons needed to protect huzaanlty from
tbe predattoas of the Adam Smitb crow&
 18 19TH CENTURY MONETARY CRIMES-THE GREAT DEFLATIONS 489

at the office of the National Intelligencer magazine in Washington, Del

Mar, who had been an owner of the magazine, was in attendance. He
relates in detail how August Belmont refused to disavow The World's
article and was inexplicably unavailable - incommunicado - for several
days at this crucial moment:
“It was as though the general of a division had gone over to the
enemy on the eve of an assured victory,” wrote Del Mar.
Seymour still got 2.6 million votes, compared to 2.9 million for
Republican Ulysses S. Grant.18 Grant's first act on taking office in
March, 1869 was signing the bankers' so-called Credit Strengthening
Act, pledging payment of Government bonds in gold, which his prede-
cessor Johnson had vetoed.
The World newspaper then became magically transformed overnight
into a hard money publication, supporting conservative candidates in the
next election. Irwin Unger observed that:
“In Manton Marble's New York World the eastern conservatives had
a powerful propaganda vehicle while August Belmont's Rothschild mil-
lions would provide unlimited resources for effective political action. 19
THE GREENBACK AND POPULIST PARTIES
FORM IN REACTION
When it became apparent that the Democratic Party was blocked
from serving as the vehicle for establishing a permanent Greenback sys-
tem, several new populist parties formed to pursue this goal. Eventually
these parties got a majority of the people on their side, but the financiers
were able to keep them splintered and dominate the political process
Wlth money.
THE SECOND ATTACK - THE ATTEMPTS TO
REMOVE THE GREENBACKS
In December 1865 Treasury Secretary McCulloch had put through a
law to gradually retire the Greenbacks (it passed 144 to 6 in the House).
The act provided that $10 million of Greenbacks received in payment to
the Government would be retired (destroyed) over six months, and up to
$4 million more per month thereafter.
Despite the lopsided vote favoring the act, it had been extremely
unpopular, since the Treasury should have been moving in exactly the
opposite direction: creating more money to ease the extra monetary bur-
den placed on the Union by the re-inclusion of the Southern States' mon-
etary needs in the nation's money system when the Civil War ended.
490 The Lost Science Of Money

To make matters worse, instead of acting gradually McCulloch

retired no Greenbacks for almost six months and then retired $10 million
all at once, creating great distress and causing business failures in the
Northern states to skyrocket in 1867:20
Northern Business Failures
1860 2,733 1864 520
1861 5,935 1865 530
1862 1,652 1866 632
1863 495 1867 2,386
McCulloch's pet Act was suspended in February 1868, after $44
million in Greenbacks had been retired, many to be re-issued later.
Even businessmen began to understand. George Morgan wrote:
“Businessmen, generally are awakening to the fact that the real issue
is between dead capital on the one side and active capital and labor on
the other. They are beginning to understand that specie resumption and
bankruptcy mean the same thing. 21

The New York Board of Trade was organized in opposition to the

New York Chamber of Commerce, in order to support the Greenbacks.22
The attempt to get rid of the Greenbacks through the law courts
failed in 1871 when the Supreme Court, in Knox vs. Lee, ruled that the
Greenbacks were legal in wartime. Then in 1884, in Juilliard vs.
Greenman, the Court ruled that Congress had the power to create them
in peacetime as well.
The financiers also moved politically to force the redemption of the
entire $360 million outstanding Greenbacks into gold.
ENGLAND SENDS “EXPERTS” TO ATTACK
THE GREENBACKS
In 1869 Walter Bagehot, an English political economist, wrote a
short book published by the Economist which pretended to propose a
union of American and British currencies. The book reads strangely. Its
proposal wasn't meant to be taken seriously; it is mostly fluff:
“First it must be founded on a single standard not a double. Second
it must have a high gold unit. 23

The only points that stand out are the emphasis on gold and the
smearing of the U.S. Government. The book's anti-governmental venom
is as strident as the 1990s variety. But at that time there was little public
debt, no income tax, no welfare and practically no government! So the
book's real lesson may be to indicate the largely psychological nature of
 18 19TH CENTURY MONETARY CRIMES-THE GREAT DEFLATIONS 491

the attacks on government; attacks supported and on behalf of powerful

financial interests.
Bagehot condemned the Greenbacks and the United States:
“So far from its being an economic act which governments do for
the benefit of their subjects it has been a political act which they have
done for their own sake.”
Such anthropomorphizing of government, or pretending the
government has desires and attributes like a person, is an essen-
tial element of the financiers attack on their main potential oppo-
nent - our government.
Another English “expert” sent on tour to befuddle American minds
was Bonamy Price, professor of political economy at Oxford University.
We met him in Chapter 13, as the former mental patient who was given
Thorold Roger's professorship at Oxford, when Rogers proved that
Englishmen were in dreadful economic shape. You judge whether Price
was rational in this October 1, 1874 interview with the Daily Tribune:24
Price: “Inconvertible currency is so vicious, so radically bad
that I feel no interest in makeshifts. There is only one step to be taken -
amputation.
The Reporter: “That is to say contractipn?”
Price: “That is not contraction, but the extinction of inconvert-
lble paper. Anything short of the extinction of the currency is so radical-
ly and fundamentally bad that I have no interest in comparing the rela-
tive goodness or badness of any expedients.”
The reporter: asks Price whether the U.S. Treasury's stoppage on
redeeming paper money was not similar to the Bank of England's stop-
plng the redemption of its paper money.
Price: “Ah but the motive is different. The inconvertible cur-
rency in your country is a tax. By means of this species of paper [paper
money] the government has got hold of the property of the nation, and it
has kept it. The property is gone and the public in the place of it has got
a species of paper [paper money]. It is the government's business to
restore the property.”
Reporter: “Who should issue the currency. the Government or the banks?”
Price: “Who the issuer is, is of no consequence as to the action
of the currency...(and from a later answer:)...I believe the intermediate
agency of a private corporation is the true method.”
Bonamy Price, an obvious shill for the bankers, doesn't explain why
it's a tax and theft of property when the government does it but is not
492 The Lost Science Of Money

when a private company does it. Again we see the ploy of treating the
government as a person rather than as society.
THE FIRST “COMMUNIST” SCARE IN AMERICA
The Republican Party made its ftrst use of the “communist menace”
scare in an attempt to panic the voters on October 12, 1 875. The
Cincinnatti Daily Gazette warned:
“A vote for the Democratic ticket is encouragement...to communist
revolution. 25
They accused the Democrats and populist groups of starting class
strife. But the literature indicates these folk were only trying to defend
against the class warfare that financial elements had already started. The
positions taken by the real socialists and communists of the time are very
instructive - they attacked the Greenbacks:
“Indeed within the ranks of labor, the only audible sour note came
from the socialists. Long opposed to greenbackerism as a mere social
palliative as recently as April 1876, they had tried to defeat the
26
Greenback platform proposed at the Pittsburgh National Labor convention...
The Marxist Labor Standard publication attacked the independent
Greenback parties:
“The disease from which we suffer is not the want of currency, but
a planless system of production. 27

THE FINANCIAL COLLAPSE OF 1873

At the end of August, 1873 large amounts of cash were withdrawn
from New York banks. Jay Cook's banking house went under on
September 18 and the U.S. markets tumbled or September 20. The New
York Stock Exchange was forced to close. The collapse was blamed on
speculation in railroad stocks:
“The railroad boom collapsed abruptly in the fall of 1873 and hard
times settled all over the nation. The blow caught the country by sur-
prise,” wrote Unger."
However, the demonetization of silver occurred at that time and
major speculators would have understood its deflationary consequences.
With the country reeling from the collapse, on April 22, 1874 an
“inflation bill” was passed that would have increased Greenbacks in cir-
culation to $400 million, and national banknote circulation to $400 mil-
lion as well (from 340 million). But in a surprise move, President Grant
inexplicably vetoed the bill and bribery was charged. Unger concluded:
 18 19TH CENTURY MONETARY CRIMES-THE GREAT DEFLATIONS 493

“In a word, the shift of public opinion is not great enough to account
for (the veto). Nothing in the press or surviving political correspondence
suggests a buildup of hard money strength.”
Grant's veto did great damage to the Republican party. They lost
control of congress in the 1874 elections and it was this 1874 lame duck
congressional session that enacted the Resumption Act to redeem the
Greenbacks in gold.
THE RESUMPTION ACT TO REDEEM
GREENBACKS IN GOLD
The original intent was to assert the dominance of gold as the mon-
etary base, but, as finally enacted, the Resumption Act was not a defla-
tionary measure. While Greenbacks would be redeemable for gold, for
every $80 of Greenbacks retired, $100 in bank currency was to be issued.
The act would substitute bankers' paper notes for the government money.
The act required that on January 1, 1879 the Treasury would redeem
in coin all Greenbacks offered in amounts not less than $50. The act lim-
ited the number of Greenbacks outstanding to $382 million. It also
increased the private banks' monetary powers under the National
Banking Act in several ways, primarily increasing the amount of cur-
rency they could print, and reducing their reserve requirements.
Yet there was so much popular sentiment for the Greenback that in
the 1876 congressional session the Resumption Act looked like it would
be repealed.29
The Republicans adopted a blocking strategy. Speaker of the House
Michael Kerr, after consulting with Manton Marble, packed the Banking
and Currency committee and the Ways and Means committee with gold
supporters:
“These moves delayed the legislation for weeks. Bills aimed at
repeal disappeared into committee pidgeon-holes” and though there was
a small majority in the house to repeal resumption, “Attempts to bypass
the committees failed repeatedly,” wrote Unger. 30
Finally in late 1877 the House did pass a bill to repeal the
Resumption law, but the bill was defeated in the Senate by one vote.
BORROWING GOLD FOR THE RESUMPTION
It was thought that $120-30 million total gold reserves - about 40%
of the outstanding Greenbacks - would be needed for the Resumption.
But when John Sherman became Secretary of the Treasury in 1877, the
Treasury held only about $25 million in gold.
494 The Lost Science Of Money'

Sherman was negotiating to borrow a total of $95.5 million in gold,

much of it from the European bankers: Seligman Brothers; Morton Bliss
and Co.; August Belmont and Co. acting on behalf of the Rothchilds;
and Drexel Morgan and Co. representing Junius Morgan of London.
The American bankers became upset at being left out of participa-
tion in that syndicate, but they were unable to match the terms offered
by the powerful international group. So Sherman signed on with the
international syndicate.
During the negotiations when a rumor circulated that President
Hayes favored paying the bonds in silver, “The syndicate bankers were
frantic at the turn of events,” wrote Unger.
THE SAME OLD GOLD STORY
The progress of this bond offering indicates that the syndicate and
its clients had far more gold than was useful to them:
“...Although the contract called for only $10 million to be taken in
the first month, in 3 weeks some $20 million were sold at above 102, and
early in May the syndicate anticipated its June subscription. By the end of
May, seven months before the contract expired, the books were closed. 31
Through most of 1877 gold had been 4% above par, at $104 in
Greenbacks for $100 of gold. After March 1878 it was only 12 cents
over par. By November, 1878, through these gold bond sales, the
Treasury held $141.9 million in gold.
Did the nation really need the foreigners' gold? Or did their gold
need the support of our nation, through the passage of laws that gave
gold a privileged position? These laws were passed through financial
power and bribery against the wishes of a majority of the citizens.
In this episode you can see an element of what we hypothesized in
Chapter 1 on the initial monetization of gold by the ancient temple cults,
because they held so much of it. What would the syndicate have done
with their gold and its storage costs, if the U.S. couldn't be manipu-
lated to pay them interest on it? rh i the U.S. didn't really need any
of their gold was soon demonstrated on resumption day.
THE RESUMPTION IS A NON EVENT
The Resumption Act had designated New York City as the place for
the event. The doors of the sub treasury office opened at 10 AM. By
close of the business day only $132,000 in Greenbacks were redeemed
and $400,000 in gold was deposited for the more convenient bank paper!
It was the same story at the banks involved in the resumption - a giant
 18 19TH CENTURY MONETARY CRIMES-THE GREAT DEFLATIONS 495

afltl-climax.
Some bankers may have believed their own propaganda against the
Greenbacks; but the Greenbacks functioned well and had been near par-
ity with gold for some time. Their good performance was one reason
the leading financiers wanted them removed from circulation, as the
Greenbacks gave a daily lesson in practical monetary theory.
The bankers failed in this because in the back-and-forth struggle a
law had been passed in 1878 requiring that all Greenbacks that were
redeemed must be re-issued, so that theoretically $346 million
Greenbacks remain current U.S. money to this day.
THE 3RD ATTACK - THE “SECRET” DEMONETIZATION
OF SILVER
Monetary legislation is often passed under bizarre circumstances,
but this episode i5 among the strangest. While the Greenback battles
were raging, silver was quietly demonetized by two laws, a year apart.
If one were to read either of the laws separately, you could not tell that
silver had been demonetized for payments over $5.
First there was an act of February 12, 1873 which neglected to name
the silver dollar as one of the “currently minted” U.S. silver coins,
instead substituting the “trade dollar,” a special silver coin minted for
trade with China. Then in June 1874, there was a revision of the coinage
laws, a long act with 67 parts. Section 3,586 contained a phrase pertaining
to all silver coinage not specified in the 1873 law as “currently minted:”
“The [‘other’] silver coins of the United States shall be legal tender at
their nominal value for any amount not exceeding $5 in any one payment.”
THE “DISCOVERY” OF THE “CRIME OF 1873”
Incredible as it may seem, the fact that silver coinage had thus been
demonetized did not become generally known to the nation for almost
two years when on March 2, 1876, George Weston's letter to the editor
of the Boston Globe pointed it out! An uproar soon arose over the
“Crime of 1873.”
Apparently even President Grant was unaware of what had hap-
pened. Del Mar noted:
“The most striking evidence of the public inattention to the effect of
the coinage act of 1873, is that President Grant who signed it, had no
knowledge of what it really accomplished in demonetizing silver and
was still uninformed as late as October 3, 1873, as proved by his letter
...(in which) he wonders why silver is not brought to the mints and
 18 19TH CENTURY MONETARY CRIMES-THE GREAT DEFLATIONS 497

coined into money!”32.

Supporters of the act insisted that the laws were passed openly.
Bullock wrote:
“After deliberating upon the subject during five consecutive ses-
sions and securing expert advice, Congress passed the ‘act of 1873.’ This
law...dropped the obsolete silver dollar from the list of authorized coins.
Its deliberate intention as stated repeatedly in Congress was to establish
legally the single gold standard. In 1876 it was discovered that a crime
had been committed in 1873. 33
William G. Sumner, playing a word game with the $5 limit wrote:
“The law of 1873 never threw a dollar of silver or other currency out
of circulation. We hear it asserted that ‘demonetization’ destroyed half
the people's money...no one of the other demonetizations, which took
place in Europe at about the same time, diminished the money in use. 34
But the $5 limit meant silver could be refused for any commercial
transactions. Gold or paper money would have to be found for payment,
and their value would be enhanced. In 1873 there was about $14 million
in silver coinage and about $63 million in gold coin circulating. But
there were also about $346 million Greenbacks circulating, along with at
least $600 million in bank created paper money and deposits (including
$329 million in national bank notes, and $1.4 million in state bank notes,
according to official government statistics, Series X 410-419).
The amounts of silver involved may not seem significant, but it
was important in the context of the requirement to make Greenback
bonds, and later the greenbacks themselves, payable in “coinage,”
which would now mean only gold coinage, because it removed the
possibility to mine new silver ore to be coined and used for the debt and
redemption payments.
Del Mar wrote:
“The silver dollar was dropped purely and simply to enhance the
value of the gold dollar and thus to double the debt of the American peo-
ple. This was the motive and there was no other motive. The proof is that
the very same men, I mean the identical individuals, who betrayed their
party in 1868 and who doubled the public indebtedness by promoting the
act of March 1869, assisted to again double the debt by promoting the
surreptitious mint codification act of February 12, 1873, and June
1874...though Congress was assured by its revision committee that no
new matter had been introduced in them. The legislation of 1865-1874
498 The Lost Science Of Money

was no academic experiment but a sordid crime hatched abroad and

brought into this country by the treacherous people who governed the
utterances of the New York World [newspaper]. 35
Del Mar is referring to August Belmont, Manton Marble, and their
financial backer, Baron Rothschild.
THE 1876 U.S. MONETARY COMMISSION INVESTIGATION
Del Mar, who had been in charge of the U.S. Bureau of Statistics,
organized the 1876 U.S. Monetary Commission to investigate the de-
monetization, receiving testimony from a worldwide group of experts.
The wisest was Henri Cemuschi (1821-1896), a Parisian Jurist and
banker, who had studied at the University of Pavia. Cernuschi was the
inventor of the term “bimetallism.” Parts of his testimony sum up the
common sense view of the situation:
“The act when passed was not read except by title...carried through
without the knowledge or observation of the country...it was neither
demanded by the resolutions of public meetings or political conventions
nor asked for in petitions from the people ... The press of the country was
entirely unobservant or silent when it was pending, and when it passed. If
it had been generally known that any such vital question as the demon-
etization of silver was lurking in the bill it would have aroused the most
wide spreading discussion throughout the country...No adequate or sat-
isfactory reasons for the enactment of the laws of 1873-74 de-monetiz-
ing silver, have ever been given. 36
In stark contrast, August Belmont's “testimony” for the commission
was a paltry one page letter that bordered on contempt. He ignored the
issue, saying that gold, being the standard of value, cannot rise or fall,
and its abundance or scarcity causes a rise or fall in all other prices. He
told them to get better statistics from someone else. He blamed the fall
of silver to its being demonetized abroad, and then concluded that our
problems were local, and the market collapse of 1873 resulted from
over-trading in railroad stocks.37
THE CRIME OF 1873 IS A HOT ISSUE FOR DECADES
Emotions on the issue were so strong that the debate lasted well into
the 1890s! Innumerable books and pamphlets flooded the country. Most
popular was Coin's Financial School, by W. H. Harvey, which sold an
amazing 250,000 copies. In the book, Harvey's fictitious lecturer, Mr.
Coin, attacked economists, bankefs and professors by name so forcefully,
that a number of them actually answered in the press.
 18 19TH CENTURY MONETARY CRIMES-THE GREAT DEFLATIONS 499

Harvey viewed England as the source of the problem:

“Whenever property interests and humanity have come in conflict,
England has ever been the enemy of human liberty...(If our silver
coinage cannot succeed) let us attach England to the United States and
blot her name out from among the nations of the World...If England
wages a war on humanity, the U.S. should declare an industrial war on
England,” and so on.'8
Harvey believed the U.S. could monetize silver alone, against the
world, and that France would follow us. But he was dead wrong.
ENGLISH INTERFERENCE WITH THE U.S. MINT LAWS
Harvey and others were furious when it was somehow discovered
that in 1872, Hooper, Chairman of the Committee on Banking and
Currency, sent a copy of the proposed U.S. coinage bill to Alfred
Latham, Chalrman of the Bank of England, for comment from one of his
employees, Ernest Seyd.
Seyd had written a book on the subject called Suggestions. For some
reason he ended up in America, being accused by anonymous writers
who made unsubstantiated claims that Seyd admitted to having brought
100,000 pounds with him to bribe Congress! As late as 1893 silver advo-
cates in Congress focused on his supposed activities against silver,

18c. August Belmont

(1816 - 1820), the main
representative of the
Rothschild interest in
America, was at the
center of several major
monetary/political
schemes to harm the
general population and
favor the financiers,
over a period of about
two and a half decades.
his testimony to the
1876 U.S. Monetary
Commission bordered
on contempt.
50tl The Lost Science Of Money

of 20 years earlier, without comlng up with anything concrete. Reading

the Congressional Record, 53rd Congress, August 18, 1893, p. 474-76,
584-89, and p. 1059, it looks like a lot of smoke; which is not to say that
Seyd was not purposely provocative, possibly an agent provocateur.
THE SILVER DIVERSION
Readers will note that we are no longer on our central issue, but are
arguing silver. Now that's exactly what happened to the populists also!
Consider how the silver issue was used to derail the populists, and
obscure the real monetary question of who should control the money
system - private bankers or the government. Monetary control had been
the main focus of the Greenback movement. It is not out of the realm
of possibility that the outrageous method of silver demonetization
was a calculated move to enrage and disrupt and derail the move-
ment. The “secret” demonetization of silver was like the matador
waving a red flag in front of a bull. After all, the U.S. had coined
roughly only 8 million silver dollars from 1792 to 1873.3’
This silver diversion had two main effects:
1) It shifted the focus away from the real monetary issue, which was
who should control the money system, into useless arguments over
bimetallism.
2) America would re-monetize silver, walking into a well-laid mon-
etary trap.
AMERICA RE-MONETIZES SILVER AGAINST THE WORLD
Cernuschi had warned them in his testimony:
“In my opinion no country can coin silver alone.. .it is better to main-
tain the paper-money (Greenbacks) than to issue a national currency of
silver, if the other nations do not use that metal as money.”
But even the young Alexander Del Mar was swept up in the outraged
emotion created by the “Crime of 73,” and he drafted the silver re-mon-
etization bill. It led the U.S. Government into a highly ill-advised policy
of re-monetizing silver against the World, while the U.S. was already
committed to redeem bonds and Greenbacks in gold.
The Bland bill of February 16, 1878 to re-monetize silver passed
205 to 72. It called for the coinage of from 2 to 4 million dollars per month
of new silver dollars. President Hayes’ veto of the bill was overridden.
This law by itself wasn't so dangerous to America, because the new sil-
ver could come from American mines, rather than Europeans unloading
their recently demonetized silver hoards. Over $378 million new silver
 18 19TH CENTURY MONETARY CRIMES-THE GREAT DEFLATIONS 501

dollars were coined through the Bland Allison Act; close to the number
of Greenbacks outstanding.
But the 1890 Sherman Act was a different matter. It required the
U.S. to purchase 4.5 million ounces of silver per month. That was about
17 million more ounces per year than American mines could produce.
The Sherman Act thereby allowed European financiers to exchange
their abundant demonetized silver hoards for American gold at the fixed
artificially advantageous price of the American 16 to 1 gold/silver ratio,
about $1.29 per ounce of silver. The U.S. paid for the silver with
Treasury notes, which the Europeans quickly redeemed for gold.
Furthermore, as the process went on, America would be forced to bor-
row back the same gold at interest, to meet continuing European
redemption of notes and bonds and silver, for gold! This drastically pres-
sured the Treasury's gold reserves:
“The withdrawal of gold from the U.S. Treasury pursued an almost
uninterrupted course from the moment of the enactment of the Sherman
silver law until the outbreak of the (1893) panic,” wrote Charles A.
Conant. The net gold exportations were: 1891 - $68.1 million;
1892 - only $ .5 million; 1893 - $87.5 million.4'
At an 1892 monetary conference, at which the U.S. was urging
bimetallism, Alfred de Rothschild attempted to fleece European govern-
ments as well as American. He proposed that European states buy £5
million of silver annually, on condition that the Americans continue to
buy 54 million ounces per year! The plan was not accepted.4'
The U.S. failed to prod France or any other European nation into re-
monetizing silver. All hope of accomplishing this ended in May, 1893,
when the British Government in India ceased the free coinage of silver,
which closed the market for one-third of the silver production of the
world.
It took three years for America to repeal the Sherman Act, in 1893,
after $147 million in silver had been purchased. Sherman had to go back
to his European syndicate for more gold loans, which came into and left the
U.S. as through a revolving door. The passage of the act has always been
blamed on American silver mining interests, but some of its main benefici-
aries were European bankers. Without the support of the law, the market
price of silver dropped to 60 cents an ounce in 1893 and 49 cents in 1894.
THE WORLDWIDE PANIC IN THE 1890s
Concurrent with these silver antics was the collapse of Baring
502 The Lost Science Of Money

Brothers of London in 1890, due to their foolish speculations in

Argentina. Its ripple effect eventually caused distress in all the world's
financial centers, including the U.S. in 1893.
An example of how economists really are “pests” is the spin that
Charles Conant put on this event, blaming American politics for the
effects of Baring’s South American fiasco:
“U.S. railways, breweries, cattle ranges and public securities were
heavily in debt to Europe...This debt was estimated at over $2 billion,
requiring $350 million of annual interest...The withdrawal of a large por-
tion of this productive loan (the withdrawal of gold from the U.S.
Treasury) was the price which the U.S. were called upon to pay for the
political maneuvers which aroused the fear they would abandon the gold
standard and make silver the basis of their monetary system.”
THE U.S. MONEY DROUGHT: 1860s - 1890s
For all these reasons the post-Civil War period in America (and
ArJntECEATINo DOLLAR, 1885—1895

18d. 1865-95 DOLLAR DEFLATION. The value of the dollar rose about 200%
over a 30-year period against agricultural products; a condition that farmers
understood well, but which was, and still is, denied by some
economists (source: J. D. Hicks: The Populist Revolt).
 18 19TH CENTURY MONETARY CRIMES-THE GREAT DEFLATIONS 503

abroad) was one of too scarce a money supply for a period of two-and-
a-half to three decades. Population, railroads, mechanization and pro-
duction were growing as the industrial revolution progressed and more
land was cultivated. Yet by many yardsticks, money was too scarce.
Some economists have claimed that there was no deflation, just
overproduction. But that sounds like banker apologia. There was still
great poverty in America and overproduction should have alleviated it.
Every farmer knew the value of money was increasing.
Anecdotal evidence was sufficient for Benjamin Anderson, an
important early 20th century monetary theorist, to conclude that a pun-
ishing deflation had occurred:
“Nor is the tremendous agitation over bimetallism, involving a liter-
ature so great that no man could dream of reading it all, involving great
political movements, presidential campaigns, great congressional
debates, repeated legislation, international conferences, etc, for 20 years,
to be explained on any other ground than that the world felt practical,
important, and unpleasant effects on industry and trade from the inade-
quacy of the money supply. 42

By one index, the dollar appreciated in value from 100 in 1865 to

about 300 in 1895. This index was derived from the statistics of the
Aldrich Report (see next chapter) and the U.S. Bureau of Labor.43
Later, Friedman and Schwartz's study established the monetary facts
statistically:
“(Between 1867-1879) there are 5 calendar years in which the
money stock declined and 7 in which it rose. ..The money stock in
February 1879 was only 17% above its level 12 years earlier...One must
go more than half a century forward from 1879 all the way to 1933 to
find another 12 year period within which the money stock declined in as
many as 5 calendar years. 44
This money supply increase of only 17% over 12 years, or about
l.40d» a year, during a period of very high growth in population and
in economic activity, must be considered deflationary.
This important example underscores the principle that it is not the
absolute amount of money in existence that measures inflation or defla-
tion, but the amount relative to population and economic activity, which
the money must service. The money supply must be compared to how much
money there should be for optimal results. Nor is it accurately measured by
price levels - the mistake the Federal Reserve System has been making since
at least 1987, when Allan Greenspan became its Chairman.
504 The Lost Science Of Money

How will the optimal amount be determined? This is something yet

to be discovered, once the question has been sufficiently studied under a
govemmentally issued money system. This question should be among
the top items on the agenda of economic science.
THE GREENBACK LEGACY CONTINUED
The machinations of the bankers could not hide the truth from most
Americans. The people were not fooled, so much as they were over-
powered! Henry George, an important 19th century reformer, wrote:
“It is not the business of government to direct the employment of
labor and capital. ..”On the other hand it is the business of government
to issue moziey.. .To leave it to every one who chose to do so to issue
money would be to entail general inconvenience and loss, to offer many
temptations to roguery, and to put the poorer classes of society at a great
disadvantage. ”
“Yet instead of doing what every public consideration impels us to,
and assuming wholly and fully as the exclusive function of the General
Government the power to issue money, the private interests of bankefs
have, up to this, compelled us to the use of a hybrid currency, of which
a large part, though guaranteed by the General Government, is issued
and made profitable to corporations. The legitimate business of banking
- the safekeeping and loaning of money, and the making and exchange
of credits, is properly left to individuals and associations; but by leaving
to them, even in part and under restrictions and guarantees, the issuance
of money, the people of the United States suffef an annual loss of millions
of dollars, and sensibly increase the influences which exert a corrupting
effect upon their government. 4’
In Summary
The purposely executed 19th century deflations, generally demone-
tizing silver in favor of a gold standard, began in England and proceed-
ed under English influence. These silver demonetizations demonstrated
the utter insincerity of the metallists theoretical positions on the nature
of money. The 1868 presidential election gave us a glimpse of how the
bankers operated behind the scenes to neutralize the Democratic party,
in effect splitting the nationwide majority that favored the Greenbacks
into several populist parties. England continued sending “experts” to
influence monetary matters and especially to attack the Greenbacks.
The great importance of a correct concept of money was evident in
how the populists were diverted onto the silver question, away from the
 18 19TH CENTURY MONETARY CRIMES-THE GREAT DEFLATIONS 505

main issue of societal control of the money system. This false silver
lssue was nursed along by bankers and mining interests, derailing real
monetary reform. And again we saw the great importance placed by the
bankers on removing the American Greenbacks from the view of the
world.

Notes to Chapter 18
1
Michel Chevelier, The Probable Fall in the Value of Gold, (New York:
Appleton, 1859), appendix notes on his 1853 Remarks on the Precious Metals
and on the Depreciation of Gold.
2 Chevelier, cited above.

Henri Cernuschi, The Anatomy of Money, (London: P.S. King, 1886), p. 27.
'Knapp, George, State Theory ofMoney, (1909, New York: Macmillan, 1924), p. 275.
W.A. Shaw, The History of Currency 1252-1896, (Putnam, 1896, repr., New
York: A. M. Kelley, 1967), pp. vii, xii, 91.
Henry Parker Willis, The History of the Latin Monetary Union, (Univ. of
Chicago Press, 1901).
' 1876 U.S. Monetary Commission Report, (Washington DC: 1876), p. 33
Charles A. Conant, A History of Modern Banks of Issue, (New York: Putnam,
1926) p. 199.
Masayoshi Takaki, The History of Japanese Paper Currenc y, (John Hopkins
Univ. Press, 1903), p. 58, & quoting the U.S. Consular report V.19, #68, p. 654.
' see John Roberts, Mitsui, Three Centuries of Japanese Business, (New York:
Weatherhill, 1973).
'1Alexander Del Mar, Monetary Crimes, (Washington DC: Del Mar Soc., 1899).
1. G. Randall, The Civil War and Reconstruction, edit. D£tVld Donald,
(Boston: Heath, 1961), p. 356.
3 Woloski, Aug. 15, 1866, & Parkinson, as quoted by Andreas Andreades, f/iJiOiy

of the Bank of England, (London University, 1909), pp. 350-90.

’4 Charles Bullock, Monetary History of the U.S., (New York: Macmillan, 1900),
pp. 90-100.
506 The Lost Science OfMonev

'5 Del Mar, Science of Money, (New York: Cambridge Encyl.,1904),.pp. 50-70.
16 Milton Friedman & Anna Schwartz, A Monetary History of the U.S. 1867-1960,
National Bweau of Economic Research, Princeton Univ. Press, 197 l), pp. 45, 72.
'7 Del Mar, Monetary Crimes, cited above, p. 62.
' Del Mar, Monetary Crimes, cited above, contains his eyewitness account over
several sections.
'9 Irwin Unger, The Greenback Era, (Princeton Univ. Press, 1964), p. 85,
20 Charles B. Spahr, The Present Distribution of Wealth in fAe United States,

(Boston: T. Crowell, 1896), p. 37.

2l Unger, cited above, p. 272.
22 Unger, cited above, p. 289.
23 Walter Bagehot, The Assimilation of the English amd American Money, “in the

Economist, 1869, (repr., CN: Greenwood Press,1969), pp.xii, 19.

24 Bonamy Price interview, Daily Tribune, Oct. l, 1874, TF-PV105, pp. 7-12.
2' Unger, cited above, p. 278.
26 Unger, cited above, p. 315.
2° Labor Standard, September 2, 1876, as quoted in Unger, cited above, p. 315.
2 Unger, cited above, p. 213.
29 Unger, cited above, p. 289.
30 Unger, cited above, p. 290-291.
3' Unger, cited above, Chapter 10.

'2 Del Var, Monetary Crimes, cited above, pp. 84-6.

3' Bullock, cited above, Section on the Greenbacks.
34 William G. Sumner, Essays, (Yale Univ. Press, 1914), p. 176
35 Del Mar, Monetary Crimes, cited above, p. 86
36 1876 U.S. Monetaw Commission Report, pp. 89, 91.
37 1876 U.S.U.S. Monetary Commission Report, p. 38.

' William Hawey, Coin I Financial Six/ioo/, inEo by R. Hofstadter, (Harvard Univ.
Press, 1963), pp. 222-32.
3 Studenski & Kroos, cited above, pp. 185-92.
40 Conant, cited above, section on 1890 crisis.
41 Shaw, cited above, Netherlands chapter.
42 Benjamin Anderson, The Value of Money, (New York: R. Smith,1936), p. 221.
43 John D. Hicks, The Populist Revolt, (Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1961), p. 88.
44 Friedman & Schwartz, cited above, p. 31.

45 Henry George, Social Problems, (New York: R. Schalkenbaeh Foundation,

1992), pp. 178-9.