Massachusetts Rep. Goes for Gold

Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1876. Disbound pamphlet; 8 pp. Julius Hawley Seelye (1824–1895), independent US. House Representative of Massachusetts gave this pro-sound currency speech. Let us trade pain now for glory in the future: “[A] paper currency which is only a promise to pay that is never fulfilled, a currency whose only value is furnished by the command or even by the credit of the government which issues it, a currency which can be produced to any extent without labor, and which has no possible use for anything except as currency, is not only inconvenient and disadvantageous, but must be disastrous wherever employed.” ​“We must reduce the actual volume of our present currency in order to make specie payments possible. If it pinches, if it pains us, if it plunges us in distresses which for the time may seem intolerable, we have got to bear it if we get back to specie payments and a healthy state of business again.”