The Vermont Watchman

Editorial Notings.

We anticipate great good to the American people will arise out of the present earnest discussion of questions relating to the currency. They are not specially farmers' questions, although the American farmer is quite as much interested as any other citizen in having and maintaining a just and uniform measure of value and medium of exchange. Nor can it be said that, on the surface, all our farmers are interested alike in these questions. The heavily-indebted farmer to-day thinks it for his advantage to have an abundance of cheap and easily-got dollars, in order to quickly pay off his debts. As a heavy debtor, he wants legal-tender dollars easily attainable, which his creditors must receive in settlement of their claims.

But will he always be of this mind? Suppose he secures the issue of large quantities of cheap dollars-as cheap as the dollars of the fourth year of the war. Suppose he gets enough of these dollars for his farm products to pay off all his debts. He is no longer a debtor. The next year, being free from debt, he has large crops, and sells them for cash. There are many things wanted by him and his family; and it will manifestly be advantageous to him to get his pay in dollars of large purchasing power. In his new position, dear dollars would be much more to his taste. Now, to-day, our farmers are divisible into those who owe money, those who are out of debt, and those are not only out of debt but have money in hand, or due them. Can all these farmers have the same interest, and can they act harmoniously as voters upon the money question? It would seem at the first glance to be impossible; and as a matter of fact a great many Eastern farmers (and probably not a few in the West) are loaners, rather than borrowers. Certain it is that the Eastern savings banks, a very large part of the money in which is the savings of farmers and their families, have a good deal of money invested in mortgages on Southern and Western real estate. For this reason the farmers' organizations in the East almost unanimously oppose the issue of paper dollars upon what is called the Land Loan Scheme. They are of the decided opinion that such money will rapidly depreciate in the hands of those who are obliged to receive it in payment of the loans made in hard cash on real estate, either East or West. They believe, whether rightly or not, that the security, however intrinsically valuable, will prove inconvertible, and for that reason must rapidly depreciate. They agree that land is too plenty in this sparsely-settled country to be sufficiently in demand, when the necessity for a settlement arises. They expect such money to go the way, in the hands of its holders, of the French assignats and the confederate paper.

It is true, as the Western men say, that the United States will be behind this land loan currency; but the others reply that this did not prevent the greenbacks from depreciating. Even Uncle Sam, they say, is not rich enough to keep a superabundant paper currency at a par with gold and silver. There is property enough, they reason, behind the paper money of the Argentine republic; but that does not prevent it from being almost worthless.

Not what will quickest relieve the present trouble of a part of the people, but what will be best for the whole country in the end, should be sought for. Already, as the question gets careful consideration, this demand for an issue of paper on land security, in a country where there is so much land for sale, is giving cause for doubt and alarm. But there is another remedy proposed-the advance of money by the government on warehoused crops; and a very plausible argument is based on the practice of the government in regard to warehoused whiskey, the duty on which is not payable until the goods are sold. But some reply that this only proves that the warehouse system is a wrong one-though in fact the cases are not exactly alike.

Is there any probable way in which the farmers of all sections can come together in agreement on these important matters? There is an invidious distinction made between the East and West, but the fact is that the currency question is one of the most vital importance to the whole country-sufficient for the needs of all parts of the country. The majority of the voters of the East favor any measure that can be shown to favor the debtor classes, and particularly the producing classes, which will not lead to a reaction injurious to all classes. The prosperity of the West and South is as important to the East as its own, for its own is dependent thereon. No one part of the country can be deeply injured without suffering in every part.