The Silver State

Financial
Propositions.

The New York Post says Secretary Manning is seriously considering a recommendation to Congress looking to the abolition of gold, silver and currency certificates. This radical change is based upon the theory that the coinage should only be sufficient to meet the demands of business, and that the people, not the Government, should be the custodian of the coin. It is claimed that there are $50,000,000 in coin in the Treasury that should not be there, and that carefully prepared tables have been submitted to Secretary Manning to show him the cost and inconvenience resulting from the present system of keeping the Mints and Sub-Treasuries crowded with coin.

Of course, though the Post does not say so, the $50,000,000 now in the Treasury, which ought not to be there, is in standard dollars, which the Post thinks ought not to have been coined. If the Secretary was disposed to get these dollars out of the Treasury, he could very readily do it without waiting for Congress to convene, by paying a part of the Government expenditures with them. An Act of Congress makes them a legal tender for all debts, public and private, and the Secretary of the Treasury should not be permitted to nullify the law to test his own financial theories. If the Treasury vaults are over-crowded with coin, the Government is in debt, and that coin is a legal tender for its debts. Under such circumstances, even the ex-President of a national bank, now at the head of the Treasury Department, if he is an honest man, ought to know what to do. His duty is plain, and requires no financiering ability to perform it. Relieve the over-filled Treasury by canceling Government obligations with standard dollars.