Financial Intergity
the trouble which it purported to be meant to relieve. He vetoed the bill, to the unmeasured gratification of business men throughout the country and of all believers in sound national finance.
Others raged against him and there arose a so-called "Greenback Party” or “Fiat Money Party” whose members held that money could be created with the printing press; and that the government, instead of seeking resumption of specie payments, which they insisted could never be effected, should print and issue vast quantities of treasury notes which were not to be redeemable in gold or silver and which were to be made compulsorily legal tender for all purposes. With these, they insisted, the government bonds should be paid off and the national debt extinguished. Some members of the Republican party became afflicted with this lunacy, but the overwhelming mass of the party remained steadfast for sound money, for resumption of specie payments and for honest payment of the national debt in gold. In this policy the Republican government was successful and at the appointed time, without the slightest appreciable disturbance of the money market or of business, specie payments were resumed. “Greenbacks" and national notes everywhere throughout the United States became automatically worth their face value in standard gold coin and exchangeable for it upon demand. The superior convenience of paper money for ordinary uses made people, however, prefer it to gold and silver, and save in a few cases out of curiosity there was no inclination to make the exchange. Meantime the principal of the debt was being reduced rapidly, and was being refunded at much lower rates of interest, until its ultimate extinction seemed sure to
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