A man who performed services to his country at a critical time scarcely excelled by more than two or three of our presidents, was Graver Cleveland. He was the man for a crisis, and he had at once the intelligence, the purpose, and the firmness to do the work. . . . No man of clearer vision, in a peculiar crisis, or more resolute to meet the demands of an occasion, has ever appeared in our affairs. His second election was one of the fortunate incidents of the history of the United States. . . .In all its history the act of no statesman has been more completely vindicated by results, and by the recognition of his countrymen, than that of Grover Cleveland in ridding the country of the financial fallacies that at tended the silver fiat money propaganda.
The movement after the war to pay its cost with greenbacks was fought by the Oregonian. In an editorial published February 18, 1878, Scott said:
This (the plan to print enough greenbacks to take up the national debt) would be a thorough and logical method of carrying out the greenback scheme. It would simply be repudiation of the entire debt, for there would be no hope that so great an amount of greenbacks would be redeemed; no time for redemption would or could be specified, and as holders would receive no interest the greenbacks would not possess a single quality of value.
Scott never wavered in his ideas on fiat money. Near the end of his career he wrote (10):
There is a fundamental error in our monetary system. It is the parent of all other errors that beset the system. This error is the fiat notion of money. . . . But these notes are not money. They are merely substitutes for money whose value depends on their redeemability in gold or the prospect of it.
He favored establishment of a central bank and branches, modeled after the United States bank founded by Hamilton in 1791 and after the government banks of Europe.
Our people (he wrote) believing they can regulate, by their votes, the value of money, and calling notes issued by authority of the government, money, will not permit any rational currency or rational banking system to be established in the United States. ... It is useless, therefore, to attempt a remedy now for the defects of our banking and currency system. We shall be compelled to blunder along with the
