wealth and Oregon finally surprised the Nation by supporting the gold standard and rejecting Bryan after its politicians and office holders during many years had been committing the State to silver.
Money is to be gained from work, he used to repeat in his newspaper, not from the government's printing presses nor from the stamping machine of the mint. Best money will be abundant enough if not driven out by cheap "money"—depreciated paper or debased silver. "Reasonable men do not expect to obtain money," he said, "unless they have something to give for it, either labor or goods. If money is to be easily had without effort, it will have little value. If best money is hard to earn, the people will not be benefited by cheap money. The only real money is gold. They cannot improve by issuing doubtful substitutes for it and declaring by law the substitutes just as good. To be just as good as gold they must be payable in gold."
GREENBACKISM
Right after the Civil War came the contest over payment of the war debt, then amounting to nearly three billion dollars. "Contraction" of the greenback debt, $433,000,000—retirement of legal tender notes—made the first controversy. But these debt notes have continued from that day to this, an ever-present menace to stability of the nation's credit and currency. The ablest financiers of both political parties have urged their retirement. The young Editor took solid ground, therefore, when he insisted that these notes were not "money" but evidences of debt; that their withdrawal would not diminish the "circulating medium" but increase it and promote confidence; that their continuance necessitated heavy gold reserve for redemption and was a costly menace to government credit. Their use, he pointed out, tempted to evils of inflation. These evils he displayed clearly and often, both when greenbacks were at discount, prior to the year 1879, and later when this credit currency and silver coinage were shaking the monetary stability of the government.
