If this representative is what it purports on its face to be, each
and every one who receives it in exchange for services or commodities,
owns not merely a piece of paper, with designs, words and promises
printed or engraved thereon, but an interest or an undivided whole in
a farm, a block of buildings or a store well stocked with merchandise,
which, in his estimation, at least, is more desirable to him than the
labor or commodity for which he has voluntarily made the exchange;
but, if on the contrary, it is other than what it purports on its face
to be, he finds that he is the owner of a piece of paper whose value
is _nil_.
There is, at the present writing, 1884, nearly eight hundred million
dollars of paper currency in the United States, consisting of
greenbacks and national currency, a great portion of which is in
actual circulation, and it has been estimated by eminent authorities,
who occupy positions of trust in the various departments through
which the financial machinery of this vast sea of paper money is daily
circulated, that there is in circulation nearly one-fifth of this
amount in counterfeit money, or about one hundred and sixty million
dollars; and not one dollar of this counterfeit money owes its
circulation to any excellence of the work in its manufacture, but
wholly to the general ignorance of those who handle it, as to what
is required to constitute a genuine bill. The time will come when the
United States will redeem all of its issue of paper money, when those
who are holding any of this counterfeit money will have to stand the
loss to the extent of the sum in their possession.
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