If all forms of indebtedness could circulate freely, the final result in balancing debts with debts would be quite readily reached, and the actual losses would be found less than is generally supposed. An equal loss without distrust, if that were possible, would be met with new enterprise and extra energy instead of despondency.
The various remedies offered in proposed legislation frequently add to the delays in the recovery of confidence. The issue of paper currency, while universally welcomed by the most wasteful of investors, makes those who still have property more doubtful as to the future. The proposition to increase demand for labor by great public improvements comes at a time when revenues are diminished and almost surely is coupled with a proposal of government scrip. To increase the burden of taxation at once, when the mass of the people are already burdened and distressed, is impossible. The issue of scrip, though actually a costly method of taxation, seems to the unthinking a way of making something out of nothing. The certain effect is to extend the period of doubt. Laws affecting the coinage and character of legal tender, since they disturb the relation of borrower and lender indefinitely, postpone readjustment of confidence. Changes in the tariff laws are liable to have the same effect because of uncertainty as to where the influence will be most felt. Special legislation with reference to contracts for labor, however well intended, are sure to hinder adjustment, and all agitation in favor of new experiments in government enterprises or in legislation as to property makes less available the capital and ingenuity of the people.
_Cure for hard times._--The only genuine cure involves a restoration of faith in enterprise. It is almost as hard to establish after a commercial panic as after a panic in an army. The remedies best worth study are really preventives, in the form of checks upon undue expansion of credits and distinct limits as to extension of time. Some have gone so far as to wish there were no laws for collection of debts, since this would actually prevent the great bulk of indebtedness; but it would also destroy the essential foundation of daily credit, one of the most productive machines of exchange. The best that can be done is to make more explicit the laws against frauds, and to limit easily transferred forms of credit to those whose foundation can be carefully inspected. It is very desirable that all corporations dealing in credit should be subject to the strictest examination by a public officer.