﻿THE PAST

21

never end.” In economic effect, their service as
currency “ expanded prices, and increased the spec-
ulation and extravagance always incident to
war.” 24

There remain the authorization of 1898 and the
emission of 1907. Of these the issue of 1907 was
again monetary rather than fiscal in character — a
consequence less of a depleted treasury than of a
rigid bond secured circulation, whereby an acutely
strained credit market sought relief in otherwise
unnecessary debt creation. Only in the Spanish-
American War authorization of 1898 did the
Treasury contemplate a short time negotiable obli-
gation in the manner familiar to fiscal practice and
sanctioned by fiscal theory — anticipation of the
proceeds of a funded loan designed to meet extra-
ordinary expenditures.

24	Dewey, “ Financial History of the United States,” p. 317.