CHAPTER XVIII
DIFFICULT CURRENCY
When the Federal government, soon after the breaking out of the war, began to issue paper money, all specie, both gold and silver, speedily disappeared. For many years the five-cent piece had been the smallest coin used in the stores and markets of St. Louis. It was silver, since the day of the nickel had not yet come. The copper cent, then large and cumbersome, was absolutely tabooed in our city; it was nowhere current except at the post-office. This was always a surprise to newcomers, and sometimes an embarrassment. A lady, who was a comparative stranger to our customs, going to the market when cabbages were unusually abundant, asked a vender the price of them, and was quite upset when he replied, “Six for five cents, madam.” “But,” she gasped, “I don’t want so many.” “Very well,” he said, “take them as you want them.”
But when all coins had disappeared both buyers and sellers were often at their wits’ end, and only by patience and mutual forbearance could ordinary business be transacted.
This want of coin for a time also seriously interfered with travel in our city. Happy were those who had horses and carriages; but most of us must either go afoot, or take the horse-cars. Nobody then had so much as dreamed of either the grip-car or trolley. But the vexed question was, how could we pay our fare? Neither we nor the conductor had any change and none was to be had. But necessity is the mother of invention; and necessity for a considerable period drove us to pay our horse-car fare in postage-stamps. But in summer the weather in St. Louis is often very warm, sometimes sissing hot. On such days we found the requisite stamps glued to our pocketbooks, or, if folded in our vest pockets, melted into a glutinous mass. How we then worked to separate the sticky things so as not to destroy them! How dilapidated they were when finally disengaged from their adhesive fellows! In getting them ready for service, some lost patience and expressed themselves in words that would not pass muster in polite society; while others differently made up broke out into laughter at the comicality of the whole thing.
Soon the government came to our aid by issuing in March, 1862, “postage currency.” Five, ten, twenty-five and fifty cent notes abounded. Postage stamps as currency then disappeared from the marts of retail trade, and no longer pestered street-car passengers and conductors. These tiny notes of green paper were now doing the usual work of the silver coins that had gone into hiding. And a year later, in March, 1863, the government, still seeking to help the people in that time when metallic currency was no longer in evidence, issued paper “fractional currency.” For greater convenience notes of three and fifteen cents were issued in addition to those of the “postage currency.”
These small notes were generally called shinplasters. How fine they looked as they came crisp and clean from Washington; but in a dusty, smoky city like ours, constantly passing from hand to hand, they soon became worn, tattered, almost illegible, and unspeakably nasty. But few seemed to care for this. These begrimed notes met our necessities in barter; and as to any inconvenience or repulsiveness that was accounted for and cheerfully endured as a part of the war.
The government, in order to raise money to meet its necessities, issued seven per cent. bonds of fifty and one hundred dollars. I invested five hundred dollars in these securities, and to my astonishment was reported in the papers and personally congratulated on the street as having done a patriotic act. I had not looked upon it in that light. But the incident shows that very many in St. Louis then thought the stability of our Republic so precarious that investing money in her bonds at seven per cent. was regarded as an act of patriotic self-sacrifice. That is a sort of self-sacrifice that hosts of men would be glad to indulge in now.