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bureau of the War Department. All men fit for military duty were to be enrolled and, as necessity arose, were to be drafted for the service. Anyone drafted could furnish a substitute or pay three hundred dollars to the Government as an exemption. 39 Financial legislation was equally drastic. One year before the country had been started on the road of irredeemable legal-tender paper: there was now no turning back. The maw of our voracious treasury was again clamoring to be filled. Spaulding, who spoke for the Committee of Ways and Means, said in the House: “Legal-tender notes are not plenty among the people; … they are continually asking for more. Why then should we be alarmed at a further issue of legal-tender notes.… It is much better to stimulate, make money plenty, make it easy for people to pay their taxes and easy for Government to make loans.” Spaulding made it clear to the House that in the next eighteen months $1,000,000,000 must be borrowed. The expenses of the Government were $2,500,000 a day, Sundays included. The receipts from customs taxes and other sources would not probably exceed $600,000, leaving the balance, a daily deficit of $1,900,000, to be met by borrowing of some kind. Congress, in what is known as the nine hundred million dollar loan act, authorized more bonds, more Treasury notes, bearing interest, which might be made a legal tender for their face value, more non-interest bearing United States legal-tender notes and a large amount of fractional currency to replace the existing imperfect substitutes issued for silver change, silver having long since disappeared from circulation. This act gave large discretionary powers to the Secretary of the Treasury. Before the constitutional meeting of the next Congress, he might issue of the different forms of paper obligations authorized a total of $900,000,000. 40

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