The Value of Rebel Money

Money, estimated by the gold standard, is now worth about eight cents on the dollar. – The rebels have fixed a standard, however, by which they profess to regulate the value of their money. That standard is wheat. – the price of this cereal is fixed by the rebel government at five dollars per bushel. With this however, many of the farmers are dissatisfied, and assert that five dollars in currency is, in reality, less than fifty cents – The Richmond Sentinel, in this connection says.

“There is a fact to which we think it popper to call the attention of the fair minded, and even the insatiably greedy themselves. All the officers of the government are paid the old salaries, except a slight increase in the salary of some of the clerks. -- According to the rule of the correspondent whom we have noticed, the President gets less than twenty-five hundred dollars a year; the Secretary less than six hundred; the clerks less than a hundred and fifty. Our thrice noble soldiers, also, are paid only the old price. According to the rule now applied, it is less than one dollar per month for the privates. Our field and line officers receive eight to twenty dollars per month, out of which to board and clothe themselves. – All these are receiving the old prices. But not so with the wrathful correspondent. Instead of one dollar per bushel for his wheat, which he would in other times have been glad to get, he now receives five dollars per bushel. He gets five prices for the wheat that he feeds soldiers working at the old price, and he raves over his pay as a mockery, and a cheat, and a swindle.”

This shows very clearly that all the efforts of the rebel press to bolster up the currency are futile. Even the wheat standard will not prevent people from thinking that the confederate money is almost worthless.

– Published in the Stark County News, Toulon, Illinois, Thursday September 3, 1863