Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Colonial Scrip

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. WjBscribe 21:59, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Colonial Scrip

Colonial Scrip (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

I can find no credible references that this actually existed. What I can find is numerous propaganda tracts which are clearly designed to promote a political agenda and not to inform. The page previously contained many fabricated quotes (now moved to talk) from important Revolution-era Americans which the author seems to admit were fabricated. Eliot 16:30, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

• Comment: Certainly the colonies issued money, some which could be referred to as scrip. See United States currency#History and the articles on the individual colonies' currency linked from there. This should either be a redirect or kept but with better coordination with the other existing articles on related topics, none of which are currently linked. Of course I agree that "propaganda tracts" should not be used as a source. Newyorkbrad 17:07, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
• Keep Of course it existed. This is just an article needing expansion and sourcing. Encyclopedic topic. DGG 03:39, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
• Keep This article needs to stay and it can indeed. It just needs improvement. It is a historical fact that Dr. Franklin helped devise this currency in 1723 and he went to London in 1764 and explained to the British Board of Trade the benefits of the paper currency. When Parliament shut it down he represented the Colonies and urged Parliament to allow the Colonial Scrip.

Franklin wrote in his autobiography “The utility of this currency became by time and experience so evident as never afterwards to be much disputed.”

Furthermore, here is an actual quote from Adam Smith regarding the Pennsylvanlia Currency, the best of the Colonial Currency experiments and the one that Franklin helped create. Here is what Adam Smith, the "Father of modern economics" said:

“The government of Pennsylvania, without amassing any [gold or silver], invented a method of lending, not money indeed, but what is equivalent to money to its subjects. [It advanced] to private people at interest, upon [land as collateral], paper bills of credit…made transferable from hand to hand like bank notes, and declared by act of assembly to be legal tender in all payments...[the system] went a considerable way toward defraying the annual expense…of that…government [low taxes].” “[Pennsylvania’s] paper currency…is said never to have sunk below the value of gold and silver which was current in the colony before the…issue of paper money.” -Adam Smith, the “Father of modern economics” as we are taught today, in his famed 1776 work The Wealth of Nations (I have provided the source in the main article)

Here is what David Ricardo said about the notion of Government-issued money:

“It appears that the commerce of the country would not be in the least impeded by depriving the [central bank] of the power of issuing paper money, provided an amount of such money, equal to the Bank circulation, was issued by the Government: and that the sole effect of depriving the Bank this privilege, would be to transfer the profit which accrues from the interest on the money so issued from the Bank to the Government.” -David Ricardo, British economist, free trade supporter, and member of Parliament in his book Plan for the Establishment of a National Bank, published posthumously in 1824.

“After Franklin gave explanations on the true cause of the prosperity of the Colonies, the Parliament exacted laws forbidding the use of this money in the payment of taxes. This decision brought so many drawbacks and so much poverty to the people that it was the main cause of the Revolution. The suppression of the Colonial money was a much more important reason for the general uprising than the Tea and Stamp Act.” -Peter Cooper, inventor, writer, founder of Cooper Union College, and US Presidential Candidate in 1876, his 1883 book Ideas for a Science of Good Government

This article deserves to stay because Colonial Scrip is a very important part of the history of economics and it must be remembered.

I have now updated the article with credible quotes that demonstrates the significance of this article. It should not be deleted.

• Keep It did indeed exist! Do one need further argument? Lord Metroid 11:53, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.