“Not Worth a Continental”

U.S. paper Continental currency,

In more recent times, to finance our Revolutionary War, the Continental Congress issued paper money in great quantities. Over a period of about four and a half years, the Continental currency fell from a value of one paper dollar per one gold dollar, to about 1,000 to one.

William Gouge, writing in 1833, quotes one member of the Continental Congress: “Do you think, gentlemen, that I will consent to load my constituents with taxes, when we can send to our printer, and get a wagon load of money, (25 sheets) of which will pay for the whole?”

Most of the burden, Mr. Gouge notes, fell on the patriots, “as it was in their hands the paper depreciated. The Tories, who had from the beginning no confidence in it, made it a rule to part with it as soon as possible.” Those who trusted the Congress were destroyed; the cynics were not. As a result of this paper money inflation, wrote one of our earliest economists, Pelatiah Webster, “frauds, cheats, and gross dishonesty are introduced, and a thousand idle ways of living attempted in the room of honest industry; economy, and diligence, which have heretofore enriched and blessed the country

“While we rejoice in the riches and strengths of our country, we have reason to lament with tears of the deepest regret, the most pernicious shifts of property which the irregularities of our finances introduced, and the many of thousands of fortunes which were ruined by it; the generous, patriotic spirits suffered the injury: the idle and avaricious derived benefit from said confusion.”

The phrase “Not worth a Continental” records the fate of this paper currency.