Word: absurd
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Dates: during 1890-1899
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...legal tenders; for of the three causes of the present trouble, the first and second were due to an iniquitous act passed wholly in the interests of silver. And for the third and final cause, I have shown that we must not blame the legal tenders themselves, but the absurd connection of the two departments of the treasury; and that mandatory provision for endless reissue. If the redeemed notes had been held in the treasury we should have had an automatic contraction of a currency made redundant by causes originating outside of the legal tenders...
...notes resting on a nominal gold reserve of $1,000,000, which may at any time sink lower. The depletion of the gold reserve takes away foreign confidence with the result of a general panic, which makes a new bond issue necessary. With such an absurd system as this, our government will never get on a sound financial basis. Legal tender notes make the gold reserve necessary, and so long as they exist the reserve must be kept up. Such a system constantly threatens the country with financial panics, as we have seen during the last three or four years...
...classical writers are even more unsatisfactory in their allusions relating to the times before the Macedonian conquest. Fable is at its worst here. Thus in Pliny there is an absurd account of the gold-hunting of the Bactrians. The works of Herodotus, Diodorus, and Strabo contain numerous legends regarding the production of the precious metals. But the conquest of Persia by Alexander, laying open the vast treasure houses of Susa, Persepolis and Ecbatana afforded something like a measure of the metallic wealth which had been amassed through many centuries. In that early time this wealth amounted to hundreds of millions...
...person or persons who are or seem to be responsible for the grievances claimed. Whenever it seems necessary to make a remonstrance against some crying abuse or an appeal to public opinion on any subject, the columns of a daily paper are perhaps the natural medium. But it is absurd to bring before the public petty complaints that can be settled by simpler and more natural means...
...battle of Bunker Hill an "absurd blunder" from the American point of view...