Paper currency.
1824. We advise our friends to exchange their “shin plasters” for “solid charms” as soon as may be.—The Microscope, Albany, May 15.
1837. Jan. 21. Another night’s reflection may metamorphose me into an inflexible advocate of shin-plasters.—Chas. L. Livingston, to Jesse Hoyt.—W. L. Mackenzie, ‘Life of Martin Van Buren,’ p. 181 (Boston).
1837. The shinplasters which are now so current throughout the country have received the appropriate name of “hickory leaves.”—Pennsylvania Republican, June.
1837. “Since they’ve monopolized my sheer of fun, they can’t do less than give me a shinplaster to go away.”… It would not do—he was compelled to retire shinplasterless.—J. C. Neal, ‘Charcoal Sketches,’ pp. 218–9.
1837. The Shin Plaster City.—From present appearances we should judge that Philadelphia was in a fair way to obtain the above elegant appellation.—Balt. Comml. Transcript, Sept. 7, p. 2/1.
1837. Mr. Calhoun asked what sort of a currency we had now. Was not the whole country flooded with currencies of all kinds: with shinplasters of all sorts, sizes, and shapes?—U.S. Senate, Sept. 22: Cong. Globe, p. 54.
1837. When Mr. Benton saw the honest and industrious mechanic toiling from morning until night cracking stone, and paid in wretched irredeemable paper and shinplasters, he felt indeed that the people had no representation.—The same, Oct. 11: id., p. 124. He also alluded (p. 132) to “that pestilential compound of lampblack and rags, yclept shinplasters, which now infests the land.”
1838. I would not aid and abet the swindling shinplaster makers out of pure spite to our own state safety-fund banks.—Letter to The Jeffersonian, Sept. 15, p. 244.
1838. Mr. Charles Stearns of Waverley Place, in this city, who whilom figured as the getter-up of some Illinois shinplasters which he advertised to be redeemed in this city.—New-York Transcript, Jan. 29: J. S. Buckingham, ‘America,’ i. 163.
1839. Gold does not expel silver, but small bank notes and shinplasters do expel it.—Mr. Benton, U.S. Senate, Feb. 4: Cong. Globe, p. 167.
1840. We are not troubled with shinplasters, in the common acceptation of the term; but we have plenty of small notes of country banks.—Daily Pennant, St. Louis, July 13.
1840. The gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Adams] had said it was a horrid affair to pay these laborers in shinplasters. All I have to say is that [he] has a very strange idea of shinplasters.… [Is] a certificate given to a laborer, specifying merely the amount of labor performed, a shinplaster?—Mr. Jones of Va., House of Repr., May 1: Cong. Globe, p. 371.
a. 1848. The indignant squatter of the west, whose home is surrounded by briars, bears, Indians, and Brandon shinplasters.—Dow, Jun., ‘Patent Sermons,’ i. 273.
1852. They [the merchants] would flood this valley with shin-plasters, and carry away our gold…. I do not want any shin-plasters. I am a Democrat, so far as that goes, and believe in hard currency, until God shall establish another.—Ezra T. Benson, at the Mormon Tabernacle, Sept. 12: ‘Journal of Discourses,’ vi. 248–9.
1853. Who is Thos. Brown, that has foisted about two or three millions of “shinplasters” upon the community? We are told he is a very clever young man, and a clerk at Page and Bacon’s.—Daily Morning Herald, St. Louis, Jan. 26.
1853. That letter you’ve got in your fin, my boy, looks woundy like a dokiment chock full of shinplasters.—Durivage, ‘Life Scenes,’ p. 123.
1857. They all ‘go in,’ and a mass of silver, with one or two aged and crumpled shin-plasters, adorns the centre of the table.—Knick. Mag., xlix. 524–5 (May).
1861. The idea of keeping up our credit by the issue of shinplasters is all gammon.—Mr. W. P. Cutler of Ohio, House of Repr., July 26: Cong. Globe, p. 283/1.
1862. The currency of New Orleans was in a condition deplorably chaotic. Omnibus tickets, car tickets, shinplasters, and Confederate notes, the last named depreciated seventy per cent. by the fall of the city, were the chief medium of exchange.—Parton, ‘General Butler in New Orleans,’ p. 413–4.
1862.
| An’ nooze is like a shinplaster,—it ’s good, ef you believe it, | |
| Or, wut ’s all same, the other man thet ’s goin’ to receive it. | |
Lowell, ‘Biglow Papers,’ 2nd Series, No. 3. |
1863. The shinplaster [issued by a local firm] looks as if a piece of tissue paper was dyed in indigo, and the lettering pressed on after the paper was pretty roughly used.—Rocky Mountain News, Denver, Jan. 29.
1867. Though not acknowledging any superiority, at that time, of the value of greenbacks over their shinplaster currency, they [the Confederates] much preferred the former, in payment, to their own.—W. L. Goss, ‘The Soldier’s Story,’ p. 36 (Boston).
*** See also WILD-CAT.
