^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^
NORTHWESTERN
UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY
The Gift of
Mrs. Merritt Bragdon
Sources of Prosperitj^
AN
ADDRESS TO THOUGHTFUL AND
SELF-RESPECTING ELECTORS
ON
THE NECESSITY OF A STABLE MONETARY SYSTEM.
BY
A C. ^RIS
LATE BVT. MAJ. GEN. U. S. VOL.
AKRON, OHIO:
THE WERNER COMPANY.
1896.
SOUND MONEY
Confidence and Co-operation the Foundation of Prosperity.
CAREFUL CONSIDERATION INVOKED.
IX the discussion of great economic problems, such as are in
issue in the present canvass, it is well to keep in mind that they
are not likely to be well settled by partisan contentions.
Great industrial crises like the present tend to warp judgment,
stifle sense and give partially informed reformers great opportu-
nities to exploit their illy devised and inadequate remedies. Such
times are not well calculated to evoke the best judgment of the
people. Any thing for a change is too frequently the expedient of
the sick man. We therefore, should not be hasty in forming our
flnal conclusions.
That some body having controlling power in the national
administration has made great mistakes — I prefer to call them
such — is not a debatable question. But my friends disabuse your
minds of the delusion that their mistakes of public policy are the
product of corruption on the part of those exerting the powers of
the government in any of its departments. The Executive has
been honest, the Congress has been honest, and the Supreme Court
has been honest. But the errors are none the less injurious. To
correct these is the duty of the electors.
Let me say to all impatient persons that it is best to move
slowly. Eadical changes in our monetary system should not be
made until it is made clear that the change will better the situa-
tion. We should exercise great caution. Repairing our monetarj
system is more than putting a pateh on your trousers.
— 3 —
COINAGE OF MONEY AND CREATING ARTICLES OF TRADE
CONTRASTED.
The popular idea of money is, that it is wealth in its most
energetic form. But the potential ability and disposition of a
people to produce and dispose of articles of wealth when
intelligently exerted, exhibit the highest expression of wealth
power. Human skill adds indefinitely to the value of the product,
as it comes from first hands ; not only by creating new forms, and
enlarged utilities but by distributing them throughout the currents
of trade.
There is great difference in the results of the changes given to
the articles of trade and the transformation of gold and silver metals
into money. Making them into coin gives no new intrinsic value ;
while on. the other hand the material of which articles of trade are
made, may be of the most insignificant value before going through
the processes which convert them into new forms — may become of
immense value by reason of the change.
We are essentially a producing and trading people — the
richest of all the nations, not simply because we are great farmers,
great manufacturers, great miners, great traders, great railroad
men, and the like, but because we push our conquests of genius
over matter all along the line of profitable enterprise and develop-
ment, and convert our skill and energy into articles of wealth and
trade.
A STABLE AND ADEQUATE MONETARY SYSTEM INDISPENSABLE.
Such a people must have some recognized standard or measure
of values, just as we must have of extension, quantity and value.
Hot an acre of 160 rods one year and 1.20 the next, not a pound of
16 ounces one day and 12 the next, not a dollar worth 100 cents one
week and only 80 cents the next. Any other rule would cause
confusion and unsettle all calculations for future investments and
obligations. A principle emphatically true of any practical or just
monetary system.
Our chdlization is founded upon the wealth of the people, and
money is an indispensable instrumentality for our social develop-
ment and business prosperity, just as are our farms, factories, fur-
naces, mines, railroads, water craft and machinery. The thrift of
— 4—
our people depends upon the stability of our monetary system ; our
virtue and higher development upon our thrift and business enter-
prise.
It is indeed matter of profound concern to the American people
that the stability of our monetary system should he seriously
threatened from any influential source, especially in a financial
crisis hke the present. Money is too hard to get to have any doubt
cast on it, by any voluntary public act after we once get it.
It is of prime importance that the state should provide an ade-
quate and stable monetary system. But we are so intimately
identified with the commercial world that we should make it with
reference to that, as well as to our own notions, to afford us the best
results in its commerce.
DISTURBERS OF MONEY VALUES DENOUNCED.
Any one who attempts to debase the- currency, whether it be
gold, silver, or paper money, or force any kind of our money to a
premium is a disturber of the public welfare and should be treated
as a public enemy. Any government that by its financial policy
either debases, or forces any of its money, by its voluntary acts, to
a premium, is a despotism and destroyer of the thrift of the people.
What is true of individuals and governments is true of political
parties. SILVEK IS A GREAT AMERICAN PRODUCT AND
SHOULD BE UTILIZED AS MONEY BY THE POSTERING
CARE OP THE GOVERNMENT TO THE EXTREME LIMIT
OE PUBLIC AND INDIVIDUAL SAFETY.
I have thus prefaced my address to emphasize the importance
of a wise adjustment of our monetary system nnd an honest and
charitable discussion of the questions involved.
MONEY DEFINED.
As a general rule nothing should he regarded as currency money,
whatever its form may be, that does not include the following
essential properties :
1. It should be the equivalent of property, of a defined and
constant value, because of its recognized intrinsic value.
2. A common measure of values.
3. A medium of exchange for the transfer of all things in trade.
— 5 —
4. A legal tender for the payment of all pecuniary liabilities.
5. And in form be convenient and economically bandied.
Whatever does not combine these five elements cannot in the
true sense be considered as currency money. All else called money
can be of no higher significance than fiat money, which is only an-
other form of giving the say so or credit of somebody, either cor-
porate or governmental, some of the leading characteristics of
money. Its value being wholly dependent on the confidence
placed in the evidence of the debt or credit of the body issuing it,
and that it will be redeemed in actual money. Bank hills in this
sense are treated as money for man}^ purposes. So the promises of
the government to pay are frequently used as a make-shift for
money. But these, in no sort, come up to the standard of true
money. The accidents attending political existence are so treach-
erous that universal confidence cannot be given to such promises
to pay though expressed in the form of money.
All efforts of governments to make money out of something
that does not of itself, in the estimation of mankind, have intrinsic
vahie equal to its face, or legal value, have been mischievous and
proved failures to a greater or less extent, frequently completely so.
The mone}'^ of a great people like ours should have as permanent
value as practicable.
But great emergencies sometimes arise that appear to make it
expedient for governments to give the significance of money to cer-
tain evidences of credit. The Greenbacks are an example. But
we have seen their days of humiliation as well as glory. Their
value once vibrated from 35 cents on the dollar to 100 as confidence
went and came.
Mankind radically and honestly differ as to the advisability of
continuing such paper beyond the exigency that called them into
existence. Many of our wisest statesmen, thinkers and business
men feel that such measures ought never to he resorted to,^ other
than to tide over an imminent and extraordinary emergency;
while other public men, patriotic at heart, with all the faith
and exuberance of the inventor believe the Greenback is the
only true dollar. The best and vastly preponderating judgment
of the well informed is, that the issue of what is popularly called
fiat money can only he justified as a temporary expedient to be
abandoned at the earliest practical moment. Experience has dem-
— e —
onstrated that the debt of a nation converted into the form of
money for circulation is not reliable. Our fathers tried the experi-
ment in continental money, which resulted in total failure. We
tried the experiment in 1861-1865, the days of our greatest efforts
and grandest triumphs,aided by the sagaiuty and patriotism of Lin-
coin. Grant, Chase, and the other great men, and the common
people as well — in every way their aggregate wisdom suggested
to make the promises of the state to pay, stand for money and with
their best efforts, on July 11, 1864 it took $3.85 of Greenbacks to
purchase a dollar in gold. In other words the ratio of fiat money
of the great United States was $2.85 to 1 of the money of the
world, silver included, or to purchase any merchantable commodity
in the markets of trading peoples. This reduced the Greenback
dollar to the value of 35 cenfs and one-half mill; and for a half
year after the 11th of August, 1864, its average worth was less than
$0.40.
FLUCTUATIONS OF THE VALUES OF THE GREENBACK CURRENCY.
We give a few instances illustrating its fluctuations : January 3,
1863 it was $1.59, March 3, $1.89, March 27, $1.53, \pril 3, $1.69,
April 14, $1.71. Shortly after the fall of Vicksburg and three
days after the battle of Gettysburg $1.32^, and in 12 days after
$1.26, and in three weeks $1.24^. On the failure of Grant to take
Kichmond, commencing May 13, 1864, it went from $1.70 to $2.85
in 60 days. It started that year at $1,514 and by April 16, reached
$1.89. On the lltb of July, the day of its extreme fluctuation, it
ruled from $2.44 to $2.85, and five other days of the same month
it varied $0.28, $0.20, $0,134, $0.15, and $0.11 per day. From the
third of January 1865, to the end of the month it ranged from
$2,294 fo $1.43|, and to May 11, a period of 128 days, to $1,284-
Then it went to $1.47f on the 16th of June, and ruled at over $1.40
for the balance of the year with the exception of 12 days when it
once reached $1,364- There was no doubt about the end of the
war after April 9, 1865.
The decline* of gold in 1873 is instructive. Gold opened in
1873 at $1,124 ^^id advanced steadily until it reached $1,194 on
April 12, which was the highest point reached during the year.
During the financial crisis gold declined to $1,064 on November
6, the lowest point since 1862. The editor of " Appleton's Annual
— 7 —
Cyclopedia" for 1873, a democrat of democrats, says : "The decline
to so low a point was simply the result of the monetary disturbances,
AND THE FACT THAT THEKE WAS FOR THE TIME BE-
ING NO DEMAND FOR GOLD EITHER FOR SPECULATORS
OR IMPORTERS."
THE SOUTHEEN EEFOEMEES NOT GOOD FINANCIERS.
Our Southern friends who are now comhining with the dissatis-
tied ones of the country, still want fiat significance given to the
silver dollar, significance it has nowhere else, tried the fiat ex-
periment for four years, with full legal tender power, with rather
discouraging results. Well the last business transaction I ever saw
with their money was an effort on the part of a Virginia woman to
buy a single row of pins worth one cent with a confederate dollar.
The sutler like the gold bugs of Wall and Lombard streets
would not exchange one cents worth of pins for the proffered dol-
lar.' I to save the credit of the greatly embarrassed Confederate
treasury from utter collapse took the dollar and gave her the row of
pins. That was 31 years ago, and that dollar is in my hands yet
with no speedy prospect of redemption. The fiuctuations of Con-
federate money compared with gold and silver money is fairly ex-
hihited in the minimum and maximum rates for the years 1862-
1865.
In 1862 The Lovrest $ 1.18 The Highest $ 3.00
1863 " 3.10 " 19.00
1864 " 21.00 " 51.00
1865 " 45.00 " 60 00
Quotations ceased in March 1865 when to force its circulation
at any price became somewhat difficult.
So pressing were the needs of the Confederates for money and
so great had the volume of their currency become that when
Trenholm, their last Secretary of the Treasury, undertook to un-
ravel the fiscal mysteries of the Davis government, he found $300,-
000,000 of legal tenders had been issued that could not he accounted
for. And the mystery still remains unsolved. It makes no differ-
ence now, the untold millions of their money issued by the same
democracy who insist on leading us into a haven of abundant
money, and business prosperity went up in the shimmer of the lost
cause. A matchless model for the silver reformers to pattern
after.
I instance these practical experiences of the American people
to show that this fiat of government can give its ideal dollars just
what value the confidence of the people gives them, and nothing
more.
These schemes no matter how vigorously backed by political
power, are and always have been, ineffectual to accomplish the pur-
poses of real money. Extraordinary efforts were made to prevent
gambling in gold during the years of suspension, but with all the re-
pressive power the'government could bring to bear, the Greenback
dollar ignobly hid its real value behind a 35 and 40 cent dollar, and
changed its actual value radically for 17 years with every change of
the moon. And yet with that history before us, a national party is
not only clamoring for more but for the free coinage of a dollar not
worth more than 50 cents.
It may be said these are instances of abnormal conditions. The
result of the late war and reconstruction. But it must be under-
stood that abnormal conditions are likely to arise at any time. The
Venezuelan flurry cost us untold millions by its disturbances of
business confidence. A confidence subject to the greatest strain
from speculators on change. The rise of $1.15 in price of gold in
60 days in 1864 was largely the work of such speculators, who are
always ready to prey on the fluctuations of confidence in the cur-
rency.
My dear free silver coinage friend, did you ever think that you
were opening the door full wide to these same fellows by giving
the silver producers the power To say how many silver dollars shall
be coined, no matter what the commercial value of silver bullion
may be, and no matter where the silver may come from?
The radical changes sought to be forced on our business enter-
prises by the unfortunate policy of the present administration over-
flowed with disaster and continues to blast our productive possibili-
ties, conditions which are but aggravated by the free coinage craze.
Everybody felt this not because there was shrinkage in the volume
of money but because of shaken confidence.
THE GREAT STRAIN OF THE
last three and one-half years is now being augmented by the un-
steady and purely visionary tendencies of the free coinage party
that persists in a monetary policy that threatens the stability of
— 9 —
Our whole financial sj'stem, and that has so awakened anxiety and
distrust among our thoughtful and conservative people as to un-
settle confidence in all our business enterprises. Not since 1893
has there been such depression as now. Had conservative conn-
sels controlled the alleged reform movement we would have instead,
business confidence.
When I speak of producers, I include every man and woman
who is co-operating to do something that tends to better his fellows
in the great struggle of hfe.
My friends you cannot legislate confidence. You cannot change
the fundamental laws of trade, nor satisfy the cravings of hunger
by legislative enactment. Law is as impotent to give value to
money when the people do not behevc in it as to overthrow the
power of gravitation.
Sound policy and equal justice demand that the government
should not open the door to what threatens to be a cheap
metallic dollar, or to experiments that do not assure us of something
just as good as we now have. Every dollar issued to circulate as
money should be equal in value to the best dollar made, and should
be a.3 good to leave as an inheritance to your children, or lay
up for a rainy day as to pay a present debt.
I am puzzled to see how we are going to be bettered by going
from a gold standard because it is said to be rising, but how or why
nobody can tell, to a silver standard which everybody knows to be
falling.
IS SILVER ANY BETTER ?
Having discussed the unstable character of currency money
created out of the promises to pay of the government we will in-
quire as to the reliability of silver as a coinage metal. (1) Does silver
possess because of its intrinsic value the essential qualities of cur-
rency money, at the rate of 16 to 1, or any other fixed ratio, as it
is now estimated by the leading commercial nations? (2) And can
it be conveniently and economically handled? But first let us for
a moment see what free coinage of silver means. It means that the
government shall take from the holders of silver bullion all the sil-
ver they may take to the mints, no matter where produced, no mat-
ter what the bullion may be worth in the markets of the world, and
coin it into money at the ratio of 16 to 1, and give in return for
— 10—
every 371^ grains of bullion a legal tender silver dollar. Such
policy would give the holders of silver the profits of the difl'erence
in bullion and coinage value, which at present market value would
be about 100 per cent., also the power to regulate the volume
of coinage at their pleasure ; and most likely make gold a commod-
ity to be bought and sold on change and unsettle values as in
1861-1879, and put the world's standard of values at the mercy of
the money speculators. It is very clear that if 371^ grains of fine
silver had been uniformly worth more than 100 cents we would
have never heard of free silver coinage at the ratio of 16 to 1. In
that case the silver barons would not be in it. When that was the
case there was no pressure for free coinage. For 39 years commenc-
ing with April 1, 1806, by order of President Jefferson, and fol-
lowed up by his successors not only free coinage, but all coinage of
the silver dollar was suspended.
The act of 1853 demonetized all fractional coin by reducing
its intrinsic value below the nominal value, an act that affected the
major part of our silver coinage up to 1873, and the advocates of
free coinage never even protested, nor did anybody kick during
these 43 years. Why do not the reformers denounce this as a great
fraud, as well as the act of 1873? A much more complete demone-
tization of silver than that of the act of 1873.
Though the last named act reduced the legal tender power
of the silver dollar to transactions not greater than $5, but
little significance attached to it because all silver coin was
wholly out of circulation from 1861 to, 1879, when the Greenback
was a legal tender for private dues. The $5 limitation had been in
force since 1853 for all silver coin except the standard dollar ; and
but few of which were then in existence. Small money specula-
tors got hold of them, melted them down and sold the bullion.
How many times this silver was recoined nobody can tell. Dur-
ing all the days from 1861 to 1879 not one of you handled a stand-
ard silver dollar.
The government coined the trade dollar to supply the Asiatic
markets, and made for our silver a market abroad, as nobody used
silver here except in the arts.
Whatever criticism may be justly made of the act of 1873, the
act of February 28, 1878, restored the coinage of the silver dollar,
made it a legal tender for all debts, public and private, and in the
— 11 —
meantime — between the acts of 1873 and 1878 — we coined
about $100,000,000 silver of various denominations, more than
we coined in all the preceding 50 yeai's. But whether favor-
able or unfavorable it had no practical effect on our monetary sys-
tem, because we were not using a dollar of silver coin at home. The
trade dollars and coinage of fractional coins created a market for our
then growing product of silver abroad.
The practical treatment of silver by the United States under
the act of 1873 was most friendly, under it we took all the domestic
product available for coinage.
But whether the act of 1873 depreciated the bullion value of
silver or not, the great question still remains, does silver possess
the essential qualities that make it expedient to give it a legal
value in coin greatly in excess of its metal or bullion value?
HAS IT A DEFINED AND CONSTANT VALUE ?
(1) While we may concede that from the time of our first coinage
act in 1792, to and including 1873, the yearly average value of
silver bullion was such that the standard dollar never fell below
$i.004 and fluctuated from that point to $1,054, a constancy not
to be criticized. But since 1873 the commercial value of silver has
vibrated between $1,004 and $0,491 in 1894 ; in other words in
21 years has fallen in value to less than one-half its previous value.
Bullion value of 371| grains of pure silver at the annual average
price since 1873 to 1895 inclusive, is given in the following table :
1873...
. . .$ 1.004
1874...
.988
1875...
.964
1876...
.894
1877...
.929
1878. ..
.891
1879...
.868
1880...
.868
1881...
.880
1882...
.878
1883...
.858
1884...
.861
1885. ..
.. .$ 0.832
1886. ..
.769
1887. ..
.756
1888. ..
.727
1889...
.723
1890...
.809
1891. . .
.764
1892...
.673
1893. ..
.603
1894...
.491
1895. ..
..506
— 12 —
SILVER NOT A FAVORITE AMONG THE NATIONS.
Germany in 1871 and 1873 legislated for restricted coinage of
sih er and called in and melted large quantities of her silver coin
and sold the bullion for gold. During the seventies Norway,
Sweden, Denmark and the states composing the " Latin Union "
closed their mints to the free coinage of silver. This only means
that these governments assumed to regulate the volume of coinage,
instead of leaving it to the discretion of the holders of bullion.
The faet is that all the great commercial people are practically
on the gold standard, no matter how vigorously some states have
tried to preserve the single silver standard. No nation can pre-
serve the silver standard in her relations with other people than
their own, without their consent. The sense of the business world
seems to be against the use of silver as money except in a limited
way. We are but part of this great community of nations, no mat-
ter how adequate we are for independent legislation.
But no state has discarded the use of silver money, and in what
are called the gold standard nations, the. parity of the two metals
has been preserved, and silver is still coined as the needs of the
people appear to the government to require, and in undiminished
quantity. But the government purchases the bullion at its commer-
cial or commodity value, instead of giving the profits of coinage to
the holders of the bullion. But the silver plutocrats are not sat-
isfied with an arrangement that only gives them the commodity
value of silver. A rule that obtains for every other commodity
bought or sold. Why should the silver producer complain at a
rule that applies to all other men who have an3dhing to sell?
(2) Silver is too bulky and heavy for large transactions to
handle, it is too burdensome and expensive to meet with favor for
great or general exchanges, at home or abroad. In our minor
transactions it is valuable, but the expense and danger in making
large exchanges with silver coin precludes its general use. Less
than $18 would put in your pockets over one pound avoirdupois,
$175, the price of a good horse, 10 lbs., and a very modest home,
worth $1,750, one hundred pounds, too heavy to carry and too
bulky to hide ; $35,000 a ton.
My judicial sale of the P., A. & W. Kd. Co., for $800,000, would
have required a freight car and the whole of the police force of
— 13 —
Akron to guard its handling. The sale of the N. Y., P. & 0. Ed.,
made at the last term of court held by me, would have taken five
or six freight trains to transport enough silver to pay its capital-
ized price. Yet so simple have such gxeat transactions become
since the days of " the dollar of our daddies," that instead of five
or six train loads of silver being employed, a deposit of $30,000
was all that was actually needed in cash to close the deal. The
check and the clearing house did the rest, without so much as a
thought of the silver dollar. For such transactions gold coin
would have been onerous, and silver "hazardous. The transfer of
the silver coin in the subtreasury in New York a few years ago to
larger vaults, required the United States' troops to guard the
transaction, so hazardous is the handling of great amounts of coin
esteemed. But the millions on millions of daily ti-ansfers at the
clearing house, are made without the hazard of a mill by theft.
I instance these to show that for the larger transactions the
sense of the business world has centered in very simple and inex-
pensive modes of payment and settling balances.
The clearancehouses are worth more to the business world today
than all the silver money in it. To men who only know of money
in a small way for daily, personal and family purposes, this may
appear strange. This class of men may well consider that because
money may be scarce with them is not proof that an abundance
may not be in existence.
Whatever the cause of the fluctuation in the value of silver
bullion may have been, the product has grown to such proportions
in the last 35 years and so fallen in value as to be a warning to us
to be cautious, very cautious in experimenting against the convic-
tions of a great majority of the nations with whom we trade.
What would have been the depression of silver in the markets
of the' world if the United States under the Bland and Allison
bill of 1878, and the Sherman bill in 1890, had not under the first
bought from $2,000,000 to $4,000,000 of silver bullion per month,
and under the latter $54,000,000 per year, cannot be told. But
the purchase of this enormous amount and while the purchasing
process was going on silver fell to one-half its former value, demon-
strates how futile the efforts of th'e general government are to give
commercial value to silver. No one is so unwise as to believe that it
would not have gone lower but for the extraordinary efforts of the gov-
— 14—
ernment. Were it not for the outstanding silver certificates re-
deemable in the silver dollar, face for face, we would never get
fifty cents on the dollar for it. The store of $390,000,000 by the
United States is no small factor in estimating the value of silver
for the immediate future. VVhy has not this vast pile of money
been taken from these repositories, and put where the horny hand
of labor could grasp these dollars? It is because the horny hand
had rather have something else. It is not because its parity has not
been maintained. Ever since the resmnption of specie payment,
for all practical purposes, the silver dollar has never failed to look
the gold dollar in the face at 16 to 1 and challenge equality with
it, for anybody who wanted to use it. But who wanted to use the
silver dollar, except in a small way, has been the practical question.
The government has gone so far as to pay the expense of distribut-
ing silver coin to all parts of the United States, so anxious has
it been to get it into the hands of the people. The silver dollar is
not a favorite with them, because it is not convenient to handle
and they prefer something else for money.
EXTEAORDIKARY II^CREASE OF GOLD AND SILVER.
Eighty-five per cent, of the present gold and silver supply of
the world is the product of the last 50 years, and aggregates about
$9,000,000,000, about equally divided between the two metals.
The extraordinary increase in the output of gold during the
last 48 years.overthrows the pretended theory that gold is relatively
increasing in value compared with the other product of wealth.
But silver compared with gold and many of the commodities of
trade has fallen greatly in value, so that if we wanted an increase
in the volume of silver money we can get it for half as much as it
cost us for the first three-quarters of this century.
It is idle to hold that the disfavor into which silver has fallen,
is the product of conspiracy between the great bankers and the
governments not admitting silver to free coinage. This disfavor
is founded in the essential nature of things, and the convictions
of as pure minded business men and statesmen as those arrayed
on the other side. It is absurd to say that the governments of the
non free silver states are all corrupt and want to vex their people
with distress and business failures. But against this conviction a
— 15 —
popular belief, very wide spread, exists tbat silver must be restored
to its former status as money by the American people, no matter
what the rest of the world think of it. This should be treated as
one of the popular delusions of the day. The plan they offer for
financial relief is obstructive rather than helpful. Is too much
like the surgeon breaking the bone to show his skill in setting it.
The silver " dollar of our daddies " along with the ox cart and
canal boat have been compelled to succumb to the advanced modes
of doing business adopted by their enterprising and inventive sons.
This disfavor is so generally and thoroughly grounded as to
the use of silver for unlimited currency money as to make it wise
policy for the government to control the amount of coinage, and
to go cautiously in the way of bucking against the convictions of
the business world.
But that is no reason why we should not make the greatest
possible use of silver that sound policy will justify. This is just
what the American people have been doing for 104 years. During
the last 30 years we have not only strained but passed the line of
safety in our anxiety to give value to silver, done for it what we
have done for nothing else, bought almost the entire American
product to stiffen its bullion value.
The effort to provoke odium against the act of, 1873, is not
honest. Who ever heard the good old fashioned democratic ad-
ministration of President Jefferson assailed because of his demone-
tization of silver in 1806, or of the demonetization policy of every
other democratic administration down to the last year of General
Jackson's, or heard Polk or Buchanan denounced for demonetizing
all fractional silver coin, and driving out of circulation all foreign
silver fractional currency? All these administrations acted as crim-
inally as did the Congress of 1873—no more so, no less so. Thefrac-
tional coin then exceeded ten times the value of standard silver
dollars.
PROFITABLE BUSINESS, NOT MONEY NEEDED.
We are eloquently told that extraordinary and general depres-
sion paralyzes the industrial possibilities of all classes of our people,
that widespread distress invades the homes of the laborer and the
debtor classes, and that free coinage of silver will give us certain
and speedy relief. The situation is indeed deplorable, but the sug-
gested relief is wholly ideal and illusory, and the great significance
— 16 —
given to it, to the exclusion of more important measures, only adds
to the confusion. It is not the want of a greater volume of silver
money, or any other kind of money that causes these conditions.
With the exception of 1893, we have had a larger circulation of
cash money than ever before ; in 1894 we had 231^ millions more
than in 1890 ; in 1895, 104-J millions more than in 1891, and 221|
millions more than in 1889, and that year had a higher circulation
than any preceding year. During the three years the Sherman
act was operative we bought 168,674,596 ounces of silver, costing
$155,930,910 — an average price of $.9244 per ounce, the ratio
price being $1.2929, for which certificates were issued as money
and at the same time coined $160,000,000 gold, with 3,747
national banks waiting to enlarge their circulation on demand.
We never had any more money than now, less the gold sent to
Europe in the last two or three years to balance the excess in value
of our imports over exports. Millions on millions of money, every
dollar worth 100 cents, are now awaiting investors of approved
business ability and character. The money holders want just such
men.
The ratio of money used to volume of business transacted
has wonderfully decreased during the last one-third of a century.
And during the same period there has been a marvelous increase
in the output of gold and silver. The banks and clearing houses
have so simplified exchanges that less money is needed in all com-
mercial transactions than formerly, outside of the ordinary domes-
tic transactions, such as pertain to the household, purely personal
matters and among rural populations and the laboring classes, who
are paid their wages at frequently recurring intervals.
To the farmer, mechanic, and common laborer, in the country
and the little towns, where banking facilities are meagre, there
may appear to be need of a greater volume of money, because they
don't have it. But does it make to them any difference how much
or how little money is in existence if they do not have commodities,
or profitable employment with which to command money, if there
be a sufficient supply in the country. If these people would reflect
intelligently they would soon see that instead of more silver money,
we need good markets, commodities to sell, more employment, more
profitable business, more articles that can be profitably exchanged
for money. WHAT THE COUNTEY NEEDS IS BUSINESS,
— 17 —
NOT MONEY ; EMPLOYMENT, NOT FKEE SILVER ; CON-
FIDENCE, NOT AGITATION ; A STEADY FISCAL POLICY,
NOT DISTURBANCE OF OUR MONETARY SYSTEM.
If there was such real need we certainly ought not to wait on
the will and ahihty of silver producers to furnish it. The relay of
silver in the treasury vaults could much more readily he reached
if there was anything in present or potential existence to move it.
The savings and trust companies, trustees of money, and the hanks
of issue would he glad to loan to good customers, and at a less rate of
interest than these silver harons or private lenders of money would
exact.
The silver advocate should remember that his sUver, though
uncoined, adds to the volume of the gold coin of his coimtry to the
extent of the commercial value of every ounce sent abroad, for it
saves to us, in the balance of trade just so much gold as otherwise
would go abroad. And that which is retained here is a source of
wealth equal to its market price in gold.
The real difficulty respecting silver money is that the people
with whom we deal abroad will not accept it at its coinage value.
No act of ours without their consent w!I ever relieve us from this
state of affairs. Our laws can have no more effect in England,
France or Germany, or in any other state, respecting money, than
their laws would have among us. Our government has never taken
the coin of other nations only at a valuation fixed by it, based upon
the recognized intrinsic value of the fine metal in the coin. We
cannot ask other peoples to adopt a policy that we do not accept
when we deal with them. Any arrangement in that hehaU, to he
effectual, must he by agreement with the nations with whom we
trade. That is just what is meant by the financial plank of the
Republican platform.
Whenever the balance of trade abroad is against us, and the com-
mercial value of silver is below its coinage value, we must adjust
that balance either in gold or silver. And no matter which
is used it must he upon its huUion value of the place where the
transaction occurred. Legislate as we please, protest as we may,
plead or threaten as none hut the Americans can, we must stUl set-
tie up according to the commercial value of gold and silver as hul-
lion, not as coin, in aU foreign transactions.
Our only escape from this inexorable law of trade is to shut
— 18—
up shop, close our ports, scuttle our ships and barricade our vast
frontiers against all the rest of the world.
In all our money exchanges when coin is reqiiired, gold has an
advantage over silver. By the consent of the commercial world
gold has a recognized and stable value, so that in London, Paris,
Berlin, St. Petersburg, Constantinople, Calcutta, China, Japan,
Australia or America, an ounce of fine gold has the same accepted
value, less current exchange. This value is purely one of consent,
no more affected by the coinage laws of the United States for all
foreign exchanges than the climate of the equator is by the hose
sprinkler on my lawn.
Our financial troubles have not arisen from a want of volume
of money hut from commercial conditions the wide world over,
from too much mere speculation, too much politics, and too little
public business sense. I might add too much reliance on the big
bankers by the government, who are like all other men, ready for
a good snap.
Ours is the disease of over production and inability to find a
profitable foreign market. We produce greatly beyond domestic
consumption and demand. What we most need is willing and able
purchasers. A matter of vastly greater significance to our people
and the state than free coinage. We might as well arbitrarily fix
by law the value of the commodities we have for sale, and attempt
to force them on the world, as to do so for silver. Just as wise
policy as to do so for silver only. Wheat, corn, tobacco, cotton,
etc., are worth many hundreds of times as much to our farmers as
the total output of silver to the silver producers ; and of iron, steel,
copper, and their ores, and the minerals, and their mighty powers,
worth many hundred thousand times more than all the utilities
of silver to our people.
Why should we not " declare that this nation is able to legislate
for its own people on every question without waiting for the aid
and counsel of any other nation on earth," and try this experiment
on them? It would be a big thing to force these commodities at 16
to 1 upon the nations as well as silver. We would then indeed be
making money. But this speculative revery collapses in the face of
the stubborn fact that we can dictate to no man away from home.
No ability that we may have to produce beyond our home de-
mand will be of any profit to us unless a profitable foreign market
— 19—
is open for our surplus. No money that we can make can change
these conditions. It is no more absurd to argue for this aiTange-
ment for all our merchantable products, than it is for silver, as long
as the commercial nations will not take our silver 16 to 1.
The absurdity of the attempt to fix the value for silver is illus-
trated by our experiments from February, 1878 to December, 1893,
by which we tried to preserve the value of silver bullion by purchas-
ing practically the output of our silver mines and when we quit
purchasing silver, it sold the world over for one-half the price it com-
manded when we started the experiment.
UNJUST CLASS PREJUDICES APPEALED TO BY THE REFORMERS.
The prejudices of the farmer, mechanic, skilled workmen and
common laborers are appealed to as if they had been wronged by
our monetary system. But pray tell what difference it makes to
them whether silver bulhon is worth 16 to 1 or 30 to 1, if the
standard dollar is a legal tender for every debt he may contract,
and for every exchange he may make? To them it is and will be
as good as any other dollar, and no better, if the parity is preserved.
But it does make a great difference to a few rich and influential
silver producers.
Silver at 30 to 1 puts his business down to the level with the
iron and steel manufacturer, who is compelled to stand his chances
of making money without special government patronage. At the
present price of silver metal, free coinage at 16 to 1 would give the
silver plutocrat a bonanza, and to the business enterprises of the
country a black eye.
How can free coinage of silver relieve us from depression result-
ing from too much capital invested in plant, too much stock in
trade, too much labor seeking employment, for the demand, when
everybody wants to sell, and nobody wants to buy at remunerative
prices. This is the situation at home, and the world outside don't
want our wheat, oats, corn, cattle, hogs, horses, wool, cotton, sugar,
tobacco and the other produce of the farm, at the prices heretofore
paid. The same is true of our manufactured articles, and labor
possibiliiies.
But my friends, this arises in part from conditions far removed
from our control. The markets of the world regulate the price of
all our surplus articles of trade, for which no American policy is
— 20 —
to blame. You must not get soured at your fellow citizens who are
apparently more lucky than you are. Every domestic merchant,
every manufacturer, every railroad man, every legitimate banker
and every honest silver man, every gold bug and every plutocrat this
side of the Atlantic wants you to get the highest price for your com-
modifies the American market can aiford, and the biggest price
abroad for all your surplus.
In the last few years commercial conditions have greatly
changed. Our old European markets are supplied from other
sources and are only open to us at ruinous prices.
The people who are now supplying these markets know how to
make laws for their needs and protection. And they will never let
their European markets be swept away by free coinage of silver in
America, or anywhere else for that matter.
The farmer and labor men who are fierce for free coinage must
not presume that the wisdom of all the world is vdth them. If
silver is such a mighty factor for the economic welfare of mankind
why does not Europe, Asia and Africa awake to its importance?
Is it not a wonder that the sagacious sense of other nations is not
already awakened. I can see no reason why the manufacturer, mer-
chant, railroad man, steamship owner, oil producer, iron or steel
makers, professional men, bankers or speculators, should not be
as eager for it as any farmer or laborer if it possesses such power ;
nor can I see why the latter should want a dollar of doubtful
value or the coinage of money which is of danger to our monetary
system, or anyone want a standard of values that depresses prices of
commodities.
That a disagreement so radical should exist among honest men
is not readily accounted for except on the basis of want of adequate
knowledge of the subject matter. A knowledge that can only be
acquired by careful study and prudent action founded on exper-
ience. The experience of mankind dictates conservative action In
all that tends to affect the stability of our monetary system.
All sensible men must feel this way. We are all selfish and
want all we can get for our efforts. Every one wants the best
attainable opportunities for our people as affording the best
chance for himself. The wide awake fellows know that good
times and good money and plenty of it always give them the bet-
ter chance. Like you and me they are opposed to doubtful experi-
— 21 —
ments on part of the government. It seems to me that to keep all
our money at a parity with the highest standard of the trading and
producing nations is the policy for the American people. Why
should not the best people in the world have the best money in it,
just as we want the best farms, the best live stoek, the best machin-
ery, the best facilities and the best markets?
Is it advisable to force free coinage against the judgment of the
leading commercial nations? The experiment of the free coinage
states has not been such as to assure us that it will be hest for our
people. The best informed men of the day, to say the least, are
not agreed that it would be pohcy for us to do so, with the great
weight of opinion against it. Wisdom dictates that we should go
slowly and experiment on the safe side. IT IS SUEE THAT HO
POLICY SHOULD BE ADOPTED THAT WILL HOT MAIH-
TAIH THE PAKITY OF THE TWO METALS. But this can-
not be done without great strain and danger as long as the silver
bullion value is greatly below its coin value. That the United
States can turn the world over in its estimation of silver is so
doubtful that we ought not to try the experiment until we have
reasonable assurance that we will have aid from other commercial
nations. Without such concurrence it would he unwise to
coin silver in excess of the home demand, whenever the commer-
cial value of silver bulhon is far below the nominal value of silver
coin, because we could only use the silver at its bullion value in
adjusting our balances in foreign transactions.
AN UNJUST BOUNTY.
If we should be able to preserve the parity and adopted free
coinage, it would give the silver producers, not only of the United
States, but all the world a bounty to drop their silver into our
coinage, and force onto our people a currency that nobody outside
our borders will take except at its bullion value.
An unfair discrimination against our own people, that in a
financial pinch would be felt disastrously by those compelled to use,
or hold it. The experience of mankind shows that when the
parity is not maintained this will surely happen in cases of
financial distress. In which case everybody will try to pay it out,
nobody be willing to take it except at its intrinsic or metal
— 22 —
Value, and true money would be hoarded and go out of clrcula-
tion and thereby diminish the volume of circulation by the amount
of the true money that so goes out; to get which a premium must
he paid, and all values for exchanges will in fact be estimated by
the true dollar, though paid in the cheap one. We had full illus-
tration of this during 1861-1879. Those of you who remember
those days know what opportunities the depreciated currency gave
to the money gamblers. Don't open the door again to them is
sound advice.
If a poor dollar is put on the track it is sure to win and land in
the poor man's pocket. The men who have to work the hardest to
get it will be the first and last to hear the hardships of its discredit.
A dollar that is good for me is good for the poorest man in the
world, and the richest. The best dollar in the world is the best
dollar for every man, the poor man included.
By act of Congress or plank of party platform you can no more
restore the standard dollar to the rank of " the dollar of our dad-
dies " than you can relegate our people to the stage coach, and
canal boat for passenger and freight transportation, and hold our
rank in the world ; or make the bicycle consume hay and oats or
the electric car restore the horse market. It can he done, but only
by falling out of the ranks in the march of civilization and progress.
The time mil not come in our day that gold will not be a mon-
etary standard because it possesses superior qualities as money to
any metal known in the estimation of our race.
WHY DECLAIM AGAINST GOLD.
But what consideration of puhhc policy can be urged to demon-
etize gold? If it be so great a crime to demonetize silver what may
not he said against demonetizing gold. And demonetization of
gold is just what you will do for our people if the commercial value
of silver is not brought to parity with gold, if we open the door to
free coinage of silver.
Bryan and his following are attacking the gold standard as if
its maintenance were a great crime. But they fail to show wherein it
is a crime—hut they still declaim. The whole array against it
will vanish if you apply your common sense in determining for
yourself whether there is any substantial ground for thus assailiTig
the universal monetary standard of mankind.
— 23—
Is it not somewhat surprising that the alleged reformers
make the free coinage question paramount to ail others, and
leave the hurning questions of revenue aiid protection to take care of
themselves, when the treasury is so exhausted that we are compelled
to borrow money to pay the ordinary expenses of the government
and maintain the parity of silver with oui other money? It looks
like a false pretense to induce the people to keep the party in
power, which has utterly failed to appreciate our public needs for
the last three and one-half years.
Its pretense of reform under the leadership of Bryan, is not
assuring. He was an active coadjutor in developing the Wilson
hill, a measure of ineffable evils as it came from the committee of
Ways and Means, and would in no way have been mitigated
had it not been for three or four Democratic senators who would
not submit to the party lash and presidential coercion. The re-,
formers need reforming and educating in higher ideals of states-
manship before they are fit to rule.
To ignore the most vital and imminent economic problems now
on us, in this great emergency, created by the gross blunders and
mistakes of the Democratic administration during the three and
one-third years it has been in power, is hut to show that its bid for
continuance in power is no better founded in appreciation of the
present situation and its paramount needs than shown by the prac-
tical results since it came into power.
It is a party of grandiloquent promises and disastrous fulfill-
ment. If Bryan is aware of the situation his attitude is one of
deception on the people. If he is not aware of its imminence he is
inadequate for the place for which he aspires. In either view
he does not come sufficiently qualified to make it safe to elect him.
DEPEESSION OF FARM PRODUCTS.
Further in this line we wish to emphasize the fact that it is
absurd to charge the depression in the farmers products to an in-
sufficient volume of money to produce, use and distribute them.
ISTowhere in the wide world since the alleged fraud of 1873 has
there been active demand for any given article of trade, such as
corn, cotton, wool, meat, leather, general merchandise, machinery
or labor, hut the money, gilt edged at a parity with any money in
use, was ready for the exchange, and enterprising producers with
— 24 —
eager buyers on band fibng into bne at break of day as aggressive
as the money power can make them, helping to give the trade an
upward boost.
It is the want of demand for the exchange that paralyzes the
markets. A glutted market never enhances market values. Leg-
islate as you may, after you have done your best, the law of demand
and supply will dominate every transaction wherever man has
learned to swap. It always was and always will be, that the man
who has to sell must take just what the man who buys is willing to
give. You cannot compel England, Prance, Germany or the
other people with whom you deal to give you a mill more for your
farm produce than they please to give you. The same is true of your
silver.
Nor will anyone prosecute a hue of business that is unprofit-
able if he can help it. The farmer understands this and governs
himself accordingly. He ought not to kick because the manufac-
turer and other employers of labor do likewise. If wheat is too
largely raised for the markets the farmer plants more corn, if that
is overstocked he puts rye and oats to crop ; if an pver supply of
beef he breeds horses and milch cows, instead of steers. If elec-
tricity or the bicycle makes it unprofitable to raise horses he tries
sheep and fondly relies on Grover Cleveland, Wilson, free silver,
and free trade to give his wool the tarve of the Australian product.
The horse is a great deal better factor for general trade than
the bicycle, as the former eats oats, hay, needs a stable, harness,
and an attendant, the other don't even chew gum, needs none of
the articles necessary for the comfort and utility of the horse.
But our farmers cannot stop the triumph of the bicycle,
nor can they counteract the effect the electric car has upon
their horse product. No money policy can change these
disastrous conditions for them. The bicycle and electric car have
come to stay, and the farmer must set his house in order con-
fronted mth the results these changed modes of locomotion bring
with them. The horse supply is too great for profitable prices.
The same is true of grain, meat, general merchandise, and the
silver supply is too great for the world's markets at the old stand-
ards.
Since 1878 the bullion value of silver has ranged from $1,004
to $0,491, and for the last 15 years from $0,880 to $0,491 in the
— 25 —
great markets of the world. Ko free coinage in the United States
can change these results. Nor will putting up one plutocracy
against the other give relief. The American silver producers are
the real plutocrats who are vexing our chances of prosperity to-day.
Confidence is the mainspring to action. Healthy co-operation
makes effort profitable. Men will invest their labor and other
capital, if hope of reward is fairly offered. If that hope is wanting
nobody will invest. Sagacious men will not part with their money
or invest it in business enterprises that do not give assurance of
profit.
THK EFFECT OF FOREIGN MARKETS IS DISASTROUS TO US.
The supply of grain, cotton and meat for the European markets
is matter of supreme importance to the American producer.
With a profitable foreign demand for them, agriculture would be
profitable. But with a market there ruling below profitable pro-
duction here, our domestic markets must take a lower level, and
every American producer must stand the squeeze. The depressed
trade conditions of these export markets are wholly beyond our
control. It once was different. We then had peculiar advantages
that gave us splendid opportunities across the Atlantic from which
our farmers, merchants, transporting men and bankers, secured
great advantages. But while we were thus growing rich our en-
terprise and great prosperity inspired other people the world over
to do likewise.
A few years ago we had one-half the mileage and best equipped
railway facilities of the world, great natural water ways, most fer-
tile lands and climatic conditions, which afforded our people most
potent instrumentalities in furthering our wonderful progress.
Europe, Asia, Africa and the islands of the sea were not slow to
discover the sources of our prosperity and to fall into line. They
with great enterprise followed our example and created like instru-
mentalities on the broadest scale, with direct aim to relieve them-
selves from the dominion of Yankee thrift and enterprise, with the
cheapest of cheap labor at their command. They came into direct
and successful competition with us in the European markets for our
surplus farm products and ruinous to all our farmers, and indirectly
depressing to all our enterprises. To-day the foreign farmers and
merchants are masters of the situation.
—26 —
The late Hon. Frank Kurd, as far back as 1884, states the
historic fact so plainly that I am pleased to quote him for the fol-
lowing :
Speaking of Great Britain developing India's agricultural pro-
duction he says : " Large extents of territory were made cultivable
through the adoption of systems of irrigation. Eailroads were com-
menced, and the work of construction was vigorously pushed.
The interior was thus opened up to the coast, so that the products
of the soil could be cheaply loaded into the vessels, . . cheap
agricultural machinery was afforded them. Under this impulse,
wheat production was so stimulated that last year there was a pro-
duction in India of more than 300,000,000 bushels . . of this 40,-
000,000 bushels have been exported, while five years ago there was
scarcely a cargo of grain sent from her shores. In the first three
months of this year (1884) tliis exportation has largely increased
over the same period of last year, indicating for this year an expor-
tation of 70,000,000 bushels."
As to the effect he says : " In the last nine months there has
been a decline in the exportation of American cereals of $47,000,-
000 in value and wheat has gone down in Oliicago to less than 80
cents a bushel, the lowest price that has ever been known in that
market. It is notable Mr. Chairman; that just as the exportation
of wheat has increased in India, the exportation has diminished
in the United States." It should be remembered that this speech
was made in Congress twelve years ago. (April 29, 1894.)
Too many acres are cultivated for the world's consumption.
A surfeit always breaks down the markets.
Why have the farm produce ruled so low is the anxious ques-
tion all over this coimtry, and in Western Europe as well. It is
because the demand is not adequate to exhaust the supply. If all
the silver in the world was coined into legal tender dollars atl6 to 1,
the price of these commodities would not be enhanced a mill on the
dollar on the commodities offered for sale. Silver or no silver the
inexorable laws of demand and supply will govern the market
price. If the world wants a commodity it will have it. If it
don't want it, it will not buy. In one case money will circulate,
in the other it will not be needed and will remain idle. This is
also true of the great manufacturing, mining and other productive
industries, silver as well.
— 27 —
Eussia, Eoumania, Hungary, India, Egypt, Australasia, South
and Central America can and do sell below you in these markets
their farm products, at rates below profitable farming in the
United States. The great European and Asiatic railroads, the
Suez Canal, the mighty steam and refrigerator ships, with their
improved methods of cultivation, machinery and modern inven-
tion confront every American farmer with a cheapness of such
merchandise, that paralyzes our industries and fills us with fear
and distress at the course of tilings.
The great refrigerator ships take the beef and mutton carcasses
from Galveston, Rio Janeiro, India and Australia, and put them
down in Europe as fresh as when shipped and at a rate so low that
the prairie farmer cannot compete successfully.
HOW ABE WE TO BETTER THE SITUATION?
As long as the Sepoy of India works for 10 or 12 cents per day
and until we have an adequate demand at home we will have
friction on part of our wage earners and distress among our farm-
ers. And until the condition of the eastern laborer is so im-
proved that he can spend a dollar or two a day for his living, the
eastern and South American surplus will rule the markets of the
world against us.
This he would do if remunerative vages were paid him. He
would then eat bread and other good food and thus enlarge de-
mand at home for their food products. Such home demand would
give an open field again in the European markets for the sale of
our surplus.
The only other source of rehef will be found in increasing the
domestic demand until it reaches the supply raised at home. This
must be our main reliance. This obtains as to all our exports that
come in competition with these peoples abroad. Cotton, our great
domestic export commodity is subject to the same conditions. In-
dia and Africa are forging ahead in conquering phalanx with their
cotton bales into every foreign market. I am told it has been sold
in our markets recently.
There is greathope that thepersonalagrandizement thatwellpaid
labor has brought to our wage-earners and producers, will inspire
the laborers and producers abroad to imitate our example and
force the significance of the man as well as the enterprises that
— 28 —
produce merchantable products. Until these conditions prevail
the creations of the wonderful instrumentalities for increasing
production and commerce on part of our eastern competitors and
their cheap labor will enable them to dominate the markets of
Europe with their farm products, and scale down our domestic
markets to their standard of value.
If the laborers and first producers of these people could be
induced to assert their individuality and force better pay for their
part of the products, every American producer would be benefited
by it.
In Europe, Asia, Africa, South America and Australia, all
along the lines of the railroads and the great navigation lines, men
are being prepared for asserting themselves, inspired by the grand
results of American selfhood, and individuality. This is the de-
cided trend of men the world over, hut too slowly to satisfy our
impatience. But progress is sure, and all we can do is to set a
good example to them, in the management of our public as well as
private affairs and keep working.
We are creatures of circumstances. Conditions that we cannot
control, have radically changed the status of our farmers and
laborers. Almost all North America worth having, not long ago,
was at our hand for the asking. Till within a very few years, the
Great West was open to the enterprise of any man who wanted a
home and a competence, which he could master by a few years of
personal effort. Every young man had the assurance of an inde-
pendent occupation and much more than a living in the possession
of a farm larger than he could cultivate, or in independent mechan-
ical pursuits, which gave him wealth and a firm standing in so-
ciety. Nor were these independent occupations limited to the
Great West. They prevaded every nook and corner of this
grand Union, wherever American society and thrift wanted a foot-
hold. But these conditions have changed. The Great West is
now an aggregation of mighty empires. Now the lands, oils,
gasses, salines, timber, minerals, ores, and water power in all our
borders,have all been preempted. The fabulous opportunities of the
pioneer have leaped the Eocky mountains, gone dowu their western
slopes and passed from us into the depths of the Pacific ocean.
Invention, machinery, classification of labor, the genius of
brainy men, annihilating time, space and almost unsurmountable
— 29 —
obstacles are on top, and our markets for our surplus are seized by
foreign invaders as voracious as the prairie locust, that leave noth-
ing, but desolation behind them. Is it any wonder that the wage-
earner, the farmer and the manufacturer are overwhelmed with
anxiety, when they realize the actual situation?
The problem is not one of the free coinage of silver, it is the
problem of economics in its broadest sense — the problem of how
to utilize our natural and acquired powers, our industries, our peo-
pie, so as to make the most of our opportunities. To us it is the
greatest of all questions, the protection of American labor, enter-
prise and production. These are the great questions. It is more than
matter of party politics; more than the election of McKinley or
Bryan. The assumption of the Chicago platform that the money
question is paramount to all others at this time is a falsehood
and insulting to the common sense of the American people. The
remedy offered by free coinage, is as stupid and hurtful as the
quack doctor's plan to throw the child into spasms to cure it, be-
cause he was h—1 on fits.
No platitude of this kind ought to fool anybody. The adjust-
ment of this great problem should be hfted above the reckless pull
of mere partisan manipulation. It should be treated as matter of
great state pohcy, of political economy, of personal rights, accord-
ing to the honest and intelligent convictions and business sense of
every man who is striving to get an honest living, whatever his
occupation may be. It is the solution of the great American
question for Americans and by Americans as citizens, not as poh-
ticians.
The unwise political agitation and meddling with the mone-
tary situation exerts a most damaging effect on general business.
Business thrift depends upon the confidence reposed in the stabil-
ity of money values and the good sense of the people in not aggra-
vating the situation by experimenting in unwise and dangerous
public expedients. No law will help us in this great emergency
that does not strike at the cause. No law can make the trans-
fer of silver money for great transactions either convenient
or economical. No local law can add much to the world's
estimate of the value of silver. The employment of money presents
problems and conditions that cannot be legislated into or out of
existence. These exist in the very nature of things. Nor can the
laws we make in that regard he wise unless they have direct refer-
enee to the convictions of the peoples with whom we deal. Trade
is wholly matter of mutual understanding.
Our present coinage system has a thousand times less to do in
producing the unfortunate depression in business than the unwise
political disturbances now agitating the American people. That
the people must, and will come down to sedate inquiry and honest
judgment before the national election is the hope of the hour and
duty of the patriot.
I say it regretfully, hut circumstances make it expedient, that
the leaders and statesmen of the late Confederate states, and those
who follow in the traditions of the old slavery system, have not yet
learned the lessons of economics adapted to the needs of a great
industrial people. They are unsafe leaders to follow, no matter
how patriotic in feeling they may be. They incline to free trade
as well as free silver. The bond and silver blunders of the present
administration pale before the disasters caused by its anti-protec-
tion policy and the fears entertained in all business circles that
the southern ideas concerning free trade would dominate. That
their notions may prevail exerts a most depressing effect upon gen-
eral business throughout the country, which compared with the
silver question is insignificant. Better a thousand times open
your mills than your mints. Encourage business and money will
come out.
Why not give significance to protecting our labor, production
and commerce. Money is worth nothing without trade ; trade is
worth nothing without commodities; commodities are worth
nothing without consumers, and no consumer is worth anything
without labor. His labor and skill constitute the golden standard
by which he must regulate all his exchanges. How he shall aug-
ment this prime and universal power is the paramount question,
and no plank of a party platform can wipe it out. It is the para-
mount question of the hour.
THE FRAUD OF 1873.
The false pretenses of party issues goes still further. It is
vehemently asserted in season and out of season that the act of
February 18, 1873, was a fraud on the business enterprises of the
world, the joint conspiracy of the gold hugs of Wall and Lombard
— 31 —
streets and Berlin. What that means is not well defined. But
it is a masterful staple in the partisan market. The pretense is too
baseless to he considered with patience. It has been so frequently
and thoroughly refuted that no honest man who knows how the
act was considered in Congress can ever he convinced, if he is not
now convinced of its utter inconsistency.
Where were the silver producers during the three years the
matter was pending in Congress? Why was no public attentioii
given to the matter then, and for years after, if it was considered
by anybody, as matter of consequence.
The idea that a few New York, London, and Berlin bankers
could inflict this fraud on the American government and on the
leading commercial nations is but silly. The men engaged in the
great business affairs of the world are too sagacious and intelligent
to have been swindled by such a conspiracy, and for 20 odd years
let these conspirators destroy their legitimate enterprises by
the demonetization of silver. The truth is we were never more
prosperous than for the 20 years after the pretended swindle.
The men who would be affected by such a scheme are as acute as
the aforesaid bankers, and in numbers and influence have con-
trolling power with the cabinets of the nations.
Business men are now in the fore front, leading kings and par-
liaments by their ability as leaders of men. You impeach them
as men of sense by charging that so great a wrong has existed for
a quarter of a century with their acquiescence. If they believed
the fraud existed, and they would he as likely as anybody on earth
to believe it if it were true, it would not have been left for the
free silver coinage men to correct the wrong at the Chicago con-
vention. The men who are interested in as many millions of dol-
lars of real enterprises, as the silver men have dollars in theirs,
would shake the pillars of every government if relief did not come,
if they believed this claim of the silver men.
But what are these fellows growling about. All the silver of
the world today is coined into money that is not converted into
higher values in the arts. The latter employs skilled labor, to
give to it an enhanced merchantable value. A factor that free
traders and free silver men may not see, but a factor that the
struggling family of the mechanic sees and feels and the country
feels to the extent that his skill has gone into its wealth, an abso-
— 32 —
lute creation of his skill; inestimable in value compared with the
mere money value of the silver. I fear the free coinage propa-
ganda has lost sight of this new value in their zeal for free coinage.
What did the act of 1873 do? In effect it suspended the coin-
age of the standard silver dollar which up to that time had been
a legal tender and in place of it provided for the free coinage of the
trade dollar, to contain 420 grains standard silver, of which $85,-
965,924 were coined before the act of 1878, went into effect, hut
by the act of February 28, 1878, its coinage was discontinued and
these dollars called in for recoinage, and the standard dollar re-
stored to its place as full legal tender for all debts both public and
private. And the government was required by the same act to pur-
chase not less than $2,000,000 nor more than $4,000,000 per month
for coinage.
In fact the free coinage and full legal tender power of silver
took effect in 1878 by joint resolution of the Congress. In 1853 all
suhsidary coin had been reduced in weight to prevent their going
abroad, or into the melter's pot, and confined in legal tender power
to $5 transactions or less. Then the fact that the coinage of the
standard dollar had been wholly suspended for 29 years next pre-
ceding 1835, and that all foreign suhsidary coins were reduced by
law of 1857, to about 20 per cent, of the nominal value, and that
no silver had been in circulation since the first year of the war,
demonstrates that at the time the act of 1873 was under consider-
ation, free or hmited coinage was not considered a matter of much
consequence. But when resumption was being provided for, sil-
ver at once received a stronger helping hand from the government
than ever before. This was all done without any grudging.
It don't appear that the government has been specially slow
in bracing up the value of silver as money since February 28, 1873.
Since then it has far exceeded all precedent efforts.
From April 2, 1792, to February 28, 1873, 81 years, our total
coinage of silver amounted to $155,471,901.50. Of this only
$8,031,238 were silver dollars, the other $147,550,632.50 con-
sisted of suhsidary coin. This fractional coin before 1853
was largely destroyed by being melted down and sold for bul-
lion for export, and how often presented for recoinage, no-
body here will ever know. The silver dollar met the same
ignoble fate. This grew out of the fact that the silver in the
— 33 —
coins was worth more as bullion than in coin, and resulted in dis-
continuing the coinage of the dollar and in reducing the weight of
the fractional coins. The ratio then being 15 to 1.
To tell the truth " the dollar of our daddies " was not an Amer-
ican invention. Our patriotic fathers made "the dollar or units
each of the value of a Spanish milled dollar" as the same was
then current, and it remained so until 1873, when the gold dollar
was made the unit of value. But that did not change the stand-
ard of value of the two metals, gold and silver. The unit of value
has nothing to do with that.
We have already shown what extraordinary efforts the govern-
ment has made to give value to silver as coin. The free coinage
advocates ought to know that if the balance of trade had been in
our favor, instead of against us since the Cleveland administra-
tion, this free silver campaign would have nothing to give it promi-
nence. And they might as well remember that India, ever since
the order of her councU limiting the coinage of silver, has kept up
her demand for silver as before and is coining it in undiminished
quantiiy. But the silver producers are not satisfied because India
purchases her sBver for coinage at its commercial value as bullion
instead of admitting it to free coinage.
The money stringency would not have occured if our economic
policy had not been'disturbed by the fatuity of these democratic
reformers. The administration Congress like a great oger stood
in the way paralyzing our industrial energies. And these reform-
ers are now laying their failures to the want of free silver coinage,
and which free coinage they solemnly proclaim as the paramount
means of rehef. They seek to relieve themselves from odium by
uttering the slander that the great fraud of 1873 is now wilting the
productive spirit of our people.
A contrast with the 20 years before 1873 and 20 years after
refutes the Mbel and will give them an instinctive lesson if they
wiU hut take it. From 1854 to 1873 inclusive, our foreign trade
balance against us was $1,331,023,683 ; for the next 20 years the
balance was $1,805,512,553 in our favor. Then balances had to
he adjusted in cash. Years of constant drainage of our money
brought grief to our people. The constant filling of our coffers
for the next 20 years made business buoyant and the people smile.
I am sure that the act of 1873 failed utterly to thwart these happy
— 34—
results. Nor did the extraordinary amount of silver coinage of the
20 years before prevent the balance against us, or any part of it, and
the consequent drainage of our coin money.
The free coinage of silver in the first period and the alleged
non free coinage of silver in the latter period had nothing what-
ever to do with the balance of trade, no more than the fact that
corn two or three years ago was worth more than wheat in the
American markets. The rise in the price of corn was not affected
one mill by the coinage question — other conditions controlled.
The bicycle affects the market value of com more than silver.
There must be something covert in this extraordinary eft'ort to
make free coinage the paramount question at this time. Private
interests rather than the public welfare are largely at the bottom
of this agitation. The 100 per cent, profit in the coinage must he'
somewhat in it.
While no two nations have the same monetary system, yet
all the trading nations recognize gold as a common measure of
values and a universal medium of exchange. All peoples accept
the gold at its generally recognized standard and always glad to
get it.
Who ever heard of Mexico, the very paradise of the silver wor-
shippers, refusing gold at its recognized value_, for anything the
Mexican had to exchange.
Free coinage does not admit the people to a free or fair partici-
pation in the profits of the coinage. The silver producer takes
his fifty cents of silver bullion to the mint and takes away his 100
cent legal tender silver dollar with a clean profit of 100 per cent,
over the market value of his product, and shoves it into his own
pockets. A shameful monopoly if for the gold, or any other pro-
ducer. This would he a bounty the government could not give to
the producer of anything else. Now Mr. Eefdrmer, how does the
poor man, the farmer, the laborer or anybody else get the benefit
of this transaction? Is the silver producer generous? Will he put
it in your hands? 0 ! but it makes money more plenty you say.
So it does. But we have 12,500 tons or over 500 car loads of the
same land of dollars begging to he hherated from confinement in
the subtreasury vaults. Why not distribute these dollars? A sim-
pie act of Congress -will open the vaults whenever the money is
wanted. Why the silver reformers do not make this disposition
— 35 —
of these silver dollars can only be accounted for because of some sel-
fish interest to be benefitted by it, for some class of persons other
than the general public. Gold has not had its emissaries all over
the country exhibiting its wonderful virtues. Yet it has forged its
way ahead in all lands and among all peoples, a welcome messenger
of prosperity. But what the silver propaganda has paid, and to
whom, to keep free coinage before the people, would be an inter-
esting matter for publication. If silver had such paramount vir-
tues as a money metal it ought to hold its o\vn without such extra-
ordinary efforts as have been made for it.
The way the coinage of silver has been conducted by both free
and limited coinage nations shows the groundless nature of the
claims of the free coinage advocates. Of the $135,495,420 of sil-
ver coined in 1893, only $42,391,261 of it was coined by the free
coinage states. The foregoing is about an average amount for the
years 1891 and 1892. Why don't the free coinage people make
more silver money? It is simply because the fiat of the state cannot
make money out of it, beyond its bullion value outside of the
state making the coin.
REDEMPTION MONEY.
The advocates of free coinage insist that we need more redemp-
tion money. Their platform scheme certainly will need more if
the " demand that the power to issue notes to be circulated as
money be taken from the national banks, and that all paper money
shall be issued directly by the Treasury Department, be redeem-
able in coin, and receivable for all debts, public and private,"
should become the law. But it is hardly probable that the gov-
ernment will become such a banking institution. With the lim-
ited amount of government paper used as money it has had most
serious trouble to provide the coin required to meet the redemp-
tion demands made at its counters. The issue of bonds to meet
their demand on the treasury, is one of the anomalies of govern-
ment finance, denounced by everybody. Grover Cleveland and
his cabinet ought not to have fallen into that policy. But the ad-
ministration unwittingly fell into the trap set by a great banker, or
two of Hew York city and London, which will always be set and baited
for every secretary of the treasury who finds it necessary to hustle
to preserve the parity of our different kinds of money. I am
— 36 —
quite sure that the President acted honestly, though not wisely,
in his great anxiety to preserve the parity of silver coin with gold,
by his bond issue. But his policy in that respect is no more mis-
taken, injudicious or injurious than to fall into the net of the sil-
ver barons of the Nevadas.
Did you ever think what an opportunity this will give to the
silver speculators at home and abroad? It is plutocracy in its
worst form, whichever plan you take, Cleveland's or Bryan's.
This redemption feature of silver money is dangerous. So haz-
ardous that as cool headed as President Cleveland and Secretary
Carlisle are, they lost their heads — dangers that would be many
fold increased if all our paper money was directly issued by the
government and redeemable at the will of the holder — while the
farmer, mechanic, laborer and small dealer would be satisfied to
take his money and use it, the speculator would lay his plans to
raid the treasury.
If the government were the banker, party politics, down to the
degenerate caucus, steered by wholly irresponsible men, instead of
the sagacious business sense of the country, would regulate the
volume and value of the currency. Another sinch for plutocracy.
At any depreciated value of silver bullion the supposed need
of sHver for that purpose, has decided merits, as it will perform
the function of preventing redemption. Few men would exchange
a conveniently handled dollar for the silver one. It wouM make
the best redemption money in the world if we did not want it to
redeem.
It is one of the great blunders of Cleveland's administration
that he did not see it in that light.
If the government, as demanded by the reform platform, com-
mits itself to issuing all the paper money for our people it may he
conceded that large quantities of silver money may he needed if
the platform plan to redeem it, is followed. But the treasury has
an amazing quantity of coined silver now for that purpose. Is
there pressing need for any more? Redemption money not worth
a hundred cents on the dollar for want of intrinsic value is not re-
demption money. It don't redeem. It simply swindles to the
extent of its discredited value — the fiat of the government forces
this balance. If the fiat of the government must he resorted to,
to give silver full redemption power, paper might better he used,
— 37 —
for that is inexpensive, and can be made in any quantity at any
time. The eleven Confederate states are a splendid example.
They made $1,200,000,000 of it in four years with a cotton basis
for redemption and never sweat under the collar. And such credit
did it have that nobody ever presented it for redemption.
But if the government becomes the great banker for our pec-
pie and all paper money be issued directly by the treasury depart-
ment; and is to be the money of the country, why the government
should redeem such money is beyond my comprehension. The
money of a state to be redeemed by other money is a currency in-
vention for which the discoverer should have a PAPER medal.
The very fact that pro\dsion must be made for its redemption
shows that it cannot carry with it the essential characteristics of
money.
EXPEDIENCY OF BANKS OF ISSUE.
This necessarily leads to the discussion of the policy of having
Banks of Issue — and of the kind we ought to allow — national or
state.
The platform is a great departure from the traditions of the
Democratic party on the paper money question. Banks of Issue
do and will exist. There is not a nation on earth, that chal-
lenges respect but has its Banks of Issue. But no other great gov-
ernment is ambitious to become the banker for its people. The
best judgment of the world is against government banking. It
is safer for us to heed the universal practical sense of the commer-
cial nations, than to embark in questionable experiments. In any
event the experiment should he entered upon slowly and can-
tiously.
Our municipal and other public indebtedness is a marvelous
development of the unreliability and recklessness of legislative ad-
ministration of the public credit. Its oppressions and dangers are
of the most serious nature, and should warn not to turn the func-
tions of government into general banking business.
No legislative body possesses the requisite brains and con-
science for banking. But the reform platform means that they
do. It is the easiest thing in the world to vote away the money
and credit of somebody else, especially when aggregate bodies have
— 38 —
this power and personal liability is not exacted. The more numer-
ous the membership the more prone to be yielding, generous, and
reckless. Of such " Goose Creek " can get a national appropriation
to improve its non-navigability. Hence the extravagance of mu-
nicipal and public management. Every city and village is over-
whelmingly and ruinously in debt because city councils and legis-
latures cannot resist importunity, or keep out of jobs. The pubbc
credit cost them nothing. This is illustrative of what may be ex-
pected of government banking.
Many of our best experts think the present financial embarrass-
ment of the government largely grew out of or was greatly aug-
mented by its banking features now existing. When the govern-
ment gets down to doing the private business of community, Amer-
icanism will die. This step toward banking is an " about face "
movement toward government monopoly of private enterprise, and
the dominion of plutocracy.
lamnotgoingtodiscuss the policy of having or not having Banks
of Issue. That is settled for our day by the established method of
doing business. The concurrence of the business world is so uni-
versally in their favor that we may safely say that they are here to
stay.
The announced, and the candidate's apparent hostility to
banks, bankers and successful business men, is not statesmanship.
It is a scheme to catch envious and disappointed voters. It is of
the same fiber as the covert attack on governmental authority,
and resorted to for the same purpose. Well informed and honest
statesmen know too much and appreciate co-operative conditions
too well to indulge in stirring up jealousies and class prejudices.
The proneness to disparage bank owners and producers of wealth,
and the promoters of great business enterprises in the great cities,
and to provoke the hostility of the farmers and laborers against
them, is unwise and unpatriotic. There is no more ground for
hostile feeling against the banking institutions, the merchants,
the manufacturers, the transporting agencies, than against those
engaged in agriculture, or laborers in other enterprises Each try
to make the most of their respective possibilities., If £hey did not
they would soon fall by the wayside.
Banks exist because the business world found them to be
convenient instrumentalities, and patronize them because of their
— 39 —
aid in making their money exchanges. Their aid enters into most
all important business affairs. But this patronage is wholly vol-
untary. No man has ever been compelled to go to any bank, by
force of any power the bank had over liim, other than any other
person may exercise who has money to lend on discount. Banks
exist because the business sense of mankind demand them, and the
universal sense of commercial peoples has declared for Banks of
Issue. Have the reformers forgotten the banking bill of the last
Congress? The business intercourse of our people ramifies into
every habitable part of our country, making money transfers nec-
essary to and from every farm, shop, mine, mill, factory, store, rail-
road station and freight office in the land; making money ex-
changes down to the very finger ends and toe nails of business —
and the banks furnish inexpensive, convenient and immediate
transfers — by the telegraph or telephone if you wish. New York
can adjust, her clearance house balances all over civilization the
moment the balance is struck. A^d what these banks can do, they
will do for you without delay or danger. My God men, the banks
are useful instrumentalities instead of being your enemies. They
cannot extort usury or take your property at exorbitant rates in.
pledge for loans, while the private lender may take the pound of
flesh with every drop of blood in it. National banking is founded
on the best plan ever deAused and with amendments as experience
dictates, no man need feel hostile to them. If National banks do not
not exist State banks will, under state legislation giving us 45 dif-
ferent kinds of money. The National banks only one. We once
tried the State banking system and it proved a great failure.
The 10 years before Lincoln's administration nearly 1,000
State banks failed, carrying down with them a loss of about $100,-
000,000 to the bill holders, just as many million times as much as
has been lost to such holders by the National banks.
The National bank system is one of complete unity all over the
country, whose bills are just as current in case of accident or failure
of the bank issmng the bill as if the bank had the highest stand-
ing. Their bills challenge confidence all over the inhabitable
parts of the earth. The bright and ever ready Japanese long for it,
the stable Chinese, the lithe East Indian, Australian, South
American, Britain, all would take a $10,000 National bank bill at
par in trade ratlier than 10,000 standard silver dollars.
— 40 —
As showing the little use of coin in adjusting balances, trans-
actions aggregating $28,264,232,758 in New York city for year
ending October 31, 1895, actual balances to amount of $1,896,574,-
349, only remained to be adjusted by money. One per cent, of
this balance u^as adjusted in gold and gold certificates. Nine per
cent, in Greenbacks and ninety per cent, in other paper money and
fractional coins. About one sixteenth of one per cent, in coin
to volume of business.
So greatly does confidence enter into our exchanges, both for-
eign and domestic, that most all our business exchanges are ad-
justed upon the basis of the confidence that exists in the parties
dealing. They rarely exact money. The bill or check is usually pre-
ferred if the transaction is founded on an actual and equivalent
consideration.
In times of financial distress, these banks have united in issu-
ing clearing house certificates to be used as money for balancing
purposes and saved whole communities from panic and disaster.
Three years ago these certificates were the very anchor that held
the American people from being dashed in wreck upon the rock-
bound shores of business failure in bankruptcy and ruin. $100,-
■00.0,000 were authorized in one day, a thousand times more effective
than anything the administration did to relieve the distress.
Neither should the savings banks, trust and loan companies, build-
ing associations and the like be the target for mean aspersion from
the partisan, press or the stump.
The great struggle of the last Congress by these same reform-
ers was to have federal recognition of a system for State banks, but
it failed as it should. But now in lieu of that scheme the govern-
ment issue of paper money is demanded by these financial tinkers.
The reform plan is full of dangers not only as a fiscal scheme but
to the liberties of the people. Did it ever occur to these reformers
that it would greatly simplify commercial exchanges if the world
had recognized" common money" based upon an established in-
ternational coinage system. This is not unhkely to come. But it
can only be done by international agreement. This would settle
the ratio between the white and yellow metals. But the silver men
d.eride the idea that a world wide problem should be settled by in-
ternational agreement. The trouble is they are not satisfied to let
the judgment of the business world settle the relative value of gold
— 41 —
and silver for money, because they see that its greatly augmented
production in the last few years has lowered the value of the silver
product in the money markets. They are not satisfied to take the
recognized commercial value of silver, but insist that the United
States shall maintain the old value of silver to them though it en-
dangers our entire money system.
If we go it alone that will most likely be the effect. My con-
victions are strong, very strong in that belief. The best judgment
of the world is that it will require extraordinary efforts on part
of the government, such as Grover Cleveland never dreamed of.
I know that very intelligent men are very profound and soHd
in their convictions on both sides of the line. Both positive, very
positive, but not equally judicious.
I prefer to quote from a learned German publivhst and states-
man, what would be likely to follow than to take the opinion
recently proclaimed in the great senate of a great party assem-
bled for the purpose of selecting a candidate for the presidency
and given as a bid for that high of&ce. "My friends, we shall
declare that this nation is able to legislate for its own people, on
every question, without waiting for the aid or consent of any other
nation on earth." That is very peart like, but is it a judicious
way of setthng a great state question that is essentially a,ffected by
the commercial policy of all the nations with whom we trade, a
trade that in its initial movements is directly affected by the stabil-
ity of our monetary system? Now for the quotation from Dr. Otto
Arndt, member of Prussian House of Deputies and of German Sil-
ver Commission of 1894. He says : " If it is now desired to per-
petuate the gold standard in Europe, let the government at Wash-
ington adopt free coinage of silver at the ratio of 1.16. At present
after the closure of the Indian mints, this step could not possibly
have any other result than to make the American standard a silver
standard. The price of silver of course would rise, but not to 59
pence (the ratio of 16 to 1) and not permanently. The United
States would have a standard not materially different from that of
Mexico. ALL THE DISADVANTAGES AND ALL THE AD-
VANTAGES OP A FLUCTUATING AND DEPEECIATED
MONEY STANDAED WOULD FOLLOW." Again he says :
"THE UNITED STATES ALONE CANNOT ESTABLISH
THE DOUBLE STANDAED BY ADOPTING FEEE COIN-
— 42 —
AGE, THEY WOULD SHIFT OVEK TO THE SILVEE
STAKDAED."
A WORD ABOUT THE BOND INDEBTEDNESS,
There must be general misapprehension as to the bonded in-
debtedness, else those who prate so much about it, think to de-
eeiye the people. The bonds are open to the purchase of any
body, and usualy made payable to hearer. But the rate of interest
is so low that the small capitalist having money to invest had
rather put it into lands, trade or loan it on mortgage security at
the usual rate of interest than hold these bonds — for the very
good reason that he can do better with his money in the ordinary
enterprises.
To fund our indebtedness into a low interest hearing bond is
wise policy. All debtor persons incline to the course that will cost
the least rate for the accommodation. It is only at the great money
centers, and among the trust companies, saidngs banks, insurance
companies and those who want undoubted security for special pur-
pose, that persons can he found who will take and hold them at
their low rates of interest. The bond holder is hardly the demon
he is pictured to he, sucking out the life blood of the people.
While he does not enter the arrangement from motives of phil-
anthropy, he invests his money as fairly as the farmer who accom-
modates his neighbor by loaning him money at the legal rates of
interest and takes a mortgage on the debtor's farm, which too fre-
quently knocks the prop from under the home of the poor family
of the mortgagor.
If the government is compelled to go in debt, it should pay
interest for the accommodation, just as 3'ou or I do. If I paid my
debts by giving out script paj'^able to bearer, I fear my credit would
soon collapse. Governments are not so different from individuals
as to change the principle.
ATTITUDE OF REPUBLICAN PARTY.
The alleged hostility of the Eepublican party to silver is wholly
unfounded. That it means honest money is well established.
Ever since resumption, every silver dollar in the hands of every
holder in the United States, in every market, shop, factory, mine,
store, bank, office and on every farm, train and navigable boat, for
— 43 —
every second of time after it was coined, has gone and came for just
one hundred cents on the dollar, just as gold, greenbacks, national
hank bills, and the pay certificates issued as money have.
Not its value, not the amount coined, but how to get the dollars
has brought the pinch. The gold dollar has been as easy to get as
any other kind of a dollar. The assaults on the gold standard
are baseless and tend to injure the value of the silver standard.
It does seem as if the preservation of the parity of silver with
the other dollars was the grievance, else why this pressing clamor
for free coinage, when the men who say we must have more money
are unable to remove the money in store in the treasury vaults,
where more silver coin is lying idle than could be coined in the next
five or six years.
No sensible, honest man wants the go\ernment to authorize the
coinage of an inferior dollar, nor do any of our people wish to pre-
vent the coinage of any dollar needed to enable us to create and
move all our merchantable commodities. That we have that
amount of money in existence and in readiness for circulation is
certain, but confidence in the business outlook is wanting and
therefore depression and unproductiveness prevail. Who is to
blame because the idle men do not go to work? Who is to blame
because the idle money is not employed? In one case the laborer
.says he can find nothing profitable to do. In the other that the
holder of money cannot see his way clear to invest his money profit-
ably. Confidence is knocked out of business. Confidence is
knocked out of the employment of money. MONEY IS GOOI)
FOE NOTHING UNLESS IT IS USED. AN IDLE DOLLAR
IS AS USELESS AS AN IDLE MAN OR IDLE MACHINERY.
The party, whenever silver has circulated as money, has given
to silver its guaranty that every dollar that has been coined, or
that it is expedient to coin, shall be as good as any other dollar in the
world. I hope this is not the matter with those who would find it
easier to pay a debt with a cheap dollar than with an " A No. 1 "
dollar. During the next twenty years after the act of 1873, when
it had the actual or balance of power, caused to be coined more legal
tender silver dollars every 90 days, on an average, than the govern-
ment coined during the 81 years previous to 1873. In 17 cc»nsecu-
tive years commencing with 1875, it coined or bought for coinage
$524,216,903, an average of $30,836,284 yearly — creating such a
— 44—
plethory of silver legal tenders that the government for years paid
out over $25,000 annually to get the dollars among the people, and
keep it there. But it was no favorite among them. A ton would
he sent to Minneapolis, another to Kansas City, another to Mil-
waukee, another to Detroit, and so on to other large cities, hut the
dollars would soon find their way hack to the vaults of the treasury.
In the face of the foregoing facts it is absurd to charge that the
party is a monometallic gold standard party.
Practically there is no such condition as monometallism
among the commercial nations. A few smaller states have not pre-
served the parity of silver, in which case silver has become the only
coin in general circulation — as Mexico for instance, where one of
our silver dollars is worth two of theirs. Every leading commer-
cial nation has silver for money which circulates as money at a
given ratio with gold, which ratio is substantially alike among
all the nations. A given weight of gold or silver coined is every-
where considered a value unit, and as such used as money, and in
most states the-parity is still maintained. The only difference be-
ing that the legal tender power of silver is limited. The judgment
of the people using it will determine wliich of the metals is more
acceptable and how far each may be used as a legal tender.
But against this feeling of disfavor, law-making has been un-
able to maintain the commercial value of silver.
In the United States 412^ grains standard silver coined into the
dollar is a dollar and a standard of value as such, just as much as the
gold dollar of 25.8 grains. They are exact equivalents. Much
misapprehension exists as to what is meant by the gold and silver
standards. The standard consists in the amount of fine metal re-
quired to constitute the dollar — the unit of value — and its legal
tender power, these two properties combined. The ratio of the
metals, as standards of value being for silver 16 to 1 of gold, or for
gold 1 to 16 of silver, to be exact 15.98 to 1 or 1 to 15.98. These
are the legal standards of value, and constitute bimetallism, pure
and simple. The silver bugs read it 16 to 1, the gold bugs 1 to 16.
There is nothing in substance in the talk about two standards,
as gold and silver standards, as long as parity is preserved, other
than that so many defined grains of gold and silver when coined
shall constitute the unit of value and be legal tender. The aets of
Congress defining the powers of these metals as money are equally
— 45 —
obligatory. Bimetallism is nothing more than the concurrent
circulation of gold and silver coin at a fixed ratio. To preserve the
parity is the great desideratum.
The pledge of the BepuhUcan platform to preserve tiie parity
is the highest expression of loyalty to silver coinage.
The specific difference of the two great parties on the silver
question is this : The Democrats declare for free coinage, not-
withstanding the attitude of the leading commercial nations against
it; the Republicans that it is opposed to the free comage of silver
except by international agreement with the leading commercial
nations of the world, which it pledges to promote.
This is not the demonetization of silver, nor is it monometallism.
It means that until such agreements he entered into the government
should determine for itself the amount of silver coinage that is ex-
pedient for any given time, just where the power is reposed
by the constitution, instead of giving the silver producers and trad-
ers the power to dictate the amount of silver coinage to the govern-
ment. And for the purpose of coinage, that the ratio shall not he
disturhed, which means necessarily that the standard of both must
he preserved. To authorize free coinage would enable the silver
barons to sieze upon all the available bullion of the world at its
greatly reduced commercial value and plump it into our mints for
coinage, and thereby get two dollars for one.
A pretty fat arrangement for silver gamblers, having 10 or 15
times as many millions in it for the first dive as the first Cleveland
bond issue gave to the hond speculators of New York and London.
A purely Democratic administration transaction however.
It appears to make a great difference who the plutocrats are,
whether of the white or the yellow metal.
In these respects the two parties radically differ. Can there he
any doubt that it is safer for the government to regulate the amount
of coinage and purchase the silver for coinage at its market value?
This policy is not only safer but more honest and business
like, considering the low and fiuctuatdng value of silver metal. I
do not like the idea of selling out to the ^ver producers or giving
over to Tom, Dick and Harry, or anybody else who may have or
be able to get silver bullion, the power to regulate our coinage
In one breath these silver advocates denounce the banks and
plutocrats and then solemnly hy national platform give over to the
— 46 —
silver autocrats, be they citizens or aliens, the discretion to make or
withhold the coinage of silver at will. And for all that they may
present for coinage, put a 100 per cent, profit in their coffers
without a nickel for the monopoly. What kind of reform consis-
tency is this, anyway !
With the significance given to silver and the enormous quantity
already coined, with many millions of bullion ready to be coined,
in the hands of the government, it does seem trifiing to stir up the
people with the free coinage craze. Indeed have the common
wealers again broke loose. The fact that the government retains
the nietermiantion of. the volume of its silver coinage at any given
time may appear a great economic blunder to the man who carries
all his money in his trouser's pockets ; but he may well learn that
free coinage of silver under existing conditions is not what is needed
to relieve our people from the stagnation of business and the weak-
ness of our markets. The paramount importance given to this pol-
icy in the reform campaign and the indifference to the other eco-
nomic problems seeking solution are but trifiing. The reform
instead of assuring better times is a menace to business prosperity.
It is vastly more important that we should preserve the parity
■of $500,000,000 or $600,000,000 of silver coin now owned by the
American people than that we should join in this frenzy for free
coinage, as our only economic salvation.
As long as gold is the highest standard of value in the estima-
tion of the commercial world, the pledge that the parity of silver
with gold and all our other moneyshall be preserved,is the best guar-
anty of loyalty to a sound monetary system. That pledge is given
in the same faith that the party has given to silver—its most cordial
support, during the years of its power.
The term gold standard means the common estimation of value
the world gives to gold. All people appear to concur in this. Why
the currency reformers should assail ttis estimation can only be
accounted for because of some selfish end to be gained by it, for
some class, or persons other than the general public. When a mon-
ctary pinch comes, any standard will appear too high and any
money will be too hard to get.
The standard is all right, but conditions make it hard to regulate
our affairs to it or any other standard, and to have a fiuctuating
standard would only augment the trouble. It is not making new
—47 —
dollars of any given standard, but something to move those we have
in existence that will give relief. The men who promise relief on
any other plan are intentionally deceiving you, or are deceived
themselves.
The gold and silver standards of the United States at the ratiO'
of 16 to 1 are exact equivalents, to maintain which the government
is pledged by act of Congress. No objection can be made to the
gold standard that may not be made to the silver standard. The
obvious objection of the free coinage reformers is because it keeps
the silver standard up to that of gold, in other words because the
government and the Eepublican party are pledged to maintain the
concurrent circulation of the money of the two metals at a fixed
ratio.
What is the real objection please tell unless it be the intention
of the reformers to make silver dominate as the standard of value.
One must conclude from Bryan's speeches that he meant destruc-
tion to the gold standard. If not why does he denounce it so ve-
hemently? If he honestly intends bimetallism, his denunciation
of the gold standard is not only silly, but fraudulent.
There can be no danger in the free coinage of gold because
every dollar of gold coin will go for a dollar in any market in the
world, less current exchange, while the silver dollar will go nowhere
out of the United States for more than about fifty cents. To coin
the former is wisdom, the latter, except for domestic needs is bad
policy, and herein consists the reason for giving free coinage to gold
and limited coinage to silver.
IS THE CANDIDATE BETTER THAN HIS PARTY ?
His speech to the convention that procured his nomination is
not assuring. There is this advantage in eloquence in politics, the
heat of declamation throws light into the heart, that cool calculat-
ing putting on paper covers up. His speech in the Chicago conven-
tion did this and developed the shallowness of his statesmafiship, a
current of thought grossly unnational and a man illiheral in feeling.
It's evident unnational and class feeling cannot be explained
away. His absurd reply to Governor Eussell, of Massachusetts,
" when you come before us and tell us that we shall disturb your
business interests, we reply that you have disturbed our husi-
ness interests by your course." A sheer piece of illiberal dogma-
—48 —
tism that has no foundation except in the imagination
speaker. Kussell uttered a note of warning that demanded candor
and sedate consideration — not recrimination or jealousy. Mas-
sachusetts on the sterile hills of her 7,800 square miles, has built up
one of the most powerful, enlightened and progressive states on
either continent, by a sagacious economic policy — the admiration
and fit model for the world. Her business people are the busiest
and richest on earth. I mean by her business people every man,
woman and child who is aiming to better his or her condition and
that of the state, by their personal efforts, in every walk in life.
Massachusetts knows how to take care of herself and does it as well
as any people ever did, without envy or effort to disparage other
states or people — in this she is the proud peer of any state of this
Union, and equally liberal.
Itisbut natural that he should magnify the fertile prairies of the
West, but his soul should glow with broader ardor — for presiden-
tial competency. It should glow for the mighty East, the sunny
and magnificent South, the incomparable prairie states, the loman-
tic West, for all the people all over our national domain, the grand-
est that ever lived and the most successful in the honorable con-
quest of matter by brains, industry and unflinching courage.
The great cities do not "rest upon the broad and fertile prairies"
any more than the broad and fertile prairies rest upon the great
cities. His poetry that you may " bum down your cities and leave
our farms and your cities will spring up again as if by magic, but
destroy our farms and the grass will grow in the streets of every
city in the country " is the product of jealousy rather than broad
Americanism. I "might say if I wanted to carry the comparison
further, that if it were not for the American cities your prairie
farmers would be stalking over your prairies in moccasins and
breech clouts, and navigating your great rivers with the birch
canoe, as they did until the call of trade from these cities
put them in the march of civilization, and made possible the
awakened energies of the great prairie country, by and through the
co-operation and interdependence of all classes of our people — of
the cities, the uplands, the prairies, the old states and the pioneers.
Their commercial needs and demands made it possible for the
farmer to turn a furrow along the Platte.
Did he forget in his exuberance and western pride that this is
—49 —
a great co-operative people, that this spirit of co-operation is the
magic that turns our efforts and industrial enterprises into profit?
Your farms would be worthless without the cities. Our cities
would be worthless without the broad acres and products of the
country. The great mines and ores would be useless without ma-
chinery, factories and the skillful busy men who do the work;
the machinery, factories and workmen would be idle without the
mines, ores and money to operaite them ; the produce of the farpis
would be worthless factors in trade if it were not for the great mer-
chants, shippers and railroad men, and the great merchants, ship-
pers and railroad men would be very little men were it not for the
farmers and the workmen. The great cities and the easterly states
are the great centers of manufacturing enterprises. They have
developed great skill and incomparable enterprise in that direction;
the rest of the country has superior agricultural and mining possi-
bilities into which they have embarked with masterful zeal and
success. Nature has directed in these different lines. But all these
industrial peoples are but partners in the great American struggle
for improved living, wealth, personal and national prosperity and
greatness. The^ prosperity of one section must inure to the benefit
of the others. General business prosperity, no matter whether on
our broad acres, in our cities or other business centers, can but co-
operate to the agrandizement of the whole people.
Brer Bryan, better inspire the people to pull together. What if
the cities have grown opulent, the whole country has had the benefit
of it. The value of every brick and stone, the cost of the iron, timber,
lumber, glass and furnishings in every home, factory, ware-
house, church, school house, street car or domestic boat and all the
labor, skill and money that has gone into them has ascended as
sweet incense, and landed the profits in full share into the pockets
of these farmers and the laboring men. Every one of these great
city enterprises have been nourished by your products and your dil-
igence, and for which they have been able to give you profitable
markets and employment by reason of the development of their
urban enterprises. Better markets than in any other parts of the
world. In the best days of our agricultural growth, you farmers
sent your very best boys and girls to these citi6s, because of the
wide diversity of opportunity they offered. Who would stop them?
No man but he who is contemplating financial suicide, or is ready
—60—
to go on the road and inake our great financial enterprises "hold
hands up,"
WK MUST PDUL TOGETHER.
When hard times pinch and foreign producers knock the bottom
out of the markets at home as well as abroad, it is no time to let
envious or disappointed feeling enter. Co-operation is indispen-
sable. We must pull together. He who undertakes to run it
alone will die like Lazarus at the rich man's gate without even a
dog to lick his sores.
The free coinage of silver in this financial storm will be just as
efficacious as the city girl's specific for the cyclone. On her first
visit to the country a great wind storm was about to send all the
occupants of the house into the cellar — the genius of the city Miss,
was adequate for the occasion, diving her hand into her pocket she
took out a handful of peppermint lozenges and threw them out of
the window confidently saying, " there uncle, you need not go into
the cellar now, mother always gives them to thfe baby when it feels
bad. She says that peppermint is just the thing for wind."
Attimes there may be anapparent conflictof interest between the
different sections and classes of our people. You feel as if the mer-
chant is getting too much for his goods, the manufacturer is winning
too large profits, the transporting companies get too much for their
service, the middle men too much for their transfers, the farmer too
much for the necessary articles of living he produces, the laborer
too much for his skill and effort, the monied man too much for
his accommodation, that one industry thrives too much at the ex-
pense of some other ; but these are inevitable conditions of human
energy and enterprise that in the long run will adjust themselves.
Good prices all along the line of merchantable commodities, steady
trade, stable money, cheerful co-operation and a judicious public
policy will but conserve the true interests and well-being of the
people, and tend to equalize these inequalities.
When you think a moment you will agree that it is better pol-
icy to preserve the gold standard and keep in line with the rest of
the business world. You cannot change or abandon the standard
without great financial disturbance of values all along the line of
production and consumption of merchantable commodities, general
business, debts, credits and ownership of property. You cannot
— 51 —
change the silver standard without having the same results follow.
The denunciation of either standard on part of intelligent men is
fraudulent, on part of ignorant men is misconceived and should
not be heeded. It won't do any harm to remember that gold
coin has hvice the market value for the gold that is in it, that sil-
ver has at its present commercial value, and that gold to-day is the
only metal that has the full confidence of all mankind as money.
Bryan in his Cleveland speech said : " the gold standard was
conceived in avarice. It was fastened upon this country by fraud
and it can only be continued by deception. . . It carries the
mask of the burglar and the knife of the assassin." A horrible state
of affairs to have been continued in full and open vigor through
every administration from Washington to Grover Cleveland — a
trial of 104 years, and in full accord with all the nations on earth.
The gold standard gives a dollar that every man who knows what
a dollar is worth is more anxious to get than any other dollar.
Either Bryan, or all our great statesmen, and all the rest of the
world for that matter, have made a great mistake in estimating the
gold standard.
It would be well for the information of the world if he were
more specific and show wherein it is so mischievous. We would
like to hear the facts. Is it too high?
But what is there about the gold standard of a vicious or harm-
ful tendency? Is it because money is hard to get? But the
standard of value and the parity of all money should be maintained
no matter how hard the times. As well find fault with your scales
because the pound weighs just as much when an article is scarce
and dear as when it is abundant. As well go for the clock because
the days are too long in the summer and too short in the winter
as to find fault with the gold standard.
TO LABOR MEN.
While the laboring man is greatly distressed and says he has no
work to do, and has no other capital to invest that will enable him
to make articles to sell, he shoujd realize that the thing for him to
do is to give encouragement to somebody who can set him to work.
Eepining at your hard lot, or denouncing those who appear to be
better off, or those who are managing great enterprises for the pro-
duction of something to sell, will but make the matter worse. You
—52 —
must realize the fact that you are unahle to go it alone. The other
man is in the same fix. Neither of you can live without the other.
Your lahor is capital as much as the money, plant and unmade-up
material of the manufacturer. You cannot force him to put his
machinery in motion. He cannot make you work. But you can
agree upon terms of mutual helpfulness or you can snarl at each
other. Which is the better course? You can tell as well as I. I
say again, we must pull together.
I have not mentioned McKinley's name because what I have
said is so fully in accord with sound Kepublican doctrines, and his
whole life has been so in accord with them that to name him
would he like telling you that my effort is an appeal for sound
money, or that he is and will continue to be our presidential can-
didate until the November election, when he will be declared the
nation's choice.
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332.4973
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