William Harrison, President
Levi Morton, Vice-President

Be it enacted &c.

That from and after the date and passage of this act the unit of value in the United States shall be the dollar, and the same may be coined of 412½ grains of standard silver, or of 25.8 grains of standard gold;  and the said coins shall be legal tender for all debts, public and private.  That hereafter any owner of silver or gold bullion may deposit the same at any mint of the United States to be formed into standard dollars or bars for his benefit and without charge;  but it shall be lawful to refuse any deposit of less value than $100, or any bullion so base as to be unsuitable for the operations of the mint.

Sec. 2.  That the provision of section 3 of "An act to authorize the coinage of the standard silver dollar and to restore its legal-tender character" which became a law February 28, 1878, is hereby made applicable to the coinage in this act provided for.

Sec. 3.  That the certificates provided for in the second section of this act shall be of denominations of not less than one nor more than one hundred dollars, and each certificates shall be redeemable in coin of standard value.  A sufficient sum to carry out the provisions of this act is hereby appropriated out of any money in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated.  The provision in section 1 of the act of February 28, 1878, entitled "An act to authorize the coinage of the standard dollar and restore its legal tender character" which requires the Secretary of the Treasury to purchase, at the market price thereof, not less than $2,000,000 worth of silver bullion per month nor more than $4,000,000 worth per month of such bullion, is hereby repealed.

Sec. 4.  That the certificates provided for in this act and all silver and gold certificates already issued shall be receivable for all taxes and dues to the United States of every description and shall be a legal tender for the payment of all debts, public and private.

Sec. 5.  The owners of bullion deposited for coinage shall have the option to receive coin or its equivalent in the certificates provided for in this act, and such bullion shall be subsequently coined.

Sec. 6.  That upon the passage of this act the balances standing with the Treasurer of the United States to the respective credits of national banks for deposits made to redeem the circulating notes of such banks, and all deposits thereafter received for like purpose, shall be covered into the Treasury as a miscellaneous receipt, and the Treasurer of the United States shall redeem from the general cash in the Treasury the circulating notes of said banks which may come into his possession subject to redemption;  and upon the certificate of the Comptroller of the Currency that such notes have been received by him and that they have been destroyed and that no new notes will be issued in their place, reimbursement of their amount shall be made to the Treasurer, under such regulations as the Secretary of the Treasury may prescribe, from an appropriation hereby created, to be known as "National-bank notes: Redemption account," but the provisions of this act shall not apply to the deposits received under section 3 of the act of June 20, 1874, requiring every National bank to keep in lawful money with the Treasurer of the United States a sum equal to 5 per centum of its circulation, to be held and used for the redemption of its circulating notes;  and the balance remaining of the deposits so covered shall, at the close of each month, be reported on the monthly public-debt statement as debt of the United States bearing no interest.

Senate bill 2350, Authorizing Treasury Notes for Silver Deposited

Mr. Reagan.  Mr. President, I only want to say that I intend to offer as an amendment to the amendment proposed by the Senator from Ohio the following:

That hereafter no funds available for the payment of the public debt, including such as are kept for the redemption of United States notes, and excluding such as are held for the redemption of gold certificates and silver certificates, shall be retained as a reserve in the Treasury exceeding $50,000,000;  and the $100,000,000 in gold now held in the Treasury for the redemption of United States notes shall be available for the payment of any demands against the Treasury.

I see that the Senator from Ohio objects to the amendment offered by the Senator from Kansas because it reserves only $100,000,000 and seems to suppose that that means that there would only be $10,000,000 available for current uses.  I do not know what the purpose of the Senator from Kansas was, but I do not understand that that is the meaning of his amendment, but that it means that the whole $110,000,000 shall be available to meet the necessities of the Treasury Department, including the $100,000,000 held for the redemption of legal-tender notes.  If that is the meaning of it, I agree with that;  that is proper;  but I do not believe that $100,000,000 ought to be held in the Treasury and kept out of circulation, and I am under the impression that $50,000,000 is a sufficient reserve for all practical purposes.

The $100,000,000 of gold held there and which has been held there until the people have paid $40,000,000 of interest on the bonds sold for the accumulation of that money is a very unnecessary tax upon them.  The $100,000,000 is pretended to be held there for the purpose of the redemption of the legal-tender notes.  Statements were made when this subject was up before as to the amount of legal-tender notes that had from year to year been brought in for redemption, which was a very limited amount, and we all know very well that the business interests and the people of this country prefer the United States notes to coin of either gold or silver, and that they are not likely to present these notes for redemption.

Then, Mr. President, we have already sacrificed $40,000,000 and burdened the people with that much more than it was necessary to burden them with, in order to hold for ten years $100,000,000 worth of gold in the Treasury to answer no purpose except to take its place on the debit and credit side of the Treasury report.

The Senator from Ohio and those who agree with him assume that this is necessary to sustain the character of the legal-tender notes.  I will not say that anything the Senator says is absurd, but I will say that I do not think there is an intelligent man in this country not influenced by some preconceived and mistaken opinion who does not know that the legal-tender notes will be just as valuable, just as much sought, and just as little liable to be presented to the Treasury for redemption after that $100,000,000 of gold is paid out as before;  and, if that be so, what is the use of retaining a hundred million dollars of gold in the Treasury idle when there is a dearth of currency which has been oppressively felt in all the rural portions of this country.  What can be the reason for it ?

Now, then, in answer to the suggestion that that is the only security upon which the value of these notes is preserved, I have to say what I said once before on this subject, that the Government does not stand like a banking establishment.  Its finances are not carried on like the finances of a banking establishment;  at least they ought not to be, though the effort of late years has seemed to me to be to make a great banking establishment of the United States Treasury.  A bank has no revenues except the interest on the loans which it makes.  The Government is not in that condition, but it is receiving at the rare of a million and a half dollars a day in taxation ---perhaps more than that.  It has $1,500,000 a day of revenue coming in from the various sources of taxation.  That itself is a guaranty of the Government's ability to pay all its current expenses, because its current expenses do not amount to that much.

Besides that, I may say by the act of 1878, the law which required the legal-tender notes to be taken up and canceled as they were paid into the Treasury, was repealed, and it was provided by the act of 1878 that when those notes were received in the Treasury as the property of the Government they should be reissued and kept in circulation.  It was the deliberate judgment of Congress that these notes should be treated as money, and not treated as debts.

Of course the monometallists, the contractionists, those who want dear money and cheap property and cheap labor, avail themselves of this and every other means to contract the volume of the currency, and to make money dear and difficult to be obtained, and to make the labor of the country and the property of the country correspondingly cheap.

Now, if there can be no practical need for this $100,000,000, I trust we are not to go on and pay $4,000,000 interest per year in order to deprive the people of the use of $100,000,000 of gold kept in the Treasury under the acts of 1875 and 1882, if that shall be held to be a proper setting apart of this money.  That the Senator from Ohio seems to question, and I do not know but that he is right;  but whether right or wrong, the Secretary of the Treasury has acted upon those laws:  and, as he says, for ten years we have held $100,000,000 of gold which might have gone to meet that much of the public debt, to relieve the people of that much of the burdens of debt, and to extinguish the interest on that amount, instead of increasing the debt by $4,000,000 a year in order to retain $100,000,000 of gold idle in the Treasury.

If I am right, $50,000,000 is a sufficient reserve with a daily income of $1,500,000 or more, and if I am right in supposing that the legal tender notes will be just as much sought and just as valuable in the money market with this $100,000,000 of gold paid out as with it in the Treasury, certainly it seems to me that it is a cruel policy to retain $100,000,000 of gold in the Treasury idle and pay $4,000,000 a year to keep it there instead of turning it loose to relieve the necessities of the country and promote its prosperity.

I do not know when I can get this amendment in.  I have thought that perhaps if the amendment of the Senator from Kansas shall be adopted I shall propose to strike out his $100,000,000 and insert $50,000,000, with words expressly withdrawing this $100,000,000 from being a reserve for the redemption of United States notes.

I thought I had best say this now, because it seems to me that we have gone on long enough punishing the people in order to benefit the monometallists and contractionists, and that the time has certainly come when it is due to the people that the Congress of the United States should take steps to see that this large sum of gold should not be retained idle in the Treasury at the expense of $4,000,000 a year to the people instead of being paid out to relieve their necessities and promote the welfare of the country.

I am not disposed to join in any legislation that will embarrass the Treasury Department.  I am as anxious about the credit of this Government as the Senator from Ohio or anybody else, and I repel the suggestion which has been made here repeatedly by those who do not believe, as I do, in the full and free use of silver, that it is the desire on the part of the silver men to get cheap money in order to repudiate any indebtedness or that they are careless and indifferent to the honor and credit of the Government of the United States.  I can point individually to all my votes in this body and to my public utterances on the stump, both since I have been a member of this body and years before, to show that I have never been tinctured with the fiat-money idea myself, and I do not believe in it now.  I believe that gold and silver were made, as the Senator from Ohio once said, by the Almighty for money;  that they are twin metals, and I do not believe that we can afford to discard either one or the other or both.

Every Senator who has spoken against free coinage during this debate has assumed that all advocates of free coinage are expansionists to begin with;  that they are in favor of an undue expansion of the circulating medium of this country.  It has been assumed, in the second place, that we were for the repudiation of the public debt and that we were for putting private debtors in a condition to scale down their debts.  I deny this.  I deny that the men who to-day stand in the front rank as defenders of silver as money, not only in this country, but all over the world, are tainted in that way.  And here I may say that in every country, among civilized men, some of the brightest and ablest men of to-day in public and private life are the advocates of the unlimited use of silver on equal terms with gold.

Great Britain has a hundred members of Parliament, and she has a number of directors of her great banks, and a number of the very highest in learning and in ability of her public teachers who are in favor of the use of the double standard.  If you go to the continent of Europe you will find the great banks of different continental countries contain more or less of people who insist that the free use of silver is indispensable to commercial prosperity, to commercial success, and to human progress and human happiness.  No more illustrious examples can be found anywhere than can be found on the Continent:  men like Professor Laveleye, of the Liege University, who has a world-wide reputation as a political economist;  Mr. Pearson, who presides over the Bank of The Netherlands, and the countless number of men in public positions and in private places who have given their best thoughts and attention to this subject and are neither repudiationists nor inflationists.

The Senator from Vermont [Mr. Morrill] assumed ---and I venture to refer to it because he assumed it in relation to myself--- that I was anxious to get on a silver basis.  I have denied that I was in favor of a silver basis from my seat in the Senate;  I have denied it on the public rostrum and through the press, and there is no excuse for the Senator from Vermont or anybody else charging that either I or very many others who associate with me in their views on this subject are in favor of a silver basis.  I have said, and I repeat, that if we can have but one money metal, the interest of this country and the interest of the world demand that it shall be silver.  On that question I am borne out, as I say, by very many men in this country and abroad.

It has been demonstrated beyond the possibility of a doubt that there is not gold enough in the world and there is not being produced enough to carry on the business of the world upon gold alone.  It has been demonstrated, I think, by the very best minds of the age, who have examined this question, that there is not to exceed $30,000,000 or $40,000,000, at most, of gold that can enter into consumption for money.

Of all countries, and Mr. Soetbeer and various other gentlemen who have examined this subject, and some of them gold monometallists, have persisted in the statement that the entire product went into the arts and sciences save and except about $30,000,000.  Put it at $40,000,000, and that is an insignificant sum when divided amongst all the nations of the earth.  If divided amongst all the civilized peoples of Europe and the United States, practically it would be about 6 cents per capita in this country and the same for people in other countries.

Mr. President, everybody knows that the waste alone, the clipping of the gold here and the gold there, the accidents to which it is subjected, are equal to that, and the $30,000,000 will not more than keep the stock of gold up and will not do that.

Mr. Platt.  Did we not coin ourselves about $30,000,000 of gold last year ?

Mr. Teller.  We did not, but we coined very near to it.  We coined between twenty and twenty-six million dollars of gold last year.  We have been appropriating an undue share of the gold of the world for the last five years.  We have used up not only our own product in the last ten years, but we have consumed of other people's product a very large amount.

Producing as we do about one-third of the gold of the world, we have not only used our own product, but, as I say, we have called upon other nations and have used more than any other nation unless it be France or Germany.

Mr. President, I repeat that it is the general opinion, I think, of people everywhere that there is not gold enough to do the business with.  Great Britain declined to enter into an arrangement with us for the double standard, and yet she insisted with great vigor that the silver standard must not be abandoned.  Why ?  Because she knew that if all the countries now using silver should attempt to use gold, and gold alone, there would be such competition for gold that its appreciation would absolutely destroy the business of the world, and would increase the burdens, public and private, to such an extent that they would become unbearable and the people would be compelled to repudiate.  So in every international conference which has been held Great Britain has declined for herself to enter into an arrangement to have the two metals used on equal terms, and yet she has declared for herself the opinion that other countries ought not to depart from the double standard.

Mr. President, the other day when the Senator from Ohio [Mr. Sherman] was speaking he declared that we were on a gold basis and that we had been on a gold basis for a great many years.  I understand what the Senator meant, but the public may not understand it correctly.  There are a great many people in this country who will not understand what he meant by a gold basis, and they will understand that be meant to say that we have the same financial system now, and have had for many years, that Great Britain has, and that is, with silver as a subsidiary coin only, and gold as the legal-tender money.

Mr. President, there never has been a time in the history of this country that we have been on a gold basis legally except between 1873 and 1878, a period of about five years.

Mr. Edmunds.  How were we legally on a gold basis, may I ask, if it will not disturb the Senator ?

Mr. Teller.  It is no disturbance.  The Senator inquires how were we legally on a gold basis.  I answer because we denied to silver access to our mints during that time, and we fixed the legal-tender limit, of all silver subsidiary coin at least, at $5 from 1873 to 1878.  It was not practically exactly a gold standard, but that was the only time that there has been any excuse for saying that we have been on a gold basis, because the old silver dollars that had been coined were still a legal tender, as I understand, though I might say with propriety that there has never been a time that we were legally on a gold basis.

Mr. Blair.  We were on a paper basis.

Mr. Teller.  No;  we were not on a paper basis.  We were on a gold and silver basis, on the double-standard basis, during all the rest of our existence.  Although gold at one time might have been the principal circulating medium and silver at another time might have been the principal circulating medium, yet at all times the mints were open to these two metals on equal terms or on terms practically equal, so that the two metals would pass into the mints and come out one like unto the other.

The Senator from Ohio [Mr. Sherman] went on to show that we had too little in the silver dollar up to 1834 and that after that we had too much, and therefore, he argued we were on a silver basis at one time and a gold basis at another and that practically we have been on the gold basis since 1853.  The Senator said:

The gold standard has been the recognized policy of all the great political parties that have longest controlled the Government of the United States.  The Federal party in the beginning sought to secure it by ascertaining the precise relative market value of the two metals and coining both as money, but erroneously fixed the ratio at 15 to 1.

Mr. President, I deny that, and I assert here that that is not supported by the slightest scrap of history in this country.  There never was a desire in the Federal party or any other party in those days to go to a gold basis, and the history of this country is full proof to the contrary, that they did not intend to go to a gold basis;  but on the other hand they intended to maintain the two standards, silver and gold, at a parity, and for that purpose they fixed the ratio at 15 to 1, which turned out to be an erroneous ratio and did not succeed in doing what they expected, for the gold went away and the silver remained.  Subsequently they attempted to fix it again, and then they made the mistake the other way and the silver went away and the gold remained.

During all that time we were operating with the cheapest money metal, as we shall operate with the cheapest money metal when there is a difference between the mint ratio and the market ratio when we get a certain amount of money.  I have no doubt that free coinage might under some circumstances bring us to a silver basis.  I have not denied it.  What I said was that there is no probability of its bringing us there until there is a super-abundance of money in this country;  and that, by the way, is the Gresham law, about which we have heard so much.  It never operates until there is a superabundance of money;  then the Gresham law takes effect, and not until then.  The Senator from Ohio proceeded:

When the Democratic party came into power, Mr. Jefferson, to secure the circulation of gold, suspended the coinage of the silver dollar, but a faulty ratio stood in his way.

The Senator did not tell us, what he ought to have known and what was essential to a fair consideration of this question from that standpoint, that the subsidiary coins then in the country were a legal tender for all that the dollar was.  They were not strictly subsidiary, and I ought to speak of them as the smaller coins.  It is not proper, perhaps, to speak of them as subsidiary if they have full legal-tender qualities.

But the minor coins, the half-dollars and quarter-dollars were legal tender for all purposes at that time and of full weight;  and not only were they legal tenders, but the Spanish milled-dollar, the Mexican dollar, and the Mexican quarter-dollars were also legal tender;  and there are plenty of Senators here who remember that in their youth the Spanish milled-dollar and the Spanish quarter and the Mexican dollar and the Mexican quarter were the common currency of our country.  I have not any doubt that two-thirds of the lands in the State of Illinois were entered with foreign silver money at the Government offices, where it was taken by law just as they would have taken a quarter silver dollar of our own coinage if it had been presented.

General Jackson and Benton and their associates---

Says the Senator---

General Jackson and Benton and their associates in 1834, with the avowed purpose to restore gold, or "Benton mint drops," as they were called, to circulation, changed the ratio to 16 to 1, but this banished all silver coin.  In the administration of President Pierce in 1853 the present system was adopted, by which gold became the unit of value and the coinage of silver was made subsidiary, but was always maintained in purchasing power the equal of gold, dollar for dollar.

Mr. President, I challenge that statement.  I assert that it is untrue, whether it comes from an ex-Secretary of the Treasury or whether it comes from anybody else.  There never was an hour previous to 1873 when the gold dollar was the unit of value in this country.  The silver dollar was the unit of value clear up to the passage of the act of 1873.  The Senator himself introduced in 1868 in this body a bill for the purpose of making the gold dollar the unit of value, which he did not succeed in doing;  and yet the people of this country are told that the gold dollar had been the unit of value and that the old Democratic party had made it the unit of value.  It is not true.

These things can not be questions of opinion;  they are matters of history;  they are recorded in the statute-books, and nobody ought to make any mistake about them.  I assert that neither the Senator from Ohio nor any other Senator can show in the statute-books a statute that made the gold dollar the unit of value.  It was not the unit of value but the silver dollar was the unit of value.  And so, having slandered the old Democratic party, having charged them with what they were not guilty of, he turns around to defend the act of 1873 and charges upon the Republican party that they followed in the same steps:

And so when the Republican party came into power, though driven by the stress of war to the almost exclusive use of credit money, yet, as soon as possible, resorted to the policy of 1853, of gold as the unit and silver as subsidiary, and coined both metals in greater sums than ever before, and maintained their parity by a limitation of the coinage of the cheaper metal and its prompt redemption by being received at its legal ratio into the Treasury as the equivalent of gold.

An absolute misstatement from the first line to the last !  There never was a time before 1873 when we limited the coinage of what the Senator calls the cheaper metal.  Upto 1873 silver was not the cheaper metal.  If we used gold from 1853 to 1873, we used it because it was the cheaper metal;  and when we stipulated that we would pay the interest on the bonds of the United States in gold we stipulated what the Government has the right always to do where it has the right to make a choice, and that is to pay in the cheaper metal of the two, because if we had paid in silver dollars we should have had to pay 3 per cent. more on the interest than we were then paying.  And yet an ex-Secretary of the Treasury and a Senator on this floor, with his great position as a financier, puts out this statement which I repeat ---not meaning to be offensive, but I think my duty to the public requires me to say it--- a statement contradicted by the historical facts of this country, that silver was the cheaper metal.  Silver was not the cheaper metal, nor was it limited in its use up to l873, except because of the fact that it was too valuable to be coined in this country on account of an imperfect and improper ratio.

The statement of the Senator from Ohio [Mr. Sherman] is in perfect keeping with the statements on this subject made from day to day and year to year on this floor and in the public press.  I repeat, there never was a gold party in the United States who insisted upon the use of gold alone until 1873 and subsequent thereto.  There was nobody in this country demanding the gold standard when the act was passed which the Senator from Kansas [Mr. Plumb] calls, rightly and justly, "the great economic crime of the age;"  and when it was discovered by the men who hold the credits, not the men who hold the money, as the Senator from Ohio wants to make it appear that we charge, but the men who hold the credits of the world, when they discovered that this demonetization had added from 25 to 30 per cent. to their holdings and to their income, then came the contest to maintain the status as it had been established by the act of 1873.

I do not mean to say that the men who hold the money of the world are not in accord with them, but for every actual dollar of money that is held, there are hundreds of dollars of credits that are affected in the same way;  and so it is that the appreciation, not simply of the money that is in the banks or in the pockets of the fortunate holders, but the appreciation of the purchasing power of the dollar that is received in payment of the interest or the principal of their securities is what has made this the most gigantic contest that has ever been waged by our people in their efforts to get back to where they were in 1873.  There has been arrayed against them the entire moneyed power of the world, not the moneyed power of the banks alone, but of the men who hold the $30,000,000,000 of public debts and twice as many billions of private debts, municipal debts, and railroad debts.  That has been the power;  they have been the parties that have been interested in it.

The Senator from Ohio further said:

Surely this is no time for a radical change of public policy which seems to have no motive except to reduce the burden of obligations freely taken, a change likely to impair our public credit and produce disorder and confusion in all monetary transactions.  Others may see reasons for this change, but I prefer to stand by the standards of value that come to us with the approval and sanction of every party that has administered the Government since its beginning.

Mr. President, if the Senator from Ohio will stand by the standard of the fathers, if he will stand by the standard which was in use up to 1873, we shall ask no more of him or of his.  That is what we are trying to do.  It is no radical movement on our part;  it is a movement on our part to get back to the original condition of things under which the Government proceeded with prosperity and with a reasonable degree of happiness up to 1873, while we have been attempting by a limping, illogical system to proceed since 1878.  What we ask for is the double standard.

I stated the other day, in a few remarks which I made, that the Senator's logic was as faulty as his facts.  I find all through the Senator's remarks the same disregard of facts, the same general statements which, if he understands them, the public will not.  For instance, the Senator made this statement:

During all this period the volume of money in actual circulation was increasing.  I here present a table showing that each and every year from 1878 to this year the currency of the country in actual circulation has been increasing year by year more than the population has increased.

The Senator then stated that the increase last year was $22,000,000.  If we have $22 per capita and we keep pace with the population, we have got to have every year practically $40,000,000 to keep pace with the increase of population.  That presents a simple question of arithmetic.  If we continue to increase as we increased during the past fifteen years ---if we are not mistaken as to the amount of population in this country, estimating it at 65,000,000 or an increase of 15,000,000 in ten years--- if we continue to increase in the same proportion, we shall practically increase 2,000,000 a year for the next ten years;  and if we keep the same per capita that we have had, we must have $40,000,000 of new coinage, or new money of some kind, every year.  The Senator from Ohio, who has presided over the Committee on Finance for years, who has presided over the Treasury Department, could hardly have overlooked that fact;  and yet he states to us that the circulation has kept pace with the population.

When I called his attention to the fact that the Treasurer of the United States had reported that last year the increase had only been $8,000,000, or really less than $8,000,000, as shown by the official report, he says, "Well, I have taken it from the Secretary's report, and, if we can not depend upon that, what can we ?"  I do not know whether we can depend upon the Secretary's report or not.  I know there is some difficulty in understanding it, but I know that there is the distinct and positive statement made by the Treasurer, who is the particular officer who has charge of that branch of the financial department of the Government, that the increase last year, considering the destruction of national-bank notes and other things, left us only with an addition of 8,000,000, which is only about 12 cents per capita ---certainly much less than we ought to have had.

I take my figures in this report from a statement furnished to the Senator from Rhode Island [Mr. Aldrich] by the Treasury Department, in which they furnish him a statement of all the gold and silver in circulation each year, and the paper money of every kind that was in circulation.  According to that statement there was in circulation in 1879 $832,355,060.  In 1880 there was $978,770,337, or an increase from one year to another of $146,415,277.  The next year the total was $1,119,813,843, or an increase of $141,043,506.  Thus within two years we had increased our circulating medium over $287,000,000, and yet the Senator from Ohio tells us that he regards putting in circulation $4,500,000 of silver per month as inflation, and as calculated to destroy the credit of the country and to bring disaster upon all our interests.  The next year the increase was $59,000,000 in round numbers.  The next year the increase was 57,000,000 in round numbers, and the next year the increase was $7,814,563.  The next year the increase was $47,729,136.  That brings to the end of 1885.

We have increased from 1885 from $1,300,000,000 in round numbers to $1,380,405,561, or in four years there has been an increase of $87,000,000, less than $22,000,000 per annum, and yet from 1880 to 1882, a period of two years, we increased $280,000,000 and more.  The period in which we increased so rapidly the circulating medium was a better period for business than the later periods have been, and if we needed $287,000,000 then in two years, we certainly have needed more than $87,000,000 in four years.  So the Senator can not say that the increase of circulating medium has been in proportion either to the population or to the business of the country.

The Senator dwelt with great force upon the fact that our people use checks and drafts.  We have a great number of banks, I admit, more banks in proportion to our population than almost any other country;  and yet every man knows that this country is not, in the language of bankers, as well banked as many other countries.

Another thing the Senator seems to have lost sight of, and it seems to have been lost sight of by others in this debate, is that Great Britain has one money center, London;  France has one money center;  Germany has one money center practically.  They are countries of limited area and they have but one money center apiece.  We have a dozen money centers in this country, and in each one of them we must have kept a surplus, and the greater the number of money centers the greater the amount of money that must be had for the business.

The Senator also loses sight of the fact that we have opened an empire in ten years larger than all the civilized countries of Europe, if you take out Russia and the wild regions of the North.  Do we not need more money with the great expanse of our country ?  If you want to do business with St. Paul from New York, you need more money than you would need to do it with Hoboken or Jersey City.

But, Mr. President, back of all that there must be a certain amount of money.  As I have stated before, there must be a certain relation between the amount of money and the checks.  I can not pay my debts with my checks unless I have the money to my credit in the bank on which the checks are drawn.  I may get that there by borrowing it of the bank or by depositing the money in the bank, but I have got to have somewhere something on which I can check.  If the Senator will show me how I can do business simply with a book of checks, I will give him a very large reward.

I have heard in the Western country gentlemen talk about opening their accounts in a bank with a check.  They may do that, but they get the bank to put to their credit a certain amount of money upon which they pay interest, and the bank must either have the money or must have something whereby it can get the money to respond to his checks when a man draws them.

Then the Senator from Ohio said:

If we want a cheaper dollar we have the clear constitutional right to put in it 15 grams of gold instead of 23, or 300 grains of silver instead of 412.5, but you have no power to say how many bushels of wheat the new dollar shall buy.

That is a mistake.  The Senator did say to the country by his legislation how many bushels of wheat his dollar would buy.  He said to the country, "Where it buys one bushel now it shall buy two;"  and that is what we complain of.  He appreciated the dollar when throwing upon gold the burden of doing all the work that had been done by silver, and it is no answer to that statement when he says that no silver was here.  Silver was doing duty, every ounce of it that we coined, somewhere else, giving an opportunity for the gold to escape from that country and to come to us.  It is a question of prices.  It is a question as wide as the world.  If wheat is cheap in Great Britain it will be cheap here;  if it is cheap all over Europe it will be cheap here.

The prices of products assimilate and are nearly alike everywhere, and when there is plenty of money in Europe and the price is raised in Europe the price is raised here.  If silver had been allowed to continue to do money duty, it did not make any difference whether it did it upon American soil or European soil or Asiatic soil.  If it was doing money duty, then it went to relieve gold of the work put upon it, and thus sustained and kept up prices, or, in other words, prevented the appreciation of gold.

Mr. President, we do not want any cheap dollar.  We have not asked for any cheap dollar.  The people of the great Northwest are as honest and as upright and as proud of the national honor and the national credit as the people of Ohio or as the people of New England, and in every place upon which they have been called to act they have acted with that high purpose that they never have been ashamed to look in the face of New England men or New York men or any other class of men.  They have been for the highest position of this country financially and morally and intellectually, and nobody is asking for a cheap dollar.

I repeat what was said of those who complained of hard times, and I declare that the repeated declaration here that we want a cheap dollar is a species of demagogism that is a disgrace to the American Senate.  There has been no talk of a cheap dollar anywhere.  We want the honest dollar of the country, which was broken down without the will of the people and without their knowledge.  Whether it was done secretly and corruptly or whether it was done openly, it was done without a demand from the public, and when the public were heard from, they declared through the legislative department of this Government by more than a two-thirds vote that they were in favor of the double standard and that they were in favor of returning to the dollar of the fathers of 412½ grains of pure silver, and there has never been a demand that reached this Chamber or anywhere else from the public in this country for a cheap dollar, and it is demagogy for any man to stand here and say that the friends of silver want a cheap dollar.  It is done to frighten the capitalists and the uninformed, to make them think we want to repudiate the public debtor to repudiate private debts.  There is nothing of the kind.  We are for the debt as it was made to be paid, as we contracted it should be paid, and that is all that anybody can ask.

The Senator from Ohio continued:

You can, if you choose, cheapen the dollar under your power to coin money and thus enable a debtor to pay his debts with fewer grains of silver or gold, under the pretext that gold or silver has risen in value, but in this way you would destroy all forms of credit and make it impossible for nations or individuals to borrow money for a period of time.  It is a species of repudiation.

Mr. President, I am as adverse to repudiation as any man living.  I believe myself in the payment of debts, public and private.  I have never believed that there was any power to release a debtor ---I mean any moral power--- save that of the creditor himself.  I have been always for the maintenance of the highest integrity in this respect, and I still so stand.  But what I complained of was that when the people did not know it, the Senator and his associates, who, whether they knew it or not, did do the thing of which I complain, increased the purchasing power of the dollar to such an extent that it now requires two bushels of wheat, two bushels of corn, two pounds of cotton to pay the debt of very many citizens where it required only one when the debt was contracted.

The Senator may call a determination on the part of Senators in this body to return to that condition by which every man shall be required only to pay the dollar that existed at the time of his contract, repudiation.  I do not think so.  I call the other thing robbery of the debtor.  I would as soon be guilty of repudiation, which is but robbery of the creditor, as I would be guilty of robbery of the debtor by increasing the burdens upon him by the appreciation of the dollar;  and it does not make any difference whether you do it by appreciating the purchasing power of the dollar or whether you do it by putting more gold in the dollar, not a particle.  It is just the same to the unfortunate debtor.

The Senator from Ohio continued:

The best standard of value is one that measures for the longest period its equivalent in other products.

On that I assert here that silver has been the most stable of the money metals.  In 1845, in Europe, before the discovery of the gold of California and Australia, it was declared in financial circles that gold was too unsteady and uncertain;  that silver was then the steady money of the age.  The Senator proceeded to say:

Its relative value may vary from time to time.  If it falls, the creditor loses;  if it increases, the debtor loses;  and these changes are the chances of all trade and commerce and all loaning and borrowing.  The duty of the Government is performed when it coins money and provides convenient credit representatives of coin.  The purchasing power of money for other commodities depends upon changing conditions over which the Government has no control.

Mr. President, what we complain of is that the Government did attempt to control it, that the Government did destroy one-half of the money, and the Government destroyed it at a time when it was exceedingly critical and dangerous to do so.  If it had destroyed that money twenty years before Germany attempted to demonetize it no great harm would have been done, but it did it at a most critical period, when Germany was putting on the market its silver or was about to put on the market its silver, and so the fright came first from Germany and then from the United States, producing at that time the largest amount of silver of any nation in the world and producing now nearly one-half of the world's product.  That is what we complain of.  We say it was a crime, and I repeat, if it was a crime to demonetize silver its is a crime to withhold from the people the redress which they have a right to demand, that they be put back where they were when this economic crime was committed.

The Senator from Ohio proceeded to say:

The silver dollar though a full legal tender, with every effort made by successive Secretaries of the Treasury, could not be kept in circulation to an amount exceeding $60,000,000.  When pressed into circulation it steadily returned to the Treasury, and on June 1 the amount in circulation was $56,348,174 and the amount in the Treasury was $309,988,092.  But the certificates based upon the dollars were issued and readily circulated as money, and now form nearly one-third of all the paper circulation in the country, and are received and paid out on a parity with United States notes and gold coin.  This experiment clearly establishes two things.  One is that silver dollars can not be made to circulate as money in excess of a very moderate amount for change or in small transactions.  The other is that the coinage of silver dollars does not tend to advance the price of silver in the markets of the world.

Mr. President, it does not show any such thing, in my judgment.  If there had been no silver certificates, how can the Senator from Ohio say that the demand for money would not have taken up the entire silver output ?  But when a man has a choice between a paper representative of the dollar and the dollar itself, whether it be gold or whether it be silver, he always takes the paper representative.  He will do that every time, and it has nothing to do with the question of which metal it is.  A greenback to-day is more valuable everywhere amongst the people than gold of the same amount;  that is, a $10 greenback will circulate more readily than a $10 gold piece, and a silver certificate will circulate more freely than a silver dollar;  yet it does not follow that the people do not want to use silver as money;  it simply follows that they want these two methods of using the money and to use that which is the most convenient to them, the paper.  So, the conclusion which the Senator draws is a false conclusion.

The other statement which the Senator says is established is that the coinage of silver dollars does not tend to advance the price of silver in the markets of the world.  Why, Mr. President, before the British commission it was testified over and over again that the Bland act had maintained and kept up the price of silver;  that but for the Bland act silver would have depreciated much more than it did.  Suppose you bought $100 worth of silver, does anybody say that that would maintain the price of silver ?

As is suggested to me, gold was rising anyhow by the great demand made upon gold and the great demand for gold.  In twelve years there have been new fields opened for gold to the extent of one-third of the gold supply of the world.  Just about one-third of all the gold in circulation has been demanded by Germany, by the United States, by Italy, and by the Scandinavian countries, who had either discarded silver or had discarded their paper.  So one-third of the gold that was in circulation has been forced into another channel and of course it appreciated, and of course silver diverged from it.

The Senator from Ohio continues:

But it is said that the reason of this failure is that executive officers neglected or refused to exercise the discretionary powers given them to buy coin bullion to the extent of $4,000,000 per month.  There is no ground for this contention.

If there is anything that the Senator is distinguished for, it is the ex cathedra way in which he announces his conclusions.  There is no question about a thing when he says it;  it must go.  There is no question about this:

There is no ground for this contention.  If the coinage of $2,000,000 worth of silver did not check the fall of silver, but steadily accelerated its fall, what would have been the natural effect of the coinage of $4,000,000 ?

Does the Senator from Ohio mean to say that the coinage of $2,000,000 hastened the fall ?  That is what he does say;  and then he says by inference that the coinage of $4,000,000 would have hastened it still more.  If we had coined $4,000.000, some years at least not an ounce of American silver would have passed out of our ports, not an ounce of it would have gone abroad to keep up the fiction of which the Senator from Missouri [Mr. Cockrell] yesterday spoke:  the prevalent idea in Europe that we were about to deluge them with a great quantity of silver.  When they saw that no silver went out of this country, that we were using it all for our own purposes, then we should have given the lie to that statement which has been so industriously circulated, and which has been aided and abetted from time to time by the officials of this Government, that we were to deluge them with silver.  There are a great many men who believe that if the Treasury Department had honestly administered the law of 1878 there would have been a parity between gold and silver all over the world, and I am one who believes it.

Mr. President, there has never been an hour, unless it may have been when there was a temporary occupant of the Treasury Department, when there has not been every energy and every power of this Government brought to bear to break down silver, to discredit it, and to compel the people of the United States to accede to the Wall-street idea that silver should not be used as money.

Again, the Senator from Ohio said:

The very presence of $290,000,000 of silver coin known to be in our Treasury vaults that can at will be dumped upon the markets of the world is the great bearish fact, the menace that tends to depreciate the price of silver.  If this great sum had been scattered among the hordes of Asia, where it is largely used as ornaments and where it is the only standard of value, it would be mingled in the vast unknown mass of three thousand millions of silver estimated as existing in the world.

Mr. President, does the Senator from Ohio want to get rid of the $350,000,000 of silver doing money duty in this country ?  Does he not know that that would be the destruction of every debtor in this country ?  Does he not know, then, that there would be an end to prosperity ?  He dare not, Mr. President, get rid of the $350,000,000.  If we had not coined the $350,000,000, where would we have got the money to do the business of the country on ?

But, Mr. President, as usual, the Senator from Ohio appears in the role of a prophet.  I remember, in 1878, when before a committee of Congress he asserted that $50,000,000 of silver coinage would drive all the gold out of the country.  He made that statement with the high authority of the financial officer of the Government.  Fifty million dollars !  Mr. President, we have coined seven times fifty million silver dollars, and yet the gold is here in four times the quantity that it was when the Senator was speaking before the committee.  And yet he drops naturally into the role of a prophet !  He has been so long in that line that he goes on and says that now it is certain to do this and it is certain to do that.  Free coinage, he says, would bring us immediately to a silver basis;  it is as sure as fate;  there is no question about it;  other people may doubt.  He never made a prophecy on a financial question that came true, and because he did not he assumes that some time he is to be right and probably this is the time for him to hit it.  He further says:

What will be the effect of the free coinage of silver ?  It is said that it will at once advance silver to par with gold at the ratio of 16 to 1.  I deny it.  The attempt will bring us to the single standard of the cheaper metal.  When we advertise that we will buy all the silver of the world at that ratio and pay in Treasury notes, our notes will have the precise value of 371¼ grains of pure silver, but the silver will have no higher value in the markets of the world.  If, now, that amount of silver can be purchased at 80 cents, then gold will be worth $1.25 in the new standard.  Free coinage means the substitution of a cheaper standard.  All labor, property, and commodities will advance in nominal value, but their purchasing power in other commodities will not increase.  If you make the yard 30 inches long instead of 36 you must purchase more yards for a coat or a dress, but do not lessen the cost of the coat or the dress.  You may, by free coinage, by a species of confiscation, reduce the burden of a debt, but you can not change the relative value of gold or silver or any object of human desire.  The only result is to demonetize gold and to cause it to be hoarded or exported.  The cheaper metal fills the channels of circulation and the dearer metal commands a premium.

And that, too, in the face of the unquestioned fact that the orders of 1785 and the orders of the French Government of 1803 linked gold and silver together, not in that country alone, but all over the world, at the ratio of 15½ to 1.  We undertook to establish a different ratio, but being a poor people we could not maintain it.  France being a rich people was enabled to maintain its ratio, and that was the practical ratio all over the world, amongst civilized people at least.  I repeat, what is borne out by the official statement of the French Government and the official statements of other governments, in France silver and gold maintained an absolute parity for seventy years without a change.  A change sometimes occurred in London, where the mints were not open, but never in Paris.

And yet the Senator tells you that you can not link silver and gold together by law.  The only way, Mr. President, that you can absolutely establish the relation between the two metals is by law, and that is what the Senator is determined shall not be done, because he proposes, as he admitted in his speech, to put us upon a gold basis and to keep us there.  As I said, that is the issue and that is the question before us.  He said further:

You may by free coinage, by a species of confiscation, reduce the burden of a debt, etc.

More, Mr. President, of appeal to the men who bold the wealth of the world to frighten them, more of appeal to the people to make it appear that the men who stand up for right and justice are disregardful of the moral obligations that arise out of contract.  I want to say again I repudiate it and I denounce it.

Mr. President, we propose no confiscation.  It was the Senator from Ohio who confiscated.  It was the Senator from Ohio who added more than a thousand million dollars to the national debt by the act of 1873.  It was the Senator from Ohio who added 33 per cent. to every mortgage in the land by that act.  It is the Senator from Ohio and his associates and his colleagues in this enterprise who have brought distress and disaster upon this country, bringing to us to-day a complaint from a class of men who have never complained, complaints that are justly made and that ought to be heeded in this body, and complaints which will be heeded now or later.  All the sophistry and inaccuracy of the Senator from Ohio can not always keep the people in ignorance of that economic crime and its legitimate and logical results.

What does the Senator propose now ?  To continue this outrage, to continue this wrong, and to continue to appreciate the gold dollar.  Thirty per cent. and more it has gone up in 15 years, and if he can accomplish the purpose for which he and his associates in this Chamber and abroad are trying, if they can complete the demonetization of silver ---which you would effectually and completely do if you pass the House bill that is in our committee to-day--- if they can do that they will add 30 per cent. more to every public and private debt, and every man will be compelled to make 60 per cent. more effort, 60 per cent. more sacrifice, to pay his debt than he did in 1873.  If there is any moral obliquity in standing here and insisting that the contracts made in 1873 shall be carried out as they were made, what shall be said of a party or a people who will insist upon adding 60 per cent. to the burdens of the people already weighed down with debts ?

Mr. President, I am willing to debate this question upon fair statement.  I am willing to admit that there are grave problems in the financial question.  I am willing to admit that it may be a question whether to-day you can proceed promptly to free coinage.  Honest men may differ about that.  But, Mr. President, I will not admit and I will not yield the question that the man who stands now for the use of the single standard alone is either dishonest or ignorant, and in either case he has no right to represent the interests of the American people.

The Senator from Ohio proceeded:

Shall we try the experiment alone ?

Has the Senator ever attempted to try it with anybody else ?  When he was Secretary of the Treasury did he give the weight of the Government of the United States to an effort to try it with anybody else ?  I deny it.  The entire influence of the Government was given against an international arrangement.  It has been given against it at all times since.  It is against it to-day, either ignorantly or viciously;  and I do not care which.  There will be no international arrangement until the Government of the United States shall plant itself squarely upon the bimetallic standard and say to the world, "We propose, whatever you may do, to try to do what France did;  we will try with 60,000,000 people and $60,000,000,000 of money ---with more money than any other country in the world--- to do what France did with 25,000,000 people and a tithe of our money."  When the Government says that, the mints of Europe will open, and they will not open until they know that we mean that;  and that is not meant under this Administration.  They did not mean it under the last;  they will not mean it under the next unless the people of the United States shall at the polls be found as they ought to be, voting for their interest and their interest alone.

I will try it alone, Mr. President.  The people of the United States are brave enough to try it alone.  They have met and conquered every difficulty that was presented.  They can conquer this financial difficulty.  If you can put in the White House and if you can put in the Treasury a man who wants to do that thing, it will be done, and it never will be accomplished until that is done.

I said the other day that the people of the United States have been treated with the grossest misrepresentation from public places.  It is a serious charge to make, but it nevertheless is, in my judgment, true.  We have heard day in and day out that the people of the United States did not want to use and would not use silver money.  We have been told by the Senator from New York [Mr. Hiscock] that he spoke for the people when be said they did not want silver or they did not want free coinage.  We were told here, and we have been told elsewhere in the public press, that the reason why the silver dollar to-day has a purchasing power equal in the markets of the country to that of gold is because of the kindness of the Treasury Department, that had redeemed it in gold.  I challenged, when on the floor before, the Senator from Ohio or any Senator to show that a silver dollar had ever been taken to the Treasury and exchanged for a gold dollar, while I asserted that under the order made by Mr. Sherman in 1880, revoked in 1881, more than $80,000,000 of gold went into the Treasury and took out of the Treasury either silver dollars or certificates.

Since I made my speech the other day I find that under the order of Mr. Sherman of September 18, 1880, gold was paid into the Treasury for silver certificates to the amount of $81,734,000.  Then the order was suspended.  Since that time there has been a custom in the Treasury Department to exchange national-bank notes for silver certificates, national-bank notes for standard dollars, national-bank notes for fractional silver coin, United States notes for silver certificates, United States notes for standard dollars, United States notes for fractional silver coin, gold certificates for silver certificates, gold certificates for standard dollars, gold certificates for fractional silver coin, gold coin for silver certificates, gold coin for standard dollars, fractional gold coin for fractional silver coin;  and in the years 1887, 1888, and 1889, three years, $52,265,733 of silver was exchanged by the Treasury Department for the class of money that I have mentioned.

Of this, the national-bank notes for silver certificates in three years took $540,653;  for standard dollars, $5,818,279;  for fractional coin, $1,685,227.  United States notes for silver certificates, $2,331,617;  for standard dollars, $15,431,187;  for fractional silver, 4,168,740;  and gold certificates received for silver certificates, $6,443,580;  gold certificates received for standard dollars, $9,803,801;  fractional silver coin, $1,977,254.  Gold coin received for silver certificates, $41,645;  standard gold coin received for standard dollars, $3,786,302;  fractional silver, $237,448.  Or, leaving out the fractional coin, $44,000,000 of silver certificates and silver dollars went out of the Treasury for other money.  And yet I repeat that at no time has the Government held itself out ready to exchange.  If a man went with a silver certificate or a silver dollar to the Treasury to get gold could he do it ?

So the pretense which has been frequently made that silver is kept at par by the treatment by the Government of it is not true.  It has been kept at par in spite of the treatment of the Government, in defiance of its efforts to break it down.  It has been the current money of the country, and has kept the country in a state of prosperity comparatively by its circulation.  I submit this table as a part of my remarks:

Mr. President, the Senator from Ohio, who of course is the mouth-piece of the gold people, left no question that he intended the country should be put upon a gold basis.  I do not think that anybody who has spoken on the other side of the case can be offended if I say that they all announce themselves as believers in the single standard.  What may come I do not know, but so far no one has announced himself except in a general way as in favor of silver and in favor of silver only as a subsidiary coin and subordinate to gold.

Now, are the people of the United States ready and willing to go upon a gold basis ?  Mr. President, what did we say in our platform ?  We said that we were for both gold and silver as money.  What did the Democratic party say in their previous platform ?  They had said it in the two preceding platforms.  They said in the last platform absolutely nothing on that subject, in deference to their candidate.  In deference to the power that stood behind that convention and made that nomination, they said nothing.

Mr. Hearst.  And that beat them.

Mr. Teller.  I hear a Senator who votes with that party say "And that beat them."  It did, Mr. President.  There is no more doubt in my mind that that defeated the Democratic party than I have that defeat came to them.

Mr. Stewart.  And that defeated the Republican candidate for governor of Oregon last week.

Mr. Teller.  Was he a gold man ?

Mr. Stewart.  He was a gold man and his opponent was a silver man.

Mr. Teller.  Mr. President, I do not wonder that they beat him.  I would not like to say very much what I think about it, but I should not be surprised at any time when the man stands before the public who is in favor of a single standard if the people should say he was not a proper representative of theirs.

At all events the Democratic party had been committed to silver as money.  They had been committed to it by their votes in the other House and here.  I have spoken of it before in this body.  When the President-elect of the United States, before he got into office, unmindful, it seems to me, of the ethics that ought to control and be considered, attempted to say to his political friends what they ought to do, the Democratic House universally declined.  I do not mean that every one of them declined, but a Democratic majority said to him, "We do not propose to demonetize silver," and they did not do it.  I know that some of the Democrats in public life yielded to the influence and power of the Executive;  I know that a great many of them were quite willing that the silver question should be passed by when the Executive was against remonetization.  They did not want to brave a veto, and no wonder;  nobody wants to put his political party in that attitude before the people:  and I do not wonder they did not.

But they were not more bound to do these things than we.  We put in our platform the declaration that we were for the use of silver and gold, and we did not stop at that.  We said "We condemn the Democratic party for its efforts at demonetization."  Now, what did we mean ?  Did we mean anything ?  The Senator from Illinois [Mr. Farwell] says we meant that we were going to buy silver.  Why, Mr. President, we were buying silver then.  We did not mean anything of the kind.  We meant that on some fair terms, on some system that was safe for us take, we intended to use both silver and gold, and it was a pledge made to the people of the United States that the next Executive and the next Administration should be in harmony with them upon this subject, as they had shown they were for this principle by repeated acts in the other House and in the Senate, for after 1878 there never was an Administration that was strong enough in either of the bodies to get a majority in favor of simply suspending the coinage of silver for an hour.  Why ?  Because the great body of the American people were in favor of its use as money, and we put it in every platform.  Did we put it in there to catch votes ?

Mr. President, I was at Chicago.  I was consulted by the Senator from Nevada;  and if I had believed that it was simply clap-trap to catch votes, I should have been less enthusiastic in that campaign than I was.  The State of Colorado would not have rolled up the great vote for the Republican candidate it did, putting itself in line the third Republican State in proportion to its vote in the Union, if the people of the State had believed that.

Mr. Blair.  I wish merely to observe that the Senator felt in regard to the platform on silver as I felt in regard to the platform upon education. [Laughter.]

Mr. Teller.  I voted with the Senator upon the educational bill.

Mr. Blair.  I know the Senator did, and so did the Senator from Nevada.  I only make this observation in passing, because the debate is audibly getting to be very uninteresting.

Mr. Stewart.  I should like to ask the Senator from New Hampshire if he thinks it is right for the party to go back on the platform.

Mr. Blair.  No;  and the party that does it, is sure to be blanked.

Mr. Teller.  Mr. President, I mean to discuss this question fairly.  I do not mean to say that that provision of our platform committed us to free coinage.  I would not insist upon that and I would not insist that every man in this body who believes with me in Republican principles and in sustaining the Republican platform is compelled to vote for free coinage.  I am bound to be fair on that point if I can.  But I do say that it did commit us to the bimetallic principle.  I say that principle has had its worst enemy, its most effective foe, the man who has done it the most harm, and who has made it the most difficult to legislate upon intelligently, in the Treasury Department---

Mr. Mitchell.  The platform meant that there should be a more liberal policy pursued in regard to silver.

Mr. Teller.  As the Senator from Oregon says, it meant a more liberal policy.  At least we thought so.  We thought it meant that free coinage was safe, or, if not free coinage, that it meant we should make an international arrangement.  Fifteen months have passed and there has been no international arrangement and no effort towards an international arrangement.  We are told we need more money and the people are suffering.  Even the Senator from Ohio says we want more money.  The President and the Secretary of the Treasury say we want more money.  They have had it in their power to give us every month $2,000,000 of good money, $2,000,000 of money with a purchasing power equal to any other money in this country.  No body who has regard for his reputation or his character will stand here and say that there was danger in adding $25,000,000 or $30,000,000 more to the money in this country, which only increased last year $8,000,000.  Why was it not done ?

It is said that we must legislate;  that we must not go away from here until we relieve the people.  It has been in the power of this Administration every day to relieve the people.  If the people suffer, if the people want, if distress pervades the land, if the people complain, and if the Republican party suffers, it is at the door of the Administration, because the power has been in their hands, a conservative power, a power that they dare not say would be detrimental to the public interest, and a power that would have been exerted if there had been in the Treasury Department and in the Executive a friendly feeling toward the bimetallic standard.

If it had not been the purpose, as now proposed by the Senator from Ohio, to put us upon the gold basis ---which the Secretary of the Treasury declares we are upon, which be says practically we are forever to continue on--- if that had not been the purpose and the will there would have been a coinage of $4,000,000 of silver per month.  It might be that it would not put up silver, it might be that we have been in ignorance on that subject, but we who believed it would, we who enacted the law, we who have in good faith attempted to stand by the Republican party and its principles, were entitled with a Republican Administration to have that question tried.  How easy, if it failed, to withdraw and continue the coinage of only $2,000,000 a month.  If disaster appeared to be coming the power was with the Executive to stop the increased coinage.

No, Mr. President, there is no friendly feeling towards bimetallism in the high places of this Government, and there has not been, and there will not be while Wall street can threaten every political party as it has done for fifteen years.  No political party has attempted anything that has not been met by the declaration, "You must legislate so as to get the good will of the business interests of this country."  That means Wall street.  I remember that a President of the United States within five years, not the present President either, addressing a crowd of people on Wall street, said "When I see you, I see the representatives of the great interests of the country."

Why, Mr. President, he saw the bill-holders and the note-shavers and the stock-speculators.  In the whole ken of his observation he did not see a single man who had ever done an honest day's work;  he did not see a single man who had ever produced an article of commerce;  he did not see a single man who had ever promoted the industrial pursuits of this country.  He was looking upon the men who handled the securities of the country, and, as I said before, those who take toll from its industries.  When he wants to see the people he wants to turn his face outward;  he wants to look out upon the great country;  he wants to look in the mills;  he wants to look in the machine shops;  he wants to look at the farms and in the mines.  There is where be will find the people.  There is where be will find the people who have added a million dollars a day to the wealth of the country.  There he will find the people who in every hour of the country's distress have been ready to respond.  There he will find the glory and the safety of the American people.  He will not find it in Wall street, and until we get an Administration that can turn its eyes outward and look to the great people of the center of the country, the farmers, the miners, the operatives, and the producers, we shall have this kind of legislation.

I for one, Mr. President, regard this question as too big for politics.  I regard it as above all political considerations.  I regard it as the critical and crucial period in the history of the world when the question is to be settled whether we are to have the two metals as money or one;  whether progress and civilization shall go on as they always have when there has been abundant metallic money, or whether they shall shrink and shrivel and be destroyed, as always has been the case when there has been too little.  No political connections, no personal considerations, are sufficient to induce me to surrender my judgment upon this question, a judgment that I have formed with great attention, with much anxiety, and with much industry ---with much anxiety because it appears to take me away from my party, because it takes me away from an Administration with which I desire to act.  But, Mr. President, for myself I propose to stand for what I think to be right, and no matter where it lands the Republican party, nor no matter where it lands me, my vote shall be given for that which I think will unloose the trammels that have been put upon commerce.  That vote, I think, will unloose the burden that has been put upon the debtors of this country, and will do it without detriment to the creditors of the country, either.

So believing, Mr. President, I have again trespassed upon the attention of the Senate, and I beg its indulgence, and thank it for its attention.

Mr. Eustis [James B. Eustis, New Orleans Louisiana].  Mr. President, I desire very briefly to give the reasons why I shall vote in favor of any proposed measure having for its object the unrestricted free coinage of silver dollars.  The scientific considerations of money, its history, its use, its relations, its fluctuations, I shall myself discard, because those matters have been very elaborately, and I may say exhaustively, discussed in this body.  I propose to discuss this question in the light of our present and immediate experience, going no further back than 1878, dealing with the present issue which is presented to the Senate for its judgment.

I prefer the safe guide, myself, of experience.  I believe that our actual experience in regard to the coinage of silver dollars is of much more value and weight than any abstruse doctrines, any superfine theories, any played-out maxims on finance, and any vaticination of Senatorial soothsayers, of which we have had such a copious abundance.  A distinguished writer has said that experience is the oracle of truth, and when its responses are unequivocal they should be considered as sacred and conclusive.

I consider that the proposition for the free coinage of silver is simply an extension of our existing system of finance.  It is no experiment.  There is no novel feature about it.  It will not be any surprise to the American people.  It is not a complicated system.  It is not a leap in the dark.  The proposition is simply whether we can with safety extend that system which to-day exists in this country, whether we can continue to travel in that road in which we have been traveling, being able and competent to appreciate and estimate the benefits and advantages of that system, and to consider all the possible dangers and perils which we may encounter.

To my mind, Mr. President, there are no pitfalls in this road.  The American people have tried this experiment.  They are satisfied with this experiment, and they demand that the experiment shall be developed and extended.  That is the question, Mr. President, before the Senate.

There have been three periods during which this silver question has been agitated.  One was in 1878;  another was the period when we had a Democratic administration in power;  the third is the present period;  and I think that it can be absolutely demonstrated to this Senate that there is not the slightest cause for honest and sincere apprehension, that there is not the slightest foundation for even any supposition that by free coinage we shall cause or create the slightest disturbance or commotion. in our monetary and financial system.

Prior to 1878, until Congress passed the law of that year, the American people had been deprived of the coinage of silver dollars.  That law was passed by Congress, and it went to the Executive for his approval or disapproval.  It was returned with a veto;  and I desire to call the attention of the Senate to the reasons upon which that veto was based, and to ask whether experience has proved that any of those reasons were justified, or that any of those reasons which were then urged can be properly and rationally urged against free coinage to-day.  The then President of the United States in the close of his message said:

It is my firm conviction that if the country is to be benefited by a silver coinage, it can be done only by the issue of silver dollars of full value, which will defraud no man.  A currency worth less than it purports to be worth will in the end defraud not only creditors, but all who are engaged in legitimate business, and none more surely than those who are dependent on their daily labor for their daily bread.

The vote irrespective of party upon this message was in the Senate to carry the bill over the veto, 46 yeas against 19 nays, 11 Senators being absent.  Two-thirds of the Senators having voted in its favor the bill was passed.  In the House of Representatives when the question was taken there were 196 yeas against 75 nays, 23 Representatives not voting, more than two-thirds in favor of the bill.

Mr. President, I desire to ask in the light of experience what solitary individual in the United States from 1878 to the present moment has ever been defrauded by the coinage of silver ?  Who has ever preferred any just complaint against this law which was passed over the Executive veto ?

When, in other parts of his message, the President of the United States used the argument that this law would discredit the public faith and impair the public credit, I ask, in the light of the experience of the last twelve years since that law was passed, when was the credit of the Government of the United States higher than it has been since that law was passed ?  When was its public faith more sacredly observed ?  When did this credit rank higher in the estimation of the world, in the estimation of the bond-holders, in the estimation of public creditors, than it has since 1878 when that law was passed ?

Ah, Mr. President, that Congress did not falter in its duty.  That Congress did not betray the interests of its constituents.  That Congress did not tamely submit to Executive dictation.  That Congress did not yield to Executive blandishments or cower before Executive intimidation.  That Congress was not frightened because the Executive whispered that he would veto that bill.  They invited and they challenged that veto, and when that veto came they overruled it by the constitutional majority.

Mr. President, since that period the American people in three-fourths of the sections of our country have, with a pronounced and determined and unequivocal unanimity, demanded that every restriction upon the coinage of silver dollars shall be removed.  I see it stated in the press, and I have heard it uttered in this Senate Chamber, that those who advocate free coinage desire to promote the pecuniary interests of the silver barons and the silver kings of this country.  The complete refutation of such an idle argument as that is that there are thirteen States in this body whose constituencies demand the free coinage of silver dollars, and in those States there is no silver produced at all to speak of.

I will show before I get through who wants to aid and assist the silver barons.  It is not we who favor free coinage who are exposed to any such calumny or imputation.  We want free coinage because the people demand it.  They demand it because they want to increase the volume of currency in this country, and they only ask that the Congress of the United States shall give them a stable, sound, constitutional currency.  They do not ask us to print notes;  they do not ask us to issue Treasury notes ad libitum.  They do not ask any Secretary of the Treasury by some magical process to evolve any complicated scheme of finance for them.

They have reached that conclusion deliberately.  It is the verdict of their common sense, which someone has said is the genius of the people.  And to tell the American people, who have been discussing and agitating and studying this question for the last twelve years, enlightened and instructed as they are upon all public questions, that question must be referred for decision to scientists and philosophers and doctrinaires and financial high priests is to tell them that they are unfit for self-government, is to tell them that a few individuals in this country understand this financial question better than they do, and that they do not know what they are asking when they are asking their representatives in Congress to pass a free-coinage law.

Measures for popular relief in this country do not spring from intellectual leadership.  The American people are unlike any other people in any country in the world.  They will never be satisfied with the answer that they are unable to understand this financial problem.  Measures for popular relief in our country take root in popular belief, they grow by popular support, they blossom by popular permission, and they bear fruit by popular volition.

And upon this free-coinage question, let me tell Senators on the other side that though we may fail to-day, the people will achieve and secure the victory to-morrow.  They are no logger to be cajoled by any specious argument.  They are no longer to be satisfied by any misleading subterfuge.  They are no longer to be insulted by any humiliating compromises upon this question.  They are demanding in earnest, for strong reasons, with firm conviction, the free coinage of silver dollars, and upon a question of this kind, where no one can claim that that demand is unjust or unreasonable or unconstitutional, it is almost incredible to believe that they should encounter any obstruction or impediment in securing the legislation they demand.

Why, Mr. President, when we consider the overwhelming, the irresistible popular sentiment in favor of the free coinage of silver dollars, that the American people are always able to secure what they demand when that demand is just and constitutional, yet that upon this silver question alone their will is to be thwarted and their demand is to be defeated and their wishes and their interests are to be ignored, it presents a most singular feature in the operation of a Government such as ours, which is purely popular and representative.

I do not speak upon this question as a partisan, although I shall speak with the utmost freedom with regard to the present Administration as I did with regard to the Democratic Administration upon this silver question.  I say that it is time that Executive assumption and Executive resistance and Executive obstruction should be overthrown by the popular will represented in the Congress of the United States.

Why, sir, in England, in France, in Italy, and other countries of Europe, if the Executive tried, as our Administrations have done, to impose their own personal views upon an unwilling and resisting constituency upon such a vital question as this, that ministry would be overthrown within twenty-four hours and a new one formed.  Yet upon this silver question, and this silver question alone, however overwhelming may be the popular demand, however large may be the majority in both Houses of Congress, we find that to-day, as in the past, the executive department of the Government can exercise the autocratic power of defeating not only the will of the people, but the will of the Congress of the United States, representing the popular will.

Then came the period of 1885.  Then we had a Democratic administration.  That Administration came out openly and boldly in favor of the demonetization of silver.  That Administration declared its policy without any reserve, without any concealment.  That Administration did not pretend to be the friend of silver, and in the report of the Secretary of the Treasury and the message of the President of the United States silver money was decried and denounced.  The recommendation was made by that Administration that the coinage of silver dollars should cease.  But how was that policy met by the Democratic party in the Congress of the United States ?  We held no caucuses, we had no conferences trying to patch up some complicated scheme of finance by which we could satisfy the antagonistic views of both the Administration and the people.

We did not invite the Secretary of the Treasury to any of our consultations in order to see whether, for political reasons or political expediency, there could be any reconciliation between these antagonistic views.  No, Mr. President, the Democratic Senators in this Chamber, led by Mr. Beck, now deceased, and the distinguished Senator from Alabama [Mr. Pugh], sounded the alarm to the American people, proclaimed that the Democratic party in the Congress of the United States would not indorse the financial policy of the Democratic Administration, that upon that question there could be no reconciliation, no accord, no harmony, and the result was that no legislation was attempted by reason of the recommendations of the Democratic President and the Democratic Secretary of the Treasury.

Now, Mr. President, we reach a period when we have to deal with the recommendations of a Republican President and a Republican secretary of the Treasury.  I desire to read what the President of the United States said in his message upon this question, and contrast this with what it is proposed shall be done in Congress:

The evil anticipations which have accompanied the coinage and the use of the silver dollar have not been realized.  As a coin it has not had general use, and the public Treasury has been compelled to store it.  But this is manifestly owing to the fact that its paper representative is more convenient.  The general acceptance and use of the silver certificate show that silver has not been otherwise discredited.  Some favorable conditions have contributed to maintain this practical equality, in their commercial use, between the gold and silver dollars.  But some of these are trade conditions that statutory enactments do not control and of the continuance of which we can not be certain.

I think it is clear that if we should make the coinage of silver at the present ratio free, we must expect that the difference in the bullion values of the gold and silver dollars will be taken account of in commercial transactions, and I fear the same result would follow any considerable increase of the present rate of coinage.  Such a result would be discreditable to our financial management and disastrous to all business interests.  We should not tread the dangerous edge of such a peril.  And, indeed, nothing more harmful could happen to the silver interests.  Any safe legislation upon this subject must secure the equally of the two coins in their commercial uses.

I have always been an advocate of the use of silver in our currency.  We are large producers of that metal, and should not discredit it.  To the plan which will be presented by the Secretary of the Treasury---

To which I wish to call attention---

To the plan which will be presented by the Secretary of the Treasury for the issuance of notes or certificates upon the deposit of silver bullion at its market value, I have been able to give only a hasty examination, owing to the press of other matters and to the fact that it has been so recently formulated.  The details of such a law require careful consideration, but the general plan suggested by him seems to satisfy the purpose ---to continue the use of silver in connection with our currency, and at the same time to obviate the danger of which I have spoken.  At a later day I may communicate further with Congress upon this subject.

We are still waiting for that half-promised message on this important question, but the result has been that the Secretary of the Treasury had a bill prepared, which was "hastily examined" by the President of the United States, and which was introduced into this body.  The venerable Senator from Vermont [Mr. Morrill] introduced the bill, but he informed the Senate that he did it by request, and that bill, which was formulated by the Secretary of the Treasury and "hastily examined" by the President of the United States, was sent to the Committee on Finance.

The Committee on Finance have reported a substitute for that bill, erasing every word and every line of the bill formulated by the Secretary of the Treasury and "hastily examined" by the President of the United States, and there is not a single recognizable feature of that bill of the Secretary in the bill proposed by the Finance Committee, and not a Senator on the other side of the Chamber has risen from his seat to utter a solitary word in defense of the bill prepared by the Secretary of the Treasury.

Even the Senator from Ohio [Mr. Sherman], in speaking upon this question, said that he was in favor of the purchase of every ounce of American silver and issuing against it Treasury notes or certificates, but that he would vote to make those Treasury notes and certificates a legal tender;  which is in direct opposition to the policy of the bill prepared by the Secretary of the Treasury.

While we are criticising the bill prepared by the Secretary of the Treasury, I desire to give the opinion of the Secretary of the Treasury with regard to the bill reported by the Committee on Finance.  In speaking of some of its features ---and this is an authorized interview sent through the Associated Press, taken from a copy of a letter addressed by the Secretary of the Treasury--- he says, speaking of the Senate bill:

This compulsory purchase of so great an amount will make the Treasury the largest operator in the most gigantic "corner" ever organized.

But, Mr. President, he also says that his own bill, which he formulated and which he had presented, has that peculiar feature.

"Is it not enough" ---speaking of his own bill--- "that we take one half of the world's silver product and lock it up in order to increase the value of the other half;  that we join the silver producers in the most gigantic "corner" ever organized ?"

So we have both bills, the bill prepared by the Secretary of the Treasury and the bill prepared by the Committee on Finance, representing "gigantic corners" in silver bullion.  Is that what the American people want ?  Is that what they are demanding, that the Treasury of the United States shall become a gambling shop, inviting every gambler in every money center of the civilized world to speculate in the currency of the American people, a currency which shall have no fixed or determined value, a currency which shall have no fixed or determined volume, but shall be exposed to expansion and contraction according to the gambling propensities of the speculators in London, New York, and other cities ?

What do we propose ?  We propose, Mr. President, to restore and give back to the people a fixed metallic currency of a certain and exchangeable and immutable standard value;  a currency that shall be beyond the reach of gambling and of speculation;  a currency which the American people enjoyed from the foundation of the Government of the United States until 1873.  And when they called upon the Government of the United States, the only power that can make and create money for the American people, to give them that fixed and constitutional metallic currency, the proposition of the Secretary of the Treasury is that we shall play a confidence game upon the American people, a thimble-rig game of "now you see your currency, and now you don't;"  tell them that they shall take warehouse receipts based upon bullion, upon a commodity, upon a merchandise, exposed to all the vicissitudes of a fluctuating market, instead of the constitutional metallic currency which it is the duty of the Government of the United States to furnish to the people.  They ask that we shall not abdicate our power and function of government.

They ask that we shall exercise under our sense of responsibility to them that highest, supremest, and most sovereign of all duties that can be performed by a government;  and, instead of giving them what they demand, what they have the right to demand, and what it is safe and prudent to give them, the only answer that is made by this Administration is that we shall by some species of necromancy invent and discover a system of finance unknown and unheard of in any civilized country, by which your fortunes and your labors and your products shall be placed upon the green cloth to be played for by gamblers and speculators.  That is the response which it is proposed to make to the American people.

Mr. President, I have not heard a serious argument made in opposition to the free and unlimited coinage of silver.  There is not to-day a Senator on the other side or on this side who has attempted to carry on this idle sport of predicting impending woes, who has dared to indulge, in the face of the arguments which we are able to present, even in any specious or misleading argumentation to show us that there is the slightest danger, the slightest peril in passing a law for the free coinage of silver.  The whole case on the other side is no longer based upon argument, is no longer based upon prediction, is no longer based even upon assertion or assumption.  It is to-day based, and based exclusively, upon merely a supposition.  What does the Secretary tell us ?  What is the reason he gives why we should not have free coinage ?

If the balance of trade shall turn against us---

If the balance of trade shall turn against us---

if distrust shall arise as to our ability to pay in gold as it surely will under such a provision of law, or if for any other reason we shall be unable to redeem in gold when demanded, the Government will be compelled to discriminate against silver dollars, when gold will at once command a premium and this nation will step down from its present proud position and take its place on the financial basis of China, India, and South America.

That is to say that if the balance of trade is against us gold will be exported.  Who doubts that ?  Who denies that ?  Who gainsays that ?  I certainly do not.  I am acting, in advocating free coinage, in full view of that remote possibility or of that possible eventuality.  But why should we suppose that the balance of trade will be against us ?  What justification is there for any such supposition at all ?  Are we not going to be permitted in this discussion to consult our immediate past and present experience ?  Are we going to base our financial system upon a mere supposition of the Secretary of the Treasury ?  Are we going to frame our monetary system to accord with any wild or impossible conjecture that the Secretary of the Treasury may choose to make with reference to impossible future events ?

Are the American people to be told that they are to continue to endure the sacrifices and the burdens which are crushing them down to the earth, which are destroying the value of their property and their labor, because, forsooth, the Secretary of the Treasury has made a supposition;  and such a supposition, as unfounded, as illogical, and as preposterous a supposition as was ever made ?  He did not dare to predict that there would be a balance of trade against us.  Why ?  Because a prediction must have some basis of argument or of fact.  No, Mr. President, he did not make such a prediction, because he knew perfectly well that if he had made that prediction it would have been falsified the very moment that he uttered it and would have instantaneously died upon his lips.

What, Mr. President, are the silver men now engaged in fighting ?  Nothing but a supposition, a ghost, a phantom, a shadow, a myth.  How is it possible, judging the future by the past, for the next ten years that there should be any balance of trade against the American people ?  And if it does not occur, as it will not occur, and we all know it can not occur in the same conditions of trade which are every day operating in our favor, whether you have one silver dollar or one thousand millions of silver dollars in this country, it is not going to affect the question of the exportation of a solitary gold dollar, and can not possibly do so.

Why is that supposition of the Secretary of the Treasury utterly unfounded ?  I did not intend to deal with statistics, but as this is the only argument presented by the Secretary of the Treasury against the free coinage of silver I desire to call the attention of the Senate to the condition of our trade relations with foreign countries in the last ten years, and to ask any Senator to attempt to give a serious reason to the Senate why those trade relations should not continue to exist in the same condition, if not more favorably to this Government than they have been for the last ten years.

Since 1876 to 1889 our exports have vastly exceeded our imports.  I think the total amount is over $1,000,000,000.  In 1878 the exports exceeded the imports in round numbers $257,000,000;  in 1879, $264,000,000;  in 1881, $259,000,000;  and during that period from 1876 to 1889 there have been only two years when our imports exceeded our exports.  In the year 1888 our imports exceeded our exports by $28,000,000, and in 1889 by only $2,000,000.  That has been in the face of some very startling statistics, which on their face ought to show that the balance of trade ought to be against this country, although they establish the contrary.  For instance, in 1880 we exported $190,000,000 worth of wheat, and in 1889, $41,000,000 worth of wheat.  So in that one item alone of wheat there is a difference of $150,000,000 against us in the relation of exports to imports.

So in regard to corn.  In 1880 we exported $53,000,000;  in 1889, $32,000,000.  That makes $170,000,000, representing in money value the difference of exports with reference only to two items;  and yet, in the face of this extraordinary deficit, we have been able to maintain the balance of trade in our favor, and therefore I say that it is preposterous for any one to assume that in any one of the future immediate years there can possibly be a balance of trade against this country.  I notice that the item of cotton has almost preserved its position as an export, but not quite.

In 1880 the cotton export was $211,000,000;  in 1889, $237,000,000;  but in the face of the fact that we are increasing the acreage of these products, I can not imagine a condition of things which will turn the balance of trade against us, unless it be the contingency that while you propose to enact a tariff law which will still further decrease the importations into this country, and consequently enhance the balance of trade in our favor by millions and millions of dollars;  for I believe that the proposition with regard to tin alone would reduce the importations into this country $33,000,000 a year ---I say I can conceive of only one possible contingency that can overthrow this balance in our favor, and that is, when you pass your high protective laws and destroy the importation into this country, declare an industrial war on England, France, Germany, and other countries, they may accept your challenge and say that "Your policy being a policy of non-intercourse we will agree with you upon that policy, and we will tax your cereals, and your cotton, and your beeves, and your other products," so that when you send a ship-load of wheat, or of cotton, or of beef to any one of those foreign ports you will find it closed and will have to return with your cargo.

If you give blows to other countries you must expect blows in return.  England, France, and Germany are only waiting to pay us back in retaliatory legislation.

Such a contingency is possible, Mr. President, for we see that France is every year adding to her tax upon cereals, and to-day Russia has imposed a duty of 1¾ cents a pound upon cotton in order to develop her cotton industry.  But when that time shall come, when those countries shall say, "You refuse to receive our manufactured articles and our products, and we will retaliate by refusing to receive your American products," then you will have universal bankruptcy in the agricultural districts, not on account of silver money, but because you have created a balance of trade against us which legitimately belongs to us, but which you have rejected by your high tariff and exclusive prohibitory legislation.

Then the American farmer, when he becomes utterly ruined, utterly bankrupted, will be in a position to appreciate the benefits and the blessings of a high tariff !  But so long as those foreign ports are not closed against us I say that so far as the present conditions of trade can justify any prediction upon the subject it is absolutely impossible to conceive that that balance of trade will be against us.  Therefore, the only objection that is made to the coinage of silver dollars entirely disappears.

Mr. President, the Secretary of the Treasury [William Windom] thought that it was a very forcible argument to address to the American people to tell them if they had free coinage of silver they would all become Chinamen and East Indians and South Americans.  Why ?  I do not know that it is to the interest of any nation in this world to use this as a dumping-ground for silver.  I suppose they have use for their own currency in China, Japan, Mexico, South America, etc.  But the complete answer to that argument is this:  We are not bound by any convention to perpetually coin silver dollars.  There is no proposition here that we shall indefinitely coin silver dollars.  We are not bound by any agreement with anybody to continue the coinage of silver dollars beyond a certain limit.  We are an intelligent people.

We have our own form of government.  We live under our own peculiar institutions.  We do not consult any foreign Government, I believe, with regard to any question of domestic policy.  We can do what we consider for the interests of the people.  If we obtain a sufficient, adequate, and necessary supply of silver dollars under a free-coinage law, we can stop the coinage when we have reached that limit.  We do not propose to imitate any foreign nation.  We are willing to learn, we are willing to be instructed by the experience of other nations, and I would tell some of those Senators on the other side that if we are to imitate the policy of any foreign nation, let us reject the policy of England and of Germany and imitate the policy of France.

Mr. President, there is a striking similarity between the condition of the French people and of the American people on a very vital and important question which brings out in full force the advantages and benefits of the policy of the French Government with regard to financial matters.  In England and Germany there are no small landed proprietors.  In France the great body of the people are small landed proprietors.  The feudal system of titles to realty in France was overthrown by Napoleon I, and he abolished the law of primogeniture and established the law of the equal distribution of estates.  The consequence is that the ambition of a French peasant is to own his little farm.  For other reasons we have that system in this country, of small farmers in the West and in a large portion of the South.

Now, Mr. President, why should we not have as much silver money as France ?  When France discovered that she had a sufficiency of silver money what did she do ?  She suspended the further coinage of it.  And when we shall discover that we have a sufficiency of silver money, we can suspend the coinage of silver.  I am not an inflationist.  I do not wish to give fictitious value to anything in this country.  I do not wish to pass any law that shall cause any injury or detriment to a large class of our people;  but I say that under the free-coinage act you could continue, in my humble judgment, to coin silver dollars for ten years and you would not begin to approach the amount of silver money in France in comparison with the population.

In France they have $18 of silver to $1 that we have in the United States per capita.  Has that caused any disturbance between the two metals ?  Has there been any divorce between the two metals in France ?  Has there been the driving away of one metal by the other metal in France ?  Why, Mr. President, while France has $700,000,000 of silver money she has $900,000,000 of gold money.  The same condition of things exists in France as has existed in this country.  When we were told in 1878 that if you coined those few millions of dollars which we have since coined, you would drive gold out of the United States ---how could it be driven out ?  In 1878 we had $312,000,000 of gold.  In 1880 we had $704,000,000 of gold, an increase of $392,000,000.

It was also said that if you issued these silver certificates representing silver dollars worth 80 cents, and made them receivable at the custom-house, there would be no gold certificates paid for customs, and we would relapse to an exclusive silver basis.  What has been our experience in the last twelve years ?  The gold certificates paid into the custom-house have been largely in excess in amount to those which have been paid in silver certificates.

No, Mr. President, being as conservative upon the financial question as any member of this body can be, I am in favor of the coinage of silver dollars until the American people say that they have enough, and when they say that, I am willing to stop the coinage of silver dollars.  They understand the question as well as we do here.  They know that it is but one phase of that irrepressible conflict which originated the day when the laboring man wiped the sweat from his brow after the close of his first day's labor, and there was money enough in the world to purchase that day's labor.

They know that this is a contest between the great masses of the American people and the concentrated avarice and insolent domination of capital.  They know that this is a contest to destroy the monocratic power of the exclusive gold standard to determine all values in the interest of capital.  But in their moderation, in their conservatism, they make no war upon capital.  They simply ask the right and privilege of free-born Americans to protect themselves against the aggression and destructive war that is made against all values and all labor and all products by capital.  They demand a law which can inflict no injury, loss, damage, or detriment upon a solitary individual in this country.  They demand that you shall restore to them the constitutional currency of this Government;  that you shall place in competition the silver standard dollar and the gold dollar, and that those two metals can struggle, if they choose, for survival of existence.

But, Mr. President, there is no ground to even apprehend that.  I have endeavored to show that it is not possible that there should be the exportation of a solitary gold dollar.  If anybody wants to hoard the gold dollar, that is entirely a different question, and he may do it if he chooses.  Let him hoard his gold dollar if he thinks it is of any profit to him that he should hoard it.  But he has not done it yet, and we will give to the people silver dollars that will buy everything that gold dollars can buy and pay every debt that gold dollars can pay.

Mr. President, this is indeed a very serious question, and we have reached a crisis upon it.  When the Emperor of Germany, commander of a million armed men, ascended his throne the other day, hooted and spurred, with his sword dangling by his side, to have placed upon his head the imperial crown, he ascended that throne by the right of inheritance, and not by the suffrages of the people;  he had made no pledges or promises to his people;  but as soon as he had been seated he heard murmurings among his people;  he heard of strikes among his people;  he heard that capital was oppressing labor;  that capital was absorbing the earnings of labor;  and what did he do ?  His minister, who believed that these great social and economic questions should be settled by the sword and iron, resigned, and he called delegations of workingmen close to his throne;  he heard their complaints;  he studied their situation, and he gave them all helpful encouragement in his power, and sternly admonished the capitalist and employer that this oppression must cease.

But, Mr. President, I am sorry to say that the President of the United States, if his views are reflected upon this silver question by his Secretary of the Treasury, is not as accessible to the American people as the German Emperor has shown himself to be;  he is not as sympathetic with their grievances;  he is not as sensitive to their complaints, or as heedful of their just demands.  But, Mr. President, the remedy is in the hands of the American people, for they and they alone make Senators, Representatives, and Presidents, and they will not much longer remain in the humiliating attitude of being suppliants of Congressional favor or Executive grace.