Extra Session of Congress
for the purpose of eliminating silver as money

Mr. Alexander [Sydenham Benoni Alexander (1840-1921), N.Carolina, D.].  Mr. Speaker, being by profession a farmer and being a member of the Committee on Agriculture of this House, I desire to present that side of this question which addresses itself especially to agriculturists.

In regard to the call of this extraordinary session, the condition of the country warrants it;  but I can not agree with the view announced by the President in his recent message or with that announced by my friend from West Virginia who presided over the Democratic convention at Chicago, that the Sherman silver law is the cause of all our woes.  I admit that the Sherman silver law is the occasion of this panic, but it is not the cause.  I will even go farther and maintain that but for this same Sherman silver law this panic would probably have come a year ago.

Now, this panic, to my mind, has been caused by vicious legislation, not vicious at the time it was adopted, because it was enacted during the war to save the country.  But it has been kept upon the statute books for a course of years during which we have been passing through an industrial revolution.  Let us look back a moment at the days beyond the war and see what was then our condition, when the city people and the country people seemed to be upon an equality.  In that day we had in every township and county mechanics of all classes, shoemakers, wagon-makers, hatters, weavers, tailors, blacksmiths, all classes of laboring men.  At that time this Government issued only gold and silver coin.  At that time the paper money circulating among the people was the issue of the State banks.  The railroad was then a local corporation, and whatever it made in transportation was paid to the stockholders living along the line.  At that time the whole country alike seemed prosperous and happy.

But the war came, and the roads have forked;  the country people have been traveling one road and the city people another.  Now I desire, not in a spirit of antagonism to the cities, to present this view;  but it is just that gentlemen living in our cities should see how hard have been the times upon the farmer.

After the war, when cotton was high, when all commodities commanded war prices, there came upon us a system of banking extending from New England to the Rio Grande, which was totally unsuited to us.  Money was scarce;  it flowed freely from the North to buy our cotton, and at such large prices that we thought we would soon get rich.  But here came the national bank system ---a system which, if you will examine it, you will find can not run a single year without the deposits of the people.  Our people believing that the Government was strong and would protect them, placed their deposits in those banks.  These same national banks became competitors with the people for money.  Why, sir, after the war, many of those institutions did not hesitate to pay 8 or 10 per cent per annum for money to be loaned out at 1, 2, and even as high as 3 per cent per month.

Now the farmers had a hard, hard time.  They had no money.  They were forced to raise money by some means, and it took more money to run the farm after the war than before, because the mechanics had left the country and everything had to come from the stores, and they were forced to get money and pay an enormous interest to the bankers, or to the few who held money, for its use.  And not only that, Mr. Speaker, the railroad system, and I wish to impress this on the minds of members present to show how they have minimized the price of the farmer's products in this country.

Before the war they had no great connections.  But after the war the great railroad system of the country was developed, extending from one side of the country to the other.  If the wheat crop failed east of the Alleghenies it made no difference in the price, because the railroads would bring the wheat from the Dakotas and other sections and place it in the cities of the East;  so that they got it at a minimum price, and the farmer realized no increase in price by reason of a short crop in his locality.  They have carried this system to such a degree of perfection that there is not a farm product in this broad land but has to be marketed in this country at the minimum price on account of this very fact.

To illustrate the effect of the railroad system on farm products more fully, let us take beef cattle for an example.  They are bought in the western country and shipped here all along the mountain ranges from here to Alabama.  True it is dressed beef as a rule but it is so cheap ---that is to say, it is shipped at such a low rate that the minimum price is preserved all along the entire line wherever it is received.  Not only that, sir, but take even cotton:  the mills in my part of the country can receive it, brought from any point in the State of Texas, delivered at the mills, for less than half cent a pound ---and the cost of production must be 2 cents per pound in favor of Texas.

Now, with the crops being marketed at the minimum price, with a greater demand for money than was ever before known in this country, with no chance to get money at a reasonable rate of interest, we find the farmers falling, one after another, in every part of the country, until they become what is known as "time price" men.  Now these time price men are unable to get money in their localities.  Their land and their stock is their entire collateral to offer for it.  But the banks will not take the stock, and they are prohibited by law from taking the land as collateral security.  In this condition of things they have to go to the merchant, and the merchant having to run risks in carrying so many of them not only the risk whether the man will live to carry out his contract but the risk of the seasons, have to charge exceedingly high prices;  so that you find that the "time price men" have paid from 40 to as high as 300 per cent for the use of money, for they all have to use merchandise to a great extent, instead of money.

Mr. Speaker, they have a term (I believe it extends from here to the Rio Grande) known as "running a man."  When a man can not borrow any money from a bank or the few who have it, he is compelled to go to the merchant and be "run" by him, as the term is.  Now, whoever started that word was as fortunate in the selection as the man who started the term "carpet-bagger" in the South.  Because the man is actually run.  It runs him all the entire year and when the year ends he finds, when he settles up, nothing to go on, and he is ready to start in on another year's "run."  This condition of things, this usurious interest that they are compelled to pay, has brought the entire farming population of the country from here to Texas, almost to the verge of ruin.  It is indeed a very serious condition.

Now let us see how it affected the cities.  The national banks got most of the money ---that is, the money of the city people and the money of all such country people as would put it into them and the people that could be induced to lend it to them at 4, 6, or 8 per cent.  Not only that, but there was a system of bank checks by which the currency of the cities was augmented to an unlimited amount.  This system of bank checks answered the city people as money.  Many a time when I would go into the city I could see every man paying his debts with checks, and no money was needed even in traveling here and there.  The check book was all that was wanted and no money was required.  Consequently, they could more than double or treble the capacity of the volume of money, or its equivalent for use.  But the man who knows the worth of money knows well that the largest volume controls those who have the least.

Now, sir, not only that, but it enabled them to double up their securities and use them as money.  Take, for example a man who had $100,000 worth of railroad bonds.  Say he went and borrowed $75,000 on the bonds, he did not receive any money.  He simply had $75,000 entered in his bank book, and received a check book and when he wanted to put that money in circulation he did not pay out actual money;  he gave his check, which passed instead of money.  Now in this way they doubled up the amount of securities, the amount of money,  or that which served as money, until the term "prosperous" for cities seemed to lose its meaning and there came in a new term, "boom."

The great cities were on a boom, and they prospered as they never prospered before.  They controlled everything, and the cities that had the greatest amount of securities to hypothecate, under this system of bank checks, controlled the greatest amount of property;  and hence you see that in the great cities they own all the railroads and all the interest-bearing bonds and almost all other interest-bearing securities.  Now this gives them a most wonderful advantage.  This system has broken down, and that is what has caused this panic.  It very nearly came before.  Have gentlemen forgotten that only a few years ago they had to telegraph the Secretary of the Treasury to go to New York for consultation, and that he had to purchase bonds in order to relieve the pressure ?  Have they forgotten that from $40,000,000 to $60,000,000 of the people's money were kept in the national banks in order that the people might not be distressed for currency ?  In any one of those years if a single bank had failed, another one possibly would have failed, and another, and this crisis would have come.

Now, I can not see how the Sherman law, issuing one hundred and forty-odd millions of dollars, should have anything to do with this panic.  In other words, if the situation was relieved in New York by the Secretary of the Treasury buying the bonds of the Government and the deposit of money in the national banks, it was just simply the want of currency that threatened the panic, and how could the $140,000,000 of currency issued under the Sherman silver bill have produced the panic ?  That is one thing that I can not really understand.

As my friend from Indiana [Mr. Cooper] says, 90 per cent of the business of the country was done by checks and evidences of credit.  Now, that system having broken down, it resolved itself just into this condition.  Suppose you had a water mill that only had 10-horse power, and you supplemented that by an engine of 90-horse power, in order to do the work of a mill that required 100-horse power.  Suppose that 90-horse-power engine broke down or collapsed, could your water power of only 10-horse power keep all that machinery in motion.  Why, certainly not.  It would be bound to stop, and that it just what has clogged the wheels of this country.

Go to your own internal-revenue offices and you will find the collectors will not take a single check.  They want currency.  Go to every railroad or corporation of any kind and you will find they will want currency.  Go to your hotels and they ask for currency.  The system by which we could do business with checks has failed;  and when it collapsed we were thrown back upon the little power remaining, and that has clogged the wheels of commerce.

Now, Mr. Speaker, the only way I can see to relieve this panic is by currency.  It prevented it several times in previous years.  One of the wisest of our Secretaries of the Treasury once called attention to the fact that the financial system, with which we are now dealing, had its severest strain in the months of August and September;  and the reason he assigned was that there was no elasticity in the system, and that currency was demanded at that time to move the crops.  The money had to leave the money centers, and as the crops of the country increased, the necessity for more money becoming so great, there was not elasticity enough to furnish the money by which they could move the crops and transact the business in the cities.  Now, if that is true, there can be no question but that it will take currency to relieve the situation;  and I would no more hesitate to vote for one hundred or two hundred or three hundred millions of legal-tender notes, and get them into circulation among the people at once, to relieve the pressure of this panic, than I would hesitate to vote for it for the defense of this country if it was invaded by a foreign foe.  The amount of property that may be destroyed may even exceed that which would be destroyed by a foreign enemy.

The condition that confronts us is really sad and serious.  We find the crops of this entire country ready to move and not a dollar to move them.  I see in a paper that in my own State, where a man has brought into a town a bale of cotton;  he could not sell it, because there was no money to buy it.  Now, under the present condition of things, if this Congress does not relieve this country at once, and if the farmers of the country are robbed of their year's labor, there is going to be trouble.  The mechanics in great cities are already thrown out of employment, by reason of the fact that there is nobody to buy the goods which they make.  Probably some of them are now suffering for the breadstuffs of life.  So that it is a serious condition that confronts us, and it is urgent, immediate relief that this country demands.  It reminds me of an old Methodist minister who tried to organize a church.  They met in March, and while discussing what salary they would pay, one brother rose and said:  "Why, brethren;  we can't tell what kind of crops we are going to have.  Let us postpone this thing until next August and let us see then."  The old minister rose up and said:  "My brothers, that old gray horse that is hitched to that hickory tree is mine, and if we can get along without your assistance till next August we will not need it."

And it is pretty true of the condition of the farmers.  If they do not get this relief by the middle of October, they will be so virtually ruined that all you will have to do, will be to pass the Torrey bankruptcy bill that was offered in the last House.  The necessity for immediate relief is pressing.  In the bills before me I can see no immediate relief.  If there is any relief at all, it is that which is offered by the gentleman from Missouri [Mr. Bland];  but if you would run your mints and run them night and day, you could not coin enough silver dollars in time to relieve the present condition.  So that I would like to have seen offered to this House a bill which would immediately relieve this country and start the wheels of commerce and trade in motion.

While I am on the floor I want to call attention to a financial system that we probably ought to adopt.  I have studied over this question of how the farming classes might be relieved.  I have tried to show to you that they had no means by which they could pool their assets and use them as money, as city people use checks.  I have tried to show that they required more actual money in their farming operations now than they did before the war, and the only system that I can see by which they could be relieved after this pressure has passed is by State banks, a repeal of the tax upon State bank circulation.  Most people urge as a reason why the tax on State bank circulation ought not to be repealed is because it is not good everywhere ---that a bill from North Carolina will not pass in Ohio or in Indiana.  Mr. Speaker, that is the very reason I advocate it.  If that bill was good everywhere, we could no more keep it than we can keep these national bank bills.  It is the very fact that it is not good everywhere that makes it return to its place of issue;  and as the people who know the banks know whether it is good or not, they are the ones for whose benefit it remains, and they are the ones to be benefited by it, and they will take it and it serves them as money.  Rather than see that fail, I would urge that the 10 per cent tax on the State bank circulation be amended so that it would place a tax on the bill in a State different from that in which it was issued.  That would keep these State bank bills from going into States where they were not wanted.

Many gentlemen who have not been engaged in farming do not know how important it is for the farmers to have money from May to August, which is the time in which the crop is made.  If, by reason of drought or any untimely circumstance, they are out of money, $20, $30, or $50 is a big thing to them;  and when they can not get that, and have to go to the store and buy goods to exchange for labor, it makes the interest too high.  Now, if they can get this old banking system, the farmers can pool their assets in the State banks;  they can put their money in there as they have done before in this country.  In North Carolina over 80 per cent of the stock of the State banks before the war was owned by the farmers of the State, and to-day there is less than 10 per cent of the national-bank stock owned by farmers.  Another fact I would like to call attention to, and it is that, no matter what system the United States Government might adopt, it can not fit every section of this country alike.  There would be some who would be benefited more than others.  Now this local circulation that would go only among the people in the State in which it was issued would relieve that condition.  I am satisfied that it would give satisfaction upon a trial.

In regard to silver, Mr. Speaker, money according to the definition where I come from, is simply a medium of exchange.  We recognize that this Government can not give to money more than four powers the power to represent value, the power to exchange value, the power to measure value, and the power to accumulate by interest.

Now, the question is, what will the Government make that money out of.  That may be a matter of policy, or it may be a matter of necessity.  But our people have been taught that gold and silver was the best to make money out of.  They know that gold and silver has seen empire after empire go down;  that there is no nation that has survived its use;  and then many of them recollect that during the late war, when the Confederacy first issued its notes, they were as good as gold, and exchangeable for gold, but as the war proceeded and the fortunes of the Confederacy commenced to waver, they knew that gold and silver would survive the wreck of the Confederacy and everyone would prefer money made of gold and silver.

All country people prefer it, for the reason, among others, that if a house is burned down the money is not totally destroyed, the bullion may still be recovered, and because rats can not destroy it as they can destroy bills.  Recognizing that gold and silver money as being stronger than the Government itself, they feel that it is good enough for them.  But the most pressing question at this time is not what kind of money there shall be, or what it shall be made of, but how much of it is to be issued and kept worth a hundred cents on the dollar ?  That is the great question with them.  They prefer gold and silver, but they want enough of it to do the business of the country and to relieve this pressure.

Mr. Speaker, I have not time to describe to this House the true condition of our farmers.  It would take too long, but if I had the time I know that the remarks that I would make about the farmers in my part of the country would apply as well to those of New Hampshire, New York, Minnesota, or other States.  The same condition is extending everywhere.  I have seen in agricultural papers accounts of abandoned farms in Rhode Island, abandoned farms in New Hampshire and other States, with complaints of the difficulty of making both ends meet.

Now, as this financial policy has been kept in force all these years by the Republican party, there having been no change of law permitted, the people are looking to the Democratic party for a new and more equitable system;  and I say here to-day that if the Democratic party comes up fully and squarely to the requirements of the situation, there will be no question whatever as to their remaining in power for all time to come, because the true habitat of democracy is among the people of our country who labor in production.

Mr. Speaker, as I may not have another opportunity to discuss the measures that are brought forward here for the relief of the existing distress, I will call attention to some of them now.  The bill of Mr. Johnson of Ohio is good, as far as it goes, as a means of getting out more money at once among the people.  The next bill that I hear of is one which proposes to authorize an increase of the issue of the national banks to 100 per cent of their bond deposits.  To that our people are opposed.  We do not like that system.  It is the system that has accumulated the money of the country at certain centers and has come in competition with everybody by borrowing money.

Not only that, Mr. Speaker;  when the Farmers' Alliance met in St. Louis in 1889 and promulgated the demand known as the subtreasury plan, I do not suppose there were a half-dozen men in that body who had any idea that that plan would ever be enacted into a law, but it was simply used to educate the people, and especially to educate them in regard to the national banks, because the farmers regarded those banks as no more than subtreasuries.  Why should five gentlemen who owned 3,000 bales of cotton, or 100,000 bushels of wheat, why should they not be allowed to warehouse it and draw 90 per cent of currency upon it as well as five gentlemen who own $100,000 in United States bonds ?  The subTreasury suggestion of the Farmers' Alliance was directed purely and squarely at that system, and I must confess that our farmers can not see the difference between the two cases.  The bonds are private property, the Government has nothing to do with them except to pay them as they become due.  In like manner the cotton and the wheat are private property.

Not only that, Mr. Speaker, even this Sherman silver law creates a subtreasury.  It brings the product of the mine and warehouses it, and pays for it dollar for dollar at the market price.  In making that fight we simply desired to educate our farmers so that they will be able to protect themselves, because we believed that this very kind of situation was going to come about very soon.  We did not think it would be quite so extensive as it seems to be in the cities, but we saw that the condition of the farmer would be just what it is.  We can not see any reason why the United States should pay a man, simply because he calls himself a banker, 100 cents on the dollar, and interest on the bonds besides.

We want money that is not tampered with by the corporations.  We want money direct from the Government, and if corporations are to have anything whatever to do with the issue of currency, let them be governed in their own States so that no influences can be brought to bear by which such a state of affairs as we now have can be made to recur.

Now, I do not want to believe that the bankers have had anything to do with this panic, because bankers are the last men in the world to want a panic.  A capitalist engaged in legitimate business is one of the last men in the world who would want a panic.  But this state of affairs does exist, and it strikes me with peculiar force that if the Sherman law is repealed and confidence is restored to the country, and money comes out from its hiding places, and business starts up again ---if these things come to pass, I say, it will seem to me very much as if the forty men described by the gentleman from Alabama [Mr. Wheeler] who, he said, could stop the wheels of trade and commerce, had got together and decided to start it up again. [Laughter]

In conclusion I simply urge this House to take into consideration the present condition of the country.  The people need relief at once;  and we should lose no time whatever in furnishing this relief.  Afterward we can settle these other questions.  I hope that the House will not delay longer the passage of that measure which will bring to the people the relief that is needed. [Applause.]

Mr. Settle [Thomas Settle (1865-1919), N.Carolina, R; studied law, admitted to the bar].  Mr. Speaker, in common with many members on this floor, I represent a constituency divided in opinion upon the questions now pending in this House;  divided, I believe, not along party lines, but along the line of honest difference of opinion as to what is the best remedy that can be offered for the present unfortunate condition of our country.  Something has been said on this floor in the course of this debate about financial "evolution."  I refer to that simply as a basis for the remark that I believe there is no State in this Union whose citizens have felt the effects of that "evolution" more than have the people of North Carolina.  In the recent contest the Democratic party formed its line of battle on this subject with two distinct utterances in its State platform, the first of which was that "We especially favor the free coinage of silver and an increase of the currency."  Not content with the enunciation of their position there made, further on in the platform we find the statement that "We demand the free and unlimited coinage of silver."  Every Democratic organ in the State of North Carolina advocated that financial policy throughout the campaign.  Every distinguished speaker of that party who enlightened his audiences on the subject of finance, committed himself and his party, State and national, in unequivocal terms to the advocacy of the free and unlimited coinage of silver.

The Republican party fought that campaign with the declaration that it was not in favor of the free and unlimited coinage of silver under existing conditions, and that never would it come to that point until there was an international agreement fixing the ratio upon which the two metals should be coined;  that the furthest they could ever go was to the enactment of some law looking to the coinage of the American product only.

In my campaign, on every stump from which I spoke, I took the position that I was opposed to the free and unlimited coinage of silver under existing conditions, and that the furthest I could go was, as I have already stated, to favor the coinage of the American product.  The Democratic party, with its line of battle formed otherwise, was successful in the nation as in North Carolina.

In less than four months after the inauguration of the Democratic President, the Democratic press of North Carolina, almost without exception, certainly without important exception, had reversed their machinery, repudiated the doctrine of the free coinage of silver, said that it was unsound finance, and that they were opposed to it.  Nearly every speaker that had participated in that campaign, in conversation and in public utterance, said that it was unwise and that he was opposed to it.  This condition of things, Mr. Speaker, continued to exist until quite recently, when the distinguished representative from North Carolina, who occupies a seat in the other Chamber, addressed a letter to one of the Farmers' Alliance orders in North Carolina, in which he said that he was for the platform which declared for the free and unlimited coinage of silver.

The Democratic speakers to whom I have referred joined issue with him.  The Democratic press of North Carolina repudiated his utterances, said that they regretted exceedingly that that distinguished gentleman could not follow his party, and denied the fact that the Democratic platform adopted at Chicago committed the party to the free and unlimited coinage of silver.  That has been the utterance, Mr. Speaker, of nearly every Democratic paper in North Carolina since the publication of Senator Vance's letter.  I quote two utterances of the Charlotte Observer, the leading Democratic paper of the State:

There is to be no free coinage of silver under this platform declaration, because it has been amply demonstrated since it was adopted that under a system of free silver coinage parity demanded could not be maintained, the two metals being now under a system of limited coinage of silver, on the verge of parting company.  Neither is the country to be reduced to a monometallic basis, gold being the only recognized money, but the two metals are to be coined and made to circulate together upon terms of equality ---or, as the platform has it, "of equal intrinsic and exchangeable value."

We have no words with which to express our regret on account of the attitude taken by Senator Vance in his letter published in yesterday's Observer.  We had much hoped that he would see his way clear to take a position with his party in favor of the repeal of the Sherman law, and of such further financial legislation as the national Democratic platform suggests ---the coinage of silver upon such basis as will insure its circulation upon a parity with gold.

We cannot but think, in view of recent events, that either the free coinage of silver or the Sherman law will defeat the very object the silver men have in view.  And again, while nothing could possibly be further from the purpose of this patriot and. illustrious citizen, we can clearly foresee that the general tenor of his letter will greatly embolden the Third party and add immensely to its strength.  In view of the certainty of a combination next year between the Republicans and Populists, this is to be particularly deplored, for at best the contest in North Carolina. is to be close and doubtful, the disappointments following the accession to power of a party which has been out, rendering the maintenance of its position, in the first election thereafter, always uncertain.  It would be idle to deny that Senator Vance's public and deliberate avowal of sympathy with the financial policy of the Farmers' Alliance complicates the situation immeasurably.

What has been the fruit of that publication ?  To-day there is an ominous silence on the part of the majority of the press of that State.  Leading and prominent politicians are silent as a grave without a tombstone when called upon for a direct utterance as to the free and unlimited coinage of silver.  They have reefed their sails and put themselves in shape to catch any breeze that may come along, so that after the action of Congress is had they may be able to say, "I told you so."

I believe that in North Carolina the opinion which I express is not confined to any one class of her citizens.  Regardless of party, regardless of vocation, there is an honest difference of opinion as to what Congress might to do upon these pending questions.  Numerous boards of trade and chambers of commerce have passed resolutions asking for unconditional repeal of the Sherman silver law.  I believe that I voice almost the universal sentiment of the business interests of North Carolina when I say that they call for the repeal of the Sherman silver law.

What weight, Mr. Speaker, should the opinions of men engaged in business interests, whose lives have been devoted to the study of financial and economic questions, what weight, I ask, should their opinions have upon the questions pending now before Congress ?  I respectfully submit that the honest opinion candidly expressed of such are worth more, when we are seeking an intelligent solution of these questions, than the opinions of persons whose lives have not led them into that line of thought or research.

Something has been said upon this floor to the effect that the message of the President was inspired not by the voice of the toiling masses, the honest yeomanry of the land, as they are sometimes called in political campaigns, but that it had its inspiration from the banking institutions and the capitalists of this country.  I believe, Mr. Speaker, that the voice of the toiling and laboring masses of my State call not for the free and unlimited coinage of silver;  simply do they ask for an increase in the circulating medium of this country.

We are not wedded to the free coinage of silver.  That is but one way suggested to increase the currency.  Our demand is for an increase of the currency, and, as a Republican from the State of North Carolina, I voice the sentiment of the Republicans of that State when I say I am not willing that there shall be any increase of the currency that does not increase it with sound and good money [Applause] ---money that is equal in debt paying and purchasing power in Maine and in Florida, on the shores of the Atlantic and on the shores of the Pacific.  In every part of this country of ours must that money which increases the circulation be equally good and sound ---not money which is shaved and discounted when it crosses a State line.

I believe, further, Mr. Speaker, that there is nothing so unwise as to advocate an increase of the currency of this country by the issue of a depreciated and ever-changing form of money.  In my humble judgment we are not subserving the interest of the laboring classes when we increase the currency in that manner;  for I believe firmly that the cheaper money, the fluctuating money, is always the money that finds the pockets of the poor man.  The laboring man receives pay for his work in the depreciated coin;  the farmer sells his products and receives in exchange depreciated coin;  the fixed and stable currency of the country, constantly appreciating, is and always will be, by the inflexible laws of trade and commerce, hoarded in banks and under the control of the capitalists of a country that issues various forms of currency that can not be maintained upon a parity.

So far, Mr. Speaker, from believing it to be in the interest of the toiling masses to increase the currency of this country with free silver, I believe no greater curse can befall them than a constantly changing, ever-fluctuating money for the poor man, a fixed, permanent, constantly-appreciating money for the rich man.

Mr. Speaker, I had not intended to ask the attention of the House in this debate, thinking I would content myself with the opportunity of recording my vote, which would explain my attitude before my constituents.  But we are summoned here to a feast by the proclamation of the President;  and the majority of this House have prepared a bill of fare without consultation with us or inquiry of us as to what our appetites called for.  We are bidden to eat what is put before us.

No opportunity is afforded any member of the minority here to offer a single amendment to the pending propositions.  The order of debate, the bill of fare, is all prepared in a committee or conference, the selection of which was without consultation with the minority.  Our opinions have not been consulted.  Our views are disregarded.  We are brought up here and our hands are attempted to be tied;  and we are to vote simply upon the propositions which they submit.  In debate even, we as the minority are not allowed to control a portion of the time.

I do not agree with those gentlemen who say that a vote for the unconditional repeal of the Sherman silver law now means the establishment of a single standard in this country.  I believe that under existing conditions it is wholly impracticable to coin the world's silver at any of the ratios suggested by the gentleman from Missouri without utterly revolutionizing our financial system, and instead of blessing, cursing the agricultural and laboring classes of our people.

Mr. Speaker, I have sat in this hall listening to these debates;  loud, long, earnest, and appealing have been the utterances of the advocates of free silver in behalf of the "toiling masses" of this country.  They speak as though they were shedding tears of sympathy which would cause the rivers to rise or wash gulleys in the mountain's side.  "Great blessings" they say, "shall be laid at your door if you will only be blessed in the way we say;  but if you will not, then be damned."

Nothing short of the free coinage of silver will they agree to.  Even those who advocate the free coinage of silver admit that the purchase clause of the Sherman silver law should be repealed.  But they say, "If you once repeal the purchasing clause of that law the advantage which would thereby be given to the advocates of the President's financial policy is such that they could not be induced or compelled to surrender at a later stage of this game."

That argument, it seems to me, proceeds upon an assumption of great virtue and wisdom on their side and an accusation of turpitude and ignorance on the side of all who differ with them.  They have made, according to their argument, a "corner" on patriotism, and all who differ with them have none of that article about them.  I believe, Mr. Speaker, that no lasting financial policy can be enacted at this time in one bill.  It is a cherry of such dimensions that we must take more than one bite at it.  And I do not agree with the idea that if the purchasing clause be repealed no further financial legislation will follow at this session.

One reason assigned for the condition existing in this country at present by the Democrats who have spoken on this subject is what they call want of confidence.  I had a vague idea of the meaning of that term before I came to this hall;  but thanks to the members of the majority I have an enlarged and expanded idea of its significance now;  and it seems to me that they have the disease in a more violent form than any other part of our country.  They undertake to restore confidence.  They are the physicians ministering to our wants;  they assume the responsibility of taking the initiative, and properly so, as they are in the majority.  But how can they expect to restore "confidence" to the sick patient when they fall out among themselves and each physician accuses the other of prescribing medicine which will not build up and restore the patient, but which will kill him ?  Yet, the free-silver men claim that it is the object and aim of all who differ with them to establish a single gold standard and bring forth a train of disasters which I have not words to picture.  The gold advocates in that party charge the same motive upon the silver advocates.  It does seem to me, Mr. Speaker, that the condition in which the majority of this House finds itself to-day is one which they have brought upon themselves with their eyes open.

When the President of the United States received their votes ---when they argued in his favor during the campaign--- they had before them the letter which he had written just prior to his inauguration in 1884.  They went to the polls with their eyes open and cast then ballots;  and it does seem that the principle of law which declares that a juror shall not be permitted to impeach his verdict should estop them from the utterances they make on this floor. [Laughter and applause]

I stand here, Mr. Speaker, certainly not endeavoring to correct any inconsistency on the part of the President, because in this matter, it seems to me, he is consistent and that his critics are inconsistent.  I listened to the gentleman from Colorado, I think it was, as he spoke advancing the ideas of his party, the Populists, when he said that, in comparison, this question of finance towered above the tariff question;  that Wall street had its fingers on the throat of this country and was tightening its grasp;  that Wall street's power over money and men was without limit, and they were in touch with the Executive of the country in favor of a single gold standard.  I could not help thinking, when listening to him, that if all that were true we may reasonably conclude that with the immense power attributed to the street, Wall street might at least control the State of New York.  How was it, then, that in the convention at Chicago, New York stood solidly opposed to the President throughout all of the ballots ?  If its interests are so selfish as they claim, if it has no heart that sympathizes with the masses of the people, why should we find the influence of that street steadily opposing the nomination of the President ?  It simply carries to my mind this fact, that the argument advanced in favor of the free coinage of silver is an argument like the straws at which drowning men are said to catch.

Now, sir, in the limited time allotted to me to express my views on this pending question I can say but little else.  I wish it to be distinctly understood that I am in favor of bimetallism.  I am not in favor of striking down silver entirely as money in this country, but I stand now, as I stood during the last campaign before my constituents, unalterably opposed to the free coinage of the world's silver in the absence of an international agreement fixing the parity between the two metals. [Applause.]

I stand now, as I said then, unalterably opposed to the inflation of the currency of this country with a fluctuating and changeable money, believing that in that position I am on the side of the business interests of the country, and also on the side of the toiling, laboring masses of our country.  Because, Mr. Speaker, the laboring masses above all others need a fixed, permanent, and stable currency.

I know not how my friends on this side of the Chamber are going to vote on this question, but for myself, favoring an increase of the currency with good money, I shall record my vote in opposition to all the scheduled variety offered to us by the gentleman from Missouri and in favor of the only digestible part of the bill of fare that has been presented ---that offered by the gentleman from West Virginia [Mr. Wilson]. [Applause.]

Mr. Allen.  If the gentleman has time I would like to know what is his scheme to increase the currency ?

Mr. Boutelle.  The gentleman from North Carolina can hardly go outside of the present schedule that has been offered here by that side.

Mr. Settle.  I do not recognize the responsibility of suggesting the road that leads out of this wilderness as resting with the minority on this floor. [Applause.]  But I say that had you not tied our hands, and cut us off from offering an amendment, I have no doubt that many amendments would have been presented by members on this side of the Chamber looking to an increased currency with good and sound money. [Applause.]

One remedy that might be suggested, and the proposition I would like an opportunity to vote upon, would be the free coinage of the American product, protected by a tariff on any foreign silver that might be brought in. [Applause.]

Another amendment I would like to vote on would be the plan suggested by the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Johnson] of private holders of Government bonds in the United States hypothecating them with the Treasury and receiving Treasury notes to the full value of the bond, said bond to draw no interest while so deposited, with power at any time subsequently to redeem the bonds. [Renewed applause.]

That far I would go, I will say in answer to the gentleman from Mississippi, not recognizing the responsibility as resting upon this side, under the circumstances, for proposing any plan in this emergency. [Applause.]

Evening Session.

The recess having expired, the House, at 8 o'clock p.m., resumed its session (Mr. Richardson of Tennessee in the chair as Speaker pro tempore).

Silver.

The House resumed the consideration of the bill (H.R. 1) to repeal a part of an act, approved July 14, 1890, entitled "An act directing the purchase of silver bullion and the issue of Treasury notes thereon, and for other purposes."

Mr. McLaurin [John Lowndes McLaurin (1860-1934), S.Carolina, D;  studied law, admitted to the bar].  Mr. Speaker, being a new member, I had intended to leave the discussion of the silver question to more experienced heads.  I can not hope to add much that is new, in figures or statistics, to a question which has been so exhaustively discussed, nor do I propose to weary the House by the attempt.  The gravity of the situation demands that every section should be heard from, and I think that, in what I shall say, I voice the sentiments not only of those I have the honor to directly represent, but that I voice the sentiments of the great masses of the Southern people.

The President tells us that we are in the midst of a panic.  That---

Our unfortunate financial plight is not the result of untoward events nor of conditions related to our natural resources;  nor is it traceable to any of the afflictions which frequently check national growth and prosperity.  With plenteous crops, with abundant promise of remunerative production and manufacture, with unusual invitation to safe investment, and with satisfactory assurance to business enterprise, suddenly financial distrust and fear have sprung up on every side.

This depicts a strange condition of affairs to produce a panic.  Whose panic is it ?  Can it be, Mr. Speaker, that we have advanced to that high state of civilization where we not only produce artificial rain and make artificial eggs, but when a few financial wizards can precipitate an artificial panic ?  This is not the people's panic;  they disown it;  it is preeminently the rich man's panic.

Mr. George Gould, the other day, upon his return from a trip to Europe, gave the New York World some information upon the subject of the panic.  Mr. Gould said:

To sum up briefly, I should very much dislike to be compelled to raise $10,000,000.  Well, so should I, gentlemen.  I doubt very much if I could do it by Monday or Tuesday.  I am sure I could not.

Mr. Bryan.  He has got down to a common level.

Mr. McLaurin.  Yes;  has got where the balance of us have been all the time.

The situation ---said Mr. Gould--- is extremely bad.  There will not be any improvement either until the Sherman law is repealed or so modified as to restore confidence;  and the financiers of the country completely lack confidence just now, and it is natural, too, that they should.  You do not want silver.  I do not want silver.  Gold is the only honest and equitable currency for the people, and gold we want.

It is not the people who want gold.  I deny that.  It is not the people who lack confidence.  I know men just as patriotic as he, and who add infinitely more to our material wealth than Mr. Gould, who yet have confidence in their country and her institutions.

There have been some of the most remarkable arguments adduced upon the floor of this House in favor of a gold standard that I ever beard.  But the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Cooper] capped the climax the other day, when he said that we must destroy the gold which enabled these men from the East to go down to Florida, for in Florida they depended for their support upon a winter's crop of Yankees. [Laughter.]  In other words, Mr. Speaker, if you want to pluck the goose, you must feed him.  Our staple crops in South Carolina are cotton and corn.  We have no Yankee goose feathers for our winter supply;  but from my experience, brief though it was, with the Florida hotels, they need not only a goose with plenty of feathers, but one that lays a golden egg, and the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Cooper] was right. [Laughter]

Mr. Speaker, I charge that even under this so-called makeshift, silver has not had a fair chance.  I say that silver has been stabbed with a Brutus dagger in the house of those who, if platforms amount to anything, ought to be its friends.  The President says that under the operations of the Sherman act, between May 1, 1892, and July 15, 1893, $54,000,000 of Treasury notes were put out, and $49,000,000 of them were redeemed in gold.  Is it any wonder that the gold reserve is depleted ?  The law provides for the purchase of 4,500,000 ounces of silver bullion each month, and for an issue of legal-tender Treasury notes against the same.  These notes are redeemable in coin, and certainly coin is either gold or silver;  yet silver was kept locked up in the vaults while the notes were redeemed in gold.  And this in the face of the provision of law that "no greater or less amount of such notes shall be outstanding at any time than the cost of the silver bullion and the standard silver dollars coined therefrom then held in the Treasury purchased by such notes."

The gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Harter] says:

That we ought to extend to the national banks this privilege of issuing circulating notes up to 100 per cent of their bonds deposited as security for their notes.

The next thing to be done is this:  I believe that, as prudent business men, we ought to authorize the Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, with the concurrence of the President, at any time, in any amount, and at any price, to sell "3-30" year 3 per cent bonds of the United States for two purposes:  First, to maintain the parity of all the paper and coined money of the United States, and, second, to meet the debts of the United States as rapidly as they mature.  This measure would forever maintain the credit of the United States, and yet I doubt whether, under its provisions, there would be in the next twenty years $200 of United States bonds offered for sale by any Secretary.

It is not hard to discover why this lack of confidence on the part of these financiers.  An issue of gold bonds payable in gold is the panac&ealig; offered;  or else they propose to authorize the national banks to increase their circulation to the full value of their bonds.  In either case the remedy is at the expense of the producer, and there will be no increase in our currency except as these national bankers see fit.  No money outside of national-bank notes and gold.  In other words, as one of the speakers so forcibly said, "put the gold of the world upon the auction block and sell it to the highest bidder."  Throw away as worthless for money our own silver that we may build up a system of credit money based upon gold and entirely within the control of the holders of gold.

The farmers and laborers of this country have done their duty.  The President says, "Crops were never more plenteous," and yet financial statesmanship of the party proposes to borrow gold from abroad to keep the governmental machinery in motion.

In less than fourteen years about five hundred and fifty million of our bonds became due.  Our bonded debt was contracted upon a currency basis, many of them costing the original holders from 40 to 70 cents on the dollar in gold.  In the fortieth Congress Senator Sherman said:

Every State in this Union, without exception, has made its contracts since the legal-tender clause in currency and paid them in currency.

And again:

If the bondholder refuse to take the same kind of money with which he bought the bond, he is an extortioner and a repudiator.  No bond or other Government obligation was made payable in gold.  The interest upon the bond was payable in coin, the principal of the original bond in "lawful money," and of the refunding bonds in coin.

Can it be that the astute holders of these securities, looking fourteen years ahead, through the demonetization of silver, propose to become the "extortioners and repudiators" spoken of by Senator Sherman ?  There are two kinds of repudiation ---one by the debtor, the other by the creditor.  When gold becomes the only legal-tender-coin, and its representative the only lawful money, then all public and private debts become payable in gold.

It is refreshing to note how wonderfully tender these advocates of monometallism are of the poor "workingman" who has to buy in this "depreciated coin."  As long as it buys $1 worth of meat and flour, why is it not just as good as any other dollar ?  If they are sincere, and think it is such an injustice to the workingman, why does one of the gentlemen propose that silver shall be legal tender for all sums under $10 ?  In other words, this "poor workingman" they shed such tears over shall receive his Saturday night's wages in this despised silver, but the interest and principal of their bond shall be wrung from the sweat of the same workingman in gold. [Applause]

I have been amazed to hear gentlemen attempt to justify the demonetization of silver in 1873 and eulogize those who were responsible for it.  Truly, it is a pretty sight;  a sight to make devils laugh.  The lion and the lamb lie down together;  their swords are beaten into golden pruning hooks.  The senior Senator from Ohio [Mr. Sherman], the archetype of Republicanism, spokesman of a Democratic Administration in the other end, the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Harter], the high priest of tariff reform, excusing Republican infamy in this end !  The story of how this was accomplished has been told too frequently upon the floor of this House for me to now rehash it.  I will simply say that the masses of the people believe that it was done by fraud, and that President Grant did not know when he approved the bill that it struck down at a blow one-half of the money of the country;  that at a stroke of the pen he doubled the debts of the people, with a corresponding increase in the wealth of the creditor class.

Demonetization in 1873.

Last summer there went the rounds of the press the affidavit of one Fred Luckenbach, setting forth the part Ernest Seyd played in the drama of demonetization;  which I give as follows:

State of Colorado, County of Arapahoe,

Frederick A. Luckenbach, being first duly sworn on oath, deposes and says: I am 62 years of age.  I was born in Bucks county, Pennsylvania.  I removed to the city of Philadelphia in the year 1846, and continued to reside there until 1866, when I removed to the city of New York.  In Philadelphia, I was in the furniture business.  In New York, I branched into machinery and inventions, and am the patentee of Luckenbach’s pneumatic pulverizer, which machines are now in use generally in the eastern part of the United States and in Europe.  I now reside in Denver, having removed from New York two years ago.  I am well known in New York.  I have been a member of the produce exchange and am well acquainted with many members of that body.  I am well known by Mr. Erastus Wyman.

In the year 1865 I visited London, England for the purpose of placing there, Pennsylvania oil properties in which I was interested.  I took with me letters of introduction to many gentlemen in London — among them one to Mr. Ernest Seyd from Robert M. Foust, ex-Treasurer of Philadelphia.  I became well acquainted with Mr. Seyd and with his brother Richard Seyd, who I understand is yet living.  I visited London thereafter every year, and at each visit renewed my acquaintance with Mr. Seyd and upon each occasion became his guest one or more times — joining his family at dinner or other meals.

In February 1874 while on one of these visits and while his guest for dinner, I among other things alluded to rumors afloat of parliamentary corruption and expressed astonishment that such corruption should exist.  In reply to this, he told me he could relate facts about the corruption of the American Congress that would place it far ahead of the English Parliament in that line.  So far, the conversation was at the dinner table between us.  His brother Richard and others were there also, but this was table talk between Mr. Ernest Seyd and myself.  After the dinner ended, he invited me to another room where he resumed the conversation about legislative corruption.  He said:  “If you will pledge me your honor as a gentleman not to divulge what I am about to tell while I live, I will convince you that what I said about the corruption of the American Congress is true.”  I gave him the promise, and he then continued.  “I went to America in the winter of 1872-73, authorized to secure, if I could, the passage of a bill demonetizing silver.  It was to the interest of those I represented — the governors of the Bank of England — to have it done.

"I took with me £100,000 sterling, with instructions if that was not sufficient to accomplish the object to draw for another £100,000 or as much more as was necessary.” He told me, German bankers were also interested in having it accomplished.

He said he was the financial adviser of the bank.  He said: “I saw the committees of the House and Senate and paid the money and stayed in America until I knew the measure was safe.”  I asked if he would give me the names of the members to whom he paid the money — but this he declined to do.  He said:  “Your people will not now comprehend the far-reaching extent of that measure — but they will in after years. Whatever you may think of corruption in the English Parliament, I assure you I would not have dared to make such an attempt here, as I did in your country.”  I expressed my shame to him, for my countrymen in our legislative bodies.  The conversation drifted into other subjects, and after that — though I met him many times — the matter was never again referred to.

(Signed) Frederick A. Luckenbach.
Subscribed and sworn to before me at Denver, this ninth day of May, A.D. 1892.
(Signed) James A. Miller,
[seal] Clerk Supreme Court, State of Colorado.

But this is foreign to the merits of the question, and is only alluded to in order to show what the people think.

The advocates of the gold standard are fond of the virtuous, the "honest dollar."  We, too, believe in an "honest dollar."  The "honest dollar" is the silver dollar, the only metal through all these twenty years which has retained relatively the same proportion to the commodities which it would buy, through the manipulations of a dishonest gold dollar, which is always rising in value while the prices of the products of this country have steadily fallen and the debts steadily increased.

The dollar is nothing but the representative of so much cotton or so much wheat, and the dollar of debt which was contracted when one bushel of wheat equaled a dollar is a dishonest dollar when it takes two bushels to pay the debt. [Loud applause]

Our people remember the flush days when cotton was high and they had plenty of money.  They have pondered over these figures, showing that wheat and cotton have gone down with silver, and have connected the two in their minds.  They have seen that in 1873, wheat, cotton, and silver steadily fell together, while gold stayed at the high-water mark.  They remember that in 1873, when silver was $1.29 an ounce, wheat was $1.17 a bushel, and cotton, the king, was 20 cents a pound.  They have connected these things in their minds, and have seen it take 4 pounds of their cotton to buy a dollar in 1873 under the double standard, and they see now that it takes 15 pounds of the same cotton to buy the same thing.

The statistical abstract for 1892 fails to give the figures upon cotton for the years mentioned, but the figures on corn will illustrate the point;  and surely a man from South Carolina and Marlboro County may even speak of corn in the presence of the Representatives of the great corn countries of the West, when in my county Mr. J. Drake had the honor of making the largest yield of corn that was ever made in the world and was awarded the prize of $1,000 for raising 255 bushels on a single acre.  In 1873 South Carolina had in corn 973,158 acres, and raised thereon 9,245,000 bushels, the value thereof being $8,090,300.  In 1892 South Carolina had in corn 1,591,671 acres and raised thereon 16,713,000 bushels, the value thereof being $9,526,000.  Thus we have as between 1873 and 1892 an increase of over 63 per cent, an increase in bushels of over 80 per cent, with an increase in value of less than 10 per cent.

Mr. Speaker, no people ever bore with greater fortitude their burden than the Southern people since the war.  They recognized that as a conquered people, like the children of Israel, to "make bricks without straw" was a part of their fate.  We can stand it no longer.  By the eternal justice of an omnipotent God, we will stand it no longer. [Loud applause]

It is England's Scheme.

When silver is worth 80 cents per ounce, it takes 600 grains of it to buy 23.32 grains of pure gold, the amount in an American dollar, or 25.84 grains of silver to one of gold.  Now, suppose the United States under present pressure establishes a ratio of 25 to 1, then she fixes the value of silver at 80 cents per ounce.  England can buy it at that price, send it to her mints, and coin it into rupees at $1.46 per ounce, and use the rupee to pay for wheat, cotton, rice, and jute, thereby fixing the price of these products.  I affirm, and will demonstrate mathematically, that with free coinage, and the United States keeping silver at $1.29 per ounce, our cotton would to-day be at 15 cents per pound.

A Great Exposé.

A pound of cotton or a bushel of wheat of the same quality is of equal value to the English, whether they lay it down from India or America.  Suppose a Manchester cotton-spinner wants some cotton for his mill, and wheat for flour on which to feed his operatives.  He writes to his London broker to buy him, say, 10,000 ounces of silver, and to ship it to his broker at Bombay.  At 85 cents per ounce, it costs him $8,500 in gold.  He writes his broker in Bombay, on the arrival of the silver bullion, to take it to the mint and have it coined into rupees, and invest the product in cotton and ship it to him.  His Bombay broker, on arrival of the silver, obeys instructions, and after paying 2 per cent seigniorage for having it coined, receives in rupees $13,504 worth, which he invests in cotton, and ships to Manchester.  On its arrival, counting first cost of silver, freights, brokerage, insurance, etc., say it costs 10 cents per pound in gold to lay it down.  An American offers him cotton, and if he buys it from him, he will have to pay for it in gold, so he says:  "I am laying my cotton down from India, at a cost to me of 10 cents per pound in gold, and other things being equal, I would prefer to patronize our own colonies."

* * * * * * * * *

Therefore, if the American sells he must offer the same quality at a lower price or a better quality at the same price.  And the price at which the Englishman can lay his cotton down from India is what enables him to fix the price on our cotton.  We will assume for the present that if we had free coinage of silver that an ounce of it would be worth $1.2929, and if it was, then 10,000 ounces of it would cost $12,929 in gold, and when sent to Bombay, and coined into rupees, and the seigniorage was paid, would only give $13,504 worth in rupees, the same as when the first cost was $8,500, and there being no more rupees, it would pay for no more pounds of cotton or bushels of wheat;  the freight, insurance, seigniorage, and brokerage being the same in both cases, the difference in the cost of the same amount of cotton would be the difference in the first cost of silver, $8,500, at 10 cents per pound, would buy 85,000 pounds of cotton;  but 85,000 pounds of cotton, the cost of the silver to pay for which was $12,929, would make it cost, laid down in gold, 15 cents per pound, and if wheat can be laid down from India at $1 per bushel, when silver costs 85 cents per ounce, when it would cost $1.2929 per ounce wheat laid down from India would cost $1.52 per bushel, and if it cost $15 cents a pound, and $1.52 per bushel to lay cotton and wheat down from India, then American cotton and wheat would certainly be worth 15 cents per pound and $1.50 per bushel.

Astonishing Statements

A pound of cotton yarn of the same quality is of equal value to the inhabitant of China or Japan, whether spun in India or England, and as the same money that would pay for 100 pounds of cotton yarn in England would buy and pay for 136 pounds of yarn of the same quality in India, the Chinese and Japanese merchants, being sensible men, bought their goods where their money would go farthest to pay for them.  (Will some patriotic Democrat bar the doors of the White House to the office-seeker until President Cleveland can get this idea into his mind ?  The perpetuation of the party in power and the commercial supremacy of the nation depends upon it.)

The result is that India in 1892 had in operation 88 cotton mills, running 2,380,000 spindles, and built 8 more cotton mills during that year, so that there are now 96 cotton mills in operation in India. as against 18 when silver began to decline.  These mills are all spinning Indian cotton with Indian labor, fed upon Indian products, and the markets they supply take the place of that much of the products of the English mills.  The result is that while 8 new cotton factories are being pushed to completion in India, the English cotton mills were closed in a lockout for six months, and were it not for the cheap cotton and wheat that low silver enables them, at our expense, to supply themselves, their condition would be much worse.

What is the imperial Anglo-Saxon blood to do ?  Commerce, when free, does not examine the color of the skin of those who best serve her wants.  Great Britain in 1890, after supplying her own 40,000,000 of home people with cotton goods sold to the rest of the world $352,529,975 worth of cotton products.  Is she going to sit still and see these yellow sons of Shem rob her of this her greatest industry, that has taken her more than three hundred years to develop ?  Great Britain, who, when she first began the manufacture of cotton goods, passed a law that prohibited all of her citizens from wearing any cotton goods not manufactured in their own country, and as soon as she captured India levied a tax on all cotton looms there, which taxed them out of existence and gave the trade to her own people, and never removed the tax until the discovery of the use of steam and Arkwright's invention enabled them to manufacture better and cheaper goods than any country in the world ?

Oh, no;  it is not to the tunes of retreat that the British banner has been placed where it is first to kiss the rising sun on every meridian of the earth's face.  Something must be done to retain this supremacy.  The English money-lenders, while controlling the government and successfully plotting in their own interests, are bankrupting her farming and cotton manufacturing industries, and "a house divided against itself can not stand."  How can all her industries be made to strike the chord of prosperity in unison is the question.  And let us see how the ingenious English mind approaches the subject:

Parliament appoints a commission, of which Lord Herschell was chairman, to investigate and report.  This commission has been gathering information and studying the subject for more than eight months, and has reported, recommending:

First.  That the mints at India be closed to the coinage of silver for individual account.

Second.  That the Government buy silver bullion and coin it into rupees at the mints of India, and sell the rupees at 32 a piece in gold.

Third.  That a tariff be levied on the importation of all silver into India not introduced by the Government.

A Terrible Raid.

Now each of these measures has a special service to perform.  First, the stoppage of the free coinage to individuals is to depress the value of silver bullion and give the Government the control of the supply of rupees.  At 31 pence an ounce for bullion. the price quoted yesterday, the silver in the rupee would cost the Government 12 cents, and if sold at 32 cents would give the Government 12 cents profit on each rupee, or about 38 cents profit on each ounce she coined into rupees.  Sixty per cent profit should certainly be satisfactory to the Government.  Having made this sum herself, she hands the rupees over to her customers with a stamp on them authorizing said customers to pay their debts due her Indian subjects with these rupees at a valuation of a fraction more than 47 cents per rupee.  The aggregate ravages upon India of the three invasions of Alexander, Pompey, and Lucullus, did not cost India one-half the treasure that this measure will, if submitted to without a revolution.

A tariff on the imports of silver shipped by individuals to India will force Chinese and Japanese merchants to quit the India mills and buy their cotton goods and yarns in England.  This will bankrupt every cotton factory in India, and build up the British factories.  It will force India to export all of her cotton, and every bale that is so exported takes the place of an American bale.  Unless America comes to the rescue, it makes England mistress of the commercial world for the next century.  She is accustomed to large transactions and [is] unscrupulous where her financial interests are concerned, as shown by her legislation in reference to factories in the American colonies, Ireland, and India.  Were we disinterested spectators, we might catch our breath at the enormity of the scheme and plod on, but when all of our giant industries are bowing their towering heads, and being stripped of their green leaves and vigorous shoots, we cannot fold our hands and idly float with the current.

These figures are studied at every humble fireside in the South and every eye is turned upon this Congress, and gentlemen who advocated free silver and so suddenly changed front, will have to answer how these figures lie.  They are not sending petitions like the boards of trade, but are doing some quiet watching and thinking on their own account.  We understand that the difference between the price of cotton in 1873 and 1893 represents the difference in a large degree between bimetallism and monometallism.  That in the last cotton crop it represented the difference between five hundred and twenty and two hundred millions of dollars.  Yes, gentlemen, our people understand that destroying one-half of our money doubles the purchasing power of the other half always at the expense of the producer.

Volume of Currency.

Now, Mr. Speaker, as to the volume of currency, a word:  The gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Harter] said that "the volume of currency was of no consequence when you kept the standard of currency sound;"  and cited the nations with a small per capita circulation as examples of greatest prosperity.  The gentleman told us all about Lycurgus [laughter] and seems profoundly versed in classic history, but I will read a page to him.  From the report of the monetary commission, on pages 49 and 50, it says, in regard to contraction:

Cause of the Downfall of the Roman Empire.

At the Christian era the metallic money of the Roman empire amounted to $1,800,000,000.  By the end of the fifteenth century it had shrunk to less than $200,000,000.  During this period a most extraordinary and baleful change took place in the condition of the world.  Population dwindled, and commerce, arts, wealth, and freedom all disappeared.  The people were reduced by poverty and misery to the most degraded conditions of serfdom and slavery.  The disintegration of society was almost complete.  The conditions of life were so hard that individual selfishness was the only thing consistent with the instinct of self-preservation.  All public spirit, all generous emotions, all the noble aspirations of man shriveled and disappeared as the volume of money shrunk and as prices fell.

History records no such disastrous transition as that from the Roman empire to the dark ages.  Various explanations have been given of this entire breaking down of the framework of society, but it was certainly coincident with the shrinkage in the volume of money, which was also without historical parallel.  The crumbling of institutions kept even step and pace with the shrinkage in the stock of money and the falling of prices.  All other attendant circumstances than these last have occurred in other historical periods unaccompanied and unfollowed by any such mighty disasters.

It is a suggestive coincidence that the first glimmer of light only came with the invention of bills of exchange and paper substitutes, through which the scanty stock of the precious metals was increased in efficiency.  But not less than the energizing influence of Potosi and all the argosies of treasure from the new world were needed to arouse the old world from its comatose sleep, to quicken the torpid limbs of industry, and to plume the leaden wings of commerce.  It needed the heroic treatment of rising prices to enable society to reunite its shattered links, to shake off the shackles of feudalism, to relight and uplift the almost extinguished torch of civilization.  That the disasters of the dark ages were caused by decreasing money and falling prices, and that the recovery therefrom and the comparative prosperity which followed the discovery of America were due to an increasing supply of the precious metals and rising prices, will not seem surprising or unreasonable when the noble functions of money are considered.

Money is the great instrument of association, the very fiber of social organism, the vitalizing force of industry, the protoplasm of civilization, and as essential to its existence as oxygen is to animal life.  Without money civilization could not have had a beginning;  with a diminishing supply it must languish, and, unless relieved, finally perish.

Our people are centuries ahead of the gentleman in his financial theories, for they understand that a contracted volume of currency means a few very rich men and a nation of paupers. [Applause]  Well does the historian say:

The conditions of life were so hard that individual selfishness was the only thing consistent with the instinct of self-preservation.

It is easy to see that after a man has made his fortune the less other people have, the more highly prized and valuable are his accumulations.  One can well imagine in those days preceding the Dark Ages some learned and wealthy Roman senator entertaining his colleagues with the same argument.  Human nature is ever the same, and "when self the trembling" balance holds interest, conscience, and judgment run near together. [Applause]

For the first time since the war, the Democratic party is in full possession of every department of the Government.  The people recognize the fact that we are not responsible for thirty of Republican misgovernments, and are willing to give the Democracy a fair trial.  But, Mr. Speaker, they will stand no deception upon the silver question.  The recent revolt against the Republican party, as the party in power, will be a gentle zephyr to the cyclone which will occur in 1896 if we are unfaithful to the pledges contained in the platform upon which we were elected, and you might just as well attempt to twist a Western cyclone round the wrong way as to stem the tide.

That plank of the platform was as follows:

We denounce the Republican legislation known as the Sherman Act of 1890 as a cowardly makeshift, fraught with possibilities of danger in the future, which should make all of its supporters, as well as its author, anxious for its speedy repeal.  We hold to the use of both gold and silver as the standard money of the country, and to the coinage of both gold and silver without discriminating against either metal or charge for mintage, but the dollar unit of coinage of both metals must be of equal intrinsic and exchangeable value, or be adjusted through international agreement or by such safeguards of legislation as shall insure the maintenance of the parity of the two metals and the equal power of every dollar at all times in the markets and in the payment of debts; and we demand that all paper currency shall be kept at par with and redeemable in such coin.  We insist upon this policy as especially necessary for the protection of the farmers and laboring classes, the first and most defenseless victims of unstable money and a fluctuating currency.

In South Carolina we accepted in good faith this plank, pledging the party to maintain the parity of metals.  Had Mr. Cleveland then announced that "silver and gold must part company," the solid South would have been a thing of the past, and he would never have been elected President of these United States, and you know it. [Applause]

The President's Surrender to Wall Street.

Mr. Speaker, some of the press are doing, I fear, the President a great injustice.  I read:

[Special Dispatch to the Traveler.]

Washington, D.C., August 14.--- President Cleveland has determined to apply his most heroic influence to bring about the speedy adoption of the silver repeal bill.

He has issued instructions to all of his cabinet officers that there shall be no more appointments made upon the recommendation of men in Congress about whose vote upon the silver problem there is any doubt.  He has gone even further, and has directed that there shall be extended no official courtesy whatever to any one in Congress until it is known how his vote is to be cast upon the silver question.

Two Senators from the far West called upon Secretary Hoke Smith the other day, and asked to have enforced certain laws adopted by the last Congress relating to Indian reservations, and they were surprised to be informed by the Secretary of the Interior that the Department would take no action upon the request of men in Congress until after the Sherman law was repealed.  The Senator attempted to explain to Secretary Smith that there was not the slightest partisanship or personal favor to them in the request made, but the Secretary of the Interior replied that he was carrying out instructions, and there would be nothing done except the routine of the Department until after the silver question was disposed of.

Mr. Speaker, if heroic treatment is to be applied, let it be met by heroes.  Let us teach Mr. Cleveland that we and not he are the representatives of the people. [Loud applause.]

Mr. Speaker, if the great influence and power of the Executive is to be used to strike down one-half of the metal money of the country, it is too dear a price to pay for a party triumph, and can only be regarded in the light of a national calamity.  In 1878 John Carlisle, now Secretary of the Treasury, said:

The movement to totally demonetize silver is a stupendous conspiracy conceived by the moneyed interests of all countries to increase the value of one-half of the world's metallic money by destroying the other half.  The successful consummation of that conspiracy would be more disastrous to the people of this world than war, pestilence, and famine.

That eloquent tongue is silenced by a Cabinet office.  Representatives like the gentleman from Tennessee [Mr. Patterson] have suddenly found out that "consistency is the hobgoblin of the fool," and gone to the other side.  We are gravely told that the silver plank means nothing ---"catch-words and glittering generalities."  "Platforms are a good thing to get in on," and I would remind the gentlemen that the late Republican party found platforms a good thing to get out on.  Let us be brave;  let us be honest.  The message of the President is a bitter disappointment ---a complete surrender to Wall street.  The issue is plainly and sharply drawn.  It is well that it is so.

Necessity will force the West and South to unite, and then the domination of the East in national affairs is gone forever.  The people can not be again deceived with catch-words and glittering generalities.  The gentleman from Tennessee [Mr. Patterson] reminds us how much we owe to New York for help in reconstruction times.  We are profoundly grateful to our brethren of the East for the help rendered in freeing us from negro domination and carpet-baggism, but we can not show our gratitude by becoming industrial serfs, to manufacture more Goulds and Vanderbilts.

For thirty years we have tackled our car to Eastern Democracy;  but this straw will break the camel's back, and you will force us to the great West, whose soul is fashioned in the likeness of her boundless prairies and mighty mountains ---not confined within the narrow rim of a gold dollar.

It was the great common people in 1776, with "confidence" in their country, who secured our independence from Great Britain.  The same people to-day are ashamed and humiliated at the admission of the right and power of England to force upon us a financial policy which enriches foreign security holders at the expense of our own people.  The next thing in order is for some one to propose that these United States be annexed to the Dominion of Canada.  We are in exactly the same condition we were in 1776, except that now we seek to eliminate the tyranny of King Gold, instead of King George.  Fifteen-sixteenths of our railroad lines are owned by British capitalists, and we have even more cause for discontent than we had then.  Millions are drained from us annually in interest and rents, and what England failed to do with her sword she accomplishes with her money.  Are we to be forever a tributary province, a puny, sickly baby, with spasms every time mother England has hysterics ?  Let us rather clip the umbilical cord with a pair of silver shears, and assume the proportions of full manhood.  One thing more, and I am done.  I will not repeat the words of Mr. Ingalls concerning silver, so frequently quoted upon the floor of this House.  Ex-Senator Ingalls, in a speech in the Senate February 15, 1878, said:

Gold is the money of monarchs.  Kings covet it;  the exchanges of nations are effected by it.  Its tendency is to accumulate in vast masses in the commercial centers, and to move from kingdom to kingdom in such volumes as to unsettle values and disturb the finances of the world.  It is the instrument of gamblers and speculators, and the idol of the miser and the thief.  Being the object of so much adoration, it becomes haughty and sensitive and shrinks at the approach of danger, and whenever it is most needed it always disappears.  At the slightest alarm it begins to look for a refuge.  It flies from the nation at war to the nation at peace.  War makes it a fugitive.  No people in a great emergency ever found a faithful ally in gold.  It is the most cowardly and treacherous of all metals.  It makes no treaty that it does not break.  It has no friend whom it does not sooner or later betray.  Armies and navies are not maintained by gold.  In times of panic and calamity, shipwreck and disaster, it becomes the chief agent and minister of ruin.  No nation ever fought a great war by the aid of gold.  On the contrary, in the crisis of greatest peril it becomes an enemy more potent than the foe in the field;  but when the battle is won and peace has been secured, gold reappears and claims the fruits of victory.  In our own civil war it is doubtful if the gold of New York and London did not work us greater injury than the powder and lead and iron of the rebels.  It was the most invincible enemy of the public credit.  Gold paid no soldier nor sailor.  It refused the national obligations.  It was worth most when our fortunes were lowest.  Every defeat gave it increased value.  It was in open alliance with our enemies the world over, and all its energies were evoked for our destruction.  But as usual, when danger has been averted and the victory secured, gold swaggers to the front and asserts the supremacy.

The present situation is no exception.  Gold has hidden its head in time of trouble and silver is at a premium instead of gold, as they predicted.  I read an extract from the New York World, which certainly can not be accused of being friendly to silver.  The occurrences were so exceptional that it may be well to recall some of them by way of illustration.

It is not so long ago that apprehension was felt that the continued purchases of silver by the Government would send gold to a premium.  A hoarding of the yellow metal resulted in consequence.  Last week, however, gold was actually worth less than the Government promises to pay, or paper money, and even the discredited silver dollars commanded a larger premium.  There was also witnessed during the week the anomaly of unprecedentedly heavy imports of gold with the rates of sterling exchange practically on the same basis as when Europe took millions from this country.  Bankers were enabled to import at the high rates simply because of the premiums commanded by currency for local purposes.  In a comparatively short time between $20,000,000 and $25,000,000 gold have been contracted for, no less than $13,000,000 having arrived during the week just closed.  Far and beyond everything else was the premium on silver dollars, which served to bring out clearly the seriousness of the currency famine.  It was not a pleasant thing to contemplate.

Mr. Speaker, I favor the free coinage of silver at a ratio of 16 to 1.  I am opposed to increasing the ratio, first, because we can maintain the parity at 16 to 1 as easily as at a larger ratio.  I despise compromise.  Brazen, impudent wrong and timid virtue are the parents of compromise.  Second, because it would result in a shrinkage of probably $200,000,000 in the coin now in circulation, which would all have to be recoined.  Third, because just to the extent that the size of the dollar was increased there would be a contraction in the money metals of the world, and a corresponding increase in the debts.  In other words, every man now owing a debt would be forced to pay in a dishonest dollar, one that had appreciated in value, since the debt was contracted, in proportion to the increase in ratio.

Unfortunately, we would not be the dumping ground for silver.  India coins at $1.37, France at $1.33, and the United States at $1.29 per ounce.  Therefore, it would cost from 4 to 8 cents per ounce to ship silver here, besides depleting the circulation of the countries from which it came.  But suppose that silver did come here.  Would not our competitors, India and Egypt, be driven out of the wheat and cotton markets of the world ?  Every buyer would come here to buy with silver, and how long could these countries stand a contracted currency, with the markets of the world closed to their products ?  Would not the price of every American product be enhanced even in this debased coin, which is now selling at a premium in New York ?  Would not the clamor from their colonies force England and Germany to us, hat in hand, and we then realize that iridescent dream of international bimetallism, with which the gentleman from Nebraska [Mr. Bryan] taunted the advocates of monometallism.

Mr. Speaker, I am glad the time for debate has nearly closed.  The country has its eyes turned anxiously upon Congress, and it wants us to do something or else adjourn and go home.  What we do, we should do promptly, and let the country know what to expect.  There can be but one thing worse than inaction, and that is the unconditional repeal of the Sherman act.  I for one am prepared to stay here the balance of my term before I vote for unconditional repeal.

Mr. Speaker, these times are not without their compensating advantages.  Discontent and agitation are the parent of progress.  The very air we breathe bears upon its bosom the restless discontent of the masses.  Our beautiful capital city has its wide avenues, its grand marble palaces.  Back down the dim corridors of the past lie the ruins of other great cities, the wrecks of mighty nations, perishing upon the shores of time because of the destruction of the homes of the people.  The homes of our people are now at stake.  Oh, ye money kings and wise financiers, I appeal to you, heed the warning.  Belshazzar ---feasted and intoxicated with the subtle essence of power, the golden goblets from the temple of the Lord were polluted with the lips of the harlot.  Belshazzar is a type.  When the beautiful night came down over Babylon, and he delighted himself with music and feasting, there were strange lights on the horizon line, but none noted them save the gloomy seers, and these called them the watch fires of the army of the great Cyrus.

There are strange lights now upon the horizon line.  The deep mutterings of a mighty storm, the fierce discontent of a hungry people, come to us like a cry for help from out of the night.  Oh, my friends, will you heed the warning, will you listen to the voice of the people, or will you wait until a Daniel strides into the judgment hall, and reads the doom of a great nation and a mighty people ?  My friends let us rise above section, above party.  In this hour of a nation's supreme need let us forget self and the fleeting present.  Let us build wisely, so that generations yet unborn will rise up and call us blessed. [Loud applause.]

A Sound and Stable Currency.

Mr. Davis [John Davis (1826-1901), Kansas, Populist;  Granger].  Mr. Speaker, I bring to you a bit of news.  It is reliable and important.  I received it in an open letter written by the President of the United States, and addressed to the members of Congress.  It is in effect, this:  "The stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner!"  There is a money question !  Our presence here in this Hall, in extraordinary session, proves that the money question is paramount.  The tariff has been relegated to second place.  The patriotic little party which I, in part, represent, has been vindicated and our statements and positions approved.  President Cleveland very justly attaches great importance to "a sound and stable currency."

In his inaugural address last March, President Cleveland said:

While every American citizen must contemplate with the utmost pride and enthusiasm the growth and expansion of our country, the sufficiency of our institutions to stand against the rudest shocks of violence, the wonderful thrift and enterprise of our people, and the demonstrated superiority of our free Government, it behooves us to constantly watch for every symptom of insidious infirmity that threatens our national vigor.

The strong man who, in the confidence of sturdy health, courts the sternest activities of life and rejoices in the hardihood of constant labor, may have lurking near his vitals the unheeded disease that dooms him to sudden collapse.  It can not be doubted that our stupendous achievements as a people and our country's robust strength, have given rise to a heedlessness of those laws governing our national health, which we can no more evade than human life can escape the laws of God and nature.

Manifestly nothing is more vital to our supremacy as a nation and to the beneficent purposes of our Government than a sound and stable currency.  Its exposure to degradation should at once arouse to activity the most enlightened statesmanship;  and the danger of depreciation in the purchasing power of the wages paid to toil should furnish the strongest incentive to prompt and conservative precaution.  In dealing with our present embarrassing situation as related to this subject, we will be wise if we temper our confidence and faith in our national strength and resources with the frank concession that even these will not permit us to defy with impunity the inexorable laws of finance and trade.

At the same time, in our efforts to adjust differences of opinion, we should be free from intolerance or passion, and our judgments should be unmoved by alluring phrases and unvexed by selfish interests.  I am confident that such an approach to the subject will result in prudent and effective remedial legislation. ·In the meantime, so far as the executive branch of the Government can intervene, none of the powers with which it is invested will be withheld when their exercise is deemed necessary to maintain our national credit or avert financial disaster.

Mr. Speaker, I am frank to say that I agree with every word and sentence here quoted.  Words can not exaggerate the importance of the question of the finances among a commercial people like ours.  There is a power in money which no human agency can resist.  There is no engagement, national or individual, which is unaffected by it.  The enterprises of commerce, the profits of trade, the arrangements in all the domestic concerns of life, the wages of labor, the transactions of the highest and lowest amounts, the payment of debts and taxes are all affected by the quantity or quality of money in circulation.  There resides in money the most enormous power known to man.  It is the tide in human affairs upon which all things must rise or fall.  It is as irresistible as the wings and wheels of commerce on the high seas and the broad continents.  More powerful than the thunder blasts of armadas that throb upon the ocean, or the tread of continental armies;  and this mighty force is self-acting in all the large and small transactions of men.  This is the concurrent testimony of the ablest writers.

The United States Monetary Commission of 1876 mentions the importance of money in modern society as---

The great instrument of association, the very fiber of social organism, the vitalizing force of industry, the protoplasm of civilization, and as essential to its existence as oxygen is to animal life.  Without money civilization cannot have had a beginning;  with a diminishing supply it must languish, and. unless relieved, finally perish.

Archibald Alison, England's great historian, speaks of money as---

This mighty agent in human affairs.

Mr. Alexander Del Mar, formerly director of the Bureau of Statistics of the United States, member of the United States Monetary Commission, an able writer on the finances, describing the operations of this factor in the affairs of nations, says:

Unheard, unfelt, almost unseen, it has the power to so distribute the burdens. gratifications, and opportunities of life that each individual shall enjoy a share of them to which his merits entitle him, or to dispense them with so partial a hand as to violate every principle of justice and perpetuate a system of social slaveries to the end of time.

The late Senator Plumb, speaking of the money question in 1888, said:

We are dealing with a question which has more to do with the welfare of the people of the United States, which is of more concern to them, than any other thing that is pending, or that can be pending, etc.

Mr. Speaker, I have not overestimated, and it is impossible to over estimate the importance of "a sound and stable" money system to the people of the United States.  Having agreed upon this, the paramount question now arises, which, among the many systems which have been tried by commercial nations, or among the several systems, either tried or untried, proposed by the various currency doctors of the present day, is the one which is prëeminently "sound and stable."

Is it gold only ?
Is it silver only ?
Is it gold and silver combined ?
Is it a paper system founded on gold only ?
Is it a paper system founded on gold and silver ?

Or, is it a paper system founded on receivability in the Government revenues, and the quality of general legal tender ?

In the discussion of a vital question like this, involving the material and moral interests, the prosperity and happiness, or the poverty, ruin, and death of so many millions of people, untried theories must have no place.  Only the facts of history and the experiences of commercial nations and peoples should be  considered.  We can not afford to admit any new system as an experiment.  In my opinion it is not necessary.  In searching for "a sound and stable" money system, in my judgment it is only necessary to follow the examples of the greatest and most successful nations of history at those times when they were most prosperous.

The Gold Standard.

From the beginning of history gold has been used as money, but during the whole of that time it has never proven itself a safe or satisfactory money.  Being a commodity of commerce, it has always been subject to the fluctuations in price common to commodities.  Worse than that, its weight and volume are such that it is easily collected and hoarded by the gamblers in money.  By this means it is rendered subject to greater fluctuations and more frequent changes in value than most other commodities.  The intrinsic value of gold is not great.  Its commercial value arises from an artificial demand created by law;  and, by reason of its being manipulated through the whims and devices of usurers and gamblers, the fluctuations of the value of gold are greater, more sudden and irregular than any other known substance.  Unless one can foresee all the demands of commerce and all the means of supply;  unless he knows the potency of all the schemes, intentions, and devices of the money gamblers of the world's great financial centers, he can not guess with any certainty the price of gold even for a single day.  If a merchant buys goods to be paid for in gold on sixty days' time, his business is a game of chance, as uncertain as the winds, and quite as subject to destructive fluctuations.

In ancient Peru gold was plentiful, but it was not used as money.  There was no artificial monetary demand created by law.  It passed from man to man on its commercial value only.  When thus left to itself, on its own merits, it had very little commercial value.  Mr. Prescott, in his Conquest of Peru, tells us that on one occasion, in the open market of Cuzco, the capital of Peru, it required gold bullion of the weight of $116 to buy a quire of paper.  A bottle of wine sold for the weight of $690 in gold bullion.  A sword was worth $500;  a cloak $1,160;  a pair of shoes $400 or more;  and a horse about $30,000 weight of gold bullion.  Between that low price of gold and the high charges for it by the gold gamblers of our time, there is room for ten thousand stages and degrees of fluctuation.  And, Mr. Speaker, the experiences and observations of all men in business prove that gold is equal to any and every emergency of that sort.  It is the loaded dice of the gamblers who rob men and nations.  It is the jumping-jack of the shylock revelry, when the gamblers and bandits hold high carnival in celebration of their greedy and merciless achievements.  Long experience and observation have proven that gold is about as safe and reliable for the foundation of "a sound and stable currency" as is a powder keg or a plug of dynamite for a steady corner stone under a family residence.  It is liable to explode at any moment, whenever it is to the interest of prowling thieves to touch it off that they may rob the house during the confusion.

Mr. Speaker, I do not and I will not speak at random on this important subject.  The ablest writers agree with me as to the experiences of nations and the facts of history.  An English economist has written of the gold-standard finances of England as follows:

England is the peculiar seat of monetary crises, just as Egypt is of the plague, and India of the cholera.  These monetary plagues are the bane and opprobrium of our country.

Prof. Vissering, of Holland, explained the troubles of England and objected to imitating her money system, as follows:

Because England, which then almost alone had the standard of gold, was subject to frequent monetary crises, and that, by adopting the same rule, we should run the risk of being involved in those crises.

The United States Monetary Commission of 1876, the ablest of all American authorities on this subject, says:

In addition to the irregularities of its production, gold lacks sufficiency of mass to give it steadiness.  It is necessarily so subject to "jerks and changes," that to use it as an exclusive standard must reduce all business to gambling.  No merchant can buy goods with gold to be sold for gold a year afterward, or even a few months afterward, without being subjected to a heavy risk.  If he covers the risk by extra profits in the nature of insurance, he must impose a heavy tax upon those who deal with him.  Whoever enters into a contract to pay gold in one, two, or three years can not, by any possibility, foresee what its value may be when the contract matures.  Gold, when unsteadied by silver, is as unstable as water.  The long experience of England has shown it to be one of the most fluctuating, treacherous, and dangerous currencies ever devised.  The present head of the British ministry said, three years ago, that England did not become rich by adopting gold, but adopted gold because it was already rich.  He might have added that it was only the great wealth acquired by England under a sounder and better system which has enabled it to endure the mischiefs of a currency which has made it "the peculiar seat of monetary crises, just as Egypt is of the plague, and India of the cholera."  If England was not the creditor of all the world on gold contracts, and if that consideration did not really dominate everything else in determining its policy, it would abandon a system which is its "bane and opprobrium."

The report of the United States Monetary Commission further says:

With a currency of gold, or of paper convertible into gold, we should feel instantly every change in Europe, and especially England.  We should not altogether escape that influence with the double standard of gold and silver, but at any rate, with such a standard, one part of our currency would be secure from European perturbations.

Mr. John Ingalls, for eighteen years United States Senator, and part of the time acting President of the United States Senate, has recorded the following correct opinion of gold as a currency:

No people in a great emergency ever found a faithful ally in gold, it is the most cowardly and treacherous of all metals.  It makes no treaty it does not break.  It has no friend it does not sooner or later betray.  Armies and navies are not maintained by gold.  In times of panic and calamity, shipwreck and disaster, it becomes the agent and minister of ruin.  No nation ever fought a great war by the aid of gold.  On the contrary, in the crisis of the greatest peril, it becomes an enemy more potent than the foe in the field;  and when the battle is won and peace has been secured, gold reappears and claims the fruits or victory.  In our own civil war it is doubtful if the gold of New York and London did not work us greater injury than the powder and lead and iron of the enemy.  It was the most invincible enemy of the public credit.  Gold paid no soldier or sailor.  It refused the national obligations.  It was worth most when our fortunes were the lowest.  Every defeat gave it increased value.  It was in open alliance with our enemies the world over, and all its energies were evoked for our destruction.  But, as usual, when danger has been averted, and the victory secured, gold swaggers to the front, and asserts the supremacy. ---United States Senate, February 15, 1878.

A nation using gold money, or gold-basis money, has no control over the volume of its circulating medium.  It is in the power of the holders of gold to make money scarce or plenty as suits their own convenience and interests, regardless of the public welfare.  Mr. Garfield once stated, most truthfully, that---

Whoever controls the volume of the currency is absolute master of all industry and commerce.

Senator Thomas H. Benton, speaking of the same dangerous class of men, said:

All property is at their mercy.

We thus see that according to the experience of nations and the testimony of the best writers;  gold is not "a sound and stable currency."  It has but little value, except through an artificial demand created by law.  It is subject to very great fluctuations in value, because it is a commodity of commerce, and it is utterly unfitted for the basis of a monetary system because it is the handy tool of the money gamblers, by the use of which they are able to rob men and nations at will.

But, Mr. Speaker, if it were a fact that gold is a safe basis for "a sound and stable currency," there are still other considerations.  The people of the United States are now staggering under a burden of some thirty billions of dollars of monetary obligations.  That burden is in the various forms of national and State debts, railroad debts, municipal debts, and private debts secured by real estate mortgages.  On three great central States of the Union the private debts of the people are frightful.  The people of my own State, ranking among the most industrious, intelligent, and enterprising, are mortgaged to the amount of $235,000,000;  the people of Illinois $380,000,000, and the people of the great State of Pennsylvania, with their rich mines and their protected manufactures (which are said to insure a prosperous agriculture), are mortgaged to the amount of $613,000,000.

Mr. Speaker, it is hardly necessary for the statement to be made to an intelligent statesman like yourself that, on the low level of gold-basis prices for the products of labor, the debts of this country can not be paid.  In order to reach and to maintain the low level of gold-basis currency it has required and still requires a contraction of money and falling prices, ruinous to the prosperity of our people, dangerous to their liberties, and a menace to the peace of the country.  Already the homes of the people are passing into the hands of foreign and domestic landlords with frightful rapidity.  Already the wealth of our rich men, acquired from the earnings of labor through the manipulations of money and the conquests of the purse, rivals the opulence of the Roman patricians, when that great empire entered the dark shadow of its decline and fall.  Already the great estates of our home and foreign landlords rival those of France when that unhappy country was dashing headlong into the abyss of the bloodiest revolution of history.  Every indication of the times and all the facts of history prove most positively, with no shadow of doubt, that the public and private monetary obligations of the people of this country can neither be paid, nor much longer carried, with property and products at gold-basis prices.  Such a policy of finance leads to bankruptcies and foreclosures for the workers, resulting in a change of ownership of the soil, whereby it passes into the hands of the rich.  It means the establishment of universal landlordism, and the serfdom and slavery of the American people.

Gold is the most fluctuating and unstable of currencies, and, in quantity, it is entirely inadequate as a money basis in America.  Its use as such is incompatible with the preservation of popular liberty in this country.  Mr. Speaker, we are said to have had in this country a practical gold basis since January 1, 1879.  Yet no one is satisfied with our financial condition.  President Cleveland says:

In dealing with our present embarrassing situation as related to this subject, we will be wise if we temper our confidence and faith in our national strength and resources with the frank confession that even these will not permit us to defy with impunity the inexorable laws of finance and trade.

Now, with these timely and truthful words in mind, let me call attention to a few facts of history which we are now copying, vainly hoping, it would seem, that "the inexorable laws of finance and trade" which have ruined other nations defying them will not harm us.  At the close of the wars of Napoleon in 1815 England stood at the front among the victors, in a blaze of glory unequaled in modern times.  She was mistress of the ocean, had acquired an empire which encircled the earth, and dictated the policies of Europe.  Her people were prosperous, happy, and jubilant.  Ignoring or defying the lessons of history and the "inexorable laws of finance and trade," the British Parliament enacted a law restricting the use of silver, in order to establish the famous single gold basis for money.  This checked the prosperity of the country by decreeing falling prices for agricultural products and the commodities of commerce.

Then were heard the first murmurs of distress among a people that for twenty years had uncomplainingly paid the troops which met Napoleon on so many bloody fields, a people that had carried victory on their bayonets throughout the Peninsula, on the Rhine, and on the field of Waterloo;  a people whose cannons had won the victories of Trafalgar and the Nile and maintained the glory of British arms and British power as only Anglo-Saxons could.  These people were now to be sacrificed by the millions to the false god known as gold-basis money.

In 1819, in pursuance of this murderous policy, the British Parliament enacted a law for the retirement of the paper money which had conquered Napoleon ---that money which Mr. Alison, the great English historian, said had saved England from becoming "a province of France."  The process of contraction, bringing falling prices, began in 1816;  it was accelerated in 1819.  By the year 1862 four-fifths of the landholders of England had lost their lands and the laboring people of the country were in such a condition of suffering that troops were necessary to compel men, women, and children to starve in peace.  Landlordism was greatly extended, the relative number of the serfs and tenants of the realm was greatly multiplied, and the public distresses among the innocent people were such as no tongue can adequately describe.

Mr. Speaker, ignoring that recent and notable example of history, and defying "the inexorable laws of finance and trade," we are at this moment copying the baleful example of England in our efforts to reach and maintain a gold-basis currency.  Our experiment commenced in 1866.  The American Congress passed a law at that time to contract the currency of the country.  It was enacted that interest-bearing bonds should be sold for currency, and that the currency which had saved the nation should be burned.  This was, in effect, a copy of the English law of 1819.  In 1873 the American Congress passed a law which demonetized silver.  This was, in effect, a copy of the British law of 1816.  Through these laws England destroyed the currency which had prevented that country from becoming "a province of France."  We have destroyed a currency which saved the life of the Republic when gold was snugly hidden in the vaults of its unpatriotic owners.  England demonetized silver for amounts above 40 shillings.  We did the same for amounts above $5.  In both nations that metal which had been good money, "current with the merchant" since the days of Abraham, was abolished, and that dollar of the United States, which had been the standard of value and the unit of account since the days of Washington and Jefferson, was dethroned and branded as base metal.

The results in both countries were alike disastrous.  In England came falling prices, the closing of the shops, mines, and factories, the idleness of labor, the bankruptcy of business, the loss of homes by all land-owners who were not also bondholders.  And the public distresses were so great that troops were on duty day and night to preserve the peace.  It is estimated that more than a million men, women, and children in England died of starvation.  That is, were sacrificed to the wicked gold-basis fallacy.  No such wholesale sacrifices are recorded of heathen peoples in their worship of idols made of wood, stone, clay, or metal.

The President has rightly said that "the inexorable laws of finance and trade" can not be defied with impunity.  So, having copied the financial policy of England, is it strange that we must suffer the same penalties ?  In 1865 the people of the United States emerged from the greatest war of modern times.  They had been successful.  They had saved the best Government on Earth.  Money was plenty, times were good, the national debt was not large, and, as individuals, we were "out of debt and prosperous."  We felt as did the British people after their great victory at Waterloo, and the banishment of Napoleon.

The British system of contraction, inaugurated here in 1866, began to tell on the clearing-house transactions in 1870.  In 1873, the same policy struck down silver.  This was at once followed by a disastrous panic, distressing the entire country, as had never before been witnessed.  According to Senator Logan, it was a "money famine;"  and it has continued ever since with only temporary abatements.

I have now shown the similarity of the British and American financial policies instituted for the same general purpose, under similar conditions.  Ours was and is a substantial copy of theirs.  To show that similar crab trees bring forth the same bitter fruits, I call attention to the testimony of eyewitnesses as to the results in the two countries.

Mr. Thomas Carlyle has pictured a period of monetary stringency in England in the following language:

British industrial existence seems fast becoming one vast prison-swamp of reeking pestilence, physical and moral, a hideous living Golgotha of souls and bodies buried alive.  Thirty thousand outcast needlewomen working themselves swiftly to death, and three million paupers rotting in forced idleness, helping the needlewomen to die.

Col. Robert Ingersoll has drawn a picture of society in this country during contraction, as follows:

No man can imagine, all the languages:of the world can not express, what the people of the United States suffered from 1873 to 1879.  Men who considered themselves millionaires found that they were beggars;  men living in palaces, supposing they had enough to give sunshine to the winter or their age, supposing they had enough to have all they loved in affluence and comfort, suddenly found that they were medicants with bonds, stocks, mortgages, all turned to ashes in their hands.  The chimneys grew cold, the fires in furnaces went out, the poor families were turned adrift, and the highways of the United States were crowded with tramps.

Mr. Speaker, the inexorable laws of finance and trade can not be defied with impunity.  We have copied England's financial policy, and we have suffered her disasters.  We are still copying her policy and also continue still reaping the same results.  It appears to be impossible for our public men to learn anything from history, or even from their own experiences, with the well-known facts thrust into their very faces.

It was said by the contractionists that when we reached a specie basis, in January, 1879, no further contraction would be necessary, and that then we would again have good times.  The promise was false, and the hope delusive.  Standing in his place in the United States Senate on two occasions, the late Senator Plumb, himself the president of a national bank, explained the question under discussion very fully.  In 1888 Senator Plumb said:

But this contraction of the currency, by the retirement of national-bank circulation, has been going on for more than ten years, and all the committee has to say now is that it has considered some bill, but it is not completed.  If the committee will not complete some measure the Senate must.  If the Senate will not, and the other House will not, then the country is going upon the breakers of financial disturbance.  As a Senator says in my hearing, "It is there now."  I think it is there now.

The retirement of the national banking circulation during the past twelve months has been 5 per cent of the total amount of the currency outstanding.  There has been during that period a phenomenal depreciation of the prices of property.  There has been the greatest depreciation of the price of agricultural products the country has ever known.

The contraction of the currency by 5 per cent of its volume means the depreciation of the property of the country $3,000,000,000.  Debts have not only increased, but the means to pay them have diminished in proportion as the currency has been contracted.  Events based upon non-legislation have proved of advantage to lenders, but disastrous to borrowers.

According to that statement, the contraction of the currency still proceeded long after the date of resumption of specie payments.  And two years later (1890) the same Senator repeated the fact of the continued contraction of the currency by the banks and by hoarding in the Treasury.  He described the devices of the false Treasury reports which are monthly made by the United States Treasurer, with apparently no other purpose than to mislead the people.  He claimed that much gold was counted in the reports as circulating in this country which had long ago gone to Europe;  that $46,000,000 of greenbacks were counted as in circulation which did not exist, and that hundreds of millions of money, said by the official reports to be in circulation, were locked up as reserves in the banks and in the United States Treasury.  In his speech of June, 1890, the Senator said:

If I were deciding this case upon what I consider the best evidence, I would be bound to say that I believed the money in actual circulation did not much, if at all, exceed $500,000,000.  Upon this narrow foundation has been built the enormous structure of credit of which I have spoken.  It is the greatest of the kind that was ever built, because it was built by the best people that ever built anything.  Over twenty thousand millions of debts, the enormous and widely extended business of 65,000,000 of people, all rest upon and must be served by a volume of currency which must seem to the veteran financier as absolutely and dangerously small.

Mr. Speaker, this gold-standard specie-basis policy has now been in force for over twenty years.  During all that time the administration of that policy has been in the hands of its friends.  The war on silver has been unrelenting.  That ancient money has been, in practice, reduced to a commodity.  The gold-basis advocates brand it as "base metal," and with every opprobrious epithet.  Although by law and contract the silver dollar is legal tender to bondholders, yet for twenty years we have not had an Administration with courage or patriotism enough to tender silver dollars to bondholders.  The practical discriminations are all against silver and in favor of gold as money metals.  In that respect we are copying the policy of England.  The two most powerful commercial nations on Earth, with the German Empire and all northwestern Europe to help, have united and co-operated for twenty years to perfect the gold-basis system.  No experiment ever had a more auspicious birth and more thorough trial at the hands of its friends.  What is the result ?  Banks everywhere on the brink of ruin.  Boys on the streets of Chicago peddling newspapers, are forbidden to announce the contents of their goods, lest the news of recent bank failures will cause other failures and precipitate a panic.  The rulers of the greatest nations of Europe and America have been for twenty years working at the absurd experiment, trying to balance a pyramid on its apex, trying to rest the billions of business of two hemispheres on a handful of gold for which everybody is grabbing.

So delicate is the experiment, that the police officers of great cities hiss through their teeth, "Silence!" "Hush!" lest the breath of a street gamin may start an avalanche which will cause national or international bankruptcy and ruin on two continents.

Verily, gold is "a stable currency."  Have not the Shylocks said so ?  And do they ever lie ---except for their own purposes ?  And have not a thousand eminent statesmen and "financiers" sworn to the lies, as the agents, attorneys, and puppets of the Shylocks ?  Of course.  In years agone an equal number of scientists and eminent men for centuries testified to the geocentric doctrine of the universe, when all the facts were as much against them as well known facts are now against the doctrine of the stability of a gold-basis currency.  This is the absurd position of the gold-basis theory and practice in the hands of its friends, and among the banks and bankers who profit by the system.  The condition is so precarious that we are having an extra session of Congress in the dog-days of August to redress the situation.

Mr. Speaker, is a gold-basis currency "the stable(?) currency" which we seek ?  If so, we have it now in all its glory.  We are now in the paradise of the Shylocks and the money gamblers.  To prove this I need only refer to the condition of its victims ---the people.  The Census Reports of 1890, which are just now being published, show that the people who were "out of debt and prosperous" in 1866, are now in debt and distress beyond the power of the imagination to comprehend.

Over $3,000,000,000 have been paid on the national debt.  This has reduced it over one billion.  That is something of which we never cease to boast.  But through the fall of the prices of commodities, it will now take as many bushels of wheat or as many pounds of cotton to pay what remains of the public debt in 1893 as it would have taken to pay it in 1866.  So, then, there has been no progress in reducing the burden of the national debt by the payment of over $3,000,000,000.  Contraction of the currency and falling prices has neutralized the entire payment.  Besides the national debt, we have over a billion of interest-bearing State, county, and municipal debts, which, with present gold prices of the products of land and labor, can be paid only through the greatest sacrifices of the people.  These are but the beginning of our burdens.  The private debts of individuals, brought on by currency contraction and falling prices, are high up in the billions.

These burdens which have been heaped upon the shoulders of the people are the price of our present sound(?) and stable(?) gold-basis currency.  So stable and reliable is this famous system that the breath of a child may topple it down and bring untold ruin on all the world.  Our billions of debts and the inevitable serfdom and slavery of our people are a big price to pay and a terrible sacrifice to make, but the system is a famous one, and the Shylocks are patting our backs and telling us, "Bravo! good dog, Bose!" while we weld the chains on ourselves and our children !

Mr. Speaker, it is safe to say that our people can not pay their present debts with constantly declining gold prices for the products of land and labor.  Our lands are already passing from the people into the hands of the money lords as fast as time can move and the courts can grind.  In passing through the courts our farms usually pay the court expenses and part of the mortgages.  The rest of the debts hang over the homeless debtors in the form of judgments.  When the mortgages were executed, the lands were worth twice the loans placed on them.  The shrinkage of values came through currency contraction.  Senator Plumb placed this shrinkage in a single year, through the retirement of bank currency, at three billions of dollars.  That loss cost the people through shrinkage of values, in a single year, nearly as much as the war of the rebellion cost the country in four years.

Hon. Joseph Walker, of Massachusetts, stated on the floor of this House in May, 1892, that farms in New England are selling to-day at about half the cost of the improvements on them.  This statement means that the lands go for nothing, and half the improvements thrown in.  This is the cost to New England of our stable(?) gold standard, which may be so easily toppled to the ground.  It comes high, but the "eminent financiers" of New York and London, who have the ear of our rulers, say we must have it.

During the twenty-five years of our currency contraction the bankruptcies of business men have averaged about ten thousand per annum.  The public and private debts of the people have grown beyond the remotest hope of payment, and the capitalization of our railroads, on which the people must pay interest and dividends, is now above ten billions of dollars.  At present prices this burden (mostly water) is simple robbery.  The corporations, like the military barons of the Middle Ages, stand between the people and their markets, and extort from them "all the traffic will bear."  This burden grows annually at the will of the corporations.  The people have no word, nor voice in the matter.  The officers of the corporations boldly publish that it is an "impertinence" for the people to discuss the subject.  When it has been intimated that the railroads should be managed for the public benefit, a leading officer of a great corporation [Vanderbilt] has said, "The public be damned!"

It may be denied that our railroad capitalization came through contraction of the currency.  I do not claim that it did;  but, Mr. Speaker, all must admit that the burden of carrying it from year to year is greatly increased by currency contraction and the continued falling prices of products.  The charges for travel and traffic are sometimes reduced through the clamoring cries of a distressed people, but seldom in proportion to the decreased prices of commodities and means of payment.

The Silver Standard.

Is silver a steadier basis for a money system than gold ?  If facts prove anything, it most assuredly is.  During all the fluctuations of the two metals since 1873, as compared with general prices, gold has continually fluctuated, usually bounding upward by large jumps and subsiding by smaller ones.  Silver has not done this, but has steadily remained "stable" as compared with the prices of commodities.  This is especially true as compared to wheat and cotton, the leading agricultural products which are exported to foreign countries.  The advocates of a single gold standard never tire in asserting that silver has fallen in value since 1873.  This is not true.  The bullion in the silver dollar will buy as much of the average products of land and labor now as in 1873, if not more.  If there has been a change in the value of silver bullion since 1873, it has risen in value rather than fallen.  This is proven beyond a doubt by comparing the commercial value of silver bullion with the commercial values of commodities in general.  It can not be proven by a comparison with gold, as that fluctuating metal agrees with nothing with any reliable certainty.  It is subject to every demand of the gold centers of Europe, and to every whim of the great gold gamblers and speculators of the world.  Such a standard must necessarily fluctuate.  It agrees with nothing, and is consistent with nothing, except that it is usually going up, as is proved by the constantly falling prices of commodities as measured in gold.

Gold and silver have each made a record in history.  Silver bought the field of Machpelah where Abraham laid to rest his beloved Sarah.  Gold was the tool and ally of Philip of Macedon, when he overthrew the liberties of Greece.  Silver was the only coin in the pockets of poverty during the struggle for American independence.  Gold was the coin of the enemy, for which the first American traitor sold himself and his country's liberties.  Silver, in all its history, has been the money of the common people ---the money of liberty, the money of the Constitution, the money of four-fifths of the population of the world.  Silver is steady and reliable, constituting the favorite hoards in the pockets of industry and serving as a balance wheel on the approach of panics.  Gold has ruined Germany, covering 80 per cent of the people's homes with irredeemable mortgages.  Silver and paper were the money of France in the days of anguish and adversity.  They have raised France to be the most prosperous and independent nation of Europe.  Gold is the fluctuating tool and ally of the gambler and thief, the tyrant and the traitor, and at this moment is driving the entire gold-basis world into the dishonor and crime of repudiation, through failing prices, making the payment of honest debts impossible.

Mr. Speaker, I do not speak at random on this important subject.  It would be treason to the American people to do so.  I call your most candid attention to the positive testimony of the highest and most respectable authorities.  Hon. John P. Jones, United States Senator, and formerly chairman of the United States Monetary Commission of 1876, in his late speech in Brussels, before the international conference, says:

Since its demonetization in 1873, silver has lost none of its command over commodities, and therefore none of its value.  Even as bullion to-day it has the same power in exchange for commodities that as full legal-tender money it had in 1873.

Index numbers printed in a late number of the London Economist show that the fall in gold prices from 1869 to 1892 was 33 per cent.

The same authority shows that on twenty-two leading articles of commerce the falling gold prices since 1869 has been 67 per cent.  On the other hand, the same authority shows that silver prices during all that time have scarcely changed at all.  In this way it is easy to show which is the "stable currency," and which the unstable.  The philosophers tell us that---

By measuring two things, one against the other, you can never arrive at any determination as to which has changed.  Instead of disputing as to whether one clock has lost or another gained, would it not be well to consult the Sun and stars and ascertain exactly what has happened ?

The commodities of commerce are the Sun and stars of the commercial and monetary world.  By this test the golden clock has gained twelve hours in the twenty-four, and at midnight tells us that it is noon, while the silver clock still keeps step with the Sun and stars of the commercial world as from the beginning.  The same in 1869 as in 1892.  Silver then is the sound and stable currency of the world.  The London Bankers' Magazine, in 1881, deprecated the attempt of Italy to resume specie payments, upon the ground of the scarcity of gold, and said:

There has thus been created a new demand for gold, of considerable magnitude, and that at a time when the supplies of the metal are barely adequate for existing wants.  For years past there have been complaints of a gold scarcity.  The addition of Germany and the United States to the body of nations using a gold currency has greatly increased the demand for the metal in the production of which there has been no corresponding increase, but on the contrary, a slight diminution.  The .international competition for gold has therefore been keener, and the fear now is that the advent of Italy as a buyer will still further intensify this competition and thus cause a general enhancement of the value of money.

In November, 1873, Mr. Benjamin Disraeli (afterwards Lord Beaconsfield) said:

I attribute it to the great monetary disturbance that has occurred, and is now to a certain degree acting very injuriously on trade --I attribute it to the great changes which our governments in Europe are making with reference to our standard of value.  I attribute the present state of affairs very much to a commission that was sitting in Paris at the time of the great exhibition.  That was a commission the object of which was to establish a uniform coinage throughout the world --a very beautiful idea which could do no great harm, but difficult to attain.  The commission never came to a definite recommendation on this subject, but they did on another subject, and that was, that no time should be lost by any of the states of Europe in taking steps to establish a uniform gold standard of value.

Six years later this same statesman, Lord Beaconsfield, further said:

Gold is every day appreciating in value, and as it appreciates in value, the lower prices become.

In January, 1876, speaking of the demonetization of silver, the Westminster Review said:

One of the things involved we hold to be the probable appreciation of gold;  in other words, an increase of its purchasing power, and that, consequently, unless fresh discoveries are made, prices have seen their highest for many a long day, and that debts contracted in gold will, by reason of this movement, tend to press more heavily on the borrowers, and that, it will be well if this pressure does not become so intolerable as to suggest by way of solution something like universal repudiation.

Mr. Bagehot, editor of the London Economist, in 1877 said:

If Germany and America, and, let us say, the Latin Union, were to adopt the gold standard, the supply of this metal would scarcely suffice and the money markets of the world would in all probability be seriously affected by this scarcity.

Prof. Thorold Rugers, of Oxford University, in 1879 accounted for the fall in prices as follows:

The principal, the most general, and in all probability the most durable cause is the rapid rise in the commercial value of gold.  At the moment when the domain of civilization is enlarging in every way, and as a consequence the want of media of exchange is correspondingly increased, one of the great states of Europe [Germany] has expelled silver and at the same time adopted gold.  She believes herself to be able to do so, thanks to the indemnity imposed upon France, but she has done the greatest harm to her population and industries.

Mr. Speaker, monetary history is bristling and blazing all over with facts proving that the commercial value of gold, exposed not only to the laws of supply and demand, as other commodities are, but to all the whims and devices of the money gamblers, is as unsound and unstable as the winds.  As a standard of value, it is the "dishonest dollar" the world over.  To deny this is to ignore the universal experience of mankind.  To attempt to build "a sound and stable currency" on a single-standard gold basis is to "defy the inexorable laws of finance and trade," which all agree can not be done with impunity.  We are, then, driven by the logic and results of these researches to further inquiry after a better and safer money system than the gold standard.

Silver and Bimetallism.

A money system based on a single commodity, as already shown, must fluctuate with the demand and supply of that commodity.  Such a system also gives the owners or holders of that commodity complete control over the volume of money afloat.  It makes the holders of that preferred commodity complete masters of the monetary system, and, through this, masters of all industry and commerce.  Senator Thomas Benton, discussing this subject and referring to the men or corporations who control the volume of our nation's money, said:

the government ought not to delegate this power [of regulating currency], if it could.  It was too great a power to be trusted to any banking company whatever, or to any authority but the highest and most responsible which was known to our form of government.  The government itself ceased to be independent — it ceases to be safe — when the national currency is at the will of a company.  The government can undertake no great enterprise, neither of war nor peace, without the consent and co-operation of that company;  it cannot count its revenues for six months ahead without referring to the action of that company — its friendship or its enmity — its concurrence or opposition — to see how far that company will permit money to be plenty, or make it scarce;  how far it will let the moneyed system go on regularly, or throw it into disorder;  how far it will suit the interests, or policy, of that company to create a tempest, or to suffer a calm, in the moneyed ocean.  The people are not safe when a company has such a power.  The temptation is too great — the opportunity too easy — to put up and put down prices;  to make and break fortunes;  to bring the whole community upon its knees to the Neptunes who preside over the flux and reflux of paper.  All property is at their mercy.  The price of real estate — of every growing crop — of every staple article in market — is at their command.  Stocks are their playthings — their gambling theatre — on which they gamble daily, with as little secrecy, and as little morality, and far more mischief to fortunes, than common gamblers carry on their operations.

This shows the very great danger of basing a money system on a single commodity.  The ease with which gold is handled, hoarded, cornered, and hidden away, makes it the most dangerous of all commodities.  Silver is less easily cornered and hidden;  less easily stolen and carried away.  It is more likely to be in the pockets of the people.  It is more difficult to collect into the great money centers;  and far more difficult to manipulate in the interest of money-gamblers;  hence, it is a safer foundation for a sound and stable currency than gold.

But as two is better than one, as a man on two feet possesses a broader and safer means of walking than a man on one foot, so a money system based on both gold and silver is broader, sounder, and safer than a one-metal system.  With a moment's thought the bimetallic system will also be seen to be the essence of simplicity.  And the maintenance of parity between the metals is easily accomplished that in friendly or impartial hands it is self-acting.  The commercial value of all things, including the money metals, is controlled by demand and supply.  With a given fixed ratio between the money metals the loaner always exercises his option and loans the more plentiful and cheaper money.  No one disputes his right to do this.  This is a demand for the cheaper metal which tends to maintain its commercial value.

Now, if the debtor is permitted in like manner to exercise his right of option in choosing the money of payment, he will seek to pay with the more plentiful and cheaper money which he has borrowed.  It is only justice that the debtor be allowed this right.  This double demand for the cheaper metal or money establishes its parity with the scarcer metal, which can not remain scarcer and dearer when relieved from the demands of both creditors and debtors. If, then, through the vicissitudes of supply and demand the metals change places, the disparity is at once checked, and parity is restored by the change of demands on the part of loaners and debtors, both uniformly choosing to use the cheaper money when permitted to do so.  Disparity can only continue by depriving one or both parties in commercial transactions of their right of option to use any lawful money which they may prefer.  The gold men who justify the loaning of cheap money utterly refuse the right of option on the part of debtors to pay in the same lawful money which they borrow.  The gold men claim that loans of cheap currency, secured by real estate mortgage, can only be paid honestly with gold coin.  This doctrine, in practice, compels an unnatural demand for gold coin.  It creates and perpetuates the disparity of the metals which is so loudly complained of.

Bimetallism is like a man walking on two feet.  The demand for action is always on the hindmost foot.  This brings it up to the other and insures the continued parity of the two.  Monometallism is like the man on one foot.  He makes no progress except by jerks and jumps, which shock and derange the entire system.  At the present moment in this country we are testing the qualities of monometallism.  Gold coin is the lawful standard, and the pcices of all  commodities are rated by the fluctuating standard of the least "stable" of all standards.  By this fluctuating standard, on which all demands are made, the prices of all property are fluctuating and falling.  Nothing is fixed, because the standard of value is unfixed.  The rocks of Gibraltar, with the same treatment ---measured by the rolling billows and changing waves and tides of the ocean--- would be as fickle and unstable as gossamer.

In our present experiment, all demands for payments are made on gold.  That raises its price.  All demands for monetary exports are made on gold.  That raises its price still higher.  The Secretary of the Treasury ignores and repudiates laws and contracts, and all the rules of common justice, swelling the demand for gold, and, by comparison, depreciates the price of silver.  With our present unfair administration of the Treasury, we are like the man with two feet trying to make progress by the exclusive use of that foot which is already in advance of the other.  His position is extremely awkward and absurd;  such defiance of natural law is physical anarchy.  Our Secretary's disregard for the rights of the people in the payment of coin obligations is very unjust toward the people. If the present Secretary of the Treasury would use both silver and gold coin on coin contracts, making the heavier demands on the cheaper metal ---always exercising the right of option in the interest of the people--- in all coin payments, the parity of the two metals would immediately be restored and maintained.

Gold can never meet the double demand for exportation and for home use as money.  The man with two feet can not walk on one with the other tied to a post.  His active foot may be a golden one, but he is paralyzed and helpless, as our country is to-day.  Every interest is suffering.  Business is bankrupt, labor is not employed, debtors are losing their homes, men, women, and children are unemployed and starving, the padlock of silence is placed on the mouths of children in the streets, lest their announcements of our bad condition may precipitate a revolution;  and the Congress of the United States is called together in the "dog days" to redress the situation.

All this, Mr. Speaker, in my judgment, is occasioned by the Secretary refusing to pay out silver coin on coin contracts, and because of his continual demand on gold for every monetary purpose, with the certain practical result of increasing the disparity of the money metals, in the interest of the gold gamblers and money lords of London and New York, and against the interest of the American people.

It is said by some that the purchase of 4,500,000 ounces per month, by the United States Government, prevents the rise of silver bullion, and that, if this demand would cease, bullion would rise.  Mr. Speaker, does not this position presume a little too much on the lack of intelligence among men ?  Does it not reverse the self-acting laws of demand and supply ?  Have we not said that the laws of finance and trade can not be defied with impunity ?  Sir, is not the Secretary of the Treasury, by ignoring the spirit of the law and the rights of the people, venturing upon an absurd and dangerous experiment ?  The logic of the situation is this:

If there were fewer buyers of wheat, wheat would rise;  if there were fewer buyers of cutton, of corn, or of silver, then those respective commodities would bear higher prices.  That is the argument which is made in favor of repealing the silver-purchase law of 1890.

Mr. Speaker, I beg of you, let us relieve the American people of this scandal.  Let us not be guilty of harboring such unwisdom at the head of our financial affairs.  It is bad to be robbed, as our people are now being robbed through currency contractions and falling prices.  It is bad to be bankrupted, as our businessmen are being driven to the wall.  It is bad to be idle and starving, as our miners, railroad employes, and other workers are out of work and starving, but it is unbearable, Mr. Speaker, to add to all of these distresses of the people the scandal and humiliation of financial idiocy !  Let the secretary, sir, pay out silver coin on all coin contracts ---require him to increase his demands on silver, under the present laws and the present contracts--- and silver will at once rise to a parity with gold.

It is said that the present silver-purchase law drives gold from the country, and hence, must be repealed.  The law does not do this.  The law provides for the putting into circulation of about $40,000,000 per annum of United States Treasury notes.  Those notes, besides being legal tender for most purposes, are redeemable "in coin," and the law provides for the coining of silver to redeem them, but gives the Secretary his option as to which coin he shall use.  He chooses to use gold coin.  This increased demand for gold raises its price, increasing the disparity of the two metals.  It also robs the gold reserve by permitting the gold to be exported.  It is not the law which robs the reserve and sends gold abroad, but it is the Secretary.  It is obvious that the Secretary's wrongful ruling needs "repealing" much more than the law does.

If the spirit of "Old Hickory" Jackson were in the executive chair now, that Secretary would, in my opinion, be dismissed so quickly that it would make him dizzy and there would be no extra session of Congress in August to relieve the gold gamblers from their troubles.

If any man capable of opening his eyes desires positive evidence as to the superiority of silver over gold as a stable money basis, he has but to observe the stable finances of Mexico at the present moment.  That country is not a strong one financially, yet with her silver standard she sits serenely amid the storm which is rending the gold countries, viewing their trepidation and distresses with pity and complacency.  With her mints turning out silver dollars at the rate of $14,000,000 per month, her finances were never in sounder condition nor her commerce more flourishing.  The following dispatch explains the Mexican situation:

City of Mexico, July 5.

Published opinions of foreign bankers that Mexico will be bankrupted through the recent fall in silver are not taken in earnest here.  Nothing approaching a business crisis is apprehended.  The credit of the great commercial and financial establishments of this city continues unquestioned.  The crop reports are excellent, and this is regarded by local bankers as a most hopeful feature of the situation.  If Mexico is able to feed herself she can afford to play a waiting game in the matter of silver.

That example ought to teach enlightened and patriotic men an important lesson.  If the Mexican finances were on the fickle gold basis, that country would be compelled to enter the general scramble for the delusive yellow metal.  Every gold standard nation must, inevitably, be shaken by every cyclone in the great gold centers ?  If the world.  There is no escape from this conclusion.  This great country of ours, struggling to maintain a gold standard , is compelled to call an extra session of Congress to doctor the finances and save the country;  while "poor old Mexico" sits firmly and calmly on her basis of white metal without a tremor.  It appears, Mr. Speaker, that wisdom and common sense are worth more than gold.

Mr. Allard, of Belgium, delegate to the International Monetary Conference in Brussels, last winter, made the following general statement as to the silver standard:

What is the state of things we see at present ?  We see that in those countries which have a gold standard, prices have fallen enormously, and that, on the contrary, in the countries which have a silver standard, in spite of the unfavorable treatment of silver in Europe, and in spite of the diminution in its uses, the relation of value between money and goods has remained almost exactly what it was twenty years ago.  They try to frighten us by pointing to the dangers which ensue from the abundance of silver, and yet I repeat that in spite of the unfavorable position in which silver is placed, we fail to observe in silver standard countries any of the evil results which ought to flow from that abundance.

I call attention to another historic lesson which should be of value at the present time.  The finances of England are on the single gold basis, long established and skillfully managed.  France, just across the channel, on the Continent, bases her finances on both gold and silver, and on the quality of legal tender.  During the last fifty years the bimetallic Bank of France has not been shaken with the fears of bankruptcy.  Even the unusual demand on its resources to pay the German indemnity of $1,000,000,000, caused but a temporary tremor.  On the other hand, on two or three occasions, we find the gold basis Bank of England, on the verge of ruin, applying to the bimetallic Bank of France for help, which was promptly given.  The fact is, the payment of the German indemnity of France caused quite as much alarm in London as in Paris.

In proof of what is here stated, I call attention to the testimony of the very highest authorities.  Mr. Allard, of Belgium, already quoted, stated in the Monetary Conference at Brussels, last winter, as follows:

Mr. Rothschild appears to me to have forgotten that not long ago the bimetallic Bank of France came ---for the third time, I think, and at any rate, for the second--- to the assistance of the monometallic Bank of England. and was obliged to lend to that bank 75,000,000 francs in gold, in order to spare it the difficulties which might have ensued from a fresh suspension of the act of 1844.  Is the system of the bank which confers the benefit, or of that which receives it, to be preferred by us ?  I do not hesitate to give the preference to the Bank of France, which conferred the benefit, although that bank is absolutely bimetallic, and my conclusion is that of the two banking systems I prefer that which is based upon the two metals. (Page 93.)

During the seven years, 1883-1890, the Bank of France only changed its rate of discount seven times, whilst the Bank of England changed it sixty-two times, the variations in France only amounting to 2 per cent, whilst those in England amounted to 4 per cent. (Page 143.)

I feel a kind of shame on the occasion of two or three millions of gold being taken from this country to Brazil or by other country (that) it should immediately have the effect of causing a monetary alarm throughout the country. ---Page 149.

Then came the Baring failure, and our weakness was shown by having to call France to our aid.  The currency of France had weathered without difficulty storms to which the Baring failure was mere child's play;  for example, the Prussian war, the communistic struggle, the war indemnity, the failures of the Panama Canal, of the metal ring, and of the comptoir d'escompte.

Mr. Giffen has stated that in almost every year since 1873 there has been a stringency of greater or less severity, directly traceable to or aggravated by the extraordinary demands for gold and the difficulties in supplying them.  And, finally, we have the declaration of Mr. Rothschild which threatens us with monetary panic, "The far-spreading effects of which it would be impossible to foretell."

I repeat, "it is gold that is sick, not silver," and unless this fact be recognized by the members of this conference, it will be impossible to apply the proper remedy to the crisis which menaces us.  I beg also to lay before the conference the accompanying diagrams which I have prepared;  and in doing so, I would draw particular attention to diagram No.3a, because it shows at a glance the instability of gold and the stability of silver. ---Pages 143, 144.

"A Sound and Stable Currency."

In order to arrest great national danger ---to ward off impending ruin--- I have shown the superiority of silver and bimetallism over gold, as a safe, sound, and stable basis of currency under the present conditions and tendencies of the monetary world.  I have appealed to the facts of history and the experiences of mankind.  I have avoided untried theories.  I think I have made out my case.  Of course, the gold gamblers will not yield.  You can not reason with Demetrius;  and the prostrate worshipers of Juggernaut would rather be crushed than face the anger of their idol.  Yet the people may be convinced and saved.

But, Mr. Speaker, to merely escape sudden ruin is not a very high ambition for a great, glorious, and progressive people like ours.  We should have higher aims than that.  Money is the blood of our civilization.  A single gold standard is a disease in an acute form.  It is delirium.  It is neither a healthy nor a plentiful blood.  It is both paucity and impurity.  Add to it silver, and you have a safer and more bountiful circulating medium.  With this improved and increased supply of the "protoplasm" of commerce and civilization our people will stand on a higher plane and the nation will live longer.  But our position in the world justifies higher ambitions than mere existence.  The examples of the statesmen and heroes of our history beckon us onward to higher attainments.  Our opportunities as an enlightened nation, and the moving, industrious, and enterprising characteristics of our compound American people forbid mere commonplace achievements.  To reach our most cherished and reasonable destiny as a commercial and civilized people we must have a sound, stable, pure, and plentiful currency.  To find and draft such a system we need seek for nothing new or untried.  Although the most important of all questions, the money question is not difficult.  Any common mind can easily comprehend and understand it when stripped of the glamour and mystery sought to be thrown around it by the gamblers.

The circulating medium of our industrial and commercial life must be pure, plentiful, and permanent.  We must not subject it to the phlebotomy of the money gamblers, nor even to the uncertain supply of the costly money metals.  Gold and silver coin must be continued:

1.  Out of respect to the traditions and usages of mankind for forty centuries;

2.  Because we have agreed to pay some billions of monetary obligations, which, per contract, are to be paid in coin of a given weight and fineness;

3.  Because our country is the largest producer of the money metals in the world, and we should not demonetize and depreciate the value of our own products;  and

4.  Because we can not discard them without industrial and financial ruin.

Let me illustrate:  By the laws of 1873-'74 silver was demonetized.  That act created a disparity between the coin and bullion values of silver.  It created and now perpetuates a rich field for the great speculators of the world.  Taking advantage of the disparity thus created, the British speculator goes into the London market, where he buys silver bullion at a discount.  This is coined for him into East Indian rupees.  The coin is more valuable than the bullion.  With the new coin the speculator buys East Indian wheat and cotton for the European markets in competition with American wheat and cotton.  The British speculator can sell his eastern wheat and cotton at the same low price at which he bought them because of his profits on silver.  And Americans must sell in those markets at the same low prices, or abandon the European markets for our two great staples of export.

This explanation shows why American wheat and cotton rise and fall with silver bullion.  It also proves that the cotton and wheat growing States have a greater direct interest in the silver question than the silver States themselves.

The same policy and the same speculations practiced in India in the handling of wheat and cotton are practiced in the South American silver-using countries in connection with wool, hides, and the cheaper grades of grass-fed beef.  This shows that not only the wheat and cotton growing States, but also the cattle and wool growing States, are quite as much interested in the silver question as are the silver-producing States.  Restore the parity between the bullion and coin values of silver by free and unlimited coinage of silver, and we raise the prices of our great agricultural staples in foreign markets at least 40 percent.

It will thus be seen that this silver fight is comprehensive and one in which we are all deeply interested.  Demonetization destroys our European markets for many of our leading commodities of export.  That is one aspect of the question.  Then, besides that, it closes the American silver mines, shuts off our supply of metallic money, and destroys our great and increasing mountain market for agricultural products.  The western third of the American continent, rich in everything except agriculture, under normal conditions would be a better market for all agricultural products and for the products of our great manufacturing establishments than all the rest of the world.

By the demonetization of silver this best side of the Republic is made a desert.  The mines are closed.  Great and rich States are depopulated and changed into deserts.  Their purchasing power is destroyed.  Agriculture and manufactures are without a market, business is bankrupt, and laborers by the millions are changed into mendicants and tramps.  We can not discard silver money if we would.  The subject is far reaching, and afflicts all men with unbearable evils except the Shylocks of London and their American allies, agents, and attorneys.

In connection with this statement I call attention to a prediction made by the present Secretary of the Treasury, then a member of this House.  It is not the first time in history when a prophet has become the willing agent of the evils which he opposed and predicted.  In 1878, discussing this silver question, Mr. Carlisle said:

I know that the world's stock of precious metals is none too large, and I see no reason to apprehend that it will ever become so.  Mankind will be fortunate indeed if the annual production of gold and silver coin shall keep pace with the annual increase of population, commerce, and industry.  According to my view of the subject, the conspiracy, which seems to have been formed here and in Europe to destroy by legislation and otherwise from three-sevenths to one-half of the metallic money of the world, is the most gigantic crime of this or any other age.  The consummation of such a scheme would ultimately entail more misery upon the human race than all the wars, pestilence, and famine that ever occurred in the history of the world.  The absolute and instantaneous destruction of half the entire movable property of the world, including houses, ships, railroads, and all other appliances for carrying on commerce, while it would be felt more sensibly at the moment, would not produce anything like the prolonged distress and disorganization or society that must inevitably result from the permanent annihilation of one-half of the metallic money of the world.

Mr. Speaker, we can not change the present ratio of 16 of silver to 1 of gold without great inconvenience and loss.  It would involve the recoinage of our present stock of silver money now in the hands of the people.  It would require a change of contract in connection with many millions of monetary obligations which are by their terms payable in coin of the standard weight of July 14, 1870.  On this subject the joint resolution of the two Houses of 1878, known as the Matthews resolution, reads as follows:

Be it resolved by the Senate, (the House of Representatives concurring therein,) That all the bonds of the United States issued or authorized to be issued under the said acts of Congress hereinbefore recited, and payable, principal and interest, at the option of the Government of the United States, in silver dollars, of the coinage of the United States, containing 412½ grains each, of standard silver;  and that to restore to its coinage such silver coins as a legal tender in payment of said bonds, principal and interest, is not in violation of the public faith, nor in derogation of the rights of the public creditor.

A change of ratio or a change of the weight of the silver dollar creates a lawful excuse for the bondholders to refuse the silver dollar in coin payments, which they will use to their own advantage.  In this silver matter we are all, except Wall street, in the same boat, and must sink or swim together.  Our only course is to rehabilitate the old silver dollar as it was prior to 1873, and to maintain the full and free coinage of both gold and silver as money metals at the present ratio of 16 to 1.  If the people are left alone, and the laws of supply and demand are permitted fair play, the parity of the metals, at that ratio, will be assured and perpetual.

Mr. Speaker, both sides in this discussion admit that neither of the metals, nor both of them combined, are a satisfactory currency for actual use in the channels of trade and business.  Both sides propose a supplemental paper, either in the form of Treasury notes or bank notes.  And in one of these forms we are expected to find that "sound and stable currency" which is to meet the necessities of the people.  I now call the attention of the House to a discussion of these two forms of paper currency.

The United States Treasury Note.

Mr. Speaker, money, strictly speaking, is not a material thing.  It is a function created by law;  and by law this function may be attached to any proper material.  It is an office or function, as is the office of sheriff.  A man naturally is not a sheriff or other public officer, but when the office or legal function is attached to the man, he is then a public officer, and as such can do many things and perform many acts which he could not do or perform in his individual capacity.  When the money function has been legally attached to a material thing, then that material thing becomes tangible money.  In rude societies the money function may grow up by custom, and by common consent may become attached to a material thing.  In this way cattle, copper, gold, silver, tobacco, and various articles or commerce have become tangible money by reason of their endowment by custom or law with the money function.  The various commodities of commerce have never proven themselves entirely satisfactory money, because of their unwieldiness and frequent scarcity.

All things considered, no material seems so well adapted to practical business purposes as well-executed paper notes.  The material is easy of procurement, reasonably durable, and easy to transport, count, and handle in large or small amounts.  It is easy to conceal about the person, being small of bulk and light of weight;  and, above all, when executed in the highest style of art, it is the most difficult to counterfeit, perhaps, of all moneys.  On this latter point, Mr. Alexander Del Mar, in his able work on The Science of Money, says:

The silk-threaded, distinctive-fiber paper, the water marks, the printing in colors, the highly artistic vignettes, the geometrical lathe work, the numbers, signatures, and other mechanical safeguards of the modern paper note, render it far more difficult to imitate than coin.

The importance of having a money above the arts of the counterfeiter is seen when we contemplate a few facts of history.  All agree that money is valuable in proportion to limitation, and that an unlimited money must be ultimately a worthless money.  A money that is easily counterfeited is practically an unlimited money.  As examples in point, I mention the Continental currency of the American Revolution and the assignats of France.  Both were largely counterfeited by the British Government.  In each case the counterfeits are said to have far exceeded in amount the genuine notes when the point of worthlessness was reached.

The issuing of money is an act of sovereignty, and as such ought not to be delegated to individuals or to corporations.  All money should be issued by the sovereign power of the nation.  When so issued, it is in effect a check on society for value, and like all checks, it must be redeemed.  All money, whether metal or paper, must be redeemed.  That is what money is for.  It rests on the value that is behind it.  But let us not be mistaken;  let us not be misled by terms.  Swapping dollars is no redemption.  The first and primary redemption of money is receivability by the issuing power.  It must be receivable in the revenues of the issuing government.  That is primal redemption.  A money so received in the United States and Great Britain has been and is uniformly good money.  This primal redemption is like a man accepting his own checks in payment of dues to himself when he transacts business.

But there is a wider and more general redemption, which arises from the quality of legal tender.  All perfect money is endowed with this necessary quality;  and when so endowed, all men advertise their eagerness to redeem such money with value.  In effect, this is basing money ---not on gold, not on silver, nor on any single commodity, but on all commodities.  A money so based is precisely as good as the issuing government ---no better, no worse.  A money so based, though made of paper, never falls below gold while the issuing government remains intact and continues to collect and disburse revenues.

This rule has no exceptions.  A paper money so funded and redeemed is always preferred to gold.  Intrinsic or commercial value in the material which is endowed with the monetary function is not only unnecessary, but it should be further stated that such intrinsic value is a great and sometimes fatal objection to the money material.  It gives the owners of the valuable money material a monopoly of the money of the country.  If gold alone is used as money, then the amount of money in a given country can not exceed the amount of gold available in that country;  and the holders of gold, by making money scarce or plenty at will, become masters of the situation.  They occupy the position described by Mr. Garfield when he said:  "Whoever controls the volume of the currency is absolute master of all industry and commerce."  In the words of Senator Benton, speaking of the same dangerous class of men:  "All property is at their mercy."

Money has been defined as a "measure of value."  This is not strictly true.  Values are measured by the combined judgments of the parties concerned, influenced by surrounding circumstances and conditions.  In other words, "values are measured with brains."  But money is a unit of account, and values are expressed in the money units.  In the United States the dollar is the unit of account, and values are expressed in dollars and fractions of a dollar.  Values having been fixed by the combined judgments of the parties in interest, then it is the office of money to settle the account between the parties as a medium of exchange or means of payment.  When I pay a man money for service, I give him a general check on society for value.  So far as I am concerned, he is paid, but in fact he has not yet received anything which satisfies his ultimate wants.  He has only received a check on the general wealth of the country for what he desires.  This check must be redeemed, and society is eager to redeem it with all the values of the country that are for sale.  Hence the man to whom I paid the check is better paid than if I had given him some form of value which he did not specially need.  If I had given him a horse or a cow, when he needed a suit of clothes, it would have been less satisfactory to him than the money, though of the same or even greater value.  Though money may be without intrinsic value in itself, and should be so, yet, when fairly treated by law, it stands for all values;  and the holder of it has a check or order on the entire country for his choice of all property that is for sale, to the extent of the value mentioned in his check or order, and all men are eager to accept or redeem his check, and give him choice of the values in their possession.

Money is a labor-saving machine.  It is a bookkeeper and accountant, saving much time and expense when it floats in proper volume.  For this purpose the material of money need not have value.  If A owes B $10, and B owes A $10, the accounts balance, the parties shake hands, and the transaction is ended.  If A owes B $10, B owes C $10, and C owes A $10, the parties, if brought together, may still see through the matter.  The case is more complicated than before, yet the opportunity for cancellation exists, and the parties may shake hands, as before, without money payment.  But suppose fifty men are involved.  Then money must be used in some form, either to pay the entire debts or to settle the balances.  Each owes another $10, but all are not aware of the facts.  Let the parties be together with no money in their pockets, but, looking on the ground, one of them finds a $10 note.  He asks for a claimant or owner of the money, but finds none.  He then pays a debt of $10 to his neighbor standing near.  His neighbor pays the money to another, to whom he is indebted.  Debt-paying is the order of the day until fifty debts have been paid, when the money finally stops in the hands of the finder, who, owing no one present, puts the note in his pocket.  I inquire, are those debts paid ?  Plainly they are.  But suppose the holder of the money should drop it into the fire, and it should be consumed.  Would that make any difference ?  Surely not.  Whatever may become of that note, the debts are paid.  But let us suppose that the holder of the bill, instead of dropping it into the fire, should carry it to a bank for deposit, and there find it to be a counterfeit.  Now, are the debts paid ?  Let each reader decide for himself.  Evidently it was a case of cancellation;  and if the parties had known of the facts and relations of each to each, they might have clasped hands and the debts would have been settled, canceled, or paid, without the use of money.

Now, let us suppose that fifty men are present in a clearing house.  The first man, A, hands his personal check to B, his creditor. (This is not final payment, as money is.  A personal check may be called money of conditional payment.) The second man, B, owes C $40.  He hands to C a $10 check, received from A, and his own personal check for $30.  And so the payment continues until all are paid with these checks of conditional payment.  Then comes cancellation and the payment of balances.  In practice it is found that checks do not balance and cancel each other in full, as men do not owe each other the same amounts, but that there must be used in every clearing house some money of final payment;  that is, money, or general checks on society at large, issued by the sovereign government or society in the concrete, which all are willing to accept as money of final payment.  By the records of clearing-house business for long periods it is found that, on the average, the amount of money of final payment necessary to settle balances is about 5 per cent of the business done.

This is not much, but it is absolutely necessary to prevent bankruptcies.  Ninety-five per cent of the business is done with individual checks and drafts, 5 per cent with money of final payment.  In view of these well-settled facts some flippant writers and speakers have taken the ground that all business may be done with individual checks and drafts, and that the volume of actual money cuts no figure.  This is not correct.  The 5 per cent of actual money is small, but it is absolutely necessary to prevent bankruptcies.  The entire business is based on this 5 per cent;  and for every dollar of this money which maybe withdrawn from circulation $20 of business must stop.  This shows the importance of watching closely the volume of money of final payment.  Even a small contraction deranges business, causes bankruptcies, and reduces the volume of the business of the country.

Money is a war power.  There are two great war powers known among civilized nations ---the sword and the purse. By the sword is meant that physical force which overcomes the enemy in the field.  The purse is that power which equips, subsists, recruits, and pays the fleets and armies.  Among savages there is much of the sword and little of the purse.  As a rule, the purse power increases among nations as civilized methods are adopted, until ultimately most of the purposes of war may be attained with only a show of physical force.  Money, as a war power, need not have intrinsic value.  It has been proven time and again that modern wars can not be prosecuted with intrinsic money as a support to the armies.  I call attention to the following examples of money as a war power:

1.  The history of the Republic of Venice is a history of continual war on land and sea.  The Republic of Venice was the great commercial nation of Earth for centuries, and its maritime wars were necessary for the protection of its extended commerce in every quarter of the known world.  In the year 1171 intrinsic money utterly failed to meet the monetary requirements of the republic, and a book credit or inscription money was adopted.  This inscription money had no material value whatever.  It was not redeemable in coin or bullion, and there was no pretense that it would be so redeemed;  but it was receivable in the revenues of the Government, and legal tender for all debts.  The legal-tender quality, in the language of Dr. Franklin, was "greater advantage" than coin redemption.  For six hundred years that paper-credit money ruled 20 per cent above coin.  During all that time there was not a money panic in the country.  Venice became and remained the center of commerce and the clearing house of the world.  There is not a line on record that any citizen of Venice was dissatisfied with their financial system.  This is the longest and most satisfactory continuous financial experiment recorded in history, and it proves very conclusively the superiority of functional, or fiat money, over intrinsic money in times of war.

2.  At the beginning of the American Revolution coin, or intrinsic money, failed to materialize.  It was not to be had.  It was an utter failure.  Our fathers had no resources but paper.  They had no government capable of issuing a proper money of any sort, but they did the best they could.  They could print paper and call it money, but they could not receive it in the revenues of the Government, because the old Confederacy did not collect revenues.  They could not endow it with the quality of legal tender, because the old Confederacy was not a sovereign government.  They could not even make it redeemable in coin, as there was no coin to be had.  Coin is always absent when most needed.  But the patriot fathers had wit as well as patriotism, and they issued the best money they could.  It was rudely executed and easily counterfeited, hence in practice must be unlimited in amount.  People were expected to take it as a matter of patriotism.  This was the only foundation of that Continental money;  yet for five years it met the requirements of the country, and Mr. Albert Gallatin afterwards spoke of it as follows:

the paper money carried the United States through the most arduous and perilous stages of the war ;  and, though operating as a most unequal tax, it cannot be denied that it saved the country.

If the American Colonies had depended on coin money as a war power, they would have remained subject to the tyranny of King George.  American liberty would never have been born.

3.  In the year 1797 money of intrinsic value failed in England.  The bank paid out its last silver sixpence, and the nation was on the verge of ruin.  A paper money not redeemable in coin was adopted, which met every monetary requirement for twenty-five years, through all the terrible trials of the wars of Napoleon.  It carried the country triumphantly through every crisis conferring on the empire a prosperity and glory unequaled in ancient or modern times.  On this subject Sir Archibald Alison says:

It is in these moments of public and private suffering that the paper circulation steps in to sustain public and private credit during the interval when national industry has been paralyzed by the disappearance of the precious metals from circulation.  But for its aid, the empire would certainly have been destroyed.  Had bank note been rendered scarce when gold disappeared, the nation and all its trading classes would have been bankrupted, and we should long since have been a province of France.

4.  In the year 1813, during the wars of Napoleon, gold utterly failed to meet the needs of the allied armies on the Continent of Europe.  England, Russia, and Prussia issued a joint paper money, which supported the armies, broke the power of Napoleon, and saved the Continent.

The late Judge Martin, in his work on The Money of Nations, says:

It met the emergency as coin could not.

Mr. Alison says:

It passed as cash from Kamchatka to the Rhine, and brought the war to a successful issue.  Without this paper money the vast armaments of the allies would have been dissolved for want of funds and their support.

5.  During the war of the rebellion, when gold left the field, there were three kinds of non-metallic war money, which stood the shock of arms to the end.  The revolutionary government of the South issued the best paper possible for such a government.  It was precisely as good as the issuing power ---no better, no worse.  It was a brave money ---far better than cowardly metal.  It staid with the armies, and fought with them to the bitter end, and went down with them on the field of battle.  That paper money of the South was rudely executed and easily counterfeited.  This, of course, made it practically impossible to limit the volume in circulation;  and, as already stated, an unlimited money is a worthless money.

Money is valuable in proportion to limitation.  If it is possible, the counterfeiters will inflate the money to the point of worthlessness, as in the case of our Continental currency and the French assignats.  In the North there were two sorts of paper money.  The first sixty millions were receivable in the revenues of the Government the same as coin, and legal tender for all debts.  That money was preferred to coin during the war, and as long as it circulated.  Another class of paper money issued during the war, known as greenbacks, was not receivable for duties on imports nor for interest on the public debt.  It was like any other useful machine with a number of important bolts left out.  It went below par as compared with coin, or as compared with paper without these legal disabilities.  It sometimes went below 50 cents on the dollar because of its legal disabilities, and from no other cause.  Yet such as it was, all the Shylocks and the armies of the South were beaten by it at one and the same time.  All agree that the greenback saved the life of the nation.  With gold only, the armies would have been paralyzed and anarchy would have prevailed.  It would have been a contest of swords after the manner of savages, with little union or adhesion on either side.

Money is the instrument of association.  Without money there is no cohesion, and disintegration must ensue.  A perfect money will remain at its post in times of danger.  Gold money would not do this.

Mr. Speaker, I have shown that gold is not a "sound and stable currency."  I have shown that silver is less fickle and far safer than gold.  I have shown that bimetallism is a better basis for "a sound and stable currency" than either gold or silver alone, and, finally, I have shown you a still safer, sounder, and more stable money system, not based on gold alone, or silver alone, or even on gold and silver combined, but on all commodities of commerce.  Money does not depend on the value of the monetary material, but on the value that is behind it ---a value always plentiful and ready for redemption purposes, not in the hands of unwilling Secretaries, nor in the vaults of banks of doubtful solvency, but in the hands of the people themselves, anxious and desperately eager to redeem all lawful money with all the values of the salable commodities of this great nation.  Such a money, founded on all commodities, is like a pyramid standing on its base, instead of on an apex composed of a single, scarce and dear commodity, subject to theft, and to all the fickle and wily devices of the gold gamblers.  Such a money is precisely as good as the issuing government, no better, no worse.  Such a money will stand by the people in times of peace and prosperity, and will fight for the government in time of war.  Gold will not do this.  While the Roman people used a numerary money printed on copper, without intrinsic value, they maintained their liberties, and Rome was a republic.  When they adopted intrinsic money, of shrinking volume, the republic gave place to the empire, and the nation entered the thickening shadows of its decadence.

A nonlegal paper, based on coin, is never reliable, but is always subject to discount or failure when the strain comes.  Between the years 1812 and 1860 the United States Government authorized twenty issues of Treasury notes, receivable in the revenues of the Government, but not otherwise a legal tender.  Those Treasury notes were uniformly preferred to coin.  During those same years (from 1812 to 1860) numerous experiments were made with nonlegal coin-basis bank paper, with an average of failures about once in seven to ten years.  In 1860 the failure of gold-basis paper was universal and complete.  Gold itself left the field, and legal-tender Treasury notes were necessary to meet the crisis and save the country.

The Treasury notes, receivable in the revenues, was the favorite money of the early leaders of your party, Mr. Speaker, and all I have said or shall say on this branch of the subject was formerly good Democratic doctrine.  I am not proposing a new and untried scheme.  In the years 1837-'38 John C. Calhoun, of South Carolina, discussed this matter of government paper very fully in the United States Senate.  Mr. Calhoun said:

March 22, 1838:

I now undertake to affirm positively, and without the least fear that I can be answered, what heretofore I have but suggested ---that a paper issued by government, with the simple promise to receive it in all its dues, leaving its creditors to take it or gold and silver, at their option, would, to the extent that it would circulate, form a perfect paper circulation, which could not be abused by the government;  that would be as steady and uniform in value as the metals themselves;  and that if, by possibility, it should depreciate, the loss would fall, not on the people, but on the government itself;  for the only effect of depreciation would be virtually to reduce the taxes, to prevent which the interest of the government would be a sufficient guarantee.  I shall not go into the discussion now, but on a suitable occasion I shall be able to make good every word I have uttered.

October 3, 1837:

We are told the form I suggested is but a repetition of the old continental money ---a ghost that is ever conjured up by all who wish to give the banks an exclusive monopoly of Government credit.  The assertion is not true;  there is not the least analogy between them.  The one was a promise to pay when there was no revenue;  and the other a promise to receive in the dues of Government when there is an abundant revenue.

We are also told that there is no instance of a Government paper that did not depreciate.  In reply, I affirm that there is none, assuming the form I propose, that ever did depreciate.  Whenever a paper receivable in the dues of Government had any thing like a fair trial, it has succeeded.

It may throw some light on this subject to state that North Carolina, just after the Revolution, issued a large amount of paper, which was made receivable in dues to her;  it was also made a legal tender, but which, of course, was not made obligatory after the adoption of the Federal Constitution.  A large amount ---say between four and five hundred thousand dollars--- remained in circulation after that period, and continued to circulate for more than twenty years at par with gold and silver during the whole time, with no other advantage than being received in the revenues of the State, which was much less than $100,000 per annum.  (Money of Nations, pages 64, 65.)

Mr. Speaker, I offer no new experiment.  This subject is too important for the permission of expiricism.  New experiments are hazardous.  They may fail.  Old experiments which have uniformly failed are criminal.  Gold-basis paper is an old experiment which always fails when the strain comes.  Government paper, legal tender and receivable in the revenues, is an old and well-tested system.  It is preferred to coin, and never fails while the issuing government stands.  Mr. E.G. Spaulding, a banker in Buffalo, N.Y., in time of the war, chairman of the Subcommittee on Ways and Means. in 1861, 1862, and 1863, and known in financial history as "The Father of the Greenback," has discussed commodity redemption of money as follows:

Every time a hundred dollar bill passes from one person to another it is a practical redemption of it by the person who takes it.  Every time a merchant at Chicago pays to a farmer $500 in national currency for a car load of wheat, the farmer by the operation redeems such national currency, not in greenbacks, nor in gold, but in a commodity better than either, namely wheat, a staple article useful to all.  So every merchant in New York that sells a bale of cotton goods and receives his pay for it in currency, redeems such currency, not in the way that banks redeem it, but in cotton goods, which is far better because it performs the true functions of money by facilitating the legitimate sale of commodities.  So every time that a merchant or manufacturer pays his internal revenue tax to the United States Collector in national currency, the Government redeems such currency by receiving and discharging such tax.  So every mechanic or laborer that receives national currency for his services, redeems such currency by the labor performed.  So it will be seen that just so long as the national currency is practically redeemed every day in its passage from hand to hand in the payment of commodities and services and in the ramified operations of trade and business both with the Government and the people whose operations it greatly facilitates, there is not the slightest necessity for resorting to the expensive and risky operation of assorting and sending it home for redemption.

Mr. Speaker, we all favor a "sound and stable currency," and believe that the life of the nation depends on the creation and maintenance of such a circulating medium.  Now, sir, in the light of the facts of history and uniform human experience.  I propose such a currency.  I propose a currency of gold and silver coin, of the standard weight of July 14, 1870," said coin to be supplemented by United States Treasury notes, all to be coined and issued by the General Government, and made legal tender for all debts and taxes.  That, sir, is a simple, sound and stable currency, old and well tried, and when submitted to the severest tests it has uniformly proven successful.  We must retain the coins of gold and silver, because they are necessary to pay all monetary obligations which call for coin.  These should be supplemented with Treasury notes, because of the convenience of paper, and because the coins cannot be relied on to furnish the proper volume of currency needed by a prosperous and growing nation.

"A sound and stable currency," like the one I propose, would not require the services of the "extra session" doctor to "restore confidence."  With such a system in operation, our finances would cease to be as now ---a mere "confidence game," set up by the Wall street gamblers to entangle and rub the people.  Men would do business with money instead of confidence--- commerce would become more of a certainty and less a game of chance.

The supplemental paper herein advocated is necessary to insure the prosperous employment of the people.  The full employment of labor, the encouragement of enterprise, and the prosperity of industry, trade, and commerce depend very largely on what are known as time contracts.  These in their turn depend for their success on a steady money market;  otherwise trade and industry become games of chance, in which timid capital will not venture ---the result being that labor is not given profitable employment.

The merchant who buys goods on time makes a time contract.  If the money volume declines and prices fall, his profits are reduced or cut off entirely.  The farmer who plants a field of corn, enters into a time contract, investing labor and capital.  If prices are falling through currency contraction, his expenses may prove greater than the market value of the crop when grown.  If the stock-raiser invests his money in a herd of young animals, which require one, two, or three years to fit them for market, he incurs extra hazard in his enterprise, unless he is sure that the country has "a sound and stable currency," which will endure until the day of sale.  The manufacturer who invests his money in any industry does so with greater confidence and certainty if he can depend on a safe, full, and even flow of money, insuring reasonable and stable prices.

If the enterprises I have named are safely pursued and reasonably profitable, wage laborers are usually employed and well paid.  But, if these enterprises are rendered unprofitable or extra hazardous, by reason of an unstable money volume and declining prices, they must cease, and labor must remain unemployed.

Now, all history proves, from the days of the Roman Augustus to the present time, that metallic money alone can not maintain full and equal prices in a great and growing nation.  The experiment was tried by the Romans.  It failed and the Empire fell.  As the gold and silver mines of Greece and Spain failed in productiveness, prices in Rome fell, lower and lower.  Every industrial enterprise was a failure, laborers were out of work and starving;  turbulence and rapine, the strong preying upon the weak, became the only means of life.  Society became disintegrated.  The population of Europe fell off one-half, and the suffering of mankind was greater than the imagination of man can conceive.  It is not possible for a great and growing nation to depend with certainty on the irregular and declining productions of the gold and silver mines of the world for "a sound and stable currency," which shall maintain a full and even flow of prices, subject only to the supply and demand of commodities.  A metallic currency, for the sake of argument, may be reckoned sound, but if it can not prevent the perpetual decline of prices it can not be rightfully considered stable.  However sound the timbers of a ship may be, if in a sinking condition, inevitably carrying down with it all on board, it can not be called a safe or "stable" vessel.

For twenty years the financiers of this country have been seeking a gold basis.  During these same years we have had declining prices.  In spite of the indomitable energy and industry of our people, business has not grown in proportion to the increase of population.  The New York clearing house shows more business in 1869 than in 1892;  more in 1881 than in any year since.  Bankruptcies and debts have increased, and at this moment men in financial circles are in distress, crying out for help.  The Secretary, in imitation of his Republican predecessor, in his monthly reports, tries to cover up the fact of shrinking money, and in so doing deceives the unsuspecting;  but among intelligent men he is covering himself with infamy.  A recent dispatch says:

A.R. Chisholm & Co., bankers, New York, state in their bank circular dated May 29, 1893:

We quote that Right Hon. Mr. Lidderdale, of the Bank of England, agrees with our views, so often expressed during the past ten years in our market letters, that this country needs more legal tenders.  France, a stationary country, has $60 per capita.  The Director of the Mint places the per capita in the States at $22, but two hundred millions of gold have disappeared and no estimate is made of the loss of paper and coin during the past twenty-five years.  It is known that silver wears out and is renewed once in thirty years.  We claim that, deducting amounts in the United States Treasury and banks held as reserve and losses in paper currency and coins. gold exports and hoardings, this country is down to the actual famine circulation of less than $6 per capita, counting our population at sixty-five millions.

This statement corroborates the estimates of the late Senator Plumb, who was president of a national bank;  and Mr. N.A. Dunning, statistician, in Washington, D.C., and others.  And on no other ground can the present financial distresses be accounted for.  It is a money famine and nothing else.  Gold can not be relied on to furnish "a sound and stable currency."  Both the metals together can not do it, the "eminent financiers" of New York to the contrary notwithstanding.

Mr. Speaker, the only hope for the industrial and commercial prosperity of this country is a full and even flow of legal-tender Treasury notes, to supplement and to take the place of the coins when the money metals are drawn off to other countries through adverse balances of trade.

No Democrat should object to the legal-tender Treasury note.  That was the money of Jefferson, Jackson, and Calhoun, and of the long line of Democratic statesmen from 1812 to 1860. ---[No, it wasn't.  Everyone of them gentlemen recommended NON-legal-tender treasury notes]  During those years of Democratic ascendancy, twenty issues of Treasury notes were authorized and sent out.  ---[None of them were legal-tender]  They were receivable in the revenues of the Government, and were uniformly preferred to coin.  In 1846, in the heart of Mexico, the United States Treasury note was valued at 6 per cent above coin.  For fifty years this Democratic paper money was deemed good money (as good as coin, or next to coin) by all good Democrats.  On various and sundry occasions it has saved the Government from difficulties and pending bankruptcy when coin failed.  In the sixties, though badly treated by law, it saved this great nation from disintegration.
---[In the 1860s democrats withdrew from the union of sovereign states.  The republicans issued legal-tender notes to finance a war of conquest.
"For three decades a union of the South and West prevented a restoration of the centralized banking system.  Not until the planting statesmen withdrew from Congress, and the storm of the Civil War swept minor gusts before it, were the ravages wrought by Jackson repaired by the directors of affairs in Washington."
Do you somehow imagine that the triumphant money power will now allow southern democrats to stand in the way of progress again, as they stood in the way of central bank, permanent debt and national bank-currency in the 1830s, 1840s, 1850s ?  ---you got your victory, the union is in one piece, now enjoy it.]
And, at this moment the United States legal-tender Treasury note, if used to supplement the coins and maintain prices, will prove a sure means of financial, commercial, and industrial salvation.  This is the doctrine of "the inexorable laws of finance and trade," which can not be defied with impunity.  No political party can long stand in opposition to these laws.  Even the gold gamblers of Wall street can not long resist them.

The American people are kindly, good-natured, and long suffering.  In the language of the great Jefferson, they are not disposed to right their wrongs as long as their wrongs are sufferable.  But, sir, with all due respect toward those who differ, candor compels the statement that with twenty to thirty billions of monetary obligations hanging over their heads in various forms, largely resting as mortgages on their homes, the people of these United States will never submit to perpetual decline in the prices of the products which they must sell for money to pay debts.  Such decline now in progress must continue if the vain effort to reach and maintain a single gold standard is persisted in.  In Europe, with half the able-bodied men under arms to coerce the others, the attempt may be feasible, but in a great and free Republic, unaccustomed to physical coercion, with the ballot box in reach, the single gold standard can hardly be reckoned as a permanent possibility.

This money question may be made very plain by a simple statement of an arithmetical example.  Thus: Divisor (commodities), Dividend (volume of money), Quotient (prices).  The people and their commodities are the divisor in the problem which we are solving in this country.  The volume of money afloat is the dividend.  The quotient is the general average of the prices of property.  The divisor is continually increasing,  through the increase of population and the energy and enterprise of our people.  The dividend decreases through the various devices of the gamblers in cornering and suppressing money.  Is it any wonder that the quotient is less and less from day to day, in the form of declining prices ?  There is but one practical remedy, namely, add money to the circulation as the people and their transactions increase.  Increase the dividend as the divisor increases, that the quotient may remain the same.  This can only be done by supplementing the coins with legal-tender Treasury notes.

The Bank-note System.

Mr. Speaker, the gold men, as I understand them, do not claim that gold shall be the only circulating medium in the hands of the people, but that it should be the basis of a bank-paper system redeemable in gold.  In other words, they desire to supplement the gold coin with bank paper, and for this purpose very generally favor the present national banking system in preference to the old Democratic Treasury-note system, which I have been discussing and advocating.  Let me call the attention of the House to this gold-basis paper system known as the national banking system.  And, first, I desire to say that President Cleveland has wisely and earnestly warned his party and the country against the evils of "paternalism."  In his inaugural address last March Mr. Cleveland said:

Closely related to the exaggerated confidence in our country's greatness which tends to a disregard of the rules of national safety, another danger confronts us not less serious.  I refer to the prevalence of a popular disposition to expect from the operation of the Government especial and direct individual advantages.

The verdict of our voters, which condemned the injustice of maintaining protection for protection's sake, enjoins upon the people's servants the duty of exposing and destroying the brood of kindred evils which are the unwholesome progeny of paternalism.  This is the bane of republican institutions and the constant peril of our government by the people.  It degrades to the purposes of wily craft the plan of rule our fathers established and bequeathed to us as an object of our love and veneration.  It perverts the patriotic sentiments of our countrymen, and tempts them to pitiful calculation of the sordid gain to be derived from their Government's maintenance.  It undermines the self-reliance of our people, and substitutes in its place dependence upon governmental favoritism.  It stifles the spirit of true Americanism and stupefies every ennobling trait of American citizenship.

The lessons of paternalism ought to be unlearned and the better lesson taught, that while the people should patriotically and cheerfully support their Government, its functions do not include the support of the people.

The above sentiments, fully and fairly interpreted and energetically enforced, would place Mr. Cleveland's administration alongside of the administration of President Jackson, and inaugurate a policy which formerly embalmed in the hearts of the American people a love for Democratic principles, and which gave to that party five national victories in seven political campaigns prior to 1860.

That condemnation of "protection," which means the taxing of one man or class of men for the benefit of another, is just and timely.  But, sir I am of the opinion that, in full justice to our people, it should have a wider meaning than a mere reference to the tariff.  The wildest tariff protectionist seldom asks for a protection of more than 100 per cent.  To ask for 200, 300, or 600 per cent protection, and for freedom from local taxation besides, on the bulk of the investment, would excite derision and special condemnation.  That being so, I desire to call attention to one particularly favored calling in this country, which is the special pet of the Government ---a business devoted almost entirely to pitiful calculation of the sordid gain to be derived from their Government's maintenance."

I refer, Mr. Speaker, to the national banking system.  The investment of capital in United States bonds is considered a good and safe one;  so much so that competition for their ownership has carried them to a premium.  When these bonds have been purchased by a banking corporation, they are used as security for currency to the amount of 90 per cent of their face value.  In doing this the owner of the bonds does not sacrifice any part of his interest income from the bonds.  His semi-annual interest is regularly anticipated and paid to him in gold, usually one year in advance.  The currency advanced to the corporation costs the corporation 1 per cent per annum as an offset for the cost of printing the notes, for renewing them as they become mutilated, and "in lieu of all other taxes."  That is the entire cost of the notes to the corporation.  The banks are authorized to loan the currency at the legal rates of the respective States in which the banks are located.  These rates vary from, say, 6 to 12 per cent per annum, compounded every thirty to ninety days.  The gain by compounding will partly or wholly balance the idleness of the lawful reserves required under the law.  So, then, the net result of the operation is approximately this:

The currency which the Government furnishes to the banks costs them 1 per cent per annum.  They loan it at six to twelve times that rate, through favor of the Government.  This is a practical protection to the important monopoly of furnishing currency to the people at from 600 to 1,200 per cent.  No man in any legitimate business has such an enormous "robber tariff" protection as that !  It can scarcely be doubted that such paternalism "degrades to the purposes of wily craft the plan of rule our fathers, established and bequeathed to us as an object of our love and veneration."

This important matter can not be viewed too carefully from every standpoint.  Suppose that, under the laws as they now exist, five men shall become organized into a corporation for business purposes.  They unite their funds and purchase $50,000 of United States bonds with the intention of borrowing money from the United States Government at 1 per cent per annum, on twenty years' time.  Their agent proceeds to Washington, and having found the office of the Secretary of the Treasury, the following dialogue might naturally occur:

Agent:  "You have money to loan, I believe, Mr. Secretary, on United States bonds at 1 per cent per annum ?"

Secretary:  "Plenty of it. How much do you want ?"

Agent:  "I have $50,000 in Government bonds which I desire to deposit as security for a loan of $45,000 in currency to be used by our corporation in opening and operating its farming lands."

Secretary:  "Stop! Stop.  You need say no more.  This Government has no money to loan for farming purposes.  That would be 'paternalism,' such as President Cleveland condemns in his inaugural address."

Agent:  "I am surprised, Mr. Secretary, that I can not borrow money for agricultural purposes;  but, since the lands our corporation owns are underlaid with valuable mineral deposits, if I may be allowed to use the money for the purpose of opening and working our mines it will answer our purpose quite as well."

Secretary:  "You can not, sir.  The Government has no money to loan for mining purposes."

Agent:  "Can we have this 1 per cent money, then, for the purpose of operating the plant in which our ores will be refined by the use of coal from our mines ?  If not, by your leave, we will take the loan for the purpose of building a steamer in which to transfer the products of our mines and farms to distant markets."

Secretary:  "You can not have the money for any such purposes.  A law authorizing such loans as you mention would be one of those class laws, the unwholesome progeny of 'paternalism' which is 'the bane of Republican institutions.'  The doctrines of paternalism, which you seem to have imbibed, 'ought to be unlearned, and the better lesson taught, that while the people should patriotically and cheerfully support their government, its functions do not include the support of the people.'"

Agent:  "Thank you, Mr. Secretary, for your kind advice.  I know that I and my people are not very wise, but by keeping ourselves in a receptive frame of mind, we may learn something.  Perhaps I may venture to assert that just now I am learning very fast.  The information you have just imparted gives me a wonderful insight into the philosophy of government.  The members of our corporation knew of an instance wherein a certain banking corporation was granted a loan of $45,000 in currency for twenty years, at 1 per cent per annum, on deposit of $50,000 in United States bonds as security, and we innocently supposed that our corporation, for the same security, would be granted an equal sum to be used in industrial pursuits which will give employment to labor and develop the resources of the country."

Secretary:  "That is entirely a different matter, sir.  For banking purposes you can have all the money you desire (up to 90 per cent of the bonds you deposit) at 1 per cent per annum, on twenty years' time.  I will pay you gold interest on the face value of your bonds, while they are on deposit, one year in advance, exempt your currency from all State or local taxation, and renew your currency when old bills become mutilated, without extra charge.  Your bonds are already exempt from all taxation.  Your currency, which costs you 1 per cent here, can be loaned in most of the Western States at 10 per cent, compounded from four to twelve times per annum.  Your taxes will be light, and the profits on the cost of your currency will be approximately ten dollars to one;  or, a protection of about 1,000 per cent.  No business in this country is guaranteed by the Government such profits as banking."

Agent:  "Again, Mr. Secretary, I thank you.  But is there no paternalism about this ?"

Secretary:  "You will get all needed information regarding details of the loan from the Comptroller of the Currency, who will, in due time, forward you the money.  I will be much pleased to see you at any time you are in Washington.  Good day, sir."

Mr. Speaker, do you see any "paternalism" in the national banking system ?  Do you see in it any "bane of republican institutions, and constant peril of our Government ?"  Do you see anything in it which "undermines the self-reliance of our people, and substitutes in its place dependence upon governmental favoritism ?"

I ask these questions with the greater freedom because prominent Democrats, in times past, have had decided opinions on this banking question and have freely recorded them, although these institutions in their day were less powerful and far less dangerous than the banking system and institutions of the present.  Thomas Jefferson, the first great Democrat in this country, expressed himself on various occasions substantially as follows:

Bank paper must be suppressed and the circulation restored to the nation to whom it belongs.

The power to issue money should be taken from the banks and restored to Congress and the people. ---[a fabricated "quote" blamed on Jefferson]

I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies.

I am not among those who fear the people.  They, and not the rich, are our dependence for continued freedom.  And to preserve their independence we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.

Put down the banks and if this country could not be carried through the longest war against her most powerful enemy without ever knowing the want ot a dollar, without dependence on the traitorous class of her citizens, without bearing hard on the resources of the people or loading the public with an indefinite burden of debt, I know nothing of my countrymen.

The first real contest with the bank power occurred under the administration of President Jackson, who in one of his messages described the case as follows:

It being thus established by unquestionable proof that the Bank of the United States was converted into a permanent electioneering engine, it appeared to me that the path of duty which the executive department of the Government ought to pursue was not doubtful.  As by the terms of the bank charter no officer but the Secretary of the Treasury could remove the deposits, it seemed to me that this authority ought to be at once exerted to deprive that great corporation of the support and countenance of the Government in such an use of its and such an exertion of its power.  In this point of the case the question is distinctly presented whether the people of the United States are to govern through representatives chosen by their unbiased suffrages or whether the money and power of a great corporation are to be secretly exerted to influence their judgment and control their decisions.  It must now be determined whether the bank is to have its candidates for all offices in the country, from the highest to the lowest, or whether candidates on both sides of political questions shall be brought forward as heretofore and supported by the usual means.

The government itself ceases to be independent —it ceases to be safe— when the national currency is at the will of a company.  The government can undertake no great enterprise, neither of war nor peace, without the consent and co-operation of that company;  it cannot count its revenues for six months ahead without referring to the action of that company —its friendship or its enmity—its concurrence or opposition— to see how far that company will permit money to be plenty, or make it scarce;  how far it will let the moneyed system go on regularly, or throw it into disorder;  how far it will suit the interests, or policy, of that company to create a tempest, or to suffer a calm, in the moneyed ocean.  The people are not safe when a company has such a power.  The temptation is too great —the opportunity too easy— to put up and put down prices;  to make and break fortunes;  to bring the whole community upon its knees to the Neptunes who preside over the flux and reflux of paper.  All property is at their mercy.  The price of real estate —of every growing crop—of every staple article in market— is at their command.  Stocks are their playthings —their gambling theatre— on which they gamble daily, with as little secrecy, and as little morality, and far more mischief to fortunes, than common gamblers carry on their operations.

The sad experiences of the country in its struggle with the bank power in the earlier days of the Republic, and the bold and patriotic teachings of the great Democrats of those times, instilled into our people a just and prudent jealousy toward the banks, which usually insured the success of the Democratic party at the national elections.  President Jackson began his memorable contest with the bank power during his first term.  His second election was on the bank issue.  His signal and glorious victory showed that the people were with him.  He declared in his fight that a national bank is unconstitutional and dangerous to liberty.  And at the polls the people declared that Jackson was right.

Martin Van Buren was elected in 1836, because it was understood that on this bank question he would "walk in the footsteps of his illustrious predecessor."  Seven times the people voted on this bank question, with the expressed or implied understanding that the Democratic party was in deadly hostility to the existence of a national bank, and was opposed to the mixing of the Government money with the funds of banking institutions.

Five times at those seven elections the people elected the Democratic ticket on the antibank platform.  In 1860 and since that time, the Democratic platforms have expressed no hostility to national banks.  Since 1860, the Democrats have been beaten seven times in nine.  And a new antibank party is organizing and coming to the front to renew the fight of the old Democrats on the money question.

To show the form and nature of the contests in the national elections referred to, I quote from the Democratic platforms of 1852 and 1856, the following resolutions:

Resolved, That Congress has no power to charter a national bank;  that we believe such an institution one of deadly hostility to the best interests of the country, dangerous to our republican institutions and the liberties of the people and calculated to place the business of the country within the control of a concentrated money power, and that above the laws and will of the people and that the result of Democratic legislation in this and all other financial measures upon which issues have been made between the two political parties of the country have demonstrated to candid and practical men of all parties their soundness, safety, and utility in all business pursuits.

Resolved, That the separation of the moneys of the Government from banking institutions is indispensable for the safety of the funds of the Government and the rights of the people.

Mr. Speaker, that was the emblazonry on the proud and victorious banner of the ancient Democracy hoisted by the immortal Jackson at the close of the most memorable political contest in our history.  Through seven Presidential campaigns it was carried aloft, to almost certain victory, winning the day by the approval of the people five times in seven.  All this, the ancient leaders of your party and their followers did, with that hydra, chattel slavery, gnawing at their vitals, and on their shoulders that pile of tigers ---the moneyed institutions of the East.  Speaking of Jackson's victory over the national bank and its branches, Senator Benton said:

That great measure of prevention, the removal of the deposits, though feebly and faintly supported by friends at first, has expelled the bank from the field, and driven her into abeyance under a State charter.  She is not dead, but, holding her capital and stockholders together under a State charter, she has taken a position to watch events, and to profit by them.  The royal tiger has gone into the jungle;  and, crouched on his belly, he awaits the favorable moment for emerging from his covert, and springing on the body of the unsuspicious traveller !  ---Thirty Years' View, vol 1, page 725.

During the late war, when this country was in a death struggle to avert dismemberment, and while the minds of the people were intensely occupied with that contest, the "favorable moment" came;  and for thirty years the progeny of that "royal tiger" in the form of 3,000 whelps, have had this great nation by the throat, fattening on its lifeblood.  All the experience and teachings of the ancient Democracy on this subject have been ignored and forgotten.  Millions and millions of public moneys have been placed in the banks without interest, to be handled and loaned by them at a profit, from the people's earnings.  Hundreds of millions of dollars of national currency have been furnished the banks at mere cost of printing, by means of which they have fattened from the labor and business of the country.  Bankers and bank presidents, and bank stockholders have occupied the highest positions in the Government;  and so haughty and powerful have they become, that they now make money plentiful or scarce at will, as described by Senator Benton.  The Government itself ceases to be independent and every man's fortune and property is in their hands.  They can make a special session of Congress necessary at any moment they please.

The President of the United States must not only obey their insulting commands, but he must do it in haste.  If the banks say a special session in September is too late, it must be in August, then the Chief Magistrate of this Republic, cap in hand, calls the session in August.  But why should Congress meet at all ?  Have not these, our masters, long ago published that---

The machinery is now furnished by which, in any emergency, the financial corporations of the East can act together on a single day's notice, with such power that no act of Congress can overcome their decisions. ---New York Tribune.

Of course it is in the interest of temporary peace for Congress to enact the present will of the banks into law, but it is seldom long until new demands are made.  In case Congress should prove reflactory and should desire to enact laws in the interest of the people, the banks usually coerce compliance with their wishes.

Mr. Speaker, should it be claimed that our present highly protected banking system is unlike the old national bank of Nicholas Biddle fame, and hence is harmless, I ask attention to the testimony of some of our later statesmen on the subject.  Hon. D.W. Voorhees, United States Senator from Indiana, and a leading Democrat of the nation, on Monday, June 19, 1882, said:

Mr. Voorhees.  Mr. President, the bill under consideration is one to enable the national banks of the United States to extend their corporate existence.  A more important measure was never discussed in Congress in time of peace.  It takes hold upon the very formulations of free, popular government.  I do not care to enter into the details of the bill before the Senate;  it could not be so framed as to make me willing to become responsible for the existence of such a financial system.  A better system can be easily substituted and a worse one is hardly possible.  A brief glance at the conduct of the banks during the last year and a half is all that I can indulge in in at this time, but it is sufficient to prove the truth of what I say.

In the closing days of the last Congress and of the last administration, the banks precipitated an issue upon the people which ought not to be forgotten on an occasion like this;  an issue so full of danger to constitutional liberty that it ought to be faithfully remembered now that they are asking a new and indefinite lease of power.

It is now more than twenty years since this Government first engaged in building up, fostering, and encouraging the present vast and overshadowing system of national banking.

No favor ever demanded by the banks has been withheld, no privilege denied, until now they constitute the most powerful moneyed corporation on the face of the globe.  Congress has heretofore on nearly all occasions abdicated its powers under the Constitution over the finances to the banks, except when called upon to legislate in their favor.  They have demanded the violation of legislative contracts with the people, and the demand has been granted, whereby their own gains and the people's burdens have been increased a thousand-fold beyond right and justice.  They have demanded the remission of all taxation on their bonds, and it has been conceded, thus leaving the poor to pay the taxes of the rich.  They have been fortified in their strongholds of moneyed caste and privilege by double lines of unjust laws, supplemented with, here a redoubt and there a ditch, to guard them from the correcting hand of popular indignation, until now, deeming themselves impregnable, they bully and defy the Government.

* * * * * * * * *

Sir, with full and unrestricted power over the volume of currency, and, consequently, over all values, conceded to the banks, together with ample machinery by which in an emergency they can defy the passage of any act of Congress, what is left to the Government except an abject submission ?  This Government could not to-morrow go to war in defense of its flag, its honor, or its existence, without first asking permission to do so of the great financial corporations of the country.  If there was an invading force on our soil this hour Congress could not with safety or a show of success, declare war to repel it without first supplicating cowardly and unpatriotic capital, engaged in banking, not to contract the currency, withhold financial aid and leave the Army to starve.  In fact there is no measure of this Government, either in peace or in war, which is not wholly dependent on the pleasure of the banks.

This Government is at the mercy of its own creatures. It has begotten and pampered a system which is now its master.  The people have been betrayed into the clutches of a financial despotism which scorns responsibility and defies lawful restraint.  If it is claimed as some palliation for the banking system that out of the two thousand banks, and more, only two or three hundred openly and actively joined in the attempt to ruin the business of the country in order to defeat the funding bill, it is only necessary to observe that enough was done to accomplish the result, and not a bank was heard to protest against the conduct of its associates.  The movement was understood in banking circles throughout the United States, and reinforcements stood ready to support the attack, and compel the surrender of the Executive.

.............

The methods adopted by our present national banking system are also similar to those pursued by the United States Bank in its rebellion against the Government.  The contest between the United States Bank and the United States Government commenced in 1829 and terminated in 1836, covering a period of seven years, as long as the American Revolution, and involving results as important to the right and power of the people to govern themselves.  The charter of the bank was to expire in 1836 and Andrew Jackson, who was a magnanimous foe, gave notice in 1829 that it should never be renewed with his consent.  The war at once opened.  A torrent of incessant abuse was at once poured on General Jackson and his supporters by the bank and its stipendiaries.  The newspapers of that period show that he and his followers were all stigmatized as hopelessly ignorant on the subject of the finances, and bent on destroying the public credit.  These charges have a familiar sound and are in daily use now, as they wore fifty years ago, against all who dare oppose the insolent pretensions of the banks.

Senator Benton has told us the manner of the fight of the bank on President Jackson and his supporters:

Under this sense of duty, and under the obligation of this oath, President Jackson had recommended to Congress the non-renewal of the bank charter, and the substitution of a different fiscal agent for the operations of the government ---if any such agent was required.  And with his accustomed frankness, and the fairness of a man who has nothing but the public good in view, and with a disregard of self which permits no personal consideration to stand in the way of a discharge of a public duty, he made the recommendation six years before the expiration of the charter, and in the first message of his first term;  thereby taking upon his hands such an enemy as the Bank of the United States, at the very commencement of his administration.  That such a recommendation against such an institution should bring upon the President and his supporters, violent attacks, both personal and political, with arraignment of motives as well as of reasons, was naturally to be expected;  and that expectation was by no means disappointed.  Both he and they, during the seven years that the bank contest (in different forms) prevailed, received from it ---from the newspapers and periodical press in its interest, and from the public speakers in its favor of every grade--- an accumulation of obloquy, and even of accusation, only lavished upon the oppressors and plunderers of nations ---a Verres, or a Hastings.  This was natural in such an institution.

Conclusion.

Mr. Speaker, I must now close with some thoughts arising from the foregoing discussions, and with a cursory touch on a few of the points not mentioned.  In all seriousness, my dear sir, can we not see that our hidebound, fluctuating, costly, and insufficient gold-basis system is an insidious infirmity that threatens our national vigor ?"  Is it not the "unheeded disease" which may doom our country "to a sudden collapse ?"  The President wisely suggests that we have grown "heedless of those laws governing our national health, which we can no more evade than human life can escape the laws of God and nature."

That is a bold, strong, and true statement.  We are defying those laws which Rome defied when she adopted a metallic system of shrinking money and falling-prices, and entered the dark shadow of national decay and ultimate disintegration.  We are defying those laws which England defied when she adopted gold basis money with declining price, bringing distress and starvation on the common people, and compelling four-fifths of her happy free-holders to abandon their hearth-stones.  We are defying the same laws which Germany defied when, at the close of the Franco-German war, intoxicated with a thousand million of indemnity money, she adopted the gold-basis system.  Consequent falling prices doomed her people to serfdom intolerable, with irredeemable mortgages resting on 80 per cent of the German real estate.  We indorsed the policy of defying "the laws of God and nature" twenty years ago when we adopted the gold standard, producing shrinkage of money and falling prices.  Our finances have been in the hands of the currency doctors ever since, constantly growing worse, until now the surgeons are crying out for help to save themselves, amid the death struggles of their prostrate victim.  Our farm mortgages mount into the billions;  business is everywhere bankrupt, and labor is starving, as in England when troops were required to compel men, women, and children to starve in peace.

We all agree that "a sound and stable currency" is "vital to our supremacy as a nation."  That being true, Mr. Speaker, how can we favor the most fluctuating and insufficient currency known in all history ?  The President condemns class legislation and "paternalism," yet I nowhere find him condemning that national banking system, than which no more glaring example of paternalism can exist ---that system which was condemned by all true Democrats and by the people of this great country five times in seven elections prior to 1860.

The President expresses himself as very solicitous in regard to the degradation of the money "paid to toil."  He expressed very earnestly the same just solicitude in his letter of February 27, 1885.  I am glad to know that this is an abiding sentiment with him.  Every patriot should be solicitous to do justice to the laboring people, because they are the very foundation of the life and prosperity of the Republic.  Let me mention to him a bit of news:

For twenty years it has been the custom to furnish for the particular use and payment of honorable labor a specially light and cheap coin.  While the President and his advisers deprecate and condemn the standard silver dollar of 412.5 grains as inconvenient, "dishonest," and dangerous, labor is furnished a light subsidiary coin of 383 grains of standard silver.  This is supplemented by a token coinage made of nickel, having a commercial value of about ten cents on the dollar.  The great Government creditors spurn the standard silver dollar of the fathers, which, as bullion, when fairly treated by the laws, has been usually worth more than gold but the humble and helpless boys of toil, who black the boots of the Government creditors, must doff their ragged hats and bend the fawning knee in order to obtain 10 cents on the dollar for their labor.  I do not thus speak in jest nor carelessly.  There has been a special effort made by the moneyed classes that labor shall be thus paid in cheap money.

On July 20, 1885, the associated banks of New York issued a circular in which they expressed themselves very fully as to the circulation of cheap money, which usually pays the wages of toil.  This circular of the associated banks of New York in part says:

It is an undeniable fact that a silver coin of the size and denomination of the dollar is not in popular demand, and is not a convenient form of money for ordinary use, but that the fractional coins may more largely circulate.  For this reason the committee cordially invite all banks and bankers throughout the country to unite with them by lending their aid in disbursing, as far as they are able, the fractional silver coins, of which there are now lying idle in the Treasury some $30,000,000.  Whatever portion of this amount can be put in circulation will so far relieve the present exigency.

To the common reader that looks very much like a "conspiracy" of the associated banks to disburse for the use of men unable to own and carry a whole dollar, a light-weight silver money, legal tender for $5 only in any one payment.  And if some richer man should become the fortunate owner of four quarters or two halves he would have the consolation of knowing that his load was 27.5 grains lighter than if he were compelled to lug around the common standard dollar, which the banks say is not in popular demand.  I wonder the Executive or his Secretary, in July, 1885, did not detect this combined effort of the New York banks to circulate a "degraded currency" into "the hand of toil."

When we hear from the platform, and read in the great state papers, what solicitude legislators and other officers of the Government have for the rights and equities of "toil," the wonder is that laboring people are not all rich !  One would hardly suspect that these speakers and writers, after the sermon is over, would spend their time devising, enacting, and enforcing systems of taxation and finance specially designed to filch from toil every dollar it earns beyond the cheapest possible living.  It is words for the humble to tickle the ear.  It is acts for the rich and powerful to add to their wealth and power.

Mr. Speaker, the committee of the associated banks strongly intimate that President Cleveland agreed with them in their efforts to force a degraded currency into the hands of labor.  Their circular says:

This committee can not better serve the purpose of their appointment than by reproducing the letter of the President of the United States, written just before his inauguration, wherein he expresses his own views upon the silver question with great clearness and force, and in doing so he also reiterates the options of his predecessors in office.

Can it be possible that the then President of the United States was friendly to the policy of the bankers in forcing a degraded currency into "the hand of toil;"  and that, in so doing the agreed with "his predecessors in office ?"

It has often been charged that, on the finances, there is no difference between the Democratic and Republican leaders.  Here is a clear statement by a high and friendly authority that the charge is true.  I have watched in vain for years to see or hear an authoritative act or word in favor of paying "into the hand of toil" gold only, as is paid to wealth;  sometimes in violation of contracts and against the interests of the laboring people.

Mr. Speaker, the rulers and high officers of leading nations can not escape history.  It is something to transmit to our children great wealth, but it is far better to bequeath to them free institutions and the bright and glorious examples of patriotic statesmanship in the service of our common country.  The hero who defends his people with the sword does much.  He who defends them against the wily and merciless oppressions of the purse does more.  General Jackson was a hero on the battlefield whom we all admire.  His heroism in the Cabinet was incomparably greater, and his victory over the money power embalmed him in the hearts of tbe people, and impressed itself on the policy of the country beyond comparison in modern history.  That other great and glorious Democrat, Thomas Jefferson, stands preeminent among the earlier statesmen of this country, because he planned the field and began the battle which Jackson victoriously won.  The salvation of this Republic and the perpetuity of human liberty in America is now in the scale waiting for other patriots to gloriously continue the fight.  The battle is between God's people and the worshipers of the golden calf.

The people of this country have had a struggle with this black demon, or chattel slavery.  There is another slavery.  Slavery is a means by which the master enjoys the earnings of the man.  If its requirements are enforced by the lash and the bloodhound, it is called chattel slavery.  If the robberies are enforced by means of bonds and mortgages created through the manipulations of taxation and finance, it is slavery all the same.  Chattel slavery is a system of physical force, after the manner of the lion and the tiger.  The slavery of the purse is after the manner of the serpent.  It is mildness itself in the beginning.  It charms, entices, and slimes.  Then it crushes and devours by slow processes, through the mortgage, the bond, and other devices, but the day of judgment firmly comes with merciless certainty and relentless savagery.  We have beaten the lions process on the fields of Lexington, Yorktown, and New Orleans, and at Appomatox.  The God of battles inspired the people with patriotism, and sent us leaders worthy of the great occasions.  Our history has been a proud one, surpassing that of the greatest nations.  The lion is beaten on American soil.

Next, we encounter the serpent.  He has his bonds and mortgages about our institutions and our people.  It is said that men can not see, but they can feel.  First, they feel in their pockets;  they are empty.  Then they feel in their stomachs;  they are hungry.  Next they feel the grip of the sheriff on their shoulder:  it is an eviction.  Then they see and hear as they never saw and heard before.  The world looks dismal.  Women and children weep and cry.  Brave hearts melt.  There is another convert to the people's cause.  The enemy makes all our converts.  There are millions of them now, and the number is increasing.  They have no hope for relief except through the ballot box.  This is a contest, not of swords and guns, but of brains and ballots.  God and his people against Shylock and his gold !  Every man must take sides.  We cannot escape the responsibility of action, nor the verdict of posterity upon our acts.

Either we will stand with Jefferson and Benton and Jackson, and a long line of noble patriots, or we must be classed with Nicholas Biddle, the defaulter and corrupter of men.  Mr. Speaker, let each for himself make such a record that the muse of history will speak kindly of us, and that our children may read the story of our deeds with enthusiastic pleasure and not with shame !

The House then, on motion of Mr. Pendleton (at 11 o'clock and 5 minutes p.m.) adjourned until to-morrow at 11 a.m.