Extra Session of Congress
for the purpose of eliminating the silver purchasing clause.

Silver Coinage.

Mr. Hill [David Bennett Hill (1843-1910), N.Y., D; studied law, admitted to the bar; in 1892 was defeated by Cleveland for the democratic nomination].  Mr. President, the President of the United States in his recent much-commended and much-criticised special message to Congress took occasion to make a quotation from some very pertinent utterances of Daniel Webster made over fifty years ago.  Permit me at the outset of my remarks to-day to make another quotation from the opening sentences of a famous speech of the same distinguished statesman, delivered in this Chamber in the year 1830 [while on retainer to the Bank of the United States], when he said as follows:

When the mariner has been tossed for many days in thick weather and on an unknown sea, he naturally avails himself of the first pause in the storm, the earliest glance of the Sun to take his latitude and ascertain how far the elements have driven him from his true course.  Let us imitate this prudence, and before we float further on the waves of this debate refer to the point from which we departed, that we may at least be able to form some conjecture where we now are.

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The existing financial disturbance may be attributed to three causes:

First.  It is a natural or inevitable result or incident of many years of real or fictitious prosperity.  The nation is not unlike an individual.  The body politic may appropriately be compared with the physical body.  A most careful observance of the rules of health will not prevent sickness, and neither will a strict compliance with the laws of business prevent commercial difficulties.  Sickness is incident to humanity and commercial panics are incident to trade. [credit bubble, really]  Temperance, abstemiousness, dieting, and rest may retard human illness, but it comes to every man occasionally sooner or later;  while conservatism, absence of speculation, and observance of correct business principles on the part of the great majority of the business community will protract prosperity for a while, but there will always be times of depression.  The student of history knows that financial panics occur about every twenty years, and our country has not been an exception to the general rule.  The panics of 1813, 1837, 1857, and 1873 [all artificial, money panics caused by bankers] should have led us to anticipate one in about 1893 [another banker manufactured money panic].

In addition to these causes, which for the purpose of this argument I denominate "natural" causes against which it is probable that no prudence could guard or prevent, there was much reason to apprehend financial troubles at this time, owing to the continued violation of correct business principles on the part of our business men in their haste to become suddenly rich.  The spirit of gambling, the desire to indulge in illegitimate speculation, the attempt to secure wealth by any means save earning it in the old-fashioned way, are fruitful causes of these times of depression.  The reaction --the retribution-- has come, that is all.

Why should we be surprised at the present lack of confidence everywhere manifested ?

Our financial centers have been flooded with watered stocks of every description in which innocent people have been induced to invest their means by the glittering promises of enormous dividends which are not forthcoming.  It has been the fad of the times to organize corporations and issue bonds and stock to an amount ten times the value of the property, and by such questionable enterprises paupers have suddenly become millionaires.  The country has been surfeited with such schemes, whereby honest and confiding investors have been virtually defrauded, and confidence has thereby been impaired.  Candor compels me to say that these transactions have usually originated with that class of financiers who infest our marts of trade and are to-day ostentatiously attracting public attention by their parrot-like clamor for an "honest" dollar, and against the continued use of silver money.

Besides we are suffering from the evils of over-production.  We have raised more than we can profitably sell, and the markets of the world have been closed to us owing to our restrictive tariff laws.  The balance of trade has unfortunately been against us.  We have sold our railroad and other securities abroad instead of at home, and the interest as well as portions of the principal have been coming due and must be paid in gold, because it was so "nominated in the bond," and hence our gold has naturally been leaving us for foreign shores.  If we contract enormous debts abroad they must be paid abroad.

Unquestionably some of the present difficulty may be attributed to the uneasiness of our protected industries, which have been accustomed to rely to a certain extent upon governmental favoritism to support them, and whose proprietors naturally apprehend that such favoritism may be withdrawn under a revision of the taxation laws contemplated by the party in power. I do not disguise the fact that such uneasiness exists and that it contributes its share to the general existing disturbance of financial affairs.  But there is no relief for this situation unless the dominant party abandons its principles and surrenders in advance to the interests which were defeated at the last election.  The Democratic party is pledged to tariff reform, and it must redeem its pledges, come what may.  Of course it must be expected there will be some friction.  It is unavoidable.  It is incident to the anticipated withdrawal of public aid from private enterprises;  and it can not be prevented, but must be endured.  The people perfectly understood the question last fall, and they voted with their eyes wide open.  Our course is onward, and we shall not retreat.

Second.  Some portion of the present panic may be traced to a concerted effort on the part of numerous monometallists to produce it, in order to further discredit silver as a part of the standard money of the country.  That fact is apparent everywhere we turn.  We observe it in their senseless arguments constantly used against free bimetallic coinage and their ceaseless endeavors to confuse the present issue by characterizing it as a contest between monometallism and bimetallism.  They seemed to be delighted when the first ray of financial trouble appeared.  They hailed the recent action of India with ill-concealed satisfaction.  They talked against silver, morning, noon, and night.

They denounced not simply the Sherman silver-purchase bill, but the future use of silver as money.  With ghoulish glee they welcomed every bank failure, especially in the silver States, little dreaming that such failures would soon occur at their own doors.  They encouraged the hoarding of money, they inaugurated the policy of refusing loans to the people even upon the best of security;  they circulated false petitions, passed absurd and alarming resolutions, predicted the direst disaster, attacked the credit of the Government, sought to exact a premium upon currency, and attempted in every way to spread distrust broadcast throughout the land.

The best financial system in the world could not stand such an organized and vicious attack upon it.  These disturbers ---these promoters of the public peril--- represent largely the creditor class, the men who desire to appreciate the gold dollar in order to subserve their own selfish interests, men who revel in hard times, men who drive harsh bargains with their fellow men in periods of financial distress, and men wholly unfamiliar with the true principles of monetary science.

It is not strange that the present panic has been induced, intensified, and protracted by reason of these malign influences.  Having contributed much to bring about the present exigency, these men are now utterly unable to control it.  They have sown to the wind, and we are all now reaping the whirlwind together.

Third.  But no matter what else may have contributed to the present financial situation, it can not be denied that the Sherman silver-purchase law has been at least in part and possibly the most largely instrumental in producing the existing complications.

I do not propose at this moment to present any analysis of that law.  It is sufficient now to state that it has lost the popular confidence, that its operations have been unsatisfactory even to its friends, that it has not increased the market price of silver bullion, that it has tended to discredit our silver currency, that it has hoarded up a vast mass of unexportable and undesirable silver bullion in the Treasury of the United States either from the natural effect of the law itself or from its mal- or unfriendly administration, so that everywhere there exists an antagonism towards it --a lack of faith in its wisdom and usefulness-- a well-founded conviction of its dangerous character and tendencies which naturally makes capital timid, frightens business men, and creates a real and genuine alarm, not a mere imaginary or fictitious suspicion of insecurity.

The nature of the act itself was alone sufficient to create uneasiness.  It presented an ever-increasing danger;  it was rushing the country towards a precipice which could not be evaded, and it was only a question of time when its inevitable results would bring disaster upon us.  The recent action of India hastened it, while the other causes to which I have referred --some natural and some manufactured-- united in producing the present extraordinary crisis.

But no matter what various causes alone or unitedly precipitated the existing emergency, it is sufficient for us to know that the panic is here --it is upon us-- it is steadily growing worse, and it must be promptly met by the exhibition upon our part of the most intelligent and exalted patriotism, a patriotism which rises above partisan considerations, a patriotism which if need be must sever party lines and ties, a patriotism which sinks every selfish advantage and rises to a just conception of the terrible importance of the occasion.

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Repeal will Triumph.

Mr. President, this bill is going to pass this Senate.  I believe it;  I predict it.  The sentiment in its favor is growing stronger each day under the light of discussion.  The sober second thought of the distinguished Senators who compose this circle ---their calm, deliberate, unprejudiced judgment--- will in the end eventually impel them to the conclusion that after all, the route of repeal is the safest, best, and surest path to pursue.  I have confidence in the wisdom, the discernment, and the patriotism of the American Senate, and we can safely trust its conscientious determination of every great public question presented to it at a critical period like this.

There will be some delay, vexatious though it may be regarded by the public, whose impatience is exhaustible under that trying ordeal through which our business interests are passing, but such delay is inevitable in a body where deliberation has been its leading characteristic for a century, but there will be no disappointment in the final result.  There will be debate, a full comparison of views, an endeavor to do the right thing, and then a prompt and honest decision.

There will be no filibustering upon such a subject as this, nonpolitical in its character, involving purely financial questions about which there always have been and always will be honest but respectful differences of opinion among men, although questions not involving life liberty, or the vital principles of free government. Any other course in this fearful crisis would be unworthy of the Senate, and the Senate will respect itself.  Let our business men who are laboring under fearful burdens and against great obstacles and embarrassments take courage at the prospect.  The present clouds of adversity which so heavily overhang these dark and gloomy days will soon pass away, and relief will surely come.  I think I see a bright, clear silver lining to the clouds in the West which now threaten danger, and in the near future that light will become stronger, better, more effulgent under the rays and inspirations of an educated public sentiment desirous of justice, freed from passion, prejudice, and selfishness, and will guide the country back to the sure ground of stable prosperity, the right financial policy, and the monetary principles of our fathers, from which it has so wonderfully and frightfully wandered in recent years.

Then our commerce will return to us, our industries will revive, our exchanges will reopen, the avenues of business will abound with activity, confidence will be resumed, and credit will be restored.  This Republic is not going to be shipwrecked on account of bad financiering.  No; it will weather the present storm.  Too much is at stake in its preservation, too many hopes are centered in its success, too many prayers are ascending for its safe deliverance for it now to be destroyed.

Divided though we may be in our political opinions and diverse as are our financial views, we none of us forget that this nation belongs to no party nor faction, but it is our country that is in peril, our prosperity that is to be promoted, and our liberties which are to be protected.  In the beautiful and appropriate language of a distinguished American statesman, in speaking of the value of our free institutions and of the inestimable boon of liberty bequeathed to us through the blood and sacrifices of our revolutionary forefathers, "This priceless heritage of freedom is ours;  ours to enjoy, ours to possess, ours to transmit."

Mr. Stewart. [William Morris Stewart (1827-1909), Nevada, R.; studied law, admitted to the bar]  Mr. President, the bill under consideration is a bill to utterly demonetize silver.  It is legislation which would adopt the single gold standard;  it is legislation which indorses the act of 1873;  it is legislation which gives the lie to the platforms of both parties and the pretensions of public men who for the last twenty years have claimed that they were bimetallists.

The promise of this bill is an insult to the intelligence of the American people.  They have had promises enough;  they have had them from the Executive Mansion continually for the last twenty years, and they have had them from both political parties.  The friends of bimetallism have struggled for affirmative legislation, but they have been baffled by vetoes, by Federal patronage, by the influence of the banking communities, and by every monometallist, both in Europe and America.  They have secured a slight recognition of silver in two laws ---one the Bland law, which the act of 1890 superseded, and they have a recognition in the act of 1890, and it was pledged that that act should be faithfully executed, but it has been trampled upon by both the Executives who have been in power since its passage.

What insult the people of the United States with more promises !  Let no man who votes for monometallism think he can deceive the people of the United States by another promise.

Mr. President, an international money is a national danger.  It is difficult for the people of any nation to so regulate their business as to avoid over speculation on the one hand or stagnation on the other.  A perfect monetary system is impossible.  Such a system would maintain stability of prices and the equity of contracts.  The nearest possible approximation to such a system, however, is the highest aim of political economy and monetary science. Every nation is the best judge of its own monetary wants and necessities.  No nation can fully comprehend the wants and necessities of all other nations.  Every attempt to obtain an international money has proved disastrous.  Every nation in the hour of its greatest necessities and greatest perils has been forced to abandon international money.

While silver was international money among the commercial nations of the world, it was as vicious as gold.  The principal business and commerce of any nation is domestic, not foreign.  So long as there is a sufficient supply of money for the use of domestic commerce prosperity is assured.  Whenever domestic commerce is drained of its life-blood ---which is money--- panic and disaster are inevitable.  No great national achievements have been made with international money.  International money is like the wolf.  It seeks the wounded nation and devours the wreck.  Domestic money, not international money, made England the mistress of the world.  During the twenty-two years of continental wars which ended on the bloody field of Waterloo, England used no international money.  Historians agree that those twenty-two years were the most prosperous in all the history of that great empire.

International money has never fought a great war or saved a nation from destruction, because in the hour of peril the enemy can draw out international money and paralyze the industries of the struggling nation.  The war of the rebellion was not fought with international money.  The committee of the great commoner of Pennsylvania, Thaddeus Stevens, in the darkest hours of the rebellion, proposed to follow the example of Pitt during the Napoleonic wars and banish during the war international money.  Mr. Stevens [the bank-lawyer] reported a bill for the issuance of bonds, the principal redeemable in coin and the interest payable in lawful money and in favor of greenbacks as the only legal-tender money until after the close of the war.

Commercial New York, which has taken the side of the enemy in every struggle between the United States and Great Britain, contrived to deprive the country of the full benefits of a domestic currency.  Wall street had sufficient influence in the two Houses of Congress to reverse the programme of Thaddeus Stevens and make the principal of the bonus payable in lawful currency and the interest payable in gold;  and to provide the gold they took from the greenbacks our domestic money, an important part of their legal-tender quality.  It was decreed that they should not be received for customs dues, but that such dues should be paid in international money.

International money was the most formidable enemy during the rebellion.  It kept up a continual war in the rear and bombarded the most essential fortification in our national finances.  Thaddeus Stevens prophesied at the time that it would cost the people of the United States a thousand millions, and his estimate was far below the mark.  Wall and Lombard streets organized the gold board to prey upon the necessities of the country.  The bulletins sent out from that board were more discouraging and disheartening than the defeat of armies in the field.  The generals and financiers of all Europe united in the opinion that the success of the Union armies was impossible.  They declared that such an army in front as the united and powerful Confederacy could furnish and such an enemy in the rear to embarrass our finances as the genius of Wall and Lombard streets had invented made victory for the Union impossible.

The struggle was desperate and for a long time doubtful.  Victory was only achieved by sacrifices the like of which were never made before.  If the people of England had allowed such an enemy to her finances to exist in their midst during the Napoleonic wars, the fate of nations would have been changed.  England would not now be the mistress of the world, but she firmly adhered to domestic money and achieved the first place in the family of nations.

The rejection of domestic money and the use of only international money by the administration of the Treasury Department is now inflicting dire distress and misery throughout the United States.  Austria was weak and trembling before the British syndicate which held $2,400,000,000 of her obligations. [which obligations Austria accumulated during the war against Napoleon for the sake of England]  These obligations were evidenced by 5 per cent bonds payable in silver.  Her creditors told her that she must change her obligations from obligations payable in silver to obligations payable in gold, or they would destroy her finances.  Austria consented upon condition that the syndicate would furnish her gold for the redemption of her paper circulation.  There was no place on Earth to obtain the gold except in the United States.  We were the only country that would adhere to the principle of international money at the expense of the prosperity of our own people.

Russia with her $500,000,000 of gold in her war chest maintained an ample circulation of fiat domestic money.  France with $900,000,000 of gold and $700,000,000 of silver would furnish no gold for export, but resisted every attempt to export gold by redeeming her paper in silver.  Germany protected her $350,000,000 of gold by using her $100,000,000 of silver to redeem her paper when a demand was made for the export of gold.  England paid a premium on gold by favorable rates of exchange to prevent the flow of her international money into foreign lands, and threatened to raise the rate of interest if any attempt was made to obtain her gold to consummate the Austrian scheme.

The United States was the only government which refused to protect its domestic money.  The law of Congress left the discretion with the Secretary of the Treasury to retain in the country or pay out gold for export in the redemption of greenbacks, and by the law of 1890, while Congress left the discretion in the Secretary of the Treasury to pay out either gold or silver, it was provided in the law that the Secretary shall coin sufficient of the silver purchased under the Sherman act to provide for the redemption of the Treasury notes issued under that act.  But the Treasury Department of the former and the present Administrations gave the discretion which had been confided to that Department for the protection of the domestic money of the people of the United States, to the foreign syndicate who had planned the destruction of the laboring masses of Austria.

The exporters of gold were furnished international money for their Austrian speculation.  They exported to Austria more than 100,000,000 American eagles and received their reward not only by converting the Austrian debt into gold, but enormously increasing that debt.  The public press now state that the Austrian gold debt is now $2,800,000,000.  The effect of the co-operation of the Treasury Department with the syndicate which has made this grand speculation in Austrian securities is felt throughout the land.  The basis of our circulation and credit was sent abroad and ruin and disaster have followed.

It was claimed by the press and by the former and present Administrations that a refusal to send our gold abroad would ruin the finances of the country and destroy the credit of the Government.  It may be asked why the refusal of France and Germany to furnish gold for export has not ruined the credit of those great countries ?  If it has not ruined them why would it ruin the United States ?  It is unfortunate that it is impossible for this country to elect an Administration that will act in the interest of the people of the United States without regard to the schemes of Lombard street to acquire wealth by manipulating the international money of the world.

An opportunity is now furnished the United States to have a reasonable supply of metallic money which will not desert in either war or peace.  Silver has been recognized as money longer than gold.  It has circulated among all the nations of Earth, while gold has been confined to a few commercial centers.  It was the standard money of England previous to the Napoleonic wars.  It was the standard of all the continent of Europe previous to 1873.  It is the standard money of Asia and all the islands of the sea, except Australia, to-day.  Europe has discarded silver to enhance the obligations of contracts, and for no other purpose.  No other country but Europe can rob us of our circulating medium and deprive us of domestic money.

An opportunity is now afforded to the United States to mine and coin silver and retain it as domestic money.  The pioneers of the West at great cost and sacrifice have developed an empire of wealth.  Mexico, our nearest and best neighbor, is rich in valuable mines of this precious metal.  The opportunity under the Constitution to mine and coin domestic money is ample to insure the development of the resources of the United States and the prosperity of all our people.  But we are told by Lombard and Wall streets and their representatives in and out of office that we shall have nothing but the international money of Europe.  They tell us it counts for nothing that the great mass of the gold of the world is either hoarded for war purposes or guarded for domestic purposes by the threat to pay silver, and that we can not obtain it without the utter destruction of the industries of this country.  But we are told that we must have international money or we can have no international trade.  The assertion is not true.  The international trade of every country which has tried the experiment, and all have tried it, has prospered most when it had no international money. The value of money depends upon its purchasing power at home, and that value will be recognized throughout the world.  It is the business of exchange to regulate balances of trade and settle them according to the purchasing power of the money of different countries.  International money, and international money alone, means domestic ruin.

We have come to the forks in the road. One points to Lombard street via New York City;  the other to the great Mississippi Valley and the Golden Pacific, with branches radiating from the Gulf to the Lakes over a country whose productive capacity exceeds all Europe combined.  The natural resources of climate, land, and minerals of all the commercial nations of Europe seem insignificant when compared with the grandeur of the bounties which nature has bestowed upon our Republic.

But the natural resources of this country are comparatively untouched and can not be developed without money.  The framers of the Constitution recognized the necessity of money, and made it the duty of Congress to provide it by the coinage of gold and silver.  The road leading westward, with its various branches, communicates with the patriotic, industrious, and liberty-loving citizens of the United States.  They demand of Congress the exercise of the power conferred by the Constitution "to coin money and regulate the value thereof," and preserve to the people of the United States the right to mine and coin their own money independent of the dictation of any foreign power prince, or potentate.

The road that leads to Lombard street via New York City, communicates with the syndicate of money loaners, bond holders and bankers who control and direct the policy of the bonded debt of the world, the interest upon which now absorbs the largest share of the fruits of labor of all the nations of the Earth.

Lombard street, speaking for all the bondholders, commands the Congress of the United States to discard silver, destroy half of the metallic money of the world, cut off more than two-thirds of all future supplies of the precious metals, and confine the new supply for a metallic basis of circulation and credit to the meager output of gold, depending upon the sporadic and uncertain discoveries of gold exclusive of the regular supply of that metal heretofore realized from silver mines.

It is impossible to estimate the vast increase in the purchasing power of gold and diminution of the price or property and wages, which must result from traveling the road to Lombard street;  nor is it possible to estimate the increase of the power and wealth of the bond-holding and money-loaning parasites of society, if Congress deserts the people of the United States in obedience to the commands of an alien enemy.

We must not forget that New York is on the way to London, and that Wall street is the Gibraltar of the imperial money power of England, with coaling stations of finance in every commercial city in the United States, and that the national banks are the tentacles by which the octopus of Lombard street sucks the lifeblood of the toiling millions of the United Sates.  Congress is convened in extra session to decide whether the people of this country shall have their own financial system, mine and coin their own money, pay their debts, and achieve independence, or submit to be governed by Lombard and Wall streets, through the instrumentality of the national banks.

I need not point out the advantages of the financial scheme provided in the Constitution of the United States.  The right to mine and coin money guaranteed by that instrument was enjoyed by the American people until the year 1873.  The establishment and maintenance of free institutions, the growth and development of the resources of the United States, the happiness and prosperity of the people under the benign influence of constitutional and just financial legislation, seem a sufficient reason for adhering to the teachings of our fathers.  But we are commanded by the public press in the interest of the money power, by the banks in their own interest and in the interest of Wall and Lombard streets, and by the President of the United States to turn our backs to the people of the United States, look across the Atlantic, and receive and obey the commands of an alien enemy to the toiling masses of this country.

We are commanded to repeal the Sherman act and remove the possibility of using silver as money.  When that command shall have been obeyed the Treasury of the United States will be in a lamentable condition.  One thousand millions of paper circulation resting upon the narrow margin of $100,000,000 of gold reserves is a colossal fabric of credit upon an inadequate basis.  The demand for the issuance of bonds to borrow gold to prevent an inevitable collapse will be imperative.  The purchase of gold will increase the price of gold.  As gold goes up, property and wages must go down, while the weight of obligations payable in money will continue to increase.

But the bankers will have another harvest.  It is not intended that the proposed scheme for the money-changers shall be temporary, but it is to be a perpetual system.  The vast gains of the national banks made by the transfer of the power "to coin money and regulate the value thereof" from Congress to the banks has created an insatiable desire on their part for more bonds and more subsidies.  The simple statement which I am about to make of the operations of the national banks will explain the motive for more bonds and more national debt.

Profit of National Banking System.

The owner of $100,000 of United States bonds in 1863 was authorized by law to make, and did make, the following transaction:

One hundred thousand dollars of bonds which cost par in greenbacks, or $50,000 in gold, was filed in the Treasury Department.  Ninety thousand dollars of the face value of the bonds was returned to the depositor in money of the United States, because the United States undertook to redeem the circulation so issued, and upon the faith of the United States, paper issued to the banks circulated on a par with greenbacks.  The net investment of the banker was $10,000 in greenbacks, or $5,000 in gold.  The bonds remained in the Treasury for safe-keeping, but the banker drew the interest, which was payable semi-annually.

The bonds for many years drew 5 and 6 per cent, but in the last few years have drawn only 4 per cent.  We will make the calculation on the assumption that the bonds drew only 4 per cent during the whole period.  Such calculation will not show the extent of the profit of the banker, but it will show sufficient gain on his part to illustrate the working of the system.  We will take the period of twenty-six years, from the beginning of 1863 to the end of 1889, and examine profit and loss so far as the Government is concerned.  We do not propose to estimate the profits which the bank made on the $100,000 of its capital which was withdrawn at the time the deposit of the bonds was made with the Government.

Four per cent on $100,000 bonds is $4,000, from which the Government charges must be deducted.  A tax of 1 per cent on the $90,000 of circulation is $900.  Department charges are $150, making a total of $1,050 to be deducted from the $4,000 of annual interest, making a net annual gain, in simple interest alone, of $2,950.  In twenty-six years this would amount to $76,700.  No account is made of the compound interest which the bank received by loaning at exorbitant rates of interest the money received from the Government.  At the end of twenty-six years the $100,000 of bonds deposited with the Government were worth at least $127,000 in gold.  But before the banker could sell these bonds he was required to return the $90,000 which he had received from the Government in the shape of currency, and the account would stand thus:

Net interest on bonds ....................... $76,700
Gold value of bonds .................... 127,000
Total ...................................... 203,700
From which must be deducted the $90,000 received from the Government and the $5,000 in gold originally invested, which is ................................... 95, 000
Leaving a net profit on the investment of $5,000 in gold of ................. $108,700

If it be suggested that this is an extreme case, it must be remembered that the lowest rate of interest and a lower rate than bonds could be placed in 1863 were taken into consideration, and that no calculation has been made of the enormous advantage of a national bank in obtaining deposits of both public and private funds.  This example illustrates the nature of the operation by which national banks make money at the expense of the people through the power delegated to them to furnish the people money.

It was said a few days ago that no money was made by the national banks on account of the circulation they received from the United States.  This declaration has been so often repeated in the last thirty years that I have been induced to examine the figures.  I now present a statement of the situation on the present market price of United States bonds under the present law of allowing the issue of 90 per cent of the face value of the bonds, and also under the proposed bill, which requires the United States to furnish the bank currency equal to the face value of the bonds deposited:

Estimate on $100,000 of United States 4% bonds, bought at 110%, due July, 1907:
Income at 4% per annum ............................. $4,000
Sinking fund for fourteen years (ten-fourteenths) at interest about five-eighths per cent ........................... $625
1 per cent tax on $90,000 notes ............................ 900
Department expenses ...................................... 150
....................................... 1,675
Yearly income, net .................................. 2,325
Cost of bonds ........................................... 110,000
Less notes outstanding .................................... 90,000
(Five per cent fund counts as reserve against deposits.)
The bank's actual investment (at 110 per cent) ......................... 20,000
2,325 dollars yearly income on $20,000 invested. Rate, 11 per cent per annum.
Same operation, bonds at 110 per cent, notes issued at par:
The bank's actual investment ..................... $10,000
Net income .................................... 2,325
Rate 23 per cent per annum to the bank
The first operation, bonds at 120 per cent, notes at 90 per cent:
Sinking fund, fourteen years (twenty-fourteenths), say additional $625.
Income $2,325, reduced by $625 ---net income ............................ $1,700
Investment, now $30,000 for income of $1,700.  Rate, 5.7 per cent per annum.

Thus, with the bonds salable at 120 per cent, circulation becomes unprofitable whenever money will lend at a higher rate than 5.7 per cent per annum.  The immediate inducement for banks able to obtain a higher rate is to sell out their bonds and for every $100,000 of bonds they contract the currency $90,000.

Under the Statutes of the United States, sections 5182, 5228, 5229, and 5230, these notes are received by the United States for all dues excepting customs dues, and are paid out by the United States for all purposes but interest on the public debt.  They are acceptable to the public on account only of the public debt pledged for them;  and further because the statutes quoted require that upon any default of the bank issuing them the notes shall be paid at the Treasury of the United States, for the public account.  The Government must take its chances of being repaid.

Thus, to all intents and purposes, these notes of national banks are Government notes.  The United States is liable for them from the time they are issued until they are paid.  But the profit upon the issue accrues to the national banks.  It is proposed now to double that profit, as my figures show.  I have shown how a profit to the banks in the operation may disappear.  From experience we know the result--- an immediate contraction of the currency.  If, on the other hand, we issue United States notes, the result is always profit, and all public profit, with no inducement to anyone, including the Treasury, to retire them and contract the currency.

Therefore, instead of providing the national banks an income at an exorbitant rate on the very moderate sum of their own money which they invest in the operation, and under the constant danger of the contraction of the currency which they will make without compunction, let the United States issue their own notes at their own profit.  Do not employ national banks to issue notes for which the Government is liable, with the profit all inuring to the banks.

The enormous profits made by the banks out of the Government under the national-bank law is not by any means the worst feature of the system.  Bearing in mind that when the price of bonds rose to $120, making the investment of the banker $30 instead of $10, the bank realized only 5.7 per cent on its investment.  The banks were not satisfied with that rate of interest.  Consequently they sold their bonds and withdrew their circulation.

On the 31st of October, 1883, there was outstanding United States notes, exclusive of the amount of money deposited with which the United States could redeem bank circulation of retiring banks, $316,020,326.  On the 31st of October, 1888, the amount of outstanding notes, exclusive of the notes for which redemption money had been deposited, was only $130,207.285 ---a contraction of the circulating medium in four years of $185,813,140.  Can a system which authorized the expansion and contraction of the circulating medium in this fashion by private corporations be longer tolerated in this country ?

I have advised and now advise some temporary relief for the distress which the system inaugurated in Lombard and Wall streets has inflicted upon the country without increasing the power of the banks to further absorb the wealth of the country, but my advice is not acceptable to the bankers or their advocates, because there is no money in it for them ---there can be no relief for the people without enriching them.  I have proposed the following plan, which I have introduced as a bill in the Senate:

A bill (S. 3) to supply the deficiency in the currency.

Be it enacted, etc., That the Secretary of the Treasury be, and he is hereby, directed to issue silver certificates of the character and denominations as now provided by law equal in amount to the silver bullion in the Treasury purchased under the act of July 14, 1890, entitled "An act directing the purchase of silver bullion and the issuance of Treasury notes thereon, and for other purposes," in excess of the amount necessary, at its coining value, to redeem the Treasury notes issued under said act, and to use the same, or so much thereof as may be necessary, to provide for any deficiency in the revenues of the Government, and to use the balance of such certificates in the purchase of United States 4 per cent bonds at the market price thereof, not exceeding 12 per cent premium on the face value of such bonds;  and the Secretary shall, as fast as practicable, coin such excess of silver and gold the same for the redemption of the certificates provided for by this act.

Sec. 2.  That the Secretary of the Treasury be, and he is hereby, further directed to issue $100,000,000 of United States legal-tender notes of the character and description of the United States legal-tender notes now outstanding, and purchase with such notes United States 4 per cent bonds, at the market price, not exceeding 12 per cent premium on the face value of the bonds so purchased, and the bonds purchased under the provisions of this act shall be held in the Treasury as security for the redemption of the Treasury notes issued under this act.

It will be seen that the bill provides for the utilization of the silver bullion in the Treasury and issuing certificates on it, and subsequently coining it.  It is there and must be taken care of, and it is useful for no other purpose.  The Treasury must have the money in its vaults with which to pay its debts, and it will need this money immediately.  My bill further provides for the issue of $100,000,000 greenbacks with which to buy bonds, the bonds to remain in the Treasury as security for the greenbacks issued.

Some such expedient as this would relieve the country;  but the bondholders and the bankers, will not consent to it.  They have not created this panic for nothing.  They must reap a rich harvest out of this crisis which they have brought on.  They and their agents will not consent that the people shall have any remedy unless they are bought off.  They have been bought off too often.  They had to be bought off time and again during the rebellion;  and every time we buy them off, we increase their power to command more.

Both these propositions are antagonized in every form, and we are told that we must give relief to the people by a donation to the national banks.  They are not satisfied to increase their circulation and draw interest from the Government of 11 per cent, but they demand circulation to the face value of the bonds, to the end that the interest on their investment may be increased to 23 per cent.  If this can be done they will take out currency and loan it to a distressed people at panic rates of interest.  We are told that in this emergency we must look to the banks;  that through the banks and the banks alone relief can come.

It is true the $20,000,000 which would be issued to the banks would require of them no consideration.  Their bonds are on file.  They have received 90 per cent in circulation.  The addition of 10 per cent is a direct donation to them, nothing more and nothing less.  But when the Sherman act is repealed and silver destroyed, there will be another emergency, greater than this.  The $4,000,000, or thereabouts, per month of legal-tender Treasury notes issued on the purchase of bullion will be stopped.  The country must have more money.  The one thousand millions of paper already out, resting upon $100,000,000 of gold, will not permit a further issue of greenbacks, and the increase of the national debt will be inevitable.

There will be no way to obtain money except through the banks.  The bonds issued to borrow gold will be used by the banks to increase their circulation.  The war harvest which the national banks reaped by the issuance of bonds to preserve the integrity of the Government will be repeated under the plea of necessity to furnish the people money.  The efforts of the Government to buy gold will continue to advance the price of gold and augment the obligations of the debtor, while it depreciates his property and diminishes his capacity to pay.

The theory that a national debt is a national blessing was first promulgated by the owners of the national debt of England, who have dominated that country since the Napoleonic wars, and enriched the few at the expense of the many.  The banks and parties interested in making money out of the Government by absorbing the power to issue money are already affirming that theory;  and we hear on every side in this free America that "a national debt is a national blessing."  Just how the masses are blest, by paying taxes to be absorbed by a favored few, has not been explained.

As I said in the beginning, we have come to the forks of the road.  It is either to mine and coin our own money or submit to a system of extortion organized by bondholders and national banks, which must result in enormous wealth for the few and peon or feudal slavery for the masses.  I regret that my friend from Indiana has reported a bill to repeal the Sherman law, the passage of which without amendment would place the finances of the country under the control of Lombard and Wall streets.  The price of silver has already fallen below the cost of production of the richest mines, and all silver mines are closed and will remain so under the policy of the bill reported by the Senator from Indiana.  If that bill should become a law, the price of silver would rapidly decline toward the price of the base metals.  In that case the $600,000,000 of silver and silver coin in the United States would form no part of the basis of circulation and credit.

The entire circulation of the United States, exclusive of gold, would rest on the $100,000,000 of gold reserves in the Treasury.  The President's message demanding the repeal of the Sherman act and suggesting no other legislation, precludes the possibility of his signing a bill for the restoration of silver.  Four years, at least, must elapse before any relief can come by legislation in Congress.  The world moves.  The business of the country can not wait four years.  The banks and their representatives will oppose the issuance of greenbacks.  They will point to the fact that the gold in the Treasury is inadequate for their redemption.  They will demand, and the necessities of the case will seem to require, the issuance of bonds to buy gold to increase the reserves.  The bonds will be taken up by the banks and circulation issued, which will also be a demand for more gold for redemption.  More bonds will be required to buy gold.  More bank issues will follow.  The banks will continue to absorb the hard earnings of the people, who will be oppressed by increased taxation while the price of their property is being continually reduced.

If the Senator from Indiana [Wolsey Voorhees, who recently joined Sherman's financial orchestrating committee], whose generous sympathy for the masses has endeared him to the people, believes, as he has so often said, that free coinage is not only a right but a necessity, why not provide for it now ?  Was there ever a time in the history of the country when there was more need of an increase of metallic money than the present ?  By the legislation which he proposes, he will augment the power of the banks and the bondholders whom he has denounced;  crush and humiliate the people who love and who have honored him, and diminish, if not destroy, the power of the citizens of the United States to resist the aggressive power of concentrated wealth.

If he is opposed to the national banks, which he so bitterly denounced, why should he augment their power and create the necessity to surrender to their extortionate demands ?  If he is opposed to an increase of the national debt, why should he by legislation create a necessity for issuing bonds to buy gold ?  If he believes the President of the United States is a bimetallist, why not give him the opportunity to sign a bill for the restoration of the money of the Constitution ?

The Senator from Indiana has reported a bill to repeal the Sherman act, coupled with a declaration in favor of bimetallism.  Why not legislate while the power exists ?  If the Democratic party is in favor of bimetallism as declared in its platform, why adopt the gold standard first, and surrender all power to concentrated wealth, which is aggressive and vindictive in its demands for the single gold standard ?  Why turn over the people of this free Republic to the tender mercies of the gold monopoly ?  I make these remarks in no unkind feeling toward the Senator from Indiana.  I have loved and admired him for his sympathy for the toiling masses.  His sympathetic nature and kind heart have kept him during a long public career in touch with the people, not only of his own State, but with the people of all the States of the Union.  It will be hard for them to believe that the man whom they have trusted above all others as the advocate of their cause will, in the critical hour, desert them.

The Senator from Indiana says the Sherman act is a makeshift;  that it was not passed in good faith.  I am certain that it has not been executed according to its letter and spirit.  I am sorry that those who have the execution of that law prefer the exporters of gold to the people of the United States.  Who can say that if the law had been fairly executed it would not have been a great boon ?  It certainly has done no harm.  All that has been done under it has been the issuance of $148,000,000 of legal-tender Treasury notes, which have done much to sustain the business of the country, and without which the panic would have come some time ago.

I know the law is odious to Lombard and Wall streets.  I know it is an obstacle to the consummation of their scheme of confiscation and plunder of the masses.  I know that the bondholders, the bankers, and the public press have done all in their power to make it unpopular.  I regret that the Republican party, which gave us that law in the place of the Bland act, now propose to take it away without restoring the former law.  They say it was a compromise.  If so, why violate the compact ?  If you do not like the law, give us back what we gave you in consideration of the compromise.  Is it good faith to compromise and then to repudiate the agreement of compromise ?  I regret that the Senator from Ohio [John Sherman], who reported and defended the law and explained its necessary and legitimate operation, should declare that he was at all times ready to destroy it.  I regret that any Democrat who voted against the law because he preferred the Bland act, and who thought it was a step in the wrong direction, should vote to repeal it without giving us free coinage, which the Democrats, one and all, who spoke in opposition to the Sherman act, declared they most earnestly desired.

It is the first time in the history of this Government that the leaders of the two great political parties were united to trample upon their own platforms.  The platforms of both Chicago and Minneapolis declare for bimetallism.  After those platforms were made, a majority of the Senate passed a bill for the free and unlimited coinage of silver.  It is now proposed to reverse the action of the Senate and repudiate both platforms.  What confidence will the people of the United States have in either of these great parties if platforms are held for nothing;  if public pledges in campaigns are disregarded;  if Wall and Lombard streets have more power in Congress than the declaration of parties and the voice of the people ?

I can not believe that the Senator from Indiana will vote against an amendment providing for the restoration of silver.  I do not believe that he will go home and tell his constituents that he forced the United States to the single gold standard when he had an opportunity to vote for the free and unlimited coinage of silver.

I will not, at this time, enter into the discussion of the revolution which concentrated wealth has inaugurated to destroy one-half of the world's money, enhance the purchasing power of the other, and increase the value of bonds and other obligations for the payment of money.  At another time I will endeavor to show the wrong and injustice of this revolution and to point out the misery and want in store for the human race if the wicked scheme of capital is finally sanctioned and legalized by a majority of Congress and the President of the United States.  There will be a mighty struggle in this country before Lombard and Wall streets can reduce the people of the United States to the same condition of want, misery, and starvation in which they have placed the people of Egypt and the millions of India.  But of that matter I will speak more at length at another time.

As before remarked, I have no disposition to delay any bill for the relief of the distress of the panic now prevailing.  The donation of $20,000,000 to the banks would be but a bagatelle if it would stop there.  I shall give the Senate an opportunity, by offering amendments, to vote for something better than the plan reported by the Committee on Finance.  We certainly must have more money than the bill under consideration will afford if the panic is to be stopped and confidence restored.  The issue of Treasury notes under proper restrictions will furnish ample relief.  The issuance of silver certificates on the silver in the Treasury, not held for the redemption of Treasury notes outstanding, would furnish $50,000,000 without delay.  I shall not abandon the hope that some of these propositions will receive the assent of the Senate until a vote shall have been taken thereon.  I trust speedy relief will be afforded, the panic stopped, confidence restored and business revived.

I appeal to the monometallists of the Senate to allow some honest bill to be passed to relieve the people from the distress and ruin which the panic is producing.  It is believed that this panic was contrived and inaugurated to prevent deliberation in Congress.  The monometallists knew full well from an experience of twenty years that the deliberate judgment of Congress was opposed to the single gold standard, and that if Congress had an opportunity to deliberate there was danger to their pet scheme of financial despotism.  The plan was concocted by the subtle brain of avarice to create a panic, and then declare that the Sherman act of 1890 was the cause of the panic, and stampede Congress.  I beg of you to give the people immediate relief and liberate Congress from the necessity of legislating without deliberation.

How can members of Congress act deliberately while their friends and many of their constituents are appealing to them for relief and immediate relief ?  How frequently do we hear Senators say, "We do not believe the Sherman act of 1890 is the cause of the trouble, but the people think it is, and we must repeal it, although we know that it will bring untold disaster."  Even the Senator from Indiana [Mr. Voorhees], who has stood so long by the people and bimetallism, has been forced into the humiliating position of abandoning them at the behest of the gold ring in order to give immediate relief.  Immediate relief can be given without involving eternal destruction.

I am in favor of repealing the Sherman act ---not the Sherman act of 1890, which has done no harm and much good--- but that other Sherman act, passed in 1873, which no man in all the debates in Congress for twenty years has had the temerity to defend.  No man has attempted to justify that disastrous legislation.  No man has been able to tell us why the financial system established by the fathers was stricken down.  No man can point out a single beneficial result of that legislation.  On the contrary, the calamities which have followed it, and which are inevitable in the future if it remains on the statute book, have been described by a thousand orators on both sides of the Atlantic.

It is admitted by statisticians and writers on political economy that the act of 1873 has enhanced the value of gold, that it has made gold a fluctuating standard;  always fluctuating in the wrong direction;  always appreciating and growing more valuable;  always measuring more property, more labor, and more sacrifice.  The gold standard which we have been gradually reaching as we destroyed silver for the last twenty years has already brought more misery upon the human race than all the wars of the century.  But the work of destruction is but just begun.  Confirm the Sherman act of 1873 by the passage of the bill reported by the Committee on Finance, and the growth of despotism will continue.  The power of Wall and Lombard streets will then be omnipotent.

The bitter fruits of the Sherman act of 1873 are seen all over the land.  The millions of the unemployed, the silent factories, the broken merchants and farmers, the distress throughout the country are the fruits of the Sherman act of 1873, which I have predicted since the discovery was made that silver had been stricken down in free America.  I am no prophet, nor the son of a prophet, but I call attention to the warnings I have been giving for twenty years of the result.  The Sherman act of 1873 has brought this panic.  The Sherman act of 1873 has made the misery and hard times of the present hour.  It has made your National Fair a financial failure.  It has deprived the laboring people of the United States of the opportunity of visiting that Fair.  It has brought sorrow, grief, and starvation where, if that act had not been passed, there would have been peace, plenty, and progress.

But the Sherman act of 1873 has not done its worst.  If it be reenacted as now proposed ---if the legislation which has been passed in spite of the Executive to free the people from the dire effects of that act is wiped out and that infamous act confirmed and ratified by another act of Congress--- one of two things must happen:  a struggle more terrible than the French revolution to regain our liberties, or a slavery more galling than the feudalism of the Dark Ages.

Already the power of the great agricultural interests is destroyed.  The farmers are too poor to attend conventions.  They are too poor to afford themselves any pleasure, luxury, and recreation.  As before remarked, they are too poor to visit the World's Fair.  Their lands are being taken from them by this terrible contraction.  This is not the first time that a money famine has subjugated a great race.  The discovery of gold and silver in Mexico and South America found our English ancestors feudal slaves.  There were only thirty thousand landowners in all England, but within one hundred years after those grand discoveries the metallic money of Europe was more than quadrupled and the landowners in England were increased to over one hundred thousand.  That increase continued until the Napoleonic wars, when the property of the masses was confiscated and the middle classes of Great Britain destroyed.  It was the yeomanry of Great Britain, made comparatively independent by the increase of the circulating medium, who achieved all that is valuable in the British constitution.  Not only that;  they were able to come to our shores and establish here the foundations of our free institutions.  But that yeomanry was destroyed by the money power located in London.  There would have been no free parliament if the serfs of England had not been liberated by the inflow of new money from America.  There would have been no independent United States if the feudal chains had not been broken from our ancestors' limbs by more money from the New World.

It is now proposed to create another money famine to sustain the powerful aristocratic organization of wealth.  It is proposed to have continued contraction until the people of this country will be too poor to contend for their rights.  Twenty years more of this oppression will so destroy the wealth of the masses and impoverish them that your boasted free-school system will be crushed. Aye, parochial schools, too.  You will be in no better condition than the downtrodden masses of Europe, where it is impossible to educate the many.  It is true you will stop emigration from Europe, because your country will be no better than theirs.  But your standard of living in this country must be the same as that of Austria, Germany, and Italy.  Why, the rapid increase of landlords and tenant farmers show the approach of the feudal ages.  In some States between 1880 and 1890 tenant farmers increased 20 per cent;  and since 1890 there have been more foreclosures of mortgages and evictions of owners than occurred in the preceding ten years.  And still the work goes bravely on.

Contraction, stagnation, hard times, and poverty for the masses are the legitimate fruit of that legislation which undertook to destroy one-half of the world's metallic money, cut off the entire supply of one of the precious metals, and fully one-third of the supply of the other.  A scheme so wicked, so far-reaching, so cruel, so potent of evil was never before conceived.

Let us give the people relief in any way we can, and then take up this infamous act of 1873 and wipe it from the statute book, and assert our rights under the Constitution to mine and coin our own money.

But we are told that England will lend us money if we change our laws;  that England is afraid we will pay back in silver what was borrowed in gold.  We borrowed nothing in gold, except where it was specifically named in the contract.  Let such contracts stand.  What we demand is that our laws shall not be changed so as to compel our people to pay in money different from the money of the contract.

What an impudent demand comes from Lombard and Wall streets ?  "We have loaned you three thousand millions in money.  We knew at the time we loaned it the laws of your country.  We knew by those laws it might be paid in any legal-tender money of the Government, which was gold, silver, and greenbacks.  We loaned you the money, knowing of the existence of these laws.  You are our debtors.  We demand of you as a condition of extension of credit, as a condition of further loans, as a condition of peace and prosperity in your country, that you shall change your laws, double the obligations of your citizens, and submit to our demand;  otherwise we will destroy you with panic, with financial ruin, with distress everywhere."

Let them do their worst.  Nothing can be so disastrous to the American people as to comply with such unreasonable demands.  No, no;  we will not change our laws and defraud our people to satisfy the greed of Lombard street.  Oh, no.  Give us time to investigate the cause of all this wrong;  give us time to wipe from the statute book the Sherman act of 1873;  give us time to restore to the people the constitutional money of their fathers.  That is what we demand, and we say to the monometallists, the allies of Wall and Lombard streets, that you will not gain by attempting to utilize the miseries of the people which you have caused to stampede Congress.

There are men in Congress who can not be stampeded in any such manner, and before this debate is over you will find that there are more men in this Congress who have faith in the people who have trusted them than you suppose.  This plan of obtaining such vast advantage by creating an emergency and stampeding Congress will not succeed.  You will not unconditionally repeal the Sherman act of 1890 in this or any other American Congress.

A more monstrous proposition was never heard of.  After there has been a majority in both Houses of Congress for twenty years to right the wrong of 1873, we are called upon in the hot month of August to ratify that wrong.  After Lombard street and Wall street have created a panic to stampede Congress and create universal distress, we are called upon to augment that distress and make falling prices, misery, and hard times perpetual.

The Senator from New York [Mr. Hill] promises the gold kings that he will give them the victory for which they have fought;  that he will crush the people, but that he will give the people promises.  Does he think that the people of the United States are so ignorant as to heed that miserable pretext ?  There is nothing so insulting to honorable men as such promises.  Away with them.  They can come from nowhere but Wall street and Lombard street;  and Wall street has always been in league with Lombard street.  It was in the Revolutionary war;  it was in the war of 1812;  it was during the rebellion.  They have all fattened upon the labors and miseries of the people of the United States.

The Senator from New York made a mistake when he promised Lombard street that we were to be slaves.  We are not;  and the bill will not be passed.  There are not men enough who will betray their trust and go back on their pledges to pass this bill.  No man in this Senate can vote for the unconditional repeal of the Sherman bill without a substitute, unless he violates his pledges to his constituents;  for they have all said on all occasions that they were bimetallists, and this is monometallism.

You see the sneers in the newspapers on the present price of silver.  They say it is down to so much an ounce.  Why is that ?  Do you not see how necessary it is to keep the price down ?  Do you not see that the Executive has refused to execute the law of 1890 for fear of making silver respectable ?  Do you not see, when the banks of Denver were about to fail because the smelters could get no currency for their bullion, it was because the Executive had refused to buy silver when it was offered at a lower price than had ever existed in the history of the country ?

You see that it is the effort and the necessity of the gold party to beat down the price of silver.  If this bill should be passed, and silver reduced in price to 20 or 30 cents an ounce, "there would be one acclaim from Wall street and Lombard street and all their agents, in and out of office, against the use of that "base metal" because it is only worth 20 cents an ounce.  Give them that argument, give them that power, and then silver is doomed, gold monometillism is established, and there will be nothing left for the people of the United States but to rise in their might, break the chains with which gold contraction has bound them, and make their own money.  It may not be silver, but it will not be gold.

You can not continue this process for twenty years.  If you could you would reduce the people so that they could not resist.  You have not stopped the common schools;  you have not crushed the ambition of all the young men of the country;  you have not blotted out the spirit of liberty;  you have dammed it up a little;  but this damming up of the spirit of liberty and of the aspirations of men will only make the torrent more terrible when they find that you are determined to make them slaves.  We know we have four years of bondage, because the Executive is a monometallist.  We understand that.  But those four years will be a season of education, and the voice of the people will be heard.

What a mockery to speak of the Democratic party or of the Republican party, when both of those parties have pledged themselves to bimetallism and gone before the country, and then they convene in extra session to give the lie to all their professions.  They say they will give us bimetallism.  They promise that from this Senate, and say to Wall street and Lombard street, "Wait a little and you shall be fully satisfied.  We will give the people a little taffy, but we will give you the power to crush them perpetually."

It is the paid press you hear talking now;  you are surrounded by bankers, you are surrounded by money influences.  The masses of the people have not been heard.  They will not be deceived.  The people are watching our proceedings, and they will mark those who, when they ask for bread, give them a stone.  They ask for free coinage, and we say we will first give Wall street and Lombard street monometallism, and then we will consider their claims.

"True, we promised;  but we are politicians, and we do not keep promises.  We have contempt for you.  Our object is to deceive the masses, to acquire office, and then betray."  That is the position of the two parties when they strike down silver;  but the position of the Republican party is more humiliating than that of the Democratic party.  They say that this was a compromise, and without giving a reason they come here to break the compact.  The people will understand it, and mark them.

The Democratic party said they could not vote for the compromise because they were for free coinage, but Wall street demands that the compromise on free coinage shall now be repudiated, that their greedy demands shall be satisfied, and the people's cause shall be buried forever.  It will not be.  This bill will not pass without a substitute.

Mr. Bland [Richard Parks Bland (1835-1899) Missouri, D.;  studied law, admitted to the bar].  Mr. Speaker, I ask the gentleman from Indiana to yield to me a moment while I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record an article by Mr. J.S. Daugherty, of Dallas, Texas, and also an article from the St. Louis Chronicle, both relating to the subject under debate.

The articles are as follows:

Will Free Coinage give us Prosperity ?
how England regulates the prices of wheat and cotton through India council drafts.

(By J.S. Daugherty, Dallas, Texas)

We hold that the greatest temporal blessing that can be conferred upon man is to give him continuous and profitable employment.  Therefore, if we can show that the free and unlimited coinage of silver will more certainly do this for the people of the United States than continuing the present law, or confining our silver coinage to the product of our own mines, or establishing the gold standard, then we have established our cause.

Silver and gold are the universally recognized commodities out of which money is now made by all civilized nations and in which the balances of trade between them are settled.  If a nation buys and borrows from other nations until the sum of its purchases and the interest on what it borrows added to the principal of bonds falling due and those sent home to be cashed before falling due, aggregate more than it sells or lends to them, then the balance of trade is against it and must be settled on terms dictated by the creditor.

"The borrower is servant to the lender." --Proverbs, chapter xxii, verse 7.

All of the gold and silver that a nation can rightfully possess must either be dug out of its mines, received in exchange for other commodities, be brought to it by immigrants who become its citizens, or borrowed.  The first three are productive sources of permanent wealth.  The fourth is speculative, and may prove profitable or result in disaster, owing to the conditions that may arise.
---[What insanity !  If in a country there is no silver or gold in the ground why make silver or gold the unit of account and the medium of exchange ?  Should there be no domestic trade and commerce until we find something to sell on a foreign market where there is silver ?  How will domestic economy develop ?  Everyone of ye referred to Allison's History of Europe often enough to know what a disaster it was for the people of Europe to make silver the unit of account and medium of exchange when there was no silver on the continent ?  Mr. Bland, himself, quoted that passage from the book.
The unit of account and the medium of exchange must be provided !]

Moses, in giving the law to the Israelites, condemned the policy of borrowing (see Deuteronomy, chapter xv. verse 6), "Thou shalt lend unto many nations, but thou shalt not borrow."
---[You are purposely mis-interpreting what is written in the Bible.]

Other things being equal, it is evident that the better prices a nation receives for all it has to sell, the more gold and silver it profitably produces from its mines, and the more and wealthier the immigrants who become its citizens, the greater its wealth and the more likely the balance of trade will be in its favor and the power to draw gold and silver from others in settlement.  The laws of commerce will never permit either gold or silver to be taken from a country where the balance of trade is in its favor.

With these elementary principles in our minds, let us investigate the effects that the free coinage of silver would have on the industries of our own country and its balance of trade.  The total value of the new silver added to the world's stock in 1890 was $166,667,000.  Of this sum the western hemisphere produced $141,757,000, leaving the product of all the rest of the world but $24,910,000.  And of that produced by the western hemisphere, the United States supplied $70,485,714.  The total silver coinage of the world for 1890 was $149,404,000.  Of this the eastern hemisphere coined $81,840,468, or $56,9201468 more than her entire product.  In addition to this, she must have used in the arts not less than $10,000,000, so that, allowing for the alloy, the eastern hemisphere must have imported 60,000,000 ounces of pure silver more than she produced.  Having bought and used it, she must have needed it.  At 85 cents per ounce, the cost would be $51,000,000.  At $1.2929 per ounce, the value of an ounce of pure silver in this country, if we had free coinage, it would have cost her $77,574,000;  we being the sellers and they the buyers, their gain was our loss to the extent of $26,574,000.

England Silent.

But let us accompany this silver and see what they did with it, for Mr. Edward Leech, Director of the United States Mint, in his testimony before the committee of Congress on Coinage, Weights and Measures, in January, 1891, testified that "Even the English mint will not tell you how much silver they have bought."  There must be some good reason for this secrecy.  England and the United States are preeminently the two great rivals for the world's commerce.  In 1890 the United States exported $26,614,000 of silver, while Great Britain coined $66,263,555 worth, and, including her entire possessions, produced but $13,746,055, so that she coined alone $52,816,500 worth more than she produced, to say nothing of what she used in the arts.  Seeing that she coined all of the silver minted in the eastern hemisphere in 1890, except $15,576,931, and considering our rivalry with her for commerce, and that London is the money center of the world, and that most of the silver exported from Mexico comes to the United States, we deem it only necessary to contrast the effects of free coinage of silver as it would affect Great Britain and the United States.  In 1890 the United States coined $39,202,205, using 16 of silver to 1 of gold, while Great Britain, claiming to be a gold-standard country, coined $66,263,555 worth, using but 15 ounces of silver to 1 of gold.  England must need it or she would not buy it.  She must make a profit on it or she would not buy it.  She tries to keep, as a secret how much she buys;  then there must be some danger to her interests in making public her methods of handling silver.

Then what is our duty to ourselves as her rivals ?  To investigate, dig into, and know as much of her methods as she does, and if she is manipulating silver against our interests, try to prevent it.

Other things being equal, it is always to the interest of the consumer to buy as cheap as possible, and the consumer's gain in this case is our loss.  What else does England buy that we produce ?  About 150,000,000 bushels of wheat and 3,500,000 bales of cotton annually.  Where does she buy these ?  In her Indian possessions first, and in the world's market second.  How does she pay for what she buys from India ?  With manufactured goods and silver coin.  She buys silver bullion as cheap as possible, and coins it at her mints in Calcutta and Bombay into rupees on a ratio of 15 of silver to 1 of gold, and issues these rupees at .47 and .37 each, in payment for wheat and cotton.  She puts no more grains of pure silver in a rupee when she buys it for 27 cents than when it costs her 41 cents, and uses this 27-cent fiated rupee to supply herself cheaply with cotton and wheat, and we furnish her the silver with which to do it.

Let us see how she does it ?  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."

Moreton Frewen, in his address before the second silver convention at Washington, said:  "An ounce of silver bullion will always buy a bushel of wheat in India and pay transportation on it to Liverpool.  Hence the American farmer must also lay down his bushel of wheat in Liverpool for gold, then all the farmer can get in gold is 85 cents less the cost of transporting the wheat to Liverpool.  Therefore, if the farmer will deduct the cost of transporting a bushel of wheat from Chicago to Liverpool from the price of an ounce of silver, he will have very nearly the price of a bushel of wheat in Chicago.

---[Because America is too dumb to develop a textile industry which would absorb the american cotton.  America tries to sell cotton to England, then buy textile products from England ---how cotton-picking dumb is that ?!]

"Assuming the cost of sending a bushel of wheat from Chicago to Liverpool, including storage, insurance, and brokerage, to be 15 cents, and silver to be worth 85 cents an ounce, then wheat in Chicago would be worth 70 cents.  But if silver were at par, as it would be under free coinage, an ounce of silver would be worth $1.29, and a bushel of wheat in Chicago would be worth $1.29, less the cost of sending it to Liverpool, or about $1.14.  Hence, as silver rises above or falls below 85 cents an ounce so will wheat in this country rise above or fall below the prices above stated."

From the above it will be seen that while the Indian farmer gets the same price, in rupees, for his wheat now that he got twenty years ago, the American farmer gets not quite two-thirds as much, and the consumer, or the middleman, gets the difference.  In 1873 India exported only 730,485 bushels of wheat;  in 1892 India exported 59,000,000 bushels.  Anyone can figure up the loss to the American farmer.  It amounts to from $160,000,000 to $220,000,000 on the wheat crop of a single year.

---[Perhaps, less people should be employed in wheat and cotton production, and more in manufacturing.]

The effect on cotton and cotton manufactures is the same as on wheat.  An Indian rupee will buy about 4 pounds of cotton, and pay transportation to Liverpool, or an ounce of silver will buy 10 pounds of cotton and lay it down in Liverpool.  With silver at $1.29 an ounce, a pound sterling will pay for 40 pounds of cotton delivered in Liverpool. A pound sterling for 40 pounds of cotton in Liverpool would be about 12 cents a pound for the American planter.  At 85 cents an ounce for silver a pound sterling will buy nearly six ounces of silver, which, converted into rupees, will pay for 60 pounds of cotton delivered in Liverpool.  Sixty pounds of cotton in Liverpool for a pound sterling is about 8 cents a pound there, or about 6 in Memphis.  A large cotton crop in India, or a short crop here, will, of course, vary these relations somewhat, but the general effect of the fall of silver is understated rather than overstated.

The exports of cotton from India have increased from $39,570,000 in 1879 to $82,665,000 in 1891;  while the export of cotton goods in the same period has increased from $4,658,500 to $33,135,725, and other manufactures of cotton from $18,220,625 to $14,348,840 in 1891, and are increasing every year.  Robert Fowler, London banker, and ex-lord mayor, in 1886 said:

"The effect of the depreciation of silver must finally be the ruin of the wheat and cotton industries of America and be the development of India as the chief wheat and cotton exporter of the world."

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.

Daniel Manning's Testimony.

Daniel Manning, the Secretary of the Treasury under President Cleveland, in 1886, says:  "It is a direct consequence of the monetary dislocation that wheat of India, which there fetched three rupees per quintal fourteen years ago and there fetches three rupees per quintal to-day, can be sold (profitably) in London (cost of transportation apart) for as little as the gold price of three rupees in London to-day, a fall of 25 per cent.  This lower price of wheat in London has had to be met by a lower price of the American wheat in London. * * * The price of our surplus wheat determined the price of the whole wheat crop of the United States.  So that the monetary dislocation has already cost our farming population, who number nearly one-half of the total population of the United States, an almost incomputable sum, a loss of millions upon millions of dollars every year."

---[ Which indicates that a lot more wheat is produced than what the population of the planet needs.  It clear from the statement that either the "farming population" of India, or the "farming population" of the United States has to change or suffer the consequences of over-production. ]

President Harrison's Testimony.

President Harrison, in his message to Congress in December, 1892, while furnishing statistics to prove that all other industries in the United States were relatively prosperous, admitted that "wheat and cotton are depressed."  In 1813, the year in which silver was demonetized, India produced only 978,000 bales of cotton, while in 1889-'90 she had increased her crop to 2,238,000 bales.  In 1819 India exported to Great Britain only 889,655 bushels of wheat, while the United States exported there 67,193,299 bushels.  In 1889 India exported to Great Britain 9,337,260 bushels, while the export of the United States there had fallen to 40,503,461 bushels.  In 1892 India exported the enormous quantity of 59,000,000 bushels, and as her exports increase ours decline.

---[ There is only one market, there are only a certain number of people to consume wheat and cotton.  Your desire is to wipe out the "farming population" of India.  Either make the market bigger, or produce something else other than wheat and cotton. ]

The average price of wheat in Great Britain in 1879 was $1.29 per bushel.  In 1889 it had declined to 88 cents per bushel, while in 1892 the unprecedented low price of 78 cents per bushel was reached, so that while the price of wheat measured in gold has fallen in London from 1879 to 1892, 51 cents per bushel, the price of wheat in India, measured in silver, is about the same as it was in 1873, and the inhabitant of India can buy of all of the necessaries of life with his rupee now as much as he could in 1873, and this uniform price of wheat and cotton for the past twenty years in India is the principal cause that has contributed so largely to develop these industries there.

If the farmers of the West and planters of the South want to get an increased market for their two great staples at better prices. they will not find the true remedy in conventions to make agreements to cut down production so as to give a larger market and further stimulus to these industries in India, but by advancing the price of silver.

In 1879, London exported to India but $12,375,612 worth of silver, while in 1890 the export had grown to $35.573,177, or increased about 300 per cent in about ten years.  The coinage of silver at the mints of India owned by the English in 1888. was $36,297,132, while in 1890 it had reached $57,931,333 worth, or an increased coinage in three years of 60 per cent.  Why this immense increase in exports and coinage of silver ?  Because there is profit in it.

What effect had the advance in price of silver in 1890 from 92.4 cents per ounce to $1.21 on the exports of silver from London to India ?  There was a falling off in the first nine months of 1891 as compared with the first nine months of 1890 of $17,020,730.  Hence it is demonstrated that the effect of cheap silver is to increase exports from London to India, and dear silver is to cause these exports to fall off.

The cotton crop in the United States in 1890 was 7,311,322 bales, the largest that had ever been previously produced, and cotton was higher than it had been for several years previous or has been since.  Turn to the Financial Chronicle of September 5, 1891, and you will find that the average cost of wheat in Great Britain for 1887, 1888, and 1889 was 308. 10d. per quarter, while in 1890 it was 358. 2d., or about 12 cents per bushel higher than the previous years, and the short crop of wheat in Europe did not occur until 1891.  So what can the higher prices of wheat and cotton be attributed to but the higher price of silver ?

But our cotton and wheat industries are no longer the only ones that share the depressing effects of cheap silver in this country and high silver in India.  The duty on our rice is offset in this way, and it is cheaper now than it has been for years.  The importation of old iron has begun from India, which may open the way for the introduction of chrome iron, manganiferous and hematite ores, which she possesses in the greatest abundance, and, when once started, other States than Colorado, as Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Missouri, may awake too late to learn that they have an interest in the silver question.  Not only are the enumerated industries developed, but when England can supply herself with cheap bread for her operatives and cheap raw material for her factories, she is that much better able to compete with all our own factories in foreign markets and hold their trade.  The more we can make her bread and raw material cost her, the more successfully can our factories compete with hers.

Seeing that to enhance the value of silver would produce these effects, the question presents with a concentrated force as to whether or not we can do it and to what extent.  We have seen that the eastern hemisphere imports 60,000,000 ounces of pure silver more than it produces;  therefore, if we should open our mints to the free coinage of silver there would be a home demand for it at $1.2929 per ounce, and if our own mines could realize that for it at home they would not accept less than that for it to be shipped abroad.  But it has been said that if we open our mints to free coinage all of the accumulated silver of the world be dumped upon us.  Let us see if it would.  France, Belgium, Italy, Switzerland, Greece, Spain, Netherlands, Russia, and the Central American States, all South America, and Haiti coin all of their silver on a ratio of 15.5 of silver to 1 of gold, and they had in sight in 1890, $1,000,084,000.  On this ratio their 5-franc pieces, which is worth 96 cents in gold as coined, contains 347.5 grains of pure silver, or at the rate of $1.2929 per ounce would be worth 93.53 cents;  on every one of them that they would send here to be coined they would lose 2.47 cents, besides paying express and insurance charges both ways.  Evidently none of that would come.

Yes, but there is India with her $900,000,000;  what will become of that ?  Well, 15 ounces of it coined at home will buy an ounce of gold, and they are certainly not fools enough to send any of it to the United States where it would take 16 ounces to buy one of gold.  Yes, but there is China;  she will flood you, she will drown you;  what about China ?  Well, poor old China has no coins of her own, no mint, and no ratio between gold and silver.  Foreign coins are the only ones she possesses, and when she opened her ports to commerce, like all inexperienced people when they engage in trade, "she paid dearly for the whistle."  The beautiful coins looked more attractive to the Mongolian eyes than red pippins to hungry schoolboys.  They wanted them, and they got them, at a cost of 13 cents more on the dollar than the bullion in them is worth on a ratio of 16 to 1, and to-day, after an experience of nearly forty years, every dollar they receive costs them from 2 to 8 cents more than the silver in them is worth, and it is estimated that the introduction of foreign coins annually costs China from $4,000,000 to $5,000,000.

Is it probable under these conditions that China would send any of her coin to this country ?  Does she want to pay express and insurance charges, and lose from two to thirteen cents on every dollar of her $100,000,000 ?  Benighted as she is, she is too wise for that.  In fact, of all of these nations of the earth who have silver coins, Mexico and Japan are the only ones who could send them here and reduce them to bullion and have them recoined at a profit, if we had free coinage on a ratio of 16 to 1, and they are each only estimated to have $50,000,000.  The additional profit on our cotton crop for one year would be more than 138 per cent of all they both have, and on our wheat crop 234 per cent more.  Then we see we can make the ratio using as little of silver as 16 to 1 without bringing any damaging amount of foreign coins.  And as we have seen it is to our interest to make silver as dear as possible, we should not use more of it than is necessary to keep foreigners from speculating on us by sending their coins to our mints.

It can be Done.

But can we maintain the ratio of 16 to 1 is the question.  Let us see.  From 1687 to 1873, one hundred and eighty-six years, there were but three years in the world's markets when it took 16 ounces of silver to buy an ounce of gold.  In 1808 it required 16.08 ounces;  in 1812 it took 16.11 ounces;  in 1813 it took 16.12 ounces.  And during that period there was but one year (1760) when it required less than 14.14 ounces of silver to buy one ounce of gold.  In 1808, 1812, and 1813 there was 98 per cent of silver to 2 per cent of gold in the world's supply of precious metals.  In 1860 there was 4 per cent of gold to 96 of silver, while in 1890 there was 5 per cent of gold to 95 per cent of silver in the world's supply of precious metals;  so that in 1890, when in the world's markets it took 22.09 ounces of silver to buy 1 ounce of gold, there was a greater relative per cent of gold to silver in the world than in 1760, when it took but 14.14 ounces of silver to buy 1 of gold.  So that it appears that while for one hundred and eighty-six years prior to 1873 the greatest fluctuations in the relative value between gold and silver was 1.98 ounces, for the seventeen years from 1873 to 1890 it has been 6.17 ounces, and that, too, when there is more gold in the world's supply with reference to silver (by weight) than there was when gold was highest in the one hundred and eighty-six years prior to 1873.

How France did it.

Then to what can we attribute the drawing apart of the relative value of the two metals in the last twenty years but to legislation demonetizing silver, thus depreciating it, and enhancing the value of gold by causing it to perform the double service that silver and gold had formerly done.  But France alone, with about one-half of our population. one-eleventh of our territory, a foreign trade that did not equal ours, and a domestic commerce that would not compare with ours, opened her mints and kept them open to free coinage of gold and silver on the ratio of 15.5 of silver to 1 of gold from 1803 to 1865, and with the Latin Union until 1870, during which time she coined $917,000,000 worth of five-franc silver, and $1,447,000,000 of gold.  And it was largely during these years that her people absorbed the precious metals that enabled her to promptly respond to the call of their government with $1,000,000,000 with which to pay the German indemnity and yet leave them with more cash in their pockets per capita than any people on Earth, the result of which is that you hear of no such panics wrecking the industries of France, in the past seventy years as have swept over Great Britain and the United States, and the reason is the people have more cash money and less bank credit than those of the United States and Great Britain.

But if free coinage is such a good thing for the United States, why did we from 1793 to 1873 coin so little silver when we had free coinage ?  Is it a fact that we did coin little ?  Let us see.  From 1792 to 1873, inclusive, we produced in the United States but $189,900,000 worth of silver, and of that we coined $157,489,898.30, while we produced in gold in the United States, from 1792 to 1873, $1,265,286,769, and coined but $852,114,537.50, or, while we coined 83 per cent of our silver product, we coined but 67 per cent ot our gold product.

Since 1873 to 1890 the United States has produced $606,420,000 of gold and $807,955,000 of silver.  Prior to 1873 our total product of gold and silver was 13 per cent of silver to 87 per cent of gold, while since 1873 silver is 57 per cent of the total product of gold and silver, while the value of our gold is but 43 per cent.  So, should we grant that it was to our interest in 1873 to demonetize silver, which we do not, it would not follow that it was to our interest to continue it now.  Conditions have changed, and it is the part of wisdom to change our laws to meet them.

If in 1873 a farmer had 13 bushels of corn and 87 bushels of wheat, and he could add 10 cents per bushel to one of them by saying so, it would not take long to say which one to add it to.  If he put it on the wheat, it would make him $8.70, while should he put it on the corn it would give him but $1.30.  But if time wore on until 1890, and he found himself with 57 bushels of corn and 43 bushels of wheat he would put the 10 cents on the corn, as it would give him 5.70, while to put it on the wheat would give him but $4.30.  Especially would he do this if he found that the capacity of his land to produce wheat was continually declining while its capacity to produce corn was improving.

What a farmer would do with his grains, why should a government not do with its metal products ?  "Why, if we did, all our gold would be drained out of the country," says the gold-standard man, "and as we owe a large number of debts, contracted to be paid in gold, we would have to buy it at a premium to pay them, and it would bankrupt us."  Let us see if it would.  Suppose that the United States adopted free coinage of silver and that Europe refused to concur, and would not pay more than 85 cents per ounce for pure silver, while in the United States it would be worth 1.2929 per ounce.  To illustrate, suppose, reader, you were a merchant in Mexico, and an American drummer entered your store, and at the same time a European drummer came in.  They both display their goods and wares.  If you buy from the American, $1,000 of your money will pay for $1,000 worth of his goods.  If you buy from the European drummer, it will take $1,000 of your money to pay for $650 of his goods.  You could pay the American 25 per cent more for the same quality and quantity of goods than you could the European, and still there would be 10 per cent profit to you in doing business with the American, because your money would go that much further in payment for the goods.  If there was 5 per cent or 10 per cent profit in doing business with the American on this account, what would you do ?  You would buy your goods from him.  Yes, and every merchant in Mexico, Central America, South America, India, China, Japan, yes, in every silver-using nation on the face of the earth, would do the same thing.

What would be the result ?  That the European drummer could sell no goods.  If he could sell no goods, all of the factories, foundries, and machine shops that he represented would have to close down because at no demand for their product, and America would have to double and quadruple hers to supply the demand.  And there is but one way under the shining Sun in which Europe could prevent this, and that would be to instruct her drummer to allow as much for silver as the American did, and when he did this silver would be worth not less than $1.2929 per ounce the world over, and our cotton 8 to 13 cents per pound and our wheat $1 to $1.25 per bushel, and we challenge the combined intelligence of the opposition to disprove it.

It has been said that if we adopt the free coinage of silver we will be deserting the most civilized nations and allying ourselves with the semi-barbarous.  Where are the profits in trade ?  Is it in selling manufactured goods to those nations who are as skillful in the use of machinery as we are ?  No, but in selling to those less expert, and it is the part of wisdom to adopt a financial policy that will draw their trade for our manufactured articles, and enhance the value of our raw materials that we sell to our rivals, the great manufacturing nations.

The Sherman Law.

But why not confine our coinage to the product of our own mines ?  Because that would not give us a chance to draw the trade of other silver-using nations.  The Sherman act practically destroys that chance now.  If Mexico now offers us her silver, we can only allow her 83 to 85 cents per ounce, since if we buy it we must again sell it as bullion;  we therefore either reject it or buy it and ship it to England.  What we reject, England steps in and buys at 83 to 85 cents per ounce and sends over to Mexico interest coupons and manufactured goods (on which she makes a big profit) to pay for it, and ships the silver to her mints in Calcutta and Bombay and coins it at $1.37 and issues it in payment for cotton, wheat, and rice, and depresses the prices of like commodities produced in this country, as we have illustrated.  Now, if we allowed Mexico coinage price for silver, and Europe refused to do so, we would get all of Mexico's silver and supply her with our manufactures, as we have illustrated, which would give increased employment to our labor.

But is there no real danger to come to this country from the free coinage of silver ?  No, but there is an imaginary one that is working as great havoc to our prosperity as if it were real, and the longer the question remains unsettled the greater the destruction.  We have seen. that one of the sources of creating a balance of trade against a country is to send home to be cashed its evidences of debt before they are due.  Whenever this happens the citizens of the country to which they are sent, carrying like securities on margins, are compelled to buy them and maintain prices, so as to prevent a sacrifice of their margins.  Hence it is that though a nation may be prosperous and possessed of all the conditions necessary to meet all of its obligations promptly at maturity, yet its speculative citizens may be bankrupted by foreign holders of its securities forcing them on its markets before their maturity.

To illustrate, suppose that citizens ot foreign countries during eras of prosperity have invested large sums in our bonds ---government, railway, and municipal--- and our own citizens also have large investments in the same classes of securities, and have them hypothecated for three-fourths of their value with our banks and trust companies, and that some misfortune overtakes the foreign holders of policy dictates to them to realize on their American securities and they should offer them in large blocks on our markets.  If the American holders of like securities on margins do not get together money to buy and pay for them, without permitting a serious decline in their prices, their margins will be wiped out and they bankrupted, while if they do furnish money to pay for them immense sums of cash can be withdrawn from the country without any notice in a week, and hazard the success of every legitimate enterprise in the country that is carrying a considerable debt.

This will be made more manifest when it is shown that in October, 1890, the banks of the United States, with cash in their vaults to the amount of $475,000,000, had given credits subject to check for $2,604,000,000, or more than $5 for each dollar in actual cash they held.  So that when there is a balance of trade of say $100,000,000 against us, and the cash is shipped out to satisfy it, not only the cash goes, but with it the basis for $500,000,000 of bank-credits that perform practically all of the functions of money.  So that our available money is cut down $600,000,000 by shipping out $100,000,000 in cash, for the banks dare not extend the credits without the cash for a basis, and the withering effect of this $600,000,000 shrinkage in the volume of our money lays its paralyzing grip on every industry, and its benumbing influence reaches to the hearthstone of every home in the land that is carrying a debt.

But suppose the people of the United States were not carrying these secutities on margins, then the foreign holders could only realize cash on them by making great sacrifices, and their necessities would become our opportunities.  They would then limit the  sales to the smallest possible quantity.  This would assist us in holding the balance of trade in our favor.  Now, with this information before us, we can readily see why the speculators of our moneyed centers look almost with terror upon any movement that is calculated to cause any large quantities of our securities held in foreign countries to be sent home for cash.  That the agitation of free coinage of silver has a tendency to cause our securities to be sent home for cash I will not attempt to deny.  But we are placed in the painful dilemma of being forced to choose between permitting our productive industries or our speculators being bankrupted.  It is a condition, not a theory, that confronts us, and I take it that we all see that our true policy is to protect our productive sources of wealth, especially when we see that our speculators are but instruments in foreign hands to draw the nation's wealth from it.

Witness the recent conditions on Wall street.  First, shipments of gold out of the country on London orders.  Next, a mad rush to realize on securities;  then we read in the Associated Press dispatches, "At the slaughter prices, London scooped in many thousand shares at the favorites."  How long, oh, how long, my countrymen, will you play like a fish on a line, to be hauled in and devoured whenever it suits the appetites of your captors ?

Awake, and inform yourselves:  cease to take for facts the statements of your rivals;  think for yourselves and act for yourselves, or you will merit the slavery your ignorance is bringing upon you.  Three millions of our forefathers struck for political liberty in 1776.  Can not 65.000.000 of their descendants declare our financial liberty now ?  Open our mints to the free coinage of silver, and the net profits on our silver, wheat. and cotton exports would be at least $150,000,000 annually more than they now are.  So much the greater credit we would have with the nations of Earth that they would have to satisfy before they could call for our gold.  An increase of 2 cents per pound on cotton and 25 to 30 cents per bushel on wheat would add one-third to the value of every acre of cotton and wheat land in the country, furnishing that much collateral for the mortgages that cover them, and would enable their owners to pay their interest on the mortgages more promptly;  would stimulate all industries and add to the carrying trade of our transportation lines, so that their values would be enhanced, and their interest and dividends more surely paid;  would increase the cost of living and raw materials in Europe, and better enable our factories to compete with hers in all of the world's markets, thus adding to the wealth, population, prosperity, and happiness of our own country.

---[If you are looking to the world's markets for your salvation and prosperity, you will get what the world's markets will give you.]

J.S. Daugherty.

[From the St. Louis Chronicle.]

A Plea for the Valley.

The prosperity of the country depends on the prosperity of the valley States.  Were it not for the breadstuffs, the provisions, the cotton raised in the valley and exported, the East would become bankrupt at once.  It is only through our labor that the country is enabled to carry on the foreign trade what gives it its net profits.

---[ You should have learned from the French example and Napoleon, to produce for domestic use, and very little for foreign trade.  That way you would have food and clothing and appliances for your own citizens, and would not care whether foreigners buy your surplus or not.]

Now, when Providence has blessed us with abundant harvests, we have in the immediate future the prospect of increased poverty and greater hardships.  Anxious to do our duty in the world and to be helpful to the world in helping ourselves, we are being driven into deeper dependence and more hopeless poverty every day.

The Northwest has an immense wealth in wheat, often times higher intrinsic value than gold, yet it can not realize on this wealth for a lack of a medium of exchange to enable it to be distributed.  It must depend on money-dealers who are actually demanding high rates of interest, not for money which they hold cornered, but for their own fiat paper, which, instead of being money and a rightful medium of exchange, is a mere evidence of their ability as extortionists.  And while they are thus demanding usury for their fiat money of private issue, they are holding at a premium of 2 and 3 per cent the currency issued by the Government and cornered by them.  All this usury and this premium come out of the proceeds of the wheat crop, and the unfortunate producer is first stripped to the skin and then flayed.

It is not different in the cotton States.  The cotton crop must be distributed, and those who are holding the money corner against the people will only allow currency to be used to move the cotton crop when they are paid an extortionate premium for it.  They propose to substitute their private fiat money for the people's currency, and to this end they are holding currency out of circulation.  This is accompanied by a Government policy of contraction at a time when the country is staggering toward bankruptcy.

The full force of a powerful Government is brought to bear against the people of our valley States now when they are in the most pressing need of help, and in their extremity they are subjected to the worst effect of a policy that is essentially sectional;  that, if it could benefit any, would only help a small class of money-dealers and very rich capitalists in the Northeast and in London.

But it can help no one.  The Northeast is commercially a dependency of the Mississippi Valley.  It is idle to deny it.  New York, New England, and old England are almost absolutely dependent on us for food and textile material.  Ruin us here, and though it may profit a few bankers in London, a few of their associated money-dealers in New York and Boston, yet the people of England and of the Northeast will be so involved in our calamity that Downing street and Wall street and Beacon Hill will bitterly regret the depth to which they thrust in the Shylock's knife.

Our people are not fools;  they are not "cranks;"  they are not "repudiationists;"  they are not knaves.  They are honest, law-abiding. God-fearing people, anxious to render to every man his due.  They are staggering under a load of debt which has been forced on them by discriminating legislation, dictated by a foolish and shortsighted sectionalism.  This debt is counted not by the million, the tens, the hundreds of million, but by the billion.  Its amount is so vast that it is unthinkable.  Under the most favorable conditions it will take away from us all the net profits of our labor for many years to come.  But we intend to do our best to pay it.  Give us the opportunity and we will pay it to the last dollar of principal and to the last cent of usury that is nominated in the bond.

But if we are crowded to the wall now, results will be the responsibility of those who crowd us.  If our Eastern friends who are controlling the policy of the Government do not relax their grip on our throats they, as well as we, will be the worse for it.  We do not desire this desperate forcing of issues with them.  We know how ignorant they are.  We know that their criminal folly is due to almost complete ignorance of the country they are living in;  but for all that, there must be a change and that soon.  We can not tolerate the conditions they have thrust upon us and we will not.

With vast resources, with real wealth greater than that of any other part of the world, we are on the verge of ruin through their folly and cupidity.  In such case we appeal to Congress.  It is an earnest cry for justice the valley sends up to Washington and it is a note of grim determination to have justice.  The policy of the money dealers must not be allowed to prevail against us now.  For if it does, our ruin will mean unspeakable suffering for the masses of the people in North America and in Europe.  The north-eastern theory is that these States of the valley are provinces, but in truth they are already the mainstay of the people of America and Europe and if they are overthrown now, when the undermined structure of their trade is tottering, the whole world will shake with the jar of the fall.

Mr. Bowers of California [William Wallace Bowers (1834-1917), California, R;  free-mason].  Mr. Speaker, there have been two things noticeable respecting this silver discussion;  the first is the number of gentlemen who declare that they are bimetallists, in favor of the use of gold and silver as money, but who declare they will vote next Monday to put this nation upon the single gold standard.

The next the number of gentlemen, especially on this side of the House, who have with such unanimity declared in their speeches that the Sherman law is not in any manner responsible for the present condition of the country, pointing to the fact that for two years under the operation of that law the country was very prosperous and that there was no trouble until after the election of Mr. Cleveland, and that he was all wrong in his diagnosis of the disease from which the country is suffering, and yet they, under these circumstances are going to vote with the President.  "Oh consistency, thou art a jewel," not found in the head of a gold bug, especially of the Republican variety.

I believe that the mass of people understand the question pretty clearly upon which we are to vote next Monday.  It is, Shall silver be destroyed as money, and this country adopt the single gold standard ?  That is the plain question, and the people will say to you gentlemen, "We don't care how you talked, but how did you vote ?  And no meandering on the part of those who are just dying to vote on both sides of the question about an international monetary conference will avail.  For the people know that no conference will amount to any more than the last one while the United States begs for it.  Pass a free-coinage bill, and in less than ninety days you will have the European nations begging this country to meet them in conference, and we will have an international agreement for the use of silver as money, and not till then.

From the beginning of this discussion the gold men have continually reiterated the assertion that the United States could not establish the free coinage of silver without the permission of England, France, and Germany.  If this be true, can we change the ratio without the gracious consent of these nations ?  England has gold, $550,000,000;  silver $100,000,000.  France has gold, $800,000,000;  silver, $700,000,000.  Germany has gold, $600,000,000;  silver, $210,000,000.  United States has gold, $649,000,000;  silver, $593,000,000.

England, France, and Germany have in round numbers about one billion of silver coin coined at the ratio of 15 to 1.  Now, if we adopt a ratio above theirs, 17, 18, 19, or 20, can we expect those nations to recoin their silver at a loss to them of one, two, or three hundred millions to bring it to a parity with ours ?  We know they will not.  England has been compelled to buy over $50,000,000 of silver each year.  The total production of the United States for the year 1891 was only $75,416,500.  I shall vote for the free coinage of silver at the ratio of 16 to 1 because it approximates the true ratio, that is, the relative amounts of gold and silver in the world.  This circular from the Treasury Department estimates the total production of gold and silver in the world as:  Gold, $5,633,908,000;  silver, $5,104,966,000.  Five hundred millions more gold than silver of 15 to 1.  This is at a ratio of less than 15 to 1.

The gold men have one substitute for an argument that they ring the changes on from morning until night ---"the market value, the commercial value" of silver.  Take this substitute away and they have not a leg to stand on.  How is this value determined ?  How found ?  Why so changeable ?  It is fixed and determined by an association of gamblers, licensed gamblers if you please, and changed day by day at their will and pleasure, without reference to any other reason, and for their own profit.  And it seems that the Government in this struggle sides with the gamblers and against the people.  The only true ratio is to be found by taking the relative amount of the two metals in existence, as all of both will not furnish one-tenth of the money needed for the use of the people.  Such a ratio will be practically stable, and therefore will not answer the gambler's purpose, as he has no use for the honest and the true.  This ratio, accepted and fixed by the Government, will take the money of the people out of the hands of the gamblers and will force the world to come to the true ratio.

Mr. Pigott.[James Protus Pigott (1852-1919), Connecticut, D; studied law at Yale, admitted to the bar ]  Mr. Speaker, it was not my intention to take part in this discussion until I heard the plaintive and eloquent appeal of the gentleman from Colorado [Mr. Pence] yesterday, in which he stated that as he was about to leave his home he was warned by his friends that the Democrats of Connecticut would turn their backs upon the Democratic platform enunciated at Chicago last summer.  Now, I desire to say, sir, that until the State of Colorado shows some practical interest in the Democratic party by at least casting its vote once for that party, the Democrats of Connecticut can endure the criticism. [Laughter.]  Connecticut supported the Democratic platform by its electoral vote last year, while Colorado went hunting after strange gods.  Mr. Speaker, Connecticut is not like those described by the gentleman from New York [Mr. Cummings] the day before yesterday, who opposed the nomination of Mr. Cleveland last summer, and are supporting him now;  nor is she like those who supported his nomination at Chicago, and are opposing him now.  Connecticut supported him in Chicago.  She has supported him three times in Presidential elections, and cast her electoral vote for him, and she is supporting him to-day.

Mr. Speaker, as I understand this question, the mistake that is made by the friends of silver here is that they seek to drive away from their favorite metal all who believe with the President that we are in an emergency, that a crisis is at hand, and that a vigorous remedy is required.  The President proposes a remedy.  It is in the line of the Chicago platform.  He does not propose it as a remedy for all the evils of the future, but he says that in his opinion the present distress is largely the result of the operation of the purchase clause of the Sherman silver act.  We do not believe, sir, that the President is in the category enumerated by the gentleman who last took his seat [Mr. Bowers of California].  We do not believe that the President is a gambler, a shylock, or an aider or abettor of such.  We believe in taking the President at his word;  we believe in taking his Cabinet at their word.  We believe in joining with him and them to see if the present distress can not be obviated by the means he proposes;  and if it can not be ---if he has chosen the wrong remedy--- then we can come together again and choose a better one.  So much for the platform and the policy of the Administration.

It has been stated frequently on this floor, Mr. Speaker, that there is a lack of confidence in this country.  That is partially true, sir;  but there are gentlemen in New York who make a business of "confidence;"  and who constantly advertise that they are printing money from "plates lost by the Government," which money they will sell at a great discount. [Laughter.]  And not a day goes by, sir, in which we do not see accounts of men going to New York, by steamboat and by rail, to purchase this money for little or nothing.

Now, ever since this discussion about the money question began here, I have heard certain gentlemen say that, by some method or other which they did not explain, this Government can print a lot of cheap money and get it out among the people.  And in that connection I wish to call attention to the singular fact that the gentlemen who go to New York to buy the "cheap money" to which I have referred, and who are sometimes arrested for carrying arsenals upon their persons, nearly always give as their home residences districts represented in this House by gentlemen who say here that this cheap money can be issued by the Government;  and it raises a question in my mind whether climatic influences have anything to do with this question of "confidence."  There is a lack of confidence, it is true, but it is on the part of members of this House in not supporting their President and his Cabinet. [Applause.]

Mr. Speaker, if the districts of this House were composed of populations as great as that of mine, the membership of this House would be one hundred less than it is.  In manufacturing interests the district that I represent on this floor stands within the first three of all the districts of the United States in the amount of capital invested and in the output.  The manufacturers there are not gamblers;  they are not Shylocks;  their interests are the interests of their workingmen, and the interests of their workingmen are their interests.  Connecticut, with less than three-quarters of a million of people, has in its savings banks $135,000,000, which sum is exceeded in but three States, New York, Massachusetts, and California.

I want the people who deposited that money ---more than a third of whom I represent on this floor--- when they go to get their money for the purpose of building their little homes to get as good dollars as they put in.  Those people sent me here.  The people who work in those great shops now closed down ---not two or three hundred, but a thousand or fifteen hundred or two thousand in a single shop--- are the people who sent me here;  and to get them back their good money and to see that their wages are paid to them in currency worth 100 cents on the dollar is my only object in taking the floor now. [Applause.]

Mr. Dockery [Alexander Monroe Dockery (1845-1926), Missouri, D;  studied medicine, became a banker].  Mr. Speaker, for the twelfth time in the history of the Republic, Congress is convened in extraordinary session.  The President in his message has adverted to the alarming gravity of the business situation.  The untoward depression which first made its appearance some months since has enlarged its scope (until it has embraced within its grasp agriculture, commerce, manufactures ---indeed, all the varied interests of this great country.  Confidence is utterly overthrown.  Banking institutions of great stability are suspending, capital, timid and hesitating, has gone into retirement;  manufactories are closing down or running upon half time, railroads reducing the compensation of their employes, and thousands of laboring men out of employment tramping the country.

Confronted with this startling condition, the people's representatives have been called together, to quote the language of the Executive, "that present evils may be mitigated and dangers threatening the future may be averted."  The President expresses the opinion that these adverse business conditions are "principally chargeable to Congressional legislation touching the purchase and coinage of silver by the Government," as authorized and directed by the act of July 14, 1890, commonly known as the Sherman act.

The situation is so alarming that it should invoke dispassionate, intelligent, and patriotic consideration, with the view of determining the causes which have contributed to the stupendous decline in values and the consequent widespread industrial paralysis.  The causes of the trouble must first be definitely ascertained before there can be an intelligent selection and application of a remedy.  Inasmuch as the President suggests that the pernicious features of the Sherman law are mainly responsible for the economic ailments which afflict us, it may be well to give a brief summary of the coinage legislation of the United States.

Coinage Laws.

The act of April 2, 1792, established a mint for tha purpose of national coinage, and made the standard silver dollar the unit of value.  It gave free coinage to both gold and silver, the gold dollar containing 24.748 grains of pure gold or 27 grains of standard gold, and the silver dollar 371.25 grains of pure silver or 416 grains of standard silver.  The act further provided that the relative value of gold and silver in the coinage of the two metals should be as 15 to 1;  that is to say, "every 15 pounds weight of pure silver shall be of equal value in all payments with 1 pound weight of pure gold, and so in proportion as to any greater or less quantities of the respective metals."

Under this act silver was first coined in 1794 and gold in 1795.  The ratio between the two metals established by the acts of 1792 proved to be unsatisfactory, an ounce of gold being in fact more valuable than its equivalent in silver.  The result was that gold was purchased by speculators and shipped abroad, there being a profit of a few cents on the dollar.  The inequality of the ratio was further emphasized by the fact that the Government received for a time underweight foreign coins in payment of custom dues.  Silver, therefore, constituted the greater part of our metallic circulating medium until the second administration of  President Jackson, when, by the act of June 28, 1834, the grains in the gold dollar were reduced from 24.748 to 23.20, the ratio thus being changed from 15 to 1 to 16.002 to 1.

The act of January 18, 1837, provided that both the gold and silver dollar should be 900 parts fine and 100 parts alloy, and in creased the grains of pure gold in the gold dollar from 23.20 to 23.22, or 25.8 standard gold ---the silver dollar containing 371.25 grains of pure silver, or 412.5 grains of standard silver.  The coinage ratio between gold and silver is thus fixed by this act at 1 to 15.988, or in round numbers 16 to 1.  This ratio has been maintained until the present time.  During the greater part of the period from 1834 to 1860 gold constituted the larger part of our metallic circulation because France was coining at the ratio of 15.5 to 1, our ratio being 16 to 1, and for the further reason, subsequent to 1849, of the immense output of the California gold mines.

I may also state in this connection that the amount of pure silver in the standard silver dollar authorized by the act of April 2, 1792, has not been changed by any subsequent legislation, but, because of the enhanced value of silver as compared with gold, the act of February 21, 1853, reduced the weight of the silver coins of less denominations than a dollar;  the weight of the half-dollar being fixed at 192 grains of standard silver, and the smaller coins sharing a proportional reduction.  This legislation was made necessary in order to prevent the further exportation of our subsidiary coin, and thus to furnish the people with small change for the transaction of business.  The act also limited the legal-tender quality of subsidiary coin to $5.

The coinage act of February 12, 1873, demonetized the standard silver dollar by discontinuing its coinage and establishing the gold dollar as the unit of value.  It also slightly increased the weight of the subsidiary coins in order to put them upon an equal footing with the minor coins of France.  This law was the initial step of the hostile movement to silver in this country, and was obnoxious to the great body of the American people.  This fact, together with the stealthy manner of its enactment, provoked a storm of opposition, which finally culminated in a partial remonetization of silver by the passage, over the veto of President Hayes, of the act of February 28, 1878, known as the Bland-Allison act.  This bill directed, among other things, that the Secretary of the Treasury "purchase from time to time silver bullion at the market price thereof, not less than $2,000,000 worth per month, nor more than $4,000,000 worth per month, and cause the same to be coined monthly as fast as so purchased" into standard silver dollars.

The Bland-Allison act remained upon the statute book until the Fifty-first Congress, when it was repealed by the Sherman law of July 14, 1890.  This latter statute was enacted as a result of a conference between the Senate and the House, the vote in the Senate being yeas 39, nays 26, and in the House yeas 122, and nays 90.  The Republican party gave the measure a united support, whilst the entire Democratic strength in both bodies was recorded against it.  In so far, then, as legislation is responsible for our financial condition, the Democratic party is acquitted of responsibility.

In view of the importance of the issue raised by the President's message, I quote the exact terms of the act, so far as it relates to the pending question:

The Sherman Act

An act directing the purchase of silver bullion and the issue of Treasury notes thereon, and for other purposes.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the Secretary of the Treasury is hereby directed to purchase, from time to time, silver bullion to the aggregate amount of four million five hundred thousand ounces, or so much thereof as may be offered in each month, at the market price thereof, not exceeding one dollar for three hundred and seventy-one and twenty-five hundredths grains of pure silver, and to issue in payment for such purchases of silver bullion Treasury notes of the United States to be prepared by the Secretary of the Treasury, in such form and of such denominations, not less than one dollar nor more than one thousand dollars, as he may prescribe, and a sum sufficient to carry into effect the provisions of this act is hereby appropriated out of any money in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated.

Sec. 2.  That the Treasury notes issued in accordance with the provisions of this act shall be redeemable on demand, in coin, at the Treasury of the United States or at the office of any assistant treasurer of the United States, and when so redeemed may be reissued;  but 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;  and such Treasury notes shall be a legal tender in payment of all debts, public and private, except where otherwise expressly stipulated in the contract, and shall be receivable for customs, taxes, and all public dues, and when so received may be reissued;  and such notes, when held by any national banking association, may be counted as a part of its lawful reserve.  That upon demand of the holder of any of the Treasury notes herein provided for the Secretary of the Treasury shall, under such regulations as he may prescribe, redeem such notes in gold or silver coin, at his discretion, it being the established policy of the United States to maintain the two metals on a parity with each other upon the present legal ratio, or such ratio as may be provided by law.

Sec. 3.  That the Secretary of the Treasury shall each month coin two million ounces of the silver bullion purchased under the provisions of this act into standard silver dollars until the first day of July eighteen hundred and ninety-one, and after that time he shall coin of the silver bullion purchased under the provisions of this act as much as may be necessary to provide for the redemption of the Treasury notes herein provided for, and any gain or seigniorage arising from such coinage shall be accounted for and paid into the Treasury.

Sec. 4.  That the silver bullion purchased under the provisions of this act shall be subject to the requirements of existing law and the regulations of the mint service governing the methods of determining the amount of pure silver contained, and the amount of charges or deductions, if any, to be made.

Sec. 5.  That so much of the act of February twenty-eighth, eighteen hundred and seventy-eight, entitled "An act to authorize the coinage of the standard silver dollar and to restore its legal-tender character," as requires the monthly purchase and coinage of the same into silver dollars of not less than two million dollars, nor more than four million dollars' worth of silver bullion, is hereby repealed.

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

Sec. 7.  That this act shall take effect thirty days from and after its passage.

Mr. Speaker, this measure, in letter and spirit, is antagonistic to the real interests of silver, because it degrades it to the inferior dignity of a mere commodity, thus recognizing, for the first time in our fiscal legislation, the vicious principle involved in what is known as the "sub-treasury" scheme.  The measure was a compromise born of the political exigencies of the Republican party, and accomplished the two-fold purpose of preventing the enactment of a free-coinage law, whilst at the same time relieving the then President, Mr. Harrison (a candidate for renomination), from disastrous political complications which it was apprehended would, in certain Western States, follow the veto of a free-coinage bill.

Mr. Speaker, it is hardly gallant or courageous to designate the Sherman law as the most vicious and sinister financial legislation enacted during our constitutional history, since it is now disowned and denounced by its reputed author and is without an advocate in the commercial world or a champion in any political party.  Professedly enacted for the purpose of furnishing a market for American silver and enhancing its value, under its operations silver has steadily declined;  professedly friendly to silver, it debases it as a money metal.  The Sherman law was therefore properly characterized by the national Democratic platform as a "cowardly makeshift, fraught with possibilities of danger in the future, which should make all its supporters as well as its author anxious for its speedy repeal."

Coinage of the United States.

But before proceeding, Mr. Speaker, to a further brief reference to the existing situation, it may be well to note the coinage which has been had under the several acts to which I have referred.  The United States has now four coinage mints, located at Philadelphia, San Francisco, New Orleans, and Carson, Nevada.  The coinage of silver dollars from the organization of the first coinage mint at Philadelphia until the suspension by the act of February 12, 1873, was $8,031,238, the total subsidiary coinage for the same period being $137,096,047.

Of the standard silver dollars coined during this period, $3,584 198, or about 45 per cent of the whole, were coined in the five years prior to the demonetization of silver, the coinage being in 1868, $182,700;  1869, $424,300;  1870, $445,462;  1871, $1,117,136;  1872, $1,118,600, and in 1873, $296,000 up to the 12th of February.

It is proper, however, to state in this connection that the Mexican dollar, containing 377.17 grains of pure silver, as well as the dollars of Peru, Chile, and Central America, the 5-franc piece of France, and other foreign coins were a legal tender in the United States at their face value during a greater part of the period prior to the passage in 1873 of the act demonetizing silver.

The coinage of silver dollars under the Bland act amounted to $378,166,793 and under the Sherman act to $36,087,185;  whilst $5,078,472 have been coined under the act of March 3, 1891, providing for the redemption and coinage of trade-dollar bullion.  The subsidiary coinage since the act of February 12, 1873, aggregates $69,503,655.  The statement of the Secretary of the Treasury issued upon the 1st of the present month shows that the standard silver dollars outstanding at that date amounted to $419,332,450 and the subsidiary silver coinage to $76,563,878, or a total silver coinage of $495,896,328.  In addition to this the records of the Treasury Department show that under the act of July 14, 1890, 161,521,000 ounces of silver have been purchased up to August 16 last, costing $150,669,459, for which Treasury notes of the same amount have been issued payable in coin.

The total gold and gold bullion in the United States on the 1st of the present month is estimated by the Director of the Mint at $603,723,903.  The Director also estimates the amount of silver, including silver dollars, subsidiary silver coins and silver bullion at cost value, in the United States at the same time, at $615,174,063.  He further states that the production of gold in the world in 1892 was of the value of $130,816,600, the production of silver for the same period being 152,061,800 fine ounces, of the coining value of $196,605,200.  He also estimates the annual average production of gold and silver in the world from 1844 to 1850 to be, gold, $36,216,428, and silver, $34,214,286, whilst the average annual production since that time has been, gold, $112,887,428 and silver $80,374,857.

Cause of the Panic.

Now, Mr. Speaker, leaving the domain of statistics I shall advert very briefly to the cause which have intimidated capital, paralyzed industry, lowered the price of farm products, and wrought havoc in the commercial world.  It will not be denied that the Sherman law is at war with all principles of sound finance and has operated to enhance the value of gold and decrease the value of silver.  The original construction placed upon the law by the last Administration, whilst technically correct, refused silver a place in our circulating medium upon an equal footing with gold. It is true that the Secretary of the Treasury is allowed to coin a sufficient amount of Silver bullion for redemption purposes, but under the practice of the Treasury Department the notes issued in payment of the silver bullion are redeemable on demand in gold.

The effect of the law, therefore, in its practical administration, is to issue Treasury notes payable in gold for silver bullion. In other words, the Sherman law has added, up to August 16, $150,669,459 to the volume of paper currency, all of which is payable on demand in gold.  I am not surprised, therefore, that under this construction gold should constitute a very small part of money which finds its way into the Federal Treasury.  The able gentleman from Tennessee [Mr. Patterson], commenting upon the decreasing volume of gold in the Treasury, says:

In June, 1888, the Government collected from customs at the port of New York $10,996.484, 74 per cent of which was paid in gold.  In June, 1889, it received $10,697,716, of which 74.7 per cent was paid in gold.  In June, 1890, the Government received $14,992,128, of which 94.5 per cent was paid in gold. In June, 1891, it received $9,131,418, of which only 12.5 per cent was in gold.  In June, 1892, it received $9,591,270, of which only 8.2 per cent was in gold.  In 1893, in the month of June, the Government collected at the port of New York $18,068.500.  Not one cent of it was paid in gold.

Mr. Speaker, the gold in the Treasury has not only been thus decreased by the operation of the Sherman law, but the adverse balance of foreign trade under the McKinley tariff law has made large drafts upon our gold resources.  The exports of gold for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1893, exceeded the imports for the same period by about $37,500,000.  These two causes, associated with the necessities of Austria-Hungary for gold to inaugurate and maintain a gold standard, together with the general depression which has encircled the globe since the failure of the Baring Brothers, have necessarily reduced the gold in the public Treasury very largely.  With the steady decline of the Treasury gold balance, the apprehensions of the people began to grow more pronounced.  It seemed to be an impression in the public mind that the $100,000,000 gold reserve had been provided by law, and should remain intact for the redemption of greenbacks.

It is true, the law did not require the fund to be maintained at this amount, but nevertheless such an impression was prevalent among the people.  When, therefore, in April last, this fund was invaded, Wall street speculators sought to coerce the Government into an issue of bonds to restore and increase the gold-reserve fund.  The alarm occasioned by their demands intimidated the country, confidence began to be impaired, timid depositors withdrew their money from banks, and thus a panic without parallel or precedent in this country was inaugurated.

Confronted with this situation, Congress is convened for the purpose of providing remedial legislation which shall restore confidence and set the wheels of commerce again in motion.  The distinguished gentleman from West Virginia [Mr. Wilson] upon the 11th of the present month, offered the following bill:

An act 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."

Be it enacted, etc., That so much of the act approved July 14, 1890, entitled "An act directing the purchase of silver bullion and issue of Treasury notes thereon, and for other purposes," as directs the Secretary of the Treasury to purchase from time to time silver bullion to the aggregate amount of 4,500,000 ounces, or so much thereof as may be offered in each month at the market price thereof, not exceeding one dollar for 371.25 grains of pure silver, and to issue in payment for such purchases Treasury notes of the United States, be, and the same is hereby, repealed;  but this repeal shall not impair or in any manner affect the legal-tender quality of the standard silver dollars heretofore coined;  and the faith and credit of the United States are hereby pledged to maintain the parity of the standard gold and silver coins of the United States at the present legal ratio, or such other ratio as may be established by law.

This bill, Mr. Speaker, as will be noted from a cursory glance, provides simply for the unconditional repeal of the purchasing clause of the Sherman act, and pledges the faith of the United States to maintain the parity of the gold and silver coins outstanding.  My colleague from Missouri [Mr. Bland] offered the following resolutions, which provide the method by which the Wilson bill should be considered, and also for a vote upon certain substitutes therefor.  The order is in these terms:

Mr. Bland.  Mr. Speaker, I desire to present to the House an order embodying an agreement as to the mode in which proceedings shall be had in the consideration of the bill just offered, on which order I shall demand the previous question, with the statement---

The Speaker.  The Chair will state the question.  The gentleman from west Virginia [Mr. Wilson) offers a bill in the absence of any rules of the House, and the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Bland] offers a resolution providing for the method in which the House shall consider that bill.  The Clerk will report the resolution of the gentleman from Missouri.

The resolution was read, as follows:

"Ordered by the House, That H.R. No. 1 shall be taken up for immediate consideration and considered for fourteen days.  During such consideration night sessions may be held, for debate only, at the request of either side.  The daily sessions to commence at 11 a.m. and continue until 5 p.m.  Eleven days of the debate on the bill to be given to general debate under the rules of the last House regulating general debate, the time to be equally divided between the two sides as the Speaker may determine.  The last three days of the debate may be devoted to the consideration of the bill and the amendments herein provided for, under the usual five-minute rule of the House, as in Committee of the Whole House.  General leave to print is hereby granted.

"Order of amendments:  The vote shall be taken first on an amendment providing for the free coinage of silver at the present ratio.  If that fails, then a separate vote to be had on a similar amendment proposing a ratio of 17 to 1;  if that fails, on one proposing a ratio of 18 to 1;  if that fails, on one proposing a ratio of 19 to 1;  if that fails, on one proposing a ratio of 20 to 1.  If the above amendments fail, it shall be in order to offer an amendment reviving the act of the 28th of February, 1878, restoring the standard silver dollar, commonly known as the Bland-Allison act;  the vote then to be taken on the engrossment and third reading of the bill as amended, or on the bill itself if all amendments shall have been voted down, and on the final passage of the bill without other intervening motions."

It may be well to state in this connection that the Director of the Mint has submitted a statement to the House showing the number of grains of standard silver in the dollar at the ratios referred to in the foregoing order, as follows:  17 to 1, 438.60;  18 to 1, 464.40;  19 to 1, 490.20;  and 20 to 1, 516.

Now, Mr. Speaker, as I have just stated, the Wilson bill provides for the unconditional repeal of the purchasing clause of the Sherman act.  The propositions to be submitted by my colleague provide for the free coinage of silver upon ratios ranging from 16 to 1 up to 20 to 1.  In the event of the failure of each and all of them, then the Bland-Allison act is to be offered as a substitute.  In other words, the Wilson bill repeals the purchasing clause of the Sherman law without any substitute, whilst the propositions to be offered by my colleague also repeal the purchasing clause of the Sherman law, but with conditions authorizing the free coinage of silver upon one of several ratios, or the coinage of silver upon the terms of the Bland-Allison act.

Mr. Speaker, the issue is thus clearly joined.  The unconditional repeal of the Sherman act leaves silver for the future without any statutory recognition whatever, gold still being allowed free coinage privileges at the mint.  This action unquestionably contemplates a single gold standard.  If there were any doubts, they have been put beyond cavil in this debate by the declaration of leading advocates of the Wilson bill that it was impracticable to execute the provisions of the last national Democratic platform demanding the coinage of both gold and silver without discrimination.

This is a battle of the standards, a contest between a single gold standard on the one hand and a double standard on the other. There is no division of sentiment in the Democratic ranks as to the propriety of repealing the purchasing cluse of the Sherman act, but a majority of the Democratic Representatives on this floor insist that the entire pledge made to the people should be kept, both as to the repeal of the Sherman law and the enactment of such legislation as will admit gold and silver to our mints upon equal terms.  Our contention is that the platform in its entirety should be maintained, and that we should not defer to a more convenient season the obligations of the present hour.  I quote the language of the vows made at Chicago in 1892:

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.

Mr. Speaker, the language of the platform clearly, rightfully, and unequivocally commits the Democratic party to the advocacy of a double standard.  This doctrine is fundamental and of paramount importance, inasmuch as money performs the two-fold duty of measuring values and exchanging values.  It is a medium of exchange and a measure of value.  When, therefore, the currency of the country is sound and stable and the volume of money is maintained at a normal standard, prices rule satisfactory;  but whenever legislation or any other cause limits the money supply it necessarily operates to decrease the price of commodities.  In other words, it is important that the money selected to fix values and to exchange values should be stable, and of sufficient volume;  else the standard will appreciate, prices of commodities and property of all kinds will depreciate, and injustice will be done the debtor classes.  It is alike and equally important, Mr. Speaker, that the money selected should not be depreciated or redundant;  else the cheapening of the standard will increase the prices of commodities and property, and work injustice to the creditor classes.  We must avoid the extremes of contraction on the one hand and inflation on the other ---the extremes of appreciation and depreciation.

Mr. Speaker, since the very twilight of history gold and silver have been recognized as money metals.  Now, then, the practical question which confronts us to-day and which this Congress must solve, is this:  What standard will best reconcile the conflicting interests of the debtor and creditor classes, preserve the golden mean, and thus give the country a stable circulating medium, of ample volume to meet the demands of trade and commerce ?

The eloquent gentleman from Nebraska [Jennings Bryan], in his able argument submitted to this body a few days since, said:

The Government does not try to fix the purchasing power of the dollar, either gold or silver.  It simply says, in the language ot Thomas Jefferson, that 'the money unit shall stand upon the two metals,' and then allows the exchange value of that unit to rise or fall according as the total product of both metals decreases or increases in proportion to the demand for money.

Commenting further upon the same line of thought, he says:

Gold and silver are called precious metals because the production is limited and can not be increased indefinitely at will.  If this Government or a number of governments can offer a market unlimited as compared with the supply, it can maintain the bullion value of gold and silver at the legal ratio.  The moment one metal tends to cheapen, the use falls on it and increases its price, while the decreased demand for the dearer metal retards its rise and thus the bullion values are kept near to the legal ratio, so near that the variation can cause far less inconvenience .  and injustice than the variation in the exchangeable value of the unit would inflict under a single standard.  The option is always given to the debtor in a double standard.

In fact, the system could not exist if the option remained with the creditor, for he would demand the dearer metal and thus increase any fluctuation in bullion values, while the option in the hands of the debtor reduces the fluctuation to the minimum.  That the unit under a double standard is more stable in its relation to all other things is admitted by Jevons and proven by several illustrations.  Mr. Giffen tries to avoid the force or the admission by saying that the difference in favor of the double standard is only in the proportion of 2 to 1, and therefore not sufficient to justify its adoption.  It would seem that where stability is so important ---and it never was so important as to-day, when so many long-time contracts are executed--- even a slight difference in favor of the double standard ought to make it acceptable.

Mr. Speaker, a single gold standard increases the demand for gold because it imposes a double duty upon gold as a money metal.  The increased demand therefor enhances its value, as is shown by the result of the action of foreign countries in demonetizing silver.  If, then, the United States, by the legislation now pending, shall devolve upon gold alone the sole duty of measuring and exchanging values, it will necessarily still further appreciate its value by increasing the demand for it.  The result logically follows that the United States and other single gold standard countries will be ceaselessly engaged in the effort to increase their gold reserves in order to maintain a gold standard, and thus disasters will multiply and follow in the wake of the unconditional repeal of the purchasing clause of the Sherman act.

If the annual production of gold was ample to meet the requirements of a single gold standard, its adoption would not, of course, be followed by industrial disaster;  but the annual supply of gold is utterly inadequate to meet the wants of the civilized governments of the world as a money metal.  The average annual production of gold since 1851 has been only $112,887,428, of which amount two-thirds has been used in the arts, leaving but one-third to be added to the volume of gold money.  The conclusion must, therefore, be reached that the adoption of a single gold standard by the United States will result in a lower wage for labor, the depreciation of farm values, farm products, and property of nearly all kinds, even if our population should remain as at present and there were no expansion in the volume of trade and commerce.

That industrial disturbances would follow the adoption of such a policy, becomes more apparent when it is remembered that the average annual increase of our population ranges from 1,000,000 to 1,500,000, and that the enterprise and tireless energy of our people are constantly exploring and discovering new fields for the investment of capital and the employment of labor.  The addition to the volume of our circulating medium under the provisions of the Sherman law has been $150,669,459, or about $50,000,000 annually, being less than $1 per capita;  and yet it is proposed by the Wilson bill to strike down the law authorizing this annual increase without offering any substitute therefor.

This proposition evidently rests upon the theory that silver is constantly depreciating in value, but it wholly disregards the rugged fact that, during the panic through which we are passing, silver dollars have commanded a premium in the city of New York.  It will not be denied that silver has declined in value, or rather that gold has appreciated in value, thus making the disparity between the two metals pronounced.

Now, Mr. Speaker, it will be conceded that the two metals upon the basis of commercial value have parted company to a marked degree, the silver in the standard silver dollar being worth only about 57 cents as compared with the value of the gold dollar.  The explanation, however, is found almost solely in the fact that certain foreign governments have within recent years discriminated against silver by suspending its coinage.  The coinage of full legal-tender silver was suspended by Portugal in 1854, by Germany in 1871, by the Scandinavian Union in 1873, by the Netherlands in 1877, by Finland in 1877, by Austria-Hungary in 1892, by Russia in 1878, by Spain (on private account) in 1878, by India (on private account) in 1893, and by the Latin Union, consisting of the governments of France, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, and Greece, in 1878.  This unfriendly legislation is the explanation for the constantly widening commercial chasm between gold and silver.

Conclusion.

Mr. Speaker, we are confronted with this situation:  Shall the United States adopt the Wilson bill, which contemplates a single gold standard, and continue its efforts to secure an international agreement, or shall we redeem the pledges of the Chicago platform and endeavor to maintain, single-handed and alone, a double standard ?

Mr. Speaker, it seems to be trifling with the interests of a great people to make any further effort at this time in the direction of an international agreement.  So long as England maintains her commercial prestige, she will not consent to abandon the gold standard adopted in 1816, and the United States finds itself handicapped in this contest by the mistaken tariff policy of the last thirty years which has permitted England to dominate and control the commerce of the world.  So long as the commerce of all nations passes through her clearing-house, just so long will England insist upon the maintenance of a single gold standard, because she is a creditor nation.

It is a matter of profound regret, therefore, that in this great contest between the standards, the United States is shorn of the influence among the nations of Earth to which she would be entitled under a policy which shall reestablish her old-time commercial prowess.  Hence an international agreement at this time is wholly improbable.  What then ?  I appeal to the Representatives on this floor, especially to those on this side of the Chamber from the West and South, to ponder well their answer to that query before they respond to the roll call on the pending question on Monday next.  I know not what others may do;  but my action shall be in harmony with the pledges made by the party at Chicago, not only to repeal the Sherman law, but also to provide for the coinage of both gold and silver without discriminating against either metal. [Applause]  The constituency I have the honor to represent have no fixed incomes arising from bonds, or other securities of that class, which would be appreciated by a single gold standard, and they demand the redemption of those pledges which command us to bear aloft upon equal terms the banners of both gold and silver.

I know, Mr. Speaker, that the pathway which leads to independent national bimetallism in this country is not strewn with flowers.  It is scarcely enlightened by precedent or experience.  There is nothing in our fiscal history like the present moment.  Heretofore we have had, to some extent at least, the cooperation of foreign countries in the effort to maintain a double standard.  But now almost every great commercial nation of the world is in arms against silver, and its last refuge is to be found alone in the United States. [Applause]  I believe, sir, that the enterprise, the energy, business sagacity, and genius of the American people, sustained as they are by the almost illimitable natural resources of the Republic, will yet achieve a triumph for the double standard ---the gold and silver money of the Constitution. [Applause]  The unconditional repeal of the Sherman act means the unconditional surrender of silver.  Voicing, as I believe, the almost unanimous sentiment of my people, without regard to party, I shall vote to restore silver to its ancient honor and dignity. [Applause]

The Speaker.  The order adopted by the House seems to the Chair to be very plain upon this question.  It first provides for general debate, then for debate under the five-minute rule, then names specifically certain amendments which may be offered and upon which a vote shall be taken, and then makes this provision, which is applicable to the point in the consideration of the bill at which we have arrived.  After disposing of the amendment providing for the reenactment of the Bland-Allison act, the order says:

The vote then to be taken on the engrossment and third reading of the bill as amended, or on the bill itself, if all amendments shall have been voted down and on the final passage of the bill without other intervening motions.

We have arrived at the stage now where the vote is to be taken, according to this order, on the engrossment and third reading of the bill.  If the previous question had been ordered on the reading and engrossment of the bill, it would not be maintained that a separate vote could then be taken on different propositions contained in the bill.  Here is the direction of the House to what shall be done when we reach this stage--- that the vote shall be taken.  Therefore, the Chair is constrained to overrule the point made by the gentleman from Texas, and to hold that under the special order an amendment is not in order.

The yeas and nays were ordered.  The question was taken;  and there were--- yeas 239, nays 108, not voting 6;  as follows:

Yeas---
Adams, Alderson, Aldrich, Apsley, Avery, Babcock, Baker, N.H., Baldwin, Barnes, Bartholdt, Bartlett, Barwig, Belden, Beltzhoover, Brookshire, Berry, Brosius, Bingham, Brown, Black, Ga., Bunn, Black, Ill., Burrows, Blair, Bynum, Boutelle, Cabaniss, Brattan, Cadmus, Brawley, Caldwell, Breckinridge, Ark., Campbell, Breckinridge, Ky., Cannon, Cal., Bretz, Caruth, Brickner, Catchings, Causey, Chickering, Childs, Clancy, Clarke, Ala., Cobb, Mo., Cockran, Cogswell, Compton, Conn, Coombs, Cooper, Fla., Cooper, Ind., Cornish, Cousins, Covert, Crain, Cummings, Curtis, N.Y., Dalzell, Daniels, Davey, De Forest, Dingley, Dolliver, Donovan, Doolittle, Draper, Dunn, Dunphy, Durborow, Edmunds, English, Erdman, Everett, Fellows, Fielder, Fitch, Fletcher, Forman, Funk, Gardner, Gear, Genry, Geissenhainer, Gillet. N.Y., Gillett, Mass., Goldzier, Gorman, Gresham, Grosvenor, Grout, Haines, Hall, Minn., Hammond, Hare, Harmer, Harter, Haugen, Hayes, Heiner, Henderson, Ill. Henderson, Iowa, Hendrix, Hicks, Hines, Hitt, Holman, Hooker, N.Y., Hopkins, Ill., Houk, Ohio, Houk, Tenn., Hulick, Hull, Hunter, Johnson, Ind., Johnson, N.Dak., Johnson, Ohio, Joy, Kiefer, Kribbs, Lacey, Lapham, Lawson, Layton, Lefever, Lester, Lilly, Linton, Lisle, Lockwood, Loundenslager, Lynch, Magner, Mahon, Marshall, Martin, Ind., Marvin, N.Y., McAleer, McCall, McCleary, Minn., McCreary, Ky., McDannold, McDowell, McEttrick, McGann, McKaig, McMillin, Shaw, McNagny, Sherman, Mercer, Sickles, Meredith, Sipe, Meyer, Somers, Milliken, Sperry, Montgomery, Springer, Moon, Stephenson, Morse, Stevens, Mutchler, Charles Stone, Northway, William Stone, Oates, Stone, Ky., O'Ferrall, Storer, O'Neil, Mass., Strong, O'Neill, Pa., Swanson, Outhwaite, Talbott, Md., Page, Tawney, Paschal, Taylor, Ind., Patterson, Thomas, Payne, Tracey, Paynter, Tucker, Pearson, Turner, Pendleton, Tex., Turpin, Pendleton, W.Va., Tyler, Perkins, Urdegraff, Phillips, Van Voorhis, N.Y., Pigott, Van Voorhis, Ohio, Post, Wadsworth, Powers, Walker, Price, Wanger, Randall, Warner, Ray, Washington, Rayner, Wangh, Reed, Weadock, Reilly, Wells, Reyburn, Wever, Richards, Ohio, Wheeler, Ill., Richardson, Mich., White, Ritchie, Whiting, Robinson, Pa., Wilson, Ohio, Rusk, Wilson, W.Va., Russell, Conn., Wise, Russell, Ga., Wolverton, Ryan, Woomer, Schermerhorn, Wright, Mass., Scranton, Wright, Pa., Settle,

Nays---
Abbott, Aitken, Alexander, Allen, Arnold, Bailey, Baker, Kans., Bankhead, Bell. Colo., Bell, Tex., Blanchard, Bland, Boen, Bower, N.C., Bowers, Cal., Branch, Broderick, Bryan, Burnes, Caminetti, Cannon, Ill., Clark, Mo., Cobb, Ala., Coffeen, Cooper, Texas, Cox, Crawford, Culberson, Curtis, Kans., Davis, De Armond, Denson, Dinsmore, Dockery, Ellis, Ky., Ellis, Oregon, Enloe, Epes, Fithian, Funston, Fyan, Goodnight, Grady, Hager, Hainer, Hall, Mo., Harris, Hartman, Hatch, Heard, Henderson, N.C., Hepburn, Hermann, Hilborn, Hooker, Miss., Hopkins, Pa., Hudson, Hutcheson, Ikirt, Jones, Kem, Kilgore, Kyle, Lane, Latimer, Livingston, Loud, Lucas, Maddox, Maguire, Mallory, Marsh, McCulloch, McDearmon, McKeighan, McLaurin, McRae, Meiklejohn, Money, Morgan, Moses, Murray, Neill, Newlands, Pence, Pickler, Richardson, Tenn., Robbins, Robertson, La., Sayers, Sibley, Simpson, Smith, Snodgrass, Stallings, Stockdale, Strait, Sweet, Talbert, S.C., Tarsney, Tate, Taylor, Tenn., Terry, Joseph Wheeler of Alabama, Williams, Ill., Williams, Miss., Wilson. Wash., Woodard.

Not Voting--- Boatner, Capehart, Cockrell, Cooper, Wis., Graham, Shell.

So the bill was passed. [Applause on the floor and in the galleries.]

Purchase of silver bullion.

Mr. Voorhees.  I am authorized and instructed by the Committee on Finance to report back with an amendment the bill. (H.R. 1) to repeal 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."  The amendment is in the nature of a substitute, the substitute being Senate bill No. 570, heretofore reported by the Finance Committee of this body to the Senate.

I ask that the bill be placed on the Calendar;  and I give notice that I shall ask the Senate to take it up and consider it immediately after the morning business from this time on until final action is taken.  I do this subject, of course, to the notices which have been given by Senators that they will address the Senate.  The Senator from Georgia [Mr. Gordon] I understand has given notice of an address to-day, which he can deliver upon the bill as reported.  The Senator from Ohio [Mr. Sherman] has given notice of an address to-morrow, and the Senator from Colorado [Mr. Wolcott] has given. notice for the day following.  I hope the Senate will agree to take up this bill and make it the order on which Senators may deliver such remarks as they see fit and at such times as may suit them.