Gold and Silver Coinage.

The Speaker.  The gentleman from Missouri [Mr. Bland] is entitled to the floor on the bill (H.R. No. 3635) to utilize the product of gold and silver mines and for other purposes, reported back from the Committee on Mines and Mining with amendments;  and the Chair will state that unless objection be made he will not take the time, which has been consumed in the discussion this morning, from the morning hour.  He does not think it should be fairly counted against the morning hour, and, therefore, alters the time of the beginning of the morning hour from half-past twelve o'clock to fifteen minutes past one o'clock.

Mr. Bland [Richard Parks Bland (August 19, 1835 -- June 15, 1899), Lebanon Missouri, D].  I ask for the reading of the bill.

The bill was read as follows:

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That coin-notes of the denomination of $50, and multiples thereof up to $10,000, may, in the mode hereinafter provided, be paid by the several mints and assay offices at San Francisco.  Carson City, Philadelphia, and New York, for the net value of gold and silver bullion deposited thereat;  and of the bullion thus received not less than 75 per cent. in coin or fine bars shall at all times be kept on hand for redemption of the coin-notes, gold for gold, and silver for silver.  The gold deposited shall be computed at its coining value, and silver at the rate of 412.8 grains standard silver to the dollar, less the lawful mint charges, and such charge for transportation from the several assay offices to the mints for coinage, and from the latter to the assistant treasuries respectively at which the coin-notes shall be payable.

Sec. 2.  That for bullion deposited at the mints of San Francisco and Carson the coin-notes issued shall be redeemable on demand at the assistant treasury at San Francisco;  and for bullion deposited at the Philadelphia Mint and assay office at New York the notes shall be redeemed at the assistant treasury at New York.

Sec. 3.  That the Secretary of the Treasury shall from time to time cause coin and fine mint-bars (stamped) to be transferred from the mint to the assistant treasuries at San Francisco and New York in such amounts as may be necessary for the redemption of the coin-notes.

Sec. 4.  That the coin-notes issued under the provisions of this act shall be receivable without limit for all dues to the United States;  and the coin mentioned in this act shall be a legal tender for all debts of the United States, public and private, not specified to be paid in gold coin.

Sec. 5.  That the gold-coin notes issued under this act shall be redeemed on presentation in gold coin or fine bars, and silver in silver dollars or fine bars.

Sec 6.  That the coin notes authorized by this act to be issued shall be prepared under the direction of the Secretary of the Treasury, and shall be transferred to the mints and assay offices named in this act as a part of the bullion fund, and from which fund deposits shall be paid for in coin or coin notes at the option of the depositor.

Sec. 7.  That the fine gold and silver bars by this act authorized to be issued shall bear the mint stamp of fineness, weight, and value, and the value of the gold bars shall be computed according to their coining rate and the silver bars at their coining value in dollars.

Sec. 8.  That the Secretary of the Treasury shall prescribe the necessary regulations for carrying into effect the provisions of this act.

Mr. Kasson.  Are there not some amendments pending ?

The Speaker.  Yes, sir;  the amendments will be read.

The amendments were read.

The amendments reported by the Committee on Mines and Mining were as follows:

At the end of line 17, section 1, add the following:

And there shall be coined at the mints of the United States the silver dollar hereinbefore mentioned.

In line 4, section 4, strike out the words "of the United States."

The amendment proposed by Mr. Lynch was as follows:

Strike out section 4 of the bill.

The amendment proposed by Mr. Caswell was as follows:

Insert after the words "United States," in line 3, section 4, the words "except duties on imports and the interest on the public debt not required to be paid in gold coin;"  and add to the section the words "except duties and interest as aforesaid."

The Speaker.  The question before the House is upon seconding the demand for the previous question on the bill and amendments.

Mr. Bland.  For the purpose of making a few remarks, I will withdraw for a moment the call for the previous question.  I desire to state that among those who favor the remonetizing of silver there is quite a divergence of opinion.  I find that many are in favor of restoring the silver dollar of 1837, which consists of 412.5 grains of standard silver to the dollar, restoring its legal-tender character as existing at that time, and until 1873.  This divests the proposition of the sections relating to the depositing of bullion and other matters connected with the bill as it has now been read at the Clerk's desk;  and for the purpose of meeting these views and to get the question before the House that a choice may be made between the two propositions, I will submit as a substitute what I now send to the desk, and which may be voted upon after the previous question shall have been seconded.

The Clerk read the proposed substitute, as follows:

A bill authorizing the coinage of the standard silver dollar, and restoring its legal-tender character.

Be it enacted, &c., That there shall be from time to time coined at the mints of the United States silver dollars of the weight of 412½ grains standard silver to the dollar as provided for in the act of January 18, 1837, and that said dollar shall be a legal tender for all debts public and private, except where payment of gold coin is required by law.

Mr. Bland.  That bill is substantially the bill that was introduced and voted upon twice at the last session of Congress;  which was introduced by the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Kelley] and received an almost two-thirds vote of this House.  I am reminded by gentleman that there has been a commission appointed to investigate this subject, and that it may be proper to postpone its consideration until the report of that commission shall have been made.  But, Mr. Speaker, this session is a short one.  The political condition of the country is now agitating the public mind and occupying the attention of members of this House, and of gentlemen at the other end of the Capitol, and I am not sufficiently advised to say at what time this commission may be able to make a report.  Indeed, I think I would be warranted in saying that under present circumstances no report can be made in time for action in this House and in the Senate.  Besides, Mr. Speaker, I think if the friends of this measure desire to do anything at this session of Congress, it is well that they shall pass some bill here and send it to the Senate for action there.  And if this commission appointed for the purpose of investigating this subject desires to amend any proposition that we send to the Senate they will have ample opportunity to do it there, and this House can then agree to such amendment or not, as it thinks proper.

But I say that if we intend to act upon this subject at this session of Congress, the sooner we get this bill to the Senate the better, the sooner we get it out of this House and before the Senate the better, I think, for the success of this bill even in this House.  This is evidently not a session for business, and the nearer we draw to the time of counting the presidential votes, the more excitement we find in this House and the less opportunity there is for the consideration of the business that comes over from the last session.  For that reason I insist upon action now, so that whatever action this House may take may go to the Senate.  If the commission which was appointed for the purpose of reporting upon this subject desire to amend our proposition or to substitute something else for it, there will be ample opportunity to do so in the Senate, and the House will then have an opportunity to pass upon it.

Gold and Silver Coinage

Mr. Bland.  I demand the regular order.

The Speaker.  The regular order is the consideration of the bill (H.R. No. 3635) to utilize the product of gold and silver mines and for other purposes.  The gentleman from Missouri [Mr. Bland] is entitled to the floor.

Mr. Bland.  Under the arrangement which has been made, the friends of this bill will occupy the first half hour and the last half hour of the time allowed for discussion, leaving the intermediate hour to gentlemen on the opposite side.

The Speaker.  The Chair understands the gentleman from Missouri to state the arrangement to be that the friends of the bill shall occupy the first and the last half hour of the two hours allowed for debate, and that the intervening hour shall be under the control of the opponents of the bill.  The Chair will recognize gentlemen in pursuance of that understanding.

Mr. Bland.  I yield to the gentleman from Kentucky [Mr. Durham] for ten minutes.

Mr. Campbell.  I ask unanimous consent to offer an amendment.

The Speaker.  No amendment is in order, either to the original bill or to the substitute.  An amendment can only be offered now by unanimous consent.  The gentleman's proposition, however, may be read for information.

Mr. Campbell.  I ask that it be read.

The Clerk read as follows:

Amend the proposed substitute by inserting after the word "be." in line 7, the words "the unit of value and;"  so as to read:  "And that said dollar shall be the unit of value and a legal tender for all debts, public and private, except where payment of gold coin is required by law."

The Speaker.  The amendment is not pending.

Mr. Bland.  I now yield to the gentleman from Kentucky [Mr. Durham] for ten minutes.

Mr. Durham.  Mr. Speaker, having been a member of the Committee on Mines and Mining, and the original bill under consideration having been before that committee for some time, I have given it all the attention and study which it was in my power to do.  Not only that but the question as to how far the provisions of the act of 1873 operated upon the legal-tender qualities of silver has also been under consideration in another committee of which I am a member and chairman, to wit, the Committee on the Revision of the Laws.  And it is upon the latter proposition I desire to say a few things on the present occasion.  There are a great many branches to this subject and as a matter of course in the short time allotted to me I cannot be expected to discuss them all.

The question whether or not we should have one quality of legal tender, or in other words, whether or not there should be two legal tenders, one of silver or one of gold, or whether or not the present bill interferes with the rights of contracts, are questions which I shall not consider on the present occasion to any very great extent.  I am, however, very well satisfied in my own mind that where you have two kinds which are legal tenders they do not operate to the prejudice of any commercial community.  I have but to look to the past, Mr. Speaker, to bear me out in what I say.

I have read with a great deal of interest the argument made by Dr. Linderman, who has charge of this subject in the United States mints, upon the idea that gold alone should be the legal tender or standard of value, because the large transactions which are carried on in this country, as argued by him, must necessarily be done in gold.  I admit that proposition to be true;  yet at the same time there certainly have been as large transactions carried on prior to the year 1873 as there have been since that time and there was no difficulty on the part of the commercial community, so far as I am apprised, that the legal tender might have been made during that time in the silver coin of the country.

I admit, sir, so far as these large transactions are concerned, they may still be in gold, and yet I would have that old law, which has been upon our statute-books as far back as the year 1792, restored.  I would have the legal-tender quality of silver restored to the utmost limit, except as provided for in the act of 1853, to wit, that where the smaller coin, to wit, half dollars, quarter dollars, &c., were deteriorated in value, I would not have them legal tender to any extent beyond five dollars.  But so far as the silver dollar is concerned, I would have it restored to its original value as established by the act of 1837, and make it legal tender for all debts, dues, and demands of every kind and description, except where the contract provides otherwise.  But I would not have, as in the State of California, (and I see one of the Representatives from that State paying strict attention to what I am saying in regard to this matter,) any contract violated;  but wherever a contract has been made payable in gold, it should be discharged in gold.  I would not have that disturbed, and hence the proposition as made by the distinguished Representative from Pennsylvania [Mr. Kelley] has been amended to that extent, so that wherever there is a contract in the State of California or Oregon, where gold is the whole and sole circulating medium, or where it may have been so made under the acts of other States, I would not have that contract interfered with.

I may then be asked by gentlemen who are opposed to this, Why will you interfere with other contracts that may have been made, so far as they have been made since the coinage act of 1873, where the trade-dollar is of a larger and greater value than the dollar of 1837 ?  I would not even have that done;  but I would undertake to say, and give it to the House as my opinion as a lawyer, after having investigated this matter fully, that every single contract which had been made prior to the year 1873, I do not care whether it was large or small, could have been discharged, and can now be discharged, in the old silver dollar which was authorized by the coinage act of 1837.

I believe the act of 1873 expressly reserves this legal-tender quality to the dollar of 1837.  If I am correct in the position I take, and it is simply the legal proposition which I propose to discuss in the short time I am entitled to the floor, then what injury can it do ?  How can it affect the public credit ?  I know it would be argued on the other side, as I have beard it argued elsewhere, and as I have heard it partially argued here, that we have no right to interfere with existing contracts.  While I would not interfere to the extent of the one hundredth part of a cent with contracts, yet I wish to say that a1l the national debt ever created was so done when this dollar was a legal tender.  I say that to-day, if the old silver dollar can be found, it does come in the discharge of every public debt or private contract made prior to the 12th day of February, 1873.

Then, sir, what contracts, so far as the Government is concerned, have been made since that time ?  There may have been a few, and I admit that if since that time debts have been contracted, you could only pay in your dollar to the extent of five dollars, or they must be paid in gold.  I would say in good faith, in good conscience, those obligations ought to be discharged according to the act of 1873.  But what I desire to say is this, in regard to the contracts that existed on the 12th day of February, 1873, when the last coinage act was passed and when the value of the dollar was increased from 412½ grains to 420, that it is right in morals, that it is right in law, that it is right in principle, too, that every single one of those contracts shall be discharged at the option of the debtor in the old silver dollar that may have existed at that time.  And the substitute now as proposed by this committee (and I am in favor of the substitute and the substitute alone) proposes to restore the legal qualities of the old silver dollar so that all these obligations and all other obligations and contracts that existed at that time can be discharged precisely in the same dollar or in a dollar of equal or equivalent value existing at that time.

Now, how can any person that holds these obligations complain ?  Why, if my honorable friend from the State of Michigan sitting beside me [Mr. Bradley] and I had made a contract prior to that time, I had the right to pay him in the silver dollar which was then of the value of 412½ grains.  suppose he held my obligation for a thousand dollars that I could have discharged in silver, provided I had had it in hand at that time, in preference to handing it over to him in gold, it must be a contract that must be complied with in either one of these coins.  What injury does it do him if he has stood on his rights from 1873 to the present time;  what injury does it do him even if the debt was not dischargeable in the coin existing at that time, if the Congress of the United States now should adopt this bill and make the silver dollar of the same value as that which was in existence at the time I made the contract ?

There is no violation of any contract by the passage of this substitute, but it will place creditors and debtors where they were before the passage of the act of 1873.  I believe the passage of that act demonetizing silver was not demanded by the people at the time and is now almost universally condemned by them.  It was an act in the interest of the bondholders and gold speculators and against the laboring classes.  It has built up capital and crushed out labor.  Mr. Speaker, as far as I have investigated the question of a single and double currency and the effect upon the stability of the currency, I am led to the opinion that the double is far preferable;  the one seems to be a check on the other.  The larger transactions will be in the more precious metal, and yet, if it appreciates more rapidly in value than the surrounding circumstances would justify, then the other presents a wholesome check.  Our western States and Territories are rich in silver ore.  Let us remonetize silver and thereby increase the production of this metal which is required as money in nearly all the civilized nations of the Earth.  Let us stand by contracts when all our national debt was made, that is, that the same should be paid in coin, in the legal tenders then in existence, viz, gold or silver.

Pass this bill and I believe that the fluctuation which has existed in the great money centers for some time will measurably cease.  The passage or this bill is but an act of simple justice to creditor and debtor and to all classes of society.

[Here the hammer fell.]

Mr. Bland.  I now yield ten minutes to the gentleman from Michigan, [Mr. Willard.]

Mr. Willard.  I could have desired more time than ten minutes to say what I should like to say on this subject.  While I shall endeavor to express in the brief time allotted to me the reasons of my support of the substitute which is offered for the bill now before the House, I still could have wished that action upon this question might have been deferred until the report of the commission appointed by the last Congress, because it seems to me that there are questions connected with this whole monetary question, and especially with that of the standard, which are not fully embraced in either of the bills now before us.

As preliminary to the few remarks I may make, allow me to say, Mr. Speaker, that the commission, of which I am a member, has, I think, made some progress in the investigation of these questions, and will be enabled to lay before the House some time next month a report which will throw some light upon this subject.  The members of the commission appointed by Congress met last September in the city of New York, and selected as additional members Hon. Mr. Grosbeck, of Ohio, and Professor Bowen, of Harvard College.  After thus completing the organization, the commission proceeded to take testimony from a large number of prominent business men and students of finance in New York and in New England, and also from certain gentlemen in the Western States.  It is the intention of the commission to proceed with the work here in this city, and I have no doubt that we shall be able to lay before this House an abundant weight of testimony which, in my opinion, speaking as one member of the commission, will fully warrant the restoration of the old standard of this country, the American silver dollar as it was established in accordance with the report of Alexander Hamilton in 1792 and continued without variation until 1873.

All the investigations which have been made upon this question go to prove at least one fact, that the silver dollar, substantially the same as that which is received by the American people, has a greater supremacy among the varied populations of this globe than any other coin or any other unit by which values are measured.  The gold sovereign of Great Britain dominates only among 35,000,000 of people;  the gold dollar, or its equivalent, is received by but 80,000,000;  while the French franc, which corresponds nearly to the silver dollar, is in use and is the unit of value with 77,000,000 of people;  and the silver dollar, in its various equivalents, may be said to be used by more than 550,000,000 of the people of this globe.  And as we look further at the facts which have been developed the last year, we find that, notwithstanding the value of silver at one time reached in the market only 47.5 pence per ounce, at no time has the silver dollar or silver coin of any kind lost its purchasing power.  The rupee of Bengal during all this time has purchased of the comforts and luxuries of life the same amount that it did before the depression of silver, and, as far as I have been able to make inquiry, wherever the franc predominates, the franc still retains the full equivalent of its power to purchase all commodities which are necessary for the supply of human wants.  And who can doubt that in our own country during all this time the silver dollar has had actually as much purchasing power over the necessaries and luxuries of life as it had in former times ?  You can buy with it as much wheat, as much flour, as much of anything which people need either to eat or wear.  It will go as far in purchasing nearly all the requirements of man as it would twenty years ago.

Well, now, Mr. Speaker, under this state of things, while the purchasing power of this coin has remained, to what other conclusion can we come than that, whatever divergence there may be between the price of gold and that of silver, it is to be largely attributed to the rise in gold ?

Most of the prominent political economists of this country --I will say nearly all political economists of this country who have been heard before the commission-- have been united in the testimony that if silver is thrown out of coinage, the tendency must be to appreciate the value of gold.  Well, now, if gold be thus appreciated, it ends in the appreciation of all indebtedness, both public and private.  It means the fall of commodities;  it means that the farmer must raise more bushels of wheat to pay the debts which be now owes;  it means that the manufacturer is to produce more of the various articles and commodities which he manufactures in order to settle his indebtedness than was required before;  it means that the laborer, if he be at all in debt, must give more hours of his toil in order to pay that debt.  We have to face this fact.  If the nations of the world shall unite in throwing silver out of coinage, there must be an appreciation of the entire bonded indebtedness which now rests upon the world.  We are now in debt;  the world is in debt.  This toiling Caucasian race of ours owes nearly all the vast volume of debt which has been piled up, until the entire sum of national and railroad indebtedness now amounts to $35,000,000,000, and if we add 10 per cent. to that debt, if gold appreciates in value to the extent of 10 per cent., it means an increase of the burden now resting upon this industrious, enterprising Caucasian race, by an amount considerably more than the entire national debt of the United States.  I will add, Mr. Speaker, that it will be found that almost every political economist throughout the world must stand appalled before results which cannot fail to fill every thoughtful mind with the most serious apprehension.

[Here the hammer fell.]

Mr. Bland.  I now yield to the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Landers] five minutes.

Mr. Landers of Indiana.  Mr. Speaker, I regret very much, sir, that the debate on this very important question is so limited.  There are gentlemen here who are opposed to the standard silver dollar.  I will be much pleased to hear some of these gentlemen, because I always like to hear those who are opposed to me on any question.  I can often learn more from them than I can from gentlemen who agree with me.  While I am in favor of remonetizing silver, yet at the same time if I were convinced that the interests of the country would be promoted by keeping it demonetized I would vote against this bill or any other to remonetize it.

As the original bill stands I am not in favor of it.  My main objection to it is this:  that it provides for the depositing of gold and silver bullion and the issuing of certificates at their coinage value.  Taking the certificates at their coin value, redeemable by the Government, either in coin or bullion at the option of the holders, the holders can take the gold or silver bullion at their coin value.  According to this bill the holders of certificates can at any time demand coin or bullion.  In all business circles option does not belong to one party alone.  In this case it belongs to the holders of the certificates, and if the bullion advances they will demand it, and if the bullion declines they will demand coin, and the Government is obliged to give it.

The Government cannot know until the certificate is presented what will be demanded.  Therefore it cannot coin the bullion, not knowing bot what it will be called upon for bullion.  Therefore, the business community is not to have the benefit of the coinage of this bullion under this bill.

I am in favor of the substitute.  It proposes to repeal the law of 1873 and to restore the double standard as it was from 1792 up to that time.  The double standard is designed to regulate the relative values of the two coins.  It is said that we practically have but one standard.  That is true to some extent, since the ingenuity of man has never been able to adjust the value of the two coins in such a way that they would long remain of the same relative value.  The reason of this failure is that they are commodities.  The value of any commodity is regulated by the uncontrollable laws of supply and demand.  The right of the debtor to pay in the cheapest money is a right that has been conceded to him ever since the formation of the Government and long before.  That always brings into use the cheapest money and checks the demand for the dearer.  This has been the practical working of a double standard, and the effect has been such that there has never been such change in the coinage value of those metals to make them correspond with their market value.  The only change that there has been, was to make gold correspond with the market value of silver.

In 1834 the market value of gold and silver varied about 6 pet cent., the silver being the lowest.  The right of the debtor in those days was recognized.  Albert Gallatin, and other distinguished statesmen, contended that it would be a great act of injustice to the debtor class to increase the value of silver, since the debt of the country was based upon that (it being the cheaper) to make it correspond with the market value of gold.  Their views were acknowledged to be correct, and Congress changed the gold eagle from 270 grains to 268, a reduction of 2 grains.  This is the only change that has ever been made between the gold eagle and the standard silver dollar from 1792 until 1873, when this vicious legislation was enacted against the silver dollar.

Had it not been for the use of both metals as equal legal tenders, I have no doubt their fluctuation in value would have been much greater.  With a single standard nothing can be substituted for the metal used as such standard when a demand is made upon us for that metal.  There is nothing to check the advance.  The standard silver dollar was not made by accident.  It was made by Mr. Hamilton, after having ascertained the value of the Spanish milled dollar, which was in use in the Colonies prior to the formation of the Government.  All debts were based upon that dollar.  It was found to contain 371¼ grains of pure silver.  On the recommendation of Mr. Hamilton, Congress declared that that should be the standard silver dollar of the United States, as in no other way could justice be done alike to both creditor and debtor.

I want the gentlemen on this floor who advocate the single standard to tell the House what they propose to do.  I want them to point out to this House in what way this advance in gold is to be checked.  Our policy provides for checking it.  I have shown how the double standard will check it.  I am also in favor of restoring silver because silver is a product of this country and it would give it increased value to make it a legal tender.  Our mines constitute a portion of our national wealth.  We have but few industries that produce fifty or sixty millions a year.  The silver mines of this country produce wealth to that amount and furnish employment to thousands of our laboring population.  Are we to allow this designing legislation of 1873 to further depreciate the value of one of our most valuable products ?

I would do nothing to depreciate the value of gold.  It is also a product of this country, but is not produced to more than one-half the extent that silver is.  I believe in protecting the industries of our own country and maintaining the value of the product of such industries.  The same gentlemen on this floor who favor the demonetization of silver, that tends so much to depreciate the value thereof, have been the most clamorous for protection to their own industries.  Our mining interests have been very much embarrassed for the last few years because of this legislation.  The decline in their bullion falls directly upon the laboring man who digs it out of the ground.

I have a further reason for favoring the remonetization of silver.  As was said by the gentleman from Kentucky, [Mr. Durham] we have a right to pay all our bonded indebtedness in silver as well as in gold, and I have never been able to understand why it was that a Congress, professing to represent the interests of the people, should destroy the value of more than one-half of that which they have to pay with.  I want gentlemen who favor this policy to explain why they do so.  The only reason that can be assigned for the legislation of 1873, as it is plainly seen, is that an abundance of silver would tend to cheapen it.  This is a risk that all men take who agree to receive payment in a commodity likely to change its value like gold or silver.  The only way that the bondholder could evade receiving it in payment was to have it demonetized, so that there would be only a gold coin in existence, since their debt was payable in coin and silver was as much coin as gold.  Is it not strange that a Congress of the United States could be induced to destroy the value of this great mining interest, furnishing labor to so many thousands of men and producing wealth to the amount of fifty or sixty millions of dollars;  that the country could be induced to adopt legislation that benefits a single class alone, small in number, and a non-producing class at that ?!

It is said by gentlemen on this floor that are in favor of contraction of either hard or soft money that our productive industries cannot prosper unless the cost of producing commodities for exportation corresponds with the cost of like articles produced in other countries, and which are likely to come in competition.  In order to reduce their cost they propose to reduce the quantity of money in the country, because the quantity of money in any country or its representatives, used in performing exchanges of commodities, regulates the value of all commodities.  As the quantity of money is reduced, the value of commodities is reduced, and consequently the price of labor.  If the quantity of money is reduced hereto correspond with the quantity of money in monarchical countries, the price of commodities here would be the same as there, and the price of labor that produces them must also be the same.  You gentlemen have now pursued this policy until you have reduced many of our laboring-men to beggary and want.  More than two thousand families in the city where I live, it is said, are depending upon the charities of the city for sustenance.  The New York Herald, a few days ago, informed us that nearly fifty thousand mechanics and laborers are out of employment in that city, and a large portion of that number bordering on starvation.  You pursue this policy of contraction as you have done and propose to continue to do, to reduce the cost of commodities in order to compete with foreign nations, and you will bring our laboring-men down to the condition of the laboring-men of Great Britain and other countries.  It is this that I have been fighting ever since I have been upon this floor.  It is that we may have more money and cheaper money that I am now contending for the remonetization of silver.  I prefer cheap money and well-paid labor to dear money and poorly paid labor.

No government coin is countenanced by any other nation.  Our coin is a commodity whenever it leaves our shores.  The coins of other nations are commodities when they come here, and there is nothing in the argument so often adduced to which I have referred.  Whenever a commodity of this country passes to another it is subject to the laws of trade there.  When their commodities come here they are subject to the laws which govern trade here.  Our coin or currency have nothing whatever to do with their value in foreign countries.  Their value is regulated by the supply and demand in their own country, and the amount of money in circulation to perform the exchanges of the nation.

A favorite remark of contractionists and demonetizers of silver is "let us have honest money."  I have come here to make honest money.  The Constitution of the United States has conferred power upon Congress to coin money and to regulate its value as well as the value of foreign coins.  How do we regulate the value of money ?  That is just what we are now trying to do ---regulate the value of silver money.  We are trying to make it a legal tender for all debts, public and private;  that is just the way that Congress regulates the value of money.

Whenever they make money, whether coin or paper, only a partial legal tender it is dishonest legislation and dishonest money is the result.  We have depreciated money.  I have never cast a vote here and never expect to cast one to make anything money for one purpose that is not money for all.  If that policy prevails we will never have money that can be called dishonest, because it will always be at par.  Money is valuable just as it is useful, and whenever a man gets into a field with his money, whether metallic or paper, that he cannot use, he must submit to a shave to get something that he can use.  If gold had been legislated against as silver has been, and silver been favored with legislation as gold has been, gold would be dishonest money because it would be depreciated, as Treasury notes and silver now are.  No man cares what his money is made of.  The question is what can he do with it.

I hope, Mr. Speaker, to see the day, and that very soon, when there will be no depreciated money;  if this Congress will exercise its power under the Constitution to make money and shall make all money a full legal tender.  Let this bill pass, the gold-broker will be panic-stricken, as silver will perform the same exchanges that gold does.  Let this Government honor its own paper and receive its own notes in payment of debts due to it, the gold-brokers will leave their gold board like rats deserting a sinking ship.  That is just what I want to see.  I want to see legislation in favor of the people and not in favor of gold-gamblers and bondholders, and no speculation in money except for legitimate business purposes.  Money is not something to invest in, but is a tool of exchanges, and its offices are to perform exchanges.

[Here the hammer fell]

Mr. Bland.  I now yield for ten minutes to the gentleman from Kansas, [Mr. Phillips.]

Mr. Phillips, of Kansas.  Mr. Speaker, I regret very profoundly that the time should be so limited within which to discuss a measure of so much moment as the one before the House, one requiring facts and information on which the safe and judicious action of this House so much depends.  The experience of the civilized world teaches us that we should approach this question with great caution and diffidence.  Germany tried to demonetize its silver coin and brought herself to the verge of ruin, and has now been compelled to suspend her action.  When we, a nation producing from $75,000,000 to $90,000,000 in silver each year, as ours has been estimated to do, estimating amounts that cannot be officially computed, proposes to strip itself of this peculiar means of paying its debts which we naturally possess, when the balance of other trade is against us, and to reduce the value of one of our products, we naturally ask why ?  As the gentleman just said, if you go to the gold standard you will raise the standard of values higher than it ever reached before, and you will increase your debt from 30 to 40 per cent. and diminish the power of this country to pay its debts;  and I give the estimate not as to the relation of values of gold to silver, but as to the effect of reducing to a single or gold standard, which would still further enhance the standard.  I say in all candor, and I say in no agrarian spirit, that the debt which the people owe was contracted when the silver dollar was one of the coin standards.  Indeed, the silver dollar is peculiarly the American standard.  It has been the true unit of the American standards of value and has been so since 1792, when the plan for its issue came from one of our most illustrious statesmen, General Hamilton.

Why should it now be disturbed ?  Because gold is at present more valuable.  The creditors of the Government "want some more."  I warn them that while every patriotic American will adhere to the strict terms of the contract, it is not for them to step forward and violate that contract.  I say to pay in coin is in strict fulfillment of the contract, save when it is expressly stipulated that it shall be paid in gold.  When they demand a higher standard, which will impose a heavier burden upon labor and the producing industry of the country, they come before the country with an unjust demand, as violators of the contract.

I think it is high time that we took the proper steps to secure the coinage of the old American silver dollar, the constitutional coin of the country.  I will say, as I have before said, that we have the means of producing the material in our country, $75,000,000 a year in silver coin.  Already, with the issue of fractional coins, we have raised the price of silver nearly to the value of greenbacks;  it was 7½ per cent. below when the steps to issue the subsidiary coin were taken.  Coin the American silver dollar and make it receivable for all contracts, and you will force Germany, the leading nation of Europe in that respect, to remonetize silver, and it will place silver along-side of gold in value as it was before.  We have this silver, and as American statesmen it is our duty to adopt this measure.  We cannot afford to stand here as the representatives of any one interest, or if there be but one interest let it be the interest of the many rather than the few.  Gold and silver both constantly fluctuate in value.  Following the discovery of America, gold fell in relation to silver 50 per cent. in twenty-five years.  Then, when the great silver mines of Potosi were discovered, the value was again disturbed.  Gold rose and silver fell.  At that time, too, some nations tried to demonetize silver.  Again, on the discovery of gold in California and Australia gold went down in relation to silver.  You will observe that we have always measured one of these by the other.  Both might have increased in amount so as to have fallen in value so far as the value of the other products of the Earth were concerned.  Both of the products, gold and silver, intrinsically rise and fall.  They may be said to regulate, or indicate, the standard of increased or diminished production in either.  The stamp and the credit and authority of the United States give them their fixed value, make them a standard for debts and other things.  It does much more.  The demand for them as money is nearly all the demand there is for either, since demand for plate and jewelry is very small.

By coining the American silver dollar we put our credit on a sounder basis.  By coining the American silver dollar and giving its old powers, all the paper we issue, interest-bearing and non-interest-bearing, has a better coin basis.  By coining our old dollar we make ourselves a power still greater in the money world, and we are enabled to pay our debts without burdening the people more severely.  Surely no other course can commend itself to the American statesmen.

The Speaker.  The time of the gentleman has expired.

Mr. Bland.  I believe that now the gentleman from Iowa [Mr. Kasson] is entitled to control the discussion for one hour.

The Speaker.  The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Iowa [Mr. Kasson] is entitled to the floor for one hour.

Mr. Kasson.  I now yield to the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Cannon] for five minutes.

Mr. Cannon, of Illinois.  Mr. Speaker, I am in favor of the remonetization of silver.  I advocated such measure during the last session of Congress, and fully discussed the proposition in the late canvass, and am satisfied that nine-tenths of the people indorse it.  I cannot, however, in the five minutes allotted me discuss the bill and proposed substitute.  I suppose the committee which reported the bill is in favor of the substitute offered by the gentleman from Missouri, [Mr. Bland,] commonly known as the Kelley bill.  I am sorry that the previous question is operating so as to cut off amendments, for I fear the substitute as well as the original bill is not perfect.  I call the attention of the gentleman from Missouri [Mr. Bland] to lines 7, 8, and 9 of the substitute, as follows:  "And that said dollar shall be a legal tender for all debts public and private, except where payment of gold coin is required by law," and ask him as well as other gentlemen of the committee the meaning of the language.

Mr. Bland.  I will tell the gentleman there is a great deal of our railroad debt which is payable in gold coin.  There are many contracts and debts which the law specifically requires to be paid in gold coin.  We do not want to interfere with them.

Mr. Cannon, of Illinois.  Nor would I interfere with contracts in any manner, but I do not understand that the law makes any debt specifically payable in gold coin.  It is true that until we remonetize silver I suppose all obligations of the Government are payable in gold coin eventually, but the very object of the bill is to utilize the silver dollar by making it a legal tender for all these debts, as we have the right to do under the original contract.  If that is the effect of the substitute, all right;  but I think it would be better if the same was more explicit.

Now, Mr. Speaker, one word as to the policy of the legislation.  There is a large amount of public indebtedness, as well as private, when made we agreed to discharge by the payment of dollars, and the law said those dollars were either gold or silver of a certain weight and fineness, and we have the right to discharge the same according to the terms of the contract in whichever dollar is of the least value.  In the exercise of that right we paid gold dollars up to 1873, for the reason that gold dollars were less valuable than silver dollars, and for no other reason, and now we should have the power to use the silver dollar because it is the least valuable, and would certainly use the gold dollar hereafter in the event it should become less valuable than silver, and all this because our contract gives us the option.  The gentleman from New York [the Chittenden] who opposes this bill so strenuously is one of the merchant princes of New York.  I have no doubt he has always kept his contracts;  at the same time I have no doubt he has always paid in the cheapest material he could under his contract, otherwise he would not be a merchant prince.  Correct financial principle for one man are correct financial principles for forty millions of people;  the only difference is in the magnitude of the transaction.

Mr. Kasson.  I now yield ten minutes to the gentleman from Ohio, [Mr. Garfield.]

Mr. Garfield.  Mr. Speaker, I do not think I shall use the whole of the ten minutes granted me, but only enough to state the reasons which will guide my [no] vote on this bill.

Mr. Garfield.  I wish to say in the remaining moments left to me that it is impossible within the brief space we have, even to go carefully through the history of the legislation which has brought us where we are.  That legislation has been denounced as a "legislative trick," as a delusion, as something intended to cheat the American people.  I will not even on this occasion go so far as the gentleman who advocated the bill, but let me read from the Congressional Globe of January 9, 1872, [sic, April 9, 1872.] the reason given by the distinguished gentleman who introduced, or at least had much to do with the original bill.  I read from the language of my friend from Pennsylvania [Mr. Kelley] who now sits near me.

I wish to ask the gentleman who has just spoken [Mr. Potter] if he knows of any Government in the world which makes its subsidiary coinage of full value ?  The silver coin of England is ten per cent. below the value of gold coin.  And acting under the advice of the experts of this country, and of England and France, Japan has made her silver coinage within the last year twelve per cent. below the value of gold coin, and for this reason:  it is impossible to retain the double standard.  The values of gold and silver continually fluctuate.  You cannot determine this year what will be the relative values of gold and silver next year.  They were fifteen to one a short time ago;  they are, sixteen to one now.

Hence all experience has shown that you must have one standard coin, which shall be a legal tender for all others, and then you may promote your domestic convenience by having a subsidiary coinage of silver, which shall circulate in all parts of your country as legal tender for a limited amount, and be redeemable at its face value by your Government.

The Speaker.  The gentleman's time has expired.

Mr. Kasson.  I will yield now fifteen minutes of my time to the gentleman from New York, [Mr. Hewitt.]

Mr. Hewitt, of New York.  I will yield a portion of my time to the gentleman from Ohio, [Mr. Garfield.]

Mr. Garfield.  Thanking the gentleman from New York for his courtesy, I will conclude the reading of the extract which I have already begun:

But, sir, I again call the attention of the House to the fact that the gentlemen who oppose this bill insist upon maintaining a silver dollar worth three and a half cents more than the gold dollar, and worth seven cents more than two half dollars, and that, so long as those provisions remain, you cannot keep silver coin in the country.

I have read the whole of that extract, Mr. Speaker, in order to do full justice to the gentleman from Pennsylvania, [Mr. Kelley,] who reported the bill.  Now, I am sure he was not guilty of a legislative trick.  I am sure he gave the House full notice of what they were doing and the reason why he asked them to do it.  And he gave as a reason that at that moment silver was worth more than gold and you could not keep two standards from fluctuation in reference to each other.  Just now it happens that silver is a little below the value of gold, and the gentleman will see, and the House will see, we must have a basis for our judgment broader than the uncertain chances of an uncertain market.  I have not quoted the passage to affirm that I wholly disbelieve in the double standard, but to show the great difficulty of realizing it.

I wish to make another remark.  When the report of that commission is made I hope it will instruct us as to the international relations of this question.  One nation alone cannot put silver up or put it down and control all the markets of the world.  If seven or eight of the leading nations of the world should form a monetary treaty on the subject, and should agree that silver be adopted, to be issued within certain limits in each, I have no doubt the silver coin could be kept in equipoise with gold.  But let one-half of the leading nations of the globe drop the silver coinage and let only one like our own insist upon it, and then we will see a flood of silver coin pouring into the hands of our brokers, who would bring it to the Treasury, and fill their own pockets with the difference between silver bullion and silver coin.

The Speaker.  The gentleman from New York [Mr. Hewitt] has twelve minutes of his time remaining.

Mr. Hewitt, of New York.  Subscribing to all the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Garfield] has said, and said so much better than I could possibly hope to do it, I was very glad to yield a portion of my time to him, and I will supplement what he said in regard to the position of the gentleman from Pennsylvania, [Mr. Kelley,] whose remarks I myself was about to quote when I took the floor, by saying that in the same speech ---[it was not the same speech, it was on January 9, 1872.], in regard to the care with which the bill demonetizing the silver dollar was considered and passed, the gentleman from Pennsylvania used the following language:

"...the committee proceeded with great deliberation to go over the bill, not only section by section, but line by line, and word by word.

"The bill has not received the same elaborate consideration from the Committee on Coinage, Weights, and Measures of this House, but the attention of each member was brought to it at the earliest day of this session;  each member procured a copy of the bill, and there has been a thorough examination of the bill again."

And I venture to refer those members of the House who wish to follow up the history of this legislation to the remarks which I caused to be printed in, I think, the last number of the Record of the last session, in which I carefully considered the whole question of the bill submitted by the gentleman from Missouri, [Mr. Bland.]  I do not propose now to go over that ground.  There is no time for it.  But I do propose to say to this House that there are no questions which ever come before deliberative bodies of more consequence and of more delicacy and difficulty than those that relate to finances and the monetary concerns of the country.  If we are sick and wise we send for a doctor;  if we are in trouble and have litigation we consult a good lawyer;  and if we fail to send for the doctor or if we fail to send for the lawyer the suffering falls only upon the individual who is so negligent of his own welfare.  But when there is a great question of finance, affecting every operation of trade, every man in the community, from the highest in the country to the lowest in the land, in settling values, making a new standard of values, increasing the pressure of debt or diminishing the obligation to pay, then in haste, before a body who will not themselves pretend that they understand these financial questions, we are asked here to pass judgment upon a proposition which goes to the foundations of society and affects every transaction and every man, not only here but throughout the civilized globe.  I plead for time, I plead for knowledge, I plead for information;  and I ask this House, the Representatives of the American people, to listen to the voice which, we are told, is to come to us from the commission which we appointed at the close of the last session.

We are told to-day by a member of that commission that by the middle of next month they will be able to throw a flood of light upon this question, upon which a commission has been sitting in England;  a question which has given rise to a conference among the nations comprised in the Latin Union, causing them to suspend their coinage until the future of silver is more fully developed;  a question which has disturbed to the very foundations the trade of China and of India and called forth minutes in council and elaborate papers from all quarters.  We are told that all this is to be brought before this House from a competent commission, assisted, I am glad to say, by experts of the highest character.  And yet this bill is pressed upon us at this moment as if some great interest were suffering that requires action on this day.

I know of no interest that is suffering unless it be that silver stocks are not selling at as high a price now as they did some six months ago.  I know of no interest in this country that cannot wait long enough to get the facts and get the truth.  But I do know if we make any mistake upon a question of this gravity and moment that then every interest in this country will suffer;  that the rich man will find his property confiscated, and that the poor man will be no better off for that confiscation, but will suffer in the general confusion resulting from the unsettling of values, for the simple reason that when you undertake to violate or vitiate or interfere in anywise with the sanctity of contracts capital leaves the country, values fall, and the debtors who might have paid their debts with a margin between the debt and the value of the property find that that value disappears and that there is no margin with which they can meet their obligations, and the property is transferred from the debtor to the creditor.  While the debtor is ruined the creditor is no better off, because the property which he has been compelled to take in payment of his debt will no longer bring the amount for which it was pledged.

This, Mr. Speaker, is the position of things to-day in the city of New York and, I have no doubt, throughout the country;  mortgages are being foreclosed and property transferred in vast amounts from the poor debtor to the rich creditor, and yet the rich creditor knows not where to raise the money to pay the taxes which he is thus called upon unexpectedly to pay.  But, sir, in dealing with this question, which emphatically involves the question of a double standard, what is needed to bring us to a proper solution of it ?  I do not say that silver may not be remonetized with advantage, but I say that if it be remonetized it must be at its true value.  What is its true value ?  It has ranged for the last six months between 46 and 60 pence per ounce, and at this instant a telegram has been received saying that it has gone up to 58 in London.  And yet in face of these violent fluctuations we are going to legislate a value into the silver coin which it does not derive from the law of supply and demand ---[speculation].  You may by adding to the demand or by reducing the supply increase the price, but the matter must finally be decided by a law higher than the action of legislators, the eternal laws of truth, which have determined that value must be the result of demand and supply.  Now, on the question of demand, how much additional demand do these gentlemen suppose they can put into silver by making it a legal tender for the payment of debts ?  If you make it a legal tender there will not be any diminution in the supply of silver;  it will merely be a transfer of silver from those countries where it is not now wanted to where a factitious demand has been created for it;  it will merely be a transfer from one place to another.  That is all that the action of the House can accomplish.  This country will thus become the market for the silver which all the rest of the world desires to get rid of, and the loss which belongs to all will be inflicted upon this country alone.  By adopting the suggestion of the gentleman from Ohio, [Mr. Garfield,] that is, for an international conference, taking the whole subject into consideration, it will be possible to give to silver general stability of value and restore it to its true place in the commerce of the world without inflicting an unnecessary and a grievous loss upon the people of the United States, whose interests and welfare we are bound to protect and preserve against the natural desire of other commercial nations to saddle upon us the loss arising from the general depreciation in the value of silver.

Mr. Kasson.  Mr. Speaker, my respect for the judgment of the members of the House, as well as the necessities of the time for debate, require me to confine my remarks chiefly to a statement of facts, both of legislation and of statistics, bearing upon this question.  Upon those facts, and my propositions briefly stated, I am compelled to leave the question to the judgment of a majority of the House.  I am glad, however, of an opportunity to state reasons for the persistent opposition made to the original bill, as presented to the House at its last session.  Now we have the opportunity to choose between that bill and a substitute, which was only offered yesterday and is far less objectionable.  It was then a proposition to create a new paper money, called coin-notes, which were to be issued alike for gold and silver, and were a new legal-tender paper.  The depositor of bullion was to have the right to receive the coin-note, and then, in exchange for that, to receive the stamped bullion or the coin; and in case of his receiving the coin, it was then to go into the circulation of the country by his disbursement, he gaining all the profit, which now by existing law goes into the Treasury for the public benefit.  This involved so serious a change in the laws regulating the mintage of this country that I did not believe it possible that the House would, upon consideration, sustain the bill.  The present law directs the Government to buy the silver at market rates, and the artificial value given to the coin accrues to the Treasury, not to the bullionist.  The people are thus saved from an equal amount of taxation to supply the Treasury;  and it has resulted that during the last fiscal year there has been paid into the Treasury of the United States a profit on the minor silver coinage alone of about $2,000,000 which came from that provision of law through the depreciation of silver, and which the proposed law would have nullified.  The proposition is in the interest of the bullionists themselves, is against the public interest, and the House could not be willing to pass the bill in the form in which it was then presented and as it is still pending.

Now another point.  We have now two legal tenders:  gold and paper.  The bill originally proposed to make three additional legal tenders:  the gold and silver coin notes representing the bullion deposited for coinage, and then the silver coinage from the bars or bullion so deposited, and in which the silver coin notes were to be redeemed.  This would have furnished to the people five different legal tenders, making inextricable confusion in all the business of the country.

It will thus be seen that the proposition submitted by this committee to the House is one which proposes to make a new legal standard of the most fluctuating, and at that time the most depreciated, of all the several legal standards submitted to the country.  Beginning in January, 1876, silver represented, in the standard value of gold, a trifle over ninety-five cents upon the dollar.  During the first seven months of this year, with various intermediate fluctuations that are shown to the eye of any gentleman looking at this chart, the value of silver descended from ninety-five cents to a fraction over seventy-nine cents on the dollar on the 13th of July.  It was therefore proposed at the end of the last session to introduce a new legal standard which had fluctuated sixteen cents on the dollar during the first seven months of the present year;  and it was proposed to put that entire profit upon the legal-tender value of the silver coin, above the actual value of the bullion, into the pocket of the producer of the bullion, instead of permitting it to go into the Treasury of the United States, where it then went by existing legislation.

Mr. Buckner.  Does not the gentleman assume in his argument that gold is an unvarying standard of value ?

Mr. Kasson.  I submit that there are some points that ought to be considered as beyond dispute.  Among those points is the statement made by all responsible publicists of the world, that gold has fluctuated less than any other standard of value among the nations of the Earth.  If gentlemen will consult the work of Professor Jevons, covering a period of nearly one hundred years, and giving the prices during that time of thirty or forty of the most essential raw commodities, they will get information on that point that I cannot now give them. I refer also to Horace White's brief essay on the silver question, (1876.)

Now, under these circumstances, it would have deranged the business interests of the community inextricably if that proposition had become a law of Congress.  For example, there are about $1,500,000,000 of deposits in the savings-banks and the other monetary institutions of the country, belonging to individuals.  Those individuals have the right to call for those deposits according to the terms of the contract.  Those deposits were made mainly in paper.  During the time I have mentioned that value of our paper money fluctuated only between 87¼ and 89¾ cents on the dollar in gold, or 2½ per cent.  That has been the amount of fluctuation of our paper legal tender, against 16 cents on the dollar of fluctuation of silver during the same period.

Had this proposition become a law, then all the moneyed corporations of the country, representing $1,500,000,000 of deposits by merchants, traders, laborers, widows, and orphans, would have had the right to have repaid all those deposits in silver, worth 13½ cents on the dollar less than the paper money which was deposited, if they could have procured the silver.

Let me call attention to another fact, to the claim that this will give us the privilege of paying our debts in silver instead of gold or paper, as the case may be, for that is the great argument in favor of this bill.  Have gentlemen considered where the blow would fall ?  Every possible injury to the permanence of the money standard falls not upon the wealthy man, who can guard himself against loss, or upon the speculator, who keeps himself in accord with every change, but it falls upon the laborer and upon the producer of the country.  Take the laboring man who is paid his wages at the end of the day, the week, or the month;  he accumulates no surplus;  your capitalist will pay him in the poorest money and not in the best that you give to the country.

And when the laborer comes to pay that poor money for the supplies the laborer must purchase, he will find that he is charged for those supplies just in proportion to the poverty of the money he presents.  If, as in the case of our paper money at one time, it is worth only forty cents on the dollar, then the laborer will be required to pay two and one-half times as much in the poor money for the articles he purchases as he would be required to pay in good money.

On every occasion when this question has come up, I have urged gentlemen to remember that it does not concern the capitalists of the country half as much as it does the laborer and producer of the country.  The best money the country can furnish should be given to that class, because every shave of every dollar falls upon the man who has no accumulation, upon the man who does not speculate, and who has no ability to protect himself.

Take the payment of our debts held abroad, and consider that subject for a few moments.  According to my estimate we have paid not less than $600,000,000 in a way that I am sorry to say we have been obliged to pay it;  that is, by the processes of the bankruptcy courts of the country.  During the last five years our railroad corporations have gone into insolvency thick and fast.  Their bonds held abroad have realized but a small percentage, and then the debts have been canceled.  The result is, that in addition to the bonds taken up in this country, our debts owned abroad are less to-day by hundreds of millions of dollars than they were five years ago.

Then, again, look at the balance of trade.  Gentlemen say that if we could pay our debts abroad with cheap money we would be doing a great thing for this country.  But as a nation we are not paying debts abroad this year.  During the last year we have had, irrespective of bullion and money exchanged, a favorable balance of trade of $79,000,000, which foreign countries are paying to the United States in gold or its equivalent.

And now what do you propose to do ?  When we have become a creditor nation --when exchange is 2½ cents below par to-day in favor of the United States --par being about $4.86½ and the price being $4.84-- when we are receiving from abroad every quarter millions on millions in discharge of debts owing to us, gentlemen propose to create a new and cheaper money in which Europe can pay her debts to the United States whenever the balance of trade is in our favor, and the payments may be made in the United States.

Are our foreign creditors going to send us gold unless they are obliged to do so in payment of this balance of trade ?   Are you, by your legislation, going to permit them to pay that balance in silver which yesterday represented --on the dollar of 1837 97.40 cents, or will you get one hundred cents for every dollar that Europe owes to the United States ?

Why, sir, the proposition is in the interest of foreign debtors, and strikes me as a direct injury to the merchants and producers of America, to be avoided only by express contracts.  Our European debtors now remit gold for the wheat and the corn of my section of the country.   By this bill you propose, at this time and in the present condition of trade, with silver at its present value, to enable them to make their remittances in money worth two and six-tenths cents on every dollar less than the gold which they are paying to-day, no stipulation being made to the contrary;  and when foreign silver shall be unloaded upon us the depreciation will be greater.

I commend these facts to the most serious consideration of my colleagues on this floor.  I am glad that is a business proposition to which attention is called, that it concerns the material interests of the country, and that men are bound in conscience to vote for the best interests of their country.  Do gentlemen say, as I believe my friend from Kansas [Mr. Phillips] did, that we are producing $77,000,000 of silver annually ?  It is an entire mistake resulting from a careless examination of the tables.  The amount stated is the combined product of gold and silver.  Over $20,000,000 of it is in gold.  You cannot attack the gold standard in favor of silver or the silver standard in favor of gold without striking at one or another of the great producing interests of this country.

Again, Mr. Speaker, at the rate at which the work is now going on in the mints they will turn out this year $54,000,000 in gold coin.  And need I say also --certainly not to you, Mr. Speaker, who originated the bill-- that they are already at work night and day in supplying the country with silver coin ?  Since the passage of the resumption act of 1875, we have issued over $25,000,000 of silver money for the uses of the people.  That is to go on under existing laws until it amounts to $50,000,000 of silver.  I thought at the last session, and am still of the opinion, that we can go on and furnish $25,000,000 more of the present silver coinage before the time will arrive at which we shall have supplied the wants of our people for minor coinage.

The situation then is this.  Our mints are fully occupied with the production of gold and silver coin.  They are taxed to their utmost capacity.  The San Francisco mint is now $800,000 behind the demand of the people for the trade-dollar for foreign export, being unable to make the supply equal to the demand.  Now under these circumstances, it is proposed to make a new coin the value of which, according to the original bill, shall be 412.8 grains (a value which the silver dollar has never had in the history of this country) or according to the substitute 412½ grains, the value under the act of 1837.  Under your new legislation you propose to put this coin into the circulation of the country and make it a legal tender for all amounts.

Let me say to the House (for I desire as far as possible to give facts rather than arguments) that yesterday the legal-tender paper dollar was worth 93.35 cents.  Two half dollars of the United States, as now coined, were worth 91.1 cents;  your silver dollar of 1837 (412.5 grains) was worth 97.4 cents.  It is now proposed to make this additional legal tender, which yesterday was worth 97.4 cents and to-day is between 98 and 99 cents.  The fluctuations for the future no man can determine, any more than he could have foreseen the fluctuations in the past.  Silver has been as low as 46¾ pence per ounce, while in 1859 it was up to 62.16 pence.  It may reach that point again or it may go down again.  It now rises in value by reason, in part, of the order of the German government suspending the demonetization of silver for the present;  and I beg to state a fact, which I have on the highest authority, that France has already accumulated about $100,000,000 of silver, a large part of which, when the proper point is reached, will be thrown upon the markets;  and when that time comes, your silver goes down.  Thus you have a standard varying from week to week and from day to day.  Can you, gentlemen, put this burden upon the country ?  Or, if you do it, is it possible that you will not at the same time so derange business that the returning prosperity of the country and the revival of business enterprise already begun will not be seriously checked ?

Mr. Phillips, of Kansas.  Has not silver been down so low as 46.5d, and is it not now 58d ?

Mr. Kasson.  I do not know what the gentleman refers to except it be what I have already stated.

Mr. Phillips, of Kansas.  The question is simply this:  Have we increased its value by using it as subsidiary coin ?

Mr. Kasson.  We have used it as subsidiary coin with a different ratio of value from the silver dollar.

Mr. Phillips, of Kansas.  And what has been the effect ?

Mr. Kasson.  It has been thus affected probably to some extent, but I do not know how much, as we have only coined $25,000,000 of it.

Mr. Phillips, of Kansas.  I ask the gentleman to yield to me.

Mr. Kasson.  My time is nearly up, and I must be excused.

Mr. Phillips, of Kansas.  Is not the value of silver given to it because it is used as coin ?

Mr. Kasson.  No;  it is an article in the market but has an artificial value as coin.  But the gentleman must excuse me, as my time is nearly out.

The whole question, then, I apprehend, cannot be in the judgment of this House whether the original bill shall be adopted.  It embraces so many contingencies shown by observation and examination to be outside of the ordinary judgment of legislative bodies that I apprehend that is out of the question.  What I have said, therefore, I desire to apply largely to tho substitute for the bill.  It concerns the propriety, at this time, before the fluctuations of silver are so determined that you can possibly establish its ratio of value to the gold dollar, the propriety of taking any action in the present condition of affairs and of our knowledge.  From fifteen to one it has fallen;  that is, the value as to gold has fallen, at one time to over twenty to one;  that is to say, over twenty pounds of silver required to be equivalent to one pound of gold.

I submit, in view of the action of this commission of ours, which is charged especially to find if there be not a safe ratio we can adopt as to relative values of silver and gold, that we should await their report and find if it be possible to adjust a relative value between the two metals.  If it be, I am for adopting it;  but if it be not, then let us stand by the least fluctuating standard as the most beneficial to the people of our country in respect to their own debts and in respect to the payment of the obligations that Europe seems now likely to owe annually to the amount of nearly $100,000,000 to the people of the United States.

Mr. Bland.  I will yield now for ten minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania, [Mr. Kelley.]

Mr. Kelley.  Mr. Speaker, I have none of the remarks quoted from me to withdraw.  They were not made on the bill demonetizing the standard silver dollar which was passed, which was a substitute, never read in this House, and being a substitute was not the bill to which I had spoken.

In answer to the learned gentleman from Ohio, [Mr. Garfield,] and the equally learned gentleman from New York, [Mr. Hewitt,] I have only in humility to confess that, unlike them, I was not at my birth inspired with all wisdom, all knowledge and all coming experience, and that I have therefore, unlike them, frequently had to sit humbly at the feet of teachers, and especially in the presence of that master teacher, the Disposer of Events, whose logic is the volume I have studied most assiduously and devoutly, though it has often compelled me to abandon cherished conclusions which, in the absence of their gifts, had been deduced from imperfect knowledge.

I did believe when I made those remarks that we must have a single standard because gold and silver fluctuated;  gold more, as is shown by the history of commerce, than any other commodity produced by man.  But I have learned, sir, through the sad experiences of the past three years;  from the parliamentary commission appointed to inquire into the depreciation of silver referred to by the gentlemen;  from the minutes of the Indian board on the same subject;  from the writings of Wollowski, Cernuschi, De Lavaleye, and other philosophers of Europe, that the double standard alone can give stability to the currency of a country;  that when gold depreciates silver appreciates;  that when silver depreciates gold appreciates;  that the nation that maintains a double standard has an unvarying currency, while that which relies upon either gold or silver suffers from depreciation or appreciation ---depreciation affecting one class, appreciation the other, as between creditor and debtor.

The minute of the Indian board has this paragraph on the recent fluctuations in the value of these metals:

The divergence now noticeable in the values of gold and silver does not necessarily prove a diminution in the value of silver.  It may be equally well accounted for by a rise in the value of gold;  and, in fact, it is probable that since the commencement of this divergence in November, 1872, there has been an increase in the value of gold as well as a decrease in the value of silver.  The actual values, measured in silver, of general commodities, whether in India, or in England, afford, as yet, no evidence of any recent sudden or violent fall in the value of silver;  and if a priori considerations strongly indicate that silver must have fallen, such considerations also make it probable that gold must have risen in value.  Appended to this resolution is a series of tables of prices in London and in India, the information contained in which points to two conclusions:  First, that gold has risen in value since March, 1873, and especially since last December;  secondly, that it is not shown that silver has fallen in value, i.e., as compared with commodities in general, either in London or in India, during the same period.  These conclusions are open to correction on a wider review of the economical causes which have been at work during the period;  but they appear to indicate a rise in the value of gold as at least one of the causes which have disturbed the equilibrium of the two metals.  The bearing of both conclusions upon the questions now before the government of India is important.

In supporting the substitute, which is my bill of last session, I plead in the name of justice and of honesty for the maintenance and enforcement of the wise provisions of the laws under which we have issued two thousand millions of bonds.  No exigency, said the gentleman from Ohio, [Mr. Garfield,] demands immediate action !  Why, sir, the highest of exigencies, justice to the wronged and oppressed American people, demands it.  They are in idleness and in want by our legislation shrinking the value of their labor and accumulated property.  It is we who are dooming men of skill and industry to idleness and vagrancy.  I ask that gentlemen to-day shall restore and enforce the law of March, 1869, which, being an act to maintain the public credit, declared that all our obligations should be paid in coin of gold or silver.  I ask you in the name of honor, of honesty, and justice to your constituents, outraged and oppressed, to stand by the letter and spirit of the funding act of 1870, which in providing for the issue of 4, 4½, and 5 per cent. bonds provided that they should be paid in the then standard coin of the country.

What was that standard coin ?  It was a gold dollar which was not the unit of value, and a silver dollar such as the substitute proposes, which was then, and had been from 1792, the unit of the monetary system of the United States.  This substitute proposes to vindicate and execute both of those acts.  In doing this it proposes to relieve the labor of the country from the grasping dishonesty which, by appreciating one metal, require two days' labor, two barrels of flour, two bales of cotton, two hogsheads of tobacco, two tons of iron, to pay the amount of interest that one did when silver was demonetized.  That is the whole question, whether labor and enterprise shall by an ingenious contrivance have their products so reduced in value by the appreciation of a metal and the making of that metal the sole money of the country, that poverty and despair shall everywhere prevail ?  In the name of outraged justice, in the name of humanity, here and abroad, I plead with you, gentlemen of the House, to stand by the coins of gold or silver pledged by the act of 1869 and 1870.  Stand by your contract and thus vindicate the honor of your country and the rights of the poorer classes of your countrymen.

Ten minutes will not suffice to read the passages I have marked in these papers, but I will invite your attention to some facts illustrative of the Indian money problem, and to a brief extract or two from the report of the British parliamentary commission to show that what I am contending for is deemed reasonable by authorities who, though not inspired like the gentleman from New York, [Mr. Hewitt,] and the gentleman from Ohio, [Mr. Garfield,] have studied the question of currency in the light not only of all recent experience, but in the light of the history of the world, under the discipline and restraints of the scientific institutions of England and the states of the continent.

The report of the parliamentary commission informs us that India absorbed during the forty years between 1835-'36 and 1874-'75, £200,000,000 or a thousand million of dollars of silver, and that she has need of much more as I shall show hereafter.  It also tells us that, misled by the example of nations that claim to be more enlightened, she began a system of public works, the capital for which she borrowed from England on coin-bearing bonds;  that these works are unproductive, and that English capitalists no longer send her silver in settlement of the balance of trade, but bills of exchange drawn against her bonds held by them;  so that, while India suffers from the lack of silver, the market of England was suddenly overstocked with that metal.

Here is a table showing the net imports of silver into India from 1867 to 1875-'76, which, with a statement of the amount of bills annually drawn, will illustrate the net imports of silver after deducting exports:

And in the year just concluded, that is, 1875-'76.

Statement showing the permanent effect of an increase of "council bills" on the flow of silver to India and upon the Indian exchanges.

These tables are taken from the London Economist, because they give the facts more in detail than does the report, but they are sustained by its assertions.

The commission regard the conditions illustrated by these tables as but temporary, and show how large a market India still offers for silver.  On this point let me cite the language of the report:

Colonel Hyde, for fourteen years director of the mint in Calcutta, was examined by the commission, and in the course of his testimony he was asked whether he believed that India has already been supplied with adequate silver currency.  He stated in reply his belief that the capacity of India for absorbing silver currency remained great.  He gave as the grounds of his belief that in many parts of India, especially in the distant and more isolated parts, transactions were not carried on by currency but by barter.  He explained that "wherever large public works have been in progress, such as railways, roads, and irrigation schemes, silver had been generally distributed in such districts," and that where this had taken place, the use of silver currency had superseded barter arrangements to a great extent.  Where the natives have once been taught the convenience of silver currency, there the currency remains.  Another witness. Mr. Mackenzie, also spoke strongly on the absorption of silver by India.  He said:  "It appears from historical periods she has always gone on absorbing silver, and there seems at present no cessation to this absorption."  He also spoke of the circulation in many districts being "totally inadequate, a large amount appears either to be hoarded or converted into ornaments, and remains in the district."

A practical distinction should, in the opinion of your committee, be drawn between the addition made to a currency in countries where all transactions have been previously carried on in the same form of currency; and where accordingly an increased supply would simply have for its effect a rise in prices, and, on the other hand, an addition made to the currency by the extension of that currency over fields where transactions were previously carried on in a totally different form.

If, at a former period, only a portion of India used silver to any extent in the ordinary transactions of life, and if now the extent of territory using it has been doubled, it is clear that India requires more silver than formerly;  and the facts of the case seem to warrant the conclusion that the use of silver coin has greatly extended in India, and will continue to extend, not so much by the use of more silver in the territories already occupied by the existing currency, as by the gradual increase of its use in the remoter parts of India.

These facts seem to me to be sufficient in themselves to dispose of the terrible suggestion that the restoration of the standard dollar to our coinage will overwhelm us by a ceaseless tide of worthless silver flowing from all lands.  What it will do will be to restore the old relation of 15½ to 1 between silver and gold.

The gentleman from New York said that the report of the commission had compelled the Latin Union to suspend their coinage.  How then does it elaborately discuss the effects of that suspension ?

Mr. Hewitt, of New York.  I desire to correct the gentleman.  He misunderstood me;  I made no such statement.

Mr. Kelley.  Then my ears deceived me and the ears of gentlemen around me were deceived.

Mr. Hewitt, of New York.  I merely stated the fact that the Latin Union had suspended coinage, but not as a consequence of the report of the silver commission.

Mr. Kelley.  I am glad to have the explanation made and hope the correction will be made in the Record.  The commission discussed elaborately the effect of the action of the Latin Union.  Their report also tells me that in four years France --a nation that has not one legal tender, nor two legal tenders, but three legal tenders;  in which gold, silver, and the irredeemable notes of the Bank of France are all legal tender and are each at par with the others because the government receives and pays whatever it makes legal tender-- France absorbed in four years preceding the making of this report not $100,000,000, as stated by the gentleman from Iowa, [Mr. Kasson,] but $167,500,000 of silver, and goes on absorbing it and her industries are undisturbed, while those of Germany and the United States that are pursuing the ignis fatuus of a single standard, the metal for which they cannot obtain, are paralyzed unto death.  Sir, France has the equilibrium and suffers no crisis.  She has gold and silver, and they regulate her currency by each compensating for the fluctuations that may occur in the other.

[Here the hammer fell.]

Mr. Holman.  Since the country became fully informed of the effect of the coinage act of February 12, 1873, omitting the silver dollar as a legal tender from the coinage of the United States, there has been an unmistakable determination among the people that it should be restored.  The passage of this act at a time when specie payments were not arresting the attention of the country and the absence of any general and definite information as to the effect of that law, either in Congress or out of Congress, had created a wide-spread belief that the measure was designed to promote special interests, and not the general good.  A people greatly in debt and feeling seriously the weight of taxation cannot be unmindful of the medium through which payment shall be made.  The act of 1869, declaring that the entire public debt, a large portion of which had been contracted on the basis of a paper money greatly under the value of coin, should be paid in coin, has been condemned by a large portion of our people as an unjust discrimination in favor of capital, and this act of February 12, 1873, which in effect declares that this great public debt and all other debts, public and private, should not only be paid in coin but in gold coin, this measure, with the succeeding measures proposing to retire and cancel the greenback money, leaving gold only as a medium of payment, was well calculated to excite serious alarm.  The least-informed citizen could perceive that the debt we might have contracted would be greatly enlarged by the shrinking in value of the property on which we might rely for payment.  Is it remarkable, then, that a vigorous public opinion should at least demand the restoration of the silver dollar as a full legal tender to our coinage ?

This act of February 12, 1873, in a most striking manner illustrates the contest between labor and capital, and the ingenious and far-reaching methods by which capital constantly obtains the advantage.  On the 1st day of January, 1873, it may be safely assumed that the debt of the United States, the debts of States and municipal governments, of corporations and citizens, taken in the aggregate, greatly exceeded the indebtedness of this country at any other period.  Subsequent events fully demonstrate that it was the intention of the men who for years have controlled our legislation and financial policy to retire at an early moment the legal-tender greenback money.  At this period, without a note of warning, not by a direct provision but by a mere omission in the enactment of a voluminous statute, one of the precious metals, used for the coinage of money in all the ages and fully recognized by the Constitution and entering into every contract, public and private, in this country up to that hour, is ignored and set aside and the most precious and valuable of all the means of payment known to the world, gold coin, must be sought for by the debtor to meet the demands that press upon him.  This, with the resumption act, will be found to be one of the most extraordinary instances of bad faith ever charged upon a government.  It entails and will entail, if it shall be consummated, on a great multitude of people destitution and ruin, while a comparative few --capitalists of Europe and America-- will by this disingenuous and fraudulent legislation add hundreds of millions to their wealth.

The vast body of debts, public and private, made on the basis of a greatly inflated volume of paper money, and which by the act of 1869 "to strengthen the public credit," so called, this coin act of 1873 and the resumption act of 1875, are to be made payable in gold coin, present as a united series of measures a most revolting instance of public injustice.  Capital here achieves a heartless victory over the debtor and the laborer, and the suffering which this victory may bring to countless firesides may sooner or later provoke retaliation.  The memory of a great act of injustice is not a pleasant feature in the history of even a monarchy, and much less so in that of a republic where justice and good faith are the foundations of government.  This bill, or rather this substitute for the original bill, simply reënacts the silver-dollar law of 1837, which is substantially the same as the law of 1792, and directs the Secretary of the Treasury to restore the coinage of the silver dollar of 412½ grains of silver, with unrestricted coinage and unlimited legal tender, except where the contract is expressly payable in gold.  It is simply the restoration of the law in regard to the silver dollar as it stood when repealed by the act of February 12, 1873.

The absolute justice of this measure is too manifest for dispute.  It can only be opposed on the theory that legislation in the interest of capital, however unjust and oppressive, can never be recalled.  That theory is not yet fully crystallized in our Government and a vigilant people will see that it shall not be.  It yet, sir, is remarkable that the entire weight of gentlemen who administer the financial affairs of this Government is against the restoration of the silver dollar.  Unhappily the small body of people to whose benefit this order of legislation inures, greatly enlarging their already ample estates, are infinitely more vigilant and possessed of infinitely more leisure than the people whom it will oppress.  They are always at the seats of power, and their arguments, and theirs only, reach the ear of those who administer the affairs of Government.  The people are never represented by the lobby, either in the halls of this Capitol or in your departments of Government.

Even as to the resumption act, it has been asserted, since the last adjournment of Congress, that the legal-tender notes, when redeemed in coin, would be re-issued;  that it was not the purpose of the Treasury Department to finally cancel the money of the people;  but the Secretary of the Treasury tells us, in his last report to Congress, "that the policy which tolerated the continuance of these notes as money after the close of the war must be regarded as a public misfortune."  And again: "They have served their end, they existed only as evidence of Government indebtedness, to be provided for as other debt obligations."

It is therefore apparent that influences, strong and potential, are at work to reduce, in a very short period, the currency and money, and all values in this country, to the single standard of gold coin, no matter how oppressive and no matter how wide-spread the disaster and ruin it may bring.  Specie payments ---no, gold payments--- are to ue forced upon the country, the greenbacks funded in gold-interest-bearing bonds, and the issues of the national banks brought down to the gold standard, and yet the most rose-colored estimate only claims $181,678,000 in silver and gold coin and bullion in the United States, with at least $700,000,000 of Federal, State, and local taxation upon our people.

The Director of the Mint informs us that the gold and silver coinage of the last year was as follows:

Coinage. ......................................... Pieces. ............................. Value.
Gold ............................... 1,949,468 ......... $38,178,962.50
Silver, (trade dollars) ................................. 6,132,050 ............. 6,132,050.00
Silver, (subsidiary coin) .......................... 64,104,950 ........... 12,994,452.50
Minor .............................................. 14,915,000 ................. 200,350.00
Total ........................................... 87,101,468 ............... 57,565,815.00

The export of gold vastly exceeds the import.  Only $38,178,962.50 coined in the past year, yet, at the bidding of the great capitalists at home and abroad, we must repudiate the greenback and fund it in gold-interest-bearing bonds, and ignore silver coin as no longer consistent with the views and interests of the gentlemen of princely estates who control our financial affairs.

If labor and the great interests that are immediately identified with our productive industries do not intend to be crushed out, they must insist, as freemen only can insist, and by a force of public opinion that cannot be resisted, that this reign of injustice and oppression shall cease.

Mr. Bland.  Mr. Speaker, it has been urged by the opponents of this bill that this measure has been foisted upon the House and the country without due consideration.  Sir, this bill was pending at the last session of this Congress six weeks;  it has been discussed throughout the country in the public press and in nearly every congressional district in the country, and when the gentleman from Ohio claims that here, without consideration, we are endeavoring to pass a measure of this importance, and compares it to the explosion of Hell Gate, I apprehend that he had probably forgotten that when silver was demonetized in this country it was a Hell Gate explosion, and that he helped to apply the torch.  The country was not informed of the fact that such a measure was pending in the House at that time.

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Iowa [Mr. Kasson] and the gentleman from New York [Mr. Hewitt] pleaded for time, for consideration, but I apprehend the fact that the pleading is for an extension of time wherein to oppress the debtor class of this country.  It is simply a question, as was remarked by the gentleman from Pennsylvania, [Mr. Kelley,] that instead of one day's work paying a certain amount of debt we shall require two days' work;  that is the effect of establishing a single standard of values.  Is it not a matter of history that a famine occurred in Ireland which nearly swept the people of that green isle from the face of the earth because its people depended upon one standard of food ?

If it were possible by legislation to decree that nothing but wheat should be used for bread, would it not be a consequence that the price of wheat would be double ?  But when there are two or three articles that may be used, the actual effect is that the price of the one governs the other and there is a medium standard established between the two.

There has been a reference again to this commission who have been authorized to inquire into this matter, and it is urged that we should postpone action until we receive the report which that commission will lay before the House.  Mr. Speaker, I am apprehensive that the gentlemen who raised this objection, at least I fear they would, if this commission reported favorably upon the subject, resort to some other means to defeat this measure as heretofore.  Pleading for time is pleading for the creditor class against the debtor.  Some suggestions have been made in regard to the substitute for the bill.  That is a provision that the silver dollar shall be a legal tender for all debts except where the contract requires the payment of gold coin.  The sole object of that amendment is to protect the kind of contracts known to exist in this country calling specifically for payment in gold coin as the payment mentioned in contracts. We know that on the Pacific coast in many cases contracts have been made requiring payments in gold coin.  It was not the object of the committee, and it should not be the object of this House, to interfere with any debt required to be paid in gold coin.  So far as public debts are concerned I know of no such contracts, and the law is now, except by the law of 1873, that all public and private debts must be paid in gold and silver.  The gentlemen who oppose this bill pretend to be especial advocates on this floor ---and especially the gentleman from Iowa [Mr. Kasson]--- of the workingmen, the widows, and orphans.  He is not representing that class upon this floor, and I venture to assert that if you ask the workingmen, the widows, and orphans what they demand in this country there would be a unanimous voice in favor of this bill.  But if he asks the creditor class, the men who hold the obligations of the country in behalf of public and private debts, they would demand payment in gold coin.  He refers to the report of the Director of the Mint on this question of the variation of the prices of gold and silver, and the whole argument is an assumption when they undertake to say that gold is the only standard.  It is merely an assumption, because gold has appreciated and was occasioned by the demonetizing of silver in Germany and the United States.  Mr. Groschen, on behalf of the British Parliament, expressed himself with reference to these commodities having appreciated.  I hope that this Government will, in restoring to us a double standard, compel Germany to retrace her steps in that regard.

I confess that I am in favor of the bill as originally introduced.  I agree that the certificates authorized to be issued for bullion deposited in the Treasury would take the place of your national-bank notes and furnish a secure paper currency for this country, and that the coin mentioned there would be a legal tender for all debts as is provided in the substitute.  But I am not particular upon this point.  For that reason the committee has permitted the substitute to be voted upon by the House in order that the House may take their choice between the two bills.  I now call for a vote.

The Speaker.  The time allowed for debate has expired.

Mr. Durham.  I ask unanimous consent to offer an amendment to the substitute.  I do not desire to argue it, but there is some doubt whether or not it is provided for in the act of 1873.

Mr. Fort.  Will it be in order to ask that the time for debate upon this bill be extended ?

The Speaker.  It can be extended by unanimous consent.

Mr. Fort.  There are a great many of the humbler members of this House who would like to say something upon this important measure.

The Speaker.  How long a time does the gentleman suggest ?

Mr. Fort.  One hour.

Mr. Buckner.  I object.

The Speaker.  The amendment of the gentleman from Kentucky [Mr. Durham] will be read.

Mr. Fort.  I would like to have the privilege of having printed in the Record some remarks upon this subject.

The Speaker.  That permission can be given, if there is no objection.

There was no objection.

Mr. Landers, of Indiana.  I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record some remarks upon this subject, in addition to those which I made to-day.

There was no objection.

The amendment of Mr. Durham was read as follows:

Provided, That a seigniorage of 1½ per cent. shall be charged upon the dollars coined under this act.

Mr. Kelley.  I object to that amendment.

Mr. Page.  I ask unanimous consent to have considered as pending an amendment to line 9 of the proposed substitute, to insert after the word "law" in that line the words "or express contract."

Mr. Kehr.  I object to that amendment.

The Speaker.  The time for debate having expired, and the main question having been ordered upon the bill, amendments, and substitute, the first question will be taken upon the substitute offered by the gentleman from Missouri.

The substitute (H.R. No. 4189) was as follows:

Strike out all after the. enacting clause, and insert the following:

That there shall be, from time to time, coined at the mints of the United States, silver dollars of the weight of 412½ grains standard silver to the dollar, a provided for in the act of January 18, 1837;  and that said dollar shall be a legal tender for all debts, public and private, except where payment of gold coin is required by law.

The question was taken, and the substitute was adopted.

The bill, as amended by the adoption of the substitute, was ordered to be engrossed and read a third time;  and being engrossed, it was accordingly read the third time.

The question was upon the passage of the bill.

Mr. Holman.  Upon that question I call for the yeas and nays.

The yeas and nays were ordered.  The question was taken, and there were--- yeas 167, nays 53, not voting 69;  as follows:

Yeas--- Messrs. Ainsworth, Anderson, Ashe, Atkins. Bagby, John Bagley, John Baker, Banning, Bland, Blount, Boone, Bradford, Bradley, Bright, John Young Brown, William Brown, Buckner, Horatio Burchard, Samuel Burchard, Cabell, John Caldwell, William Caldwell, Campbell, Cannon, Carr, Cason, Caswell, Cate, Caulfteld, John Clarke of Kentucky, John Clark of Missouri, Clymer, Collins, Conger, Cook, Cowan, Cox, Crounse, Culberson, Cutler, Davis, Dibrell, Durham, Ellis, Evans, Faulkner, Felton, Finley, Forney, Fort, Foster, Franklin, Fuller, Glover, Goode, Gunter, Andrew Hamilton, Robert Hamilton, Hancock, Hardenbergh, Henry Harris, John Harris, Harrison, Hartridgee, Hartzell, Hatcher, Hathorn, Haymond, Henderson, Henkle, Hereford, Goldsmith Hewitt, Holman, Hooker, Humphreys, Hunter, Hunton, Kelley, Kimball, Knott, Lamar, Franklin Landers, George Landers, Lane, Leavenworth, Lewis, Luttrell, Lynde, Mackey, Magoon, McCrary, McDill, McFarland, Milliken, Mills, Money, Monroe, Morgan, Mutchler, Neal, Odell, Oliver, Page, Payne, William Phillips, Piper, Poppleton, Powell, Rea, Reagan, John Reilly, Rice, Riddle, John Robbins, William Robbins, Roberts, Rusk, Sampson, Savage, Scales, Sheakley, Singleton, Slemons, William Smith, Southard, Sparks, Spencer, Springer, Stanton. Strait, Stenger. Stevenson, Stone, Stowell, Swann, Teese, Terry, Thornburgh, Throckmorton, Martin Townsend, Tufts, Turney, Van Vorhes, John Vance, Robert Vance, Waddell, Waldron, Gilbert Walker, Alexander Wallace, John Wallace, Walsh, Watterson, Erastus Wells, Wiley Wells, White, Whiting, Whitthorne, Willard, Andrew Williams, Charles Williams, Jeremiah Williams, William Williams, Benjamin Wilson, James Wilson, Woodworth, Yeates, and Young ---167.

Nays--- Messrs. Adams, George Bailey, William Baker, Ballou, Bell, Blair, Burleigh, Candler, Chittenden, Davy, Denison, Eames, Flye, Freeman, Frye, Garfield, Gibson, Hale, Haralson, Benjamin Harris, Abram Hewitt, Hoar, Hoskins, Hurd, Frank Jones, Kasson, Kehr, Levy, Lynch, Maish, MacDougall, Metcalfe, Miller, Nash, Norton, O'Brien, O'Neill, Packer, Pierce. Plaisted, Platt, Potter, Schumaker. Seelye, Sinnickson, Herr Smith, Tarbox, Wait, Warren, Alpheus Williams, Willis, Alan Wood, and Fernando Wood ---53.

Not Voting--- Messrs. Abbott, Banks, Barr, Beebe, Blackburn, Bliss, Chapin, Cochrane, Crapo, Danford, Darrall, De Bolt, Dobbins, Douglas, Dunnell, Durand, Eden, Egbert, Gause, Goodin, Hays, Hentlee, Hill, Hoge, Hopkins, House, Hubbell, Hurlbut, Hyman, Jenks, Thomas Jones, Joyce, King, Lapham, Lawrence, Le Moyne, Lord, McMahon, Meade, Morrison, New, Phelps, John Philips, Pratt, Purman, Rainey, James Reilly, Robinson, Miles Ross, Sobieski Ross, Hayler, Schleicher, Smalls, Stephens, Thomas, Thompson, Washington Townsend, Tucker, Charles Walker, Walling, Ward, Warner, Wheeler, Whitehouse, Wigginton, Wike, James Williams, Wilshire, and Woodburn ---69.

So the bill (H.R. No. 4189) was passed.

Mr. James B. Reilly.  At the time the vote was taken to-day on the passage of the bill for the coinage of the silver dollar, I was absent from the Hall of the House;  but not from the Capitol.  I ask unanimous consent to be allowed to record my vote in the affirmative.

There was no objection.

Message from the House of Representatives, by Mr. George M. Adams, its Clerk, announced that the House had passed the following bills:

The message also announced that the House had passed the following bills;  in which it requested the concurrence of the Senate:  A bill (H.R. No. 4189) authorizing the coining of the standard silver dollar and restoring its legal-tender character;

The bill (H.R. No. 4189) authorizing the coining of the standard silver dollar and restoring its legal-tender character, was read twice by its title, and referred to the Committee on Finance.

Mr. Maxey.  Mr. President---

Mr. Logan.  I desire to say that I obtained the floor when this question was before the Senate and was being discussed some days ago, and intended to submit some remarks, I have been very unwell since, and therefore am willing that the Senator from Texas shall occupy the floor in my stead this morning;  but I desire to call the attention of the Senate and of the chairman of the Committee on Finance to the bill (S. No. 1026) for the issue of silver coin and to make the silver dollar a legal tender, now before the committee, and also to a bill of a similar character passed by the House of Representatives within a few days.  Senate bill No. 1026 was introduced by myself at the last session.  I think it is very important that the Senate should take early action on the question and settle it one way or the other;  and without submitting any views on the question, more than a general statement, my views concur with the action of the House to a certain extent;  that is that the old silver dollar should be made a legal tender and be recoined.

I desire now to ask the chairman of the Finance Committee at what time he thinks it will be likely the committee can report this bill or some bill to the Senate of the United States for their action ?  I was not with the committee at the last meeting for the reason that I was not well enough to be there.  At the meeting before I was present, and without saying anything about what transpired I suggested this matter myself, and something was said in reference to a report of a committee or commission appointed on the subject.  But in as much as I feel a great interest in this measure and desire to urge it at all times that I can before the Senate, I wish to know prior to the adjournment if there is any probability of early action by the committee in presenting the question to the Senate of the United States.

Mr. Sherman.  I can only state to the Senator that the committee have not yet had an opportunity to consider the question and have been delayed somewhat by the fact that the silver commission, as it is called, has made no report on the subject.  I am informed in a general way that they will be able to make a report soon.  As a matter of course the subject is pending before the Committee on Finance and will be promptly acted upon after the adjournment;  but how soon I do not know, certainly at an early period of the session.  I am in favor of very speedy action.  Whether my views agree with those of the Senator or not will be developed hereafter;  but I can assure him, I think, that immediately after the adjournment, so far as the Committee on Finance are concerned, they will be ready to act on this question, especially if in the mean time the silver commission should make their report.  It seems to me they ought to make their report before we take any final action.

Mr. Logan.  I feel myself that that is very proper, but I do not see the chairman of that commission present, nor do I propose to find any fault with their action ---I have no right to do so--- but I do desire to say that I think it very important that that commission should report, and report at a very early day;  if the Committee on Finance is waiting for the report of the silver commission, so called, unless they intend to make a report so voluminous that it will never be read, and if they do, action might as well be had without it.  If they intend to make a report that can be read during this session, I hope they will make it as soon as possible, for the reason that if the report is not made until late in the session in all probability there will be no action on the question.  I deem it a question of as much importance as any that is before the country now, and the action of the Senate on it is very important to the country in view the action of the House of Representatives.

I do not desire to be understood as casting any reflection whatever upon the commission, but I merely say what I do merely in order that they may be urged to make their report as speedily as possible, because that certainly was contemplated by the action of the Senate when they were appointed and required to report at this session.

Mr. Sherman.  I am directed by the Committee on Finance, to whom was referred the bill (H.R. No. 4189) authorizing the coining of the standard silver dollar and restoring its legal-tender character, to report it back without recommendation and ask that it be placed upon the Calendar.  The Committee on Finance have taken the action of the Senate yesterday in extending the time for the report of the silver commission as an instruction not to act upon the bill now.  As a matter of course, until that report comes in we shall not have the benefit of the information that that commission has gained, and we thought it better and more respectful to the Senate to report this bill back and let it be placed on the Calendar without recommendation, subject to the future action of the Senate.

The President pro tempore.  The bill will be placed on the Calendar.

Mr. Sherman.  I wish also in the same connection to give notice that when this bill is called up again I, as an individual, as a Senator, will offer as a substitute what I now send to the Chair, and which I ask to have printed, accompanying the bill.

The President pro tempore.  The proposed substitute will be printed.

Mr. Cameron, of Wisconsin, presented a joint resolution of the Legislature of Wisconsin, in relation to the coinage of the silver dollar;  which was referred to the Committee on Finance, and ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:

Resolved by the senate, (the assembly concurring,) That the Senators and Representatives of the State of Wisconsin in Congress are requested to use all proper endeavors to secure the repeal of the law known as the act demonetizing silver, and to secure such laws as may be necessary to establish the coinage of the old standard silver dollar, and to make it legal-tender for all debts, public and private.

Approved February 16, 1877.
Harrison Ludington, Governor.
C.D. Parker, President of the Senate.
J.B. Cassaday, Speaker of the Assembly.