Mr. Kelley.  I move that the rules be suspended and the bill passed which I send to the Clerk's desk.

The bill was read, as follows:

A bill to provide for the coining of the standard silver dollar of the United States, and for restoring its legal-tender character.

Whereas by the omission to name the legal-tender silver dollar in the enumeration of the silver coins of the United States in the act of February 12, 1873, the authority to coin said dollar was withheld:  Therefore,

Be it enacted, &c., That there shall be, from time to time, struck and coined, at the several mints of the United States, silver dollars of the weight of 412½ grains provided for in the act of January 18, 1837, upon which shall be the devices and legends provided by said act;  and that the said dollar shall be a legal tender of payment for any sums whatever.

Mr. Savage and others called for the yeas and nays.

The yeas and nays were ordered.

The question was taken;  and there were--- yeas 119, nays 68, not voting 97;

So (two-thirds not voting in favor thereof) the rules were not suspended ans the bill was not passed.

Mr. Warner introduced a bill (H.R. No. 564) to amend certain sections of the Revised Statutes of the United States relating to coinage and the deposit of coin and bullion in the Treasury for certificates; which was read a first and second time, referred to the Committee on Coinage, Weights, and Measures, and ordered to be printed.

Mr. Warner, from the Committee on Coinage, Weights, and Measures, reported back a bill (H.R. No. 564) to amend certain sections of the Revised Statutes of the United States relating to coinage and the deposit of coin and bullion in the Treasury for certificates, with the recommendation that the bill be printed so as to show the words intended to be stricken out and the words intended to be added, and then that the bill be recommitted.

The Speaker.  The Chair hears no objection, and the bill will be reprinted as indicated by the gentleman from Ohio and recommitted to the Committee on Coinage, Weights, and Measures, not to come back on a motion to reconsider.

The Speaker.  The regular order of business is the consideration of the bill (H.R. No. 564) to amend certain sections of the Revised Statutes of the United States relating to coinage and coin and bullion certificates, and for other purposes;  reported from the Committee on Coinage, Weights, and Measures, with amendments.

Coinage Certificates, etc.

The Speaker pro tempore.  The regular order is the further consideration of the bill known as the coinage bill, a bill (H.R. No. 564) to amend certain sections of the Revised Statutes of the United States relating to coinage and coin and bullion certificates, and for other purposes, reported from the Committee on Coinage, Weights, and Measures with amendments.  The gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Kelley] is entitled to the floor for one hour.

Mr. Kelley.  Mr. Speaker, to prevent an indefinite number of interruptions I had better begin my remarks by frankly and humbly confessing that since 1872 I have learned something on the silver question, which, in my judgment, is the paramount question of the period.  Gentlemen seek to convict me of inconsistency.  I value consistency, but not that kind which by ignoring the lessons of experience, precludes intellectual progress and constrains men to go through life the advocates of error because when they entered manhood they were ignorant of the real law which controlled a given question.  I have, through life, been a seeker after truth as a guide and have accepted it from any and every source.

I have believed that consistency and duty to my manhood both required me to change my opinions and line of action whenever increase of knowledge should satisfy me that I have been in error, though such change should disturb my most cherished social and political relations.  Thus, I was in 1846 an enthusiastic democrat;  but when Mr. Calhoun declared by a resolution offered in the Senate that slavery was national and freedom sectional and confined to a few States into which Southern men might rightfully carry their slaves, and that doctrine was accepted by Mr. Yancey and introduced as a resolution in the Baltimore convention of 1848, and was supported, if my memory serves me, by thirty-six delegates, I denounced it, and voted openly for the free-soil candidate for President, though still maintaining my devotion to State rights, free trade, and other doctrines of the party against whose presidential candidate I voted;  and when, in 1854, the attempt was made to enforce this novel and pernicious dogma by carrying slavery into the northwestern Territories, I avowed myself a republican, and, in 1856, resigned a judicial position, in which I had reason to believe I was honored by my constituents, in order to lead a forlorn hope as the republican candidate for Congress in a district in which I was awarded by the election officers one vote out of every ten.

Again, sir, I was not only a free-trader, but an intense and, as I believed, a well-instructed one, having read largely on the subject.  I had been a disseminator in my city of the publications of the corn-law league and was a recognized volunteer agent for their distribution.

But when in 1857 the course of events proved that the assumptions from which my convictions had been deduced were false ---and it became patent to all men that, notwithstanding the discovery of gold in California and the mining of nearly a thousand millions of dollars thereof;  that the potato rot in Europe had given an extraordinary market and unusual prices to our agricultural products;  that for a series of consecutive years every natural incident had favored the prosperity of the country and the accumulation of capital by the people, yet at the end of that decade from the discovery of California gold, we had made so small an accumulation of capital that the draught of British and continental banks for $7,000,000, only 7,000,000, caused a suspension of specie payments throughout the country and paralyzed our industrial system--- I said to myself, "The laws of trade and finance are inflexible as the law of gravitation, and have produced results so diametrically opposite to those promised by the theories of free-traders that my principles cannot be sound, my belief must be erroneous."

It was not easy, sir, to yield my most cherished convictions, and I did not do it without much study and reflection.  Indeed, sir, it required three years of patient investigation to bring me to conclusions on the merits of the question of free trade or protection in which I could rest.  That it may be seen whether I changed my opinions lightly, I will hand to the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Claflin] and my colleague [Mr. Fisher,] who have so chided me for avowing that I had learned something on the silver question, a pamphlet containing my reasons for that change, and will also see that a copy of it is handed to each member of the House.

---[
On May 7, 1879, Claflin threw into Kelley's face what he said to Mr. Potter on April 9, 1872:
"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.

"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."

On May 8, 1879, Fisher threw into Kelley's face what Potter said on April 9, 1872:

"Mr. Speaker, this is a bill of importance.  When it was before the House in the earlier part of this session I took some objections to it, which I am inclined now to think, in view of all the circumstances, were not entirely well founded.  But, after further reflection, I am still convinced that it is a measure which it is hardly worth while for us to adopt at this time.

"Then, in the next place, this bill provides for the making of changes in the legal-tender coin of the country, and for substituting as legal-tender coin of only one metal instead as heretofore of two.  I think myself this would be a wise provision, and that legal-tender coins, except subsidiary coin, should be of gold alone;"

Then Fisher quoted what Kelley said to Potter somewhat later, which is what Claflin quoted the day before.
]

In 1872, when I made the remarks which were cited by those gentlemen, and which have been frequently quoted in both Houses, and always with an air as much as to say that to convict this man of the crime of having been instructed by the logic of events would forever settle this momentous question, we were not using coin, and no gentleman in either House appears to have appreciated the scope and magnitude of the silver question or to have given it special study.  Hence the bill --and I wish gentlemen to know what that bill was;  it was a bill to reorganize the mints, not to revise the coin money of the country, but to reorganize the mints, and it was passed without allusion in debate to the question of the retention or abandonment of the standard silver dollar.  The then Speaker of the House [Mr. Blaine], now a distinguished member of the Senate, and Hon. Mr. Voorhees, of Indiana, who is also a member of that body, were then members of this House;  and during the last Congress this colloquy occurred between them.  It was, I think, denied by Mr. Voorhees that members of the House knew that the bill proposed to demonetize the silver dollar, and to sustain his view he said to the ex-Speaker:  "Did you know it, sir ?" "No," said Senator Blaine;  "did you ?"  " No," replied Senator Voorhees.

I was chairman of the committee that reported the original bill, and I aver on my honor that I did not know the fact that it proposed to drop the standard dollar, and did not learn that it had done it for eighteen months after the passage of the substitute offered by Mr. Hooper [that would be May, 1872 + 18 = November 1874], when I disputed the fact, and was shown the law.  The distinguished gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Garfield] who now leads this side of the House was then, as now, an attentive and already a distinguished member of the House;  yet when in joint debate [with Pendleton] before the people of Ohio in October, 1877, the question arose as to who was responsible for its demonetization, he frankly said he did not know that such a provision was in the bill when it passed the House.  I state this the more freely in his absence because I informed him that I intended to do so;  and he replied, "It is the case;  I did make that statement, and it is true."

Nor did the President who signed the bill know that it abolished legal-tender standard silver dollars, for in his letter to Mr. Cowdrey of October 6, 1873, cited by the gentleman from Ohio, [Mr. Warner,] he said:

Silver will gradually take the place of this currency, and, further, will become the standard of values, which will be hoarded in a small way.  I estimate that this will consume from $200,000,000 to $300,000,000 in time of this species of our circulating medium. * * * I confess to a desire to see a limited hoarding of money.  It insures a firm foundation in time of need.  But I want to see the hoarding of something that has a standard value the world over.  Silver has this.

Gentlemen will observe that this letter was written several months after the writer's signature had given the force and effect of law to the bill which prohibited the further minting of the kind of coins he expected the people to hoard.

Let me, in passing, say that the statement of Mr. McNeely, of Illinois, which has been so often cited as though it discredited my word, that the bill had been read line by line and paragraph by paragraph in the committee has my indorsement.  It is true as to the original bill.  Hence it was that I admitted, as I so long and frequently did, that I had reported a bill which demonetized the standard dollar, and that I continued to believe that that provision had escaped my notice until my friend who sits before me, the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Fort] investigated the subject from the egg up and brought me the bill I had reported retaining the standard dollar, together with a Senate bill which had been substituted for it, which changed a section and omitted it.  In view of these facts, I think I may be permitted to believe that it is not specially discreditable to me that I alone among all those who then constituted the law-making power, either in the legislative or executive department, had not been illuminated on this grave question.

In justification of a change of opinion on this question I may be permitted to say that in 1872 I was ignorant of the existence of Emile de Laveleye and of Henri Cernuschi;  but since then it has been my privilege to correspond with these learned and distinguished men and I have enjoyed much social intercourse with Mr. Cernuschi.  I have read their instructive writings and would have been a dullard indeed had they made no impression upon my mind.  Nor did I then know that Wolowski, Seyd, and their learned associates had predicted the terrible results which have followed the attempt of one great nation to demonetize silver, but since then I have done much to bring their conclusions and the reasons upon which they rested to the attention of Congress and the country.  Nor had I then read the well-considered and instructive books of our countrymen, Dana Horton on silver and Francis Walker on money, neither of which was written until years thereafter.

Mr. Keifer.  Will the gentleman allow me an inquiry ?  I would like the gentleman to state, if he is able to do so, on which side of the silver question Dana Horton is ?  He says he has read his book.

Mr. Kelley.  I make this remark that I will object to no interruption that is pertinent if I can be assured that my time will be extended beyond the hour in proportion thereto.

In reply to the gentleman from Ohio I say that though I am not able to define exactly the position of Mr. Horton, I regard him as a bimetalist and that I found his book, in connection with other studies, most instructive, as I think any gentleman will.  It embodies an immense number of facts and much definite thought on the money question.

Mr. Belford.  I desire to ask the gentleman a question or two, because I regard him as one of the fathers of this measure.

Mr. Kelley.  Please do not make a speech, but put your question.

Mr. Belford.  The third section of this act provides that any owner of silver bullion may take it and deposit it at the mint and have it coined.

Mr. Kelley.  If the gentleman will permit me to anticipate his question I will answer it so far as I am prepared to, that is by declining to entertain it.  I am not a member of the committee that reports this bill, and it is not my purpose to discuss its provisions in detail.  I desire to take a general and broad view of the question, and I therefore refer him to the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Warner] and the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Stephens,] chairman of the committee, for the details.  I cannot be led away from the line of discussion which I have prepared for myself.

Mr. Belford.  I merely asked the question for information.

Mr. Kelley.  I have no doubt that the gentleman asks for information, but he comes to the wrong source.  He ought to have asked the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Warner] whose bill it is, and not me who am here simply discussing the general question it involve in a broad and general way.

In 1872 I had not read this extract from a speech of the late President Abraham Lincoln.  That great and always conservative man, in the hall of representatives in Springfield, Illinois, in December, 1839, spoke as follows:

The natural effect of this change of policy, every one will see, is to reduce the quantity of money in circulation. * * * The man who has purchased any article, say a horse, on credit, at 100 dollars, when there are 200 millions circulating in the country, if the quantity be reduced to 100 millions by the arrival of pay-day, will find the horse but sufficient to pay half the debt;  and the other half must either be paid out of his other means, and thereby become a clear loss to him;  or go unpaid, and thereby become a clear loss to his creditor.  What I have here said of a single case of the purchase of a horse, will hold good in every case of a debt existing at the time a reduction in the quantity of money occurs, by whomsoever, and for whatsoever it may have been contracted.  It may be said, that what the debtor loses, the creditor gains by this operation; but on examination this will be found true only to a very limited extent.  It is more generally true that all lose by it.  The creditor, by losing more of his debts, than he gains by the increased value of those he collects;  the debtor by either parting with more of his property to pay his debts, than he received in contracting them; or, by entirely breaking up in his business, and thereby being thrown upon the world in idleness.

The pertinence of these wise words of Mr. Lincoln will become more apparent as I proceed.  Nor, sir, had I then read the very powerful articles from the pens of Stephen Williamson, of the great Liverpool house of Balfour, Williamson & Co., and R.H. Patterson, the distinguished author of the Science of Finance and of the Economy of Capital, in the Contemporary Review for April, 1879.

Nor had I seen in the Financial Chronicle of the 12th of last month this manly statement and significant reminiscence which gives me the right to claim the moral support of England's premier, the Earl of Beaconsfield [Benjamin D'Israeli], who seems to have foreseen, as no American statesmen did, the dire calamities that must follow an attempt to demonetize silver:

Let it be borne in mind that we are proposing no stupendous novelty.  Nay, rather let it be kept in view that we are suggesting a return to the old and safe conservative paths in regard to "money."  We are no innovators.  The innovators were the gold monometallic propagandists of 1868, who are accountable for all the recent dislocation and mischief;  and I regret to say that a few Englishmen, who certainly could not have dreamed of the consequences of their propaganda, were among the number, if they were not the chief instigators of the movement.  They are now alarmed at the success of their teaching and are fervently praying that there may be no further demonetizing of silver in the world.

Lord Beaconsfield referred to the impending dislocation and the evils likely to result --almost with prophetic vision-- on the 19th November, 1873, when he was installed rector of the Glasgow University.  He then said, at the evening banquet:

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

His lordship (then Mr. Disraeli) proceeded to point out that it was the greatest delusion in the world to attribute our commercial preponderance or prosperity to our having a gold standard, and then warned his hearers that we must be prepared "for great convulsions in the money market --not occasioned by speculation or any old cause, but by a new cause with which we are not yet sufficiently acquainted."  He added:  "When countries inundated with silver are trying to get rid of it, convulsions must come, and no one would be able to form an adequate idea of the monetary arrangements of the times in which he lives if he omits from his consideration the important subject to which I have called your attention."

Finally, sir, I am free to admit that when in 1872 I absurdly asserted that the unit of our monetary system, the legal-tender silver dollar, which was worth commercially three cents more than a gold one, was subsidiary coin, I knew no more of the stupendous significance of the silver question than the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Claflin] and my colleague, [Mr. Fisher,] do now in 1879.

I was then, as they now are, involved in the battle of standards.  It is a bootless controversy.  A standard is a fixed and unchanging measure, and that which is fixed and unchanging cannot be found in that which is liable to great and incessant fluctuations.  Nothing in the history of man has fluctuated in value more frequently or more extremely than gold.  The value of both gold and silver fluctuates, and hence it was that in my ignorance I became confused and, believing that we must have a standard of value, thought that only one metal could properly furnish such a standard.  These metals fluctuate not only relatively between themselves, but relatively with every other commodity.  Neither, therefore, can, I repeat, be a standard of value.

Nor is money such a standard, let it be made of what it may, whether it have intrinsic value or rest on the credit of the Government that issues it.  Money is a convenient representative of value, a medium of exchange used in current purchases and a standard of deferred payments.  A debtor agrees to pay so many marks or florins or francs or pounds or dollars on a given day, and on that day to maintain his credit he must pay that number of designated coins, but unless he has expressly stipulated that the coins shall on the maturity of the obligation be of the existing weight and fineness, and the Government which issues the coin has, pending its maturity, reduced the weight or fineness of the coin specified and made it less valuable, the debtor pays his obligation by producing on the day fixed the stipulated number of the coins the value of which the Government has thus by law reduced.  This is the law of every civilized nation.  This right is, I reaffirm, established by law, and in no sense depends upon the intrinsic value of the metallic or other unit of payment upon which the law has bestowed the attribute of legal tender.

Thus, when we diminished the value of our gold dollar, for we have never changed that of our silver one, he who owed a million dollars when that change took place met his obligations with honor, though every one of the coins with which he paid were of the lighter and cheaper kind then recently ordained;  hence it is apparent that the gold dollar, though it is a standard of deferred payments, is not a standard of value.

But I must proceed to more general considerations.  This decade, I mean from 1872 to 1883, will mark one of the most instructive epochs in modem history.  Its progress in discovery, invention, and the application of science to the useful arts is probably unparalleled in the story of man's existence.  It is also marked by great movements of people to new countries with cheaper lands and freer institutions.  Yet, as its later half passes it is marked by a reaction against the progress of civilization and social refinement, the severity of which must, within its limits, compel a change in the financial and economic system of Great Britain, and endanger, if it does not overthrow, the governments of some of the great continental nations.

Look where we may, restless discontent prevails.  In our own country, by far the happiest of all by reason of our broad, free lands and the intelligent self-reliance of our people, discontent and agitation mark these years.  From New England, New York, Pennsylvania, and the entire manufacturing sections of the East, working men, women, and children, who, having secured their own homes or partially paid for them through building associations, were prosperous and contented, are fleeing to the remote West to endure the hardships and risks of frontier life and to make, at best, but bad farmers.  Remonstrate with them against the change as we may, they will say to us, "there we can at least live;  but here, without employment, or with partial employment at reduced wages, we cannot live."

So, too, is it in the South;  and I admit that political causes may have had some effect there.  You find the laboring population, a people specially fitted for labor in that section of the country, fleeing as eagerly as the intelligent working people of New England, New York, and Pennsylvania to States within which there is no employment for them in producing cotton or sugar, as there are no manufactories to employ those of the white mechanics who are augmenting the proportions of this modern exodus.  Sir, the flight of this decade is marked by all the symptoms which preceded the fall of the Roman Empire, the French and continental revolutions of 1793, the convulsion of Great Britain in 1847 and 1848, the overthrow of the French monarchy and the driving from Berlin of the German government in the latter of these years.  Indeed everywhere outside of our own country, Canada, Australia, and other British colonies which are settled by people of British origin and enjoy self-government, we find evidence of the action of a potent disturbing cause.  I have said that the same symptoms preceded the overthrow of the Roman Empire.  I speak with diffidence from my own general study on this point, but beg leave to read a short passage touching it from Alison's History of Europe:

The two greatest events which have occurred in the history of mankind have been directly brought about by a successive contraction and expansion of the circulating medium of society.  The fall of the Roman Empire, so long ascribed in ignorance to slavery, heathenism, and moral corruption, was in reality brought about by a decline in the silver and gold mines of Spain and Greece. * * * And, as if Providence had intended to reveal in the clearest manner the influence of this mighty agent on human affairs, the resurrection of mankind from the ruin which these causes had produced was owing to the directly opposite set of agencies being put in operation.  Columbus led the way in the career of renovation;  when he spread his sails across the Atlantic he bore mankind and its fortunes in his bark. * * * The annual supply of the precious metals for the use of the globe was tripled;  before a century had expired the prices of every species of produce were quadrupled.  The weight of debt and taxes insensibly wore off under the influence of that prodigious increase;  in the renovations of industry the relations of society were changed;  the weight of feudalism cast off;  the rights of man established.  Among the many concurring causes which conspired to bring about this mighty consummation, the most important, though hitherto the least observed, was the discovery of Mexico and Peru.

I need not dwell upon the causes which produced the French revolution.  Whoever has read any history of that event, whether by Guizot, Thiers, Carlyle, or other justly distinguished writer, knows that the outbreak was precipitated by financial embarrassments;  that the people were impoverished;  that the farmer-general could not collect the revenues;  that industry was paralyzed, and that discontent produced by want drove the masses into revolt.  Yes, out of the financial difficulties of the period came that war which raged for nearly a quarter of a century, involving all Europe, and as one of the incidents of which we have the instructive lessons furnished by English history, that an increase in the volume of paper money, though inconvertible, stimulated industry, production, and the growth of durable wealth in ratios previously unknown, and that by its contraction, enforced by law, in order to bring about specie payments ruin overtook the people, and for a time threatened the permanence of the government.

In 1847 and 1848 the supply of gold and silver from the mines had diminished;  it was not equal to the annual loss and consumption by the arts.  The credit of countries, then dependent on coin, had to be contracted as that "enduring" standard of value diminished in amount and increased in purchasing power.  Industry was without reward.  The French monarch was driven from his throne, and a republic established which avowed as its first duty the creation of remunerative employment for the people, even though it should be by the establishment of national workshops.

How were the people brought to order and contentment ?  It was by giving them remunerative employment.  I have recited twice on this floor the story from the London Times, and will not now repeat, but simply allude to it.  The Bank of France was authorized to issue an immense amount of irredeemable paper, and commissions were appointed to loan it, not only to those who could bring gold-bearing bonds as security, not to the wealthy alone who could offer still wealthier indorsers, but to the people of the workshop.  The test of fitness to receive a loan was the exhibition of the books of the man who sought it.  If they exhibited proof of a useful and well-managed business with a general result of profit, the applicant was to have a loan commensurate with the demands of his business.  France thus stimulated her productive power, and in a few years, by supplying the world with silks, wines, and gewgaws, was enabled to purchase gold and silver with which to redeem every note the bank had issued;  and the loss by these seemingly loose loans was, when the accounts were closed, reported to have been inappreciable.

But how was peace restored to the whole continent of Europe ?  I am speaking of 1848.  The threatened convulsion in England occurred in 1847 and the early part of 1848.  Then it was that Louis Napoleon established his British respectability by entering the ranks of the citizen police and bearing a staff in the maintenance of order, not dreaming that in five years he would have overthrown the Republic of France and secured the power to make himself Emperor.  But let me answer my question.

It was these disturbed years of 1847 and 1848 that gave the world a new Mexico and Peru in California and Australia.  As the gold and silver of Mexico and Peru banished the dark ages of Europe which had intervened between the fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of arts after Columbus's voyages, so the precious metals of California and Australia flowed into the channels of commerce, quickened industry, enabled capital to employ and pay labor, and thus restored peace and order to Europe.

These are, I think, instructive periods in history.  And I repeat that the current years are marked by all the symptoms that characterized those immediately preceding each of the events alluded to, and from the same cause, the shrinking away of the metallic basis of the credits of the world, which is now occurring by the force of legislation in the presence of an immense annual production of the precious metals.  Germany and the United States are doing summarily by law what the consumption of the precious metals by the arts, the power of abrasion, and the contingencies of mining operations then did by slow and unobserved processes.  Let me show you upon how grand a scale we are promoting those evil ends, idleness, want, discontent, and revolt.

Here is an elaborate report from the select committee on the depreciation of silver, together with the proceedings of the committee, minutes, evidence, &c., printed by order of the House of Commons on the 5th of July, 1876.  Among these papers I find a statement of the world's annual production of gold and silver from 1852 to 1875, inclusive, giving by years the production of each metal.  Though prepared for the Journál des Economistes, it was accepted by the committee.  It shows that the production of gold was $2,913,000,000, that of silver $1,187,500,000, making a total of $4,100,500,000.  Germany and we have undertaken to exclude from use as money --not by the slow process of abrasion, loss, and consumption in the arts, but, as I have said, summarily by law-- nearly one-third of that total production.

But, as I am reminded, we propose to do more and worse than this.  We will also banish from circulation the stock of silver the world had accumulated prior to 1852.  Since that year the steadily increasing stock of these metals has been augmenting the wants and productive capacity of man, sending forth adventurers into every new country, improving and extending the means of transportation, building up manufactures, stimulating agricultural production, promoting commerce and extending it to all the islands of the sea and to every navigable river of the world.  In view of these facts how stupendous is our undertaking !  Can any gentleman predict the evil consequences the attempt, though baffled it must be, may produce ?

It is impossible to estimate the depreciation of values that so enormous and so gradual and long continued a contraction of the volume of money must produce;  but, to give gentlemen who have not considered the subject data for forming a vague and remote estimate, let me remind them that it was in testimony before the secret committee which reported to Parliament in 1847 that the withdrawal of $45,000,000, coin, from the Bank of England had depreciated public stocks $573,761,125.  That was the rapid work of a crisis, but the retirement of silver from the circulating medium of the world is to be the work of one or more generations, during which the average of prices cannot advance, but, must continue to fall.  Let me also invite gentlemen to consider the fact that when the resumption act of 1819 was under consideration, Ricardo, Peel, and others of their school recurred to the fact that the difference between bank-notes and gold was less than 5 per cent., and said that, as the act gave four years in which to effect that slight change, it would work no appreciable depreciation of prices.

But what was the result ?  Industry and commerce were paralyzed.  The bank, finding that the people could not endure the consequences of a contraction that was to continue through four years, hastened the operation and concluded it in two years;  yet it effected a change in the price of every commodity, including land and improved real estate of 45 per cent., and caused a relative appreciation in the value of government stocks.  The direct effect, the widespread ruin produced by this action was confined to Great Britain, but the history of the times shows that the people of every nation to which she was commercially related suffered with her to a greater or less extent.

But, say monometalists, the discrediting of silver must proceed.  The two metals have given the world too much money;  its abundance has produced extravagance;  men ought not to live as it justified them in living;  they, especially laborers, must not live so well;  the wages paid for labor have been too high;  and in their effort to correct these alleged evils they attempt to force back the tide of civilization and social refinement by destroying the purchasing power of more than one-third of the world's metallic money.

Mr. Fisher.  Will my colleague allow me to ask a question ?

Mr. Kelley.  Certainly.

Mr. Fisher.  Do you mean to assert that the German Empire has demonetized silver ?

Mr. Kelley.  I do.

Mr. Fisher.  In the next place, does not the gentleman think that if German statesmen see they have committed an error they will retrace their steps, as they have done in adopting the protective policy, upon which my colleague and I agree ?

Mr. Kelley.  The gentleman will find out before I close, if I have time to say all I wish to, that I do not think it will be optional with the German government whether it will retrace the step it took in demonetizing silver;  that the terrible force of events will compel it to abdicate or to retrace its steps.  The maintenance of order in Germany under that demonetization and the effect it has produced on the markets which Germany formerly supplied with her productions will compel the adoption of one of the alternatives I suggest.

My friend from Ohio [Mr. Warner] has just pointed me to a page of the report of the commission to which I have already referred, on which I find the official answer to the question of my colleague as to whether Germany had demonetized silver.  Having referred to several laws demonetizing portions of the current silver money, the report proceeds to say:

The scope of this first law is so far important to the present inquiry, as it bears on the state of the silver market between December, 1871, and the middle of July, 1873, when the next great step was taken.

On the 9th of July, 1873, another coinage law (Münzengesets) was passed.  This law introduced the gold standard.  It commenced with the words "the imperial gold currency takes the place of the various currencies which are now legal in Germany belonging to the separate states."

Since 1871 Germany has been selling her silver.  Her citizens could pay it to the government, which received it at its denominational value up to certain dates;  but when the government received it, it put it into bars and has been selling those bars by the ton from then till now.  What it holds and is trying to sell is, as I shall show, regarded by the highest financial authorities in England as the cause of all her recent manufacturing, commercial, and financial troubles and of the world-wide business depression now prevailing.

Thus Mr. Williamson in his article in the Contemporary Review for April, after reciting the conclusions touching the effects of demonstration presented to the government by the Liverpool Board of Trade, said:

These conclusions by no means exhaust the category of untoward results.  The picture could be greatly heightened in coloring, but they are enough for our purpose, accounting as they do for the greatly diminished demand there now is for our textile fabrics, railway materials, machinery, and other things from vast and populous regions of the globe, whose money is now useless to us and unsuitable for the discharge of our trade accounts.  Merchants are at their wits' end.  They are shut up to refuse credits in silver-using countries.  They are baffled in all their exchange calculations.  They are driven to restrict operations.  The malign and adverse influence acts and reacts.  The distress intensifies.  Manchester warehouses are filled to repletion with unsalable stocks.  Iron rails go down to a point lower than ever known.  Many good opportunities for developing the resources of other countries, and of investing English capital, pass unheeded and unavailed of.  Men inquire what will the silver dollar or rupee be worth six months or six years hence in the London market;  and the deduction from late monetary legislation prompts the reply that there is no bottom to the fall.  India may be ruined --our investments may be worthless;  and the inevitable conclusion is that we must minimize our risks, restrict our operations, draw in our capital from silver-using countries, and let things take their chance.  The Economist and Mr. Giffen prophesied three years ago that trade would soon mend.  They ridiculed our fears and what they called our heroic remedies.  But the world now knows they were prophets who prophesied pleasant things because men loved to have it so.

Now, sir, I affirm that to remonetize silver (and it must sooner or later be done by all the commercial nations, including England) would restore peace, order, and prosperity throughout the world, as did the increase of the precious metals from Mexico and Peru, and at a later day the increase from California and Australia.  Let me sustain this assertion by pregnant proof.

Prediction is said to be the test of truth, and I propose to apply it in this case.  Mr. Ernest Seyd, in the course of his address before the British Society of Arts on the 3d of April, 1878, said:

In 1867-'68 M. Wolowski, then a senator of France, in opposing the proposition that that country should demonetize silver, said:  "If in the then existing state of the balance of trade one of the great nations demonetized silver the balance would be overthrown and dire mischief would follow."

I.  The international trade of the world would instantly show signs of decline, to the special injury of the countries whose international trade was large.

II.  That public enterprise, such as results in the construction of railways and other beneficient undertakings, would come to a standstill, and that general progress would suffer.

Will any gentleman deny that this prediction has been abundantly fulfilled here and elsewhere ?  If any one doubts on this point it may be well for him to consider the facts set forth in this paragraph from the last issue of the New York Mercantile Journal:

The Railway Age brings forward its record of railway foreclosures through the year 1878, giving a list of forty-eight roads sold during that year, representing a total mileage of 3,902 miles, $160,014,500 bonds and debt, and $151,616,700 capital stock;  the entire amount of bonds, debt, and stock being $311,631,200.

These represent only the roads that lately been sold, and not lines which are in the hands of receivers.  Should these be added, and those which are still maintained because they were built upon the credit of cities that will not repudiate the expenditure, it may be safely stated that the railroad mortality, so to speak, in this country has involved the loss of an amount of capital larger than the bonded debt of the United States.

III.  That the decline in price would compel countries internationally indebted to depart more and more from the principles of free trade toward a policy of protection.

Has not this prediction been verified ?  Canada has just passed her first protective tariff law;  Australia is about to follow the example and the papers yesterday told us of the indignation with which Bismarck left the chamber of the Reichstag because unexpected opposition was made to one of his protective measures, and the last of his words given us by the telegraph were that he insisted that the Zollverein must be re-established.  It was the Zollverein which made the empire possible.  Frederick List, a young and enthusiastic German, came to Pennsylvania and resided there for several years, during which he studied the American system of Henry Clay.  He consorted almost exclusively with protectionists, and when he returned to Germany he devoted himself to the work of inducing the German states and duchies to make a league on the basis that the productions of each should enter the others free of duty, while commodities produced beyond those states should pay a protective duty.  Thus he wove together in internal interest what is now the great empire of Germany, and made the Prince Bismarck and Emperor William we know in their grandeur possible.

The Speaker pro tempore.  The gentleman's time has expired.

Mr. Warner.  I hope the gentleman's time will be extended.

The Speaker pro tempore.  How much time does the gentleman from Pennsylvania want ?

Mr. Kelley.  I am speaking from notes;  I cannot say exactly.  I would be grateful to the House for indefinite extension.  I believe I have some information of value to bring to the attention of the House and, through the Record, to the country.  My speech is unwritten, and it will likely remain unwritten unless the reporters write it for me.  I will be as brief as possible.

Mr. Knott.  I hope the gentleman's time will be extended indefinitely.

The Speaker pro tempore.  The gentleman's time is extended by unanimous consent.

Mr. Deuster, (after a time.) I object.

Mr. Kelley.  I desire to say I was one of the gentlemen who was taken off the floor in the discussion on the legislative bill;  every other gentleman was given unlimited time save the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. De La Matyr] and myself.

The Speaker pro tempore.  The gentleman's time has been extended indefinitely, as the objection came too late.

Mr. Kelley.  I thank the House, and proceed to consider prediction No. 4, which is:

IV.  That the nations of the world would first be divided into two principal groups, the one trading in gold, the other in silver, and this would render commerce between them precarious.

This is now being fulfilled, and I will recur to it at a later stage in my remarks, and merely say now that when that division occurs I want this nation to be at the head of the silver group, which will embrace three or four times the population of the gold group.

V.  That throughout the world a fall in prices would take place injurious alike to owners of solid property and to the laboring classes, and advantageous only and unjustifiably so, to the holders of State debts and other contracts of that kind.

VI.  That when this time of depression sets in there would be this difficulty, namely, that the causes of this depression would be sought for in all directions;  that all sorts of allegations more or less groundless and fantastic, or of a secondary nature only, would be brought forward by the gold-valuation school and that this real cause, the demonetization of silver, would be neglected until strong signs of distress compelled thinking men to refer to it.

Now upon what were these predictions founded ?  On this point Mr. Seyd says:

The extent of international trade and business generally depends mainly on the means available to liquidate balances.  Hitherto both gold and silver, in equal proportions, had served for this purpose.  But the moment that Germany overthrew the balance and compelled other European states to close their mints against silver that metal ceased to be an effective medium of exchange between the civilized nations.

He also asked, "What, then, are the causes of the present aspect of affairs ?" and illustrated the correctness of prediction VI by answering the question as follows:

In order to lead to the true cause let me first endeavor to review the various allegations which have been made, in numerical order, and to show whether they are tenable:

First.  When, in 1873, trade began to slacken a little, the cause referred to was the Franco-German war.  Strange to say, however, the two years following that war were in reality prosperous.  From 1848 upwards we have had the French and continental revolutions, the Crimean war, the Franco-Austrian war, the American war, and several minor wars.  In fact, never has there been a period so rich in war.  Yet our trade steadily increased year by year.  In connection with this, although only within the last two years, it was said that the threatening Oriental war caused want of confidence.  In former times, when merchants had long-winded ventures at sea, and vessels were liable to capture and blockade, there would have been grounds for such want of confidence;  but now, when steamships run and voyages are much shorter, news traveling instantly, when railways lessen the importance of blockades, and a better international understanding exists, there is little occasion for such apprehensions.

Secondly.  It was then suggested that the dullness in trade represented but one of the usual periods;  that in the following year it would recover.  Refer to our statistics of the last sixty years, and, although they exhibit certain variations between one or two years, yet the increase was steady.  The years following the crises of 1847, 1857, and 1866 showed a falling off of several millions, but in the next following again an increase.  But now we find that there has been a falling off for four years, getting worse year by year, at an unheard-of ratio, and without any of those causes to which we ascribe crises and ordinary periodical variations.

Thirdly.  Then followed the allegation that "things had been overdone generally."  Hitherto things were "overdone" at the crises before mentioned.  It was then stated that the "overdone" referred to the use of more machinery and overproduction.  That we are making continual improvements in and additions to our machinery and industry is evident, and for the last thirty or forty years there has been a steady progress here and elsewhere.  But can any one say that suddenly, in the years 1873 and 1874, we had made such a start in this as to bring out the results before us ?  And as regards overproduction, that may have appeared so at first, from the stocks on hand;  in reality, however, the production was not in excess of the consumption it had hitherto met with.  During the last two or three years the production has diminished sensibly and stocks of goods are not excessive.  A great portion of our manufacturers have worked half time or less, or closed works temporarily.  The stoppage of public works, such as railways abroad, is one of the most remarkable features.  The existing railways pay fairly;  there is room for more.  Why should the cessation of this kind of enterprise be so sudden ?

Fourthly.  A favorite allegation is that which ascribes all the mischief to the strikes of the workingman.  Apart from the question that strikes do not affect much the value of certain commodities in which the falling off has been severe, it has always been held that higher wages encourage consumption and production among the masses.  "Strikes" cannot in any case account for the sudden reversal in trade, and at this moment, when wages are again much reduced and prices fallen much below those of 1873-'74, there is no improvement nevertheless.

Fifthly.  The "competition" of the foreigner was then referred to.  Now, if on account of strikes or for other reasons the foreigner had acquired our trade, this might seem a legitimate reason;  but it is not so.  Foreign manufacturing nations complain of badness of trade and falling off of exports even more loudly than we do, and in their turn ascribe it to the competition and cheaper prices in England.

Sixthly.  One of the arguments used is that during recent years we have lent but little money to foreigners, who were in the habit of taking large quantities of goods on the credit of loans.  I have pointed out before that, if this were so, we ought to have an enormous accumulation of gold here;  but, as that is not the case, the real reason may be rather that of our diminished ability to do so.  It will also be found that the defaulting nations were not such large customers of ours as to warrant this large falling off and that this falling off is especially noticeable with nations in whom we have confidence or who have no occasion to be debtors to us on such loans.

Numerous other allegations have been made which, simply or collectively, do not account for the state of things.

These secondary symptoms, as Mr. Seyd calls them, are just such as we are in the habit of hearing assigned in this country as the cause of the hardships the world is enduring.  But he proceeds to say:

Permit me here to point out what I, in conjunction with many others, deem to be the real or only cause of all this mischief, a cause of which all the other allegations made are but secondary symptoms.  This real cause is the demonetization of silver, or rather the steps so far taken in that direction.

In proof of the correctness of prediction IV, that is, that nations would be divided into two groups, one using silver and one gold, I beg leave to adduce the following evidence.  Mr. Coke, in seconding the adoption of the report presented to the board of trade of Liverpool by the committee it had appointed to present its resolutions and petition to the government of England, said:

It is impossible that India can continue to purchase from England at the rate expected when her money is discredited 20 per cent., and may be 30 per cent., if nothing is done to arrest the present decline.  If the manufacturers of this country wish to retain India as a market for their productions, they must assist in supporting the value of the rupee.

And again:

The only permanent cure would be the adoption of a bimetallic system throughout the great commercial countries of the world, by which silver and gold would become legal money at a fixed ratio of value.  In such case not only India but all other silver-using states would be able to buy from England, and, unfortunately, they are her principal customers.

Mr. R.H. Patterson, in his article on The Eastern Trade and the Precious Metals in the Contemporary Review for last month, said:

The system of demonetizing silver would lead to world-wide consequences of really incalculable disaster.  Those persons who talk so glibly of the advantages of "monometalism" and a single gold standard must be totally blind to the inevitable consequences of the course which they so complacently advocate and extol.  Were silver degraded from its place in the currency of the world, or even of Europe, the fall in its value, say one-half --although the fall might be very much greater-- would be equivalent to destroying one-half of all the silver in the world !  It would annul a vast outlay of capital and the labor of generations of hard-working miners.  Were it possible in like fashion --namely, by legislation or edict-- to reduce the price of ordinary commodities, such as food or clothes or houses, in such a case, although the producers of those commodities would unfairly suffer, the community at large would grain to an equal extent.  The usefulness of such commodities would remain unimpaired.  But the chief usefulness of the precious metals nowadays, and the sole usefulness of gold and silver coins, lies in their purchasing power, their value as money;  hence, a demonetization of silver would be proportionately destructive to its present usefulness, and, we repeat, would be equivalent to a willful annihilation of a vast portion of the world's stock of money.  In proportion as this demonetization was carried out, it would be a voluntary throwing away of the vast blessings and benefits which mankind have recently enjoyed from the new mines of America and Australia.  The world would be plunged back into the "hard times" which previously prevailed, or in truth into a far worse predicament.  The fact that our own country is under a single gold standard (a condition into which we passed by successive stages from a purely silver currency, the act of 1816 merely establishing by law what was already established in fact) would be powerless to ward off from us the effects of a demonetization of silver, which still constitutes by far the larger portion of the world's stock of the precious metals.  Our stock of gold would be drawn upon to supply the dearth of money in other countries.  Not to speak of the inevitable collapse of our monetary system as regulated by the absurd and pernicious bank act of 1844, the burden of our national debt would be vastly increased, and so would that of every other country.  These debts, which amount to an enormous sum, would thenceforth hang like a millstone around the neck of the nations.  Add to these results the restriction upon trade and industry inseparable from a dearth of money, and any statesman who at present favors the general, or any extended, adoption of a single gold standard may well shrink back from such a change, and refuse to imperil the prosperity of his own country, and of the civilized world at large, by producing an arbitrary and artificial dearth of money, which is the most potent auxiliary, we might say the very life's blood, of trade and industry, as these are and must be carried on under a mature civilization.

Sir, the verification of Mr. Seyd's prediction, to which I am referring, seems from the extracts just read to be near at hand.  When it comes where shall we take our place ?  But before answering this question let me refer to some of the laws of international trade.  When such trade may and generally does yield two profits, one to each country engaged in it, it does not flow along parallels of latitude, as does trade between the Northern States of our Union and England, France, Belgium, and Germany.  These States and nations possess in greater or less profusion the same raw materials and manufacture like commodities.  They are the great rival industrial nations of the world, and, with free trade between them, the elder nations, whose capital is cheaper and whose industries are more perfected, often carry off the sole profit of the trade.  Commerce, to be reciprocal and mutually profitable to those who participate in it, should travel on longitudinal lines.  The people of tropical countries export raw materials which we cannot produce.  They are not manufacturers.  They need what we produce and we need their productions from which to fabricate ours.  Hence the true line of American commerce is across degrees of latitude.  And I ask gentlemen to consider the question whether we shall place ourselves at the head of the silver-using group of tropical and semi-tropical nations which would give us the true lines of commerce, or shall remain, and suffer that we may remain, the tail of the gold-using countries, a mere bob to their kite ?  This is one of the grave questions now before Congress.

The following extract from a work by Condy Raguet, which appeared, if my memory serves me, in 1839, is pertinent in this connection, as it illustrates not alone the point on which I am speaking but the folly we perpetrated when we recently attempted to establish a single gold standard, and at an earlier date when we so far diminished the value of our gold dollar as to make it profitable to export our silver.  Prior to that time, 1834, so far as trade between Great Britain and the United States was concerned, the two countries constituted a bi-metallic union.  Though our law tolerated both metals and made them both legal tender, we were practically a silver-using and England absolutely a gold-using nation;  and the result of this use of both metals is shown by Mr. Raguet as follows:

"Prior to the passage of the gold bill above referred to, the metallic currency of the United States had been virtually, as above stated, a currency of silver since the establishment of the government, gold very rarely appearing, whilst that of Great Britain was of gold.  The consequence was, that the currency of each was independent of the other, and the contraction or expansion of each did not necessarily act upon the other.  The contraction in England, which preceded the resumption of specie payments, in 1821, after a long suspension of twenty-four years, produced no convulsion on this side of the Atlantic;  nor did our contraction, distressing and durable as it was, after the removal of the public deposites from the Bank of the United States, on the 1st of October, 1833, which brought down the prices of stocks from 20 to 50 per cent., and led to the importation of 3,793,293 dollars in silver from England alone, during the year ending on 30th September, 1834, produce any convulsion whatever in that country.*

* During the contraction last referred to, which occasioned a panic that continued from October, 1833, to July, 1834, exchange upon London, at New York, the market of which regulates the rate for all the other cities, fell greatly below the ordinary limits.  In February, 1834, the pressure for money was so great, that bills were sold, for a short period, as low as one to two per cent. below the nominal par of that period, which was, in reality, nine to ten per cent. below the true par.  A great fall, also, took place in every species of stocks, property and merchandise, whilst the discount on good commercial paper rose to two or three per cent. a month.

Notwithstanding this great pressure, however, it was not felt at all in England, except, perhaps, in the diminished remittances of merchants, so that her currency remained not only without the slightest contraction, but actually experienced an augmentation, to the great advantage of our shippers, whose cotton was sold without any reduction in price.

"Such would have continued to be the case, had the mint regulations remained without alteration;  but no sooner was gold, by a change in its relative value to silver, rendered the most profitable of the two metals to import, than we found the currency of England disturbed to a degree that rendered necessary an immediate reduction of her paper issues, although the amount of gold drawn from her between the passage of the law in June, 1834, and the 30th of September, of the same year, was but 1,922,960 dollars.  To the importations of gold in the years 1835 and 1836, instead of silver, may be ascribed that further contraction of the British currency, which led to the crisis of the latter year, that was so fatal to American credits and American cotton, by which millions of dollars were lost to the country.

"Now as like causes will produce like effects, it behooves us to examine well into this matter, and if we find that we have committed an error, it is our duty to retrace our steps.  Thus far very little progress has been made towards introducing gold into actual circulation, notwithstanding that a large amount has been imported,* still a long perseverance in the law will give us a gold currency, but it will be most dearly purchased.  It will so closely ally our fortunes with those of Great Brittan, that no convulsion can take place in the currency of that country, that will not act directly and powerfully upon ours;  whilst on the other hand, none can take place on our side, that will not act directly upon hers, and in so doing, break down the prices of cotton and tobacco, and other American products in the markets of Europe to the great injury of our planting interest.

"But this is not all.  The tendency of the present regulation is to drive silver out of the country, and not gold, in all cases where coin is exported, the result of which will be, if long enough persevered in, to deprive us almost altogether of a silver currency, and in that event, a universal resort will be had in all the states to bank notes of the smallest denominations in preference to gold coins of similar denominations, as a remedy for the evil, a remedy, which, it is hoped, no friend of a sound currency desires to see adopted."

Let us hastily consider the question with which league interest invites us to unite ?  The population which uses gold numbers 180,450,000 and they all dwell on our lines of latitude.  They are older in manufactures than we, and against the productions of their cheaper capital and labor we have to maintain an artificial barrier by our tariff.

The nations using gold and silver as we would if we fully remonetized silver have a population of 132,500,000, nearly as many as the gold-using countries.  They also are on our lines of latitude, and as bimetalists could trade with us even while silver may continue to be depreciated.  The silver-using people number 876,700,000, which is largely more than twice the total of the others combined.  Where do they dwell ?  India --British India, with whom England can no longer trade;  China, Japan, and the islands of the Southern Sea, Africa and, to come to our own doors, Central America, Mexico, and South America are all silver-using nations.  Shall we seek to become the manufacturers for this nearly one thousand million producers of raw materials, and become what England through the possession of this trade has been, the work-shop of the world, and, as an inevitable consequence, the mistress of the seas ?  If we aspire to this proud position we must place ourselves on a bimetallic basis, so that their coin shall be at par with ours, while 20, 30, or 50 per cent. may be between their par and that of those manufacturing nations of Europe which may adhere to the gold valuation.

My friend and colleague [Mr. Fisher] intimated that in advocating this bill I was doing something against the protective policy.  I asked him to demonstrate his proposition.  He said he had done so;  but I have read his speech with equal care and pleasure and have not found the demonstration.  Let me whisper to him confidentially that it was not our statutory tariff that propelled the manufacturing industries of this country by the marvelous strides with which they advanced between 1862 and that year of such triumph for us, 1876, when Philadelphia and Pennsylvania conferred upon this nation an international exposition.  I do not mean to taunt gentlemen who come from States which made no contribution toward the cost of that exhibition.  The burden was cast upon us, except that New Jersey gave $100,000, and I am a little proud of the fact that Philadelphia and Pennsylvania conferred that boon on the nation and welcomed the people of all the States to a share in its advantages.  We will be amply repaid, for the exhibition proved to the world our country's capacity for manufacturing supremacy.

But to my point.  What was it that so marvelously quickened our progress between 1862 and 1876 ?  It was not our statutory tariff.  No;  it was the difference between the current value of the legal-tender money with which our immense domestic commerce was carried on and the money of the gold-using manufacturing nations.  The depreciation of our paper made a measure of protection that false invoices nor any other means of defrauding the revenue could evade.  It was inexorable;  and when stupid people cried out for gold and were ready to make any sacrifice to bring our greenbacks to par with gold, they were hastening the abolition of the most effective protection the industry of any nation ever had.  I hope my colleague will carry these suggestions in his mind while I proceed to exhibit evidence of the correctness of my position.

Mr. Fisher.  Will my colleague allow me to ask him a question ?

Mr. Kelley.  I will bear my colleague.

Mr. Fisher.  Are we to understand that you now advocate a silver standard ?

Mr. Kelley.  No, sir;  I am a bimetalist.

Mr. Fisher.  A bimetalist ?

Mr. Kelley.  Yes, sir.

Mr. Fisher.  Is Mr. Williamson ?

Mr. Kelley.  He is, and presented to the British government the recent memorial of the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce demanding the remonetization of silver.

I am a thorough bimetalist.  Let me state what I mean.  I am ready to remonetize silver at the present market rate, and, to borrow a phrase from my learned friend from Maine who sits beside me, [Mr. Reed,] to make this country the dumping-ground of all the world for its silver.

Mr. Reed.  At what rate;  the market rate ?

Mr. Kelley.  Yes.  If England and Germany see fit to send their silver here in advance and have it coined and use it in the form of dollars they will buy no more than the silver dollar would then be worth, and before we should have received $100,000,000 of their silver, that metal would be at its old par with gold and the "daddy dollar" be again worth three cents more than its gold rival.

On this point there is small room for doubt:  as I shall show, on the authority of the London Economist, than which there is no higher mono-metallic authority, that the cause of the commercial dislocation prevailing throughout the world, and which has already destroyed the possibility of profitable commerce between England and her Indian possessions, which embrace one hundred and ninety millions of people, is the possession by Germany of from $75,000,000 to $100,000,000 of silver, which having been demonetized is for sale.  Were that amount absorbed in the circulation of the world, the Economist holds, the old equilibrium would be re-established, and not only British and Indian trade would revive, but the trade of the whole world also.  Who can doubt that in this country, under a system of free mintage which would scatter the standard dollars over the face of the country instead of locking them up in the Treasury as is now done because the metal for them is bought by the Government with interest-bearing bonds, the southern people alone would absorb $100,000,000.  This is a moderate proposition, for I have shown you that months after we had signed the bill which demonetized the silver dollar, President Grant's calculation was that our people could readily absorb from $200,000,000 to $300,000,000;  and I am ready to make this country the dumping-ground of silver because it is apparent that before Germany could send us $50,000,000 the price of the metal would go to par with gold.

Mr. Fisher.  I fear I have misunderstood my colleague;  I thought he was advocating a gold group of nations and a silver group of nations.

Mr. Kelley.  I have not propounded that suggestion as an original idea, a theory of my own evolving;  I only quoted Wolowski and Ernest Seyd, who said such a result was among the inevitable consequences of the demonetization of silver by any one great nation.  I think their prediction is being rapidly fulfilled, and am not afraid that we will receive an excessive volume of silver, for, as I have shown, the total amount which now hangs like a threatening cloud over the world is but from 75,000,000 to $100,000,000, an amount which our people could readily absorb.  On this point the Economist shall speak for me.  It is the highest economical and financial authority among the monometalists of the world.  It is opposed to bimetalism and advocates the demonetization of silver;  but trade between England and India has almost ceased, for in one year that trade cost England in loss on exchange $20,000,000, because there was no par between the units of payment of the two countries.  Nations who adhere to the more costly unit cannot profit by trade with those who use a less costly one.

How does the Economist propose to overcome this difficulty and relieve England from her distressing embarrassment ?  To recede squarely from monometalism and advocate bimetalism would not do for so dignified and authoritative a journal;  it therefore evades that issue and proposes that England shall buy half of Germany's silver.  To put it to what use ?  To use it indirectly as money.  To issue legal tender paper upon it, just as the bill under consideration proposes to receive some of the silver dollars in the Treasury and issue certificates therefor which shall be legal tender.  Yes;  it proposes that England shall buy the half of Germany's silver on such liberal terms as will justify her in stipulating that Germany shall withhold the balance from the markets of the world for a given period, and that the Bank of England shall be authorized to issue legal-tender notes on the basis of the silver thus purchased.  In its issue of April 12, 1879, it said:

The operation of supplying Germany with a gold currency may now be understood to be completed in the main.

That phrase, "in the main," is a very large saving clause.  Bismarck and Emperor William would be glad to know that not much more gold was required in Germany, for whenever they put their new gold coins into circulation they fly away;  they will not stay in Germany.

Fresh additions may have to be made from time to time, but no vast and sudden demand like that caused when the currency was instituted need any longer be apprehended.  But though the gold currency has been established, the superseded silver has not---

That word "superseded" is a good synonym for discarded.  My friend and colleague [Mr. Fisher] will, by and by, begin to believe that Germany has demonetized silver---

yet been entirely disposed of, and the German government still holds a stock variously estimated at fifteen, seventeen, or twenty millions sterling.  The whole of this, presumably, is not for sale, though it appears that but little, if any, more will be wanted for further subsidiary coinage.  It would probably not be wrong to assume that fifteen millions may ultimately come on the market.  It is uncertainty, as to the course Germany may pursue with regard to this sum, which keeps France in an expectant attitude.  It is the restriction of the coinage of silver in the Latin union, at Vienna, in the United States, which as much as, if not more than anything keeps the price of silver to the point it now stands at.  So far, then, there are grounds for believing that the present depression in the price of silver is temporary, and not permanent.  To a temporary difficulty a temporary remedy may fairly be applied, which could not be thought of were the evil certain to last for any lengthened period.  The following course appears to have a great deal to recommend it:  That our government should ascertain from the German government the actual amount of silver they have for sale, and that our government then should authorize the Bank of England to buy one-third or the half of the amount on the understanding that no further sales of silver should be made for a limited period of not less than five or seven years.  The purchase might suitably be made at the average price of, say, the last three years.  The bargain might fairly be expected to answer the purpose of both parties.  Germany would gain at once a customer at a fair price for an article which she finds it difficult to dispose of.  England could expect to reap a corresponding advantage in the rate of exchange with the East.

Yes, there is the cause of Britain's commercial depression, "the rate of exchange with the East."  The Economist proceeds to say:

The arrangement might further provide that the Bank of England should hold this sum of sliver among its bullion, and issue notes against it, as far as the provisions of the act of 1844 permitted, the government guaranteeing the bank from loss on the transaction, if any were incurred, and sharing the profit, if any, on terms to be stipulated.  * * * That such an operation as has been indicated would relieve both trade and the finances of the Indian government there is little doubt.  The movement in the price of silver but a few days since, when the Indian loan was proposed, shows how sensitive the market is.  The removal of the pressure of the German silver would doubtless have a far greater effect.

The difficulty which is crashing England is, I repeat, the derangement of exchange between gold-using England and silver-using India and other silver-using states, whose total population numbers nearly nine hundred million.

One word further as to protection.  Let me show that the depreciation of the commercial value of India's monetary unit is operating so protectively to India that the manufacturers of Lancashire are demanding that England's Indian subjects shall be made to wear and pay for Manchester cotton goods.  The authority for this statement is before me.  When addressing the House on the 9th of May, 1878, in opposition to Mr. Wood's tariff bill, I cited the ridicule heaped by the London Times upon Lancashire manufacturers, who had even then made this demand, and I again bring it to the attention of the House:

There was scarcely a town in our cotton-manufacturing districts which was not represented.  Lancashire en masse had turned out for the occasion, personally or by deputy, and the speakers may be fairly taken as expressing the fixed opinions of some hundreds of thousands of Englishmen.  Private deputies were sunk for the moment in the face of a great question in which the earners and payers of wages were equally concerned, and Lancashire, for once in a way, was in perfect harmony in all its sections. * * * Their wish to preserve a foreign market for their goods is natural enough, and, within decent limits, praiseworthy enough.  We can scarcely say much for them when they ask not only that Indian finance shall be regulated for their own convenience, but that the export trade of India shall be kept within the bounds they wish to assign to it, and shall be crushed out of existence when it intrudes itself as their rival.  It was nothing less than this that the deputation were asking for, and with scarcely a disguise as to their real meaning.  It is a strange thing, we cannot help remarking, to observe the new quarters from which proceed, in the case before us, the attack on free trade.

The British Indian government cannot raise revenue enough to meet current expenditures, and though each member of it is a free-trader it imposes an import duty of 5 per cent. on cotton fabrics.  This light duty with the effect of the depreciation of silver have developed cotton manufacture in the presidencies of Madras and Bombay to such an extent that in addition to all her other inhumanities toward that unfortunate dependency the British manufacturing interests again and more emphatically demand the repeal of the duty and the compulsory consumption of British cotton goods by the miserable people.  In this connection the Economist, in the number from which I have read, says:

It is nearly certain, whatever the fiscal regulations which may ultimately be adopted, that a considerable body of factory hands will ultimately be formed in India.  The native capitalists, especially the Parsees, have learned how to use machinery, and with cotton on the spot, coal almost on the spot, and a large supply of cheap labor, they are almost certain to defeat foreign competition.  Their fuel will become no dearer, their cotton tends to become cheaper in proportion as they learn to pack it for railway carriage and to store it, and their labor will hardly rise in price.

A five per cent. duty is not sufficient to account for this sudden and immense increase of manufactures in India.  No, the depreciation of her discredited silver is doing for her what the depreciation of our paper money did for us.  How this development continues to terrify Manchester is shown by Mr. Coke, whom I have already quoted, and who in his remarks to the Liverpool Board of Trade, said:

But the selfishness, nay, the cruelty, of this treatment of India is further exemplified by a correspondence on the Indian import duties which, strange to say, appears also in this day's Manchester papers.  Mr. Raynsford Jackson, writing to the secretary of state for India, on behalf of Lancashire manufacturers, demands that India should be compelled to buy Manchester goods duty free.  The other markets of the world being inaccessible, because of the wall of protection with which they are surrounded, India must be made to buy.  She has only silver money with which to pay;  then give more of it, take off the duties, borrow when she can only buy Manchester goods.

I have, I fear, wearied the House.  But I beg leave to briefly call its attention to the condition of France.  She has been bimetallic since 1803, and though she has in this long interval seen dynasties rise and disappear in quick succession, she is now serene in the midst of the perturbed nations of Europe.  The descent of her Crown has been changed several times.  Empire has succeeded monarchy, and a republic the empire, more than once, yet through all these changes she has never since the adoption of bimetalism endured a financial crisis such as has so often prostrated the commerce and manufactures of England and the United States.  She resorts when necessary to the use of inconvertible notes of her bank, having required it to issue $612,000,000 of them during the German war;  but, unlike us, she has never been deluded into the idea that the way to pay debts is to suspend the operations of productive industry and to compel laborers to suffer in enforced idleness.  When war or any other exigency compels an expansion of her paper currency she makes it, and then stimulates industry by every conceivable appliance, never retiring the inconvertible paper until there has come into the country a gold or silver franc for every paper one that is to be withdrawn.  She maintains steadiness of business by maintaining a uniform and sufficient volume of currency.  When she has to ask a loan she never organizes a syndicate to sell it to foreign capitalists, but through her own agencies disposes of it to the French people and thus binds them in loyalty to the nation by the tie of self-interest.  Her policy is the very opposite of ours.  What a contrast she presents to Germany, whose Emperor was recently so popular, he who with his chiefs won rich provinces and five milliards in money from France in 1872-'73 and became the idol of his subjects, but who now dare not show himself in the streets of Berlin without his guards about him;  his approach like that of the Czar being heralded by the tramp of a detachment of cavalry.  Meanwhile England finds herself in a condition which must constrain her to abandon her most cherished economic and financial theories or prepare to again trample into submission her suffering laboring people as she did in the streets of Bristol and Peterloo while she was arbitrarily forcing the resumption of specie payments.  But mid all these perturbations bimetallic France moves on prosperously and contentedly, an example in monetary matters to our poor benighted country, and is quietly consolidating a republic which we may hope and believe will prove an enduring example to all the nations of Europe. [Applause.]

Mr. Oscar Turner.  I would like to ask the gentleman a question which I have withheld until the present time because I did not desire to interrupt him.

Mr. Kelley.  I shall be glad to reply to the gentleman if it be in my power.

Mr. Turner.  I understood the gentleman to state, in giving an account of the demonetization of silver, that the effect of the measure was not understood by him at the time, although he reported the bill.  Now, for the information of the country, I wish to make this inquiry:  If that bill was passed by Congress and signed by the President in ignorance of its effect in demonetizing silver, why was it not repealed by the party then in power when it was discovered that an outrage of that kind had been perpetrated ?

Mr. Kelley.  I cannot answer that question because it inquires into motives.  All I can say is that the Committee on Coinage, Weights and Measures, who reported the original bill, were faithful and able, and scanned its provisions closely, that as their organ I reported it, that it contained provision for both the standard silver dollar and the trade-dollar.  Never having heard until a long time after its enactment into law of the substitution in the Senate of the section which dropped the standard dollar, I profess to know nothing of its history;  but I am prepared to say that in all the legislation of this country there is no mystery equal to the demonetization of the standard silver dollar of the United States.  I have never found a man who could tell just how it came about, or why.

Mr. Oscar Turner.  My inquiry was why the party then in power did not repeal the provision when its effect was discovered.

Mr. Kelley.  I will answer that by another question, though I am not a Yankee.  Will the gentleman tell me why this House, in which his party has a majority, does not hasten to repeal that legislation.  I presume that the same cause which now controls the majority here controlled the majority of the other party when they were in power.

Mr. Oscar Turner.  The democratic party did attempt it;  in 1878, but were prevented by the republican Senate;  and we are now attempting effectually to do it by this bill.

Mr. Cannon, of Illinois.  I would like to put a question to the gentleman from Pennsylvania.  As neither gold nor silver circulated at that time in this country, may it not be possible, if not probable, that this fact enabled that legislation to be passed without the scrutiny on the part of anybody which it would have received if coin had been actually in circulation ?

Mr. Kelley.  I have so said in my remarks.

Mr. Bowman obtained the floor and said:  I yield thirty minutes to the gentleman from Maine, [Mr. Reed.]

Mr. Reed [Thomas Brackett Reed (October 18, 1839 - December 7, 1902), occasionally ridiculed as Czar Reed; Maine, R.; studied law, admitted to the bar ].  Mr. Speaker, although I am to follow for a few moments the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Kelley] I propose to reply only a few portions of his speech and those merely incidentally.  I rise for the purpose of making a remark or two upon what seems to be the vital point concerned in the question now before the House;  but before doing that I wish to say a word or two which I hope may have the effect to remove in some degree the prejudice by which this matter has been attempted to be surrounded.  This prejudice relates to two things.  First, it is declared that the demonetization of the silver dollar was a "fiendish outrage" of which somebody or other, name not given, was guilty;  and, secondly, it is affirmed that the taking away of the legal-tender character of the trade-dollar was "a trick" disgraceful to all parties concerned.  Those two allegations seem to lie upon the threshold of the discussion of this question as matters of prejudice.

Mr. Warner rose.

Mr. Reed.  Now, I hope the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Warner] will remain quiet long enough to allow me to say something.  I say to this House that from the year 1865 until 1875 there was a discussion going on throughout the world among economists and persons specially interested in the question, whether a single standard or a double standard was the more desirable for a commercial nation as advanced in character and manufactures as the United States and Great Britain and various other nations.  About the year 1872 that discussion culminated in a general belief on the part of all persons concerned that a single standard was the best.  This belief prevailed, more or less, in all European nations and in all nations as far advanced in civilization as we are.  And the point upon which that discussion turned was mainly, if not solely, that of stability.  It was and is desirable in all civilized countries that there should be a standard of value which should be stable, which should not fluctuate in its character;  and in the then condition of the world it was deemed proved by facts and circumstances, and by the general consent of mankind, that a gold standard was such a standard.  I believe that there was no thought in anybody's mind of pillaging or plundering anybody, but simply of establishing a standard which should be permanent, and pillage and plunder nobody.  On that question of stability we all of us agree.  The gentlemen who are in favor of a double standard argue it upon the ground of the greater stability of the double standard and upon none other.

Now, my friend from Pennsylvania [Mr. Kelley] in my judgment is suffering under a lapse of memory on this subject.  He did not understand when the demonetization took place, he says.  I am bound to believe he states the matter exactly as he understands it now.  But the truth about it is that this particular act attracted very little attention, although the discussion itself undoubtedly attracted the attention of a gentleman so well acquainted with and so well versed in such subjects as the gentleman from Pennsylvania..  And to show that the discussion was in his mind I call his attention to a statement which has already been quoted.  It is true he was talking in the preceding sentences about the subsidiary coinage, but it is equally true that he had the whole subject in his mind in the discussion during which this bill was passed.  For he said at that time:

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 15 to 1 a short time ago;  they are 16 to 1 now.

Now, I do not find any fault with the gentleman from Pennsylvania because he has received information on these various subjects.  I do find a little fault, however, that he should boast of the necessity of having received so much;  that he should have stated to this House that he had changed his mind upon all economical and financial subjects and then made a merit of the change.  That a man should learn is an advantage not only to him but to the world at large.  But there is one thing that I do insist upon, that he shall not in any way talk about the conduct as "fiendish" of gentlemen who have not been able to get his light.  Why in the world cannot a man get credit for honesty ?  Then he is consistent as well as credit for honesty when he is inconsistent ! [Laughter.]  In short, does all human virtue consist in wobbling ?

Mr. Kelley.  One moment, if you please.

Mr. Reed.  Certainly.

Mr. Kelley.  I do not know that any human virtue consists in wobbling.  I was speaking of Germany, and I did not know that any gentleman on this floor had legislated for her;  or probably should have been more guarded in my expression.

Mr. Reed.  The gentleman misunderstands me.  This was a debate in Congress on a bill in Congress.  The gentleman has already made his explanation before to-day, and I make my comments upon it.  Now I come to the question of the demonetization of the trade-dollar, or rather to the taking away from the trade-dollar its legal-tender power.

Mr. Kelley.  I wish to say to the gentleman from Maine [Mr. Reed] that I mean no disrespect to him by now retiring from the Chamber.  I find myself in such a condition that I must seek repose;  otherwise I should be very glad to stay and listen to his argument.

Mr. Reed. When the trade-dollar was first coined --and this is an undisputed fact-- silver was then in such a condition that the amount of silver put into the trade-dollar was worth one hundred and four cents.  Consequently, by a law which is as immutable as the law of the attraction of gravitation, it could not circulate in this country, and our bullion-holders, desirous of finding a market for their bullion, asked the United States to put their stamp on a certain amount of their silver, and then they could export it so stamped to China and to the East generally.  Accordingly that was done.  But in the law, by some "mystery" or other --and by "mystery" I mean simply that I do not know how;  that is all, and that is about the size of most of the "mysteries" there are here-- it was made a legal tender to the extent of $5;  but it was discovered upon the fall of silver shortly afterward that these trade-dollars were coming back.  Then, when the matter was fresh in everybody's mind, the legal-tender clause was repealed so as to prevent this silver, which was coined simply for export purposes, from becoming a part of the currency of the country and driving gold out;  or perhaps I should not say driving gold out, for I believe we had not much then.

Well, now, let me give the particulars.  Let us see what were the names of these "conspirators" who perpetrated the trade-dollar "trick."  In the first place, on the 8th day of May, 1876, Hon. Samuel J. Randall, of Pennsylvania, introduced into the House a bill the third section of which repealed the legal-tender quality of these coins.  Well, whatever faults the gentleman from Pennsylvania may possibly have, nobody ever accused him of being a conspirator.  He is certainly straightforward in all his actions.  He brought the bill into the House and it was then reported --by whom ?  Why, by my friend from New York [Mr. Cox!]  And it was passed by this House without a single dissenting vote, and at a time when people understood just what it meant.  Now, it does not seem to me there is any trick about that.

Well, sir, having cleared the subject as I hope, in some slight degree, I do not desire to magnify my efforts in that direction, but having indicated a way in which men's minds may be cleared to some slight extent from the effects of prejudice, let us see what the question is for us to-day.  People differ on the question whether it produces a more safe standard to have it bimetallic or monometallic.  Into that dispute I do not propose to enter.  In my judgment the opinion of the world after having been in favor of monometalism is now swimming the other way.  Men are changing their opinions upon the subject as to which is the best standard, a double or a single one.

What I have to say I desire to say entirely upon the basis of a double standard.  I want to confine my remarks to that I want to place myself at the outset on the basis of a double standard, for the purpose of this argument, reserving to myself the right to change my mind in consequence of any future wisdom I may acquire, like the gentleman from Pennsylvania, from communion with the saints and demi-gods who reside in Philadelphia, or any other place.

A Member.  Does the gentleman say "demagogues" ?

Mr. Reed.  I said demi-gods, from whom you may get wisdom;  from the demagogues you get words only. [Laughter.]

Now, the situation of the world on this subject is something like this: I am not going into details.  There are certain nations of Europe with whom we have trade and connection which are practically monometalists, which have gold for a standard and not silver.  There are certain other nations which have silver for a standard.  We at present have gold with a limited coinage of silver.  Now, in that state of affairs India has ceased to absorb the amount of silver that it used to absorb in times past.  Germany, for political reasons mainly, has demonetized silver to get rid of a great many silver coins and to have a universal coinage of the empire;  and that has put $75,000,000 of silver in a threatening attitude as to the market, in such an attitude that the effect of it is much more depressing than the actual production of seventy-five millions of new silver, because nobody knows what they are going to do with it;  nobody knows when they are going to sell it;  and the consequence is the hostile attitude, the scare arising from it does much more toward the depression of silver in the market than the amount would seem to indicate.

Then there seems to be a larger production from the mines with the prospect of a still greater production.  And besides that, there is the attitude of France.  My friend from Pennsylvania eulogizes France.  And whenever you find one of these gentlemen who are dissatisfied with the system of the United States he is always in love with the system that prevails in France.  France's great system produces nothing but prosperity.  The French system produces nothing but what is to be imitated by us.  And yet the French to-day, or at least quite recently within a few months, have concluded a treaty by which they have stopped the coinage of silver for seven years.  Why is it that our admiration of France should stop at these glittering generalities instead of following the system out into particulars ?  In France they have done a sensible thing;  and they have done it because they have found that under the coinage of silver by the Latin union the gold is gradually disappearing from France;  and hence from being a bimetallic she is becoming a monometallic nation, a silver instead of a gold and silver nation.

Just in this attitude of affairs, in this condition of things which renders the value of silver the most fluctuating possible, it is proposed to us to adopt, as the gentleman from Pennsylvania says, a double standard, but really a silver standard.  But there are nations with a double standard which have really a single standard of silver.  When the proportion is 1 to 16, it is really a single standard, and that is a standard of silver, which is what this bill means.  Now look at the effect of this.  We adopt what is really a single standard at the very time when it is most fluctuating and its future most uncertain.  And here I must suggest to members that it is a little difficult always to follow the gentleman from Pennsylvania, [Mr. Kelley.]  He says that silver, the standard in India, has raised a barrier which causes the Lancashire men to cry that they must take goods of other countries at any price, and that such a barrier is a good thing, because it operates as a protective tariff;  and in the first part of his speech he talked about India "weltering" in poverty, I think that was the expression, as the result of this very thing.  He first tells us that India is "weltering" in poverty and in a state of sorrow, and before he gets through with his speech he has her with a beautiful barrier erected and "virtue rewarded everywhere."

Now, what is the situation of England and the other nations with regard to this silver question ?  England used to be not only mono-metallist, but she had propagandist tendencies.  She not only believed in that system herself, but she wanted to make every one else believe in it;  but she has found that the experiment as between herself and India has been a pretty expensive amusement for her;  and now the English say we are in favor of a single standard, and that standard gold;  but as to you, the people of other nations, we do not like to banish silver, and we rather think you ought to have it as a part of your currency.  Why ?  Because if you, particularly, you of the United States, take it, it would relieve us of our troubles about India, for the United States would become the dumping ground to use the expression which my friend from Pennsylvania has honored with his approbation, for all the loose silver in the world, and then England would be relieved.  Now, we want the whole world to come to the bimetallic system, and consequently the proper attitude for us to assume is what they call an expectant attitude, only waiting until England is driven to do what we believe to be the proper thing on the subject.

Now, what is our theory and what do we believe to be the proper thing ?  It is that when all nations have gold and silver, if by any local changes silver, for instance, becomes cheaper in one country and drives gold into another country it will cheapen gold in that country and have a tendency to push the gold back and there will be the least possible disturbance of the equilibrium of values all the time.  If that equilibrium is liable to be disturbed by the change in the value of money arising from temporary increased production of gold, the disturbance will be much less if the effect of the increase is distributed over a base of both gold and silver than if distributed over a base of gold alone.  So with an increase of silver.  It would have much less effect on money composed of gold and silver than on money of silver alone.  And a temporary increase of production of silver and gold is not likely to be simultaneous.  This idea can probably be carried out practically if all or nearly all civilized nations will come into it;  if not, or if some of the greatest refuse, it will not work at all.  I know the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Warner] will say let us have silver, and if gold is driven out to other nations it will lower the value of gold and raise the price of silver.  Only temporarily and to a very slight extent.  Perhaps, practically, at the present time, not at all.  Silver has certainly fallen in spite of our purchase of thirty millions.  Whatever effect this would have, it would be only temporary;  it would not be establishing a system placing us in accord with the rest of the world.  If our silver became dear it would have nowhere to go to.  A circulation must have a circuit, veins, arteries, and capillaries.  Bimetalism to give stability implies free circulation.

Now, whether the monometallic system or the bimetallic system is the best is a question not yet decided.  It is a scientific question, a complicated one, containing many elements that require to be studied, and it cannot be decided by a shout of fraud.  We may be doubtful about the true decision of the question, but it seems to be sufficiently proved by the facts within our knowledge that it is an experiment to be tried, and if we want to try it we ought to try it under advantageous circumstances and not under bad ones.  If we try it now it will be under bad circumstances and will be a failure;  if we wait we can try it under proper conditions and it promises success.

Mr. Warner.  Will the gentleman before he takes his seat allow me to ask him a question ?

Mr. Reed.  I will answer it if I can.  My knowledge, however, is exceedingly limited, and I do not keep a note-book.

Mr. Warner.  The gentleman remarked that we could not settle this question by crying fraud, and that it was a question that required very weighty consideration.  Did it have that consideration when the change was made ?

Mr. Reed.  In my judgment it did.  In my judgment the people of the country discussed the question just as they discuss other questions.  It was considered as a great many truths are, and the people may, perhaps, have changed their opinion from the changed condition of the country.

Mr. Warner.  I would ask the gentleman if the two lenders of the republican party, one in the Senate and one in the House, have not admitted to the country that they did not know that this provision was in the bill demonetizing silver ?

Mr. Reed.  I say that it had consideration, but the leader of this side of the House now does not know of this discussion between you and me, and the two leaders may have been absent at that time;  but what astonishes me is that the gentleman from Pennsylvania, [Mr. Kelley,] who was the chairman of the Committee on Coinage, Weights, and Measures, does not recollect anything about it.

Mr. Fort.  Will the gentleman tell us where the democrats were about that time ?

Mr. Warner.  I was not speaking of parties.  I was speaking of the whole country.

Mr. Reed.  I find in a speech by the gentleman from New York, Mr. Hewitt, delivered on the 23d of August, 1876, that it took six or seven pages of the finest print to simply give the heads of the transactions of the House and Departments upon that question.

Mr. Warner.  Was there any discussion in the Senate ?

Mr. Reed.  I do not know, but I know that the question was discussed all over the country and in the reports of the Secretary of the Treasury and in the reports of the Comptroller of the Treasury.

Mr. Warner.  Did not the distinguished Senator from New York [Mr. Conkling] ask the chairman of the Finance Committee of the Senate the question whether the silver dollar had not been dropped and was no longer a legal tender ?

Mr. Haskell.  If the gentleman will allow me I can answer that question.

The Speaker pro tempore.  Does the gentleman from Massachusetts yield ?

Mr. Bowman.  I do.

Mr. Haskell.  That bill was prepared by Mr. Knox, Comptroller of the Currency, in 1870;  was submitted to twenty-five monetary experts for their opinion, which was given;  was agreed to by the New York Chamber of Commerce and by the New York Board of Trade.  It was introduced into one Congress, referred to a committee, and debated;  it was introduced into another Congress, referred to another committee, and debated.  It was thirteen times ordered to be printed by Congress.  The debates in the House and in the Senate upon that bill cover eighty Record columns.  It was debated by Senators on both sides, republicans and democrats.  The special feature of the demonetization of the silver dollar was referred to by Comptroller Knox in his report, was referred to by these twenty-five monetary experts, by the New York Chamber of Commerce, by the Board of Trade, by Mr. Kelley, Mr. Potter, Mr. Hooper, of the House, by Senator Casserly, Senator Bayard, and I think five or six other gentlemen.

At the expiration of over two years, after having been considered by two Congresses, by two committees, on the report of the Secretary of the Treasury and of the Comptroller of the Currency, it became the law of the land.

Now we are here to-day debating a bill changing the coinage of the United States and are talking about the debate upon the former measure.  We will be called upon next Tuesday to vote upon the several provisions of a specific bill, and the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Warner] is the only man on this floor who has taken up and considered that bill carefully and presented his views upon the subject.  Unless we can have a debate different from that which has been bad for five days on this bill we will come to a vote next Tuesday on the provisions of a bill which has never been represented on this floor save by one man;  its language never having been referred to and its effects never more than guessed at.

Mr. Warner.  It has been discussed in every journal of the United States, while the former bill was never alluded to in any public journal or by any public writer of the country.

Mr. Haskell.  When my hour comes for making a speech I will refer the gentleman to at least twenty-five journals of this nation which contained articles on demonetization.

Mr. Bowman.  And the gentleman from Kansas might have said that that matter was discussed in about eighty pages of the Record, in the Bankers' Magazine, and in the newspapers of the country for days and weeks.  At this late hour of the day, and when other gentlemen are anxious to speak, I do not intend to detain the House by any extended remarks on this bill.

Mr. Cannon, of Illinois.  If the gentleman will yield I will move that the House adjourn.

Mr. Bowman [Selwyn Zadock Bowman (May 11, 1840 - September 30, 1928; Massachusetts, R.; studied law admitted to the bar].  Mr. Speaker, I will take but a short time.  The hour is late, and, as I have said, other gentlemen are anxious to speak, and I think that the ground for Monday is all mapped out.  I desire now only to state the foundation principles on which I shall act.

I have listened here day after day to the debate upon this question.  I have heard our greenback friends and our friends on the other side give a thrilling and eloquent account of the condition of the people, of the depression of trade, and of the needs of labor.  But I have not heard in any discussion of this bill any reference to the principles involved in it;  a bill than which none has been introduced into this House at this session or at any other having a more vital bearing on the interests of all classes of the people.

What does this bill provide ?  As I understand it, this bill establishes four simple distinct propositions, which propositions have not been explained and have not been met by the advocates of silver currency.  The first proposition is for a free and unlimited coinage of money, an absolutely free and unlimited coinage of silver money, or only limited by the will of the holders of the bullion or the supply of the metal.  Second, it makes all such silver money, issued absolutely without any limitation except the will of the holder of the bullion or the supply of the metal, a legal tender.  It provides that every man shall be obliged to take it for the debt due to him, whether this experiment is a success or a failure.

Third, it provides for the issue of silver certificates for the silver bullion or coin left on deposit in the Treasury;  for the issue of silver certificates to an unknown and unknowable and unlimited and illimitable amount, regulated only by the amount of silver which may flow into the Treasury, which amount is likewise to have no limitation except the will of the owners of the bullion or the supply of the metal.

The fourth and the most extraordinary proposition makes the silver dollars not of legal weight a legal tender for all debts according to their weight.  This great mass of silver issued at the will of persons outside of the Government is to be turned into the currency;  and then no matter how abraded, worn, or mutilated, how clipped by punching or otherwise, how difficult even of identification it may be, every man must receive it in payment of his debts at a valuation in proportion to its weight.

It may be worn so that you cannot tell whether it is legal tender coin or not;  but if, it being tendered, an expert can afterward show upon the stand at a trial and by an analysis of the metal that it is a true legal-tender coin, the man who refuses it does so at his peril.  Only half of it may be left;  only quarter of it may be left;  it may be in any condition you please, yet you are obliged to take it at its full value according to weight as a legal tender for debts.

I think I have made a fair statement of the four propositions contained in this bill, and I say that it is one of the most vicious bills ever introduced into the Congress of the United States --a bill which is not aimed at capitalists alone but aimed also at the laboring classes.  In this country there can be no distinction between the interests of the capitalist and the interests of the laboring-man.  They are interwoven and twisted together like net-work or basket-work.  They are the warp and woof of civil society.  Pass a law which cripples the manufacturers, and the loom stops, and, as in some of our cities, thousands of men and women and little children cry for bread.  Endanger the interests of the laboring classes, and the loom likewise stops, and disaster is brought upon the capitalist.

Now consider for a moment the provisions of this extraordinary bill, which I say has not been analyzed by its supporters.  The gentleman who represents on this floor and is said to be the leader of the greenback persuasion [Mr. Weaver] said yesterday that he would endeavor to discuss the merits of this bill.  He gave us an argument about inflation and told us how poor people suffer, and said in substance they would not endure it any longer.  He would have us believe that the laboring classes were on the verge of revolution.  He gave us a history of the country for many years past.  The gentleman who has defended this bill to-day [.Mr. Kelley] told us about France and about the ancient Romans.  He gave us a history of the condition of the country.  But none of the advocates of this bill have analyzed it or endeavored to show that it meets the wants of the community or would relieve the sufferings of business men.  Now I ask the House for a moment to analyze patiently this bill to see what it is --to see the wickedness and viciousness and bad policy embodied in this measure, the ruin which it threatens to the business of the country, or that at least which is left to us.

In the first place this is a scheme for the inflation of the currency, and the wildest scheme of the most unlimited inflation ever before attempted.  In the days of the war, when greenbacks went down to their great discount, and gold upward to its premium, there was a limitation.  There was never an issue of greenbacks at the will of the people.  The greenbacks were only issued as the Government needed them.  As the war went on and great purchases had to be made, as the vast demands of the war had to be met, greenbacks were issued.  But there was never a scheme of inflation like this --never an issue of greenbacks, except to meet the needs of the Government and at the will of Congress.  The supply of coin under this bill has nothing to do with the needs of the Government, has nothing to do with the needs of the banks, has nothing to do with the needs of the laborer, has no thing to do with the needs of business in its various operations.  All questions of expansion or contraction, all questions of a tight or loose money market, all questions of the state of exchanges or the balance of trade, in a word, all questions of the need of money are entirely eliminated and have nothing to do with this question of the issue of silver.  The Government has nothing to say about it.

This question is, as it were, wholly lifted out of the control of the Government.  The Government says, in effect, to the holders of bullion, "We will have nothing to say about the question;  we withdraw our control;  we give it all into the hands of you, a few private men who own mines in Nevada or who are speculators in silver;  we do not even retain a power of supervision or veto over you;  we absolutely give up the control which we had during the war to decide how much money the Government would issue.  You are a little syndicate --ten, twenty, fifty, a thousand men.  All congressional power, all the power of the Secretary of the Treasury, to decide how much money there shall be in this country, all power of breaking down or affecting business by inflation to the utmost extent we surrender, we relegate to you.  Do you represent the people ?  No.  Are you members of Congress ?  No.  Are you watching over the interests of the people ?  No.  You are simply operators in bullion, and in your sole individual hands we place that power heretofore reserved by Congress or the Government of saying what the extent of the currency shall be."  Congress cannot take back this power during the recess;  the Government cannot interfere;  the Secretary of the Treasury must be dumb.  No matter how the experiment fails, these few men are the leaders and the rulers of the country so far as the amount of the currency can affect business prosperity.

Did you ever hear of a more monstrous proposition ?  Would we dare to give ourselves that power ?  Would we dare to vote here to-day that members of Congress, at any time after adjournment, may get together and vote that the currency shall be inflated to the extent of $1,000,000, $5,000,000, $50,000,000, or $70,000,000 ?  I say that at this time, with the silver reservoirs in this country and in Europe ready to flood us with a resistless stream of silver, this is a monstrous power, at which every business man may shudder --a power which may be so tremendous in its effects that business men will not dare to embark in manufacturing enterprises or in importations of goods or in any business when the price of money may go up and down, not, as in the times of the war, at the will of the Government, not at the will of the Secretary of the Treasury by his issue of greenbacks, not at the will of Congress, but at the will of speculators in bullion, who want to carry prices up or down, or who want to sell their silver bullion to the Government at eighty-five cents on the dollar, receiving therefor one hundred cents on the dollar, with which to pay poor men through the country debts which they owe.

Now, is there any danger in this ?  There is no danger as to gold.  Gold will keep its value.  Gold is a good tender through the world.  Go through the countries of Europe, among the wild Indians of the West, among the savages of the whole world, and you will always find that your gold dollar is a legal tender, accepted for anything.  But the demand for silver will not absorb the silver so as to keep it up to its par, as contemplated by this bill, of one hundred cents on the dollar.

From 1866 to 1875, a period of ten years, the production of gold was £237,000,000 sterling and a fraction, while the production of silver was about £118,000,000 sterling, making a yearly average of about £24,000,000 sterling in gold and £12,000,000 sterling in silver.

From 1853 to 1875, a period of twenty-three years, the production of gold amounted to about £560,000,000 sterling, and of silver about £281,000,000 sterling.  In 1877 the production of silver in this country alone was about seventy millions.  Imagine the holders of the Nevada mines and other mines in this country having the power to inflate the currency yearly at the rate of $70,000,000, more or less, and then that power reenforced by the inexhaustible reservoirs of Europe, with their hoards of demonetized silver, and then consider what inflation might possibly result, and consequent disturbance of the currency.  Would any man be such a natural fool as not to take advantage of the speculation if he could ?  Would you or I, if we held silver at eighty-five cents on the dollar, not take that silver in a cart and go with it as quickly as we could to the Treasury, and march off, in place of our silver, with silver dollars or silver certificates, to be paid to our creditors at one hundred cents on the dollar ?  Are our people crazy ?  Do the brokers of Europe know what they are about ?  Do you believe that the Rothschilds and other great monetary firms in Europe will not send their silver here and heap it into our vaults and inflate our currency ?

Why is there a discrimination against the United States ?  You are not giving the United States Government a fair chance when you pass a law providing that private individuals shall speculate all they want and make all they can out of silver;  that foreigners may do it;  that the world may do it at a profit of 15 per cent.;  and all may do this except the Government of the United States.  The Government of the United States is shut off from this speculation.  It is not to buy this silver at eighty-five, ninety, or ninety-five cents on the dollar.  The bullion speculators, the money speculators, the foreigners of the whole world may go into this speculation, put the United States is shut out and has no right to do it.  It is wholly shut out from taking this bullion and making any money out of it, if money is to be made.

Now, Mr. Speaker, I have said and have I not rightly said and has that argument been met by the advocates of the bill, that this is a scheme of boundless inflation of which no man can prophesy the end ?  He can prophesy, to be sure, but will his prophecy come true ?

I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
Why, so can I, or so can any man;
But will they come when you do call them ?

You may prophesy, but the prophesying may not be carried out.  We may exercise our New England practice of guessing how much the currency will be inflated, but there is no rule to go by.  It would be like an endeavor to tell how much water would run down the Mississippi River.  The question is how much the fountains will hold;  how much rain will descend from the heavens and fill those fountains.

If we had only our own country to consider we could judge with safety to a limited extent, but how can you tell how much silver would come from Europe ?  Who can tell, with the discovery of new mines and new appliances, how much silver will be produced in our country next year or the year after ?  Will the gentleman who has charge of the bill put upon record his prophecy whether the currency will be inflated to the extent of ten, fifty, seventy, or one hundred millions ?  No man can tell, and it is put beyond the reach of the Government;  beyond its control, and absolutely into the hands of private individuals.

Suppose this Congress should pass a bill like this:  that a body of men, brokers and bankers of Wall street, might by a vote properly entered decide at any time how much greenback currency should be issued, and thereupon the Secretary of the Treasury should issue the legal-tender greenbacks that such body of men require.  Is there a man who would vote for that ?  Yet that is the very bill that is here to-day.  This Congress, if it passes this bill, will vote that a body of men may decide at any time how many legal-tender greenbacks shall be issued by the Secretary of the Treasury, providing that sufficient silver is deposited as collateral.  The Secretary cannot say "yes" or "no," but must simply issue those greenbacks.

I agree with the gentleman of the greenback persuasion who spoke yesterday that it makes no difference whether you call them greenbacks or silver certificates.  It is just as well to say instead of silver certificates that the Government can issue an amount of greenbacks equivalent to the amount of silver put on deposit;  hence this is not in one sense a silver bill.  No man believes that the people are going to carry silver in their pockets to a great extent.  This is simply a greenback inflation currency bill.  It is a bill providing that currency in the shape of paper shall be issued by the Government to an amount that outsiders (men out of the Government) think to be best, provided they can put a corresponding amount of silver bullion in the Treasury.  Hence it is a bill to secure not only an unlimited issue of silver, but an unlimited issue of paper money, the amount of which no man can conceive, or prophesy, or guess, and this at the instigation of men outside of Congress, outside of the business interests of the country, and who care for nothing but their own pockets and their own business speculations.

Now, I say if we are going to have an issue of silver let us meet the question honestly in behalf of the people.  Let the Government say how much shall be issued from time to time;  let the advice of the Secretary of the Treasury be asked.  If that will not do, why not put the power in the hands of one man ?  There is a man in Nevada who studies the silver market, the greatest owner of silver stock in the world, a shrewd, keen, clear-headed business man, who understands the laws of trade and of finance.  We might trust his opinion on this subject.  Why not put this law in a form which will leave that gentleman to decide how much silver shall be coined and how much the currency shall be inflated at any time ?  Why not trust him as well as to trust a dozen or fifty others ?  Why not trust him as well as to trust a foreign broker ?  Why not trust him as well as to trust the Rothschilds ?

I remember reading a little while ago an account that the Rothschilds hunted up the statutes and found an old law by which the French government were bound to coin silver bullion into silver francs.  They reckoned the price, bought the bullion, and sent it to the mint.  The authorities there did not know of the law, and upon hunting up the statute they found that they would be obliged to coin that silver.  In order to discourage the Rothschilds they said that because of the great amount of business they would not be able to furnish them the coin for one year.  The Rothschilds figured on it and found that they could afford to lose the interest for one year, and they sent word to the mint to go on and coin it as soon as they could.  After awhile it was discovered that this silver bullion had been stolen from the mint.  Under the French law the government was not bound to guarantee the safe-keeping of the bullion, and hence the case got into the courts and became public.

Now, we propose to advertise to the Rothschilds that they need not go to the French mint, but if they will be kind enough to send their silver over here, we will coin it for them and give them 15 per cent. profit.  At the same time we advertise to all the money kings of Europe that we propose to give them the power to say how much our currency shall be inflated at any time.  If they want our bonds to go up or to go down, if they want our goods to decrease or increase in price, we hereby notify them in the most public manner that we will place in their foreign hands the right, without any appeal to our Government or our people, to say how much our currency shall be inflated;  whether we shall have a great deal more of currency or a little;  whether we shall be kept short of currency or whether we shall be flush, to use the broker's term.  The whole monetary power in that respect is to be transferred to foreigners, to brokers and speculators, to any persons who may be interested in that question and can secure the bullion.

I say that this is a bill which violates all the laws of common sense.  I submit to you, gentlemen, whether these statements have been answered by any facts;  whether it has been shown that this is not unlimited inflation;  whether they have put any checks around this bill to guard it in case the experiment shall prove to be a failure.  In case the silver of the world is poured into our Treasury, is there anything by which the President, the Secretary of the Treasury, or even Congress can protect the people in case of disastrous results ?

The Treasury mills will still grind on, no matter how much silver may be depreciated.  The carts will drive up to the Treasury and empty out their bullion, and the mills will turn around and make it into silver dollars.  The bullion will go in at one end worth eighty-five cents on the dollar, and come out at the other end worth for tender purposes one hundred cents on the dollar, and will be used to pay our debts.

A flexible currency, one that is adjustable to the wants of the people, is what is needed.  The national banks issue money sparsely or plentifully, according to what is needed.  What this country wants is a flexible currency in some way adjusted to the wants of the people.  That was what was meant to be attained by former laws of Congress, by the rules of the Treasury, and the mode of proceeding adopted by the national banks.

Now, what do you substitute for the flexible currency adapted to the wants of the people ?  You substitute an arbitrary rule with which the people and their wants have nothing to do.  They are eliminated from the case;  they are not considered for a moment.  The only question asked is whether there are any holders of bullion who desire to have it turned into legal-tender silver dollars.

Hold up this bill and examine it in any light you please;  look at it upon all sides, upon the side of the capitalists, of the merchants, of the manufacturers, of the bankers, of the brokers, (except the brokers in silver,) of the laboring-man whose wants are supplied by his muscle and to whom the question of the value of money is a vital question;  turn it around and examine it from all points of view, and you will find that it is a monstrous law, a law the most independent of the people, of Congress, of the Government that was ever attempted to be put on our statute-book.  It is a law which will be a curse to the business man because there is no element of certainty in it, and, worse still, because there is no element of Government protection in it.

The Government cannot protect us under this law.  The power will be put into the hands of a few individuals.  Silver may pour in in a steady stream, or it may come in "spurts" as it may affect this or that business speculation.  It may change according to the temporary wants of speculators, according as to whether they want to bull or bear the market, to buy or sell stocks.  Any of these reasons may affect this expansion, and no man can foresee what will be safe for him to do in business enterprises.

The law of supply and demand is wholly violated.  This law applies to money as well as to all other things.  One gentleman told us the other day, as an indication of the need of a silver bill, that potatoes at a certain place were at a very high figure, and the reason, as he inferred, was that we had not a law such as this silver bill.  I could have told the gentleman that the law of supply and demand has a great deal to do with that question.  The potato-bugs sit on the fence in the West and deliver their opinion as to what the price of potatoes shall be.  The question of the supply of silver has nothing to do with the price of potatoes, except as it inflates the currency.

Why, Mr. Speaker, imagine the farmers of Illinois sitting down when the potato harvest comes and saying, "Well, now there is so much silver in the country, we must sell our potatoes at such a price per bushel."  Imagine them holding a convention and fixing the price of their potatoes according to the price of silver.  The law of supply and demand applies to everything ---wheat, silver, gold, horses, cattle, everything.  If gold were as plentiful as the paving-stones of the street it would be just as cheap as those paving-stones.

The law of supply and demand as to silver is entirely violated by this bill, because the question is not whether silver is needed, whether the people are suffering for it, but simply whether speculators who have it in hand, who want to sell it, who want to make money, shall have the right to turn their bullion at eighty-five cents on the dollar, more or less, into money worth one hundred cents on the dollar for debt-paying purposes ?

[Here the hammer fell.]

Mr. Conger.  I ask that the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Bowman] may be allowed to finish his remarks.

The Speaker pro tempore, (Mr. Harris, of Virginia.)  If there be no objection the gentleman will be permitted to proceed.  The Chair hears no objection.

Mr. Bowman.  I will endeavor to be very brief.  Now, Mr. Speaker, money has been heretofore supplied according to the demands, according to the needs of the Government.  In the war a vast volume of currency was needed to carry on the great operations of the Government and the great manufacturing and mercantile enterprises occasioned thereby.  Now a less volume is needed.  Throw into the market, where it must pass as legal tender, more silver or paper money than the needs of trade require, and it must be deteriorated.  The history of the war and of subsequent years proves this.  When more greenbacks than were needed were thrown into the market the value of greenbacks went down.  Throw into the market more silver than is needed and can properly be absorbed, and you have a depreciated currency --a currency which drives all good currency out of the market.

No man can doubt that under such a law as this silver money will be a deteriorated and debased currency.  The value of money varies with the demand for it, as well as from other causes, in other words with its supply.  Gold is the great standard of value throughout the world.  In the first place, you start with a silver dollar to-day that is not worth by fifteen cents so much as gold.  Intrinsically, it is an inferior and debased coin.  Now, I am not going to discuss the question whether the legal-tender quality will carry that silver to par, because there is not a man in this Hall, be he a greenbacker or otherwise, who believes that silver will come to par with gold.  Some of the gentlemen who advocate this bill have had the frankness to say that they do not care if gold is driven out of the country.  They are willing to have this country made the great "dump" of the refuse silver of the world.  The discount on silver is substantially in proportion to the demand among the people for it.  Supply more silver than the people want and it goes down;  supply less than the people want and it goes up.

But gentlemen tell us that silver has intrinsic value to keep it up;  that in this it differs from paper.  It has not such intrinsic value.  The so-called standard silver dollars are worth only eighty-five cents;  and I say it is dishonest, it is a wrong and a fraud, it is a crime, to compel a man to take eighty-five cents for a debt of one hundred cents.  It is a crime for Congress to thrust its hand between creditor and debtor and say to the debtor that he may with eighty-five cents make payment of a debt of one hundred cents.

The result of this measure must be that silver will drive all the gold coin out of the country, or at least out of circulation.  One would say this was a self-evident proposition;  but the question has been so much debated and the arguments of the supporters of the bill have been such that it seems necessary to prove even that proposition.  When you buy an apple of an apple-woman on the street she gives you the old sixpence that no one else will take.  You have in your pocket a greasy, tattered, deteriorated greenback and you shove it off at the first opportunity.  You have some old silver which you are afraid you may not be able to deposit in the bank and you pay with this debased currency the first debt you can.  Your gold will be hoarded in an old stocking, or put in some other place of safety.  Inevitably, the bad, the debased, the clipped, the dishonest money drives out the good money.  The poorer money always drives out the better.  And the result will be that we shall have here a silver currency without limit and uncontrolled by the Government in regard to its amount as the sole currency of the country.

I shall not detain the House, Mr. Speaker, by speaking of the second proposition in regard to making all this money a legal tender.  The silver currency will be a legal tender, no matter how inflated to the extreme, emptied from all the countries in the world, from mints running to their fullest capacity, and with the great steam-engines of Nevada grinding up their thousands of tons of ores.  Let silver go down and down and down;  no matter how disastrous this experiment, we must take it for our debts, for our lands, for our houses, for our cattle, and for our goods.  No matter how disastrous the experiment is, no matter how great the deterioration is, we must take it for all our debts.  The poor man must take it for his labor, the rich man must take it for his goods, the importer must take it for goods for which he paid gold.  I say that this is not a question to be argued by our greenback friends as the guardians of the poor of this country as they assume to be, but by all of us.  They have no pre-emption rights to style themselves the only friends of the laboring classes.  We who desire an honest currency, who desire that everyman should be paid for his labor or his goods in honest money for an honest day's work or an honest quantity of goods, have just as much right to speak for the laborers of this country and the poor men of this country as our greenback friends who assume the monopoly of the protection of the poor and laboring classes, and by their self-styled protection would drive those laboring classes into a worse misery than they have yet felt, into a repetition of the suffering and the misery of the last five years.

We are just coming out of this long and weary path which has been so hard to follow.  Our feet are bruised, and wounded by the thorns.  Do we want to go over it again ?  Do we want to drive the people into this long road of suffering from which we are emerging ?  I tell our greenback friends, and I honestly believe it, that they are trying to lead on the people of this country not only into a repetition of the sufferings of the last five years, but into worse agony and worse suffering.  You are destroying the fruits of this time of trouble.  Of late we have been paying the penalty for the overissue of greenbacks.  We are emerging into prosperity, and you would repeat the disastrous experiment which we have gone through.

Now, Mr. Speaker, I only want to say a word about this issue of silver certificates.  If you are determined to increase the paper money, why not do it honestly, with a check upon it ?  Why not say that the Government, in its discretion or by a law of Congress, to a certain amount fixed by Congress, may buy silver bullion and put it in its vaults, and issue greenbacks to the amount of the silver in the vaults ?  There you have a fairer proposition.  The Government and Congress can decide as to the need of inflation.  Why not do that ?  Why not say that bullion may be deposited by the Government in the vaults and greenbacks issued in place thereof ?  And why do you take that power out of the hands of the Government and say that private individuals may decide that question;  that private individuals may deposit the bullion and private individuals may make the money on the speculation, and according to the will of those speculators currency may be inflated or be contracted ?

I believe that the last section of the bill is vicious and inexcusable.  I know it follows the general law of legal tender.  But you are looking now toward a great and unlimited inflation of silver dollars if your theories are correct;  that is, silver dollars will remain everywhere throughout the country and be in universal use if this bill passes, all the gold dollars being driven out.  And you provide that no matter how mutilated that money is, no matter how it is clipped, no matter how holes are punched through it, no matter how you are unable to identify it, if an expert can swear and prove that it is really a United State silver dollar you have got to take it at its weight as legal tender in payment of your debt.  A man comes to you to pay you for your house or your horse and offers you a collection of old and battered silver coins;  some of them with holes in them, some flattened out, others mutilated and all abraded, and he says:  "I want you to take that coin."  You reply:  "I don't want to take any such money.  That does not look like a good dollar;  it is mutilated, it is abraded.  I am not sure even that it is genuine, because I cannot try the chemical tests upon it."  His reply is:  "You must take it if I can prove that, mutilated as it is, it is good silver;  if I can prove it is a United States silver dollar you must accept it."  Men will be obliged to go about with scales on their backs to weigh the silver presented to them in payment of debts if this silver is to be the universal and permanent medium of exchange, as it is claimed it is to be.

If this money is going to be poured upon us like the dews of heaven, (no, I will not say that, because it comes from another region,) the last section is a vicious section.  I submit to this House for all these reasons whether this law is a law which ought to be considered for a moment by a reasonable man.  I ask gentlemen upon the other side of the House honestly whether they have answered these questions;  whether, in their dissertations on the history of the country, upon the depression of business for the last five years, in their sermons about Rome and France and Germany, they have answered any of these questions about this bill or discussed it in a practical manner ?  Why do you not tell us how much silver will probably be sent into the country and what the expansion may be ?  Why do you not inform us as to the practical results of the bill ?

Mr. Warner.  If the gentleman will yield to me I will answer him now.

Mr. Bowman.  I will yield in a moment.  I have only a word or two to say.  I say why do you not discuss this bill, take it up section by section, as I have endeavored to do, and tell us what the practical result will be ?  Why not discuss this free-coinage clause, this power given to private individuals of regulating the contraction or expansion of the currency ?  Why not discuss the question about legal-tenders and the making of a limitless amount of silver legal tender for our debts, yours and mine, and debts which affect all other laboring-men ?

Mr. Warner.  Whenever the gentleman will yield to me I will explain that point.

Mr. Bowman.  Why not tell us about the issue of silver certificates, whether the result of this bill will be an issue of silver or an issue of paper money under the name of silver certificates, which might just as well be called greenbacks, and thus we shall have a greenback-inflation currency ?  Why not tell us whether it is not really an expansion of the paper money of the country and not of coin really and practically ?  Why not tell us about the last section, whether, if this money is to be issued in great quantities, we shall be obliged to take it for all our debts in a mutilated state, and as to the convenience or evils of that proceeding ?

When we have before us a bill so important as this, a bill vital in one way or another to the interests of this country, why cannot we have the bill itself discussed, and not listen all the time to these essays upon labor and the needs of the laboring-men and the demands of business, unless the connection between the bill and these questions is made good.

Now, sir, I will stop with only one question.  The gentlemen of the greenback persuasion have told us that the silver bill is a panacea for all our woes;  that if it passes business will revive, the laboring-men will be happy;  that it is the great remedy for all our troubles.  Will they not show us how ?  Why do they not show us that if one hundred million more dollars, issued by Government according to the greenbackers' idea, are printed the laboring-man is going to get some of them ?  Why do they not show us how they are going to benefit the laboring-men ?

Mr. Warner.  By preventing a further fall in prices.

Mr. Bowman.  How does this bill accomplish this ?  They did not tell us;  they did not dare to tell us in the greenback campaign last autumn in Massachusetts how this was to be effected.  We asked the question how, if you issue millions of paper dollars and millions of silver dollars, they are going to get out among the people and enable them to get rich, and our opponents never answered that question on the platform, but they have answered it in Congress.  Within three or four days past our greenback friends have said in substance that an issue of silver dollars will not help the people;  that inflation will not help the people or give them more money unless the money reaches the people;  but they do not tell us on the floor how this money is going to reach the people or how to solve the problem.  Will the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. De LaMatyr] tell us how he would solve it ?  Why, the answer is that they will issue these millions of dollars of greenbacks and spend these millions of dollars for building up all the old, worn-out canals, and burst-up railroads in the West.

Mr. De LaMatyr.  The gentleman really ought not to be so unfair as to repeat that.

Mr. Bowman.  Does the gentleman withdraw that bill ?

Mr. De La Matyr.  I presented it merely for another man, and I would do the same thing again.

Mr. Bowman.  Does the gentleman withdraw the bill ?

Mr. De La Matyr.  I presented the bill, but I do not indorse it.

Mr. Bowman.  Now I would ask, does the gentleman withdraw the other bills introduced by his greenback colleagues ?

Mr. De La Matyr.  That bill is the only one I do not indorse.

Mr. Bowman.  I would ask in what earthly way or by what miracle you can get the money into the hands of the people except by spending it ?

Mr. De La Matyr.  When I get the floor, as I hope to do, I will answer that question.

Mr. White.  Let the county commissioners pay it out.

Mr. Bowman.  That question has never been answered on this floor, it has never been answered on the stump, how any silver, paper, or other currency of the Government could get out to the people unless you spend it.

Mr. Jones.  We could spend it to pay the current expenses of the Government.

Mr. Bowman.  To pay the current expenses of the Government, the gentleman says.  We pay those now;  we pay the expenses of the laboring-man, merchant, and the mill-owner, and of all men who contribute to the needs of the Government.  Last year and the year before, and the year before that, every year since 1875 and the hard times, we have paid the current expenses with the money which we have, and yet it does not accomplish your purpose.  That is not an answer, but it is the only answer which has been given.

Mr. White.  We have enough money for that now.

Mr. Bowman.  We have enough currency now to pay all our expenses.  Is there an employé in any of the Departments or in all the United States that is suffering because there is not money enough to pay him ?  Does not the money we now have go among the people, and has it not gone for five years ?

Mr. Jones.  Why not pay off our bonds with it ?

Mr. Bowman.  Because we do not believe in raising money by taxation or by increasing our revenues to pay off our bonds faster than is reasonable.  We are paying them now just as fast as we can decently and comfortably, and the debt is being reduced every year.

Let the people take notice of this matter, and let them say if they want to adopt this doctrine of the greenbackers.  The only way that any man on this floor or any man on any stump has shown how the people can be benefitted by the issue of greenbacks or silver by the Government is to adopt a great system of internal improvements, to dig out canals, harbors, and rivers, to build breakwaters, to revive old bankrupt railroads, to build other railroads across the continent;  to spend the money of the United States for internal improvements, and thus increase the debt.  I challenge the greenbackers on this floor to show a single way in which the people will be benefited by this inflation except by the United States spending the money and increasing its debt.  I have refrained from saying anything as to whether this bill should be supported if it provided for an honest silver dollar, equivalent in value to the gold dollar.  The bill must be treated and discussed as it stands.

In conclusion I have only to say that I know and believe that the country or the laboring people themselves will not be blinded by all this dust and fog and talk about the rights and sufferings of the laboring people which have been thrown around this question.  The question of the sufferings of the people has nothing to do with this bill.  It will stand or fall on its naked merits as a scheme of inflation, either of silver or of paper.  Under all this sophistry, under all this hair-splitting argument, under all this philosophizing which we have listened to for days here, is the simple naked question whether we wish to give to a body of uncontrolled and uncontrollable men outside of the Government, having no possible interest in it, caring nothing for the people, caring nothing for business, caring nothing for laborer or capitalist ---whether we shall place in their hands alone the power of saying how much silver shall be issued or how much the currency of the country shall be inflated.

Mr. Buckner obtained the floor.

Mr. Dunnell.  If the gentleman from Missouri will yield, I will move that the House now adjourn.

Mr. Buckner.  I will yield for that purpose.

Mr. Dunnell.  I move that the House now adjourn.