William Harrison, President
Levi Morton, Vice-President
William Windom, Secretary of the Treasury

Treasury Notes and Silver Bullion.

The President pro tempore.  Is there further morning business ?  If there be none, that order is closed, and the Chair lays before the Senate the unfinished business, being the bill (S. 2350) authorizing the issue of Treasury notes on deposits of silver bullion.

The Senate, as in Committee of the Whole, resumed the consideration of the bill.

Mr. Sherman.  Mr. President, if no Senator on the other side of the Chamber desires to address the Senate, I will avail myself of this opportunity, though I did not intend to speak upon this question until a later stage, when we had some bill supported by somebody to debate.  The bill that was reported from the Committee on Finance seems to me like an uneasy ghost, wandering without an owner or a father, without compass or without guide, with no one to call for a vote and no one to demand a solution of the difficult question with which it assumes to deal.  Still, as I am compelled to be absent from the Senate Chamber on other important business of the Senate, I will avail myself of this opportunity to say what I have to say rather than at some future-time, when it may interfere more with the public business.

I approach the discussion of this bill and the kindred bills and amendments pending in the two Houses with unaffected diffidence.  No problem is submitted to us of equal importance and difficulty.  Our action will affect the value of all the property of the people of the United States, and the wages of labor of every kind, and our trade and commerce with all the world.  In the consideration of such a question we should not be controlled by previous opinions or bound by local interests, but, with the lights of experience and full knowledge of all the complicated facts involved, give to the subject the best judgment which imperfect human nature allows.  With the wide diversity of opinion that prevails, each of us must make concessions in order to secure such a measure as will accomplish the objects sought for without impairing the public credit or the general interests of our people.  This is no time for visionary theories of political economy.  We must deal with facts as we find them and not as we wish them.  We must aim at results based upon practical experience, for what has been, probably will be.  The best prophet of the future is the past.

To know what measures ought to be adopted we should have a clear conception of what we wish to accomplish.  I believe a majority of the Senate desire, first, to provide an increase of money to meet the increasing wants of our rapidly growing country and population and to supply the reduction in our circulation caused by the retiring of national-bank notes;  second, to increase the market value of silver, not only in the United States, but in the world, in the belief that this is essential to the success of any measure proposed, and in the hope that our efforts will advance silver to its legal ratio with gold, and induce the great commercial nations to join with us in maintaining the legal parity of the two metals or in agreeing with us in a new ratio of their relative value;  and, third, to secure a genuine bimetallic standard, one that will not demonetize gold or cause it to be hoarded or exported, but that will establish both gold and silver as standards of value, not only in the United States, but among all the civilized nations of the world.

Believing that these are the chief objects aimed at by us all and that we differ only as to the best means to obtain them, I will discuss the pending propositions to test how far they tend, in my opinion, to promote or defeat these objects.

And, first, as to the amount of currency necessary to meet the wants of the people.  The paper money in actual circulation, which is the active money in nearly all domestic transactions in the United States, consisted of the following items on the 1st day of May, 1890:

Legal-tender United States notes ............................. $346,881,016
Certificates of deposit ........................................... 8,795,000
Gold certificates (less amount held in Treasury) .................... 134,642,839
Silver certificates (less amount held in Treasury) ................. 292,923,348
Old demand notes ........................ 56,442
Fractional currency ...................... 6,912,549
National-bank notes ....................... 189,442,472
Total ................ 979,453,667

The aggregate of $979,000,000 is subject to a reduction of notes lost or destroyed by the casualties of time, of which it is hard to make an estimate.  The fractional currency and demand notes may be considered as out of circulation, though a part of them will be presented for redemption.  The gold and silver certificates, being of recent origin, may be counted as outstanding.  The United States notes have been in circulation for twenty-seven years.  The estimated loss, according to the present Treasurer of the United States, is about 2 per cent.  The loss of bank-notes inures to the benefit of the United States and is estimated to equal or exceed that of United States notes.  If these estimates can be relied on, the volume of currency is diminished by lost notes about $12,000,000 leaving of paper money outstanding $967,000,000.

But it must be remembered that, of the $189,000,000 of national-bank notes outstanding, $60,521,556 is in process of redemption and cancellation, and that the same amount of lawful money is held in the Treasury to redeem these notes.  It is manifest that both sums should not be counted as in circulation, thus reducing the aggregate of paper circulation to $907,000,000.  To this must be added the gold and silver now in circulation.

As to silver coin, it can be stated with substantial accuracy as follows:

Standard silver dollars in circulation October 1, 1889 ......................... $57,554,100
Subsidiary silver coin in circulation October 1, 1889 ............................ 52,931,352
110,485,452

As to gold coin in circulation, the estimate of the Secretary of the Treasury at the same date, October 1, 1889, was $375,947,715 and his estimate of total circulation at that date was $1,405,018,000.

While some of these estimated items, especially that of gold in circulation, may be subject to many grains of allowance, it is reasonably certain that the current money in use in the United States is now about $1,400,000,000.  In this sum I do not include the gold and silver coin in the Treasury represented by certificates in circulation.  And it must be remembered that much of this sum of $1,400,000,000 is held in the Treasury and in banks as reserves required by law.  Is this volume of current money sufficient for the foreign and domestic exchanges of the people of the United States ?  I concede that, by reason of the great extent of our country, its vast diversified productions, its increasing population, and the push and energy of our people, they need a larger circulating medium than an equal number in an older and more densely populated country.  But nowhere else are the substitutes for money better understood and in more general use.

From a table for the first time compiled in the year 1881 from actual returns from all the national banks, it was found that the receipts of those banks upon a single day were $295,000,000, while the receipts of the banks in New York and Chicago were more than one-half of that amount.  These data also show that the proportion of gold coin received was less than 1½ per cent.;  of silver, less than one-fourth of 1 per cent.;  of paper money less than 5 per cent., and of checks and drafts about 95 per cent., while the proportion of the receipts of the banks in New York City was more than 98 per cent. in checks and drafts and less than 2 per cent. in coin and paper.  If the daily receipts or payments of the banks of the country were to be made exclusively of gold and silver coin, the total coinage of the year, amounting to $60,000,000, which kept employed in its manufacture the whole force of the Mint of the country (consisting of a small regiment of men) during the entire year, would be sufficient only to supply the banks of the country in making payments for one-third of a bank day, or one hour and forty minutes, so that the money of the country has very little proportion to the business of the country.

The total amount of coin manufactured at the mints in a year, if used exclusively in making payments, would be exhausted by the national banks of New York and Chicago in less than a single day.  The whole of the coin and currency of the country now in circulation, $1,400,000,000, would supply the national banks of the country, if their payments were made exclusively in coin and currency, for five days only.

The table referred to is as follows:

Table from report of the Comptroller of Currency for 1881, showing total receipts and proportions of gold coin, after coin, paper money, and checks and drafts.

[In this table are shown, both for June 30 and for September 17, the proportions of gold coin, silver coin, paper money, and checks and drafts, including clearing-house certificates, to the total receipts in New York City, in the other reserve cities, and in banks elsewhere, separately, and also the same proportions for the United States.]

This table shows the proportions of money of different kinds, checks, drafts, etc., that are paid in the ordinary business of the country, showing that the actual circulation plays a very insignificant part in the business of this country.  Besides, the use of banks and banking institutions of every grade and degree is more common in the United States than anywhere else.  In every town of any importance in the United States there are banks of issue or banks of exchange or banking offices or savings-banks or institutions of a similar character for the care and deposit of money in the transaction of monetary business, greater in number and in aggregate than all the institutions of the kind in Europe.  Thus there has grown into the customs of the country the use of credit money in the form of drafts, checks, and certificates to a far greater extent than anywhere else, leaving money in circulation to transact only the smaller business of the country.

The best way to test the sufficiency of this sum of $1,400,000,000 to conduct the business of our country is to compare the volume of the currency to-day with that of former periods.  In making this comparison I do not take a period before the war, when we had practically no national currency but gold and silver coin, and that in comparatively very small amounts.  This was at a time when a great party was dominant which denied the power of the United States to issue any form of paper money, and under the pretense of States' rights crippled the Government of many of the essential rights of a nation and left to the several States the imperial right to issue paper money through private corporations.  It is a marvel that the country grew into such proportions with a currency so vicious, insecure, insufficient, and at times worthless as State-bank paper money.  It did grow in spite of it, but no student of American history would propose a recurrence to such a policy.  Our currency was then the worst existing in any commercial nation, but the necessities of the war and more liberal opinions as to the powers and functions of the National Government led to restrictions upon State paper money and the adoption of national paper money, which is now conceded by the most advanced nations as the best ever devised by man.

Let us take a period when this national policy was well established.  On the 1st of March, 1878, before resumption, and at the date of the passage of the silver act, the aggregate currency in circulation was $805,793,807, including $80,000,000 of gold, or $600,000,000 less than now, being $16.50 per capita, while now it is $22 per capita.

On the 1st of October. 1880, after resumption and at a time of great prosperity, the total amount of paper money in circulation, exclusive of that held in the Treasury, was $690,430,147, as follows:

United States notes ............. $329,417,403
National-bank notes .............. 340,329,453
Silver certificates ............... 12,203,191
Gold certificates .................. 7,480,100
690,430,147

This included only $12,200,000 of silver certificates and $7,480,000 gold certificates.  Now we have $292,000,000 of silver certificates and $134,000,000 gold certificates, but the national-bank circulation was then $344,505,427 and is now $189,000,000.

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

Mr. Teller.  Will the Senator tell us how much it actually increased last year ?

Mr. Sherman.  The statement----

Mr. Teller.  I challenge the statement that the Senator makes and I want him now to tell us.

Mr. Sherman.  I know the Senator challenges everything, but I take this from the Treasury report, the highest authority we can quote in this country.  Here is the table---

Mr. Teller.  If the Senator will allow me, I will call his attention to the fact that the Secretary's report shows that the circulation increased last season less than $8,000,000, and that certainly does not bear out his statement that it has increased as fast as the population.

Mr. Sherman.  I do not think this way of interrupting an argument a very good one, but I think the Senator is not correct.  I have the statement here before me, and I will read it to him, although I did not intend to weary the Senate with going over all these figures.  The increase each year, in the different kinds of money, is exhibited in the following table:

The amount and kinds of money in actual circulation on certain dates from 1878 to 1889.

Mr. President, this is the best information we can have, and if we can not rely upon the official reports of the officers of the Government, what can we rely upon ?  What newspaper scrap should be brought here to face down figures like these ?

Mr. Teller.  If the Senator will allow me, I will---

The President pro tempore.  Does the Senator from Ohio yield ?

Mr. Sherman.  I do not like to yield and I do not like to refuse.

Mr. Teller.  I do not want that statement to go out uncontradicted.

Mr. Sherman.  Since the Senator takes it in that way, I will go on.

Mr. Teller.  Very well;  I will contradict it by the record when the Senator gets through.

Mr. Sherman.  That is a great deal better, and it is a much more orderly way of proceeding in the Senate.

It is a fact that there has been a constant increase of currency.  It is a fact which must be constantly borne in mind.  If any evils now exist, such as have been so often stated, such as falling prices, increased mortgages, contentions between capital and labor, decreasing value of silver, increased relative value of gold, they must be attributed to some other cause than our insufficient supply of circulation, for not only has the circulation increased in these twelve years 80 per cent., while our population has only increased 36 per cent., but it has all been maintained at the gold standard, which, it is plain, has been greatly advanced in purchasing power.  If the value of money is tested by its amount, by numerals, according to the favorite theory of the Senator from Nevada [Mr. Jones], then surely we ought to be on the high road of prosperity, for these numerals have increased in twelve years from $805,000,000 to $1,405,000,000 in October last and to $1,420,000,000 on the 1st of this month.  This single fact disposes of the claim that insufficient currency is the cause of the woes, real and imaginary, that have been depicted, and compels us to look to other causes for the evils complained of.

I admit that prices for agricultural productions have been abnormally low and that the farmers of the United States have suffered greatly from this cause.  But this depression of prices is easily accounted for by the greatly increased amount of agricultural production, the wonderful development of agricultural implements, the opening of vast regions of new and fertile fields in the West, the reduced cost of transportation, the doubling of the miles of railroads, and the quadrupling capacity of railroads and steam-boats for transportation, and the new-fangled forms of trusts and combinations which monopolize nearly all the productions of the farms and workshops of our country, reducing the price to the producer and in some cases increasing the cost to the consumer.  All these causes co-operate to reduce prices of farm products.  No one of them can be traced to an insufficient currency, now larger in amount in proportion to population than ever before in our history.

But to these causes of a domestic character must be added others, over which we have no control.  The same wonderful development of industry has been going on in other parts of the globe.  In Russia, especially in Southern Russia, vast regions have been opened to the commerce of the world.  Railroads have been built, mines have been opened, exhaustless supplies of petroleum have been found, and all these are competitors with us in supplying the wants of Europe for food, metals, heat, and light.  India, with its teeming millions of poorly paid laborers, is competing with our farmers, and their products are transported to market over thousands of miles of railroads constructed by English capital or by swift steamers through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, reaching directly the people of Europe whom we formerly supplied with food.  No wonder, then, that our agriculture is depressed by low prices, caused by competition by new rivals and agencies.  Any one who can overlook these causes and attribute low prices to a want of domestic currency, that has increased and is increasing continually, must be blind to the great forces that in recent times throughout the world are tending by improved methods and modern inventions to lessen the prices of all commodities.  A surplus of a very small percentage of an article that will perish within a year, as a matter of course, depreciates the value of the whole stock on hand.  It is very unlike the effect upon an article of permanent and enduring value like the metals.  The reasons why the products of labor have cheapened in price are thus forcibly stated by C.P. Williams in a recent number of Rhodes's Journal of Banking:

The advance in the wages of labor proves that gold has not appreciated.  And the wages of labor have advanced at the same time that the products of labor have cheapened in price.  Why, the past half century, and more particularly the past quarter century, has revolutionized commerce and production:  first, by inventions and machinery and steam power in aid of productiveness of human labor;  second, by steam-ships taking the place of sails on all the lines of ocean commerce, shortening the time of the voyage and cheapening the cost of transportation and commercial intercourse;  third, by the net-work of railways through all the more progressive countries, diminishing the cost of internal transportation and intercourse to one-fourth the former cost in both time and money;  fourth, in belting both the continents and the seas with the telegraph, by which we have at our breakfast-table the news of yesterday from the most distant corners of the Earth, formerly taking six months to reach us;  fifth, by our improved method of exchanges, lessening by three-fourths the actual quantity of money --gold and silver-- used by commerce, and thereby lessening its cost.

These improvements, the result of advanced civilization and of fertile invention, are recognized by all intelligent economists and statesmen as fully accounting for the cheapened price of commodities, while human labor advances in its reward, and gold as well as silver depreciates in value.  As Mulhall, the english statistician, says:  "It would be monstrous if prices remained the same in spite of cheapened transport, improved machinery, and all the effects of scientific progress."

The farmer will really see, in view of this recital, how his interests are affected.  If his products are somewhat reduced in value, so are all articles of his consumption cheapened in still greater ratio.

A rapid or unexpected fall or rise in prices of agricultural productions is not a new experience in our country or in other countries in the world.  Nothing is more uncertain in price than the perishable articles which form the common food of mankind.  In my own experience I have seen the price of wheat fall in Ohio as low as 50 cents and rise to $2 without any apparent appreciation or diminution of the currency.  Some fifty years ago a very popular and excellent man was a candidate for the Legislature in Ohio and his election was supposed to be assured, but an advertisement was found in a local paper of some twenty or thirty years before that time, in which he, as a miller, offered to pay 30 cents a bushel for wheat in cash.  This ofter was thought so illiberal that the candidate was easily beaten, although when the facts were known it was shown that he offered to pay the market price, 30 cents, in cash, while all other bidders would only give 30 cents in store pay.

These fluctuations depend upon the law of supply and demand, involving facts too numerous to state, but rarely depending on the volume of money in circulation.  An increase of currency can have no effect to advance prices unless we cheapen and degrade it by making it less valuable;  and if that is the intention now, the direct and honest way is to put fewer grains of gold or silver in our dollar.  This was the old way, by clipping the coin, adding base metal.

If we want a cheaper dollar we have the clear constitutional right to put in it 15 grains of gold instead of 23, or 300 grains of silver instead of 412½, but you have no power to say how many bushels of wheat the new dollar shall buy.  You can, if you choose, cheapen the dollar under your power to coin money and thus enable a debtor to pay his debts with fewer grains of silver or gold under the pretext that gold or silver has risen in value, but in this way you would destroy all forms of credit and make it impossible for nations or individuals to borrow money for a period of time.  It is a species of repudiation.

The best standard of value is one that measures for the longest period its equivalent in other products.  Its relative value may vary from time to time.  If it falls, the creditor loses;  if it increases, the debtor loses;  and these changes are the chances of all trade and commerce and all loaning and borrowing.  The duty of the Government is performed when it coins money and provides convenient credit representatives of coin.

The purchasing power of money for other commodities depends upon changing conditions over which the government has no control.  Even its power to issue paper money has been denied until recently, but this may be considered as settled by the recent decisions of the Supreme Court in the legal-tender cases.  All that Congress ought to do is to provide a sufficient amount of money, either of coin or its equivalent of paper money, to meet the current wants of business.  This it has done in the twelve years last passed at a ratio of increase far in excess of any in our previous history.

Surely, if an abundance of good money constantly increasing in volume, all equal to gold, is the elixir of life in our trade and commerce and should bring prosperity to our people and good prices and good markets for our farmers, now would be the good time come;  but experience has shown that the prices have fallen as our currency increased.  Nor can it be said that industries are idle or that the country has not reasonably prospered in general growth and production.

Still it is apparent that there is a general feeling in the country that Congress ought to provide for additional circulation, or, at least, supply a substitute for the national-bank notes being rapidly retired.  The sole cause of this retirement is the payment by the United States of its bonds held as security for the notes of national banks.  Congress has repeatedly refused to allow these banks to issue notes to the amount of the real value of the bonds deposited, or even to their face value, and has steadily shown its opposition to the system of national banks by refusing to pass any measure of relief, however just and meritorious, so that the friends of the national-bank system feel that its end is near at hand.

The 4½ per cent. bonds, amounting to $112,521,250, will mature next year, and the 4 per cent. bonds, amounting to $606,551,000, will mature in 1907 and be paid, leaving no basis for the national-bank system, and there is no disposition on the part of Congress to prescribe any other security for circulating bank notes.  We must then legislate in view of the fact that the $60,000,000 of national-bank notes now outstanding and secured by a deposit of lawful money must soon be paid off, that the circulating notes based upon 4½ per cent. bonds will probably be retired within a year, and that the balance of the circulating notes, amounting on April 30 to $128,920,910, will be retired prior to 1907. This fact alone compels us to provide for some substitute for these circulating notes.

Under the law of February, 1878, the purchase of $2,000,000 worth of silver bullion a month has by coinage produced annually an average of nearly $3,000,000 a month for a period of twelve years, but this amount, in view of the retirement of the bank notes, will not increase our currency in proportion to our increasing population.  If our present currency is estimated at $1,400,000,000 and our population is increasing at the ratio of 3 per cent. per annum, it would require $42,000,000 increased circulation each year to keep pace with the increase of population;  but as the increase of population is accompanied by a still greater ratio of increase of wealth and business, it was thought that an immediate increase of circulation might be obtained by larger purchases of silver bullion to an amount sufficient to make good the retirement of bank notes and keep pace with the growth of population.  Assuming that $54,000,000 a year of additional circulation is needed upon this basis, that amount is provided for in this bill by the issue of Treasury notes in exchange for bullion at the market price.  I see no objection to this proposition, but believe that Treasury notes based upon silver bullion purchased in this way will be as safe a foundation for paper money as can be conceived.

Experience shows that silver coin will not circulate to any considerable amount.  Only about one silver dollar to each inhabitant is maintained in circulation with all the efforts made by the Treasury Department, but silver certificates, the representatives of this coin, pass current without question and are maintained at par in gold by being received by the Government for all purposes and redeemed if called for.  I do not fear to give to these notes every sanction and value that the United States can confer.  I do not object to their being made a legal tender for all debts, public or private.  I believe that if they are to be issued, they ought to be issued as money, with all the sanction and authority that the Government can possibly confer.  While I believe the amount to be issued is greater than is necessary, yet in view of the retirement of bank notes I yielded my objections to the increase beyond $4,000,000.  As an expedient to provide increased circulation it is far preferable to free coinage of silver or any proposition that has been made to provide some other security than United States bonds for bank circulation.  I believe it will accomplish the first object proposed, a gradual and steady increase of the current money of the country.

But this measure can be greatly aided by a proper treatment of the national banks.  These banks have fully met all expectations.  They have furnished circulating notes without cost and without loss to the Government or people of the United Slates.

The total tax collected from the national banks up to July 1, 1889, amounted to $7,855,887.74 on capital, $60,940,067.16 on deposits, and $68,868,180.67 on circulation, making a total of $137,664,135.57, besides full taxes to the States and cities and towns where located.  ---[How much did it cost to the tax-payers ?]  No system of banking has ever been more successful.  It is distributed through all parts of the country, is free and open to all without limit.  Its strength is in United States bonds deposited as security for the notes, its weakness is in the rapid payment of these bonds and the difficulty of finding a proper substitute. But surely while these bonds are outstanding they ought to be accepted as security for their face value.  This alone would check the retirement of bank notes and probably increase their issue.  And yet it is those who demand "more money" that resist so plain a remedy. ---[Because more of this private money is more debt and more bondage.]

And there is still another measure of relief against a contraction of the currency.  Under the present law national banks, compelled by the payment of their bonds to retire their circulation, must deposit in the Treasury notes equal in amount to the bank notes to be retired.  The United States then assumes the payment of the bank notes when presented, but, as the law now stands, must retain the United States notes held in the Treasury for that purpose.  This is a direct and immediate contraction of the currency.  To avoid this I propose that these United States notes shall be covered into the Treasury, but be paid out on the public debt or for other purposes, and thus be restored to circulation.  The bank notes will continue in circulation until presented to the Treasury for redemption.  They will become in legal effect United States notes and will only be presented for payment when unfit for use.  The same process will apply to the remaining bank circulation when and as it is surrendered by the banks.

These two measures will be effective to stop the contraction of the currency.  This would delay and postpone the further retirement of bank currency until 1907, when the policy of basing Treasury notes upon gold and silver bullion will be proven to be either a success or a failure.  If Senators really desire to secure more money, good money, based upon gold and silver coin and bullion, they can secure it without the hazard of the dangerous experiment of the free coinage of silver and of detaching the United States from the standards of value recognized by the principal commercial, civilized, and christian nations of the world.

I have thus stated my view of the best mode to provide for a gradual increase of money for circulation and to provide a substitute for national-bank notes retired when and as the bonds of the United States are retired.

And now, Mr. President, I come to the second object of desire, to increase the market value of silver, not only in the United States, but in the world, in the belief that this is essential to the success of any measure proposed and in the hope that our efforts will advance silver to its legal ratio with gold and induce the great commercial nations to join with us in maintaining the legal parity of the two metals or in agreeing with us in a new ratio of their relative value.  To decide how this can be done we must know the precise legal status of silver, how it was affected by the acts of 1834 and 1853 and the coinage act of 1873.  After the suspension of the coinage of the silver dollar in 1805, fractional silver coins and also gold coins were issued from the mints;  but as gold, by being undervalued, was drawn from our country, fractional silver and foreign coin were the only coin in circulation.  One ounce of gold was worth more than 15 ounces of silver, and therefore gold went to countries where it would buy 15½ ounces of silver.  To avoid this and to invite gold to our country, the acts of 1834 and 1837 changed the ratio so that 1 ounce of gold was rated at 16 ounces of silver.  This was a mistake in the opposite direction, for 16 ounces of silver were worth more in Europe than 1 ounce of gold, and silver disappeared from the United States and gold became our only coin.

To meet this difficulty and to secure the use of both metals, Congress, by the act of 1853, following the example of England, provided for a coinage of fractional silver containing less grains of silver and a legal tender for only $5, and thus silver and gold --gold as the standard and silver as subsidiary-- were the coin of our country.  The silver dollar had disappeared long years before.  None were to be found except as curiosities.  Only $8,045,838 had been coined from 1793 up to 1873, or less than three months' coinage under the present law.  Under these conditions we entered upon the civil war, when gold and silver alike disappeared from our currency.  Paper money alone, from the 1 cent stamp to the $5,000 United States note, was then our domestic currency.  We exacted gold for duties on imported goods to enable us to maintain the credit of our bonds.  It did not circulate, but was a commodity at a premium for seventeen years until resumption.  We heard nothing in Congress of coinage until the abortive effort to devise an international coin as a medium of exchanges between nations, a gold coin that would be the exact equivalent of £1, or $5, or 25 francs.

This was at the Paris conference in 1867, and my letter in support of it was quoted in this debate.  I stand by that letter, every word of it.  At that time it expressed the almost universal desire of our people, it was approved by the Paris conference, and would have been adopted by the leading commercial nations but for the refusal of Great Britain to make the slight change requisite in her pound sterling.  It is now the hope and expectation of the leading scientists of the world and will be the first step of the first successful international monetary conference --an international coin which will contain so many grains of gold and be the exact equivalent of 25 francs, $5, £1, so that with this international coin a man may travel everywhere.  That was only defeated by the narrow idea of the British Government, who refused to change their pound sterling in intrinsic value from 484 to 479 and a fraction, and they declined to do it.  It did not deal with or affect the silver question at all.

The next we heard of coins and coinage was in a report from the Secretary of the Treasury on the 25th of April, 1870, transmitting the bill now known as the coinage act of February 12, 1873, which is here before me.  This bill was, on its face, a revision of all the laws relating to the Mint and coinage of the United States.  It stated what coins of gold and silver and what minor coins should be coined, and of what metal composed.  It dropped from the coins of the United States the silver dollar of 412½ grains.  And now we are told that this coin was surreptitiously dropped, that a conspiracy existed to deprive the country of one-half of its money with a view to increase the value ot the remainder.

I mean now to place upon the Record proofs so absolutely conclusive that this is a false cry, that if any man hereafter repeats it in the Senate and the House the evidence of the falsehood will stare him in the face.

What was the silver dollar that was said to be demonetized surreptitiously by this act ?  To some men it is a kind of fetich, made an object of superstitious worship which it is sacrilegious to disturb.  It was a coin authorized by the act of April 2, 1792, containing 416 grains of standard silver, afterwards reduced to 412½ or 371¼ grains of pure silver.  It was based upon the ratio of 15 to 1, admitted from the beginning to be incorrect.  There were coined of these dollars prior to 1805 1,439,517, or about one-half of one month's coinage of the silver dollar now.  President Jefferson then suspended their coinage.  Mr. Campbell P. White, in an appendix to his famous report, upon which the act of 1834 was founded, transmits a letter from Samuel Moore, Director of the Mint at Philadelphia, under date of May 25, 1832, in which he says:

The President, in 1805, interposed more efficiently by directing that the coinage of dollars should be suspended at the Mint;  this remedy met the particular exigence.  The Chinese, through prejudice, undervalued the dollar;  the lower denominations they refused.

Mr. J.K. Upton, in his book, Money in Politics, says:

The silver was now (1805) the unquestioned unit of account, and in this coin all contracts calling for dollars could be satisfied.  Mr. Jefferson, who was then President, had favorably indorsed the ratio of 1 to 15 proposed by Mr. Hamilton and adopted in the coinage act of 1792.  He believed that both metals could and would circulate side by side under the relations fixed by that act.  He desired that gold should circulate as well as silver, and, to prevent the expulsion of gold, he peremptorily ordered the Mint to discontinue the coinage of the silver dollar, and Congress and the country seemed to have approved his action, although taken without authority, if not in direct violation, of law.  To the effect of this executive interference is probably due the fact that from 1806 to 1836 no silver dollars were coined.

So this dollar so anxiously sought for was demonetized by Mr. Jefferson, who was familiar with the history of its coinage, and that continued practically until our civil war, as I shall presently show.  Not one dollar of this coin was issued from its suspension by Mr. Jefferson until after the passage of the act of 1834, and only $1,300 prior to 1840.  From that time until the approach of the civil war the issue was comparatively insignificant, varying yearly from $1,100 to $184,000, the highest amount in any one year.  Yet during this period, from 1805 to 1860, over $100,000,000 of fractional silver coins were issued and in circulation, all of which was demonetized in the general sense from 1834, being a legal tender for only $5.  The silver dollar had fallen into desuetude.  As the war approached and until 1873, about 5,000,000 silver dollars were coined, solely for exportation to China and Japan, but none of them entered into circulation.  Many of us never, prior to 1878, saw a silver dollar.  It was an image of the past, lost to sight and memory, conceived by Hamilton, suspended by Jefferson, and ignored by two generations except as a convenience for the exportation of silver bullion.

Mr. Jones, of Nevada.  Mr. President---

The Presiding Officer (Mr. Harris in the chair).  Does the Senator from Ohio yield to the Senator from Nevada ?

Mr. Jones, of Nevada.  Allow me to say one word.

Mr. Sherman.  Certainly.

Mr. Jones, of Nevada.  I have not known that those who advocated the recoinage of silver insist that a particular species of coin shall be coined at the mint.  I ask the Senator how many gold dollars have been coined ?

Mr. Sherman.  I have given the amount of gold.

Mr. Jones, of Nevada.  But I ask him to state the amount of gold dollars, not the amount of ten-dollar pieces.  I want to say right here that up to and including 1846 there was more full legal-tender silver money coined than gold, and that it was not the silver dollar that the silver men were insisting upon coining, but silver money with full legal-tender functions, whether in the form of half-dollars or quarter-dollars or any other kind of silver coin;  that it was half-dollars, the more convenient coin, that were coined, and not the dollar piece.  It is of no consequence whether it was a dollar piece or a half-dollar piece that was coined.

Mr. Sherman.  I will come to that in a moment.  The half-dollar was never coined except as a subsidiary coin and it was only a legal tender for $1.  The half-dollar since 1853 has only been a legal tender for $1.

Mr. Jones, of Nevada.  I am speaking of the fact that from the foundation of the Government up to and including 1846 more legal-tender silver money was coined than gold in this country.

Mr. Mitchell.  Will the Senator allow me just one moment ?

Mr. Sherman.  I will say, as I said to the Senator from Colorado, that I do not like to refuse and I do not like to consent.

Mr. Mitchell.  I only want to occupy one moment.

The Presiding Officer.  Does the Senator from Ohio yield ?

Mr. Sherman.  I will hear the Senator from Oregon.

Mr. Mitchell.  I think a false impression has been given generally as to the action of Thomas Jefferson, referred to by the Senator from Ohio.  There was not a general suspension of silver coinage, only the silver dollar, not the suspension of silver entirely.  The Senator surely does not mean to convey the impression that Jefferson's action related to anything more than the suspension of the coinage of the silver dollar, not to the half dollars or any other silver ?

Mr. Sherman.  The dollar I am talking about altogether.

Mr. Mitchell.  And the other coins were all legal tender ?

Mr. Sherman.  I am talking about the dollar of the fathers.  I will repeat the sentence that was broken by the interruption of my friend from Nevada.  This policy was an image of the past, lost to sight and memory, conceived by Hamilton, suspended by Jefferson, and ignored by two generations except as a convenience for the exportation of silver bullion.

No wonder that the Senator from Nevada did not know that the silver dollar was demonetized.  The wonder is that he knew of its existence.  The revisers of the United States statutes were oblivious to it, for, while the act of 1873 dropped it from coinage and forbade its issue from the mints, that act did not take from the silver dollars, if in existence, their legal-tender quality.  While the whole mass of fractional silver coins issued under the act of 1853 had been for nineteen years a legal tender only for $5, the silver dollar was among the people an unknown coin.

But it is not the legal qualities of the silver dollar I have to deal with, but it is the imputation that it was dropped from our coinage surreptitiously, done by stealth, unlawfully;  this is the charge that I repel.  I was chairman of the Committee on Finance when the act of 1873 was considered and passed.  My associates in 1871 were Senators Justin Morrill, George Williams, Alexander Cattell, Willard Warner, Reuben Fenton, and Thomas Bayard.  The Committee on Coinage of the House, having charge of the bill, consisted of Messrs. William Kelley, Samuel Hooper, John Hill, Noah Davis, Peter Strader, and John Griswold.  What motive could we have for such a cowardly, disgraceful proceeding ?  On the 25th of April 1870, when the bill was sent to us by the Secretary of the Treasury, the silver dollar was worth $1.0312 in gold in the markets of the world.  This was before Germany had sold her silver and adopted the gold standard, before the slightest sign of the depreciation of silver.  Could we so far foresee the future ?

But I will not leave this matter to argument or inference.  The bill on its face shows that it was a bill revising all the laws relating to mints and coinage.  In the bill sent to us on the 25th of April, 1870, the silver dollar was omitted and its further issue prohibited.  Here is a copy of the bill sent to us with the report.  [Exhibiting.]  I will read the fifteenth section.  The fourteenth section provides the weight of the double eagle, etc., giving the weight of the gold coins.  The fifteenth section was as follows:

Sec. 15.  And be it further enacted, That of the silver coins, the weight of the half dollar, or piece of fifty cents, shall be one hundred and ninety-two grains;  and that of the quarter dollar and dime, shall be, respectively, one-half and one-fifth of the weight of said half dollar.  That the silver coin issued in conformity with the above section shall be a legal tender in any one payment of debts for all sums less than one dollar.

That is, "for all sums less than $1."  Then here is section 18, just following it:

Sec. 18.  And be it further enacted, That no coins, either of gold, silver, or minor coinage, shall hereafter be issued from the mint other than those of the denominations, standards, and weights herein set forth.

Not only was the silver dollar omitted, but there was an express provision that no other coin except those mentioned should be issued from the mint.  So not only were the names of the coins designated, their weight and measure fixed, but all others were prohibited by the law of 1873 and on the face of the bill.  That bill was sent to us here at the time when the silver dollar was demonetized.  With the letter of the Secretary of the 25th of April, 1870, Mr. Knox, under a conspicuous, large-typed heading --"silver dollar; its discontinuance as a standard"-- says:

The coinage of the silver-dollar piece, the history of which is here given, is discontinued in the proposed bill.  It is by law the dollar unit, and, assuming the value of gold to be fifteen and one-half times that of silver, being about the mean ratio for the past six years, is worth in gold a premium of about 3 per cent. (its value being $1.0312), and intrinsically more than 7 per cent. premium in our other silver coins, its value thus being $1.0742.  The present laws consequently authorize both a gold-dollar unit and a silver-dollar unit, differing from each other in intrinsic value.  The present gold-dollar piece is made the dollar unit in the proposed bill, and the silver-dollar piece is discontinued.

What can be clearer than that ?  That message was sent to us.

Mr. Dawes.  Did that accompany the bill ?

Mr. Sherman.  Certainly.  Here is the document.

If, however, such a coin is authorized, it should be issued only as a commercial dollar, not as a standard unit of account, and of the exact value of a Mexican dollar, which is the favorite for circulation in China and Japan and other Oriental countries.

This bill was not acted upon in the Senate until the next session of Congress.  In the mean time a copy of it was sent to all the experts in the United States.  The bill sent to them included among the silver coins a dollar of 384 grains instead of the old dollar of 412½ grains, thus not only dropping out the old dollar, but substituting a token dollar not a legal tender.  The replies were sent to the House of Representatives in obedience to a resolution of the House on the 25th of June, 1870.

I have, then, here before me a voluminous report of Mr. Boutwell, the Secretary of the Treasury, of 100 printed pages.  It contains a full statement of the objects of the bill, the necessity for the proposed revision, with reports, among others, from Robert Patterson, F. Peale, H.R. Linderman, James Ross Snowden, G.F. Dunning, and E.B. Elliot, all of them known as scientific experts and the principal officers of the mints and assay offices.  Each of them discussed the provisions of the bill.

The necessity for the revision of the coinage law was admitted on all hands.  It had been recommended by Secretary Chase and his assistant, Mr. Harrington, by Secretary McCulloch and his assistant, Mr. Chandler, now a member of the Senate.  There had been no codification of the mint laws for thirty-five years.  The different acts of Congress in reference to the service were scattered through all the various volumes of the statutes.  The English Government had recently revised its mint laws, introducing important reforms.  The "coinage act of 1873" was framed with a like purpose.  The operations of the Mint were not suspended during the war.

The amount of coinage during the suspension of specie payments, 1861-1879, was $735,320,317, while the total coinage from 1792, the year of the establishment of the Mint, to 1861, a period of seventy years, was but $599,428,229.  There was 50 per cent. more coined in the eighteen years after 1861 than during the whole period of the Government before 1861.  The business of the Mint was rapidly increasing and the wisdom of creating a bureau of the mint in the Treasury Department was apparent to every one.

The section of the bill which discontinues the coinage of the old silver dollar was discussed by all the experts.  Hon. James Pollock, formerly governor of Pennsylvania, then Director of the Mint, favored the reduction of the weight of the silver dollar from 412½ grains to 384 grains, as he had previously recommended in his annual report of 1861.  Robert Patterson was in favor of the abolishment of the silver dollar, half-dime, and three-cent piece.  He said:  "Gold becomes the standard of which the gold dollar is the unit.  Silver is subsidiary, embracing coins from the dime to half-dollar."  The heading of this paragraph was printed in capital letters, thus:  "silver dollar, half-dime, and three-cent piece discontinued, and coins less than dime of copper, nickel, legal tender -- one-cent piece of one gram in weight."

The same report contains a letter dated June 10, 1870, from E.B. Elliot, late Actuary of the Treasury Department (page 70), well known to many Senators, now dead, which gives a brief history of the silver dollar, headed as follows, in capital letters:

The Standard Silver Dollar -- Its Discontinuance as a Standard.

The bill proposes the discontinuance of the silver dollar, and the report which accompanies the bill suggests the substitution for the existing standard silver dollar of a trade coin of intrinsic value equivalent to the Mexican silver piastre or dollar.

Franklin Peale, formerly melter and refiner of the Mint at Philadelphia, says:

To designate what the weight of silver coinage should be at this time is a difficult problem, and should be carefully considered by competent financiers, bullionists, and Mint officers before any law is enacted.

The heading of this paragraph was in capital letters, as follows:  "Weight of silver coin should be carefully considered."

Mr. Peale recommended the discontinuance of the coinage of the one-dollar and three-dollar gold pieces and gave his reasons therefor.

Dr. H.R. Linderman, formerly Director of the Mint, discussed the subject in a paragraph which was headed in capitals as follows:  "discontinuance of silver dollar."

Hon. James Ross Snowden discussed the same subject in a paragraph which was headed in capitals as follows:  "the present silver dollar should not be discontinued."

Hon. George F. Dunning, late superintendent of the assay office in New York, the officers of the United States mint at San Francisco, and others discussed this feature of the bill.  It was well said in the report of the Comptroller of the Currency in 1876:

If the question of the double standard did not become prominent in the discussion of the bill it was for the reason that usage had established the gold dollar as the unit, the silver dollar, on account of its greater relative value, having, with the Mexican dollar and pistareen, disappeared from the circulation of the country.  The coinage act of 1873 simply registered in the form of a statute what had been really the unwritten law of the land for forty years.

We had this one-hundred-page document sent by Secretary Boutwell, with returns from all the officers of the Mint and the experts throughout the country, probably thirty or forty of them.  We had at that time, when we considered the bill, the previous letter of our Deputy Comptroller of the Currency, who had charge of the Mint, recommending the passage of the bill, with a copy of the bill, and copies of the bill were sent broadcast, omitting entirely the silver dollar and calling special attention to that omission in every possible way.

Now, Mr. President, with all this copious information in both Houses, this coinage bill was reported to the Senate by the Committee on Finance on the 19th of December, 1870.  On the 9th and 10th days of January, 1871, it was debated for two full days, mainly upon the coinage charge of three-tenths of 1 per cent., by Senators Cole, Williams, Corbett, STEWART, and Casserly against the charge, and MORRILL and SHERMAN for it.  The bill was read in full, and a number of amendments made, but the coinage provision was defeated and the charge for coinage was repealed.

The bill passed by a vote of 36 yeas and 14 nays, January 10, 1871.  Among the nays I find the names of MORRILL and SHERMAN, no doubt because against their advice all coinage charges were repealed.  Among the yeas I find the names of Casserly, Cole, Corbett, Nye, STEWART, and Williams, every Senator from the Pacific coast.  It was that bill that omitted and excluded the silver dollar from our coinage, and, in accordance with the act of 1853, continued all silver coinage as subsidiary and a legal tender for $5 only.  No bill was ever more broadly proclaimed or publicly discussed in all its details than this, and yet my venerable friend [Mr. Morrill] and myself, who voted against the bill, have been singled out and named as dupes or comparators, while gentlemen who voted for the bill were victims of a plot, ignorant of its provisions, and generally taken in !  It is better far to stand manfully for what we did honestly, even if we were mistaken, which to this hour I do not think we were.  Is it possible that any man who participated in this debate could have been ignorant that the old silver dollar of 1792 was dropped from our coinage by this bill ?  Is it not more likely that he was indifferent to it or had forgotten it ?  I knew and recall the dropping out of the silver dollar, and neither plead ignorance nor negligence, but I had not the omniscient power to see into the future, when the dollar suspended by Jefferson, demonetized by Jackson and Benton, superseded by subsidiary half-dollars by Pierce and Hunter, turned into a trade-dollar in 1873, would become the idol of the Democratic party in 1890, as the best expedient for cheap money, the most plausible pretext for confiscating a portion of public and private debts.

This bill was sent to the House, referred to the Committee on Coinage, and reported favorably, but no action was taken upon it during that session.  Early in the called session following Mr. Kelley introduced an original bill substantially similar to the bill of the preceding Congress, but with this important modification of section 16.  The House bill recommended a subsidiary dollar of 384 grains with limited legal tender in place of the old dollar of 412½ grains.  So the other House had inserted in the bill when it was reintroduced by Mr. Kelley this subsidiary coin of 385 grains', containing 26½ fewer grains than the old silver dollar, and made subsidiary coin like the former subsidiary coin of half-dollars and quarter-dollars.

The bill finally became a law on the 12th of February, 1873, nearly three years after it was introduced into Congress.  It was reprinted thirteen times and extra copies were printed for circulation.  It was conned over, amended, and debated almost as copiously as the bill now pending, and no man in either House proposed to retain the old silver dollar.  It was not mentioned, it was not thought of.  It was an afterdevice.  The fact that it was omitted from our coins was referred to in debate in both Houses.  Mr. Hooper, in the House of Representatives, said:

Section sixteen reënacts the provisions of existing laws defining the silver coins and their weights respectively, except in relation to the silver dollar, which is reduced in weight from four hundred and twelve and a half to three hundred and eighty-four grains;  thus making it a subsidiary coin in harmony with the silver coins of less denomination, to secure its concurrent circulation with them.  The silver dollar of four hundred and twelve and a half grains, by reason of its bullion or intrinsic value being greater than its nominal value, long since ceased to be a coin of circulation, and is melted by manufacturers of silverware.  It does not circulate now in commercial transactions with any country, and the convenience of those manufacturers in this respect can better be met by supplying small stamped bars of the same standard, avoiding the useless expense of coining the dollar for that purpose.  The coinage of the half dime is discontinued for the reason that its place is supplied by the copper-nickel five-cent piece, of which a large issue has been made, and which, by the provisions of the act authorizing its issue, is redeemable in United States currency.

Here it was pointed out by Mr. Hooper, a very distinguished financier, as we know, that it was not only proposed to drop the old dollar, but to substitute a dollar containing 26½ grains less than the old dollar, and that was adopted by the House.  Mr. Stoughton and Mr. Potter, both leading members, supported the proposition.  Mr. Kelley, whose honorable life we have recently commended, advocated the single standard of gold:

Mr. Kelley.  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.

So it appears that these honorable gentleman not only knew what they were about, but gave their reasons for adopting the 384-grain dollar instead of the old dollar of 412½ grains, and the House acted with full knowledge in adopting the French dollar and made it a subsidiary coin or a legal tender for but $5.  When the House bill came to the Senate it contained the silver dollar of 384 grains, and also fractional coins of the same relative value, precisely in accordance with the coins of 1853, except that the 384-grain dollar, made a legal tender for only $5, was substituted for the old silver dollar of 412½ grains, which was a full legal tender.  This, it appears, was explained by me on the 17th of January, 1873, in the following words:

Mr. Sherman.  This bill proposes a silver coinage exactly the same as the French, and what are called the associated nations of Europe, who have adopted the international standard of silver coinage;  that is, the dollar provided for by this bill is the precise equivalent of the five-franc piece.  It contains the same number of grams of silver;  and we have adopted the international gram instead of the grain for the standard of our silver coinage.  The "trade dollar" has been adopted mainly for the benefit of the people of California, and others engaged in trade with China.  That is the only coin measured by the grain instead of by the gram.  The intrinsic value of each is to be stamped upon the coin.

Now, unless some Senator, then a member of this body, did not know the difference between a five-franc piece and a dollar, he certainly must not have been listening to me or he would have been clearly informed:

It contains the same number of grams of silver;  and we have adopted the international gram instead of the grain for the standard of our silver coinage.  The "trade dollar" has been adopted mainly for the benefit of the people of California, and others engaged in trade with China.

I presented a petition here from the Legislature of California asking us to give them a dollar more valuable than the Mexican coin, in order that they might have a convenient mode of transporting their silver bullion, then not used at all among the people of the United States as currency.

That is the only coin measured by the grain instead of by the gram.  The intrinsic value of each is to be stamped upon the coin.

Afterwards Mr. Casserly said that a dollar somewhat more valuable than the Mexican dollar would be a convenient coin for the exportation of silver in the Chinese trade;  and he produced a memorial from the Legislature of California asking Congress to provide for such a coin, and we did provide for the trade-dollar of 420 grains, to be coined at any mint at the expense of the owner of the bullion.  Other amendments were made and the bill passed.

A conference was ordered on the disagreeing votes of the two Houses and was held.  The House conferees agreed to the amendment in respect to the trade-dollar and provided "that any owner of silver bullion may deposit the same at any mint to be formed into bars or into dollars of the weight of 420 grains troy, designated in this act as trade-dollars."  This dollar took the place of the 384-grain dollar.  The report was signed by the conferees of both Houses, John Sherman, John Scott, T.F. Bayard, managers on the part of the Senate, and Samuel Hooper and W.L. Stoughton, managers on the part of the House.  The report was read in the Senate February 6 and in the House February 7, 1873, and agreed to.

I do not see how a member of either House, in the face of the recommendation of the Treasury Department and of the debate in both Houses on this very question, can repeat the imputation against the living and the dead of secretly and surreptitiously demonetizing the silver dollar without confessing to a grave neglect of public duty or a want of common intelligence.  When this matter was discussed here in March, 1888, by the lamented Senator from Kentucky, Mr. Beck, he repeated the stale charge that the old silver dollar was surreptitiously dropped from our coinage, and I promptly replied in a speech I hold in my hand.  I produced the original bills from the files of the Senate.  I produced the memorial of the Legislature of California and conclusively answered this charge, not only for myself, but for every member of the Senate and House of Representatives that passed that bill, and, I am glad to say, to the entire satisfaction of the then Senator from Kentucky.

And now, sir, I intend to add the testimony of one more witness, that of Hon. Abram S. Hewitt of New York [Peter Cooper's son-in-law], who gave to this subject the most careful study.  He said in his speech in the House of Representatives on the 5th of August, 1876, as follows:

The gentleman from Missouri [Mr. Bland] on the 3d instant stated that the coinage act of 1873 "was passed surreptitiously and without discussion, and was one of the grossest measures of injustice ever inflicted upon any people."  The honorable Senator from Nevada [Mr. Jones] and the honorable gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Holman] have made similar statements, and these statements have been reiterated by the press of the country and repeated again to-day by the gentleman from Missouri [Mr. Bland] and the gentleman from Illinois, [Mr. Fort.]  In answer to these charges I propose, at the risk of being tedious, but in order to refute them once for all, to give, in a note at the end of my remarks, the history of the coinage act of 1873, as shown by the records of the Treasury Department and of Congress.

I have felt it necessary to make this weary statement in order to prove that the legislation of 1873 was not surreptitiously enacted, traveling over ground that has been occupied in part by other members who have addressed the House, and in part by the daily press, because there is nothing so unpalatable to the American people as "tricks" in legislation, of which the Committee on Mines and Mining will be fully conscious when it comes to be generally understood how far they have exceeded the legitimate line of their duty in bringing forward this bill, which could never have been reported from the Committee on Banking and Currency, to which it properly belonged.

I will ask the Reporter to insert at the end of my remarks the historical statement of the coinage act of 1873, prepared by this gentleman, and I will not weary the Senate by reading it.  It contains a most complete analysis and statement of every stage of the passage of the bill.

Now, sir, I shall leave this question, upon which perhaps I show a little more feeling than I ought.  It is pretty hard to chase down a lie so often repeated, but I thought it necessary to do it, and set forth the matter here, not only for myself, but also for all others engaged in that legislation.

If, after this second vindication of the members of the Forty-second Congress, this baseless charge is repeated I shall content myself with denouncing it as a falsehood.

And now, sir, I recur to my second proposition, how to increase, if possible, the market value of silver to its legal ratio to gold, that of 16 to 1.  In 1878 the United States commenced the experiment under the act of February 28, 1878, by remonetizing the silver dollar of 412½ grains of standard silver and by purchasing silver bullion at the market price to the amount of $2,000,000 worth a month and coining it into silver dollars.  We know the result of that experiment.  Silver bullion steadily declined in value.  This table gives the average price of silver in London each fiscal year, 1873-1889, and the value of an ounce of fine silver at par of exchange, with decline expressed in percentages, each year since 1873:

The silver dollar, though a full legal tender, with every effort made by successive Secretaries of the Treasury, could not be kept in circulation to an amount exceeding $60,000,000.  When pressed into circulation it steadily returned to the Treasury, and on June 1 the amount in circulation was $513,348,174 and the amount in the Treasury was $309,988,092.  But the certificates based upon the dollars were issued and readily circulated as money and now form nearly one-third of all the paper circulation in the country and are received and paid out on a parity with United States notes and gold coin.  This experiment clearly establishes two things:  One is that silver dollars can not be made to circulate as money in excess of a very moderate amount for change or in small transactions.  The other is that the coinage of silver dollars does not tend to advance the price of silver in the markets of the world.

But it is said that the reason of this failure is that executive officers neglected or refused to exercise the discretionary powers given them to buy and coin bullion to the extent of $4,000,000 per month.  There is no ground for this contention.  If the coinage of $2,000,000 worth of silver did not check the fall of silver, but steadily accelerated its fall, what would have been the natural effect of the coinage of $4,000,000 ?  The very presence of $290,000,000 of silver coin known to be in our Treasury vaults that can at will be dumped upon the markets of the world is the great bearish fact, the menace that tends to depreciate the price of silver.  If this great sum had been scattered among the hordes of Asia, where it is largely used as ornaments and where it is the only standard of value, it would be mingled in the vast unknown mass of three thousand millions of silver estimated as existing in the world.

But we have made this impossible.  We have been careful to buy silver bullion in the market at about $1 for an ounce of 480 grains and have coined 371 grains of this silver and called it a dollar.  We have given to this dollar, when circulated at home, certain qualities which make it current here as a dollar, but it is not current anywhere else in the world.  All other nations can buy silver bullion as cheap as the United States and coin it for less cost.  This bullion is an ample security for its cost, and if represented by notes not greater in amount than the cost of the bullion they can easily be kept in circulation, but the coin can not be.  Its forced circulation would depreciate it in every State in the Union, especially in California and Nevada, where a large proportion of contracts are payable in gold.

As coin in the vaults of the Treasury it is in far more danger from thieves;  it is more expensive to handle and to guard than bullion, ton for ton.  It is easily counterfeited or duplicated.  It is a vast hoard always in sight, known to all men, increasing yearly.  Suppose instead of $290,000,000 it was $580,000,000, would this tend to increase its value ?  Our silver in the form of coin does not and can not circulate in any country but our own.  It is of less value in any foreign country than bullion, for to be coined there it must be converted into bullion.  It is the opinion of many wise men that if the United States had only coined as much silver as could be circulated at home, leaving the surplus to find its natural market as bullion, the price of it would not have receded to the rate at which it has been sold;  but, be this as it may, its continued coinage when not needed as money is not only a useless expense, but tends to lower the price of bullion.

What then can we do to arrest the fall of silver and to advance its market value ?  I know of but two expedients.  One is to purchase bullion in large quantities as the basis and security of Treasury notes, as proposed by this bill.  The other is to adopt the single standard of silver and take the chances for its rise or fall in the markets of the world.  I have already stated the probable results of the boarding of bullion.  By purchasing in the open market our domestic production of silver and hoarding it in the Treasury we withdraw so much from the supply of the world, and thus maintain or increase the price of the remaining silver production of the world.  It is not idle in our vaults, but is represented by certificates in active circulation.  Sixteen ounces of silver bullion may not be worth 1 ounce of gold, still $1 worth of silver bullion is worth $1 worth of gold.

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

If experience is needed to prove so plain an axiom we have it in our own history.  At the beginning of our National Government we fixed the value of gold and silver as 1 to 15.  Gold was undervalued and fled the country to where an ounce of gold was worth 15½ ounces of silver.  Congress, in 1834, endeavored to rectify this by making the ratio 1 to 16, but by this silver was undervalued.  Sixteen ounces of silver were worth more than 1 ounce of gold and silver disappeared.  Congress, in 1853, adopted another expedient to secure the value of both metals as money.  By this expedient gold is the standard and silver the subsidiary coin, containing confessedly silver of less value in the market than the gold coin, but maintained at the parity of gold coin by the Government.

The bill was carried forward in the Senate Chamber by Mr. Hunter, of Virginia, and many of the most distinguished men of that day participated in the debate upon it, where it was fully discussed and its passage put upon the ground that it was impossible to make the two metals always equal to each other so that their relative value would not change.  Therefore, gold was adopted as the standard and silver was to be used so far as it could be as a subsidiary coin for currency.  In that way both metals have run side by side from that day to this, and under that law more gold and silver coin --four-fold more of both metals-- has been coined than under the old system of up Jo and down Jack, the system of a changeable ratio.

This system has been maintained now for thirty-six years, more than an average lifetime.  Under it the coinage of silver has enormously increased.  From 1792 to 1853 the entire coinage of silver was $79,241,904.50, including $2,506,890 of standard silver dollars.  From 1853 to 1873, when the coinage act was passed, the coinage of silver dollars was $5,538,948, and of fractional silver (subsidiary) was $60,361,032.10.  Under the act of 1873 there were issued 35,965,924 trade dollars, and $5,445,264.40 fractional silver.  Under the resumption act of 1875, there was coined of fractional silver $48,082,580.  Under the act of 1878 there were coined of standard silver dollars $363,626,266, as shown by the following table:

It is a remarkable fact that since 1853, when all silver coin was made from bullion bought by the Government, the coinage and use of silver has been much greater than when the coinage of silver was free.  Under the free-coinage system prior to 1853 we coined in silver $79,241,904.50, and under coinage limited to bullion bought by the Government we coined in silver $519,020,014.55.  Under the present system we have also maintained an increasing coinage of gold and have now in the United States among the people or in the vaults of the Treasury $689,275,007 in gold coin or bullion, all of which is either circulating as money or is the basis of paper money in active circulation.

Under the free-coinage system the cheaper metal was the only money of the country;  the other fled to foreign countries.  A rise or fall of 3 per cent. would demonetize one or other of the metals.  Under the present system the people are indifferent to the fluctuations in the bullion market and they know they have a fixed standard of value and that the Government, the custodian of their money, will maintain the parity of the purchasing power of their coins whatever may be the market value of the metal contained in them.

The gold standard has been the recognized policy of all the great political parties that have longest controlled the Government of the United States.  The Federal party in the beginning sought to secure it by ascertaining the precise relative market value of the two metals and coining both as money, but erroneously fixed the ratio at 15 to 1.  When the Democratic party came into power, Mr. Jefferson, to secure the circulation of gold, suspended the coinage of the silver dollar, but a faulty ratio stood in his way.  General Jackson and Benton and their associates in 1834, with the avowed purpose to restore gold, or "Benton mint drops," as they were called, to circulation, changed the ratio to 16 to 1, but this banished all silver coin.  In the administration of President Pierce in 1853 the present system was adopted, by which gold became the unit of value and the coinage of silver was made subsidiary, but was always maintained in purchasing power the equal of gold, dollar for dollar.

And so when the Republican party came into power, though driven by the stress of war to the almost exclusive use of credit money, yet as soon as possible it resorted to the policy of 1853, of gold as the unit and silver as subsidiary, and coined both metals in greater sums than ever before, and maintained their parity by a limitation of the coinage of the cheaper metal and its prompt redemption by being received at its legal ratio into the Treasury as the equivalent of gold.  By this policy it has combined in use within twelve years over $800,000,000 of gold and silver coin, and with ample reserves of their coin in the Treasury now keeps in active circulation over $900,000,000 of paper money, which is in our own country and in all parts of the world received and paid out as the equivalent of gold or silver coin.

The adoption of free coinage now will be a reversal of the established policy of the Government from its beginning.  It will limit our coinage to a single metal, for who will deposit gold for coinage into dollars when it is worth more in the markets of the world ?  If a fluctuation of 3 per cent. drove gold and silver alternately from our country, how much more would a fluctuation of 20 or 30 per cent.?

But it is said by the friends of free coinage that France maintains both silver and gold as money.  So it does, precisely as we do.  They hold, as estimated by the Director of the Mint, $900,000,000 of gold and $700,000,000 in silver.  This money is kept at par with each other by being received into the Bank of France as money and is only paid out when needed, precisely as the United States Treasury receives silver and gold and pays out such money as is lawfully demanded.  But there is no free coinage in France or in any country of Europe.  France would consider it suicidal to adopt free coinage.

In 1865, when 15½ ounces of silver were worth more than 1 ounce of gold and Chevalier and others favored the single standard of silver, the nations forming the Latin Union agreed by treaties to continue for ten years to receive and pay out the coins of the respective Governments to an amount limited and defined by the treaties.  The object was to prevent gold, as the cheaper metal, from excluding silver.  The treaty was extended ten years, and, in the mean time, silver had fallen below the French ratio of 15½ to 1.  The treaty continued during all the period of the extreme fall of silver, when 1 ounce of gold was worth 22 ounces of silver, and the treaty is now continued year by year, liable at any time to be abandoned at the will of either of the treaty powers.  The tendency of public opinion in Europe is to abandon the double standard and rest all obligations upon gold alone.

The United States and France, both Republics, are now upholding the double standard, not upon the basis of free coinage, but by refusing to coin silver except in limited amounts, and each maintaining the parity in purchasing power of its coins by receiving them and paying them out as money, or by holding bullion and coin of both metals as security for the redemption in coin of circulating notes.  France and the United States have co-operated heartily with each other in two international conferences to establish the free coinage of silver and gold by the commercial nations of the world upon a common ratio, both admitting that neither or both nations combined can with safety enter upon such an experiment.  Shall we try the experiment alone ?  And we have the good fortune to have two members of this commission members of this body.  As sure as fate, as certain as the waters of the ocean will find their level, silver will be the only standard of value in the United States.  We will detach ourselves from the standards and monetary policy of the great civilized and christian nations of the world, and take our place with China, Japan, India, and South America.  The pound sterling will be worth $6 instead of $4.846;  the franc, the thaler, and the florin, 25 per cent. more than now.  Our dollar will be, as in colonial times, worth less than 3 shillings, or about 4 francs.

But it is said that those of us who demand the gold standard or paper money always equal to gold are the representatives of capital, money-changers, bondholders, Shylocks, who want to grind and oppress the people. This kind of argument I hoped would never find its way into the Senate Chamber.  It is the cry of the demagogue, without the slightest foundation.  All these classes can take care of themselves.  They are the men who make their profits out of the depreciation of money.  They can mark up the price of their property to meet changing standards.  They can protect themselves by gold contracts.  In proportion to their wealth they have less money on hand than any other class.  They have already protected themselves to a great extent by converting the great body of the securities in which they deal into gold bonds, and they hold the gold of the country, which you can not change in value.  They are, as a rule, the creditors of the country.

The great creditors are savings-banks, insurance companies, widows and orphans, and provident farmers and business men on a small scale.  The great operators are the great borrowers and owe more than is due them.  Their credit is their capital and they need not have even money enough to pay their rent.

But how will this change affect the great mass of our fellow-citizens who depend upon their daily labor ?  A dollar to them means so much food, clothing, and rent.  If you cheapen the dollar it will buy less of these.  You may say they will get more dollars for their labor, but all experience shows that labor and land are the last to feel the change in monetary standards, and the same resistance will be made to an advance of wages on the silver standard as on the gold standard, and when the advance is won it will be found that the purchasing power of the new dollar is less than the old.  No principle of political economy is better established than that the producing classes are the first to suffer and the last to gain by monetary changes.

I might apply this argument to the farmer, the merchant, the professional man and to all classes except the speculator or the debtor who wishes to lessen the burden of his obligations, but it is not necessary.

It is sometimes said that all this is a false alarm, that our demand for silver will absorb all that will be offered and bring it to par with gold at the old ratio.  I have no faith in such a miracle.  If they really thought so, many would lose their interest in the question.  What they want is a cheaper dollar that would pay debts easier.  Others do not want either silver or gold, but want numbers, numerals, the fruit of the printing-press, to be fixed every year by Congress as we do an appropriation bill.

Now, sir, I am willing to do all I can with safety, even to taking great risks to increase the value of silver to gold at the old ratio, and to supply paper substitutes for both for circulation but there is one immutable,  unchangeable, ever-existing condition, that the paper substitute must always have the same purchasing power as gold and silver coin maintained at their legal ratio with each other.  I feel a conviction, as strong as the human mind can have, that the free coinage of silver now by the United States will be a grave mistake and a misfortune to all classes and conditions of our fellow-citizens.  I also have a hope and belief, but far from a certainty, that the measure proposed for the purchase of silver bullion to a limited amount and the issue of Treasury notes for it will bring silver and gold to the old ratio and will lead to an agreement with other commercial nations to maintain the free coinage of both metals.

And now, sir, I want to state in conclusion, without any purpose to bind myself to detail, that I will vote for any measure that will, in my judgment, secure a genuine bimetallic standard, one that will not demonetize gold or cause it to be hoarded or exported, but will establish both silver and gold as common standards and maintain them at a fixed ratio, not only in the United States, but among all the nations of the world.  The principles adopted by the acts of 1853 and 1875 have been sustained by experience and should be adhered to.  In pursuance of them I would receive into the Treasury of the United States all the gold and silver produced in our country at their market value, not at a speculative or forced value, but at their value in the markets of the world.  And for the convenience of our people I would represent them by Treasury notes to an amount not exceeding their cost.  I would confer upon these notes all the use, qualities, and attributes that we can confer within our constitutional power, and support and maintain them as money by coining the silver and gold as needed upon the present legal ratios, and by a pledge of all the revenues of the Government and all the wealth and credit of the United States.  And I would proclaim to all, our readiness, by international negotiations or treaties, to bring about an agreement among nations for common units of value and of weights and measures for all the productions of the world.

This hope of philosophers and statesmen is now nearer realization than ever before.  If we could contribute to this result it would tend to promote commerce and intercourse, trade and travel, peace and harmony among nations.  It would be in line with the civilization of our age.  It is by such meas our statesmen may keep pace with the marvelous inventions, improvements, and discoveries which have quadrupled the capacity of man for production, made lightning subservient to his will, revealed to him new agencies of power hidden in the earth, and opened up to his enterprise all the dark places of the world.  The people of the United States boast that they have done their full share in all this development, that they have grown in population, wealth, and strength, that they are the richest of nations, with untarnished credit, a model and example of self-government without kings or princes or lords.  Surely this is no time for a radical change of public policy which seems to have no motive except to reduce the burden of obligations freely taken, a change likely to impair our public credit and produce disorder and confusion in all monetary transactions.  Others may see reasons for this change, but I prefer to stand by the standards of value that come to us with the approval and sanction of every party that has administered the Government since its beginning.

Mr. Teller [Henry Moore Teller (May 23, 1830 - February 23, 1914) Colorado, R, D; studied law, admitted to the bar;  was member of the Aldrich monetary commission].  Mr. President, I congratulate myself and I congratulate the country that the mask is off this so-called silver party that has paraded the committee's bill before the Senate. If there was any question as to the attitude of the distinguished gentleman who had taken his seat before I got up, no person who has listened to him can doubt it now.  He is for the single standard, the gold standard to be the only standard, he is for the abandonment of silver as a money metal, to be used simply as subsidiary coin, or else his words mean nothing.  I welcome the issue. The people of the United States will be glad to know that the so-called silver party who have heretofore been avowed goldites have resumed their natural, normal position and place.

Mr. President, I do not intend to reply to what the Senator from Ohio has said now, because the Senator from Nevada [Mr. Stewart] wishes to make some remarks.  I only want to say that the statement made by him that this country has been on a gold basis at any time except between 1873 and 1878 has not the slightest scintilla of evidence to support it.  We never were on a gold basis.  There never was a demonetization of silver in this country as the Senator states.  I rose to do what the Senator declined to allow me to do, correct an error of his when he stated that the circulation of this country had kept pace with the population.  He stated that the per capita of this country was $22.  If so, the increase every year having been about a million, there must have been $22,000,000 last year of increased circulation.  I was not able to hear from the rear where I sat, being back of the Senator, just the amount that he gave as the increase last year, but I challenged the statement when he said it was in proportion to the increase of population, because that is not true.

Mr. Sherman.  Twenty-two million.

Mr. Teller.  The Senator said he went to the Treasury Department for its report.  So did I.  I have it here stated in at least three or four different places, and I will read it, and then I will drop the matter.  But I shall take occasion to reply to some of what I will say, with all due politeness, are misstatements of fact in the Senator's remarks.  I think the Senator's facts are as much out of joint as his logic.

Mr. President, the report of the Treasurer of the United States --you can find it on pages 10 and 11-- starts out and gives us the Treasury report of the year 1889, the last report out.  The Treasurer starts out and gives a statement of all the coin and all the paper money in this country and foots it up as amounting in 1889 to $2,099,000,000 in round numbers, gold and silver and paper money;  and that is the statement which goes out to everybody, that we have that amount of money.  But the Treasurer says:

From the face of the preceding statements it would appear that there was an increase both in the aggregate monetary supply and in the amount held by the people.  The certificates of deposit are, however, merely representative of moneys in the Treasury, and to count them with the coin and notes to which they give title would be a duplication.

That is what is being done by the advocates of plenty of money.  I do not understand that the Senator from Ohio who has just addressed the Senate is in that category, because he said the other day that we needed more money, but did not say how much:

If these be eliminated, and the actual moneys disposed according to ownership, the result will be as shown below:

Outstanding.  In Treasury.  In circulation.
June 30, 1888.
Gold ................................... $705,818,855.00 ... $193,610,172.46 .... $512,208,682.54
Silver ............................... 386,572,835.35 ... 79,923,468.70 ...... 306,649,366.65
Notes ................................. 606,512,959.32 ... 45,787,874.89 ...... 560,775,084.43
Total ......................... 1,698,904,649.67 ... 319,271,511.05 ... 1,379,633,133.62
June 30, 1889.
Gold ................................. 680,063,505.00 ... 186,257,490.79 ...... 493,806,014.21
Silver ............................ 420,548,929.00 ... 57,792,586.52 ..... 362,756,342.48
Notes ................................ 565,482,986.47 ... 34,493,508.05 ..... 530,989,478.42
Total ................... 1,666,095,420.47 ... 278,543,585.36 ... 1,337,551,835.11

He shows, Mr. President, that the actual circulation is $1,387,000,000 which taken from the circulation that was issued last year the accounts show is about $8,000,000 increase.  I will read it so that there shall be no misunderstanding:

These figures make apparent a contraction of about $33,000,000 in the currency, resulting from the changes already pointed out in the stock of gold, silver, and national-bank notes.  In combination with this the $1,000,000 paid out of the Treasury produced an increase of $8,000,000 in the circulation.

I put that statement of the Treasurer of the United States as published against the statement of the Senator from Ohio which he declined to allow me to correct.

"what sort of a plea is it for a man, who represented a mining State and who was interested in bullion,
to say he did not know what the provisions of the bill were ?"

Mr. Stewart [William Morris Stewart (1827-1909), Virginia City Nevada, R;  studied law, admitted to the bar;  voted for credit strenghtening].  Mr. President, from the foundation of this Government to 1873, any person having either gold or silver bullion could take it to the Mint of the United States and obtain coin for it at the ratio fixed.  That is an admitted fact.  The act of 1873 deprived the citizens of that privilege.

The question is now whether or not that act was passed advisedly, accidentally, or otherwise;  whether it was discussed in the Senate and understood in the House or whether it was not.  The discussions fortunately are all recorded.  Consequently the fact, as to passage or not, can be determined without any mistake by the records.  Inasmuch as I am constantly pointed to as having been here and participating in the proceedings and inasmuch as I have recently stated that I did not know when this occurred and was unconscious of having participated in this measure, I propose to exhibit the facts as they are and put them in the Record, so that any man can judge and determine for himself.  The statement thereof may be a little dry, but I will not be as long showing exactly how it appeared as you may suppose.

Mr. President, on the 28th of April, 1870, the Senator from Ohio [Mr. Sherman] introduced in the Senate a long bill (S. 859) entitled "A bill revising the laws relative to the mints, assay offices, and coinage of the United States," which was referred to the Committee on Finance.  It was reported by the Finance Committee with amendments December 19, 1870, and discussed in the Senate January 9 and 10, 1871.

When this bill came up for consideration in the Senate the only controversy which arose with regard to it was in relation to an amendment offered by the Senator from Ohio, which was vigorously opposed by all the Pacific coast delegation.  This was the bill to which the Senator has alluded and which had been recommended by the Treasury Department.  This was the amendment offered by the Senator, which occasioned all the discussion that occurred:

For coinage, whether the gold and silver deposited be coined or cast into bars or ingots, in addition to the charge for refining or parting the metals, three tenths of one per cent.

A long discussion followed, and it was held that the provision was a discriminating tax against bullion, for, in addition to paying the ordinary charges, it would discourage the taking of bullion to our mints and make its market value for shipment greater than its value at the mint.  It was very ably discussed by many Senators for a long time.  The amendment was adopted in Committee of the Whole by a yea-and-nay vote of 25 to 22.  No other amendment which excited discussion was acted upon in the Senate, except little formal amendments.  In fact, all the amendments, except the tax amendment, related to the administration of the affairs of the mints.

After the bill was reported to the Senate, Mr. Cole, of California, demanded a separate vote on the amendment of the Senator from Ohio to tax bullion.  Another long and animated discussion followed, after which the amendment was rejected by a yea-and-nay vote of 23 to 26.

The Senator from Ohio, having failed to secure the passage of the amendment to tax bullion, abandoned the bill and asked for the yeas and nays on its final passage.  The bill was passed by a vote of 36 to 14.  My name is recorded in the affirmative and that of the Senator from Ohio in the negative.  There was not a word of discussion in regard to coinage in the bill.

Mr. Sherman.  I will ask the Senator from Nevada whether that bill did not drop the silver dollar;  whether the silver dollar was not omitted from that bill, and prohibited from among the coins.

Mr. Stewart.  It was Mr. Knox's bill, and it did what the Senator states.  But the attention of nobody was called to it;  and in this connection I will say, it is very strange that so important a measure as that, if it had been discussed, been indorsed everywhere, and was generally known, was not alluded to while the bill was before the Senate.  The only question discussed was this question of taxing bullion.

I did not know that the bill made any change in the coinage of either gold or silver, but supposed, as the title indicated, that it was a mere codification of the Mint laws.  There certainly was no suggestion in the Senate that the bill made any change in the standards of gold or silver or that the coinage of either metal would be affected thereby.  It is undoubtedly true that previous to the introduction of the bill the Senator from Ohio and the Comptroller of the Currency, John Jay Knox, had recommended the demonetization of silver, and the Secretary of the Treasury had forwarded the report of the Comptroller to Congress, recommending such action.  But it attracted no attention and was passed over in the same manner that other printed matter relating to technical subjects usually is.  It is impossible for any Senator to keep the run of all the public documents printed.  He could not read them if he did no other business.  It is the duty of the committee having charge of particular subjects to examine such documents and bring before the Senate all matters of importance.  The Committee on Finance failed to call the attention of the Senate to the fact that the bill contained a provision which would demonetize silver.

I will not trace the proceedings in the House which relate to this great change in our silver coinage, except to remark that they prove that the question of demonetizing silver was never considered in that body.  The fact, which I will hereafter show, that the leading members of the House and of the Senate did not know that silver was demonetized for several years afterwards, demonstrates that the matter was not understood at the time the act became a law.

The bill which demonetized silver, as it passed the House, contained a dollar which was precisely the equivalent of the five-franc piece.  It limited the legal-tender quality of the silver coinage to $5, which fatal effect was not noticed.

This bill passed the House May 27, 1872.  The sixteenth section of this measure as it came from the House contained a silver dollar of 384 grains, which was the exact equivalent of the five-franc piece of France and adopted the European ratio of 15½ to 1.  On the 28th day of May, the bill was reported to the Senate, and the next day referred to the Committee on Finance.  That committee, on December 16, reported the bill back to the Senate with various amendments.  The amendments were printed January 7, 1873.  The bill was discussed and passed January 17, 1873.

The amendments reported by the Committee on Finance were acted upon seriatim, and, with one exception, in the usual manner.  Section 16 of the bill, which provided for the silver coins of the United States, contained, among other things, as before remarked, a silver dollar of 384 grains.  The recommendation of the committee was to strike out the sixteenth section of the House bill and substitute therefor the provision which demonetized silver.  The substitute proposed by the committee, and which is now section 3513 of the Revised Statutes, and which was not read or discussed, is as follows:

That the silver coins of the United States shall be a trade-dollar, a half-dollar or fifty-cent piece, a quarter-dollar or twenty-five cent piece;  and the weight of the trade-dollar shall be 420 grains troy;  the weight of the half-dollar shall be 12½ grams;  the quarter-dollar and the dime shall be, respectively, one-half and one-fifth of the weight of said half-dollar; and said coins shall be a legal tender at their nominal value for any amount not exceeding $5 in anyone payment.

Another section limited the legal tender of the new trade-dollar to five dollars.  The amendments, as before stated, were considered seriatim.  When section 15 was reached it was stricken out;  consequently section 16 of the House bill would then become section 15 of the amended Senate bill.  The Congressional Globe shows that no action was taken on section 16 of the House bill.  On the contrary, after acting on section 15, the next amendment of the House bill considered was section 17, which had been section 16 of the amended Senate bill.  This amendment related to the minor coins and it was adopted without debate.

The next amendment was one to section 19 of the House bill and section 18 of the Senate amended bill.  This amendment provided for omitting the eagle on the silver dollar, half-dollar, quarter-dollar, and the dime, respectively, and prescribed in lieu thereof the weight and fineness of the coin, so that the section when amended would read as follows:

Sec. [19] 18.  That upon the coins of the United States there shall be the following devices and legends:  upon one side there shall be an impression emblematic of liberty, with an inscription of the word "Liberty" and the year of the coinage, and upon the reverse shall be the figure or representation of an eagle, with the inscriptions "United States of America" and "E Pluribus Unum," and a designation of the value of the coin;  but on the gold dollar and three-dollar piece, the silver dollar, half dollar, quarter dollar, the dime, five, three, and one-cent piece the figure of the eagle shall be omitted;  and on the reverse of the silver dollar, half dollar, quarter dollar, and the dime, respectively, there shall be inscribed the weight and fineness of the coin;  and the Director of the Mint, with the approval of the Secretary of the Treasury, may cause the motto "In God we trust" to be inscribed upon such coins as shall admit of such motto;  and any one of the foregoing inscriptions may be on the rim of the gold and silver coins.

I have got the record here --anybody can examine it-- showing that that was omitted and not mentioned.  Mr. Casserly, of California, was watching the bill.  He said:

I regret that the eagle is to disappear from the dollar, half dollar, and quarter dollar of our coinage.  It will hardly be possible to think of a half dollar or a quarter dollar as being such a coin without the eagle upon it.

A dialogue followed between the Senator from Ohio and Mr. Casserly, in which the chairman of the Finance Committee explained fully and particularly why it was necessary to have the weight and fineness stamped upon the dollar, half-dollar, and quarter-dollar of our silver coinage.

The chairman said:

Mr. Sherman.  If the Senator will allow me, he will see that the preceding section provides for coin which is exactly interchangeable with the English shilling and the five-franc piece of France;  that is, a five-franc piece of France will be the exact equivalent of a dollar of the United States in our silver coinage;  and in order to show this wherever our silver coin shall float --and we are providing that it shall float all over the world-- we propose to stamp upon it, instead of our eagle, which foreigners may not understand, and which they may not distinguish from a buzzard, or some other bird, the intrinsic fineness and weight of the coin.

Mr. Casserly was still dissatisfied with this explanation.  He wanted the eagle.  Mr. Sherman again said:

This bill proposes a silver coinage exactly the same as the French, and what are called the associated nations of Europe, who have adopted the international standard of silver coinage;  that is, the dollar provided for by this bill is the precise equivalent of the five-franc piece.

That is, the Latin Monetary Union.

Mr. Sherman.  The dollar there is exactly two half-dollars, corresponding with the French coin.

Mr. Stewart.  I would rather not be interrupted.  I want to give it connectedly if possible.  By interruptions the discussion will be disconnected.  The Senator referred to the preceding section, which, it may be remarked, contained a dollar the equivalent of the five-franc piece, and not to the proposed amendment, which was never read and which contained the trade-dollar, which was not equivalent to the five-franc piece, but contained 420 grains of standard silver.

This bill proposes a silver coinage exactly the same as the French, and what are called the associated nations of Europe, who have adopted the international standard of silver coinage;  that is, the dollar provided for by this bill is the precise equivalent of the five-franc piece.  It contains the same number of grams of silver;  and we have adopted the international gram instead of the grain for the standard of our silver coinage.  The "trade dollar" has been adopted mainly for the benefit of the people of California, and others engaged in trade with China.  That is the only coin measured by the grain instead of by the gram.  The intrinsic value of each is to be stamped upon the coin

The Chamber of Commerce of New York first recommended this change, and it has been adopted, I believe, by all the learned societies who have given attention to coinage, and has been recommended to us I believe as the general desire.  That is embodied in these three or four sections of amendment, to make our silver coinage correspond in exact form and dimensions, and shape and stamp, with the coinage of the associated nations of Europe, who have adopted an international silver coinage.

As before stated, the substitute for the sixteenth section of the House bill, which demonetized silver, was not read and acted upon in the Senate;  at all events, the Globe fails to show that it was.

Mr. Sherman.  If the Senator will allow me, he has now in his possession the original bill which shows the particular item.  ---[But the House did not pass the original bill (Senate bill 859), it passed an amendment in the form of a substitute, which contained a 384-grain $1 silver coin, legal tender for five dollars in any one payment]

Mr. Stewart.  Yes, and I will state it all.  I will come to that if you will let me go on, and I will put it in the Record so that everybody may study it.  It is possible that the Reporter failed to record the action of the Senate, but it is very improbable.  It is doubtful, indeed, if such a failure ever occurred before or since, and it is strange that the most important amendment that was ever considered by the Senate, an amendment which demonetized one of the precious metals, should have been omitted by the Reporter.  If there was nothing, however, but the omission to record in the Globe the fatal amendment, a possible doubt might exist;  but the discussion as to the inscription on the silver dollar, which arose on the amendment to section 19 of the House bill, to which I have called the attention of the Senate, seems to establish beyond the possibility of doubt that the original section 16 of the House bill was retained and was in the bill as it passed the Senate.

The whole argument of the Senator from Ohio for substituting the weight and fineness on the silver dollar in place of the eagle was to designate its value, because it was to be an international coin, and to show that it was the exact equivalent of the five-franc piece.  This argument could not have had reference to the trade-dollar of 420 grains in the proposed amendment;  on the contrary, it was expressly stated that the reason applied to the silver dollar of 384 grains.

The dollar in the original section of the House bill was to be of 384 grains;  it was the exact equivalent of the five-franc piece, whereas the dollar provided for in the amendment which was not acted upon contained 420 grains and was called a standard dollar.

The fact that the legal tender of the silver coins in the House bill was limited to $5 is immaterial so far as it relates to what occurred in the Senate.  That limitation was not brought to the attention of the Senate, but, on the contrary, as has already been shown, the Senator from Ohio said:

This bill proposes a silver coinage exactly the same as the French, and what are called the associated nations of Europe, who have adopted the international standard of silver coinage;  that is, the dollar provided for by this bill is the precise equivalent of the five-franc piece.

The silver coinage of the associated nations of Europe was a full legal tender.  Consequently, the effect of what the Senator from Ohio said of the section of the House bill was that it contained a dollar equivalent to the five-franc piece, which was a full legal tender.

On the record the evidence seems conclusive that the fatal provision demonetizing silver was never acted upon in the Senate, but was incorporated in the bill by the engrossing clerk.  And it should be here remarked that the engrossing clerk could not be blamed for his action, because upon the copy used at the desk the amendment to section 16 is marked "agreed."  So that mistake might have been made at the clerk's desk.  I have the original here.  There, was no provision in the bill which passed the Senate to prevent the owner of silver bullion from presenting his bullion at the Mint and demanding coin therefor.  Silver bullion was excluded from free coinage, except into trade-dollars, by the following clause in the report of the conference committee:

No deposit of silver for other coinage [than trade-dollars] shall be received.  (Congressional Globe, 1872-'73, part 2, third session, Forty-second Congress, page 1150.)

So that there was a provision in the conference committee's report excluding silver.  It prevented the owner of silver from taking it to the mints and exchanging it for anything but the trade-dollar.

But, as I have said, the fatal amendment which demonetized silver was never read in either House.  It was adopted in the conference report as number 6, and here is the conference report, and the numbers run from 1 to 20.  This fatal amendment demonetizing silver was numbered 6.  The House did not hear it read because it went in by a number.  It was simply number 6 in the conference between the two Houses.  It was slightly amended in the conference report, but not in such a manner as to indicate what number 6 was.

In order that every Senator may have an opportunity of examining this remarkable legislation, I ask leave to print in my remarks, first, the House bill as originally reported to the Senate by the Finance Committee, with the proposed amendments of the committee, and also with the action of the Senate on those amendments, as indicated by the marks of the reading clerk, and that will give it all.  Here is the original copy which I have secured from the files, and I ask the Reporter to give it back to the Secretary of the Senate, as it is an important document and I have not another copy of it.

Now, as to the proceedings in the Senate when the bill with its amendments was under consideration as shown by the Congressional Globe.  I have the proceedings here, and I will print them seriatim, so that all can take the bill and the proceedings that follow it and see what they were;  then the engrossed amendments to the bill, and immediately after that I will have the conference report inserted.  All these are out of print and inaccessible to the public, and by printing them seriatim as they occur, the history of the whole thing will appear.  By these documents it will be shown that the fatal demonetizing amendment was never read in either House.  It went by number 6 in the report.

I have the record here and will have it printed so that everybody can examine it and make no further mistake. 

Mr. President, I have now laid before the Senate all the record information that exists as to the passage of the bill through the Senate which demonetized silver.  The use made by the gold monometallists of the fact that I was a member of the Senate at the time this legislation took place has compelled me to do this to exonerate myself.  In common with all of the members of the two Houses of Congress who have spoken on the subject, with the exception of the Senator from Ohio, so far as I am informed, I was ignorant of the fact that silver was demonetized in the act codifying the mint laws.  The Senator from Ohio alone, so far as I am advised, contends that this unfortunate legislation was the result of public discussion, careful consideration, and was in pursuance of the enlightened judgment of Congress.

I now submit to him in all candor two questions:  First, did he comprehend the consequences which have resulted from the demonetization of silver ?  Second, if so, did he desire to produce the results which have followed that demonetization ?

The Senator from Ohio [Mr. Sherman] a few days ago [May 22, 1890.] interrupted the Senator from Virginia [Mr. Daniel] in the course of his speech on silver, and the following running debate took place:

Mr. Sherman.  I know the Senator from Virginia does not wish to mislead upon a fact of that kind;  and if I do not interrupt him, for I never choose to interrupt a Senator in the midst of a speech, I remember that in a debate between the late Senator from Kentucky, Mr. Beck, whose death we mourn, he made this same statement, that has been made over and over again in the Senate and House, that the silver dollar was surreptitiously dropped from the coinage.  I then got the original files and showed the original letter of April 25, 1870, had it read, and showed every stage of that bill.  It was printed at least eight or ten times, circulated widely all over the country, and sent to everybody who was supposed to know anything about the bill, and attention was especially called to the fact that the silver dollar was dropped from the coinage.  The bill was debated in both Houses.  The fact was brought out here only the other day by the Senator from Oregon [Mr. Dolph].  The Senator from Kentucky, with the manly generosity that distinguished him, because, although he was very strong in his opinions, he was always willing to be corrected, at once acknowledged his error;  and there are Senators here within the hearing of my voice who probably remember the circumstance.

That dollar was never surreptitiously dropped.  It may have been foolishly done, but it was done after debate.  The circumstances connected with it, the why and the wherefore, were given in both Houses of Congress and stated by the Secretary of the Treasury.  I have no objection to any comment being made upon that fact.  It may have been very unwise;  I will not interrupt the Senator here to debate that;  but the fact is that it was known to every member of Congress.  It is true General Grant said he did not know the effect of the measure, and many other outsiders did not;  but no man could have been present here in the Senate Chamber as a member or in the other House of Congress and attended to his duties and not have known it.

Mr. Hoar.  How many times was the bill printed ?

Mr. Sherman. It was printed some eight or ten times, perhaps more than that, from the beginning to the end for three years during two Congresses, from April 25, 1870, to February, 1873, and the fact that that dollar was dropped from that bill was as bold and palpable a fact as any fact of legislation in the history of our country.

Mr. Daniel.  Mr. President, the Senator from Ohio was entirely right to interrupt me, or at least to make his explanation, and he but does me simple justice in saying that he knows I would be glad to allow any explanation of that kind.

Mr. Sherman.  I suppose the Senator knew that, but I was greatly surprised when another Senator made the same declaration about the silver dollar being surreptitiously dropped who was present here as a member of the Senate, and I can show over and over again he refers to it here.  I knew the Senator did not intend to mislead.

Mr. Daniel.  But, Mr. President, the fact is very little short of the statement made.  So far as this movement to demonetize the silver dollar was concerned, it was a matter unknown to Congress and unknown to the people of the United States when it was done.  Speaker Blaine did not know it when the act passed.  Senator Stewart, of Nevada, representing that great silver community, who was a member of the body, did not know it.  The Senator from Texas [Mr. Reagan], who has always had an eye on silver, did not know it.

Mr. Sherman.  He was not here.

Mr. Daniel.  Was he not then a member of the other House ?

Several Senators.  No.

Mr. Aldrich.  Will the Senator allow me to say that the Senator from Nevada, who also has his eye always upon silver, was here and voted for the bill.

Mr. Teller.  He did not know it.

Mr. Stewart.  I did not know it, and I will give the Senator, if he wants it, the entire discussion.  It was not stated in the discussion that there was any intention to leave the dollar out.  On the contrary, the very last thing that was done was an amendment offered by the Senator from Ohio providing for the inscription on the silver dollar.  I will get it in a moment and show it.  That was adopted.

Mr. Sherman.  The trade-dollar.

Mr. Stewart.  No, the silver dollar and the trade-dollar both.

Mr. Sherman.  In the bill as it came to us --I will get the original files again and introduce the same evidence I did here before.

The Senator from Ohio stated that the Senator from Kentucky [Mr. Beck] intimated that he had taken back his charge, and I will read what the Senator from Kentucky said after the colloquy between him and the Senator from Ohio on the occasion referred to in my remarks in regard to this bill.  The Senator from Ohio failed to satisfy the Senator from Kentucky on the occasion to which he alluded in the foregoing debate with Mr. Daniel.  After the colloquy which took place between the Senator from Ohio and the Senator from Kentucky, to which the Senator from Ohio alluded in the foregoing quotation, the Senator from Kentucky proceeded as follows:

What Senator Beck Said.

Mr. Beck.  What I complain of, and what I think I have proved, is that the House never knew what was in that bill.  The bill was offered as a substitute for all former bills, and it was vouched for by Mr. Hooper, who presented it, that it had nothing to do with coinage.  It was upon the faith of that statement the House allowed it to pass, and the House was deceived.

The Senate amendment is a curious commentary on what the Senator from Ohio the other day said about the old silver dollar being deliberately demonetized because it was more valuable than gold.  When the bill came into his hands, as chairman of the committee he struck out the provision which the House bill contained reducing the dollar because of its overvaluation;  he left no such dollar in the bill, but inserted another dollar altogether;  one of 420 grains, or 7½ grains more silver than the original 412½ grains, which he said was worth 3½ per cent. more than gold;  and the bill was sent back to the House, and, so far as I can find by searching the Record, the House was never told of the change.  What occurred when it got back to the House ?  It was sent at once to a committee of conference.  I turn to the Record again, part 2, third session 42nd Congress, page 1189, under the heading "Mint laws:"

Mr. Hooper, of Massachusetts.  Mr. Speaker, I rise for the purpose of submitting a report of a committee of conference, which I ask the Clerk to read.

That was this report, which no man could by reading tell what it meant unless he had the bill carefully before him.  Signed by the conferees.

The report was adopted.

Mr. Hooper, of Massachusetts moved to reconsider the vote by which the report was adopted;  and also moved that the motion to reconsider be laid on the table.

That is all the House ever did know.  The House was never told, so far as the record shows, that I can find, that the Senate had changed the bill from a bill reducing the value of a silver dollar to a bill creating a new dollar altogether, one of 420 grains instead of 384 grains.

When it came to the Senate, the Senator from Ohio had charge of it, and it is headed again "Mint laws."

Mr. Sherman submitted the following report.

The report was concurred in, with not one word said about it, so that neither House had any opportunity, so far as these reports show, to know what they were doing.

I need not waste time in regard to what took place when the House bill reached the Senate.  The Senator from Nevada [Mr. Stewart] has shown very fully what took place there.  If the Senator from Ohio is content with that statement I am.  Mr. Casserly, of California, was in the Senate and other able and distinguished representatives of silver-producing States.  Mr. Corbett, of Oregon, and others took part in the debate.  Will any sane man believe that they deliberately consented to strike down silver coinage ?  Mr. Sherman says they all did.  I do not believe him.  When the House bill was brought up by Mr. Sherman, the Record shows that he used this language:

Mr. Sherman.  I rise for the purpose of moving that the Senate proceed to the consideration of the Mint bill.  I will state that this bill will not probably consume any more time than the time consumed in reading it.  It passed the Senate two years ago after full debate.  It was taken up again in the House during the present Congress, and passed there.  It is a matter of vital interest to the Government, and I am informed by officers of the Government it is important it should pass promptly.  The amendments reported by the Committee on Finance present the points of difference between the two Houses, and they can go to a committee of conference without having a controversy here in the Senate about them.

Again he said:

Mr. Sherman.  If the Senator will allow me, he will see that the preceding section provides for coin which is exactly interchangeable with the English shilling and the five-franc piece of France;  that is, a five-franc piece of France will be the exact equivalent of a dollar of the United States in our silver coinage;

That was stricken out, and there was no such thing left in the bill.

and in order to show this wherever our silver coin shall float --and we are providing that it shall float all over the world-- we propose to stamp upon it, instead of our eagle, which foreigners may not understand, and which they may not distinguish from a buzzard, or some other bird, the intrinsic fineness and weight of the coin.  In this practical utilitarian age the officers of the Mint seemed to think it would be better to do that than to put the eagle on our silver coins.  I must confess I do not think it is very important;  but I think the Senator ought to be willing to defer in these matters to the practical knowledge of the officers who have charge of this branch of the Government service.  I will say that Mr. Linderman, whom the Senator must know, has suggested this as being a convenient mode of promoting international coinage.

This bill proposes a silver coinage exactly the same as the French, and what are called the associated nations of Europe, who have adopted the international standard of silver coinage;  that is, the dollar provided for by this bill is the precise equivalent of the five-franc piece.  It contains the same number of grams of silver;  and we have adopted the international gram instead of the grain for the standard of our silver coinage.  The "trade dollar" has been adopted mainly for the benefit of the people of California, and others engaged in trade with China.  That is the only coin measured by the grain instead of by the gram.  The intrinsic value of each is to be stamped upon the coin.

Did not every word of that indicate the continuance of silver coinage with full legal-tender quality as it had always had ?

International coinage in a trade-dollar, with a legal-tender quality of only $5, and even that poor quality was stricken out in 1875, so as to make it simply merchandise.  That was the coin the Senator from Ohio said was to float, and they were providing it should float all over the world wherever our flag floated, and that it should be international coinage equivalent to the coins of other nations.  Little wonder the Senator from Nevada said to him, "Whatever may be your construction of the meaning now, the words used then induced me to vote with you, because you made me believe that you were sending out a bona fide silver dollar as good as any in the world."  The Senate so believed.  The debate showed that Mr. Casserly announced that Nevada alone was then producing $20,000,000 of silver, and the question was, as to whether silver owners should pay the coinage charge of half a quarter, or one-eighth per cent.;  nothing was suggested anywhere that the silver dollar was to be stricken down.  The Senator from Ohio was as silent as the grave on that subject.

But that was not all.  To show that whenever things are not done as they ought to be, the track can be followed, and it will be in the same direction, the Revised Statutes were adopted shortly afterwards.  When it is said that we had coined no silver dollars, practically, up to that time, that is not the fact.  We had coined in the month of January, 1873, and in the first twelve days of February, 1873, nearly two million standard silver dollars of 412½ grains, nearly one-fourth of all we ever had coined.  By the way, if Senators will turn to Dr. Linderman's work on "Money and Legal-Tender," which you will find in the Library, you will see we never had coined a gold dollar from the foundation of the Government until long after the discovery of gold in California, and that we had up to 1848 about as much silver as we had gold coin of all sorts.  At the time we fought the war of 1812 and the war with Mexico, and acquired Louisiana, we were upon a silver basis, if that is worth suggesting.  All our acquisitions were obtained with silver coin, the Mexican dollar being the legal tender, as well as other foreign coins, most of the time.  The table furnished by Dr. Linderman shows it all, and the fact is proved by his tables that we had coined nearly two million standard dollars in less than six weeks before this act of 1873 was passed.

I think I can guess the reason why the bankers of Europe were pushing the act of 1873.  The Rothschilds, who held our bonds, and the great bankers of the Rhine, at Frankfort and elsewhere, were of course, all anxious for it to pass.  Mr. Hooper and the other bankers knew why.  How much the Senator from Ohio was allowed to know I can not state;  but Dr. Linderman showed in November, 1872, that silver was falling, and falling rapidly;  it had fallen from 3 per cent. premium down to par with gold when the act was passed demonetizing it, and that it was sure to fall still more rapidly.  All their bonds were payable in it while it was being stricken down in their countries.  Dr. Linderman tells the whole story in a report made the fall of 1872, after the bill had passed the House.  He takes credit for the trade-dollar as having been first suggested in his report.  He says we discovered very soon after the bill passed the House --as early as September or October, 1872-- that Germany was going to sell her silver.  The House had passed the bill, recollect, in May, 1872;  it came to the Senate practically in December.

Dr. Linderman in his book states what he said in the fall of 1872:

The amount of silver bullion annually produced from the mines of the United States has been increased during the last three years, and now amounts to about $20,000,000 per annum, exclusive of gold it contains;  and a further increase in this product being quite certain, the future value of silver as compared with gold is a matter of national importance.

The fluctuations in the relative value of gold and silver during the last hundred years have not been very great, but several causes are now at work, all tending to an excess of supply over demand for silver, and its consequent depreciation.  Among these causes may be stated the increasing production, its demonetization by the German Empire, and continued disuse in this country, except to a limited extent, as part of the circulating medium.

It has also been demonetized by Japan, while in some other countries silver coin has been wholly or partially expelled from circulation by paper money, the effect of which will be to bring to market as bullion large amounts hitherto used as coin.  The amount of silver coin in the German Empire at the date of the enactment of the recent coinage law, (December, 1871,) which changed the standard from silver to gold, is estimated by competent authority at $350,000,000, being equal to five years' total production of the globe.

Even if silver should be adopted by Germany for subsidiary coinage, not more than $50,000,000 will be required for that purpose, which will leave $300,000,000, or about nine thousand tons, to be disposed of as bullion.  A market for this immense supply of silver can only be found in such of the European states as maintain the single standard of silver or the double standard of gold and silver, and in China and the Indies.

The facts above stated indicate the gradual but eventually certain adoption of the gold standard, and consequent demonetization of silver by all commercial countries.  Not only is the tendency to adopt gold as the sole standard and measure value, but to use paper money redeemable in gold as the bulk of the circulating medium.

Then he proceeds to show that gold would necessarily appreciate, which he said meant the same thing as depreciation of property by reason of silver being stricken down.  I may refer to his table giving the amount of silver and gold we had then coined and the relation they bore to each other in 1873, showing that the pretense that silver was demonetized because it was either not a coin that the people wanted or because it was more valuable than gold is not true.  It was stricken down because the great gold brokers, foreign and domestic, saw that gold was becoming more and more valuable every day, and silver would necessarily fall because of the action of Germany.  The production of gold had fallen off in this country from $66,000,000 in 1856 to $32,000,000 in 1873.  Silver production had gone up from less than $14,000,000 four years before to thirty-odd million dollars in 1873.  That was the real cause of its being stricken down in the interest of the bondholders and the bankers and the usurers of Europe and America.

I have gathered quotations from members of Congress and from the President, showing their utter ignorance on the bill;  these I will also print.  I will not take time to read them, but they are from quite a number of members, and from these quotations it will appear what each has said about it, so far as I have been able to determine, and from the evidence of these men who participated, they were all in the same boat with me, I believe, and no one has come out and said that he understood it.  Certainly, it was not read at the Desk.

Mr. Holman, in a speech delivered in the House of Representatives, July 13, 1876, said:

I have before me the record of the proceedings of this House on the passage of that measure, a record which no man can read without being convinced that the measure and the method of its passage through this House was a "colossal swindle."  I assert that the measure never had the sanction of this House, and it does not possess the moral force of law.

Again, on August 5, 1876, he said:

The original bill was simply a bill to organize a bureau of mines and coinage.  The bill which finally passed the House and which ultimately became a law was certainly not read in the House.

It was never considered before the House as it was passed.  Up to the time the bill came before this House for final passage the measure had simply been one to establish a bureau of mines; I believe I use the term correctly now.  It came from the Committee on Coinage, Weights and Measures.  The substitute which finally became a law was never read, and is subject to the charge made against it by the gentleman from Missouri [Mr. Bland], that it was passed by the House without a knowledge of its provisions, especially upon that of coinage.

I myself asked the question of Mr. Hooper, who stood near where I am now standing, whether it changed the law in regard to coinage.  And the answer of Mr. Hooper certainly left the impression upon the whole House that the subject of the coinage was not affected by the bill.

Mr. Cannon, of Illinois, in a speech made in the House on July 13, 1876, said:

This legislation was had in the Forty-second Congress, February 12, 1873, by a bill to regulate the mints of the United States, and practically abolished silver as money by failing to provide for the coinage of the silver dollar.  It was not discussed, as shown by the Record, and neither members of Congress nor the people understood the scope of the legislation.

Senator Bogy, of Missouri, uttered the following words in a speech made in the Senate June 27, 1876:

Why the act of 1873, which forbids the coinage of the silver dollar, was passed, no one at this day can give a good reason.

Mr. Burchard, of Illinois, in a speech made in the House of Representatives on July 13, 1876, said:

The coinage act of 1873, unaccompanied by any written report upon the subject from any committee, and unknown to the members of Congress, who without opposition, allowed it to pass under the belief, if not assurance, that it made no alteration in the value of the current coins, changed the unit of value from silver to gold.

Senator Conkling, in the Senate on March 30, 1876, during the remarks of Senator Bogy on the bill (S. 263) to amend the laws relating to legal tender of silver coin, in surprise, inquired:

"Will the Senator allow me to ask him or some other Senator a question ?  Is it true that there is now by law no American dollar ?  And, if so, is it true that the effect of this bill is to be to make half-dollars and quarter-dollars the only silver coin which can be used as a legal tender ?"

General Garfield, in a speech made at Springfield, Ohio, during the fall of 1877, said:

Perhaps I ought to be ashamed to say so, but it is the truth to say that, I at that time being chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, and having my hands overfull during all that time with work, I never read the bill.  I took it upon the faith of a prominent Democrat and a prominent Republican, and I do not know that I voted at all.  There was no call of the yeas and nays, and nobody opposed that bill that I know of.  It was put through as dozens of bills are, as my friend and I know, in Congress, on the faith of the report of the chairman of the committee;  therefore I tell you, because it is the truth, that I have no knowledge about it.

Senator Allison, on February 15, 1878, when the bill (H.R. 1093) to authorize the free coinage of the standard silver dollar and to restore its legal-tender character was under consideration, observed:

But when the secret history of this bill of 1873 comes to be told, it will disclose the fact that the House of Representatives intended to coin both gold and silver, and intended to place both metals upon the French relation instead of on our own, which was the true scientific position with reference to this subject in 1873, but that the bill afterward was doctored, if I may use that term, and I use it in no offensive sense of course---

Mr. Sargent interrupted him and asked him what he meant by the word "doctored."  Mr. Allison said:

I said I used the word in no offensive sense.  It was changed after discussion, and the dollar of 420 grains was substituted for it.

On February 15, 1878, during the consideration of the bill above referred to, the following colloquy between Senator Blaine and Senator Voorhees took place:

Mr. Voorhees.  I want to ask my friend from Maine, whom I am glad to designate in that way, whether I may call him as one more witness to the fact that it was not generally known whether silver was demonetized.  Did he know, as Speaker of the House, presiding at that time, that the silver dollar was demonetized in the bill to which he alludes ?

Mr. Blaine.  I did not know anything that was in the bill at all.  As I have before said, little was known or cared on the subject. [Laughter.] And now I should like to exchange questions with the Senator from Indiana, who was then on the floor and whose business it was, far more than mine, to know, because by the designation of the House I was to put questions;  the Senator from Indiana, then on the floor of the House, with his power as a debater, was to unfold them to the House.  Did he know ?

Mr. Voorhees.  I very frankly say that I did not.

Senator Beck, in a speech made in the Senate January 10, 1878, said:

It [the bill demonetizing silver] never was understood by either House of Congress.  I say that with full knowledge of the facts.  No newspaper reporter --and they are the most vigilant men I ever saw in obtaining information-- discovered that it had been done.

Senator Hereford, in the Senate, on February 13, 1878, in discussing the demonetization of silver, said:

So that I say that beyond the possibility of a doubt --and there is no disputing it-- that bill which demonetized silver, as it passed, never was read, never was discussed, and that the chairman of the committee who reported it, who offered the substitute, said to Mr. Holman, when inquired of, that it did not affect the coinage in any way whatever. --Ibid, page 989.

Mr. Kelley, of Pennsylvania, who had charge of the bill, in a speech made in the House of Representatives on March 9, 1878 said:

In connection with the charge that I advocated the bill which demonetized the standard silver dollar, I say that, though the chairman of the Committee on Coinage, I was ignorant of the fact that it would demonetize the silver dollar or of its dropping the silver dollar from our system of coins as were those distinguished Senators Messrs. Blaine and Voorheess, who were then members of the House, and each of whom a few days since interrogated the other:  "Did you know it was dropped when the bill passed ?"  "No," said Mr. Blaine;  "did you?"  "No," said Mr. Voorhees.  I do not think that there were three members in the House that knew it.  I doubt whether Mr. Hooper, who, in my absence from the Committee on Coinage and attendance on the Committee on Ways and Means, managed the bill, knew it.  I say this in justice to him.

Again on May 10, 1879, Mr. Kelley said:

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.

Senator Howe, in a speech delivered in the Senate on February 5, 1878, said:

Mr. President, I do not regard the demonetization of silver as an attempt to wrench from the people more than they agreed to pay.  That is not the crime of which I accuse the act of 1873.  I charge it with guilt compared with which the robbery of two hundred millions is venial.

President Grant was also ignorant of the demonetization of silver.  Eight months after the passage of the bill he wrote a letter to Mr. Cowdrey, from which the following extract is taken:

The panic has brought greenbacks about to a par with silver.  I wonder that silver is not already coming into the market to supply the deficiency in the circulating medium.  When it does come, and I predict that it will soon, we will have made a rapid stride towards specie payments.  Currency will never go below silver after that.  The circulation of silver will have other beneficial effects.  Experience has proved that it takes about forty millions of fractional currency to make small change necessary for the transaction of the business of the country.  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 two to three hundred millions, in time, of this species of our circulating medium.

It will leave the paper currency free to perform the legitimate functions of trade and will tend to bring us back where we must come at last, to a specie basis.  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 of value the world over.  Silver has this, and if we once get back to that our strides toward a higher appreciation of our currency will be rapid.  Our mines are now producing almost unlimited amounts of silver, and it is becoming a question, "What shall we do with it?"  I suggest here a solution that will answer for some years, and suggest to you bankers whether you may not imitate it: To put it in circulation now;  keep it there until it is fixed, and then we will find other markets. --McPherson's Handbook of Politics for 1874, pages 134 and 135.

On January 14, 1875, the same date that he signed the resumption act, President Grant sent a special message to Congress advising the establishment of two or more mints at Chicago, St. Louis, and Omaha to coin silver dollars to provide for resumption, when by law, signed by himself, it was provided that no more silver dollars should be coined.

I submit that it is unfair for the Senator from Ohio, in view of the facts which I have presented, to claim that the question of demonetizing silver was discussed and understood, and that Senators who were present and voted for the bill knew that the silver dollar was omitted.

He undoubtedly knew what the bill contained, because it was in harmony with the views which he had entertained and often expressed.  It is quite probable that he did not realize the consequences of the great change in the standard money of the world which the law he framed would produce, and that he was mistaken in the consequences which would follow the demonetization of silver.  If the law was a mistake he should in all fairness have been the first one to rectify that mistake and aid in the restoration of the money of the Constitution.  Has he done so ?  On the contrary, he has during all the years that have passed since 1873 persisted in his advocacy of the single gold standard, and he is not now willing to restore silver to the place it occupied before it was demonetized in the manner I have described.  If the Senator from Ohio to-day would advocate the unlimited coinage of silver, a law for that purpose would speedily be placed upon the statute-book.  He is the author of the demonetization of silver and the great leader in the advocacy of the gold standard.  If he should change his views the battle would be won and the money of the Constitution restored.

Mr. Sherman.  Mr. President, I have but a very few words to say in conclusion.  The dollar that the Senator from Nevada is talking about --and he seems to have gotten into a mare's nest about it-- is the subsidiary dollar that was put on in the House containing 385 grains, 26½ grains less than the old silver dollar.  It was the French five-franc piece.  Perhaps the Senator is not aware, and I will now tell him so that he can not be mistaken, that he is in error in supposing that the French silver coinage is upon the basis of 15½ to 1.  That is a mistake.  The French people, like all the people of Europe, have adopted silver as a subsidiary coin.  It is true they maintain a standard of 15½ to 1, but when they coin it at all they coin upon that standard, and the French silver to-day is like other coins, it is a subsidiary coin, but they found they would not have any silver during the time when gold was at a premium.

Another thing;  in all the remarks that have been made, I call attention to the fact that the dollar in the bill as it came from the House of Representatives here, about which the discussion arose, was the French dollar, a dollar of 385 grains.  That was stricken out by the action of the Senate.  That was not the 412.5-grain dollar at all.  The dollar that was stricken out was the dollar of 385 grains which was legal tender for only $1.

Mr. Stewart.  All right;  let me go on.

Mr. Sherman.  I thought the Senator was through.

Mr. Stewart.  No;  I beg your pardon;  I am not.  The Senator is right in saying that as it came from the House the silver dollar was equivalent to the five-franc piece.  He says that was only a subsidiary coin.  He is mistaken about that.  That was an international coin at the time of the international convention, and it was circulating as the standard at that time.  It was the unit of value in all of the associated nations of Europe and it was regarded as better than gold.  They had not given up the idea of demonetizing gold then, and our silver dollar was at a premium of 3 per cent., and it was stated by the Senator that this dollar was going to circulate all over the world, this five-franc-piece dollar.  It was the five-franc-piece dollar that his argument referred to, for that was still in the bill and did not go out of the bill until the engrossment, when it gave place to the provisions that demonetized silver.  It went out of the bill outside of the Senate, to give place to the trade-dollar of 420 grains;  but I say the section in the law which demonetized silver was never read in either House of Congress.

With what grace men get up here and charge me with dereliction of duty in not protesting, when it was never read or discussed or brought to the attention of Congress other than by number 6 in the report of the conference committee, is amazing to me !  Perhaps we ought to understand all the amendments which are reported, but we do not all the time do our duty in that respect.

There are a great many bills passing every day that other people have charge of where we do not know of the amendments which are reported.  It is only those that are acted upon and discussed, and the important measures that are brought before the Senate and discussed, that we know about.  But the responsibility of demonetizing silver without calling the attention of the Senate to the fact rests upon the then chairman of the Committee on Finance.  If it had been discussed it would have been in the Globe.  These discussions about outside matters amount to nothing, but here is a crowd of witnesses who were present and all come forward and say they did not know it.  The House did not know it.  They did not know what amendment No. 6 meant;  the Senate did not know what No. 6 meant when it was read.  Silver was demonetized in the conference report by by amendment No. 6;  it was never read in either House !

The Senator from Ohio, in discussing this question, constantly dwells upon the value of gold and the value of silver, as if it had inherent value which could not be affected.  How was the value of silver put down ?  It remained at par with gold for nearly a century.  It did not vary one-half of 1 per cent. for more than a century until silver was rejected as money, and the Old World admits that fact now and the Royal Commission admitted that fact.  It was put down because of the want of demand, because it could not be coined.  It is the demand that puts up the price.  Value consists of two things:  limitation of quantity and the desire of man as manifested by demand.

Now, he pretends to say that if we would demand all the silver by free coinage that would not put up the price, and he tells us that there would be a gap of from 20 to 30 per cent. between silver and gold.  The gap was made by rejecting silver.  Silver has little value without the demand as money.  It would be very poor security but for its money value, and if we demand it for money we make a demand for six or eight hundred millions, and we take it all.  If we make a demand for $300,000,000 we take it all, and I believe a demand for $200,000,000, or much less, would put it to par.  It takes but a slight demand, because there is more coin, as shown by the Royal Commission on the Depression of Trade, by 18 per cent. than has been produced, and has been for many years;  and we can only account for it by the recoinage of old coins.  There is no surplus production of silver.  The want of coinage demand in Europe and the United States has depressed its value, nothing else.  Before the United States could be supplied enough would be absorbed to raise silver to par. And why should there be a departure from established custom ?  Why should the sacred usages of the people for centuries be assailed ?  Why should not the coin of the Constitution be restored, when it was rejected without even the reading of a fatal amendment ?  It was rejected, I say, without reading the amendment.  If it be restored, will there be too much money if we have both gold and silver ?  Why was it rejected at all ?  I deny that it was done by discussion.

I do not believe the Senator from Ohio understood its far-reaching and its terrible effects.  I do not believe he did, and if he had come out and said it was by mistake, and he had not fully understood its effects, nobody would have blamed him, because at that time the question of coinage was not being discussed.  We were under coin suspension, very little money was being coined, and it was very easy for a mistake to be made by the Senator from Ohio or anybody.  But, having been made, the people having lost their money of the Constitution through a mistake, to which nobody's attention was called, what I say is that those engaged in that should rectify it, and should not have kept the country in these seventeen years of depression.  They should not have robbed the country of its money all this time.

Talk about the value of gold remaining stationary !  What has put up the value of gold ?  The purchase of it by our people with their produce, the sacrifice of their property.  The farmers and producers of this country have been compelled to sell their property at a discount of from 30 to 40 percent, to buy gold to pay debts because the Government of the United States would not allow them to be paid in the money of the Constitution, because by an amendment that was never read silver was demonetized, and they could not pay in silver as well as gold, and so they were compelled then to get money at all hazards;  and they have done it nobly, but they have done it at the expense of the prosperity of the country.

Mr. Sherman.  I should like to see the original bill of 1873, which the Senator has, in order that I may reply to him.

Mr. Stewart.  I was pretty nearly through with that subject.  Perhaps I had better let the Senator make his statement here.

The President pro tempore.  Both Senators are inaudible at the desk.

Mr. Sherman.  I have lost my voice and therefore I am excusable, but the Senator from Nevada has not lost his voice and is not excusable.  The Senator from Nevada certainly does not want to misstate or mislead, and his statements are now misleading except to a person who would examine the papers and know and see the exact facts.  He will see that he is mistaken.  The amendment referred to by him is No. 6.  I will read it and then show you that that very amendment was adopted, but probably the Reporter, in the confusion there may have been, dropped it out.

Mr. President, here is the bill of the House with Senate amendments, the same that went to a conference, the last, final papers [exhibiting].  Here is section 16 of the House bill changed to 15, and now I will read it:

Sec. [16] 15.  That the silver coins of the United States shall be a dollar, a half-dollar, and a dime or ten-cent piece;  and the weight of the dollar shall be 384 grains;  the half-dollar, quarter-dollar, and the dime shall be, respectively, one-half, one-quarter, and one-tenth of the weight of said dollar;  which coins shall be a legal tender at their nominal value for any amount not exceeding $5 in any one payment.

The amendment proposed by the Senate, printed in italics, provides---

That the silver coins of the United States shall be a trade-dollar, a half-dollar or fifty-cent piece, a quarter-dollar or twenty-five-cent piece;  and the weight of the trade-dollar shall be 420 grains troy;  the weight of the half-dollar shall be twelve grams and one-half of a gram;  the quarter-dollar and the dime shall be, respectively, one-half and one-fifth of the weight of said half dollar;  and such coins shall be a legal tender at their nominal value for any amount not exceeding $5 in any one payment.

The amendment proposed by the Committee on Finance being to strike out the words in the House bill between brackets [ ] and insert those printed in italics.

Here, then, is the House proposition, with the Senate committee's amendment, as reported from the Committee on Finance, printed in italics, which must have been open before every Senator and could not be mistaken.  On the margin of this Senate amendment, in the handwriting of the Clerk, is plainly written "Agreed to."  Not only this, but I will show that another amendment was made to this Senate amendment.

The difference between the two was in respect to the dollar.  The House proposed the subsidiary dollar of 385 grains.  The Senate Finance Committee, at the request of the people of California, proposed the trade-dollar of 420 grains, and the Senate agreed to that.  Here is the official record, kept by Mr. McDonald [William J. McDonald (1813-1878) for 15 years Chief Clerk of the Senate], whom we all remember with great pleasure.  Here it is in his own handwriting, but the Senator says it is not in the Globe.  Suppose it is not.  It was probably dropped out there by the Reporter.  Is there any other evidence of this ?  The highest evidence is this very paper.  It is the bill under consideration before the Senate.  Others just like it had been printed for the benefit of all, and here it is marked "Agreed to."

Now, to show that it was agreed to, as appears by the Globe, there was an amendment to the Senate amendment numbered 6, which I offered, and I called attention to the fact that that amendment had not been adopted, had not been acted upon as an amendment to the amendment numbered 6, and here is the conversation called to my attention by the officers of the Senate;  and here I show, on the same page of the Globe that the Senator read from, and he would have found if he had gone a step further.  I said:

Mr. Sherman.  There is an omission in the matter proposed to be inserted by the committee.  I move to insert in line 11, after the words "twenty-five-cent piece," the words "and a dime or ten-cent piece."

Here the words are inserted in the copy kept by Mr. McDonald in his hand writing, agreed to on my motion;  and this is the amendment which the Senator says was never read.  It must have been read because here it is amended by an amendment and that amendment went to the committee of conference.  If the Senator will not believe upon an exhibition of this kind, then I do not know what will convince him.

Then it must be remembered that that amendment was again amended by the conference committee, and here the report is signed by all of them, Messrs. Hooper, Stoughton, and McNeely, of the House;  SHERMAN, Scott, and Bayard, of the Senate.  Here is an amendment to that sixth amendment which was itself acted upon in conference, and this amendment which passed the Senate as an amendment to the House bill was acted upon in the committee of conference and amended, and here it is:

That the House recede from its disagreement to the sixth amendment of the Senate---

Mr. Teller.  That is the one.

Mr. Sherman.  Yes---

and agree to the same with the following amendments:  In line 5 strike out the word "grains;"  at the end of the line, and insert in lieu thereof "grams (grammes);"  an in line 6 strike out "grain," and insert "gram (gramme);"  and the Senate agree to the same.

Here it is "gramme."  So not only must this amendment have been read here, but it was amended in the Senate.  It was printed in italics, laid before the Senator himself, and sent to the committee of conference, and there again amended.

Mr. Teller.  What amendment is that ?

Mr. Sherman.  The sixth amendment amended in conference by inserting the word "grammes" instead of "grains."  It was originally "grains" and they inserted here "grammes," and the word "grammes" was properly inserted in the amendment.

Mr. Teller. What I wanted to call the attention of the Senator to is whether that is the amendment which dropped out the silver dollar.

Mr. Sherman.  This was the amendment that dropped out the silver dollar.  The silver dollar was dropped out by both Houses.  The silver dollar was never proposed by mortal man in either House at that time.

Mr. Teller.  Not the silver dollar, but a silver dollar.

Mr. Sherman.  A silver dollar.  That subsidiary French dollar was proposed by the House and sent to the Senate, and we substituted the trade-dollar, and no mortal man in either House during those three years of controversy ever thought of or ever proposed the old silver dollar.  It was conjured up afterward for the purpose of misleading, and I say, sir, that there it is, and the man who does not believe that testimony of men now dead would not believe anything.

Mr. Stewart.  If any man will read this record and find that section mentioned---

Mr. Sherman.  I have done it.  Here it is.  I showed it to the Senator.

Mr. Stewart.  That was when there was another amendment under consideration.

Mr. Sherman.  This amendment is amended, inserted in writing.

Mr. Stewart. Then there was no action upon the sixth amendment at all.  It was when the other amendment was under consideration.  Anybody can study it for himself.

Mr. Sherman.  I have not examined the record critically, but the senator says that the Reporters of the Globe failed to record the adoption of the sixth amendment.  I say that here is the sixth amendment printed in italics in the bill before him, marked "agreed to" by Mr. McDonald, and not only "agreed to," but amended, and the amendment is shown in the very paper the Senator read from.

Mr. Stewart.  Then the next amendment considered was in section 17.  I can read this right along---

Mr. Sherman.  Show me the place where you say it was omitted and not read.

Mr. Stewart.  Here is section 15;  that is the section that was struck out.  Here is the discussion in regard to it [exhibiting].  Then here is the next amendment marked "amendment agreed to."  The next amendment was to strike out section 17 (16 in the amended bill) "in the following words:"

Sec. [17(16).  That the minor coins of the United States shall be a five-cent piece, a three-cent piece, and a one-cent piece---

And so on.

And to insert in lieu thereof the following.

Then Mr. Sherman said:

Mr. Sherman.  There is an omission in the matter proposed to be inserted by the committee.  I move to insert in line 11, after the words "twenty-five-cent piece," the words "and a dime or ten-cent piece."

The amendment to the amendment was agreed to.

That was when the next amendment was under consideration---

Mr. Sherman.  Now, Mr. President, if the Senator has completed that statement, I say the amendment referred to by "Mr. Sherman" here is this identical amendment which the Senator says was never read or adopted, and here it is in the handwriting of Mr. McDonald.

Mr. Stewart.  Let anybody take it and study it.

Mr. Sherman.  I do not want any doubt about it.  I say that any one who can not, under these circumstances, see this must be willfully blind.  I say that I myself called attention to the fact that a certain amendment to the amendment proposed by the committee had not been agreed to, and the amendment was read, and here it is written, "a dime or ten-cent piece," the very amendment which the Senator says was not read.

Mr. Stewart.  I do say it was not read.

Mr. Sherman.  Here it was all the time before the Senator, and how could it be otherwise than read ?

Mr. Stewart.  Will you find where it was read ?

Mr. Sherman.  Because the Reporter does not happen in the hurry of business to catch every amendment in the precise order in which it was presented, the Senator would therefore convict some one of some grave wrong.  There is no justice in it; and I was going to say worse than that.

Mr. Stewart.  It was not only not read, but the subsequent discussion shows that the omission of the old dollar was not there.

Mr. Sherman.  No dollar was there.

Mr. Stewart.  The subsequent discussion shows that it had not been adopted, because you describe in your reply to Mr. Casserly that it was equivalent to the five-franc piece, and if the amendment had been adopted, there would not have been any five-franc piece there at all, any more than the dollar of 412½ grains.

Mr. Sherman.  The dollar of 412½ grains was never in any bill whatever during the whole discussion.  It was lost to sight.  The dollar in that bill was the French dollar.

Mr. Stewart.  Certainly it was, but you stated that it was in there, and you called attention to it;  whereas, if the amendment had been adopted there would not have been any French dollar there, but the trade-dollar, and consequently your argument shows that it was not acted upon.

Mr. Sherman.  The French dollar was in the House bill, not in the Senate proposition.  The Senate proposition was the trade-dollar.  Can not the Senator understand that ?

Mr. Stewart.  Can not the Senator understand this, that after the bill was passed and there was a discussion as to the inscription on the coin, he stated that the reason for it was because he wanted the weight and the fineness stamped upon it, and that that was equivalent to the five-franc piece ?  That was the reason he assigned.  If the amendment had been adopted, as he says it was, he could not have assigned that reason, because there would have been no five-franc piece there.  Can you understand that ?

Mr. Sherman.  I can understand that perfectly.  We were talking about these coins and devices, and I spoke of the half-dollar and the quarter-dollar, and all of them.  It is perfectly clear the two propositions were there, and the only difference between them was not the old dollar, but whether the French dollar of 384 grains or the trade-dollar of 420 grains should be inserted;  and the question was put, and it could not be otherwise.  It would not be possible in the nature of things for an amendment of that kind to be overlooked, and it was not overlooked, and you will find that the amendment was amended in the way I proposed, and in the very words which it appears by the Globe are in the amendment which I offered.  It appears from the Globe, and is recorded in this paper in the record in the handwriting of Mr. McDonald.

Mr. Stewart.  There will be no trouble about this hereafter, because before we conclude this matter I will put all these papers in their order in the Record, so that anybody who has curiosity about the subject can study it.  I repeat again, he will find that the section which demonetized silver was never read in either house, and any one who examines it will find it was never read in either House.

Mr. Sherman.  It was never mentioned or spoken of.

Mr. Stewart.  Then I shall be exonerated for having been here and having voted for this bill, and my excuse will be taken.  If the provision was read in my hearing and I did not object to it I might stand convicted, but I have shown that it was not read, and I repeat again, the record will be before the world now, because I have put it in methodical order.

I repeat again, the legislation contained in this bill which changed one of the standards of money, which revolutionized the financial history of the world, ought to be corrected without a word.  We ought to put it back where it was before.  The people of the United States ought to have a new trial for mistake, if not for fraud.  When this was discovered and brought to the attention of the country, whatever the policy might thereafter have been, it was, in all good conscience and all justice and honor, the duty of everybody who had anything to do with it, to say "The people have not had a hearing;  the money of the Constitution has been taken away from them without a hearing, and we will undo the wrong."  Now, we come here again and ask that the wrong be undone at this late day.

We ask for the restoration of silver, and we are told that we are disturbing the finances of the country, the settled policy of the world.  A "settled policy," established as this was, ought to be disturbed.  It ought not to stand.  It has no place upon the statute-book.  I have brought a crowd of witnesses who have proved that they did not know what it was.  I do not stand alone.  I stand with Presidents and ex-Presidents, the living or the dead, who have borne the testimony which I print in my remarks that they did not know of this transaction.

Suppose it had been known that we were to change the standard, there would have been a lively discussion about it in the Senate.  Do you suppose we should have been discussing immaterial things if a great question of that kind were pending ?  Was it proper for the chairman of the Committee on Finance to fail in calling the attention of the Senate to what was being done ?  If he was proposing to fairly make this great change, which he perfectly understood and which had been recommended, it would have been the first thing that he would have called to the attention of the Senate for discussion.  That is usual.  That is done everyday.  If it was done accidentally and nobody knew about it and the Senator was mistaken as to its consequences, then nobody would ever blame him, because, as I said before, we were in suspension at that time, not using gold or silver, and a mistake of that kind might very well happen.  We knew very little about finance at that time.  As the Englishmen used to say laughingly, "We were blundering along in the dark, using paper money," and a mistake at that time might naturally occur.  But when a mistake so fundamental as that occurred it should be corrected at the first demand that the money of the Constitution be restored, that contraction stop;  and when we remonetize silver I predict we shall put it at par, for remonetization will create a demand for it.

There is no excess of supply.  The only fear is that we shall not get enough of it.  The world has not enough of gold and silver, as is evidenced by the fact that to-day more than one-third of the money of the world is paper, and as long as we have more than one-third paper to do the business of the world it can not be said that there is danger of too much gold and silver.  There is, in round numbers, 3,900,000,000 of paper, about 3,100,000,000 of gold, and about $3,800,000,000 of silver, according to the report made up for me in the Treasury Department, and as long as you have more than one-third of the world's money in paper is there any danger of there being too much gold and silver ?  No, the world never did have too much gold and silver in any age, and it never had any prosperity in any age when the mines were not productive.

We have gone through depression time and again.  Our race is only in danger of barbarism from the failure of the mines.  The productive mines in the different epochs stand out as mile-posts showing when the people prosper.  Show me when the people of any country advanced in civilization, and I will show you that at that time they were securing large supplies of the precious metals, gold and silver.  Show me when they were in decay and poverty, and I will show you that the mines failed every time in all the history of the world.  In the first part of this century, after the wars in Mexico, South America, and Spain, we had hard times up to 1850, when the great boom came by the discovery of gold in California and Australia, which revivified the commerce of the world and put it onward in progress, and the whole world rejoiced, and more progress was made in twenty-three years than had been made in any century since the beginning of recorded history.

But then the hand of the misers, the usurers, who manipulated individual contracts previous to that time, who were hated by all mankind, despised as the most wicked of wretches --the usurers combined not to change individual contracts, but to change the contracts of the world, all contracts.  First, they proposed to enhance the value of bonds and obligations by the demonetization of gold.  These combined usurers against the producers commenced this discussion in 1853, and they have continued it ever since.  They failed in demonetizing gold.

Then they started in to demonetize silver and produce a revolution in the money of the world.  They did it to enhance the value of bonds.  They stated that as the reason.  We were as lambs dumb before the shearers.  We uttered not a word.  The American people had no opportunity to utter a word.  We joined the army of usurers to enhance the obligations of contracts.  We have doubled the indebtedness of the world and we have transferred from the masses thousands of millions of their hard earnings to the hands of the few by this usurious legislation.  We have made millionaires and we have created serfs and slaves of the producers.  Do we propose to continue that process indefinitely ?  Do we propose to adhere to the gold standard ?

Do we propose to chain the people to the gold standard of Europe ?  Do we propose to make them sell their property at 50, 60, or nearly 100 per cent. discount to pay gold to pay debts contracted when money was plenty and gold was cheap, before it was hoarded, and when bonds were cheap and greenbacks plenty ?

There was as large a circulation in 1865 in the North alone, before the rebellion was conquered, as there is now in the whole country.  Why did not the Secretary of the Treasury take those figures ?  There was as much then as there is to-day.  Since that time there has been one-third increase in the population by the reacquisition of the South;  at least we have to-day the growth of thirty years.  Yet there has been no increase in circulation.  We have gone, however, into a pool with Europe to corner gold.  We have been buying gold.  Austria and Italy have been buying gold.  Germany was on a silver basis.  She retired her silver and commenced buying gold, and thus we put gold up.  Although we have been strong, although we have sustained our credit, we have done it at the expense of the producing classes.  Cotton and wheat have had to be sold to buy gold, because the government of the United States denied us the right to use silver and denied it by legislation which was never discussed, and by an amendment that was never read in the halls of congress.

I say it is time to right that wrong and give us back the money of the Constitution.

Mr. Sherman.  Mr. President, in a document that my attention has been called to within a few minutes, I find a matter that I should like to have the Senator from Nevada explain, for I have no doubt he then felt exactly as Mr. Casserly did about silver.  A great deal is said about silver being wonderfully productive.  The last words of the debate in the passage of the bill referred to were in the following statement of Mr. Casserly, ---[only a few seconds after Sherman lied to him and to the whole Senate] who was then a Democratic Senator from California:

I say the cost of refining in London is so much more than it is in San Francisco that but for this coinage charge the gold bullion product of Australia would come to us.  Why ?  Because what they want in England all the while is silver for their Asiatic exchanges, with India and China.  We have more silver than we want.  Nevada appears to be getting ready to deluge the world with silver.  I see that her silver product last year was probably over $20,000,000.

Now, sir, there could not be a better basis for exchange, nor a more profitable operation for the American people, than to take the gold bullion of Australia and coin it in San Francisco and diffuse that much more specie through all the arteries of business, getting ready for the resumption of specie payments, of which the Senator spoke so well and so truly the other day, and to give them in return for their bullion this silver which we do not want and which before a great while may be at an absolute discount on our hands.  I wish to say that much.  I feel very earnest about this matter, because I think I understand the financial and commercial bearing of the great blunder we make in continuing this obsolete coinage tax.  Having said so much, I leave the question to the Senate.

That was the very idea of the silver men, that they were getting too much of it;  and they wanted it to go away and the gold from Australia to come to us.  That is what they wanted because we has so much silver, and yet, forsooth, it is alleged because somebody demonetized silver all this fuss is made !

Now, Mr. President, any man who will take that paper [exhibiting] will find that it contains testimony that can not be denied, a paper old with age, and here is the amendment which the Senator from Nevada upon the face of that paper dares to say was never read in the Senate, simply because the Reporter did not catch the amendment.  It seems to me that is going far beyond what has ever been done before, especially when you have the fact that that amendment was itself amended according to the testimony of the Globe itself, so that it must have been considered and read more than once.

That amendment was to strike out the House proposition containing a dollar of 384 grains and insert upon the motion of the people of California a dollar of 420 grains, and it never appears in all these three long years of debate that, while that bill was pending, any man proposed to retain and continue the silver dollar of 412½ grains.  It had no place.  The last word said in this debate by a gentleman from California was that they had too much silver and that they wanted the gold of Australia, and were willing to have the silver of Nevada go to India or wherever else it would go.

Mr. President, I confess I am somewhat disappointed that the Senator from Nevada, when he saw this evidence, did not frankly state that he had been misled and relieve the imputation which would rest otherwise upon every man connected with that legislation, and especially upon the members of the conference committee before whom these amendments were brought, were read, and by whom they were acted upon in their report here made known to the Senate, and voted upon with full knowledge of every amendment stated in the conference report.  I supposed the Senator from Nevada to be a frank man, and I expected he would state frankly and fairly, especially where he saw that there was a feeling manifested, and my honorable friend from Vermont [Mr. Morrill] and myself feel the same way in regard to this matter.  When this imputation is made by any man we resent it, and I resent it now, and express my profound regret that a Senator of the United States, when convinced on the testimony before him, does not say, "I withdraw any charge of impropriety from gentlemen on this account."

Mr. Stewart.  Mr. President, again I have been charged with being present when this discussion took place, and I am denied the right of exonerating myself by giving the printed record here.  I have been very fair, for I have printed in my remarks the entire record, and everything connected with it, and I can not be responsible if the record condemns the Senator from Ohio.

There will be nothing but the record, and the people will examine it.  I print it in the Congressional Record because these papers are not accessible, and this one is the only copy of the original bill.  The engrossed amendment can not be found, except in this file copy of the Senate.  I put them all in together, seriatim, so that the Senator from Ohio will be able to have the complete record by which to defend himself, and it will enable me to place the record before my constituents to show what occurred when I was here, for I have had it charged upon me repeatedly by gold bugs, and it was also charged by the Senator from Rhode Island [Mr. Aldrich], very gleefully and boastfully, that I was in my seat in the Senate when this action was had and that I voted for this bill.

If I had been here and voted for the bill knowingly, I would not come up and say that I did so ignorantly;  but the man who voted for it knowingly and not ignorantly is responsible for changing the values of this country.  He is responsible for changing every contract in the world after it was made;  he is responsible for all the gain that the miser extracted from the laboring classes by usurious interest, acquired by changing contracts after they were made --a charge that I would not like to have lie at my door.  If he did it ignorantly he is excused, because men can not know everything, and, that I may do exact justice to the Senator from Ohio, I put it in the Record.  I stand by the record, and say I did not know it, and I further say that I did not have a reasonable opportunity to know it, such an opportunity as Senators usually have.  I stand with Garfield and Grant and Conkling and others who defended themselves by pleading ignorance of this transaction.  If the great men whose names I have read could plead ignorance of this matter, why should not an obscure individual like myself make the same defense ?  If in making that defense I have reflected upon the Senator, I can not help it.  It was not to reflect upon him that I did it, but it was to defend myself.  Let him defend himself as chairman of the Committee on Finance for not calling the attention of the Senate to his amendment demonetizing silver before he charges others with being parties to that unfortunate transaction.

Mr. Aldrich.  Mr. President---

Mr. Teller.  I should like to ask the Senator from Ohio a question, if the Senator from Rhode Island will allow me.

Mr. Aldrich.  I yield if it will not take long.  I should like to make a few remarks in answer to the suggestions of the Senator from Nevada.

Mr. Teller.  I merely wish to ask a question, but I will wait.

Mr. Aldrich.  Mr. President, it is true that in the course of the discussion I made the suggestion that the Senator from Nevada [Mr. Stewart] was present and voted for the bill which demonetized silver in 1871.

Mr. Stewart.  That is not the one.

Mr. Aldrich.  The one that passed the Senate.  The Senator was present and voted for that bill upon the yeas and nays.  I now understand him to say that he was ignorant of its provisions, that he did not know what he was voting for.  The Senator from Nevada took quite an important part in the discussion of that bill in the Senate, and he discussed the twenty-fifth section, and stated in the course of that discussion:

I have been unfortunate enough to be engaged in mining enterprises and to have bullion for sale, and I know that the coinage charge is deducted.

Now, I want to call the attention of the Senate and of the country to the provisions of three sections of that bill which were under consideration, and then the Senate can judge.  The twenty-first section provided in terms --not by indirection, mind you, or by implication, but provided in terms-- that any owner of silver and gold bullion might deposit the same at the mints.  I will read section 15 first in order to get them in the logical sequence in which they should be stated:

Sec. 15.  That of the silver coins, the weight of the half dollar, or piece of fifty cents, shall be one hundred and ninety-two grains;  and that of the quarter dollar and dime, shall be, respectively, one-half and one-fifth of the weight of said half dollar.  That the silver coin issued in conformity with the above section shall be a legal tender in any one payment of debts for all sums less than one dollar.

The eighteenth section provided:

Sec. 18.  That no coins, either of gold, silver, or minor coinage, shall hereafter be issued from the mint other than those of the denominations, standards, and weights herein set forth.

A distinct and positive prohibition upon the mints of the United States to coin anything but the half-dollar, quarter-dollar, and dime, which were set forth in the provisions of the bill.  If the Senator from Nevada did not know what the bill contained, and was familiar with bullion, and represented a State that was of the first importance in its mining interests of any State in the United States, all that I can say to him is that he has grown immensely in zeal and in intelligence in representing his constituents since 1871.

Mr. Stewart.  When that bill was under consideration the Senator from Ohio [Mr. Sherman] offered an amendment.  That amendment was in these words:

For coinage, whether the gold and silver deposited be coined or cast into bars, or ingots, in addition to the charge for refining or parting the metals, three-tenths of 1 per cent.

That was the matter which was read and brought to the attention of the Senate and that was all.  The whole Pacific coast delegation said that this was an unjust charge, and they voted against it, and made a fight on it.  They supposed, and everybody supposed, that this was an ordinary codification of the Mint laws, and it went through as many other bills go through, and, whether I was remiss in my duty or not, I say it was never called to my attention, and I repeat again that the parties having it in charge, if they knew that it contained a thing of that kind, under the pretense of being a bill to codify the Mint laws, should never have attempted to change the coinage of the world without notifying the Senate;  and everybody connected with the committee failed to do that.  If we voted for the bill we did not know that it contained any such provision.  I was not familiar with Mint arrangements, and it being a bill to codify the Mint laws, I did not examine its provisions with any particular care.  Can any Senator say that he reads every bill which comes before the Senate and knows everything that is contained in the same ?  Under no circumstances would I ever at any time have voted to demonetize silver.

Mr. Aldrich.  There is one other section which I omitted, which I want to read for the benefit of the Senator from Nevada.  The twenty-seventh section, two sections from the section which he discussed so long and so ably in the Senate, contained this provision in terms:

That silver bullion, deposited by private holders, shall be paid for in silver bars or disks only, and that no deposit for coinage into silver coin shall be received.

Who will say that that was put there by implication, and what sort of a plea is it for a man, who represented a mining State and who was interested in bullion, to say he did not know what the provisions of the bill were ?

Mr. Stewart.  I saw, as I said, that you had a bill codifying the mint laws, and I, in common with nearly all the members of both Houses, was ignorant of the fact that you were changing the coinage of the country.  The section was not read.  The amendment proposed by the Senator from Ohio was not discussed then, and I repeat that silver was demonetized without discussion in either House of Congress;  it was demonetized without warning to the people, and it was either a mistake or something worse.  So far as I am concerned, I was ignorant of it, and others say the same thing;  and I am ready, and have been ever since I discovered it, to do all in my power to right the wrong.  The fact that I was here when this great wrong was perpetrated has been one of the reasons why I have worked for the last sixteen years in this cause.  I believe no one will charge me with having missed an opportunity to do whatever was in my power to right this wrong.  One of my great objects in life is to see the people's money restored to the place where it was before this bill was passed through Congress in the manner in which it was.

I wish the Senator from Ohio and the Senator from Rhode Island were as willing to give back to the people the money of the Constitution as I am.  If they were willing to right the wrong it would be sooner remedied.  If those who are in favor of free coinage, in favor of restoring the silver dollar, had their way, the people would have back the dollar of the Constitution in two weeks.  Those in favor of the gold standard have the advantage by this legislation without giving the people a hearing.  The people say they had not a fair trial, and they are asking for a new trial;  and if those gentlemen think that the people will not press their case until they get a fair hearing they mistake the temper of the people of the United States.

Be it enacted &c.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sec. 2.  That the Treasury notes issued in accordance with the provisions of this act shall be redeemable on demand, in coin, at the Treasury of the United States or at the office of any assistant treasurer of the United States, and when so redeemed may be reissued;  but no greater or less amount of such notes shall be outstanding at any time than the cost of the silver bullion and the standard silver dollars coined therefrom, then held in the Treasury purchased by such notes;  and such Treasury notes shall be a legal tender in payment of all debts, public and private, except where otherwise expressly stipulated in the contract, and shall be receivable for customs, taxes, and all public dues, and when so received may be reissued;  and such notes, when held by any national banking association, may be counted as a part of its lawful reserve.  That upon demand of the holder of any of the Treasury notes herein provided for the Secretary of the Treasury shall, under such regulations as he may prescribe, redeem such notes in gold or silver coin, at his discretion, it being the established policy of the United States to maintain the two metals on a parity with each other upon the present legal ratio, or such ratio as may be provided by law.

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

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

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

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

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

Approved, July 14, 1890.