Speech of Honorable William Holman, of Aurora Indiana.

Mr. Speaker, the attention of the House has been called this morning to two of the great subjects of this period, the tariff and the payment of the public debt.  The gentleman from Maine [Mr. Blaine] has argued that the public debt should be paid in coin, while the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Brooks] urges that the prosperity of the country demands an increase of the tariff.  These gentlemen present the views of the Republican party, of which they are distinguished members, in their respective sections of the Union.  The tariff and the public debt are closely allied.  The tariff and internal taxation being the only agencies by which the public exactions can be met, I differ with these gentlemen on both of these questions.  If the payment of the entire national debt in coin and the increase of the tariff, which now almost reaches the point of prohibition, are measures calculated to promote the interests of the people of Maine and Pennsylvania, I am very certain, sir, they are measures at war with the interests of my constituents.  I do not pretend, sir, to any peculiar learning on the great questions of finance and political economy which affect the destinies of nations --questions which have staggered the greatest intellects of every age;  yet, Sir, the main questions of finance connected with the public revenue and the public debt and the duty of the people of this Government with regard to their national obligations are clearly within the comprehension of every citizen.  For the first time in history the people themselves, on whom the burdens of Government rest, decide the questions connected with a great national debt, and fortunately, sir, the whole people are informed of the nature of their obligation, and able to determine with justice the rights of the public creditors.

And here, sir, there occurs inevitably a divergence of opinion, for political parties in a free State are the inevitable result of difference of opinion on fundamental principles of Government.  The questions which affect the relations of labor and capital are either directly or remotely the foundation of all political parties.  In monarchies the interests of capital are always in the ascendant, for it is manifestly the policy of a strong Government to centralize its wealth;  hence the universal oppression of labor.  Hitherto in our own country the general distribution of wealth has prevented any direct antagonism between the interests of capital and the interests of labor, yet on the incidental questions which have sprung up in our country affecting these two great interests, capital has ever obtained the advantage, for from its very nature it can readily concentrate its power, and never hesitates to demand the advantage, and is never wanting in a plausible pretext.

We encounter for the first time in our history a great national debt.  The debts created by former wars were too inconsiderable to excite solicitude, but the debt now upon us, from its magnitude and the nature of the obligations, justly excites a serious apprehension that it will, for many years, greatly oppress every department of industry, and, more than all, tend to change the genius and spirit of the Government.  With every consideration for the magnitude of the war, it is scarcely credible that a debt of such magnitude could be contracted in so brief a period.  A few men, officers of the Government and capitalists, have determined the magnitude and regulated the form of this debt.  While the war absorbed the attention of the whole people, public vigilance was impossible, and the most remarkable feature, next to the magnitude of the debt, is the unexampled rapidity with which the wealth of the nation has been centralized and the comparatively small number of persons who have become the holders of the vast body of the public securities.

It was apprehended by the holders of these securities, both in Europe and at home, that a people who had been so long almost exempt from taxation would be restive under the heavy exactions of such a debt, a debt greater, the rate of interest considered, than was ever before born by any people;  hence the effort of the bondholders in 1866 to secure the adoption of the fourteenth amendment to the Constitution before the nature of the debt had been fully considered, that the people might be precluded from considering the nature of their obligations.  But that ingenious device failed, and the forbearance with which the people are now considering the nature of the debt and what is justly due to the bondholders, furnishes the highest guarantee that the public honor will be maintained.  On what basis shall the debt be paid ?

The drift of the great political parties of the country on this question cannot be misapprehended.  The gentleman from Maine has spoken the general sentiment of the Republican party, the party which represents the great body of these public securities --a party which, from its very nature, from the character of its leaders, from its elements, and its theories of public policy, is, on a question like this, inevitably on the side of capital.  The gentleman insists that the debt should be paid in coin, and with his usual ability and force of argument has presented the whole question, and insists that every consideration of public policy demands that the bonds shall be paid in coin.

The gentleman demands justice for the bondholder.  For one, I am in favor of even-handed justice to that class of our citizens;  or, whether they be citizens or not, I am in favor of evenhanded justice to the holders of our public securities.  I do not think the nation can afford to violate its plighted faith.  I think that every consideration to honor, of national preservation, and of regard for the future, calls upon the nation to carefully preserve its honor from even the taint of suspicion.

But, on the other hand, I think nothing is clearer than that, in determining what is just to the holders of our public securities, the fact cannot be lost sight of that those upon whom rests the obligation of paying these public securities, and the annual interest accruing thereon, have the same right to demand evenhanded justice at the hands of their Representatives.

The capitalist has no greater claim to justice than the masses of our people, upon whose labor the whole fabric of the public debt rests, who give to these bonds all the value they possess, and in whose keeping is the public faith.  To the bondholder the public debt may be a public blessing, but to the laboring tax-payer and to his wife and children it is a grinding curse.  The laboring men, in the main, filled the ranks of your gallant army.  The capitalists furnished the money, and the laboring men are now called upon to pay the debt.  The capitalists have made no sacrifice at all, and yet claim every exemption, no taxation, and gold for bonds purchased with currency depreciated from thirty to one, hundred and eighty per cent. below the value of gold.

Mr. Speaker, common justice to the bondholder and to the people who are to pay the bonds, demands that the debt should be paid off upon the basis upon which it was made, and it cannot justly be paid off upon any other basis.  The Representative who favors the interest of bondholders at the expense of the labor which gives value to the bonds, is chargeable with manifest injustice, for if either interest is to be preferred, capital or labor, does not the conscience of every man tell him, unless it be influenced by mercenary considerations, that labor should have the preference ?

On the 1st day of March, 1868, our debt amounted to $2,519,829,622.84.  The interest for this current year is $129,678,078.50, and of this amount of interest $119,961,958.50 is payable in gold.  The appropriations for the expenses of the Government for this current year, as estimated by the Secretary of the Treasury, besides the interest on the debt, is $182,183,736.92, making the entire expenditure for this current year, according to the estimates, $311,861,804.92.  And to illustrate the magnitude of the expenditures for the present year, it will be remembered that the appropriations for the last year of Buchanan's administration were $66,703,592.46.  It cannot be disguised that even if the Government was administered on principles of severe economy the burdens upon the country would be exceedingly oppressive, and it is certainly proper to reduce the demands upon the industry of our people to the lowest point consistent with justice.  The nation can afford to be just, but nothing more.  The principal of the public debt, except the ten-forty bonds, amounting to $212,784,400.00, is clearly payable in lawful money.  The greenbacks now in circulation amount to the sum of $356,157,747.

If the people pay this debt of $2,519,828,622 on the basis on which it was contracted --dollar for dollar-- if they pay in lawful money that part of the debt which is not specifically payable in coin, and pay in coin that portion expressly payable in coin, it is all that the bondholder can ask.  When he asks more he asks that, for his benefit, injustice shall be done to the people on whose industry rests the value of his securities.  The gentleman from Maine dwells on the consequences of issuing the vast amount of legal-tender notes necessary to extinguish the debt, and predicts universal ruin.  I do not understand that any person proposes to issue enough legal tenders to pay off this entire debt at once.  I understand that those who demand justice for the people take the simple ground that the basis on which the debt was contracted is the basis on which it should be paid.  If, while this debt was being contracted between the year 1861 and 1865, we had outstanding currency amounting to some eight hundred and fifty million dollars, and on the basis of that amount of currency this debt was contracted, on that basis it ought to be paid.  It is scarcely possible for any gentleman to argue that if it is necessary to raise $300,000,000 a year for the purpose of paying interest on the public debt and carrying on the Government, that that sum can be raised as well with a currency of $650,000 as it could be on a basis of currency corresponding with that which existed at the time the debt was contracted --$850,000,000.  Indeed, it would probably be just to assume that the currency of the country during the time our debt was being contracted, every element of currency considered, actually exceeded $900,000,000.

The bonds were purchased with this currency, dollar for dollar, while the difference between the currency and gold was from thirty to one hundred and eighty per cent.  Is it an unreasonable proposition that it is the right and duty of this Government, while this heavy weight rests upon its industry, to keep in circulation, stimulating the various branches of labor, an amount of currency substantially equal to that on which the debt itself was made ?  Can the public creditor complain of this ?  Why, sir, the holders of our securities --the five-twenty bonds of the classes that were first issued purchasing with currency-- hold them at a cost to them of about forty-three cents on the dollar on the basis of gold.  I assume, therefore, not as the result of any investigation of my own, but on the authority of those who carefully investigate questions of finance, that if you reduce the currency until you can reach specie basis, you in fact increase the value of the bond the difference between currency and gold at the time the bond was issued, the value of the bond in gold will after all substantially depend upon the amount of lawful money in circulation, if the debt is redeemable in currency.  If you reduce the paper until you reach a point where gold and paper are worth exactly the same, you have really added fifty-seven per cent. to the value of the security in the hands of the holder, so that you may as well pay the whole debt in gold as to reduce the currency to the gold standard.  Nothing can be more manifestly unjust than this, for if the debt had been made on the basis of gold, it would have scarcely exceeded $1,250,000,000, instead of $2,500,000,000;  and it requires no knowledge of finance to perceive it.  It is not necessary to master more than the simplest rules of political economy to see that if you contract a debt on an inflated currency of $850,000,000, and then reduce that currency down to $425,000,000, for the purpose of making currency and gold of the same value, you by that process inevitably increase the value of a bond payable in currency to the amount of difference between the value of gold and currency with $850,000,000 of it in circulation.

It is against this that the Democratic party protests.  And here the different positions of the advocates of the interests of capital and the advocates of the interests of labor are clearly developed.  The Democratic party of the great West and, in the main, throughout the country --for we have voices from the Democracy of the States of Maine and Pennsylvania echoing back the voice of the West-- are resolved on the payment of this debt upon the basis on which it was contracted, dollar for dollar, maintaining good faith to the bondholder and good faith to the laboring man.

Mr. Upson.  I desire to ask the gentleman whether he is anxious to have the paper currency of the country continue depreciated ?

Mr. Holman.  My answer is no.  The whole antecedents of the great party with which I have acted have favored a specie currency as favorable under ordinary circumstances to the interests of labor.  For there can be nothing clearer than that a currency, the value of which is recognized by all nations, is the best representatives of value.  Gold is a currency better adapted to the interest of the whole people, bringing capital down to a proper basis and securing to labor a just and certain equivalent.

But, sir, we are in an anomalous period of our history, and the question is not what is the best currency for the general business of the country, to regulate or represent the value of labor and capital, but what currency will justly meet the present exigency of the nation.  We have contracted a great debt in a currency greatly under the value of gold.  Shall we pay the debt in the same currency, or pay in a currency of much greater value ?  You increase the value of the legal-tender currency just as you diminish the amount in circulation.  If we had no debt, we should have no divided opinion.  The question is not what is the best currency, but in what currency should this debt be paid ?  If you reduce the currency and reach a specie basis you inevitably increase the burdens of the people, because in fact you require them to pay a larger sum of money --a greater value-- than they received for the bonds they are required to pay.

Mr. Upson.  I wish to ask the gentleman this question: if we raise the value of paper currency to par, do we thereby increase the value of gold ?

Mr. Holman.  Certainly not.  The pertinency of the question is not very apparent.  Either the gentleman or myself do not fully comprehend it.

Mr. Upson.  My point is this: if the paper dollar is worth a gold dollar, I do not know why it would not pay the debt just as well as gold.

Mr. Holman.  There is no question about that.  Does not the gentleman know that if you contract a debt on the basis of a volume of currency amounting to $850,000,000 and you reduce the currency to $300,000,000 to reach a specie basis, you do in fact, waiving any finespun theory of political economy, substantially if not more than double the value that must be paid to redeem the debt ?  The gentleman would reach the point where the gold and paper dollar would be of the same value, but to do this you must increase the value of the paper dollar by reducing the amount in circulation.  If you can do it in any other way you will not increase the burden of payment, and yet you would increase the value of the security as you would pay in a more valuable currency.  But this is mere speculation, you can only for the present increase the value of legal-tender notes by reducing the amount in circulation, and just to that extent you pay more than you agreed to pay by your bonds.  If you increase the currency beyond what it was when the bonds were issued and pay the bonds in that currency, the holder of the bond may complain.  If you diminish the currency, as you have done, you simply enhance the currency value of the bond by increasing the value of the currency in which it is to be paid, and the people may justly complain of this.

The gentleman says it is the interest of the Government to come to a specie basis.  The general proposition is correct.  But I answer that the condition of our affairs renders it impossible, and unjust if it were possible, because in doing it you double the burden upon labor and increase the value of capital represented by these bonds.

Gentlemen talk about justice to the bondholders.  It may be regarded as a settled law of this land that a debt incurred prior to the issue of legal tenders, or by its terms expressly payable in gold, is payable in lawful money, made awful money and a legal tender by act of Congress.  If the gentleman owes me a debt incurred on the 7th of March, 1861, and I demand payment, he pays me in lawful money of the country;  so if the debt is expressly payable in gold.  The courts have deliberately held it to be a lawful payment, although at the time the debt was contracted it was then payable in specie, then the only lawful money recognized by our laws.  We issue bonds, sell them for the lawful money in circulation, the bondholder becomes a creditor of the Government, the bond payable in lawful money, and he demands payment of his debt in gold.  Will any fair-minded man say that his debt is entitled to any greater consideration than any other debt ?  If it was just for the Government to pay the pensions of the soldiers of the Revolution, three of whom survived until near the close of the late war, and the pensions of the soldiers of all the subsequent wars up to the late civil war, when at the time their pensions accrued gold and silver were the only lawful money, in lawful money, greenbacks, is the bondholder entitled to greater consideration ?

Mr. Axtell.  Will the gentleman allow me to ask him what are the greenbacks to be paid in ?

Mr. Holman.  They are payable, sir, at the pleasure of the Government in whatever the Government of the United States declares to be lawful money.  It must be regarded as the established law of the land by judicial decisions, that United States notes made lawful money by act of Congress are lawful money not a promise to pay a debt hereafter or at present, but money-representative of value for all the uses of social, domestic, and political life.  Congress may regulate the value of money, and the fact that United States notes are money rests upon not only the acts of Congress, but also on the almost uniform decisions of the courts of justice, and, more than that, on the public wealth and faith of the nation.  When in the future we shall reach a specie basis, coin will be lawful money as it is now, and it will then be to the interest of the whole people that the currency that shall regulate values shall be the currency which is lawful money in the judgment of all nations.  But, sir, the legal-tender notes, "United States notes," are money, legal representatives of value in the proper sense of the word, and have just as much value as an artificial representative of values as pieces of gold and silver on which the Government has stamped a similar declaration of value.  I say this with reference to legal representatives of value, the artificial convenience of commence and of political society.  We have acted on this idea without embarrassment for seven years;  and all this is true while gold has an intrinsic value which paper does not possess.

Mr. Blaine.  Each legal-tender note says upon its face that the United States promises to pay a dollar.  What is that dollar that they promise to pay ?

Mr. Holman.  The dollar which they promise to pay is what they themselves declare to be a dollar.

Mr. Blaine.  What do they declare to be a dollar ?

Mr. Holman.  They declare that United States notes shall be received in payment of all dues, except certain duties on imports, and shall be lawful money.

Mr. Blaine.  The gentleman does not touch the question.  I hold in my hand a note on which "the United States promises to pay ten dollars."  It does not promise to pay that note.  That is the evidence of the promise.  Now, what is it that they promise to pay ?

Mr. Holman.  Is not the gentleman a little technical ?  Is not that looking at the form of the instrument instead of the substance of the instrument ?  When Congress declared that paper which the gentleman holds in his hand to be lawful money, did they not give it the effect of lawful money as a means of representing values for the extinguishment of debt just as much as if they had declared a piece of gold to be of that value as lawful money ?

Mr. Blaine.  No, sir.

Mr. Holman.  Will the gentleman from Maine mention the difference ?

Mr. Blaine.  I will mention the difference.  The gentleman will see that the United States have, by various laws, established that a certain number of pennyweights of gold shall constitute a lawful dollar, and when this war broke out the United States issued some paper promises to pay, which were redeemable in those dollars.
---[As the law stands (on March 7, 1868,) 412½ grains of silver in a coin is the unit of account, that is what a U.S. note promises to pay.  Future speaker of the House, who sat in his Chair and pretended to be deaf and dumb while silver was demonetized.  The bonds were purchased with these promises, worth at the time 50-cents in gold, they should not, now, be redeemed with 100-cent gold coins, the exact same promises should do just fine !  In fact, these promises today are worth more in gold than they were at the time of purchase, so the bondholder is already getting back more than just the principal.]
They ---[the republican party] found they were not able to redeem them, and they then issued indefinite promises, not being able then to assign a date when they would give gold, but it was none the less an honorable obligation on the part of the United States to pay a dollar at some time;  and the gentleman entirely confuses logic and history and fact when he says the United States declares that that piece of paper is a dollar.  On its face it is a promise to pay a dollar.  It nowhere says that it is a dollar.  It is merely a promise to pay a dollar;  and so long as it is not redeemed --and here is the gentleman's point-- the United States says that that promise of its own shall circulate between its citizens as though it were paid;  but it is not, a dollar;  it nowhere declares itself to be a dollar;  it is nothing else than a promise to pay a dollar, and so long as it is not paid, it is suspended paper, just as much as the gentleman's paper would be if he did not pay it when it fell due.

Mr. Holman.  What is money ?  A convenient agent of commerce, a method of exchange, a representative of value, a regulation of political society.  I owe the gentleman ten dollars and I promise to pay him that much money.  I tender him such a note as he holds in his hand.  The law has declared it to be money --lawful ten dollars, which he is bound to receive in extinguishment of his debt.  The Congress, with the sanction of the courts of justice, have declared the paper which my friend holds in his hand to be ten dollars and receivable in extinguishment of a promise to pay that much money by the citizen or by the Government.  To draw a distinction between this money and any other kind of money is a mere play upon words.  Congress has declared that these United States notes shall "be lawful money and a legal tender in payment of all debts, public and private, within the United States," except duties on imports and interest an bonds and notes payable in coin;  these notes are money by the same authority that gold coin is made money, their commercial value as money is fixed by law.  There is nothing in the objection that this money is not money;  it is money after all.  The people themselves fully appreciate this money.  They are satisfied with the lawful money they have made.  They insist that it is sufficient for the ordinary transactions of business between citizen and citizen.  And if a debt, payable by a citizen to a citizen, is under the law of the land redeemable in this lawful money, declared to be lawful by a law of the land for the payment "of all debts public and private," will you tell me why a similar debt should be paid in gold, when the nation --the whole people are the debtor ?

But I do not propose to stand upon that ground.  I think, as a matter of public policy, it is better that this nation should pay off this debt upon the exact basis upon which it was made, in gold where the agreement was to pay in gold, and in lawful money where the agreement was to pay in lawful money, or, where the particular money was not expressed, and the justice of paying in lawful money where the debt is not expressly payable in coin, is clearly manifest;  indeed, the agreement to pay in coin a debt contracted in a currency of less value is clearly unjust to the people.  But it is better to live up to our contract, hard and unconscionable as at was, than that the slightest suspicion should rest upon the integrity or honor of the nation.  Until we can pay the principal of the debt in lawful money, let the interest be paid in coin.

Mr. Broomall.  Will the gentleman allow me to interrupt him a moment ?

Mr. Holman.  I will yield to a question.

Mr. Broomall.  The gentleman says that the paper greenback dollar is a dollar because it is made lawful money by the Government of the United States.  I want to know whether he means us to understand him to say that the gold dollar are precisely equal in value because the law of the United States also makes the gold dollar lawful money ?

Mr. Holman.  Certainly.  I suppose there is actually but little intrinsic value in gold or silver in comparison with the value attached to it as a circulating medium by the common consent of civilized nations.  I suppose nothing is more clearly established in this Government now, though certainly it was not dreamed of eight years ago, than that the Government can impress upon whatever it thinks proper a given value as an agent of commerce;  and that for all practical purposes in all dealings of the Government with its citizens, and between citizen and citizen in the extinguishment of debt and the ordinary business relations of life, that which is declared to be money by the supreme law of the land, becomes in fact the standard of value, just as much as gold and silver are made the representatives of value by law.

I know there is a greater intrinsic value in a piece of gold than in the bit of paper I hold in my hand.  It is valuable for many purposes of civilized life.  It is valuable because of its comparative scarcity and durability;  it furnishes a convenient medium for the commerce of the world.  Iron is also one of the most valuable of metals, actually of infinite more value than gold.  The Spartan law-giver thought an iron currency better than a gold or silver currency.  Iron and paper are the great agents of civilization;  they are of actual and inestimable value, while the value of gold is purely artificial.  Yet it is valuable as a common representative of value among all nations.  The artificial interests of commerce have made it money just as our laws stamp this monetary value upon a piece of paper.  The value of the gold dollar and the value of the paper dollar equally depend on the law of the land as an agent of commerce.  In the ordinary channels of business, in the common, every-day affairs of this nation, this paper dollar becomes in fact, as it is in law, a legal standard of value.

But all this develops the fact that the Republican party, which now controls this nation, and has done so for eight years, the policy of which rendered this money indispensable, has always, in its ingenious theories, its modes of thought, and methods of reasoning, favored that policy which would promote the interest of capital, making the rich richer and the poor poorer.  You put out this money;  you contract an enormous debt on the basis of this money;  you pay the pension of the widow and orphan child of the dead soldier in this money.  It was good enough to pay for the blood of the soldier;  it is good enough for the people;  but the bondholder must have a more valuable money;  it is not good enough for the wealthy capitalist.  You never lose sight of the peculiar interest of capital;  and the theory upon which the Republican party seek to control the destinies of this Republic is in fact the supremacy of capital;  and that party now seeks, as it has from the beginning, to make that interest paramount to the interest of labor.  That labor, which upholds the whole fabric, Government and debt, must dig the soil and toil in the workshop, but its privations and sufferings excite no compassion.  The overgrown power of this party, conscious of its strength and deluding to its purposes even the honest patriotism of the people, bends its energies to the interest of capital alone.  In the same line of policy, following the same mode of reasoning, that party established the national-banking system.

And, sir, while three months ago there was reason to indulge the hope that the common demand of the people would speedily result in the removal of that feature of financial policy, to-day the power of this national-bank system is clearly seen.  I believe that this Congress will go on, not simply through its present session, but the next, and this measure of oppression, this great financial and political power, will remain unshorn of its strength.  Under this system an organization, with a mere handful of capitalists, obtain the benefit of $300,000,000 of money, the interest on this vast sum and the benefit of the political power which it commands.  Yet the condition of the country and of our public affairs was such that without any embarrassment, and in perfect harmony with our financial system, the people might have had the benefit of this enormous amount of circulation in the form of legal tender notes.  One of the elements of the profits of this banking system is the interest on $300,000,000 of currency furnished to the banks by the Government, which, at six per cent., only secures them the annual sum of $18,000,000.  At the lowest rate of interest.  $18,000,000 a year as a bonus from the Government! --a sum equal to one fourth part of the entire appropriations made to carry on this Government in the last year of a Democratic administration.  And yet, gentlemen say that this party is not in the interest of capital.  The enormous profit resulting from this vast volume of currency should inure to the benefit of the whole people.  What right has a few bondholders to this enormous profit at the expense of the people ?  The system should be abolished and $300,000,000 of the money of the people substituted for the currency of the banks, and thus paying off $300,000,000 of your gold-bearing bonds, saving $18,000,000 per annum in gold.  When the people shall have an opportunity to speak, when the issue shall be fairly presented, the wrong and injustice involved in this entire system of policy will be remedied;  the people will demand the abolition of the national banks, and the substitution of the lawful money of the country for the circulation of the banks, so that the people themselves may have the benefit of the enormous profit resulting from the system of paper money.  To doubt this, sir, would be to underrate the intelligence of the people and their appreciation of their own rights.

But the party that has built up this policy will stand by their offspring.  They will rely on their enormous financial power and their political influence upon the affairs of the country.  That great statesman, Andrew Jackson, trembled for the political rights of the people of this nation when it was proposed to organize a national banking system with $60,000,000 of capital.  But now labor is obliged to resist a system in which $600,000,000 of capital are concentrated in a common interest for a common end, the interest of capital.  These banks are vigilant in evading taxation.  In the State which I in part represent, the poorest citizen who is subject to a tax pays a larger amount of tax to the town, or city in which he lives than the overshadowing national bank organized in the same community.  In Indiana these banks are totally exempt from municipal taxes.  Taking the country throughout, the taxation borne by the national banks is nothing compared with the benefits of the capital which they enjoy.  They pay but the pitiful sum of one per cent. per annum as a tax on their $300,000,000 of circulation and nothing on their $300,000,000 of bonds;  and they loan out to the laboring men and smaller capitalists of the country at twelve and fifteen per cent. per annum the money furnished them by the Government, on which they pay but one per cent.  This is but a specimen of the unconscionable profits realized under this system since its first organization.

As a result of all this, these national banks, after declaring annual dividends of from ten to twenty per cent., have actually in three years added more than sixty-five million dollars to their capital.  See how carefully the Republican party has nurtured these objects of their munificence.  Three hundred millions in bonds, on which they receive their six per cent. interest in gold, wholly exempt from taxation;  $300,000,000 in national-bank currency, which is printed and furnished to them by the Government for one per cent. per annum;  and the shares, at least in Indiana, wholly exempt by a Republican Legislature from all municipal taxation.  No wonder they have accumulated in three years $65,000,000 of a surplus fund, every dollar of which is wrung from overtaxed labor.

The gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Logan] some days since proposed that a tax of two per cent. for national purposes should be imposed on the national bonds.  Under the acts of Congress and the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States, the States have no power to tax the securities of the Government.  But the proposition of the gentleman from Illinois is one clearly admissible.  Nothing can be clearer than that the very proposition which denies the power of State and municipal bodies to impose a tax on such securities implies necessarily that a tax may properly be imposed on such securities by act of Congress;  and it seems to be the wiser policy that the tax should be imposed by the General Government.  It is better, because then the tax would inure to the benefit of the whole people and would be properly applied to the immediate extinguishment of the debt, or rather, to the extent of the tax, would be in effect a reduction of the interest.

But, Mr. Speaker, whatever may be the purposes of the gentleman, I apprehend his proposition receives little favor at the hands of his political friends in this House.  I apprehend this measure will not even be pressed upon the serious consideration of Congress by the men who control legislation in such a form as will be at all likely to secure its enactment into a law.  I hope I am mistaken, sir;  but, with the strong sympathy of Congress with these overgrown capitalists, I see but little hope for a measure in the interests of the people.

Mr. Blaine.  Will the gentleman state it as his judgment that the Democratic side of is House will vote for that proposition or anything like it ?  Will the gentleman himself vote to tax United States bonds two per cent. and take the amount of the tax off the coupons ?

Mr. Holman.  Yes, sir.

Mr. Blaine.  And take it off the coupons ?

Mr. Holman.  It has to be taken off the coupons.

Mr. Blaine.  Does the gentleman know that the forty-five members on his side of the House will vote with anything like unanimity for that ?

Mr. Holman.  This has not, so far as I am aware, been the subject of any consultation among the opposition members of the House.  As for myself, I introduced a proposition in the early part of the session that a tax should be imposed by the General Government upon these bonds --the purpose to tax them being by strong inference expressed in the laws authorizing their issue-- substantially equal to that imposed on other property for State and local purposes in the various States.  I assume that, for the present at least, the tax imposed for State municipal purposes throughout the northern and western States of the Union --I do not know how it may be in the South-- is now equal to about two per cent. on the general value of property.  There is not even a plausible argument against imposing upon these bonds a corresponding tax, and thus substantially equalizing taxation.

The argument against allowing State taxation was apparently a sound argument.  It was made here years ago;  I have heard it time and again on this floor.  It was that if a State was permitted to tax the Federal securities it might in an unfriendly spirit, render them worthless by excessive and unequal taxation.  That argument, however, does not apply to a tax imposed by the Federal Government.

Mr. Blaine.  I understand the gentleman as speaking for the Democratic side of the House --of course he must be speaking for that side when he arraigns the other side-- and I understand him to say he is opposed to local taxation of the national bonds.

Mr. Holman.  Will the gentleman allow me to ask him a question ?

Mr. Blaine.  Certainly;  if he will answer my question first, he may catechise me as much as he pleases.  Do I understand him to be opposed to State or local taxation ?

Mr. Holman.  The gentleman did not so understand me;  and he has got to be franker and fairer if he expects me to yield to him.  I have not said a word from which he can fairly draw the inference he does.

Mr. Blaine.  You said you had heard the argument fifty times that States might tax these bonds out of existence, and you said that was a good argument.

Mr. Holman.  I say it was a good argument.  The gentlemen will remember years ago, when both of us were here, a proposition was brought forward to allow the States to tax these bonds, to the same extent and in the same manner as other similar property.  I say that that principle is right.  I have always contended for it.  But the gentleman's State, perhaps, being favorably located for many appliances connected with the war, has become more extensively a bondholding State than my own.

Mr. Blaine.  No, sir;  the State of Maine suffered ten dollars per capita where yours did one.

Mr. Holman.  The facts are shown by the bank deposits, and appear from the last annual message of Governor Andrew, of Massachusetts.  The eastern States were enabled to accumulate vast sums in the shape of Government securities.  These securities are held mainly in the East.  I submit that in as much as the national debt rests upon the labor of the whole people, it is just and proper that the tax should be imposed upon the national securities in such manner as that its benefits shall inure to the whole people.  This you accomplish by a national tax.  If you tax the six per cent. bonds two per cent., reducing the interest in effect to four per cent. in gold, you would still pay a greater interest than England pays on any of her securities.  It is the only practical mode, too, of reaching the whole of the bonds, less subject to exception, fairer in the estimation of all fair-minded men, than the project either of the Senate or the House, refunding bills upon a basis of a five per cent. security.

I answer the question of the gentleman from Maine.  I thought, at the period this debt was being made, the States should be allowed to impose a tax upon the bonds to the same extent, and no more, that they should tax other similar property in their limits, thus guarding against the bonds being improperly taxed.  I submitted such a proposition repeatedly to the House;  but now the only way you can reach the bonds, whether held by American or foreign capitalists, is for Congress to impose a tax to be taken from the Coupons.  It must be manifest that this is a fair and legitimate mode of taxation, and we do not require any new funding scheme, to result in the expenditure of millions in making the exchange, and opening up new expedients for the capitalists.  If you tax the bonds of course you reduce their value to the extent of the tax; so you do all other taxable property, and of course you would reduce the interest to the extent of the tax.  You would reduce the value of the bonds and the interest on the bonds in the same manner and to the same extent that all other property is reduced in value by taxation;  to that extent you would reduce the interest.  Can the bondholder justly complain of this ?  It only imposes on him the tax which every other citizen is compelled to pay.

I do not propose, I say to the gentleman--- I am not proposing to reduce the interest upon these bonds by a mere arbitrary act of Government.  I only propose that the Government should exercise the ordinary power of taxation, a power which Congress has not and could not surrender.  The bonds can well bear a reasonable taxation.  The Government ought not to have fixed on so high an interest as six per cent.  I insisted at the time that the interest was too high payable in gold.

Mr. Blaine.  It is a contract.

Mr. Holman.  I am not proposing by act of Congress to reduce the interest, but I do say those bonds, like other species of property in the United States, or the value of which exists by virtue of the laws of the United States, are the legitimate subject of taxation.  And I say, further, that the capitalist who assumes that he alone shall be exempt from the ordinary burdens of taxation which rest upon the poorest laboring man in the land is the last of all mortals whose opinions or wishes are entitled to be considered by any legislative body.  Shall he, whose wealth is protected by Government, heap on the shoulders of labor all the burdens of Government ?  Shall we permit the most offensive form of aristocracy to obtain a foothold in this Republic ?  Why, sir, it is monstrous.  Inequality of taxation is the purpose and the great evil of monarchy.  It grinds the face of labor.  It gives the lordly, domineering spirit to the favored class which in Europe has rendered labor hopeless for centuries.  It is this, sir, that breaks the manly spirit of a people.  Disguise it as you may, and it is still the fatal enemy of a republic.  Here, upon our own soil, in a Republic, gentlemen in the interest of capital stand up and press the argument of a pretended contract by which capitalists are to escape all taxation, while the poorest soldier in the land, wounded perhaps in the cause of his country, who, if he furnished no money, was at least content to shed his blood in its defense, is by your legislation loaded down with taxation.  It is monstrous that labor should bear burdens from which wealth is exempt.  It is unendurable that a citizen with a comfortable income shall pay less tax for the education of his own children than the laboring citizen of his neighborhood.  Yet such is the policy which gentlemen defend;  for a citizen holding your six per cent. gold-bearing securities to the amount of $16,600 (greatly above the average wealth of our people) is absolutely exempt from taxation, State or national.  I believe that gentlemen on this side of the House generally favor the taxation of these securities.  And I know this, sir, that the Democratic masses of this country demand just and equal taxation and that the wealth of the country whether in the form of bonds or any other form, shall bear its just proportion of the burdens of Government.

I hope the gentleman from Maine is not overlooking all this, that when Congress adjourns, and we go before our people on appeal from the acts of Congress, the people themselves will arraign this Congress on solemn impeachment for favoring the interest of capital to the utter prostration of the interest of industry.  I know that the gentleman from Illinois and other gentlemen have brought forward propositions to relieve the labor and business of the country from the present oppression.  If the Republican party approved these measures why are they not adopted ?  The legislation of the country is absolutely in the hands of that party;  a party with unexampled power;  if this party is willing to promote the interest of the producing and laboring classes by proper measures of legislation, why are not these measures adopted ?  What apology will be given to the people ?  What subterfuges will be resorted to ?  In order to escape from public indignation will gentlemen pretend that temporary obstacles were in the way of reform ?  What obstacles are in the way ?  If they are acting in good faith in these measures they will press them forward to consummation.  I have no doubt, sir, without having consulted with gentlemen on this side of the House, that every gentleman here will give his support to that fundamental principle of Democratic faith, equal taxation, that labor shall not be oppressed for the benefit of capital.  They will protect with even-handed justice the rights of every citizen, the rights of capital, and the rights of labor.  But, if there must be discrimination it shall be for the interests of industry and the rights of labor.  But these measures of reform are in your own hands, not ours.  Our number is too inconsiderable to render our support or opposition of any moment to the great party which has for the present the destinies of this nation in its keeping.

As I was saying, the Government of the United States impliedly reserved to itself the right to tax these bonds.  It said in the law authorizing the issue of the bonds that those bonds should not be subject to State or municipal taxation.  In saying that the Government by strong implication said that they should be subject to national taxation.  There being the two taxing powers, State and national, and only the one excluded, it is too late now, with the implied reservation, for gentlemen to insist in the interest of the bondholders that the bonds shall not be subject to the same burdens as the property of other citizens.  It is most unreasonable that holders of securities which you propose to pay in gold, dollar for dollar, the interest on which you are paying in gold --bonds purchased, too, with a currency greatly inflated-- should have the presumption to ask for such exemption, and, more unreason able still, that the leaders of a great party, representatives of the people, should concede their right to such exemption, and insist that they shall be entirely exempt from the burdens which press heavily upon every other class of citizens.  Gentlemen forget the ancient maxim of liberty, "The safety of the people is the supreme law."

If anything could be done which would weaken the faith of the laboring portion of the people in the value of our institutions it would be this oppressive discrimination against them.

The gentleman from Illinois [black-jack Logan] may press his measure for taxation, but I have no hope of its success;  the Republican party is too completely under the control of the bankers and capitalists to yield to such a reform.  Among other grave grounds of complaint, which the people will have against this party, will be that the measure which was demanded by the people with unexampled unanimity --the homestead policy-- has been virtually defeated by granting away those very lands which the people expected to secure for themselves and their children, to those overgrown corporations whose special agents are now thronging our lobbies.  It should excite the apprehensions of the people that their interests are in peril, that the lobbies of Congress are crowded by agents in behalf of every interest of centralized wealth, tariff and banks and bonds and corporations;  every interest except the interests of industry and the men of toil.  This lobby influence has grown up with the Republican party into gigantic proportions and greatly controls your legislation.

It is the dangerous feature of this Government.  For capital easily combines its energies;  it comes here with united force;  it stands at every door of the Capitol;  you see it everywhere demanding protection for its own peculiar interests, while no voice is raised here in behalf of the toiling millions upon whose labor rests the whole fabric of this Government and gives to every interest its only value.

Mr. Holman.  Lands do not yield more than three per cent. on their estimated value.  I know that in New England, where, under the protective policy, large profits are realized, at the expense of the labor of the western country, four, five, or six per cent. may appear a low interest, but with us it is a high interest, so far as productive industry is concerned.  I do not speak of the rates of interest on money or invested capital.

But, sir, I find a key-note to the present condition of affairs in a paper published in the exclusive interest of capital.  This paper furnishes some explanation of the remarkable spectacle before the country --the impeachment of the national Executive.  The paper from which I propose to read a paragraph is the Iron Age, a paper devoted to the interests of the capitalist and manufacturer alone, with no word for the interests of industry, except so far as it is made subservient to accumulating and building up the fortunes of those who are already the favorites of fortune.

Mr. Eldridge.  The paper is well named.

Mr. Holman.  Yes, sir;  it is called the Iron Age, and it is as cold and remorseless as iron.  The laborer may toil and suffer, but this "iron age" has no sympathy with his struggles.  I propose to read a passage foreshadowing the time when the resolute citizen who is standing up against the assailants of constitutional government shall be set aside and the Senate, not the people, shall elect a President (if such shall be our evil fortune) of the United States.  Then capital may hold high carnival.  When Mr. Wade becomes President, says this paper---

"No tariff act can be passed by Congress"---

I call the attention of western men particularly to this utterance---

"No tariff act can be passed by Congress too protective to receive the assent of a President who is almost a prohibitionist in his wise zeal for the development of his country's industry."

"Almost a prohibitionist !"  Wisely did the people of Ohio repudiate this man, who would grind down the labor of his own people for the benefit of the capitalists of other sections of the Union, and to build up their already excessive wealth.

Again:

"No railroad-aid legislation will be too liberal to frighten an Executive who knows that the growth of a country's foreign as well as domestic trade is in exact proportion to the extension of its railway system."

Congress need not be afraid.  They cannot be too liberal to railroad corporations for this generous gentleman.  They may grant whatever subsidies they please, amounting it may be to millions of dollars, not to be earned by themselves, but by the toiling and tax-oppressed masses.  They may grant to the railroad brokers of your great cities millions of acres of the public lands, denying to the laboring man every hope or prospect of a homestead.  Oh, no;  Congress cannot frighten this courageous Executive.  He will be too willing to approve these schemes of plunder.  Congress need not be afraid to grant these subsidies to corporations.  This liberal gentleman will more than approve them.  A new era is to be inaugurated;  a new man is to be at the head of public affairs;  a man bound hand and soul to the interests of capital.  In six years you have given 125,000,000 acres of the people's land to corporations.  But you need not be afraid to give more.

Sir, I wish that these two utterances could be heard and taken to heart at every fireside in the whole northwest.  I wish that every constituent of the gentleman could hear them.  Let the people understand that the party in power is making a tremendous effort to thrust from the presidential office a man constitutionally elected by the voice of the people, and to place there a representative of capital eager to tax the producing interests of the northwest to swell the wealth of New England, and rob the poor man and his children after him, of every hope of a homestead on God's green earth by giving the public lands to railroad corporations.  Yes, sir, the rapacious grabbers at the public lands, the wealthy manufacturers, the railroad kings, and the holders of bonds may well rejoice !  But there is a day of reckoning;  the destinies of this nation are still in the hands of its people.

Resisting the manifest designs of the leaders of the Republican party, those opposed to their policy and who demand reform in the administration of public affairs, will appeal to the people in behalf of these great measures.

1.  The payment of the public debt on the basis on which it was contracted, in the lawful money of the country, except where by express stipulation we have agreed to pay in coin.

2.  The taxation of the bonds by the Federal Government to amount substantially equal to the tax imposed on other property for State and local purposes in the several States, the tax be deducted from the coupon.

3.  The abolition of the national banks and the substitution of $300,000,000 of United States notes for the $300,000,000 of national-bank paper.

4.  Reform in national expenditure and no taxation of the people to give lands or moneys to railroad corporations.

5.  A tariff for revenue and not to protect the manufacturers at the expense of the producing interests;  and, more than all,

6.  The speedy restoration of the Union.

Sir, at no period of history have a people encountered a power of centralized wealth equal to that which is now arrayed against the people of this nation.  If they would save the Republic and hand down to their children the blessings of a Government securing the equal rights of the whole people, they must reform the administration of their public affairs, and remember that "the price of liberty is eternal vigilance."

Currency – Taxation – Bank Monopoly.

The House having under consideration the bill (H.R. No. 1572) entitled "An act to amend the several acts providing a national currency and to establish free banking"---

Mr. Speaker, there is, and always has been, in the United States a vigorous public sentiment in favor of gold and silver coin as a circulating medium.  It is the natural outgrowth of our experience.  Our people like the honest face of real money.  The argument in favor of it is unanswerable, and if the measure were practicable I have no doubt our currency would rest on a metallic basis.  Indeed, our people have for so long a period been accustomed to regard gold and silver as the only true basis by which commercial transactions can be safely governed, and having seen the countless frauds of paper money issued by irresponsible banks, have been reluctant to adopt a currency less in value than the standard of gold and silver.

But, Mr. Speaker, notwithstanding I have been all my life a disciple of the famous statesman of Missouri [Thomas Benton], and believe that all interests, and especially the interests of labor, are better promoted by a money coined out of gold and silver, such as is recognized as money by the whole commercial world than by any other standard of values, yet, in common I think with most of the citizens of this country, I have been driven to the conclusion that in our present circumstances to compel by legislation the resumption of specie payments would be impossible, and the attempt would be attended with universal disaster.  Nothing can be more apparent than this.  The experience of all commercial nations has been that to maintain specie payments the paper currency cannot very greatly exceed in amount the coin money of the nation.

There is certainly not now in this country, and has not been for several years past, more than $140,000,000 of gold and silver coin.  The Director of the Mint in his last report to Congress state the amount as follows:

The coin, except as to the Pacific coast States and Territories, being as a general thing in the Treasury and banks, the present time is a favorable one for estimating the amount of gold and silver coin in the country.  From the most reliable data obtainable, the gold coin is estimated at $135,000,000, and subsidiary silver $5,000,000 ---total, $140,000,000.  The silver coin is principally in circulation in California, Oregon, Nevada, Idaho, Arizona, and Texas.

Nor can we anticipate at an early day a rapid increase of the precious metals.  In 1861 our mints coined in gold, silver, and nickel $63,400,597, and in 1873, $38,689,183 only;  and it is clear that a very large portion of the gold-bearing securities of the United States ---whether issued by corporations, cities, counties, States, or by the nation--- are held by European capitalists.  I think that no gentleman can estimate the amount of gold flowing from the United States to European coffers at less than $140,000,000 a year.  I think that is a very moderate estimate.  We receive annually more or less coin and bullion from abroad.  But the balance of trade is largely against us.  Our whole policy tends to that result, and unless it were largely in our favor, the vast sums we are annually paying to European capitalists as interest on our public securities alone would render the resumption of specie payments, except to the highly favored capitalists, practically impossible.  The gentlemen who have controlled our affairs seem to have aimed at this.  The act of March 18, 1869, "An act to strengthen the public credit" so called, opened the coffers of all Europe to our five-twenty bonds.

A few years ago the Committee on Ways and Means reported a bill to allow the Treasury to issue coupon bonds for registered bonds.  I opposed that measure, and in course of the discussion said:

Now, the light difference between the two classes of bonds is in favor of American investment and tend to retain the large portion of the bonded securities of the Government among our own people.  There is therefor that embarrassment in the way of increasing in the hands of foreign capitalists our securities.  I think any measure that tends to decrease the indebtedness of the country in the hands of foreign capitalists is a measure of the highest importance to the public interest.

Mr. Dawes, in reply, said:

The gentleman alludes to the fact that heretofore the Committee on Ways and Means have opposed this facility of transfer.  That may have been the case in times past, because it was once the policy of the Government to keep all its evidences of indebtedness in this country.  That policy has passed away.

Out of this new policy grew the syndicate.  This policy makes the bankers of London the masters of our system of finance, and pours the wealth of this nation in a remorseless flood into the coffers of Europe.

This policy must be reversed before the precious metals can obtain a permanent foothold in this country.  If the volume of coin cannot be largely increased, can gentlemen expect the country to encounter the universal bankruptcy that would follow such a reduction of the currency as would bring it up to the value of coin ?  A despotism could not force such disaster upon a people.

But beyond that, and still more important in this inquiry, no people can for a long period of time pay annually into their public treasury, in the form of taxes, whether external or internal, the larger portion of the medium which represents their wealth and industry ---their currency.  I doubt whether any nation for a series of years could pay in the form of taxed into their treasury a sum equal to one-half of its currency or near that without the absolute prostration of labor.  The drain upon the national wealth through excessive taxation, by imperceptible degrees, and by inexplicable and countless agencies, if long continued absolutely exhausts the producers of wealth.  It is clear that where the taxation is heavy and the currency insufficient the resources of the country are gradually exhausted.  I think it fair to estimate that the resources of this country are annually taxed not less than $550,000,000.  The entire revenues of tho Government for the last fiscal year were $333,733,204.67, and the following are the sums actually received from people through taxation:

From customs ......... $188,089,522.70
From internal revenue ......... 113,729,314.14
Total ......... 301,818,836.84

Gentlemen who have the most carefully examined into taxation in the several States estimate the local taxation for all purposes, State, county, township, city, and town, at $250,000,000 annually.  If this is correct, the aggregate annual taxation exceeds the enormous sum of $550,000,000.  The customs taxes are gold, but currency is in the main the agency employed in the purchase of gold to pay the tax, and a large per cent. of the annual taxes, is always suspended in national and local treasuries.  I will be told that the money drawn from the people is ultimately restored to the volume of the currency, but the exhaustive effect of excessive taxation on our industries, on the producers of our wealth, is none the less obvious.  It takes from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned and swells the wealth of the skillful and too often, unhappily, unscrupulous molders of policies and laws.  It is a powerful and subtle centralizer of wealth.

Now, sir, with such a weight of annual taxation and such a volume of currency, could even avarice so harden the capitalist that he would, to increase the value of his money, still further oppress our industries ?  Will the present reduced volume of currency suffice for the wants of the country ?  No, sir;  not with the present burdens of Government.  No other people bear such taxation on such a volume of currency.  The tax upon labor is now exhaustive and crushing.

Mr. Maynard.  Paid by the productive industries of the country to the non-producing classes.

Mr. Holman.  My friend from Tennessee is correct--- paid by the productive industries of the country to swell the wealth of tho non-producing classes.  It is very clear all of that five hundred and fifty millions of money is never in a state of suspense and drawn from circulation at the same time, but it is clear a large percentage of that amount is always in a state of actual suspense, and the banks kindly keep suspended a hundred millions more.  I doubt whether during the last two years there has actually been in circulation in the United States to exceed four hundred and fifty millions of money at any one time.  I do not think it can be demonstrated that at any one time there has been in actual circulation, within the reach of the citizens for the purpose of business, to exceed four hundred and fifty millions out of the seven hundred millions of our currency.  My friend near me says four hundred and fifty millions is too much, and perhaps he is correct.  We are at the mercy of a few great capitalists.  The enormous interest now drawn from the country by the national banks will show how completely every industry in this country is placed by law at the mercy of incorporated avarice.

It is very clear you cannot reach and maintain specie payments by the force of legislation where the aggregate amount of the precious metals in the country does not bear some reasonable relation to the amount of paper money, and yet no absolute rule can be laid down.  You may reach specie payments without it.  We have within the last eighteen months seen the difference in the price of gold and paper apparently 8 per cent.  But gold is with us but an article of merchandise and not a standard of value.  Its value now is a question of demand and supply.  In other words, for a moment that general representative of values, gold, as an article of merchandise was but 8 per cent. above the value of our paper.  This was but an incident of no permanent value.  To reduce the currency to increase its value to that of gold would be an act of heartless despotism to which the country would not submit and could not submit, and still bear the present burden of taxation.

By changing our policy and declaring the five-twenty bonds to be payable in gold, we at once induced a rapid purchase of our securities abroad, and the increased amount of gold flowing to Europe makes America "the hewer of wood and drawer of water" for foreign capitalists.  Let us see, sir, the effects of our policy in comparison with England.

England adjusted her debt fifty years ago at 3 per cent., and her bonds are worth to her capitalists 92¼ per cent.;  while our five per cents and six per cent are at 109.  Of course our bonds go abroad, and free bankers are struggling to add till further to the value of these bonds.  And yet, strange to say, we are, when we have money in the Treasury, buying up these very bonds at the enhanced premium.  Thus, in the interest of capital, you have enlarged the debt and increased unjustly its weight upon the people.

Mr. Speaker, I regret to reach the conclusion that the resumption of specie payments in this country is now at least impossible.  It is not a question of money so much as it is a question of the weight of the public debt upon our industries.  We should reduce the burden of this debt as far as good faith and public honesty will justify.  The weight of taxation must be diminished.  In what other nation is labor so severely taxed ?  Reasonable economy will reduce your national expenses $40,000,000 annually.

I do not believe that specie payments are possible, without universal disaster, while the current expenses of the nation are estimated by your Secretary of the Treasury, as they are for the next fiscal year, at $319,198,736.82, being $190,920,656.82 after deducting interest on the public debt and pensions.  It is this fearful annual expenditure that is exhausting the country.  Now, while your legislation is in the main for the benefit of capital through countless monopolies, and while the enormous profits of issuing money through national banks drains the country and builds up imperial estates, I would be rejoiced, sir, to see any policy, consistent with public honor, which would bring back our bonds so that these exactions on the resources of the nation, this drainage of the wealth of the nation, would be diminished, and that would give to the whole people the imperial franchises now held by the few.  Such a policy, with economy and honesty in public affairs, will restore specie payments.  The highway to specie payments is reduced taxation in State and nation, retrenchment and reform.

But, Mr. Speaker, while I am very confident that paper money will have to constitute the basis of our currency for years to come, I think the only question is, and will be, in what form it shall be issued.

I have listened to the gentleman from Missouri [Mr. Havens, page.759] to-night with great pleasure while he discussed this question.  I do not think that the public men of this period, the members of this House, treat the people well or their Government well when they talk about the greenback as an irredeemable currency.  Irredeemable !  Such is the odium attempted to be stamped on the lawful money of the nation by capitalists and bankers who swarm in the lobby.  Why, sir, it is not currency in the sense in which you can apply the term irredeemable to it.  It is money.  It is not simply currency, but money.  You cannot speak of the gold dollar as currency in any proper sense;  for currency generally signifies something to be redeemed.  The greenback is money in the same sense in which a gold dollar is money, and both are made money by the same high authority, the only authority that in this country can make anything money, the law of the land.  The making of money is the act of the sovereign authority of the nation, and your Government has declared the greenback lawful money and a legal tender in the same manner that it has made the gold dollar lawful money.  You make the gold dollar lawful money for all purposes;  the greenback lawful money except in payment of your bonds and duties on imports.  Gold for the capitalist, the greenbacks for the people.  Such has been your uniform discrimination.

This greenback money, under the sanction of law, rests for its value on the energy, enterprise, labor, wealth, and honor of the people of this Republic.  It is the money in which the nation discharges obligations infinitely more sacred than bonds purchased at 50 per cent. of their value.  Irredeemable paper !  I do not envy the man who in competency to wealth can sneer at the lawful money of his country, the solitary feature of your whole policy in the interest of the people.  Sir, if the Government of the United States possesses the power to make money at all, they have made money ---not promises to pay, not an irredeemable issue--- but they have made money in the form of the United States note.  I think that is money which is declared by law to be money, a measure of value, a standard of exchange, a medium by which debts are extinguished by law.  An act of Congress declares what is money;  it stamps the money quality, the representative value, upon a bit of gold or silver just as it does upon paper.  There is no difference in that respect.

The stamp of the United States upon gold or silver gives it the character of money and fixes its value as money.  Without that, sir, it is simply an article of merchandise ---bullion;  a thing of the market, a commodity for bargain and sale simply, but not money.  Paper which bears the stamp of the United States upon it as money is money.  Its value fixed by law.  It bears the highest impress of value ---the faith of the nation.  It is the only paper money ever issued in this country that bore an honest front.  It is not a child of monopoly.  It is the common wealth of the whole people, at once a loan of the people to their Government without interest and a safe and solid medium of exchange.  Irredeemable paper !  A dishonored currency ! say the capitalists, for with $400,000,000 in circulation it saves the people $24,000,000 from their rapacity.  They would redeem it in national-bank paper under the guise of free banking for the bondholders.  We shall see whether this can be done.

No sneer can change the fact that that is money which is made so by law.  Why, sir, the most enlightened writer that I have read, and I do not regard Stuart Mill as the least of them, all esteem that to be money with which by law debts may be extinguished, which makes a final disposition of the claim of one citizen against another.  The greenback is money.  I admit this is very unpopular talk here;  but the bank lobby are not the people.  We are told we cannot issue this lawful money in lieu of the $354,000,000 of national-bank paper and apply this $354,000,000 in payment of the public debt, thus saving to the people annually $21,240,000 more, because the faith of the nation is pledged that only $400,000,000 of greenback shall issue.  Can servility to capital go any further than this ?  Pledged to whom ?  To the bondholders who got their greenback bonds converted into gold bonds ?  Are these the gentlemen who are so anxious for the good faith of the nation ?  The bankers ?  Are they not satisfied with the $50,000,000 they have been drawing without consideration from the labor of the country annually for years past ?  Where did one Congress get the power to bind its successors forever by an ordinary act of legislation ?  Oh, yes !  It is all right to amend the act of 1862 by the act of 1869, after the bonds were issued, and add $200,000,000 to their value;  but of course legislation that would relieve labor and save to the producers of our wealth, the patient toilers in the field and the mine and the shop, $21,240,000 a year would be a violation of public faith !  What an argument in a republic !

But it is said on behalf of the bankers the greenbacks were solely a war measure and the Government cannot issue them in time of peace.  How eager these gentlemen are for their valuable and sovereign franchises !  The Supreme Court held in the legal-tender cases, (12 Wallace, Supreme Court Reports, page 529,) and in every case decided since, that the greenback was lawful money and a legal tender for the payment of debts contracted before the war and since the war.  The Supreme Court say:

The Constitution was intended to frame a government as distinguished from a league or compact, a government supreme in some particulars over States and people.  It was designed to provide the same currency having a uniform legal value in all the States.  It was for this reason the power to coin money and regulate its value was conferred upon the Federal Government, while the same power, as well as the power to emit bills of credit, was withdrawn from the States.  The States can no longer declare what shall be money or regulate its value.  Whatever power there is over the currency is vested in Congress.  If the power to declare what is money is not in Congress, it is annihilated.

And again:

But the obligation of a contract to pay money is to pay that which the law shall recognize as money when the payment is to be made.  If there is anything settled by decision it is this, and we do not understand it to be controverted.

But some of the very gentlemen who are now arguing that the issuing of greenbacks was the exercise only of a war power and not under the constitutional power to "borrow money," or "regulate commerce," or "coin money and regulate the value thereof," did but a few days ago vote, in this hour of profound peace, to add $18,000,000 to the 1ega1-tender notes.  Both the House and Senate have within a few days voted to issue $18,000,000 of lawful money, and now in behalf of the banks the question is raised.  So the Supreme Court and Congress have decided that greenbacks are 1awfu1 money, and I hope that the people will see to it that Congress shall not reverse that decision.  Certainly the Supreme Court never will.

If any other decision had been pronounced by that court, if the decision first pronounced by Chief Justice Chase ---a most unfortunate decision--- if that decision had stood a the law of the land, no citizen who loved his country could have failed to tremble at the disasters that might overtake us in the future.  I believe that in the whole history of this nation there never has arisen and never will arise a question of such magnitude for the decision of the court.  It is easy to foresee emergencies that may arise when the honor of the nation and the safety of the Republic might be involved in that question.  If the first decision had stood as the law, the expedient which went far to save the nation from disaster could never have been resorted to again without a change in the Constitution, and the decision would have been followed by bankruptcy and disaster to a multitude of our people.

Now, sir, the question is, is it for the interest of the whole people that instead of greenbacks, pure and simple, the benefit of which during the war and since the war inured to the whole people of the country, you should have the issue of the national banks ?  Or shall the bankers' notes be withdrawn and lawful money issued in their stead, and be applied to the payment of the public debt ?  This, in my judgment, is a vital question.  I am and have been uniformly in favor of issuing greenbacks and withdrawing the national-bank notes ---giving the whole people instead of a few wealthy capitalists the immense profits of issuing money.  This is not a measure of inflation, except that the $100,000,000 greenbacks held by the banks would enter more directly into circulation.

I insist that, while the issue of paper money is inevitable, that kind of paper money should be adopted which would most completely destroy monopoly in money.  Certainly one of the highest prerogatives of government is the issuing of money.  I think it is not simply one of the highest, but in a certain sense it is perhaps the highest prerogative of government to issue money.  It is not pretended that in the proper and legitimate sense the issue of a national bank is money;  it is more properly to be called currency.  It is redeemable ---what an idea--- in greenbacks !

I have heard it argued by some one that the issuing of more greenbacks would be an increase of the national debt.  But is that true ?  Of course not.  It is quite clear that if greenbacks are issued they should at once be applied to the extinguishment of the national debt;  that indeed is the main object.  Suppose that the $354,000,000 of national-bank paper now out should be substituted as they came from time to time into the Treasury by an equal amount of greenbacks, and the greenbacks applied to the extinguishment of $354,000,000 of our national debt, or, if the gold act of 1869 is to remain in force, purchase the bonds.  It seems to me that if that can be done, it would be a wise measure.  It would reduce the interest on the public debt about twenty or twenty-one millions a year, even if you adhere to the pernicious policy of purchasing the bonds at a premium.  To that extent it would diminish the drain upon the country for gold and would hasten the resumption of specie payments.

The saving of $20,000,000 a year to the industries of the country a very important item.  That is a sum equal to one-third the entire expenses of this Government fifteen years ago.  That it can be done no gentleman pretends to deny.  That there is any obstacle in the way of it no one will assert.  I am not arguing that you can do this at once, but as the bank-notes come into the Treasury from time to time they should be canceled and United States notes issued in their stead, and the bonds of the banks surrendered from time to time as their circulation is canceled.  Within two years the country would receive the full benefit of this measure of relief, and without injustice to any one a larger portion of the public debt would be extinguished than has been extinguished under oppressive taxation during all the years since the war;  for during all those years, under a taxation more exhaustive than any people have ever borne for a long period of time, you have only paid $323,253,800 of the principal of your debt.  No person pretends to assert that this is impracticable.  Why can it not be done ?  I have never been able to understand the reason why not.

You have expressly retained the right to modify or repeal the bank law.  The banks as banks of discount and deposit would still remain, and, like other people, they would do business on the lawful money of the country.  There is no public reason against this measure.  I am aware that with a Congress teeming with bankers and capitalists the obstacles may be insurmountable.  But, sir, will the day never come when the legislation of Congress will be for the benefit of the whole people and founded on public reasons ?  Will special franchises and corporate powers and remorseless monopoly always rule this nation ?  I think we already hear the heavy footfall of the coming power of reform.

In my judgment the objectionable consequence of a redundant currency is, that with the agencies here at work it tends to centralize wealth in certain portions of the country.  There is no objection to the increase of wealth or the representative of wealth if it is diffused.  If your currency was increased to $900,000,000 and it was diffused over the whole country in the form of greenbacks, reaching labor in all its varied fields and departments, there would certainly be nothing to deplore.  Such was the actual state of things during the war and before the banks had obtained complete mastery.

I think the years 1864 and 1865 were years of actual prosperity in this country;  not simply apparent but real, notwithstanding the waste of war.  Labor during that period ---and the whole test of a nation's prosperity is in the condition of labor;  that is the true test of a nation's policy--- labor during that period was animated and encouraged by at least reasonable rewards, even in proportion to the values of the commodities it produced.  I do not think there is any objection at all to a reasonable increase of currency if issued in the form of United States notes;  for it would inure at once fully and completely to the benefit of the whole people, and is more certain to be diffused among the people than if completely under the control of the banks.  But the trouble is that in this country, more than in any other upon the face of Earth, there exist agencies for centralizing wealth.

I admit that when you increase the currency to what is reasonable and proper, when you actually inflate it, as was the case at one time during the war when the currency was twice its present volume, the machinery of your national banks concentrates it in vast amounts and makes it effectual in building up special interests and promoting enormous private fortunes.  There is no denying the fact that under the agencies which Congress has created more fortunes have been built up ---imperial fortunes--- than have been accumulated during any corresponding period of history, except when the marauding chiefs of the Middle Ages seized and consolidated the wealth of their less-powerful neighbors.  But, sir, this has resulted not from the circumstance of a redundant currency so much as from the agencies of financial centralization you have created.  The inevitable effect of this national banking system is to centralize our wealth.

The system proposed by my friend from Tennessee [Mr. Maynard] in the pending bill is spoken of as a "free-banking system."  The title is captivating.  A system of free banks !  Free banking !  The odium that attaches to the present banking law is that of monopoly.  If there is anything that ought to be abhorred by a free people it is monopoly of advantages in that which may be justly common to all.  There is something so monarchical about it, so hostile to the fair play and the genius of republican institutions, that the instincts and sympathies of a free people are against it.  Hence "free banking" is an attractive title.  But, Mr. Speaker, is there in fact anything like free banking in this bill ?  Free banking ?  A large portion of your bonds are held by European capitalists, or rather by their agents in the United States.  You find the names of those agents of the great moneyed houses of Europe on the petitions before us for specie payments.  The national banks have on deposit in the Treasury to secure circulation bonds to the amount of $392,852,100.

The body of our bonds not owned by the banks or foreign capitalists is held in the commercial centers--- New York and Boston, Philadelphia and Baltimore;  not in the West and South, where the banking facilities are inconsiderable;  not in the States like Illinois, Indiana, or Tennessee.  Those bonds are held, except in inconsiderable sums through the country, by capitalists in your great cities.  The application of the $354,000,000 of bank-notes transformed into greenbacks to the extinguishment of the public debt has a substance in it infinitely beyond that which possibly could result from the pending bill;  for this bill applies to bank-notes to be issued, while my plan applies to those issued on 6 per cent. bonds.  The bill simply lightens the interest on the bonds which may be purchased with gold, while my plan pays off $354,000,000 of the bonds even on the present basis of our currency, pays the bonds, interest and principal both.

Indeed, sir, if this country had grappled with this question bravely, and had extended the same even-handed justice to the people and the capitalist, and had provided, not for the purchase at a premium, but for the payment of the five-twenties in the money in which they were payable according to the terms of the contract, and had issued greenbacks as currency instead of national-bank paper, and applied those greenbacks in the extinguishment of the debt, then, with a currency of seven hundred or seven hundred and fifty million dollars our public debt would have been so greatly reduced at this hour that the interest could not possibly at this time, with the resources we have had and the taxation our people have borne, exceeded $40,000,000 a year;  and when you reduce the interest on the public debt to $40,000,000 you have got it well in hand.  It would then be a comparatively light burden on our people, provided that in justice to labor, the tendency to extravagant expenditures of the Government be with firm purpose held in check.  But now the interest we are paying annually swells up to $104,750,688.44, mostly in gold;  $23,571,126 is paid to the national banks in gold annually.

No gentleman can take up this report of the Comptroller of tho Currency without being impressed with the fact that this banking system is one of unexampled profit to the capitalist, and is a fearful drain of wealth from the producers of our wealth into the coffers of the non-producing classes.  Now, no gentleman appreciates more fully than my friend from Tennessee [Mr. Maynard] the proposition that any agency by which wealth may be accumulated in this country, except it be by patient and plodding industry, is to be deplored and discouraged.  Even when, in legislation by which a good is accomplished, you are compelled to create an agency by which wealth may be amassed without industry, a thing scarcely possible, you have to deplore the fact and admit that of all things that legislation and that system of public policy are wisest and best which furnish no facilities for accumulation of fortunes except through productive industry.

Excessive fortunes, such as bring poverty and wretchedness to multitudes, will occasionally be accumulated in spite of the wisest system of laws.  But to frame your laws to that end, encouraging princely estates on the one hand and poverty on the other, is imitating the most odious principle of monarchies.  The wealth which is built up in Wall street by watering of stocks, the hoarding and expansion of currency through the banks to depress on the one hand and enhance on the other the fruits of labor, and gambling in gold, is a dishonor and a curse to the nation.  The imperial fortunes thus accumulated are drawn through countless channels from the patient toil of our people.  Can any gentleman say that our laws are not responsible for this ?  When did you enact a law, except the law for the issue of United States notes, that did not open up opportunities for the unscrupulous stock-jobber to take from labor the bread it had earned ?  Do you think the crafty speculator, who use the power of your monopolies and wields the special franchises you grant so freely, can accumulate an estate of millions without consigning multitudes of your people to want and wretchedness ?

National Banks and Monopoly.

William Steele Holman, of Aurora Indiana

Mr. Speaker:  The encomiums pronounced upon the national-bank system have exhausted the eloquence of honorable gentlemen.  They contemplate the system with fervent enthusiasm, and assure us that it is the most perfect agency for regulating the monetary affairs of a great people that human wisdom can devise.  I concede that so far as the element of safety in the currency issued by the national banks is concerned no system could possibly be safer.  The issues of the national banks are necessarily absolutely secure in the absence of fraud while the credit of the Government remains unimpaired.  This currency is as secure as the Government.  Why should it not be perfectly safe when guaranteed by the wealth and labor and energy of fifty millions of prosperous people ?  Beyond this element of safety for its issues I have never been able to understand how it can be claimed that the national banking system is the best as yet devised.  In all else these banking associations stand on the same footing with multitudes of corporations, State and national, that have been formed in this country and subject, as I shall attempt to show, to the same frailties.  The only element of absolute safety they possess lies in the integrity, the solidity, and the wealth of the country.

Mr. Burrows, of Missouri.  Does the national-bank note contain one redeemable feature that is not possessed by the legal tender ?

Mr. Holman.  Certainly not.

Mr. Burrows, of Missouri.  Does the greenback not possess some that the bank note does not ?

Mr. Holman.  Certainly; it possesses a very important element of value beyond the national-bank paper.  But it seems to me remarkable that so candid and sincere gentlemen as my friend from Massachusetts, [Mr. Crapo,] who honors me with his attention, and as the gentleman from New York, [Mr. Hewitt,] who addressed the House to-day, dwell with emphasis upon the peculiar excellence of this system on account of the absolute safety of its issues.

Why of course currency issued by the United States and guaranteed by the Government of the United States, while the Government remains as it is inexhaustible in its resources and the integrity and energy of its people, must be perfectly safe and absolutely secure.  I am not aware of any feature of this national banking system independent of that feature which it borrows from the Government which entitles it to any peculiar encomium.  As to the depositor, except in the case of the Government where the deposits are required by law to be secured by Government bonds, I am not aware of any special superiority of this system over those of the unfortunate days which have happily gone by when the people were periodically plundered by local banks.

The loss by depositors in national banks is no new fact.  Eighty-four of them have failed with the loss of millions to the people.  Two of them have failed since the 1st day of last November ---one in Boston, the other in Newark, New Jersey, the latter with a capital of $500,000, an alleged surplus fund of $400,000, and $2,500,000 of deposits.  The failure of the bank of course does not in the least degree affect the value of the currency of the bank.  That value does not depend on the solvency of the bank, but on the solvency of the Treasury of the United States.  Not so with the depositor, for he must look to the bank for the payment of his deposit with the limited liability of the stockholder, but when the crash comes experience demonstrates that generally the solid men have disappeared, leaving the unfortunate depositor to look to an insolvent bank and to insolvent stockholders for the fruits of his labor.  These failures have occurred, and that, too, at a period of general prosperity, notwithstanding the alleged severe examinations to which these banks are subjected by experts with ample salaries, and notwithstanding the important fact that as the Government guarantees the payment of the bank notes the banks are exempt from runs upon them, in the hour of panic, by the holders of their notes, which was the peril of the old system of banking.

I have not seen, therefore, in this national-bank system any feature pertaining to itself that elevates it above other banking systems that have been known to this country.  It has furnished us a perfectly good currency.  But it has done it simply as the distributing agent of the Federal Government.  Even the old system of banking which robbed and plundered the people of this country for more than half a century would scarcely furnish a more striking example of frailty and dishonesty in banking than the Mechanics' National Bank of Newark, New Jersey, to which I have referred, with its capital of $500,000, its surplus of 400,000, (showing its extraordinary gains,) and its deposits of over $2,500,000.  I quote the exact words of the Comptroller of the Currency:

The Mechanics' National Bank of Newark was placed in the hands of a receiver on November 2 last.  It had a capital of $500,000, a surplus of $400,000, and deposits of over $2,500,000.  The capital and surplus are lost through the criminal conduct of the cashier.

The Comptroller proceeds in his statement as follows:

This bank was many times examined by skilled accountants of great experience, but it cannot be denied that some of them were misled by the criminal cashier, who, through his apparently high character and standing, so long deceived not only the directors but every one with whom he had business relations.

When the vaults of the bank are finally opened they are found empty.  The Government is safe, for it holds the bonds to secure the circulation.  The holders of the notes are safe, for the notes are paid at your Treasury.  But what of this $2,500,000 deposited in this bank by a great multitude of depositors ?  Who can say how many of them were laboring men and women who had deposited in this bank the earnings they had scrimped themselves and families of, even the bare necessities of life to save, in the confidence inspired by the daily laudations of this perfect system of banking ?  Oh, they must look to the stockholders.  Yes;  and unless aided by the accident of good fortune they will look until deferred hope will make the heart sick.  So this most perfect system, watched over by "skilled accountants of great experience," with ample salaries, depends for its solvency on the integrity of its cashiers, whose virtues are everlastingly tempted by the selfish rapacity which inspires the system.

The greenback is absolutely assured to the holder.  So is the national-bank note upon exactly the same ground ---the national guarantee.  Nor, sir, am I able to agree with my friend from Massachusetts [Mr. Crapo] touching the patriotic origin of the national-bank system.  It did not spring up at the first tocsin of alarm, at the first cry of national peril.  There was no suggestion of the national bank until long after the financial peril to which the rebellion exposed this Government had measurably passed by.  Indeed, sir, the idea that this system of banking was devised as a mode of securing the sale of the national bonds and aiding the national credit is a very modern suggestion.  The bonds were not put into circulation through the national banks.  When the first national bank was organized in Boston, not only the currency of the country, though greatly depreciated by the scarcity of coin, was reasonably well assured, but the solvency and the permanency of it was a fixed fact in the minds of the men here who were guiding the course of events, and more important still, of the great body of the people of the loyal States of the Union.  The national bank was not the agent through whom the bonds reached the country, although they did ultimately become the holders of the great body of the 5/20 6 per cent. gold interest bonds into which the 7.30 bonds and other public securities were funded.

The 7.30 bonds were issued as part of the general system;  they were legal tenders at their face value, and were paid out as money, paid out to your Army through your paymasters in the years of the war when the Government was most pressed for means.  When upon this floor I offered a resolution calling on the Secretary of the Treasury to inform the House why payment to the Army was so long delayed, the answer was the sending of paymasters to the front with 7.30 bonds, as well as greenbacks, to pay to the Army.  It was through the instrumentality of your people, the men who furnished supplies and munitions of war, and your Army that your bonds obtained their circulation;  and they were cheerfully, promptly, and readily accepted by your Army and your people.  I do not think we have got so far away from the current history of that period as to justify or excuse a misrepresentation of the facts.  It was only as the interest began to accumulate on those bonds that they arrested the attention of capitalists and drifted to your commercial centers.

Mr. Hooper, then a member of the House from Massachusetts, whom I regard as the most prominent member of the House in getting up this system, could not have had any reference to the sale of the bonds, for no other purpose was contemplated in the organization of this system but the issue of notes and banking on Government deposits.  Every provision of the original act of February 25, 1863, and especially of the amended act of June 3, 1864, which is the real bank law, concerning bonds, is also a provision concerning bank notes for circulation, for the bonds could be withdrawn as the currency issued by the bank was decreased.

You have been discussing this subject as though there was a want of faith in our securities during the years 1863 and 1864.  I know of no part of the loyal States where, during those years or afterward, any doubt existed as to the absolute security of every form of indebtedness issued by the Government.  The soldiers in the Army, the dealers in all forms of certificates of indebtedness, the contractors for supplying the munitions of war, merchants, and people, in 1863, and ever after, gladly received the greenback, though greatly depreciated, and still more gladly all forms of interest-bearing securities.

The first national banks were organized long after the 25th of February, 1863, and had deposited with the Treasury, to secure circulation, only $3,925,275 on the 1st day of October, 1863, two years and a half after the commencement of the war.  Why organize banks to sell Government bonds ?  The 7.30 bonds were fundable at par in five-twenties, and they were never under par and the Government was never in default an hour in the payment of the interest, and the bonds on the basis on which they were issued were the most valuable that capitalists ever held.  The national banks came upon the stage when the rebellion was "toppling to its fall," but in time to make an unexampled profit from the financial errors and mistakes inevitable in a great war and a disordered currency.  No, sir;  the Government did not owe its financial safety to the capitalists of that period, nor to the financiers of the country.  It owed its triumph in finances as well as in the field, to the absolute confidence reposed by the people of the loyal States, from one ocean to the other, in the ultimate triumph of the Union and the good faith of their Government.  Either one of the financial systems proposed at the beginning of the war would have achieved success, upheld as it would have been by the confidence of the people.  It was the great uprising of the masses, the rising up of the whole people of the loyal States which not only put down the rebellion and saved the Union but gave strength to your financial system and credit to your securities.  The plain people, as expressed by President Lincoln, gave credit to your financial system and success to your armies.

There never has been a great contest in the history of mankind where the people were so completely entitled to the credit not only of maintaining by arms the integrity and honor of a nation but of maintaining a financial system necessary to its complete triumph.  Therefore, the claim that the wealth of the country ---the wealth which organized and took hold of your national-bank system and with infinite skill crystallized the mass of your public securities into imperial private fortunes to an extent and with a promptness unexampled in history--- are entitled to the credit of having organized that system through patriotic considerations and for the purpose of promoting the interests of the country and rescue its finances from utter ruin cannot go as a truth into history, whatever gentlemen interested in the perpetuation of a great monetary power may now claim for its advantage.

Patriotism !  It is not easy to perceive any high degree of patriotism in the ingenious methods by which paper money and paper securities, depreciated 50 or 60 per cent., were converted into bonds drawing 6 per cent. interest in gold, payable half-yearly, and still more difficult to perceive it in the method by which those bonds were made payable both principal and interest in gold.  There was no great sacrifice or self-denial in that, and that could have been done even without national banks.  Nor is it easy to see a purely patriotic motive in depositing these bonds with the Secretary of the Treasury, untaxed and still drawing gold interest upon them at 6 per cent. half-yearly, and in addition receiving national-bank paper printed and prepared at the expense of the Government to the amount of 90 per cent. of the bonds deposited, at an interest of 1 per cent. per annum.

One is the more bewildered in the search for patriotic motive in all this when it is borne in mind that the exceedingly satisfactory and profitable form into which the paper money and paper securities depreciated 50 or 60 per cent. were converted, when it is borne in mind that the enormous loss resulting from these financial methods is borne by the whole people, and especially by the gallant Army whose valor upheld the Union and gave solidity to the financial system, and that the enormous profits accrued to the banks.

I am not willing to undervalue the services of any men or class of men in the Army or out of the Army who aided the Government in its hour of peril, but this claim of patriotism for a system which so directed your disordered finances and public debt as to amass imperial fortunes, and forever overthrow the general equality in the material wealth of our people, which had been the glory of the Republic for so many years, is too preposterous for debate.

Mr. Speaker, I have consumed a great deal more time than I had intended in these preliminary remarks;  gentlemen have led me from my purpose.  While I concede that the notes of the national banks are assured to the note-holders against danger of loss and are unquestionably a good currency, it is also equally true of the greenback money, and for exactly the same reason;  both have the same guarantee of solvency.  I am not able, never have been, to understand why a body of gentlemen, no matter how respectable, organized into national banks are a safer instrument through which to issue paper money than the Government.  I have heard the argument used (and it had some plausibility at any rate) that there was danger of fraud in overissue and the like being perpetrated in your Treasury Department in the performance of so important and delicate a task as that of preparing for issue and actually issuing a large body of paper money;  but as a matter of fact the Treasury Department has often in former years issued Treasury notes, and twenty-one years has been issuing the greenback money, and for eighteen years has printed and prepared for issue and delivered to the banks ready to be issued the national-bank notes, and all of these notes are finally canceled at the Treasury, and yet up to this time so far as I am informed, no suspicion of fraud or misconduct touching the issue of currency or the preparation of currency for issue has been suggested, while grave charges have been made against the Treasury about almost everything else under its control.

But even the pending bill contemplates the printing and preparation of the bank notes by the Treasury, and at the expense of the Treasury, and in the same Bureau of Printing where the greenbacks are printed;  so up to this time it can hardly be said that the objection named has much force.

Many of us thought thirty years ago, in view of the wide-spread ruin the banks of former days were inflicting upon the country, that coined money ---only gold or silver--- should be recognized as money;  but now all men, of all shades of financial opinion, agree that paper money, readily convertible into coin, is indispensable, and all men agree that the paper money shall be issued on the faith of the United States, so that whether banks are honest or dishonest, the holders of the note shall suffer no loss;  so that, in fact, there are but two points of difference between the bank and anti-bank men.  Who shall determine the amount of paper money that shall be issued ---the banks or the Government ?  Who shall have the profits of issuing this paper money ---the banks or the whole people ?

The banks claim the right to determine the amount that shall be issued and the profits of issuing it.  I do not agree with them.

Why should not the Government have the profit on the paper money issued upon its credit and at its expense ?  Gentlemen, in answer to this inquiry, say that this system is not specially profitable.  The report of the Comptroller shows that the earnings of the banks as a system on both capital and surplus fund was 9.20 per cent. during the past year, and that the banks beside making annual dividends have laid by a surplus fund (undivided profits) of $128,140,680.  And this, too, after taxes, salaries, and incidentals are all paid.  What other business pays such a profit ?  But the question I have asked admits of but one answer.  Common justice would give the profits of issuing paper money to the whole people.

Then the question comes up, who can most safely determine what shall be the volume of paper money to be issued from time to time in connection with your gold and silver coin ---the national banks or the whole people as represented in Congress ?

It is very clear, sir, that the volume of paper money required by a commercial people must be considered in connection with and determined by the volume of coin.  It must be readily convertible into coin.  Gold and silver coin, the common representatives of value throughout the world, must determine the volume of paper.  These metals are seldom of exactly the same value;  sometimes one and sometimes the other is the most valuable.  A few years ago it was silver, now it is gold;  but the general equality in value of these metals through all the past ages has been such that notwithstanding the occasional fluctuations in their relative value they can, by the common judgment of mankind, be safely relied upon as measures of value.  Neither gold, silver, nor paper can be made an exact standard of value, except as regulated by law, in the world of commerce and affairs.  It is all-sufficient if the one is readily exchangeable into the other, paper into gold or silver coin.  It has been demonstrated during recent years, since, by abundant crops in our own country and failure of the crops in Europe, the balance of trade is with us and our revived industries have been restored to their normal condition, that with $346,000,000 in legal-tender notes, $323,000,000 to $360,000,000 in national-bank notes, and the gradual increase in the silver certificates from $413,360 on the 1st day of January, 1879, to $58,833,770 on the 1st day of November, 1881, all readily convertible into coin, our monetary system is perfectly sound and up to the commercial demands of the country.  If this system is maintained, there will be a moderate increase of the silver certificates annually.  Now, with this state of facts, will any fair-minded man say that it is safer to trust the banks, which only a little more than a year ago surrendered $18,764,438 of the currency in the attempt to create a panic to defeat the bill which required them to deposit 3 per cent. bonds to secure their currency, and actually secured a veto of the bill ---I say is it safer to trust these banks to regulate your currency than your Government ?

Those patriotic institutions, which gentlemen are so anxious to invest with the absolute control of your currency ---the life-blood of your business and prosperity--- were perfectly willing to overturn your admirable monetary system, disorder your industries, and throw multitudes of men out of employment to defeat an ordinary and proper act of legislation, affecting them about one per cent on their bonds, when you were furnishing them $343,000,000 of paper at your expense, with Government indorsement at one per cent. per annum.

These banks are making a steady and persistent war on your greenback money, silver certificates and the silver dollar, and are already supported by high officers of the Government.  Does any gentlemen on this floor doubt that, if the system is permanently established by the passage of this bill which, at no remote day, at the demand of these banks, your greenback money and silver certificates will be retired and national-bank notes substituted in their place ?  Their system is well defined and simple gold coin the only standard of value, and no taxation by the Government, even the one per cent. they pay you for their circulation to be removed.  The Comptroller of the Currency, the representative of the system, in his last report, page 52, says:

The Comptroller again respectfully repeats his recommendation for the repeal of the law, imposing a tax upon bank capital, deposits and the two per cent. stamp upon bank checks.

And on page 58 of the report urges, that Congress shall limit the States in taxing the shares of stock, and yet during the last year there was paid out of your Treasury at the expense of the Comptroller’s Office alone for the benefit of the banks $214,118.50.

Have great capital interests been so mindful of the welfare of the people, that you can safely trust your currency to their keeping ?  If so, when has it been displayed ?  I remember very well, when a distinguished capitalist of Massachusetts rose on this floor to ask for the passage of the bill to reorganize the Mint (an event so often mentioned here).  I remember very well the incident, the questions and the answers, that accompanied the passage of that innocently-titled bill through the House, which struck from your coinage the silver dollar, and did it, too, on the very eve of the period, when the coinage of the silver dollar was to be vital to the public welfare.

I would rather indulge the belief, that the distinguished gentleman was not fully conscious of the measure under his control, and of which I believe he was not the author;  but I am confident, that no man can carefully consider the events of that period and the men, who were then at this Capitol, and recall events transpiring in Europe, and the state of our public debt, and the fact, that the debts of the nations then exceeded in volume any example in history, without being impressed with the belief, that that measure was not a mere incident of ordinary legislation, but a part of a conspiracy of great capitalists against the labor of mankind.

No, sir;  the banks will use their power as they have done in this country from the beginning, to advance their own fortunes, and not for the public weal.  In a disordered state of finance, in contractions and expansions, they will find as they have always found, their chief profits.  You say you will not permit them to retire their currency.  Can yon prevent them from alarming the country by locking their currency in their own vaults ?  No, sir;  I sincerely trust the people of this country will not become charmed with a system in which a few wealthy gentlemen, who meet annually at Saratoga, have it in their power to strike down for the time every hope of labor, and coin new fortunes out of the public grief.  Is it wise to trust such a power in the hand of any body of men ?  Does not experience demonstrate that periods are constantly occurring when the interests of large aggregations of wealth are not in harmony with the interests of labor and of productive industries ?

For the reasons I have mentioned, and for others still more important, if possible, than those I have named and to which I will refer briefly hereafter, I do not believe that it is safe, necessary, or expedient that the issuing of our currency should be placed under the control of banks.

A great statesman, in discussing the currency question recently, said that the qualities that should be considered in the currency of a country were "its safety, convenience, and cheapness, and that the profits of issuing it accrued to the nation."  You have now three forms of money, greenbacks, national-bank notes, and silver certificates.  The latter form of paper money is steadily but moderately increasing, while the two former are stationary in volume except that from time to time national banks issue new currency or retire their currency and take up their bonds.  You will observe, gentlemen, that the action of the banks in increasing the currency or in diminishing the currency, running through a range of many millions, has no reference whatever to the public convenience or the public necessity, but to the convenience and profit of the banks alone.

Now, sir, can any gentleman point out a valid reason why the Government could not, with perfect safety, as the bank notes come, as they do daily, into the Treasury to be canceled and renewed, issue Treasury notes in their stead and apply them from time to time in payment of the public debt, and permit the banks to take up their bonds ?  Is there danger of inflation ?  Why, would not the volume of currency remain unchanged, except more steady in amount ?  The question has been asked a thousand times, and that, too, by sincere men seeking for the truth, and the only answer I have ever heard is after the order of the views expressed by the gentleman from New York [Mr. Hewitt] in discussing this bill, in which he said:

My answer to that is that we have had during the refunding operations and since the war, an experience of the dangers of confiding power over the currency to public officers, however capable and however honest.  The fact is that to put the control of the currency into individual hands is to put the whole property of the country at the mercy of the men who control the currency.  The power is too great not only for human knowledge but for human character.  ---[what contortion of logic he is forced to twist himself into]

Yes, it is true that the banks overreached the public officers or conspired with them in the funding operations and defrauded the people out of many millions of dollars.  The profits of one bank alone were five times its capital stock, and the logic, I suppose, is that you must distrust your public officers, but that it is perfectly safe to trust the banks.  You cannot of course safely put the currency under the control of individuals, but as bankers are immaculate, it is perfectly safe to intrust this tremendous power to them.  The power is too great for human knowledge or human character, but as banks are not human, it is perfectly safe to trust them with the control of your currency and to repeat the funding operations !  This is a modest bank view of the subject, but it does not answer my question.

In issuing any form of paper money, inasmuch as it is all prepared in the Treasury, the danger is of fraud in its overissue, and that is to continue under this bill.  The Treasury will prepare for issue and ready for issue every dollar of paper money, whether issued for the benefit of the Government or the benefit of the banks, and this state of things will continue;  for it is absolutely certain that with the widespread intelligence of our people on questions of finance and currency, this country will never again be afflicted with a paper money issued by local banks.  Your Government will issue and prepare for issue the paper money, and your Government or the banks will get the profits.

We have had now an experience of twenty-one years in the issue of the greenback currency, and of eighteen years of the national-bank paper;  and I believe my friend from Massachusetts [Mr. Crapo] has not had occasion to point out that the issue of one form of money or the other through the Treasury, with its valuable and complicated system of checks, has developed an instance of fraud in that respect within the Treasury or without it.  Indeed, it is one of the most interesting facts of our financial history that while all these millions in the form of greenback money and national-bank paper have been issued through the direct instrumentality of the Government, there has not been up to this time, so far as I am aware, even a public scandal raised in connection with a solitary transaction.  If any such fraud has been committed it has not reached the public eye.

If this be true, does not the argument that it is unsafe for the Government to become a great banker disappear ?  The Government is no more a banker in the issue of greenback money or certificates in any form to circulate as money than in passing over to the national banks the paper that is circulated by them.  In both cases the Government exercises the same power, operates through the same agents, employs the same precautions.

But, sir, it is urged that in case of a financial panic the Government would be greatly embarrassed, but is not the Government the guarantor of every dollar of paper money issued, whether issued for the benefit of the people or the benefit of the banks ?  The old idea of banking, both State and Federal, was that if the bank broke, which of course it did sooner or later, the people lost the money.  The new and more rational theory is that if Government authorize the issue of paper money, when the bank breaks the Government shall redeem its notes.

The bankers claim that they alone can be trusted to regulate the volume of paper money.  I would not trust them with any such power.  I think thew whole people of this country, through their representatives, are a much safer depository of that power.  Whoever controls that power, controls the nation.

But I think I see in the silver certificates a perfectly safe regulator of the volume of paper money.  When coin is required, the silver certificates which constitute a part of the paper money, will be retired and the coin increased;  when the convenience of increased paper money is demanded, coin is retired and silver certificates increase the currency.  The application of the same rule to gold coin as heretofore would increase the facility.  Coin never has and never will remain in the vaults of a bank, judging from our past experience, if withdrawing it would be profitable to the bank.

Our silver certificate is not a new idea.  I think I have read, that the Dutch suggested the idea.  The frugal burgomasters of Amsterdam perceived the convenience of paper money a long time ago and organized a bank.  The only law of that bank was that, when a paper dollar was issued, a silver dollar should be put in the vaults to pay it, when it came back.

I have entire faith in this system of silver certificates, and believe they will play an important and most valuable part in your currency system.  But the audacious and persistent war made upon the legal tender notes, the silver dollar, and the silver certificate by the great bankers ought to inform our people, that in the early future there will be no divided control of your currency.  The Government will issue all forms of currency for the common benefit of the people, or the national banks will issue it all on the credit and at the expense of the Government for the benefit of the banks.

The present state of the money and currency of the country is well presented in the report of the Comptroller of the Currency in the following table:

The gold and silver coin as presented in the table includes the gold and silver coin in the Treasury for the redemption of the gold and silver certificates.  Most of the gold certificates have been retired, but the Comptroller makes the following statement as to the steady increase of the silver certificates:

The silver certificates in the hands of the people and the banks, at dates corresponding with those given in the preceding tables, were as follows:

January 1, 1879. ............... $413,360
November 1, 1879. .............. 1,604,370
November 1, 1880. ............. 19,780,240
November 1, 1881. ............. 58,838,770

It will be seen that the amount of these certificates in circulation has increased $39,058,530 during the past year.  Of the $58,838,770 circulating on November 1, 1881, a large portion are constantly in the hands of the people, being paid out by the banks in preference to gold coin or legal-tender notes.

The total amount of silver dollars coined upto November 1, 1881, was $100,672,705, of which, as stated in one of the foregoing tables, $66,576,378 was then in the Treasury, although an amount equal to $58,838,769 was represented by certificates in the hands of the people and the banks, leaving only $7,737,609 actually belonging to the Treasury.

Thus it will be seen that in spite of the clamor of the banks against the silver dollar, all of that coinage is in circulation either in coin or certificates except $7,737,609 held by the Treasury.  The silver certificate is not a legal tender, but the dollar behind it is.

Mr. Speaker, I plead for a perfectly sound monetary system, in which the paper money shall be readily exchangeable into gold and silver coin.  While the interchangeable quality is maintained, there is no danger of a redundant circulation.  I prefer trusting to the conservative judgment and intelligence of the whole people as represented in Congress notwithstanding the blind and unreasoning spirit of party which sometimes afflicts the country, to determine the amount of currency and on the regulating power of your coin certificates rather than rely on the cool, calculating methods of your masters of finance who contemplate with composure, and in many instances have organized, the financial panics which take from "the mouth of labor the bread it has earned" and make the general loss a source of speculation and profit.

But your national-bank system rests upon the public debt.  The final extinguishment of this debt is of the highest moment to this country.  The presence of $145,031,850.20 "available cash" in your Treasury renders economy in your Government out of the question.  With an overflowing Treasury and the holders of the public securities seeking to postpone payment, schemes for personal aggrandizement, organized and fraudulent raids upon the Treasury, and public enterprises of questionable expediency, spring up like mushrooms in a too fertile soil, while the corridors of your Capitol are filled with a feverish, jostling, and clamorous multitude intent on public plunder.  The lobby becomes an audacious and recognized power, scandalizing and, more than that, corrupting the public service.  Such are the natural fruits of an overflowing Treasury.  The magnitude of your revenues, even if promptly applied to the public debt, militate against frugal and honest government.  In the presence of your enormous revenues the member of House or Senate who counsels moderation in expenditure or resists the countless brilliant schemes of national embellishment is accounted too plebeian of spirit to represent so great a country.  Yes, sir, an overflowing Treasury is a constant peril;  its presence is fatal to frugal, honest, and republican government, and yet your revenues will be great and your Treasury at least at times overflowing until your public debt is extinguished, and then and not till then this nation can, and I trust in God will, return to the old path of safety.  The bonded debt of the Government on the first day of this month was as follows:

Bonds at 3½ per cent. ........ $490,697,050
Bonds at 4½ per cent. ........... 250,000,000
Bonds at 4 per cent. ..........      738,854,800
1,479,551,850

To which should be added the bonds issued for the benefit of the Union Pacific Railroads ......       64,623,512
1,544,175,362

Of these bonds the $490,697,050 at 3½ per cent. are now payable at the pleasure of the Government.  The banks have on deposit to secure their circulation $369,608,500 in bonds, and $241,376,150 of these bonds are 3½ percents, which the Government has a right to pay at any time;  and with $145,031,850.20 available cash in the Treasury, at the present rate of taxation every dollar of this $241,376,150 of 3½ per cent. bonds now held by the Treasury to secure circulation can be paid, and ought to be paid, within one year from this date, thus extinguishing nearly two-thirds of the bonds on which the bank circulation rests.  The money to pay largely more than half of them is lying idle in the Treasury, and yet we are paying the banks 3½ per cent. on their bonds.  Now, sir, what is to be the result of all this ?  The banks say they cannot afford to buy the 4 and 4½ and 6 per cent. bonds on account of the high premium, which now averages more than 20 per cent.

It has been already proposed on this floor that the national banks shall only be required to secure a certain per cent. of their issues by bonds.  If this is done, the old robbery of the people by irredeemable and dishonored paper money will begin.  And will the people tolerate the spectacle of vast sums of money drawn from their labor by taxation lying idle in the Treasury under the sinking-fund law that the banks may have the benefit of bonds which could be paid;  or the other spectacle of the Government paying the banks 3½ per cent. interest on bonds with money lying idle which ought to be applied to their payment and at the same time at the expense of the people, and on faith of the Government, furnishing the banks money to loan to the people at profitable rates of interest ?  We will see the result;  but I am very confident that if you pass this bill and make this national-bank system perpetual, and this bill means that and nothing less, and perhaps nothing more, the issue will not be to the disadvantage of the banks or to the profit of the people.

But, sir, there is an objection to making this national-bank system perpetual much more serious than its control of your currency.  I allude to the incidental and yet inevitable power it will exert over your free institutions.

There is no country, where corporations exercise as tremendous a power as in our own.  It is true, that incorporated companies exist in Great Britain, and to a limited extent in the nations of continental Europe.  There are ninety banks in France, with thirty-seven millions of people;  but in all those nations, corporations are hedged in and restricted by wholesome laws, and are made subordinate to the public good, except where they have been organized for the express purpose of giving strength to monarchical power, and then they have been made subordinate to Government, even if organized to oppress the people.

But in the United States, both in State and National Governments, gigantic corporations witn gigantic powers, in numbers and with resources unexampled in the history of the world, have been organized.  Every enterprise involving any considerable amount of capital seeks the shelter of an incorporation.  But the great corporations which have in recent years been created by States and the Federal Government, or enlarged by the consolidation of corporate powers granted by several States, like the great interstate railroad systems, have been created with such utter disregard of wholesome limitations, and with such enormous and irresponsible powers, that even now, almost in their infancy, they put your governments, State and Federal, at defiance.  You nave invested them with powers which belong to the whole people in organized government, the right of eminent domain, on the theory that they were public agents organized for public purposes and for the public good, and to be subject to public control;  but armed with perpetual existence and intrenched behind the Dartmouth College case they aspire to an absolute independence of government, both in the courts of justice and in the halls of legislation, seeking to control the very agencies which should restrict their power.  The four corporations organized by Congress within the last twenty years to construct railroads between the Mississippi River and the Pacific Ocean are absolutely imperial not only in their franchises but in the vast public domain you have placed under their exclusive control.

Many States which will take their places in our Union of States at an early period are being formed and molded by those corporations, and how are they molding those embryo States ?  When you hear of farms of fifty thousand acres, and even of one hundred thousand acres, and see a few men become, under these imperial grants, the owners of millions of acres of fertile land, and remember that these grants almost exhaust the agricultural lands of your once magnificent public domain, you begin to see the accursed fruits of monopoly which ripen into princely estates and a land filled with tenants and wretchedness.  And yet only twenty years ago it was the pride and glory of our country that its wealth was generally diffused and every citizen was an independent freeholder or a free-hold in the soil of his country was within his reach.  All this rapidly recedes, and a large portion of the once princely inheritance of the American people, transformed by the deadly glance of monopoly is threatened with the system which filled for centuries all Europe with a hopeless people, a system which a century of revolutions has only modified and under which the son of the Green Isle, in spite of his high courage and ever-springing hope, still suffers the agony of despair.  And these corporations are to mold the systems of policy of the coming States of the American Union !  Land monopoly reduced labor in all Europe into servitude for centuries.  Is land monopoly and the railroad monopoly, and above all the monopoly of the power to control the currency, likely to be more merciful in America ?

It is true that corporate franchises and combined resources were apparently necessary to develop the railroad system, and that development was inevitable, no matter what changes it might produce in the existing relations of men and their industries.  Here I admit the apparent argument of necessity;  but there is no such argument in behalf of corporations to control your currency.  But where government authorizes the organization of a great power it is bound by every obligation that can rest upon a government to regulate that power by proper and wholesome safeguards and limitations and protect the people and their industries from the oppressive and extortionate demands of that power, but I hold that no motive of national progress or pretense of opening up the country could have justified or excused the vast grants of lands made to the Pacific Railroad corporations rendering imperial estates in lands inevitable.  In my judgment those imperial grants were an irreparable wrong to the landless people of this and of the coming ages ---a crime against humanity itself.  And I hold that it was a national crime to permit the extraordinary consolidation of the rail systems and leave the productive industries at their mercy.

The tendency of monopoly is to the ceaseless concentration and consolidation of power.  Your vast body of railroads between the Atlantic and the Mississippi and onward, with the four great lines I have named, to the Pacific, are already so combined and consolidated that a number of men so small that you count them on your fingers absolutely control the entire system, and hold at their mercy the fortunes of every industry in the United States.  Will this handful of gentlemen who control this vast system be unmindful of the value of judges and legislators ?  Why talk about the rotten-borough system, once the disgrace of England ?  Can any man indulge even the hope the power that organizes States, that holds the industries of the country in its grasp, will have no voice in House or Senate ?  Has power ever been so forbearing as this ?

Let us see how monopolies sustain each other.  A citizen already the owner of an overgrown estate, the fruits of monopoly, by a simple resolution of his board of directors increases the capital stock of a great railroad and levies increased taxes on the labor of the people to support the increased volume of stock and keep it up to par, and with the proceeds of new stock purchases at par $40,000,000 of your 4 per cent. bonds.  The value of controlling your currency is so great that as the volume of your bonds decrease the premium of your four percents advances to 20 per cent., as it is now, and adds almost at once $8,000,000 to his wealth.  But suppose the New York millionaire, finding your national-bank monopoly made perpetual, prefers to invest his forty millions in your banking system;  he deposits them, and the Government becomes responsible until they become payable in 1907 for their safe keeping, and then the Secretary at your expense will pay him over the sum of 36,000,000;  you pay him on his forty millions 4 per cent. he pays you on your $36,000,000 the pittance of 1 per cent., and that only on that part of the $36,000,000 he keeps in circulation, and if he should co-operate with other banks to reduce the price of the farmer's produce or the value of stocks, for the purpose of speculation, and calls in his $36,000,000, he does not even pay that pittance of 1 per cent. while the money lays in his vaults.  And so under the auspices of the two great monopolies the "skillful financier," to whom in the eyes of the champions of this bank system it is so much safer to intrust your currency than to the representatives of the people, by the watering of stock, increased exactions for transportation, and through your national-bank system gathers in from the earnings of the people $76,000,000.  And can any mortal tell how many homes were scrimped even in the bare necessities of life, how many men lost hope and sunk into despair while the iron forces of the accursed principle of monopoly were drawing together through countless channels this imperial estate ?  Is there any other country where the laws open up such opportunities to the skillful and the unscrupulous or give such advantages to wealth ?

I have said that even now in their comparative infancy these corporations measure strength with your Government.  It was only after a contest of years and after repeated failures the measure was finally carried through Congress to require the combination known as the Union Pacific Railroad Company to provide even a small sinking fund to meet the $64,623,512 of 6 per cent. bonds you issued for their benefit on which the Government has paid $37,909,124.94, not a dollar of which has been refunded, and even that funding act is being steadily evaded.  The people of all sections of the Union have by countless petitions called upon Congress to pass a law regulating the interstate railroad business, preventing unjust discriminations, and prohibiting extortionate charges;  but the railroad lobby has appeared in force and the measure fails.  But more than all, the skillful gentlemen who obtained from Congress the imperial grants of land now hold over seventy millions of acres clearly forfeited to the United States by the lapse of the time within which the laws making the grants required their roads to be constructed, and with only an act declaring the forfeiture necessary to restore these fertile lands to the public domain for free homes for the people;  but the act cannot be passed, and monopoly still holds those lands in its deadly grasp.

The national banks have transformed a vast bonded debt payable in paper money into a debt payable in coin, and then into a debt payable in gold coin, and now asks that a twenty-year charter shall be made perpetual, and Congress hastens to do the work.  But why enumerate ?  When has great power animated by the spirit of insatiable avarice been moderate in its demands ?

Thus, sir, we enter upon our second century with this vast body of concentrated wealth, armed with perpetual corporate franchises, to contest supremacy with the people.  It was Bacon who said:

In the infancy of states men mold institutions;  in their maturity institutions mold men.

Can any patriot indulge the hope that these powerful institutions which the Government now cherishes and refuses even to put under wholesome restraints will not, imperceptibly it may be, but steadily aspire to political power, change the character of our institutions, and mold them into harmony with their own interests ?  Will not the natural timidity of wealth, especially wealth consolidated, seek new guarantees as well as new powers ?  With vast facilities for absorbing the fruits of the labor of our people, will not these institutions reproduce on this new theater of human aspirations the deadly evil of the old, splendid estates, an impoverished people ?

The Roman maxim, "Never despair of the republic," is an inspiring sentiment now as of old, but no friend of our free institutions can fail to apprehend that unless the American people, reanimated by the spirit of their fathers, shall compel a return to the old path of safety, where the common and equal rights of the citizen rose superior to the demands of wealth, in spite of the universality of intelligence, the just, plain, and frugal government which excites the admiration of the world will steadily, as power shall move from the many to the few, fall into decay, and a splendid government supported by "powerful monopolies and aristocratical establishments," will take its place.  A splendid government, princely estates, an impoverished people !