THE MONEY QUESTION. 
 
 " rHons are no rccpectprw of p«rHons. They will sap the power of rank^ of wealth, 
 of iittinbur, and of authority. —JUat/eod. 
 
 " 'ihere ia no euch thing fts intrinsic value," — FroJ. Jevonu. 
 
 '* The ralne of monev, «thr>r things boiiifr the eame. varies invorsflly as its quan- 
 tity; every increase of qMnniity lowcriuj: ihe volt.o juid every diniinislion raiaing 
 it in a ratio exactly equivalent. ' — John Stuart Mill. 
 
 "Thftt cominmlitlea would rise or fall in pHco in proportion to the inrreaee or 
 diminuLiun of money 1 aauuuie &a a fact tliut is incoutrovertiblo."— i^icajiZo. 
 
 SPEECH 
 
 HON. JOHN P. JONES, 
 
 OF NEVADA, 
 
 IS THE 
 
 SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, 
 
 OCTOEEK 14, IG, 21, 2;3, 24, 23, 27, AND uO, 1S03. 
 
The original of tiiis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013775329 
 
'''•'^ l^pney question ...Speech of Hon. Joh 
 
 3 1924 013 775 329 
 
 TH E'~MONEY~mFESTlUN: 
 
 " Ideas ore no Tespecters ofpersons. They will sap the power otjsai^W^^lM&i, 
 of niimbei, and of authority.''— JHodeod. 
 
 ' There is no such thing as intrinsic value." — Prof. Jevons. 
 
 "The value of money, other things heing the same, varies Inversely as its quan- 
 tity; every increase of quantity lowering the value and every diminution raising 
 it in a ratio exactly equivalent.^'— J'oftn Stuart Mill. 
 
 " That commodities would rise or fall in ^rioe in proportion to the increase or 
 'diminution of money I assume as a fact that is incontrovertible." — JRicardo. 
 
 SPEECH 
 
 OP 
 
 HOIST. JOHN P. JONES, 
 
 OF NEVADA, 
 
 IN THE 
 
 SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, 
 
 OOTOBEE 14, 16, 21, 23, 24, 25, 27, AND 30, 1893. 
 
 "WASHINGK^I 
 1894. 
 
OJ 
 
 
 (^.ZY^-^/Z 
 
Kemonetization of Silrer* 
 
 SPEECH 
 
 or 
 
 HON. JOHN P. JONES, 
 
 OF NEVADA, 
 
 In the Senate op the United States, 
 
 October U, 16, SI, SS, U, S7, and SO, 189S. 
 
 The Senate having under consideration the bUl (E. B. 1) to repeal a part of 
 an act approved July 11. 1890, entitled "An act directing the purchase ol sil- 
 ver bullion and the issue of Treasury notes thereon, and tor other purposes" — 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada said: 
 
 Mr. Peesident: The question before the Senate, broadly con- 
 sidered, Involves all the varied interests of this Republic. Every 
 concern of our people, financial and industrial, religious and 
 moral, political and social, comes within its all-embracing scope. 
 Upon a proper solution of the problem of money in a country 
 depends the decision of the question whether there shall be in 
 that country more poverty or less, more crime or less, more in- 
 sanity or less; whether among its people there shall be more em- 
 ployment or more idleness, more happiness or more misery — 
 indeed more liberty or more slavery — for it must be borne in 
 mind that men may be as thoroughly enslaved by unfavorable 
 industrial conditions as by positive legal enactment. 
 
 No matter under what form of government a people may live, 
 whether the irresponsible despotism of a military autocrat or a 
 constitution carefully framed to permit the widest play of polit- 
 ical action, the table from which Hunger rises unsatisfied will 
 have no seat reserved for Freedom. Surely a subject that affects 
 so vast a range of topics deserves serious consideration. Yet 
 we have been told that upon assembling here in response to the 
 call of the Executive we had nothing to do but to vote , or, at most, 
 to vote first and deliberate afterward. What a travesty upon a 
 785 3 
 
republican form of governinent! What a plain confession of 
 preference for the methods of despotism! " Vote first and delib- 
 erate afterward!" It is the echo of the command given by the first 
 Napoleon to the representatives of the Allied Powers assembled 
 in Italy. That was a command worthy of a tyrant; but the bound- 
 aries of this vast Republic are not broad enough to give it place. 
 If a lawmaking body has but to act first and deliberate after- 
 ward, there is no necessity for parliamentary government. 
 What is needed is a Man on Horseback. 
 
 A grave subject, sir, needs grave deliberation. In the Senate 
 of France, upon a discussion of monetary standards, Senator 
 Dumas well said: 
 
 Those wlio approach these questions for the first time decide them at once; 
 those who study them with care hesitate; those who are obliged practically 
 to decide, doubt and stop, overwhelmed with the weight of the enormous 
 responsibility. 
 
 The very essence of deliberation is — time. This debate, we 
 Know, has been most impatiently borne by a small but powerful 
 coterie of men who meet in bank parlors in the great money 
 centers in all the countries of the world, and who, whether re- 
 siding in the United States or elsewhere, have a profound dis- 
 trust of popular government and an admiration for Napoleonic 
 methods. The discussion here has been conducted under great 
 disadvantages. The speeches of Senators who favor the gold 
 standard demonstrate that the necessity for protracted sittings 
 in a close atmosphere every working day and many nights dur- 
 ing the most enervating season of the year is not conducive to 
 the careful study or painstaking analysis of a great question. 
 Neither is it conducive to clearness of thought or accuracy of ex- 
 pression, without which no complex subject can be intelligently 
 or logically discussed. The total disregard of economic truths 
 and of correct definitions on the part of those Senators demon- 
 strates that they have not had the leisure — for it is not to be con- 
 ceived that they did not have the desire — to bring to bear upon 
 the subject the learning and ability of which they are in an emi- 
 nent degree possessed. 
 
 To discuss this question in all its broad aspects and implica- 
 tions would require a treatise on political and social economy. 
 The subject must be examined with the laborious methods of 
 , the student, and every proposition subjected to the test of reason. 
 
 785 
 
Let us be candid, Mr. President, with reference to the ques- 
 tion before the Senate. It is not a question of mere expediency; 
 it is one of principle. It is not merely the repealing of a clause 
 of a law already on the statute books, with a view of providing 
 a substitute for that clause. Were that the intention no man 
 can justify a departure in this instance from the unvarying and 
 immemorial custom ot legislative bodies, to embrace in the re- 
 pealing measure the remedy for the evil sought to be corrected. 
 Yet the gold standard press protests that the object is not to 
 place the country upon that standard. The very vehemence 
 with which this statement is made is of itself suspicious. " The 
 lady doth protest too much methinks." 
 
 No impartial mind can fail to see that in its way the proposi- 
 tion before the Senate is a repetition of the tactics of 1873. The 
 attempt is to place the country on the sipgle gold standard be- 
 fore the people have opportunity to speak. Deeming the ques- 
 tion in all its implications the most momentous which has ever 
 come before the American people, I shall ask the indulgence of 
 the Senate while I attempt, to the best of my ability, to present 
 the subject somewhat broadly. 
 
 PHEVAI.ENT MISCONCEPTIONS BEGABDING MONET. 
 
 In all attempts at fundamental discussion it is necessary first 
 to clear the ground of such obstacles as tradition or ignorance 
 may have placed in the pathway of progress. We know that 
 before men came to understand the forces by which the earth is 
 held in its orbit it was to them inconceivable that a body could 
 exist in space without physical support. Hence in the most an- 
 cient of cosmologies the earth — which was supposed to be flat — 
 was conceived to be held in position by pillars, upon which it 
 rested. For, aa was argued by the prisiitive mind, it must rest 
 on something! 
 
 While such a belief existed it was in vain to expect any direct 
 progress to be made toward a true science of astronomy. Every 
 phenomenon observed was attributed to a cause wholly removed 
 from the real one; every inference drawn was distorted to fit 
 into the framework of the preconceived theory and to accord 
 with the established opinion. Thus causes were mistaken for 
 effects and effects for causes. In the slow course of ages, as as- 
 
 785 
 
6 
 
 tronomicai phenomena multiplied and each newly discovered 
 fact came to be compared with, the facts already accumulated, 
 certain anomalies, inconsistencies, and incongruities were re- 
 vealed, and it was in the effort to reconcile those that it began 
 by degrees to dawn upon mankind that the discrepancies may 
 have had a common origin in some fundamental misconception 
 affecting the entire hypothesis by which the phenomena had 
 been interpreted. 
 
 Now, it is not too much to say that the world is to-day more 
 instructed in at least the rudiments of astronomy than in those 
 of monetary science. So far as concerns the ordinary facts of 
 every-day observation those affecting astronomy are much bet- 
 ter understood than those affecting money. People will give an 
 intelligible and uniform explanation of the causes even of an 
 eclipse, but a hundred- differing and contradictory accounts of 
 the genesis of a panic. Every school boy knows that the appar- 
 ent movement of the sun and stars around the earth as a central 
 body is a mere optical illusion; and that, contrary to the ancient 
 belief, the earth is not a flat surface. Yet, with reference to 
 money, fallacies equally gross command the unquestioning faith, 
 not of the masses merely, but of men of the highest intelligence in 
 other departments of human knowledge. While those fallacies 
 are accepted as fundamental truths, it is in my opinion impossible 
 to arrive at correct conclusions concerning any question arising 
 in any department of monetary science. 
 
 But in the nature of things the errors must have been plausi- 
 ble or they would not have so long survived. Hence their dis- 
 lodgment can not be effected by mere denial of their truth. 
 The denial must be accompanied by proofs, and those can be de- 
 rived only from an analysis that shall go to the root of the ques- 
 tions Involved, by an appeal to reason in the effort to arouse 
 thought and awaken reflection. 
 
 The silver question can not be intelligently discussed without 
 entering upon the entire subject of money, and inasmuch as one 
 of the contentions of the gold-standard advocates is that silver 
 is losing its "intrinsic value," it is necessary for us to investi- 
 gate the subject of value and ascertain if we may how value, 
 especially the value of money, arises; from what source or sources 
 
it Is derived; how far the value or money is dependent upon the 
 cost of production of the material of which it is composed, and 
 whether in fact there is really any such thing as "intrinsic 
 value." So also it is necessary to investigate the essential nature 
 of money, the function it performs, and the phenomena con- 
 nected with the increase and the decrease of its quantity. 
 
 We are told that silver is no longer fitted for the full money 
 use because it has less "intrinsic value" than formerly — be- 
 cause the standard dollar of that metal is no longer, in "intrin- 
 sic value," the equivalent of the gold dollar at the ratio of 16 
 to 1. This is regarded by the advocates of the gold standard aa 
 an argument of unanswerable force. When they have stated 
 it they deem the discussion closed. Yet, like the pillars which 
 were believed to support the earth, this intrinsic value whether 
 of gold or silver is purely imaginary. Notwithstanding the re- 
 jection of the theory by all well-informed economists, it continues 
 to be a refuge for ignorance and sciolism. 
 
 In the whole history of time there has been no error in any 
 department of thought that, in the degree of contribution to 
 the martyrdom of man, can compare with this notion of "in- 
 trinsic value." Fully refuted and rejected by science, the the- 
 ory had well nigh disappeared from economic literature until 
 the discovery was made that the hold which, like a blighting 
 superstition, it had obtained on the ignorance of men could be 
 utilized to discredit silver and to plume the single gold stand- 
 ard. Immediately the teachings of science are set at naught, 
 and " intrinsic value " is declared to be the determinative fac- 
 tor ip the discussion. 
 
 I wholly deny the existence of intrinsic value, whether in gold 
 or any other obiect. I base the claims of silver, as I have always 
 based them, on the indispensable necessity for some money ma- 
 terial acceptable to our people and especially adapted to the 
 money use — a material which/ shall exist in quantity sufficient 
 to furnish to a rapidly increasing population such number of 
 monetary units (dollars) as shall keep pace with the constantly- 
 growing demands of a country whose development has hardly 
 yet begun. 
 
 785 
 
8 
 
 WHAT IS VALUE? 
 
 In order intelligently to determine how far it may be incorrect 
 to Bay that money or any other object should possess " intrinsic 
 value," we must have a correct conception of the meaning of 
 the term " value." 
 
 There is no word in the entire vocabulary of political economy 
 that is so much, and so variously, misunderstood, yet of which 
 it is BO essential to have an exact apprehension. 
 
 Bailey, in his celebrated work on The Nature of Value, says: 
 
 In tlie examination of the present subject, as dlscussea by those writers 
 on whose doctrines I have ventured to animadvert, I have been forcibly 
 struck with the vaguen'ess, the Inconsistencies, and the errors which have 
 arisen from speaking of value as a sort of general and Independent prop- 
 erty; and I can not too strongly recommend the student of political econ- 
 omy never to let the word value pass before hlni without putting the ques- 
 tion, "value in what?" or "In relation to what? " The value of a com- 
 modity must be Its value In something, and whenever the term Is used with 
 any definite meaning, that something may be assigned. If It can not be as- 
 signed, the reader may rest assured that the author, whoever he be, Is 
 writing without any determinate 16.63,5.— Nature of Value, pages 34 and 35. 
 
 And by way of emphasizing the importance of correct defini- 
 tions in economic argument, Bailey, quoting another writer, 
 very appropriately says: 
 
 To dlscove'- error In axioms, or In first principles grounded on facts, Is 
 like the breaking of a charm. The enchanted castle, the steep rock, the 
 burning lake disappear; and the paths that lead to truth, which we Imagined 
 to be so long, so em barrassed, and so difficult, show as they are, short, open, 
 and easy. 
 
 A point always to be borne in mind about value is that it is 
 not an independent entity, nor quality inhering in an object. It 
 is not a material thing, nor can it even exist in the substance of 
 a material thing. 
 
 In his Essay on the Value of Gold Prof. Jevons calls value 
 
 "an impalpable relation;" and in his celebrated work on Money 
 
 and the Mechanism of Exchange, he says of it: 
 
 Value, like utility, Is no Intrinsic quality of a thing; it is an extrinsic ae- 
 cMent or relation. 
 
 The same author, in his work upon Political Economy, says: 
 
 Value Implies, in fact, a relation ; but if so, It can not possibly be sotne other 
 thing. A student of economy has no hope ol ever being clear and correct In 
 his ideas of the science if he thinks of value as at all a thing or object, or 
 even a» anytHng which lies in a thing or object— The Theory of Political Econ- 
 cunn, page 82. 
 785 
 
9 
 
 And again, in the same work, Prof. Jevons says: 
 
 Value In exchange expresses nothing but a ratio, and the term should not 
 be used In any other sense. To speak simply o£ the value ol an ounce ol gold 
 Is as absurd as to speak of the ratio of the number n. What Is the ratio of 
 the number 17? The question admits no answer, for there must be another 
 number named In order to make a ratio.— TAe Theory of Political Economy, 
 page 83. 
 
 Jolin Stuart Mill, in defining " value," says: 
 
 The word " value," when used without adjunct, always means. In political 
 economy, value in, exchange.— Political Sconomy, Book 3, chapter 1. 
 
 Prof. Francis A. Walker says: 
 
 Value Is no t a property of any thing. It arises wholly out of relations which 
 exist between things.— ifo»«a/ in its Selations to Trade and Industry, page 32. 
 
 Prof. A. L. Perry, of Williams College, in his work on Political 
 
 Economy, speaking of value, says: 
 
 Value, then, is not a quality of stogie things, belonging to them as if by 
 nature, as hardness is a quality of a rock or gravity Is an attribute of gold; 
 because all physical qualities to physical things, all that which makes or 
 helps to make anything such as it is, may be learned by a study of the things 
 themselves, by themselves. A careful examination and analysis of the me- 
 chanical and chemical properties of any physical thtog will discover all its 
 distinguishing characteristics, all thatmakes it that particular thmg lii dis- 
 tmctlon from all other things; but it is plain already that the value of any- 
 thtog (if It have value) can not be found out by studying that particular 
 thing by Itself alone; the questioning of the senses, however mmute, the 
 test of the laboratory, however delicate, cannever determine how much any- 
 thtog is worth, because that always implies a comparison between tuio 
 things or more strictly a comparison between two renderings to exchange. 
 Value is not an attribute of single things; not even if the thtogs be phys- 
 ical and tangible.— Principles of Political Economy, page 34. 
 
 Numberless other citations could be made from writers of the 
 first rank to prove that value is not a property residing in any 
 object, and that therefore it can not by any possibility be " in- 
 trinsic." 
 
 A correct definition of value I conceive to be: Human estima- 
 tion placed upon desirable objects whose quantity is limited. 
 
 There are then two factors, and two only, which constitute 
 value — two elements entering into its structure; first, human de- 
 sire for an object, and secondly, limitation of the number of ob- 
 jects of the class to which the desired object belongs. If men 
 have no desire toobtain an article, no value will attach to it. If, on 
 the other hand, men esteem an article highly, then value will 
 be predicated of it in proportion to the degree of scarcity of 
 articles of its class, modified, or, as the economists say, "cor- 
 
 785 
 
10 
 
 reoted," by the degree of estimation which, on the average, men 
 place upon articles of that class. , 
 
 In order that value may exist, there must be not only au ob- 
 ject, but a subject; there must, on the one hand, be a human 
 being , and on the other something of which he desires the pos- 
 session, and of a class the quantity of which is limited. Value 
 therefore is subjective, not objective; and not being objective it 
 can not be " intrinsic." 
 
 Limitation of quantity implies greater or less sacrifice to re- 
 duce to possession. Hence every expression of value is an ex- 
 pression of degree. It is a quantitative expression of the degree 
 of desire for an object, corrected by the average degree of sacri- 
 fice necessary to obtain it. This sacrifice will not be made except 
 in response to desire. Hence value can exist only by reason of 
 demand. 
 
 The reason why demand exists is not important. It is of no 
 consequence to know why men esteem an object or invest it with 
 value; nor does it matter whether the esteem grows out of a use 
 which men find for qualities that inhere or exist in the object 
 itself, or whether, in aid of the ordinary evolution of society, 
 and the development of institutions, they see fit to confer upon 
 an object a use or function the exercise of which they find 
 indispensable to their progress, , prosperity, and happiness. 
 
 NO SUCH THING AS INTRINSIC VALUE. 
 
 QuoMties may be said to be inherent or intrinsic in objects, 
 but value, being a conception of the mind, can not be intrinsic 
 or inherent. This can not be difScult to perceive when we bear 
 in mind the teaching of science, that color does not reside in the 
 object in which we appear to see it, but is an attribute of the 
 eye itself, and that sound is not a quality of bodies, but a prop- 
 erty of the human ear. 
 
 If value were intrinsic, if it resided in the article, it could not 
 be taken from it, and it could not be changed by changes in the 
 number of the objects of which value is asserted, or with modi- 
 fications in the desire of men to become possessed of such arti- 
 cles. Qualities that are inherent do not vary with the shifting 
 degrees of estimation in which they may be held by mankind. 
 Hardness in a stone, gravity in lead, do not suffer either aug- 
 
 785 
 
11 
 
 mentation or diminution by reason of any increase or reduction 
 of the appreciation of men. If value were intrinsic in articles 
 it would remain intrinsic whether people wanted them or not. 
 But things can have no economic properties by and of them- 
 selves; those properties exist only because there are people. A 
 thing can have no use unless some one wants to use it; it can 
 have no value unless, in addition to being wanted, some one is 
 ■willing to incur sacrifice to obtain it. 
 
 Suppose a metal to have more value at one time than at an- 
 other. We know that at both times it has the same specific 
 gravity, the same density, the same ductility, the same tensile 
 strength. These qualities being intrinsic, can not be removed 
 without destroying the object. 
 
 If an article had intrinsic value, such value in its entirety 
 would at any given time be 100 per cent. The intrinsic value of 
 gold in 1873 was therefore 100 per cent; it is still, and must al- 
 ways be, 100 per cent. But we know that in comparison with all 
 other things — and value, as already shown, is a matter of compar- 
 ison — gold to-day has a value 50 per cent greater than ithadin 
 1873. Has it to-day, then, 150 per cent of intrinsic value, or 50 
 per cent more than it is possible for it to have? 
 
 Suppose a new and extensive use to be discovered for silver, 
 and a large demand to spring up in consequence, resulting in an 
 increased price (stated in terms of gold) for silver bullion. It 
 would thenbesaid thatanewvaluehadarisenfopsilver. Would 
 that new value be intrinsic? When silver fell 20 cents an ounce 
 in one day, on the issue of the Indian order in council, was that 
 a loss of 20 cents' worth of intrinsic value? And when it rose 
 again, was that rise a recovery of so many cents' worth of intrin- 
 sic value? 
 
 If all the world should remonetize silver it is admitted by all 
 the advocates of the gold standard that silver would have a much 
 higher value than it now has. Would this added value be " in- 
 trinsic"? 
 
 AUTHORITY BMPHASIZBS THli THACHIN6 OT BEASON— THAT THBBE IS NO 
 INTBINSIO VAIilTE. 
 
 On this subject of intrinsic value what do the leading author- 
 ities say? 
 
 785 
 
12 
 
 "There is no such thing," says Prof. Jevons, "as intrinsic 
 
 value." (Essay on value of gold.) 
 
 John Stuart Mill says: 
 
 There can not, In short, be intrinsically a more insignificant thing In the 
 economy ol society than money.— (iVmcipics of Political Mconomy, volume 
 II, page 23. 
 
 Prof. Perry, while a most ardent champion of the gold 
 
 standard, is compelled to admit the absurdity of the expression 
 
 " intrinsic value," and to deny such value to gold as well as to 
 
 everything else. In reviewing the statements of another writer 
 
 on the subject of ttioney, who had used that term. Prof. Perry 
 
 says: 
 
 This author Is led astray by the worse than useless adjective " Intrlnsio," 
 having never yet learned that there is only one kind of value in economics, 
 namely, purchasing power. — Principles of Political Economy, page 341. 
 
 Mr. Macleod, in his elaborate treatise upon the "Theory and 
 Practice of Banking," speaking of the expression "intrinsic 
 value," says: 
 
 This unhappy phrase meets us at every turn in economics, and yet the 
 slightest reflection will show that to define value to he something external, 
 and then to tie constantly speaking of intrinsic value are utterly self -con- 
 tradictory and inconsistent ideas. Thus over and over again it is repeated 
 In economical treatises that money has intrinsic value, but that a bill of ex- 
 change or bank note Is only the representative of value. 
 
 Money no doubt is the produce of labor, but, as Adam Smith observed, if 
 it would exchange for nothing it would have no value; so, M. Say says, that 
 the value of gold and silver consists only in what they will buy. How then 
 can its value be mtrlusic? How can anything have intrinsic value unless it 
 has the things it will exchange for ineiae itself ? •' Money has intrinsic value 1" 
 Has a piece of money got the merchandise, and all the other things it will pur- 
 chase. Inside itself? Money will exchange for anything — com, houses, horses, 
 carriages, books, etc., and each of these Is the value of the money with re- 
 spect to that commodity. But which of these is its Intrinsic value? The in- 
 congruity of these ideas is so glaring that it is only necessary to call atten- 
 tion to it for it to be perceived at once. Yet from the very beginning of the 
 science this phrase has intesied it,.— Theory and Practice of Banking, page 48. 
 
 In extending the discussion Mr. Macleod says: 
 
 Moreover, we see on considering the term value that it is nonsense to 
 speak of the representative of value. Value is a ratio— sa external relation. 
 What can be the representative of a ratio, or of an external relation? To say 
 that money, because It is material and the produce of labor, has intrinsic 
 value, and that a bank note Is only the representative of value, is just as 
 absurd as to say that a wooden yard measure is intrinsic distance, and that 
 the space of 36 inches between two points is representative distance. It is of 
 the first Importance to economic science to exterminate this unhappy phrase 
 "Intrinsic value," which is clearly shown to be a contradiction in terms. — 
 Macleod, Theory and Practice of Banking, 1, 50. 
 785 
 
13 
 
 Rioardo (than whom no flnaaoial authority stands higher) lays 
 down the principle that even paper money, having not a shred 
 of what the gold-standard advocates call " intrinsic value," will 
 have real value equal to that of gold money, provided the num- 
 ber of the notes be sufflciently limited in quantity. 
 
 Speaking of uncovered paper money, he says: 
 
 By limiting Us quantity its value In exchange Is as great as an equal de- 
 nomination ot coin, or of bullion in tliat cola.—I'olitical Economy and Taxa- 
 tion, chapter 37. 
 
 After further discussion of the subject he continues: 
 
 On these principles it will he seen that it is not necessary that paper 
 money should be payable in specie to secure Its value; it is only necessary 
 that its quantity be regulated according to the value of the metal which is 
 declared to be the standard. (Same work and chapter.) 
 
 In other words, Ricardo's statement here is, that if the amount 
 of irredeemable paper money in a country were just equal to 
 the amount of gold which would form that country's distribu- 
 tive share of the gold money of the world, the paper money would 
 have precisely the same value, dollar for dollar, as would an 
 equal amount of gold in that country. 
 
 All these writers and many others declare that the value of 
 money — other things beiiig equal — depends on its quantity and 
 not on its material. It is therefore absurd to claim that silver 
 has ceased to be adaptable for the money use because it is said 
 to have lost some supposed attribute that neither silver nor gold 
 nor anything else ever possessed, namely, intrinsic value. 
 
 But we have an authority outside the line of writers on polit- 
 ical economy, whose words, nevertheless, will attract the atten- 
 tion, if not of the bankers and champions of the gold standard, 
 certainly the attention of the plain people of the United States — 
 the words of one of whom it is written: "And they sent unto 
 him certain of the Pharisees and Herodiaius, that they might 
 catch him in his talk." Clearly, he was not a believer in the 
 theory that money must have "intrinsic value." His simple in- 
 quiry as tocoin was: " Whose image cmd superscription hath, it?" 
 That was nearly two thousand years ago, yet we find the Phar- 
 isees and Herodians of the present time attempting to confuse 
 the public mind with demands for intrinsic value — something 
 that has never existed. 
 
 785 
 
14 
 
 What becomes of the argument for the intrinsic value of 
 money when we see silver money doing a large portion of the 
 business of the western world at a valuation 40 per' cent higher 
 than its so-called value measured in gold? 
 
 Olie would suppose that the universal acceptance of token 
 coins as good money by all the people within the boundaries of 
 the largest countries — coins notoriously wanting in so-called in- 
 trinsic value — would have long since exposed the entire fallacy 
 of the idea that it is the bullion value that constitutes the money 
 value of the metals. The money for the masses of the people, 
 it appears, does not need to have the full quota of "intrinsic " 
 value — it may be "short" in weight, but for bankers and bond- 
 holders money must be of full weight. On this point Gen. F. A. 
 Walker, in his work on Money, says: 
 
 A laborer who Is paid on Saturday 22 coined shillings for his week's work, 
 in reality gets less than a sovereign's (20 shillings) worth of silver; the girl 
 who Is nominally paid 10 pence tor her day 's work in the mill, gets only about 3 
 pence worth of copper. Here, it is said, is » manifest injustice. Thewealthy 
 and well-to-do receive their incomes in the principal coin of the country, 
 which is of full weight and fineness; the poor are paid in coins which con- 
 tain only a part, and perhaps only a small part, of the metal which would 
 be worth the sum for which they are made a tender by law. This complaint, 
 sometimes heard among laborers, was recently given a wider hearing througli 
 Col. Tomline, a member of the British Parliament 
 
 The answer of Mr. Hubbard appears to be conclusive, so long ai such bil- 
 lon or token money is not Issued in excess. It is quite true, says Mr. Hub- 
 bard, that silver, rather than gold, is the medium through which the wages of 
 the laboring clastet are paid; but to show that the laboring classes are 
 injured by the mint regulations it must be demonstrated that the shilling 
 they nowreceive commands a smaller quantity of the necessaries of lifethaji 
 woald a shilling coined as an integral measure of value. The shilling now 
 circulating derives its purchasing power, not from the silver it contains, but 
 from its being by law a twentieth part of a pound — the golden standard. AU 
 prices, wholesale or retail, whether of a bullock or a beefsteak, of a quarter 
 of wheat or a loaf of bread, are computed upon a gold valuation. The ar- 
 tisan's shilling is intrinsically the twenty-second [instead of the twentieth} 
 part of a pound, his penny but the four hundred and eightieth [instead of 
 the two hundred and fortieth] part of a pound, but how do these facts affect 
 his interest if he can always, with 20 shillings, or 240 pence, secure the value 
 of a pound?— Jfon«y, pages 219 and 220. 
 
 So long, Mr. Hubbard thinks, as a laboring man can secure 
 
 the value of a pound with his token coinage, matters are all 
 
 right. Why should the laborer demand intrinsic value? Of 
 
 course, the proposition changes when it is not a laborer, but, 
 
 say, a lord, who is to receive money. Then the money must 
 
 have "intrinsic value." 
 
 785 
 
15 
 
 DOBS THB VALTJB OF MONHY DEPEND ON THE COST Off PRODUCTION Off THE 
 MATERIAL Off WHICH IT IS COMPOSED? 
 
 From tlio fallacy lurking in the idea of " intrinsic value " is 
 derived the further fallacy that the value of money depends on 
 the cost of production of the material of which the money may 
 be composed. 
 
 This is an attempt to apply to money the principle of cost of 
 production (or, as some economists have it, of reprodvjction), 
 admitted to govern the prices of commodities. But the cases 
 are not parallel. Money, properly considered, is not a commod- 
 ity. On the very contrary, it is the polar opposite of commod- 
 ities. Admitting that gold and silver, when not coined, are 
 commodities, yet their value as money is affected by issues of 
 uncovered paper money, so that the law of cost of production, 
 if it is to be applied to the metals as money, must be corrected 
 by allowing for the influence of such paper issues. In countries 
 having a "mixed currency," composed of either or both of the 
 metals in conjunction with paper, the value of the metallic 
 ^ money is diminished — population and demand remaining un- 
 changed — by every increased issue of paper, and, conversely, is 
 increased [ceteris paribus) by every withdrawal of the paper from 
 circulation. 
 
 If it be sought to avoid the force of this contention by denying 
 that anything can be money except the metals (as, from and after 
 the passage of the bill now before the Senate, it will doubtless 
 be insisted that nothing can be money except gold), I reply that 
 it is too late in the century for that. The leading writers on po- 
 litical economy unite in the declaration that when duly limited in 
 quantity paper money has all the value of gold money, and if 
 sufficiently limited may even have much more value than gold 
 and rise to a premium above it. Our leading American writer 
 on money, a writer recognized in every gold-standard country, 
 and among the leading economists of the gold-standard school in 
 all countries, as one of the most distinguished authorities on 
 monetary science, Gen. Francis A. Walker, whom I have just 
 quoted, defines money as follows: 
 
 Money Is to be known by its doing a certain work. Money is not gojd, 
 though gold may be money; sometimes gold is money and sometimes it Is 
 not. Money Is no one thing, no group ot many tilings haying any material 
 785 
 
16 
 
 property in common. On tlie contrary, anything n^y be money; ind anything. 
 In a given time and. place. Is money which then and there performs a certain 
 function. Always and everywhere, that which does the money work it the money 
 thing.— money Trade and Industry, chapter 1. 
 
 And in order to show that he means precisely what he says, 
 
 Gen. Walker says: 
 
 The claim that greenhaoks are not money in the fullest sense of that term ; 
 that they can not do all in the way of measuring values, so called, which 
 gold or silver may do is untenable, and it can be of no advantage to any 
 really s3und cause to seek to mamtainit,.— Money inits Belations to Trade and 
 Industry, preface. 
 
 Gen. Walker does not approve of Government paper money, 
 because of the danger of overissues of such money, but neither 
 he nor any other leading writer on the subject of money denies 
 that with proper limitation of quantity so-called irredeemable 
 paper money maintains itself, and when so limited in quantity 
 has historically maintained itself, without the slightest diflSculty 
 at a par with gold. With more than 25 per cent of all the money 
 of the world uncovered paper money, costing nothing to pro- 
 duce — though costing each man who possesses it as much to ao- 
 quire as if it were so much gold — how absurd it is for anyone 
 to claim that the value of money is determined, as in the case of 
 commodities, by the cost of production of the material. Ute 
 value of money, no matter of what material made, is determined hy 
 ilie cost of obtaining it after such material has been made into money; 
 and this value is expressed in the general range of prices of commod- 
 
 But leaving paper money wholly out of view, and looking even 
 at gold and silver merely as commodities, we shall see that they 
 constitute a category wholly by themselves, and that so far as 
 the law of cost of production applies to them, it applies under 
 circumstances totally different from those under which it applies 
 to commodities in general. 
 
 As to all other commodities, the supply is each year consumed 
 by the time the next year's production becomes available; that 
 is to say, at the expiration of a year from the date of production 
 practically little or none of a particular commodity remains to 
 lap over on the new supply. Owing to the indestructibility of 
 the precious metals, however, there is an enormous stock of them 
 always in existence; sothatthenewsupply of each year, whether 
 
 785 
 
17 
 
 costing little or much, is so slight in pi^jportion to the quantity 
 already existing that it can exercise but an infinitesimal influ- 
 ence on the value of the total supply in the market. 
 
 It is not like the case of a thing of which there may be a sur- 
 plus. A surplus of anything is such portion of it as is left over 
 after the satisfaction of all demands. Qf ametal transmutable into 
 money at will there can never be a surplus. There is demand, 
 and instant demand, for the entire production. The influence 
 of accumulation in steadying the value of the monetary metals 
 has been likened to the effect of an enormous balance wheel in 
 modifying the action of machinery — protecting it from those 
 extreme variations of speed which would otherwise be the in- 
 stant effect of varying degrees of steam pressure. 
 
 Let us suppose, as to any ordinary commodity, say wheatjthat 
 there were six months' supply of it in the world at a given time. 
 It is readily conceivable that in a single year that supply might 
 be doubled. But to double in one year the amount of gold and 
 silver which is already in use as money throughout the world 
 would require the production in that year of the enormous sum of 
 over $7,500,000,000. The largest amount ever hitherto produced 
 in one year of both metals combined is only $325,000,000, so that, 
 in comparison with the stock coming over from the past, the 
 new supply of each year is trifling. With all other things the 
 case is reversed; it is the stock coming over that is trifling in 
 comparison with the new supply. 
 
 Taking into account the rapid and enormous yield of gold in 
 Calif Lrnia and Australia in the middle of the century, if the value 
 of the product had been governed, as in the case of ordinary 
 commodities, simply by the cost of production at the time the 
 discoveries were made, the value of the metal would have fallen 
 enormously and at once; whereas the change that did occur was 
 slight and gradual, the value of money not falling, according to 
 the best authorities, more than 18 or 20 per cent, and that fall 
 spread out over a period of twenty years. 
 
 Bui; there is another reason why the precious metals as com- 
 modities constitute a category by themselves, namely, that the 
 pursuit of mining is one into which the speculative element en- 
 ters in a degree wholly unknown in other fields of production . 
 785 — 2 
 
18 
 
 In all other departments of production the result of effort can 
 be measurably, foreseen. That result will usually bear some 
 approximate degree of relation to the amount of labor exerted 
 and capital employed. Even in agricultural production, the re- 
 sult of which depends in large measure on contingencies of 
 weather, if there be planted an increased acreage there will be 
 expected an increased crop. In fact, crops may, according to 
 demand, be increased practically without limit; soil is always 
 accessible. Not so the precious metals. There is an impassa- 
 ble barrier opposed by nature to the unlimited production of 
 those. 
 
 Unlike the products of agriculture, men can not at will deposit 
 in the soil seeds of gold and silver to multiply many fold, and 
 bring forth a great crop. i 
 
 Unlike the products of manufacture, gold and silver can not be 
 made to order. Mines are discovered, not made; and at this 
 stage of the world's progress can be discovered only after long, 
 tedious, and, on the whole, very expensive search. When so dis- 
 covered in nine cases out of ten, after absorbing large amounts 
 of capital they have to he abandoned, as of not sufficient fertility 
 to defray running expenses. In the occupation of mining, there- 
 fore, the question of what quantity of metal shall result froiA a 
 given quantity of labor and a given expenditure of money, count- 
 ing the long enduring search and the profitless exploitation, is 
 so much a matter of mere chance that no intelligent calculations 
 or predictions can be made on the subject. 
 
 In the manufacture of ordinary commodities, on the contrary, 
 while there is always the question of what price can be obtained 
 for the products when made, there is at least assurance that by 
 the application of a certain amount of capital and the employ- 
 ment of a certain number of men something approaching defi- 
 nite computations can be made in advance as to the number of 
 articles of a given character which may be expected to result. 
 The larger the amount of labor and capital applied the greater 
 on the averrige is the result expected. With mining it is alto- 
 gether different. The hazard is so great as to 99 per cent of 
 the "prospects" that men who succeed in realizing any consid- 
 erable sum of money in the occupation almost always put the 
 
 785 
 
19 
 
 money back into the ground — that is to say, invest it in "prom- 
 ising " ventures which never become anything but promises. 
 
 In discussing the cost of production of silver, the operations 
 of the most successful and productive mines only are taken into 
 account. No note is taken of the fact that mining is a lottery 
 and that thousands of ventures are totalfailures. Many millions 
 of dollars have been expended in sinking shafts, boring and 
 blasting tunnels, erecting hoisting works, creating plants, and 
 constructing mills that have never returned to their projectors 
 the value of one dollar. Yet so-called statisticians and states- 
 men who know absolutely nothing of the subject, and many of 
 whom have never even seen a mine in their lives, treat us to 
 long disquisitions upon the cost of mining silver. My word will 
 be sustained by that of every experienced miner in this country, 
 as well as in the world, when I assert that taking as a whole the 
 business of silver-mining, for every dollar produced more than a 
 dollar has been actually expended. 
 
 For reasons which must be satisfactory to themselves the sta- 
 tisticians and statesmen who are careful to give us theirabortive 
 and absurd computations as to the cost of producing silver, do not 
 appear to be equally solicitious to instruct the world as to the 
 cost of producing gold. Perhaps they entertain some fear that 
 investigation as to the cost of gold would show that in propor- 
 tion to coining value it has, in the main, cost very much less than 
 silver. 
 
 It is the belief of well-informed scientists that in the case of 
 gold, the element of cost of production bears much smaller pro- 
 portion to the money value of the metal than is the case with 
 silver. After an exhaustive investigation covering a series of 
 years, Prof. Suess, of the University of Vienna, perhaps the 
 most distinguished of living geologists, declares in his work on 
 the Future of Gold that nine-tenths of the gold of the World 
 has been obtained from the gravel deposits of old river beds 
 ("placers"), in which work, as a matter of course, the labor cost 
 was the veriest trifle in comparison with the money value of the 
 product. 
 
 I will illustrate this by reading a brief extract from a letter 
 written in 1848 by the late distinguished General of the Army, 
 785 
 
20 
 
 Gen. William T. Sherman, then acaptain, stationed at Monterey, 
 Cal. This letter appeared in the New York Tribune of April 7, 
 1892, as having been read in public by the honorsible Senator 
 from Ohio [Mr. Shekman] to whom it had been written. After 
 referring to the inconvenience to which the oflcersof the Army 
 had been subjected by reason of the excited rush of the people, 
 including the private soldiers of his command, to the newly-dis- 
 covered gold fields, Capt. Sherman said: 
 
 This gold is found In the beds of streams, In dry quarries, in fact mingled 
 with the earth over a large extent of country. * * * Men are now get- 
 ting from their individual labor from $5,000 to $8,000 a month. This is not 
 fiction. It Is the truth. I went with ©ovemor Mason and saw the eyldence 
 of It myself. 
 
 "When an ordinary unskilled laborer, without capital, could 
 make $8,000 a month, an amount sufficient to buy a good house 
 in any city iii the United States, the argument from cost of pro- 
 duction can not be very strong. 
 
 The influence of these discoveries began to be felt only by 
 slow degrees as the new money came to be distributed over the 
 world, and it was because of the increase of the quantity of 
 money, and not from any consideration arising from cost of pro- 
 duction of its material, that its value fell — not the value of gold 
 alone, though it was gold alone that increased in quantity. The 
 value of silver money also fell, for the metals being freely inter- 
 changeable in one country or another at a ratio established by 
 law, both felt the depreciating effects of the increased quantity. 
 
 Even now, when the placers seem to be exhausted, and gold is 
 to be obtained only from veins, involving the use of capital and 
 machinery, there is far greater steadiness in the cost of produc- 
 tion of silver than of gold, and the gold mines are relatively much 
 the less expensive to work. A plant that will crush 100 tons a 
 day of gold ore can be built for $25,000; whereas one that will 
 crush 100 tons a day of silver ore instead of costing less wUl cost 
 approximately $100,000. It is the experience of all miners that, 
 once found, gold mines can be worked at a relation of profit over 
 silver mines much greater than a ratio of 1 to 16: but the diffi- 
 culty is that the mines are not to be found. 
 
 Owing then to the special category in which gold and silver 
 must be placed by reason of the special circumstances affecting 
 
 785 
 
21 
 
 them the influence of the cost oJf production on the value of those 
 metals is very greatly overrated. This is fully recognized by the 
 economists who admit that this influence is not direct in any 
 sense as in the case of commodities, and that it is only over long 
 periods of time that it tends to affect the value of money, by af- 
 fecting the quantity produced. 
 
 THB LEADING WKITBRS— ON THB INffLUBNCE OF COST OF PRODTJCIION ON 
 THE VALUE OF MONEY. 
 
 On this point Mr. Henry Sidgwick, professor of political 
 
 economy in the University of Cambridge, England, says: 
 
 In consequence ol the great durability of gold, together with the fact that 
 nearly all the gold used as money Is practically in the market at any given 
 time, any change in the cost of production is likely to take a long tune to 
 produce its full effect on value. Hence the effects of all changes In the con- 
 ditions of production of the precious metals are at first, and continue to bo 
 for many years, questions oj quantity only, with little reference to cost of pro- 
 duction.— Principles of Political Economy, by H. Sidgwick, page 850. 
 
 On the same point. Prof. Francis A. Walker, in his work on 
 
 Money, says: 
 
 Again, it Is said, it Is the cost of production which determines value. 
 But it is always and everywhere the relation of the supply to demand thai deter- 
 mines value. Cost of production only affects value by affecting the actual or 
 potential lupply.— Money, page 245. 
 
 And Prof. Jevons says: 
 
 Labor once spent has no Influence on the future value of an article.— 
 Theory of Political Economy, page 159. 
 
 In a further discussion of this subject. Prof. Jevons says: 
 
 The great principle of cost of production falls us, because In the case of 
 such durable commodities as gold and silver the accumulated stock on hand 
 is Immensely gi'eater than the annual production or consumption.— Coraten- 
 porary Beview, May, 1881. 
 
 With reference to the influence of cost of production on the 
 
 value of the metals, John Stuart Mill says: 
 
 From their durability, the total quantity In existence is at all times so 
 great in proportion to the annual supply that the effect on value even of a 
 change in the cost ol production Is not sudden; a very long time being re- 
 quired to diminish materially the quantity in existence, and even to in- 
 crease it very greatly not being a rapid process.— PoKticai Economy, Book 
 III, chapter 7. 
 
 And he adds: 
 
 Alterations, therefore, in the cost of production of the precious metals do not 
 act upon the value of money except just in proportion as they increase or dim- 
 inish its quantity, which can not be said of any other commodity.— Som«, 
 Book III, ix, 3. 
 785 
 
22 
 
 An acute writer, F.W. Bain, M. A., of Oxford, England, says; 
 
 Cost of production, so Important and decislTe as to the Yalue of commod- 
 ities bought with money, Is, In the case of money itself, of no account what- 
 ever. For, any particular commodity we can do without; and so If it costs 
 too much to produce no one will buy it, but money must be had at all costs, 
 for without it no commodities can be procured at all. And be it observed, 
 money is comparatively permanent. It is not, like commodities in general, 
 consumed in the use. Consequently there is a great and even enormous dif- 
 ference between it and things produced to be consumed. It is, as a rule, the 
 rapidly perishing commodity whose value depends mainly on its cost of 
 production. Each time it is wanted it must be made again. But money, 
 once made, is there for almost any length of time, for though it wastes a 
 little, yet not much ; its value, therefore, can be hardly, if at all, appreciably 
 dependent on its cost of production.— 2%* Principle of Wealth- Creation, page 
 101. 
 
 In a more elaborate discussion of this question of cost of pro- 
 duction, Prof. Francis A. Walker quotes the dictum of Prof. 
 Price to the effect that exchanges are effected by comparing 
 "the cost price of the goods with the cost price of the gold" 
 for which they are exchanged. From this view the American 
 author wholly dissents. Gen. Walker says: 
 
 What is in fact the method by which the ratios of exchange between the 
 piece of metal and equal quantities of [commodities] A, B, and C are de- 
 termined? 
 
 Let us bring the matter down to its pure elements by supposing that in a 
 given community where gold has been and still is of such universal accept- 
 ability as to become the general medium of exchange, there exist a million 
 pennyweights of this metal; that the country Itself yields no gold; that 
 Intercourse vrtth foreign countries is, for the time, cut oft so that none can 
 be Imported; and lastly, that gold is usedsolely as money and not at all In 
 the arts. Under such conditions- 
 Prof. Walker says— 
 
 articles will be exchanged for pennyweights of gold without the slightest ref- 
 erence to the cost of producing the metal. It is literally true, without the 
 smallest qualiflcation, that. In the words of Prof. Je vons, "Labor once spent 
 has no Influence on the future value of any article." How, then, can the 
 gold measure the value of the commodities produced within the community y 
 
 Here Gen. Walker enters upon an analysis of the process: 
 
 The answer Is, it does so in the only way in which money ever measures 
 values. Each producer will strive to bring to market that commodity which 
 will command for him the greatest number of pennyweights of gold for a 
 certain exertion and sacrifice on his part; and through the operation of this 
 principle and of this principle alone, the relative worth of all commodities 
 win be determined; not through a comparison of the amount of labor required 
 for the production of each by turns, with the amount of labor required for the 
 production of the gold, but through a comparison of the amounts of labor sev- 
 erally required to renew and keep up the stock of the different cOTmnodiiies them- 
 telves.— Money, Trade, and Industry, page 33. 
 785 
 
23 
 And he adds: 
 
 It Is in this way that products are dlfl erentlated lu exchange according to 
 the cost of renewing the stock. 
 
 Not the stock of money, but the stock of products to be ex- 
 changed. Hence, this author styles money "a common denom- 
 inator in exchange," in terms of which deliominator the mutual 
 relations of all commodities and services are expressed, and by 
 means of which, as he says, "all commodities are placed, one 
 above another, on a scale of prices." It was for this reason that 
 Sir James Stewart long- ago called money "a scale of equal 
 parts." 
 
 If, therefore, there were no money except money of gold and 
 silver, these authorities show that the theory of cost of produc- 
 tion, which is made so much of in discussing the silver question, 
 is for the purposes of discussion of no avail whatever. 
 
 All our I gold monometallists admit that if Great Britain and 
 Germany should remonetize silver the United States could go 
 to free coinage with entire safety and propriety. What, then, 
 becomes of the theory of cost of production? The cost of pro- 
 , duction of silver would be precisely the same whether those 
 countries declared for its free coinage or not. 
 
 There is a feature of this question which the economists never 
 touch, but which, it appears to me, must be one of the first con- 
 siderations to occur to a practical man. That feature is this: If 
 the cost of producing silver has been so slight as to make the 
 profits of silver-mining higher than the average return to capi- 
 tal, why is it that so few have engaged in the business? Is it 
 not open to all the world? Do we not know that, from all the 
 countries of Europe, capital in large amounts has sought invest- 
 ment here? Do we not perceive the keenness with which all 
 men of capital and energy search for profitable investments? 
 Can we, therefore, help inquiring why this field, which many 
 appear to think so profitable, is so neglected? 
 
 Do not their acts, Mr. President, belie their words? If they 
 were not satisfied that mining investments were on the whole 
 and on the average unprofitable investments, should we not find 
 millions upon millions of dollars from Wall street and Lombard 
 street rushing to the mining regions for investment? But we 
 
 785 
 
24 
 
 must do credit to the acumen of the investors of capital. They 
 well know how and whei-e to invest. Instead of putting money 
 into mining enterprises, they put large sums into hank stocks, 
 hecause they have observed that no matter what other industry 
 may languish, hanks pay high dividends. Investors also put 
 large sums into gilt-edged railroad bonds, bscause they know 
 that such bonds are obligations to pay fixed sums of money at a 
 future time, and that those sums will be paid in dollars of increas- 
 ing value. 
 
 Besides, if they really believed as they pretend to believe, in 
 the theory that the cost of production is the element that de- 
 termines the value of money, how is it possible that they can at 
 the same time believe, as they profess to do, that gold never 
 varies in value? Do they suppose that during a period extend- 
 ing over hundreds of years the cost of mining gold has remained 
 to the fraction of a cent absolutely the same? 
 
 The separation between gold and silver does not result from 
 any change in the cost of production of silver, nor does it result 
 from any change in the purchasing power of silver money. 
 Neither does the enormous increase which has taken place in 
 the value of gold during the last twenty years, an increase of 
 which there is no denial, arise in the slightest degree from any 
 increase in the cost of production of gold. Every man who knows 
 anything on the subject knows that there has been no such in- 
 crease. 
 
 IS MONBT THE COMMODtTT-EQtnVAi:.ENT OP THE COMMODITIES FOB WHICH 
 IT IS EXCHANGED? 
 
 It is the pernicious theory of intrinsic value that has led to 
 the equally absurd idea very generally entertained that money 
 is the equivalent as a commodity of the other commodities for 
 which it is exchanged. With the destruction of the idea of in- 
 trinsic value must go also this idea of commodity equivalence. 
 It is persistently asserted that gold bullion does not derive its 
 value from the' money use to which the metal is put, but from 
 the value of the bullion as a commodity. 
 
 This claim, though held throughout the ages, will not stand 
 the investigation of reason. 
 
 Were gold demonetized to-morrow, so enormous is the amount 
 
 of it in existence compared with the demand for commodity pur- 
 rss 
 
25 
 
 poses, that an ounce of it, instead of being worth $20.67, as at 
 present, would not be worth perhaps the one-hundredth part ol 
 that sum. 
 
 In order to ascertain what the commodity value of gold would 
 be were the metal confined to commodity uses, we must suppose 
 it to be made entirely dependent for its value upon the demand 
 for it in the arts — that is to say, we must conceive ifc to be demone- 
 tized and relegated to a commodity. In other words, let us 
 judge of the commodity value by the commodity use, and of the 
 money value by the money use. 
 
 Let us inquire what would be the quantity of gold which would 
 be suddenly thrown on the market as a commodity in case that 
 m6tal were deprived of the money function. 
 
 Our Treasury Department reports that the amount of gold 
 money in existence in the world is $3,800,000,000. 
 
 As to the amount which is annually withdrawn from the 
 money-use lor the purposes of the arts and manufactures, there 
 are no figures which can be absolutely relied upon. Mr. Giffen, 
 the statistician of the London Board of Trade, has stated that 
 in his belief, practically, the annual yield from the mines was ab- 
 sorbed for nonmonetary purposes; and in this estimate I believe 
 he is right. Sir Lyon Playfair estimated the amount consumed 
 in the arts at not less than 75 per cent of the total annual yield. 
 As long ago as 1873, Mr. W. L. Fawcett, in his interesting work 
 on "Gold and Debt," made a careful estimate based on the re- 
 searches of Mr. J. R. McCuUoch, the distinguished English 
 economist, and states the then annual consumption of gold in the 
 arts and manufactures at $110,000,000, and the amount must have 
 ajinually increased rather than decreased. 
 
 But casuistical statisticians, who wish to show that some of the 
 annual yield is available as money, profess to believe that the 
 amount consumed in the arts is only $60,000,000 per annum. If 
 my estimate be correct, then in case of the demonetization of gold 
 and its relegation to commodity purposes exclusively, there would 
 be on hand in the market at the time of demonetization, available 
 for the purposes of the arts, not less than thirty-six years' supply 
 of the metal. 
 
 With the competition between its owners for the disposition 
 
 785 
 
26 
 
 and sale of so enormous a sum, for commodity purposes, what 
 would be its value? What price would an ounce of gold bring in 
 the market, if there were available for purchase at any given 
 moment a supply gufBcient to carry the world along for thirty- 
 six years? 
 
 No one being any longer obliged to have gold in any country 
 of the world in order to pay debt or otherwise utilize it as 
 money, who can suppose that an ounce of such discarded metal 
 would bring $20.67? 
 
 If, however, we accept the figures of the statisticians — and 
 they are all devoted admirers and adherents of the gold stand- 
 ard — the quantity of gold used annually in the arts is abbut 3,- 
 000,000 ounces. What would be the value of gold per ounce for 
 use in the arts when there were available for that purpose at 
 any given moment the enormous amount of 180,000,000 ounces, 
 or a supply sufficient to meet all demands for the metal as u, 
 commodity, not for two years or ten years, but for sixty years? 
 
 We know that of wheat and other commodities there is never 
 more than a few months' surplus on hand at a time. Yet the 
 slightest addition to that surplus produces a lowering of the 
 price altogether out of proportion to the quantity of the surplus. 
 How trifling would not the value of wheat be, if, after taking 
 out the quantity needed for the current year's consumption , there 
 remained on the market enough to meet all demands for even 
 two years additional! And even supposing that science and in- 
 vention should furnish a method of preserving wheat indefi- 
 nitely in all its original efficiency and purity as an article of 
 human consumption, to what an utterly insignificant price would 
 it not descend if instead of two years or five years' additional 
 supply there were enough to meet all demands for sixty years? 
 
 But In our estimate of the amount of the metals that would be 
 thus available, we should be warranted in going beyond even 
 the figures indicated. The estimation in which gold is held in 
 at least that department of the arts which con tributes to decora- 
 tion, and for purposes of ornament, is derived almost wholly 
 from the awe with which it is regarded by the great body of 
 mankind from the fact of its extended use as money. This is 
 what Ruskin very appositely describes as " the effect upon the 
 imagination." Deprived of tbe imperial money-use and rele- 
 
27 
 
 gated to commodity-uses only, there can not be a doubt that much / 
 of the metal now existing in the shape of trinkets would find its 
 way to the secondhand shop.. 
 
 Whichever of these estimates we adopt, even the least of them, 
 in my humble judgment, constitutesaperfect mathematical dem- 
 onstration, "strong as proof of Holy Writ," that, deprived of 
 the money function, there would be practically no value what- 
 ever in gold bullion. 
 
 It surpasses my comprehension, therefore, how men can argue 
 otherwise — especially men who profess to be political econo- 
 mists with, as is supposed, a faculty for exact reasoning. 
 
 Let us apply to the question the definition I have given of 
 value: "Human estimation placed on desirable objects whose 
 quantity is limited." 
 
 There are in this definition, as I have said, two factors: Hu- 
 man desire for the object, and limitation of the quantity of, like 
 objects. 
 
 With gold as at present in full and universal use as money, 
 these two factors have full play. As money men esteem gold, 
 and, considering the universal demand for money, the quantity 
 of the metal is limited — so limited, indeed, that no Senator as- 
 serts that there is enough of it. 
 
 Both conditions, therefore, unite to establish the present 
 value. 
 
 But with gold demonetized — with gold deprived of the im- 
 perial prerogative of money — one of these factors of value would 
 be wanting to it. No matter how highly esteemed for com- 
 modity purposes, it could no longer be said that its quantity 
 vms limited. Limitation of quantity can not be predicted of an 
 article the stock of which in the market at a given moment is 
 sufficient To supply all demands for half a century to come, 
 
 THB AOTHOBITIES SUSTAIN THE THEORY THAT IT IS THE MONEY TJSB THAT 
 GIVES VALUE TO GOLD AND SILVER AS COMMODITIES. 
 
 With reference to the share of value which is contributed to 
 
 gold by the money Use, as distinguished from the commodity use, 
 
 Mr. Macleod says; 
 
 It is In fact the peculiar qualities which render gold so useful as a currener 
 that give It the greater portion of its value.— Ulementa of Banking, ed. 1858, 
 page 133. 
 
 785 
 
28 
 
 Says Thorold Rogers, professor of political economy at Ox- 
 ford University, England: 
 
 The fundamental cause of value In the precious metals Is their use as eur- 
 reticy. This conclusion Is not so obvious as It might appear. Up to recently- 
 ordinary political economists have been accustomed to accept Mr. Senior's 
 dictum, that the measure of value in the precious metals Is their use in the 
 arts." It Is very possible that this view Is atlU accepted, notwithstanding the 
 experience of the lastflfteen years, during which events have occurred which 
 would, one might think, induce these people to reconsider their conclusion.— 
 Industrial and Commercial History of Mngland,iiage 324. 
 
 " The experience of the last fifteen years," to which Prof. 
 Rogers here alludes, is the experience under the demonetiza- 
 tion laws by which silver ceased to have free access to the mints. 
 He perceived clearly that the fall in the gold price of silver was 
 due to the denial of unrestricted coinage of silver, and not to any 
 question of cost of production or of so-called intrinsic value. Sir 
 David Barbour, in his Theory of Bimetallism, says: 
 
 Gold and silver owe almost the whole of their value to the fact that they 
 can be converted into and used as money. If gold and silver were absolutely 
 excluded from the currency of the world their value would be greatly re- 
 duced, if it did not almost entirely cease to exist; and if either gold or sil- 
 ver were largely excluded from the currency of the world the value of the 
 metal so excluded would experience a very great taih—Tlie Theory of Bimet- 
 allism, chapter 2. 
 
 In the same work. Sir David Barbour, dealing with this point 
 
 more at length, says: 
 
 The value of gold and silver is almost entirely due to their use as money 
 and consequently the relative value of gold and silver depends upon the ex- 
 tent to which the different nations of the world use these metals as currency. 
 If one nation after another decided to demonetize silver and to sell the sil- 
 ver contained in its currency, the value of sliver relatively to commodltiea 
 and still more so in comparison to gold, could be made to fall to a very 
 small fraction of its present value. 
 
 On the other hand, if the nations of the world demonetized gold and sold 
 their gold, the value of gold in relation to silver would experience a very 
 great fall. 
 
 In short, we see that the demand for gold or silver Is due mainly to the ex- 
 tent to which the legislatures of the different countries decide to use these 
 metals as money, and therefore their relative value is and musi continue to 
 be regulated by legislation.— Z%«or2/ of Bimetallism, page 34. 
 
 In a letter to the London Times May 7, 1881, Lord Bramwell, 
 speaking of the money value and the so-called intrinsic value of 
 gold and silver, said: 
 
 Gold and silver have real and artificial values— real and natural, as for 
 gilding, for use in surgical appliances, forks, spoons, and other things; arti- 
 ficial, for money for circulating mediums. * * * 
 
 This artificial value Is much greater than the real [value]. If some sub- 
 
 78.5 
 
29 
 
 stltute lor gold and sliver were found which could be used more advanta- 
 geously as money and displace them, their exchangeable values would be 
 vastly less than at present. That Is, It an ounce ol gold exchanges for 2 
 quarters ot wheat now anywhere, Itwould, If It ceased to be used asmoney, 
 exchange for much less— how much Is beyond speculation. 
 
 John Ruskin, who thought deeply and acutely on all questions 
 
 with which he dealt, Bays: 
 
 In so far as It (gold) has legal exchangeable value Its worth as a commodity 
 Is increased. We want no gold in the form of dust or crystal; but we seek 
 for It coined, because In that form It will pay baker and butcher. And this 
 worth in exchange not only absorbs a large quantity in that use, but greatly 
 increases the effect on the Imagination of the quantity used In the arts. — 
 JHunera Pulveris, page 83. 
 
 In stating that the exchange value, or money value, of gold 
 "greatly increases the effect on the imagination of the quantity 
 used in the arts," Ruskin means that the estimation in which 
 gold is held for the purposes of decoration is heightened by the 
 fact that it is in use as money, and that while in such use it is a 
 universal order for goods. 
 
 In a very recent French publication on political economy, by 
 
 a professor of high standing. Prof. Gide, I find the following 
 
 unequivocal and outspoken declaration on this subject; 
 
 No doubt, if gold and silver were demonetized in every country, metallic 
 money would lose the greatest part ot Its value. We must not deceive our- 
 selves as to this matter, and the present fall in silver, caused by Its demon- 
 etization In some countries, only too fully proves the fact. Yet many au- 
 thors do harbor this Illusion, or at any rate do not put their readers on their 
 guard against It. Most of them seem to say that the government seal stamped 
 npou gold and silver coins merely states their actual value, just as the tick- 
 ets tradesmen put on their goods. But the declaration that the six-gramme 
 gold piece Is worth 20 francs Is not only declaratory, but is also determi- 
 native of value. It is because the will of the legislator or, if It is preferred, 
 the agreement of men, has chosen gold and silver as money, that these met- 
 als have acquired the larger part of their value, and they would lose It as 
 soon as this agreement or this law happened to cease to exist. Aristotle, 
 too, had perceived this very clearly. Sayshein the Ethics, book V: "Itwas 
 through a voluntary agreement that money became the Instrument of ex- 
 change. It is called nomisma (from nomas, law) because money is not a nat- 
 ural producf, but exists only through law, and It lies with us to change it 
 and rob It of Its utility as we will."— PoiiMcaJ Economy, page 216. 
 
 From any point of view it is absurd to suppose tjiat the money 
 value of gold is derived from the value of bullion. The efifect 
 has been mistaken for the cause. The bullion gets its value from 
 the fact that gold from the moment it leaves the mine is poten- 
 tially money. Gold bullion deprived of accessibility to the mints 
 might drop to the value of copper, with which, for utility (un- 
 
 785 
 
30 
 
 less some new uses stall be discovered for gold) Itisuotlor a mo- 
 ment to be compared. 
 
 The statement tbat it is not from bullion that gold money de- 
 rives its value receives support from considerations growing out 
 of the very nature of the case. 
 
 From the earliest ages gold and silver were held in high es- 
 teem even among savage tribes, because of their adaptability for 
 purposes of ornament. At first, and doubtless for a long period, 
 exchanged as mere commodities, against other commodities, 
 they came by degrees, as theif quantity increased, to be used as 
 common media of exchange. 
 
 But one of the most important functions of money came to be 
 the function of registering or recording values for the purpose 
 of permitting men to enter into time contracts — what some econ- 
 omists call a "standard for deferred payments." This was a 
 function which could not be fulfilled by a small supply of the 
 money material. For this exceedingly important purpose not 
 until a vast stock had been accumulated were the metals fitted 
 to be clothed, in the interest of society, with the function and 
 ofEce of money. Should transactions and values be based on them 
 as money while yet the stock of the metals was extremely 
 limited, it is obvious that a slight increase of yield from the 
 mines in any one year would create ruinous variation in the unit 
 of value, so that it would be unsafe for men to enter into obli- 
 gations except those for immediate fulfillment. 
 
 It was, therefore, only by very slow degrees that the system 
 of barter, having the precious metals on one side of the equa- 
 tion, gave way to the commercial system in which, from those 
 metals as commodities, by gradual and insensible degrees, was 
 evolved the system of money. Before this evolution could be 
 made perfect, before the metals could have acquired fitness 
 for the money function, there would be needed, and there must 
 have been in existence a stock so enormous as, by its quantity, 
 to insure society against violent and sudden jars in the value of 
 the monetary unit. This stock must have been equivalent to 
 the yield of the mines for a great stretch of time, probably 
 hundreds if not thousands of years. 
 
 It must in any case have been such a stock as, in comparison, 
 
31 
 
 to have reduced to a point of utter insig-niflcanoe the mere com- 
 modity demand for the metals in any one year. 
 
 Testing gold and silver, then, as commodities by the same law 
 of supply and demand that is applied to other commodities we 
 find that neither, of the metals was wholly fitted to be vested 
 with the money function until by the enormous accumulation of 
 its quantity it was stripped of almost every vestige of commodity 
 value. This was the condition-precedent to the crowning of the 
 metals for the higher and nobler function of money, the imperial 
 function. 
 
 If it be the bullion or commodity use that gives gold its value, 
 why do people expect the variations of gold to be less than those 
 to be Been in the value of other things? 
 
 It is no unusual thing to see a variation of 10 per cent, for ex- 
 ample, in the value of wheat in the course of two seasons, lOper 
 cent in the value of brass, and similar variations in the value 
 of other things. Why is it that gold should be expected to 
 remain steady in value if the legal-tender function has no in- 
 fluence? Is it possible that throughout all the years of its pro- 
 duction, with the wages of labor and the price of machinery con- 
 stantly changing, the cost of mining gold has remained absolutely 
 stationary — neither increasing nor decreasing in the slightest 
 degree? 
 
 WANT or INTBINSIO VALTTB IN BANE "MONET." 
 
 When the silver question is not under discussion the bankers 
 and their allies are only too ready to acknowledge that it is the 
 function and not the material that creates the value of the dol- 
 lar. Indeed, the very impalpability and intangibility of the 
 dollar is then set up as its principal recommendation to favor, 
 because it is supposed to establish the peculiar merit of the 
 banking system. When engaged in lauding the advantages of 
 that system they maintain that bank deposits are money, al- 
 though having no more material existence than the ink with 
 which the entries are made on the books. 
 
 Bank deposits are not concrete things. If anything can bo 
 
 called intangible and immaterial, it is surely an entry in a book. 
 
 We know that the bank deposits of the country exceed several 
 
 times over the money in the country, especially if we regard as 
 
 785 
 
32 
 
 money only the things having what the bankers call " intrinsic 
 value." Yet there are some books on political economy by writ- 
 ers of respectable position that treat such deposits as money. 
 Prof. Sidgwick says of them: 
 
 In such a country as England, where deposit banking I3 fully developed 
 and payment by cliecks customary, the greater part of such money must 
 consist of what has been called "money of account," that Is, of bankers' 
 liabilities or obligations to pay In coin on demand, not " embodied " or rep- 
 resented otherwise than by rows of flgures In their boolss.— Principles of 
 Political Economy, page 233. 
 
 Hence it appears that when the bankers can make a profit on 
 dollars, they are willing that the dollars may be immaterial and 
 intangible; but the dollars on which they can not make profit, 
 the dollars in the hands of the people, must have " intrinsic 
 value!" No matter how numerous the dollars on the books of 
 the banks; no matter how intangible or immaterial, so long as 
 the banker is receiving interest on them and they yield him a 
 revenue, although their so-called ' ' intrinsic value " be no greater 
 than the little speck of ink necessary to make the entry and the 
 equally little speck of paper on which the entry is made, they 
 are lauded as equal to the best dollars. They are even declared 
 to be better dollars than the dollars of so-cplled intrinsic value. 
 
 Sycophantic writers and so-called statisticians fill the columns 
 of the press with articles to show how near perfection our money 
 system is, because, as they declare, it is no longer necessary for 
 it to have an existence outside the pages of bank ledgers. But 
 the moment the silver question is under discussion all these ad- 
 missions are ignored, even wholly denied, and intrinsic value in 
 dollars is insisted on as an absolutely essential factor of money 
 Consistency is not a Jewel for which the bankers and their 
 friends have any special regard, except in so far as it ministers 
 to the pecuniary profit of the banks. 
 
 The theory of intrinsic value comes to us from the dim ages 
 of the past, and is indebted for its survival to that blind and un- 
 questioning regard for dogmatic authority which characterized 
 the childhood of our race. Science has discarded some of the 
 «rrors of those times; reflection has compelled the rejection of 
 others. But so slowly do the forces of truth operate through 
 time that we find the President of the United States, adopting 
 
 785 
 
33 
 
 this solecism, taking up his position as a student of political 
 economy with those who lived and wrote in the period when 
 men believed the universe to be confined to the planets consti- 
 tuting our solar system, and that of those the earth was the 
 center. 
 
 The geocentric theory made as hard a fight for existence as 
 the theory of intrinsic value has made, but in the light of ad- 
 vancing civilization it was forever discarded. Perhaps I go 
 too far in this statement, as we have lately had a pronunoiamento 
 from Brother Jaapar reviving it in the somewhat celebrated 
 declaration that "the sun do move." I would commend to the 
 attention of the President the following statement of one of the 
 most distinguished of economists, one who has distinctly de- 
 clared that there is no such thing as intrinsic value. He says: 
 
 In the physical sciences— authority has greatly lost its noxious In- 
 fluence. Chemistry, In its brief existence of a century, has undergone 
 three or four complete revolutions of theory. In the science of light, New- 
 ton's own authority has heeu decisively set aside, after it had retarded for 
 nearly a century the progress of inquiry. Astronomers have not hesitated, 
 within the last few years, to alter their estimate of all the dimensions of 
 the planetary system and the universe, because good reasons have been 
 shown for calling in question the real coincidence of previous measure- 
 ments. In science and philosophy nothingmust be held sacred.— rA« Theory 
 of Political Economy, by W. S. Jevons, page 266. 
 
 Nothing is sacred, Mr. President, but truth. It is the mission 
 and the merit ot civilization to discover truth in all departments 
 of human endeavor, and when discovered to maintain and per- 
 petuate it. In none is this more imperative than in the depart- 
 ment of money, the department which has to do with the meas- 
 urement of human sacrifice, with the adjustment of the equity 
 that forms the basis of all equities. 
 
 The fundamental idea at the bottom of the theory of intrinsic 
 value is that money is not a sooietary instrumentality, but an in- 
 strumentality appertaining to man as an individual, standing 
 single and alone, without knowledge of or participation in so- 
 ciety or civilization. In accordance with this idea it is said that 
 in exchanging a commodity for money men must get as money 
 another commodity which, in and of itself, shall be the equivar 
 lent of the commodity given in exchange. In other words, it 
 is contended that the process is precisely as if the money and 
 
 785 3 
 
34 
 
 the commodity were simply the commodity equivalents of each 
 other. 
 
 This implies that society as an aggregation, society as contra- 
 distinguished from the individuals or separate units composing 
 it, is no factor in civilizaMon, and that a thing which subserves 
 an indispensable societary function, a thing without which it 
 would be impossible for civilization to exist or for the powers of • 
 man to develop and expand, becomes the object of no greater 
 esteem by reason of performing the societary function than it 
 would be if it were the possession of solitary man; of man as the 
 wild and imbruted denizen of the primeval forest. 
 
 In a word, the theory of intrinsic value is based on the idea 
 that a thing without which it would be impossible for men to 
 dwell together in unity — the very crown and symbol of their 
 progress from barbarism to civilization — can have no value 
 which the individual man is bound to respect. 
 
 This is contrary to the whole spirit of institutional existence. 
 It is contrary to all the facts on which our civilization is based 
 and all the inferences derivable from that civilization. 
 
 Let us examine for a few moments the process by which 
 money came to exist. 
 
 THE EVOHmON OF MONET TBOM BARTEB. 
 
 The idea of money arose insensibly out of the custom of barter. 
 As commodities came to be exchanged for one another some 
 were naturally designed for immediate consumption; others to 
 be retained until necessity should compel their use. Of the two 
 classes of commodities indicated, those which should eventually 
 become general media against which all other commodities might 
 be exchanged would naturally be such as could be longest re- 
 tained without deterioration. 
 
 A long list of materials have at various times in the history of 
 the world been used as money. It has always been a question 
 for separate nations or peoples according to the exigencies of their 
 own situation to decide for themselves as to what material would 
 most advantageously serve them for the purposes of money. That 
 which was suitable for the people of one country might not nec- 
 essarily be suitable for those of other countries. In primitive 
 times it in noticeable that the materials selected by each people 
 
 786 
 
35 
 
 were always such as were not only plentiful when and where se- 
 lected, seas to guard against present deprivation of money, but 
 being natural products of the country, either indigenous to the 
 soil or resulting from the prevailing occupations of the people, 
 insured them against a prospective deprivation of money through 
 tribal onslaughts or the sinister machinations of enemies. 
 
 This is a point of great importance in the history of money as 
 indicating an intuition among the masses of mankind, in all ages 
 and countries since the origin of civilization, that the material 
 of money should be not only abundant, but continue through 
 time to be abundant in the^place or country in which it was thus 
 selected to fulfill the monetary function. In this intuition we 
 perceive indications that for the purpose of knitting themselves 
 together in the great web called society, men were thus early 
 reaching out after something more than a mere temporary me- 
 dium of exchange — that they were aspiring to the discovery of 
 some method of estimating or computing, and as it were record- 
 ing, in terms of this common denominator the mutual sacrifices 
 involved in their exchanges, so that they might no longer be 
 confined to the transactions of a day — no longer restrained by 
 the limitations of barter— so that they might dispense with those 
 limitations and restraints and avail themselves of the benefits 
 of time contracts, without at the same time parting company 
 with equity and justice. 
 
 The desire to make preparation for the future constituted the 
 first definite aspiration toward civilization. To enable this as- 
 piratioi^to be realized, it was necessary for men to provide some 
 method by which they could arrange for an exchange to take 
 place, as it were, by installments, so that a transaction begun to- 
 day might remain in abeyance, to be completed next week or 
 next year, as might be agreed upon, without involving loss to 
 either of the parties to the exchange by reason of its division 
 into two or more transactions instead of being completed in one. 
 
 While mankind was still occupied in hunting, it is manifest 
 that the flesh of animals captured in the chase would serve for 
 immediate consumption, while the hides, dried and retained in 
 the form of fur or leather, would serve for a future exchange. 
 
 When hunting ceased to be the principal occupation, and men 
 
36 
 
 came to settle into tlie pastoral condition, in which they tended 
 flocks, the most convenient media of exchange came naturally to 
 be live sheep and cattle— those being then the most numerous 
 • and most readily transferable, and not so liable as other commod- 
 ities to deterioration of quality. 
 
 In the poems of Homor oxen are repeatedly referred to as 
 something against which other commodities were exchanged, 
 and also as an expression or estimate of value — ^what has come to 
 be denominated a measure of value. Thus the value of the arms 
 of different warriors were estimated in oxen — those of Diomed 
 being held worth nine oxen, those of Glaucus one hundred. 
 
 In the agricultural stage of civilization which succeeded the 
 pastoral, different products of the soil (and, in maritime coun- 
 tries, of the sea) were used as money. In India, rice; in China, 
 tea; in various parts of Europe, wheat, barley, and oats; in Ice- 
 land, dried flsh; in Norway and Greenland, seal skins and blub- 
 ber; in the countries surrounding the Mediterranean, olive oil — 
 an article very plentiful in production and consumption in those 
 parts, and having the advantages of durability and divisibility. 
 In Central America different kinds of nuts were used as money; 
 in Mexico, coca beans. 
 
 In the Colonial period of North America various products of 
 agriculture were not only used as general media of exchange, 
 but in time came to be legal tender. In several colonies tobacco, 
 corn, and a variety of other articles, including the skins of 
 beavers, were lawful tender in payment of debts. In Newfound- 
 land dried codfish was used. 
 
 The benefits to be derived from a circulating medium in aid- 
 ing the civilization of man was illustrated even in the earliest 
 period of the Colonial settlements. The new settlers, in their 
 dealings with the aborigines, found a tribe on Long Island 
 which proved to be far more civilized than those of other parts 
 of the country. Investigation as to the source of their superi- 
 ority developed the fact that while other tribes had no money, 
 and relied on barter for the satisfaction of their wants, these 
 Long Islanders had certain small cylindrical shells which they 
 polished to a high degree of luster, and, by drilling them 
 
 lengthwise, formed them into beads, which they used as money. 
 ,785 
 
37 
 
 The beads they strung upon threads and naade into belts. This 
 form of money was what was known as wampum, of which there 
 were two qualities, black beads and white — one of the black 
 being held to be equal to two of the white. The colonists, who 
 had brought with them very little gold or silver from Europe, 
 utilized this wampum as money in their dealings with the sava- 
 ges; and in Massachusetts it finally became legal tender even 
 for the planters. "It was good money," says Gen. Walker. It 
 was better money than articles of food or fur, because, by not 
 having such immediate utility as a commodity, it was not so 
 likely to be suddenly withdrawn from the money use. 
 
 In all instances the articles selected to perform the function 
 of money were such as had at first been exchanged by barter, as 
 commodities, against other commodities, and by degrees came 
 to be used as articles against which all others were exchanged. 
 Commodities that were not readily perishable, thus insensibly 
 developed into money. But while infinitely better than bar- 
 ter, such commodities could never be relied upon to serve in 
 the most efficient manner all the purposes of money, owing to 
 the fact that notwithstanding their comparatively nonperishable 
 character they were so useful as to render society constantly ex- 
 posed to the danger of being deprived of money by reason of the 
 consumption (and consequent destruction) as commodities of the 
 very material constituting the mondy of the community. 
 
 Thus, where articles of food were used as money, it was im- 
 possible to say how long they would be permitted to play the 
 monetary role. In severe climates, in which furs were money, 
 there was no surety how long they would be allowed to remain 
 in the monetary condition. No complicated chemical or me- 
 chanical process being necessary to turn them to commodity- 
 use, a piece of fur which in the morning was money, might be- 
 fore evening be an article of apparel. Hence with the develop- 
 ment of the art of mining it was perceived that the metals of- 
 fered better media than any that had been theretofore used as 
 materials of money. 
 
 While other commodities answered sufficiently the purposes 
 of exchange in the primitive condition of society, whether as 
 instruments of barter destined to immediate consumption or even 
 
38 
 
 as media of exchange when both sides of a transaction were to 
 be made on the spot, they were not so well adapted as the metals 
 to be instruments of so-called measurement or expressions of 
 value, when on one side nothing was immediately needed for 
 consumption, and when, therefore, one-half of the exchange 
 was necessarily relegated to a future period. The more useful 
 and necessary an article was as a commodity, that is to say, the 
 more important it was as an article of food or clothing for the 
 comfort and sustenance of man, the greater the probability that 
 it would shortly be consumed, and thus be removed altogether 
 from the monetary use. 
 
 AsBociety advanced, although still restricted to primitive labor, 
 people came to have a larger variety of occupations. Thus, 
 a greater number of exchanges became necessary, the disposition 
 to accumulate — to provide for a rainy day — became more and 
 more developed; and men did not at once consume all the prod- 
 ucts of their labor. As wealth grew and exchanges multiplied, 
 it became more and more difficult to retain without deteriora- 
 tion the articles exchanged. Hence a great increase took place 
 in that class of transactions which, on one side at least, did not 
 demand the immediate consumption of the articles forming the 
 subject of exchange. With a constantly growing division of labor 
 those who were producers were making more of one class of ar- 
 ticles than they could themselves either consume or dispose of; 
 other men therefore became traders, whose business it was to 
 lay in a stock of articles for future exchange. 
 
 Some instrumentality was then needed by which the degree 
 of mutual sacrifice incurrea by the parties to an exchange could 
 be estimated, or, as it is usually called, measured, and a definite 
 expression or record of such measurement secured. How should 
 such an instrumentality be securedV 
 
 All classes of objects or materials that before the birth of 
 mining could be accumulated in sufficient quantity to serve for 
 money were in the nature of the case more or less perishable. 
 . It was only with the discovery of the art of mining that it was 
 possible to effect any great degree of accumulation of material 
 adopted for the money use. 
 
 The indestructibility of the metals and theii' universal accept- 
 
 783 
 
39 
 
 ability for purposes of ornament pointed to them as the best ma- 
 terials for accumulation. Gold and silver, by their ready divis- 
 ibility, nonoorrosiveness, and susceptibility to luster, naturally 
 lent themselves to the process. Their high esteem constituted 
 them in all parts of the world the prime articles of barter, against 
 which any other articles at any time 'could be exchanged. 
 
 In the slow process of the ages the metals were being gradu- 
 ally withdrawn from the commodity use and applied to use as 
 money. During this period the demand for them for purposes 
 of ornamentation and as commodities became insensibly merged 
 in the demand for them as money. Notwithstanding the uni- 
 versality of the desire for ornament there is a desire more uni- 
 versal and more urgent— the desire for articles of absolute ne- 
 cessity, for such as will sustain life. In the form of commodities 
 the utility of the metals was limited to the satisfaction of one 
 want and that not an indispensable want, but a want likely to be 
 experienced only after indispensable wants were supplied, a want 
 felt most among the rich or the well to do. 
 
 When they became money instead of supplying one want they 
 would supply all wants. Their use instead of being confined to the 
 rich would extend to every class of the community. He who 
 should possess them would possess not merely an ornament, he 
 would possess all things; not merely a ring to adorn his finger 
 (a trifling want at the best), but clothing to protect him from 
 the inclemencies of the weather, a bed in which to rest, a house 
 in which to find shelter (wants of the most material character); 
 above all, food to sustain life, and what will not a man give for 
 his life! 
 
 As the quantity of the metals, then, increased, the very act of 
 increase which by degrees was rendering them of less and ever 
 lessening value as commodities, was at the same time, and by 
 the same process, rendering them valuable as money. So that 
 the demand for the metals for purposes of ornamentation became 
 insensibly and by degrees merged and absorbed in the greater 
 and more exigent demand for them as money. And although 
 the process was a gradual one, the time finally arrived when, 
 owing to the prodigious stock on hand, they no longer owed to 
 the commo(?ity demand any portion of their value. But this 
 
 785 
 
40 
 
 took no value from the metals. It was a mere transference, by 
 slow and imperceptible degrees, of the cause or source of their 
 ralue. 
 
 By this transference the metals lost no dignity; on the con- 
 trary, they enormously gained dignity. It would be an impeach- 
 ment of the judgment and penetration of mankind to suppose 
 that it could more highly esteem or value .^n article for the de- 
 gree of utility which it may be supposed to possess in the tawdry 
 trappings of apparel — a function of mere ostentation, in which 
 the king may be emulated and outdone by the clown in the cir- 
 cus — than for the immeasurably greater degree of utility which 
 it must possess for mankind as money — as the great instrumen- 
 tality which delivers men from savagery, admits of their aggre- 
 gation in communities, renders possible a division of labor suited 
 to the aptitudes of each and the needs of all, develops skill of 
 hand and brain, feeds the hungry, clothes the naked, shelters 
 the homeless, educates the ignorant, uplifts the humble, refines 
 the gross, and gives heart and hope and happiness to all who 
 are weary and heavy laden. 
 
 In all of these capacities money not only possesses value, but 
 value so inestimalsle that civilization could not exist without It. 
 Is not this the test of the highest value? What difference does 
 it make what the reason of its value is, if we only recognize that 
 it has value, and that changes in its value are fraught with most 
 serious consequences, whether for good or ill, to the human 
 family. 
 
 The service which money performs is one wholly of a societary 
 character. Without a group, without an aggregation of people, 
 there is no office which it could fill. To a man in isolation it 
 would be utterly useless; in fact for him it could not exist. 
 Having no one with whom to exchange anything there would be 
 no necessity for any instrumentality of exchange. Having no 
 one to whom to give, or from whom to receive, he would have 
 no need to compute or record the degree of sacrifice involved in 
 any of his labors. 
 
 MONET ESSENTIALLY A FUNCTION RATHBK THAN A MATERIAL. 
 
 Money is not, therefore, a natural production, but a creation of 
 society, and can be created only by society. The metals are 
 
 785 
 
41 
 
 natural substances, that is, they are products of physical nature. 
 Money is not such; not an emanation of the earth, but of the 
 mind of man, not the work of his hands, but of his brain. Es- 
 sentially money is a function rather than a material, an intan- 
 gible yet most palpable and mighty power, as superior to the 
 material which clothes it, the agent endowed with the money 
 function, as the spiritual nature of man is superior to his phys- 
 ical nature. The relations are more nearly parallel indeed than 
 upon a cursory glance would appear. 
 
 In its essence money can not be a material thing any more 
 than a function of the brain can be so .' As civilization develops 
 functions are differentiated from the things with which, in the 
 rude original of society, they have been identified. Nothing 
 better illustrates this than a glance at the origin of civil society. 
 
 As men emerged from savagery, the strongest among them, 
 who in personal combat subjugated all others in his environ- 
 ment, became ruler or governor of the community. He ruled 
 by right of animal strength. 
 
 Thus in physical force had government its origin. But as civ- 
 ilization advanced and the tribe of twenty or fifty developed into 
 the nation of millions, one man could no longer cope with his 
 environment. One was not equal tp all. Why, then, did society 
 tolerate him; why did it retain him as governor? Was it still 
 for his physical qualities? By no means. Society had made a 
 great discovery — namely, that the function was more important 
 than the person. However unwelcome might be the individual^ 
 even though despotic, he fulfilled an indispensable function, 
 and as society became stronger, and the ruler, as an individual, 
 relatively weaker, the function did not lose, but on the contrary 
 gained strength. 
 
 No country in the world better exemplifies this than the 
 United States, in which the person who presides over the Gov- 
 ernment is only the principal servant of the people, and (except 
 when the silver question is under discussion) is recognized to 
 be merely a servant. From age to age, through unbroken cen- 
 turies of time, the function has been recognized as indispensar 
 ble to the existence of society. Whatever the name, nation, or 
 title of the person, he takes his place at the appointed time, in 
 785 
 
42 
 
 the interest of society, and although, looking to the traditions 
 of a distant past, he may ascribe his elevation to inherent qual- 
 ities of his own, yet the philosophy of history should admonish 
 him that lie is mistaken. And when, in time, the inevitable call 
 comes, and the final accounting is made, he passes away and his 
 place is filled by another. The individual is dead; the function 
 never dies. " The king is dead; long live the king." 
 
 As men began to reason it was seen that without the existence 
 and exercise of this function of what in monarchies is called the 
 king, and in republics the chief magistrate, the social relations 
 could not endure; men could not, so to speak, cohere in commu- 
 nities, and would again be relegated to primitive individualism — 
 in other words to barbarism. Without this function society 
 would be separated into its component elements — to individual 
 and fragmentary existence, to isolation and impotence. At ail 
 hazards this was to be avoided. Not thus was the destiny of man 
 to be fulfilled. So the institution of government, which, in the 
 crude beginning, was created by an individual from motives alto- 
 gether personal, and by no better right than that of the strong 
 over the weak — was continued by society as the very quintes- 
 sence of its own existence. 
 
 But what a transformation in the agency by which this is ac- 
 complished! The work of the bludgeon, even of the bullet, is 
 performed by the ballot — how much better it is not necessary 
 to suggest. The material of the bludgeon may be stronger thaji 
 the material of the ballot, but the fwnetion of the ballot is as 
 strong as that of the bludgeon. 
 
 It is, after all, for their functions that all things are esteemed, 
 for their services to mankind that all things are valuable. An 
 Indian gets a bright new rifle from a passing trader. It is the 
 most beautiful thing the Indian ever saw. He understands fire- 
 arms, and can use them well, but he has never seen anything so 
 beautiful as this. He prizes it beyond anything he ever pos- 
 sessed. Not only has it great beauty , but th e trad er informs him 
 that it has great " intrinsic value." It is of the utmost service 
 to the Indian in procuring food and for self-defense. One day it 
 gets out of order. He can not use it. He is obli_ed to go with- 
 out food and without defense. It has lost noae of its weight, its 
 
43 
 
 polish., its macerial. Its so-called " intrinsic value " still exists. 
 It is simply incapable of performing its function, and it is 
 wholly valueless. 
 
 In a few months, the trader, repassing that way and finding no 
 serious derangement in the parts of the rifle, is able in five min- 
 utes to restore its function. Immediately it is aS valuable as be- 
 fore, yet there has been no addition to its " intrinsic value." 
 The only change is that its function has been restored. Which 
 factor was it that contributed most to the value of the rifle, the 
 material of which it was composed or the function which it 
 served? While it was out of order — while deprived of its func- 
 tion — the rifle was no better than so much old iron, worth per- 
 haps a cent a pound. When the function was restored I suppose 
 it will be said that again it had great "intrinsic value." 
 
 Let us take another illustration: 
 
 Suppose a great painter to produce a picture which extorts 
 favor from the critics and commands the admiration of the world 
 of art. The multitude flocks to see it. Shortly it is stated that 
 the picture has been sold. It has been bought by the governors 
 of the academy, to adorn one of the beautiful galleries of that 
 beautiful structure. The question is asked how much was paid 
 for the picture. No one knows; but it must be a great sum. 
 
 What are the elements that determine the value of a picture? 
 Is it the labor involved or the length of time taken to produce 
 it? Some men, good artists, might work hard for a lifetime 
 without rivaling it. Is it the value of the pigments consumed 
 or the brushes used in its production? Surely not. Is it the 
 first cost of the canvas? Not at all. What, then, is the source 
 of its value? To answer this question we must ask, " What is 
 the function of a picture? What office does it fulfill? What serv- 
 ice does it render?" Is it not to gratify the artistic taste? To 
 whatever degree it serves that purpose the picture will have 
 value without reference to the labor bestowed upon it, the 
 length of time taken to produce it, the cost of the colors used in 
 the embellishment of the canvas, or' the cost of the canvas itself. 
 
 Would anyone say ihat the perfect performance of the func- 
 tion is not sufficient to give value to the picture? It can be 
 nothing else, inasmuch as the purchaser does not expect to put 
 
44 
 
 it to any use except the gratification of the sense of sight. Is it 
 not enough that by its beauty it contributes to the delight of the 
 beholder? What other function could a picture perform? If it 
 did aot perform that function to the degree that it does would 
 its value have been so great, even had the painter expended on 
 it twenty times the labor and had the materials cost a thousand 
 times as much? 
 
 Everything, then, in its place; everything to its use. The 
 beauty of this picture is not a concrete thing. It can not be han- 
 dled. The canvas may be handled, the pigments may be touched, 
 but the beauty is an immaterial and intangible quality. Yet the 
 beauty — the intangible and immaterial factor — not the concrete 
 object on which, nor the concrete instrumentality by which the 
 embellishment is effected, determines the value of the picture. 
 
 So it will be found, as I have said, as to all things that aid the 
 advancement and progress of man. For him, whatever the ma- 
 terial composition may be, the essence of the article, and the 
 source of its value, is and must always be the use it subserves, the 
 service it performs, the function it fulfills. 
 
 One further illustration as to the importance of the function 
 in contradistinction from the material by and through which it 
 may be exercised. Suppose we bring together in a large recep- 
 tacle 96 pounds, by weight, of water, 10 pounds of pure glue, 3 
 poHinds of white of egg, 34 pounds of fat, 8i pounds phosphate of 
 lime, 1 pound carbonate of lime, 3 ounces of sagar and starch, 7 
 ounces fluoride of calcium, 6 ounces phosphate of magnesia, and 
 a little ordinary table salt. Now, what have we? One hundred 
 and fifty-three pounds of chemical ingredients. What are they 
 worth? What is their " market value "? Excluding the water, 
 which may cost nothing, they can be bought in a village store 
 (combined drug store and grocery) for $2 or $3. 
 
 In this list we have all the constituent elements that, taken to- 
 gether, constitute the average physical man; weight 153 pounds . 
 Prom a material point of view the man is complete. Why does 
 he not arise emd walk? What is it that constitutes the differ- 
 ence between this body of matter and the man of whom it is the 
 corporeal equivalent? The function of life ! In comparison with 
 
 the distance between that mass of inert material and the living 
 
 785 
 
45 
 
 man of the same weight, it is not too much to say that the dis- 
 tance from the earth on which we dwell to the farthest of the 
 fixed stars is but as the elemental point — which geometry de- 
 clares to have neither length, breadth, nor thickness. 
 
 However necessary then a material may be as the bearer of a 
 function — the instrumentality by which it is given effect — it is 
 not the material that gives value to the function, but the func- 
 tion that gives value to the material. Considering the function 
 which money subserves, can it be necessary to supplement with 
 commodity value (a value derived from a trifling and frivolous 
 use) the far nobler value, which, in the nature of the case, must 
 be conferred on the material by the imperial and unapproach- 
 able money function? 
 
 For men in . the societary condition this function is well de- 
 scribed by Hobbes in his Nutrition of a Commonwealth. He 
 characterizes it as a measure — 
 by means ol whloli measure — 
 
 he says — 
 
 all commodities, movable and Immovable, are made to accompany a man to 
 all places of resort, within and without the place of his ordinary residence, 
 and the same passeth from man to man within the Commonwealth, and goes 
 round about, nourishing as it passeth every part thereof, insomuch as this 
 concoction is as it were the sangulnifloation of the Commonwealth. * * * 
 By concoction I understand the reducing of all commodities which are not 
 presently consumed, but reserved for nourishmentin time to come, to some- 
 thing of equal value. 
 
 Would time permit, a further consideration of the essential na- 
 ture of money would but strengthen the demonstration that the 
 intricate relations of society, which, at every turn, cross and in- 
 terlace and superimpose, can only be maintained in all their 
 vigor and efficiency — in all their harmony and beauty — in all 
 their strength and complexity — by means of money. . What heat 
 is to the physical universe money is to the universe of industry 
 and commerce. It is the great resolvent and analyzing agency 
 of human effort. A sufficiency of it maintains the warm glow of 
 life in all parts of the system; an insufficiency chills the business 
 currents, and if the insufficiency be progressive, results in the 
 congelation of all energy. 
 
 In rendering possible a division of labor, by means of which 
 men become skilled in the separate departments of industry and 
 
 even in special lines of each department, money divides and sub- 
 
 785 
 
46 
 
 divides all things into infinitesimal fractions and renders the 
 exchange of each fraction as practical and as advantageous as 
 the exchange of the integral articles of which these fractions 
 form a part. 
 
 Aristotle well understood this function of money and well ex- 
 pressed it in the following paragraph in the Ethics: 
 
 Intercourse takes place between people having different objects of desire. 
 In order that they may be exchanged with each other It Is necessary that 
 they should be compared, lor which purpose money came forward, and is as 
 It were a medium, for It measures everything, both the excess and the de- 
 fect ; as, for instance, how many pairs of shoes will be equal to a house or to 
 food; for If this is not done there will be no exchange or Intercourse. All 
 things, therefore, must be measured; but It is, in truth, want- 
 That is to say, demand — 
 which holds all things together, lor II persons wanted nothing from each 
 other, or not equally, there would be no exchange. Money, then, has been 
 made, by agreement as It were, a substitute for demand, and is so called 
 because It exists not by nature but by law, and it is in our power to change 
 it and make It useless for the purpose. II It were not possible to exchange 
 there would be no commerce. If a man requires nothing at the present 
 time money is, as It were, a surety to him for a future exchange that it shall 
 be made when he wants It. But money Itself is not alwaysof the same value, 
 but yet it has more tendency to remain fixed, wherefore everything ought 
 to be appraised, lor so there will be exchange. Money, lUce a measure, 
 mukes things 'equal; for If there were no exchange there would be no inter- 
 course, nor any exchange If there were no equality, nor any equality if there 
 were no common measure. In truth. It Is impossible that things differing 
 so much should be commensurate, but for practical use It Is suiaclently pos- 
 sible. Money makes aU things commensurable, for all thingt are measured 
 by money. 
 
 The frequent references of Aristotle to money as a " measure," 
 his saying that it " measures " everything, and that it makes 
 things "equal, "show thateven in his time money was well under- 
 stood to be rather a measure of value than a mere medium of ex- 
 change, and that its greatest function was as such measure. 
 However useful as a commodity might be the material of which 
 it was composed, it was impossible for it to be so valuable for any 
 commodity- use as for that supreme use which consists in measur- 
 ing and adjusting the mutual relations of men in the work of 
 producing and distributing wealth, by which not only is life sus- 
 tained but by which the physical, intellectual, and moral de- 
 velopment and elevation of man is made possible. 
 
 MONEY COMPAKED WITH LETTERS. 
 
 In the ninth chapter of his history of the Decline and Fall of 
 the Roman Empire the histori m Gibbon compares the invention 
 
47 
 
 ofmoney with that of letters, and adds thathothof these institu- 
 tions, bygfivinga more active energy to the powers of human na- 
 ture, " have contributed to multiply the objects they were de- 
 signed to exp.'ess." 
 
 Nothing can be more correct than this statement. No inven- 
 tion of man, with perhaps the single exception of the invention 
 of letters, is to be compared with that of money — if money may 
 be called an invention. 
 
 The indications of history are that money preceded the inven- 
 tion of letters; for in all the oldest writings that have been dis- 
 covered money is mentioned. It is certain that letters could 
 have been of but very limited utility to men until they had learnt 
 to use some article for money. Next after spoken languagfe, 
 money is the great instrument of association. Without it, men 
 would have found difficulty in achieving such a degree of asso- 
 ciation as to invite or demand the invention of letters. 
 
 As without some considerable development of language men 
 must have remained savages, so without the invention or evolu- 
 tion of money they could have lifted themselves but little above 
 the savage condition. As Gibbon says, both money and letters 
 have contributed to multiply the objects they were designed to 
 express. Ail thinkers agree that language is not a mere instru- 
 ment for giving expression to thought; much more than that, it 
 is also an instrument for the development — the creation — of 
 thought. 
 
 Without the faculty of " thinking out " a subject by the dif- 
 ferentiation or modification of old words, or the invention of 
 new, the powers of the human mind would be torpid and inert, 
 
 The function of language, therefore, in the advance of man- 
 has been to supply the tools with which to analyze and synthe- 
 size thought, to subdivide it into its component elements — its 
 separate ideas — and to arrange or rearrange those ideas in or- 
 derly sequence and juxtaposition. Thus only could the great 
 chasm between concrete things and abstract conceptions have 
 been bridged. 
 
 But the work of money even in these respects was hardly in- 
 ferior to that of language. Since the dawn of creation the wiints 
 of man have been extending. The satisfaction of physical wants 
 
 785 
 
48 
 
 begets mental wants, which in turn operate as incentives to the 
 further increase of the range of wants both physical and men- 
 tal. Man may be distinguished from the remainder of creation 
 by describing him as the unsatisfied animal. His wants are in- 
 satiable. That which was yesterday the goal of his ambition is 
 to-day but the starting point for some new want. It is the para- 
 . dox of his many-sided nature that it finds repose only in eter- 
 nal activity. 
 
 The tools which language has supplied to man for the develop- 
 ment and multiplication of thought, money has supplied to him 
 for the development and multiplication of things — without which 
 thought could not be. 
 
 The absence of all means of specialization, and of the power 
 of training and developing aptitudes among men, would consti- 
 tute society a gathering of languid, dronish,and unaspiring peo- 
 ple, scattered in isolated hamlets, remote from each other, and 
 Incapable of any high degree of civilization. 
 
 In contradis tinction from a society conceivably without money, 
 we may point to the marvels of the nineteenth century. Those 
 marvels, however, in my opinion, fall very far short of the 
 achievements with which mankintt could now be credited had our 
 philosophers, statesmen, journalists, and so-called financiers de- 
 voted to the subject of money a tithe of the attention that they 
 have devoted to some of the minor considerations of social prog- 
 ress. 
 
 With the advancement of man in the subordination of the 
 forces of nature, it must, to the reflective mind, seem amazing 
 that every few years — and those years recurring with remark- 
 able regularity of periodicity — there should be a crash in which 
 the entire body of the arts and industries of mankind is brought 
 to the ground, as if we were still in the initial stages of civiliza- 
 tion and knew not how to preserve that which we had gained. 
 
 There can not be a doubt that this results from the total in- 
 sufficiency of the money supply to transact the enormously in- 
 creasing business of the world, yet we find the demand for gold 
 constantly increasing; Austria, for instance, with its population 
 of forty-one millions having, by the act of August 2, 1892, gone 
 to the gold standard, and even Russia, which does not intend 
 
 785 
 
49 
 
 to go to it, taking out of the monetary circulation of tlie world 
 and looking up in its war chest nearly $500,000,000 of that metal. 
 Yet notwithstanding the rapid increase of population and com- 
 merce and industry all over the world and especially in the 
 United States, we are told that we must enter into a contest for 
 gold with the countries of the Old World, and that without 
 having made any agreement to do so, we must pay out gold 
 upon demand to every Austrian broker and speculator who can 
 make a little commission by gathering up the money of our coun- 
 try and sending it away; and that at the same time that we are 
 thus losing one form of our money, we should not be permitted 
 to have an equal quantity of any other form of money to take its 
 place. The gold-standard men tell us that if there should be a 
 premium of even 1 per cent on gold the silver money of the coim- 
 try — notwithstanding that it is legal tender for all debts, public 
 and private — would fall, or as they call it would " slop " to the 
 bullion value of the silver that is not coined — that portion of the 
 metal that is denied the imperial and all-important function of 
 money; and this they call the natural or "market" value of 
 silver. 
 
 DEMAND FOB COIN COMPARED WITH THAT FOB BULLION. 
 
 Here is a piece of silver bullion (exhibiting it) — a piece of 
 metal not coined, and therefore not having the legal-tender 
 function conferred on it by law. Suppose I should offer it for 
 sale, what would be the demand for it? Inasmuch as it could be 
 used only as an ordinary commodity, I might travel over the 
 entire city without finding anyone who would want it. Yet the 
 price it would thus bring, the price arising from a demand for 
 only one purpose — and by only three or four persons in an entire 
 city — is the value which the gold-standard Senators say that sil- 
 ver would have if the demand were increased to so enormous an 
 extent as to make it a demand for all purposes — to make it a de- 
 mand not by a few hundred men in the entire country, but by 
 every one of the 67,000,000 inhabitants of the United States. 
 
 Suppose the Government should put its stamp on this piece of 
 metal that I have exhibited and make of it a piece of legal-ten- 
 der money, would not a transformation be effected? Would it 
 not be transmuted from an inconsequential thing — a thing that 
 
50 
 
 hardly any one would need— into a thinsrof supreme importance 
 which no one in the country, however independent and self- 
 sustaining, could do without; yet these economists around me 
 tell me that the value of that piece when it represents a demand 
 for all things, an exigent and inexorable demand upon which lif^ 
 itself depends, should be measured by its value when it repre- 
 sents a demand for only one thing — a single commodity — which 
 like any other commodity could be readily dispensed with. 
 
 Mr. GRAY. It does not make any difference as to the quan- 
 tity? 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada, The quantity of money, other things 
 being equal, as I shall show in the course of my remarks, fixes 
 the value of money. Nobody has ever successfully controverted 
 that, and the authorities all admit it. No Senator on either 
 side of the Chamber denies the proposition that it is the number 
 of units of money ^(dollars, francs, or pounds sterling, a^s the case 
 may be) in circulation in a country that fixes the value of each 
 unit in that country. 
 
 The demand for money is universal. When people want money 
 it is not particularly gold that they want; they want something 
 that has general purchasing power, something that is a ticket of 
 command for all things. 
 
 Mr. GRAY. Gould it not be done with copper? 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Undoubtedly; but there is too much 
 copper; that metal has never been admitted to unrestricted 
 coinage because there is too much of it; while silver has from 
 time immemorial had unrestricted access to the mint, and there 
 is not, and never has been, too much of it. The world has be- 
 come accustomed to the coinage of all the gold and all the silver 
 yielded by the mines and there is no necessity for the abandon- 
 ment of that plan. It has been followed for thousands of years, 
 and of both together there has never been too much. 
 
 Mr. HOAR. Will it disturb the Senator from Nevada if I ask 
 him a question? 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Not at all. 
 
 Mr. HOAR. I should like to ask the Senator, if his theory be 
 true, then why he asks Congress to incur the expanse of using 
 several hundred million dollars' worth of silver coinage, what- 
 
 785 
 
51 
 
 ever the cost may be, by takiag a material whicb costs 65 cents 
 for every dollar instead of making our dollars out of a material ' 
 like copper or leather or brass, or something of that kind, which 
 does not cost one-tenth the amount? Why are we to expend so 
 many hundred million dollars for silver when we can get some- 
 thing cheaper that will answer the same purpose? 
 
 THE ATJTOMATIO SYSTEM Or MONET. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Because the belief of a, majority of 
 the people of this country has been in what has been called Uie 
 automatic system, a system not regulated by legislation; and the 
 creditors of the world, the holders of the bonds of the world, 
 including of course the creditor classes of the United States, 
 are always vehemently against government interference with 
 money, except when it is getting cheaper. At this time their 
 objection is to silver. Forty years ago their objection was to 
 gold. If by any chance gold should again become plentiful, they 
 would again insist on its demonetization. 
 
 In 1848 a great discovery of gold was made, and the most 
 learned of scientists, in the interest of the bondholding classes 
 (those who are now, in my judgment, attempting insidiously 
 to enslave the world), wrote endless essays bewailing the disad- 
 vantages to result to the bondholders and owners of public 
 debts by reason of the beneficent discoveries in California and 
 Australia. They advocated as to gold then what they advocate 
 as to silver now, that it should be eliminated from the category 
 of the automatic theory, which from the earliest period meant 
 the coinage of both gold and silver at a relation established by 
 law or mint regulation. In the interest of this class, Germany 
 actually demonetized gold in 1857. In no instance in the his- 
 tory of the world, when one or both of the metals has been 
 getting dearer, have the creditor classes been heard to favor 
 governmental interference with the automatic system; but on 
 the contrary, they have denounced all such interference as an 
 interference with natural law. 
 
 But no sooner did they find one of the metals — whether gold 
 or silver — becoming a little cheaper by reason of increased pro- 
 duction, no sooner did they see a prospect of losing the unearned 
 
52 
 
 iflcrement which by reason of the almost constant increase in 
 ' the value of the monetary unit they had been receiving, than 
 they reversed the entire policy of history and — for example, be- 
 fore the French monetary commission of 1869— declared in favor 
 of governmental interference with the automatic theory, with 
 what they had theretofore called ' ' natural law " — even going so far 
 as to declare that as governments control the standard of money 
 they ought, so far as possible, to assure its value — by value mean- 
 ing of course purchasing power. But without reference to the 
 interested contentions of the creditors, the people of this country 
 are, I believe, in favor of the automatic theory, provided it is to 
 be consistently and impartially carried out. 
 
 Mr. STEWART. Will my colleague a little more fully ex- 
 plain what is meant by the automatic system? A good many 
 people who may read his remarks when in print may not know 
 the precise meaning of the term. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. The theory is that by depending on 
 the yield of the mines for the supply of the material from which 
 money should be made there would be secured what has been 
 called an automatic or self- regulating method of determining the 
 quantity of money. Under that system by which, when carried 
 out in its integrity, both metals were used, creditors and debt- 
 ors alike took their chances of a greater or less increase in the 
 money volume and of their being affected injuriously by one 
 change or the other. By confining the money used to a single 
 metal the creditor is eliminated from the risks of the partner- 
 ship and that which in the case of the debtor was but half a share 
 in a risk is by the change turned into an entire certainty of loss, 
 while the creditor is sure to gain. 
 
 It is quite probable that if the yield of both metals should be 
 fully availed of for money purposes all classes in this country 
 will be willing until such time as the mines shall fail to yield a 
 sufficient supply of both for the purposes of the world's money, 
 to continue to trust the regulations of the money volume to the 
 limitations which the rude obstacles of nature oppose to the pro- 
 duction of the metals, rather than confide that function to the 
 aotion of legislation. 
 
 Senators have stated here that they arebimetallists. The dis- 
 
 785 
 
53 
 
 tinguished Senator JErom Massachusetts [Mr. Hoae] in a most 
 eloquent speeoli said that those who agreed with him were bi- 
 metallists and wished both metals to be in circulation at one 
 time, while we on our side, he said, were silver monometallists. 
 But, Mr. President, if there be enough of one metal, why have 
 two? If both can not be made to circulate at the same time on 
 account of the scarcity and therefore the increasing value of 
 one, in consequence of which increase it leaves the country, I 
 am in favor of having the one of which there may be a sufficient 
 quantity. 
 
 The question is not whether we shall have a white or a yellow 
 metal upon which to put the stamp of the Government; the ques- 
 tion really is, shall we have a quantity of money that will main- 
 tain justice between debtor and creditor in the matter of deferred 
 payments —a feature not only of great but of surpassing import- 
 ance. Mr. President, justice is in my estimation much more 
 sacred than gold. When it is said that we should have a dollar 
 ihat will be at a parity with gold, I reply that we might better 
 have a dollar that will be at a parity with the products of the 
 labor of our people — at a parity with a bushel of wheat and with 
 a pound of cotton. What I wish to see in this country is a dollar 
 that will be, and will stay, at a parity with justice. Gold is at a 
 parity with nothing, but on the contrary is at a disparity with 
 everything. 
 
 Mr. ALDRICH. Will it disturb the Senator 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Oh, no. 
 
 Mr. ALDRIOH. I will not interrupt the Senator if it is not 
 agreeable to him. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. I have not the slightest objection. 
 
 VAIiUE or MEXICAN DOLLARS. 
 
 Mr. ALDBICH. I understand the Senator from Nevada to 
 say that the value of money depends upon a limitation of the 
 units of quantity, in one part of his argument, and in another 
 part of his argument he says that it depends upon the legislative 
 legal-tender function which is given to it. 
 
 Now, I ask the Senator is it not necessary in order to maintain 
 the value of money that both these qualities should coexist? 
 Otherwise is it not true that the coin wUl only represent the 
 
 785 
 
market value of tlie bullion that is in it? Take the case of Mexico, 
 for instance, where the silver dollar is an unlimited legal tender 
 and where the purchasing power of the silver dollar coined by 
 the Government is no greater than the number of grains of silver 
 bullion that it contains. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. I have frequently stated in the Senate 
 that silver bullion everywhere, on a<!COunt of that metal being 
 used by Mexico as money, is worth somewhat more than it would 
 be if Mexico did not so use it; but so slight is the capacity of 
 that country for producing commodities that will command the 
 products or money of other countries that it fails to raise the 
 bullion value to any material degree. Of course, with unre- 
 stricted coinage in any country, the bullion value and the mint 
 value will in that country be coincident. 
 
 As the Senator says, I have stated again and again thatmoney 
 is a creation of law, and that the value of the unit depends upon 
 the number of units, but he is aware that I have also frequently 
 stated that no matter how many or how few may be the mone- 
 tary units in a country they will represent all the value that is 
 possible to exist in the shape of money in that country at that 
 time. If the business of a country were being performed by 
 $50,000,000, no value would be added by making the number of 
 dollars one hundred million, other things remaining unchanged; 
 because unless population and business should have increased 
 that one hundred million would have no more work to do than 
 had been done by the fifty million. 
 
 Mr. ALDRICH. As I understand the Senator's argument 
 now it is this, that the reason the coinage value and the bullion 
 value in Mexico is the same is because of the greater number of 
 units in circulation in Mexico as compared with the business of 
 that country and the demand. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Certainly. 
 
 Mr. ALDRICH. Would not that same thing be true in the 
 United States if the number of silver dollars in circulation here 
 had the same relation to business that it has in Mexico? 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Undoubtedly, if this country had as 
 much money in proportion to its business as Mexico has, it 
 would result in the same range of prices as results in Mexico. 
 
 785 
 
55 
 
 It is impossible for this country, whose business is infinitely 
 greater tban that of Mexico, to obtain the amount of silver 
 ■which would be necessary to constitute as many dollars in pro- 
 portion to its business as the people of Mexico have in circula- 
 tion, ^o vast a quantity of silver is nowhere to be found. It is 
 not that the people of Mexico have much money per capita, but 
 that they are not a money-absorbing people. That country is 
 one of small population — not one-sixth thatof the United States, 
 and with a foreign trade hardly more than one-twentieth that 
 of the United States; besides which almost alL of its exports 
 comprise articles which the countries of Europe could without 
 material inconvenienoe altogether dispense with. Its domestic 
 trade can hardly be one-hundredth part that pf the United States, 
 and much of it is conducted by barter. The demand of the Mex- 
 icBJis for money of any kind is so insignificant that it can not be 
 expected to materially raise the gold price of silver bullion. 
 
 We know that the value of such bullion as is not transmuted 
 into money necessarily changes with every new demand; and our 
 contention is that with unrestricted coinage the demand which 
 the United States would make for silver would put the uncoined 
 metal to a parity with the coined metal all over the world, be- 
 cause the price established here would become the price every- 
 where. Every holder of silver bullion in any country would de- 
 mand for it per ounce in that country the very price that he 
 could get for It in this, minus only the cost of shipment. We 
 point to the fact that France, when it had less than half the pop- 
 ulation of this country, kept the metals at a parity without the 
 slightest difficulty for three-quarters of a century; and to the 
 fact that when in 1890 there appeared for a time to be a prospect 
 that our mints might be opened to the unrestricted coinage of 
 silver the price of bullion rose to $1.20 an ounce, and as it rose 
 here it rose correspondingly all over the world, as the official 
 figures will prove. 
 
 But there has been no depreciation in the value, that is to say, 
 in the purchasing power, of the silver money of Mexico. What 
 a Mexican dollar would buy in Mexico in 1873 it will buy in Mex- 
 ico to-day. Had there been a depreciation it would have evinced 
 itself through a rise of commodities. There has been no such 
 
 785 
 
56 
 
 rise in the pripes of commodities, measured in silver, in Mexico 
 or any other silver-using country. 
 
 A COMPARISON Or HOBSBS. 
 
 The Senator from Rhode Island seems to assume that If we 
 should decide on gold as the money standard of this country we 
 Bhould obtain an unchanging standard of value. The very pith 
 of our contention is that gold is constantly rising, and that by 
 adding silver to gold in this country we should arrest this rise. 
 The gold-standard advocates argue as if by depriving silver of 
 its right of unrestricted access to the mint the value of gold had 
 not been augmented. Why, Mr. President, by devolving the 
 entire demand for money upon gold alone an enormous increase 
 has taken place in the value of that metal. In the very nature 
 of the case it is impossible that such a result could have been 
 avoided. 
 
 To use a homely illustration, suppose that in any given coun- 
 try there were a certain number of white, and a certain number 
 of yellow horses, and that a law were passed forbidding the har- 
 nessing of the white horses, so that all the work would neces- 
 sarily devolve upon the yellow. On the one hand the increased 
 demand for yellow horses must naturally increase their value, 
 while on the other hand the demand for white horses, being 
 proportionately reduced, the value of such horses would natur- 
 ally fall. Suppose that afterward a law were passed restoring 
 to white horses the right to be harnessed, is it not obvious that 
 then the demand, instead of being all concentrated on one class, 
 would again be divided between the two classes, and that as a 
 consequence the value of yellow horses would diminish, while 
 that of white horses would increase? 
 
 Mr. GRAY. May I ask the Senator, in connection with his 
 very interesting illustration of the two metals, whether if a man 
 had a yellow horse which was capable of doing all his work it 
 would be economy to buy also a white horse, which would have 
 to be fed, and to divide the work between the two. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. The condition on which the Senator 
 bases his inquiry is of course hypothetical. The very conten- 
 tion we make is that there are not enough in number of the yel- 
 low horses. To drop metaphor, the reason why, to the eyes of 
 
 785 
 
57 
 
 many persons, there appears to be enough money is because 
 money is something that in its nature is wholly unlike anything 
 else. Whatever quantity of it may at any tipae be in use will at 
 that time appear to be enough, because as the quantity of money 
 (in proportion to population and demand) becomes less and less, 
 the prices of commodities and property necessarily become less 
 and less; so that a quantity of money which at, say, the present 
 range of prices might be wholly insuflBcient to effect the present 
 volume of exchanges, might, when property and commodities 
 had fallen to a lower range, be ample to exchange at the lower 
 range of prices all the commodities and property in the market. 
 To illustrate, we have to-day a certain quantity of money in 
 this country. That quantity results in the establishment of a 
 certain range or level of prices of commodities and property. 
 Now, there would be no trouble whatever in transacting the busi- 
 ness of the country with one-half or one-fourth that quantity of 
 money, provided we were content to letthepricesof commodities 
 and property fall to a level sufBciently low to be compatible with 
 the reduced amount of money. The objection is not, therefore , to 
 low prices, of themselves, but to the 'persistence of the lowering 
 process — the constant and unending fall — which renders it im- 
 possible for industry and commerce to find a steady level from 
 which prosperity might begin. 
 
 BPFBOTS OF CHANGES OF MONET VALUE ON DEFERRED PAYMENTS. 
 
 Even an unceasing fall of prices would be a matter of no con- 
 sequence if all transactions were for "spot cash" — if no debts 
 had been contracted or deferred payments bargained for. All 
 will admit that under conditions as they are at the present 
 time if the money unit were to double its purchasing power in, 
 say, one year, so enormous is the volume of debt and of deferred 
 payments that the entire business world would be overwhelmed 
 with bankruptcy. But were all payments cash payments — were 
 there no debts or time obligations to be provided for — the value 
 of the dollar might e ven in that brief period double with impunity. 
 This will be plain on a short analysis. 
 
 A year is composed of three hundred and sixty-flve days. 
 Suppose the dollar in that time to take on an additional 100 per 
 cent of value, yet in a contract requiring but five minutes from 
 
 785 
 
58 
 
 the instant of inception to that of consummation, the proportion 
 of the increase attaching to so brief a period would be in- 
 finitesimal. Neither party to the contract could be_ injured. 
 The value which the dollar would have when the contract was 
 entered into would be its value when the contract was executed. 
 No greater degree of sacrifice would be required to fulfill it than 
 the degree that was bargained for. 
 
 How different are present conditions! The very essence of 
 modern industrial life is the time contract. No enterprise is 
 now undertaken except upon a foundation of debt — a foundation 
 often wide and deep. The feature which above all other fea- 
 tures distinguishes our age from all the ages of the past is the 
 deferred payment. Obligations involving future settlements 
 amounting not merely to thousands of millions, but to scores of 
 thousands of millions of dollars have been incurred. With a 
 just monetary system these obligations are entirely consistent 
 with prosperity. Under such a system those enormous obliga- 
 tions could be met with entire equity, and to the great benefit 
 of society; but under the operation of a money volume shrink- 
 ing relatively to demand, time obligations, by a subtle and fur- 
 tive process, operate as a withering blight upon industry. 
 
 Year by year the equities involved become more and more dis- 
 torted; the payments demand for their satisfaction more and 
 more of the products of labor. Against this secret and clandes- 
 tine progress no degree of intelligence or foresight can protect 
 the man of enterprise or of projective mind, who, with capital, 
 energy, and skill, undertakes to employ laborers. It is in vain 
 that he has thoroughly learned his business and understands its 
 varied processes and possibilities — in vain that he looks ahead 
 and bases his operations upon carefully worked-out plans and es- 
 timates. All foresight and calculation are thwarted and set at 
 naught by the influence of this silent but baleful increase in the 
 value of the monetary unit — an increase which expresses itself 
 in a fall of the prices of the commodities in whose production 
 the investor employs laborers and to which he devotes his cap- 
 ital and his skill. 
 
 I have said that the objection is not against low prices per se, 
 but against the persistency of the fall. Were the downward 
 
59 
 
 trend to be arrested at any given stage, prosperity would set in 
 as soon as it became evident that prices were to continue firm. 
 By failing to keep the quantity of money in the country in- 
 creasing according to population and demand, this downward 
 trend might continue until wheat should reach 20 cents, 10 
 cents, or even 5 cents a bushel, and cotton 1 cent a pound, with- 
 out any other evidence of an insufficient money supply except 
 the fact of the fall of prices, the bankruptcies which it creates 
 and the idleness to which it relegates laborers. But are not 
 those evidences enough? If debts are contracted while wheat is 
 a dollar a bushel, cotton 12 cents a pound, and all other com- 
 modities in proportion, does the Senator from Delaware think 
 that prices should be permitted continually to fall by reason of 
 a diminution in the quantity of money? 
 
 HAS GOLD APPBEOIATBDT 
 
 Mr. GRAY. No; but I was referring to the illustration which 
 the Senator used, which was amusing, and illustrations often 
 help argument. I merely asked whether, if a yellow horse were 
 capable of doing efficiently all the work of his owner, it would 
 be economy to buy a white horse and feed him in order to divide 
 the work between the two? As to whether it is a good thing 
 that gold or any or all the metals shall appreciate, so that the 
 prices of commodities shall go down, I wish to say that the ar- 
 gument regarding appreciation rests, to my mind, upon an as- 
 sumption. There is no evidence — none has been adduced which 
 appeals to my Judgment — to show that there has been an appre- 
 ciation of gold so as to produce this decline in prices. That 
 argument, I think, is one that has to be met in the discussion of 
 the subject. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. When we talk with business men, 
 while the silver question is not under discussion, no denial is 
 made of the fact that for the past fifteen years there has been 
 hardly any profit in business. I had a conversation the other 
 day with the Senator from New Jersey [Mr. Smith], who so ably 
 addressed the Senate on this subject, and he admitted to me that 
 business men in general have had a difficult task to make ends 
 meet for the past fifteen years. Occasionally somebody, under 
 
60 
 
 exceptional conditions, makes a little money, but the large ma- 
 jority of business men have had uphill work. 
 
 This is because the margin of profit is narrow, and in the greater 
 number of instances there has been no profit at all. The prices of 
 the products of labor have been persistently falling for twenty 
 years. The Government of Great Britain has been obliged to ap- 
 point commissions to inquire into matters of depression of trade. 
 The London Economist and other papers have called attention 
 to the depression; the French and other continental papers 
 admit it; -and it was admitted by all the delegates who attended 
 the Brussels conference. The general and long-continued de- 
 pression is everywhere and always admitted in Congress, except 
 when silver is under discussion. 
 
 Mr. GRAY. Will the Senator allow me? 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Certainly. 
 
 Mr. GRAY. I admit, and stated the other day, that prices in 
 the last twenty years have declined in a most notable way; but 
 the question at issue — and if I am wrong I shall be glad to have 
 the Senator correct me — the question at issue, and which we are 
 called upon to consider here as the most important involved in 
 this controversy, seems to me to be whether that decline in prices 
 is due to the appreciation of gold or to other causes which affect 
 the production and labor cost of commodities. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. If the fall of prices resulted from im- 
 proved methods of production, business would be prosperous and 
 there would be no need of royal commissions to inquire into the 
 long-continued depression. "Improved methods" could notmake 
 business unprofitable. The very reason why manufacturers have 
 recourse to new and improved methods is because they can make 
 more profit by adopting them. 
 
 THB BATES OF INTEREST AS INDICIA OF RISING VALUE IN MONET. 
 
 But a convincing, and, indeed, an overwhelming argument, 
 one which it seems to me can not upon mature examination 
 be resisted, is the fall in the rate of interest. I have not reached 
 that subject in its order yet, but now that it has been broached, 
 I lay down this as a fundamental proposition, that in a new and 
 undeveloped country, among a people energetic and aspiring, 
 when the rates of interest constantly fall it is an unerring sign 
 
61 
 
 that the purchasing power of the money unit is constantly in- 
 creasing from causes having their origin in an insufficient money- 
 volume. In a country whose development has hardly more 
 than begun, if those of our people who have the genius to pro- 
 ject great enterprises were not thwarted by some subtle, unseen, 
 and unsuspected force, you would not find money in such light 
 demand. During the past twenty years interest has fallen in 
 just about the same proportion that the British royal commis- 
 sion said the value of gold had advanced. I assert that as the 
 purchasing power of money increases its interest-bearing power 
 decreases, and for a very plain reason, as the Senator will see 
 when I state it. 
 
 Mr. GRAY. The Senator from Kansas [Mr. Pbffee] has told 
 us at very great length that the interest on money is too high. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Interest on money is always too high 
 when the prices of commodities and property are falling. What 
 good can it do a man to borrow money even at 1 per cent if on 
 his property investment he loses 6 or 8 per cent? When prices 
 are falling, any rate of interest is too high; it confiscates the 
 property of the enterprising man, which property is confiscated 
 ipto the possession of the man who sits in his bank parlor en- 
 gaged in merely juggling with the counters by which the tran- 
 saction is effected. 
 
 Mr. WHITE of Louisiana. May I ask the Senator if his ar- 
 gument is that the effect of the remonetization of silver will be 
 to increase the rate of interest the people of the country will 
 have to pay? 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. There is not a particle of doubt about 
 It. Men pay interest ungrudgingly when enterprises yield a 
 percentage of return higher than the rate of interest. 
 
 There is at present no profit anywhere in business. If the 
 Senator from Louisiana [Mr. White] can go before the sugar- 
 producers of his State, and the cotton-producers of the entire 
 South, and tell them that there is going to be a sufficiency of 
 money, and that the prices of the sugar and cotton and of every- 
 thing else produced in Louisiana are going to be held firm they 
 will not be particular about the rates of interest. When all 
 prices are falling men are compelled to conform to the fall. 
 
 785 
 
62 
 
 Business is then conducted on a plane inclining downward, 
 Aiter men have produced goods at one level they find themselves 
 compelled to market them at a lower level. This enormously 
 handicaps the producers. For twenty years men have been pay- 
 ing more interest than under the conditions of business they 
 could afford to pay. . Although the rate may have been low, the 
 amount paid was more than the profit they could make by the use 
 of the money they borrowed. I deal with that subject in its order 
 later, and must content niyself for the present with this brief 
 reference in reply to the suggestions of Senators. 
 
 By the passage of the bill before the Senate you continue and 
 intensify that process. Business will continue to be unprofita- 
 ble. You go absolutely to the gold standard when, as is admitted 
 by Mr. Giffen, the statistician of the London Board of Trade, 
 and others, nearly all the gold produced is consumed in the arts 
 and manufactures, and hardly any is left for circulation as money. 
 This, too, when the population of this country, unlike that of any 
 other country upon earth, is increasing at the rate of 2i per cent 
 per annum, and the demand of the entire population for every 
 wantof daily life is made upon money. Two and one-half per cent 
 increase of population means a 2i per cent increase of demand for 
 money, and yet it is proposed to cut oft' all increase — to cure what? 
 To cure a disease which every reflecting man not jaundiced by 
 the color of gold admits is not a surplus, but a scarcity of money. 
 I do not see how anyone can reconcile it with his conscience, 
 knowing that there can be hardly any addition to the gold money 
 of the world. 
 
 Without impugning the motives of any person, I say it is a 
 crime against mankind; it is an act of treason against the human 
 race. We must make a choice; if the proposition is to keep a 
 standard of gold at the expense of justice, give me, Mr. President, 
 a standard of justice at the expense of gold. 
 
 THE DANGEB OF A SHiVSH BASIS. 
 
 Mr. VILAS. If it would not interrupt the Senator, I should 
 like to ask him one question. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. It will not interrupt me a particle. 
 I want all the light possible thrown on this question. 
 
 Mr. VILAS. I understand the Senator's position to be that 
 
 785 
 
63 
 
 the remonetization of silv'3r by free coinage would enhance its 
 value. Now, does the Senator not recognize that at any of the 
 ratios proposed for that purpose there would be a great risk, at 
 all events, of a monetary derangement in such a scheme? 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. I will answer. In the first place, all 
 the silver that we have remonetized, every dollar that has been 
 struck off at the mints, weighing 371i grains of pure silver, or 
 412i grains of standard silver, has been right up to parity. That 
 is indisputable. Only the portion that has not had the supreme 
 prerogative of coinage conferred upon it has depreciated. Every 
 silver dollar that has been coined is as good as a dollar of gold 
 or of anything else. 
 
 Can the Senator point out any country from which there is 
 any great amount of silver to come here? Does the Senator 
 doubt that if there were only one dollar more of silver to be 
 coined it would go right up to a parity with the gold dollar, as 
 all the other silver dollars have gone? And if ha does not doubt 
 that, does he know where any extraordinary number of dollars 
 are to come from? 
 
 Mr. VILAS. I do not suppose that the Senator can make the 
 answer he is making now without knowing that the reason why 
 the silver dollars have been held at par is because the Govern- 
 ment has done it by force of its pledge of parity, and by the prac- 
 tice of the Treasury in maintaining it, 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada, I can say to the Senator that I was on 
 the conference committee which made what he calls a " pledge of 
 parity," and there was no ''pledge of parity" given. There is 
 not, in my judgment, a lawyer in this body who will tell me that 
 under any rule for the interpretation of statutes a stray expres- 
 sion, such as the Senator calls a "pledge of parity," without any 
 provision for its enforcement, is more binding than a provision 
 distinctly and expressly mandatory, specifying with precision 
 what, under certain circumstances, the executive ofBoers should 
 
 do. 
 
 There was never any promise made that th e silver dollars should 
 be' exchanged for gold. And as every man knows, during the 
 very period in which the gold standard press was stating that 
 the people of this country feared the silver dollars would go to 
 
 785 
 
64 
 
 a discount, those very dollars were going to a premium over gold. 
 There was never a more impertinent declaration put before a 
 people than that the recent panic was occasioned by any fear on 
 the part of the people of this country that their silver money 
 might not retain all its value. What better proof can be cited 
 of this than that silver dollars went to a premium of 3 per cent 
 over gold? 
 
 During all the period of the panic I never heard of a man 
 taking any portion of the mone/of the United States, whether 
 a silver dollar, a greenback dollar, a Treasury note, or note of 
 any other kind, to the Treasury to be exchanged for gold. In 
 all the ' ' runs ' ' that were made upon the banks and all tbe money 
 that was taken out of the" Treasury no effort was made by our 
 people to get gold . The fear entertained by the people was not 
 of the kind of money in which they would be paid. What they 
 feared — and subsequent events proved their fears to be well- 
 founded — was that the banks did not have any form of money in 
 which to pay. 
 
 Mr. VliiAS. Then do I understand the Senator to mean to 
 answer that, in his judgment, there would be no risk of serious 
 monetary disturbance if at once unlimited and free coinage were 
 given to silver at the ratio of 16 to 1? 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Why, Mr. President, if the Senator 
 from Wisconsin would only tell me what he fears — for, from the 
 way he argues, it seems to me that he must fear something — if 
 he would describe to me the character of his fear, I might argue 
 with him about it. I have not the slightest doubt that in ten 
 minutes after a free coinage bill became a law silver would be at 
 a parity with gold. 
 
 I can say another thing to the Senator, that, with a decreasing 
 quantity of gold in the world, silver, if endowed with legal-ten- 
 der functions, would keep on a parity with gold without the 
 slightest difficulty, and I will give the reason for it. I hope I 
 shall be excused by the Senate for anticipating at this time a 
 point which I shall reach in its natural order later on. 
 
 How could silver, when once made full legal tender in this 
 country,fail to maintain a parity with gold? Let us see how that 
 would be. According to the admissions of the Treasury Depart- 
 
 785 
 
C5 / 
 
 ment we liave $600,000,000 of gold in the United States to-day. 
 Our total money supply is given a^ 81,600,000,000. On the basis 
 of that money stock the prices of commodities hold their present 
 level. Does anybody suppose that if we should come to have less 
 than one billion six hundred millions of money in circulation we 
 could have a rise of prices? Will a contraction of the money 
 ▼olume result in an increase of prices? Is that possible under 
 any theory of finance of which anybody ever heard? 
 
 Mr. VILAS. If the Senator desires an answer 
 
 Mrs JONES of N^ada- Yes; I desire to know if we can have 
 an inflation with a smaller quantity of money? 
 
 Mr. VILAS. I will ask the Senator this quesition: If that Con- 
 dition of things took place, would not the owners of silver in Eu- 
 rope and Mexico and other parts of the world bring their silver 
 here to be coined into dollars with which they would buy our 
 gold and transport it(to where it was worth more than the silver? 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada, I will admit all that, just for the pur- 
 pose of the argument, but I have never been able to find these 
 ownersof silvei*; I have never known where they lived or where 
 they are to be found; and nobody has ever pointed them out; but 
 I will take it for granted the Senator knows about it and that 
 they are a great menace to this country — threatening every day 
 to come here and pour their moneyinto this country. 
 
 Mr. VILAS. Has the Senator never heard of the fact that 
 the Bank of Prance has some $700,000,000 of silver in its vaults'/ 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. I will take all the facts. The Bank 
 of France has $250,000,000 of its reserve in Silver and that silver 
 can not be sold without legislation changing the money system 
 of the country. It is held there at a ratio of 15i to 1. If they 
 did sell it they would have to bring it here at the ratio of 16 to 1 
 and lose 3 per cent oh every dollar, they brought. If the Bank 
 Of Prance or any individuals lu' Prance wanted to send here any 
 Prenclj. silver which does not form part of the bank reserve they 
 would have to gather it in from all the nooks and corners of the^ 
 country at great'expense for brokers' commissions. That ex- 
 pense would be in addition to the loss on the ratio. There would 
 be another loss in melting it up and eliminating the alloy pre- 
 paratory to presenting it' at our Mint. The French people 
 
 785 5 
 
60 
 
 have never been particularly anxious to lose money. They are 
 among the ablest financiers in Europe, and, have m:iintaincd 
 greater financial stability than dny country of yiat continent. 
 Mr. VILAS. By stopping the coinage of silver. 
 
 WHY FBANOB OLOSBD HER MINTS TO SILVEB. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. I will answer that suggestion at once.. 
 In the first place, as a scientific principle, a stationary popula- 
 tion needs no increase in the volume of its money, and France 
 has a population that is stationary. In -the second place, at the 
 time of the suspension of the silver coinage, the legions of Ger- 
 many had trampled into the dust the ensign of Prance, and in 
 the pride of conquest had extorted a thousand million of dollars 
 .from a humiliated people. Germany at the same time demon- 
 etized silver and adopted a gold standard, expecting and intend- 
 ing to send the discarded silver to France ajid get French gold. 
 
 j<'rance had no objection to silver, which has always been the 
 money of her people; but France wanted nothing that was Ger- 
 man, whether good or bad. The reason for the action of France , 
 therefore, was a political and not an economic reason. Her 
 people were actuated by motives of national pride. Resenting 
 with bitterness the humiliation to which the armies of Germany 
 had subjected them, they \vere prepared tp resent with equal 
 bitterness any attempt of Germany to make the monetary laws 
 of France a means of contributirig toward the carrying out of 
 any policy which Germany might decide to be for her own wel- 
 fare. 
 
 Mr. STEWART. If my colleague will allow me, France has 
 not given the one year's notice required under .the agreement 
 of the Latin Union; and if she went to an exclusive gold stand- 
 ard she would have to pay $1.33 an ounce in gold for more than 
 one hundred millions of silver. That she refused to do. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. She never has done it, and she never 
 will do it. She sees that silVer is doing all the work of gold. 
 
 The Senator from Wisconsin [Mr. Vilas] talks as though, if 
 a people have a white token whicn performs exactly the same 
 service as a yellow token; and of whicJi nobody complains, but 
 with which everyone is satisfied, and which, in fact, everyone 
 must have for use in the everyday business of life, men will 
 
 785 
 
67 
 
 eagerly grasp at an opportunity to lose 4, or 5, or 6 per cent in 
 exobanging it f or somsthing that will do no more service and 
 perform no better service. That, I suppose, is what the Sena- 
 tor means. 
 
 But I will take him at his word and suppose that the Bank of 
 France should send its $250,000,000 over here and buy so much 
 gold. The prices of commodities here could not increase on. 
 that account. We should have no greater number of dollars 
 than before the gold went out, so we should still have the gold 
 range of prices. The Senator does not,, I presume, mean to say 
 that we could have an inflation of prices in a country when the 
 quantity of money did not increase. Having at present $1,600,- 
 000,000 of money, if two hundred and fifty millions of gold went 
 out and no more than two hundred and fifty millions of silver 
 came in, we should haye the same amount of money that we had 
 before. There could,, therefore, be no inflation. Wheat and 
 • cotton would bring as much as heioj^e, and so would all other 
 products of labor. What, then, would be the harm"? 
 
 Mr. GRAY. May I ask the Senator why It was that in the 
 era of high prices piy.or to 1873 the per capita circulation in this 
 country was less than it is now, if we are to believe the sljatistios 
 we have from the Treasury Department? 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. The statistics are not correct. Every 
 student of the subject knows them to be incorrect. 
 
 Mr. VILAS. I should like", if I do not interrupt the Senator 
 too much, to again ask him a question. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. I shall be glad to hear the Senator. 
 
 Mr. VILAS. The Senator assumes that I am saying some- 
 thing or making some argument, when I only addressed him a 
 question. I asked him whether there was not danger of a mon- 
 etary disturbance in the event of our going to the free coinage 
 of silver. I suggest that the price of silver in the world is 
 not to exceed 60 per cent of the price which would probably be 
 fixed upon it by such action on our part. Now, I ask the Sena- 
 tor if the two hundred and fifty millions of gold which he just 
 mentioned would not go up proportionately? 
 
 "Mr. JONES of Nevada. I presume that an artificial panio 
 
68 
 
 might be.created, the same as the last one was, if you could get 
 the Government and the bankers generally to engage in it. 
 
 Mr. VILAS. I should like right there to say that if it be true 
 that a panic would follow, which the Senator chooses to desig- 
 nate as an artificial panic 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. That would be a correct designation 
 for it. 
 
 Mr. VILAS. I want to ask, then, if the true remedy, to meet 
 what the Senator contends is an evil, is not to demonetize gold", 
 to withdraw its legal- tender quality, and leave both metals stand 
 upon the same ^lane? 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Why, Mr. President, the Senator 
 argues as though I had said there would really be a panic on ac- 
 count of the exchange of gold for silver. There would not be 
 the slightest panic unless, as I said, the banks and the Govern- 
 ment, acting together, were determined to make one. They 
 can make one under any circumstances. But when the Senator 
 talks about all the silver in the world coming here, I ask him 
 how the silver of India is to come? Does he suppose the people 
 of .that country will sell their silver for our gold? Up to tie time 
 of the demonetization of silver by Germany and the United 
 States,- did India send forth her silver to buy gold? Did Mex- 
 ico? Did any silver-using or silver-producing country? 
 
 Mr.*VILAS. Not then. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Why not? It could have been done 
 then. Silver was money then in Germany, in Prance, in the 
 United States, and in many other countries. 
 
 Why should the East Indian, however, part with his silver? 
 The disparity between silver and gold has not arisen from a fall 
 in the purchasing power of silver. Silver bullion in Liverpool 
 or London to-day will buy as much of the products of labor — as 
 much of the products of the farmers of Wisconsin and the plant- 
 ers of the South — as either silver money or gold money would 
 buy twenty years ago. 
 
 Silver is performing the same benefi.cent function now in India 
 that it performed then. Yet Senators are unable to see that the 
 change which has taken place is an advance in the value of gold. 
 To the eyes of people generally in gold-standard countries silver 
 
 785 
 
69 
 
 appears to have fallen, while to the eyes of the East Indian, who 
 sees silver buying as much as it ever bought, the change that 
 has taten place is that gold has risen. Should silter and gold 
 now reach a parity, that fact would, to the East Indian, be an un- 
 erring indication, not that silver had risen, but that gold had 
 suddenly fallen. In neither case would it make the slightest 
 difference to him. As he had refused to buy' gold when it was 
 rising in value, so he would naturally refuse to buy it if the proc- 
 ess should be"'re versed and it should fall in value. 
 
 WHY Dm NOT THE LAW OF 1890 EESTOBB IHB PARITY? 
 
 Mr. HIGGINS. Will the Senator yield to me? 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Certainly. 
 
 Mr. HIGGINS. I understood the Senator, in reply to tha 
 Senator from Wisconsin a few minutes ago, to ask where would 
 the silver come from to depi-ess the value and the price of it if we 
 went to free coinage. Now, I ask the Senator, in turn, why 
 was it when we undertook to buy, and did buy, 4,500,000 ounces 
 of silver bullion a month — 51,000,000 ounces a year — under the 
 Sherman law, that it did "not put up and keep the price of sil- 
 ver at a parity with gold, but that the supply of silver in the 
 world was such that even our purchase of the American product 
 did not bring it to a pd,rity? ^ 
 
 One other question, which is in keeping with the one I have 
 just propounded: If the Senator's theories are true, how is it that 
 India found that, under the free coinage of silver there, the 
 value of the rupee went dd wn to the bullion value of the silver , and 
 exchanges there so fluctuated that India has, had to abandon the 
 ' free coinage of silver and undertake to establish an artificial 
 value at Is. 4(2. an ounce? 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. The Senator from Delaware [Mr. 
 HiGGiNS] has heretofore stated that at the time of the passage 
 of the Sherman law the opinion was expressed that the pur- 
 chase of 4,500,000 ounces of silver bullion a month would bring 
 silver to a parity with gold. Even had that opinion been ex- 
 pressed, Mr. President, it would naturally have been based 
 upon the value of gold at that time; that is to say, itwould have 
 been expressed with reference to the level at which gold in its 
 upward trend had at that time arrived But without regard to 
 
70 
 
 silver, the value of gold has continued to rise. If I may use 
 an illustration, the case is somewhat analogous to one in which 
 a person contracted to erect a dam across a river with a view to 
 bringing the level of the water to a height corresponding with 
 that of a pillar whose summit was a given number of feet above 
 the level of the stream. All^the calculations of the engineers 
 showed that in order to accomplish the desired result, the pro- 
 posed dam would need to be a structure rising a certain num- 
 ber of feet from the bed of the river, and incidentally, it was 
 noted, that when finished it would be on a level with a con- 
 siderable number of objects, such as rocksj etc., near the bank 
 of the stream, and houses, fences, etc., farther in shore. But 
 when the dana was finished to the height proposed, it was ob- 
 served with surprise that the level of the inclosed water was 
 farther from the summit o£ the pillar than it had been before 
 the dam was constructed. So the computations of the engineers 
 were again carefully revised, and it was found that no error 
 of calculation had been made. The height of the dam was then 
 compared with that of the numerous objects on shore, with which, 
 as had originally been observed, its height wheh completed, 
 should correspond; and it was found, as to all those objects, 
 that it fi*lly complied with the conditions. It then became 
 manifest that what had happened was that during the progx'ess 
 of the work of construction the pillar was rising faster than the 
 dam. This was evidenced by the fact that the summit of the 
 pillar was now plainly higher in its relation to all the surround- 
 ing objects than it had been when the dam was commenced. 
 Notwithstanding this, there were large numbers of persons who 
 insisted that what had happened was that the water had fallen 
 below the original level of the stream. 
 
 Metaphor apart, it is, as I have said, not silver that has fallen, 
 biit gold,that has risen. Prices of commodities measured by 
 silver have remained firm; measured by gold they have fallen 
 more disastrously during the past three years than at any previ- 
 ous period, and more rapidly in foreign countries than in this 
 country. By reason of this greater fall abroad than here even 
 the operations of the McKinley law have to a great degree been 
 neutralized, and, as a consequence, the importations of com- 
 
 785 
 
71 
 
 modities into this country have been enormously ijicreasing. So 
 that gold was for a season taken from here to pay for those ex- 
 cessive importations, although that was not the only reason for . 
 the outflow of the metal. There were imperative needs of Euro- 
 peans for gold to meet obligations of their own, arising largely 
 out of a great panic in gold-standard Australia, and a panicky 
 condition all over gold-standard Europe; besides the demands of 
 Austria in, its ill-advised attempt to go from the silver to the 
 gold standard: But all this outgo of gold from this country has 
 been ascribed to the Sherman law. 
 
 When the Senator says that in India the value of the rupee 
 fell to the bullion value, I will say to him that with unrestricted 
 coinage the coin value and the bullion value were always coin- 
 cident; so they were in India, and so they always will be wher- 
 ever coinage is unrestricted and there is no charge for coining. 
 There never was, consequently, any variance between the mar- 
 ket and the mint value of silver in India. As to the statement 
 that India had to abandon free coinage, the Senator may not be 
 aware that great protests have been sent from the East Indian , 
 people to the government against this monstrous violation of 
 every equity, this monstrous invasion of the rights of the 280,- 
 000,000 people of India. 
 
 In manufactures and general development the people of India, 
 in the pasttwenty years, have made marvelous and unprecedented 
 progress. The cotton mills of Bombay are now supplying to 
 China and Japan six times the quantity of cotton yarns which 
 Great Britain supplieSj and all this with a money metal that they 
 say is ' ' falling. " The, Senator seems not capable of seeing move- 
 ment except in one direction. It is impossible for him to see 
 a rise; he can only see a fall. We assert that in purchasing 
 power silver did not fall in India; that measured by labor, and 
 by the products of labor measured by the wheat and the cotton 
 that the ryot produces, and by the yarn he spins, in short, meas- 
 ured by everything that he makes, or that he d,oes, there has 
 been no change in the value of silver in India. I repeat, it is not 
 silver that has fallen, but gold that has risen. 
 
 All political economists agree that while a number of things 
 may change their relations to each other, yet, when all appear 
 
72 
 
 to change in relation to one particular thing it is not in reality 
 all things that have changed , but the one thing that has changed. 
 All things appearing to have changed with relation to gold, it 
 is absurd to suppose that all things have really changed and that 
 gold is unchangeable. It is gold that has changed. 
 
 THE EAST INDIA QUESTION. 
 
 Among the 280,000,000 people of India there has been no change 
 of value in the rupee; there, has been practically no change in 
 the rates Qf wages. Statisticians have attempted to show a 
 change by showing some increase for personal services in the 
 seaboard cities of servants of the English resident officials, but 
 there has been practically no change. 
 
 Mr. STEWART. And that is why the rupee is called the 
 " perverse rupee.'' 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Yes; Mr. Gosehen, in England, char- 
 acterised it as the "perverse rupee" because it did not change 
 in value at all, notwithstanding that from the English point of 
 view it ought to change. 
 
 Mr. HAWLEY. I am somewhat troubled by what the Sena- 
 tor is saying in respect to India, where there is a vast multitude 
 of employes of various sorts, and officers in the military and civil 
 service, whose salaries have been and are now paid in rupees. 
 The Senator is perfectly familiar with all of these questions, of 
 course, as to India, and knows that one of the difficulties of the 
 situation there was that these officials appealed to the mercy of 
 the British Government, saying that those living on fixed sala- 
 ries could not support themselves. What occasioned that con- 
 dition of things in India. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. I will tell the Senator what was really 
 the matter. The cupidity of the Englishman is a good deal like 
 the cupidity of the American? When the contingent of English 
 officials stationed in India and drawing their salaries in rupees 
 saw that in England the newspapers and bankers were con- 
 stantly talking of the "fall" of silver, although these Indian 
 officials got as much for that silver as before, they said: " What- 
 ever may happen to the Hindoo we shall be much better off if 
 we can secure the adoption of the gold standard in India." What 
 is true of officials in India is true of officials everywhere, when- 
 
 785 
 
73 
 
 ever a man thinks he can get an increase of salary he will apply 
 for it. 
 
 Mr. STEWART. From the President down. [Laughter.] 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Yes, from the President down. That 
 is inherent in human nature. Those men could then buy with 
 their silver as much as they could buy at any previous period, 
 but they wanted to have their salaries doubled. 
 
 The East Indians have universally complained of the action of ' 
 the British Government. They find that it takes 2 pounds of 
 cotton and 2 bushels of wheat to pay the same amount of inter- 
 est on the enormous gold debt due to Great Britain that 1 pound 
 or 1 bushel would pay before. This means that it now takes two 
 days' work in India to pay the same amount of interest on a 
 Sterling debt that one day's work would pay before. Great Brit- 
 ain has her great dependency in a practically helpless condition. 
 
 Bitter as are the assaults of the English writers against " fiat " 
 money, the British Government has by its order of June 28, 
 1893, established fiat money throughout India, for no stickler for 
 " intpinsio value," so called, can for a moment suppose that with 
 the limitation-upon its coinage, the rupee is any longer anything 
 more than if the stamp of the government were placed upon so 
 much paper. i 
 
 Mr. TELLER. Will the Senator from Nevada allow me to 
 make a suggestion to the Senator from Connecticut [Mr. 
 
 HAWIiEY]? 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Certainly. 
 
 Mr. TELLER. If the Senator from Connecticut will examine 
 the report of the English commission of 1888, he will find the 
 question which troubles him thoroughly discussed and solved. 
 The complaint of the Indian officials was that they had to ex- 
 pend a portion of their income in England; for instance, they 
 had to send their children to school in England, as they could 
 not be educated in India, and purchases had to be made in England 
 which could not very well be made in India. The English commis- 
 sion thoroughly discussed that question. The hardship on an 
 English oflicer in India was that probably one-half of his income 
 was spent in England and he had to transmute his rupees into 
 gold. That commission directly stated that,, so far as the pur- 
 
 785 
 
74 
 
 chasing power of the ruped in India was concerned, it had not 
 fallen. 
 
 THE SILVER BASIS AGAIN. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Now, I want to return to my friend from 
 Wisconsin [Mr. VlLAS]. He fears that the silver reserve of the 
 Bank of France, $250,000,000, may come over here. Suppose it 
 , should come. We have $660,000,000 of gold in this country. De- 
 ducting $250,000,000 from that, we are left with $350,000,000 of 
 gold. We have, then, no more money than before, for a dollar 
 of silver can perf ornf no more monetary function or service than 
 a dollar of gold. Therei?, therefore, ho inflation; no cheating of 
 the creditor; he gets as much as he did before for every dollar 
 he lent. 
 
 Suppose Austria sends in $20,000,000 more, that makes $270,- 
 000,000, and we have $330,000,000 left. Now, suppose Germany 
 sends in $80,000,000. We have still left $250,000,000— but not a 
 dollar of iiicrease of money, and consequently no change of the 
 general range of prices. How can you have inflation or any va- 
 riation between silver and gold until you first have enouarh sil- 
 ver by itself to do all the business that both gold and silver did 
 before? So that you would need to have more than $600,000,000 
 of silver brought in before all the gold could go out, or before 
 there bould be any rise in prices of commodities, for no one will 
 pretend that there oould be a condition of inflation without an 
 increase of the volume of money. We must remember that when 
 our gold got to Europe it would raise prices there, and so help 
 all the sooner to establish an international equilibrium, render- 
 ing it less necessary for gold to leave here. 
 
 Mr. VILAS. Does the Senator not see that $360,000,000 of sil- 
 ver, 60 per cent of $600,000,000 of gold, would be coined into 
 $600,000,000 of silver dollars with which the $600,000,000 of gold 
 oould be obtained? We assume that silver is worth 60 cents 
 upon the dollar of gold. You propose at that ratio to adopt free 
 and unlimited coinage. Then, what hinders $360,000,000 worth 
 of silver being brought in here-and coined into $600,000,000 of 
 silver to be exchanged for $600,000,000 of gold? 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. I think the Senator ought to show 
 where the silver would come from. 
 
 785 
 
75 
 
 Mr. VILAS. Is it not more than $360,000,000?' 
 ' Mr. JONES of Nevada. I do not know where the ^Senator 
 oould'get the silver. 
 
 Mr. VILAS. Silver is for sale. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. In what market? 
 
 Mr. VILAS. There is $360,000,000 worth of silver bullion. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. The visible stock in the United States 
 is not $3,000,000. When Senators speak of the immense amount 
 of silver that would come here, I should like them to point oi^t 
 where it is. I am trying to find out where it is, and the Sena- 
 tor can not point it out. 
 
 Mr. VILAS. If there is no silver to be coined, what advan- 
 tage is there in free and unlimited coinage? t 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. The small amount coming annually 
 from the mines would be coined. I deny the Senator's state- 
 ment. I assert — and I challenge authoritative contradiction — 
 that there is not $20,000,000 of silver bullion for sale in the world. 
 
 Mr. VILAS. I was going to ask the Senator ii there were not 
 almost $200,000,000 worth of silver produced from the mines last 
 year? I do not mean from our mines, but from the mines of the 
 world. I 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Not quite so much; but even were it 
 so, whkt then? 
 
 Mr. VILAS. We have it yet. If the Senator takes the 
 ground 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. I will take these figures just to ac- 
 commodate the Senator. Does he mean to tell me that there 
 is $200,000,000 of silver for sale at 60 cents for 311 grains? That 
 silver of last year is not on the market now. 
 
 Mr. VILAS. 1 will ask the Senator if he does not understand 
 that there are nearly four thousand millions of silver in the 
 world? 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Between $3,800,000,000 and $4,000,- 
 000,000. 
 
 Mr. STEWART. What can it be bought for? 
 
 Mr. VILAS. About 68 cents on the dollar in gold. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Oh, no. Only the uncoined surplus- 
 age that is denied access to the mint could be had at that price, 
 
76 
 
 and the moment that surplusage were taken up silver would rap- 
 idly go to its old relation. The free coinage of silver in this 
 country would take up at once the entire surplus — which is but 
 a small surplus — that is left on the market uncoined. Even to- 
 day, however, no larger amount of silver could be bought for 
 gold in India than enough to meet the current gold liabilities of 
 the Indian Government. 
 
 Mr. VILAS. I think the Senator's difficulty is apparent 
 
 Mr. JONEfe of Nevada. The Senator says the difficulty is ap- 
 parent. I say to him that only twenty years ago when silver 
 was at a premium over gold, and the East Indians could get the 
 benefit of that premium in the sale of silver, they did not sell it 
 for gold, because they did not want the gold. Gold does not cir- 
 culate in India, and in the nature of things can not circulate 
 there. Wages at 10 cents a day can not be paid in gold. We 
 must remember that about the time of the passage of the 
 Sherman law silver bullion rose to $1.20 an ounce, but it rose 
 not in this country alone. It rose to that figure all over the 
 world. Silver bullion could not then be purchased in India, in 
 England, or anywhere else in the world at a less figure than it 
 could be purchased here, and everybody knew the reason for the 
 rise was the prospect of favorable legislation in the United 
 States. - No one can point to any instance in which silver could 
 be bought any cheaper in one country than another, considering 
 transportation charges, etc. Whatever the price of silver is 
 h^re it will be in India, in England, in Germany, and wherever 
 else telegraph cables reach. 
 
 Mr. BUTLER. The Senator from Wisconsin [Mr. Vilas] has 
 stated to the Senator from Nevada that the annual product of 
 silver was about $200,000,000, and left the inference to be drawn 
 that that $200,000,000 would be dumped into this country if we 
 went to the free coinage of silver. As an offset in part to that 
 inference, I desire to ask the Senator from Nevada if he can 
 give us an approximate statement of what proportion of that 
 $200,000,000 of silver is used in the arts and industries? 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. I suppose about. 30,000,000 ounces 
 would be used in the arts. But the Senator from Wisconsin has 
 failed to answer as to where this silver would come from to take 
 
 785 
 
the place of gold so as to have inflation in this country. I should 
 like to have the Senator from Ohio [Mr. Sherman] or the Sen- 
 ator from Rhode Island [Mr. Aldeich] tell me where the infla- 
 tion could come from and where the silver could come from that 
 would change the parity, or would make a disparity hetween sil- 
 ver and gold in this country? 
 
 Mr. SHERMAN, I have been appealed to by the , Senator, 
 and 1 will say that this same argument was one which largely 
 led the Senate of the United States over three years ago to 
 adopt what is known as the, act of July 14, 1890. The truth is 
 silver would be brought here from all the markets of the world, 
 and a vast mass of 83,800,000,000, amounting to many million 
 ounces, from all parts of the world, would come here and be saddled 
 upon us at its market value. 
 
 The same argument now so earnestly and ingeniously put, and 
 always put by the Senator from Nevada, was proved to be falla- 
 cious four years ago. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada.. I made no argument that was falla- 
 cious. I stated the exact facts which existed at that time. The 
 Senator refers to market value. What is it that makes market 
 value? I supposed that the market value was the result, of the 
 supply as correlated to the demand; these two forces operating 
 upon each other. Does the Senator mean to tell me, with a de- 
 mand constant, incessant, and always at a maximum, for money, 
 by seventy million of the greatest money-absorbing people on 
 the face of the earth, that with unrestricted coinage any other 
 market price than the money-price or mint-price could exist? 
 Is it possible that the market price takes no cognizance of the 
 fact that seventy million people, night and day, are demanding 
 that which is money? Why, Mr. President, the Senator's con- 
 tention, I say with all respect, is perfectly absurd. I ask the 
 Senator where the silver could come from. Did the Senator 
 ever know of a dollar of silver coming out of India? Silver in 
 Prance is selling to-day for a dollar and thirty-two cents an 
 ounce. 
 
 Mr. ALDRICH. In gold? 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Of course it is— exchanging for com- 
 modities at the same rate that gold exchanges for the same com- 
 
 78S 
 
78 
 
 modities. I should be glad to be informed how France could sell 
 silver. 
 
 Mr. ALDRICH. gilver bullion sells there relatively at the 
 price it sells in the United States. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. But there is no bullion in France. I 
 am talking about the only silver there is in France, which is in 
 the shape of francs. 
 
 Mr. ALDRICH. We have a coin, for instance, the five-cent 
 piece, in the United States, made of nickel and other combina- 
 tions of metal, which sells for one hundred times its market value 
 in the same way the Senator speaks of silver being sold. 
 
 Mr. JOI^TES of Nevada. You can coin gold so that the ten-dollar 
 . piece will sell for a hundred times its'market value. 
 
 Mr. ALDRICH. That is not selling at all. It is used with cer- 
 tain alloys as money in limited quantity and maintains a certain 
 value on account of the limited quantity. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. It is precisely because you do not 
 limit the quantity of gold you coin that the coin value and the 
 market value are coincident. 
 
 Mr. HOAR. Why does not the Senator iavor the free coinage 
 of nickel? 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Because there is too much of it. I 
 am trying to have somebody, point out where there is too much 
 silver. Besides, nickel has never had unrestricted coinage, and 
 silver always has had, until 1873. I have asked the Senator from 
 Wisconsin to tell me where all the flood of silver is to come from, 
 and he showed that he did not know an^thiilg about it. I want 
 somebody else to point out where silver bullion is coming from. 
 
 Mr. Hawkey rose. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. I will hear the Senator from Connec- 
 ticut. 
 
 Mr. HAWLETf . I will state within a few million where it 
 came from. Here is a list showing the August supply [reading]: 
 "Boston and Colorado Smelting Company; " later, " Boston and 
 Colorado Smelting Company;" later, Boston and Colorado 
 Smelting Company;" and so on, giving the various mines and 
 smelting companies that supply silver. 
 
 Mr. STEWART. If my colleague will allow me I will state 
 
79 
 
 that that bullion was offered from time to time, probably the 
 same bullion. That was after the market price had been abol- 
 ished by the Treasury Department. 
 
 Mr. HAWLEY. I am reading the offers, and opposite each 
 one is " accepted." 
 
 Mr. STEW ABT. There was very little accepted in the month 
 of August. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. How much was the August supply? 
 
 Mr. HAWLEY. The total of the August supply? It was not 
 a great deal. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. I am asking where these millions are 
 to come from? i 
 
 Mr. HAWLEY. I wish the Senator would tell me — probably 
 he knows the figures better than I do — have we not bought 
 something like 150,000,000 ounces in the last three years? 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. In three years? Why, that amount 
 did not begin to be enough to keep pace with the increasing de- 
 mand, owing to increase of |)opulation and business. 
 
 Mr. HAWLEY. That is another question. 
 
 Mr. JOllES of Nevada. No, I deny that silver enough can be 
 got anywhere to make an inflation in this country. I say that 
 from the day the Sherman law was parsed the general level of 
 prices of commodities fell, and I assert that a dollar issued under 
 that law last spring, not speaking of the panic period, was worth 
 more than the first dollar issued under that sajne law. That fact 
 was made plain by the report of the subcommittee on tariff of 
 the Senate Committee on Finance, of which subcommittee the 
 Senator from Rhode Island [Mr. Aldbich] was chairman. That 
 subcommittee attempted to show that the fall of prices was 
 brought about by the operations of the McKinley law, while I 
 maintain tha,t it was really produced by an insufiBcient quantity 
 of money — by a quantity of money whose increase was not keep- 
 ing pace with the increase of population and business. It was 
 attempted to show that the reduction was effected by the tariff 
 law, without any time having been allowed for the genius of the 
 American people to operate by invention upon machinery, a re- 
 sult which the tariff is supposed to effect by putting millions of 
 
 785 
 
80 
 
 workmen into well-equipped shops, and giving them ample op- 
 portunity to develop their genius. 
 
 Singular to say those "improved processes" began their ef- 
 fects as early as two months after the passage of the McKinley 
 law! The fall in prices, it was said, was the beneficent result of 
 that tariff, when in fact that fall had its genesis long prior, in 
 the increasing scarcity of gold as compared with the demand for 
 it. So that, as I have said, every dollar issued under the Sher- 
 man law was more valuable than any prior dollar issued under 
 the same law, and the last one was much more valuable than the 
 first. 
 
 Is that inflation? Does that show that there were too many 
 dollars out? Is that the reason why the supply of those dollars 
 should be out off by repealing the purchasing clause of the so- 
 called Sherman bill? What good reason in morals or philoso- 
 phy, or political economy can be advanced for cutting off the sup- 
 ply of money from the country when notwithstanding the supply 
 the unit of money has been and is constantly increasing in value 
 and looting the debtor in the interest of the idle creditor? How 
 do Senatort defend themselves in this body for cutting-off the sup- 
 ply of money, when it has been shown that the supply instead 
 of inflating prices has not been suflBcient to keep them from con- 
 stantly falling and the load upon the already overburdened 
 back of the debtor has been increasing from day to day? 
 
 That, Mr. President, is the reason why we oppose this bill. 
 We are threatened here with a deluge of silver, but no Senator 
 caff point out the source of the deluge. We have for fifteen 
 years heard of this deluge, but only when some silver law has 
 been under discussion. When the Bland act was being debated 
 in 1878 the New York papers had a statement to the effect that 
 a new process of cupellation had been discovered by which an 
 ■enormous quantity of silver could be obtained by melting up old 
 lead pipes, and that that was one of the sources from which we 
 might expect a " deluge " of silver. Then they said that there 
 had been mines of fabulous riches discovered in the unexplored 
 mountains of Peru, and all that was needed was simply to run a 
 tunnel and take out all that you wanted. These mountains did 
 not materialize. 
 
 785 
 
81 
 
 Mr. VILAS. Will the Senator allow me? 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. With pleasure". 
 
 Mr. VILAS. I remember reading some time ago of a coun- 
 tryman who listened to the Latin debates at Oxford. Somebody 
 asked Mm if he understood the tongue. He said no, but he al- 
 ways knew who was wrong in the argumeht. "And how? " was 
 asked. He replied, "by seeing which one got angry first. '^ 
 [Laughter.] J^ow, I regretted that my learned friend, a very 
 able Senator, who is the special champion of silver, should for a 
 moment have niade a retort that calls upon me to observe that 
 we do not pretend to know all the laws of finance and all the 
 courses of nature and all the effects which will be produced by 
 experimental efforts in the interest of some special problem; 
 but I do wish to ask his attention to the fact that when he began 
 to answer the question which I addressed to him he assumed 
 that silver would come to this country, and proceeded to argue 
 that there would be no harm produced by the inflation, because 
 $250,obO,000 of silver would come, upon the supposition he made, 
 to take out the $250,000,000 of gold.> 
 
 I called his attention to the fact then that for the $600,000,000 
 of gold but $360,000,000 of value of foreign silver would be neces- 
 sary to take the place of it; and he answers me then, "Where is 
 the silver to come from? " forgetting that he had assumed that 
 the silver was to come, as everybody must know would be the 
 fact with $4,000,000,000 worth of it in the world, and a demand 
 here for $360,000,000 to take $600,000,000 worth of gold. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. For the sake of the argument I as- 
 sumed it to come, and I showed that if it came it could do no 
 harm. But if the Senator continues to assert that $360,000,000 
 worth of foreign silver would come, it is incumbent on him to 
 show where it is to come from. I have already stated that there 
 was silver coin in Prance that was selling at a higher price than 
 even our free coinage would give. It is already exchanging in 
 Prance at a higher rate than it is exchanging here. Nobody is 
 going to gather up the silver of Prance , aiid sei^d it here and 
 lose 3, 4, 5, or 6 per cent on it. Nobody would do that in any 
 other country. In discussing the supposititious available stock 
 785— -« 
 
82 
 
 I had reference to silver that is not permitted coinage, Hihat has 
 not access to the mint. Where is that? No man can pointit out. 
 
 Then I called the Senator's attention to another thing. If 
 this country should adopt free coinage at the ratio of 16 tol (and 
 at the present relation of silver to gold it would be about 25 to 
 1) does he imagine that when the Government advertises that it 
 will take silver at 16 to 1 any man anywhere will take any less 
 than $1.29 an ounce for it? Does the Senator imagine anybody 
 is going to do that? The moment a free-coinage bill is passed, 
 that instant silver goes to $1.29. Is not that in accordance with 
 our knowledge of human nature? 
 
 Does any business man in this body suppose that if silver were 
 $1.29 an ounce here he could get an ounce of it anywhere for 
 less than the amount at which this Government says it will take 
 it? I again inquire: Who has any? I have asked these gentle- 
 men to point out where it is. They can not point it out. Great 
 Britain has none. All that is in Prance is selling at a higher 
 rate and as to all that is in India, none has ever left India .that 
 went into it. Will Prance gather up pieces of money that are 
 already full legal tender, performing every service that could bo 
 performed by gold, and send them here at a loss? 
 
 Mr. GRAY. Bullion? 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Where is the bullion? Senators can 
 not point to it. I have asked where it is because I wish to strip 
 the mask off this entire pretense. Twenty-five million dollars 
 of bullion can not be found. No Senator can point it out. We 
 are for ever being told about the great flood that will come upon 
 us. This " flood " is a myth. It will not stand examination. 
 
 Mr. HILL. Will the- Senator from Nevada allow me a mo- 
 ment? . 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Certainly. 
 
 Mr. HILL. I rise not for the purpose of asking a question but 
 to appeal to him that he will not allow interruptions, but con- 
 tinue his speech in the order he set out for himself. I for one 
 would like to listen to his connected speech. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. That course is entirely agreeable to 
 me. The digressions I made were with the view of answering 
 such questions as were put to me. Much that I hUve said in this 
 
 785 
 
83 
 
 way will be dealt with, in its proper order in the course of my 
 remarks, and therefore if I shall seem to repeat the substance 
 of something that I have stated in thesp colloquies with Sena- 
 tors, I hope I may not be regarded as boring the Senate. 
 
 Mr. HILL. It will bear repetitton.' 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. I thank the Senator. 
 
 Mr. ALDRTCH. Before the Senator leaves this part of his 
 argument I wish to say a single word, not for the purpose of in- 
 terfering with his speech or to divert his attention, but in an- 
 swer to a statement he made some time ago. 
 
 The Senator challenged the friends of the pending measure to 
 show where the silver was coming from, that is to be brought 
 here and coined under free coinage, and I understood him to say 
 that we could not point out more than $50,000,000 of uncoined 
 silver in the world, and perhaps more than $25,000,000. 
 
 Mr. JONES of' Nevada. Put it at $25,000,000 of bullion un- 
 coined. 
 
 Mr. ALDRICH. That this statement may not go out unchal- 
 lenged, I quote from an address made by Mr. Balfour at the 
 Egyptian Hall, Mansion House, London, August 3, 1893, in which 
 he estimates the amount of uncoined silver in India to be 
 "between one hundred and thirty and two hundred million 
 pounds sterling;" in other words, from $650,000,000 to $1,000,000,- 
 000. 
 
 Mr. Balfour makes the further statement, which is undoubtedly 
 true, that this silver has been i"etaii;ied in Indiaheretof ore from the 
 fact that the people of India had the right to take it to the mints 
 ajid have it coined at any time into money; in other words, that 
 this uncoined silver was in their hands practically a legal tender 
 for all the uses of money in the payment of debts and other uses. 
 The Indian Government having taken away the right of coinage, 
 this silver bullion is in the hands of the people of India, and can 
 not be used except to be sold aa silver bullion at 60 or 70 cents an 
 ounce, or whatever the price may be. If the United States fixed 
 the price at $1 .29 an ounce in gold , I ask if any one holds that that 
 bullion would not be likely to come to the United States? 
 
 This estimate of between £130,000,000 and £200,000,000 ster- 
 ling is made by Mr. Balfour. Mr. David Barbour, of the Indian 
 
84 
 
 Unance committee, whom I regard, and I believe the Senator 
 will agree with me, as the ablest and clearest writer upon the 
 theory of bimetallism, estimates the amount of uncoined silver 
 in India at a larger sum than this. It seems, to me that this 
 statement alone is a sufficient answer to the Senator. 
 
 I do not intend to interfere with the argument the Senator is 
 making, but I might supplement these authorities by many 
 others as to the extent of the stores of silver in the world both 
 coined and uncoined. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. I wish the Senator would do it now 
 I do not know where that silver is. 
 
 Mr. ALDRICH. I have called the Senator's attention to es- 
 . timates made by friends of bimetallism that it now amounts in 
 India alone to between $650,000,000 and $1,000,000,000. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Why, Mr. President, the East In-. 
 dians have this silver laid away in the shape of idols and re- 
 ligious charms, which they hold in far higher esteem than 
 money. Even were Mr, Balfour correct, which I doubt, I ask 
 the Senator whether in case the price of silver rose in some for- 
 eign country those idols and charms would be sold? If so, I 
 should like to know what the East Indians would get in return 
 for them? 
 
 Mr. ALDRICH. Thpy would get gold. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Gold! There is not a single thing in 
 the Western World that the ryots of India use or want. They 
 do not want gold. What would they do with gold after they 
 got it? Why should they sell their silver even if they knew 
 they could get $1.29 an ounce in gold for it? During all the ages 
 when they could get $1.29 for it they did not sell, but constantly 
 increased their hoards of it. Why should they sell it now for 
 $1.29 in order to get a thing for which they have no use? 
 
 Mr. ALDRICH. There was a very good reason why they did 
 not sell it then to America. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Why? 
 
 Mr. ALDRICH. Because thev had a market at their own 
 doors. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. But they never sold it. 
 
 Mr. ALDRICH. They did sell it, I beg the Senator's pardon. 
 
 785 
 
85 
 
 The statistics of the Indian mint show that in very many years, 
 and I think in a majority of years — it_is not so in all the years, but 
 it is so in a great many years — the eoihage of the silver rupee in 
 India was very much greater than the total importation of silver, 
 showing that this great mass of silver bullion was put into coinage 
 according to the wants p,nd demands of the Indian people. They~ 
 had a market at that time at their very door in the Indian mint. 
 That market, which was the only market they had, has now been 
 closed to them'; and to say, as the Senator does, that the people 
 of India are unlike the people of any other country in the world 
 / and have no demand or use for money 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. I did not say they had no use for 
 " money." I said they had no use for gold. 
 
 M!r. ALDRICH. 1 so understood the Senator. 
 ' Mr. JONES of Nevada. I said they do not want anything sup- 
 plied by the western world. 
 
 Mr. ALDRIOH. Does the Senator mean to say. that any peo- 
 ple on this wide earth have no use for-gold? 
 
 Mr. JONES Qf Nevada. I say so. 
 
 Mr, ALDRIOH. I do not know of any. , 
 
 Mri JONES of Nevada. I never heard of the East Indians 
 having anyuse for gold, except for ornaments or charms. They 
 have no use for it as money. 
 
 Mr. ALDRICH. Gold is the measure of everything, and can 
 be converted into' everything. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Gold is the measure of nothing in 
 silver-standard countries. Gold-standard countries use gold for 
 their measure; silvei'-standard countries use silver. Among 
 the 280,000,000 people of India there is hardly one in a million 
 who, in any bargain or transaction relating to labor or its prod- 
 ucts, knows anything whatever of gold. 
 
 If there is no- demand among the East Indians for anything 
 produced in the western world they would not dispose of their 
 silver for gold. The Senator's statement about what was coined 
 at the Indian mint proves nothing. It simply proves that by 
 reason of abrasion reooinages took place. There has always 
 been a proportion of reooinages in India every year. The state- 
 ment does not prove that the charms are coined. 
 
 785 
 
86 > 
 
 Mr. ALDRICH. I will bring proof of my statement from th.e 
 testimony taken before the Indian commission at a recent date — 
 1888. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Does the Senator go so far as to say 
 that the charms, etc., to which I have referred, were coined? 
 
 Mr. ALDRICH. I do. A large number of witnesses stated 
 that this uncoined silver in India was taken to the mint and 
 coined whenever the wants of the people who held the silver re- 
 quired that it should be done. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. There is no more danger of that sil- 
 ver coiiing out of India than there is that the silver money in 
 circulation in India would flow out, 
 
 Mr. ALDRICH. I will suggest to the Senator from Nevada 
 that the statement which he originally made was not that the 
 sUver would not under any circumstances come to the United 
 States, but that there was no such stock of silver in existence. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Every one knows there has always 
 been a large stock of silver in existence in India, but what I as- 
 sert is that there is not any stock of silver there that would 
 leave India, and therefore it is not in existence for that purpose. 
 I am quite sure that the Senator will find, upon examination 
 that the annual recoinages of the old rupees, fully account for 
 the difference between the net imports of silver to India and 
 the amount of coinages shown by the mint returns. 
 
 Mr. ALDRICH. But suppose the price of silver here should 
 be sent up by our action? 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. They could sell it for its market 
 price in London, which would then be the same as here, less only 
 the cost of transportation to this country. They could sell it at 
 that price wherever silver is bought and sold. But does the 
 Senator suppose if an East Indian has a charm which he almost 
 worships, and which cost him $1.16 in the products of India, he 
 will sell it as soon as the metal in it becomes worth $1.17 in 
 gold? 
 
 Mr. ALDRICH. I think he would! If he sends that silver 
 to London at the present time he gets no more than the rupee 
 is worth in India, and he gets no better market than the bullion 
 is worth at home. 
 
 785 
 
87 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. There is no market in India for the 
 bullion. If they can not coin it, what will they do ^/vith it? 
 
 Mr. ALDRICH. The Senator from Colorado [Mr. Teller] 
 and several other Senators have called attention to the fact that 
 the importation of silver has been going on in India since the 
 suspension of silver coinage. If there is no market why are they 
 sending it? There certainly is a market^ but it is a market for 
 the bullion itself at its present market price. If you increase 
 that market price here from 70 cents to $1.29 an ounce, you could 
 not stop the silver flqw to the United States. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. If I may suppose a somewhat parallel 
 case, it is hardly to be presumed that because of an increase in 
 fim price of silver bullion the Christian people of the United 
 , States would propose to sell the Communion service of their 
 churches. Now, the Hindoo is not merely religious; he is in- 
 tensely supers,titious. He attaches great virtue to these idols 
 and religious charms, and would as soon think of selling them 
 as our people would think of ordering a sale of the Communion 
 service of their churches because of a rise in the price of silver 
 bullion. 
 
 Mr. ALDRICH. I hardly think that is an answer. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. It is a complete answer. 
 
 Mr. ALDRICH. The Senator knows as well as I, and very 
 much better, that from 1834, or whenever the silver producWn 
 of the United States was commenced, up to 1873, practically the 
 silver bullion of the United States went to the French and other 
 European mints, because they paid 3 per cent more for it than 
 could be obtained for it in the Unitea States. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Undoubtedly. 
 
 Mr. ALDRICH. If the Senator supposes that with a differ- 
 ence of between 70 cents and $1.29 the people of India would not 
 take advantage of this market he gives them credit for very 
 much, less intelligence than I think they have. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. The Senator does not state the propo- 
 sition at all. When silver becomes $1.29 here it becomes $1.29 
 everywhere. To show that it is law that governs absolutely the 
 value of silver, and the value of gold relatively we have but to 
 look at our own history. Between 1792 and 1834 we had no gold 
 
 785 
 
88 
 
 in tMs country. All our business was done with silver. Why? ^ 
 Because silver was overvalued here, 15 pounds of it being a legal 
 tender equal to a pound of gpld; while by the law of France 15J 
 pounds of silver were required in that country to be given for a 
 pound of gold. Yet we have been told here in a great number 
 of speeches on this floor that the relation we made was not the 
 "market" relation. Why, Mr. President, there was no " market 
 relation " about it. It was law that fixed the relation. The re- 
 lation established by our law overvalued silver as compared with 
 the relation established by the law of France. The French having 
 made I5i pounds of silver the equivalent of 1 pound of gold, 
 while in this country we made only 15 pounds of silver the 
 equivalent of a poUnd of gold, who was going to send a pound" of 
 gold here to exchange it for 15 pounas of silver, when he could - 
 send his gold to France and get 15i pounds of silver for it? 
 
 What was the result? Although there was only one-half of 1 
 per cent difference, and that in a metal most precarious in its 
 supply, involving greater degrees of difference in coat of pro- 
 duction than almost any other commodity known to man; we all 
 know that the law of France operated to take all the gold out of 
 this country and leave all the silver here. Then in 1834, when 
 the mines of North Carolina and other portions of the South 
 were discovered, we changed our relation; instead of 15 to 1, we 
 made it 16 to 1. That meant an overvaluation by law of gold 
 as compared with silver. 
 
 No • ' market" had anything to do with fixing that price. It was 
 the law. Clear up to 1'834, for forty years in the history of the 
 Republic, all the gold went out, owing to the figure at which 
 the law of our country had fixed the relation of the metals, and 
 for the same reason all the silver at a later period went out. 
 When we made the ratio of 16 to 1, only one-haU of 1 per cent 
 over the former valuation, from that time on gold came and sil- 
 ver went. That was entirely due to the laws establishing the 
 I ratios in the two countries respectively, making the two metals 
 interchangeably legal tender at a ratio in one country different 
 from that at which they were legal tender in the other. 
 
 Mr. ALDRICH. I invoke in behalf of the statement which I 
 make the very law which the Senator has been stating with 
 
 785 
 
89 
 
 such clearness. I believe from 1834 to 1873 the United States 
 paid $1.29 an ounce for silver bullion for coinage purposes, and 
 practically th e French people paid $1.33 an ounce for silver. By 
 a law as invariable and as irresistible as the law of gravity the 
 silver went to the Fr ench mints to be coined. Why? Because 
 3 per cent more was paid for it there. That will be true in India, 
 and it has always been true everywhere. 
 
 The Senator says it is ths law of legal' tender that fixes the 
 value of silver. Take the example of India, which has had her 
 mints for a generation open to the free coinage of silver at the 
 ratio of 15 to 1, and with the silver rupee at the par value of 2 
 shillings, we have seen the purchasing power of that rupee go 
 down, down, down to 1 shilling and 3 pence, although there are, 
 270,000,000 of people who were using silver as currency, 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. I must deny the Senator's statement. 
 
 Mr. ALDRICH. The people of India who hold this silver can 
 not get to-day in any country in the world any more ihan its 
 market price in India and its bullion price- in London for their 
 coin. I say that there is no country on the face of the globe, 
 civilized or uncivilized, which would pay any more for this In- 
 dian coin than its bullion market price in London; but if "we say 
 in the United States that this great Government, that this great 
 ' people, with our vast resources, will make an open offer of $1.29 
 an ounce for something that is not worth over 10 cents in the 
 other markets of the world, if the Senator asserts that that sil- 
 ver will not flow to the United States for a market, then he does 
 not believe in any of the natural laws which govern this and all 
 other questions. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Mr. President, the proposition of the 
 Senator borders on absurdity, if I may say so without meaning 
 offense to the Senator. The idea that the people of India are 
 going to trade off that which is essential to the peculiar civili- 
 zation which they have for something that they do not need and 
 never use, will not stand for a moment. 
 
 The Senator talks as if thd people of India were hungering 
 and thirsting for gold. They do not want it. We have nothing 
 that they could buy with it, since we produce nothing whatever 
 that they use. 
 
 785 
 
90 
 
 When the Senator states that silver has been continually de- 
 clining in value we deny it, and have denied it, and supported 
 our denials with proofs over and over again. He produces no 
 proof of any such decline. 
 
 The silver rupee buys as much for the East Indian to-day as 
 it ever did, and yet Senators insist that it has fallen. But they 
 do not prove it. By reference to no range of prices anywhere, 
 by reference to no products of labor anywhere, do they prove 
 
 that it has fallen. The Senator does not see that it is gold that 
 
 i 
 IS rising and not silver that is falling. 
 
 Mr. ALDRICH. The Senator says we can give the East In- 
 dians nothing in exchange. We have gold which the Senator 
 himself says represents everything and purchases everything. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. It represents everything in gold- 
 standard countries. But the Hindoos do not want gold. Their 
 money is silver. To them silver represents everything and pur- 
 chases everything. 
 
 Mr. ALDRICH. Let us look for a moment and see. The In- 
 dian ryot has the rupee, with which he purchases clothing or 
 whatever it may be. He might get a certain quantity to-day at 
 a certain price of silver. Whatever might be the , relation be- 
 tween the price of wheat and the price of silver in India, he 
 certainly would get twice as much if he could change that rupee 
 into twice as much gold, whatever the article to be purchased. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. He gets wheat and rice, and such 
 very few other things as suit his limited needs, in his own coun- 
 try. 
 
 Mr. ALDRICH. He wants to purchase something, or else he 
 would have no use for the rupees. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Millions upon millions of Hindoos do 
 not even know that there is such a country as the United States. 
 Are they going to send rupees here to be exchanged for gold so 
 that they can buy some rice and wheat, which are growing right 
 around them? 
 
 Mr. ALDRICH. I do not think that is a fair answer. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. I think it is. 
 
 Mr. ALDRICH. The real argument reduced to its last anal- 
 ysis is simply this, that there are people in the world to whom 
 
 785 
 
91 
 
 it would make no difference whether the purchasing power of 
 their money should be doubled. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nbvada. But the purchasing power does not 
 depend upon the relation between it and gold as is shown by the 
 fact that twenty years ago the relation between that silver and 
 gold was 33 per cent different from what it is to-day, and yet the 
 purchasing power of silver was as great then as that of gold. 
 Does the Senator deny that fact? 
 
 Mr. ALDRICH. I do indeed. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. I made a speech in this Chamber in 
 1890, in which I demonstrated in detail by figures of actual mar- 
 ket prices of commodities and of silver bullion that a givefi num- 
 ber of ounces of that bullion would then buy or command as 
 much of commodities in the market as would either silver money 
 or gold money in 1873. That demonstration has not been criti- 
 cized or shown to be incorrect in any particular, and can not be. 
 The figures were based upon quotations of prices furnished by 
 the Bureau of Statistics of the Treasury Department. I assert 
 now that the silver rupee will purchase as much to-day'as it 
 would in 1873, when at our relation silver was 3 per cent pre- 
 mium over gold. 
 
 Mr. ALDRICH. I think I can illustrate what I mean by 
 making this statement: A thousand rupees rep'resent say 165,000 
 grains of silver. That silver could be sent to London to-day and 
 exchanged for a certain amount of gold. . If the United States 
 bids double the present price of silver it could be exchanged 
 then for twice that amount of gold. > 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Does the Senator suppose, when the 
 Government of the United States gives $1.29 an ounce for silver 
 that anybody can get an ounce of the metal for any less than that 
 amount anywhere in the world? Does he not suppose that it 
 will be $1.29 everywhere? 
 
 Mr. ALDRICH. If we bid $1.29 it will all come here. 
 
 Mr, JONES of Nevada. Suppose it comes; all we can do is 
 to exchange it. It can be exchanged as well where it is. 
 
 When this subject comes to be carefully examined it will be 
 found thatremonetization will simply put silver' back to where it 
 was before it was demonetized. It had runalong for nearly a cen- 
 
92 
 
 tiiry with practically no change. Why should it have changed 
 since 1873 any more than before, except for that one legislative 
 act? There is not the slightest reason why a trifling increase of 
 the quantity produced should affect the relation betweta the 
 metals. During the infinitely greater increase in the yield of 
 gold after 1848 the metals did not separate,. but were held to- 
 gether by the law of France. This country is now infinitely 
 stronger than France was then, and has an absorbing power for 
 money greater than all Europe combined. It consumes per 
 capita three times as much of all the products of labor as does 
 the population of Europe. The money-absorbing capacity of 
 this country is unequaled by that of any country in the world. 
 (At this point the honorable Senator yielded to Mr. Vooehees 
 for a motion to adjourn.) 
 
 Monday, October 16, 1893. 
 
 A WORD AS TO PKEPARED SPEECHBS. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Mr. President, the remarks of the 
 junior Senator from Massachusetts [Ml". Lodge] a few moments 
 ago in support of his resolution to' forbid the reading here of 
 written speeches demonstrate that the adherents of the gold 
 standard do not believe it to be worth while to make careful 
 preparation for the discussion of this great economic question. 
 Yet I call the attention of the Senate to the fact that scarcely a 
 single contention of those who oppose the pending bill . has been 
 answered in any speech on the gold-standard side. When there- 
 fore the junior Senator from Massachusetts tells us that he wants 
 no written speeches delivered in the Senate, it means that ha 
 and those who agree with him are willing to discuss this great, 
 all-absorbing, and far-reaching question either as I have said 
 wholly without preparation or with such preparation only as 
 may be involved in committing to memory a Fourth of July 
 oration. 
 
 The preparation to be made for a discussion of this subject 
 consists not in schoolboy attempts to commit speeches to memory, 
 but in a serious and careful study of the reasons for and against 
 the passage of the proposed measure. So far as I am concerned 
 I have no desire to commit speeches to memory, but I do wish 
 
 785 
 
93 
 
 that any speech of mine to which the Senate may do me the 
 honor to listen' shall bear evidence at least that some " midnight 
 oil" had been expended in its preparation. 
 
 T have attempted to demonstrate that there is not in money 
 any such thing as intrinsic value; that, essentially, money is not 
 a material thing, but a function, which f unption vitalizes and 
 gives value to the piece of material which serves as the bearer 
 if the function. 
 
 MONET— DERIVATION AND SIGNIFICANCE OE THE WORD. , 
 
 But while money is a function rather than a material, yet it is 
 corrept enough by a species of metonymy to designate by the 
 name "money," the material on which is impressed the sym- 
 bol of the supreme authority of the nation, by right of which" 
 alone any object may exercise the money function. For, as we 
 Bay that a man has a clear head, when we mean that his judgment 
 is good, or that he is a brilliant man when we mean that he has 
 a superior mind, so the name "money " may with propriety at- 
 tach to the thing upon which the money function is impressed. 
 
 The word has a peculiar derivation — one that should invite re- 
 flection. It comes to us from the Latin word which signifies a 
 warning. The coining operations of the Romans were long 
 carried on in a tejnple dedicated to Juno, under the appellation 
 of Juno Moneta, because on the occasion of an important battle 
 the goddess had given to the Romans a warning or admonition, 
 by taking advantage of which they were successful. Thus the 
 origin of the word has a significance far beyond that which the 
 Romans intended — a significance which has continued to the pres- 
 ent time, and will continue while man inhabits the planet. This 
 warning, correctly interpreted, signifies that no institution of 
 civilization is of greater importance than money. To a free 
 people especially it signifies that none should be more sedulously 
 studied, none so carefully regulated, none so vigilantly guarded, 
 if they would preserve not alone their prosperity, but their lib- 
 erties. 
 
 Money being useless to man in a condition of isolation, and 
 therefore entirely a societary instrumentality, it must be the 
 creation of society (that is to say, in so far of governments), and 
 can not be that of an individual, except as he mdy derwe power 
 
 785 
 
94 
 
 from the supreme authority— the authority which represents the 
 people in their collective capacity. 
 
 Money may be composed of anything capable of division and 
 identification' division in order that the pieces may be con- 
 venient for handling, and identification that all men may know 
 these pieces to be duly authorized units of money. 
 
 So long as those fiieces are capable of complete identification, 
 and can, regardless of the credit of the persons using them, be 
 passed and received from hand to hand in the community, in 
 final payment for commodities and services, and in full legal dis- 
 charge and liquidation of debts, they constitute money, without 
 reference to the material of which the pieces may be composed. 
 This is the teaching of history, and the unavoidable deduction 
 from the reasoning of the leading economists — a deduction from 
 which there is no more escape than from the principles of human 
 reason. 
 
 But while, abstractly considered, the material is of no impor- 
 tance, yet from the point of view of the habits and customs of a 
 people the material is of much importance, provided there be 
 enough of it to maintain the general range of prices of commod- 
 ities at a steady level. A people's habits and customs are not to 
 be ignored with reference to the material of the money which 
 they shall use any more than with reference to, anything else 
 which has been hallowed by time. A material that has been in 
 use among a people from time immemorial can more readily be 
 continued in use than can a new material find acceptance. But 
 inasmuchas it is not foi: its own sake that money is needed, but 
 in order to effect exchanges and maintain the equities of time 
 contracts, if there be not enough of such material to maintain 
 the general range of prices at a steady level, there should be no 
 hesitation in adding to it a sufficient quantity of some other fit- 
 ting, material to accomplish that purpose. 
 
 THE VALUE OV MONEY SHOtTLD BE UNCHANGING. 
 
 ■While,in discussing the question of money, some of the minor 
 authorities have exhibited much confusion of thought, the great 
 authorities — the dominating minds— give us a body of principles 
 which compel the mind in search of truth to accept the princi- 
 ple that whatever society decrees to be money is money. As 
 
 785 
 
95 
 
 Prof. Francis A. "Walker says: Whatever does the work of 
 money is m(m«!/ — whatever performs the money worfc is the money 
 thing. 
 
 The value of the unit of money, so far as human wisdom and 
 prescience can provide, should be unchanging. The expression 
 " value of Inoney " does not mean the commodity value of the ma- 
 terial, but the money valite of the unit. Money is valuable, not for 
 the power of being transformed into one thing, or, as is said, of 
 being "redeemed" in one thing, but the infinitely greater power — 
 the power which the alchemists sought, and which Aladdin 
 foreshadowed — the matchless and magical power of command- 
 ing, as by the wave of the enchanter's wand, the transforma- 
 tion and transmutation of all things into one another at. will. 
 This is the power which constitutes money the greatest instru- 
 mentality of an advancing civilization. In comparison with 
 ^his all-embracing power how insignificant the power which 
 commends the material thing on which money function may be 
 placed to the admiration of savages for the trivial purpose of 
 decoration — whether the decoration be as with the more civilized 
 people for the wrist and the neck or, as among less civilized, 
 for the g.nkle and the nose. Money has value for the reason de- 
 scribed by the prophet — because it "answereth all things." 
 
 Money not being essentially a material thing, but an ofBce or 
 purpose served by a material thing, its value doesnotj as I have 
 stated, depend on the cost of production, or the cost of reproduc- 
 tion, of the material which may be -selected to bear the evidence" 
 of monetary authority. ^ 
 
 HOW VAIitTB or MONBT IS DETBBMnrBD. 
 
 The sole constituents of its value are supply and demand; that 
 is to say, the supply of money and the demand for morixy. 
 
 In a system of civilization such as ours, based upon a division of 
 labor by which men no longer make complete articles, but only 
 parts of articles, no man can by his own efforts supply directly 
 anything but the merest fraction of his own wants. He can 
 only secure the satisfaction of all his wants by exercising his 
 skill in his own vocation, and by disposing for money of the ar- 
 ticles or parts of articles which he has made, demanding, through 
 money, such; other articles as he needs. Inasmuch, then, as it 
 
 785 > 
 
96 
 
 is through money that men seek the satisfaction of their wants. 
 it is on money that the first demand for all things presses. 
 
 In modern civilization none but mendicants make demand. 
 directly for coats, hats, shoes, or other things. When men want 
 hats, shoes, or clothes they do not offer to exchange labor di- 
 rectly with the hatter, the shoemaker, or the clothier. Each 
 offers his labor to employers of his own trade, and with the re- 
 sultant money makes an effective demand upon the hatter, shoe- 
 maker, or clothier. All objects that are useful to man and de- 
 sired by him are thus obtained by means of money. Hence the 
 demand for money is equivalent to the demand , for all other 
 things, and must always be infinitely greater than the demand 
 for any one thing. As to any other article or object, the de- 
 mand is merely for one article or class of articles; as to money, 
 the demand is a demand not for one article, but for all articles. 
 
 The competition for money, therefore, is not only incessantk 
 but instant, urgent, importunate, and universal. So long as men 
 have needs it will be ceaseless and unremitting. Each worker 
 gives his services not for goods to be obtained from the maker 
 of such goods, but for money to be obtained from his own em- 
 ployer. Each employer, in turn, parts with the goods made by 
 the workman, not directly for other goods but for money. Thus 
 all men are engaged, each in his own vocation, in unceasing 
 competition with every other man, for units of money — each hat- 
 ter in competition with every other hatter, each shoemaker with 
 every other shoemaker, and so the process continues through ' 
 the long round and procession of occupations. 
 
 The competition for money is therefore equal to the competi- 
 tion for all other things combined. The demand for it Ifl equal 
 to the sum of the demand for all other things. 
 
 As to the supply of money, upon which that demand is made, 
 it does not consist of any special kind of money or material of 
 money. The demand is for any or all kinds or materials that 
 may be in use as legal tender and which may be decreed by so- 
 ciety to be money. The supply of money in a country, therefore, 
 is not the supply of a particular kind but the total supply of all 
 kinds — the number of monetary units either at the time in ac- 
 
 785 
 
97 
 
 tual circulation or susceptible of being at any mopient placed in 
 circulation. 
 
 Here we ttave an equation in wbich., on one side, stands a total 
 demand for money and on the other a total supply of money. 
 The force of demand operating upon supply determines th.e value 
 of money. The important feature of this valu,e is not the total 
 value of all the money in a country, but simply the value of the 
 unit. As already stated, money has not a value distinct and 
 apart from purchasing power. 
 
 Yet there is no fallacy so universally accepted and adhered 
 to in the popular mind as that the value of money means the cost 
 of production of the material of money. It especially suits the 
 purpose of the champions of the gold standard that the masses 
 of the people shall be led to believe that the value of money de- 
 pends on the value for commodity uses of the piece of material 
 on which the money stamp is placed, because inasmuch as gold 
 has now free access to all the European mints, and there is no 
 charge for coinage, the mint price will naturally be and remain, 
 invariably, the commodity price, while the portion of silver that 
 has no access to the mint may, for commodity purposes, be of 
 less value or price, stated in terms of gold, than the ratio estab- 
 lished by law for such portion of that metal as may be made into 
 money. 
 
 One of the metals being potentially money as soon as smelted 
 from the ore or dug from the sand, while a portion of the other 
 is left uncrowned and devoid of the money function, no com- 
 parison can be instituted between the uncrovmed portion of one 
 and^the croioned portion (which is the entire portion) of the other. 
 It must be observed that all the silver that in any country of 
 the world is in full use as money of final payment— such por- 
 tion ae has been crowned (as all gold has been crowned )-rhas the 
 full power and value of gold money at the relation established 
 by law. No man can Show any difference between them in their 
 power to purchase commodities or property. What sense, then, 
 is there in these statements about a 60-cent dollar? If the men 
 in high station, selected by the people for their supposed fitness 
 for the places to which they were chosen, would give to a sub- 
 ject of the importance of this one-half the time they devote to 
 
 788 1 
 
98 
 
 matters of trifling consequence, they would not mislead the peo- 
 ple who have reposed confidence in them. 
 
 NO VALUE IN MQlftT EXCEPT PUBOHASING POWEE. 
 
 Any one who will note what the economists say as to the mean- 
 ing of the term "value of money " will have no difficulty in ar- 
 riving at a clear comprehension of it. John Stuart Mill says: 
 
 The value of money is, to appearance, an expression as precise, as free 
 Xrom possibility of mlsuuderstanatng as any in science. The value of a 
 tiling is what if will exchange, for; the value of money is what money will 
 exchange for — t?ie purchasing power of money. If prices are low, money 
 will buy much of* other things, and is of high value; if prices are high, it 
 will buy little of other things, and is of low value. The value of money is 
 inversely as general prices, f alUng as they rise, and rising as they f all.-^ 
 Political JBIconomy, Book in,'cliapter 8. 
 
 This statement of the great economist can hardly be misun- 
 derstood. He applies the term "value of money " wholly to the 
 relation which money bears to commodities, not to the cost of 
 production of the material of which money is composed. After 
 saying that " the value of money is what money will exchange 
 for," he adds that the value of money is "inversely as general 
 prices — falling as they rise and rising as they fall " — showing 
 ( that he regards the value of money as wholly a question of its 
 purchasing power. 
 
 On the same subject Prof. F. A. Walker says: 
 
 When we speak of the value of either gold or silver we mean the power it 
 has to pv/rchase other commodities, including the ons element of money be- 
 sides Itselt.— Money, page 230. 
 
 And again Prof. Walker says: 
 
 Economists have been wont to make this distinction between value and 
 price: Value is purchasing power— power in exchange; price is the power 
 to purchase money — It Is the money value of commodities. Money itself, 
 then, while it has value (the value of a given amount of money l>eing meas- 
 ured by the quantity of commodities it will purchase) has not yiiee.— Money, 
 page 229 
 
 Prof. Sidgwick emphasizes the signification of the term by 
 Stating that in economic discussion there is no method of avoid- 
 ing confusion except by always and everywhere insisting that 
 theonly correct interpretation of the term "value of money, "is — 
 
 The purchasing power of money, or its exchange value m>easwed in commodities 
 other than money. 
 
 Prof. Fawcett, once a cabinet minister of Great Britain and 
 a distinguished professor of political economy in the University 
 
 785 
 
99 
 
 of Cambridge, i8 equally empliatic as to the meaning of the 
 
 term "value'" when applied to money. He says: 
 
 When, therefore, In political economy the precious metals or the value ol 
 money Is spoken of, thepureliasmg power of money Is referred to ; or In other 
 words the power of money to obtain other commodities in exchange for it. 
 
 He continues: 
 
 It must, therefore, he distinctly home In mind that although men of husi- 
 uess consider the value of money to be represented by the rate of Interest, 
 yet the signification which is here— 
 
 that is, in political economy — 
 
 attached to the money, is such as to describe the value of money to be great 
 when prices are low, and to be small when prices are idgii.— Political Econ- 
 omy, page 364. 
 
 So that Prof. Fawcett sees no value in money except through 
 prices, that is in its command over commodities. But it is 
 useless to multiply authorities. All that are worth quoting are 
 to the same effect. 
 
 Inasmuch, then, as the term "value of money" signifies 
 simply purcha^ng power, the total value of all the money in a 
 country would, at any given amount, be the same, whatever the 
 number of units into which it might be divided. If a country 
 has $1,000,000,000 in circulation, the total value, of that entire 
 sum woiild be as great as if the number of dollars were at that 
 time two thousand millions. The only difference would be that 
 the unit — the dollar — would in the first instance have twice as 
 much purchasing power as in the second. 
 
 The money unit being the unit by which human effort or sac- 
 rifice is measured, the consideration with respect to it that out- 
 weighs all other considerations is that of stability of value. In- 
 asmuch as the societary condition is indispensable to the- 
 civilization and progress of man, and money the dominating in- 
 stitution by which aggregation and association are possible, 
 without which progress would be unattainable, if there be one 
 object that, more than another, demands the, at^leiitioii aod^ 
 thoughtful consideration of mankind, it is to jsA^intain unchaiig- 
 
 f I 
 
 r 
 
 ing through time the value of the monetary, pnit, ' 
 
 MONET THE ONLT THING IN THE WORLD TOR WHICH THEBli l6 fHp SUBSTIr 
 
 T^™- ,, ' ,^. '' ,' / ' '' ( , 
 
 Money diflers from all other things in:.tlfe fa/fet tha^thet^ Isik/ / 
 substitute or alternative for it, and in thj^ n^ure pf things never 
 can be. In the utilization of all other thin^sr^liaf l!ep^s,tp the 
 
 785 ' 'l 
 
 "^O, 
 
100 
 
 comfort or convenience of man advantage is taken of a law of 
 substitution. If a thing whioii has been in general use becomes 
 for any reason very scarce, and as a consequence very dear, a 
 proportion of the people abandon its use, and adopt something 
 which. serves the same purpose. Thus, if, owing to the preva- 
 lence of distemper which carries off considerable cattle, beef rises 
 in price far beyond its ordinary limit, large numbers of the popu- 
 lation will abandon its use, and substitute for it mutton or some 
 other form of animal food. 
 
 If a certain brand of flour becomes much dearer than ordinary 
 people substitute for it another brand; or if, owing to a failure 
 of the wheat crop, all flour becomes much dearer, great numbers 
 of the people will wholly relinquish its use for the time being. 
 So if one description of wood, say oak, becomes scarce and dear 
 another wood, as ash or maple, is utilized instead. This serves 
 as the defense of the great mass of mankind against the selfish- 
 ness and cupidity of a few who would without hesitation estab- 
 lish a corner in any single article of universal demand if they 
 believed that, no matter how high its value rose, the people 
 would be compelled to obtain it. 
 
 If a man be regarded as a public enemy who merely comers 
 wheat what would be thought of those who combine to corner all 
 articles of food without discrimination? But when men corner 
 money that is precisely what they do. When they deprive the 
 world, or, which is enough for our purpose, when they de- 
 prive their own countrymen of a sufiBciency of money they are 
 cornering not only wheat, but every other article of food as well 
 as every article of clothing. Notwithstanding the fact that gold 
 is growing more valuable every day, they have so used their 
 power that the people are deprived of a full and free resort to a 
 ' sulpS|t41(Utev / jWell aware that owing to the very nature of money, 
 OVing to the tt>anscendent importance of the function which 
 mon^y (X)er|0|rms, there can be no substitute for it, and knowing 
 that the less ^hfere i$ot money in proportion to the demand the 
 more ,yaluab|e- will become the debts of which they are the 
 pw^ers, ^they deliljeitijtesy deprive mankind by law of the im- 
 m©fn6ri^l\r4ght;tb siipplement the deficiencies in the supply of 
 
 otae metal by^a resOr't to the supply of the other. 
 
 785 , !.^ 
 
101 
 
 Mr. President, no matter how high the value of money may 
 rise the people must have it. Hence, when it becomes insuffi- 
 cient for the demand — the monetary obligations of the people 
 being imperative — the products of labor must be sold for less 
 money than he tore . The value of the unit might increase to such 
 an extent that the price of a bushelof wheat might fall to one- 
 tenth or one-hundredth part of its present figure, yet would the 
 demand for money be as exigent as ever. Instead of finding a 
 substitute for it, as could be done in the case of anything else 
 that became scarce and dear, people would be compelled to at- 
 tach to fractional parts of the dollar the value which now they 
 attach to the dollar itself. 
 
 For everything, then, except money, there is some substitute 
 to which, in case of necessity — in case of a corner — men may re- 
 sort. For money, there is none. The fact of its scarcity and 
 dearness wUl not only not lessen the urgency of the need for it, 
 but will increase that urgency and need. Inasmuch as nothing 
 else will pay debt or keep the sheriff flag from the window, 
 legal-tender money must be obtained at any sacrifice. This is 
 clearly recognized by Prof. Sidgwick, who says: 
 
 ^ It appears, then, that coto forms an exception to the general rule that the 
 Bcarclty of any commodity extends the demand for its substitute.— PoKiicaZ 
 Economy, page 252. 
 
 Mr. HIGGINS. Will the Senator yield for a question? 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Certainly. 
 
 Mr. HIGGINS. I do not know whether the Senator confines 
 his proposition to coin, as Prof. Sidgwick put it, or to money 
 generally, but is not paper a substitute for gold or other coin? 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. I have already stated that anything 
 which is full legal tender is money. 
 
 Mr. HIGGINS. Then the proposition of the Senator is tha,t 
 gold can not be increased; but he ignores the fact that the vol- 
 ume of money can be increased outside of gold by the issue of 
 paper, money of account, and other such devices. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. My proposition is precisely what I 
 stated it to be — that there is no substitute lor money. Generally 
 ■when people refer to' ' ' money of account " they mean money of no 
 account. They refer to money that is not legal tender. They re- 
 
 785 
 
102 
 
 fer to devices that will enable a man to get into debt, but when 
 trouble comes will not enable him to get out. Nothing is or can 
 be money in the full or in the proper sense that needs to be re- 
 deemable in anything else before it can pay a debt. Money is 
 not money if it be cpnflned to redemption in one thing; it must 
 be redeemable in all things. The very essence of money is re 
 deemability in all things that are for sale and all services that 
 are for hire. That is the character of money to which I refer. 
 
 Mr. HIGGINS. I suppose the Senator means what is known 
 as flat money, 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. All money, whether of gold, silver, 
 or paper, is "flat." Moneiy is created bylaw, and derives its 
 value from limitation of quantity. Gold money is as much 
 "flat" money as is paper money, for the reason that for any 
 other use than the money use there is conceded to be sixty years' 
 supply of gold on hand, which, were gold demonetized, would be 
 available in the market for all the purposes to which gold is 
 adapted in the various arts and manufactures. In other words, 
 gold money is " flat V money because it has not " intrinsic value." 
 Owing to the fears of the money-lending classes that legislators 
 would issue too much paper money, they have preferred that 
 mankind should adhere to the automatic system — the system of 
 relying upon the mines for the material of money. 
 
 The creditor classes are now, however, departing from that 
 system. They are determined to have a system of money in 
 which the unit shall from year to year acquire greater and 
 greater control over property, including the products of labor. 
 Hence in order to restrict to a minimum the quantity of money, 
 and increase to a maximum the value of the money which they 
 have already reduced to possession, one of the metals that from 
 immemorial time had been used as money is denied the right of 
 access to the mints, and the other metal established as the only 
 metal of unrestricted coinage. In other words, while it had 
 long been their contention that the world should always rslyon 
 the mines for the material of money, they now announce their 
 determination that the world must be content with such frag- 
 ment of the automatic system as is certain to work an advantage 
 for the creditors. 
 
 785 
 
103 
 
 WHY tRASCB OLOSBD HEB MINTS TO SIIiVEB. 
 
 Mr. HOAR. Will the Senator please state why France demon- 
 etized silver? 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. France ceased the coinage of silver 
 because Germany, having gone to a gold standard, had three or 
 four hundred million^ of silver to sell. France was determined 
 not to accommodate Germany by admitting her silver to the 
 French mints. 
 
 Mr. HOAR. Is it not true, then, that France, which I think 
 the Senator stated in his speech of yesterday is the ablest finan- 
 cial nation in the world, demonetized silver for precisely the 
 reason, in the first instance, that we are asked to repeal the 
 Sherman law, to wit, that if she' did not do it, the silver of other 
 cotmtries would be put on to her and flood her at once? 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. It was a political, not an economic 
 reason that actuated France. It was a reason founded upon nar 
 tional pride. It was hatred of Germany, not any fear of silver — 
 which had always been and continues to be the popular money 
 of France. The French people would not at that time take the 
 silver of Germany nor anything that was German under any con- 
 ditions, no matter how pecuniarily advantageous it might be for 
 France. But without reference to the motive of France, there 
 is one good and sufficient reason why this country can not afford 
 to follow her example. As I have already remarked, it is pop- 
 ulation that makes a demand for money. Without population 
 there would be no demand for it. With increasing population 
 there is increasing demand. With a stationary population the 
 demand for money is stationary. In respect to increase of pop- 
 ulation this country is in a wholly different category from all 
 other nations of the world. The population of France practi- 
 cally is stationary, whileours is increasing at the rate oi 2i per 
 cent a year — a percentage unprecedented in the history of na- 
 tions. The population of France has not increased as much in 
 ten years as ours has in four months. France is an old and fin- 
 ished country, while our country is new and unfinished. 
 
 Mr. HOAR. What I wish to ask the Senator is, if, in his judg- 
 ment, it was good finance in France, the ablest financial country 
 
 785 
 
104 
 
 in the world, as he stated, to demonetize silver, whether it would 
 not be good for us? 
 
 Mr. BUTLER. Do I understand Prance has demonetized sil- 
 ver? 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. No. France simply ceased to coin 
 
 silver. 
 
 Mr. HOAR. That is all the Sherman law provides for. 
 
 Mr. BUTLER. I am not talking about the Sherman law. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Does the Senator from Massachusetts 
 think that the condition in France, with a stationary population 
 would apply to this country, where we are increasing in popula- 
 tion at the rate of 2,000,000 per annum? 
 
 Mr. HOAR. I will answer the question with great pleasure, , 
 If the Senator would like to have me do so. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. I should like to have the Senator 
 do so. 
 
 Mr. HOAR. I think the rule for a stationary population and 
 for an increasing population would be the same in this respect, 
 that it the flood of the inferior metal was likely to be so great 
 as not only to provide a legitimate increase of currency for the 
 wants of the population, but to drive out the gold of the world, 
 so that the country would have left for its own use nothing with 
 which it could pay its debts to foreign nations, exactly the same 
 doctrine would apply. I think that is one fallacy in the Senar 
 tor's proposition. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. If there were a flood, if it would 
 bring in one thing, and if it would drive out another — and I do 
 not know how many more " ifs " — certain results would follow. 
 
 Mr. HOAR. I answered the Senator's question exactly. His 
 question was preceded by an "if." 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. I do not remember that it was. 
 
 Mr. HOAR. The Senator asked me if it was proper for a na- 
 tion, with a population increasing two or three millions per an- 
 num, to do the same thing which a nation would do whose pop- 
 ulation was not increasing, and I replied that if the ciroum- 
 stances were such that the proportion of the cheap metal ajid 
 the demands of the nation increased more largely than the in- 
 crease of population, such would be the case. The Senator put 
 a hypothetical case to me, and I said " yes." 
 
105 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. The Senator fails to show that there 
 is any such increase. I understood the Senator to say in his 
 speech some days ago that he wasa bimetallist, and that his vote 
 in favor of the pending measure would not be a vote against sil- 
 ver. He knows that our population is increasing at the rate of 
 nearly two millions every year, and yet he proposes to cut off 
 such little supply of money as we have been getting through the 
 operation of the Sherman law. Nobody pretends that there is 
 a flood, or any danger of a flood, by reason of the four and a half 
 millions of silver purchased per month. 
 
 Everybody who has examined the question knows that a Treas- 
 ury note issued last month, or any month within the past year, 
 was worth more than the first note issued under the Sherman 
 law. Each month has seen each note more valuable. How, 
 then, I should like to ask the Senator, does he excuse himself to 
 his conscience for -cutting off this money, increasing the burdens 
 of debt, and increasing the number of people relegated to 
 involuntary idleness by reason of falling prices? Why does he 
 propose to cut off the present supply when it is proved not to be ' 
 enough? 
 
 Mr. HOAR. Because we have got now a larger amount of 
 currency per capita than that of any other nation on earth. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. That wUl not do. 
 
 Mr. HOAB. That is.the Senator's opinion. We have a sup- 
 ply which is to increase for a number of years to come by the 
 coining of the existing bullion in the Treasury, and by the in- 
 crease of whatever comes in of the new product of gold. We 
 shall also have, in my opinion, all the paper instrumentalities ■ 
 which are to be added for the next five or ten years, until there 
 can be a reconstruction of our financial policy on a theory which 
 will use both gold and silver, as I conceive they should be used, 
 for the purpose of national coinage. I hold that we ought to 
 have not only an abundance, but an increasing supply of cur- 
 ency for the people of this country. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. The Senator does not answer the 
 projwsition I have made. • 
 
 Mr. HOAR. I think I have answered it. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. I alluded to the fact that the sub- 
 
 785 
 
106 
 
 committee of the &ommittee on Finance, of which, I think, the 
 Senator from Rhode Island [Mr. Aldhich] was chairman, made 
 an examination of the range of prices, and found there had been 
 a fall everywhere. Did the Senator ever hear of inflation sim- 
 ultaneously with a faU of prices^ 
 
 Mr. HOAR. Not in labor. 
 
 Mr. JO>'ES of Nevada. Labor is not like a bushel of wheat. 
 
 Mr. HOAR. Will the Senator pardon me? When ha states 
 a fact will he permit me to say, in all respect, he should state a 
 fact? 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. I spoke of commodities. 
 
 Mr. HOAE. The Senator said there had been a fall of prices 
 everywhere. His argument about labor is another question. 
 Let us finish the other first. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. There is a faU in the price of labor 
 also, if you take into account the number relegated to compul- 
 sory idleness. 
 
 Mr. HOAR. That is not what the committee finds. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. I do not care what they find. I am 
 stating the fact that millions are out of employment. 
 
 Mr. HOAR. Does the Senator think it is quite the way to 
 conduct this debate, which he is conducting so much to our in- 
 struction, for him to affirm that the committee said something 
 as a fact, and when I pointed out that they did not include labor, 
 he says ho does not care whether they did or not? Then he 
 says that they found labor was relegated to enforced idleness; 
 and when I say in reply, "Yes, they include labor," the Senator 
 says, '"I do not care whether they include labor or not."- 
 
 Mr. JOISTES of Nevada. That committee had two objects in 
 view. The Senator from Rhode Island took the position that 
 the fall of prices was due to the operation of the tariff. The 
 then Seaator from Kentucky. Mr. Carlisle, wished to show that 
 the fall was not due to that cause, and the Senator from Ten- 
 nessee [Mr. Harris] agreed with him. i I will say to the Sena- 
 tor from Massachusetts thart; in gold-standard countries all over 
 the world the price of labor is falling, as is evidenced by the 
 unprecedented strikes now on in Great Britain and elsewhere. 
 But when we say that a shrinkage in the volume of money 
 
107 
 
 causes a fall in prices, we do not mean to say that the fall takes 
 ^ place coincidently with the shrinkage in that volume, or thait 
 when it does take place, it is necessarily of the same percent- 
 age as that of the fall of prices, because, as J have already re- 
 marked, every power of society is exerted to keep prices from 
 falling. 
 
 Every man who has anything to sell does everything in his 
 power to hold prices up. This determination to keep prices 
 steady at a time when the volume of money is not keeping pabe 
 with demand finally results in a collapse. That is the real gen- 
 esis of the recentpanic, as I shall show later. The range of prices 
 which prevailed was becoming daily more and more incompat- 
 ible with a quantity of money that was diminishing relatively to 
 demand. The increase of population and business was greater 
 than the increase of money. 
 
 Mr. HOAR. We were trying tQ get at what the committee 
 said, and I think the Senator stated it erroneously. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. The committee said there had been 
 a general fall in prices. But they could not separate the prices 
 of labor. Labor that is idle is getting no "price" whatever. 
 The attempt to maintain the gold standard in this growihgcoun- 
 try reminds me of the story of a man who went into a clothing 
 store to buy a coat. In response to his demand the proprietor 
 of the establishment promptly took down a coat. The man man- 
 aged by great effort to get his arms into it, and by the aid of the 
 clothier and two or three of his clerks the coat was flnallybuttoned. 
 To the eye of the lookerron it then appeared as if it had grown on 
 him. Said the clothier: "That is the nicest coat thalt any man 
 ever put on." The customer replied: " It is a nice enough coat; 
 there is only one difSoulty with it; I can't move in it, or take a 
 full breath; my blood won't even circulate." To this the ever- 
 ready clothier replied: "Mine frient, when a man has a chance 
 to get such a coat as that, he ought to be willing to train down 
 toit." [Laughter.] So it is with our gold-standard friends. They 
 are determined that the country shall "train down " to the gold 
 standard. They will find our people hardly ready to ' ' train down " 
 quite so much. The people of this country prefer to have clothes 
 
 785 
 
108 
 
 large enough toadmitof natural and unrestrained breatMng and 
 locomotion. 
 
 I will now resume the thread of my argument at the point at 
 which I was interrupted. I was discussing the importance of 
 stability of value in the monetary-unit. ■ 
 
 EXOEKDING IMPOKTANOE OF STABUjITT OF VALUE IN THE MONETAKT TJHIT. 
 
 It being impossible, then, to provide a substitute for money, 
 and the demand for it being always at a maximum, it is the Only 
 thing the demand for which can be measured and ascertained in 
 advance. It is the only thing the very nature of which gives 
 absolute assurance that it can not be dispensed with,' or that the 
 demand for it will in the slightest degree fall away. That de- 
 mand is always in a direct ratio to the demands of all the people 
 for all the things that satisfy human wants. Those wants do not 
 decrease with time; they are certain to increase with population. 
 
 The Struggle for money being always at a maximum, the 
 value of the unit can not be increased except by decreasing the 
 number of units while the population remains stationaryj or in- 
 creasing the numbers of the population while the number of the 
 units of money remain stationary. 
 
 Money is as indisi)ensable to men in society ^ the air they 
 breathe is to their individual existence, and as necessary to their 
 industrial advancement as liberty is to their political develop- 
 ment. If the air which is necessary to our physical being should 
 at times be found sufficient and at times insufficient for the sus- 
 ienance of life, would it not be deemed a defect in the order and 
 arrangement of the universe and of the adaptation of means to 
 ends? — or at least would not men exhaust the resources of 
 chemistry and natural philosophy to devise means by which a 
 . sufficient quantity of it might be evolved from other gases or 
 other forms of matter to sustain the lives of all who^ might be 
 born? 
 
 PROGRESS IN ALL DEPABTMBNTS OF HUMAN THOUGHT EXCEPT THAT OF 
 
 MONEY. 
 
 By slow and painful toil man has emerged from barbarism, 
 advancing step by step in the dUerent departments of science 
 and art. In astronomy, in chemistry, in every walk of science, 
 the human mind has been on the alert, the theories of ages have 
 
 786 1 
 
109 
 
 been overthrown and entire revolutions effected. Note the prog- 
 ress in the arts. Take the art of locomotion. First, the weari- 
 some journey on foot, pack on back; next, the subjugation of 
 the brute creatlbn in order to lessen the drudgery of man; next, 
 the invention of the wheel for land carriage, an invention of 
 prime importance; next, the utilization of one of the forces of 
 nature — water — in its natural bed, to sustain the load, while 
 with paddle or oar men propelled raft or boat; next, still avail- 
 ing of the use of this agent in its natural place to float the bur- 
 den, calling in the assistance of another force, the wind, to 
 propel it. 
 
 Later, and only after long ages, men learnt the secret of tak- 
 ing the, water from its place and transporting it with the burden, 
 invoking the assistance of another natural force, heat, to subdi- 
 vide that water into minute particles which by expansion pro- 
 vided an irresistible power, by means of which ships may "sail" 
 against the wind and by which trains have reduced the toilsome 
 and exhausting land journey of months to the pleasant and ex- 
 hilarating trip of as many days. And now comes the electric 
 force, the unit of which constitutes a subdivision of matter in- 
 finitely more attenuated than the most minute atom of water. All 
 this progression of discoveries and achievements in but one single 
 department'of human effort! And who can say that the end is 
 yet! In every department of science and art, of literature and 
 philosophy, we see eager and intensely active minds ever on the 
 alert for the discovery of new truths which may enable mankind 
 with infinite and unappeasable curiosity to peer one step farther 
 into the great unknown. 
 
 But with reference to money, the thought of mankind appears 
 to be still in the paleozoic age. Notwithstanding the enlightened 
 civilization of our time, men sufficiently scientific and clever to 
 calculate the distance from the earth to the sun — to compute 
 the periodicity of comets, and, by the aid of the spectrum, to an- 
 alyze and subdivide the solar ray, are found to be as children in 
 the domain of monetary science. Even the economists them- 
 selves — dimly seeing the " kindly light," and fearing to follow, 
 are content to argue in a circle and grope in a darkness com- 
 pared with which midnight may be called noon. Students of 
 
110 
 
 books rather than of men — of theories rather than of life — struck 
 with awe at the power of wealth and the glamour of privilege — 
 they either pause at the, very threshold of discovery and retrace 
 their steps, or, seeing the truth, prefer to appear ignorant lest 
 they give offense to the mighty. 
 
 Many of the most able economists, aware of the serious injus- 
 tice effected by changes in the value of money, especially changes 
 by which the value of the unit becomes greater — acknowledging 
 its existence to be an evil of enormous proportions, are content 
 to stammer Ealteringly forth the truth as it is, and permit the 
 eVil to continue without protest and without effort at a remedy. 
 
 As for that class of so-called statesmen and writers, who re- 
 gard the value of gold as fixed and immutable, their ignorance 
 or conceit, or both, entitle them either to commiseration, or to 
 contempt; and were it not for the injury which results to society 
 from the persistence with which the assertion of this error con- 
 tinues it woula not be worth noticing. But we find men in ex- 
 alted places who take up this subject of an afternoon in an easy 
 chair, giving forth solemn and ponderous opinions upon the gold 
 standard in order that we may have "the money of the world," 
 as if justice were not more to be desired than gold, and as if the 
 United States did not form an important part of " the world" — 
 for us here by far the most important part,- 
 
 STABILITT OF THE MONETARY UNIT AS IMPOBTANT AS THAT OF THE MATHE- 
 MATICAL UNIT. 
 
 Stability of power in this important factor in human affairs 
 is of precisely the same importance that stability of power is in 
 the factors of our numerical notation. In that system all de- 
 pends upon the immutability of the power of the single unil; — thp 
 figure 1 — the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. WhatwoulS 
 bethoughtof a system of computation in which that figure, which 
 now stands for our conception of a upit, and whiQh forms the 
 basis of all calculations, should, a year hence, stand for the con- 
 ception which we now entertain of a unit and a half, and should 
 keep progressively adding to its mathematical power, so that 
 two years hence it would represent what we now conceive to be 
 the power of one and three-quarters, or two, or any other sum 
 that may be imagined, without rule or precept, without guiding 
 
Ill 
 
 or governing priDoiple — the creature of accident and contin- 
 gency? Such a system would result in the destruction of all 
 mathematical accuracy in transactions extending beyond the 
 present moment, and would require, every few years, a recon- 
 struction of all equations and calculations. 
 
 If it ba important to maintain unchanging the power of the 
 mathe)natical unit, which is the basis of all measurement and 
 account, it is no less important to maintain as undeviating and 
 invariable as human wisdom can devise the enormously impor- 
 tant power of the unit of money — that instrumentality by which 
 the mutations in value, of all other things, may be correctly as- 
 certained and determined. It will be at once conceded as to 
 mathematics .that were a system of accidental or fortuitously 
 shifting notation to exist side by side with what in other re- 
 spects might be a high civilization, it would be wholly unworthy 
 of the genius and achievement of the human mind. Yet, the 
 monetary system of the world, and especially the gold standard, 
 is a close parallel to this. The value of mOney is permitted to 
 become greater or to become less — to increase or to diminish — 
 from year to year, not, as alone should be the case, £iccording to 
 changes in the relations of supply and demand affe6ting the'^rti- 
 oles which it is the function of money to exchange and to meas- 
 ure, but most momentous changes occur in the value of money, 
 from considerations arising from irregularity in the supply of 
 money itself. 
 
 The only changes in the value of money that can occur from 
 causes affecting itself must be from causes affecting supply alone. 
 There is never any cessation in the demand for money. While 
 human wants remain insatiable that demand must always be at 
 a maximum. 
 
 THE VAIiXra or MONllT DETUBMINAEIiE fiT SCIENTIFIO BEGTILATIOII OF ITS 
 QUAtfTITT. 
 
 Money exercises control over all human needs., Those needs 
 are not accidental or sporadic; they are regular, continuous, 
 unceasing, and exigent. They are not less to-day than they 
 were yesterday. They do not depend on contingencies. Their 
 urgency is not momentai-y or transitory. The need for food is 
 as regular and inevitable as the flow of time; the need for 
 
 785 
 
112 
 
 clothing as periodical and imperative as the recurrence of 
 tbe saasons. Inasmuch as, with, division of labor, it is only 
 through money that these needs can be satisfied— that supplies 
 of food and clothing must be obtained— as well as all other ma- 
 terial things that pertain to the comfort and happiness of man, 
 upon what principle of reason, I ask, should the supply of money 
 be permitted to vary according to accident? 
 
 This being the teaching'of all the great authorities on polit- 
 ical economy, how do Senators explain the paradox which they 
 set up, namely, that although gold might be suddenly with- 
 drawn from the country, all the other money of the country, 
 which did not go, would buy less than before — in other words, 
 a reduction in the volume of money — the making of dollars 
 scarce — would make each dollar less valuable instead of, as po- 
 litical economy teaches, making each more valuable. Their 
 theory is that the silver dollar would fall to its bullion value; 
 that there would be a great rise in the prices of commodities, for 
 that is the meaning of a fall in the value of money. 
 
 "We know that among 70,000,000 people every guild and occu- 
 pation is in daily and incessant competition with every other 
 guild and occupation for units of money — that every man is in 
 unceasing competition with every other man — all for units of 
 money. Hence, prices can neither rise nor fall all along the 
 line, unless some change takes place in the demand for money. 
 How, then (population and demand continuing the same), is it 
 possible for any one man, or set of men, to change the value of 
 money? It is absurd to suppose that the value of money among 
 70,000,000 active and alert people is determined by Mr. Ickel- 
 heimer, or Mr. Ochelhausen, or Mr. Anybody-else. If the de- 
 mand for money remains the same, and the supply be decreased 
 by the withdrawal of the grold, no Senator can explain how it is 
 possible for the silver doll|ir, or any other legal-tender dollar, to 
 fall even in the moat infinitesimal fraction of a cent. 
 
 The life of money is the legal- tender function. That function 
 is the all-suflHcient guaranty of the money "value. As I have 
 said, if I take a piece of silver bullion not having the poten- 
 tiality of money and search all Washington, I might not find 
 one man in ten thousand who would make a demand few it. 
 
 785 
 
113 
 
 While in that form, the demand lor it is a demand for but one 
 thing— silver bullion. But put the stamp of the Government 
 on it and endow it with the function of legal tender, — which, so 
 far as money is concerned, is the function of life, — and the same 
 piece of silver becomes a demand for all things, and is capable 
 of supplying all things, so far as its value may extend. It is an 
 order on society for everything on sale and for all services that 
 are for hire. 
 
 Should I fare any better with gold? If a man took a nugget 
 of gold, supposing that metal also to be deprived of the poten- 
 tiality of money, and with it a certificate from the assay office 
 of the Government, or from the Director of the Mint, or from 
 the Secretary of the Treasury, to the effect that this piece of 
 gold is exactly equal in weight and fineness to a five-dollar gold 
 piece, he would find not one person in ten thousand demanding it, 
 and such demand as should be discovered would be a demand for 
 but one thing — gold bullion — a trifling thing in the economy of 
 civilized life. But impress it with the stamp of the Government, 
 making it also subject to the law of legal tender, and instantly 
 it becomes transmuted into an order for all saleable goods or 
 services. 
 
 If before coinage the piece of gold were round and flat, and 
 weighed exactly 25.8 grains of standard metal, would that be 
 a dollar? All agree that it would not. Yet it is precisely the 
 same in every respect with the dollar turned out from the mint, 
 except that it has not the stamp of the Government. The in- 
 stant that stamp has pressed upon it the " image and superscrip- 
 tion " provided by law, it is then a dollar. The word " dollar," 
 therefore, is a denomination; it is simply a name for the money 
 unit of the United States, whether the proof of the fact be 
 stamped on metal or on paper. The value that it has is derived 
 from the law of legal tender, when it becomes an order for all 
 things on sale in the country issuing it. Its value, after becom- 
 ing such ticket of command, is determined by the competition 
 of all men to get it. This competition becomes more keen as the 
 number of dollars decrease in relation to population; it becomes 
 less keen as the number of dollars increase in proportion to pop- 
 ulation. The thing that decides, therefore, how much the dol- 
 
 785 8 
 
114 
 
 lar stall be worth is not any so-called intrinsic value in the dol- 
 lar, but the competition of all the people to get dollars, that is 
 to say, demand operating against supply. 
 
 Now, with reference to all other things than money it is 
 never possible to foretell the demand, nor to foretell the supply. 
 The adaptability of many things to be called into requisition as 
 substitutes for any one thing, and the consequent variability of 
 demand, renders it impossible to estimate in advance the de- 
 mand that will be made on any commodity. Inasmuch, also, as 
 the supply of all commodities usually comes from a great vari- 
 ety of sources, and is subject to the widest variations and muta- 
 tions, it is not within the bounds of possibility for human judg- 
 ment to estimate the probable or approximate supply. 
 
 With reference to money, however, were its principles fully 
 understood, and the factors of supply and demand entering into 
 its value properly appreciated, it would be a most simple process 
 for society, that is for each country or government, to regulate 
 its value so that industry would be conducted on a basis of ap- 
 proximate steadiness; and so that any alterations in value would 
 be, as they should be, due wholly to causes affecting the rela- 
 tions of supply and demand bearing on the articles or commodi- 
 ties whose value it was desired to measure; and not at all from 
 considerations affecting the value of money independently and 
 of itself. 
 
 But, -it is said, law can not make value. Do the advocates of 
 the gold standard deny that demand makes value? Undoubt- 
 edly, law can not make value, because value resides in the human 
 mind. But when the law creates a demand for something and 
 keeps that demand constant, and unceasing, and unwavering, 
 then, the quantity of the article being limited, does anybody 
 doubt that the law which creates this demand gives to the ma- 
 terial a value which, without the demand, would notattach to it? 
 
 People want gold and silver for some purposes in the arts, say 
 for adornment. But they also want gold and silver for the 
 greatest concerns of life — for the mutual exchanges of property 
 and to liquidate obligations, that if not liquidated will involve 
 bankruptcy. Hence there is a universal struggle to get units 
 
115 
 
 of money, to get the things that are made the ultimates of pay- 
 ment. 
 
 Their value is automatically fixed by this universal struggle 
 to get them. Consequently their value will be determined by 
 the quantity of them that is out, as compared with the demand 
 for them. If this be denied, where would be the danger or the 
 injury of inflation? 
 
 It is rendered possible to regulate the value of money for the 
 following reasons: 
 
 1. The demand for money is not a variable quantity, but is al- 
 ways as great as it is possible to be, depending on all the wants 
 of all the people, which are always at a maximum. 
 
 2. The supply is the creation solely of the Government, as 
 nothing is money until the stamp of the Government is placed 
 on it, under authority of the great law of legal tender. 
 
 Legal- tender money can never decrease in value so long as there 
 is no increase in its quantity in proportion to population; and it 
 can never increase in value so long as ii does not decrease in quan- 
 tity in proportion to population . Inasmuch as it is population that 
 makes a demand for money, and without population there would 
 be no such demand, the least increase that should be made to the 
 volume of money would be an increase pari passu with the in- 
 crease of population. 
 
 These considerations render it entirely practicable for society, 
 that is to say, for civilized governments, with a fair degree of 
 approximation, to regulate and prescribe the value of the money 
 unit. 
 
 No greater boon since the invention of the art of writing 
 could be vouchsafed to man than the securing of a perfectly 
 steady and unchanging value in the unit of money. It is an ob- 
 ject well worthy the most enlightened thought of an advanced 
 age, for, when secured, there will be introduced a new order of 
 the ages, a new impetus to human aspiration and effort. As 
 nearly as may be it will be the realization in the concrete of 
 man's ideal of abstract and eternal justice. 
 
 The annual gold yield, whether coined or uncoined, being 
 pracfcally all absorbed in the arts and manufactures, where is 
 our money now to come from? No greater injustice was ever 
 
 785 
 
116 
 
 perpetrated upon a people than the cutting ott ot tae only source 
 of increase of the money supply, so that, without compelling a fall 
 in the prices of all property and commodities, they can not meet 
 the increase of 2,000,000 of population each year. The Sherman 
 law has supplied about $800,000 a week of new money to meet the 
 increase of 40,000 persons added weekly to our population, or 
 only $20 for each person added, which is about $5 less than the 
 Treasury reports show to be our average per capita of money. 
 
 BFFEOTS OF INCREASING AND OF DECREASING MONET SUPPLY. 
 
 Sir Archibald Alison in his history of Europe portrays in 
 eloquent words the effects of an increasing and a decreasing vol- 
 ume of money upon the progress of society. He says: 
 
 The two greatest events that have occurred In the history of mankind 
 have been directly brought about by a contraction and on the other hand 
 an expansion ot the circulating medium of society. The fall of the Roman 
 Empire, so long ascribed In Ignorance to slavery, egotism, and moral cor- 
 ruption, was in reality brought about by a decline in the silver and gold 
 mines of Spain and Greece. And, as If Providence had intended to reveal 
 in the clearest manner the InQuence of this mighty agent on human affairs, 
 the resurrection of mankind from the ruin which those causes had pro- 
 duced was owing to a directly opposite set ot agencies being put In opera- 
 tion. Columbus led the way in the career ot renovation: when he spread 
 his sails across the Atlantic, he bore mankind and its fortunes In his bark. 
 The annual supply ot the precious metals for the use of the globe was 
 tripled; before a century had expired the prices of every species ot produce 
 were quadrupled. The weight ot debt and taxes Insensibly wore oft under 
 the Influence ot that prodigious increase. 
 
 In the renovation ot the Industry the relations of society were changed, 
 the weight ot feudalism cast off, the rights of man established. Among the 
 many concurring causes which conspired to bring about this mighty con- 
 summation, the most important, though hitherto the least observed, was 
 the discovery ot Mexico and Peru. If the circulating medium of the globe 
 had remained stationary, or declining, as it was from 1815 to 1849, from the 
 effects ot the South American revolution and from English legislation, the 
 necessary result must have been that It would have become altogether in- 
 adequate to the wants otman, and not only would Industry have been every- 
 where cramped but the price ot produce would have universally and con- 
 stantly fallen. Money would have every day become more valuable ; all other 
 articles measured in money less so; debt and taxes would have been con- 
 stantly increasing in weight and oppression. The fate which crushed Rome 
 in ancient, and has all but crushed Great Britain In modern times, would 
 have been that ot the whole family ot mankind. All these evils have been 
 entirely obviated, and the opposite set ot blessings introduced by the open- 
 ing of the great treasures of nature in California and Australia. 
 
 The closing remark of this acute observer and eminent his- 
 torian correctly states that the blessings to which he referred 
 had been "introduced," but unfortunately they had hardly time 
 ■ to be more than introduced before they vanished. The supply 
 
 785 
 
117 
 
 of gold began to decline. Had not the cupidity of the creditor 
 classes been aroused, the blessings which the increased supply 
 of gold brought to the world would have been continued to 
 humanity through the gradual and beneficent increase in the 
 supply of silver which followed the decline of gold. 
 
 Every dollar of gold — the "cheap" money of the period, be- 
 came equal to a silver dollar, then the " dear" dollar. When in 
 its turn gold declined in quantity and silver became more plen- 
 tiful, every dollar of silver would have had precisely the same 
 effect as a dollar of gold. It would have continued in operation 
 the manifold factors of prospsrity set in motion by the gold dis- 
 coveries. Wherever silver has been used as full legal tender 
 money it has proved a blessing, as has been abundantly seen 
 in India, whose prosperity has never known such rapid advance 
 as »ince silver was demonetized in Europe. 
 
 MONIT OPEBATES UPON INDUSTRY THROUGH THE MEDIUM OF PRICES. 
 
 In the report of the Monetary Commission of 1876, of which I 
 had the honor to be chairman, I discussed the effects of a scarcity 
 as contradistinguished from a sufficiency of money, and with the 
 permission of the Senate I will make a few quotations from that 
 report. The statements fit the situation to-day with the same 
 exactness that they fitted it then: 
 
 " Whenever gold and silver prices have become adjusted to a 
 given stock of those metals, an increase of that stock, other things 
 remaining unchanged, will cause a rise and a decrease will cause 
 a fall in prices. But under such conditions other things never 
 do remain unchanged. There are powerful causes, moral and 
 material, which invariably operate, when money is increasing 
 in volume, to moderate the rise in prices and to intensify their 
 fall when it is decreasing. Hence the fall in prices caused by a 
 decreasing volume of money would be much greater in degree 
 than would the rise caused by a proportionately increasing 
 volume. 
 
 "Whenever it becomes apparent that prices are rising and 
 money falling in value in consequence of an increase of its vol- 
 ume, the greatest activity takes place in exchanges and pro- 
 ductive enterprises. Every one becomes anxious to share in the 
 advantages of rising mT,rkets. The inducement to hoard money 
 
 78b 
 
118 
 
 is taken away, and conseqjuently the disposition to hoard it 
 ceases. Its circulation becomes exceedingly active, and for the 
 very plain reason that there could be no motive for holding or 
 hoarding money when it is falling in value, while there would 
 be the strongest possible motive for exchanging it for property, 
 or for the labor which creates property, when prices are rising. 
 Under these circumstances labor comes into great demand and 
 at remunerative wages. This results in not only increased pro- 
 duction, but increased consumption. The wants and expendi- 
 tures of laborers increase with their earnings. Large enter- 
 prises, safe and unsafe, are at such times inaugurated by eager 
 adventurers, and as frequently as otherwise upon insufficient 
 capital. 
 
 "If, however, the volume of money should increase in undue 
 proportion to the new demands for it so as to cause a continuous 
 and persistent rise in prices, it would encourage gambling in 
 prices instead of encouraging production, and would end in the 
 destruction of that industry which it at first stimulated. Such 
 would be the haste to convert money into property that the price 
 of all forms of property would advance more rapidly than the 
 wages of labor. The laborer, excited by the apparent increase 
 in the value of everything, would soon become discontented with 
 the slow accumulations of his increased wages. Using his sur- 
 plus earnings as a basis of credit, which is readily extended 
 upon small margins when prices are rising, he would leave the 
 field of productive industry for the illusory but more inviting 
 field of speculative venture. 
 
 " It may, however, be possible that when industry has been 
 dwarfed, commerce paralyzed, and the spirit of enterprise 
 crushed out by long-continued shrinkage in the volume of money 
 and falling prices, the stimulus of rising prices would be a nec- 
 essary temporary treatment." 
 
 That is what is needed now, a stimulus to prices — in other 
 words, more money and not less. Does anyone suppose that 
 money would remain hoarded one day in this country if it were 
 known to the people who are hoarding it that more money were 
 going to be put in circulation, and that, therefore, by a gentle 
 rise of prices, business all over the country would experience 
 
 785 
 
119 
 
 the utmost activity? Would not the hoarded money leave its 
 hiding places on account of the return to be realized from its 
 use/ in productive enterprises — in enterprises that would call 
 f roip idleness to labor every man who may be out of employment — 
 and what greater boon could be conferred on a country than 
 that all its people should be at work? 
 
 THE VAIiIiING OFF IN THE QXTANTITr OB' MONET A POTENT PAOTOB IN PBO- 
 DUOING THE COLLAPSE KNOWN AS THE DARK AGES. 
 
 "At the Christian era the metallic money of the Roman Em- 
 pire amounted to $1,800,000,000. By the end of the fifteenth cen- 
 tury it had shrunk to less than $200,000,000. During this period 
 a most extraordinary and baleful change took place in the con- 
 dition of the world. Population dwindled, and commerce, arts, 
 wealth, and freedom disappeared. The people were reduced by 
 poverty and misery to the most degraded conditions of serfdom 
 and slavei'y. The disintegration of society was almost complete. 
 The conditions of life were so hard that individual selfishness 
 was the only thing consistent with the instinct of self-preserva- 
 tion. All public spirit, all generous emotions, all the noble as- 
 pirations of man shriveled and disappeared as the Volume of 
 money shrunk and as prices fell. 
 
 " History records no such disastrous transition as that from 
 the Koman Empire to the Dark Ages. Various explanations 
 have been given of this entire breaking down of the framework 
 of society, but it was certainly coincident with a shrinkage in 
 the volume of money, which was also without historical parallel. 
 The crumbling of institutions kept even pace and step with the 
 shrinkage in the stock of money and the falling of prices. All 
 other attendant circum'stances than these last have occurred in 
 other historical periods unaccompanied and unfollowed by any 
 such mighty disasters. It is a suggestive coincidence that the 
 first glimmer of light only came with the invention of bills of 
 exchange and paper substitutes through which the scanty stock 
 of the precious metals was increased in efficiency. 
 
 " But not less than the energizing influence of Potosi and all 
 the argosies of treasure from the New World were needed to 
 arouse the Old World from its comatose sleep, to quicken the 
 torpid limbs of industry, and to plume the leaden wings of com- 
 
120 
 
 merce. It needed the heroic treatment of rising prices to enable 
 society to reunite its shattered links, to shake oft the shackles 
 of feudalism, to relight and uplift the almost extinguished torch 
 of civilization. That the disasters of the Dark Ages were caused 
 by decreasing money and falling prices, and that the recovery 
 therefrom and the comparative prosperity which followed the 
 discovery of America were due to an increasing supply of the 
 precious metals and rising prices, will not seem surprising or un- 
 reasonable when the noble functions of money are considered. 
 Money is the great instrument of industry, the protoplasm of 
 civilization, and as essential to its existence as oxygen is to ani- 
 mal life. Without money civilization could not have had a be- 
 ginning; with a diminishing supply it must languish and unless 
 relieved finally perish. 
 
 SOCIAL AND POLITIOAL DISCONTENT DISPELLED BT OALIEOBNIA DISOOV- 
 
 EBIES. 
 
 " Symptoms of disasters similar to those which befell society 
 during the Dark Ages were observable on every hand during the 
 first half of this century. In 1809 the revolutionary troubles be- 
 tween Spain and her American colonies broke out. These trou- 
 bles resulted in a great diminution in the production of the 
 precious metals, which was quickly indicated by a fall in general 
 prices. As already stated, it is estimated that the purchasing 
 power of the precious metals increased between 1809 and 1848 
 fully 145 per cent, or, in other words, that the general range of 
 prices was 60 per cent lower in 1848 than it was in 1809. Dur- 
 ing this period there was no general demonetization of either 
 metal and no important fluctuation in the relative value of the 
 metals, and the supply was sufficient to keep their stock good 
 against losses by accident and abrasion. But it was insufficient 
 to keep the stock up to the proper correspondence with the in- 
 creasing demand of advancing populations. 
 
 "The world has rarely passed through a more gloomy period 
 than this one. Again do we find falling prices and misery and 
 destitution inseparable companions. The poverty and distress 
 of the industrial masses were intense and universal, and, since the 
 discovery of the mines in America, without a parallel. In Eng- 
 land the sufferings of the people found expression in demands 
 
 785 
 
121 
 
 upon Parliament for relief, in bread riots, and in immense Chart- 
 ist demonstrations. The military arm of the nation had to be 
 strengthened to prevent the all-pervading discontent from ripen- 
 intj into open revolt. On the Continent the fires of revolution 
 smoldered everywhere and blazed out at many points, threat- 
 ening the overthrow of states and the subversion of social insti- 
 tutions. 
 
 "Whenever and wherever the mutterings of discontent were 
 hushed by the fear of increased standing armies the foundations 
 of society were honeycombed by powerful secret political asso- 
 ciations. The cause at work to produce this state of things was 
 so subtle, and its advance so silent, that the masses were en- 
 tirely ignorant of its nature. They had come to regard money 
 £15 an institution fixed and immovable in value, and when the price 
 of property and the wages of labor fell they charged the fault 
 not to the money, but to the property and the employer. They 
 were taught that the mischief was the result of overproduction. 
 Never having observed that overproduction was complained of 
 only when the money stock was decreasing, their prejudices 
 were aroused against labor-saving machinery. They were an- 
 gered at capital, because it either declined altogether to embark 
 in industrial enterprises or would only embark in them upon the 
 condition of employing labor at the most scanty remuneration. 
 They forgot that falling prices compelled capital to avoid such 
 enterprises on any other condition and for the most part to avoid 
 them entirely. They did not comprehend that money in sh rink- 
 ing volume was the prolific parent of enforced idleness and pov- 
 erty, and that falling prices divorced money, capital, and labor, 
 but they none the less felt the paralyzing pressure of the shrink- 
 ing metallic shroud that was closing around industry. 
 
 " The increased yield of the Russian gold fields in 1846 gave some 
 relief, and served as a parachute to the fall in prices which might 
 otherwise have resulted in a great catastrophe. But the enor- 
 mous metallic supplies of Caliiornia and Australia were all needed 
 to give substantial and adequate relief. Great as these supplies 
 were their influence in raising prices was moderated and soon 
 entirely arrested by the increasing populations and commerce 
 which followed them. In the twenty-five years between 1850 
 
 785 
 
122 
 
 and 1876 the money stock of the world was more than doubled, 
 and yet at no time during this period was the general level of 
 prices raised more than 18 per cent above the general level in 
 1848. A comparison of this effect of an increasing volume of 
 money after 1848 with the effect of a decreasing volume between 
 1809 and 1848 strikingly illustrates how largely different in de- 
 gree is the influence upon prices of an increasing or decreasing 
 volume of money. The decrease of the yield of the mines since 
 about 1865, while population and commerce have been advanc- 
 ing, has already produced unmistakable symptoms of the same 
 general distrust, nonemployment of labor and political and so- 
 cial disquiet, which have characterized all former periods of 
 shrinking money. 
 
 HAPPY EFFECTS OP STEADINESS OF COMMERCIAL PBICF3. 
 
 " It is in a volume of money keeping even pace with advancing 
 population and commerce, and in the resulting steadiness of 
 prices, that the wholesome nutriment of a healthy vitality is to 
 be found. The highest moral, intellectual, and material devel- 
 opment of nations is promoted by the use of money unchanging , 
 in its value. That kind of money, instead of being the oppres- 
 sor, is one of the great instrumentalities of commerce and in- 
 dustry. It is as profitless as idle machinery when it is idle; dif- 
 fering from all other useful agencies, it can not benefit its owner 
 except when he parts with it. It is onlv under steady prices 
 that the production of wealth can reach its permanent maximum, 
 and that its equitable distribution is possible. 
 
 " Steadiness in prices insures labor to all and exacts labor from 
 all. It gives security to, credit and stability and prosperity to 
 business. It encourages large enterprises, requiring time for 
 their development, and crowns with success well matured and 
 carefully executed plans. It discourages purely speculative ven- 
 tures, and especially those based upon disaster. It encourages 
 actual transactions, rather than gambling on future prices. It 
 metes out justice to both debtor and creditor and secures credit 
 to those who deserve it. It prevents capital from oppressing 
 labor and labor from. oppressing capital, and secures to each its 
 just share of the fruits of industry and enterprise. It secures a 
 reasonable interest for its use to the lenders of money, and a 
 
123 
 
 just share in the profits of production to the borrower. It keeps 
 up the distinction between a mortgage and a deed. It insures a 
 moderate competence to the many rather than colossal fortunes 
 to the few at the expense of the many. If it be admitted that the 
 volume of money should increase pari passu with either wealth, 
 commerce, or population, the least measure of increase would be 
 that based on population, as in commercial countries both wealth 
 and exchanges are multiplied more rapidly than population. 
 The narrower measure of increase would probably be the more 
 accurate one, as the thing to be measured and which it is im- 
 portant should have an unvarying value is human effort, and as 
 that can neither be increased nor diminished except through an 
 increase or diminution of the population it would seem that the 
 volume of money should only vary with population. 
 
 "As steadiness in prices, which depends on steadiness in the 
 relation between money and all other things, is essential to pros- 
 perity, it follows that in any change in money systems, the vol- 
 ume of the new money— that is to say, the number of units of the 
 new money issued — should if possible be neither greater nor less 
 than the number of units in circulation at the time of the change. 
 A strict observance of this rule, whatever be the material of 
 moneys will prevent any general rise or fall in prices. 
 
 " The quantity of metallic money, or of paper money constantly 
 convertible into metallic money, which can be maintained in the 
 circulation of any particular country can not be controlled arbi- 
 trarily. It can not be greater than such an amount as may be 
 requisite to maintain the prices of such codntry at a substantial 
 parity with the prices of all other countries using the same kind 
 of money. Any change from this amount must be temporary, 
 and will be soon automatically corrected by the course of ex- 
 change." 
 
 No country, Mr. President, can keep more than its distribu- 
 tive share of what may be called international money. You 
 might issue bonds until doomsday, and even if you got with 
 them hundreds of millions of gold for your Treasury, yet if you 
 do not lock up that gold and keep it under guard it would not 
 remain. The vacuum created in the money volume abroad 
 would lead to a fall of prices abroad, while the increase of thte 
 
 785 
 
124 
 
 money volume here by the inflow of the gold would create a rise 
 here, and the moment you unlocked your Treasury it would flow 
 out again. It would be as futile to keep gold under such cir- 
 cumstances as to attempt to pump water out of the harbor of 
 Liverpool into the harbor of New York and expect to maintain 
 two separate levels of the ocean by the operation. It would be 
 utterly impossible. If you have the gold standard you must con- 
 tent yourself with the gold range of prices and must be prepared 
 to see the condition of Jthe working and producing masses of this 
 country brought down to the level of the like masses of Great 
 Britain and Germany. 
 
 "The volume of inconvertible paper money, on the contrary, 
 is local to and subject to the control of the country issuing it, 
 and should be regulated solely with reference to existing prices, 
 and consequently should be neither increased nor diminished, 
 except in correspondence with changes in population and com- 
 merce. 
 
 "The propositionoften made that the quantity of money in this 
 country should amount now to as much per capita as it did at 
 some anterior period, or to as much per capita as in England or 
 France, rests on no philosophical basis whatever. Irrespective 
 of time contracts, it is of no consequence what the volume of 
 money may be, provided it be subdivided into such number of 
 imits, or fractions of units, as would meet physical requirements, 
 while the equity of such contracts can be met only by maintain- 
 ing the relation between money and other things undisturbed." 
 
 BATES OT INTBBEST ALWAYS LOW WHEN MONEY VOISUNE IS SHRINKING. 
 
 "Equally fanciful and erroneous is the proposition that the 
 rates of interest depend upon the volume of money. The rates 
 for the use of loanable capital depend upon entirely different 
 factors, such as the current rates of business profits, productive- 
 ness of the soil, the security of property, the stability of go /ern- 
 ment, pressure of taxation, and the fiscal policies of governments, 
 such as the maintenance of public debts, which necessarily in- 
 crease the rate of interest. In truth increasing the amount of 
 money tends indirectly to increase the rate of interest by stimu- 
 lating business activity, while decreasing the amount of money 
 reduces the rate of interest by checking enterprises and thereby 
 
125 
 
 curtailing the demand for loans. This is signally illustrated by 
 the present condition of things in every part of the commercial 
 world. The rate of interest should be, and under a correct 
 money system would be, merely an expression of the rate of profit 
 ^which could be made through the use of borrowed capital." 
 
 Under a proper monetary system investments in productive 
 •«nterprises would be as profitable now as at any time heretofore. 
 This country is not half built up, and money should find increased 
 use, and at least undiminished profit, in enterprises that employ 
 labor. Surely in a country like this, whose development has 
 hardly more than begun, it must be considered extraordinary 
 that interest on first-class securities is so low. In new countries 
 interest is always higher than in old. Interest will on the aver- 
 age represent what men can make by the use of money, else there 
 would be no reward for the enterprise or energy which induces 
 men to borrow and invest in industrial enterprises. Indeed, it 
 is probable that interest rates represent rather more than, on 
 .the average, can be realized from the use of money in business, 
 as the hopes of those who have the activity of temperament and 
 the disposition to invest in industrial enterprises are usually suf- 
 ficient to lead them to expect too much. 
 
 The rates of Interest are not fixed by individual borrowers or 
 by individual lenders, but by the general consensus of experi- 
 ence among men as to the amount' of profit which can be made 
 by the use of money. This profit is limited and controlled by the 
 {)rices of the commodities in whose manufacture the capitalist 
 engages. When money is shrinking in quantity and its value — 
 that is its purchasing power — increasing, the fall of prices — 
 which under the gold standard knows no end — renders impossi- 
 ble the rate of profit on which men of enterprise had calculated 
 when they entered into business. 
 
 The fact that rates of interest are constantly growing less is 
 a sign that the borrower csin not afi'ord to pay higher rates. We 
 know that the lender would take no low rate if he could get a 
 higher; no one will for a moment suspect that the money-lender 
 would lend his money at less than he can exact from the bor- 
 rower. But he must be contented with what he can get. If he 
 does not take that rate, his money will lie-idle altogether. When 
 
 785 
 
126 
 
 men of enterprise find no profit in industrial undertakings — wheo 
 they discover that the persistent fall of prices renders impossi- 
 ble a reasonable degree of profit, they either decline to borrow, 
 in which case they reduce expenses by discharging a portion of 
 their workmen, or if they borrow and utilize the money in their 
 business, the lender must take such interest as they can afford 
 to pay. 
 
 Whatever may be thought of the causes for a fall of prices, it 
 must be conceded that if money is diminishing in quantity In 
 comparison with the demand for it, the prices of commodities 
 can not avoid falling. It is also. impossible to escape the conclu- 
 sion that a persistent and protracted fall of prices from whatever 
 cause must result in making the rates of profit for the use of 
 money in industrial enterprises less and less. , And if profits re- 
 cede nothing is more certain than that interest also must recede. 
 Hence men who have means and do not wish to risk them in 
 business on a constantly falling market, invest them in gilt- 
 edged securities — securities that are sure to make no default in 
 the payment of interest. This is a necessary concomitant of a 
 gold standard, by reason of which — business tending more and 
 more to lack of profit — men are relegated to idleness. 
 
 When I look around me among Senators here I wonder whether 
 they can really mean that it is important to adopt for this coun- 
 try the gold standard in order that we may be able toget British 
 money-lenders to lend us more money for investment in bonds and 
 similar securities? Have the American people come so close as 
 this to the end of their resources? If I thought so I should con- 
 sider it a pitiful exhibition of the power of a republican form of 
 government to secure prosperity for those who live under it. 
 
 If all our gold should go to foreign countries we should have a 
 more equitable money in its place if we had silver money. What 
 more beneficent thing could happen to us than that the $600,- 
 000,000 of gold in this country should go to replenish the money 
 volume of those countries to which we sell our surplus products? 
 
 What folly could we commit by letting this gold go to countries- 
 ii which wheat and cotton and meat products would bring 20, 
 
 30, or 40 per cent more than they now do? So far even as we 
 
 ■;85 
 
127 
 
 may have gold contracts, it is, after all, through the sale of the 
 products of labor that we must get gold with which to pay. 
 
 IS THBBB DANGER Or A SILVER BASIS ? 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson, win the senator yield to me a moment? 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Certainly. 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson. Suppose we opened our mints while the 
 mints of the world are closed, and all the accumulated silver of 
 the world and the current silver should flow to us, what would 
 become of this country? 
 
 , Mr. JONES of Nevada. In the first place, this is not a cred- 
 itor country. But how are we to suppose that the silver should 
 flood in here? There are at least seven or eight hundred mil- 
 lions of people in the world who use nothing but silver. They 
 can not demonetize it. That is utterly out of the question. 
 
 According to the idea of the Senator from Rhode Island, as 
 expressed on Saturday, the 280,000,000 of ignorant and super- 
 stitious people constituting the population of India would' send 
 here the little silver charms and idols which they use in their 
 religious worship, and which they revere more than they do 
 money. 'There is no logic in such a proposition. A trifle of 
 bullion might come out from such a country, but it would he 
 impossible for any considerable amount to come. So this "flood" 
 of silver can not come. 
 
 Mr. MCPHERSON. Why not? 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. For the reason I have stated, and for 
 the further reason that the East Indian would want something 
 in exchange for his money. We have not anything he wants. 
 I know of nothing in the world that he wants that we could 
 supply. 
 
 Mr. MCPHERSON. The British Government or the Indian 
 Government wants gold in exchange for silver. They are build- 
 ing up the gold standard. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. They will take gold for silver, but 
 will not give gold for silver. It is a one-sided operation in its 
 way. The British Government agrees that it will not sell coun- 
 cil bills for less than Is. id. 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson. They fix the value. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. They fix the gold value. 
 
128 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson. The senator declared in his speech on 
 Saturday, and he reiterates the statement to-day, that there are 
 not more than twenty millions of silver anywhere in the stocks 
 of the world that could afford to come to the United States and 
 become a part of the circulation of the United States. I think 
 it must be very evident to the Senator that the five hundred mil- 
 lions of gold reported to have been in this country a short time 
 ago has all retired somewhere, either into the reserves of the 
 banks or into the hoards of the people. If a larger value should 
 be given to silver by allowing it to be brought to the mints and 
 to be sold at $1.29 an ounce, instead of selling it, as is now done, 
 at 75 cents an ounce 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. They do not sell it at all. 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson. Oh, yes, they do. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. They do not sell it at all. I dispute 
 the Senator's proposition. 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson, very well. Let me go on with my state- 
 ment. I will assume then that we are going on a silver basis. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. That is purely an assumption. 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson, in my opinion it is absolutely unavoid- 
 able. The gold will not be in circulation, and what is coming in 
 to take the place of the departed gold? The Senator can not for 
 one moment deny the fact that it would be for the interest of 
 Prance and Germany and the states of the Latin Union, as far 
 as they had silver on hand, to exchange it for the gold of the 
 United States, or resort to some process by which gold could 
 be obtained for silver. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Does the Senator say they will do 
 it? 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson. I do; and the Senator must admit the 
 fact. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. I do not for a moment admit it as a 
 fact. 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson. France is situated in the heart of Europe, 
 surrounded on all sides by gold countries that use scarcely any 
 silver except as subsidiary coin or whose mints are closed to the 
 coinage of silver. At all events she could not, with the gold- 
 using countries, use her hoard of $700,000,000 of silver to buy 
 
 785 
 
129 
 
 ■even ammunition for war or an ounce of food to feed her army or 
 supply her people. Therefore if France could convert her silver 
 into gold, to wit, the gold of the United States, by the exchange 
 of silver in lieu of gold, does the Senator say that France would 
 not avail herself of that advantage? 
 
 The Senator may possibly asK me how France could convert 
 her silver into gold. I would not say that she could exchange 
 it for American gold which has gone out of circulation, because 
 the banks would not release their gold except at a high premium. 
 The hoards in the hands of the people, who are not debtors 
 usually, would not be released, but they would hold it for a 
 higher premium. How then would she do it? By sending her 
 silver here and exchanging it for commodities. As a matter of 
 course the moment your $500,000,000 of gold ceases to circulate it 
 leaves your $1,600,000,000 of circulation now in this country 
 brought down to $1,100,000,000. What is the result? Silvermust 
 rush in to take its place,because you have opened your mint to sup- 
 ply it. What then takes place? Silver will rise. Commodities will 
 necessarily fall. It enables France to exobange her silver through 
 the medium of our commodities into gold, our commodities to 
 be transferred to Europe and sold in Europe for gold. So what 
 has she done? She has taken her $500,000,000 of silver and put 
 it in our circulation in place of the $500,000,000 of gold that has 
 gone into hers. 
 
 The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. CnLLOM in the chair). 
 The Chair must remind the Senator from New Jersey that the 
 Senator from Nevada has the floor. 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson. I know, but he has been so courteous as 
 to yield to everybody, and I thought he would permit me to ex- 
 plain how gold will escape and silver come in. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Certainly. 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson. I want to hear the Senator on this ques- 
 tion, and would like the Senator to bear with me a moment 
 longer. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. With pleasure. 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson. I have listened with great interest and with 
 greatprofit to his learned address, but let me submit to the Sen- 
 ator that we are confronted here now with a measure of legisla- 
 
130 
 
 tion^ We are engaging in tlie practical thing, in applying in 
 practice the theories he has advanced here. Now, let us apply 
 them. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. The Senator is reversing them. 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson. Let me hear from the Senator, with our 
 mints open and offering $1.29an ounce, when all the world outside 
 is not a bidder for silver and offering nothing how we can pre ■ 
 vent that great flood of silver from coming in upon our circula- 
 tion. 
 
 Then, to apply the Senator's other principle, which he used 
 with great force and effect and in which I agree with him, he says 
 that in proportion as you increase the volume of the circulation 
 you to that extent affect the value of the unit of measure. The 
 result of it would be this: Until we get in our circulation as 
 much silver as we have driven out of the circulation in the 
 character of gold money, there will be, as a matter of course, a 
 contraction. When we reach the $1,600,000,000 again then we 
 have got back to our normal condition. Now, how are you going 
 to stop the flood beyond that? You are the only bidder, yours 
 is the only mint open to silver; the world has $3,500,000,000 of 
 silver that we have not yet received, and the mines in 1892 sent 
 us $195,000,000 of silver (coinage Value), for which there is no 
 market except through our mints. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. I may be excused if I did not exactly 
 understand how the process was to go on by which France was 
 to send us her $700,000,000, as the Senator said. In the first 
 place there is not half that available. There are not more 
 than $250,000,000 in the Bank of France. The remainder is 
 circulating among the people all over France; that is to say, 
 largely among the peasantry, who know practically no money 
 but silver money. There is 3 per cent difference between the 
 French ratio and ours, which would be so much loss to the French- 
 man, and to that must be added the brokers' commissions for 
 gathering the silver pieces together from all the corners of 
 Prance and sending them over here to buy something the peo- 
 ple of France do not want. And if we conceive them to part 
 with their silver to get gold, we know that the gold will not 
 pass in France for a particle of value more than silver did be- 
 
 785 
 
131 
 
 fore; and as the gold money consists of pieces of large value it 
 would not serve the purpose of the people nearly so well as 
 silver doss now. Is it possible to suppose the French people 
 would do such a thing, when a very large amount of money 
 would be lost in the exchange? 
 
 Mr. MoPHERSON. We have seen Germany do the same 
 thing. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Yes, at a time when she was to re- 
 ceive a thousand million dollars of gold as a result of the war. 
 And even then Germany had to pass a law bsfore making the 
 change; and now the masses of the people of Germany, espe- 
 cially the agricultural classes, are intensely opposed to that 
 law and are urging the restorition of the bimetallic standard. 
 
 Prance has never shown the slightest inclination to part with 
 her silver; and in a conversation which I had with M. Tirard, 
 who was minister of finance in Prance and a delegate to the con- 
 ference at Brussels, he said Prance was perfectly contented with 
 her system. Much batter is the silver in Prance for the good-, 
 of the people of Prance than if it were so much gold, even if 
 they could exchange it to-morrow without any loss whatever. 
 That silver money stays in Prance and performs the beneficent 
 function which money is intended to perform. It is not con- 
 stantly drawn out and drawn in, to the great disarrangement and 
 detriment of the people's business, as would be the case were it 
 internationally acceptable as money. 
 
 I assert that the prosperity of business, in a country depends 
 upon the stability of the quantity of money in that country with 
 which to do the internal business of the country. France has 
 a money that can not be drawn out. It is there and remains there 
 to perform the great functions that money was intended to per- 
 form. It is a wholly chimerical idea that the peasants of France 
 are going to discard silver and take gold which can not be sub- 
 divided to 'meet their daily wants, and to which, whether it 
 could be subdivided or not, they have never been accustomed, 
 and ^n dealing with money, the habits and customs of a people — 
 their immemorial usages — are of the utmost importance. 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson. The senator does not understand me as 
 saying that France will ever drive out of her circulation that 
 
 785 
 
132 
 
 portion of silver that is needed for small transactions to pay the 
 butcher and the baker, no more than our country would drive 
 out silver coinage altogether. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Why should she send out any more 
 of it than we send out of what we coin? 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson. Simply for this reason: France can con- 
 vert $300,000,000 or $400,000,000 of silver into gold; and the posi- 
 tion the other nations of Europe occupy maintaining a gold stand- 
 ard could send all their surplus silver. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. She occupies an infinitely stronger 
 position than any of the other nations of Europe. 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson. France to-day gives a forced circulation 
 to her silver. The charter of the Bank of France requires that 
 the bank shall receive from the people the silver franc on de- 
 posit, and it requires also that the bank shall pay it out again 
 to parties who deposit it; that is, the public. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. The Senator talks about a "forced " 
 circulation. Why, Mr. President, all circulation is by force. 
 Whatever is legal tender is forced circulation anywhere. We 
 have been told a great deal about the "enforced" coinage of 
 silver. If people would give attention to the meanings of 
 words, they would understand that all legal-tender money, of 
 whatever material it is composed, is given "enforced" circula- 
 tion. The circulation of gold is as much " enforced " as that of 
 silver. 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson. I have heard the Senator state upon 
 this floor that Prance charges a premium upon gold. Now, I 
 wish to know if that would not be a forced circulation of silver, 
 if a premium were charged upon gold? 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Not at all, except in the sense that 
 it would force the man who wants to speculate on the treasure 
 of France to pay the market price for it, instead of allowing 
 speculators, as our Government wrongfully does, to come in and 
 take gold out of the Treasury in order that they maybe enabled 
 to make a pitiful commission of a quarter of 1 per cent or a half 
 of 1 per cent upon it by selling it to Austria. 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson, it is not what they have, but what the 
 effect of it would be. Is it not a fact that if you charge a pre- 
 
 7S5 
 
133 
 
 mium on gold you do force silver into circulation, because silver 
 takes the place of gold? 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. I agree to that. 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson. Then there is the admission of a fact. 
 
 The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair must remind Sena- 
 tors that before they interrupt the Senator entitled to the floor 
 they must address the Chair so that the Chair may ascertain 
 whether the Senator on the floor yielas. 
 
 Mr. STEWART. I should like to ask the Senator from New- 
 Jersey a question. 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson. I am speaking in the time of the Sena- 
 tor's colleague, who has kindly yielded to me, because I want to 
 bring out something on this particular point. 
 
 Mr. STEWART. I want to bring it out. Will the Senator 
 allow me to ask him a question? 
 
 The PRESIDING OFFICER. Does the Senator from Nevada 
 [Mr. Jones] yield to his colleague? 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Certainly. 
 
 Mr. STEWART, Is the Senator from New Jersey aware of 
 the fact that in 1885 the Latin Union passed a resolution dissolv- 
 ing the union at the end of five years, provided any member of 
 the union would give a year's notice; and upon the giving of such 
 notice and such dissolution it was resolved that each of the na- 
 tions belonging to that union should redeem the silver coins that 
 the other had in gold at the rate of 15i to 1, $1.33 an ounce? Is 
 the Senator aware of the fact that Prance holds of the other na- 
 tions about $200,000,000 of their silver coin, which by giving the 
 notice she could make them take at the rate of $1.33 an ounce, 
 and that France has refused to give that notice? Is the Senator 
 aware that there has been a struggle all the time on the part of 
 the gold monometallists to make France give the notice, urging 
 as a reason that those countries had joined her enemies and she 
 ought to do it as a matter of revenge, and that the French Gov- 
 ernment has refused to do it on the ground that it would not give 
 up its silver coinage and disturb its present financial condition? 
 Is the Senator aware that a transaction of that kind has been 
 going on? 
 
 785 
 
134 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson, if the senator wants to ask me a ques- 
 tion 
 
 Mr. STEWART. If the Senator agr?,es with the fact I have 
 stated, let me ask him why, when France will not sell that sil- 
 ver coin at $1.33 in gold, she would send it here and sell it at 
 $1.29? 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson, in the first place, the question the Sen- 
 ator asks me is the worst blow that could have been struck upon 
 the argument which has been made all the time by his colleafgue. 
 In the next place, it does not matter a particle to me or to the 
 question which the Senator from Nevada is discussing whether 
 three or four nations shall get together and decide as to a cer- 
 tain monetary policy between themselves, because it is one that 
 is terminable at the end of the period of time for which it was 
 made. It can not have any lasting effect, and as a universal 
 principle affecting money, it is of no consequence whatever. So 
 I do not think I need to spend any more time in answering it. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. As I understand the Senator from 
 New Jersey, first the gold would all go out. 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson, it has gone. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. I understand the Treasury reports to 
 state that there are $500,000,000 or $600,000,000 in this country. 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson, it is out of circulation. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. It has not been in circulation. I do 
 not think anybody has seen any for years. I have not. It is no 
 more out of circulation now than it has been all the time. 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson. The panic dropped it out. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. I did not see it before the panic, nor 
 did anybody else. No man in the country has seen any gold in 
 circulation in this country for many years, except a little on the 
 Pacific coast. It has always been in hiding. It is no more out 
 of circulation now than it has always been. Yet by reason of 
 going out of circulation the Senator tells us there would be a 
 great contraction! He tells us that in this country there would 
 be a premium on gold, and the silver money of this country 
 would buy 15 or 20 per cent more than the money upon which 
 there was a premium. 
 
 Mr. MCPHERSON. Not at all. 
 
135 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. I want to state it again, to see 
 whether I state it aright. He says the gold money would go out 
 and leave only $1,000,000,000 or $1,100,000,000 in this country, 
 and that the purchasing power of that $1,000,000,000 or $1,100,- 
 000,000 must increase largely; in other words, prices must fall. 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson. Truly. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. They must fall very greatly, and 
 at the same time there would be a premium on gold, which 
 would buy much less of commodities than the dollar of this sil- 
 ver money! That is such a contradictory statement, never con- 
 firmed in the history Of the world, that I am willing the Sena- 
 tor shall have the full benefit of it. 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson. Now, let me say to the Senator, as I have 
 described to him the operation by which it would be done, I 
 understand that, except by the purchase of gold at a premium 
 by French or German silver, it could only be obtained through 
 an exchange of their silver for our commodities. Our gold to 
 the extent of $500,000,000 goes out of circulation the moment we 
 pass a bill providing for the free and unlimited coinage of sil- 
 ver. If the French and Germans are disposed to get rid of their 
 silver, as they are, they may bring it here. That being silver 
 money, as a matter of course it would rise in value and commod- 
 ities would fall. The German silver and the French silver 
 would be invested in commodities at low prices, which would be 
 sold in European States at gold prices. 
 
 Why would not 100,000,000 bushels of wheat or a million bales 
 of cotton sell for just as high price in French hands as it would 
 sell in American hands? Therefore, they have converted their 
 three or four or five hundred million dollars of silver into com- 
 modities at their gold value and exchanged them for gold in 
 gold-using countries. We have lost our gold; they have gained 
 it. We have got their silver, and we are upon a silver basis, 
 and we can not get off of it. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. The Senator from New Jersey talks 
 as though a dozen different ranges of prices could prevail simul- 
 taneously in a dozen different countries. There can be but one 
 international range of prices. There can not be for the same ar- 
 ticle one prioe in France, another price in England, and a third 
 
136 
 
 price in this country. Prices of international commodities al- 
 ways find a common level. 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson, win the senator yield a moment further? 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Certainly. 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson. I go on this proposition broadly, that if 
 France to-day could sell her silver at 90 per cent of its value in 
 bulk, bodily exchange it for gold, she would be glad to do it. 
 If there is a slight deviation or a slight loss, I do not think 
 France would care about it. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Does the Senator speak by any au- 
 thority from Prance? 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson. I do not, but I speak from the general 
 condition of things, and assume that the French people are wise 
 in financial matters. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. The French minister of finance told 
 the Brussels conference, and he told me personally, that France 
 was entirely contented with her position, wanted no change, 
 was all right, and was seeking nothing of the kind. 
 
 Now, I should like to ask the Senator from New Jersey another 
 question, as he is so fearful that the people of Prance and other 
 countries will come over herewith their silver. Is he in favor, 
 and will he be in favor, of the coinage of the American product, 
 keeping out the foreign product? 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson. I know of no line of demarcation except 
 this one 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. I ask the Senator whether he is really 
 opposed to the foreign product coming in? 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson. The opening of our mints to-day drives 
 us within the next six months to a silver basis, from which you 
 can not escape. The coinage of the American supply will drive 
 us there a little more slowly, but no less surely. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. That is, the Senator thinks that 50,- 
 000,000 ounces a year of addition to our currency to meet an an- 
 nual increase of population of 2,000,000 will drive us to a silver 
 basis. 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson. Letmeask the Senator a question. Will 
 he yield to me? 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Certainly. 
 
137 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson. There was produced in the year 1892 
 $195,000,000, our coinage value, of silver in the world. There 
 is not a market for it on the earth, and if offered to-day in a 
 block it would not bring 40 cents an ounce in any market in the 
 universe. Now, what do you propose to do? You propose to 
 add to the value of that store, which you transfer direct from 
 your mine to the mints, an additional 54 cents per ounce upon 
 every single ounce of it. Your silver to-day is bringing 75 cents 
 an ounce in the market. Your silver at its mint price would 
 bring $1.29 an ounce, or a difference of 54 cents per ounce, which 
 is infinitely more than the cost of producing the ounce of silver. 
 Here you have stimulated production. The mines of to-day pro- 
 duce $195,000,000 per year, which would be stimulated to such 
 an extent that they would produce perhaps twice that amount 
 of silver. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. The Senator is talking about $195,- 
 000,000 of silver. I am talking about the production of this 
 country. 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson. I am speaking of the production of the 
 world. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. I am speaking of the production of 
 this country, and I ask the Senator whether he supposes the 
 French people are so lacking in financial acumen that they are 
 going to send us their silver at a great expense and lose a large 
 amount by it? Every man in public life in France is against it. 
 But the Senator from New Jersey seems to know exactly what 
 they are going to do. 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson. I care nothing for the argument that it 
 is against their interest. It is surely for their interest to sell it 
 to us to-day for high prices and buy it back later at low prices. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. I ask the Senator if he is willing to 
 take the American product to meet the demands for money of 
 an increasing population? Then he wanders. I can not under- 
 stand exactly the point he is trying to make. 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson, now, apply, if you please, the vory prin- 
 ciple that I have been adapting here to the $65,000,000 of Ameri- 
 can product. I care not whether you apply it to the world's 
 product or the American product, if you intend by any legisla- 
 
 785 
 
138 
 
 tion which you propose here to limit the amount of silver that 
 can possibly come to our mints to the American product, that 
 makes the process a little slower but no less sure. 
 
 Mr, JONES of Nevada. What process? 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson. The process of transferring us from a 
 gold standard, where we now stand, to a silver standard. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. We have not any gold standard. We 
 have a standard of numbers, so many dollars, and we want to 
 keep up that number of dollars and keep it proportioned to the 
 increase of population. If gold will not do it, and we have not 
 enough to keep pace with the population, I am right in accord 
 with the Senator's theory. He is afraid of his own theory. He 
 does not live up to it. 
 
 Mr. McPHERSON. There is this difference between the Sen- 
 ator and myself. I say that I am unalterably opposed to giving 
 up the standard of gold which we now have. The Senator says 
 that he would be perfectly willing to taike a standard of silver, 
 silver being the more stable. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. The Senator from New Jersey pre- 
 fers a standard of gold to a standard of justice. I prefer a stand- 
 ard of justice, a standard in which the dollar shall remain a true 
 measure of the sacrifice involved in the transactions whose equi- 
 ties it is used to register, a just and faithful measure of the ob- 
 ligations of time contracts and deferred payments in an age in 
 which such contracts and payments are essential to the uninter- 
 rupted employment of labor. I understand that, according to 
 the view of the Senator, if prices should fall, wheat to 10 cents a 
 bushel and cotton to .3 cents a pound, on account of the decreas- 
 ing supply of gold in the world, he would still be for the gold 
 standard; he would still be for the creditor classes; he would 
 still be for making this country an annex of Great Britain; he 
 would still be in favor of having the producing classes, the plain 
 people of this country, reduced by the fall in the prices of the 
 products of their labor to a condition in which they must live on 
 the bare necessaries of life, and when once there that they must 
 remain there. 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson, if the Senator will yield tu me for a sin- 
 gle moment I will show him how unjust any such statement is. 
 
139 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. I do not think the Senator can. 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson. I win tell you what we have tod ay. "We 
 have $500,000,000 of g'old in the country and we have over $700,- 
 000,000 of silver circulation. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. We have not any gold in circulation 
 in the country. I deny that at once. 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson. I am willing to put just as many dollars 
 of silver in circulation in this country as we have gold and main- 
 tain the two on a parity. How then does the Senator say that 
 I am unwilling to use silver in circulation? 
 
 Mr. .TONES of Nevada. Suppose that is not enongh to keep a 
 parity with justice? 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson. Then I would increase the gold and in- 
 crease the silver. 'There is no country in the world that can pro- 
 duce gold as fast as we can or absorb it faster. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. To talk about being able to procure 
 gold when it does not exist is idle. It is impossible to procure 
 gold. No country can have more than its distributive share, and 
 no country can maintain gold except at the gold range of prices, 
 at the range of prices prevailing in the countries which use 
 gold. Gold can not be maintained in this country, the tariff 
 wall considered, above the range of prices obtaining in all other 
 countries that use gold. 
 
 The Senator says he is willing to have a dollar in silver for 
 a dollar in gold. That does not answer the question. Suppose 
 that is not enough. Suppose that in proportion to the demand 
 for gold the supply is constantly decreasing, and suppose that a 
 dollar in silver and a dollar in gold, taken together, do not make 
 enough to maintain the range of prises undisturbed — that they 
 do not make enough no prevent the enslavement of the debtor 
 classes to the creditor classes — is there to be no escape? What 
 is the meaning of a fall of general prices? It means the loot- 
 ing of the debtor. It means a constant unearned increment in 
 the pockets of the creditor. 
 
 All evidence goes to prove, and the British Royal Commission 
 practically admitted, that gold has advanced 50 per cent in value 
 in the last twenty years. That means that to the $30,000,000,000 
 of debts estimated to be due by the people of this country in 
 
140 
 
 their individual capacity, there is an average additional burden 
 imposed of 2i per cent per annum. It means that a like per- 
 centage is added to the burden of the $30,000,000,000 of the na- 
 tional bonded debts of the world, or on account of those debts 
 alone, an unjust and unearned capitalized increment of $15,000,- 
 000,000 in twenty years, on which interest is paiyable to the 
 creditor classes, a colossal sum for which the people have re- 
 ceived not the slightest equivalent, and all of which is placed on 
 the already overburdened back of labor. And the process has 
 not ceased, but is still in operation. I am willing that gold 
 should stay here, but if we can not keep gold except at the ex- 
 pense of justice, then I say let gold go and let us retain justice. 
 
 Let the dollar that we retain be a dollar that does not exact 
 from the debtor more sacrifice than he received. Let our money 
 unit, or dollar, be a unit that will bear a steady and unwavering 
 relation through time with the correlative units of the various 
 products of labor, whether yardstick, pound-weight or bushel 
 measure. Whatever be the relation between the monetary unit 
 and the units of commodities and properties when a debt is in- 
 curred, that is the relation that should continue to exist till the 
 debt is paid. It is far more important that our dollar, which is 
 the unit of our money, should be at a parity with the products 
 of labor than with gold. Gold keeps at a parity with nothing. 
 
 I should like to see a monetary unit that will keep at a parity 
 with the unit of wheat, and the unit of cotton, the unit of beef, 
 and of pork, and the unit of all other things that we produce in 
 this country. That would be much better than that our mone- 
 tary unit should be kept at a parity with gold. If there is not 
 gold enough to maintain our monetary unit at a normal and un- 
 changing relation with the units of these various commodities 
 that our people produce at the relation that they start with, then 
 I repeat let gold go. 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson. I did not wish to interfere with the 
 Senator, but he was making statements which I believed to be 
 fallacious; and the Senator will pardon me for the use of the 
 term. I did not want to interfere with his speech. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. I have no objections to interruptions. 
 
 Mr. MCPHERSON. He had suspended for the time being, 
 
141 
 
 and finding that he was perfectly willing to allow interruptions 
 I interposed my ohjections to his reasoning. 
 
 What I want to get at is the fact, and I think the country 
 wants it more than it wants anything else just now. I wanted 
 to call the attention of the Senator to existing conditions, and 
 apply his reasoping to those conditions. 
 
 THB TAOTS WANTED. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. I can not understand how the Sena- 
 tor expects to get at facts, or expects us to get at them. I find 
 the Senator constantly votes to keep us here night and day. I 
 find the Senator from Massachusetts [Mr. Lodge] objecting to 
 anybody carefully preparing what he wishes to say on a question 
 of the utmost magnitude. He wants Senators to get up and 
 speak on this groat subject extemporaneously, and without very 
 serious thought. I find that many Senators on this side of the 
 Chanlber tell us they want discussion to get out the facts, and 
 then keep us here eighteen or nineteen hours a day to get out 
 the facts. But, Mr. President, Hihe facts can not be found on the 
 desks here. 
 
 Mr. HOAR. Will the Sen tor from Nevada permit me to say 
 that, while I am one of the Senators who have expressed them- 
 selves most emphatically upon the question of using debate for 
 the purpose of obstruction, I do not myself believe there is a 
 member of this body, whatever opinion he may hold on the 
 silver question, who thinks the Senator's speech has been in 
 any way too long or an abuse of the privilege of the Senate, , 
 or a speech which ought not to be made. It has been full of 
 instruction and delight to those who differ with the Senator as 
 well as to those who agree with him. I think every Senator will 
 agree with me when I say that. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. My criticism did not refer to the 
 senior Senator from Massachusetts but to the junior Senator. 
 
 Mr. HOAR. I did not understand the Senaitor to refer to 
 me, but I refer to him. 
 
 THE BEPOBT ON PBIOBS AND WAGES. 
 
 Mr. ALDRICH. I think I ought to say a single word in 
 answer to an allusion made by the Senator from Nevada to an 
 
 785 
 
142 
 
 inquiry made by th.e committee of whict I was the chairman, it 
 being an inquiry into the prices of wages from 1840 to 1892. I 
 will state that the Senator from Nevada entirely misapprehends 
 the purposes which that committee had in view, and from his 
 idea of the results ascertained it is evident that in- his wide 
 range of reading upon this and collateral questions Jie must 
 have overlooked the report of the committee. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Oh, no; I did not. I think I stated it 
 substantially as I understood it. I was upon the Committee on 
 Finance which created this committee, and I understood what 
 the object of it was. 
 
 Mr. ALDRICH. I think the Senator will agree with me that 
 in the making of the inquiry from 1840 to 1892 the purpose could 
 not have been in the nature of things to ascertain the result of 
 an act which was passed in 1890. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. But it would be hardly possible to 
 get at what took place after 1890 unless the information was 
 called for so as to embrace the period before as well as after. 
 Much information would naturally be obtained as to the period 
 prior to that time, but no committee would try to get the de- 
 sired information for the prior period and fail to get it for the 
 period subsequent to 1890. 
 
 I wish before sitting down to say one word upon what seems to 
 me a very flippant statement about the cost of producing silver. 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson. I should like to hear the Senator on that 
 point. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. I should like to know how the Sen- 
 ator gets at the cost of producing silver, and what he knows 
 about it. 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson. , I win tell the Senator now. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. I shall be glad to know how he gets 
 at it. 
 
 REGARDING COST OF PRODtTCING SILVER. 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson. I take the report of the Director of the 
 Mint in 1887, Dr. Kimball. I take the reports of Prof. Austin, 
 of London, for the same year. Coupled with that, and finding 
 that the cost of the production of silver as found in the mining 
 reports has been very much reduced in the past few years, I then 
 
143 
 
 take the mint reports. I take the report of the Superintendent 
 of the Census, who in 1890 reported the cost of producing 41 ,000,- 
 OOff ounces of silver in the United States out of the 51,000,000 
 ounces produced. He gave a report of the actual cost of mining 
 and reducing 41,000,000 ounces oi silver out of a possible produc- 
 tion of 51,000,000 ounces. After deducting the gold it contained, 
 the lead it contained, and selling it in the market for the market 
 price, it left the actual cost of producing an ounce of silver at 37i 
 cents. Now, I know of no higher authority to go to than those 
 gentlemen who have been employed by us to make investigation 
 and report. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. I know a higher authority to go to 
 than those gentlemen. 
 
 Mr. McPHERSOJST. Who is it? 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. It is the Senator from Nevada, who is 
 now addressing this body. He is a very much higher authority 
 than those gentlemen, and he does not claim to be a very high 
 authority either. The statement is absolutely absurd. The 
 great cost is in finding the mine. Years of time and hundreds 
 of thousands of dollars are spent in tapping the earth, in going 
 down and down until what gave promise of being a mine is found 
 to be a failure. The money spent in mines that never materialize 
 is infinitely greater than that spent in the mines that turn out 
 the metal. 
 
 As I had occasion to say on Saturday, if there were a profit of 
 50 per cent or more an ounce in mining silver, what an absurdity 
 it is that more of the people of the Unite i States do not go into 
 the business. There are railroads running into all those regions 
 and communities established there, and yet there has been no in- 
 crease in the numbers either of the mining capitalists or of the 
 working miners of the country in the last ten years. 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson, win the senator answer me a question? 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Certainly. 
 
 Mr. McPHEBSON. At a time when the price of silver has 
 fallen at a terrible ratio, year after year, you have increased 
 your production, and almost doubled it in the last few years, 
 selling the product at the lowest price silver has ever reached. 
 Ho* do you account for that? 
 
 785 
 
144 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. In the simplest possible way; and a 
 business man ought to know without asking. I may, by pre- 
 lude, say that the yields of silver that have made the great sup- 
 ply of the world have not come from sporadic or occasional 
 mines, but from great deposits found in certain localities, as, for 
 instance, the Comstook lode, in Nevada, and the mines of Lead- 
 ville, in Colorado. Four or five camps in the United States have 
 given four-fifths of the silver of the United States. All those 
 mines were opened and great machinery put in them before there 
 was any material decline in silver. 
 
 Enormous sums of money having been expended, great and 
 expensive shafts sunk, tunnels bored, and the mines open and at 
 work, men went on with their work after the gold price ofsilvar 
 fell. Any man who knows anything of mining knows that it is 
 almost ruin to mining machinery to close a mine. So that even 
 if the mining companies made nothing more than bare ex- 
 penses — and not always those — they kept their men at work, 
 always hoping for an improvement. The great silver fields have 
 been very few and have become worldrfamous, such as the Po- 
 tosi in Bolivia and the Comstock in Nevada and the Leadville 
 mines of Colorado, besides the deposits found in Mexico and 
 Peru. Before any pronounced fall took place in the gold price 
 of silver bullion, the Nevada and Colorado mines had been fur- 
 nished with expensive machinery. Works amounting to millions 
 of dollars were in operation on the Comstock lode before 1873 
 and at Leadville shortly afterward; railroads were built to the 
 mines and everything was in order for work. Now the Com- 
 stock mines are about to close. 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson, if the Senator will alio w me, I am willing 
 to rest this question upon the mines now open. We have any 
 number of mines in the United States producing silver and the 
 cost of production according to the census report is so much. 
 Now, in estimating what the eflfeot of that silver is to have upon 
 the silver market of the world, I am ready to take just the prod- 
 uct of those mines now open, upon the increased production 
 and the benefits which will flow from the increased mint price 
 of silver. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. No increase flows from that. When 
 
 785 
 
146 
 
 ailrer is found they dig' out all of the metal possible to be( dug. 
 Everything tiiat the mine is capable of yielding is taken out, be- 
 cause the companies can not afford to fritter away a dollar's exr 
 'Pense in running the ndine. 
 
 There will therefore be no increased output on account of any 
 increased price of silver. Everybody who thoroughly under- 
 stands the business will agree with me in that statement. 
 
 [At this point jjhe honorable Senator yielded to Mr. Peffeb.] 
 
 Saturday, October SI, 1893. 
 
 Mr. JONES^of Nevada. Mr. President, 1 have been surprised 
 that in a question of such transcendent importance as the one 
 binder discussion, the newspaper press of the country, and Sen- 
 ators who are in favor of the pending measure, should for one 
 moment think that there has been too much time occupied in its 
 discussion. Why, Mr. President, there is not a business in the 
 United States that is not intimately affected by the proper solu- 
 tion of this question. 
 
 I confess, too, that I have been somewhat disappointed that 
 those who are so vehemently urging the gold standard for this 
 <x)untry have not seen fit to present to us their views in extenso. 
 I have not heard a single argument made on this floor, or a single 
 fact presented; I have heard no demonstration or attempt at 
 demonstration, that the Sherman act has had any relation what- 
 ever to the collapse in the prices of property which took place 
 two or three months ago. On the contrary, I have heard Sen- 
 ator after Senator who favor repeal state to the Senate their 
 conviction that the Sherman act had in fact nothing whatever to 
 do with it. 
 
 THE SHERMAS LAW NOT EBSPONSIBLE TOR THE PANIC. 
 
 The most that has been said against the Sherman law is that 
 possibly it might, as a result of the exercise of the epiotional 
 side of the people's nature, hav© had something to do with the 
 difficulty; in other words, that the people thought the law re- 
 ■sponsible for the difficulty, and therefore, say our legislators, it 
 should be repealed. I deny that the people thought bo. A few 
 interested persons, mostly the bankers of a few large cities and 
 
 785— i-lO 
 
146 
 
 their allies, pretended to think so, and with the aid of the lead- 
 ing city newspapers, proclaimed -themselves to be the "people." 
 These city newspapers stated that the difllculty was caused by 
 the Sherman la\i^, but evidently the Senators here on both sides 
 of the Chamber do not believe the city newspapers. Yet, even 
 were the people to suppose the difficulties to be caused by the 
 purchasing clause of the Sherman law, inasmuch as Senators 
 here do not believe it, why repeal it? 
 
 Suppose it were the case of a physician and his patient; if the 
 patient had taken a poison for which the physician prescribed 
 an antidote which the patient refused to take, and not only re- 
 fused to take, but insisted upon taking more of the poison, what 
 would be thought of the physician if he should say: "I shall 
 give this patient the remedy he wants, no matter how injurious 
 it may be to him; if it destroys him the responsibility is not 
 
 with me." 
 % 
 Now, sir, in a matter of this sort the legislative body is the 
 
 physician. If every man, woman, and child in the United States 
 thought that the remedy in this case were the disease, believing 
 as I believe about it I should resign my seat in this body before 
 I should vote for the pending measure. But few of the phases 
 of this question have been discussed so far by the friends of re- 
 peal; none of the basic reasons have been given why this country 
 should come to the gold standard. Everybody throughout the 
 United States admits that never in the history of the country 
 was there at any time more property in the country, more assets, 
 more collateral. 
 
 Mr. ALDRICH. Will it interrupt the Senator if I ask him 
 a question? 
 
 The VICE-PRESIDENT. Does the ^Senator from Nevada 
 yield to the Senator from Rhode Island? 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Certainly. 
 
 Mr. ALDRICH. The Senator says thatnobody hae given any 
 of the basic reasons why this country should come to a gold 
 standard. The inference from that would be that we are not 
 now on a gold standard, but upon some other standard. I should 
 like th'e Senator to explain what standard we are on, and what 
 
 785 
 
147 
 
 I 
 
 change is to take place in the standard by the passage of the 
 ^lending bill? I ^ 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada, Mr. President, there is scarcely a 
 country in the world absolutely upon the gold standard. If the 
 world were absolutely upon a gold standard prices would be 50 per 
 cent lower than they are. We have had under this law an ad- 
 dition, of perhaps $30,000,000 or $35,000,000 ayear to meet the in- 
 creasing wants pf a rapidly growing population. We have so 
 far remained on what is called the gold and silver standard, con- 
 sistent with the issue of these Treasury notes. It is now pro- 
 posed to cut off all supply. It is proposed now that the business 
 of this country shall be done with such an amount of money aa 
 we already have out, with no addition whatever to meet, as I 
 have said, the growing wants of a rapidly increasing population. 
 
 Does the Senator from Rhode Island deny that? Has the 
 money that has been issued under the Sherman act produced a 
 rise in prices? Does he maintain that the Treasury notes issued 
 under the Sherman act have produced what has usually been 
 termed inflation? The very report that he brought to the Sen- 
 ate as chairman of the subcommittee of the Finance Committee 
 was that the dollars, instead of growing less valuable, had been 
 growing more valuable during the whole term of operation of 
 this law; that ever since the bill had passed prices had been fall- 
 ing. Does he want now, by cutting off the supply of money, to 
 compel prices to fall still more rapidly? Does he believe that 
 the best interests of the country are subserved by falling prices? 
 
 MEANING OT "HAKD TIMES." , 
 
 Why, Mr. President, if I should be asked to .state in a single 
 phrase what hard times meant, I should reply, " falling prices." 
 That phraee means the compulsory idleness of large numbers of 
 workingmen; it means an increasing number of patients in lu- 
 natic asylums, an increase in the occupants of the almshouses 
 and the prisons of the country. No two words in the English 
 language cover so vast a field of misfortunes. A condition of 
 falling prices means the payment of an unjust and unearned in- 
 crement to the creditor; it means an unjust exaction from the 
 debtor. A condition of falling prices means a discouragement 
 
 785 
 
148 
 
 to every business venture, a thwarting of all business foresight; 
 it means a juggling with mortgages by which they become deeds, 
 and the property of the borrower becomes vested, in fee simple, 
 in the lender. 
 
 Yet, Mr. President, when we say that the value of the mone- 
 tary unit in gold is rising — and when I say " unit "I mean for this 
 country the dollar, for France the franc, for Germany the mark, 
 for England the pound sterling — just as all know that the unit of 
 wheat-measure means a bushel of wheat, the unit of cloth-meas- 
 ure means a yard of cloth, or that the unit by which we measure 
 specific gravity is the pound weight— I say that when we claim 
 that the monetary unit is constantly increasing in value, we are 
 met by hair-splitting arguments that improved processes of pro- 
 duction have produced that result. 
 
 The improvement in methods of production in the twenty 
 years after 1873 do not compare in importance or value with 
 those of the twenty years preceding 1873, yet while one i)eriod 
 has been a period of falling prices and business prostration, the 
 other was a period never excelled in the history of the world for 
 business prosperity. It was a period of rising prices. It was 
 the red-letter period of history! The difference between the 
 periods is due to the difference in monetary circulation. For 
 money has been well called the lifeblood of industry. 
 
 BATES or INTEREST AIiWATS LOW WHEN MONET VOLUME IS SHRINKING. 
 
 I had occasion to say the other day that besides the fall In 
 prices we have other reasons for saying that gold has advanced 
 In value. We have absolutely conclusive reasons that nobody 
 ever pretended to answer. Heretofore the argument has been 
 used by the bankers — by some professed political economists and 
 many quacks in that profession — that instead o^ a scarcity of 
 money we had a superabundance, and they have shown us what 
 they have taken to be proof of this fact in the piling up of money 
 in city banks or great money centers, and that as another indi- 
 cation of plentiful supply the rates of interest on money have 
 been falling. 
 
 With reference to the fall in the rate of interest I have 
 stated that instead of being an evidence of plentiful supply of 
 
 785 
 
149 
 
 money the constant reductions in the rate of interest on gilt- 
 edged securities, about which there could be no question, was an 
 unerring signal that the quantity of money was not keeping pace 
 with the demand. Especially is this so in a country new and 
 unfinished, a country hardly more than touched by development, 
 a country filled with resources of every description — the fines* 
 forests, the greatest water courses and mines, and the greatest 
 variety of soils and climates of any nation on earth, with the 
 most progressive, energetic, and aspiring population anywhere 
 to \fe found. My statement is that when the rate of interest on 
 money falls in such a country it is conclusive proof that the ex- 
 change power of money is rising. 
 
 The British royal commission on gold and silver (1886) on this 
 subject says: 
 
 When gold Is scarce and commercial activity is checked l)y the resulting 
 tall of prices the demand for permanent investments Increases and the 
 price ot such securities rises. Owing either to the actual or the apprehended 
 scarcity of gold there la a tendency to invest in securities hearing a fixed 
 interest, payable in gold, which raises their price and reduces the net return 
 obtainable from them. (Keport, p^rt 1, section 56.) 
 
 So, as the commission further says: 
 
 The rate ot Interest on permanent Investments is also declining. 
 
 A PBOPHBCY MADB IN 1876. 
 
 Prior, however, to the report of the British royal commission 
 the report of the United States Monetary Commission, to which 
 I have referred, clearly pointed out that interest upon first-class 
 securities would continue to fall— the process having already 
 begun, although the demonetization of silver had taken place 
 but four years prior. In that report I stated: 
 
 " There need be no haste in refunding the public debt at the 
 rate now proposed and considered low. Unless the progress of 
 the commercial world in the policy of contraction by demonetiz- 
 ing silver is checked, bonds bearing a much lower rate of inter- 
 est than any yet offered will be gladly accepted by capitalists 
 here and in Europe. When the money stock is diminishing and 
 prices are falling, the lender not only receives interest, but finds 
 a profit in the greatly increased value of the principal when it is 
 returned to him. A loan of money made in 1809 if repaid in 1848 
 
 785 
 
would have been repaid with an addition of 145 per cent in the 
 purchasing power of the principal, besides all the interest paid. 
 
 "Those who have loaned money to this Government since 1861 
 have already received nearly as much in the increased value of 
 their principal as in interest, and all the probabilities are in re 
 spect to the i per cent thirty-year national bonds now being ne- 
 gotiated, if they are redeemed in gold, that more profit will be 
 made by the augmentation in the value of principal than through 
 interest. Indeed, the signs of the times are that the bonds of a 
 country possessing the unbounded resources and stable institu- 
 tions of the United States payable in gold at the end of thirty 
 years without any interestwhatever would, through the increase 
 of the value of that metal, prove a most profitable investment." 
 
 Although sixteen years have elapsed since the writing of that 
 report it is perfectly clear that the diagnosis then presented haa 
 been verified by the facts. 
 
 MONBT NOT CHEAP WHEN INTEREST IS LOW. 
 
 An idea seems to exist in tbe minds of many that if interest or 
 the charge for the use of money is low, therefore money is cheap. 
 This is an entire misapprehension as to the nature of money and 
 as to the nature of cheapness. The interest on money simply 
 represents the amount of profit that can be made by its use. It 
 is altogether different from the purchasing power of money. It 
 is plain that when the value of money is increasing by reason of 
 a dimunition in the quantity, there is a dimunition in the profits 
 of business. It does a man no good to borrow money even at 1 
 per cent if the business in which he invests it is losing instead 
 of making money. 
 
 Of what use is it for a man to put his money into property or 
 into industries for the majiufacture of products, when he knows 
 that a constant fall is taking place in the prices of the products 
 which his money would help to create? In that case he finds 
 that had he delayed his investment he could put his money to 
 better use, inasmuch as he could buy more with it each year 
 than he could the year before. At the same time he observes 
 that people who have invested their money in gilt-edged bonds 
 as, for example, the bonds of great trunk-line railroads, have 
 
 785' 
 
151 
 
 always an absolute guarantee of tbe rate of interest, whatever 
 it may be, which, they bear, whereas it is CLuestionable whether 
 anything could at such time be made upon the money if in- 
 vested in ibdustrial enterprises, where labor was employed in 
 production. 
 
 The demand for tjiat class of bt)nds therefore, such as railroad 
 bonds of the first order, has been very great, and they have risen 
 in value in about the same proportion that other property has 
 fallen. Who would hesitate to pay even 10 per cent for~money 
 if he knew that property was aroing to increase 20 per cent in 
 ■value? On the other hand, if a man knew that he could borrow 
 money for 2 per cent, but that property was falling in value by 
 3 per cent a year, how could he utilize the borrowed money at a 
 profit? The rate of interest seems to be very small. A few per- 
 sons might be willing to pay more, but they would be such as 
 were forced by circumstances to do so in order to protect them- 
 selves from serious loss. 
 
 Instead of interest becoming less as money becomes more 
 plentiful, interest rises, because more profit can be foreseen in 
 the use of it than when the value of the unit is increasing and 
 the quantity of money decreasing. But the natural rate of in- 
 terest will never be known until society shall obtain a unit of 
 money that shall be unchanging in value. With a money in- 
 creasing in value and decreasing in quantity the rate of. interest 
 will be lower than if money were unchanging. If prices continue 
 falling interest will be lower. 
 
 WHY IS INTEREST FALLING? 
 
 Why is it that interest is less now than it has been heretofore? 
 Why has interest been falling in the United States? Has the 
 country been finished? Is its material development completed? 
 Are there no great enterprises that would or should engage the 
 attention, the enterprise, and the energies of the people that 
 would be commercially profitable? One would suppose that un- 
 der natural monetary conditions— conditions adapted to the 
 means of thejoountry — there would be no difficulty in finding 
 such enterprises in a new country such as this, especially with 
 a population rapidly increasing; but with a volume of money con- 
 stantly shrinking there is an equally constant decline in prices. 
 
 785 "■ 
 
152 
 
 Price is the barometer that measures prosperity, aad yet ih& 
 entire discussion in this Chjimber on the part of the gold stand- 
 ard- Senators has been carried on Without relation to or even 
 mention of that one word " price," wh,ioh is the pith and -marrow 
 of the entire question before the Senate and of the entire science 
 of money. When prices fall the hopes of the producer of wealth 
 are taken away; he is deprived of all prospect of profit, which is 
 the only inducement to investment of capital — and nobody is 
 benefited but the lender of money — the man who juggles with 
 the counters by which profits are computed. 
 
 When prices of commodities and property are falling moneyed 
 men will not part with money in order to acquire property 
 which in a month will be worth less than they paid for it, or to 
 employ labor, the prices of the products of which are constantly 
 declining. They keep their money either in the form of gilt- 
 edged bonds or as ^deposits in banks, subject to their order. In 
 other words, so far as all the purposes of money are concerned 
 it may be said to be hoarded. People instinctively hoard and 
 hold that which is becoming more valuable. If wheat is rising 
 in price, those who deal in wheat and can afford to keep it on 
 hand will do so for the manifest purpose of making a better 
 profit at a later period. i 
 
 When money is rising in value, therefore, men instead of put- 
 ting it to use take it practically out ef use. Hence at such times 
 it refuses to perform the b9nefioent functions for which society 
 intended it. 
 
 When, therefore, prices rise interest rises; with the fall of 
 prices oE commodities interest falls. When money isincreasing 
 in volume and decreasing in value, prices rise, and each invest- 
 ment in productive enterprises becomes more profitable. Asa 
 consequence interest rises. When it is decreasing in volume 
 and so increasing in value, it is because prices are falling. At 
 such times investments in property and in industrial enterprises 
 become unprofitable. As a natural consequence money avoids 
 them and seeks gilt-edged bonds, on which no default of interest 
 is to be expected. 
 
 Such bonds naturally increase in price. On this subject tha 
 
 785, 
 
153 
 
 London Financial Times, of September 27 last, has the following; 
 
 item: 
 
 The aifflcnlty ol finding a trust Investment to yield more than the smallest 
 traction over 3 per cent Is one which la ever before trustees, and as the ten- 
 dency ot first-class stocks Is always to Increase In price, this difficulty bids- 
 fair to become In the course of a few more years an impossibility. 
 
 They must take less than 3 per cent if the money unit con- 
 tinues to increase in value. 
 
 SXCasASE or interest on GOTEBIIMENT SECUBITIES hoi a sign of BHi 
 CBEASING CREDIT. 
 
 With reference to the decrease in the rate of imterost on Gov- 
 ernment securities, it is sometimes said that this decrease shows 
 the degree of appreciation of the credit of the country, or in the 
 case of first-class trunk-line railroad bonds, the credit of the 
 railroad company. But this is altogether an error. If a man 
 could be moderately certain of making 4, or 5, or 6'per cent profit 
 in a business enterprise, he would not take a Government bond 
 at 3 per cent, no matter how good the credit of the Government. 
 
 During a period of increasing value in the money ifnit, although, 
 interest will be held up as far as possible, yet it must be re- 
 duced. A time arrives when the borrower finds it impossible to- 
 pay so much and the bond must be " converted " or " refunded " 
 at a lower rate of interes t, but for a longer period of time. In< 
 other words, it the loan be one for twenty years at 4 per cent the 
 borrower may prefer to "convert" or "refund" it into a loan, 
 paying 3 per cent for thirty years. This makes the loan easier 
 for the borrower, and sometimes saves him from bankruptcy. 
 
 The most certain sign, therefore, that the value of the mone- 
 tary unit is increasing and from reasons having their origin not 
 in improved processes of manufacture or in changes in the rela- 
 tions of supply and dem^-nd dlreotjly affecting commodities, but 
 from reasons having their origin in changing relations of the 
 money volume to the demands of population and businesSj is tha 
 fact that interest on securities of the first class is decrea^injg. 
 
 ErTECTS OF DECREASE OF <]X7AIITITY OF MONET. 
 
 "While the volume of money is decreasing, even although 
 very slowly, the value of each unit of money is increasing in 
 corresponding ratio, and property is falling in price. Those, 
 who have contracted to pay money find that it is constantly be- 
 
 785 
 
154 
 
 coming more difficult to meet tbeir engagements. Tiie margins 
 of securities melt rapidly away, and the confiscation by the 
 creditor of the property on which they are based becomes only 
 a question of time. All productive enterprises are discouraged 
 and stagnate because the cost of producing commodities to-day 
 will not be covered by the pricss obtainable for them to-morrow. 
 Exchanges become sluggish, because those who have money will 
 not part with it for either property or services beyond the re- 
 quirements of actual current necessities, for the obvious reason 
 \ that money alone is increasing in value while everything else 
 i tdeclining in price. 
 
 "This results in the withdrawal of money from the channels 
 ■of circulation and its deposit in great hoards, where it can exert 
 mo influence on prices. This hoarding of money from the na- 
 ture of things must continue and increase, not only until the 
 ■shrinkage of its volume has actually ceased, but until capitalists 
 are entirely satisfied that money lying idle on special deposit 
 will no longer afford them revenue, and that the lowest level of 
 prices has been reached. It is this hoarding of money, when its 
 volume shrinks, which causes a fall in prices greaterthan would 
 be caused by the direct effect of a decrease in the stock of money. 
 Money in shrinking volume becomes the paramount object of 
 ■commerce instead of its beneficent instrument. Instead of mo- 
 bilizing industry, it poisons and dries up its life currents. It is 
 the fruitful source of political and social disturbance. It foments 
 Strife between labor and other forms of capital, while itself hid- 
 den away in security gorges on both. It rewards close-fisted 
 lenders, and filches from and bankrupts enterprising borrowers. 
 It circulates freely in the stock exchange, but avoids the labor 
 -exchange. It has in all ages been the worst enemy with which 
 society has had to contend. 
 
 "The great and still continuing fall in prices in the United 
 States has proved most disastrous to nearly every industrial en- 
 terprise. The bitter experience of the last few years has been 
 an expensive but most thorough teacher. It has taught capi- 
 talists neither to invest in nor loan money on such enterprises, 
 and just as thoroughly it has taught business men not.to borrow 
 for the purpose of inaugurating or prosecuting them. Of the few 
 
156 
 
 business enterprises now being successfully prosecuted, the 
 larger part are based on a monopoly secured either by patsnts 
 or exceptional conditions. The business man has discovered 
 that the less active and enterprising he is the better he is off. 
 The manufacturer avoids loss by damping down furnace fires 
 and slowing down machinery. * * * 
 
 "The stockholders of railroads have suffered a vast shrink- 
 ■g-e in the value of their property and in the volume of their 
 trafiBc in rates of transportati.oii, while their debts have re- 
 mained nominally the same, but really increasing. In order to 
 make their decreased receipts meet the interest on their bonds, 
 they are forced to reduce their operating expenses to the lowest 
 possible point. Their struggles seem to be in vain, and unless 
 that systepi can be changed, which is making each dollar which 
 they owe more valuable and, at the same time causing a shrink- 
 age in their business, and which is chaining labor and all other 
 forms of capital to the chariot wheels of money capital, they 
 will, one after another, be swallowed by the bondholders. In 
 the end the stockholders will be entirely out of the account, and 
 the contest will be between different classes of bondholders, if 
 that can be called a contest where victory is assured in advance 
 to the liens which have priority. 
 
 " Farmers whose lands are not mortgaged, and their employes 
 who at least are insured against absolute want, best escape the 
 evils of the times, but the prices of agricultural products must 
 finally decline with the reduction in the number and means of 
 the consumers." 
 
 This prediction, made by me in 1877, sixteen years ago, is amply 
 verified by the enormous fall in the prices of wheat and cotton in 
 the intervening period. 
 
 " The tendency of falling prices is to break down the vast 4i- 
 ▼ersifled interests of the country and to fdrce a constantly in-, 
 creasing proportion of the population into the one single industry 
 of cultivating the soil. The United States, instead of continuing 
 a highly commercial and manufacturing nation, will, until fall- 
 ing prices are checked, become more and more exclusively ag- 
 ricultural and pastoral. 
 
 " Securities have already become so impaired through falling 
 
156 
 
 prices that loanable capital has fled affrighted from the newer 
 and more sparsely settled sections of the country and accumu- 
 lated in large amounts in the great financial centers, whose se- 
 curities are more ample. The personal and property securities- 
 of individuals have generally ceased to be available, except at 
 the highest rates of interest or at ruinously low valuations. 
 Money can ba borrowed only upon such securities as bonds, which 
 are based on the unlimited tax-levying pow^r of the Gtovern- 
 ment, or upon the bonds and stocks of flrst-class trunk lines of 
 railroad corporations, whose freight and fare rates are practi- 
 cally a tax upon the entire population and resources of the re- 
 gions which they traverse and supply. The competition among* 
 capitalists to loan money on those more ample securities has be- 
 come very keen, and such securities command monsy at unpre- 
 cedentedly low rates. , 
 
 /'These low and lowering rates of interest, instead of denoting 
 financial strength and industrial prosperity, are a gauge of in- 
 creasing prostration. Large accumulations of money in finan- 
 cial centers, instead of being caused by the overflow of a health- 
 ful circulation, or even a proof of a sufficient circulation, are 
 unmistakable evidence of a congested condition caused by a de- 
 creasing and insufficient circulation. The readiness with which 
 Government bonds bearing a very low rate of interest are taken, 
 instead of showing that the credit of the Government has im- 
 proved, is melancholy evidence of the prostrated condition to 
 which industry and trade have been reduced," 
 
 EFFECT ON LABORERS OF SHRINKING MONET-VOLTJMB. 
 
 " The worst effect, however, economicallyconsidered,offalling^ 
 prices is not upon existing property nor upon debtors, evil as it is, 
 but upon laborers whom it deprives of employment and consigns 
 to poverty, and upon society, which it deprives of that vast sum 
 of wealth which resides potentially in the vigorous arms of the 
 idle workman. A shrinking volume of money transfers existing 
 property unjustly, and causes a concentration and diminution of 
 wealth. It also impairs the value of existing property by elimi- 
 nating from it that important element of value conferred upon 
 It by the skill, energy, and care of the de-btors from whom it is 
 wrested. But it does not destroy any existing property, while 
 
 785 
 
157 
 
 ^t does absolutely annihilate all tlie values producible by the 
 labor which it condemns to idleness. * * * 
 
 " Money capital, labor, and other forms of capital are the warp 
 ^nd woof of the economical system. Labor, cooperating with 
 "the forces of nature, is the source of all wealth, and to reach the 
 highest degree of effectiveness it must be classified through the 
 aid of capital and supported by capital during the process of pro- 
 duction and be measured and paid in money, each unit of which 
 jIs a sight draft on all other forms of property, bearing a value in 
 .proportion to the number of such drafts. In order that any coun- 
 try may reach the maximum of material prosperity, certain con- 
 •ditions are indispensable. All its labor, assisted by the most ap- 
 proved machinery and appliances, must be employed and the 
 ■fruits of industry must be justly distributed. 
 
 "These conditions are only possible when capital is absolutely 
 protected against violence and free from illegitimate legislative 
 interference, and when the laborer is protected in his natural 
 ■right to dispose of his labor in such manner as he may prefer. 
 They are utterly impossible when the money stock is shrinking 
 ^nd the money value of property and services is declining. How-' 
 .-soever great the natural resources of a country maybe, however 
 genial its climate, fertile its soil, ingenious, enterprising, and 
 industrious its inhabitants, or free its institutions, if the volume 
 of money is shrinking and prices are falling its merchants will 
 'beoverwhelmed with bankruptcy, its industries will be paralyzed,' 
 and destitution and distress, will prevail. \ 
 
 SELr-INTBKBST THE tNDUCBMIKT TO PRODtTCTION. 
 
 "The Instinct of sell-interest is the mains-pring of industrial and 
 •commercial activity. It is the animating motive alike of the 
 -capitalist and of the laborer. Without it, no labor would be 
 performed nor would capital have an existence. If money 
 .capital is withdrawn from productive enterprises, it is from the 
 . apprehension of loss and from the sime instinct of thrift through 
 which it was acquired. It is' natural that the money capitalist 
 -should exact from labor all he can in exchange for his money, 
 and that the laborer should exact all the money he can in ex- 
 change for his labor. What is known as the conflict'between 
 ■ capital and labor is not so much a conflict between other forms 
 
 785 I 
 
158 
 
 of capital and labor as it is between money and labor. Indeed, 
 the conflict between money and other forms of capital is as dis- 
 tinctly marked and quite as severe as the conflict between 
 money and labor, and in that conflict other forms of capital 
 suffer fully as much as labor, the only difference being that they 
 are better able to endure losses. 
 
 "Other forms of capital jnust be constantly converted into 
 money in order to pay wages and to meet other demands inci- 
 dent to industrial enterprises. When the stock of money is 
 shrinking and prices are falling, this conversion can only be 
 made at rates continually growing more unfavorable, while at 
 the same time the products of the labor for whose wages sacri- 
 fices have been made are also undergoing a shrinkage of money 
 value. Thus loss and sacrifice are encountered at every turn, 
 and the owners of other capital than money shrink ftora the 
 friction of exchange, withdraw from productive enterprises, 
 and only exchange as much of their property for money as will 
 suflSce to meet the necessary expenditures of living, which are 
 reduced to the most economical level, as it ie principal and nqt , 
 income which is being consumed. Little more labor will be em- 
 ployed under these circumstances than is sufficient to support 
 the owners of capital on this parsimonious basis, and as a conse- 
 quence the labor market will be overstocked and the competi- 
 tion between laborers will reduce wages to a starvation level. 
 
 " But during this period, when property is being sacrificed to 
 meet current necessities and laborers are being remitted to idle- 
 ness and destitution, money fattens on the general disaster. 
 Under any money system whatever, labor, money, and other 
 - forms of capital confront each other as opposing forcps, each 
 seeking through a natural instinct to secure as much as possible 
 of the other's in'exchange. These forces, although always op- 
 erating against, are not necessarily injurious to each other. On 
 the contrary, under a just money system they are not simply 
 mutually corrective. The conflict between them is essential to 
 the proper adjustment and harmonious working of all parts of 
 the economical machinery. They are the centripetal and cen- 
 trifugal forces of the industrial system. The equilibrii'm of all 
 things is maintained through counterbalances. It is out of the 
 
 785 
 
159 
 
 action and counteraction of antagonistic forc6s that the harmo- 
 nies of the universe are evolved. BAt under an unjust money 
 systemj under a system *hich througk law or accident fails to 
 regulate the quantity of money so as to preserve the equilibrium 
 between money and the other factors of production, the conflict 
 between money and labor and other forms of capital becomes 
 destructive and ruinous. 
 
 MONUT EITHER IN SHRINKING OR UNDTTLT INCREASING VOLUME SEPARATES 
 CAPITAL PROM LABOR. 
 
 " It is in the shadow of a shrinking volume of money that dis- 
 orders social and political gender and fester, that communism 
 organizes, that- riots threaten and destroy, that labor starves, 
 that capitalists conspire and workmen combine, and that the 
 revenues of governments are dissipated in the employment of 
 laborers or in the maintenance of increased standing armies to 
 overawe them. The peaceful conflict which under a just money 
 system is continually waged between money capital and labor, 
 and which tends only to secure the rights of each and is essen- 
 tial to the progress of society, is changed under a shrinking 
 volume of money to an unrelenting war, threatening the de- 
 struction of both. Money, in either shrinking or unduly in- 
 creasing volume, like a dissolving chemical, separates capital 
 from labor. It is not against capital, but against the false finan- 
 cial system that permits the volume of money to either shrink or 
 unduly increase that the hostility of society should be aroused. 
 
 "Letlaborandcapitalbeputonequal terms, so that idle capital _ 
 will be as unfruitful as idle labor, and the conflict between them 
 will cease to be destructive. An unjust money system produces 
 an unnatural relation between labor, capital, and money, and 
 the resulting evils can not be remedied by special legislation on 
 particular cases, nor by general legislation abridging the natural 
 rights of either. Sueh legislation would be futile and imperti- 
 nent, destructive of that freedom erf individual action so essential 
 to progress, and subversive of the true interests of all classes of 
 society, and would powerfully tend to the overthrow of free in- 
 stitutions. The equitable ad justment of the correlative demands 
 of capital and labor can not be made through violence, and is 
 utterly impossible through any legal or other contrivance, under 
 
 785 
 
160 
 
 any system tliat permits contraction or undue expansion of that 
 great instrument which measures alike the property of the capi- 
 talist and the labor of the workman. ' It iS: only through the 
 action and counteraction of the antagonistic forces of capital and 
 labor, automatically operating under a just money system, that 
 ■equity and harmony can be evolved. 
 
 " The very same reasons which make capitalists refuse to ex- 
 change money, whose command over property is increasing, for 
 property, whose command over nioney is decreasing, also make 
 them refuse to exchange it for labor for the production of prop- 
 •erty. In a commercial sense, industrial enterprises are never 
 undertaken nor carried on except with the hope and expectation 
 ■of gain. This expectation, unless under exceptional conditions, 
 falling ma,rkets destroy. While capitalists for these reasons 
 can not afford to invest money in productive enterprises, still 
 less can anybody afford to borrow money for such >investmenta 
 at any rate of interest, however low, and but littte money is be- 
 ing now borrowed, except for purely speculatives ventures, or 
 ■to supply personal and family wants, or to renew old obliga- 
 "tions. Money withdrawn from circulation and hoarded in con- 
 sequence of falling prices, although neither paying wages nor 
 serving to exchange the fruits of industry, nor performing any 
 of the true functions of money, is nevertheless not unprodmj- 
 tive. It may not be earning interest, but it is enriching ita 
 owner through an increase of its own value, and that, too, with- 
 /out risk and at the expense of society. 
 
 BFFBOT OF MONBTAKT CONTBAOTION TO GIVE PBOFrT TO OWNERS OF IDLB 
 
 MONET. 
 
 "If this were not the case, and ifiponey were, while idle, losing 
 a little in value instead of gaining, or if it simply held its own, 
 11; would be constantly diminished to the extent of the necessary 
 expenditures of its owners, who, under such conditions, would 
 be impelled by every instinct of thrift to seek for revenue through 
 . its employment in productive enterprises. The peculiar effect 
 ■of a contraction in the volume of money is to give profit to the 
 owners of unemployed money, through the appreciation of its 
 purchasing power, by the mere lapse of time. It is fallingprices 
 ■that robs labor of employment and precipitates a conflict between 
 
 786 
 
161 
 
 it and mon^y capital, and it is the appreciating effect which a 
 shrinkage in the volume of money has on the value of money 
 tliat renders the contest an unequal one, and gives to money 
 capital decisive advantage over labor and over other forms of 
 capital invested in industrial enterprises. 
 
 "Idle machinery andindustrialappliancesof all kinds, instead 
 of being productive of profit, are a source of loss. They con- 
 stantly deteriorate through rust and waste. They can not es- 
 cape the assessor and tax-gatherer, as the bulk of money does, 
 and must pay extra insurance when idle. Labor, unlike money, 
 can not be hoarded. The day's labor unperformed is so much 
 capital lost forever to the laborer ana to society. It 'being his 
 only capital, his only means of existence, the laborer can not 
 wait on better times for better wages. Absolute necessity forces 
 him to dispose of it on any terms which the owners of money 
 may dictate. These are the conditions which surround the la- 
 borer throughout the commercial world to-day. The labor of 
 the past is enslaving the labor of the present. At least that por- 
 tion of the labor of the past which has been crystallized into 
 money is enabled through a shrinkage of its volume and while 
 lying idle in the hands of its owners to increase its command 
 over present labor and over all forms of property, and to trans- 
 form vast numbers of honest and industrious workmen into 
 tramps and beggars. 
 
 STTCH HFFECT FATAL TO LABOR. 
 
 "These laborers must make their wants conform to their di- 
 minished earnings. They must content themselves with such 
 things as are absolutely essential to their existence. Consump- 
 tion is therefore constantly shrinking toward such limits as ur- 
 gent necessities require. Production, which must be confined 
 to thei limite* indicated by consumption, is constantly tending 
 toward its minimum, whereas its applisinces built up under 
 more favorable conditions^ are sufficient tc supply the maximum 
 of consumption. Thus idle labor, idle money, idle machinery, 
 and idle capital stand facing each other and stagnation spreads 
 wider and wider. Tfie future affords no hope or prospect of im- 
 provement,,except through achange in financial policies. Prices 
 
 have been persistently falling throughout the world since 1873, 
 785 — 11 
 
162 
 
 and as fast and as far in specie-paying countries as elsewhere. 
 If the policy of chaining the industry and commerce of the world 
 to a sijagle metal be persisted in by the United States, Germany, 
 and the other European countries acting in concert with them, 
 money must still rise in value and prices must continue to f^iU. 
 
 " The depression in productive industry will become more 
 deathly, and the number of idle laborers will indefinitely mul- 
 tiply. The loss which this country sustains by reason of the 
 enforced idleness of laborers who, although idle, must still in 
 some Scanty way be supplied with food, clothing, and shelter^ is 
 in the aggregate very great. * * * Contrasted with the 
 startling sum thus annually lost through the shrinkage of money 
 and falling prices, the amount which could by any possibility be 
 lost in a generation through fluctuations in the relative values 
 of gold, silver, and paper money would weigh as mere dust in 
 the balance. If to this loss be added that caused by the nonem- 
 ployment of productive machinery and appliances, the aggre- 
 gate becomes appalling. 
 
 "The average stocks of nearly all commodities are at no time 
 sufficient for more than a few months' consumption.' Without 
 constant reproduction mankind would soon be stripped of all 
 their movable possessions. No more fatal blow, therefore, could 
 be directed against the ■ economical machinery of civilized life 
 , than one against labor, and that blow can be most effectively de- 
 livered through a policy which strikes down prices. If all debts 
 in this country had been doubled by an a^t of legislation, it 
 would have been a far less calamity to the debtor and to the 
 country than the increase in their real burden already caused by 
 a contraction in the volume of money, and infinitely more dis- 
 astrous in every sense than an unjust increase in the burden of 
 debt in the universal stagnation of industry and commerce re- 
 sulting from the same cause. The doubling of debts would have 
 left the productive forces unimpaired, while falling prices are 
 sapping them insidiously and fatally. Nations have often ex- 
 hibited an astonishing capacity for sustaining and repairing the 
 destruction of great and protracted wars. 
 
 " The explanation of this will be found in the fact that their pro- 
 ductive forces have at such times oontinupd vigorous and active. 
 
 785 
 
163 
 
 Armies in barracks and on parade are as essentially nonproducers 
 as when actively engaged, and a considerable proportion of the 
 additions made to armies in times of war are recruited from the 
 ranks of nonproducers. England was never more prosperous 
 than .during the Napoleonic wars. The Northern and Western 
 States of this Union were never more prosperous than during, 
 the civil war, and for some time afterward. So long as all the 
 productive forces are active almost any burden can be borne. 
 The debts of the cpuntry, graat as they are, would scarcely weigh 
 as a feather if all its labor were employed. Indeed, this country 
 could better afford, in an economical view, to support one million 
 of soldiers in the field than to support the army of men whom 
 falling prices have conscripted into the ranks of nonproducers." 
 
 Mr. HIGGINS. Does the Senator object to a question right 
 there? 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Not at all. 
 
 Mr. HIGGINS. Does the Senator refer to the army of unem- 
 ployed that has appeared since the presant panic or before? 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. I refer to it as a greater or a lesser 
 army, which, though of varying numbers, has always been large, 
 and has been in existence in this country ever since 18Y3. 
 
 Mr. HIGGINS. If the Senator will allow me, I suppose that 
 beginning with the resumption of specie payments in 1879 and 
 continuing on until the present condition of things arose, under 
 the threat, as I think, of a continuance of the purchases of silver 
 under the silver-purchase law, there has never been any period 
 of the world or any part of the world that found labor so univer- 
 sally and so profitably employed, as has been the case in the 
 United States during that period, from 1879 to the beginning of 
 the present year. 
 
 THE CONTRACTION AFTER THE CIVIL WAR. 
 
 Mr. JONES ot Nevada. That remark makes it desirable for 
 me to state more particularly the way in which a fall of prices op- 
 erates. In considering the causes which create general distress, 
 the advocates of the gold standard appear to think that there is 
 no connection beti^een cause and effect unless the effect operates 
 concurrently with the cause. Yet any impartial mind can trace 
 the great panic of 1873 to causes having their genesis in con- 
 
164 
 
 iitions whose operation began in 1865. When, in that year, 
 the country saw the two millions of men constituting the 
 armies of the North and South withdrawn from fields of destruc- 
 tion to enter fields of production, it was believed that universal 
 prosperity would bless this reunited people. 
 
 We had not yet come to consider the tremendous influence 
 which money, that great instrumentality of production and ex- 
 change, exercises upon the fortunes of a people, and what infi- 
 nite care should be exercised to see that its quantity increases 
 pari passu with population and demand. We had not come to 
 realize that such an increase is an indispensable necessity to 
 utilizing all the hours and moments of a people, and keeping 
 every man employed. In April, 1865, ten millions of a popular 
 tion that had not been using the money of the Union were added 
 to the 24,000,000 which formed the population of the Northern 
 States, without a dollar of money being added with which to do 
 their business. That fact alone was equivalent to an enormous 
 contraction of the currency. 
 
 It was a demand made by 10,000,000 of people of the same race 
 and blood and of the same energetic and aspiring disposition as 
 those of the population to which they were added. Those 10,- 
 000,000 found themselves without a dollar of money. The money 
 volume that had been sufficient to do the business of only 24,000,- 
 000 people had to do the business of 34,000,000 — a contraction of 
 33 per cent. Instead of prices ijising or even remaining firm — 
 instead of the country becoming more prosperous — as was to be 
 . expected when these enormous armies were disbanded, times 
 began to grow harder, as every man now living who was then of 
 age can remember. , 
 
 Now, as I have already stated, whenever prices show a tendency 
 to fall, all the forces of society are enlisted in holding them up. 
 Every man who has property says to himself, "I will not sell 
 my property for the prices ruling to-day. A year ago I could 
 have got a better price for it, and things must improve." Thus 
 moved by faith and hope, men hold on to their property, rather 
 than sell at a reduced figure. 
 
 At the close of the war private debt among the people was 
 less per capita than at any other period in the history of the 
 
 78f 
 
165 
 
 country. By 1B13 the whole framework of business was honey- 
 combed with debt. Property in every direction was mortgaged. 
 
 THE BnBNIHG UP OF QBEBNBACKS. 
 
 As if the contraction to which I have referred were not enough, 
 we find that in 1866, during the Administration of Andrew John- 
 son, the Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. McCuUoch, commenced 
 destroying the money upon whose volume the prices of all com- 
 modities and property depended. He entirely ignored the fact 
 that at the close of the war an enormous demand had arisen for 
 money, with no increase in the supply, and that by degrees the 
 10,000,000 people of the South were drawing on the North for 
 money to pay for cotton, tobacco, sugar, and everything else 
 which the South could sell to the North. Thus the whole coun- 
 try, with its 34,000,000 people, was compelled to do all its busi- 
 ness with the same volume of money that had formerly been suf- 
 ficient for 24,000,000 only. So when the crisis came the weakest 
 link in the chain broke and all fell to the ground. Then we were 
 told that it was on account of the previous inflation. 
 
 Mr. HIGGINS. Will my friend object to an interruption just 
 there? 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. I have not quite got to the point of 
 my answer to the Senator's first question. Everything collapsed. 
 The banks of New York and the other great money centers,' not 
 caring to what extent the prices of property declined in the di- 
 rections in which production was going on, gave no hefed what- 
 ever to the complaints of the people and the cries of distress 
 from all sections of the country. But the moment stocks began 
 to fall in the New York market there came a demand from the 
 banks upon the executive department of the Government to is- 
 sue some $60,000,000 or $70,000,000 of greenbacks to relieve the 
 situation. They never think the situation demands or deserves 
 redress until the prices of the gambling securities in which they 
 deal become affected. 
 
 Then folio wed for years a condition of protracted misery among 
 the producers of the country. As I have already explained, 
 while the volume of money is contracting the fall of prices is 
 always greater than the percentage of the decrease 'in the vol- 
 
166 
 
 ume of money would really warrant, for the very simple reason 
 that owing to the instinct of thrift, when people find the univer- 
 sal trend of prices of property and commodities to be downward 
 and that the money unit is rising in value the hoarding of money 
 begins. Money, in other words, is withdrawn from use, its 
 owners occupying a watchful and expectant attitude. But while 
 from this cause prices fall lower than they otherwise would, yet 
 at such periods almost anything that will inspire h ope may cause 
 a rise in prices. Whenever people who have hoarded their 
 money Relieve that bottom prices have been reached and that it 
 is again safe to invest in business, they will do so. 
 
 I recollect very distinctly when, in the year 1878, a continu- 
 ous fall of prices brought the greenback to a level with gold 
 and silver, and rendered really unnecessary a law for the re- 
 sumption of specie payments. All that was needed was to let 
 our population grow, as it was growing, at the rate of 3 per 
 cent per annum with the supply of money that we had. The 
 increasing demand for money — the supply being stationary — 
 brought each paper dollar up to a level with a dollar in specie, 
 th^ more readily because of the Treasury order giving to the 
 greenbacks full legal-tender power by permitting the customs 
 authorities to accept them in payment of customs dues. 
 
 Mr. CAREY. Will the Senator let me ask him a question 
 there? Was it an injury to the country to have resumption at 
 that time? ' 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. It was an injury to the country not 
 to have supplied it with a volume of money sufficient to keep 
 pace with the increase of population. 
 
 Mr. CAREY. On the Senator's own statement that would 
 have prevented resumption at that time. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Does the Senator think that equity 
 between debtor and creditor, the universal employment of labor, 
 and hope and happiness in the household ^re things of no possi- 
 ble account, and that the ijesumption of specie payments was 
 therefore more important than to have an equitable volume of 
 money? 
 
 Mr. CAREY. The Senator has just described the sad condi- 
 tion we were in at the time resumption took place, because of the 
 
 785 
 
167 
 
 fall of prices. Was there not immediately after resumption good 
 times in this country? 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. I was just stating when the Senator 
 interrupted me, that aJways when the volume of money is de- 
 creasing the instinct of tnrif t induces those who have money to 
 hoard their money, to withdraw it from the channels of circula- 
 tion, and that for that reason the percentage of the fall in prices 
 is greater than the mere percentage of decrease of money. If, 
 therefore, for any reason all the people coulid be led to believe 
 that times were going to be good, such belief would have the 
 effect temporarily to draw out the hoarded money and this of 
 itself would constitute an addition to the circulation. 
 
 The general belief that the resumption of specie payments 
 would bring prosperity had for a time that effect — an effect which 
 was' aided by the completion of the elevated railroads through 
 the city of New York, so that the prices of property in the upper 
 part of the city and the outlying suburbs began to rise. Those 
 circumstances gave whatwas believed to be an assurance to men 
 of enterprise and capital everywhere that there were going to be 
 good limes • after resumption, much of the hoarded money was 
 put in circulation, and for about two or three years we had some 
 improvement. But there has not been the degree of prosperity 
 that Senators suppose. 
 
 In 1890 I made an analysis of the official reports of the Massa- 
 chusetts Labor Bureau, at ^ period when, as we were told, times 
 were at their very best, and I found from those nonpartisan 
 reports that an average of 10 per cent of the laborers were con- 
 stantly out of employment. As labor is well organized in Massa- 
 chusetts, what was true of that State must have been true of 
 all other States of the Union. The Senator will find the actual 
 figures in a speech which I had the honor to deliver in this 
 Chamber in May, 1890. 
 
 But even were all the people at work it could not be said that 
 they were prosperous if they had to be content with the bare 
 necessaries of life. Taking into consideration the inventions of 
 our mechanics and the wealth which they create, they ought to 
 be able to live much better than they do. Senators point to some 
 time in the past and say that the people are living better than they 
 
168 
 
 did then. Of course they are. It would be as logical to point to 
 the time when men lived in the savage state and assert that they 
 should' not now complain, inasmuch as their condition is much 
 better than it was in that remote age. 
 
 Mr. CAREY. Will the Senator please answer my question? 
 It is all very nice of course to theorize about the savage and civ- 
 ilized condition. Please state at what time in the history of 
 this country the people were in a better condition, when pros- 
 perity was more general among all people, than the period im- 
 mediately following the resumption of specie payments? 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. I have told the Senator that imme- 
 diately following the resumption of specie payments, by reason 
 of the liberation of money that had been hoarded, there was a 
 BufBcient volume for a couple of years and prices rose a little, 
 but that spurt of comparative prosperity did not last long. 
 Prices resumed the falling process and we have had generally 
 falling prices from that day to this. An accidental circum- 
 stance created for a couple of years what by comparison might 
 be called prosperous times. 
 
 Mr. PEFFER. .Will the Senator fr6m Nevada allow me to 
 make a suggestion at this point? 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Certainly. 
 
 Mr. PEPFBR. In addition to the increase of bank circular 
 tion there were from $28,000,000 to $30,000,000 silver dollars put 
 in circulation and added along from year to year. 
 
 BANK MONEY ELASTIC— IN THE WBONG DIBBanON. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Yes, but that amount was wholly 
 insufficient for increasing wants. There was another thing 
 wWch happened. The Senator from Wyoming, I believe, is in 
 favor of that elastic currency which the banks furnish. Between 
 1873 and 1879, when prices were falling, and when the stringency 
 of the money market was as sharply defined as at any period in the 
 history of this country, when. the distress was almost universal, 
 when Federal troops had to be called out to suppress hungry and 
 starving workmen, the banks then showed how elastic their cur- 
 rency could be — in the wrong direction. 
 
 It was then made to diminish instead of being increased. Al- 
 though everybody knew that the people' wanted more money, 
 
 785 
 
169 
 
 because prices were falling, the banks withdrew their currency 
 at the very time when they ought to have increased it. But 
 after 1879, when prices were rising, and it was manifest that there 
 was in circulation alarger volume of money, the banks commenced 
 enormously to increase their issues of notes. This sort of money, 
 issued by corporations for their own profit, is always issued when 
 it is not needed, and withdrawn when it is most needed. It was 
 so then, and will always be so with bank notes. After the with- 
 drawal came hard times. 
 
 WORKMAN'S WAGBS. 
 
 Mr. CAREY. Will the Senator permit me to call his atten- 
 tion to ajiother fact? He is a member of the Committee on 
 Finance. Last year that committee was composed of those in 
 favor of the unlimited coinage of silver, I think one member who 
 was in favor of the issue of greenbacks and some who were in 
 favor of discontinuing the coining of silver and the purchase of 
 it. Some were in favor of a tariff for revenue only and some 
 were in favor of a high protective tariff. That committee sub- 
 mitted a report with no minority report to the effect that wages 
 had been generally rising in this country for a period of forty 
 years and that the same condition existed all over the world; ' 
 while the prices of the products of labor were going down. Now, 
 is not that the best condition in a country, when wages go up 
 and products go down? 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. It takes time to cover all features of 
 a question., I have n6t yet reached in its order the question'.of 
 wages, which I deal with fully later on. I will merely remark 
 now th^it nothing "favorable can be inferred from the rates of 
 wages prevailing until one knows how many men are relegated 
 to idleness by reason of falling prices and consequent lack of 
 profi.t in business. Wages, however, I will say, are failing, as 
 is illustrated by the unprecedented strikes at 'present existing 
 in England. Wages are falling in all gold-standard countries. 
 
 Mr. CAREY. The Senator says it is because of a shrinkage 
 of money? 
 
 Mr. JONES of .Nevada. Certainly. No man can doubt it who 
 examines the situation and reflects upon it. 
 
 785 
 
170 
 
 Mr. CAREY. How brought about? 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Brought about by a failure of tha 
 quantity, of uionsy to increase in accordance with the increase 
 of population and business. 
 
 Mr. CAREY. There is not one man in ten in the United 
 St-ites of those who are discussing this question who believes 
 that the panic has been ^caused by a shrinkage of the money 
 volume. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Of those who discuss it there is not 
 one man in ten nor in twentj who investigates it. Men are 
 prone to take for granted everything they read in the gold- 
 standard newspapers and everything theyhear from gold-stand- 
 ard orators, without making any investigation on their own 
 part. 
 
 Mr. CAREY. I understand from the Senator's own statement 
 that the wages of the laborer has gone up, but his prediction for 
 the future is that wages will- go down. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. The wages in all gold-standard coun- 
 tries are now falling; they are being cut down everywhere. 
 
 Mr. CAREY. I say according to the last ofBcial report we 
 have, wages are rising and have been risingfor forty years. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. We do not need official reports when 
 we see men starving all around us, and starving in Great Britain 
 and other gold-standard countries. We do not need official re- 
 ports when no laboring man can put his hand on bread for his 
 family at any hour of the day. 
 
 Mr. CAREY.. We are not talking about thepanic now, or the 
 unnalural condition o^ things existing in the country. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. It is a perfectly natural condition of 
 things and prevails, so far as laborers are concerned, in other 
 countries also. A volume of money that does not keep pace with 
 population and demand always ends in a panic. It brought 
 the panic on here; it brought apanic on in Australia; it brought 
 on conditions amounting to a panic in England. The condition 
 of the workingmen of Great Britain, as I shall show later, was 
 never so bad as to-day. 
 
 Mr. CAREY. Yet the report of the Senator's committee, the 
 Finance Committee, made less than a year ago, went on to state 
 
 785 
 
171 
 
 » 
 
 that the prices of the laborer were higher in England and else- 
 where-in the world than heretofore— only a short year ago. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. For the number of men who have 
 been retained at work, wages have at least not fallen, and in occu- 
 pations in which labor is well organized have risen, owing to the 
 immovable determination of the labor organizations that wages 
 should not be permitted to be reduced. That process, as I have 
 said, could continue for a time, hut with prices of products fall- 
 ing wages can not continue rising, nor can they maintain any 
 rise they may have secured. When the margin of profits is 
 wiped out, wages can go no farther. ,So we see wages falling 
 to-day in every gold-standard "country. Falling prices simply 
 mean the adjustment of prices and the ultimate adjustment of 
 wages to the volume of money. 
 
 BDGABDING OTJB OIEOtTLATION PER CAPITA. 
 
 Mr. CAREY. I wish to state to the Senator that the volume 
 of money in this country ha,s not shrunk; that is, our per cap- 
 ita. Ignorant men like myself, men who have no understand- 
 ing, must take the official reports of the Government as oup 
 guide, and not set our theories uj) over and above the ofBcial 
 reports. The official reports show there was a slight shrinkaige 
 during Mr. Cleveland's first Administration — I itiink, 60 or 70 
 cents. They show there was an increase during the last Ad- 
 ministration of about $1.70. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Where did it opme from? 
 
 Mr. CAREY. I am not talking about where it came from. 
 That is the oflcial report. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. I must have some knowledge of how 
 it arises or where it comes from. Let me say on this point, 
 that we have had official reports and official reports. They are 
 made with various objects in view. If we are talking about the 
 danger of gold leaving the country, and hOw necessary it is to 
 issue bonds to increase our gold reserve, then the gold stock in 
 the country is very small; but if we undertake to show that 
 there is not money enough to do the business\of the country, 
 then the gold stock is very large— in fact, there is plenty of it. 
 It appears to depend entirely on the subject we are discussing as 
 tc how much money we have in the country. 
 
 785 
 
172 
 
 Mr. CAREY. Then I understand the Senator to say the offi- 
 cial reports are not reliable. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. I do not depend upon them at all, 
 neither does any other stud,ent. We know they are incorrect. 
 I want to know where the money comes from. We know the 
 amount of greenbacks, the amount of bank notes, the amount of 
 Treasury notes issued; we know the amount of silver coined un- 
 der the Bland law, and the amount of Treasury notes under the 
 Sherman law. We know what all those additions mean. We 
 know it as well as anybody in the Treasury. 
 
 Mr. CAREY. The Senator's information, then, is more relia- 
 ble than that of the Treasury Department. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. The Senator may be willing to ac- 
 cept any statement that is ofEcial, even if it be contrary to well- 
 known facts, in order to carry out his theory, but I shall not do 
 so. , 
 
 Mr. TELLER. For the benefit of the Senator from Wyoming 
 I should like to give a little illustration of the worthless char- 
 actei^of the statistics we receive. The Treasury report put the 
 amount of gold in England at $550,000,000, and has been putting 
 it so for several years, while the statisticians of England have 
 been consulting and debating and contesting the question whether 
 it is not less than 8400,000,000, and the Hei-schell committee the 
 other day declared that it is $440,000,000. Yet the Government 
 of the United States has put it right along (although the Depart- 
 ment has been criticized publicly for so doing) at $550,000,000, or 
 over $100,000,000 more than the estimate of any man who pre- 
 tends to any kind of information on the subject. Any man who 
 has given any attention to the question knows that it has been 
 for years rated by the Department at over $100,000,000 more 
 than it really is. And the same is the case with our own statis- 
 tics. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. We can never get at the proper "solu- 
 tion of this money question so long as intelligent men accept 
 without investigation everything "official " that is told to them. 
 Neither can the question be Understood in any of its relations so 
 long as men who are regarded by the country as authorities on . 
 the subject entertain the belief that one unit of money, of what- 
 
 I 785 
 
173 
 
 ever material composed, has any more effect upon prices of prop- 
 erty and commodities' in the country than a money unit of any 
 other maiterial; nor so long as men continue to talk of " intrinsic " 
 value in money of any kind,' 
 
 I shall now proceed to speak of the quantitative theory of 
 money. I wish to say, preliminarily, that I have heard no Sen- 
 ator dehy the scientific correctness of that theory; yet if it he 
 correct the so-called standard of gold is a standard of gross in- 
 justice. 
 
 THB QTJAHTITATrrE THBOBT OF MONEY. 
 
 Political economy, Mr. President, has been called " The dis- 
 mal science." The most dismal branch of it, if men are to en- 
 deavor to/orce conclusions to fit some preconceived theory with- 
 out reference to principles, is that which relates to money. The 
 persistent determination to make the whole science subordinate 
 to the absurdities of the gold standard has operated like a West- 
 inghouse brake on the progress of the civUized world. 
 
 But there is one principle of monetary science that, if held 
 steadfastly in view, will constitute an unerring guide through 
 what would otherwise be a path of inextricable difficulty. 
 
 That principle is that the value of the unit of money in any 
 country is determined by the number of units in circulation. In 
 other words the value of every dollar depends on the number of 
 dollars out. 
 
 The greater the number of dollars dut, other things being 
 equal, the less will be the value of each dollar; the fewer the 
 number out, other things remaining the same, the greater the 
 value of each — and this without any regard whatever to the ma- 
 terial of which the dollars are composed. This is the key to the 
 financial situation in the United States. Much more; it is the 
 key to the financial sitjiation in every land. Without this' key 
 it is in vain that the student attempts to unlock the door leading 
 to the Arcanum of monetary knowledge. Unlike many of the 
 locks made by man, the lock on that door is unpickable. The 
 household of science is one that thieves can not break through 
 and steal. He who would enter must first find the key. With 
 this key in hand, the most secret recesses may be explored with 
 confidence. Without it, the student travels in a circle — return^ 
 
 785 
 
174 
 
 ing, after much labor, to the point from which he started upon 
 his journey. Like one in a maze, when most confidently expect- 
 ing to find his way out, he but sees himself coming up against 
 impassable barriers. 
 
 To the possessor of this theory and of an impartial mind, that 
 is to say, a mind in search of truth for truth's sake, there is no 
 phenomenon of industry, of commerce, or of finance that is not 
 accounted for. With it, all facts, in the monetary world har- 
 monize. All the teachings of history illustrate its force. It 
 has therefore for support both reason and experience. It re- 
 solves all doubts ; unriddles all enigmas ; makes clear that which, 
 without it, would be an insoluble problem of political economy. 
 But in order to receive all the benefits of truth, men must not 
 approach the investigation with a predetermination to prove 
 some special theory. The truth is always its own justification. 
 
 No Sena,tor will rise in his place and deny that, other things 
 being equal, the value of each unit of money in a country de- 
 pends on the total number of units forming the monetary circu- 
 lation of that country. No Senator will attempt to deny that, all 
 other things remaining the same, the prices of property and 
 commodities in a country are regulated by the number of units 
 constituting the monetary circulation of the country; and by the 
 "number of units " I mean, of course, for this country the num- 
 ber of dollars, for Prance the number of f rancsj for Great Britain 
 the number of pound? sterling, etc. 
 
 The quantitative theory, Mr. President, is not new. In the 
 third century of the Christian era the Roman jurisconsult Paulus 
 gave a description of money which indicates the acceptance at 
 that early period of' the principle of quantity as that to which 
 the money unit owed its value. I invite special attention to this 
 clear-cut statement: 
 
 The origin of buying and selling— 
 
 Says Paulus — 
 
 goes back to barter. Primitively, there was no money. One thing was not 
 called "merchandise" and the other "price," but every one, according to 
 his needs, and according to his circumstances, bartered things useless to 
 him for those which would be useful to him; for it often happens that what 
 one has too much of another lacks. But, as it would not always or easily 
 happen that yoij had what I should have wished for, and that, conversely, I 
 had what you wished to obtain, choice was made of a material which, being 
 785 
 
175 
 
 declared forever legal Talue, would obviate the dlffloultleaol barter By meant 
 of a quantitative equation. And this material, stamped In the corner by the 
 State, circulates with a power which It derives not from the substance but from 
 thegtmntity. Since that time, of the things thus exchanged one Is called mer- 
 chandise, and the other Is called price. 
 
 This description was deemed worthy to be incorporated in the 
 Pandects of Justinian, compiled and promulgated in the sixth 
 century, thus demonstrating that the lapse of three hundred 
 years had not rendered it obsolete. It is as sound to-day as it was 
 when first written. 
 
 John Locke, in his Considera,tions, relating to the value oi 
 
 money, said: 
 
 Money, while the same quantity of It Is passing up and down the kingdom 
 in trade, is really a standing measrae of the falling and rising value of other 
 things in reference to one another, and the alteration In price Is truly In 
 them only. But if you Increase or lessen the quantity of money current in 
 traCQc in any place, then the alteration of value Is in the money. 
 
 Locke further said: 
 
 The value of money In any one country Is the present quantity of the cur- 
 rent money In that country in proportion to the present trade. 
 
 David Hume, the historian, says: ' 
 
 It Is not difBcult to perceive that It IS the total quantity of the money In 
 circulation in any country which determines what portion of that quantity 
 shall exchange tor a certain portion of the goods or commodities of that 
 country. It Is the proportion between the circulating money and the com- 
 modities In the market which determines the price. 
 
 Picthe says: 
 
 If the quantity of purchaseable articles Increases, while the quantity of 
 money remains the same, the value of the.money Increases In the same ra- 
 tio; 11 the quantity of money Increases, while the quantity of purchaseable 
 articles remains the same, the value of the money decreases In the same 
 ratio. 
 
 James Mill, in his treatise on Political Economy, says: 
 
 And again, in whatever degree, therefore, the quantity of money is In- 
 creased or diminished, other things remaining the same. In that same pro- 
 portion the value of the whole and of every part is reciprocally diminished 
 or increased. 
 
 John Stuart Mill (Political Economy) says: 
 
 The value of money, other things being the same, varies Inversely as Its 
 quantity; every increase of quantity lowering the value, and every diminu- 
 tion raising It In a ratio exactly equivalent, 
 
 And again, as I have already quoted in connection with my 
 
 remarks on cost of production, Mr. MUl says: 
 
 Alterations In the cost of the production of the precious metals do not act 
 upon the value of money, except J ust In proportion as they Increase or di- 
 minish Its quantity. 
 785 
 
176 
 
 Ricardo (Reply to Bosanquet) says: 
 
 The value of moi;ey In any country is determined by the amount existing. 
 That commodities would rise or fall in price In proportion to the increase or 
 diminution of money I assume as a fact that is incontrovertible. 
 
 Rioardo further says: 
 
 There can exist no depreciation in money but from excess; however de- 
 based a coinage may become, it will preserve its mint value; that is to say, 
 it will pass In circulation for the [so-called] intrinsic value of the bullion 
 which it ought to contain, provided It be not in too great abundance. 
 
 ' John Stuart Mill agaia says: 
 
 We have seen, however, that even in the case of metallic currency the 
 Immediate agency In determining Its value is its quantity.— jy4»<%jJe» of 
 Political Economy, volume II, page 89. 
 
 William Huskisson (The Depreciation of the Currency, 1819) 
 
 says: 
 
 If the quantity of gold in a country whose currency consists of gold should 
 be increased in any given proportion, the quantity of other articles and the 
 demand for them remaining the same, the value of any given commodity 
 measured In the coin of that country would be Increased in the same pro- 
 portion. 
 
 Sir James Graham says: 
 
 The value of money is in the inverse ratio of its quantity; the supply of 
 commodities remaining the same. 
 
 Torrens, in his work on Political Economy, says: 
 
 It the value of all othel: commodities, in relation to gold, rises and falls as 
 their quantities diminish or Increase, the value of gold in relation to com- 
 modities must rise and fall as Its.quantity is diminished or Increased. 
 
 Prof. De Colange, in the American Cyclopedia of Commerce, 
 
 article "Money," says: 
 
 The rate at which money exchanges for other things is determined by its 
 quantity. * * * Supposing the amount of trade and mode of ak:cuIation 
 to remain stationary, if the quantity of money be increased its value will 
 fall and the price of ^ther commodities will proportionately rise, as the lat- 
 ter will then exchange against a greater amount of money; if, on the other 
 hand, the quantity of money be reduced, its value will be raised, and prices in 
 corresponding degree diminished, as commodities will then have to be ex- 
 changed for a less amount of money. * * * In whatever degree, therefore, 
 the quantity of money is Increased or diminished, other things remaining 
 the same. In that same proportion the value of the whole and of every partis 
 reciprocally diminished or increased. 
 
 Says Prof. Sidgwick, of Cambridge University: 
 
 The exchange value of any particular coin wlU vary in exactly Inverse ra- 
 tio to the variations In^uantlty of the aggregate.— iVinctpiM oj Political 
 Economy, page 251. 
 
 So absolutely clear are the leading writers that the value of 
 
 785 
 
177 
 
 money unit is, in every case, other things heing equals deter- 
 mined by the number of units out, and does not depend on the ma- 
 terial of which the money may be composed, that they have not 
 the slightest hesitation in as sorting that the rule applies even 
 to uncovered paper money, so that the value of every dollar of 
 gold and silver in circulation is diminished or increased, accord^ 
 ing as the quantity of paper money is increased or diminished; 
 and reciprocally as to all of these, the increase in the number of 
 dollars of either kind diminishing the value of each dollar of the 
 others, while the decrease in the number of eithgr increases the 
 value of each of the others, without the slightest regard what- 
 ever to the material of which either of the dollars is composed. 
 
 If this be so, if' the value of the unit of money depends not on 
 the material of the dollars but on their quantity, what becomes 
 of the gold standard? If this be so, inasmuch as silver has been 
 utilized as money since the dawn of creation, why abandon it 
 now, unless Senators are prepared to abandon the automatic sys- 
 tem altogether? If we must, by legislation, compel a chan'ge in 
 the value of money (for that is what this measure means), why 
 legislate so that it can change in one direction only, and that 
 the direction which is always favorable to the classes that lend 
 money and live idly on their incomes — the direction most inju- 
 rious to society, most fatal to industry, most narcotizing to en- 
 ergy? 
 
 Prof. Stanley Jevons, in his work on Money and Mechanism 
 
 of Exchange, says; 
 
 There Is plenty ot evldetice to prove that an Inconvertible paper money, If 
 carefully limited in quantity,, can retain its full value. Such was the case 
 with the Bank of England notes for several years after the suspension of 
 specie payments In 1797. and such Is the case with the present notes of the 
 Bank of France. 
 
 / In his proposal for an economip and secure currency, the great 
 
 authority, Ricardo, himself a most acute dealer in mo.ney, says: 
 
 A well regulated paper currency is so great an improvement In commerce 
 that I should greatly regret if prejudice should induce us to return to a sys- 
 tem of less utility. The introduction of the precious metals for the purposes 
 of money may with truth he considered as one of the most important steps 
 toward the Improvement of commerce and the arts of the civilized lif^; but 
 It is no less true, that wltli the adyancement of knowledge and science, we 
 discover that it would be another Improvement to banish them again from 
 the employment to which, during a less enlightened period, they had been 
 BO advantageously applied. 
 785 12 
 
178 V 
 
 The distinguished economist and editor, Mr. J. R. MeCuUoch, 
 in commenting on the principles of money laid down by Ricardo, 
 
 says: 
 
 Heexamiued thedrcumstancea which aeterminetlievalueof money, * ** 
 ana he showed that * * * its value will depend on t?ie extent to which 
 it may be itsued compared with the demand. This is a principle of great Im- 
 portance, for it shows that intrinsic worth is not necessary to a currency^ and 
 that, provided the supply of paper notes declared to he a legal tender be suffi- 
 ciently limited, their value may be maintained on a par with the value of 
 gold, or raised to any higher level. If. therefore, it were practicable to de- 
 vise a plan for preserving the value of paper on a level with that of gold, 
 without making it convertible into coin at the pleasure of the holder, the 
 heavy expense of,a metallic currency would be saved. 
 
 It appears, therefore, that if there were security that the power of Issuing 
 paper money would not be abused ; that Is, If there were perfect security for 
 its being issued In such quantities as to preserve Its value relatively to the 
 mass of circulating commodities nearly equal, the precious metals might be 
 entirely dispensed with, not only as a circulating medium, but also as a 
 standard to which to refer the value of paper. 
 
 Lprd Overstone also ' admits that irredeemable paper money 
 can, by a proper limitation of its issues, be kept at par with gold. 
 In adopting a paper circulation- 
 He says — 
 
 We must unavoidably depend for a maintenance of its due value upon the 
 adoption of a strict and judicious rule for the regulation of Its amount. 
 
 Supporting this view we find also that Alexander Baring, in 
 
 his evidence before, the secret committee of the House of Lords 
 
 in 1819, said: 
 
 The reduction of paper would produce all those effects which arise from 
 the reduction in the amount of the money iu any country. 
 
 An early and distinguished authority. in our own country, Mr. 
 
 Gallatin, said: 
 
 If in a country which wants and possesses af metallic currency of seventy 
 millions of dollars, a paper currency to' the same amount should be substi- 
 tuted, the seventy millions In gold and silver, being no longer wanted for 
 that purpose, will be exported, and the returns may be converted Into a pro- 
 ductive capital and add an equal amount to the wealth of the country. 
 
 When we know that these are views of the leading writers — 
 
 all uniting in the assertion that that which determines the value 
 
 of money is the quantity, not the material— it must excite our 
 
 special wonder that Senators propose to destroy silver as money 
 
 of final payment, or to repeal a law which by its slight addition 
 
 to the quantity of money has at least tended to maintain, in some 
 
 degree, among us the equities of time contracts and deferred 
 
 785 
 
179 
 
 payments. When Senators know that all great projects in thij 
 country, on wliich thp employment of labor depends, are based 
 upon the prices of commodities, and that when those prices are 
 constantly falling workingmen must be relegated to idleness, 
 that every debt must be paid ina dollar of increasing value, to 
 the ruin of merchants and of the projectors of industrial enter- 
 prises in which labor should be employed, it is incomprehensible 
 how they can advocate the establishment in this country of a 
 gold standard, or of any standard except such as will furnish a 
 sufficient volume of money for the business of the people. 
 
 With reference to Rica,rdo, it is to be borne in mind that his 
 profession was that of stockbroker. Hence we must make al- 
 lowance for his desire to maintain the gold standard — knowing, 
 as' he very well knew, that the gold standard meant a certain 
 level of prices for commodities— that is to say, that it did not 
 mean the possession of gold, but the ability of money-lenders, 
 creditors, and the idle aristocracy and income classes of Great 
 Britain to obtain all the comforts and luxuries of life at a level 
 of prices getting constantly lower, for, if by those means, work- 
 men were relegated to idleness, those idlers felt themselves not 
 individually responsible. Their inquiry was: " Am I my brother's 
 keeper?" • 
 
 In a paragraph of the twenty-seventh chapter of his work on 
 Political Economy, Ricavdo makes the broad statement that a 
 nation may be on the gold standard without having a solitary 
 dollar of gold within its entire territory, provided only that, 
 whatever may be the form of its money, the number of the units 
 of that money shall not exceed the number of gold units which, 
 if the country used gold money, would be its distributive por- 
 tion of the gold of the world. That proportion is, of course, 
 fixed by the general range of prices. Ricardo's statement is: 
 
 A currency IS In Its most perfect stat? wlien It consists wholly of paper 
 money, but of paper money of an equal value wltli tli^ gold which It pro- 
 fesses to represent. The use of paper Instead of gold- 
 He continues — 
 
 substitutes the cheapest ln_ place of the most expensive medium, and en- 
 ables the country, without loss to any individual, to exchange all the gold, 
 which before it used for this purpose tor raw materials, utensils, and f ood— 
 by the use of which both Its wealth and its enjoyments are Increased. 
 785 
 
180 
 
 It will be remembered that on Saturday I demonstrated, Ijy 
 citations from the leading writers that money has no value what- 
 ever except value in excha.nge— purchasing power — and that when 
 the term "value of money" is used, it means only purchasing 
 power and not any value, which, for commodity purposes, might 
 attach to the material of whichit is composed. 
 
 By limiting its quantity— 
 
 Ricardo says — 
 Its value In exchange— 
 
 Which, as I have said, is the only value that money has^ 
 Is as great as au equal denomination ot coin, or ot bullion in tliat coin. 
 
 And he very properly adds: 
 
 There Is no point more important in issuing paper money than to he folly 
 impressed with the eflects which follow from the principle ot limitation of 
 quantity. 
 
 Of course there is no point more important than that. The 
 principle of limitation ot quantity is of the very essence of the 
 value of money, of whatever material it may be composed. 
 
 If money were unlimited in quantity it would have no value 
 whatever. Nothing has value that is. unlimited in quantity. If, 
 instead of sand, the ocean beach were strewn with gold dust, it 
 would have no value whatever as a commodity; yet if that gold 
 dust were taken up and coined into pieces of money, the number 
 of such pieces being limited, they would have value precisely as 
 gold pieces have value to-day. And, on the other hand, as Adam 
 Smith says, if gold should reach a certain degree of scarcity, the 
 slightest bit of it might become as valuable as a diamond. 
 
 Ricardo, leaving no form of the statement untouched, recurs 
 
 to the subject by making the following remark: 
 
 On these principles it will he seen that it is not necessary that paper money 
 should be payable in specie to secure its value; it is only necessary that its 
 quantity should be regulated according to the value of the metal which Is 
 declared to be the standard. 
 
 If it is not necessary for paper money, in order to be of equal 
 value with gold money, to be payable or "redeemable" in gold, 
 how can it be asserted that silver money, in order to maintain 
 its value in relation to gold, should be redeemable in that 
 metal ? 
 
 T85 
 
181 
 
 Prof. Fawoett, in his work' on Political Economy, says: ; 
 
 " In discussing the laws of price, the principle was established that general 
 prices depend upon the quantity ol money In circulation compared with the 
 wealth which is bought and sold with money, and also upon the Irequenoy 
 with which this wealth is bought and sold before It is consumed. If more 
 wealth Is produced and an Increased quantity of wealth Is bought and sold 
 for money, general prices must decline .unless a larger quantity of money it 
 brought iiAo circulation. 
 
 When Prof. Fawoett says that "general prices must decline 
 unless a larger quantity of money is brought into circulation," 
 he is but stating in another form of phrase that the value of 
 money increases as its quantity diminishes. This is the quan- 
 titative theory. Prof. Pawcett further says: 
 
 The amount of money required to be kept in circulation depends upon the 
 amount of wealth which is exchanged for money. Hence, ceteris paribus, 
 the amownt of money ought to increase as the population and wealthof a comitrj/ 
 advance.— Political Economy, page 371. 
 
 ■ If the amount should be increased, surely the increase must be 
 an increase of th& quantity. 
 Mr. N. A.' Nicholson, of Oxford, in his Science of Exchanges, 
 
 Whatever substance may be used as cm-rency, an excessive quantity of it 
 (more than is required by the wants of the community) necessarily causes a 
 diminution ol its purchasing power. 
 
 To show that even gold is subject to the same law of quantity, 
 
 Mr. Nicholson asks: 
 
 Could a currency, then, consisting entirely ot the best gold coin only, b« 
 depreciated? 
 
 To which he replies: 
 
 Certainly, provided that the exportation of gold could be altogether pre- 
 vented, the amount In use would soon become greater than what was re- 
 quired by the wants of the community, and Its purchasing power would 
 diminish in the same proportion. 
 
 What Mr. Nicholson means by the " wants of the community " " 
 is the amount of money necessary to sustain prices at the inter- 
 national level. 
 
 Earl Grey, writing to Mr. Grenfell, one of the governors of 
 
 the Bank of England, and l-eferrihg to Ricardo, says: 
 
 I w6uld remind you (though it is hardly necessary to do so) that in his 
 admirable pamphlet on this subject, he (Blcardo) has shown the value of 
 paper money issues by the authority ot the state to depend upon its amount 
 as compared to the wants of the state in which it circulates. No one, >I be- 
 lieve, now doubts this to be true, and experience has proved that mconvert- 
 785 
 
182 
 
 ible paper mofiey will circ^late not only without -depreeial ion f\iut even at <• 
 premium If the issues are sufficiently limltea.— [L/etter from Earl Grey, 
 dated May 31, 1881. Quoted in The Bimetallic Controversy, by Gibbs & 
 Grenfell, page 160.1 
 
 Prof. Shield Nicholson, of Edinburgh, in an article in tha 
 Nineteenth Century for December, 1889, states that every econo- 
 mist of repute since Ricardo"s time has been Ein advocate of the 
 quantitative theory of money. 
 
 Even a so-called debased coinage: — that is, a coinage, each 
 piece of which contaips a smaller quantity of metal tha.n the law 
 prescribes — will maintain itself atpar provided the total number 
 of coins put in circulation be not too large. On this point, as I 
 have shoVa, Ricardo says, that in circulation such coins will pass 
 for the quantity of metal they oitglit to contain, provided they 
 be " not in too great abundance." 
 
 With reference to this relation of quantity, and to the abso- 
 lute necessity of an increase of money pari passu with the de- 
 mands for it, Prof. Perry, of Williams College, say^: 
 
 Whfen, however, enlerprises are multiplying and -exchanges are being per- 
 manently increased in number and variety, then there must be a larger vol- 
 ume of money.— Pi'inciples of Political Economy, page 409. 
 
 With regard to the irredeemable paper notes of the Bank of 
 
 England, issued on the suspension of specie payments in 1797. 
 
 Prof. Perry says: 
 
 Cautiously Issued at first, bank paper continued at par for several years 
 after the suspension, ■which proves that when Government possess the mo- 
 nopoly of issuing paper money, and carefully limits its quantity, and both 
 receives and pays it out at par, it may keep an Inconvertible paper at par, or 
 even by sufficiently limiting its quantity carry it abom par. 
 
 How do gold-standard Senators, who talk of a sixty-cent dol- 
 lar, explain the fact of a one-cent paper pound-sterling being 
 at par with gold, or even at a premium over gold, without a 
 penny's worth of gold existing in the entire kingdom? I sup- 
 pose they will say the notes were sustained by the ' ' credit of 
 the government." Then, why did the credit of the government 
 allow the notes later on, when tliey were issued in larger quantity, 
 to depreciate in value? 
 
 All these great authorities agree, as I have shown, that the 
 quantitative theory of money is correct, and that, instead of 
 applying merely to gold, it applies to all money without dis- 
 crimintition or distinction of material. 
 
 785 
 
183 
 
 Upon what principle oi justice or wisdom, then , I ask, can 
 Senators advocate the repeal of a law which permits the con- 
 tinued utilization of silver, which has heen money throughout 
 all time? Why do the;y wish to repeal a bill which not only 
 does not give too much money, hut which, as is shown by the 
 persistent fall of prices of commodities in the country, has riot 
 supplied even enough money for the wants of- our people? ' The 
 value of the notes issued under that law, Instead of becoming 
 less as time has elapsed, h^a become greater, showing, as I have 
 stated, that there have not been too many of liiem issued, but' 
 too few. 
 
 I have heard no authorities cited by Senators on the other side. 
 They prefer to be authorities themselves. They can not iilvoke 
 in behalf of their contentions either the facts of history, or the 
 works of leading political economists or philosophers in any coun- 
 try of the world. The junior Senator from Massachusetts [Mr 
 Lodge] by his resolution to prohibit the reading of speeches 
 wished us to understand that it is better to deliver speeclies on this 
 question extemporaneously and without th|i.t thoughtful prepara- 
 tion to which so great a subject is entitled. I have heard no at- 
 tempt to deny the propositions or postulates that we have laid 
 clown. We on our side are subject to the derision of all the gold- 
 standard newspapers; even the cranks of the country are en- 
 couraged to "suppress" us; but, most remarkable circumstance, 
 neither in the press nor in the Senate do we r^ad or hear any an- 
 swer to our arguments. We stand here for the prosperity of our 
 country; for the welfare of all its people. We stand here advo- 
 cating the wisdom, the duty, and the policy of having a reasonable 
 incre-ise in the volume of our money, an increase sufficient to 
 maintain undisturbed the range of prices of the products of in- 
 dustry. 
 
 Until this is accomplished we shall constantly see willing 
 workers relegated to idleness, owing to want of profit in busi- 
 ness. We shall see the producers of the country looted by the 
 money-lenders, who will receive the unearned increment on every 
 contract, every bond, and every mortgage. Until thisisaccom- 
 plished, and the quantity of money keeps pace with demand, the > 
 real emancipation of man will not be achieved. Then only will 
 
 785 
 
184 
 
 the spiritual be fully enabled to take posseBsion of the material. 
 Then only shall we see every department of society advancing 
 in intellectuality and in spirituality, for neither men nor women 
 can ever become truly spiritual whUe engaged in a feverish hunt 
 for the absolute necessaries of life. 
 
 AS TO BEGULATION OF QTTANTITT. 
 
 Mr. CAREY. Would it interrupt the Senator if I should ask 
 him how he would regulate the quantity? 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. I will reply to the Senator. In order 
 that I may do so intelligently let me very briefly recapitulate 
 the factors that enter into the question. In a condition of civ- 
 ilization dependent, as ours is, upon a system of almost infinite 
 subdivision of labor, there is no human being who by his own 
 - efforts can supply even one of his own wants — none who can con- 
 tribute more than a fragment of the labor necessary to the pro- 
 duction of any one article necessary to life or to comfort. The 
 agriculturist may be said to come nearest to independence, but 
 in the present day even he must depend largely upon machinery, 
 so that he is practically subject to the rule I have indicated. 
 
 The production of food, clothing, and all the other indispen- 
 sable necessaries, to say nothing of comforts or luxuries of life, 
 now depends upon the employment of a number of persons each 
 of whom'has acquired skill in the manipulation of a particular 
 process or machine. For example, taking the case of a shoe as 
 a familiar illustration, after the leather and other findings have 
 been supplied, there are required sixty-four separate processes 
 to produce the shoe. This makes of each person engaged in the 
 work o£ manufacture but a fraction of a tradesman — but the 
 one-sixty-fourth part of a shoemaker. He can, as I have said, 
 supply, with his own labor, not even one of his wants. The 
 most that he can do is to contribute a small fraction of the 
 effort necessary to the production of any one article which 
 he needs. Hence, in order to render his own labor effective in 
 the supplying of his wants, it is absolutely indispensable that he 
 should have something with which all wants can be supplied — 
 something through which or by which to supplement his own 
 efforts and his own products by the efforts and products of other 
 men, and through and by which th6 products of the labor of 
 
 785 
 
185 
 
 other men can be effectively demanded, and in response to which 
 they will withoutfail be instantly supplied. Without some means 
 of thus commanding theefforts of others — of resolving and trans- 
 muting our own labor and its products at will, and at any mo- 
 ment, into the labor' and products of other men — civilization as 
 we know it could not exist for one day. 
 
 No man but a beggar makes a demand directly for a coat, a 
 hat, a shoe, or anything else that he wants. Every man works 
 in his own vocation, and from his labor or the products of his 
 labor, obtains money. With this money he can dema^id and 
 command the efforts and the products of the labor of other men. 
 This, as I have already stated, makes the demand for money ur- 
 gent and incessant. But this demand is not a demand for gold— 
 except in so far as gold is money. If gold were not money it 
 would represent a demand biit for one thing — ^a metal, which, as 
 a metal, serves but a trifling and inconsequential purpose in the 
 economy of lif^. As a metal it would supply but one want — the 
 desire for decoration; and that wantj in comparison with all the 
 material wants of life — how insignificant! What does it supply 
 as money? Money supplies all wants, and therefore for gold as 
 money there is an importunate and unceasing demand. 
 
 Mr, CAREY. How with silver? 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. It is the same with Silver. Silver 
 money enables men to supply every want, not because it is silver, 
 but because it is money. There being, as I have said, no sub- 
 stitute for money, however dear it may become — however much 
 its command over commodities increases— rit must be obtained, 
 to meet maturing obligations, to save men from bankruptcy, and 
 to purchase the necessaries and comforts of life. The demand 
 for all necessaries and comforts is made by people. Were there 
 no people there would be no need of money or anything else. 
 As population increases there will be an increased demand for 
 money. It makes no difference what the number of dollars may 
 be with which a population starts on its career; when prices of 
 commodities and property become adjusted to that number of 
 dollars and thousands of millions of dollars of debts are contracted 
 on the basis of those prices, the duty of the statesman is to see 
 that equity and justice are not violated through changes in the 
 
 785 ' 
 
186 
 
 . quantity of the circulating medium by which those debts are 
 measured. 
 
 When a given population has become accustoiped to a certain 
 quantity oE money, to which all prices have become adjusted, if 
 the population increases at the rate of 2 per cent there will surely 
 be needed 2 per cent more food, 2 per cent more ,clothing, 2 per 
 cent more houses, and 2 per cent more of all other things that 
 go to supply human wants. Inasmuch as those wants can only' 
 be supplied with money, it is clear that there should be an in- 
 crease of 2 per cent in the quantity of money. Otherwise the 
 change of price arising from changes in the relation of sup- 
 ply and demand affecting the commodities themselves will be 
 intensified by changes brought about by variations in the quan- 
 tity of money. There being a greater demand for money by 
 reason of the increased population commodities can be ex- 
 changed only at a lower and lowering range of prices, which 
 means that a constantly increasing quantity of the products of 
 labor, must be exchanged for a given sum of money. 
 
 This means the destruction of men who have agreed to make 
 deferred payments, and,' in this age, all great undertakings must 
 necessarily be conducted through the medium of deferred pay- 
 ments. I assert, therefore, that as population^increases the very 
 leist increase that should take place in the volume of money is 
 an increase proportioned to the percentage of increase of the 
 population. Does any body dpubt this? Can anybody answer the 
 contention? Ah! Mr. President, I think not. But, it will be 
 said, do you think silver money better than gold? I reply that 
 under any circumstances it is just as good, and that by reason of 
 the fact that there is not enough gold, we should under no cir- 
 cumstances abandon silver. The entire history of the world 
 shows that tljere has never been too much of both. 
 
 Mr. CAREY. Will the Senator permit me to call his atten- 
 tion to the question I asked him? I asked the Senator how he 
 would regulate the quantity of money, assuming that we have 
 not the right quantity now. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. I have stated that the least quantity 
 which should be added to the money volume is a quantity cor- 
 responding with the increase of population. Whenever f&e 
 
 785 
 
187 
 
 wqrld shall be prepared to intelligently regulate the quantity 
 of money by trusting to the wisdom of legislation to supplement 
 the deficiencies of the yield from the mines there will not be 
 the slightest difQculty in arriving at methods of regulation. 
 That is a matter of mere detail. So long, howevdr, as the cred- 
 itor classes fear to trust the regulation of the money volume to 
 human wisdom, so long as they prefer to abide by the automatic 
 system, they should not-distort that system in their own inter- 
 est; they should not so legislate as that with each advancing 
 year the burden upon the backs of the debtors shall become 
 greater and greater. 
 
 THERE HAS NEVER BEEN TOO MITCH METALLIC MONEY. 
 
 When we know that the mines of gold and silver taken to- 
 gether have never produced too much of both metals to serve 
 the purposes of money,. there is no reason to assert that the 
 mines of one metal alone will yield enough. We know that the 
 placers, from which nine-tenths of the gold yield of the world 
 has been obtained, have been exhausted, and that the earth has 
 been raked as with a comb in the vain search for others.' It is 
 certain, therefore, that so long as the world relies upon metallic 
 money the reliance must be on silver. 
 
 The only persons whose interests can be subserved by discard- 
 ing silver as money of final payment and as a measure of value 
 are the creditor classes, and they permit neither justice nor con- 
 sistency to stand in the way of the achievement of their purpose. 
 Wliile professing to disti^ust legislative interference with money 
 they destroy one-half tbe money of the world ^y legislation in 
 their own behalf. 
 
 When, in 1816, Great Britain adopted' the gold standard the 
 yield of gold had been for some years declining . But that fact 
 did not prevent Great Britain, whose creditor classes were then 
 as they are to-day tjie governing classes of that country, from 
 adopting that standard. T^iey knew that whoever should be 
 hurt by that transaction it would not be themselves. They un- 
 doubtedly expected that other nations would follow their ex- 
 ample, but in this they were fOr a long time disappointed. 
 
 The accessibility of the French mint for the unrestricted coin- 
 age of both silver and gold enabled the world to utilize all the 
 
188 
 
 silver as well as all the gold yielded by the mines. Hence the 
 action of Great Britain in the interest not of the masses of her 
 people, but of the classes only, was prevented from inflicting 
 upon society the irijury which would otherwise have resulted. 
 The bimetallic law of France held the metals together. It was 
 as easy for the world to pay in gold'the debts they owed to Great 
 Britain as it would, be to pay those debts if that ooimtry had 
 maintaihed the double standard; 
 Mr. CAREY. It did neither good nor harm. 
 
 DBBTOB COnNTBOS, IiIKB THB UNIIBD STATBS, STTI'FEB MOST FBOU DB- 
 MONETIZATION OF SILVBB. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada, It did neither good nor harm at that 
 time. But as soon as the mints were closed to silver the harm, 
 as would naturally be expected, began. With the demonetiza- 
 tion of silver the creditor classes not only of Great Britain but 
 of every gold-standard country, began to receive from their in- 
 vestments an increment unearned and unbargained for ; and 
 having now for twenty years enjoyed the privilege of receiving 
 such increment it is regarded not as a privilege merely but as a 
 right vesting by mere prescription in the privileged classes of 
 all countries, against which the debtors are expected to make 
 no defense. So we find that debtor countries like the United 
 States — which have to pay annually an enormous amount of 
 money, or its equivalent in the products of labor, to the creditor 
 classes of Great Britain are called upon by the creditor classes 
 not only of Greaj; Britain but of our own country to go to the gold 
 standard. 
 
 This country is a debtor country. It is not in the position 
 of Grea,t Britain, whose creditor classes, as Mr. Gladstone says, 
 have ten thousand million dollars out at interest. There is no 
 reason — none has been or can be shown — why the United States 
 should go to the gold standard. This country needs an increas- 
 ing volume of money as population and business increase. It is 
 impossible for it to get gold except at the expense of ruinous and- 
 continuously falling prices — a fall of prices by and through which 
 the property of the producing masses is being and will continue 
 to be coiJfiscated into the possession of the creditors. 
 
 If other countries want gold let them have gold. Especially 
 
189 
 
 let them have it U they are the countries to which we send our 
 wheat, cotton, tobacco, meat products, and petroleum for sale, 
 BO that the prices of those commodities may be such as will prop- 
 erly compensate our farmers, planters, and others for their labor. 
 What we want is enough money to maintain a firm range of 
 prices, so that men will not have the discouragement of transact- 
 ing business upon an ipcliued plane — ^producing goods upon one 
 level and disposing of them at another and always a lower level. 
 
 Mr. CAREY. May I interrupt the Senator from Nevada ? 
 
 Mr, JONES of Nevada, Yes. 
 
 Mr. CAREY. As I understand the Senator, he says that good 
 money is made by simply putting the stamp of the Government 
 on the face of it; and if we can not have both gold and silver it 
 would be better to have silver than gold. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Undoubtedly. The annual gold yield 
 is almost all consumed in the arts and manufactures, and even if 
 it were not, the quantity produced is whoUyinsufflcient to main- 
 tain prices of commodities at a firm range, so that business can 
 not be planned or conducted with any intelligent foresight. 
 
 THB UTHiIZATIOS OF BOTH METALS NECBSSABY. 
 
 Mr, CAREY. The Senator talks of the automatic theory 
 which depends upon the production of these two metals. Can 
 he on his own statement trust the automatic theory? Will it be 
 safe to be guided by that in regulating the amount of money? 
 
 Mr, JONES of Nevada, By taking both metals and utilizing 
 them to the full, justice may for a time be m,aintained'. It has 
 been demonstrated to the satisfaction of every impartial mind 
 that there is not gold enough, and that there is no chance of 
 getting enough, so that it is absolutely esseiltial to continue the 
 use of silver to the fullest extent. The production of silver is 
 not so fugitive a work as that of gold — not so dependent upon 
 accident. The larger proportion of the gold stock of the world 
 is the production of nomads — only an infinitesimal portion hav- 
 ing been produced by men who made the work the occupation of 
 their lives. It has not been produced from mines or by means 
 of machinery. 
 
 The production of silver, on the other hand, is a higih art. It 
 requires the best machinery, the best mechanics, the best engi- 
 785 , 
 
190 
 
 neers, and the best miners; and althougli mines of any great de- 
 gree of fertility are extremely few, yet in the mines of moderate 
 or slight capacity there is promise of enough of the metal, for- 
 tunately for the interests of society, to be yielded slowly and 
 gradually through the years, an annual yield perhaps sufficient 
 to meet the monetary demands of the world for some time to 
 come. But the metal can not be poured out in a flood, as has 
 been foolishly and ignorantly stated. The business is one that 
 few men, even in the most favored of its periods, will be content- 
 to follow. Railroads have long penetrated every section of the 
 mining regions of this country, yet but a very small number of 
 the population, whether capitalists or working miners, engage 
 in the business. It is a business in the nature of a lottery. 
 While there is in it enough of hope to allure men of sanguine 
 temperament who will take great risk on the chance of a great 
 gain, there is at the same time enough of disappointment to dis- 
 courage and repress any material increase in the numbers of 
 those' who might wish to follow the occupation or invest capital 
 in it. ' 
 
 Mr. PEFFER. May I ask the Senator a question? 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Yes. , 
 
 Mr. PEPFER. I wish to ask the Senator whether it is not a 
 fact that a very large proportion of the gold which is the prod- 
 uct of the mines comes from the mines which produce silver? 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. A very large amount of it, I will an- 
 swer. The Comstock mines have produced on an average about 
 45 per cent gold and 55 per cent silver. The great silver fields 
 have been extremely few — so few that their names have become 
 familiar to every ordinary reader — the Comstock, Leadville, and 
 Aspen. Where are any others? The Comstock lode, however, 
 is now practically exhausted. 
 
 As for the great mines that we sometimes hear of being dis- 
 covered in Mexico, I have always noticed that while the marks 
 made in the highway by those entering Mexico for purposes of 
 mining are the marks of shoes, the marks made on the return 
 journey are of bare feet. Any man can judge for himself as to 
 the profit of an occupation in a country of which such a state of 
 things can be predicated. 
 
191 
 
 The wonderful stories told of the ease of production of silver 
 and its slight cost emanate from people who know nothing what- 
 ever about the question. The great and convincing truth is 
 that with alleged profits exceeding those of almost any other 
 business, capital does not enter it; and with wages of labor 
 higher than average wages' in other occupations workingmen 
 do not engage in it. As i have stated, but a very small propor- 
 tion of the ' population of this or any other country engage in 
 that business, though it is free and open to all. Show me any 
 other business in the world in which the profits are said to be so 
 large, and I will show you a business which will be overcrowded 
 in two months. There is no overcrowding here. 
 
 [At this point the honorable Senator yielded to Mr. VOOR- 
 
 HEES.] ' 
 
 Monday, October SS, 189S. 
 
 Mr. JONES of J^evada. Mr. President, when I yielded the 
 flbor on Saturday, I had been diverted by the ques^ons of my 
 friend, the Senator from Wyoming, from the direct line of my 
 remarks. I was attempting to demonstrate that the standard of 
 a country could not' be gold, that it could not be silver, that it 
 could not be any especial material, but that of whatever material 
 the money might be composed the standard of a country is and 
 must be quantitative; that the value of the monetary unit de- 
 pends upon the number of units out. In support of iny conten- 
 tion, I cited the opinions of the ablest political economists — the 
 leading thinkers and writers on the science. I wish this morn- 
 ing to continue for a few minutes the consideration of that prop- 
 osition, and in that connection to deal with a " fstd," if I may so 
 term it, of the gold-standard press. 
 
 DOES THE ABGUMENT FOR QtTANTITT IGNOBB THE QUALITT OP MONET? 
 
 It is said that in arguing for the free coinage of silver and for 
 the increase of the quantity of money we forget the quality of 
 money. There is a great delusion about the quality of money. 
 Why, Mr. President, there is no quality in money except that 
 imparted to it, by quantity. Whatever quality it has is the 
 creation of quantity. The only quality that money has is that 
 by which it exercises command over property and services. 
 
192 
 
 The extent of that command, exercised by each piece, can be de- 
 termined only, and is determined wholly, by the number of 
 pieces out. As I have shown by citations from the leading 
 authorities, the term value, as applied to money, has no meaning 
 whatever except py/rchasing power. 
 
 Until men come to perceive this they can not understand the 
 first principles of the subject, and if they attempt to discuss it 
 will find themselves revolving in a circle, making nO progress 
 with the discussion, but always coming back to the point from 
 which they started* Yet nothing seems more dififloult to dis- 
 lodge from the minds of men who have ISoked into the question 
 only superficially than that there is some value in money apart 
 from purchasing power. 
 
 AH the authorities agree, not only on that point, but also that 
 this value (purchasing power) of each monetary unit is deter- 
 mined (other things being equal) by the quantity of those units 
 in circulation. The only consideration of consequence, there- 
 fore, in respect to the value of money is that it shall remain un- 
 changing through time. , This effect can be secured only by 
 regulation of the quantity. Of this doctrine, as enunciated by 
 the economists, there can be no possible denial, consistent with 
 the principles of reason. 
 
 The statement that there is some quality in money independ- 
 ent of that derived from its quantity is based on the exploded 
 idea that money has or should have "intrinsic" value, as it 
 value could be intrinsic, or could reside in an object.' 
 
 IS IT THE CREDIT OV THE GOVERHMENT THAT KEEPS SHiVEB AT A PARITY 
 WITH GOLDV 
 
 In like manner, it is said by the advocates of the gold standard 
 that the reason why the silver dollar maintains a dollar's worth 
 of value or purchasing power is because the credit of the (Jov- 
 ernment is back of it, and that It is that credit which keeps sil- 
 ver money at parity with gold . 
 
 It is not the creditof the Government that keeps it at a parity. 
 Seventy millions of people are constantly striving for the money 
 of the country, and it is this strife — this competition of all the 
 people to get money— that keeps the metals at a parity. No 
 matter what the credit of the Government might be, if the people 
 
 785 ' 
 
193 
 
 were to strive harder for one metal than for the other it would 'be 
 impossible to keep them at a parity. ' 
 
 ' If it is the credit of the United States that keeps them at a 
 parity, why is it supposed that free coinage, or a larger number 
 of silver dollars, if put out, would endanger the parity? 
 
 Is it pretended that the extent of the credit of the United 
 States is only a few hundred million dollars? Let us test,this 
 question of credit. Suppose the United States should issue 
 .$3,000,000,000 in bonds; ddes any one mean to say that they 
 would not be at par? We know that the Republic has already 
 in one generation paid a national debt of nearly/that amount, 
 and when we bear in mind the number and the energy of our 
 people there can not-be av doubt that the credit of the Govern- 
 ment could keep all those bonds at par without the slightest dif- 
 ficulty. The credit of Great Britain, which contains but a little 
 over half our population, keeps consols for a larger amount than 
 this nearly at par. But the issue of bonds and the prices of 
 bonds are matters involving credit. 
 
 The keeping of money at par, and having bonds at par, are 
 totally different affairs. 
 
 Notwithstanding the high credit of the United States — a credit 
 not excelled by any government in the w'orld^no man in his 
 senses will for a moment pretend to say that we could issue three 
 or four thousand million dollars, whether of gold or any other 
 kind of money, and keep that quantity of money at par with the 
 gold standard of the present time. Prices of commodities would 
 rise far above present gold prices, and it would be impossible to 
 keep so much money at a parity with the much smaller quantity 
 of gold that is now in circulation in gold-using coujitries. 
 
 Even if the number of dollars thus added were of gold, the fall, 
 in value of each dollar, caused by the enormous issue, would con- 
 stitute an entirely different gold standard; that is to say, the 
 range of prices of commodities which would then prevail would 
 be k range wholly different from that which now prevails. 
 
 The idea that the value of a Treasury note issued by a Govern- 
 ment sucli as ours is not based on the number issued, but on 
 something behind the not«, or upon the credit of the Govern- 
 ment, deforms the whole idea of money. It is clung to because 
 
 785 — 13 
 
194 
 
 people have been accustomed to look upon money as something 
 of " intrinsic " value, and on that theory they have been at a loss 
 to account for the fact that uncovered paper dollars, when suffi- 
 ciently restricted in number, have precisely the same purchas- 
 ing power as g^jld money; quantity for quantity. There is no 
 question of credit labout it. Ifo man takes a piece of money of 
 any kind, whether gold or silver or paper, as a piece of credit. 
 If it is not legal tender it is not, in the true and full sense, money 
 at all; if a full legal tender it needs nothing behind it bat the law 
 which makes it a legal tender for all debts and demands, and a 
 regulation of its quantity, to maintain the monetary unit at any de- 
 sired levej of value. 
 
 It is, not the credit, but the power of the Government that is 
 behind it in the law of legdl tender: and in the right to in- 
 crease or diminish the issues. Taxes are payable in money, and 
 debts are payable in money, and the only way that people can get 
 money Vith which to pay debts or taxes is by competing with 
 one another for it in all the occupations of life. It is this uhi- 
 versal competition to get it that fixes the value of all kinds of 
 money, as it is competition that fixes the value of all other 
 things. In this work of competition the number of dollars to be 
 competed for (other things being unchanged) must determine the 
 value of each dollar. 
 
 The quantitative theory does not mean that all countries would 
 require to maintain the same quantity of. money in order to ar- 
 rive at the same result. The immemorial habits and customs 
 of the people of each country fix for them the per capita which 
 they need. The French peasantry keep a good deal of money 
 stored away in old stockings. But even with the quantity of 
 money in Prance much greater than the quantity of money in 
 this country, money would not, unit for unit, have the same 
 effect upon prices in a country like France that it would have 
 in a country like the United States, in which the habits of the 
 people are altogether different. But, other things remain- 
 ing unchanged in any given country, the volume of money reg- 
 ulates the range of prices, or, to state the same thing in other 
 terms, it is the volume of money that regulates the value of each 
 of the units of money. The character of the material of money 
 
 785 
 
195 
 
 has nothing whatever -to do with fixing; the value of money. It 
 , is always the quantity — the number of dollars in comparison with 
 the demand for dollars— that fixes their value. 
 
 In the case of metallic money the rsgulation of quantity is 
 effected by nature through thb limitations placedupon the pro- 
 duction of the metals. In the case of paper money, the regula- 
 tion would depend upon thev wisdom of legislation. The effect ' 
 of limitation of quantity is precisely the same in both cases. 
 , If the quantitative theory be not correct— if the value of the 
 dollar is determined not by the number of dollars out, but by 
 what there is behind these dollars, or what they are based on — 
 then the adherents of the gold standard have absolutely no de- 
 fense against the plan at one tiihe suggested that the Govern- 
 ment should issue money on the basis of land — the money to be 
 lent to farmers on an appraisal of the value of their land. 
 
 If thfe theory be correct that something must be ' ' behind " 
 money, and something other than the demand of all the people 
 must be a "basis" for money, it is wholly impossible to answer 
 the theory which contemplates land as a basis for money, or as 
 being behind money. That theory is entirely erroneous, but is 
 derived naturally from the idea that money must have some- 
 thing as a basis or somethin? behind it. The fact is that all that 
 is a basis for money is the universal demand for it, and that is 
 basis enough. Nothing need be behind it except the law of legal 
 tender, which compels every man to take money m payment of 
 debt. 
 
 The farmers of this country are a most intelligent and patri- 
 otic class of men. All that needs to be done in order to show 
 them that they are wrong in demanding an issue of new money 
 to be loaned on land as a "basis " is to demonstrate to them the 
 true principles of monetary science, especially the principle 
 that, other things being equal, the value of each dollar is deterc 
 mined by the number of dollars out. But it is impossible to 
 demonstrate their error if it be insisted or if it be trjie'that 
 money must have any other basis than the demand of all the 
 people for it. If it be true that money must have something 
 concrete upon which it shall rest as a basis, then the theory that 
 iRnd is a good basis for money can not be controverted. Land is 
 
 78& 
 
196 
 
 better than gold, which, notwithstanding: its weight, may take 
 wings. But it is not true, and the land-loan theory is wrong. 
 The quantitative theory is impregnable and intelligible, and its 
 general and universal acceptance would immediately dispel all 
 monetary illusions. Wl^en it comes to be understood that it is 
 the increase or the decrease of the quantity of money in the com- 
 munity that installs justice or creates injustice, the situation 
 will immediately beconfe as plain as day. 
 
 STANDARDS OF VALUE. 
 
 We are informed by so-called " financiers " and statisticians, 
 and by an army of ready-made political economists among the 
 gold-standard press— gentlemen who have not taken the trouble' 
 to carefully study ithe subject— that the value of gold is unchang 
 ing, and that to attempt to depart from what is called the " gold 
 standard " would be to set at naught ail the principles of justice, 
 and even to defy the very laws of nature. This is an argument 
 used only since the demonetization of silver. Up to that time 
 it was well recognized by all who gave any attention to ,the sub- 
 , ject of money, and is still well recognized by all the authorities 
 on political, economy, that both silver and gold are variable in 
 value. So serio.us indeed have, from time to time, been the 
 variations in the value of money that thoughtful men — some of 
 them distinguished economists— have long observed a,nd com- 
 mented on the gross injustice which such variations involve, and 
 various sijggestions have been made of methods for securing 
 stability of value in the monetary unit. 
 
 Cjp to the period when the creditors discovered the ingenious 
 plan of surreptitiously increasing by an appeal to the legislative 
 arm of all governfcients the value of all debts due, and to become 
 due, to them, by depriving debtors of the immemorial right to pay 
 in either of the two metals, it was acknowledged by the most 
 eminent economists that the adoption of a single metal as a so- 
 called " standard" of money did not secure so great a degree of 
 uniformity in value as the adoption of both metals. This may 
 seem a paradox to those who have not reflected on the essential 
 nature of money and upon the method by which it obtains what 
 is termed its " value," which it does through the medium of the 
 prices of commodities. They ask: How can there be a standar-d 
 
197 
 
 composed of two things? Must not a standard tie one? Can it 
 be two or more? 
 
 DISCUSSION CI-OITDlaD BY MISAPPLICATION OP THE WOBD STANDARD. 
 
 There can be no doubt that the discussion of the value of money 
 is much clouded by the entirely unwarranted application of 
 the word "standard" to the material of which money is made. 
 The idea of a standard is of something that is absolutely uniform 
 and unchanging. Now, the only uniformity there isaboutgold 
 is that, like all other elementary substances, it is, chemically con- 
 sidered, always the same, but paople do not care for gold because 
 of its chemical properties. It is as money that all the people 
 desire It. Undoubtedly, those who keep their eyes always on 
 the metal itself, and not on the manner in which it is fulfilling 
 its monetary duty, think it is unchanging in value, and so long 
 as they confine their gaze to the metal alone, they must always 
 continue to thitfk so. Suppose that in the case of a machine, as a 
 steam engine, acertain pressure of steam — say 100 pounds — were 
 the normal pressure for the accomplishment of a prescribed pur- 
 pose^ and that if that degree of pressure were maintained the 
 most efficient service could, be- rendered consistent with safety. 
 Imagine what would happen if, instead of noting the oscillations 
 of pressure by observing the movements of the indicator upon 
 the gauge, the engineer should simply f asten the figures "100 " 
 in bold type to the end of the indics^tor! 
 
 In such jjase, no matter how violently the pressure of steam 
 rose, how correspondingly the needle became deflected, or how 
 far it persisted in its course around the dial, a superficial glance 
 would always show that the indicator pointed to "100" — a de- 
 gree of pressure understood to be entirely safe for that engine, 
 and best adapted to steady and uniform action of the machinery 
 to which the engine supplied motive force. This abSjUrdity is 
 precisely analogous to the course pursued by the creditor and 
 annuitant classes and the champions of the gold standard. They 
 •pinto gold the word ''standard," and no matter how wild its 
 vagaries or violent its oscillations, its movements are always 
 apparently the movements of the "standard," so that whatever 
 point it reaches is assumed to be the correct point. They wholly 
 divert the attention of the onlooker from the objects which it is 
 
108 
 
 the function of money to measure — thousands of objects whose 
 relative positions taken altogether would unmista-kably demon- 
 strate that gold was changing in value. 
 
 THE STANDARD IS NOT THE MATERIAL OP MONET, BUT THE NUMBEB OF 
 UNITS OE MONEY. 
 
 The seeming paradox involved in the idea that what is called 
 a "standard of value" may he composed of more than one ma- 
 terial is made plain when it is borne in mind that it is not the 
 material, but the quantity, of money which constitutes the stand- 
 ard. The quality to which in the case of value the word ' ' stand- 
 ard " is applied is not a quality inliering in the material of the money. 
 Value, as I have shown, does not reside in any article or in the 
 substance of any article. When the consideration to be kept in 
 view is not an object but a service — not a material Iput a func- 
 tion — the instrument by which that service or function is per- 
 formed need not necessarily be limited to one material. Inas- 
 much as the purpose to be served is the attainment of a correct 
 result, whatever the material by which it may be accomplished, 
 such number of materials as may be indispensable to.that end 
 should without hesitation be employed. If we wish to obtain a 
 clock which shall indicate the correct time we do not insist that 
 it shall be ijiade of one material. The material of which money 
 is made is no more a standard of value than the material of a 
 clock is the standard of time. , 
 
 The yardstick which by statute is declared to be the model for 
 all other yardsticks is made of bronze, but bronze is not there- 
 fore a standard of length. A bushel measure may be composed 
 of any material, or of any number of materials combined, but 
 this- makes no difference so long as the precise purpose sought is 
 attained, namely, the securing of perfect acuraoy of measure- 
 ment. If we assume the model or '* standard " bushel measure 
 to be composed of brass, it is not the brass that is the "stand- 
 ard of measure." Assuming that all bushel measures weremade 
 of brass, then this particular piece of brass comprising the model 
 constitutes a standard by which to test the metal of which all 
 future bushel mesisures may be made, but this does not constitute 
 brass per sea." standard " of cubical content. 
 
 All the functions of money are performed through the me- 
 
 785 
 
199 
 
 dium of prices in the manner I have already indicated. It is 
 the quantity of money, irrespective of the material of which it is 
 composed, that determines what shall be the general level of 
 prices. Credits aid in the establishment and maintenance of 
 prices, but credits are themselves based on the quantity of 
 money available for liquidation. They can be safely extended 
 only to the degree to wiiich money, payments can, in the ordi- 
 nary course of business, be made. No one will pretend to say 
 that credits can be wisely extended beyond that point. 
 
 Hence a gold standard means the maintenance of a level of 
 prices consistent with the quantity of gold in use as money, 
 which means a level of prices on the average the same as those 
 prevailing in gold-using countries. This must be clear, from 
 the consideration that' if from a country which possessed no gold 
 mines all the gold had been Sent out, it could be attracted back 
 only to buy commodities; which clearly means that unless the 
 prices of the commodities forming the subject of international 
 trade were fqr the moment lower here than in the country from 
 which the gold shouldcome, we could not have exported the com- 
 modities except at a loss. 
 
 IHB TABITLAR STANDARD. 
 
 I have said that the injustice of a variable money unit has £),t 
 various times led to suggestions for the remedy of the evil. As 
 early as 1822 an English writer named Lowe proposed that au- 
 thoritative returns should be collected, from a variety of locali- 
 ties, showing the prices of commodities of most general con- 
 sumption, and that from those a table of reference be constructed, 
 having regard to the comparative quantities consumed in an 
 average household. By following, he said, the course of prices 
 as shown by such returns all contracts which by their terms were 
 payable in money could, according as they matured, be adjusted 
 in accordance with the principles of equity, and the value of 
 money thus be kept constant. 
 
 Some eleven years later a scheme somewhat similar was pro- 
 posed by another English writer, named Sorope, the author of a 
 work on political economy. In 1838 G. R. Porter, author of The 
 Progress of the Nation, gave publication to another plan involv- 
 ing the same general features, with tables of prices of fifty lead- 
 
 785 
 
200 
 
 ing commodities, showing their average monthly fluctuations for 
 
 a period of years. 
 
 Commenting on those plans, Prof. Jevons, who himself fully 
 
 recognized the evil of the varying value of money, writing so 
 
 late as 1875, says: 
 
 Such schemes for a tabular or average stauaai;d of value appear to be per- 
 fectly sound and highly valuable In a theoretical point of view, and the prac- 
 tical difficulties are not of a serious character. -To carry Lowe's and 
 Scrope's plans into effect a permanent commission would have to be created 
 , ana endowed with a kind of judicial power. The officers of the department 
 would collect the current prices of commodities in all the principal markets 
 of the kiagdom, and by a well-defined system of calculations would com- 
 pute from these data the average variations In the purchasing power of 
 gold. > 
 
 Inasmuch as Prof. Jevons was one of the most ardent and dis- 
 tinguished of the champions of the gold standard, dt must sur- 
 prise some of the eminent statisticians of this country who think 
 things are perfect only when they emanate from Great Britain, 
 to know that so eminent an economist and Englishman had act- 
 ually admitted that gold was a varying standard of value, and 
 was not as immutable as truth itself j which, to these Anglo- 
 Americans, gold will always appear to be so long aa it is the 
 money of Great Britain. 
 
 Prof. Jevons continues: 
 
 The decisions of this commission would be published monthly, and pay- 
 ments would be adjusted in accordance with them. Thus, suppose that a 
 debt of £100 was incurred upon the 1st of July, 18"5, and was to be paid back 
 on the 1st of July, 1878, that the value of gold had fallen in the ratio of 106 ta 
 100 In the Intervening years— 
 
 And in passing let me remind Senators that instead of falling 
 the value of gold has risen at an average rate of 2i per cent per 
 annum as shown by the fall in the generailevel of wholesale prices 
 for the past twenty years, ever since the year when the^United 
 States demonetized silver. Prof. Jevons, however, for good rea- 
 sons, suggested the idea of a fall, and speaking of such fall, he 
 adds — 
 
 then the creditor would claim an Increase of 6 per cent In the nominal 
 amount of the debt. 
 
 There is not a doubt that in the case of a fall in the value of 
 
 gold as supposed by Prof. Jevons, the creditor would insist 
 
 on equitable compensation for the fall; he would insist on being 
 
 made whole to the full extent of the increase of price ^otcommod- 
 
 785 
 
201 I 
 
 ities— f or that is what is meant by a " fall " of gold money or an^ 
 other kind of money. But in the case which more immediately 
 comes home to the great producing masses, the persistent and 
 ruinous fall in the prices of the products of farm and factory for 
 the past twenty years, and the consequent and ruinous increase 
 of the burden of debt, the creditor sees no equity to be asserted 
 by the debtor and denies that this persistent and extraordiiiary, 
 fall of prices is an injury to men who have borrowed money with 
 ■which to buy homes or to enter upon business enterprises in the 
 hope and expectation that the prices of their products would en- 
 able them to pay interest and to repay the loan without depriv- 
 ing them of their enire property. 
 
 Prof. Jevons then enters upon a discussion of details affecting 
 the work of the commission which he suggests, and refers to 
 the confidence which could not fail to be entertained in the labors 
 of such a body, in view of the monthly publication, which he 
 recommends, oi the iigures on which their calculations might 
 be based, and the names of the localities from which such fig- 
 ures had in eafch case been taken. TJhis would give full pub- 
 licity to all the data and admit of the results being verified, so 
 that any departure from accuracy could at once be detected. He 
 then adds this significant comment: 
 
 Whatever method were adopted, howerer, (As resuUs would be tetter than if 
 we continued to accept a tingle metal for the standard, as we do at present. 
 (Money and tlie Mechanism ot Excliang'e. Appleton's edition, page 331). • 
 
 Prof. Jevons knew and admitted that Prance, when giving un- 
 restricted coinage to both metals without distinction, had, for 
 three-quarters of a century, kept the two metals at a parity under 
 circumstances of extraordinary variation in their relative yields 
 from the mines; and, whilei too loyal to suggest tha,t; they did 
 things better in France than in England, he could not avoid 
 stating his conviction that some plan should be adopted which 
 would secure equity of contracts caused by changes in the volume 
 of money. In closing his chapter on the subject he says: 
 
 Such a Standard would add a wholly new degree of stability to social r/?J^ 
 tlons, securing the fixed Incomes of individuals and public institutions f rou 
 the depreciation from which they have often suffered. 
 
 Observe how careful he is not to suggest to the creditors thai 
 in the process of time an opposite effect might possibly come 
 about, namely, that they themselves might be compelled, in the 
 
202 
 
 interest of justice, to yield or waive some of the unearned in- 
 crement, the wrongful advanliage, which under the single stand- 
 ard of gold would come to them from a literal but unjust inter- 
 pretation of the terms of bonds, mortgages, and time contracts. 
 Prof. Jevons knew that the only possible chance of getting 
 his proposed plan into favor was by giving prominence to the 
 considerations which weighed in favor of the creditor. He con- 
 tinues his statement of the advantages that would follow the 
 adoption of the plan; 
 
 Speculation, too, based upon the frequent oscillation of prices, wUch takes 
 place In the present state of commerce, would be t6 a certain extent discour- 
 aged. The calculations of merchants would be less frequently frustrated by 
 causes beyond their own control, and many bankruptcies would be pre- 
 vented. 
 
 Periodical collapses of credit would no doubt recur from time to time, but 
 the Intensity of the crises would be mitigated, because as prices fell the lia- 
 bility of debtors would decrease approximately in the same ratio. 
 
 But this approximate decrease of the liability of debtors, 
 which thys distinguished economist knew to be just and to be for 
 the enduring welfare of his country and the world, is the very 
 thing that the creditors cry out against, and which they are de- 
 termined at all hazards to prevent. 
 
 Alfred Marshall, professor of political economy in Cam'bridge 
 University, England, recognizing the injustice of gold as a 
 standard of deferred payments, favors recourse to a tabular 
 •standard. He especially recognizes the injury to all classes of 
 workers by their relegation to idleness through the operation 
 of a defective monetary system. 
 
 In a paper read in 18S5 before the "Industrial Remuneration 
 
 Conference " of Great Bri|;ain, Prof. Marshall said: 
 
 A great cause of the discontinuity of industry is the want of certain knowl- 
 edge as to what a pound Is going to be worth a short time hence. With 
 every expansion and contraction of credit prices rise and fall. 
 
 And as credit is based on money an expansion or contraction 
 
 of the volume of money results in an expansion or contraction of 
 
 the volume of credit. I have already shown by quotations from 
 
 the various economists that the level of commercial prices rises 
 
 or falls in general accord with the increase or decrease of the 
 
 quantity of money. Prof. Marshall continues: 
 
 This change of prices presses heavily even on those who kept themselves 
 as far as possible from the uncertainties of trade, and Increases In many 
 
 785 
 
203 
 
 ways the Intensity of oonimeroial fluctuations. For bust when private trad- 
 ers and public companies are most Inclined to reckless ventures' tlie Interest 
 wlilcli they have to pay on borrowed capital represents an exceptionally 
 small purchasing power, because prices are high. And in the opposite phage,' 
 when tlielr resources are crippled "by the stagnation of business, the low- 
 ness ol prices compels them to sacrifice a muph greater amount of real 
 wealth in order to pay their interest. When traders are rejoicing in high , 
 pricey, debentijre and mortgage-holders and other creditors are depressed, 
 and when the pendulum swings the other way traders, already depressed, 
 are kept urider water by having to pay an exceptionally heavy toll to their credit- 
 ors. 
 
 This is not the statement^of an advocate of silver, but of one 
 
 of the most distinguished professors of political economy now 
 
 living, and he is not referring to a "dishonest silver dollar, "but 
 
 to a dishonest gold pound. Prof. Marshall continues: 
 
 This serious evil can be much' diminished by a plan which ecoijomista 
 have long advocated. In proposing this remedy I want governnient to help 
 business, though not tq do business. It should publish tables showing as 
 cjosely as may be the changes In the purchasing power of gold, and should 
 facilitate contracts for payments to be made in terms of units of fixed pur- 
 chasing power. 
 
 After describing his plafi, somewhat similar to the plan of 
 
 Prof. Jevons, Prof. Marshall says: 
 
 On this plan if A lends B £1,000 at IJ per cent interest and after some years 
 the purchasing power of money had risen by an eighth, B would have to pay 
 as Interest not £45, but a sum that had the same purchasing power as £45 
 had at the time of borrowing, that IS, £40. And so on. The plan would have 
 to win Its way Into general use, but when once it had become familiar none 
 but gamblers would lend or torrow upon any other terms, at all events for long 
 periods. 
 
 These quotations from Prof. Marshall will be found in the 
 third report of the Royal Commission on the Depression of 
 Trade, at pages 42^ and 423. 
 
 Here are men of higliest eminence in this science— Prof. 
 Jevons and Prof. Marshall — strongly recommending the aban- 
 donment of gold as a standard of deferred payments— that is to 
 say, as a standard of value, because of its unfitness for that func- 
 tion owing to its yariability. 
 
 Yet we are told by the political economists who edit our gold- 
 standard newspapers that gold is an unchanging and unchange- 
 able "standard!" , 
 
 All these discussions of plans for the elimination from bonds, 
 mortgages, debts, and contracts, of the injustice perpetrated by 
 changes in,the value of money, were doubtless inspired by the dis- 
 
 785 
 
204 
 
 covery that among the laws of Elizabeth's time a statute was found 
 directing' that certain colleges, as those of Oxford, Cambridge, 
 Eton, etc., should, in letting out their lands for long terms, pro- 
 vide that a certion portion of the re nt should be paid to the 
 college, not in money, but in "corn," tpe English term for wheat 
 and other cereals. The object of this statute, it appeal a, was to 
 protect the parties from the injustice efTected by changes in the 
 value of money. " Bread corn," that is to say, wheat, was con- 
 sidered by Mr. Francis Horner, chairnian, of the celebrated bul- 
 lion committee of the House of Commons, as " the real and par- 
 amount standard of all values." John Locke, in his work on the 
 value of money, preceded Horner in the expression of the same 
 Idea. He said: 
 
 Wheat, in this part at the world, and that grain which is the constant gen- 
 ■eral food of any other country, is the fittest measure to judge of the altered 
 value of things in any long tract of time. 
 
 Our own distinguished economist,Prof . Francis A. Walker, rec- 
 ognizes, asProf. Jevons recognized, the wrongful exactions im- 
 posed by changes in the value of pioney. He refers to such 
 changes as unavoidable in connection with metallic money, but 
 nevertheless as something of the first importance to avoid, in 
 the interests of justice. He ascribes the changes in part to the 
 very character of the work of mining as being full of accidents 
 arising from natural and insurmountable causes. On this point 
 Prof. Walker says: 
 
 The very nature of metal deRositg, the work of agencies long extinct, and 
 the utterly unaccountable way in which such deposits occur, especially in 
 the case of gold and silver, render it inevitaMe that periods of highly stim- 
 ulated production should he followed by periods of comparatiye inactivity 
 ■or complete lethargy, to the serious prejudice of money in its functions as 
 the standard of deferred payments. 
 
 And in discussing the suggestions of Locke and Horner to the ef- 
 fect thatwheat is abetter standard than the metals for the adjust- 
 ment of time contracts. Gen. Walker continues: 
 
 There is no reason to believe that the metals furnish a better standard 
 for the adjustment of long-term contracts [than wheat]. Indeed, quite the 
 reverse Is probably true. Through considerable periods breadstufts main- 
 tain their cost of production much more steadily than do the metals. 
 
 In support of this contention he advances these points: "The 
 
 vast breadth of arable land of reasonably uniform quality; the 
 
 eimpiicitv of the processes of agriculture and the wide diffusion 
 
' 205 
 
 of the art of tillage; the comparative immunity of the soil amid 
 
 ravages which greatly impair, perhaps permanently cripple, 
 
 manufacturing, and, in an even greater degree, mining industry; 
 
 the limited applicability of the principle of division of labor to 
 
 agriculture, and the relative inefflcienoy of machinery in its operor 
 
 tions.^' 
 
 Gen. Walker accounts for the failure of society to adopt some 
 
 plan for the preservation of the equities in deferred payments by 
 
 advancing the following reasons: 
 
 The manliest oonvenieuce of haviiig tliat for tlie standard of deferred pay- 
 ments wlilch Is also the medium ofcvirrent exchanges, the indolence and 
 want of Initiative which lead to the acceptance of what Is nearest at hand 
 and most familiar, a superstitious veneration for the precious metals—? 
 
 I do not think that if Gen.Walker were writing to-day he would 
 assert that there was any "superstitious " veneration for silver, 
 though there can not be a doubt that his statement is strictly 
 true with reference to gold. He continues: - 
 
 a superstitious veneration for the precious metals, together with great 
 ignorance as to the conditions and history of their production, have com- 
 bined to withstand the Important reasons which favor the adoption of com 
 rents, com interest, and com annuities, In the case of long leases, long loans, 
 and fixed charges upon land. 
 
 He fails, however, to mention what is undoubtedly the lion in 
 the path, namely, the, determination of the creditor classes and 
 money-lenders and their agents, the bankers of the great cities, 
 to secure advantages to themselves at the cost of no matter how 
 much injustice. There was no exhibition of " indolence " when 
 those classes secured in 187 3 the demonetization of silver, and 
 above all ^there was no "lack of initiative." On the contrary, 
 there was such an exhibition of initiative in their own interest 
 as had never before been exhibited, except in the case of the 
 creditor classes of Great Britain. These creditor classes and 
 their agents in every country are capable of all the initiative 
 'necessary to secure themselves every advantage. They have 
 not power of initiative enough to use, their money themselves in 
 business, nor the energy, skill, or disposition to do so, but they 
 have sufficient power of initiative to see that all risks, even of 
 those changes in the value of money which have been brought . 
 about by the machinations of the creditors themselves, shall be 
 
 785 
 
206 
 
 run by those who borrow from them, or buy from them on credit, 
 or undertake to lease property from them for a term of years. 
 
 I have dwelt a little at length upon this question of a "tabular 
 standard," or "multiple tender," not because I think it would 
 be necessary if there were an intelligent regulation of the quan- 
 tity of money, but in order to draw attention to the fact that 
 notwithstanding thfe loud assertions of the gold-standard cham- 
 pions with reference to the invariability and unchanging value 
 of gold, it has for hundreds of years been recognized that gold 
 and silver were variable in value. Indeed, 1 might extend the 
 time to thousands instead of hundreds of years, for an expression 
 made use of by Aristotle appears to imply that he was cognizant 
 of changes in the Value of money. 
 
 With the money institution — which is the most important in- 
 stitution for the knitting together of society— properly and in- 
 telligently guarded; with both gold and silver fully availed of, 
 and the deficiencies of the mines supplemented as, with the 
 growth of population, industry, and commerce they should be, 
 by duly limited quantities of legal tender paper money there 
 could be no difiiculty in maintaining equal and exact justice in 
 all contracts, bonds, mortgages, and debts of every character. 
 Of the wisdom and necessity of such a course only interested 
 casuists can complain/ 
 
 HAS GOI.D APPRECIATED ? 
 
 It is asserted by the advocates of the gold standard that there 
 is no insufficiency of that metal for the purposes of money. If 
 before the demonetization of silver there was only enough of 
 both metals combined, how can men justify the assertion that 
 there is now enough of one of them alone to answer all demands 
 without rendering necessary a fall of prices of commodities? It 
 will be conceded that value depends on the relation of demand 
 to supply. No reason has evefr been or can be given why 
 money is not subject to that law. What, then, was the demand 
 for gold in 1871 at the time Germany resolved to go to the gold 
 standard? There were but three countries of Europe that were 
 then formally on the gold standard — Great Britain, Portugal, 
 and Turkey — and of those Turkey was making no demand for 
 coin, but conducting its business with irredeemable paper, 
 
 785 
 
207 ■ 
 
 Six of the other countries of Europe had nominally the bi- 
 me|iallicstandard, namely, Prance, Italy, Belgium, Switzerland, 
 Greece, and Spain; but of these only two, Belgium and Switzer- 
 land, were actually using coin, all the others, by reason of wars 
 then but recently concluded, using inconvertible paper, and mak- 
 ing no demand for coin of either metal. The countries then for- 
 mally on the silver standard were Germany, Austria, !flussia, 
 Sweden and Norway, Denmark, and Holland. Of those Austria 
 and Russia were without coin, and transacting their business on 
 inconvertible paper money. The people of the United States, 
 as is well known, were also at the tim6 transactinar thejr busi- 
 ness with paper money. Placing the several countries in sepa- 
 rate! categories, according to their actual condition in 1871, we 
 iiave the following results: 
 
 Countries making demand for goldalone: Great Britain and Por- 
 ■tugal. 
 
 Countries making demand for gojd or silver, indifferently: Bel- 
 .gium and Switzerland. 
 
 Countries making demand for silver atone.' 'Germany, Sweden 
 and Norway, Denmark, and Holland. 
 
 Countries rmiking no demand for coin of either metal, but using in- 
 convertible paper moriey: Austria, Russia, Turkey, France, Italy, 
 Greece, Spain, and the United States. 
 
 In Belgium and Switzerland, both of which were on the bi- 
 metallic standard, silver money was as useful and aswelcome as 
 gold, so that those countries made no demand -that was impera- 
 tive for either of the metals in preference to the other. In Ger- 
 many, Holland, Sweden, and Norway there was no demand for 
 gold as money. All the other countries named, with the excep- 
 tion of Great Britain and Portugal, were at that time, as ihatter 
 of fact, upon the paper standard and made no demand for gold. 
 The population of those two countries, therefore (being in 1870, 
 respectively, 31,600,000 and 4,000,000, or in allless than 36,000,000), 
 comprised the entire population of Europe and America that 
 made an imperative demsind on gold for monetary purposes. 
 Let us compare that demand with the demand of to-day. 
 
 What are the countries of Europe and Americg, now demand- 
 ing gold, struggling for it, and endeavoring to conduct their 
 
208 
 
 business with ^t? • Tliose actually on the gold standard are the- 
 following: 
 
 Great Britain, with a population of 38,000,000; Germany, 50,- 
 000,000; Austria, 40,000,000; Turkey, 33,000,000; Scandinavian 
 union (Norway, Sweden, and Denmark), 9,000,000; Egypt, 7,000,- 
 000. 
 
 As our bonds have always been paid in gold we must add ta 
 this group our own country with its 67,000,000 population. In- 
 asmuch as Holland and the countries of the Latin Union have 
 closed their mints to the unrestricted coinage of silver, and al. 
 though not on the gold standard have entered upon the struggle 
 for gold in order to make international payments, we must also 
 add the 85,000,000 comprising the combined populations of Hol- 
 land, France, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, and Greece— resulting- 
 in a colossal struggle for gold participated in by 330,000,000 peo- 
 ple—and this notwithstanding the admission of Mr. Giffen that 
 suistantially norM of the gold yielded annually from the mineh be- 
 comes (or if minted, remains) money, but is absorbed by the arts and 
 manufactures! 
 
 This is a population nine times that which in 1871 made de- 
 mand for gold, yet we are informed by the advocates of the gold 
 standard that there is an ample supply of gold for all purposes, 
 and that the fall of commercial prices has been brought about by 
 new inventions! 
 
 PREDICTIONS AND ADMISSIONS AS/TO APPRECIATION OF GOLD. 
 
 We are, however, able to show that at various times during 
 the progress of the fall of prices, but prior to the looming up of 
 the silver question, the change that was taking place was at- 
 tributed, even by champions of the gold standard, to the insuffi- 
 ciency of the monetary supply. In fact, before the fall began, 
 it was by some writers foreseen as a danger lurking in mono- 
 metallism. 
 
 Before any nation of Europe thought of imitating the example 
 of Great Britain by going to the gold standard. Prof. Stanley 
 Jevons expressed his sense of the danger of a rise in the value 
 of money which would be incurred by such a movem'ent. No 
 man then living was better entitled to be heard on any subject 
 relating, to money, his researches having placed him in the first 
 
 ■785 
 
209 
 
 rank of investigators and economists. Writing to M. Wolowski, 
 the eminent French economist, in acknowledgment of a tract on 
 the subject of money on the 12th of January, 1868, Prof. Jevons 
 said: 
 
 As regards tlie theory, I feel strongly In what an admlrahle manner you 
 have set forth the principles of the so-called "double standard," and th» 
 danger we might run of a rise in the value of gold were silver entirely demone- 
 iizea. 
 
 Knowing the hopelessness of any movement to induce the 
 creditor classes among his own countrymen to replace the gold 
 money of Great Britain by silver, yet seeing that if other nations 
 should demonetize silver the value of gold would rise, P'rof . Je- 
 vons in his communication to Wolowski added: 
 
 Y«t, It Is only hy a more or less replacement of this kind [a replacement 
 of silver for gold In Great Britain] that a rise in the value of gold would he 
 ■piB\ea%e&.~InveBtigaiions into Currency and Mnanace, page 320. 
 
 In an article in the London Economist of May 8, 1869, Prof. 
 Jevons said: 
 
 I think that the growth of population and trade tends to lower prices by in- 
 creasing the use of gold. , 
 
 Of course in the term " use of " Mr. Jevons included "demand 
 for," as an increased use involves an increased' demand. 
 
 In 1871, two years before the demonetization of silver, Ernest 
 Seyd made a prediction regarding the effects that would follow 
 demonetization, which, in the light of subsequent facts, must 
 be deemed nothing less than remarkable. He said: 
 
 It Is a great mistake to suppose that the adoption of the gold valuation by 
 other States besides England will be beneficial. It will only lead to the de- 
 struction of the monetary equilibrium hitherto existing, and cause a fall In 
 the value of sliver, from which England's trade and<the Indian silver valu- 
 ation will sttffer more than all other interests, grievous as the general de- 
 cline of prosperity all over the world will be. 
 
 The strong doctrinism existing In England as regards the gold valuation 
 is so blind that, when the time of depression sets in, there will be this spe- 
 cial feature: the economical authorities of the country will refuse to listen 
 to the cause here foreshadowed; every possible attempt will be made to 
 prove that the decline of commerce is due to all sorts of causes and irrecon- 
 cilable matters. The workman and his strikes will be the first convenient 
 target; then speculation and over-trading will have their turn. Later on, 
 when foreign nations, unable to pay In silver, have recourse to protection; 
 when a number of other secondary causes develop themselves, then many 
 would-be wise men will have the opportunity of pointing to specific reasons 
 which In their eyes account for the falling oft In every branch of trade. 
 Many other allegations will be made totally Irrelevant to the real Issue, but 
 satisfactory to the moralizing tendency of financial writers. The great dan- 
 785 14 
 
210 
 
 get ot the time will then be that, among all this confusion and strife, Eng- 
 land's supremacy In commerce and manufactures may go haokwards to an 
 extent which can not be redressed, when the real cause becomes recognized 
 and the natural remedy is applied. 
 
 ADMISSIONS OF MB. GUTBN BSPBCIALLT. 
 
 Among the most doughty of thectiampionsof the gold standard 
 and most determined opponents of bimetallism stands Mr. Robert 
 Giffen, statistician to the London Board of Trade. His writings 
 j'constitute the very arsenal from which all the advocates of gold 
 monometallism draw their ammunition. Hence I shall be par- 
 doned for quoting him freely. Before the silver question be- 
 came the burning question that it now is, Mr. Giffen put himself 
 on record with reference to the cause of the baleful fall of prices. 
 He declared that the cause was continuing and persistent, and 
 one fpom the uninterrupted action of which a continued and 
 progressive fall of prices was naturally to be expected. He shows 
 
 that there was need for an increase, pot a decrease of money, if 
 prices were to be maintained firm. 
 
 In a paper read before the Statistical Society of London, in 
 
 January, 1879, Mr. Giffen said: 
 
 "There Is a general agreement that during the last few years there has been 
 a heavy fall In prices. * * * It Is usually a fall In price which cripples 
 the weaker borrowers and causes bad debts, and this Is a beginning of losses 
 by which stronger borrowers are In turn crippled, further falls In prices en- 
 sue, and more bad debts and losses are produced. When we see so many 
 failures as are now declared, therefore, we may be sure that they are pre- 
 ceded and accompanied by a heavy fall in prices. 
 
 In discussing in the same article the question of the insuffi- 
 ciency of the annual current gold yield to meet the monetary 
 wants of the world, Mr. Giffen says: 
 
 It Is a moderate calculation that If only the countries which used gold In 
 1848, Including their colonies, were now using It, the requirements to cor- 
 respond with the Increased population and wealth would be at least three times 
 what they were, assuming prices to remain in equilibrium. 
 
 But, he adds: 
 
 While during the last thirty years the annual yield of gold has been falling 
 away from Its first superabundance tlie current demands for the metal have cer- 
 tainly been groining with marvelous rapidity. 
 
 Now, observe his next statement. Speaking of the extraordi- 
 nary demands made by the addition of Germany and the United 
 States (upon resumption of specie payments) to the list of gold- 
 
 785 
 
211 
 
 standard countries, and the practical inclusion of France in the 
 
 same list, he says of these new demands: 
 
 They nave been supplied very largely by a continued pressure upon exist- 
 ing stocks till an adjustment has at UngtMesn made by a contraction of trade 
 and fall in values. 
 
 No man who can reald that statement can doubt that it is an 
 unequivocal admission of the fact that the cause of the fall of 
 prices is the insuffloiency of the gold supply to meet the nat- 
 ural wants of trade and industry. But, according to Mr. Giffen, 
 ■*he mere increase of population is not the sole element in deter- 
 mining the fact| of such insufflciency. He goes on to say that 
 since 1848 the wealth per head has increased enormously. And, 
 after showing that the wealth of Great Britain for the period of 
 ten years, 1865-1875, had increased by 27 per cent, he continues: 
 
 Not only must tbe requirements of gold-using people be Increased by 50 
 per cent to allow lor tbe natural Increment ol population, but another SO per 
 cent must be added for the greater wealth per head. 
 
 Referring to the great fall of prices since 1873 he says: 
 
 Two causes only havei been suggested. One Is a great multiplication of 
 commodities and diminution of tbe cost of production due to tbe progress 
 of invention, Improved facilities of communication, lower freights,! Inter- 
 national telegraphy, and like circumstances. Tbe other Is, that the pre- 
 cious metal used for the standard money— viz, gold— has become relatively 
 scarcer.thanlt was, Its production being diminished on the one hand, and 
 the demands for it on tbe other band Increased. The former of these causes 
 [multiplication of commodities and diminution of cost of production] was 
 discussed quite lately by Mr. Fowler in the Contemporary Review, and a 
 greater weight assigned to it than to the litter cause. lam disposed to give 
 greater weight to the latter. 
 
 That is to say, he is disposed to ascribe the fall of prices to 
 
 the insufficiency of the quantity of gold. 
 
 He continues: 
 
 To a large extent, however, tbe two causes are not In conflict.; The ques- 
 tion Is of money prices— the relation of money to commodities. Whether It 
 Is commodities that multiply, or gold tbatdimlnlshesordoesnotmultlplyin 
 proportion, the relation between gold and tbe mass of commodities Is equally 
 changed. It Is quite conceivable that If gold were to Increase in quantity 
 and its cost of production to diminish, as other commodities increase in 
 quantity and have their cost of production diminished, there would be no 
 change of any kind in gold prices. Commodities would be more abundant, 
 but tbe abundance would make itself felt in a rise of money wages, salaries, 
 rents, and projtts, and not in lower prices. That it is felt in lower prices now ap- 
 pears to be absolute proof that the relation between gold and commodities has 
 changed, that they have no( increased in quantity andhadtheir cost of production 
 diminished pari passu. In addition, however, while not denying that there 
 has been a change on the commodities side of tbe balance, I would go further, 
 and maintain that what has happened to gold in the way of diminished produc- 
 785 
 
212 
 
 tion and mereaied demandt upon U, arising from other cauiet than the multipli- 
 cation of commodititi, mutt hate had great effect.— Eaeayi in Finance, series II, 
 pages 22 and 23. 
 
 In showing why it was that what has happened to gold " haa 
 
 had great effect," Mr. GiSen goes on to say: 
 
 In round figures, therefore, there have been new demands in the last thir- 
 teen years lor about two hundred millions [pounds sterling, equal to $1,000,- 
 000,000] In gold, an amount very nearly equal to the whole production of the 
 period, although a larger amoimt than the annual production of that peMod 
 had been necessary In previous years to maintain the state of prices which 
 then existed. As the maintenance of equilibrium in the matter of prices is 
 only possible, other things being equal, by means of a supply of gold to meet 
 the wear and tear of coin and the increase of the population using gold in num- 
 bers and wealth— and the ordinary demands of that kind before 1872 amounted 
 In fact to twelve millions sterling annually— it Is dlfttcult to Imagine how all 
 these extraordinary demands could have existed without contributing to that 
 change in the course of prices which we should have expected beforehand as the 
 _ consequence, and which in fact occurred. — Essays in Finance, series n, page 25. 
 
 Not only is it difficult, as Mr. Giffen says, to imagine how those 
 greatly increased demands could have been made without pro- 
 ducing the effect of a fall of prices, but to a mind not blinded by 
 prejudice it is wholly impossible to conceive how prices could 
 have sustained themselves under the circumstances. 
 
 Referring to the mode in which an insufficiency of money 
 would express itself, Mr. Giffen proceeds: 
 
 The way scarcity or abundance of gold would tell upon the money market 
 would be by producing monetary stringencies and periods of temporary 
 difflcnlty and discredit, by which, perhaps, the tendency to Inflation in 
 prices at one time would be checked, and the tendency to depression at an- 
 other would be aggravated. The average rates over the whole period when 
 these stringencies were occurring might be lower than at times when they 
 were fewer, but the mere fact of successive stringencies would help to pro- 
 duce the effect described on prices. Now, the course of the money market 
 since 1871. when the German Government began to draw gold from London, 
 has been full of such stringencies. The crises of 1873 and 1875 were no doubt 
 precipitated by them; and since 1876, in almost every year except 1879 and 
 1880, there has been a stringency, of greater or less severity, directly trace- 
 able to, or aggravated by, the extraordinary demands for gold and the difficulty 
 of supplying them. 
 
 Looking at all the facts, therefore, it appears Impossible to avoid the con- 
 clusion that the recent course of prices, so different from what it was just 
 after the Australian and Calllornlan gold discoveries, is the result in part of 
 the diminished production and the increased extraordinary demands upon the 
 supply of gold. 
 
 In a paper of Mr. Giffen's read before the Statistical Society 
 
 of London, in December, 1888, published in the journal of that 
 
 society for that month, he said: 
 
 We can say positively that the recent change from a high to a low level of 
 785 
 
213 
 
 prices Is due to a change in money, of the nature or In the direction of absolute 
 contraction. 
 
 And after showing the extremely slight additions that had 
 
 Leen recently made to the stock of gold he said: 
 
 The stock with additions has had to do more work, and it hcu only been 
 able to do so because prices have/alien. 
 
 In the same paper, speaking of the effects of this insufficiency 
 
 of gold he said: 
 
 It is obvious beyond all question that these effects may be important. 
 The debtors pay more than they would otheriMee pay, and the creditors receive 
 more. The matter is thus not unimportant to the two large classes of peo- 
 ple who make up the community. Appreciation is a most serious matter to 
 those who have debts to pay. It prevents them gaining by the development of in- 
 dustry as they otherwise would, 
 
 PKOr. JEVONS AKD MB. GOSCHBN. 
 
 So well convinced was Prof. Jevons of the injustice of gold as 
 
 a standard for deferred payments that in 1875 he wrote of it: 
 
 It should cease to be the i)ermanent standard of value because, as I have 
 explained In chapter 25 (of Money and the Mechanism of Exchange), long 
 enduring debts and transactions will be regulated by the tabular standard 
 of value, the amounts of debts although expressed in gold, being varied in- 
 versely as gold varies ,in terms of other coTwaxoCMXea'.— Investigations in Cur- 
 rency and Finance, page 297. 
 
 Discussing the effects on prices of an increased demand for 
 
 gold the same writer in an article in the Contemporary Review 
 
 for May, 1881, says: 
 
 It stands to reason, of course, that If several great nations suddenly de- 
 cide that they will at all costs have gold currencies to be coined, in the next 
 few years the annual production can not meet the demand, which must be 
 mainly supplied, if at all, out of stock. The result would doubtless be a tendency 
 to a fall of prices. 
 
 And after referring to the gold stock in Great Britain, and 
 
 the considerable gold fields of the British colonies, he added: 
 
 If these foreign nations insist upon having gold currencies, they must pay 
 our price for gold, and they must, tn raising the price, benefit us and our cblo> 
 nies. 
 
 In 1883 Mr. Goschen, aiterward chancellor of the exchequer 
 of Great Britain, read a paper before the Bankers' Institute of 
 Liondon, on the "Probable results of an increase in the pur- 
 chasing power of gold." After showing that within ten years 
 an enormously increased demand had arisen for gold, and that 
 
 786 
 
214 
 
 in that time Germany, the United States, Italy, and Holland 
 
 had absorbed $1,000,000,000 of it, Mr, Goschen said: 
 
 Economists will accordingly ask tbemselYes wbat result, It any, is such a 
 phenomenon likely tp have producea? I think there is scarcely an econo- 
 mist but would answer at once, " It is probable, it is almost necessary, it is 
 according to the laws and the principles of currency, that such a phenome- 
 non must be followed by a fall In the prices ot commodities generally. Just 
 as a large amount of gold poured into Europe in 1852 and subsequent years 
 created a rise in prices, so the counter phenomenon must produce a tall. 
 
 And at the same meeting of the Bankers' Institute at which 
 Mr. Goschen's paper was read, Mr. Giffen stated that if the sup- 
 ply of new money were not sufficient to maintain the equilibrium 
 between demand and supply — considering the increase of popu- 
 lation and wealth — " then we may have a long-continued fall of 
 prices from generation to generation, and this iirill probably have 
 a very great effect as time goes on." 
 
 PBOI'. ROGERS AND GEN. WALKER. 
 
 The total insufficiency of gold for the monetary purposes of 
 the world, considering the unequalled extension of industry and 
 commerce, is emphasized by Prof. Thorold Rogers, in an arti- 
 cle in the Princeton Review for January, 1879. 
 
 Speaking of the "rapid rise in the economic value of gold," 
 he says: 
 
 The fact has been commented on with considerable but tmequal force by 
 M. Laveleye, in a recent number of the Sevue des Deux Mohdes, where he al- 
 leges, and on good growndt, that the annual produce of this metal is not more 
 than sufficient to cover the annual wear and tear of the curreneiee. 
 
 And he adds: 
 
 Unless we are to assert that the values 61 gold and silver do not depend on 
 the demand which exists for them and the means for supplying that demand. 
 It must follow that a large demand brought lo tear on a limited supply will nf- 
 fed the values of those precious metals, and through them lower prices. 
 
 Writing in 1879 of the effects of .demonetization of silver, our 
 leading American economist, Prof. Francis A. Walker, now pres- 
 ident of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said: 
 
 The second immediate consequence of the German demonetization has 
 been an enhancement of the purchasing power of gold, now left throughout 
 pretty much all Europe to perform the whole office of money which six years 
 ago was performed by a money mass composed both of gold and silver. The lat- 
 ter having been thrown out of Its use as full-valued money, and remitted to 
 the purposes of small change or banished to the East, the value ot the for- 
 mer has, by a necessary eonteguence, risen greatly, even in the tew years that 
 have intervened since this disastrous act was accomplished. 
 78S> 
 
215 
 
 The effects upon Industry and trade oJ a dlmlnislilng money supply In en- 
 hancing the burden of debts and fixed charges and In disparaging the prol- 
 its of business and hence reducing the motives of production, h aye been dis- 
 cussed so much at length that we need only inquire here as to the fact. 
 
 Two notable pieces of testimony on this subject have been given to the 
 public vrithin the past few weeks. In an article In the January number of 
 the Princeton Review Prof. Thorold Rogers, of Oxford, in discussing the 
 causes of the present general disturbance of commerce, writes as follows: 
 
 ' ' The first cause in importance, the most general, and, In all probability the 
 most enduring, Is the rapid rise in the economical value of gold. 
 
 " While the area of civilization Is widening and, therefore, the demand for 
 an adequate currency Is being extended, the most populous state of Europe 
 has abandoned a silver for a gold currency, and has had, as a fruit of a suc- 
 cessful war with Prance, an exceptional power of attracting gold to Itself, 
 with singular success Indeed, to the incredible misfortune of Its people. 
 Germany has effected a monetary revolution on the grandest scale, and has 
 beggared Its own industries. 
 
 " Taking into account the growing Intercourse of civilized nations, and 
 particularly the sensitiveness which they feel at any event which may 
 check the activity or derange the machinery of trade and production, it ap- 
 pears that at no time has the drain on, the existing stock of gold been to sharp 
 andrapid as at present. ' 
 
 On the 28th of December the London Economist, in a^ remarkable article on 
 the causes of the present depression of prices which that journal finds to be 
 greater than after the panic of 1857 or that ot 1866, gives as the principal 
 causes the following: 
 
 First. There has ieen a diminution in the supply of gold. 
 
 Second. There has been a marked increase in the demand for gold. The ef- 
 fect of the adoption of a gold standard In Germany, as well as in some other 
 European countries of minor importance, has been, as we have clearly seen, 
 to depreciate the value of silver, measured by a gold standard, in an extra- 
 ordinary manner. Large masses of silver have been demonetized and 
 thrown upon the market. But, on the other hand, large masses of gold have 
 been required to take their place, while, as has been shown, the supply has been 
 actually diminishing. 
 
 The Economist concludes that there has been a real fall In prices to the 
 extent of 16 per cent since 1869. This Is an undoubted appreciation of gold, 
 because it represents a real increase in the purchasing power of gold. 
 
 "What does an Increase ot 16 per cent In the purchasing power of gold 
 mean? 
 
 It means an addition of one-sixth to the burden of every existing debt, 
 national, corporate, a,nd private, payable, as are nearly all the public and by 
 far the greater part of the private debts of the world, in gold. It means 
 that on evety day which the lab orlng man gives to work to pay his share of 
 the Interest and principal of such 'public debts, or to meet the Interest or 
 principal of the mortgage on his cottage or his farm, his hours of labor shall 
 be, not twelve, but fourteen. In those last two hours' drag, if brain and hand 
 grow weary with the strain and toll, he should know whom to thank, the 
 financiers and political economists who, at a time when the production of 
 the two historical money metals jointly was at a standstill, or even dimin- 
 ishing, accomplished the great monetary reform of throwing the stock of one 
 of them, accumulated through thousands of years, out of Its uses as money 
 of full power in Europe, remitting it to the office of small change, and send- 
 ing the remainder to swell the treasures of the Orient; all for the sake of a 
 mathematical and metrical unity of coinage and exchange.— Jfon«y Tradt 
 and Industry, page 191 et seq. ^ 
 
 785 
 
216 
 
 Within the year a piece of testimony haa been contributed to 
 the diaoussion as to the appreciation of gold, which one would 
 suppose, by reason of its source and timeliness, should serve to 
 awaken thought among even the most fanatical of the adherents 
 of the gold standard. It will be remembered that in 1886 the 
 British Government appointed a royal commission to inquire 
 into the " recent changes in the relative values of the precious 
 metals." This became known as the Gold and Silver Commis- 
 sion. It was naturally composed of men of ability and distinc- 
 tion — twelve in number — among whom was Mr. Leonard Court- 
 ney. Kegarding the genesis of the fall of prices the commission, 
 as is well known, divided — six of the members maintaining that 
 it was to be looked foi^ mainly in causes affecting commodities; 
 the other six mainly in causes affecting gold. 
 
 Among those who believed that the change was for the greater 
 part due to causes affecting commodities was Mr. Courtney. 
 Now, after six years of further investigation and reflection, Mr. 
 Courtney expresses a change of conviction, or, more correctly, a 
 progress of conviction toward the ground occupied by what may 
 be called his opponents on the commission. In an article in the 
 Nineteenth Century for April, 1893, he says: , 
 
 I was one of the six members of the Gold and Silver Commission who could 
 not see their way to recommend bimetallism, and repo rted, " When we look 
 at the character and times of the fall In the prices of commodities * * * we 
 think that the sounder view is that the greater part of the fall has resulted 
 from causes touching the commodities rather than from an appreciation of 
 the standard." In the same paragraph we had said, " We are far from de- 
 nying that therb may have been, and probably has been, some appreciation 
 of gold, " though we held It impossible to determine its extent. 
 \ 
 
 Mr. Courtney then continues: 
 
 Let me make a confession. I hesitated a little about this paragraph. I 
 thought there was perhaps more In the suggestion of an., appreciation of 
 gold than my colleagues believed, but whilst I thus doubted I did not dissent. 
 
 He then goes on to say: 
 
 I am now satisfied that there has been an appreciation of gold greater than 1 
 tuapected when I signed the report, and I should not be able to concur in the 
 same paragraph again. My conclusion is built upon many reasons, and it 
 seems to me to explain many phenomena otherwise inexplicable. 
 
 Mr. Courtney admits that the fall of prices is as much aa -30 per 
 cent, which means an appreciation of 43 per cent in the purchas- 
 ing power of gold; and referring to its effect, he says that even 
 
217 
 
 if it were but 10 per cent it ' ' would just counteract all that we 
 [the English people] have done in the last fifteen years in the re- 
 duction of the national debt." 
 
 And he continues: 
 
 We bave reduced tlie nominal amount, but the real burden Is unaltered. 
 The pressure of all debts, public and private, bas Increased. Nor Is tbls all. 
 Although it is immaterial to commercial and industrial activity what may 
 be the scale of prices, high or low, when a scale is reached and maintained, 
 yet the transition from high prices to low is extremely restrictive of enter- 
 prise. 
 
 The person who enters on the use of things— that is, the man who creates 
 enterprise, whether In industry or commerce— has his wealth nibbled away 
 by those who have money claims upon him, and the man who trades on bor- 
 rowed capital trades as little as possible If he finds his assets shrinking com- 
 pared with his liabilities. Differences must also constantly arise between 
 masters and workmen, between the producers of a raw material and the 
 creators of the finished product, in a word— between all who cooperate to put 
 something on the market— If they find its selling price mysteriously dimin- 
 ishing, and their shares of it have to be perpetually adjusted. 
 
 And Mr. Courtney adda: 
 
 It is a dream to suppose that gold is stable in value. * * * It has under- 
 gone a considerable appreciation in recent years, and industry and com- 
 merce have been more hampered by Its movement than they would have 
 been had silver been our standard. Whether the appreciation will be main- 
 tained undiminished is uncertain, but every step taken toward the further 
 demonetization of silver must tend to the enhancement of the value of gold. 
 
 But, Mr. President, it would be useless to multiply testimony. 
 
 No man who bears in mind the enormous increase in the demand 
 
 for gold, and the fact that most, if not indeed all, of the current 
 
 annual yield is absorbed in the arts and manufactures, can for 
 
 a moment entertain a doubt that the metal has enormously 
 
 appreciated. 
 
 AS TO IMPROVHD METHODS OF PRODUOTION. 
 
 The advocates of the gold standard in this country assert that 
 the fall of prices, which they are compelled to admit began the 
 very year of the demonetization of silver, is not due to such de- 
 monetization, but is a mere coincidence; and that it is in fact 
 due to new inventions and consequent improvements in the va- 
 rious arts and ipdustries. 
 
 But It is to be observed that such improvements have been 
 the characteristic of all periods of time since the application of 
 steam to the various processes of industry. While improve- 
 ments of detail icalculated to facilitate production have undoubt- 
 
 785. 
 
218 
 
 edly been a feature of the mechanic arts during the past twenty 
 years, yet for far-reaching invention, for radical improvement 
 in all the round of industries, that period is not to be compared 
 with the twenty years preceding, during which the prices of 
 commodities not only were not falling but were in fact rising, 
 and when the business of the world, instead of being in collapse 
 as a consequence , was more prosperous than at any former period 
 in history. 
 
 Economic writers have made all readers familiar with the red- 
 letter character of the period from 1850 to 1873, during which 
 the CalifOrnian and Australian discoveries were reinvigorating 
 the almost exhausted energies of tjie commercial and industrial 
 worlA,, which for a period of thirty years prior had suffered from 
 the dry rot of a money volume hot keeping pace with demand. 
 With the new supplies of money came universal prosperity in 
 the form of rising prices — notwithstanding the extreme ac- 
 tivity of invention and improvement in methods of manufacture. 
 In discussing this question the advocates of the gold standard 
 leave it to be inferred that no inventions or Improvements in 
 methods of production were ever made prior to 1873, and are 
 driven by the logic of their contention to the absurd conclusion 
 that with that year was ushered in a new order of the ages. 
 There is no reason whatever for supposing anything of the kind. 
 
 Mr. Giffen, in a paper read by him before the Statistical 
 
 Society of London, in January, 1879, referring to the period from 
 
 1848 to 1877 (the period which, except the last four years, was 
 
 characterized by rising prices), said: 
 
 The peculiarity of the period has been the increase of mechanical invention 
 and the constant aug?nentation of goods.. 
 
 And he went on to show that in the period named the annual 
 output of pig iron in England had increased 300 per cent, of cot- 
 ton exports 400 per cent, of shipping clearances 400 per cent, 
 and in other departments of business in like proportion. 
 
 And writi^ig in 1885, he said: 
 
 The same reply may also be made to the suggestion that the multiplica- 
 tion ol commodities accounts for the entire change that has occurred. 
 There Is no reason to suppose that the multiplication of commodities rela- 
 tively to the previous production has proceeded at a greater rate stace 1873 
 than in the twenty years before that. Yet before 1873 prices were rising not- 
 withstanding the multiplication of commodities; and since that date the 
 785 
 
219 
 
 tendency has been to decline. Tlig one thing that has changedt there/ore^ ap- 
 pears to be the supply of gold and the demands upon it; and to fhat cause largely 
 we must accordingly ascribe the change in the course of prices which has oc- 
 cured. * * * The very thing is happening which we should have expected to 
 happen if there had been a pressure upon gold,— Essays in Finance, Series II, 
 page 28. ' 
 
 Writing of the great fall of prices between 1809 and 1849, 
 which he ascribed to the falling off in the supply of the money 
 metals, by the closing of the South American mines, and com- 
 menting on the arrest of that fall and the setting on foot of a 
 contrary movement by the California discoveries, Prof. Jevons 
 
 Thus wUle industry, trade, and property were rapidly advancing In Great 
 Britain and other parts ot the world there wasno corresponding advance in 
 the production of the precious metals. Prices both in gold and silver continu- 
 ally receded. Now, if while the introduction of railways, telegraphs, and in- 
 numerable other improvements accelerated the extension of trade and the 
 consequent demand for the precious metals no new disco veries of the precious 
 metals hadbeenmade.whatmusthaveensned? Prices must have continued 
 in the downward course they had pursued for thirty or forty years before. 
 But they did not continue in this course. On th6 contrary they turned upwards 
 in a sudden and decided manner as shown in the body of this tract. And this 
 change was simultaneous with the discovery of the new gold fields. Half the 
 prerogative instances of Bacon are exemplified in, this question, and if the , 
 philosophy of observation and common fense may be applied to statistical masters 
 we can draw but one conclusion— that prices have risen in consequence of the gold 
 discoveries. 
 
 But Prof. Jevons continues his reflections beyond this, and in 
 
 order to accentuate the blessings which the yield of the new gold 
 
 discoveries had been to the world, he says: 
 
 The gold discoveries have had the double effect of arresting the fall of 
 prices and then raising them. The total effect IS not merely the rise that 
 has occurred, but that rise plus the fall that would have occurred. This 
 goes a considerable way to explain why prices have not risen so high as the 
 vast supplies of gold might have led us to espeot.— Investigations into Cur- 
 rency and Finance, page 110. 
 
 There is not a period of history since the invention of James 
 Watt that has not been characterized by new inventions and 
 improvements. 
 
 Mr. Tooke, in the first volume of his History of Prices, pub- 
 lished in 1838, referring to thfe several causes of a rise of prices 
 observed to occur between 1792 (one hundred years ago) and 
 1819, says: 
 
 And as the improvements in agriculture and mauufactures, all tending greatly 
 to reduce the cost of production, were in progress during the whole period, al- 
 though not ISO rapidly in the earlier part ot it, they must have operated as a 
 785 
 
220 
 
 corrective against so great an advance In price of those articles to whlcli 
 they applied as might trom the operation ol other causes have been ex- 
 pected. This cause need, therefore, only be Incidentally referred to. 
 
 The same author, in one of his later volumes, dealing with the 
 
 period from 1848 to 1856, after the gold discoveries, says: 
 
 The rapid increase In every part of the world, the improvements In the 
 navigation and speed of ships, the rapid spread of population into new and 
 fertile regions, t?ie quick tuccesaion of important discoveries in practical ecienee 
 and the ceaseless activity wixh which they are applied to increase the efficiency oj 
 all mechanical appliances * * * are all causes which singly and conjointly 
 have assisted to accelerate the rate of progress; [but with all this] the in- 
 fluence of the new supplies of gold year by ye ar has probably been that par- 
 ticular cause or train of causes which has modlfled in the 'most powerful de- 
 gree the economical and commercial history of the last nine years. 
 
 From those statements it will be observed that so far as con- 
 cerns new inventions and improved methods they have bean a 
 constant feature of industry in periods both of high and of low 
 prices from the date of the invention of the steam engine to the 
 present time. And while it is conceded that in one or two in- 
 dustries radical improvements have within the past twenty 
 years been effected, yet in the vast mass of processes, no revolu- 
 tionary change has occurred, or anything to Justify the extraor- 
 dinary fall of prices which has occurred— not in the products 
 of one or two classes of industries merely, but of all classes of in- 
 dustries — no less of those involviag finished products than of 
 those involving raw materials, both of the factory and the farm. 
 
 OtTGHT THE UNITBD STATES TO FOLLOW THE EXAMPLE OF GREAT BRITAIN? 
 
 If the gold standard contributes to the welfare of the peoples 
 adopting it, there must be some method of ascertaining that 
 fact. There must be some external evidences of the prosperity 
 which it is said to impart. 
 
 We are told that gold is especially the proper medium for the 
 money of rich nations, and that Great Britain, being a rich na- 
 tion and having a gold standard, and gold alone for money of 
 full legal tender, we should follow the example of Great Britainj 
 and that if we did not do so we should be placed alongside India, 
 Mexico, South America, and so on. 
 
 We do not dispute that there is great wealth in Great Britain, 
 but when it is said that Great Britain as a nation is rich, we are 
 placed upon inquiry as to what constitutes a rich nation. 
 
 785 
 
221 
 
 On this point I quote a pertinent suggestion of John Ruskin's. 
 He says: 
 
 Respecting riches, the economist has to Inquire, first, Into the advisable 
 modes of their collection; secondly. Into the adTlsahle modes of their ad- 
 ministration. 
 
 Kespectlngthe collection of national riches, he has to Inquire, first, whether 
 he Is justified In calling the nation rich it the quantity of wealth it possesses, 
 relatively to the wealth of other nations, he large, irretpectively of the man- 
 ner of Us distribution. Or does the mode of distribution in any wise affect 
 the nature of the riches? Thus, If the King alone be rich (suppose Croesus, ' 
 or Mausolus), are the Lydians or Carlans therefore, a rich nation? Or if a 
 few slave-masters are rich, and the nation is otherwise composed of slaves, 
 is it to be called aiidh nationt For If not, and the Ideas of a certain mode 
 of distribution or operation in the riches, and of a certain degree of fi;eedoni 
 in the people, enter into our idea of riches as attributed to a people, we 
 shall have to define the degree of fluency or clrculative character which is 
 essential to the nature of common wealth; and the degree of independence 
 of action required in Its possessors— questions which look as If they would 
 take time in answering. 
 
 And further. Since the inequality, which is the condition of riches, may 
 be established in two opposite modes— namely, by Increase of pgssesslop on 
 the one side and by decrease of It on the other— we have to inquire with 
 respect to any given state of riches precisely in what manner the correla- 
 tive poverty was produced; that is to say, whether by being surpassed only 
 or being depressed also; and if by being depressed, what are the advan- 
 tages, or the contrary, conceivable in the depression. For lnstance,lt being 
 one of the commonest advantages of being rich to entertain a number of 
 servants, we have to inquire, on the one side, what economical process pro- 
 duced the riches' of the master; and on the other, what economical process 
 produced the poverty of the persons who serve him, and what advantages 
 each on his own side derives from the result?— Jfrmsra Pulverii, page 23. 
 
 Does it then, Mr. President, make any difference how the 
 riches of a nation are distributed? Let us take a case near home 
 in qrder to enable us to see the situation clearly. The late Mr. 
 Jay Gould lived in a village or small town on the Hudson, ad- 
 jacent to the city of New York. He was believed to be worth 
 at least $100,000,000, Even if no other man in the village was 
 worth a dollar, it could still be said that that village was a rich 
 village because Mr. Gould lived in it. In a certain limited sense, 
 as words are usually understood, that would doubtless be true. 
 But, cui hono? The fact that Mr. Gould was rich did not makp 
 the other inhabitants of the village rich. One swallow does not 
 make a summer. 
 
 I't is said that the income of one duke in England amounts to 
 hundreds of thousands of dollars a month, from rents alone. This 
 fact, in one sense, may be said to make England a rich country; 
 but, ill the true sense of the term, does it mean anything to af- 
 
 785 
 
222 
 
 firm that by reason of the riches of the Duke of Westminster 
 England is a rich nation? A nation is not made up of dukes. 
 May it not be that the people at large, instead of being the richer, 
 are the poorer, for the riches of the Duke of Westminster? And 
 when the example of Great Britain, as a rich nation, is held up 
 to the admiring gaze of our people by the gentlemen who are so 
 devoted to the gold standard, do they intend us to understand 
 that a nation is rich because a few of its people are rich? 
 
 WHAT CONSTITUTES A STATION? 
 
 If the wealth of a nation be concentrated in the hands of a few 
 persons, while the masses of the people are steeped in poverty, 
 what a travesty it is upon words to say that the nation is rich. 
 What is a nation? Is it mere land without reference to the peo- 
 ple who dwell on it? Manifestly not. If, then, it meana people, 
 does the word " nation " express only that limited numbe^r of 
 people who are rich? 
 
 This was the idea of polished and cultured Greece, in which 
 the artisans and all that portion of the population corresponding 
 with the working classes of our time, were slaves. It accorded 
 sufficiently well also with the Roman idea — one-half the popu- 
 lation of the Roman empire (according to Gibbon) consisting of 
 slaves— not black slaves, but white— heing persons, of whatever 
 race or blood, conquered in war. But the classes of white men 
 that were formerly slaves are now freemen and constitute the 
 great body of every community. 
 
 Ai>y description of a nation which should leave them out of 
 account would be a description which would omit the most in- 
 dispensable part of ^society — the makers of things — the produ- 
 cers of wealth — as contradistinguished from the drones and 
 idlers, and that portion of the community which, instead of pro- 
 ducing wealth, merely juggles with the counters by which wealth 
 is computed. In this age, what significance can attach to the 
 expression " a rich nation," if it mean only that a few persons 
 residing in a country are the possessors of large wealth, or of all 
 the wealth of the country? Any correct definition of the term 
 could include only nations in which wealth is generally diffused 
 among the people. 
 
 785 
 
■ , 223 
 
 In that sense Great Britain is not a rich, but a very poor, na- 
 tion. Like m ost European countries, it is a nation in wUch a 
 few are rich, while the great masses of the people are steeped 
 in poverty. The persons who constitute the nation, in the sense 
 of those who speak of Great Britain as a rich nation, are the 
 creditor classes — a^hd they are the most active, alert, and watch- 
 ful in their own behalf of any " nation " in Christendom. That 
 CO untry is, by situation and circumstances, naturally a commer- 
 cial country ; and its creditor classes have, from the earliest times, 
 determined to dominate the commercial world, and especially 
 the world of which we, to-day, form part. Before the application 
 of steam to the purposes of industry, many nations of the conti- 
 nent ex celled Great Britain in the arts and manufactures. Fail- 
 ing to find a market in Europe, the eyes of the commercial and 
 financial aristocracy turned at an early day to the American 
 colonies. Here they saw a market which they were determined 
 to enjoy without competition. Not only without competition 
 from other European countries, but without competition even 
 from the colonists themselves. 
 
 liONG-SIANDING DETEBMINaTION OT GREAT BRITAIN TO EXPLOIT 'T^E IN- 
 • DUSXRIES OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 In 1660 the first of the navigation acts was passed which com- 
 pelled the colonists to use only English ships in the work of 
 transportation. In 1663 another law was enacted which required 
 that all the articles which the colonists might desire to buy in 
 Europe should be bought in the markets of England. Heavy 
 penalties were prescribed for the violation of such laws. In 1669 ' 
 Parliament declared that no wool, yarn, or woolen manufactures 
 of the American plantations should be shipped, or even laden to 
 be transported from thence to any place whatever. 
 
 In 1719 it declared that the erecting of manufactories in the 
 Colonies tended to lessen their dependence upon Great Britain. 
 In 1732 a law was passed forbidding hats or felts to be exported 
 from the Colonies or even to be loaded on horse, cart, or other 
 carriage for transportation from one plantation to another. So 
 determined were they to repress and put down, by the strong 
 hand, all attempts on the part of the Americans to produqe the 
 articles required by, their own situation and circumstances, that 
 
 785 
 
224 
 
 In 1750 Parliament went to the extreme length of prohibi ting by 
 law "the erection, or continuance, of any mill or other engine 
 for slitting or rolling iron, or any plating forge to work with a 
 tilt hammer, or any furnace for making steel, in the Colonies " 
 under the penalty of £200. 
 
 Every suojh mill, engine, forge, or furnace was declared a com- 
 mon nuisance, which the governors of the provinces were bound 
 to abate within thirty days under a penalty of £500. In the same 
 year a prominent and well-known London publication on 
 "Trade" — a great authority in its time — a work written by a 
 person named Gee, exhibited the tone and spirit of English 
 public opinion regarding the industrial development of the Col- 
 onies. That writer said: 
 
 ^Manufactures In our American Colonies should be discouraged and pro- 
 MMtea. We ougM always to keep a watoMul eye over our colonies, to re- 
 strain tliem Irom setting up any ol the manufactures which are carried on 
 in Great Britain, and any such attempts should be crushed in the beginning, 
 for if they are suffered to growup to maturity it will be difflciilt to suppress 
 them. * * * 
 
 Our colonies are in much the same state as Ireland was In when they be- 
 gan the woolen manufactory, and as their numbers Increase will f^U upon 
 manufactures for clothing themselves, if due care be not taken to find em- 
 ployment for them in raising such productions as may enable them to fur- 
 nish themselves with all the necessaries from us. As they will have the 
 providing rough materials for themselves, so shall we have the manufactur- 
 ing of them. If encouragment be given for raising hemp, flax, etc., doubt- 
 - less they will soon begin to manufacture if not prevented. 
 
 Therefore to stop the progress of such manufacture it is proposed that no 
 weaver have liberty to set up any loom without first registering at an oface 
 to be kept for that purpose. That all slitting mills, and engines for drawing 
 wire or weaving stockings be put down; * * * that they shall be prohib- 
 ited from manufacturing bats, stockings, or leather of any kind. This lim- 
 itation— 
 
 The author is good enough to say — 
 
 will not abridge the planters of any liberty they now enjoy— on the contrary, 
 itwlUthentnrn their industry to promoting and raising those rough ma- 
 terials. • * * If we examine Into the circumstances of the inhabitants 
 of our plantations and our own. It will appear that not one-fourth part of 
 their product redounds to their own profit, for out of all that comes here 
 they carry back clothing and other accommodations for their families, all 
 of which is of the merchandise and manufacture of this kingdom. 
 
 Now, note how early the shrewd " foreign investor " began to 
 
 get in his work upon the people of this country. Mr. GJee says: 
 
 All these advantages we receive by the plantations, besides the mortgages on 
 
 the planters' estates, and the high interest they pay us, which is very considerable, 
 
 and therefore every care ought to be takenln regulating all the affairs of the 
 
 colonists that the planters are riot put under too many difficulties, but encouraged 
 
 785 
 
to go on cheerfully! * * « New England and the northern colonies have 
 not products enough to send ua In return for purchasing their necessary 
 clothing, but are under very great diCQculties, and therefore any ordinary 
 sort of clothing sell with them; and when they have grovra out of fashion 
 with us they are new-f ashloued enough lor them. 
 
 I may add, as a pertinent suggestion at this point, that we still 
 find New England sending no wheat or cotton abroad, so that 
 the fall of prices of those leading articles of export is not a mat- 
 ter of so supreme importance to the people of that section as it 
 is for other parts of the country. 
 
 All this, Mr. President, shows that from the earliest time the 
 eyes of the alert money lenders of Great Britain have been 
 turned to these " plantations " as the fertile field for the culti- 
 vation and development of British prosperity. 
 
 That was written nearly one hundred and fifty years ago, and 
 to this day it can truthfully be written that the interest we pay 
 them is " very considerable.'' If the silver-purchase law be re- 
 pealed, and the dollars of every man's debt be thus made more 
 valuable tc the creditor, the interest will yearly grow more and 
 more " considerable," to the hearty satisfaction of our "foreign 
 investor," who accordingly is urging this repeal with unfeigned ' 
 enthusiasm. 
 
 GREAT BRITAIN THE GREAT CREDITOR NATION OE THE WORLD. 
 
 One hundred years ago, at a time when France was the only 
 
 rival of England, Edmund Burke, speaking of the money power 
 
 of Great Britain, said: 
 
 Our capital gives us a superiority which enables us to set at defiance all 
 the efforts of France to rival our manufactures. The powers of capital — 
 
 He added — 
 
 are irresistible in trade. It dominates; It rules; It even tyrannizes in the 
 market; it entices the strong and controls the weak. 
 
 No better description of the effects of capital, as it is utilized by 
 the British capitalist, was ever given. Fifty years later. Sir 
 Robert Peel, in debating the corn Ip.ws, still understood its in- 
 fluence when he said: 
 
 That we may retain our manufacluring preeminence we must neglect no 
 opportunity of securing to ourselves those advantages by which that pre- 
 eminence can alone be secured. * » • The accumulation of wealth— that 
 Is, the increase of capital— Is one of the chief means by which we can retain 
 the eminence we have so long enjoyed. 
 
 And Prof. Senior, in one of his Oxford lectures (1830), ingen- 
 
 785 15 
 
220 
 
 uously admits the manner in which, the prosperity of Great 
 Britain and its great creditor classes is maintained. "The mine 
 worked by England," he says, "is the general market of the world!" 
 In a report made in 1854 by a commission appointed by Parlia- 
 ment to inquire into the operations of the mining laws of Great 
 Britain the following statement appears: 
 
 Tlie large capitals of tlila country are tlie great instruments ol warfare 
 against competing capitals of foreign countries, and are the moat essential 
 Instruments now remaining by which the supremacy of our manufactures 
 can be maintained— the other elements— cheap labor, abundance of raw ma- 
 terial, means of communication, and skilled labor, being rapidly in process 
 of being equalized. 
 
 All these statements, as to the purpose of the legislative and 
 governmental policies of Great Britain, lead up directly to the 
 statement made by Mr. Gladstone in his speech in the House of 
 Commons on the 28th of February last, in opposition to the mo- 
 tion of Sir Henry Meysey Thompson with reference to the Brus- 
 sels conference. 
 
 "England," said Mr. Gladstone, " is the great creditor of the countries of 
 the world ; of that there can be no doubt whatever ; and it is increasingly the 
 great creditor of the countries of the world. I suppose there is not a year 
 which passes over our heads which does not largely add to the mass of Brit- 
 ish investments abroad. I am almost afraid to estimate the total amount 
 of the property which the United Kingdom holds beyond the limits of the 
 United Kingdom; but of this I am well convinced, that it is not to be esti- 
 mated by tens or hundreds of millions. One thousand millions probably 
 would be an extremely lowandinadeqnate estimate. Two thousand millions. 
 or something even more than that, is very likely to be nearer the mark. I 
 think, under these circumstances. It is rather a serious matter to ask this 
 country whether we are going to perform this supreme act of self-sacri- 
 fice." 
 
 The act of self-saerifice, to which Mr. Gladstone referred, was 
 whether Great Britain should even discuss the question of giv- 
 ing a larger use to silver as currency. In giving utterance to 
 those views Mr. Gladstone simply repeated in another form 
 what had before been so often stated. The gist of his statement 
 is contained in his opening remark, that " England is the great 
 creditor of the countries of the world." 
 
 Now, Mr. President, it is well known that the United States 
 is one of the great debtor countries of the world. If it would be 
 an act of self-sacrifice for the creditor classes of Great Britain 
 to bring to a halt the unjust and constantly growing apprecia- 
 tion of gold, would it not be an act of wisdom on the part of the 
 
 785 
 
227 
 
 American Senators to do what may be in their power, in the in- 
 terest of their own people, to bring about that result without 
 reference to the self-sacriflce of the creditor classes of Great 
 Britain? 
 
 Mr. Gladstone's highest estimate — namely, that the property 
 which the United Kingdom holds beyond its own limits, may be 
 £2,000,000,000, or $10,000,000,000, is sustained by the statements 
 of eminent writers. Prof. Cairnes calculated that according 
 to the returns of imports and exports the creditor classes of Great 
 Britain receive every year, on their foreign investments, not 
 less than $500,000,000, which would be the interest on $10,000,- 
 000,000 at 5 per cent. This computation was made in 1874; and 
 we may rest assured the amount has not been reduced since then. 
 
 And Prof. Thorold Rogers, in his work on the Economical In- 
 terpretation of History, says: 
 
 * * * An enormous and incredible mass of foreign and colonial securi- 
 ties is lield by British investors. I am confidently assured by tbose who 
 know the facts well, that at least two thousand millions sterling of such se- 
 curities are held in Great Britain, and ear-marked on the stock exchange. 
 We in England hold all, or nearly all, the colonial securities, the Indian 
 debt, and so large a mass of foreign debt that no large purchase can be made 
 of such foreign debt on any but the London Stock Exchange. Now, interest 
 must be paid on such llabillflies, and of course, in accordance with the rule 
 laid down before, the ordinary way in which such an amount of interest is 
 paid, as is Implied in the above-stated indebtedness, is by goods, the amount 
 or value of which makes the aggregate of imports appear to be vastly in ex- 
 cess of the aggregate of exports. * * * In fact, the annual interest which 
 the borrowers contract to pay is expressed In the currency of the United 
 Kingdom, or in the currency of the borrowing state and community, and in 
 theory such debtors are bound to pay in money. In practice, however, they 
 pay iagoods, generally in raw materials, or In articles which our climate will 
 not allow to, be produced, or not to be produced in so useful a form. Hence 
 a country like our own, to whom other countries are largely indebted, always gets 
 its raw materials, and some other articles, at the cheapest rates possible.— The 
 Economic Interpretation of History, page 98. 
 
 Why, Mr. President, the very object of Great Britain in main- 
 taining the gold standard is that her creditor classes may get 
 the products of other people's labor at the " cheapest rates pos- 
 sible." They want American wheat and American cotton at the 
 " cheapest rates possible," and they are getting them cheaper 
 and cheaper as time elapses. 
 
 It needs no prophet to safely predict that by the repeal of the 
 
 purchasing clause of the Sherman law they will get our products 
 
 very much cheaper than ever. 
 785 
 
228 
 
 While Great Britain appears to be receiving' gold as intere9t 
 on hsr foreign investments, yet what sli3 really receives is not 
 gold itself —which, she does not want — but commodities at the 
 range of prices consistent with the existing quantity of gold 
 money. If the $500,000,000 of interest, which Prof. Cairnes 
 calculated was received each year by Great Britain, were re- 
 ceived in money, it would be a sum greater than the entire 
 monetary supply of the kingdom, and, were it possible to be ob- 
 tained, would produce such a rise of prices of all commodi- 
 ties as would create a revolution in the industries and trade of 
 the country. But no country can retain more than its distribu- 
 tive share of the gold, of the world. 
 
 INJURIES INrLiICTBD ON THE PEOPLE OF GREAT BRITAIN BT THE ADOPTION 
 OF THE GOI.D STANDARD. 
 
 The creditor classes are, and well may be, content to receive, 
 not the money, but the materials which the money will buy. 
 Producing nothing by their own labor, they can observe without 
 regret a constant fall in the prices of the products of other men's 
 labor. They know that it would be impossible to obtain the gold , 
 and that, if obtained, it would be good only for its purchasing 
 power as money. For hundreds of years, as I have shown, it 
 has been the determination of those classes to dominate the com- 
 mercial and industrial world. They are too intelligent to at- 
 tempt, in this age, a domination of force. They know how to 
 acquire domination by strategy. This was the basis of their de- 
 termination to limit the supply of money to gold alone. 
 
 When they decided to adopt the gold standard they knew that 
 the quantity of money in circulation determined the value of the 
 monetary unit. Before taking that step they were not unaware 
 of the difficulties that would be encountered, but not being them- 
 selves producers of wealth they had nothing to fear. The mis- 
 eries which their course might inflict upon others was not a 
 matter which concerned them. In the investigation by the par- 
 liamentary committee, made prior to the adoption of the gold 
 standard, the manufacturing interests of Great Britain were rep- 
 resented by wise and thoughtful men, who foresaw and deline- 
 ated the consequences that must ensue from the carrying out of 
 the gold policy, but the executive department of the Govern- 
 
 785 
 
229 
 
 ment of Great Britain turned a deaf ear to the statements of the 
 manufacturing andagricultural classes, andlistened only to those 
 of the bankers and money-lenders. To their interest, then, as 
 at all times since, every other interest was subordinated. 
 
 In describing the consequences of the parliamentary enact- 
 ment which placed Great Britain on the gold standard, Sir 
 Archibald Alison says: 
 
 The capital which had been realized during the war [with Napoleon] had 
 been so great, the Influence of the moneyed Interest so powerful, that the 
 legislature became affected by the desires ot its possessors. The monetary 
 bill of 1819, before many years had elapsed, added 50 per cent to the value of 
 money and weight of debt and taxes. * » * Small landed proprietors were 
 generally ruined from the fall of prices; the magnates stood forth in In- 
 creased lustre from the enhanced value of their revenues. Industry was 
 querulous from long-continued suffering; wealth ambitious from sudden 
 exaltation.— ConimwaMora oj History of Europe, volume 1, page 3. 
 
 And again he says: 
 
 The effects of this sudden and prodigious contraction of the currency were 
 soon apparentj and they rendered the next three years a period of ceaseless 
 distress and suffering in the British Islands. The accommodation granted 
 by the bankers diminished so much, In consequence of the obligation laid 
 upon them of paying la specie, when specie was not to be got, that paper 
 under discount at the Bank of England, which In 1810 had been £33,000,000, 
 and In 1815 not less than £20,660,000. sank In 1820 to £4,672,000, and In 1831 to 
 £2,722,000. The effect upon prices was not less Immediate or appalling. 
 They declined in general— 
 
 The historian says — 
 
 within six months to half their former amount, and remained at that low 
 level for the next three years. Distress was universal In the latter months 
 -of the year 1819; and that distrust and discouragement was felt In all 
 branches of Industry, which Is at once the forerunner and the cause of dis- 
 aster. 
 
 The land-owners of Great Britain at the time of the passage of 
 the bill numbered 160,000 persons. By reason of the ruinous 
 consequences of the fall in .prices they became reduced in the 
 course of seven years to 30,000 in number, or less than one-fifth, 
 while 15 per cent of the population became the subject of sup- 
 port by organized charity. The idleness and distress among the 
 people became so universal that mass meetings were held in all 
 towns and cities, some of which were attended by as many aa 
 60,000 persons. Collisions with the troops occurred, in which 
 many were killed and wounded. 
 
 Speaking of the effects of this same bill establishing the gold 
 
 785 
 
230 
 
 standard, Sir James Graham, in his tract entitled " Corn and 
 
 Currency," publi'slied in 1826, says: 
 
 Wlietlier we regard private debts or public burdens, tlie effects of the 
 measure of 18191iave been to enact that /or every lest sum owing a greater thall 
 be paid; prices falling, but pecuniary engagement remaining undiminished, 
 the farmer has no profit, the landlord no rent, the manufacturer no cus- 
 tomer, the laborer no employment; a revolution of property and a derange- 
 ment of the whole frame of society must necessarily ensue. 
 
 But the writer significantly adds that — 
 
 Amidst the ruin of the farmer and of the manufacturer, the distress ot 
 the landlords and the Insurrections of a populace without bread and without 
 employment, one class flourished and was triumphant; the annuitant and 
 the tax-eater rejoiced in the increased value of money; in the sacrifice of pro- 
 ductive Industry to unproductive wealth, in the victory of the drones over 
 the bees. 
 
 But these sufferings had no effect then and similar sufferings 
 have none now on men determined to gain an advantage for 
 themselves at the expense of the masses of the people. 
 
 Ever since the establishment of the gold standard the business 
 of the English people, and that of all people having the gold 
 standard, has been subjected to frequent and violent panics, re- 
 sulting from the incongruities and absurdities of a money sys- 
 tem wholly insufScient, and growing yearly more insufficient, 
 for the performance of the task imposed upon it. But, as was to 
 be expected, when anything occurs calculated to expose the 
 monstrosity of a system under which ^ich and powerful classes 
 are increasing their riches and perpetuating their power, the 
 professors of political economy and the writers for the daily press 
 attempt to account for its eccentricities by the most absurd and 
 contradictory hypotheses — even Prof. Jevons, a most distin- 
 guished economist, actually connecting the causation of the 
 numerous panics, periodically occurring in Great Britain, with 
 the recurrence of the spots on the sun! 
 
 Our statisticians, economists, and statesmen who laud the gold 
 standard and recommend its adoption by the United States, may 
 flatter themselves that their theories are supported by the sup- 
 posed fact that England is a rich nation, but we know nothing 
 about the riches of a nation until we shall ascertain how those 
 riches are distributed. The distribution of wealth in a country 
 is a subject upon which it is difficult to arrive at very exact in- 
 formation. Those whosa business it is to write upon public 
 
 785 
 
231 
 
 questions, especially in monarchical countries, deem it a patri- 
 otic duty to give rose-colored vievsrs of the conditions of society. 
 
 A POET'S DESOBIPTION OF ABTISAN IjIFX IN ENGLAND. 
 
 Such a picture is one that I am about to read from an address 
 recently delivered by Sir Edwin Arnold at Birmingham, in Eng- 
 land. When, people read such descriptions of the conditions of 
 life, which they suppose to exist among the masses of the people 
 of Great Britain, it is no wonder they call it a rich nation; no 
 wonder they call the gold standard a great standard; no wonder 
 that the creditor classes should welcome such statements, and 
 hold them up to the admiring gaze of an appreciating world as 
 evincing the beauties and excellencies of the gold standard. Sir 
 Edwin Arnold said: 
 
 Upon tlie lace of facts, Is life— even were It transient — so bad a thing as 
 some people make out? Look at common moaern existence as we see It, 
 and note to what rich elaboration and large degrees of comf nrt it has come. 
 I leave aside for the moment uncivilized nations and the bjgo:ie struggles 
 of our race; Its wars and woes; Its tyrannies and superstitions; all of which 
 history has fereatly exaggerated, not telling us of the oontemporaneons con- 
 tentments. I Invite you briefly to contemplate an artisan's existence in your 
 own Birmingham. Let alone the greatness of being an Englishman, and 
 the supreme safety and liberty of his dally life, what king of old ever fared 
 so royally? What magician of fairytales ever owned so many slaves to 
 brlnghim treasures and pleasure at wish? Observe his dinner board! With- 
 out being luxurious, the whole globe has been his servlngman to spread it. 
 
 The currants in this dumpling are a tribute from classic Greece, and 
 tinned salmon or kippered herring a token from the seas and rivers of Can- 
 ada or Norway. He may partake, if he will, of rice that ripened under the 
 hot skies of Patna or Rangoon; of cocoa— that '-food of the gods "—plucked 
 under the burning bltie of the equator. For his rasher of bacon the hog ex- 
 press runs dally with 10,000 grunting victims into Chicago. Dutch or Brit- 
 tany hens have laid him his eggs, and Danish cows grazed the daisies of 
 Elslnore to produce his cheese and butter. If he drinks beer, it is odds that 
 Russia and Bavaria have contributed to it the barley and the hops; when he 
 has finished eating, it will be the Mississippi flats or the gardens of the An- 
 tilles that fill for him Ms pipe with the comforting tobacco. He has fared, I 
 say, at home as no LuouUus ever fared ; and then, for a trifle, his dally news- 
 paper puts at his command information from the whole globe, the freshness 
 and fullness of which make the news-bearers of Augustus Caesar, thronging 
 •hourly into Rome, ridiculous. At work, machinery of wonderful Invention 
 redeems his toll from servitude and elevates it to an art. 
 
 Is he fond of reading? There are free libraries open to him, full of Intel- 
 lectual and imaginative wealth. Is he artistic? Galleries rich with beauti- 
 ful paintings and statues are prepared for him. Has he childr»n? They can 
 be excellently educated for next to nothing. Would he communicate with 
 absent friends? His messengers pass In the Queen's livery bearing his let- 
 ters everywhere by sea and land; or in the hour of urgency the ariel of elec- 
 tricity will flash for Mm a message to the ends of the kingdom at the price 
 of a quart of small beer. Steam shall carry him wherever he wants to go 
 lor a penny a mile; and when he is sick, the charitable Institutions he has 
 785 
 
232 
 
 too often forgotten in health render him such snccor as sick goddesses never 
 got from ^sculaplus, nor Ulysses at the white hand of Queen Helen. 
 
 Does he encounter accident? For him as tor all others thfc benignant 
 science of our time, with the hypodermic syringe or a waft of chloroform 
 has abolished agony; while for dignity of citizenship he may help when 
 election time comes by his vote to sustain or to shake down the noblest em- 
 pire ever built by genius and valor. IJet the fancy All up the Imperfect pic- 
 ture with these thousand helps and adornments that civilization has brought 
 even to lowly lives; and does it not seem stupid and ungrateful to say, as 
 some go about saying, that such an existence, even If it were transitory, is 
 not for itself distinctly worth possessing? 
 
 No man can doubt that in presenting this picture the distin- 
 guished poet and writer is perfectly sincere. So long as the 
 rich and cultured classes in those countries are enjoying life, it 
 is a great comfort to them to suppose that all others enjoy it. 
 They concern themselves very little with the sufferings or bur- 
 dens of the workers, and especially of those who are relegated 
 to idleness. They have no personal knowledge of those condi- 
 tions. It is gratifying to their sense of humanity to suppose 
 that enforced idleness is unavoidable. They would never think 
 of holding the gold standard responsible for it. Those things 
 are supposed to be inevitable. They find so many good things 
 in their own path that they assume something of a like good for- 
 tune for everybody else. 
 
 For idleness the only suggestion they have to make is that 
 charity shall be brought to bear. So conditions are investi- 
 gated only with reference to the effects which philanthropy 
 may have oh them. Even the philanthropists, the persons who 
 have some heart, and those who see the miseries of the masses 
 as matters of daily observation, are disposed to regard them as 
 the results of natural causes, or of the inscrutable decrees of 
 Providence. The literature, therefore, which deals with the 
 real condition of the masses of the people is very limited. How 
 few examine those conditions at their sources. 
 
 We can, however, ascertain some general facts which may aid 
 us in arriving at a judgment as to the wisdom of the national 
 policies that dominate the Government of Great Britain, of 
 which none' can be more important than its monetary policy. 
 
 CONCENTBATION OP WEALTH IN GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 The concentration of wealth in that country is illustrated by 
 the distribution of the national debt, amounting to over $3,500,- 
 000,000, which, a short time ago, the official returns showed to 
 
233 
 
 be held in the hands of only 126,331 persons, thus averaging 
 $30,000 to each person owning the debt. The greater prosperity 
 of the French people is illustrated by the wider and more gen- 
 eral distribution of the public debt of that country. Even so 
 long ago as 1867 that debt was held in the ownership of 1,095,683 
 persons, averaging but $2,000 each, and since that time it has 
 obtained even a wider distribution. 
 
 The following statement of the distribution of land owner- 
 ship in Great Britain and Ireland is a summary from the re- 
 cent work on political economy by Prof. J. S. Nicholson, of Ed- 
 inburgh: 
 
 England and Wales, total area, 37,000,000 of acres. A body 
 of men not exceeding 4,500 own more than half. Less than 280 
 people own one-sixth of the inclosed land. Sixty-six people own 
 one-eighteenth part, or 2,000,000 acres. One man owns 186,397 
 acres. 
 
 Ireland, total area, 20,000,000 acres. Two hundred and ninety- 
 two people own one- third . Seven hundred and forty-four people 
 own one-half. There are three persons owning more than 100,- 
 000 acres each. 
 
 In Scotland the figures are still more striking. Total acre- 
 age about 19,000,000. One owner has 1,326,000 acres and 32,000 
 in England as well. There are five owners with more than 300,- 
 000 acres each. Twelve men own one-quarter of all Scotland. 
 Nine-tenths of the whole of that country belongs to fewer than 
 1 ,700 people. 
 
 The following summary is still more startling: 
 
 Two-thirds of the whole of England and Wales owned by 
 10,207 persons. 
 
 Two-thirds of the whole of Ireland owned by 1,942 persons. 
 
 Two-thirds of the whole of Scotland owned by 330 persons. 
 
 One man owns an entire county extending across Scotland. 
 One land owner in Scotland a few years ago appropriated 300 
 square miles of land to a deer forest, evicting many, families to 
 make room for the deer. 
 
 SOME PBOSE-WBITBES' DESCEIPTIONS 01" LlrE IN THE POET'S COUNTKT. 
 
 In a book entitled Breadwinners Abroad, Mr. Robert P. 
 Porter, late Superintendent of the United States Census, speaks 
 
 785 
 
234 
 
 of a district he visited — th.e nail-making district near Birming- 
 ham, England, within a few miles of the spot at which was de- 
 livered the glowing description I have read from the remarks 
 of Sir Edwin Arnold. Mr. Porter says: 
 
 It Is said tliat 24,000 persons aie engaged In this dismal district making 
 nails and rivets. Ttougli within 7 miles of the great and prosperous city of 
 Birmingham no one seems to know or care about this army of men, women, 
 young girls, and children condemned to a life of wretched slavery. * * » 
 The Inhabitants of this desolate district are among the most Industrious 
 and yet the most wretched in England. They are engaged in making all 
 kinds of nails, rivets, and chains. The work is done in little smithies at- 
 tached to the hovels In which the workers reside. * * * These houses, as 
 a rule, contain little or no furniture. They are filthy and wretched beyond 
 description. What spare time the tmhappy nailer's wife gets from nurs- 
 ing the baby and preparing the meager meals is spent at the smithy Are 
 pounding away at the anvil until late at night. But the extra work that the 
 woman does, combined with that of one child— say a girl of 14— will barely 
 keep the family from starvation, t * * The most cruel part of this 
 business is that young women should be allowed to work at what is called 
 the "Olivers," a heavy Iron machine worked by means of two wooden 
 treadles. I found numbers of girls making large 8-inch bolts on these 
 machines, and indeed they seemed to work with masculine firmness and 
 with far more vigor than the men. * * * Their earnings do not exceed 
 11.25 per week. 
 
 In this way mothers, daughters, and mere children toll and slave on from 
 year to year — indeed one man told me that nails had been made here for 
 over a century in this way. How they exist is a mystery to me. They live 
 in hovels, they are poorly fed, and poorly clad. They marry early, and sev- 
 eral girls not over 17 were pointed out to me as mothers of children 3 and 3 
 years of age. The men have an unmuscular look ; most of them are very pale 
 and lean and leaden-eyed. The small nailers are not protected by the Eng- 
 lish factory act and they work in their father's shops sometimes until late 
 at night. The time to see the nailers at work is at night. The sharp din of 
 the hammer on the anvil, and the dull rapid thud of the Oliver as it flattens 
 the heads of the nails and spikes still rings in my ear from last night. I can 
 see the bright sparks from the forge, the red-hot nails clattering down to 
 Join their cooler brethren, the bending forms of the men, the women and 
 the girls, little children creeping into the clattering, scintillating nail shop 
 for the sake of warmth, and every now and then the red flames from the 
 forges illuminating the scene and making more distinct the wlerd form of 
 these shadowy creatures doomed to a never-ending industrial treadmill. 
 
 In some cases I found mothers and three, and even four, daughters at the 
 forge. In most of such instances, the father, I was told, spent his time in 
 the public house, and the united earnings of the entire family would be less 
 than S5. Many of the nailers actually starve, and cases of the deepest sor- 
 row are not uncomm.on. " Misery," as the London Standard correspondent 
 wrote, " so deep and dreadful that the mostgraphlcpencanbut faintly con- 
 vey its depth of sorrow is witnessed." * * * Not long ago a Journalist 
 of ability undertook to show the desperate condition of the working classes 
 here. I do not mean the Idle, worthless, good-for-nothing people, but just 
 such industrious people as those described in this letter. He sent the re- 
 sult of his Inquiries to a Liberal journal and the manager refused to pub- 
 lish the facts. He wrote ; " It is better not to call attention to such matters. 
 It could do no good." • * ■* It is time the truth about industrial Eng- 
 785 
 
235 
 
 land Is told. The London Standard has dared to speak out on the condition 
 of lahor In the Black Country, and when that paper makes the following 
 statement I can say that actually accords with some of the horrlhle facts 
 which have come within my observation during my stay In this dismal re- 
 gion : 
 
 " Women within a few days of their confinement have bee n known to work 
 in the agony of exhaustion In order to earn a lew pence at the hearth— not 
 the hearth of home, but the hearth of the forge; they have been known to 
 return to work In a day or two after childbirth, emaciated In constitution, 
 weak and weary for the want of simple nourishment. Their children, rag- 
 ged and Ill-fed, have to lead miserable and wretched lives, with no hope be- 
 fore them but a life of wickedness and vice."— TAe Breadwianera Abroad, chap- 
 ter 48. 
 
 Should it be said that these statements are from the pen of an 
 American writer, we need not trust altogether to Americans. 
 
 PAUPERISM IN LONDON. 
 
 In a letter of Mr. Arnold White, a prominent citizen of London, 
 England, in the daily Times of that city, dated January 11, 1893, 
 we find a statement of a few significant facts which give us a 
 striking view of the condition of that class of people in England 
 which the well-to-do call the lower orders. Mr. White states 
 that according to an official publication — the Directory of the 
 •charitable associations of London — a great body of associations 
 which number nine hundred and eighty-six, there were received 
 ■ by those organizations in cash during the year 1892 the sum of 
 £6,246,136 (over $31,000,000), to be distributed among the poor. 
 He adds that from his long and intimate acquaintance with the 
 city he is certain that at least twice that sum is given each year 
 as private charity. 
 
 Even if we assume an equal sum only to be given, there are 
 ' $60,000,000 a year expended in organized and unorganized char- 
 ities in the city of London. At the rate of $2 a week (and peo- 
 ple would hardly give more, as a regular weekly gratuity, to 
 paupers) this sum would support 600,000 persons all the year 
 round. This is 12 per cent of the entire population of London. 
 
 Inasmuch as the people of European cities aie not given to in- 
 discriminate charities, it must be assumed that of this large 
 number of persons a considerable proportion are cases of chronic 
 idleness. 
 
 In accordance with the laissez-faire maxims of the period, the 
 enforced idleness that comes of a volume of money shrinking in 
 
 785 
 
23C 
 
 comparison with the demand for it is Charged to the dullness of 
 trade — never to the policies of the Government— which are sup- 
 posed to have no responsibility for dullness of that character. 
 In ninty-nine cases, however, out of one hundred this dullness 
 is caused by a shrinking money volume — a matter wholly within 
 the correcting power of the Government. 
 
 The estimate of Mr. Arnold White is sustained by estimates 
 based upon actual investigations. But who would care to make 
 those investigations? 
 
 None but those who have to do with the classes immediately 
 concerned. Not the prosperous; not the creditor classes; not 
 the bankers; not the cultured and the literary classes. Who 
 would undertake a work which may well make the stout heart 
 quail? That which wealth, culture, and refinement disdained 
 or neglected to do, religious enthusiasm, not for the first time, 
 undertook. And T will say here in behalf of the writer I am 
 about to quote, that as his book created a sensation in Eng- 
 land, there was appointed a committee of most distinguished 
 persons to investigate his career and his work, and after investi- 
 gation that committee made a unanimous report commending 
 him and his work in the most hearty manner and approving 
 his efforts for the improvement of the condition of the unfortu- 
 nates of whom he writes. 
 
 THE FATE OT ENGIiANS S SUBMERGED TENTH. 
 
 Gen. William Booth, in his book entitled In Darkest England, 
 gives some idea of the condition of a large class of his country- 
 men. In the introduction of his subject he says: • 
 
 In setting forth tlie ditdoultles wMch have to be grappled with, I shall 
 endeavor in all things to understate rather than overstate my case. I do 
 this for two reasons: First, any exaggeration would create a reaction; and, 
 secondly, as my object Is to demonstrate the practicability ol solving the 
 problem, I do not wish to magnify Its dimensions. 
 
 He then proceeds: 
 
 The denizens in darkest England for whom I appeal are, first, those who, 
 having no capital or income of their own, would in a month be dead from 
 sheer starvation were they exclusively dependent upon the money earned 
 by their own work; and second, those who, by their utmost exertion, are 
 unable to attain the regulation allowance of food which the law prescribes 
 as indispensable even for the worst criminals in our jails. I sorrowfully ad- 
 mit tha*. It would be Utopian in our present social arrangement to dream of 
 attaining fortevery honest Englishman a jail standard of all the necessaries 
 785 
 
237 
 
 of life. Sometime, perhaps, we may, venture to hope that every honest 
 worker on English soil will always he as vrarmly clad, as healthily housed, 
 and as regularly fed as our criminal convicts— hut that Is not yet. Neither 
 is It possible to hope for many years to come that human beings generally 
 will be as well cared for as horses. 
 
 Mr. Carlyle long ago remarked that the four-footed worker has already 
 got all that this two-handed one is clamoring for: "There are not many 
 horses in England which are able and willing to work which have not due 
 food and lodging and go about sleek-coated and satisfied in heart." Yousay 
 it is impossible. "But," said Carlyle, "the human brain, looking at these 
 sleek English horses, refuses to believe in such Impossibility for English 
 men." Nevertheless forty years have passed since Carlyle said that, and 
 we seem to be no nearer the attainment of the four-footed standard for the 
 two-handed worker. "Perhaps It might be nearer realization," growls the 
 cynic, "if we could only produce men according to the demand, as we do 
 horses and promptly send them to the slaughterhouse when past their 
 prime," which of course Is not to be thought of. What then — 
 
 Asks Gen. Booth- 
 is the standard toward which we may venture to aim with some prospect 
 of realization in our time? It is a very humble one, but it realized it would 
 solve the worst problems of modem society. It is the standard of the Lon- 
 don cab horse. 
 
 When in the streets of London a cab horse, weary, or careless, or stupid, 
 trips or falls and lies stretched out in the midst of the traffic, there is no 
 question of debating how he came to stumble before they try to get him on 
 his legs again. The cab horse Is a very real Illustration of poor, broken- 
 down humanity; he usually falls down because of overwork and underfeed- 
 ing. « * * If not for his own sake, then merely In order to prevent au 
 obstruction of the traffic, all attention }s concentrated upon the question of 
 how we are to get him on bis legs again. The load is taken off, the harness 
 is unbuckled, or, if need be, cut, and everything is done to help him up. 
 Then be is put in the shafts again and once more restored to his regular 
 round of work. That is the first point. 
 
 The second Is that every cab horse in London has three things; a shelter 
 for the night, food for his stomach, and work allotted to it by which it can 
 earn its corn. These are the two points of the cab horse's charter. When 
 he is down he is helped up, and while he lives he has food, shelter, and work. 
 That, although a humble standard, is at present absolutely unattainable 
 by millions— literally by millions— for our fellow men and women In this 
 country. Can the cab horse charter be gained for human beings? I answer 
 yes. * * * 
 
 The first question, then, which confronts us is, what are the dimensions 
 of the evil? How many of our fellow-men dwell in this darkest England? 
 How can we take the census of those who are fallen below the cab- horse 
 standard to which it is our aim to elevate the most wretched of our coun- 
 trymen?. 
 
 The moment you attempt to answer this question you are confronted by 
 the fact that the social problem has scarcely been studied at all scientif- 
 ically. Go to Mudie's and ask for all the books that have been written on 
 the subject, and you will be surprised to find how few there are. There are 
 probably more scientific books treating of diabetes or of gout than there are 
 dealing with the great social malady which eats out the vitals of such num- 
 bers of our people. 
 
 Of late there has been a ch ange for the better. The report of the Eoy al Com- 
 mission on the housing of the poor and the report of the committee of the 
 7S5 
 
238 
 
 House of Lorda on Sweat Ing, represent an attempt at least to ascertain the 
 facts wMcli bear upon tlie condition of the people. But, after all, more 
 minute, patient, Intelligent observation lias been devoted to tbe study of 
 earthworms than to the evoltition, or rather the degradation of the sunken 
 section of our people. Here and there in the Immense field, indlyidual 
 workers make notes, and occasionally emit a wall of despair, but where Is 
 there any attempt, even so much as to take the first preliminary step of 
 counting those whohave.gone under. 
 
 Gen. Booth then enters upon an estimate, based upon an actual 
 industrial census of East London, of the conditions of the peo- 
 ple throughout the country as a whole. Counting the houseless 
 and the starving, as well as the criminals and the members of 
 the pauper workhouses — all who get relief, whether indoors or 
 outdoors, as well as those who get neither — and including Eng- 
 land only, without reference to Scotland or Ireland, after enum- 
 erating the actual figures upon which his estimates are based, 
 he sums up the case as follows: 
 
 This brings my total to 3,000,000, or, to put It roughly, to one-tenth of th« 
 population. 
 
 According to Lord Brabazon and Mr. Samuel Smith, between two and 
 three millions of our population are always pauperized and degraded. 
 
 Mr. Chamberlain says — 
 
 I am still quoting from Mr. Booth's book — 
 
 there Is " a population equal to that of the metropolis " — that Is, between tour 
 and five million— "which has remained constantly in a state of abject desti- 
 tution and misery." Mr. Gifan Is more moderate. The submerged class, 
 according to him, comprises 1 in 5 of manual laborers, or 6 In 100 of the popu- 
 lation. Mr. Gifln does not add the third mllllou which Is living on the 
 border line. 
 
 Between Mr. Chamberlain's four millions and a half and Mr. 
 Giffln's one million eight hundred thousand, Gen. Booth says he 
 is content to take three millions as representing the total num- 
 bers of the destitute. He continues: 
 
 DarkestEnglandmay be said, then, to have a population about equal to 
 that of Scotland. Three million men, women, and children— a vast despair- 
 ing multitude. In a cond Itlon nominally free but really enslaved— these It Is 
 whom we have to save. 
 
 It is a large order. England emancipated her negroes sixty years ago at 
 a cost of £40,000,000 sterling, and has never ceased boasting about it since. 
 But at our owif doors, from Plymouth to Peterhead, stretches this waste 
 continent of humanity— three million human beings who are enslaveJT— 
 some of them to taskmasters as merciless as any West Indian overseer, all 
 of them in destitution and despair. 
 
 Is anything to be done with them? Can anything be done lor them? Or 
 Is this million-headed mass to be regarded as offering a problem as insolu- 
 ble as that of the London sewage, which, feculent and festering, swings 
 heavily up and down the basin of the Tliames with the ebb and flow of the 
 tide. 
 
239 
 
 In a recent publication entitled Massefs and Classes, a review 
 of social and industrial life in England, the author, Henry Tuck- 
 ley, quotes Canon Blackley, of the Church of England, as saying 
 that: 
 
 The proportions wUch pauperism attained among the old were not easily 
 ascertained, but as the clergyman ot a large parish he had examined the reg- 
 isters of death in his charge, and had found that of those parishioners who 
 in eleven years had died over 60 years of age, 37 per cent had died In the 
 receipt of pauper relief. Moreover, at his request, seventy or eighty other 
 clergymen had made similar Inquiries, and their returns placed the propor- 
 tion at 45 per cent. These returns related to all classes all over England, 
 and If the number of those who provided for themselves were deducted, what 
 lesson did we learn but the horrible lesson that, roughly speaking, half our 
 working people. If they reached 60 years of age, were doomed to die as pau- 
 pers. 
 
 The same author quotes Mr. Joseph Chamberlain as stating at 
 
 a public meeting in England that — 
 
 at the present time, of the working classes, one in two, If he reaches the age 
 of 60, is almost certain to come upon the poor law for his subsistence. 
 
 Mr. Chamberlain continues: 
 
 It may well be that some of these deserve thetr fate; they may have been 
 brought to It by Intemperance or misconduct of some kind or another. But 
 nobody will persuade me that that is true of all of them [cheers], or even of 
 the larger portion of them. It Is Impossible that one out of two of the in- 
 dustrial population of this Kingdom have done anything to deserve the fate 
 which under existing circumstances is inevitably in store for them. [Cheers.] 
 
 Now, Mr. President, what American heart can fail to be moved 
 by such descriptions of the conditions under which an enormous 
 number of the people of England live? We look in vain f,or the 
 sturdy yeomanry with whom song and story have made us famil- 
 iar. Instead, we find great estates reserved for game, or placed 
 under pasture, while the millions who might make a living on 
 the land are starving. 
 
 CONDITIONS OF CHILD LABOR IN THE HOME OF THE GOLD STANDARD. 
 
 What American can have patience with the laudations h e hears 
 of the riches of Great Britain, when he knows that parents are 
 compelled to force their children of tender years to hard and 
 dreary labor in order that the family taken altogether may eke 
 out a bare existence. Great numbers of little boys and girls, the 
 future men and women of Great Britain, are wearing out their 
 young lives in order that the nation maybe called rich, and may 
 be held up to the admiring gaze of the people of the United States. 
 
 785 ' 
 
240 
 
 In an able work upon The Wages Question, referring to the 
 conditions of child-labor in England, Gen. Francis A. Walker 
 says: 
 
 We know that mill owners are harassed with applications from their 
 hands to take children into employment on almost any terms, and that the 
 consciences of employers have required to he reenf orced by the sternest pro- 
 hibitions and penalties of the law to save children 10, 7, or 4 years old from 
 the horrors of " sweating dens " and crowded factories, since the more mis- 
 erable the parents' condition, the greater becomes the pressure on them to 
 crowd their children somehow, somewhere, into service; the scantier the re- 
 muneration of their present employment, the less becomes their ability to 
 secure promising openings or to obtain favor from outside for the better 
 disposition of their offspring. Once In the mill, we know how little chance 
 there is of the children afterwards taking up for themselves another way of 
 life. 
 
 We know, too, that in the agricultural districts of England gangs of chil- 
 dren of all ages, from 16 down to 10, or even 5 years, have been formed 
 and driven from farm to farm, an^ from parish to parish, to work all day 
 under strange overseers and to sleep at night In barns huddled all together, 
 without distinction of sex. (Page 201.) 
 
 And he adds: 
 
 So late as 1870, children were employed in the brickyards of England, 
 under strange task masters, at SJ years of age. Account is given us, sicken- 
 ing tn Its details, of a boy weighing 52 pounds carrying on his head a load of 
 clay weighing 43 pounds 7 miles a day, and walking another 7 to the place 
 where his burden was to be assumed.— ?%« Wages Question, page 202. 
 
 Quoting from the reports of some English Government in- 
 spectors, the same author says: 
 
 Speaking alike of the weaving sheds of the cotton districts and of the 
 woolen districts. Dr. Bridges and Mr. Holmes, in their report to the local 
 government board, in 1873, say : " The work Is done in the great maj ority of 
 cases by women; a considerable portion of these are married, and the prac- 
 tice of working until the last stage of pregnancy and of returning to work 
 within a month, sometimes within a fortnight, or even a week , of childbirth, is 
 as common in the West Eidlug (of York) as in Lancashire." An old factory 
 surgeon says: "I regard the mother's return to the mill as almost a sen- 
 tence of death to the child." It is also a fruitful source of permanent injury 
 to the mother herself.— rA« Viages Question, page 52. 
 
 What a picture for the instruction of the American working 
 classes, whose duty it becomes to see that the creditor classes 
 of their own country do not exploit them with a gold standard 
 as the working classes of Great Britain are exploited by the 
 creditor classes of that country. 
 
 John Ruskin well understood the conditions of his country- 
 men, with regard to the distribution of wealth, when he said: 
 
 Though England is deafened with spinning-wheels, her people have not 
 clothes; though she Is black with the diijglng of fuel, they die of cold; and 
 though she has sold her soul for grain, they die of hunger. 
 785 
 
241 
 
 And the great heart of Mrs. Browning — moved by the sight 
 of hundreds of thousands of little hands prematurely set to labor 
 to aid in piling up the riches which enable the American ad- 
 mirers of the gold standard to state that Great Britain is a rich 
 nation — what does it say? Hear the pathetic appeal of a woman 
 to the stony hearts of the classes for whose benefit those riches 
 are accumulated: 
 
 Do ye hear the ohlldren weeping, O, my brothers, 
 
 Ere the sorrow comes with years? 
 They are leaning their young heads against their mothers, 
 
 And that can not stop their tears. 
 The young lambs are bleating In the meadowsi 
 
 The young birds are chirping in the nest, 
 Thle young lawtts are playing with the shadows; 
 
 The young flowers are blowing towards the West— 
 Btit the young, young Children, O, my brothers, 
 
 They are weeping bitterly; 
 They are weeping In J;he playtime of the others, 
 
 In the country of the free. 
 
 The riches, Mr. President, that are built up on the foundation 
 of children's tears may excite the admiration of those who are 
 thoughtless enough to look at ends without regarding means; 
 but the policies that- permit it, or that-render it necessary, are 
 not policies to be held up to the emulation of a free and inde- 
 pendent people who do not propose to be enslaved, whether by 
 law or by conditions having equal force with law. The people 
 of this Republic will be on their guard against a system which 
 renders necessary a sacrifice of the great body of the people, not 
 merely men and women, but little, helpless children — the men 
 and women of the future— in order that the nation which toler- 
 ates it may pass for a rich nation, and be held up to the world 
 as the exemplar of a perfect civilization. 
 
 THB BATTI/B OF WATERLOO. 
 
 At the demand of the creditor classes the gold standard was 
 
 adopted in England after the Napoleonic wars, in order that the 
 
 war debt, a large portion of which was incurred in paper, might 
 
 be paid in gold. In his Financial History Of England, Mr. 
 
 Doubleday states his belief that for a portion of the war period 
 
 the pound note with which the public securities of Great Britain 
 
 were bought was not worth in specie over 7 or 8 shillings in the 
 
 pound — about 33 to 38 per cent. 
 785 16 
 
242 
 
 The debt being afterward by law made payable, pound for 
 pound, in gold, it is obvious that the bondholders of Great 
 Britain,then mulcted the people of that country, as, at a later 
 period, the public creditors of the United States mulcted the 
 people of this country. The English people supposed that they 
 had long since paid the expenses of the struggle with Napoleon, 
 but, by the annual increase in the value of the pound sterling, 
 that struggle is costing them more and more as the yea^s go by. 
 Although the war is over so far as concerns the destruction of 
 men in uniform and on the battle-field, yet their destruction 
 continues loithout uniform, and without the formidable formali- 
 ties of battle-lines. Although three-fourths of a century have 
 ela,psed since that war terminated, the conflict still rages. 
 
 The bonds that were issued to pay the expenses of those wars 
 are increasing in value at the same rate at which gold increases, 
 which, for the past twenty years, is at the rate of 21 per cent 
 per annum. Napoleon has been dead for two generations. In 
 his will, by formal words and solemn injunction, he bequeathed 
 to France thediity of avenging upon England the untimely death 
 to which it had consigned him. He might have saved himself 
 the trouble. He has found avengers whom he little suspected 
 among the Englishmen themselves. 
 
 The p'ublic creditors, by the increasing exactions which from 
 year to year they are making through the operation of the gold 
 standard in the payments of interest on the war debt, have al- 
 ready by me.ins of idleness and starvation brought to ruin, deso- 
 lation, and death millions of such brave men as defeated Na- 
 poleon. The masses of the people oil great Britain, though iible 
 to cope with an open foe on a field in which they recognized the 
 enemy, have not been on their guard against the insidious attacks 
 of the crafty adversary who presented himself in the guise of a 
 compatriot, who under the authority of law by a subtle manipu- 
 lation of money has continued the slaughter. 
 
 The creditor classes of Great Britain having, by their merci- 
 less exploitation, reduced their artisan classes, through the in- 
 strumentality of the gold standard, to the helpless and pitiable 
 state which their own writers describe, have finally established 
 such conditions in that country as render it impossible for them 
 
243 
 
 longer to make what ttey deem sufficient return on their money. 
 Hence they seek abroad the in vestments and profits that, were 
 their wisdom as great as thei' cupidity, they would be able to 
 find at home. In the search for foreign investments they nat- 
 urally seek as most desirable the country in which consumption 
 is greatest. No country in the world can, in the earnings or ex- 
 penditures of its people, compare with the United States. Our 
 people consume fully three times as much. as the average con- 
 sumption per capita of the people of Europe. 
 
 OTJB COUNTBT DOBS HOT NEED TOBBIGN MONEY. 
 
 / ■ ' 
 
 Under a proper monetary condition the people of this country 
 
 would not need foreign money. We should be able to attend to 
 
 our own business and to maintain justice and equity among our 
 
 • own people without asking permission from foreign countries. 
 
 The British Government is determined to treat the United 
 
 rates as an annex to Lombard street; and its efforts are spc- 
 o ded by a few persons in this country who delight to be knowu 
 rather as citizens of the world than of the United States. The 
 masses of the people of this country will not permit a perpetual 
 injury to be inflicted on them simply because the Government, or 
 governing classes, of some other country are so indifferent to the 
 welfare of their own people as to maintain a shrinking money 
 standard, which constantly relegates large numbers to idleness. 
 
 The people of the United States are too brave to be enslaved 
 by military power. . The combined armies of the earth, with all 
 the powder, shot, and shell they could bring to bear, would be 
 impotent to reduce to a condition of servitude the fearless and 
 undaunted people of this country. But, Mr. President, many a 
 man who can encounter even death itself with a smile, can not 
 face ahungryfamily; and apeople that never could beconquered 
 by a foreign foe may be reduced to abject submission by a few 
 foreigners, cooperating with a few of their own people, through 
 the subtle and clandestine manipulation of the volume of money. 
 Without financial independence, political independence is butan 
 empty name. \ 
 
 If the creditor classes of Great Britain can have their way 
 now in establishing the financial measures of this country, and 
 can dictate, as they are dictating and shaping, the national pol- 
 
 785 
 
244 
 
 icies of this Republic, the sufferings and heroism of our fore- 
 fathers have been in vain. What does independence mean? 
 Hear Webster's definition of it: 
 
 Absence o* dependence; ezempition from reliance on otters or control 
 from them; self-subsistence or maintenance; direction of one's own affairs 
 •without Interference. 
 
 These are all self-evident significations of the term. But it is 
 said that independence means freedom to make our own Iwws 
 without interference from others. Laws about-what? Does inde- 
 pendence mean the right to make laws to prevent Great Britain 
 from sending her troops here to reduce this country to posses- 
 sion? By no means. What would she do with the country? - 
 Of what use would possession be to her unless she could tax us 
 or compel us to pay tribute? That question was settled some- 
 time ago. But why should Great Britain put herself to the 
 trouble and expense now of sending troops here to reduce this 
 country to possession when she can secure all the tribute she 
 wishes by voluntary acts of Congress — which contract our money 
 volume, acts by which the value of gold will be enormously en- 
 hanced? What more can she have or wish to ha,ve, than the right 
 to tax the labor of this country? That right she has already in a 
 measure secured — that is to say, her creditor blasses have se- 
 cured, by their success in compelling our people to render trib- 
 ute to tnem through the ingenious and unsuspecting operation 
 of our own laws, first, by the demonetization of one of the money 
 metals in which our debts to Great Britain were payable, and, 
 secondly, when Congress sought to correct that error, then, by 
 the violent and little less than criminal interposition of the ex- 
 ecutive officers of our Government in behalf of the bondholder, 
 to his unfair advantage and against the interests of the produc- 
 ing masses of this country. 
 
 The governing classes of Great Britain are much better off to 
 have this country take the trouble of passing its own laws in so 
 far as concern the police regulations and the maintenance of in- 
 ternal order, while permitting those classes to reap all the bene- 
 fits to come from the possession of what are tantamount to large 
 colonial dependencies, teeming with an active, enterprising, 
 and vigilant population. They get $80,000,000 a year in inter- 
 est, and on other accounts, from the great dependency India; 
 
245 
 
 they get probably thrice that much from the United States, 
 which, if the pending measure become a law, will displace India 
 as the principal dependency of Great Britain, though out of re- 
 gard for our creditors and foreign rulers we will not give them 
 the trouble to appoint agents to collect taxes and tribute. We 
 will ourselves see that they are paid. 
 
 Owing to the poverty of the people of India it is impossible 
 that much more can be extorted from them in the form of tribute 
 to the creditor classes of Great Britain; but so far as concerns 
 the people of the United States, their very activity, energy, in- 
 genuity, and enterprise form the groundwork of the hope of Great 
 Britain and her creditor classes that here they may find a field 
 worthy, of their effort. They are intelligent enough to know 
 that any form of tribute exacted from the people of this country 
 jnust be in clandestine form; for while the people of India are 
 unable to defend themselves the people of the United States 
 have but clearly to perceive the evil in order instantly to apply 
 a remedy. 
 
 Hence the necessity of calling gold a "standard," so that all 
 propositions to increase the volume of money in accordance with 
 population may be met by the objection that there is no more 
 of the " standard " with which to niake possible an increase, 
 and that however much a fall of prices may be regretted it is 
 Unavoidable! 
 
 They keep out of view, and out of reach of the people, the truth 
 as to a standard, which is, that it is not a material but a quantity. 
 To them, gold commends itself because its limitation of quan- 
 tity is extreme. With a gold standard it is impossible to have 
 much money — impossible to have such increase as to keep cred- 
 itors from looting the producers of the world. 
 
 The London Daily News, in its issue of May 10, 1892, speaking 
 of bimetallism editorially, says: 
 
 " For Great Britain, preeminently the creditor among all na- 
 tions, to adopt it, wouldbemidsummer madness, indeed." "Bi- 
 metallism," it adds, " would shake to its foundations the finan- 
 cial fame and supremacy of Great Britain." Well, Mr, Presi- 
 dent, if the installation of justice would have the effect of shak- 
 ing to its foundation the financial fame and supremacy of Great 
 Britain, it only shows how far removed from the true standard 
 
 785 
 
246 
 
 that fame and supremacy are. The " supremacy " to which the 
 Daily News refers is the power of the creditor to extort from his 
 debtor more than is called for by the contract. 
 
 There can be no doubt that the restoration of silver to its full 
 function as money of .ultimate payment would tend to' lessen that 
 power, would tend to retard the further appreciation of gold. 
 But that tendency would not deprive the creditor of anything 
 to which he is rightfully entitled. It would simply render it less 
 easy for him to commit a fraud; less easy to compel the debtor 
 to return more than was 'agreed upon. The argument that Eng- 
 land's financial supremacy would be destroyed by the free coin- 
 age of silver may be a justifiable argument to present to the 
 moneyed classes of Great Britain, but it is incomprehensible how 
 it can be presented to the people of the United States. 
 
 EFI'ECT OF THB GOLD STANDARD ON IBELAND. 
 
 The effect which that standard is having upon the people of 
 Ireland is well summed up by Archbishop Walsh, of Dublin. In 
 an interview originally printed in the Dublin Freeman's Journal, 
 and since published in a pamphlet entitled Bimetallism and 
 Monometallism, Archbishop Walsh says; 
 
 Here Is where the difficulty comes in. Ca all such cases the farmer is un- 
 der the obligation of paying, year after year, an amount specified in pounds 
 shillings and pence. But then this rent, or other annual-payment which he 
 has to make, though it is thus specified in amount, is really Increasing, that 
 is to say, becoming more burdensome from year to year. 
 
 To bring the matter to a point, it comes to this, that year after year more 
 corn, more hay, more cattle, have to be sold by the farmer to enable him to 
 get the gold which is required to meet that annual payment. 
 
 But, of ooutse, If he has not more corn, more hay, or more cattle to sell, 
 he can not, out of what he has to sell, get enough to enable him to make 
 that payment. 
 
 And, plainly, the longer the term for which his ''flxea " annual payment 
 has to be made, the more disastrous must be the results to him. 
 
 As for the tenant-purchaser, he probably thinks that, after the extra pres- 
 sure of the first few years, he may look back to' easy times for the rest of his 
 lite. He little knows what is before him.- If things go on as they are, it will 
 be harder for him ten or twelve years hence to pay iB40 a year than It would 
 be for him to pay £50 a year now. But of all this he knows nothing. How 
 could hef His only idea is that a pound Is always a pound, a sovereign is 
 always a sovereign. So in the belief that the yearly payment, when it is 
 reduced to £40, will be well within his reach, he puts his head Into the halter. 
 
 Archbishop Walsh continues: 
 
 This aspect of the case is brotight out forcibly also by the Belgian econo- 
 mist, Emile de Laveleye: 
 "This consideration," he says, "especially attects Ireland. * « * 
 785 
 
247 
 
 "If you can let tenants hold their lauds for nothing, It would be all right; 
 but If they have to pay a fair rental, either to landlords or to the Govern- 
 ment, or to purchase at a fair price, they must then sell ^produce so as to 
 procure the amount requisite for purchase or for a fair rent. 
 
 "If the price of this produce is very low, and Is still falling lower, then the 
 tenants will be Incapable of raising the required sum, and it will be neces- 
 sary to evict them * * * or .to cancel their debts. 
 
 "The supply of gold being wholly insufUcient, a fall in prices must ensue; 
 hence the ruin of Irish cultivators in spite of home rute,^' 
 
 THE POSITION Ol' THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT. 
 
 Last summer the British Government knew that a great dis- 
 cussion was soon to take place in this countrji upon the silver 
 question; having observed the published statements that an ex- 
 traordinary session of Congress was to be called for the purpose 
 of debating it. Knowing the strength of the free-coinage sen- 
 timent among the masses of the people of this, country, Great 
 Britain deliberately threw down the gauntlet of defiance to the 
 United States by closing the mints of India to free coinage. 
 And, assuming that when Great Britain spoke all discussion on 
 the part of other nations was closed, we had the assurance of 
 the chancellor of the British exchequer, in Parliament on the 
 8th of August last, that the prder in council had forever destroyed 
 bimetallism! This statement he mad© in a tone of supreme tri- 
 umph and cynical satisfaction. 
 
 Where was the United States GovBrnmen,t during this time— 
 the United States, of all the nations of the earth tha most in- 
 terested? The position of our Chief Magistrate on the question 
 is well illustrated by the line from Emerson: 
 ' I am the doubter and the doubt, 
 but in the words of the supplemental line, the Genius of the Re- 
 public admonishes the President as well as Great Britain: 
 They reckon ill who leave me out. 
 
 The people of the United States, Mr. President, do not pro- 
 pose to be left out of the consideration as to what shall be the 
 material or the quantity of their money. Great Britain may 
 have what material and what quantity of money it pleases, and 
 may extort usury in compound or in quintuplicated form from 
 such nations as India and Egypt, whose people are the remnants 
 of exhausted races and have not the genius or the strength to 
 defend themselves. But we are not yet a dependency of Great 
 
 785 
 
248 
 
 Britain, and our President is not a governor-general who can 
 issue orders in council. The people of this country propose 
 to regulate their own affairs, without orders in council or orders 
 from Downing street. 
 
 Instead pf calliog Congress together for the purpose of adopt- 
 ing the true American policy of an instant remonetization of 
 silver, as the answer of the United States to the order of the 
 British Government, the Executive of the Republic is found to 
 he the- head and accepted chief of a new party, composed of mem- 
 bers of the two leading political parties, who find no inspiration 
 in the Declaration of Independence, and no authority in the Con- 
 stitution of the United States, by which our people, after a cen- 
 ' tury of self-government, can extricate themselves from the net 
 which the so-called and self-styled " great creditor nation " and 
 " great rich nation " has set for mankind. 
 
 If we are to be governed by Lombard street and by British 
 policies, if we are really to be controlled by the English govern- 
 ing classes, and if they are to decide upon what is to be taken 
 as money in the United States, would it not be well, in order to 
 save them trouble, for us to declare by statute law that the unit 
 of money hereafter in this country shall be the pound sterling? 
 In that way the English creditors will be saved a great deal of 
 trouble in making their computations. 
 
 Is there not some danger, if we do not adopt this plan and accept 
 their unit of money as owr unit of money, that we shall be placed 
 alongside Mexico and India and the Argentine? Had we not 
 better, while it is yet time, and before the Constitution of the 
 United States has become obsolete, as it will become under the 
 operation of the gold standard, adopt this plan by a constitu- 
 tional amendment, or (which will be equally binding) by a de- 
 cree of the Chief Magistrate? ' 
 
 For the first time in our national history we find ourselves put- 
 ting into execution, through officers elected by the people of the 
 United States, plans formulated in Downing street. Verily, 
 Mr. President, time has its revenges. 
 
 Inasmuch as the policies of Great Britain are so much better 
 than ours — so much better than those planned for us by Wash- 
 ington, Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, and the others whom we 
 
249 
 
 have evidently been mistaken in regarding as great men — it is 
 clear that it was the error of the centuries that these colonies 
 ever became independent States. Who were Washington, Ham- 
 ilton, and Jefferson — those arch-enemies of Great Britain — ^that 
 they should be named on the same day or in the same century 
 with Presidents who offer up " daily prayers " that the delay oc- 
 casioned by the Senate in carrying into execution plans for gold 
 monometallism, rejected by the founders of our Government, may 
 not bring discredit and dishonor to the' United States? 
 
 Who, especially, was Washington that he should bid his coun- 
 trymen beware of entangling alliances with foreign nations on 
 the ground that a republic could not expect favors from mon- 
 archies? We have learnt in these modern days that it is better 
 to make alliances with foreign nations — monetary alliances— and 
 to keep advising them daily that we intend, to be "honest" and 
 to pay our debts in the "honest" money which they designate 
 after they have " cornered" the material, which, as they assert, 
 is the only "honest" money material. Who were the framers 
 of our Constitution that they should impose on their country- 
 men unsound, unstable, and dishonest currenojy composed of 
 gold and silver, instead of gold alone? 
 
 These men, whose foresight, sagacity, and political genius 
 have been regarded as among the marvels of all time, are rele- 
 gated to the rear by modern statesmen who, in the words of the 
 present President of the United States, wish our currency "to 
 be of such character as will demonstrate abroad our wisdom and 
 gpod faith, thus placing us upon a firm foundation and credit 
 among the nations of the earth." Immbrtal shade of Washing- 
 ton! Would it not be better to deiHonstrate this at tome?' What 
 has "abroad" got to do with us? If it be justice that is sought, is 
 there to be no justice at home? Why " abroad?" Ido notwish to 
 exaggerate, but I suppose it to be universally conceded, both 
 abroad and at home, that the United States is not merely the 
 greatest nation now of the earth, but the greatest that ever has 
 been of the earth, and that it gives promise of becoming, not 
 smaller, but greater, with the advance of time. 
 
 Is it necessary for the splendid citizenship of this mighty 
 Republic, the possession and inheritance of 70,000,000 of alert 
 
250 
 
 and aspiring people, to be vindicated by daily protestations of 
 honesty to a few usurers who have been paid far more than their 
 contract called for, and more than was agreed to bs paid them? 
 Such an idea disparages citizenship of a free Republic, and sets 
 up as the model and standard of perfect political wisdom the 
 relation held by subjects to monarchs, more wise than those they 
 govern, monarchs who know what they are about when they 
 prescribe the gold standard as the unfailing remedy for all over- 
 weening aspirations on the part of the masses of the people. 
 
 THE Sia,VEB QUESTION ARISES, OtTT OF THE CLAIMS OP THE HOLDEKS OT 
 UNITED STATES BONDS.— AKE THOSE CLAIMS JUST? 
 
 All discussions of the silver question have arisen out of ' the 
 claims of the holders of United States bonds to be paid the prin- 
 cipal and interest of the bonds in gold, yet there is no debt of 
 .the United States that by the will or consent of the people or of 
 Congress was ever made payable in that metal. Where, by the 
 terms of the bonds, any mode of payment was prescribed, the 
 words used were either "lawful monBy," which would mean coin 
 or paper, or else the word " coin," which would mean either 
 gold or silver. • The word "gold" was never used. 
 
 The act of February 25, 1862, authorizing the issue of $500,- 
 000,000 of 5-20 bonds provided that the principal of the bonds 
 should be payable simply in "dollars," making no mention 6f 
 the material of which the dollars should be composed. ' It pro- 
 vided specially, however, that the interest should be payable in 
 coin. It is clear, therefore, that the act contemplated the pay- 
 ment of the principal in lawful money of the United States, 
 whatever that money may be. Having provided that the inter- 
 est should be paid in: coin the act set apaijtthe coin receipts from 
 customs for that purpose. 
 
 The act of March 3, 1863, under which the 10-40 bonds were 
 issued, makes the principal and interest of those bonds payable 
 in coin. 
 
 That no portion of the bonds of the United States, except the 
 interest, was by the original law authorized to be paid in any- 
 thing but lawful money was attested by the honorable Senator 
 from Ohio [Mr. Sherman] in a letter written by him .to the 
 Hon. A. Mann on the 20th of March, 1868, Mr. Mann being a 
 
 785 
 
 / 
 
251 
 
 resident of Brooklyn, N. Y. Under that aate, as appears by 
 various printed publications, the honorable Senator wrote a let- 
 ter of which the following is a Copy: 
 
 Dear Sib: I was pleased to receive your letter. My personal Interests are 
 the same as yours, but, like you, I do not Intend to be Influenced by ttem. 
 My construction of the law is the result ot careful examination, and I f eql 
 quite sure that an impartial court would confirm it if the case 'could be tried 
 before a court. I send you my views as fully stated In a speech.. Your idea 
 Is that we propose to repudiate or violate a promise when we offer to redeem 
 the principal in legal tender. / 
 
 I think the bondli older violates his promise when he refuses to take the 
 same kind of mon!ey he pays for the bonds. If the case is to be tested by law, 
 I am right. If it is to be tested by Jay Cooke's advertisement, I am wrong. 
 I hate repudiation or anything like it; but we ought not to be deterred from 
 doing what is right by the fear of undeserved epithets. If under the law 
 as it stands the holders of the 5-20's can only be paid in gold, then we are re- 
 pudiators If we propose to pay otherwise. If the bondhpl,der can legally de- 
 mand only the kind of money he paldr, then Ae is a repudiator and extortioner 
 to demand money more valuable, than he gave. 
 Yours truly, 
 
 JOHN SHEBMAN. 
 
 These were tie views, and correct views, of the honorable 
 Senator from Ohio at the time this letter was written. There 
 is no doubt, however, that upon the passage in 1869 of the act 
 to strengthen the public credit, and in 1870 of the act providing 
 for the refunding of the national debt, the United Stated States 
 waived and abandoned the right to pay in lawful money and 
 guaranteed payment of both principal and interest of the bonds 
 
 THE ACT TO STBENGTHBN THE PUBLIC CREDIT GUARANTEED PAYMENT IN 
 ' COIN. ^ 
 
 At the time of the passage of the act of 1869 it is clear that no 
 
 one had any idea that the bonds were payable in gold alone. As 
 
 the act is very brief, I will read it: 
 
 Be it enacted, etc.. That In order to remove any doubt as to the purpose of 
 the Government to discharge all just obligations to the public creditors, and 
 to settle conflicting questions and interpretations of the laws by virtue of 
 which such obligations have been contracted, it is hereby provided and de- 
 clared that the faith of the United States Is solemnly pledged to the payment 
 in coin or Its equivalent of all the obligations ot the United States not bear- 
 ing interest, known as United States notes, and of all the Interest-bearing , 
 obligations of the United States, except In cases where the law authorizing 
 the issue of any such obligatibn.has expressly provided that the same hiay 
 be paid in lawful money or other cilrrenoy than gold and silver. But none of 
 said interest-bearing obligations not already due shall be redeemed or paid 
 before maturity unless at such time United States notes shall be convertible 
 Into coin at the option of the holder, or unless at such time bonds of the 
 United States bearing a lower rate of interest than the bonds to be redeemed 
 785 
 
252 
 
 can be sold at par In coin. And tlie Uniteil States also solemnly pledges its 
 faith to make provision at the earliest praotloable period for the redemption 
 of the United States notes In coin. 
 
 Any one who can read the English language can clearly per- 
 ceive that this act makes no promise of payment in gold. On the 
 cosntrary, it specifically recogijizeB the fact that the "coin"' prom- 
 ised in the former act is coin of either gold or silver. The idea 
 with which the act was passed was tt^at all the obligations of the 
 United States were to be paid, not as was at first agreed, in 
 "lawful money," but, as this act now stated, "in coin or its 
 equivalent," with the single exception of obligations as to which 
 it had been "expressly provided that the same be paid in lawful 
 moneyor other currency than gold or silver." 
 
 THE RErUNDING ACT riXED THE STANDARb OP THE COIN, 
 
 The act of July 14, 1870, providing for the refunding of the nar 
 tional debt, authorized the Secretary of the Treasury to issue 
 certaih classes of bonds therein named to the amount of alto- 
 gether some $1,500,000,000, "redeemable in coin of the present 
 standard uaZwe." Those bonds when issued had printed upon 
 them the following statement: 
 
 This bond is issued in accordance with the provisions of an act of Con- 
 gress entitled "An act to authorize the refunding of the national debt," ap- 
 proved July 14, 1870, amended by an act approved January 20, 1871, and Is re- 
 deemable at the Treasury of the United States after [stating such number 
 of years as applied to the various descriptions of bonds whose issue was 
 provided for in the act] in coin of the standard value of t/ie United States on 
 said July 14, 1870. 
 
 On the date of the passage of this act of, July 14, 1870, the 
 standard coin of the United States consisted of a gold dollar and 
 a silver dollar; the gold dollar containing 25.8 grains of stand- 
 ard gold and the silver dollar 412| grains of standard silver. 
 
 No change which the Government might afterward make in 
 the standard or character of its coins could deprive the cred- 
 itors of the right in this act guaranteed to them of payment in 
 coin of the then standard valve. But neither could any execu- 
 tive officer lawfully deprive the people of the United States ot the 
 option in this act secured to them, to pay in coin of either gold 
 or silver of the then standard value. ' 
 
 If the act was good to guard the creditor against any subse- 
 quent alteration in the standard of value by which the true 
 
 785 
 
253 
 
 value of th.e debt could be reduced, it was equally good to se- 
 cure the debtors — the people of the United States — against any 
 alteration in the standard dt value by which the true value of 
 the debt might be increased. Whatever changes might be 
 made in one direction or the othei*, the rights of the parties 
 were now specifically fixed and determined in writing, even 
 though at a grievous loss to the debtors. If after the enactment 
 of this law the United States should see fit to demonetize both 
 gold and silver and resort to paper money or to coins of platinum, 
 or other metal, still the rights of these creditors held good to 
 be paid in coins of either gold or silver and not in paper money 
 or platinum. 
 
 Should the United States, before the maturity of those bonds, 
 provide a new coinage of gold and silver in which the dollar 
 should consist of but one-half oi; three-fourths the number of 
 grains of pure metal of either gold or silver contained in, the 
 standard coins of July 14, 1870, then t(ie creditors could rightly 
 decline to receive such coins in payment, and their legal rights 
 could not be overridden or prejudiced by any such alteration of 
 the standard. So, on the other hand, if the laws of the United 
 States should later provide for a coinage system in which the 
 dollar of gold should contain a larger number of grains of gold 
 than that"which was the standard of July 14, 1870, or the dollar 
 of silver a larger number of grains of silver, ho injustice could 
 be done the creditors by enforcing the bond according to its 
 terms requiring payment in the smaller dollar, which was the 
 standard on July 14, 1870; and it would be then, aa it always has 
 been, the imperative duty of the executive ofBcers of the Gov- 
 ernment to carry out the law according to its plain and unmis- 
 takable terms. 
 
 After the passage of the demonetization act by the United 
 States, gold and silver bullion, as was foreseen by the creditors, 
 began to part company. In this process no change took place 
 in the purchasing power of silver. The change that took place, 
 as has been demonstrated time and again, was in gold, which 
 was rapidly appreciating in value by reason of the enormously 
 increased demand for it. All the statistics of ^he subject, as 
 printed from day to day and month to month by the gold-stapd- 
 
 785 
 
254 
 
 ard papers themselves, go to demonstrate that the changfe that 
 was taking place was a change in the value of gold, while the 
 purchasing power of silver — not merely of the silver dollar, but 
 of silver bullion — remained related to commodities substantially 
 as it, in common with the gold dollar, had been related to com- 
 modities before the act of demonetization. 
 
 But the gold dollar, being taken as the standard, and silver 
 and everything else being measured in terms of gfold, the change, 
 as it progressed, and as gold bscame more and more valuable, 
 had the appearance of a change in the value of silver bullion, 
 which was said to have fallen. Had the bondholders, therefore, 
 received their pay not even in silver dollars, but merely in sil- 
 ver bullion, they would have received all the purchasing power 
 that the gold dollar in common with the silver dollar had at the 
 time the act of 1870 was passed, which provided for payment in , 
 coin of either metal, and all that the' gold dollar had when they 
 bought the bonds. They would have received even more, as the 
 proofs are that silver not only had not lost any power over com- 
 modities but hfid slightly gained, owing to the want of sufBcient 
 ' money-volume to maintain the exchanges of the world. This 
 being the case, I ask any gold-standard Senator to answer how 
 the payment of the bonds, principal or interest, in silver (had 
 the payment been so made) could have inflicted the slightest 
 possible injury on the'public creditors? 
 
 The gold dollar had in 1870 a purchasing power of say 100 per 
 cent. The silver dollar had precisely the same purchasing power; 
 it would buy precisely the same amount and number of commodi- 
 ties in general as would the gold dollar. The purchasing power 
 of silver bullion remains the same to-day, in relation to commod- 
 ities in general, that it was then, while the gold dollar has stead- 
 ily kept rising in its power over commodities, until to-day it has 
 a purchasing power substantially 50 per cent greater than ithad 
 in 1870, or 150 in 1893 to its 100 in 1870. 
 
 But this is no reason why the people of the United States, who 
 had contracted to pay only 100 per cent of purchasing power, as 
 that purchasing power stood in 1870, should to-day be paying, 
 or be bound hereafter to pay, 50 per cent more value than had 
 been agreed upon. 
 
 785 
 
255 
 
 The determination of the oE&cjrs of the United States there- 
 fore to pay the bonds in gold, added enormously and caUsalessly 
 to the just burden ot the debt. Had the bonds bsen paid, accord 
 ing both to the spirit and the letter of the contract, in either 
 gold or silver, as might have best suited the convenience of the 
 Treasury and the interests of the people, which were and are 
 the interests of justice, an enormous amount of money — an enor- 
 mous amount of wealth — would have been saved to the people of 
 this country. 
 
 Mr. STEWART. And they would have been out of debt. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada, Yes, they would have been entirely 
 out of debt. 
 
 Not merely saved in the amount wrongfully and unrighteously 
 paid out to the bondholders, but in the colossal sums which have 
 been needlessly lost to our people, especially our producers of 
 wheat, cotton, and other articles of export by reasoil of the un- 
 precedented fall in prices. 
 
 DOES THE HONOR OV THE GOVERNMENT REQUIRE THAT THE BONDS BE PAID 
 
 IN GOLD? 
 
 It is said that the honor of the Government would be tarnished 
 if it did not pay its obligations in gold; that its credit would be 
 destroyed, and that it would be ranked among the nations that 
 have repudiated their lawful obligations. 
 
 The honor of the United States, Mr. President, does not rest 
 upon the word of interested self-seekers and their casuisticalde- 
 fenders. It abides in the patriotism of the people who have 
 never consented to pay more than their honest debts merely to 
 receive, the questionable and interested plaudits of their credit- 
 ors. The idea that a debtor must pay more than he justly owes 
 in order that he may be on good terms with his creditor is an 
 idea worthy of the feudal ages, when men upon bended knees 
 swore homage to the lord of the manor. It is a piece of syco- 
 phancy and absurdity of which the people of this country and of 
 this age willnot be guilty. This Republic has never failed to 
 meet its indebtedness, and it is the only country in the world 
 that has never made default in the payment of its obligations. 
 The most powerful governments of Europe have made such de- 
 faults. , 
 
 [At this point the honorable Senator yielded to Mr. Stewart.] 
 
 785 
 
256 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Mr. President, there is hardly a na- 
 tion on earth except the United States that has not at some- 
 time paid its obligations or the interest on them in a money less 
 vaMable than that in which it agreed to pay. The people of 
 the tlnited States have scrupulously guarded their honor by a 
 faithful observance of every obligation, not only in the spirit, 
 but in the letter. But while the people have always maintained 
 their honor by observing justice, the officers whom they have 
 chosen to execute their law;s have joined hands with the cred- 
 itors of /the country in extorting from our citizens, under the 
 name of honor and honesty, more than the people had agreed to 
 pay. 
 
 In disregard and in open defiance of the law, these officials 
 have aided the public creditors to loot the taxpayers of the 
 country. For the executive officers to interpret an obligation 
 of the Uhited States in such a manner as to pay over to the 
 creditors of the country from the public funds a greater value 
 than the people contracted to pay, was a gross violation of the 
 instrument constituting the contract between the parties. 
 
 I do not charge that it was done through any want of desire to 
 do what was rigb t, but if done from zeal for the honor of the 
 country it was a most mistaken zep,l, and was not authorized or 
 warranted by the law. So far as concerns the essential fact, 
 which is the loss suffered by the people of this country, it has 
 had precisely the sams effect as if those officials had deliberately 
 altered the words of the bonds, so that instpad of agreeing to pay 
 $1,000 the United States had agrepd to pay such amount greater 
 than $1,000 as gold has appreciated in value — or about 2i per cent 
 per annum for the past twenty years. Their reward for this 
 consists of the loud, interested, r.nd obnoxious praises of the 
 cunning schemers who have used the officials of the United 
 States as tools to assist them in plundering the public Treasury 
 under the plea that whit they were doing was honest, and that 
 the honor of the United States demanded it. 
 
 In the execution of laws for the payment of money, officials 
 must take cognizance not merely of the rights of the credit- . 
 ors, but the rights of the people. If the officials choose to act 
 as trustees for the creditors, they should not forget that they 
 
 78S 
 
' '257 
 
 were chosen as trustees and ag^ents of the people. The people 
 reserved to themselves the option of paying their dehts in either 
 gold or silver, for the very purpose of being protectsd against 
 any contingency, whether of legislation by foreign countries with 
 respect to either of those metals, or any combination of circum- 
 stances which might involve a change of conditions in the pro- 
 duction of the metals, or otherwise. 
 
 THB OPINION OF THE ATTOKNET-GBNBIlAli. 
 
 The position of the United States was very clearly stated by 
 Attorney-General Devens in 1877, in a letter replying to an in- 
 quiry of the then Secretary of the Treasury, now the honorable 
 Senator from Ohio [Mr. Sherman].- In order to show the f oundar 
 tion of the opinion of the Attorney-General, I will first read the 
 letter of inquiry of the Secretary of the Treasury: 
 
 Tbeasuby Dbpabtment, Oiticee or the Secretakt, 
 
 Washington, J). C, April 21, 1877. 
 Sib: I lieg leave to call your attention to, and ask your optnloniupon, the 
 following questions growing out of the refunding act of July 14, 1870, to wit: 
 Can I stipulate in the body 6t the 4 per cent bonds about to be issued that 
 they shall be redeemable In coin of the present standard value; that Is, the 
 standard value at the date of their Issue, or must it be, the date of the law? 
 
 I submit a statement prepared by the Hon. H. M. French, Assistant Secre- 
 tary, having reference to the laws. 
 
 It may become important to the public Interests to make the new bonds 
 payable in coin of the present standard, that Is, gold coin. Some doubts 
 have been expressed upon whether previous bonds Issued under acts passed 
 prior to 1873 are not legally payable in silver coin. This question may be- 
 come Important, as any doubt upon the legal terms of a public security af- 
 fects its value. 
 
 Very respectfully, 
 
 JOHN SHERMAN, 
 Hon. Chables Devens, Semetary. 
 
 Attorney- Seneral. 
 
 The reply of the Attorney-General was ag follows; 
 
 Depabtmbht of Justice, Washmgton, April ze, 1877. 
 
 Sib: In answer to your letter of the 21st instant requesting my opinion 
 upon the following question growing out of the refunding act of July 14, 
 1870, to wit, " Can I stipulate in the body of the 4 per cent bonds about to be 
 Issued that they shall be redeemable in coin of the present value, that is, the 
 standard value at the date of their issue, or must it be the date of the lawf" 
 1 have the honor to reply : ' 
 
 The act provldes-for the Issue ol bonds ''redeemable in coin of the present 
 standard value." The word "present" undoubtedly refers as a matter of 
 date to the time when the act was passed, and not to the time when the 
 bonds were thereafter Issued. It contemplated that a long period would 
 elapse before It would finally be carried Into iE;f[ect, and that changes In the 
 coinage of the country might occur during that period. 
 785 17 
 
258 
 
 Whatever changes In the coinage should, occur these bonds were, however, 
 to be redeemed in coin of the standard value as it existed at the date of the 
 act. By this provision the holder was guarded against any depreciation 
 that might take place in the value of the coin, and the Governihent would 
 not be oompelled.to pay the additional value should the coinage be appre- 
 ciated. All the bonds issued under the act were to stand alike, no matter 
 • what was the date when such bonds were issued. Bach was to be redeema- 
 ble in coin which was included in the authorized coinage of the country at 
 the date referred to, it being'of the standard value as it then existed. Since 
 the law was passed no change has taken place in the standard value of the 
 coin. It is understood that there has been a certain change in the coinage 
 of the country and that silver dollars have now ceased to exist practically 
 as coin. 
 
 It has been further provided by the statute of February 12th, 1873 (Revised 
 Statutes, sections 3585, 3586), that "The silver coins of the United States 
 shall be a legal tender at their nominal value for any amount not exceeding 
 $5 tu any one payment." , 
 
 Notwithstanding this practical change in the coinage of the country and 
 the passage of this act in regard to legal tenders, the form of bond to be 
 Issued by you should not be changed so far as the mode in which it is to be 
 redeemed is concerned. It was not intended that this should be varied ac- 
 cording to the changes which might be made in the coinage, because a defl- 
 nite rule was given by reference to the coin of a particular date. That which 
 will pay the bonds heretofore issued under this act will pay the bonds which 
 you may hereafter issue. 
 
 It can not be authoritatively said that the words '* Payable in coin " or 
 "Payable in gold" are equivalent to the words used by the statute. Evenif 
 this leaves open for discussion the question whether bonds issued under this 
 act are or are not redeemable in silver coin of the character and standard 
 whicn existed July 14, 1870, it is not a doubt which it is in your power to rem- 
 edy by the use of words in the bond other than those which this statute pro- 
 vides, t 
 
 While I comprehend the difficulty suggested in your letter and the con- 
 venience that there might be in removing any question upon this matter, I 
 am, therefore, of opinion that it would not be sate to issue the bonds, except 
 as redeemable in coin of the standard value of July 14, 1870. 
 Very respectfully, your obedient servant, 
 
 CHAS. DEVENS, Attorney- General. 
 Hon. John Sherman, 
 
 Secretary of the Treasury. 
 
 What did the Attorney-General mean when he said that it 
 would not be "safe" to issue the bonds, except as redeemable in 
 coin of the standard value of July 14, 1870? He surely meant, if 
 he meant anything, that the statute must be construed according 
 to its plain terms — and it is very clear that he considered that 
 theissue of bonds payable in gold would be a violation of the 
 statute. 
 
 With reference to the suggestion of the Secretary of the 
 Treasury that some doubts had been expressed as to whether 
 previous bonds issued under acts passed prior to 1873 were not 
 legally payable in silver coin, the opinion of the Attorney-Gen- 
 
 785 
 
259 
 
 eral wr.s that it was not a doubt which it was in the power of the 
 Secretary of the Treasury to remedy by the use of any other 
 words in the bond than those provided by this statute. His 
 meaning is clear, that any doubt on the subject was one that 
 could be resolved and removed by legislation only, and not by 
 the unauthorized dictum of an executive officer. 
 
 The Secretary of the Treasury, upon reading this opinion of 
 the Attorney -General, must have concluded that he was entirely 
 without authority to pay these bonds, or the interest on them, 
 in gold coin. No other inference can be drawn from his recom- 
 mendation to Congress at the opening of the subsequent session. 
 In his report dated December 3, 1877, he suggests to Congress 
 that provision be made by express act for payment in gold coin. 
 Had he supposed that the law of 1870 and the provisions printed 
 on the bond authorized the payment of gold alone, why should 
 he have suggested the enactment of affirmative legislation to 
 authorize such gold payments? The Secretary's recommenda- 
 tion was as follows: 
 
 II, therefore, tie public Interests demand tlielssueof silver dollars— a sub- 
 ject hereafter discussed— it Is respectluUy submitted to Congress that an 
 express exception be made requiring that gold coin alone shall be paid for 
 principal or interest on bonds issued to public creditors since February 12, 
 1873, the amount of which is $502,990,700, These bonds have entered into the 
 msjrkets of the world. If the market value of the sliver in the new coin is 
 less than the gold dollar, a forced payment In the new coin Is a repudiation 
 of a part of this debt. 
 
 Congress did notacton this recommendation. One would sup- 
 pose this fact to be notice, if any were necessary, to the officials 
 of the United States that Congress did not agree with the Sec- 
 retary in his interpretation of the case, whether upon the law 
 or the facts. Congress did not see that either the law or the 
 equities required any readjustment. Congress knew, as all men 
 knew, that the bondholders had taken very good care of them- 
 selves already, and had in 1870 provided for full, and more than 
 full, payment by the passage of the provision for payment in 
 coin of either metal. 
 
 Prom all the facts in the case, none of the executive officers of 
 tl)e Government could have for a moment been ignorant of the 
 meaning and determination of Congress in respect to the matter. 
 
 786 
 
260 
 
 BOND-BUYERS ALWAYS SCBTJTINIZB THE STANDARD OE PAYMENT. 
 
 People who buy bonds do not buy them from altruistic motives. 
 They buy them for their own profit and advantage. They buy 
 bonds of the United States as they buy all bonds, only after care- 
 ful scrutiny of the terms on the face of the bonds, and of the 
 laws by authority of which these bonds have been issued. They 
 look sharply to the figures which show the dates of payment of 
 principal and interest, but above all, and rising beyond all other 
 considerations; they look to the medium, or as they term it, the 
 standard in which the payment is, by the terms of the bond, to 
 be made. 
 
 To suppose that such a feature is neglected would be to sup- 
 pose that public creditors, the keenest of men, had lost their 
 cunning. Every bond ever issued has, in plain terms, stated 
 on its face the authority for its existence. It contains a clear 
 citation of the law or laws which constitute the reason for its 
 being. These laws are open to public inspection. No class of 
 persons better than public creditors so well understand the lim- 
 itations which the laws of all civilized nations place upon ihe 
 functions of executive officers with respect to issuing bonds or 
 incurring debts or obligations on behalf of their country. They 
 know that the duties of those officers in connection with loans 
 are specified in the laws by which the loans are authorized to bo 
 effected. Hence these loans are examined as with a mental mi- 
 croscope to see that no doubt exists as to the authority of the 
 officer who executes the securities, and as to all other par- 
 ticulars concerning payment of the obligation. If they did not 
 observe on the bond the plain printed statement that it was pay- 
 able in the standard coin of the United States of July 14, 1870, 
 they must have been blind indeed. 
 
 I have never heard a denial by anyone having knowledge of 
 the legislation under which the bonds were issued that it is the 
 legal right of the United States to pay those bonds in either gold 
 or silver coin. It is said that at the time of the negotiation of 
 the bonds silver money was out of use in this country. The suf- 
 ficient answer to that is that gold was equally out of use. It is 
 said that the bonds were sold to citizens or subjects of countries 
 in which silver was not recognized as money. This was cer- 
 
 785 
 
261 
 
 tainly not true of Germany, in which country early and consid- 
 erable sales were made. 
 
 Grermany was on the silver standard until December, 1871, and 
 had considerable silver in its coin for a long time after that. 
 Besides, our bonds were not, either by their terms or by impli- 
 cation, payable in foreign countries or in the money of those 
 countries. They were payable within the United States, and it was 
 distinctly afarmed on their face that they were payable in dollars 
 of the United States. If the citizens or subjects of foreign coun- 
 tries who boughtsuoh bonds did not understand what a doUarof 
 
 the United States meant, they could not have had the slightest 
 
 ft 
 difficulty in ascertaining; and of course they did ascertain. 
 
 THBT PAID rOR THEIR BONDS IN THE CHEAPER METAL. 
 
 At the time when all these transactions took place one of the 
 money metals was cheaper than the other. For such of the 
 bonds as any creditor bought it was his 'option to pay in either 
 the cheaper or the dearer metal. He exercised his option by 
 paying in the cheaper metal — which, at the time, was gold, 
 which was 3 per cent less valuable than silver, He knew that , 
 by the terms of the bonds it was the option of the people of the 
 United States, whenever the time of payment should arrive, to 
 do as they had been done by— namely, to pay in the metal which 
 at the time of payment should be the cheaper. If the cred- 
 itor had, as he did have, a specific option and exercised it in his 
 own behalf and for his own benefit and advantage, what reason \ 
 can be advanced why the debtors should abandon an equally 
 specific option residing in them? 
 
 THE MATTHEWS RESOLUTION LEFT NOT A SHADOW OP DOUBT AS THE MEAN- 
 t IN6 6p the LAW. 
 
 But to place the matter beyond possibility of doubt or perad- 
 venture, this whole question as to whether the bonds of the 
 United States were lawfully payable in either gold or silver at 
 the option of the United States was thoroughly discussed by the 
 representatives of the people in both Houses of Congress in 1878, 
 prior to the passage of the silver-purchase law of that year. On 
 the 1 16th of January, 1878, the Hon. Stanley Matthews, then a 
 Senator from the State of Ohio, in view of the claims of the 
 
 785 
 
262 
 
 bondholders and their henchmen in Congress that the bonds 
 were legally payable in gold alone, submitted to the Senate a 
 concurrent resolution designed to call forth thp views of the 
 members of the House and Senate nine years after the passage 
 of the act of March 18, 1869. That was time enough for sec- 
 ond thought. The preamble of the resolution recites the con- 
 dition of existing laws relating to the payment of United States 
 bonds, and as I think the document will be found interesting 
 reading, I ask the careful attention of Senators to it: 
 
 Whereas by an act entitled "An act to strengthen the public credit," ap- 
 proved March 18, 1869, It was proT;lded and declared that the faith of the 
 United States was thereby solemnly pledged to the payment in coin or its 
 equivalent of all the interest-bearing obligations of the United States, ex- 
 cept in cases where the law authorizes the issue of such obligations had pre- 
 viously provided that the same might be paid in lawful money or other cur- 
 rency than gold or silver; and 
 
 Whereas all the bonds of the United States authorized to be issued by the 
 act entitled "An act to authorize the refunding of the national debt," ap- 
 proved July 14, 1870, by the terms of said act were declared to be redeemable 
 in coin of the then present standard value, bearing interest payable semi- 
 annually in such coin; and 
 
 Whereas all bonds of the United States authorized to be isstfed under an 
 act entitled "An act to provide for the resumption of specie payments," ap- 
 proved January 14, 1875, are required to be of the description of bonds of the 
 United States described in the said act of Congress approved July 14, 1870, 
 entitled "An act to authorize the refunding of the national debt;" and 
 
 Whereas at the date of the passage of the said act of Congress last afore- 
 said, to wit, the 14th day of July, 1870, the coin of the United States of stand- 
 ard value ol that date included silver dollars of the weight of 412i grains 
 each, declared by the act approved January 18, 1837, entitled "An act sup- 
 plementary to the act entitled 'An act establishing a mint and regulating 
 the coins of the United States,' " to be a legal tender of payment, according 
 to their nominal value for any sums whatever: Therefore, 
 
 Se it resolved by the Senate (the House of Sepresentatives concurring therein). 
 That all the bonds of the United States Issued or authorized to be issued 
 under the said acts of Congress hereinbefore recited are payable, principal 
 and interest, at the option of the Government of the United States, in silver 
 dollars of the coinage of the United States, containing 413J graius each of 
 standard silver; and that to restore to its coinage such silver coins as a 
 legal tender in payment of said bonds, principal and interest, is not in vio- 
 lation of the public faith nor In derogation of the rights of the public 
 creditor. ; 
 
 A motion to refer that resolution to the Committee on Finance 
 of the Senate was voted down. A very influential member of the 
 Senate, the then Senator from Vermont, Mr. Edmunds, moved 
 to strike out such phraseology of the resolution as declared sil- 
 ver to be legal tender in payment of the bonds, and to insert, in- 
 stead, phraseology which would make the bonds "payable in 
 
 785 
 
263 
 
 gold or its equivalent." But, not satisfied with these words, the 
 distinguished Senator from Veirmont in addition moved to incor- 
 porate in the resolution the following declaration: 
 
 And tliat any other paymelit — 
 
 That is to say, any other than "gold or its equivalent" — 
 
 without the consent of the creditor would be In violation of the pnWic faith 
 and In derogation of his rights. 
 
 This proposed amendment brought sharply before the atten- 
 tion of the Senate the very point in issue. What was the de- 
 cision of the Senate upon that point?. 
 
 The amendment of the Senator from Vermont was voted down; 
 the vote standings-yeas 18; nays 48. This means that nine years 
 after the passage of the act to strengthen the public credit 
 which guaranteed to the creditors payment of the principal and 
 interest of their bonds in coin and seven and one-half years after 
 the standard of the coin was named 48 out of 66 Senators of the 
 United States repelled the assertion or implication that the 
 bonds were payable in gold alone. 
 
 It will be noted, Mr. President, that the proposer of that res- 
 olution [Senator Matthews] was not a representative from one 
 of the so-called silver States, nor was he a silver crank nor a crank 
 of any other character. His appointment later to the position 
 i>f .Associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, 
 i.nd his distinguished services in that capacity leave the advo- 
 cates of the gold standard no opportunity to designate him by 
 any term that is not complimentary. 
 
 The Senator from Vermont, not daunted by the rejection of 
 his first amendment, moved to amend the preamble so as to 
 change the resolution into one declaring for gold payment in the 
 case of the public debt. This amendment was also rejected, and 
 the resolution was sent to the House of Representatives, where, 
 on the 29th of January, 1818, it was passed by a vote of 189 yeas 
 to 79 nays, considerably over two-thirds of the votes cast being 
 in favor of the resolution. Both Houses, then, of the Forty-fifth 
 Congress declared by an overwhelming majority that the public 
 debt should be payable in gold or silver, as might best suit the 
 people of the United States— Congress in that respect simply re- 
 asserting and reafBrming the rights of the people as they bad 
 
 785 
 
264 
 
 ■been settled and recorded by the acts recited in the preamble of 
 the concurrent resolution. 
 
 One would suppose that after this unmistakable declaration of 
 Congress as to the tenor and meaning, and as to the intention in 
 the passage, of the acts recited, there could be no room for doubt 
 as to the material or standard of money in which the public debt 
 of the United States might lawfully be paid. 
 
 THE BONDS AT ONB TIHB CONCEDED TO BE PAYABIiB IN SHiVEB. 
 
 Indeed, the then Secretary of the Treasury, the present hon- 
 orable Senator from Ohio [Mr. Sherman], appeared for a time 
 to be in full accord with Congress and to be determined to carry 
 out the law according to the intent and meaning with which it 
 was passed. There was a time at least when he favored the pay- 
 ing of the bonds exactly in accordance with the law of July 14, 
 1870, namely, in either gold or silver, at the option of the United 
 States, and not at the option of the bondholder. 
 
 I think I can say with truth that, considering the amount of 
 suffering and distress caused to all the industrial classes of this 
 country by reason of the change of conviction on the part of the 
 honorable Senator, no single act in the lifetime of any man who 
 ever held ofBce in the United States since the adoption of the 
 Constitution is more to be regretted. I do not intend to exag- 
 gerate, and am entirely serious and sincere when I say that in 
 my humble opinion no one act since the foundation of the Re- 
 public has caused more affliction and desolation to the people of 
 this country unless it be the act of firing on Fort Sumter. I 
 am equally sincere in saying that according to my judgment if 
 this attempted repeal is accomplished all who vote for it will 
 live to see and to feel that the firing on Sumter, serious and 
 sorrowful as it was in its immediate consequences, was a shot 
 that for enduring injury to the industrial classes and to every 
 man who works for a living in this country, can not be compared 
 with the measure it is now attempted to drive through this body. 
 
 It will be remembered that the silver-purchase law of 1878, be- 
 sides directing, the purchase and coinage of silver to the extent 
 of not less than two nor more than four million dollars' worth 
 per month, also restored the legal- tender character of thestand- 
 
 785 
 
265 
 
 ard silver dollar. That fact being borne in mind, it will be in- 
 teresting to know that the honorable Senator from Ohio saw no 
 further necessity for paying the bonds or the interest thereon in 
 gold, knowing, as of course he must have known, that it was not 
 only lawful, but equitable that they should be paid in either coin. 
 I say " of course equitable," because I can not assume that the 
 distinguished Senator would do or recommend the doing of any- 
 thing that was hot equitable. 
 
 Some tlv^ee weeks after the enactment of the law of February 
 28,1878, the Senate Committee on Finance had a conference with 
 the honorable Senator, then, as is well known, the Secretary of 
 the Treasury, or finance minister of the Administration of Pres- 
 ident Hayes. From the proceedings of that conference I shall 
 read a few remarks. It will' be borne in mind that the New 
 York press, in the interest of Wall street gamblers and money- 
 lenders, had raised a great alarm (which was purely fictitious, 
 and manufactured for the occasion) because of the threatened 
 passage of the bill, and denounced Congress in unmeasured terms 
 for want of patriotism in attempting to impose such a measuret 
 on the country. Of course, they prophesied the most serious 
 consequences to result from the new legislation. 
 
 At this conference with the then Secretary of the Treasury, 
 which was held on the 19th of March, 1878, there were present, 
 besides the Secretary, the following-named Senators: Messrs. 
 MoKBiiiL of Vermont (Chairman); Dawes of Massachusetts, 
 Ferry of Michigan, Jones of Nevada, Allison of Iowa, Bay- 
 ard of Delaware, Kernan of New York, Wallace of Pennsyl- 
 vania, and VoOEHEES of Indiana. 
 
 The extract I shall read is as follows: 
 
 CHAiBMAN. What effect has the sliver bill had, or Is likely to have upon 
 resumption? 
 
 Secretary Sherman. I do not want to tread on delicate ground In an- 
 swering that question, Mr. Chairman. I shall have to confess that I have 
 been mistaken myself. Now, as to the silver bill, I have watched Its opera- 
 tions very closely. I think the silver bill has had some adverse effects, and 
 it has had some favorable effects, on the question of resumption. Perhaps 
 the best way for me to proceed would be to state the adverse effects first. It 
 has undoubtedly stopped refunding operations. Since the agitation of the 
 silver question, I have not been able largely to sell bonds, although I have 
 madeeveryeffortto doso. * * • 
 
 Now, another adverse effect the silver bill has had Is to stop the accumu- 
 lation of coin. Since the 1st of January we have accumulated no coin, ez- 
 786 
 
266 
 
 cept lor coin oertlflcates, and except tlie balance of revenue over expendltuie. 
 The revenues In coin being more than enough to pay the interest ol the debt 
 and coin liabilities, we accumulate some coin. 
 
 Another effect that the silver bill has had is to cause the return ot our 
 bonds from Europe. Although the movement of our bonds in this direction 
 has been pretty steady for more than a year, yet it is latterly largely in- 
 creased, how much I am not prepared to say. 
 
 On the other hand, I will give the favorable effects. In the first place, the 
 silver bill satisfied a strong public demand for bimetallic money, and that 
 demand is, no doubt, largely sectional. No doubt there is a difference of 
 opinion between the West and South and the East on this subject, but t/ie 
 desire for remonetization of silver was almost unvoersal. In a government 
 like ours It is always good to obey the popular current, and that has been 
 done, I think, by the passage ot the silver bill. Sesumplion can temamtaine(f 
 more easily upon a double standard than upon a single standard. The bulky 
 character of silver would prevent payments in it, while gold, iemg more portable, 
 wouldbe more freely demanded, and I think resumption can be maintained 
 with a less amount of silver than of gold alone. 
 
 Senator Bayakd. You are speaking ol resumption upon the basis of 
 silver, or ot silver and gold? 
 
 Secretary Sherman. Yes, sir; I think it can be maintained better upon a 
 bimetallic, or alternative standard, than upon a single one, and with less ac- 
 cumulation of gold. In this way remonetization of silver would rather aid 
 resumption. The bonds that have been returned from Europe have been 
 readily absorbed— remarkably so. The recent returns in New York show 
 the amount of bonds absorbed in this country is at least a million and a quar- 
 ter a day. We have sold scarcely any from the Treasury since that time. 
 This shows the confidence of the people in our securities, and their rapid 
 absorption will tend to check the European scare. 
 
 Senator Voobhees. That shows, Mr. Secretary, that this cry of alarmin New 
 York was unfounded. Then, this capital seeks our bonds when this biTnetallic 
 basis is declared? 
 
 Secretary Sherman. Yes; many circumstances favor this. The demand 
 for bonds extends to the West and to the banks. 
 
 Senator Jones. Then, in its effect upon the return ot the vast amount of 
 bonds you refer to, would there not bean elementof strength added in favor 
 ot resumption, in that the interest on these bonds returned would not be a 
 constant drain upon the country? 
 
 Secretary Sherman. Undoubtedly. 
 
 Senator Jones. Would the fact that they come back enable us to maintain 
 resumption much easier? 
 
 Secretary Sherman. Undoubtedly. ' 
 
 Senator Bayard. You speak ot resumption upon a bimetallic basis being 
 easier. Do you make that proposition irrespective of the readjustment ot 
 the relative values of the two metals as we have declared them? 
 
 Secretary Sherman. I think so. Our mere right to pay in silver would 
 deter a great many people from presenting rptes for redemption who would 
 readily do so if they could get the lighter and more portable coin in ex- 
 change. Besides, gold coin can be exported, while silver coin could not be ex- 
 ported, because its market value is less than its coin value., 
 
 Senator Bayard. I understand that it works practically very well. So long 
 as the silver is less in value than the paper you will have no trouble in re- 
 deeming your paper. When a paper dollar is worth 98 cents nobody is going 
 to take it to the Treasury and get 1)2 cents In silver'; but what are you to do 
 as your silver coin is minted? By the 1st of July next or the 1st ot January 
 next you have eighteen or twenty millions of silver dollars which are in olr- 
 785 
 
267 
 
 culation and payable for duties, aBd how long do you suppose this short 
 supply of sllTer and your control of It hy your coinage will keep it equiva- 
 lent to gold— when one is worth 10 cents less than the other? 
 
 Secretary Sherman. Just so long ae it can be used for anything that gold is 
 used for. It will be worth in this country the par of gold until it becomes so 
 abundant and bulky that people will become tired of carrying it about; but in our 
 country that can be avoided by depositing it for coin-certificates. 
 
 For my part, Mr. President, I can not comprehend how the 
 distinguished Senator from Ohio can reconcile with the state- 
 ments made on that occasion the idea that either the principal 
 or interest of bonds of the United States are now payable exclu- 
 sively in gold. 
 
 There is but one rule kno^n to the law for the interpretation of 
 written contracts, and that is by reference to their specific terms. 
 No impartial mind can read the bonds or the statutes of the 
 United States without perceiving that the bondholders have 
 never, by the terms of the bond or by the law, been entitled to 
 a compliance with their demands. Even were it so, were they 
 to claim payment in gold, not on any technical ground, but on 
 the ground of equity, we quote them the maxim of the law. 
 " Those who demand equity should do equity." 
 
 IF THE LAW DOBS NOT COMPEL PAYMENT IN GOLD, DOES EQUITY DEMAND 
 SUCH PAYMENT? 
 
 W![iat, then, is the position of the bondholders from an equi- 
 table point of view? In legislating regarding the national debt 
 have we trenched in any respect upon the fair repute of our 
 Governm,ent and upon those principles of probity and honorable 
 dealing so dear to our people? Let us look at the actual facts. 
 
 Between 1862 and 1868 the United States Government sold 
 bonds to the amount of $2,049,975,700. How much did the pur- 
 chasers pay to the Government for those bonds — these men in 
 whose behalf the legislative contribution box is made to pass 
 around at almost every session of Congress in order that some 
 new act or law more potent than those which have preceded 
 may now and again be dropped into it for the better support of 
 the bondholders? 
 
 The amount received by the Government for those bonds was 
 less than $1,400,000,000, or, to be exact, $1,371,424,238— being, on 
 an average for the entire issue 67 per cent of their face value. 
 
 These bonds would have been honestly paid, if paid in lawful 
 
 r?5 
 
268 
 
 money, no other money having been prescribed in the acts author- 
 izing the issue, except that coin was prescribed for the payment 
 of the interest. The very fact that it was deemed prope r to provide 
 that the interest should be payable in coin was a plain implication 
 that the principal was not to be so payable. The maxim of law is 
 that the inclusion of one is the exclusion of the other. 
 
 However, on the clamorous insistanceof the creditors the peo- 
 ple yielded so far as to declare in the " act to strengthen the 
 public credit" and in the refunding act that the principal also 
 should be paid in coin. 
 
 For this $1,400,000,000 received by the Government of the 
 United States there have already been paid back to the bond- 
 holders in principal alone $1,756,000,000— being $385,000,000 
 more than was altogether received. Besides, there have been 
 paid as interest on the debt $2,538,000,000, or nearly twice the 
 total amount received. There has been paid as a premium on 
 bonds i)ought in $58,000,000. So that for the $] ,400,000,000 re- 
 ceived there have been paid in all to the bondholders the sum of 
 $4,352,000,000. 
 
 THE BOND TBAKSACTIONS FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF PURCHASING POWER. 
 
 But the cupidity of those people, is unbounded. Let us now 
 look at the facts from another pointof view, still bearing iujnind 
 merely the equities, and not the technical interpretation of the 
 law. As I have shown earlier, the only value that money has 
 is purchasing power. Let us see what amount of purchasing 
 power has been paid to the creditors in return for the purchas- 
 ing power which they paid to the Government when the bonds 
 were placed on the market? 
 
 Assuming that the people had paid the dollars constituting 
 the public debt at the same ratio of purchasing power that those 
 dollars possessed when paid over by the bondholders to the peo- 
 ple — as stated by a member of another body — it would have re- 
 quired but 1,007,000,000 bushels of wheat to pay the entire 
 amount. We have already, as principal alone, paid to the bond- 
 holders the equivalent in money of 1,986,000,000 bushels of 
 wheat; we have paid as interest the equivalent in money of 
 2,974,000,000 bushels; and as premium 62,000,000 bushels, making 
 the total payment of principal, interest, and premium 5,022,000,- 
 
 785 
 
269 
 
 000 bushels of wheat, or five times the purchasing power which 
 the people received from the bondholders. 
 
 Yet after paying this enormous sum during the past quarter 
 of a century we have still the same number of bushels of wheat 
 to pay that would have paid the entire debt at the time it was 
 contracted. 
 
 Again, had we paid the dollars of the debt at the same ratio 
 of purchasing power that the dollars had when we received them, 
 we could have paid the entire sum with 14,184,000 bales of cotton, 
 whereas we have already paid, of principal, interest, and pre- 
 mium to the holders of our bonds, the equivalent of 94,690,000 
 bales of cotton, and there still remains to be paid more cotton 
 than would have been sufficient at the time the debt was con- 
 tracted to pay it all back. 
 
 It will be said that the prices of commodities, when the money 
 was borrowed, were " war " prices. But whatever the prices were, 
 they were the same for the bondholder that they were for the 
 people, and dollarshad at the time the same value, the samepur- 
 chasing power, for the one as for the other. 
 
 Estimating the debt then as the amount of sacrifice with which 
 the bondholders parted, and measuring that sacrifice by bales 
 of cotton, the holders of bonds have been paid seven times over, 
 and we still owe them more cotton than the original quantity. 
 Nothing can more clearly show the enormous advantage which 
 falling prices bring to those who have money out at interest. 
 What they want is not to get their money back, but to get the 
 things which money will buy, and when prices fall by reason of 
 the manipulation of the volume of the country's money in their 
 own behalf, by demonetizing one of the metals — which neces- 
 sarily operates as a limitation on supply-^they are simply en- 
 gaged in a gigantic looting of the community under the name 
 of honor and honesty. 
 
 "When, under such circumstances, people speak of an invest- 
 ment in government bonds as a "speculation," they might very 
 correctly spell ' ' speculation " without the " s "- The course pur- 
 sued by the bondholders — the public creditors — of the United 
 States 'would appear to indicate that they were the parties who 
 
 785 
 
270 
 
 were in the mind of John Ruskin when he referred to " the 
 magnifloence of authorized Lirceny and polished menJicity." 
 
 THE BONDHOLDEa THE GREAT OBJECT OF SOIilCITUDB. NO CONSIDEBATION 
 FOB THE TAX-PAirHR. 
 
 The lessening of the value of the money that is to be paid to 
 the creditor and bondholder is regarded by the advocates of the 
 gold standard as an unparalleled calamity— something which is 
 dsstineJ to uproot the very foundations of the Republic. No 
 note is taken of the enormous increase in the burden of the debt — 
 an increase effected by the sinister machinations of those men, 
 first, through the mighty arm of the law, in changing the con- 
 tract to their advantage after it was entered into, and, as if that 
 were not enough, then in effecting, again by law, the demone- 
 tization of one of the metals in which the debt was payable, in 
 order to increase the value of the other, and having exhausted 
 the powers of legislation, then through the powerful supple- 
 mental arm of the executive officers of the Government continued 
 the process of spoliation. 
 
 But, Mr. President, we understand that all this is done in the 
 name of honor and honesty. The use of the word "honest" in 
 this connection has a tendency to bring it into the contempt of 
 the people. They smile in derision when they hear it applied 
 tp the bondholder's dollar — as the spectators in a theater smile 
 when they hear the Moor of Venice speak of "Honestlago." We 
 hear constantly of justice to the public creditor. We hear noth- 
 ing of justice to the people. When the intsrests of the bond- 
 holders are at stake the note of alarm is sounded by the officers 
 of our Government, and the noise and commotion are so great 
 that it would appear as if the pillars of the temple of our Con- 
 stitution were falling. 
 
 The burden of the sacrifice which the people of this country 
 made during the war is not to be compared with that which they 
 have beenenduring since by reason of the administration of their 
 money system. The amazing prSduotiveness of the country has 
 enabled them to pay off a large proportion of the war debt, though 
 not without suffering. During the continuance of active hostili- 
 ties any hardship that might have been experienced was attrib- 
 uted to the ifra,v, and men felt that the country was engaged in a 
 
 785 
 
271 
 
 struggle for its existence. Even those who lost fathers, broth- 
 ers, and husbands in the conflict were sustained to some extent 
 by that exaltation of feeling that arises from patriotism. But 
 in the later conflict, that which arose out of the monetary con- 
 traction following the war, no consolations of that character 
 were experienced. Nothing but discouragement and distress. 
 
 THE EXAMPLU OF PRANCE IN DEALING WITH BONDHOLDERS. 
 
 The attempt of the American bondholder to get the word 
 " coin " erased from his contract, and to get written into its 
 place some word which would describe a coin that was always 
 gettinsr dearer, is not the first attempt of the kind in history. , 
 A similar attempt was made on behalf of the French bondhold- 
 ers after the discoveries of California and Australia: Gold was 
 then the metal that was becoming cheap money, and the French 
 bondholders took ready alarm at the prdspeot of the purchasing 
 power of their incomes being reduced by the inflow of the new 
 money. They found, as all bondholders find everywhere, ready 
 and pliant agents and advocates in the literary guilds. 
 
 Chevalier and those in accord with him made a demand for 
 the payment of the bonds of the French Government in silver. 
 Their cry was for honest money. It is the same cry that we 
 hear now, and have heard for more than twenty years. It was 
 a demand for a payment of the money that was becoming dearer. 
 For it appears that when money is becoming dearer it is honest 
 money, while ifwheat and cotton become dear, which means that 
 money is becoming cheap, the wheat and cotton are dishonest 
 and fraudulent. 
 
 Chevalier demanded the payment of the bonds in silver. In 
 order that the people might suppose that he had some ground 
 in reason for his demand he maintained that silver had always 
 been the money of France, and that when people bought the 
 bonds of the Government they supposed they were buying bonds 
 payable in silver — very much the same sort of argument that 
 has been used in the Ui;iited States, except that in this country 
 the demand was for bonds payable in gold. 
 
 This ruse did network, however. The officers of the Govern- 
 ment refused compliance with the demand. They declined to i 
 
 785 
 
272 
 
 transfer to the creditor the option which the people of France 
 had reserved to themselves, That they were right no man but 
 a bondholder oould have the hardihood to deny. 
 
 Our modern Chevaliers have been more successful — chevaliers 
 of industry, whose only connection with industry is the laying 
 it under tribute, and exacting from it an unearned increment, 
 with the approval and through the instrumentality of our ex- 
 ecutive offlcers. 
 
 SUPPOSE THE OPTION WERE TO , DELIVEK WHEAT OR BARLEY, INSTEAD OV 
 GOLD OR SIIiVIlB? 
 
 Suppose the owner of a great estate had entered into a con- 
 itract by which he obligated himself to deliver certain quantities 
 of cereals — his option being to deliver either wheat or barley, 
 whichever, at the fulfillment of the contract, he might choose. 
 Suppose that his object in embodying the option in the contract 
 was to protect himself from a possible corner in one of the arti- 
 cles named — a corner which might be effected by the machina- 
 tions of speculators in cereals. Suppose that, as matter of 
 fact, when the time of delivery arrived there was a corner in 
 wheat which, as a consequence, was held at an exorbitant price. 
 
 Would anybody suppose that in such case, an agent even had 
 he a full power of attorney to act for his principal, would be justi- 
 fied in saying to the creditor, "Although, in the making of this 
 contract, my principal reserved to himself, as a protection against 
 wrongful exaction, an option to deliver either wheat or barley, 
 whichever might be most just upon the day when the contract 
 was filled, yet you are an 'honest' man, and of course what- 
 ever advice yoi^ would give me would be ' honest ' advice, and 
 whatever money you would wish to be paid would be ' honest ' 
 money. Therefore, I will interpret this contract in such way 
 as shall be suitable to honest men like you. If, instead of ac- 
 cepting delivery in barley, which is not cornered, and which is 
 therefore ' dishonest,' you prefer wheat, which is cornered by 
 honest men like yourself, I will transfer to you the option 
 which my principal reserved to himself, and if you wish me to 
 deliver wheat, I shall do so, even if I have to pay out of the funds 
 of my principal the exorbitant and extortionate price which 
 ,the honest managers of the corner in wheat have decreed." 
 
 785 
 
273 
 
 What, I may ask, would be thought of the "honesty " of such 
 an agent? And especially what would be thought of his honesty 
 when it was as plain as day that the creditor was himself a mem- 
 ber of the gang that had cornered the wheat market. 
 
 It has often been said, Mr. President, that Americans are noth- 
 ing, if not originaL This method of dealing in options is cer- 
 tainly original, even in America. No similar example is to be 
 found in the history of any civilized government, and I venture 
 to say that the ofBcers of no government on earth will ever fol- 
 low the example of those of the United States in a matter of this 
 character. 
 
 THX ADVOCATBS OV GOLD PBOIECTINQ TBI EOmHOLDSBS OTithY. 
 
 Had the Congress of the United States been willing to make 
 special provision for the payment of the public creditors in gold, 
 many years after the making of the contract, thus establishing 
 a distinction between them and the body of our citizens, includ- 
 ing the workingmeu and all who were not owners of bonds, we 
 should not have been summoned here in extraordinary session 
 to enter upon a discussion of this subjebt. The silver question 
 would have long since disappeared from public view. 
 
 When the silver-purchase law of 1878 was before the Senate 
 for consideration, one of the gold standard Senators offered an 
 amendment providing that standard silver dollars "shall be a 
 legal tender at their nominal value for all debts and dues, pub- 
 lic and private, except duties on imports and interest on. the pub- 
 lic debt." 
 
 The intention of this was to give to the creditors a special 
 dollar, and to discriminate in their favor against everybody 
 else, to give them an "honest" dollar and the workingman 
 what Senators themselves called a "dishonest" dollar. Had 
 that amendment been accepted by those who favored free coinage 
 of silver, the silver question would then and there have been 
 settled, and we should have had free coinage at once. This is 
 the sort of regard that the advocates of the gold standard had 
 for the interests of the workingmen of the country, whose spe- 
 cial friends and champions they now pretend to be. Had the 
 bondholders been able to secure for themselves a gold dollar 
 which was constantly increasing in value, they and their friends 
 
 785^18 
 
274 
 
 were willing that the workingmen should have any other kind 
 of dollar that they pleased. "Where, then, were to be found 
 the advocates of the dollar of "highest purchasing power" for 
 the workingmen of the country? We heard nothing from the 
 New York press denouncing a provision that would have paid 
 the workingman in "cheap dollars" and "dollars of low pur- 
 chasing power," while giving to the bondholder a dollar not 
 only of high purchasing power, but a purchasing power con- 
 stantly growing higher. 
 [At this point the honorable Senator yielded to Mr. Teller.] 
 
 Tuesday, October g^, 189S. 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Mr. President, we are told that with 
 unrestricted coinage of silver, or with continued purchases of 
 silver under the Sherman law, the gold in the country would 
 go to a premium. Let us examine that question. 
 
 WOtTLD GOUJ GO lO A PREMIUM TINDER UNBESTBICTED COINAGE OB CON- 
 TINTTBD PUECHASES OF SILVEE? 
 
 In the first place I challenge Senators to point to a period in 
 the history of any country when gold went to a premium while 
 any considerable quantity of it remained in that country. Under 
 certain circumstances it might be sent out. So long, however, 
 as it remained it would never reach a premium until the total 
 amount of all forms of money in circulation was more than suffi- 
 cient to meet all monetary- demands at the international range 
 of prices. 
 
 There must be a reason for the separation of the metals and 
 for the happening of a premium on gold. The metals have no 
 will of their own to separate or to coalesce when they please. 
 Neithercan the goldholders make a premium at their pleasure. 
 If they could do so we should find gold constantly at a premium. 
 A premium must be made by eonditions. What is it that creates 
 those conditions':" The range of prices of goods that form the 
 subject of international commerce. To the extent that we pur- 
 chase of those goods in excess of the sales of our own products 
 to the people of the gold-using countries, we create a necessity 
 for the outward shipment of gold in payment of balances. 
 
 Suppose the holders of our $600,000,000 of gold decided to-day 
 
 785 
 
275 
 
 to put a premium of 1 per cent or of 10 per cent on gold. Could 
 they do it? Do we not know that if they could get a premium 
 by merely demanding it they would promptly demand it? Their 
 difBoulty is that the conditions on which alone a premium can 
 be created do not exist, and in the absence of the appropriate 
 conditions no one will give them a premium, no matter how 
 strenuously they insist upon it. 
 
 THB FALL or PBICBS— A "PREMIUM" WHICH PRODUOBES HATE TO PAT. 
 
 When the number of dollars in a country is from any cause 
 reduced, there is a tendency to a fall in the prices of commodi- 
 ties. If then a man be engaged in productive operations in this 
 country, and if by reason of the outward flow of gold to meet 
 foreign payments a fall takes place in the prices of the products 
 of his labor, compelling him to accept less for those products 
 than he otherwise would receive, he suffers a loss which, though 
 ■not called a " premium," is in tenor and effect a premium on 
 gold. So far as /le is concerned, he is so much the poorer by 
 reason of the outflow of the money of the country. 
 
 Why quibble about names? In order that a payment may be 
 entitled to be called a "premium," and to involve the serious 
 consequences attributed to a premium, is it necessary that it 
 shall be paid by a particular person? If a farmer, planter, or 
 manufacturer in this country is compelled to pay $100 through , 
 the medium of products, the prices of which have been to that 
 extent reduced owing to the maintenance of the gold standard, 
 what but the mere name is the difference between that man's 
 payment and the payment of the banker or broker who disburses 
 $100 as a difference in exchange and on his books enters the 
 ■amount as a "premium?" If an American farmer, hatter, or 
 shoemaker has to give more of the products of his labor for gold, 
 what divinity doth hedge around the American banker or 
 broker which entitles him to call his occasional payment a 
 " premium," while the constant and persistent payments of the 
 producers are called a mere " fall in price?" 
 
 If farm products fall 10 per cent by reason of the sending out 
 ■of gold, if the product of the shoemaker's labor is similarly re- 
 duced, as well as that of men engaged in all other industries, is 
 not that 10 per cent a premium on gold? And if not, does it differ 
 
 785 
 
276 
 
 in anything but the name? Being a loss caused by the gold' 
 standard, does it not have all the effect of a premium? . Is it 
 not in nature and substance a premium? Yet the importer says, 
 and our financiers and statesmen all unite in saying, that so long 
 as it is the producer who is suffering the loss everything is all 
 right, and that it is only when it becomes the turn of the im- 
 porter or the money-broker to pay that "the times are out of 
 joint." So long as the producing classes do the paying it at- 
 tracts no attention, but as soon as the broker or importer has- 
 to pay a great wail is heard. 
 
 When gold alone, or a money based on gold, is the circulating- 
 medium of a country, a contract calling for the payment of 
 $1,000 on the spot would on its face seem to be the same as a con- 
 tract calling for the payment of $1,000 at a future time, because 
 the sum being in each case the same and payable in the same 
 form of money, there would seem to be no premium involved. 
 If, however, men are obliged to give more of their products for- 
 it in the one case than in the other, are they not to all intents 
 and purposes paying a premium on gold? Is it any less a pre- 
 mium because the true character of the transaction is not de- 
 tected? Values being always stated in terms of money, never ini 
 terms of commodites, it is not easy for the uninitiated to detect 
 variations in the value of the circulating medium itself . 
 
 Anything that is measured by itself alone can never present 
 an appearance of change. No matter, therefore, how great a 
 departure may be made by gold from its value at any former pe- 
 riod, such departure is never denominated a change in the value 
 of gold, but always a change in the prices of commodities. Itis- 
 thus that even the everyday phases of industry and commerce 
 are calculated to conceal the evil which the gold standard in- 
 flicts upon society, and afford to interested casuists and sophists, 
 as well as to superficial thinkers upon money, to so-called statis- 
 ticians and would-be philosophers and economists an opportu- 
 nity much improved by them of disputing as to the true nature 
 of the change that has taken place. 
 
 The masses of the people take no note ot changes in the value 
 of money, but the bankings and creditor interests are keen to- 
 observe all such changes. Whenever a variation of value ap- 
 
 785 
 
277 
 
 pears between two forms of money, they select the form which 
 commands the greatest amount of property, and loudly pro- 
 claim that to be the "best" money and the only "honest " 
 money, while the other form, which may have retained its value 
 unimpaired, and therefore be an exactly just and equitable meas- 
 ure of value, is derided as " cheap " and dishonest ttioney. The 
 gold-standard advocates never speak of any advance in the value 
 of the dearer metal. By them the change is always made to ap- 
 pear as a decline in the value of the other metal, which may in 
 fact have suffered no decline. 
 
 rOREIGN PAYMENTS. 
 
 It is supposed to be decisive of the question to inquire how, if 
 we have not the gold standard, we can pay our debts to foreign- 
 ers? Let us examine this point. An American importer buys 
 goods in Great Britain or Germany to be sold here for his profit, 
 and his alone. The query is: How is he to get the gold to pay 
 his bill? I reply to the question by asking another. By what 
 means does he pay bills in his own country? How does any mer- 
 chant obtain money? By sales of merchandise. Very well. 
 
 Let, then, the American importer sell merchandise for gold 
 with which t(j pay his gold indebtedness. He bought in gold- 
 standard countries the goods which require to be paid for in gold. 
 Let him sell in those countries for gold the goods from sales of 
 which to pay his bill. Gold is to be bought for commodities in 
 •every gold-standard country of the world. If the range of prices 
 in those countries is such that he can not make a profit on the 
 transaction, that is his misfortune, and is not one for which the 
 American people at large are responsible; or by reason of which 
 they should be mulcted in sums infinitely larger than any possi- 
 ble premium that could be involved in the transactions of a few 
 importers. 
 
 All the internal commerce of this country, which is fifty times 
 greater in amount than our foreign trade, should not be dis- 
 jointed by reason of the necessity which exists for a few men 
 to pay their debts abroad. Is it a greater act of justice to facil- 
 itate the payment of an importer's foreign bill at the expense of 
 all the people of the United States than to maintain equity and 
 justice in the payment of all debts and the payments for all com- 
 
 785 
 
278 
 
 modities and services interchanged among the 70,000,000 people 
 of our country? Must we forever continue to inflict wrong and in- 
 justice upon all our producing classes — upon ninty-nine one-hun- 
 dredths of our people — simply to save an occasional importer or 
 foreign business house some inconvenience? — for, in any case, it 
 could be nothing more than an inconvenience; it could under no 
 circumstances result in o toss to any importer to have to pay a 
 premium. 
 
 Suppose a failure of the crops to occur in Europe and an abun- 
 dant harvest in this country. There will be a consequent boom 
 here. Numbers of contracts will be made on a high range of 
 prices. Then this country becomes a poor country to buy in, be- 
 cause prices are high, but for the same reason it becomes a good 
 country to sell in. Other countries at such a time will be poor 
 countries to sell in because prices there are low, and they will 
 for the same reason be good countries to buy in. 
 
 On such occasions our importers strain every nerve to buy to 
 the utmost. Having, therefore, large payments to make to for- 
 eign countries, they find that owing to the low prices prevailing 
 abroad they are unable to send out our wheat or cotton to ad- 
 vantage. Hence they gather up the money of the country and 
 send it away. 
 
 Instead of assuming the responsibility for the exercise of bad 
 judgment or overweening cupidity on their part in making 
 more purchases than the country makes sales, they make every- 
 body in the country suffer — those who have not had anything 
 whatever to do with foreign goods as well as those whose 
 business it is to deal in such goods. As everybody knows, the 
 number of persons who deal in foreign g^oods is utterly insig- 
 nificant compared with the enormous number who deal in do- 
 mestic articles. 
 
 The premium which in any event the importers would pay is 
 a bagatelle in comparison with the unseen and unobserved pre- 
 mium which for many years haa been paid by the toiling mil- 
 lions. Money is bought by every man with the products of his 
 labor. The masses of the people are not digging gold out of the 
 mines. The gold they dig is the amount that can be bought by 
 their labor exerted in fields of wheat and cotton, in seams of iron 
 
 786 
 
279 
 
 and coal, and in the city shops, foundries, and factories. The 
 amount of money which the products of such labor will command 
 is therefore the measure of the value of gold. 
 
 With the present system all the people of this country are 
 made to pay a premium on gold in order that a few importers 
 may be saved some imaginary inconvenience in the payment of 
 balances. 
 
 An adverse balance of trade whereby $100,000,000 of the money 
 of the country might be shipped out, would so reduce the debt- 
 paying power of the people and the prices of the commodities 
 with which, in the last analysis they must pay the debt, as to 
 make it a calamity of great proportions in comparison with any 
 inconvenience to which importers might be subjected in paying 
 their foreign balances. 
 
 In order that such a transaction may result in great loss to the 
 masses of our people, it is not necessary for a panic to occur. 
 The loss could be gradual, but great. 
 
 In one case, only the men who bought abroad would be sub- 
 jected to inconvenience — and it would be inconvenience merely; 
 for, as I have said, they would in no case be subjected to loss. 
 In the other, every man in the United States who owes a debt 
 would be put not merely to inconvenience but to loss. 
 
 It is the most monstrous of ideas that because a few men can 
 make a profit by sending out the money of the country all the 
 industries of the country must be disarranged. In an age ot en- 
 lightened civilization nothing seems more absurd and unjust. 
 
 It is natural and proper that some di£a.oulty should be experi- 
 enced in transmuting the money of one country into the money of 
 another. 
 
 If people in one country wish to buy in other countries more 
 than can be sold from their own country, they are warned by the 
 state of the exchanges that the balance is against them. Accord- 
 ing as the balance becomes more and more against them those who 
 persist in buying should personally suffer the inconvenience. 
 The people of the entire country, who have nothing to do with 
 importations, should not be compelled to sufler. 
 
 Whenever that which may be termed international money has 
 its normal value, it is at the par of exchange. When it becomes 
 
 785 
 
280 
 
 unprofitable to ship products, and the demand for money for 
 shipment becomes excessive, so that a premium arises, the per- 
 sons who should pay the premium are the importers — thosewho, 
 for their own profit, import into the country more than the 
 exports of the country can pay for. 
 
 The people of the whole country who are conducting a business 
 100 times as larere as the entire importing business, and under 
 our system of credits involving themselves in debt to enormous 
 amounts, should not be compelled to pay a premium upon every 
 dollar of their domestic debts simply to suit the convenience of 
 a few importers. Any balance of trade which can possibly be 
 against us must always be infinitesimal, compared with the enor- 
 mous amount of domestic debts that are constantly being paid by 
 our own people. If we had an ample supply of silver money for 
 the transaction of our own business all that we could need of gold 
 would be such sum as would meet any adverse balance. 
 
 Prof. Stanley Jevons, one of the most renowned of the finan- 
 cial economists of Great Britain, in a paper read before the 
 American Social Science Association in Saratoga, in 1877, said: 
 
 Gold Is not really requisite exceot for making International payments, 
 and the stock need not be very mueli larger tlian will meet any conceivable 
 demand for exportation. 
 
 I call the special attention of those who have a horror of the 
 
 silver standard to a remark of the London Times, which with 
 
 them ought to be the first of authorities, in discussing the very 
 
 bill which it is now proposed to repeal. In an editorial on the 
 
 so-called Sherman law, the Times of September 1, 1890, said: 
 
 Under a silver standard a ricb country can keep as large a stock of gold as 
 It requires for all purposes, without any difttculty whatever. 
 
 When the United States resumed specie payments a small gold 
 stock proved sufficient for the purpose. Yet now, with $600,- 
 000,000 of gold in the country. Senators fear a premium on it! 
 
 How do foreign nations which have no mines get gold? 
 They exchange goods for it. So the importers who would need 
 gold to pay for goods imported should get the gold by the sale 
 of their goods. They would not need much to settle balances, 
 and they could get it at but slight extra cost. Indeed, it would 
 be better for the United States if gold were always at a slight 
 premium, because then the silver money would remain in the 
 
 785 
 
281 
 
 country and would not flow out, to the disarrangement of all 
 prices and all equities here. 
 
 Contracts made in any country are made on the basis of the 
 range of prices at the time prevailing in that country. If after- 
 ward the money supply of that country be diminished relatively 
 to demand, whether such diminution be owing to nonproduction 
 of the metals from the mines, to their consumption in the arts, 
 to increase of population and demand for money, or to exporta- 
 tion of gold in payment for imported goods, can anybody doubt 
 that the fall of prices sure to result from such diminution is 
 practically a premium on gold and paid by the producing classes? 
 
 There is no possibility of a permanent premium upon gold here 
 «xcept when enough of other money has come into circulation 
 to put our prices above the international range. That is to 
 say, having $1,600,000,000 of money in this country, of which, 
 say, $1,000,000,000 is other than gold, but of full legal-tender 
 power, if the gold all left the country, or went out of circulation 
 (which it would do if it went to a premium), there would have to 
 be $600,000,000 of some sort of money added to the $1,000,000,000 
 before we could reach the gold range of prices. "Where is that 
 $600,000,000 to come from? Is it possible that with only $1,000,- 
 000,000 of money, which is $600,000,000 less than our present 
 stock, there could be an increase of prices? Would there not, 
 on the contrary, be a fall, and would it not be silver rather 
 than gold that would be at a premium as measured in the products 
 of labor? Is it possible that $1,000,000,000 of silver alone is capa- 
 ble of elevating prices beyond the level to which they can be ele- 
 vated by $1,000,000,000 of silver and paper plus $600,000,000 in 
 gold? That is contrary to every principle of political economy 
 and of common sense. 
 
 Only a certain range of prices is consistent with the interna- 
 tional range. Should our prices rise beyond that gold would 
 begin to flow out, though not to the extent of our whole foreign 
 trade; only to the extent of balances against us. 
 
 In any case there could not be a permanent premium upon 
 gold until what may be termed a corresponding degree of per- 
 manent "premium" had arisen on commodities, property, and 
 services — the things which it is the function of money to dis- 
 
282 
 
 tribute. If in comparison with, gold prices all men should get 
 higher prices for their commodities and services, in other 
 words, if their commodities and services were at a "premium," 
 how should they be harmed by a premium on gold? 
 
 It is a contradiction of terms to say that we could have a pre- 
 mium upon gold and at the same time a decline in the prices of 
 goods and of labor. 
 
 Had we to pay a premium, or increase of price, in silver for 
 gold over what we might have previously paid for it, it would be 
 because we had first received a corresponding premium, or in- 
 crease of price, in silver for the products or services with which 
 we might buy gold. In any event, we would have to buy the 
 gold, since all men who need gold, except actual miners of the 
 metal, can get it only by selling their labor or products for it. 
 
 Should gold go to a premium, and we could show that the 
 silver money of the country had not fallen, but measured equi- 
 tably all property and services, who would be at any disadvan- 
 tage, except people who make a business of gambling in gold, 
 and who can not complain when the game goes against them? 
 
 If gold goes to a premium of 10 per cent, that means that it 
 will buy 10 per cent more of goods internationally dealt iti than 
 can be bought with silver or other money. But if a man has to 
 pay 10 per cent for gold, does he not get 10 per cent more in the 
 other money for his goods and services? Is not equity there- 
 fore preserved among our people? What greater end can be de- 
 sired than equity? 
 
 Even as to our foreign trade, were there a premium of 10 per 
 cent on gold, and Liverpool merchants bought from us wheat, 
 cotton, or anything else, they would have to pay us either the 
 Liverpool price in gold or the American price in silver, which 
 latter, in case there were a premium of 10 per cent on gold, 
 would mean 10 per cent over the gold price. 
 
 Gold might go to a premium of 1 or 2 per cent, and yet if in- 
 terest were high and business active in this country, that metal 
 might not leave, because the percentage of interest obtained by 
 loaning gold or investing it in this country might be so much 
 more than the percentage of profit derived from gold if sent 
 
 785 
 
283 
 
 abroad that it would be more profitable for its owners to keep' 
 it here. 
 
 Gold is frequently at a premium without the fact attracting 
 attention, because the term "premium" is carefully avoided? 
 in designating the translation. There is frequently, as a result 
 of the differences in what is called exchange, a small payment 
 required on gold beyond the cost of shipping it. What is that 
 but a premium? 
 
 So, when in England gold becomes scarce and the bank rate 
 goes up, the increased rate is called a " rise in the rate of dis- 
 count." It is really a premium upon gold. 
 
 Suppose the bank rate to be ordinarily and normally 3 per cent, 
 and that in case of emergency or difSculty it rises to 6. What 
 in reality is this extra 3 per cent but a premium of 3 per cent on- 
 gold? When the bank rate is thus raised, it is not because the- 
 borrower is able to make 3 per cent more profit on the money 
 that he borrowed, or can afford to borrow it at that price. 
 The fact is that the reason why he has to borrow is that he finds- 
 it impossible to make even ordinary profit, or indeed to do busi- 
 ness at any profit that will enable him to provide for his mon- 
 eyed engagements. 
 
 It is not a case in which money at that time will buy more than 
 before, or more than usual. The borrowers do not take it 
 with a view to buying anything, but solely with the view of 
 meeting imperative obligations, entered into when normal con- 
 ditions prevailed. 
 
 Let us suppose the domestic indebtedness of our people to one 
 another to be $30,000,000,000, while our gold stock is only $600,- 
 000,000. If a premium of 10 percent should take place on gold — 
 that is to say, if it alone, and of itself, without reference to the- 
 other money of the country should advance 10 per cent in value, 
 it would at the utmost be an advance of only 10 per cent on 
 $600,000,000; whereas, while we are on the gold standard, a cor- 
 responding fall in the prices of commodities consequent on the 
 increasing purchasing power of the gold dollar would involve, 
 to our domestic debtors alone, a total loss of 10 per cent on the 
 $30,000,000,000 of their debts, or such proportion of them as were= 
 in existence during the whole period of this 10 per cent fall. 
 
284 
 
 The true name for this fall of prices and for this enormous loss 
 'to the people is a "premium on gold." In comparison with this 
 unrecognized and undesignated premium the thing usually 
 'Called a premium is but an insignificant trifle, even were it a 
 loss, and it could not be a loss so long as our silver money justly 
 measured all equities. 
 
 Who pretends to say that under the Sherman law the dollar 
 is worth less to-day than it was when the first dollar was issued? 
 Who contends that during the operation of that law there has 
 ibeen any general advance in prices of commodities? Who 
 ipretends to say that before the late panic occurred the monthly 
 issues of Treasury notes under the Sherman law had produced 
 an inflation of our currency? Who denies that the value of the 
 . dollar from month to month' was rising and not falling? What, 
 then, is the evil to be remedied by stopping the issue of Treasury 
 notes under that law? 
 
 It is seen that the increasing population of the country 
 and the increasing demand for money are not sufficiently met 
 by the 4,500,000 ounces purchased each month. It is seen that 
 the dollar is all the time becoming more valuable. What, then, 
 is it against which those who so vehemently demand the repeal 
 . of the purchasing clause of the Sherman law wish to defend the 
 . country? Surely not an inflation; for pricesof commodities con- 
 tinued to fall from 1890. when the bill was passed, until the time 
 the panic broke out. This was shown by the exhaustive ezamina- 
 tion of the Finance Committee of the Senate. 
 
 How can repeal redress the situation in this country? Prices 
 are falling and were falling at the time the panic broke out. 
 ■ There was not money enough to maintain them at a firm or 
 equitable range. For, as I have said, price is the barometer 
 that indicates whether equities are being maintained and 
 whether times are good or bad; yet with prices falling, our gold- 
 standard economists tell us that we must cut off the money that 
 has hitherto been furnished, notwithstanding that it is admitted 
 by the champions of the gold standard that almost the entire 
 yield of the gold fields is consumed in the arts and manufac- 
 ;tures and little or none left for the money use. 
 
 785 
 
285 
 
 THE WAGII3 or LABOR. 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson. I do not wish to interrupt the Senator's- 
 speech at all; but I simply wish to make an inquiry. The com- 
 mittee to which the Senator refers in making their investigation, 
 and report did report that the prices of commodities had fallen. 
 At the same time the report states that the price of wages had' 
 advanced. How does the Senator account for that? 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. On. several occasions of late when I 
 have had the floor in this debate I have stated that the wage- 
 earner is not a commodity; not a dead piece of property. Not 
 many years ago the wage-earners began to organize in this coun- 
 try, at a time when they were getting by no means their fair 
 share of that which they contributed to the joint product of cap- 
 ital and labor. All over the United States they organized into 
 compact masses, as they previously had done in England, and 
 kept constantly increasing their demand upon the employers for 
 more wages. 
 
 In the manner in which business is conducted in these latter 
 years it is necessary to employ great numbers of workmen; 
 hence contracts covering long periods of time must be entered 
 into, and such contracts frequently contain clauses involving 
 heavy forfeitures or penalties for failure of prompt performance. 
 This fact compels employers to beware of serious difficulties with 
 their working force. They know that a general strike might 
 involve them in enormous loss. The official reports of strikes- 
 show that in many instances where employers have conceded 
 an increase of, say, 10 per cent demanded by the workmen, 
 the increase was followed by a dismissal from employment of 
 10 per cent of the workers. If this were true generally it would- 
 mean that wages as a whole were no greater than before. 
 They only appear to be increased because the men retained in 
 employment receive more than before. It would be better for 
 society as a whole and far better for the working classes them- 
 selves if all were retained in uninterrupted employment, even 
 without increase of wages, than that some should have their 
 wages increased, while others receive nothing and are left tO' 
 starve. 
 
 In order to show that wages have really increased, the returns- 
 
286 
 
 -should also show that the number of men employed continued 
 to be as great as before. Otherwise the laboring class as a whole 
 receive no more money as wages. 
 
 Given a certain number of men employed at, for ease of com- 
 putation, say, a dollar a day. They demand a dollar and ten 
 •cents. The employers, with heavy contracts on hand, know not 
 how to resist that demand. They yield. In a few weeks they 
 discharge 10 per cent of their employes; and against this decree 
 the men have no recourse. The reduction of force is made up 
 in the shop by a resort to all sorts of small economies. Ten 
 per cent of the men formerly employed are sent into compul- 
 sory idleness. Their labor is lost to society, and themselves and 
 their families are brought to penury. Yet no note is taken of 
 this. So long as the men in actual employment are paid the 
 ■customary, or even increased wages, it is taken for granted that 
 all is well. No census of the unemployed is taken. 
 
 The Senator from New Jersey knows that within tenor fifteen 
 years lars^e numbers of business establishments have been con- 
 centrated under one management. A thousand and one methods 
 lOf decreasing expenditures have been resorted to. The work- 
 men have been constantly striking for more wages with great 
 power and with great intelligence. The employers, not always 
 able, owing to the fall of prices, to meet that demand , have yielded 
 in one direction only to recoup themselves in another. 
 
 But now the maximum has been reached. It must be borne 
 in mind that effect does not immediately follow cause in ques- 
 tions of this character. A stone thrown into the harbor of New 
 York is certain to result in a rise of the level of the water at 
 Liverpool; but the effect is by no means immediate. 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson. The senator, I think, certainly will ad- 
 mit that for the last fifteen or twenty years there has been a 
 gradual and persistent rise in the wages of labor. He has al- 
 ready stated in his speech a number of times that there has been 
 a great depression and a great fall in the prices of commodities. 
 Now, commodities are things that labor makes; the commodities 
 ;are the things that labor consumes. With an increase in the 
 price of labor, with the lowering of the price of commodities 
 
 785 
 
287 
 
 which labor consumes,! do not understand how the Senator can 
 measure the money of the country by the price of commodities. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. The Senator from New Jersey starts 
 out with the proposition that laborers were getting the wages 
 they were fairly entitled to, considering the volume of money in 
 circulation in the country; but this was manifestly not so. They 
 are looking more sharply after their interests. Until the great 
 ■organizations arose business was conducted more loosely. 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson, it has been increasing every day. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. The workers have been constantly 
 increasing their demand, and the employers have had to yield. 
 Now, however, millions of laborers are out of employment. It 
 is the statement of every business man that for the past twenty 
 years business in this country has been conducted at practically 
 no profit. Previous to that time the same businesses were con- 
 ducted at large profits. This condition is not peculiar to the 
 United States, but is a characteristic of all gold-standard coun- 
 tries. 
 
 Mr. TELLER. Will the Senator from Nevada allow me to 
 read a very brief extract from an English newspaper? 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Certainly. 
 
 Mr. TELLER. It is as follows: 
 
 Never was there such an Industrial war In England; never was there such 
 destitution, and never such a mass of InSammahle discontent in the very 
 heart and center of the land. Belief committees and soup kitchens are im- 
 ceasingly at work throughout the strike areas. Bread is distributed and 
 fought tor by lamlshlng men and women, and gardens and orchards robbed 
 In the frantic search for food. Hungry children attend the schools too weak 
 to learn, and women tramp from village to village begging tor money or 
 bread. 
 
 That is from the London Daily News of September 7, 1893. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Mr. President, that is the way the 
 condition of the laboring man hasbeen" improved." I saw great 
 numbers of the unemployed on the hills about London— people 
 who were starving; yet we are told wages have been advancing 
 for years I The gentlemen who compile statistics take no 
 note of the unemployed. I deny, whatever they may say to the 
 contrary, that, taking wages, for instance, all over the West and 
 South, they have been increasing for fifteen years. 
 
 Mr. GEORGE. They have fallen. 
 
 785 
 
288 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Counting the numbers of men dis- 
 charged from employment owing to the persistent fall of prices, 
 it is my conviction that, on the whole, wages have fallen rather 
 than risen. 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson, if the senator wUl hear with me a sin- 
 gle moment longer, I will state that a subcommittee of the Com- 
 mittee on Finance, a very intelligent committee, pursued an in- 
 vestigation for several months here in--1891 after the passage of 
 the so-called McKinley law to ascertain what the effect of the 
 McKinley law had been upon prices. It was argued by the 
 friends of the McKinley law that inasmuch as we had raised 
 the duty upon foreign products thereby we would increase' the 
 wages of labor in the domestic products, and that was the reason 
 why wages had raised in this country. Now, I simply invite the 
 attention of any Senator to that report to the effect that in the 
 gainful institutions where labor was employed there has been 
 more increase in the wages of labor among those industries that 
 were not protected at all. 
 
 Mr, GEORGE. In agriculture? 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson, in agriculture and everything else. I 
 speak of -wases as compared with the cost of living. 
 
 Mr. GEORGE. The Senator is wrong as to the South. 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson. Of course when you speak of wages of la- 
 bor you speak of it as compared with the cost of living to the 
 laborer. 
 
 Mr. PASCO. If the Senator from Nevada will allow me, I 
 will state that in the speech which I delivered on the 27th of last 
 month I showed clearly the situation in the section of the country 
 where I lived, an agricultural section, a cotton-raising section. 
 I stated, and it is susceptible of proof, that the wage-earners 
 there have shared the fate of the cotton-planter, and that their 
 wages have been reduced relatively and actually. My belief is 
 that a like result has followed in similar sections of the country 
 where cotton-raising is the principal industry, as will be borne 
 out by the Senators from those sections. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Mr. President, there can be no doubt 
 about it. An interested body of statisticians, most of whom do 
 nothing but tabulate their own ignorance and air their own 
 
289 
 
 egotism, are engag'ed in attempting to bolster up the gold stand- 
 ard and make their figures and their conclusions correspond 
 with all the claims that are made by the advocates of that 
 standard, whatever the real facts may be. Of course, there are 
 conspicuous and honorable exceptions, but itis certain that none 
 of them take account of idle labor. There can be no doubt in 
 the mind of any observant man that there has been a fall of 
 wages of unskilled labor in such parts of the country as are not 
 in close proximity to great manufacturing centers, where labor 
 could combine to keep wages up. 
 
 THE RECENT PANIC. 
 
 It is absolutely inevitable, while prices are falling, that men 
 should be relegated to idleness. When it becomes apparent 
 that the employer of labor is bound to lose money, it is only a 
 question of time when the laborer must lose his employment— r 
 not merely suffer the loss of a part of his wages, but all his 
 wages. Things must ultimately accommodate themselves to the 
 volume of money. What happened during the recent panic was 
 simply that not only the wages of labor but the prices of |)rop- 
 erty commenced to adjust themselves to the volume of money 
 in the country. They had both by every conceivable means 
 been held above the range naturally consistent with that vol- 
 ume: and at last the law of supply and demand, in the relation 
 between money and commodities, asserted itself. It is sought to 
 divert attention from the true source of the difficulty by the as- 
 sertion that the people had some fears as to the kind of money 
 they were going to get. 
 
 There never was a more monstrous perversion of the truth. I 
 do not believe that a man can be found in the United States who 
 will say, so far as he is concerned, the panic "had its genesis in 
 any such cause. What he feared was that the institutions in 
 which his money was deposited did not have it to pay him back 
 on demand. The demand was not for gold, but for silver, or 
 silver certificates, or any other character of legal-tender money. 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson. I understand the Senator to contend that 
 it is not the kind of money, but the volume of money which de- 
 termines and fixes the unit of value. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Undoubtedly; nobody who has inves- 
 785 19 
 
290 
 
 tigated the subject of the value of money will deny that propo- 
 sition. ' 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson, if the senator will bear with me a single 
 moment longer, the fear the people of the country had was that 
 there was a disposition to impose the free coinage of silver, uncer- 
 tain in amount and quantity; that if whatever there was of quan- 
 tity to-day in the world that would come from the mines to our 
 mints was all to be coined into dollars, the result would be that 
 the volume of that kind of money which was not on a par with 
 good money, as the world understood it , would disarrange values 
 or there would have to be a general readjustment of the values of 
 property. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. In answer to the Senator from New 
 Jersey, I can say that neither immediately before nor during 
 the recent troubles was there a word said about free coinage. 
 That question was not under discussion. The only silver ques- 
 tion that could at all have entered into the minds of the people, 
 if any did, was whether we could go on supplying this limited 
 quantity of money to the people of this country. The question 
 of free coinage, as everbody knew, was settled for such time at 
 least as the present Executive held his position. There was 
 therefore not the slightest fear of the unrestricted coinage of 
 silver. Hence all that the Senator says about the enormous in- 
 crease to be expected or feared in the amount of money by rea- 
 son of free coinage falls to the ground. 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson. I draw no distinction between free coin- 
 age and the operation of the Sherman law, except as to the quan- 
 tity. The Sherman law would bring us to a silver basis with 
 the same certainty, but not so rapidly. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. I have shown that the quantity of 
 money paid out under the Sherman law was not even sufficient 
 to maintain the range of prices — and prices are of the essence of 
 the question. The unit of money should be kept at a parity 
 with the units of property and commodities. The producing 
 masses of this country want a dollar that shall remain at some- 
 thing like parity with the pound of cotton, with the bushel of 
 whed,t, and with all other products of labor — not a dollar that 
 shall be at parity with a metal which is constantly increasing in 
 
291 
 
 \ 
 value to the unjust advantage of the bondholders and the money- 
 lenders of the world: Our demand i3 a demand for equity and 
 justice. We say it is not necessary that our money should keep 
 at a parity with gold if only it will keep at a parity with justice. 
 If keeping it at a parity with gold, which is a unit of chance, 
 and which has been constantly increasing in value, is inconsist- 
 ent with jiSstice, then, I say, let gold go. If we have to take 
 our choice between a gold standard and a standard of justice, we 
 insist upon the standard of justice. The Senator from New Jer- 
 sey takes the gold standard. We are willing to go before the 
 people on that proposition. 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson. That is the standard of justice. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. The Senator says it is the standard of 
 justice, yet it is everywhere admitted that gold has been con- 
 stantly rising in value for twenty years, effecting a constant loot-, 
 ing of the debtor in the interest of the creditor. Is it not ex- 
 traordinary that we have never heard any complaint about a 
 rise in the value of the money unit, but whenever there is a fear 
 or suggestion "of a fall in the value all hands are up? That is 
 deemed a dreadful misfortune to the world; yet a rise in the 
 value of money means the making of the rich unjustly richer 
 and the poor unjustly poorer. , 
 
 I will now resume the consideration of the question of a gold 
 - premium at the point at which I was interrupted. 
 
 S|appose a war to be imminent in Europe, and that Russia, in 
 order to increase her war fund, should offer a premium of 5 per 
 cent for gold, which is not an absurd supposition by any means; 
 and suppose the other gold-standard nations of Europe, in order 
 to attract to themselves the supply of gold, should make an offer 
 of 10 per cent premium, which would be better than Russia'^ 5 — 
 do6s it follow that all the people of the United States who owe 
 money should permit themselves to be mulcted in 10 per cent 
 upon every dollar of their debt, so that the dollar to be paid by 
 them to their creditors shall require from the debtors 10 per 
 cent more sacrifice than the dollar which was agreed to be paid 
 and agreed to be accepted? Yet, that is precisely what will hap- 
 pen so long as we maintain a system of what may be called in- 
 ternational money. 
 
 785 I 
 
292 
 
 THB BATES OY INTEREST. 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson, n the senator will allow me, I want to 
 get at the exact facts that he is contending for. It seems to me 
 that if gold had appreciated interest would have gone up; it 
 seems to me if gold had appreciated labor would have gone 
 down, as the inevitable consequence of his contention. Now, 
 in the past ten or fifteen years we have seen the bonds of the 
 United States, which we will consider a perfectly safe and not a 
 speculative security, go down from 5 percent to 2, the bonds be- 
 ing floated to-day at 2 per cent. 
 
 Now, as to the labor question I contend that labor has gone up 
 for the past ten or fifteen years in a regularly increasing ratio. 
 If in most of the countries that employ labor, large countries 
 like England, the United States, Germany, and other countries, 
 labor is paid an increased price year after year, I can not under- 
 stand how those countries, being upon a gold basis, can stand that 
 condition of things with the appreoiatsd value of gold. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. I will say to the Senator that within 
 the past few days I have more than once gone over that entire 
 question. The proposition which the Senator makes is one of 
 the most startling proofs of the disingenuousness of the statis- 
 tics that attempt to show us the effect of improved processes 
 and other alleged causes for the fall of prices. I think I demon- 
 strated to the satisfaction of every Senator who listened to me 
 that one of the most irrefragable proofs of an increase in the 
 value of the monetary unit is a decline in the rates of interest. 
 If money is increasing in purchasing power, if it is increasing 
 in its command over land and over the products of labor — in 
 other words, if prices are falling — who wants to enter business? 
 Men prefer to wait until bottom prices have been reached. The 
 man who puts up a factory when prices are falling finds that in 
 two or three years his rival can put up one exactly similar for 10 
 or 15 per cent less money. 
 
 Hence, I say that when prices are falling money congests in 
 the centers, because its owners are not willing to risk it in legiti- 
 mate business. A keen competition, therefore, arises for first- 
 class securities. This competition is incontestable proof of the 
 advance in the value of money. 
 
 785 
 
293 
 
 Why, in a new country like this, should interest fallV "Why 
 can not money be used as profitably now as at any period of our 
 history? 
 
 Is not the field wide here for industrial enterprises? la the 
 country finished? Has it reached the fullness of its develop- 
 ment? Had we a proper monetary system, could not a thousand, 
 yes, ten thousand, enterprises be entered upon with advantage 
 alike to projectors and workingmen? 
 
 Sir, everybody wishes to keep that which is going up and to 
 refrain from investing in that which is going down. When 
 prices are falling money is going up and all forms of property 
 going down. This is why money accumulates in the centers, 
 and why the competition for gilt-edged securities increase's. No 
 better evidence is needed of the advance of value in gold than 
 the decrease of interest. While dollars are increasing in value 
 men find it impossible to pay the old rate of interest and at the 
 same time a constantly increasing value in' the dollars constitut- 
 ing the principal. And it will be observed that during the 
 last twenty years, as I have said, there, is a remarkable doin- 
 cidenoe between the ratio of the decrease in the rates of inter- 
 est and that of the increase in the value of the money unit-^a 
 coincidence wholly inexplicable on any other hypothesis than 
 that I have stated. 
 
 The instinct of thrift on the part of all mankind is to avoid 
 that which is falling and to hold on to that which is rising in 
 value. Hence the 4 per cent bonds rose from par to 127. What 
 is a bond? Nothing but an obligation to deliver money in the 
 future. During a period of falling prices capitalists want to be 
 long on money, not long on property. At such times men do not 
 want to be long on business. When business is declining, the 
 value, that is, the purchasing power, of the dollar is rising. 
 Hence everybody wishes to be long on money, and there is, 
 therefore, competition to get nothing but money futures, that 
 is to say, bonds. 
 
 Havingalready , however, dealt with this subject at some length 
 in the course of my remarks, I will now resume the considera- 
 tion of the question which I was discussing when interrupted. 
 
 785 
 
294 
 
 DISADVANTAGE OP INTBENATIONAl MONET. 
 
 In order to keep labor uninterruptedly employed contracts 
 must be made long in advance and debts incurred covering years 
 of time. 
 
 As money is not prized for itself but for what it will purchase, 
 equity and justice demand that its purchasing power should be 
 kept as steady and unchanging as possible. Otherwise time con^- 
 tracts and debts would work great injustice by compelling per- 
 formance of much more than was contracted for, or much less, as 
 the case might be. 
 
 Instead, however, of endeavoring to keep this power of money 
 steady and "Unchanging, the people of every country that has an 
 international money permit the value of their money to undergo 
 constant fluctuation by reason of the outflow of the money of 
 their own country and the inflow of that of a foreign country. 
 
 Suppose it were the case of some other great instrumentality 
 of indispensable necessity to civilization. On axjoount of the 
 function which money performs in the proprietary distribution 
 of ijroperty, it is frequently compared to a railroad train, which 
 effects its physical distribution. Suppose great numbers of our 
 locomotives and cars were daily put on leviathan ships and car- 
 ried over the ocean, to remain on the other side until some ex- 
 igency of the countries to which they might have gone should 
 admit of their return tfl us? What a state of demoralization and 
 parg-lysis would exist in every business in the country. Yet it 
 would be trifling compared with the paralysis created by reason 
 of the shipping put of great quantities of our money, upon the 
 volume of which the equities of all contracts are based. 
 
 It seems to me, therefore, to be absurd that large quantities 
 of the money of the country should be permitted to go out when 
 we know that scores of millions of dollars of deferred obliga- 
 tions depend for their just and equitable settlement upon the 
 the quantity of money in the country. ' So also it seems to me 
 that the money of other countries should not come in here 
 since we know that when it comes it produces inflation, and when 
 it goes— as go it will — it produces contraction. 
 
 It we have the right quantity of money here, why permit any 
 more to come in, and why permit any to go out? The gold-standard 
 
 785 
 
296 
 
 advocates contend that inasmuch as all that we might receive 
 from abroad would be an advantage we should welcome it. But 
 as we can not keep it, as we can not keep any more gold than 
 our distributive proportion of the gold of the world, we gain 
 nothing permanent by it. Our whole industrial system is de- 
 ranged by its coming, and more than deranged by its going. 
 
 When the quantitative theory of money comes, as come it 
 must, to be universally recognized as correct, then it will be 
 considered folly for a government to permit the quantity, and 
 consequently the value of the unit of money upon which so many 
 equities are based to-be changed merely for the purpose of ac- 
 commodating a few men who wish to make purchases in foreign 
 countries. Would it not bs better to have a national money 
 that would neither flow in nor flow out, than to have injustice 
 daily and hourly perpetrated upon all the citizens of our own 
 country, especially those leastable to bear the injustice j namely, 
 the debtors? 
 
 Should a separation finally take place between gold and silver 
 money, it will be because of the constant and ruinous rise in the 
 value of gold. Should population and business in this country 
 continue to increase as for some years they have been increasing, 
 and should the yield of gold from the mines diminish either abso- 
 lutely or relatively to the demand for it, and the value of the 
 metal undep the opei"ation of increased demand continue, as a 
 consequence, to rise higher and higher, the time must come 
 when gold and silver money mufet separate. The salvation of in- 
 dustry and commerce would depend on and require such separa- 
 tion. 
 
 We know that the world has been ransacked in vain for gold, 
 and we know that there is not only a vast and constant increase in 
 the world's population and business, but a constant increase in 
 the consumption of gold for nonmonetary purposes in all the 
 arts and manufactures, especially in dentistry. Unless great 
 discoveries of gold are made — something in the highest degree 
 improbable — there is not the slightest doubt that the gold stand- 
 ard must ultimately be abandoned or people will begin to sus- 
 pect that after all it is not the " spots on the sun " that cause 
 
 785 
 
296 
 
 the periodic and frequent panics in countries of the gold stand- 
 ard. 
 
 The country that has the foresight to first perceive the neces- 
 sity for its abandonment, and the intelligence and virtue to 
 provide a proper and sufficient substitute, will lead the world in 
 a career of unintermitting prosperity. It is not alone, nor nec- 
 essarily, an inflation of the money volume that will drive gold 
 out of a country. Even were that volume kept intactand steady, 
 in its relation to population and business, gold might go by reason 
 of the shrinkage of its quantity as compared with population and 
 business, ana with the amount previously in existence and doing 
 duty as, money. 
 
 If there be but one kind of money in a country, for example 
 gold, or if all the money of the country be "redeemable" or re- 
 solvable into one, it may, without detection, go to what, for want 
 of a better name, I must denominate a premium over itself; that 
 is to say, it may become more and more valuable — acquiring 
 greater and greater purchasing power day by day and year by 
 year; yet there is apparently no way of measuring or estimating 
 what has taken place except in terms of this same thing", gold. 
 The fact, however, is that in such case the fall in the general 
 range of the prices of commodities is the measure of the premium 
 oh the gold money. 
 
 Suppose prices fell 15 per cent it would be insisted that there 
 was no premium upon gold, because none would be apparent, 
 since all values would continue to be stated in the same terms 
 as before. 
 
 But, suppose we had a money that was not scarcer then than 
 before, and that in terms of that money there was no fall of 
 prices, then we could see that a premium on gold really existed. 
 If, however, in the one case, there was a fall of prices of say 15 
 per cent, and in the other case a rise of say 17i per cent, it would 
 cost no more in the products of labor to get the gold dollar in the 
 one case than in the other. 
 
 Yet people talk about the premium upon the gold which each 
 man happens to have on hand, as if that were a great factor in 
 the case, when really the most powerful factor in a premium 
 upon gold is a fall in general prices. It is in that way that gold 
 
 785 
 
297 
 
 is acquiring day by day greater and greater control over com-' 
 modities. In this way the gold of each year is at what might be 
 termed a premium over the gold of the year before; in other 
 words, at a premium over itself. Yet it is not seen that there is 
 •any premium because men are constantly measuring gold by 
 itself. It would be perceived and made perfectly plain and 
 demonstrable to all the people that there was an increasing pur- 
 chasing power in gold if we had another money by which we 
 could see just what was taking place — a sort of monetary bar 
 rometer. 
 
 Had we this other kind of money — a national money — it 
 would measure the premium upon gold with precision and ex- 
 actness, and we would see at once that this increasing purchas- 
 ing pow-er of gold was nothing but a premium upon itself, and 
 that it would take no more of the products of industry to get the 
 gold dollar under the one condition than under the other — that 
 is to say, no more of the products of labor to get a given amount 
 of gold when gold is at an open and admitted premium, than 
 when, during a fall of general prices, it is at an unrecognized 
 and undesignated premium. With a money of unchanging value 
 the equities in all time contracts would be preserved without in- 
 volving any hardship in obtaining any necessary quantity of 
 gold. The few who might require it would be obliged to give 
 no more commodittes for it in the one case than in the other. 
 
 Had we an amplesupplyof silver money, which wouldnot leave 
 the country, we would always have an equitable money. With 
 such a money we should have something which would openly de- 
 clare whether a premium upon gold existed or not, and if it did 
 exist, would measure and record such premium. We could then 
 clearly see that the fall of prices was a premium on gold. This 
 would be an infinitely better monetary system than anything that 
 is possible under the so-called gold standard. 
 
 Men who owed obligations in their own country would not then 
 need gold . They would not be mulcted simply because other men 
 were ' ' short " on gold . The men who needed the gold would alone 
 pay the premium when buying the foreign goods, but so also 
 they would receive a " premium " when selling them. Hence 
 they would lose nothing. 
 
 785 
 
298 
 
 Only gamblers in money who were " sHort " on gold would lose 
 anything. 
 
 THE MONET OTt THE COTINTBT SHOUI,D BE ADJUSTED TO THE HOME TKADB. 
 
 The money of a country should be adjusted not to the conduct 
 of an incidental and subordinate trade, as against the dominat- 
 ing trade; not to facilitate a foreign trade as against, and to the 
 injury of, the domestic trade. Have Senators ever stopped to 
 consider what are the proportions existing between the domestic 
 and the foreign trade of the United States? 
 
 Mr. Edward Atkinson, in his book entitled " The Industrial 
 Progress of the Nation," computes the production of this coun- 
 try by all who are at work at such a sum as makes a little over 
 an average of $200 per head of the entire population. Assum- 
 ing our population to be, in round numbers, 70,000,000, this 
 would give a total production of $14, 000,000,000 per annum. 
 But business does not end with production. It is estimated that 
 each article is bought and sold at least three times before be- 
 ing consumed. As, in computing foreign trade, we count both 
 exports and imports, so, in ascertaining the total trade, we count 
 purchases and sales. We must therefore add to the $14,000,- 
 000,000 a further sum made up of the treble sales and the treble 
 purchases which constitute the commerce of the country apart 
 from production. 
 
 We have, therefore, these figures: 
 
 Production $14,000,000,000 
 
 All purchases-- - 42,000,000,000 
 
 AUsales 42,000,000,000' 
 
 making a total of $98,000,000, 000 of production and commerce, not 
 computing anything for profits on the transactions. Of this vast 
 sum, what proportion is the foreign trade of the country? Last 
 year it was larger than ever before in our history, and still it 
 amounted to less than $1,900,000,000, or considerably below the 
 one-fiftieth part of our total trade! 
 
 When we keep in mind this colossal sum constituting the busi- 
 ness of our own people among themselves, it must be obvious that 
 the monetary question of most importance to the population of 
 the United States is by what form of money they can equitably 
 exchange products and pay debts among themselves. 
 
 785 
 
299 
 
 The need for gold is not for the purpose of makiag payments 
 on all foreign purchases, but for the purpose only of settling 
 momentary balances, or excesses of imports over exports, which 
 are never more than the merest trifle in proportion to the total 
 trade. Had we a permanent balance every year against us of 
 $50,000,000, to be paid in gold, two-thirds of it could be paid from 
 the products of our own mines. But even the $50,000,000 would 
 be b,ut the one-fortieth part of our foreign trade, and would, 
 therefore, bs but the two-thousandth part of our entire business. 
 Yet it is this infinitesimal demand for the money of a foreign 
 country that induces Senators to persist in adhering to a stand- 
 ard that is disturbing the equities of all time contracts in their 
 own country and through falling prices relegating to idleness, 
 large numbers of the population. 
 
 ' GBEEHBACKS AND GOLD DTJEING THE WAB. 
 
 Undoubtedly the foundation of the popular fear of a premium 
 on gold is the idea that in order to trade with other countries 
 we must use for our domestic money the same money material' 
 as the countries with which we trade; and the discount on our 
 paper money during our late war is pointed to as a warning. 
 But that discount was not in the slightest degree due to the 
 character of the material of our money, but to the number of ;the 
 dgllars that were put into circulation. It was the excessive 
 quantity of the money units in circulation that caused the vari- 
 ance in purchasing power between the paper unit and the gold 
 unit. Who will deny that if the whole number of our dollars of 
 all kinds had been kept strictly limited to a number equal to the 
 number we had at the time the war began, every dollar of the 
 paper would have remained equal to gold? 
 
 The great fluctuations in the relation between gjreenbacks and 
 gold were not, however, a correct measure of the so-called de- 
 preciation of the greenback. It frequently happened that the pre- 
 mium upon gold was enormously greater than the relative values 
 9f the two things, greenbacks and gold, as measured in every- 
 thing else. The overplus simply indicated that a little ' 'corner" 
 or " squeeze " in gold was for the time being made in the market. 
 
 A simple illustration will be sufficient to show this: When there 
 785 ' 
 
300 
 
 was a change of 3 or 4 per cent in the premium on gold, as there 
 freq^uently was within twenty-four hours, it was not found that 
 all the values in the country fluctuated to that extent in a day.. 
 The wages of men were not readjusted from day to day, nor did 
 the prices of commodities, measured in greenbacks, suffer any 
 such sudden change. It meant that some persons were in great 
 need of gold at that moment, and a '' corner " was created in 
 order to squeeze them. 
 
 There was but a small supply of gold in the country, and it 
 was subject to demand and supply on the spot where, and at the 
 moment when, needed. The premium did pot, therefore, cor- 
 rectly measure the relative values of the two kinds of money. 
 
 Take the range of prices in England and in this country in 
 gold all through the war, and it will be found that when there 
 was a little corner made here, and the metaL ran up to a high 
 figure, it was not owing to any corresponding change of prices. 
 
 Gold was then a commodity in this country, and the elements 
 that governed value in all other things governed its value — 
 namely, demand and supply at the time and place where wanted. 
 
 Those who sold gold without owning or having it frequently 
 found the market cornered, and at whatever cost, had to get it 
 for delivery on the day on which they had engaged to deliver it. 
 In no sense, therefore, did it measure the relative values of 
 things, according to the medium in which, at the time, all things 
 in this country were bought and sold. 
 
 The fact is that during the war we were simply calling two dif- 
 ferent things (a paper dollar and a gold dollar) by the same name, 
 " dollar," leading people to the idea that they represented one 
 another. Instead of having relation to one another the paper 
 dollar was simply the dollar, or money unit, of this country. 
 What the thing called th« gold dollar really represented was a 
 fractional or proportionate part of the value created by the whole 
 number of dollars (or their equivalents) of gold in use through- 
 out the world, as modified by the varying numbers in the differ- 
 ent gold-using countries, and by the amounts of silver and paper 
 money in use in those countries. Prices in one country having 
 the gold standard must bear a certain relation to prices in every 
 Other country that has the gold standard. With any other kind 
 
 785 
 
301 
 
 of money unit than a gold unit we might, therefo-re, without the 
 slightest injustice or depreciation, in our money, separate fi'om 
 the gold standard. Had we never called the two things by the 
 same name, the word "premium" could not be used to describe 
 a difference between them. 
 
 For example, had we never had a gold dollar, but had a paper 
 dollar, and had we found that at one period a certain number of 
 grains of gold could be got at a certain rate in paper, that is, in 
 the money of the country, and that at a subsequent period they 
 would cost more, people would not conclude that our money had 
 depreciated, but simply that gold, which was in no sense the 
 money of this country, had risen. Especially would this be the 
 case if, as measured by our money, the general range of prices 
 had been maintained practically unchanged. 
 
 But viewing gold as an unvarying thing, it has been taken for 
 granted, without examination, that it has not been appreciating. 
 
 rr IS SAID THJ^T DDK MONEY MUST BE AS GOOD AS THE MONET OF ANT 
 OTHER COTJNTBY. 
 
 The advocates of the gold standard lay great stress upon the 
 necessity of our money being as good as the money of any other 
 country. 
 
 Yet we know that with a given amount of gold we can buy 
 twice as much labor in England, and three times as much on the 
 Continent of Europe, as we can in this country. How, then, can 
 any comparison whatever be made between the moneys of the. 
 respective countries, and ia it not absurd to talk about the money 
 of this country being kept as " good " as the money of any other 
 country? 
 
 The value of money in any country is based on its purchasing 
 power in the country of its coinage or issue. Any pet-son in one 
 country who wants the money of another country can buy and 
 must buy that money with such goods as he may have, and at such 
 rates as it can be got for, measured by the products of that country. 
 
 If a man abroad wants to buy some particular product in the 
 United States he will purchase the money of thp United States 
 with that of his own country, and with our money he or his agent 
 will buy and pay for the product of which he is in need . In other 
 words, he will buy a bill of exchange on the United States. The 
 very purpose of a bill of exchange is, as it were, to transmute the 
 
 785 
 
302 
 
 money of one country into that of another. -As to any two coun- 
 tries, the money of either will, to the full extent of the export 
 trade of that country, buy on absolutely equitable terms, the 
 money of the other country, of no matter what material the money 
 of either m9,y be composed. The ratio of the two moneys in ex- 
 change will, of course, be proportioned to the purchasing power 
 of the units of the two in their respective countries. 
 
 This rule holds good, no matter how poor a country may be. 
 Evenin the case of bankrupt governments it holds perfectly good. 
 
 For instance, the money of Turkey, whose bonds are worth 
 little or nothing, is as good in London as in Turkey, up to the 
 limit at which English merchants have to pay for goods which 
 they have bought from Turkey, minus, of course, a small per- 
 centage for exchange and charges, as in the case of the money 
 of any other country. 
 
 Or again, suppose there were in London a sum in Japanese 
 yens equivalent to £10,000,000, and that 40,000,000 yards of 
 Japanese silk were imported at 5 shillings a yard. That money 
 would pay for them, and, after deducting a small charge for ex- 
 change, would, although not legal tender in England, have in 
 London all the value it had in Japan. 
 
 The money of this country will likewise, on terms absolutely 
 equitable, buy the money of any other country to the extent of 
 our exports. Should there be an excess of importations from 
 gold-using countries over exportations to such countries, there 
 would be a small premium on exchange. 
 
 These are matters for adjustment between exchange dealers 
 and those who, without foresight, send goods here from abroad 
 to be sold in our market, or who, living here, buy abroad more 
 than can be paid for by the exports of our own country. Losses 
 of exchange should not be made to fall on all our people, but only 
 on those who are responsible for them. Any country that has a 
 balance of trade in its favor can always, to advantage, get so 
 much of the money of any other country as it may need. 
 
 ADVANTAGES OF A KATIONAIi, AS CONTRADISTINGT3ISHED FROM AN INTEB- 
 NaTIONAL, MONET. 
 
 Mr. President, extraordinary anxiety is expressed lest we 
 should go to a silver standard or a silver basis, and thus " sep- 
 
 785 
 
303 • 
 
 arate ourselves," as the advocates of the gold standard say, from 
 the commercial nations of Europe. The "commercial nations " 
 in this case mean only Great Britain and Grcrmany, because there 
 would be no difficulty in exchanging silver with France. The 
 other nations of Europe outside of the three named, so far as 
 our commercial- relations are concerned, are not worth taking 
 into account. 
 
 Now, I, for one, believe in submitting things to the test of 
 reason. I am not willing to take the word of any man in mat- 
 ters of reason without investigating for myself. Let us then in- 
 quire what injury could result to the people of this country if we 
 should have a money not international in character. For al- 
 . -though there is, strictly spea,king,nosuch thing as international 
 money, yet in view of the fact that a special material has unre- 
 ■stricted access to the mints of several countries, and is therefore 
 potentially money in those countries even when not coined, we 
 may, for the purposes of the discussion, term gold international 
 money. 
 
 There are two great evils inseparable from the use of what 
 maybe termed international money: First, the demand of a large 
 ■group of nations being made upon the same money material, 
 the supply of which is insufficient for the constantly growing 
 exchanges of those countries, there must result a continuous and 
 progressive fall in general prices. Second, the money of each 
 country in turn is taken out of the circulation and shipped to 
 •other countries, whence in time it is returned, only to be shipped 
 •out again , thus maint£i,ining a process of seesaw in the course of 
 of prices in the various countries affected.' So that by basing all 
 transactions, both internal and external, upon an international 
 money, trade and industry are kept in a constant oscillation be- 
 tween bad times and good times— between inflation and contrac- 
 tion. Hence prosperity, like the ocean tide, has its ebb and flow. 
 It is said to come in " waves," and so long as nations adhere to 
 -the shrinking gold standard prosperity can come -in waves only. 
 So long as we use a money material common to all nations, or to 
 a large group of nations, not only are we never sure of having 
 enough for the needs of our own people, but when any difficulty 
 occurs in a foreign country we are subjected to extreme varia- 
 
 785 
 
. 304 
 
 tions in the value of our money because of foreign embroilments 
 over which, in the nature of things, we can have no control. All 
 this would be avoided by the possession of a money purely nar 
 tiqnal. 
 
 UNDER A SYSTEM 01' NATIONAL MONET, WHO WOULD NEED GOLD, AND HOW 
 WbULD THEY GET IT? 
 
 No amount of energy, industry, enterprise, or thrift can keep a 
 country uninterruptedly prosperous while large quantities of its 
 money are flitting back and forth across the ocean, alternately 
 contracting and inflating the money volume, alternately lowering 
 and raising prices, disarranging contracts, destroying equities, 
 defying foresight, inducing bankruptcy and producing misery. 
 Were our money exclusively national, then, should the balance 
 of trade go against us, it might be that, so far as this country ia 
 concerned, the international money would go to a premium. But 
 who would want international money? Who would be compelled 
 to have it? Two classes of persons only. First. Our importers 
 of foreign goods, and they to the extent merely that they have 
 bought more largely of foreign goods than^ the merchants of for- 
 eign countries have bought of our goods. Second. Railroad and 
 other corporations which have outstanding bonds payable in 
 gold. 
 
 As to the first class: If the importer paid a premium he would 
 not be a loser, bsoause he would recoup himself by charging so 
 much more for his goods, and this' extra charge should very 
 properly be paitt Dy those among our citizens who prefer for- 
 eign-made articles to those of American manufacture. 
 
 As to the second class, namely, railroad corporations having 
 outstanding obligations payable in gold: Under a system of na- 
 tional money they could as readily command gold as they now 
 do. How do railroad companies now command gold? By ren- 
 dering certain services in the transportation of persons and com- 
 modities for which the public pay certain rates of fare and 
 freight. The more active and remunerative the business of 
 their patrons the more thrivingmust necessarily be the business 
 of the railroads. Whether under a gold regime or any other, if 
 the business of the people be stagnant and unremunerative, the 
 business of the railroads can not be prosperous. A farmer or 
 
305 
 
 cotton-planter can better afford to pay a high rate of transporta- 
 tion on wheat or cotton that is marketed at a rate which yields 
 a fair profit than to pay a much lower rate on the same commodi- 
 ties marketed at bare cost of production or at a loss. 
 
 The prosperity of the railroad companies depends on the pros- 
 perity of all the people of the region through which the roads 
 run. This prosperity can not coexist with persistently falling 
 prices of the commodities which it is the function of railroads to 
 transport. Want of prosperity among "the people means ruin 
 and '• receiverships " for railroads. Such want of prosperity is 
 the inevitable result of a shrinking money volume. 
 
 With a national money that should keep even step and pace 
 with demand there would be confidence in the stability of prices, 
 safety in the making of time contracts, consequent prosperity in 
 the course of business, and uninterrupted employment of all the 
 people. These are the elements that enter into the prosperity 
 of railroads, as of all other business enterprises. 
 
 I have said that railroads now get gold by rendering certain 
 services for which the public make certain payments. The 
 money received in such payments bears a certain average rela- 
 tion to commodities, and, at that relation, commands commodi- 
 ties. Under a system of national money the payments which 
 railroads would receive would be in such national money, which 
 would have a certain control over commodities in this country. 
 As commodities now in this country bear relation to gold, and 
 at that relation command gold, so our national money, which 
 would always bear relation to our commodities, would at that 
 relation command gold. 
 
 The only difference would be, that whereas now the increase 
 in the value of gold is furtive and unperceived, because we use 
 gold as the "standard" and measure it by itself, a national 
 money would exhibit this baleful increase in all its deformity, 
 and would register the degree in which, from month to month 
 and yea,r to year, gold was departing from the level of equity and 
 justice, and the degree in which it was confiscating into the pos- 
 session of the creditors the property of all debtors in the coun- 
 tries which adhered to its so-called "standard." 
 
 Should a premium arise on gold by reason of a decline in the 
 
 785 20 
 
306 
 
 value of our national inoney (measured of course in commodi- 
 ties) that would be one thing; but if by reason of a rise in the 
 value of fifoM (measured likewise in commodities) that would be 
 another and wholly different thing. It would be a benefaction 
 to this country to have a money that would neither rise nor fall 
 in value, and I must here repeat that the value of money means 
 purchasing power; it has no other value. If, however, gold should 
 rise and tbere were a sufScient supply of national money with 
 which to do our business and maintain the average range of 
 prices undisturbed, then a premium on gold, as measured in our 
 national money, could not exist until the prices of commodities, 
 estimated or expressed in national money, should come to bear 
 the same relation to prices estimated or expressed in gold that 
 the purchasing power of our national money would bear to the 
 purchasing power of money in gold-using countries. 
 
 In other words, a premium could not arise on gold until the 
 general range of prices of commodities, expressed in national 
 money, rose to a degree corresponding with the premium on 
 gold. Hence commodities would command as much gold as if 
 the national money did not exist, and the few persons who might 
 owe gold debts would have no more sacrifice to make, in order 
 to get gold with which to pay those debts, than if there was no 
 national money. Indeed they would not need to make so much 
 sacrifice, inasmuch as if all the gold of this country were per- 
 mitted to go to and remain in Europe our exports would bring 
 better prices there, and so command more gold than if we 
 should insist on maintaining the struggle for a share of the 
 world's supply of that metal. 
 
 On the other hand, with gold only for money, or with money 
 redeemable in gold, the increasing value of the monetary unit 
 would be wholly unperceived, except as evidenced by the fall 
 in the prices of our commodities. That fall would occur, not in 
 prices of imported articles merely, but of all articles whether 
 imported or domestic. This would create a subtle buUenormous 
 increase in the obligation of all domestic debts — debts amount- 
 ing to many thousands of millions of dollars. Gold has increased 
 in value — that is to say in purchasing power — 50 per cent in the 
 past twenty years, or at the average rate of 2i per cent per an- 
 
 785 
 
307 
 
 num. so that the indebtedness of our people, measured in sacri- 
 fice has, by reason of adherring to the gold standard, cost them 
 that much more than they were equitably required to pay. 
 
 With a national money— a money which would not be sent out 
 of the country, there would be no great rise or fall bf prices, 
 and no great changes in the volume of money. All the money 
 would remain in the country, for the use of our own people, and 
 all differences in exchange would then be settled (as they should 
 be settled) by commodities. 
 
 It would then be as profitable to meet balances of trade with 
 commodities as with money, because our money would in foreign 
 countries be mere merchandise, which, I assert, is as it should 
 be. The money supply of our country should not be continually 
 oscillating between a feast and a famine, alternately raising hopes 
 and dashing them to the ground. 
 
 WANT 01' PARITY NO OBSTACLE TO FOREIGN TRADE. 
 
 The absence of a parity between the moneys of nations does 
 not affect their foreign trade, as some would have us believe. I 
 challenge any gold-standard Senator to point to an authority of 
 repute on political economy who anywhere pretends to assert 
 that any nation having money other than gold is, or can be, in- 
 juriously affected in its business or other relations by any vari- 
 ance in what is called the parity of moneys. The money of this 
 country, whether gold, silver, or paper, will always command — 
 will always purchase — upon equitable terms, the money of any 
 other country with which we have commercial relations, whether 
 those relations be directly with itself or through other countries. 
 
 One of the most eminent of economists. Prof. J. B. Cairnes, of 
 the University College, London, though an eminent advocate of 
 the gold standard, in his Leading Principles of Political Econ- 
 omy, says: 
 
 It appears to metliat tlie Influence attributed by many able writers In the 
 United States to tbe depreciation of the paper currency, as regards Its ef- 
 fects on the foreign trade of the country, is, In a great degree, purely inmgi- 
 nary. An adrance In the scale of prices, measured In gold. In a country. If 
 not shared by other countries, will at once affect its foreign trade, giving 
 an Impulse to importations, and checking the exportation of all commodi- 
 ties other than gold. 
 
 A similar effect is very generally attributed by American writers to the 
 action on prices of the greenback Inconvertible currency. But it may be 
 easily shown that this is a complete illusion. Foreigners do not send their 
 785 
 
308 
 
 products to the United States to take greenbacks In exchange. The return 
 ■which they look for Is either gold or t/ie commodities of the country; and if 
 these have risen in price in proportion as the paper money has been depre- 
 ciated, how should the advance In prices constitute an Inducement for them 
 to send their goods thither? The nominal gain In greenbacks on the Im- 
 portation is exactly balanced by the nominal loss when those greenbacks 
 come to be converted into gold or commodities. The gain may, in particu- 
 lar cases, exceed the loss, but, if It does, the loss will also, in other cases, 
 exceed the gain. On the whole, and on an average, they can not but be the 
 equivalents of each other. 
 
 I find this point touched upon also by an American writer 
 
 whom I regard as one of the ablest contributors to the literature 
 
 of political economy to be found in this or any other country. I 
 
 allude to Mr. John P. Young, the managing editor of the San 
 
 Francisco Chronicle. In a luminous article on bimetallism in 
 
 the issue of that journal xor August 3, last, Mr. Young says. 
 
 But the suggestion that this country might have a sole silver currency Is 
 the bogie that frightens many who know little or nothing of the subject. "To 
 have a sole silver currency" in their eyes means unparalleled disaster. 
 Such people completely igndre the fact that during the period that we had a 
 sole gold currency no one thought that the country was threatened with 
 ruin because the dearer silver was not coined. Such as gave the subject a 
 thought at all and had any real knowledge of the diflcuity desired that the 
 mistake of undervaluing sliver might be corrected, but they would have 
 judged a man a fit candidate for the lunatic asylum had he asserted that dis- 
 aster would certainly follow the free coinage of gold because it was cheaper 
 than silver. * * * If a nation has resources and a people capable of de 
 veloping them it vrtU Increase its wealth no matter what sort of money It 
 employs to circulate values, provided the standard of values is not tampered 
 with. , 
 
 Between 1860 and 1880 the precious metals, silver and gold, were not used 
 to circulate values in the United States. Our only currency was the green- 
 back — except in California. There was no demand for gold except that ar- 
 tificially created by promising to pay the Interest on bonds In money of that 
 metal, yet during the period in question, in spite of a devastating war dur- 
 ing which production was interrupted and vast quantities of property de- 
 stroyed, the wealth of the United States increased from S16, 160,000,000 to 
 543,642,000,000, or nearly threefold in twenty years. If the theory of those 
 who make a fetich of gold were sound this could never have happened. Nor 
 while we were increasing our wealth at home did our foreign trade suffer. 
 That went on precisely as described by John Stuart Mill In his chapter " On 
 the Foreign Exchanges." After supplying an Illustration, Mill remarked: 
 
 *'It thus appears that a depreciation of the currency does not affect the 
 foreign trade of the country. This is carried on precisely as if the currency 
 maintained its value. * • * If the currency Is depreciated 10, 15, or 20 per 
 cent, then in whatever way the real exchange arising from the variation of 
 international debts and credits may differ the quoted exchange will always 
 vary 10, 15, or 20 per cent from It. However high this nominal premium may 
 be It has no tendency to send gold out of the country for the purpose of 
 drawing a bill against it and profiting by the premium, because the gold so 
 sent must be procured, not from the banks at par, as in the case of a con- 
 vertible currency, but In the market at an advance of price equal to the pre- 
 mium." 
 785 
 
309 
 
 Bank of England notes will at any time, and at equitable rates 
 of exchange, buy the money of any other country with which 
 England has commercial relations— direct or indirect. Why? 
 Not because they are payable in gol(^ but because they will com- 
 mand commodities in Great Britain. The ultimate object of 
 money is to command goods — to purchase commodities. Money 
 is an order for goods in the country of its coinage or issue— a 
 guinea, as Adam Smith says, being nothing more than " an order 
 for goods on all tradesmen in the neighborhood." Any form of 
 money that will command commodities in Great Britain can, 
 therefore, in any country of the world, be exchanged at equita- 
 ble rates for the money of other countries, because almost all 
 countrieshave Commercial relations with Great Britain. Should 
 the comodity desired be gold itself the situation is in no sense 
 altered. The principle is the same. Even gold coin is but a 
 commodity in every country except that whose stamp it bears. 
 
 Where, as in Europe, a number of small countries lie close to- 
 gether, and the plane of living of the people of all such coun- 
 tries is about the same — especially, if travel between them is 
 very general — the utility of what may be termed an international 
 money is much more obvious than under other and directly op- 
 posite conditions. 
 
 THE POSITION or THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 Where a country is of continental proportions and separated 
 by thousands of miles of broad ocean from another country pos- 
 sessing a certain character of money; where, also, the manners 
 and customs of the people altogether differ, and the level of life 
 for the masses is much higher; where, instead of four or five 
 millions, or even twenty or thirty millions, of inhabitants, the 
 country has 70,000,000; where, too, a country is in no way de- 
 pendent upon other countries for the supply of its needs, buthas 
 within itself every element necessary to the supply of all the 
 wants of its people — but, above all, where the spirit of freedom 
 and independence prevails to a degree unknown elsewhere — 
 there is no necessity whatever for a money system correspond- 
 ing with that of any other country. On the contrary, when the 
 situation comes to be carefully analyzed, many reasons will ap- 
 
 786 
 
310 
 
 pear why it would be better for such a country not to have a fi- 
 nancial system to correspond with that of other countries. 
 
 If money be necessary at all, it is necessary all the time. What- 
 ever the volume of money may be, that quantity is needed every 
 day and every hour of the day. There is no circumstance of 
 business or season of the year in which it is not necessary that 
 the volume should be steady. The equities of all contracts de- 
 pend upon it. In transactions requiring deferred payment, jus- 
 tice is impossible unless the money volume increases with in- 
 crease of population and demand. It is as unwise, therefore, for 
 the people of a country to permit their money to be taken away 
 in any material quantity as it would be to permit the agricultural 
 implements employed in the country to be taken away when they 
 were needed for the operations of agriculture — indeed it would be 
 more objectionable and injurious to take the money than the ag- 
 ricultural implements, because the season demanding the use of 
 agricultural implements is short, while the season for money is 
 the entire year — and every day of the year. 
 
 The advocates of the gold standard lay great stress upon the 
 fact that 95 per cent, as they call it, of the business of the world 
 is transacted now with checks, drafts, notes, and bills of ex- 
 change. Ninety-five per cent of the business they regard, and 
 rightfully regard, as a very large percentage, but when we show 
 ^ that 95 per cent of our business is domestic business, is a business 
 between our own people themselves, and not between our own 
 people and foreigners, then the 5 per cent done with foreigners 
 becomes of enormous importance, while the 95 per cent done be- 
 tween our own people is a matter of no consequence whatever! 
 
 THE POSITION OF THE REPCBLICAN PARTY. 
 
 The " revenue tariff " advocates are criticised by our protec- 
 tionist friends because, as is said, they do not take an American 
 view of the tariff. The protectionists, however, refuse to take 
 an American view of the money question. The protectionists 
 of to-day lack the courage with which the Republican party set 
 out in its great career. They have not the courage to investi- 
 gate this great question of money from a national, or natural, 
 point of view. A true American should be amazed to hear that 
 no money is good money unless it be the money of Great Britain 
 
 785 
 
311 
 
 and Germany, Whenever those two countries say to us that we 
 may use silver as full legal-tender money, then our Republican 
 protectionist friends are willing that we may do so. Silver will 
 then be good American money, not before. 
 
 This is a " lame and impotent conclusion" for a great national 
 party — the party of human freedom. The slavery of 1861 was 
 that of an inferior race. There is a slavery of to-day which it 
 is sought to perpetuate, and which, while not so palpable to the 
 common view as that of 1861, is more far-reaching and repulsive 
 and baleful in its consequences, because it is a slavery of the pro- 
 ducing masses of the white race all the world over. This slavery 
 our people can not escape. Against it, forms of governmentare 
 no defense. If we do the bidding of the money-lenders, and 
 maintain the gold standard, we must expect our producing 
 classes to become year by year more and more depressed, pro- 
 vided they are willing to tolerate the conditions which the gold 
 ' standard renders inevitable. One of the plainest of those con- 
 ditions is that the lands are ■ to pass into the proprietorship of 
 mortgage companies and other rich creditors, while our work- 
 ing farmers are to be transformed into tenants, as in Europe. 
 
 TJhe respect in which our people, however, differ from those 
 of Europe is that they are not disposed to tolerate European 
 conditions. The political unrest of the past year or two in this 
 country and the serious defection from both the leading political 
 parties, speak to Congress louder and more plainly than do 
 the bankers and the chambers of commerce. 
 
 It is impossible to misapprehend or mistake the spirit of our 
 people. For many years past demands for the free coinage of sil- 
 ver have been made by all the leading organizations of labor and 
 all the great associations of agriculturists in this country. 
 
 It will not do to say that these men do not understand the 
 monetary question. They understand it much better than the 
 advocates of the gold standard suppose. 
 
 What an absurd idea it is that we can not tell a week in ad- 
 vance what shall be the volume of money in our own country. 
 
 It is absurd for 70,000,000 intelligent people to submit their 
 entire business, with all the delicate and multifarious equities 
 
 785 
 
312 
 
 existing between debtors andi3reditors,to the dictum of foreign 
 governments and peoples. 
 
 THE COINAGE OR ISSUB Off MONIY A GOTEBNHBNTAIi rUNOTION. 
 
 All governments reserve to themselves the right to coin 
 money. It is impossible to obtain money except through the 
 instrumentality of governments. Is it not the duty of a govern- 
 ment to adopt a monetary standard that will admit of the possi-. 
 bility of a sufficient volume of money being obtained for the 
 transaction of the business of its own people, and to protect it 
 against both inflation and contraction. The government after 
 all is but the people in their collective capacity, and the collec- 
 tivity may do, and in fact, as to money, must do. what can not be 
 done by the individual. The happiness of all the people depends 
 upon their having a sufiSicient volume of money, and no govern- 
 ment should divide responsibility in so important a matter with 
 any foreign government. 
 
 An inflow of money, by tending to make prices rise, gives an 
 impetus to business. No sooner has the process commsnced, 
 however, than a contrary influence begins to assert itself, and 
 the money by flowing out of the country leaves our industries 
 without monetary support. ' 
 
 With a national money properly regulated and the banks held 
 under strict control and restraint with reference to the exten- 
 sion of credits, a general or widespread panic would be impossi- 
 ble. In matters on which there 'was a diversity of judgment 
 there would, with any system of money, be chances of disaster. 
 There would be occaBional overspeculation in town lots, or too 
 many people entering into special lines of business, but the effects 
 would be local and limited — local as to places and limited as to 
 classes of business. There would be no general panic. 
 
 It is one of the inalienable rights of a free people to provide 
 themselves with a sufficient and properly regulated money sys- 
 tem, regardless of the systems prevailing in countries of less 
 enlightenment, or in which the rights and interests of the peo- 
 ple are subordinated to the cupidity of money-lenders and privi- 
 leged classes. 
 
 During the late war we had not the manufacturing resources 
 that we now have. The support of our Army and Navy created 
 
313 
 
 a demand for goods of all kinds. Our imports enormously ex- 
 ceeded our exports, and we became " short " on gold. Then the 
 Europeans had us at a disadvantage and we had to issue bonds 
 for coin with which to pay for foreign purchases. 
 
 But now positions are reversed. It is we who have products 
 that the Europeans must have, and while they produce nothing 
 that is indispensable to us, we produce articles of prime neces- 
 sity which are absolutely essential to their very existence. 
 
 THE VAIiUH or AMBKICAM MONEY SHOULD NOT BE PEBMITTBD TO DEPEND 
 ON THE ACTIOH OF OTHER GOVERNMENTS. 
 
 The more one reflects upon this question the more monstrous 
 does it seem that the value of money in this country should de- 
 pend on the will or whim or cupidity of the governments or peo- 
 ple of other countries. If by reason of wars or otherwise the peo- 
 ple of other countries suspend specie payments, they can, by sus- 
 pension or resumption of such payments, affect the value of 
 every dollar in the United States, simply by taking the money 
 out of this country and storing it up in their vaults, as they are 
 now doing. 
 
 Suppose that our national monetary unit should represent ac- 
 curately the amount of sacrifice that a debtor equitably and hon- 
 estly owes — suppose it should represent precisely the value that 
 was agreed to be delivered in repayment ol a debt — when we 
 know that the value of the monetary unit aepends on the num- 
 ber of units circulating in the country, could we look with sat- 
 isfaction upon a process by which without any control upon our 
 part foreigners, whether through their wars or otherwise, could 
 in effect alter the terms of all our domestic debts and contracts? 
 Had we a money system that secured justice and maintained 
 equity, how is it possible that we could be at a disadvantage in 
 comparison with a country that had an unjust system? 
 
 Whatever our money may be, it will be good abroad to the ex- 
 tent of our exports, and we do not want any better condition 
 than that. We do not want a money that can be shipped out, to 
 the injury of our business. If any of our importers wish to buy 
 in excess of the sales being made by our exporters, then it be- 
 comes the personal business of the importer to settle his debt' 
 without inflicting injury on domestic debtors, who are praoti- 
 
 785 
 
314 
 
 cally the people of the entire country. * Had we a national money 
 we should have an unerring barometer, which, by the rise of 
 foreign exchange, would notify us that we were importing more 
 goods than we were exporting. Merchants and others could 
 then adjust their business relations accordingly, and no one 
 could be injured. 
 
 The English economists and professors insist with vehemence 
 on the theory that goods are paid for in goods, not in money. It 
 was the acceptance of this theory that led to the rejection of the 
 so-called mercantile system, which regarded money as the only 
 wealth — as something whose possession for its own sake was tha 
 main object of commerce. 
 
 Their whole theory of political economy is based on the idea 
 that imports are paid for by exports, and that all international 
 trade is barter. If correct in this why need they express so 
 much anxiety lest the money of a foreign country go to a pre- 
 mium in this? The premium could affect only those of our peo- 
 ple who wished to use articles of foreign production — and whom 
 else should it affect? 
 
 rALLAOT or BASING MONBTABT DISCUSSIONS OH A MBBB FOBBIGN TRADB. 
 
 Owing to the influence of England, which was the first of the 
 civilized nations to develop a large foreign commerce, all dis- 
 cussions on money are based upon foreign trade. This may 
 do for Great Britain, but will not do for the United States. 
 The poverty of the masses of the people of that country is such 
 that in proportion to their foreign trade their domestic trade 
 is much less per capita than that of the United States. But this 
 comparison is not one derogatory to this country. On the very 
 contrary, the superior purchasing power of our people is tha* 
 which constitutes the source of their prosperity and independ- 
 ence. Hence the conditions of the two countries widely differ. 
 Our internal commerce is enormous. One of our trunk lines of 
 railway — the Pennsylvania Company— hauls more tons of freight 
 in a year than the entire foreign shipping of Great Britain. 
 
 "With such a statement before us, can any Senator explain why 
 the United States should attempt to adjust its enormous domes- 
 tic interests to the moneyed necessities of a business that con- 
 sists of a mere one-fiftieth part of our entire trade? 
 
 785 
 
315 
 
 In any event when we buy gold we have to buy it with com- 
 modities. Inasmuch as every man must get or " buy " the money 
 of his own country with commodities.^the product of his labor, 
 will not that money in its turn buy gold, should it be needed to 
 pay importer's balances? 
 
 THU BALANCE OP TRADE. 
 
 Had we a money exclusively national, our importers could buy 
 to whatever extent they pleased without disturbing the pros- 
 perity of the country. Nobody would even inquire whether there 
 was a balance of trade against us or not. He who bought would 
 simply have to make payment according to his agreement. He 
 could not and should not be permitted to make payment by 
 sending our money out of the country, to the detriment and dis- 
 advantage of all who owe debts in this country, and they are 
 nine-tenths of the people. He could not turn his property into 
 foreign money, but would have to turn it into money of his own 
 country. He could not deprive the people of his own country of 
 their natural supply of money, the supply necessary to maintain 
 the equity of contracts. 
 
 When the balance of trade is against us it means that we are 
 going to lose a part of our money. With a money exclusively 
 national the balance of trade would not affect ug at all. It would 
 be a matter of personal concernment only to the importer. It 
 would leave him to make payment according to contract, and 
 would remove from the idea of an adverse balance of trade all the 
 objections that now attach to it. 
 
 Under a proper system of money we should not have more than 
 enough to do our own business, at a firm and natural level of 
 orices. That much we need all the time, and it is a greatinjus- 
 tice to our people to arbitrarily disturb the system upon which 
 the prices of the products of their labor depend. 
 
 Wnenever our national money were offered for sale, foreign 
 nations would be glad to take it to the full extent of our exports. 
 Should a larger amount be demanded, or, in other words, when- 
 ever our imports should begin largely to exceed our exports, 
 then, undoubtedly, a premium would begin to operate against us. 
 This would not be unnatural, nor would it be a disadvantage. 
 Like the index upon the steam gauge, the premium would, as it 
 
 785 
 
' 316 
 
 rose, indicate the increasing pressure. Like an automatic at- 
 tachment, it would ring a note of warning, gentle at first, but 
 increasing in force until heeded. It would announce that the 
 imports of the country were exceeding its exports, and that the 
 time had arrived for the curtailment of importations; or that, if 
 they continued, it should be for the importer to arrrange for 
 payment. 
 
 In discussing international trade the advocates of the gold 
 standard altogether lose sight of a most important fact, namely, 
 that a premium means a reduction of the prices of exports. A cer- 
 tain range of prices j)revailing in this country, a premium aris- 
 ing on gold would mean that at present prices the merchants of 
 gold-standard countries are not willing to buy our goods, but by 
 giving those merchants a premium, they are enabled to take the 
 goods at the prices at present prevailing here, and dispose of 
 them in their own country at a profit. 
 
 If importers do not wish to pay a premium on the money of a 
 foreign country they should see to it that they do not exceed in 
 imports the export business of their own country. It is no hard- 
 ship on them to require them to keep themselves informed of 
 the conditions of their own trade. A man who brings foreign 
 goods into the country should be compelled to make his own 
 computations as to how he is going to obtain the money with 
 which to pay for them. There is no difficulty about the compu- 
 tation, and, so far as the country at large is concerned, it would 
 be found that the foreigners would very much oftener have to 
 pay a premium upon our money than we should upon theirs. 
 
 If the foreigner buys our goods, with what will he pay? With 
 our money, or with goods measured in our money; that is, the 
 goods of his own country. If the foreigner does that, he will be 
 willing to give for our money its equivalent in grains of gold. 
 
 The subtle consideration involved in this proposition is that 
 our money will be, and must be, good to the full extent of the 
 amount of our exports. It always will, and must, purchase upon 
 absolutely equitable terms to the full amount of our exports the 
 money of any other country. 
 
 No country can have an equitable system of money for its own 
 citizens while permitting foreign governments to be partners 
 
 785 
 
317 
 
 ■vith itself in the matter of its money. It would be better to 
 have such a partnership in other things than in money, yet the 
 idea of partnership between nations in the matter, for example, 
 of ships, would be considered absurd. 
 
 There are many things as to which this country has no part- 
 nership with other nations, yet as to which we have prospered 
 exceedingly. Then why a partnership in money? 
 
 Had we a national money no foreign crisis could disturb the 
 prosperity of our people. There could be no general crisis here. 
 
 Should the money of a foreign country become too high, 
 we should have an alternative; that is to say, we should not 
 need to buy anything from that country beyond the so-called 
 equilibrium of trade. But if we use the same character of money 
 as the people of that country do, a scarcity of money with them 
 may produce a widespread panic in our country. 
 
 Had we a money of unchanging value, by reason of a proper 
 regulation of its quantity, what possible disadvantage could 
 come to us from the lack of foreign gold? We should always 
 have $35,000,000 of gold every year from our ovrn mines; and gold 
 is offered in every country in the world for our products. 
 
 SUPPOSE CONTBACTS WERE MADE NOT IM TERMS OP MONET BUT WHEAT I 
 
 Suppose the people of the United States in all their dealings, 
 foreign and domestic, should make their contracts for payment, 
 not in dollars, but in pounds of wheat. Suppose the foreigners 
 insisted that in these transactions the Americans should use the 
 system of scales and weights that were used abroad. And sup- 
 pose we found after awhile that according to the foreign system 
 the specific gravily of the pound weight was constantly and 
 wrongfully increasing. Suppose that upon this discovery, ob- 
 jection was made by many Americans to making payment accord- 
 ing to this foreign standard, what would be thought of other 
 Americans who should noisily insist that payment should be 
 made to these foreigners according to thp pound which was con- 
 stantly increasing in weight, although they knew or could read- 
 ily ascertain that this increase of weight was surreptitious, 
 clandestine, and fraudulent? 
 
 Suppose the payments to have been made, however, according 
 to the interpretation placed upon the contract by these noisy 
 
 785 
 
318 
 
 Americans, many of whom regarded themselves as citizens of 
 the world rather than of the United States, and that all foreign- 
 ers declined to enter into further obligations except upon the 
 understanding that Americans making foreign contracts should 
 use these foreign scales and weights. Very well. What injus- 
 tice could there be in letting such of our citizens as insisted on 
 making foreign contracts on those terms carry out their con- 
 tracts according to their agreement, letting each man individu- 
 ally pay his indebtedness to the foreigner according to the terms 
 and understanding of the contract and according to the scales 
 and weights of the foreign country? 
 
 But what, objection could there be to permitting all the re- 
 mainder of the people of the United States conducting their 
 business among- themselves according to the scales and weights 
 which were the standard in the United States — scales and weights 
 by which exact justice may be meted out between citizen and 
 citizen. 
 
 Prosperity can not comefrom injustice. Letowr people among 
 themselves have just weights and measures; let the foreigners 
 have such weights and measures as they please. Those who 
 make contracts with foreigners may use any scales provided for 
 by the contract. But why should not our own people, among 
 themselves, use scales that are perfectly equitable — what injury 
 or injustice can happen to any one by such a course? 
 
 ADVANTAOB OF HAVING CORRBOT SCALES AHD TRUE WBIGHTS. 
 
 By having correct scales for the home trade the equities be- 
 tween our own people are preserved. If any individual wishes 
 to make a contract which |iequires him to pay in certain pre- 
 scribed scales and by certain prescribed weights, he is entitled 
 to make his contract as he pleases. But why should he find it 
 necessary to force upon a^-the other people of his country the 
 inequitable scales and weights of foreigners and make them the 
 standard of his own country, so that no sign of the iniquity may 
 be discernible, no evidence of the wrongful aberrations ob- 
 served? 
 
 If we have correct scales and weights for our own domestic 
 transactions, we shall be able to see the errors of the others. If 
 we have no scales or weights other than those of foreign nations, 
 
 785 
 
319 
 
 wMoh. are constantly increasing their measuring power over 
 commodities, our people will not be able to perceive the wrong 
 which is inflicted upon them, and will have to undergo much 
 Buffering from causes which they can not explain. 
 
 So, as I have stated, we do not escape the payment of a premium 
 by having the gold standard in this country. The fact simply 
 is that, everything being measured in gold, all changes that take 
 place are attributed to conditions affecting commodities. The 
 masses of the people are not prone to suspect changes to occur 
 In that which they are taught to regard as a standard. 
 
 No nation, whether on the gold standardor not, can keep more 
 than its distributive or proportionate share of the world's gold. 
 Hence any influx of gold into a country beyond the customary 
 stock can be merely temporary. Only national money will re- 
 main to perform the money function among the people. This 
 property in national money, instead of being a vice, as the gold- 
 standard men assert it to be, is a crowning virtue. 
 
 Had we free coinage of silver no one would want gold, be- 
 cause, even if as supposed by the gold-standard advocates, gold 
 should then be hoarded and withdrawn from circulation, prices 
 ■of commodities might fall instead of rising. In that case our 
 foreign purchases trould become less, so that balances would be 
 in our favor. 
 
 THE MONEY SYSTEMS OE EUROPE NO CBITEBIA EOB THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 Compared with the United States the population of the Euro- 
 pean countries is stationary. The money systems of those coun- 
 tries, therefore, are no criteria for us. "With the character of our 
 population, their enterprise, their energy, ingenuity, andaspira- 
 "tion, their aptness in adapting means to ends, they would make 
 this country the center of civilization and of progress. 
 
 If we have an international money v, j must content ourselves 
 with international prices. It is only when prices have gone up 
 above the international range that gold begins to go out, and if 
 the gold product should continue small, and a constantly increas- 
 ing amount of it be consumed in the arts, the chances are that 
 without any inflation whatever gold would continually get dearer, 
 and the two metals might part company. They are more likely 
 
 785 
 
320 
 
 to remain together, however, if this country does not enter into a 
 contest for gold. 
 
 It is impossible, as I have said, for gold to go to a premium in 
 this country until substantially all the gold in the country has 
 gone out, and it will take a large amount of silver to drive out 
 all the gold. A silver dollar can do no more in that respect — 
 can do no more toward sustaining prices or sending out gold — 
 than a gold dollar. 
 
 It is admitted that we have $600,000,000 of gold in this coun- 
 try. How long would it take for that gold to go out and $600,- 
 000,000 of silver to take its place, and what would be the effect 
 abroad and at home while that operation was taking place? 
 
 SUPPOSE CUB GOLD STOCK TO GO I 
 
 Suppose that according as portions of the $600,000,000 went, 
 the monetary supply of this country were maintained at a steady 
 level by the issuance of a number of silver dollars equal to the 
 number of gold dollars that were sent abroad. Suppose the gold 
 to go out gradually and silver gradually to come in to take its 
 place. Suppose that ultimately — say in a year— $100,000,000 of 
 gold should go and $100,000,000 of silver were coined and issued 
 to take its place. Could any change take place on that account 
 in the prices of commodities? If so, how? Can any Senator an- 
 swer? And if that question can not be answered, let me further 
 inquire: If prices do not rise, how can our importations increase 
 sufficiently to take out any more gold? But suppose that eventu- 
 ally all our gold left the country and went to Europe, would the 
 gold standard of Europe be then the same that it now is? There 
 are, according to the report of the Treasury Department, $3,000,- 
 000,000 of gold in Europe. An influx of six hundred millions 
 would be an addition of 20 percent to that stock of money. Is it 
 to be contended thatthatamount, added to the volume of money 
 in European countries, would not raise the prices of commodities 
 there? Would the gold standard of Europe be then the same 
 gold standard that it is now? Manifestly not. 
 
 The gold standard simply means the range of prices consistent 
 with the available quantity of gold money. When our gold had 
 all gone and entered into the circulation of European countries — 
 its place being supplied here by silver — would not the gold staad- 
 
 788 
 
321 
 
 ard of those countries be altogether a different standard from 
 that of today? Would it not be a much better standard, a more 
 beneficent standard? Would not the range of prices in Europe 
 be materially increased by the inflow of so large an amount of 
 gold? Would not a halt be called to the unjust increase in the 
 burden of debt, and would not our products exported to Europe 
 command much better prices than they now do? To what better 
 place could our gold go than to the markets in which we sell our 
 wheat, cotton, petroleum, tobacco, and meat products? 
 
 Meanwhile, as each dollar of silver took the place in our cir- 
 culation of each dollar of gold as the gold went out, our prices 
 could not alter. It will surely not be contended that a dollar of 
 silver could have any more effect than a dollar in gold. 
 
 Suppose, as I have said, that $100,000,000 of gold should go out 
 every year. Of this amount we should have $35,000,000 from our 
 own mines, which would leave $65,000,000 of our accumulated 
 stock to be sent out. Hence, it would require ten years to send 
 out all our gold, even at the rate of a hundred million a year, 
 and even if that amount, when sent to Europe, had no effect what- 
 ever on prices of commodities in the countries to which it went. 
 
 But no one doubts that it would raise prices there, so thatlong 
 before one-half or even one-third of our gold could go to Europe 
 the range of prices would be such as to establish an equilibrium 
 between the two countries. This would altogether stop the 
 outgo of gold; no man with any capacity for reflection can for 
 a moment doubt that that is precisely what would occur. Hence 
 the demand for our gold would stop very far short of exhausting 
 the quantity in the country. 
 
 There is no country in which the upper classes are more lux- 
 urious than in Russia. They are the most lavishly extravagant 
 people in the world in the purchase of all sorts of foreign lux- 
 uries. Yet they have had practically no money but paper money 
 for one hundred years. They simply purchase the necessary 
 gold by means of the commodities they have to sell. Does any- 
 body suppose that we can not get in like manner the few things 
 that we need abroad — ^for we need, in proportion to our popula- 
 tion and wealth, less things abroad than any other people in 
 the world. 
 
 785 21 
 
322 
 
 All the articles of prime necessity, the articles required for 
 the daily living of the masses of our people, are in surplus in 
 our own country, so that we do not need to buy them abroad. 
 The same is true of the larger proportion of our luxuries. 
 
 SaODIiD WE THUS SEPABATB OURSEIiVES FROM THE BEST OE THE WORLD? 
 
 It is said that we ought not to separate ourselves from the rest 
 of the world by having a money different from that used by other 
 countries. No one wants to separate our country from the rest 
 of the world. People who live in separate houses do not neces- 
 sarily separate themselves from the rest of the world. Each 
 family has its separate house, and there are certain rules and 
 restrictions for the government of all. That does not separate 
 them from the rest of the world or from the rest of the country, 
 or from the rest of the city. In the long run trade between na- 
 tions is settled with commodities. Nations could not go on sell- 
 ing everything and buying nothing. They would soon have to 
 stop the process, because in a few years they would have no 
 money. Even the most fanatical of the gold men would have to 
 admit that 95 per cent of the business of the country, being do- 
 mestic business only, there must be some medium retained in 
 the country by which the exchanges can be effected. 
 
 WOULD A SILVBB BASIS PLACE US ALONGSIDB INDIA? 
 
 tt is vehemently asserted that if we go to a silver basis we shall 
 be placed alongside India ana Mexico. 
 
 I should like to know whether Senators really suppose — 
 whether their reading of history and of sociology leads them to 
 understand that the difference between the sturdy race that in- 
 habits this country and the ryots of India and peons of Mexico — 
 is the standard of money that is used in the respecti ve countries. 
 If that is the conclusion which they draw from their reading, 
 I must be permitted to express my amazement. 
 
 I have supposed that the difference arose not from the stand- 
 ard of our money, but the standard of our men and women — the 
 standard of the blood in our people, of the iron in their veins, of 
 the nerve, the muscle, the brain, and tbe brawn of our race. I 
 have supposed we owe something to the experience of the thou- 
 sands of years during which our ancestors have been struggling 
 up the rugged mountains, fighting for liberty, and achie^'ng it. 
 
323 
 
 I h ive supposed we owed something to our hope, our faith, our 
 aspiration, our unconquerable determination. If I am mistaken, 
 however, and if really there is any credit due to the standard of 
 money, I can still point to the first half century of the ex- 
 istence of our Republic, when silver money was the money of the 
 country, and when Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and other 
 great men laid strong and wide and deep the foundations of 
 a great nation. 
 
 Every schoolboy knows that the achievements of that time 
 have never been excelled in history. I might even inquire 
 whether they have ever been equaled. The subject would bear 
 -elaboration, but I deem it of no importance. Those who advance 
 the claim that by going to a silver standard the people of the 
 United States would be placing themselves alongside India, in 
 the sinister sense in which these claimants desire to be under- 
 stood, do not themselves believe it, and in making the claim are 
 playing upon what they suppose to be the credulity of our people. 
 The contention would be entitled to be called silly but for the 
 fact that not one of those who use it believe it. It is wholly 
 disingenuous. 
 
 Are we to understand that if the people of India should now 
 adopt the gold standard they would place themselves "along- 
 side " the United States — that is to say, that they would become 
 equal to the people of this country in intelligence, in enterprise, 
 in inspiration, in energy, in genius, in momentum, in power? 
 If it be true that it is the gold standaM that invests the white 
 race with those qualities, it should invest the Hindoos with 
 them. To state the proposition is to answer it. 
 
 The words ' ' India " and ' ' Mexico " in this connection are mere 
 catch- words with which to distract the attention of people from 
 the real issue, and their use is proof of a pitiful lack of merit 
 in the argument for the gold standard. 
 
 According to the admissions of the advocates of the gold stand- 
 ard, the United States are now indebted to silver alone for the 
 performance of all the functions of money in this country, gold 
 being either hoarded or held in the banks when it is not going 
 -abroad. 
 
 It must be pretty good money that will keep always in circu- 
 
 783 
 
324 
 
 lation — pe. forming the service for which money is useful. The- 
 money that should be praised is the money that remiins in cir- 
 culation, and not the money that is hoarded or goes abroad. 
 
 I recollect hearing a discussion some twenty years ago as to- 
 the superior merits of gold as money. The gold-standard cham- 
 pion had been for some time expatiating on the supposed advan- 
 tages of the money he advocated . The old farmer with whom 
 he was discussing told him that he remembered well when the 
 war broke out, and that when the reverberations of the flrst gun 
 came from Sumterthe eagle on the ten-dollar gold piece shrieked- 
 like a cowardly fowl and fled the country, while the greenbackr 
 shouldered the musket and went to the front, where it stayed till' 
 the war was over. He said gold might be good money, but ItK. 
 would not fight. 
 
 GOLD IN WARFARE. 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson. May I ask the Senator a question in that 
 connection? 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Certainly. 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson, it has been constantly contended by 
 those who entertain the same views in regard to this question 
 as the Senator from Nevada that Russia, Austria, and all the 
 great countries of Europe were constantly strengthening their ■ 
 gold reserves to prepare for war. I wish to ask if gold will not 
 buy the munitions of war, if it will not keep troops in the field, . 
 if it is not to be preferred to paper or silver, what becomes of 
 the argument we have so often heard here that the gold of the 
 world is being absorbed in the treasuries of the great nations 
 who are preparing for war? 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. I will say to the Senator that the 
 great war fought between Germany and Prance a few years ago 
 was fought on the part of Germany with silver money alone. 
 The Napoleonic wars, in which Great Britain took a great part^ 
 were all fought with paper money. No great war in history was 
 ever fought with gold; and now, when the nations of Europe are 
 drawing gold to fill what are called their war chests, the object 
 of each is to embarrass the other with regard to its finances. It 
 is a financial war, which often precedes the pomp and circum-- 
 stance of the real war. 
 
325 
 
 As I have said, a money that will circulate, of whatever mate- 
 ■ rial it may be composed, is the best form of money. Some peo- 
 .ple mistakenly depreciate a money that will circulate in thoir 
 own country and not in any other. But although the money of 
 tthe United States may not circulate in any other country, it will 
 have recognition there to the extent of our export trade, which 
 ,is not only as good for our purposes as circulation there would 
 s^be, but, indeed, very much better. 
 
 No mind not blinded by prejudice can doubt that if the United 
 States should altogether get rid of gold and send it to Europe 
 and itself go to the silver standard exclusively, it would be an 
 enormous atimtilus to the exportation of commodities from this 
 country. 
 
 In the first place, the gold would, as I have said, largely in- 
 crease the volume of money in Europe, and as a consequence the 
 prices of our commodities sent there for sale would rise. This 
 would not only reward our farmers and planters with better 
 prices, but would stimulate our entire export trade. There 
 would not then be so much difference between gold and silver as 
 ■there is now. Were the United States to make silver their only 
 money the rise in the purchasing power of gold would be arrested. 
 
 Mr. VEST. Will my friend permit me to ask if his attention 
 .has been called to a dispatch published this morning from Bom- 
 bay in regard to the effect upon prices in India of the demone- 
 tization of silver by the English government in India? 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. No. 
 
 Mr. VEST. This dispatch comes from Consul-General Jam- 
 ieson. The effect, as stated in the article published in this 
 morning's papers, is that in India there is no monetary panic; 
 ■that silver continues to buy as much of all commodities as before 
 the change in the mintage by the English Government; that 
 gold has gone up enormously in value while the prices of com- 
 imodities have fallen. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. In gold? 
 
 Mr. VEST. Yes; in gold. 
 
 Mr. HOAR. Then what harm does the demonetization of 
 silver do? 
 
 785 
 
326 
 
 Mr. VEST. This report goes to show, what I understood the 
 Senator from Nevada to say in the early part of his argument., 
 that while silver remained equal in its purchasing power and 
 would buy as much as before, gold has gone up. 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson. Does not the article state that that has 
 occurred in Bombay and in Calcutta? Does it state that gold 
 has gone up through the interior of India? 
 
 Mr. VEST. It has gone up, as I understand it, in India. I do 
 not know anything abouo any particular locality. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. That is undoubtedly true, and the 
 more it is investigated the more perfectly clear it will become. 
 
 [At this point the honorable Senator yielded the floor.] 
 
 Wednesday, October S5, 1893. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Mr. President, I presume it will be 
 obvious to Senators that those who believe in the continuance 
 of the purchase of silver under the Sherman law until a law au- 
 thorizing unrestricted coinage can be enacted are not making 
 speeches with the hope of changing any votes in this body; but 
 we are determined in this great contest to place in full before 
 the people of the United States the reasons that lie at the foun- 
 dation of the question. 
 
 The time I had intended to occupy has been very much length- 
 ened by the various questions that I have been called upon to 
 answer, but I shall proceed as rapidly as possible with what I 
 have to say. 
 
 THE BALBrTIIj EITECTS OF AN INStrFFICIENCT OF MONIiT XJPON THE INTER- 
 ESTS OF THE WORKING CLASSES. 
 
 Some advocates of the gold standard inquire, with a sneer, 
 how it is that free coinage of silver is going to put money into 
 the pockets of the workingmen? They say that men must give 
 labor for money. To that we agree. In advocating the frej 
 coinage of silver men do not attempt to put money directly into 
 anybody's pocket. What we are attempting to do is to secure 
 the adoption of a national policy that will enable business to be 
 conducted on steady prices for the products of labor. If em- 
 ployers can not conduct business without incurring loss, idle men, 
 can not find employment. They will earn their money if given 
 
327 
 
 the opportunity. But if there is not enough money in the com- 
 munity to present falling prices, it is impossible that men can be 
 kept in uninterrupted employment. 
 
 We are simply attempting to secure the adoption of laws that 
 will permit the issue of metallic money, as has been the custom 
 of all time. If we are to have metallic money, how is it to be got 
 into circulation? How do people get gold money? Do they not 
 have to work for it? Men have to work even for bank notes, 
 which have none of this valuable quality which so many call 
 " intrinsic value." 
 
 With a correct monetary policy, those who now earn nothing 
 will be set to work, and will get their share of the money in the 
 community without depriving others of an equal opportunity to 
 get such share as those others may be entitled to. 
 
 Because a law against stealing does not put money directly into 
 any man's pocket, is it therefore useless to enact such laws? Be- 
 cause the preaching of the gospel does not put money into the 
 pockets of the multitude, must, therefore, the preaching of the 
 gospel be dispensed withy Because the observance of morality 
 or justice puts no money directly into the pockets of people, must 
 we, therefore, cease the inculcation of those qualities? Why 
 trouble ourselves to commend to our youth the advantages of 
 education, intelligence, uprightness, hoilesty, equity, and fair 
 dealing, because, after all, as the gold advocates inform us, 
 money can be maae only Dy working for it. Must not people at- 
 tempt by proper laws to establish correct conditions? 
 
 If gold monometallists are right, then the Decalogue is a su- 
 perfluity, and the Sermon on the Mount mere exuberance of emo- 
 tion. No one can see very clearly how either of those puts money 
 directly into the pockets of the people. Let the bankers have 
 charge of the issuing of the money of the country, and they will 
 be happy. The people of this country have determined, how- 
 ever, that the issue of money, which is a function of sovereignty, 
 shall be exercised by themselves, through their Government, 
 and it is useless for the banks to attempt to override the will of 
 the people, 
 
328 
 
 MOCK PEAKS THAT THE WOBKINGMEN MAT BE PAID IN DEPRECIATED 
 
 SILVER ! 
 
 Others of the gold-standard advocates, among whom are found 
 the New York bankers and the President of the United States, 
 entertain great fear that if the silver-purchEise law is not repealed 
 the workingmen will be paid in depreciated money — money of 
 low purchasing power — while the employers will keep the gold 
 money for themselves — because it will, as they suppose, have 
 higher purchasing power. 
 
 I wish some of them or their friends had taken the trouble to 
 indicate how this result was to be brought about, so that we 
 might have before us the modus operandi. 
 
 If silver dollars were to become depreciated, in relation to 
 what would they become depreciated? Would they become de- 
 preciated in relation to the products of labor? Does anybody 
 suppose that if the products of labor bring a higher price, the 
 wages of the laborer will not rise with the price of the products? 
 Nothing can be clearer than that the wages of labor must in the 
 long run fall with the prices of the products of labor, and that 
 they must rise with rising prices for those products and with 
 the modern organization of labor the rise of wages must promptly 
 follow a rise of prices. , 
 
 In the latter case not only does labor rise, but the universal 
 testimony is that it maintains the rise for a considerable time 
 after the general range Of prices of commodities has fallen, and 
 this by reason of the natural indisposition of the working classes 
 to have their wages reduced, and their stubborn opposition to 
 any proposition looking to that end. 
 
 With the article which is the product of labor persistently 
 falling in price, how can the employer keep on paying the work- 
 ingman a dollar that is constantly growing more valuable? 
 
 How could anybody afford to continue manufacturing if he 
 must pay wages at the former rate while the product of the 
 labor is falling in price? 
 
 There was a time, Mr. President, when the metal that was be- 
 coming the cheaper and more plentiful was not silver, but gold. 
 What was the belief at that time regarding the probable effect 
 
 of such cheapening process on the wages of the workingman? 
 
 785 
 
329 
 
 And what class of the community was then deemed entitled to 
 commiseration owing to the growing cheapness of the money? 
 
 THE CLASSES THAT WOTTLD REALLY BE AFFECTED BY CALLING A HALT 
 TO THE RISE IN THE VALUE OF MONEY. 
 
 Shortly after the discoveries of California and Australia Chev- 
 alier was a member of the council of state of the usurper, Napo- 
 •leon III. He foresaw, as he supposed, great evils to follow from 
 those discoveries — from a flood of depreciating money to flow into 
 Europe. He wrote a work on The Probable Fall in the Value 
 of Gold. Did he entertain the fear that the workingman would 
 suffer by being paid in the depreciated money? Here is what 
 he said on that subject: 
 
 If we would particularize tlie persons who will be more or less deeply 
 affected by tbe fall In gold, we have only to select those whose Income will 
 not find itself augmented naturally and by a self-adjusting process, In exact 
 proportion to the fall, and by the very tact of the fall, In gold. 
 
 Who are those persons that Mr. Chevalier, in the largeness 
 of his heart, commiserates? Are they the workingmen? Hear 
 his answer: 
 The national creditor— 
 He says- 
 Is the characteristic type of this class of sufferers. 
 All those persons- 
 He continues — 
 
 whose Incomes, expressed in monetary units, remain the tame would be In- 
 jured by the change to the extent of the half of their income, all other things 
 being equal. 
 
 He was arguing that gold would probably depreciate one-half in 
 purchasing power. It was for the national creditor that his sym- 
 pathies were aroused, and it is for the national creditor that the 
 sympathies of the bankers are now aroused. 
 
 All commodities,— 
 
 He continued — 
 
 excepting gold [the money that was growing cheap] and every kind of 
 property excepting that of which the income is, from the present, fixed, as 
 is the case with government funds ought from the moment that the mone- 
 tary crisis is terminated, to have attained in a gold currency double the price 
 which they are at present worth. 
 
 His opinion then was that the price of commodities and of 
 property, except government funds, would " double in price." 
 
 785 
 
330 
 
 How was it with wages — the reward of the workingmen? Were 
 they to continue low as before while prices were rising? Chev- 
 alier says: 
 
 /* will be the same eventually with the wages of labor [that Is to say, wages 
 would double], and with all personal serTices, whether rendered in the fac- 
 tory or on the farm or from the liberal professions. 
 
 And in a summing up distinguished for clearness of statement 
 
 he concludes this portion of his remarks with this paragraph (I 
 
 desire to call the special attention of the Senators to this, so that 
 
 they may note the classes of persons whom he includes): 
 
 " Thus, as a definitive analysis," he says, " the proprietors of lands, houses, 
 and other real estates, manufacturers, merchants, and their auxiliaries of 
 every kind ; public functionaries of all ranks ; and also those who follow the 
 different learned professions, will all find themselves in the end compensated 
 in the new state of things with advantages whicn they now enjoy^ all other things 
 being equal." "It Is another class of persons," he says, "whom we have 
 previously defined in a general way (the national creditors) who have to sub- 
 mit to a sacrifice In the proportion to the fall In the precious metal." 
 
 This enumeration of persons who can not be injured by a fall- 
 ing value or purchasing power in the monetary unit is sufficien- 
 tly comprehensive to include all workers, as contradistinguished 
 from idUrs, all laborers, whether with hand or brain, and the 
 employer as well as the employ^. 
 
 WORKINGMEN CAN NOT BE BENEFITTED BY AN INCREASING VALtTE IN THE 
 
 DOLLAR. 
 
 In discussing the welfare of the workingman, in connection 
 with the subject of silver money, the bankers and the President 
 talk as if wages were fixed, either by the mere dictum of the 
 employer or else by some hidden and occult process, or some 
 immutable law, so that no matter what might be the purchasing 
 power of a dollar, the wages of labor must remain what they are. 
 This means that if the dollar came to be a cheaper dollar the 
 workingman could get no greater number of dollars, and if dearer 
 he would get no fewer, while in either case all the people 
 would be kept uninterruptedly employed. 
 
 If the value of the dollar could be kept constantly increasing, 
 and if, notwithstanding this, the workman could get, in wages, 
 the same number of dollars that he got before, then the secret 
 of his prosperity has been discovered. If the dollar which he re- 
 ceives in wages is each year to buy more and more of the prod- 
 ucts of labor, while he suffers no diminution in the number of 
 
 785 
 
331 
 
 dollars received, and if, as a consequence, none of his fellows are 
 discharged, then it is to his interest that dollars shall increase 
 in value until, each shall have a purchasing power, say one hun- 
 dred times as high as at present, so that the article which now 
 costs $100 may be had for $1. 
 
 Of course this increase of purchasing power in the dollar can 
 not be had without a great reduction in the number of dollars in 
 circulation relatively to the numbers of the population and the de- 
 mand for money. Under this theory what a blessing it would be 
 to the workingmen of the country if the Secretary of the Treasury 
 should discover some method of taking out of circulation and lock- 
 ing up in the Government vaults nine- tenths, or even a larger pro- 
 portion, of the money of the country! The more he could get^n 
 the greater would become the value of the dollars left out. 
 
 The value ol money— 
 
 says John Stuart Mill — 
 
 other things being the same, varies Inversely as Its quantity, every Increase 
 ol quantity lowering the value, and every diminution raising it In a ratio 
 exactly equivalent. 
 
 It the repeal of the Sherman law is to be acoomplishecl in be- 
 half of the workingmen, if the country is to bs deprived of the 
 three millions or so which that law has added monthly to the 
 circulation, we shall doubtless next have a proposition looking 
 toward the calling in and cancellation of all the notes issued 
 under it, with the view of further increasing the value of the 
 dollar in the so-called interest of the workingman, to be fol- 
 lowed by other propositions of like character, all in the interest 
 of an increasing value in the dollar, in order that it may be 
 made a better dollar. 
 
 What is wanted in the dollar, Mr. President, is that it shall 
 neither increase nor diminish in value, but shall, as nearly as 
 possible, be unchanging through time. This would hurt neither 
 debtor nor creditor. 
 
 SOME or THB OONSEQTrKNOES OF A DECRBASING VALOT! IN THE MONE;rABT 
 
 UNIT. 
 
 We have seen what were the prognostications of Chevalier aa 
 to the probable results to be expected from the increased money 
 supply with which the world was blessed during the middle of 
 
 785 
 
332 
 
 -the century. As to the actual results there is ample testimony. 
 
 !■! will cite the one author who more vividly than any other has 
 
 I'left a picture of the times. 
 
 Sir Archibald Alison says: 
 
 The annual supply of gold and silver for the use of the glohe was, by these 
 discoveries, suddenly Increased from an average of £10,000,000 to one of £35,- 
 000,000. The era of a contracted currency, and consequent low prices and 
 general misery, interrupted by passing gleams of prosperity, was at an 
 end. Prices rose rapidly, and rose steadily; wages advanced in a similar pro- 
 portion, exports and imports enormously Increased, while critne and misery 
 rapidly diminished; -emigration itself, which had reached (in 1852) 368,000 per- 
 sons a year, sank to little more than half that amount. Wheatrose from 40 
 shillings to 55 shillings and 60 shillings; but the wages of labor advanced in 
 nearly as great a proportion; they were found to be about 30 per cent higher 
 
 ■ on an averajge than they had been Ave years before. 
 
 In Ireland the change was still greater, and probably unequaled in so short 
 a time in the annals of history. Wages of country labor rose from 4 pence 
 a day to one-and-six-pence or 2 shillings; convicted crime sank nearly a 
 half; and the increased growth of cereal crops under the genial influences 
 of these advanced prices was for some years as rapid as its previous decline 
 since 1846 had been. At the same time, decisive evidence was afforded that 
 
 . all this sudden burst of prosperity was the result of the expanded currency, 
 and by no means of free trade, in the fact that it did not appear till the gold 
 discoveries came into operation, and then it was fully as great in the pro- 
 tected as in the free-trade states. 
 
 Those were the effects of an increased volume of money upon 
 the condition of the working classes forty years ago, when labor 
 was wholly unorganized, and employers had, to a far greater 
 extent than at present, the determination of the rate of wages. 
 
 THE WAGES QUESTION. 
 
 With the modern organization of labor, the question, What 
 shall be the wages of the workers in any occupation is not wholly 
 a question for the employer. 
 
 It is his right to close his establishment if he can not work it 
 at a profit, but if he will keep it open it must be on terms at least 
 acceptable, if not welcome, to the workers. 
 
 The growing strength, efficiency, and intelligence of the work- 
 ingmen have for some time been depriving the employer of the 
 dogmatic and autocratic power which in former periods charac- 
 terized his relations with his employes. The alertness of the 
 workmen and their disposition to assert their right to a fair, 
 and even a growing, share of the products of their labor, will 
 'be seen from an extract from the proceedings of the British 
 .Royal Commission on Labor which has only recently completed 
 
 W5 
 
333 
 
 Its labors. Before thatcomttissioiijSittingatWestminsterHally, 
 London, a large number of witnesses were examined, among 
 them a secretary of an organization of working people, compris- 
 ing 200,000 persons — the Weavers' Association of Northeast Lan- 
 cashire. This gentleman, Mr. Thomas Birtwistle, was asked by 
 one of the commissioQers; 
 
 When there Is a rise in prices, by what means do the operatives get thelr- 
 share ot such a rise? 
 
 To this question Mr. Birdwistle answered: 
 
 By meeting and discussing the question with the committee I have de>~ 
 scribed before, the Joint committee (a committee consisting of six employes 
 and six representatives of the operatives) . Of course, we each of us use oup 
 best arguments; we produce facts as far as we are able, and prove that the - 
 profits of the employers are such that they can afford to do this. 
 
 He was further asked: 
 
 Do they ever give It to you without your asking It? 
 
 To this he replied: 
 
 A. I only remember one case; they did once, some twenty or twenty-flve • 
 years ago. 
 
 (Minutes of Evidence, Group C, page 59,) 
 
 This period was during the rise of prices — before thedemone- 
 tization of silver. 
 
 From these questions and answers it is manifest that the la-- 
 borers are keenly on the alert and keep a watchful eye on the 
 prices of the products of their labor, so that they may be able ■ 
 promptly to take advantage of a rise. Not only this, but so de- 
 termined are they not to be deprived of anything which they 
 deem their due that even when prices are falling th«y are indis— 
 posed to submit to a reduction of wages which the employers 
 deem absolutely essential in order to keep the establishments - 
 open. A question on this point was directly put to Mr. Bird- 
 wistle by one of the members of the conunissioni, who first re- 
 minded him of the testimony he had gi^en regarding the in- 
 crease of wages. 
 
 Q. I think you went on to say in answer tO' Mr. Mawdsley that if business 
 were to improve you would of course look for an advance In wages? 
 
 To this the witness answered, "Certainly." 
 
 Q. But if, on the other hand, there came a period of depression, you would-, 
 not allow your wages to go down? 
 785 
 
334 
 
 The answer to this question was: 
 
 No, I dia not say " allow." I simply said we should do our best to prevent 
 4t. (Same evidence, page 64.) 
 
 These answers sufiSciently attest the spirit which animates 
 
 the working classes of Great Britain regarding the increase and 
 
 reduction of wages. 
 
 STRIKES IN EUBOPB. 
 
 That spirit is further attested by the fact that the number of 
 strikes in that country in 1889 was 1,145, of which those for ad- 
 vance of wages numbered 768. Of these 768 it is a significant 
 fact that the number recorded as being wholly unsuccessful is 
 but 76, being only 10 per cent. The demands for higher wages 
 were, therefore, wholly or partially successful in nine cases out of 
 ten; and taking the entire number of strikes from all causes in 
 -that country for that year, the number declared of record to be 
 unsuccessful is only 207 — so that the workingmen were either 
 •wholly or partially successful in four-fifths of the cases. 
 
 In Germany, for the year ending April 30, 1890, the number of 
 •strikes and lockouts reported, of which particulars can be ascer- 
 tained, consists of 1,075. Of these the number resulting favor- 
 .ably to the employers was 187; those favorably to the working- 
 men 420, and the number compromised 468. If we credit the 
 workman's side with one-half of the number compromised and 
 the side of the employers with the other half, it will show 644 
 strikes out of 1,075, or 60 per cent in which the workmen suo- 
 •ceeded either wholly or partially. 
 
 The growing self-assertion of the workers is to be seen even in 
 Italy, in which the strikes in 1878 were but 22, while in 1890 they 
 were 160. In 1878, the number of strikes in that country arising 
 from aemand for increased wages were but 25 per cent of the 
 whole, while in 1890 those arising from the same cause were 50 
 ,per cent of the whole. 
 
 In France, as stated by the eminent statistician, Miurice 
 Block, the number of strikes of workingmsn prior to 1844, ranged 
 from 20 to 50 per annum. In the year 1889 alone they numbered 
 321. 
 
 These are evidences of the unmistakable trend of labor in Eu- 
 •Tope towards larger self-assertion and a determin_ition to obtain 
 
 785 
 
335 
 
 what to the laborers appears tc be a fair share of the products 
 of their labor. 
 
 STRIKES IN THE XnriTED STATES. 
 
 It is not to be supposed that the workers of the TTnited States 
 are less alert and attentive to their own interests than those of 
 other countries. Accordingly, we find, by the third annual re- 
 port of the United States Commissioner of Labor, Col. Carroll 
 D. Wright, that the number of strikes in this country in 1881 
 was 471, while in 18S6 the number was 1,411. 
 
 An analysis of all the strikes in the United States from 1881 
 to 1886 inclusive, made by Col. Wright, shows that strikes hav- 
 ing for their object simply an increase of wages occurred in 
 9,439 establishments. Of these the workmen were completely 
 successful in 6,229, or 66 per cent. In 797 others, or 8.43 per 
 cent, they were partly successful. So that the workers suc- 
 ceeded, either wholly or partially, in 75 per cent of the establish- 
 ments in which they struck. In only 25 per cent of the estab- 
 lishments did the strikes for increase of wages wholly fail. 
 
 During the pendency of this debate we have seen in the morn- 
 ing papers an item of news from Milwaukee, reading as follows: 
 
 If the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Kallroad Company insists on cut- 
 ting wages there will be a strike by the six thousand employes In the oper- 
 ating departments. This la the decision ol the grievance committee ol the 
 Brotherhood of Trainmen. 
 
 We can hardly infer from all these that the wages of the work- 
 ing classes depend on the employer. 
 
 I must be permitted to distrust the anxiety of many of these 
 gold-standard theorists with regard to the welfare of the work- 
 ingman. If the silver dollar were really a cheap dollar — cheaper 
 than a gold dollar — many of those who now express anxiety for 
 the laborers would be the first to welcome it. If they could keep 
 for their own purposes a dollar of high purchasing power, and 
 have at command, as a special fund for the payment of wages, a 
 supply of dollars of low purchasing power, we should find them 
 sending up petitions to Congress for the free and unlimited coin- 
 age of depreciated dollars. 
 
 The workers do not seek the commiseration of the bankers with 
 reference either to the amount of wages they are to receive or 
 
 785 
 
336 
 
 the quality of the money in which those wages are to he paid» 
 They are the guardians of their own rights, and will so remain. 
 They are citizens of the United States, imbued with all the man- 
 hood and independence which that term implies. 
 
 When it is said that the first thing which these depreciated 
 silver dollars would do would he 'to find their way into the pock- 
 ets of the workingmen, it seems to me that, taking into account 
 the enormous numbers of workingmen who are constantly idle, 
 owing to lack of profit in business, the greatest blessing that 
 could occur would be to have such a quantity of dollars of some 
 kind in circulation as would increase with the growth of popula- 
 tion and business. If that were done, the dollars would be sure 
 to find their way into the jackets of men who are willing to 
 work, but for whom, even in a country that is not yet half fin- 
 ished, there is no room, owing to the persistent fall of prices, 
 which disorganizes industry. 
 
 The greater the number of dollars that get into the pockets of 
 the working classes the better. It is notenough that dollars shall 
 getinto the pockets of only such persons as, under the operation of 
 the gold standard, are able to find employment. It can not be said 
 that a nation is prosperous when a part only of its people are 
 employed — even if that part should be employed at wages so 
 high as to include the laborer's entire contribution to the prod- 
 uct. The working classes will never be prosperous until the 
 employer is found seeking workmen with the same zeal that 
 workmen are now seeking employers. That condition of affairs 
 will be brought about by an intelligent regulation of the money 
 system of the country so that the number of dollars shall always 
 increase in accordance with the increase of population and busi- 
 ness. 
 
 The constant trend of the laboring classes in all countries 
 is to combination — a direction in which capital set them the ex- 
 ample. The procsss i|S certain to continue and to result in the 
 laborers getting a larger and larger share of the contribution 
 which they severally make to the joint product of capital 
 and labor. To the extent that they pursue this course they 
 must impinge upon the profits of the employer until a stage is 
 
337 
 
 reached at which, an equilibrium between wages and profits is 
 established. 
 
 THE STRUGGLE BECOMING SBABPUB IN ALL GOLD-STANDAED COUNTKIES, 
 OWING TO THE PEBSISTBNCB OV THE EALt OE PBICBS. 
 
 With a constantly shrinking volume of money , ho we ver , there is 
 little hope for employer or employed. The leading factor in all in- 
 dustries of the present day being the time contract, it is iiqpos- 
 sible for employers to see their way to meeting their obligations 
 while the money unit is obtaining ever-increising control over 
 commodities — over the products of labor. In many industries 
 great strikes have recently been undertaken in order to prevent 
 reductions of wages, rendered necessary, as the employers 
 stated, because of the fall of prices. Such a strike was that of 
 the Lancashire operatives, in which tens of thousands of work- 
 ers opposad a proposed reduction of 5 per cent in their wages. 
 
 After a struggle of five months, throughout which- the em- 
 ployers insisted that with falling prices they could not continue 
 manufacture at the old rates of wages, the men were obliged, 
 to accept a compromise by which the proposed reduction was di- 
 vided, so that they Were compelled to submit to a lowering of 2i 
 per cent. 
 
 Later still we have seen 350,000 coal miners of Great Britain 
 going out on strike rather than submit to a proposed reduction 
 of 25 per cent in their wages, rendered necessary, as the employ- 
 ers asserted, by the long-continued fall in the prices of their 
 products. 
 
 While other adverse influences in business may be foreseen 
 and guarded against, the most far-sighted computations are 
 brought to naught by the subtle power of an increasing value in 
 the money unit. So long as this increase continues it is impos- 
 sible for business enterprises to be anything but games of chunce, 
 in which men the most reckless and unconscionable outwit the 
 most honorable and conservative. 
 
 The working cla^sses may battle for better wages, but when the 
 fall of prices reaches the point at which profits vanish they must 
 give up the fight and accept the reduction or be relegated to 
 idleness. All over the European world, as well as in this coun- 
 try, the maximum of wages consistent with the gold standard 
 785 — 23 
 
338 
 
 appears to have been reached. Everywhere we observe trouhle 
 between employers and employes. Everywhere we see multi- 
 tudes of men rendered idle, owing to want of profit in business — 
 a want of profit due to the persistence 6t the fall of prices. 
 
 The bane of labor is the idle labdrerJ In this enlig-htehed and 
 prOgrfesSive age, in which people are learning tp adapt means to 
 ends, it is pitiful to see millions of men always out of employ- 
 ment, and it is tseless to hope for any improvement so long as 
 the value bf the money unit is increasing and acquiring greater 
 and greater control over the products of labor. It is not meant 
 that the same millions — the same identical persoHs — are always 
 out of employment, but while the persons vary, the number of 
 the idle always reaches millions. 
 
 SbUE OP THB FRUITS OF THB GOIiD STANDARD. 
 
 On the very day that Mr. Gladstone was making his speech in 
 the House of Commons, in February last, ascribing the prosper- 
 ity of Great Britain — meaning thereby the creditor classes of 
 Great Britain — to the gold standard, the official returns show 
 that of the trades unions of skilled workmen reporting to the 
 board of trade, comprising at that date 280,377 members, there 
 were out of employment 26,324, or 9.49 per cent. As these were 
 distributed all over the country, the number of idle men among 
 such unions as did mot report to the board of trade must have 
 been a similar percentage. Inasmuch, then, as in round num- 
 bers 10 per cent of the skilled and organized artisans of Great 
 Britain were out of work, we can not assume a,ny less number of 
 the unskilled and unorganized to have been so, and there being, 
 according to Mr. Giffin, thirteen million two hundred and sev- 
 enty-seven thousand workers in the Kingdom, we are warranted 
 by the official figures In placing the number of the involuntary 
 idle in Great Britain at 1,327,700. 
 
 If we add to these the number of persons naturally dependent 
 upon them for support — a very small average of which would be 
 two persons to eacn worker (and I believe it to be a larger num- 
 ber)— we find, including the .workers themselves, 3,900,000 per- 
 sons, or, in round numbers, 4,000,000 persons, the skilled arti- 
 sans of Great Britain and their families, without means of live- 
 lihood, in a country whose boast it is that it has no money but 
 
 785 
 
339 
 
 *' sound " money; no standard but the gold standard. Yet these 
 are the men upon whose labors rests the renown of Great Brit- 
 ain. 
 
 THE ACHrEVBlIENTS OF GBBAT BRITAIN DITE TO HEB ARTISANS. 
 
 In comparison with the services rendered by these, the ser^r- 
 Ices of her generals, her admirals, her armies, her navies, and 
 her statesmen, upon which the literature of England spreads so 
 much hazy and questionable glamor, are as nothing. To the 
 skill and the genius of her .artisans is due the civilization of En- 
 gland; not to the cunning of her' so-called financiers, the greed 
 of her money-lenders, or the cupidity of her creditor classes. 
 The idleness of 10 per cent of her workingmen is a misfortune 
 of incalculable weight, yet it is recorded in a news item of halt 
 a dozen lines in England's leading economic paper, and goes 
 wholly unnoticed in the great dailies, in which a column or two 
 of space may be given to an attack of tl^e gout on a duke or an 
 earl, and an entire page to a horse race, 
 
 The large proportion of the idle men in England can not be 
 ascribed to temporary derangement of the industries of that 
 country owing to the passage of our tariff bill of 1890. It is usual 
 to find enormous numbers of persons out of employment in Great 
 Britain. I do not refer to the ' ' Submerged Tenth," the 3,000,000 
 unfortunates who are always on the verge of starvation. I re- 
 fer to the respectable artisan class. As far back as 1886 — four 
 years before the passage of the MoKinley bill — the records of the 
 board of trade show a percentage of idleness even higher than 
 10 per cent. 
 
 It must be manifest that willing and capable workers would 
 not thus be thrown out of employment except by falling prices. 
 Profit is in all cases the inducement to production. When profit 
 ceases production ceases. If, therefore, production.be not sus- 
 tained by steady prices for the products of labor it is certain 
 that workmen will be relegated to idleness. 
 
 There can be no doubt that before the development of labor 
 organizations many employers were making undue profits, and 
 getting a larger share of the products of industry than they 
 were entitled to, in comparison with the share of the workman. 
 But as the organization of labor became more perfect, then, in 
 
340 
 
 response to the imperious demands of the workers, wages grad- 
 ually improved. 
 
 All great institutions of industry have time contract? stretch- 
 ing into the future, which they are under bond to fulfill by or be- 
 fore specified dates, so that few such institutions can afford, to 
 resist the workmen's demand for increase of wages, so long as 
 such demand is one not inconsistent with their continued operar 
 tion. W-hen closely pressed, however, the employer often seems 
 to yield — that is to say, he grants the increase of wages, and 
 then discharges a number of his men — resorting to all sorts of 
 small economies to render more efficient the labor of those who 
 are retained. 
 
 People do not perceive that if, by reason of an increase of 10 
 per cent in wages 10 per cent of the workmen are thrown out of 
 employment, a far greater injury results to society than if the 
 wages of all were permitted to remain unaltered, or even than 
 if they were to a moderate extent reduced. 
 
 With all the workmen employed there would be 100 per cent 
 of production. With only 90 per cent employed there would be 
 but 90 per cent of wealth produced; yet from this 90 per cent all 
 men must live — including the workmen themselves and their 
 families.' 
 
 THB ARGTJMENT THAT THE WORKERS ARE BETTER OFF THAN FORMERLY. 
 
 When the workers of the world express dissatisfaction with 
 present conditions they are reminded of the fact that they are 
 better off than were the workingmen of former times, that their 
 condition is far ahead of that of the laboring classes of the last 
 century, and the century before. But this is not the real ques- 
 tion at issue. It is not whether the man now living is better off 
 than were men of his class who lived at some remote period of 
 the past ; but whether the man now living— the man now pro-' 
 duoing the wealth by means of which alone all other classes in 
 the community can continue to exist — is, all things considered, 
 receiving his own fair share of the products of his labor. 
 
 The question is whether the working classes, all of them, and 
 not merely a portion of them, are able to keep uninterruptedly 
 at work, and to receive for their work that compensation which 
 comports with the advances in invention, in science, in art, and 
 
341 
 
 In government. In other words, are they as well off as the 
 methods of production warrant? i 
 
 My conviction is that when we have a correct system of money, 
 the working man, instead of having one spare dollar to protect 
 himself against the exigencies of the dayi will have ten. 
 
 Workingmen have the same intuitions as other men; they de- 
 sire to have some money in their pockets. At the least calcula- 
 tion, under conditions as they should be, in this new and great 
 country, our 22,000,000 workers would absorb in pocket money 
 alone, to be constantly held against contingencies, not less than 
 a hundred million dollars, which would be $5 per capita. This 
 would absorb $100,000,000 of silver to-njorrow. 
 
 Mr. GEORGE. What is the Senator's stateinent? 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. That with every laboring man kept " 
 constantly at work, and at such rates of wages as should be just, 
 not only to himself but to his employer, considering the risks of 
 capital, the interest on money, etc., there wotild be a constant 
 tendency to an increase of the amount of money statically held 
 in the pockets of the people. If you will go around among work- 
 ingmen to-day you will find them carrying perhaps 10 cents, 25 
 cents, or at most perhaps a dollar in their pockets. With un- 
 failing constancy of employment at just wages there would be a 
 continual advance in the amount thus carried by those men to 
 protect themselves against the emergencies of the day. With a 
 five-dollar piece instead of 25 cents in the pocket, $100,000,000 
 would be absorbed by the community before prices of commodi- 
 ties could in the least exhibit a rise. 
 
 BNOBMOUS ADVANTAGES Or EVEN A SLIGHT RISE OF FBICES, ESPECIAIiLT 
 TO THE WORKING CLASSES. 
 
 Large numbers of the people even of this country are doing 
 business by barter, owing to the lack of a sufiicient quantity of 
 money; and this is a most extravagant method of doing business. 
 Were they to do business with money, an enormous amount of 
 money would be thus absorbed before a rise in prices could take 
 place, and without a rise in prices there could be no such thing 
 as a diminution in the value of the money unit; becaluse, to say 
 that prices rise is but another way of saying that the money 
 tmit is diminishing in value. 
 
 785 
 
342 
 
 As I have already stated and as is well known, after the dis- 
 coveries of California and Australia, when the money volume of 
 the world was doubled, the resulting increase of prices of com- 
 modities was only 20 per cent, distributed most gradually over 
 a period of twenty years. The reason for so small a rise of prices 
 following so great an increase of the money volume is to be found 
 In the fact that before prices can rise the first effect of the new 
 money supply is always to quicken the movement and increase 
 the volume of business — cutting out new channels of enterprise 
 for itself and widening and deepening those already existing. 
 
 This process calls from idleness to labor every man who has 
 been unemployed, which fact alone absorbs an enormous amount 
 of money.' Before any rise, therefore, could take place in pripes 
 there would be an enormous increase in the number of transac- 
 tions and a like increase in the number of men put to work. If, 
 instead of having a million or two million of men idle in this coun- 
 try, all were at work who were willing to work, a vast increase in 
 the amount ol money would be needed before any increase could 
 possibly take place in the general range of prices, or any diminu- 
 tion in the value of the money unit. "When, therefore, there 
 is gi large increase of money in proportion to population, without 
 a corresponding advance in prices, it is a signal that that wonder- 
 ful instrumentality, money, is beginning to operate — beginning 
 to perform its great function, of setting every energy in motion 
 and putting every idle man to work. Itis then that great enter- 
 prises are undertaken — great projects, stretching far and wide, 
 giving opportunity for the exercise of all the activities of the 
 people. Men have courage when satisfied that prices are going 
 to be firm in the future. 
 
 After a long period of shrinkage in the volume of money, com- 
 dared with demand, an enormous amount of new money would 
 be absorbed as soon as all the people began to be employed and 
 ail the energies of this great country to be called out. 
 
 Therefore I say we, need have no fear whatever of the coinage 
 of all the silver there is in sight, which can not exceed $25,000,- 
 000. The effect of an increase now of $100,000,000, $200,000,000, 
 or $300,000,000, were it possible to obtain so much, would be like 
 
 785 
 
343 
 
 /' 
 that of rain upon the parched and thirsty earth. It would be al> 
 sorbedas fast as it could come, with the most fructifying results, 
 
 Before any rise of prices could take place every department of 
 industry would be enormously stimulated. 
 
 The working classes are specially benefited by increases of the 
 volume of money. Referring to the effects upon tb,ose classes of, 
 the increase of the money volume of the world by the California 
 and Australiadiscoveries,Prof.Cairnes(J!s«a2/a in PoZiiicaZ -Eccm-, 
 amy) has demonstrated that the addition of 40 per cent to the 
 money volume of Great Britain between 1851 and 1859 was pre- 
 vented from affecting the prices of commodities, except in the 
 most gradual and infinitesimal degree , not merely by the stimulus 
 to business, but by reason of the increase in real incomes result- 
 ing to the industrial classes as a consequence of the increased 
 production of gold. He demonstrated that the tendency of all 
 increases in the volume of money was to effect a laifrer propor- 
 tionate distribution of money awiorifir the working classes. 
 
 The true test of the prosperity of the people is their ability to 
 consume. No people can have the highest capacity for con- 
 sumption while large numbers among them are unemployed., 
 With steady prices, or prices having a slight tendency to rise, 
 employers will be seeking workmen with all the zeal that work- 
 men are now seeking employers. 
 
 DISASTBOUS EFFBCTS OV COMPUIjSOBT IDI-ENKSS. 
 
 As I have stated, the great impediment to the progress of the 
 working classes is the idle man. While large numbers are hun- 
 gry and unemployed, it is impossible for organization to accom- 
 plish the objects it has in view. Hence the task which natur- 
 ally precedes all attempts of workingmen to obtain an advance 
 that shall be real, rather than apparent, in wages is the adop 
 tion of such national policies as may result in putting and keep- 
 ing every man at work. * 
 
 Computations as to rates of wages are, and will continuetobe, 
 wholly incomplete' and misleading until side by side with them 
 are placed the figures which show the number of men who are 
 living in enforced idleness. Our statisticians take note of wages 
 as they are, for those who are at work. They make not the slight- 
 
 785 
 
344 
 
 est attempt to ascertain the number of the unemployed. Until 
 tMs is done all calculations of wages are vain. 
 
 Enormous numbers of men are at all times to be found ready 
 to take tbe places of those who go out on strike, and this, too, 
 in a country whose development instead of being complete, has 
 only- just begun. 
 
 On the occasion of the strike on the New York Central Rail- 
 road at Buffalo some months ago, although all the statisticians 
 and orators of the gold-standard school had for some time been 
 telling us that there was no suffering in the country, that our 
 prosperity was never greater, it was seen that the railroad com- 
 pany had no trouble in supplying the places of the strikers. 
 
 The same is true of the strike at Homestead, Pa. It is well 
 known that at that place a very large number of men of high 
 skill were employed, and that to take their places an equal num- 
 ber of idle men of like skill were sought and were found. The 
 strikes, therefore, both at Homestead and Buffalo, proved to be 
 complete failures. 
 
 When large numbers of men are found standing ready to take the 
 places of those who strike it means more than appears upon the sur- 
 face as to the numbers of the unemployed. It means not only 
 that the number actually needed to fill the places of the strikers 
 are idle, but a very much larger number. For such is the esprit 
 de corps of the working classes that men must be at the point of 
 starvation before they will take the places of their fellows who 
 are struggling for what they deem their rights — struggling for 
 the elevation of the entire body of workers, including that of 
 the men who take their places. 
 
 Men who undertake to fill such places know that they incur 
 the hatred of the entire class to which they belong, and would, 
 under ordinary conditions, hesitate a long time before subject- 
 ing themselves to so severe an ordeal as the ostracism of them- 
 selves and their families. There i« among the great body of 
 workers a class pride that deters each from injuri-ng all by fill- 
 ing places under such circumstances. Hence, we may be assured 
 that when, on the occasion of an extended strike suflficient men 
 are found without difficulty to fill the places of those who have 
 engaged in what they feel to be a struggle for life or death, the 
 
 785 
 
345 
 
 number who take their places form but a triling proportion of 
 the whole number out of employment. 
 
 "When compelled to admit that large numbers are ohronipally 
 idle, the advocates of the gold standard take refuge in the cyn- 
 ical assertion that in all communities a number of men will be 
 found who do not wish to work, and that their idleness is there- 
 suit of their own folly or improvidence. The statement that men 
 prefer idleness to honest labor I consider a slander on the work- 
 ing classes. These are the statements of the political philoso- 
 phers of gold-standard countries, resorted to in order to account 
 for the enormous proportion of men whom the gold standard 
 relegates to idleness, and keeps there-^a standard which is the 
 symbol for the concentration of wealth and the distribution of 
 poverty. By its diversion of money from the paths of industry 
 into the great centers of speculation, it takes froni the labor 
 market and uses in the bond and stock market the material 
 which is the lifeblood of industry. 
 
 The idea that men prefer to ,beg rather than to work is alto- 
 gether an idea of European origin, and is contradicted by all 
 the experiences of this new country. The very classes that in 
 Europe have been charged with incorrigible laziness, prove, on 
 coming to this country, that in tbeir European homes they were 
 merely the slaves of conditions, and that they can be as indus- 
 trious as any other class of the community. 
 
 Whatever amelioration occurs in the condition of the work- 
 ingman occurs because he is year by year increasing his demaijds. 
 He will continue to increase those demands until it becomes 
 clear to him that he receives his fair share of the products of 
 his labor. So long as the employer's profits will warrant the in- 
 crease, the workman will exact it, until the equilibrium between 
 profits and wages is reached. This is inevitable. Butwhere, with 
 falling prices, the employer is already on the verge of loss (and 
 as money shrinks in volume his profits tend to disappear) no 
 effort on the part of the workers, whether by strikes or other- 
 wise, can permanently secure to them a higher scale of wages. 
 Where the strikes are warranted by conditions of business they 
 will be successful. Where not so warranted, they must inevita- 
 bly fail. 
 
 785 
 
346 
 
 THE TAIiLAOT THAT PBICES CAN BISB WITHOUT A RBSTTLTIHG INCREASE Off 
 
 WAGES. 
 
 When it is said that the prices of the products of labor could 
 increase all along the line without the laborer exacting his share 
 of the employer'sincreased profits, I should like to inquire where 
 the laborer is supposed to be while all this is gfoing on? Is it as- 
 sumed that he is asleep? The history of labor within recent 
 years does not Warrant this assumption. 
 
 Is it for a moment to be supposed that American workmen 
 stand in such awe of their employer that they can not contrive 
 to obtain from him any fair proportion of this increase in the 
 price of the commodities which are the products of their own 
 hands? 
 
 In other words are we to understand that the prices of inani- 
 mate things — things that can not think — are to rise, while the 
 price of flesh and blood— the compensation of living, thinking, 
 human beings, who make those inanimate things, can not rise? 
 
 The great object of a nation should be to have such national 
 policies as may lead to the uninterrupted employment of all its 
 people. A country can not come to harm when its people are all 
 at work, when every forge, anvil, and loom is performing its 
 function — when every hand and every brain is busy. 
 
 Whenever there is enough money in a counKry to keep prices 
 of commodities firm, the productive energies of the people are 
 fully occupied, and business profits are reasonable, so that em- 
 ployment is continued and continuous for all. With a proper 
 volume of money comes a proper distribution of the results of 
 industry. 
 
 Under proper monetary conditions in this country there would 
 be opportunities constantly offering for every American worker 
 to invest his surplus earnings in the industrial or manufacturing 
 establishment with which he may be connected. This would 
 give him an interest in the work in which he is employed— an 
 interest far beyond the ordinary interest of a wage-earner. It 
 would be a spur to industry and thrift, and would increase the 
 true permanent wealth of the country. 
 
 The aim of political economists seems to be to deal with prod- 
 ucts after they have been made — after they get into the hands 
 of those who did not produce them. 
 
 785 
 
347 
 
 MISDHIBCTION Or EFFORT ON THB PART OF POIilTIOAl BOONOMISTS. 
 
 The entire learned world appears to be applying itself to the 
 task of remedying complaints made by speculators, by those who 
 deal in articles by mere purchase and sale,, while the interests 
 of the producers are wholly ignored. "While science a,nd learn- 
 ing are thus looking after the interests of the already enormously 
 powerful aggregation of middlemen who assume to themselves 
 all importance in the development of industry, the industrious 
 and hardy producers are left to shift for themselves. Such or- 
 ganizations as they effect with a view to their own advancement 
 are, sneered at even by Cabinet ministers through the columnsof 
 the public press. 
 
 The parties who should be left to shift for themselves are the 
 middlemen. Whenever justice comes to be done, the interests 
 of the producers will be cared for. When they are justly dealt 
 by no man can suffer. It is in their capacity as producers that 
 men are entitled to consideration. 
 
 Imagine thp injury to a capitalist if a great machine remain 
 idle for a time ! Yet machines are mere inert matter. Man is in- 
 finitely greater than any machine that is the work of his hands. 
 In comparison with the idleness of a man, the idleness of a ma- 
 chine is a mere trifle. Yet how palpable is the injury whenma- 
 chinesare idle; how impalpable, unperceived, unappreciated, and 
 disregarded when men are idle! 
 
 THI COMPUIiSOBY IDLENESS OF LABGE NtlMBEBS OF WORKERS AN EVI- 
 DENCE OF DEFECT IN THE MONET SYSTEM. 
 
 In view of the almost infinite division of labor which is the 
 ever-increasing characteristic of our advancing civilization, it 
 may be said that the principal function of money is to keep all 
 the people at work. I wish emphatically to impress upon Sen- 
 ators that when that is not done there is some failure or fault in the 
 money system. Nothing can be of greater importance to a nation 
 than to keep all its people at work- Until every man is em- 
 ployed, each in the labor of his choice and of his aptitude, the 
 goal of civilization will never be reached. 
 
 There is not a minute of time that has not its duty; not a 
 minute of the working day in which every man of sound body 
 siaoald not be contributing to his own support and that of his 
 
348 
 
 family; to the creation of wealth, and the enrichment and ad- 
 vancement of society. Imagine, then, the colossal waste when 
 millions of men are compulsorily idle! 
 
 By the effect of a sufficient volume in sustaining the prices of 
 commodities, so that all men may be kept at work without in- 
 ,terruption, money becomes an instrumentality by which billions 
 of mitlions of minutes are saved to society, and by which to that 
 extent civilization is enabled to advance beyond a motionless 
 level, beyond the point of petrifaction, because work is the dy- 
 navio of civilisation. The loss of so much dynamic force in so- 
 ciety is absolutely immeasurable. The most serious, then, of all 
 the evil effects wrought by a money volume which does not keep 
 pace with demand, is the subtle and furtive effect by which it 
 . relegates to idleness millions of the workers of the world. 
 
 The national policies that will keep men at work, and keep 
 them all at work, are the policies that will make the people 
 happy, contented, and prosperous. If all are at work, all are 
 sure of a living. This statement, so easily made and in so few 
 words, seems commonplace, but if we reflect upon it we shall find it 
 to be the bearer of a great message to humanity. That message 
 is, that it is only when men are certain of earning a livelihood that 
 their real development begins. In order that man may experience 
 the highest and most noble development, not only is it necessary 
 for him to have uninterrupted employment for hand and brain, 
 but without this, that is to say, without being relieved of the 
 fear of hunger, ho man can put his soul into his work. 
 
 When men are deprived of work, even for a short time, they 
 get into debt, which, being practical slavery, benumos the fac- 
 ulties and depresses aspiration. With regular and uninterrupted 
 occupation for all there would be fewer disordered minds and 
 fewer men falling into evil ways — fewer lunatic asylums and 
 fewer jails. 
 
 The best missionary work in the world is that which keeps 
 men employed. An increasing value of the unit of money tends 
 to put them out of employment. The more skillful, intellectual, 
 and spiritual a people become, the greater the necessity for a 
 correct money system, in order that their labor and its products 
 may be justly measured and equitably distributed. The more 
 
 .785 
 
349 
 
 intelligent and aspiring the people the greater the economic 
 loss by their idleness— the greater the loss to their country and 
 to civilization. No people were ever more intelligent, aspiring, 
 or skilful than the people of the United States. The compul- 
 sory idleness of large numbers of our people constitutes a greater 
 loss to civilization than the like idleness of twice the number in 
 any other country of the world. 
 Says John Ruskin: 
 
 Since the essence of wealti consists In power over men, will It not follow 
 that the nailer and the more in number the persons are, over whom it has 
 power, the greater the wealth? Perhaps It may even appear, alter some 
 consideration, that the persons themselves are the w«a2<ft— that these pieces of 
 gold with which we are in the habit of guiding them are, In fact, nothing 
 more than a kind of Byzantine harness or trappings, very glittering and 
 beautiful la the barbaric sight, wherewith wo bridle the creatures; but if 
 these same living creatures could be guided without the fretting and jingling 
 of the byzants In their mouths and ears, they might themselves be more 
 valuable than their bridles. 
 
 In fact, it may be discovered that the true veins of wealth are purple— are 
 notlnrook, butln^esA — perhaps even that the final outcome and consum- 
 mation of all wealth Is in the producing as many as possible f uU-breathed, 
 bright-eyed, and happy-hearted human creatures. (Unto this last; Essay 
 n.) 
 
 That is a sentiment, Mr. President, which I commend to the 
 
 serious consideration of 'the gold-standard advocates. 
 
 WHAT IS AN HOiraST DOLLAB? 
 
 The gold-standard men tell us that all they ask for is good 
 money — honest money. If that is so, then there must be some 
 monstrous juggling with words. For the very pith and marrow 
 of our contention in demanding the restoration of the privilege 
 of full coinage to silver is for good money, honest money, a 
 money more honest than gold, a money that shall be honest not 
 merely to-day, but in perpetuity. The acute among the gold 
 men very well know that gold money under existing conditions 
 is not an honest money, but an unjust and essentially dishonest 
 money. 
 
 What, then, is an honest dollar? Is it not a dollar which de- 
 mands at all times the same degree of sacrifice to obtain it? 
 
 Is a dollar "honest" only when it is increasing in purchasing 
 power— when it is enlarging its grasp over the products of labor? 
 Is it an "honest" dollar only when it is exacting more from the 
 debtor than he contracted to pay, and giving more to the cred- 
 itor than he agreed to receive? 
 
350 
 
 Is a dollar dishonest when, on the date of repayment, it com- 
 mands precisely the same degree of sacrifice that it commanded 
 when it was borrowed? 
 
 In order that a dollar may be entitled to the designation " hon- 
 est," is it necessary that at the date of repayment it should have 
 a greater control over human effort than it had when it was 
 borrowed? 
 
 One would naturally suppose that an honest dollar would be a 
 dollar that would correctly register the sacrifices of men, so that 
 at the close of the term of a loan the creditor, in addition to law- 
 ful interest, would receive as principal not merely the same 
 number of dollars, but dollars commanding on the average the 
 same degree of human effort as those he had lent. 
 
 Are we to understand that after the making of a contract re- 
 quiring the payment of money a dollar becomes more and more 
 "honest "in the proportion in which its purchasing power in- 
 creases, to the advantage of the creditor and the disadvantage 
 of the debtor? 
 
 WAS THB GOLD DOLLAR AN HONEST DOLLAS IN 1873? 
 
 The gold dollar having to-day a purchasing power 50 per cent- 
 greater than the same gold dollar had in 1873, was the gold dol- 
 lar of twenty years ago a dishonest dollar, and is it to-day 50 per 
 cent more honest than it was then, it being at both periods of 
 precisely the same weight and fineness? And it it continues to 
 increase in purchasing power, will itcontinue to increase in hon- 
 esty? • 
 
 We have heard no gold-standard champion attribute dishon- 
 esty to any gold coin of any country at any date. Gold, they say, 
 i? always gold, which in one sense we grant, and therefore one 
 would suppose that a contract to pay gold would be the same con- 
 tract at one time as at another. Yet, at two different periods 
 of time it means two totally different things. 
 
 One of the most important ends served by money is, or should 
 be, to equate the differences in value produced by the varying 
 degrees of supply and demand which, from season to season, 
 affect the commodities in the market. Before money became 
 evolved from barter men could, on the spot, have exchanged 
 wheat for clothing, but without money they could not have ai> 
 
"351 
 
 ranged, as Aristotle puts it, " for the exchange to take place at 
 a futui-e time," because in another season, owing to altered con- 
 ditions of supply Eind demaiid affecting the commodities, their 
 true relation in exchang-e might be altogether different. 
 
 Under a perfect money system the sacrifice necessary to obtain 
 any given sum would on the average be no greater at one time than 
 at another. It is as ameasure, an adjuster — an instrument of reg- 
 istration—of the varying degrees of human Sacrifice entering into 
 the production of commodities and the rendering of services, 
 that money finds its most beneficent function. It cannot faith- 
 fully perform that function whon the measuring unit is increas- 
 ing in power from year to year. 
 
 To illustrate; in 1849 the pound sterling bore the same name 
 that it bore in 1809, yet, as I have already remarked, between 
 those years, according to Jevons, and according to Tooke and 
 Newmaroh, its value increased 145 per cent — that is to say,'in 
 1849 it had a purchasing power two and a half times as great as 
 in 1809. 
 
 In view of the enormous debts of the world, is it possible that 
 Senators are prepared to adniit tliat such a pound, constantly 
 increasing its grasp over the products of labor, was an honest 
 pound? If so, it must have been two and one-half times more 
 honest in 1849 than in 1809, and as the weight of debt became 
 progressively heavier, the pound must have grown more and 
 more honest! 
 
 So, likewise, from 1873 to 1893, as is shown by the reports of 
 royal oommissions and by all the economical, financial and com- 
 mercial literature of the times, the pound sterling, the dollar, 
 the franc, and every other monetary unit in gold-standard 
 nations have increased in value 50 per cent. 
 
 Taking into account thesa extraordinai'y changes, can money 
 be said to be thus serving the ends for which society intended 
 it? It will be observed that it is only when it is undergoing this 
 sort of change^t is only as it is increasing in power — that it is 
 called "honest." 
 
 ' To be entitled to the designation honest, it is not enough that _ 
 it shall be a dear dollar. It must be constantly increasing in 
 dearness. It must be a dollar that is becoming progressively 
 
 785 * 
 
352 
 
 more difficalt for debtors to obtain — a dollar which. recLuires 
 more sweat and toil to reduce it to possession. Of course, on the 
 theory of the gold-standard advocates, the dearer and more dif- 
 ficult a dollar is to get, the more "honest " it is. That sort of 
 dollar, when paid over by a debtor to the holder of his bond and 
 mortgage, will command more property than could have been 
 commanded by the debtor with the dollar which the creditor 
 originally lent him. That is the idea of an honest and a just 
 dollar entertained by th^ champions and beneficiaries of the gold 
 standard. 
 
 As the dollars are due to them, they deprecate with upturned 
 eyes and clasped hands any change except one by which it is 
 becoming more valuable. Were they the persons who owed 
 the dollar they would feel that they had discharged every duty 
 of honor and honesty if they paid their debts in a dollar of 
 precisely equal value with that which they borrowed — in a dol- 
 lar which should transfer to the creditor the exact amount of 
 sacrifice— of control over human effort, which the creditor had 
 transferred to them on making the loan. What further can jus- 
 tice require? 
 
 The cry for an honest dollar is a mere pharisaical claim by 
 which money-lenders are enabled to perpetrate practical rob- 
 bery upon the masses of the people. It is a demand under the 
 name of honesty for a grossly dishonest dollar. While they are 
 calling out for honest money, they are looting the community. 
 Their entire contention is enough to bring the word " honesty" 
 into reproach. As well might the dealers in " green goods " in- 
 sist that their trade is " honest." 
 
 A sordid disposition, from which, as civilization advances, 
 mankind can escape only slowly, still induces many to think 
 that anything is honest which is for their profit and advantage. 
 
 Well may we invoke honesty, as Madame Roland invoked lib- 
 erty, exclaiming "How many crimes are committed in thy 
 name.'' 
 
 THB DSMAND THAT ONB DOLLAB MUST BB EBFT AS GOOD AS ANOTEBB. 
 
 • The gold advocates say that one dollar must be as good as 
 another. But they do not define what goodness means. What 
 
353 
 
 is goodness in the case of a dollar? Is not a just dollar a good 
 dollar? Is not a dollar of undianging value a good dollar? 
 
 If the ' dollar they take for their model is a swindling dollar, 
 why should they ask that an "honest" dollar should be as 
 "good " or as bad as that? 
 
 If a dollar should gpt to be more valuable than the dollar of 
 the contract — if goodness means dearness — then we want a dollar 
 that shall not be so good. We want a dollar that shall demand 
 no more sacrifice to get it than the dollar of the contract — than 
 the dollar that was agreed to be paid. 
 
 By artful devices, and without the knowledge or consent of 
 the people, but through the arm of the law, the creditor classes 
 increased the value of the dollar by cutting off one-half the quan- 
 tity of the material from which dollars had thereto/ore from time- 
 immemorial been made; and, having thus clandestinely secured 
 themselves, they began, with loud voice and sanctimonious air, to 
 announce to the people that justice required every dollar to be 
 kept at a parity with this new dollar that is constantly growing 
 dearer. 
 
 Were gold to double in value in the course of the next year 
 we should still hear ringing sentences from the banks and from 
 the President of the United States, demanding that we make 
 every dollar as good as every other dollar — meaning that all 
 dollars would have to be made of equal value with the gold dol- 
 lar. They would disregard the injustice caused by overturning 
 all contracts and doubling the burden of all debts. The honest 
 dollar, according to these authorities, is that which exacts the 
 most sweat and toil from the debtor. 
 
 Suppose that instead of agreeing to pay dollars people agreed 
 to pay wheat in standard bushels of the United States, and sup- 
 pose that after the debt had been contracted, a bushel measure 
 was introduced and made the only legal bushel, having a capacity 
 50 per cent greater than the measure which was the standard at 
 the time when the transaction was entered into, then with the 
 same propriety that our leading financiers now speak of the gold 
 dollar, we should find them and the President declaring the lar- 
 ger bushel to be the best bushel because it would give to the 
 creditor a larger quantity of wheat than the bushel for which he 
 
 785 — 23 
 
354 
 
 had contracted. So also if a pound weight were by law so changed 
 as to represent 50 percent more than the present standard pound 
 the creditors would assert that they must have the best, mean- 
 ing the heaviest pound weight. They would cast odium upon 
 the old weight as a cheap and dishonest weight, and insist that 
 one pound weight should be as good as anpther ! 
 
 The analogy will be completed when we suppose the law to 
 provide that without further specific legislation all the standard 
 weights and measures of commerce shall each year take on a per- 
 centage of increase — the pound weight to be a heavier weight, 
 the yardstick a longer stick, and the bushel measure a more 
 capacious measure. In this way, without the trouble of making 
 new laws every year and undergoing the exposure and odium 
 naturally attaching to acts o| moral turpitude, the creditor classes 
 could enter into contracts involving future payments of money 
 to them with the certainty that as each yearly payment fell due 
 they would get a greater and greater unearned increment of 
 money. 
 
 THB StrPBEMB TEST OP THE GOLD STANDARD. 
 
 If gold he the best money, it will of course stand the best test. 
 
 Let us apply to it the test that we would apply to all oth^r 
 things. 
 
 The supreme test of all things human is the ordeal of war. In 
 order to fight to the best advahtage — in order to win battles — a 
 country must have the best men; those men must have the best 
 guns, the best powder, the best clothes, the best blankets, the 
 best horses, the best tents, the .best food. All these require 
 money — and, one would suppose, the best money. What is to be 
 said of a money that disappears on the outbreak of hostilities? 
 
 Do we consider citizens the best citizens who leave their 
 country on the first appeal to arms? Has mankind been mis- 
 taken in its estimate of duty and valor, and is the true patriot, 
 after all, not the man who goes to the front, but he who takes 
 the first steamer for a neutral port, to return only when the con- 
 flict is ended? 
 
 If gold be the best money, is it not extraordinary that no na- 
 tion on earth has ever been able to fight with it? And is it not 
 equally extraordinary that men can only fight with the worst 
 
 785 I 
 
355 
 
 money? What would be thought of a country that shquld pro- 
 vide its soldiers with the worst guns, the worst powder, the 
 worst food, and the worst clothing? In the greatest emergency 
 of the nation's life it had no gold — in the greatest emergencies 
 of the lives of all nations, they have had no gold. At the first 
 roar of the cannon gold goes, and never returns until it comeein 
 the hands of usurers. 
 
 The lesson of history is that that money which fights for lib- 
 erty, and has fought for liberty all the world over, is not an in- 
 ternational money, but a national money. It is a very extraor- 
 dinary thing that people will persist in ascribing the term " best" 
 to a money that leaves them helpless upon the slighest note of 
 danger. In every great war that has ever occurred in the his- 
 tory of the world, men have been deserted by this money which 
 we are told is the ' ' best." The memory of every Senator informs 
 him that it is as true of this country as of others. During 
 our late war, where was gold? Where was this " best " money? 
 Who then heard the statesmen and the newspapers calling upon 
 the workingmen of the country to demand the "best "money 
 and the only honest money? If gold was the best money why 
 did not the Government officials seize it and make it serve the 
 country? They did not hesitate-to seize men and send them to 
 the front? Is gold more sacred than men? 
 
 After all, do we not make a mistake in saying that a national 
 money is the worst money? Observing the high premium on 
 gold during our time of trial, all the monarchies of the earth 
 were predicting the doom of the Republic. One of England's 
 greatest historians, Prof. Freeman, saw this so clearly that in 1863 
 he published an elaborate work entitled ' ' A History of Federal 
 Government from the formation of the Achasan League to the 
 Disruption of the United States.'' No doubt the monarchs and 
 "the historians based their calculations on the fact that at that 
 time the money-lenders of Great Britain possessed all there was 
 of this "best " money, and thatfor wantof it we were helpless. 
 They have since had ample opportunity to discover that the 
 people of the United States are equal to every emergency. 
 
 786 
 
356 
 
 IS THEUE NOT NEED FOB GOOD MONET IN PEACH AS WELL AS WAB. 
 
 So far as concerns the need for money, is there essentially any 
 difference between a time of war and a time of peace? In peace 
 is there no exigency demanding money? In peace as well as in 
 war a people need something with which to pay. Do men not 
 get hungry in peace as in war? Do they not need money with 
 which to exchange the products of industry at one time as at the 
 other? 
 
 During a period of warfare the exigency is on the part of the 
 Government and the people as a whole — as a collectivity; it is a 
 struggle by all for the existence of the nation. During a period 
 of peace the exigency is on the part of every individual citizen, 
 who is engaged in a struggle hardly less serious, for his mnn 
 existence. If in the supreme emergency of war, a nation can 
 wholly dispense with gold, why during peace should they sacri- 
 fice justice to obtain it? 
 
 If without gold a people in their collective capacity can de- 
 fend and preserve their lives and liberties, how illogical and ab- 
 surd to suppose that they are dependant upon it in peace to de- 
 fend and protect their industries? If the Republic is to survive, 
 it is as important that the people shall have food and clothing- 
 during peace as during war. The struggle for existence is not 
 over on the cessation of armed hostilities. The battle of life goes 
 on. In the contests of industry the people need money as exi- 
 gently in peace as the nation needs it in war, and they need 
 just as good money. 
 
 All admit that there is a struggle in war, but who can deny 
 that there is also a struggle in peaxje? The war struggle lasts 
 a year or two; the struggle of peace lasts a lifetime. The same 
 men who held the musket are they who follow the plow. Do 
 they not continue to need at home, as they needed on the battle- 
 field, the best blankets, the best clothes, the best food, and the 
 best money? Is there any period of their lives when the indus- 
 trious, energetic, and aspiring people of this country should not 
 have all of these? Is it only during periods of warfare that men 
 are to be blest with prosperity? Is it only them, that their activi- 
 ties are to be in requisition? Must men be imemployed during 
 
 785 
 
357 
 
 peace? Must they starve because they are not destroying each 
 
 other? Did Milton err when he wrote: 
 
 Peace hath her victories 
 No less renowned than war. 
 
 Those who insist upon having the best money can not mean 
 that the entire volume of a money , if composed of any special ma- 
 terial, is any better or has any more value than the entire volume 
 of a money composed of any other material. All the economists 
 unite in declaring that all the money- value possible to a country 
 at a given time is expressed in its total volume at that time, no 
 matter of what material the money may be composed. 
 
 The entire value of the money of acountry can not be increased 
 except by increasing the wealth of the country. Under given 
 conditions the only change in value that can be effected is in the 
 value of the unit. The word " best " therefore can have no pos- 
 sible application to the volume of money as a whole. It can ap- 
 ply only to the individual units of money — to the separate dol- 
 lars. But if "best " money means best units of money, the term 
 is nonsensical. If there is a "best " unit of money, there must 
 be a best unit of other things. Imagine a farmer Insisting upon 
 the best unit of wheat! If the best unit of money is that which 
 has the largest control over property, then the best unit of prop- 
 erty would be one that has the largest control over monfey. 
 
 Hence our farmers should be occupying themselves with the 
 invention of devices for progressively decreasing the cubical ' 
 contents of the bushel, as it is only in that way that wheat can 
 acquire greater control over money. The farmer has just as 
 much right to claim the best unit of wheat, as the banker has to 
 claim the best unit of money. As the vast mass of industry in 
 this age is based on time contracts, neither the unit of wheat, 
 nor the standard measure of any other product of human labor, 
 any more than the unit of money, should be permitted to suffer 
 either increase or diminution if it be possible for human wisdom 
 to keep them unchanging. 
 
 So, again, if the bankers are correct in insisting upon the best 
 unit of money, why should not the mianufacturer of cloth insist 
 upon the best unit of cloth — meaning by that a unit of measure 
 that is constantly shifting its measuring power—and always in 
 
 785 
 
358 
 
 the direction which will give advantage to the cloth manufac- 
 turer. If the instincts of the money-lender lead him to wish the 
 greatest purchasing power in the unit of money, and to scheme 
 and plan in order to bring about a constant increase in that pur- 
 chasing power, then the cloth manufacturer should not be blamed 
 if he for his part should strive to see that the unit of his mer- 
 chandise shall command a constantly increasing quantity of 
 money. 
 
 WHAT IS THE BEST OOTJLAU? 
 
 The best money is the money of uncharging value. The best 
 dolla*- is the dollar that holds its own. 
 
 The best dollar is that which, as time advances, becomes no 
 dearer and no cheaper, so that neither debtor nor creditor can 
 be despoiled by it. The best dollar is that which, in so far as it 
 expresses the equity of a contract at the time the contract is 
 made, continues faithfully to express that equity through time, 
 no matter lor how long a period the contract endures. Whenever 
 society shall get such a dollar the ultimate will have been 
 reached. With a perfect money the world will be transformed. 
 Men will succeed in life according to their ability in their special 
 callings, and not according to their cunning, their hardhearted- 
 ness, or their dishonesty. It will be sufficient if they sh'all be 
 able to exercise foresight and make calculations with regard to 
 their own business without being compelled to study the science 
 of finance and enter upon long computations regarding the chang- 
 ing value of money. 
 
 The statement that silver is cheap money is only correct in 
 the sense that gold has become a d^ar money. Silver bullion 
 will buy as much to-day of everything that enters into the con- 
 sumption of the people as gold bought twenty years ago. In 
 that sense silver is to-day cheaper than gold. The delicate hands 
 of our bankers go up in horror at the idea of having a cheap 
 money. It is repugnant to their sensitive nerves that the thing 
 with which they have to deal should become cheap. They do 
 not suspect anything to be wrong when it is wheat that is be- 
 coming cheaper. Indeed with many advocates of the gold stand- 
 ard it has become a maxim that ' ' cheapness is the life of trade " — 
 meaning some other man's trade — not their own. 
 
 785 
 
359 
 
 All things in which other people deal may become cheap with- 
 out debasing our civilization, but to cheapen the things in which 
 bankers deal would be altogether unendurable. 
 
 Now, as I have already indicated, if money be not cheap other 
 things must be cheap. How can other things be cheap unless 
 money be dear? To state, the one is to state the other. The 
 bankers and bondholders would not directly admit that they 
 want a dear dollar; they prefer to call it an honest dollar. Inas- 
 much as "dear " is the opposite of " cheap," one would suppose 
 they would use the word "dear" to describe their own dollar, 
 and if they were logical they would do so. They want the dear dol- 
 lar, butare afraid to say so. Thata dear dollar is what they really 
 want— even a dollar that is each year becoming dearer — is con- 
 fessed by their insisting that all dollars shall be equal to the gold 
 dollar, to a dollar that has risen in value, in purchasing power — 
 in command over the products of labor — at an average rate of 2i 
 per cent per annum for the past twenty years, or 50 per cent for 
 that entire period. 
 
 When people talk about dear money being the " best" money, 
 everything depends upon whom they have in mind. If they are 
 considering only the creditor, the annuitant, and the idle in- 
 come gatherer, then in one sense they are right. Undoubt- 
 edly in a narrow sense, and for the purposes of the moment, the 
 best money in the case of these persons is the money that is in- 
 creasing in value, and acquiring constantly larger control over 
 the products of labor. But how is it with reference to the pro- 
 ducer? What money is best for him? Is he not to be considered 
 in the matter? Is he to be destroyed in order that creditors 
 may receive a dollar more valuable than they paid, more valua- 
 ble than they agreed to take in repayment, and more valuable than 
 justice or equity warrants? They effected their loans in a dol- 
 lar that would buy 100 cents' worth of property; they insist on 
 being repaid in a dollar that upon that basis will buy 150 cents' 
 worth of property. Calling the two dollars by the same name 
 will not make them the same thing. 
 
 THB 60-CENT DOLLAK. 
 
 And here let me inquire, is it not a somewhat remarkable cir- 
 cumstance that 60-oent dollars are quite numerous, while 150- 
 
360 
 
 cent dollars are never heard of? It is singular that a dollar can 
 become less than 100 cents, but can never become more. The 
 rule does not seem to work both ways. No matter how high the 
 value of the dollar may go, according to Wall street it can never 
 rise above 100 cents. This is because it is to the interest of 
 money-lenders to keep the eyes of the people off the rising dol- 
 lar and make it appear by comparison that the other dollar is 
 falling. It is a device to divert the attention of the people from 
 the ruinous advance in the value of gold in the interests of those 
 who juggle with money. 
 
 When Senators deride the silver dollar and call it a 60-cent 
 dollar, they are in effect deriding the gold dollar of 1873, and 
 calling it a 60-cent dollar. It was not so dear a dollar then — it 
 had not such a high-purchasing power — hence according to their 
 logic, the gold dollar of to-day is more honest. 
 
 The fact is, however, that every dollar that the law creates con- 
 tains 100 cents. A dollar means 100 cents. The thing to be as- 
 certained when two different dollars ohang-e their relation to one 
 another is whether the unit of each of such dollars bears on the 
 average the same relation to the units of commodities that it 
 did before. If not we may ascertain that one of the dollars has 
 become a 150-cent dollar. In that case it is a very bad dollar. 
 
 If our dollar is a 60-cent dollar, then the 5-franc piece of France, 
 Belgium, and Switzerland is not a 5-franc piece but a 3-franc 
 piece. The 5-lire piece of Italy is equally "short." If the value 
 of money is derived from any supposed "intrinsic value " of the 
 metal it contains, how are we to account for the fact that all 
 those "short- weight" coins are doing the businesslof the countries 
 named in unlimited payments at par with gold and without com- 
 plaint by the people of those countries or anybody else? 
 
 According to the logic laid down by the advocates of the gold 
 standard the gold dollar of to-day will in a few years be consid- 
 ered a swindling dollar, inasmuch as the dollar of a few years 
 hence, though containing no more metal, will have considerable 
 more purchasing power than the gold dollar of to-day. 
 
 MONET OF HIGHEST PURCHASING POWER. 
 
 Many persons take for granted that a unit of money having 
 tb highest purchasing power is the best unit. It is not a ques- 
 
 '85 
 
361 
 
 tion ol high, or low per se, but of a chanqe. It makes no differ- 
 •enoe whether the value of a dollar be high or low at any given 
 tinie, provided it will only remain unchanged. The idea that 
 ■there is any advantage, even if there were no injustice, in hav- 
 ing a unit of higher value than one that previously existed, is as 
 absurd as to suppose that the best clock is that which is con- 
 stantly gaining time, that the best yardstick is one which each 
 year acquires an addition of a few inches to its length, or that 
 the best pound weight is that which is each year acquiring 
 greater specific gravity. 
 
 The distinguished Senator from Ohio [Mr. Sherman], in some 
 remarks delivered before the Legislature of Ohio on the oc- 
 casion of his last election, is represented by the New York Tribune 
 and other newspapers to have stated that what both political par- 
 ties in Ohio wanted was " the best money and plenty of it," so 
 that " labor and production will be measured by money of the 
 highest purchasing power." 
 
 Now, Mr. President, in the sense here intended, the expres- 
 sion " best money and plenty of it " is a contradiction of terms. 
 All political economists agree that money will have purchasing 
 power in proportion to its scarcity, so that according to the Sen- 
 ator's statement, what both parties wanted in Ohio was "the 
 scarcest money and plenty of it." [Laughter.] 
 
 SUCH MONET GOOD FOB MEN WHO HAVE ALBEADT ACHIEVED FOETTTNE. 
 
 For those who have already achieved fortune — who have re- 
 duced the dollar to possession — undoubtedly in a narrow and selfish 
 flense the best dollar is the dollar of highest purchasing power, 
 especially if, as is the case with the gold dollar, the purchasing 
 power is constantly increasing. Hence it is not unnatural to find 
 that men who lend money and deal in bonds and mortgages call 
 the best dollar, and indeed the only " good " dollar, that which 
 will exchange for an increasing quantity of commodities. But 
 if a man owe a dollar, is not the best and most honest dollar in 
 that case, not only for him but in a broad sense for the man even 
 to whom it is due, the dollar intended by the contract — that is 
 to say, a dollar which will demand of the debtor when repaying 
 it the same sacrifice that it demanded of the creditor when lend- 
 ing it? 
 
 785 
 
362 
 
 If any other dollar is meant, it would argue that injustice and 
 exaction are better for the ^human family than equity and fair 
 dealing. The correct principle is that it makes no difference 
 what may be the purchasing power of the dollar, so long as it 
 remains unchanging through time. Whether it have a high or a 
 low purchasing power it will equally maintain the equity of 
 debts and time contracts if it retain that purchasing power with- 
 out alteration, and especially without increase. 
 
 In the Middle Ages 6 bushels of wheat could be bought with 
 the present price of 1 bushel. The money of that time was 
 money of a higher purchasing power than the present money of 
 the United States. Will it be wise for us, therefore, to return to 
 the prices of the Middle Ages? If wheat continues declining till 
 it gets to be 5 cents a bushel, then a dollar will buy a very much 
 larger quantity of wheat than it does to-day; in other words, the 
 dollar will have a much higher purchasing power than the dol- 
 lar of to-day. Had we better, therefore, persist in our adher- 
 en oe to that form of ' ' best " money — money of increasing purchas- 
 ing power — until prices have fallen suflSciently to enable the rich 
 man, whose money is already reduced to possession and who is 
 himself producing nothing, to buy the products of other men's 
 labor at the rate of 20 bushels of wheat for $1. This is a ques- 
 tion that ought to have some interest for our farming communi- 
 ties. It is the constant increase of value in the monetary unit 
 that disturbs and disarranges industry, that ruins employers and 
 relegates to idleness our workingmen. 
 
 If the gold dollar is the best dollar because of its weight — be- 
 Cfiuse of its containing so many grains of rhetal — it would man- 
 ifestly be a better dollar if the number of grains were increased. 
 On that contention the dollar would be twice as good if the num- 
 ber of grains were doubled, and three times as good if trebled. 
 According to this the best foot measure would, as I have already 
 stated, be that which should have the greatest number of inches, 
 the best yardstick that which should have the greatest number 
 of feet, the best hat, the biggest hat. 
 
 Inasmuch as all economists agree that the principal function 
 of money is that by which it serves as a measure of vahae for de- 
 ferred payments, what difference can it make whether there are 
 
 785 
 
363 
 
 many grains or few in the dollar, many inches or few in the 
 foot rule, provided the measure be unchanging. WUl not a- 
 bushel measure be a good measure if it always measures out the-- 
 same quantity of wheat, and the foot rule a good rule if it al- 
 ways stands for the same space? 
 
 I must here repeat that money is a question of relative num- 
 bers. The value of money — its purchasing power and control 
 over commodities — is a question of the number of money units' 
 in circiilation. The effect of one unit is precisely the same as 
 that 01 another unit. Other things being equal, one dollar, no 
 matter of what material made, can not make prices either ad-^ 
 vance or decline more than any other dollar. An increase of the' 
 purchasing power of all dollars results from a decrease, relar 
 tively to demand, in the quantity of all kinds of dollars in the- 
 circulation; and vice versa. 
 
 The value of every dollar in use, population and demand re- 
 maining the same, being determined by the number of dollars 
 in circulation, the purpose oi repealing the Sherman law mani-- 
 festly is to increase the value of the dollars in circulation by- 
 refusing to increase the quantity of money while population con- 
 tinues to increase. This will add unjustly to the burden of every 
 debt and to the weight of every mortgage. It will turn increas- 
 ing numbers of workmen out of the shops and throw them on 
 cold charity of the world. 
 
 THE NEW TOBK NEWSPAPERS AND THB STOCK MARKET. 
 
 If money is to have the highest or a constantly increasing pur- 
 chasing power, prices of commodities must be kept constantly 
 lowering. The higher the purchasing power of the dollar the 
 lower necessarily must be those prices. Yet everybody wants - 
 prices to be " good." In the stock market business is said to be 
 prosperous when sales are rapid and prices rising. It is said to 
 be " bad " when prices are falling and sales, as a consequence, 
 restricted. The same rule applies to all forms of business. Un- 
 less, then, there is to be a fall in the purchasing power of money, 
 there ia no way to secure better prices except by a diminution ■ 
 in the production of commodities— by poor crops and idle facto- 
 ries. 
 
 785 
 
364 
 
 There is great rejoicing in the New York newspapers when 
 stocks and property are rising, whioh means that money is de- 
 creasing in value; yet they tell us in the same breath that they 
 want money of the highest purchasing power, showing that so 
 far as money is concerned the writers do not understand the re- 
 lation of cause and effect. When these " honest money " news- 
 papers of the East tell us that there is a ''brightening up all 
 over the country " and that "business is looking better" they 
 always add that "there is an advance in values." Now, an " ad- 
 vance " in prices of property signifies a decline in the value of 
 money, but they do not perceive this. Ask business men gen- 
 erally whether they think it better for the country that a slow 
 and slight rise in prices should take place, rather than a steady 
 -and persistent fall, however slight, and they will telU j'ou that 
 a gradual and reasonable rise of prices is the very synonym of 
 prosperity. 
 
 But when people want money of the highest purchasing power, 
 and at the same time want that activity of business that results 
 from steady or gently rising prices, they simply ask for two 
 things that are absolutely incompatible and contradictory. They 
 want both sides of the scales to be going up at the same time. 
 
 To whatever degree money is increased in volume (other things 
 remaining the same), the value of all the money in circulation is 
 decreased. If, then, moneyof the highest purchasing power were 
 really the best money, and the only honest money, it would be- 
 come a moral duty of governments, in the interest of society, to 
 forbid the further mining or coining of gold and silver. By re- 
 fusing to those metals or either of them free access to the mint, 
 the purchasing power of all dollars already in circulation would 
 be enormously increased. 
 
 If, notwithstanding this increase, workingmen could receive 
 the same number of dollars that they now do, what an inestima- 
 ble boon it would be to the laborers not only of the United 
 States, but of the world if the greater portion of the money 
 stock were destroyed. No scheme could be more philanthropic 
 than one in which all civilized nations should combine to anni- 
 hilate nine-tenths of the money supply of the world, so that by 
 .enormously decreasing the quantity of money the unit of money 
 
365 
 
 may acquire the highest purchasing power, and inasmuch aa,- 
 according to the logic of the gold-standard advocates, the la- 
 boring men would still receive the same number of dollars, they 
 would of course be elevated from poverty to affluence. 
 
 This involves an entire reconstruction of the science of politi- 
 cal economy upon principles never before dreamed of. It is 
 hereafter to be a science, by the study of which men may learn 
 how to lift themselves up by the straps of their boots. That is 
 precisely the performance which the advocates of the gold stand- 
 ard propose that the people of the United States shall under- 
 take to do when they determine to inaugurate a season of pros- 
 perity by repealing the present silver-purchase law and putting 
 nothing in its place. 
 
 SILVER A PRODUCT Ol' THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 The ground that silver is the product of the United States does 
 not, in the eyes of the gold advocates, commend it in any way to 
 consideration. When opportunity arose, however, to commend 
 gold as being such a product, the argument was deemed legiti- 
 mate, and was used without hesitation. 
 
 Albert Gallatin, in his Considerations on the Currency, pub- 
 lished in 1831, said; 
 
 Another consideration may be adduced In favor of the proposed reform of 
 our gold coins. It seems to lie well ascertained that the United States con- 
 tains some of the most extensive deposits of gold that have yet been discov- 
 ered. » » * It appears but just to afford to those employed In collecting 
 that natural product, a certain, and the hig/iest home market, of which It Is 
 susceptible. (Page 64.) 
 
 Even the honorable Senator from Ohio [Mr. Sherman] has- 
 considered the fact that gold was a. product of the United States 
 to be a recommendation in its favor, and I presume he con- 
 siders it so still, although, taking into account the much greater 
 importance of our silver yield, one would suppose that as a, prod- 
 uct of our own soil, silver would be esteemed the more valu- 
 able, the Senator professing to be a consistent protectionist. 
 
 In 1868 that Senator, then chairman of the Finance Commit- 
 tee of the Senate, submitted a report to this body upon the 
 Question of an international monetary standard, recommending 
 the adoption by the United States of the system of unification 
 of the coins of all nations on the gold basis, as suggested by the- 
 
 785 
 
366 
 
 I International Monetary Conference held at Paris in 1867. In 
 
 'that report the distinguished Senator states: 
 
 Aside from the general advantages wUcli we wUl share with the civilized 
 world in attaining a uniform coinage, there are special reasons why the 
 United States should now adopt the system. The United States is the great 
 gold-producing counti-y ol the world, now producing more than all other 
 nations combined, and with a capacity of future production almost without 
 limit. Gold with us is like cotton— a raw product. Its production here af- 
 fects and regulates its value throughout the world. Every obstruction to 
 . its free use— such as the necessity of its recolnage when passing from nation 
 to nation — diminishes its value, and that loss falls upon the United States, 
 the country of production. 
 
 And farther along in the same report he repeats his recommen- 
 • dation for the adoption of the gold standard, on the ground, 
 among others, that gold is "mainly the product of our own coun- 
 try." 
 
 The Senator did not permit his mistaken fears of an enormous 
 yield from the mines to interfere with his recommendation. Ha 
 distinctly stated that the United States had " a capacity for fu- 
 ture production almost without limit." According to this rea- 
 soning it would seem to be the conviction of the Senator from 
 Ohio that because gold was an American product it was our duty 
 by all the means in our power to sustain its value, no matter how 
 unlimited its supply or how insignificant the cost of its produc- 
 tion. "Every obstruction to its free use, "said the Senator, "di- 
 minishes its value, and that loss falls upon the United States, the 
 ' country of production." In that statement I fully agree with the 
 Senator from Ohio. But it seems that while this was a valid ar- 
 gument for gold, it is to be deemed preposterous as an argument 
 i for silver. 
 
 THE S3XVBR MINERS. 
 
 The silver miners of the United States, Mr. President, are a 
 brave and hardy people. Those of my State shrink from no 
 comparisons to which they can be subjected. Tried by every 
 gauge of manhood and patriotism, they respond to all tests. 
 Imagine the resolute pioneer, filled with the ardor of expec- 
 tancy and the enthusiasm of anticipation, denying himself all 
 present enjoyment, all the solaces and comforts of civilization, 
 to take up what he hopes will be but a temporary abode in a hut 
 on a barren mountain-side — can there be found within the bor- 
 . ders of the Republic a soul more intrepid, more aspiring, more 
 
 785 
 
367 
 
 filled with the ardor of liberty, more willing to do and dare, 
 more determined to defy and overcome difficulty, in the effort 
 to achieve, in the endeavor to appease that thirst, which, from 
 the days of the Argonauts, has seized upon the best and the 
 bravest of mankind. 
 
 In his interested and alluring search he finds no consolations 
 of landscape; no spreading lawns; no undulating fields; no placid 
 lakes; no tempting fruits; no sheltering trees. On bleak and 
 rugged mountain, or in deep forbidding gorge his lot is cast. 
 The blasts of winter and the torrid heats of summer he bears 
 with fortitude and resignation — for does he not see the finger of 
 Hope — that hand-maiden of Ambition — ever beckoning him on? 
 This follows, as of course, from the nature of his calling. Mining 
 is, above all things, the occupation of Hope. It is an honorable 
 occupation; requires the boldest and most enterprising men; in- 
 vites none but independent and adventurous spirits. No man 
 not possessed of self-control and self-reliance — no man who is not 
 willing to brave danger, can follow it. Such characters are the 
 natural material for citizenship of a free republic. And although 
 Nevada be a State of small population, yet its population is com- 
 posed of such as these— no State in the Union can boast of 
 braver or of better. 
 
 As is befitting such a population, the great seal of the State 
 which I have the honor in part to represent in this Chamber 
 bears a motto which I commend to the serious consideration of 
 those who ridicule Nevada because it lacks the splendor and ma- 
 jesty of the great banking States of the East. The motto is: "All 
 for our country." That was the simple but eloquent legend which 
 the warm glow of patriotism suggested to those faithful sons of 
 the Republic on the admission of their State to the Union. It 
 was becoming to men who loved freedom and wished to give no- 
 tice to all mankind that they were willing to brave all dangers 
 for the Republic which they loved. ' 'All for our country ! " Ah ! 
 Mr. President, that is a motto which I venture to assert will 
 never be found upon the escutcheon of any State in which bond- 
 holders predominate. Their sordid motto is, "All for our bonds." 
 
368 
 
 CONTRAST or TBI CLAIMS OF THE MINERS WITH THOSE OP THE BOMB- 
 
 HOLDERS. 
 
 Let me very briefly contrast the claims of these two classes of: 
 men to the consideration of the people of the United States. 
 
 As I have shown, when the bondholders entered upon their- 
 relations with the United States they paid for the bonds in de- 
 preciated paper dollars, or in the gold equivalent of such dollars, 
 at the average rate of only 67 cents on the dollar. Those bonds 
 were (according to law, and would have been according to equity), 
 payable in lawful money of the United States. That was the con- 
 tract, and, in substance, it was so nominated in the bond. The- 
 bondholders then set to work to secure a change of the law in, 
 their own interest, and did secure such change, by which dollars- 
 that were agreed to be paid, and to be received, in lawful money 
 of the United States, were afterward declared to be payable in 
 coin. 
 
 Having got thus far they secured another change in the law, 
 by which, in 1873, one of the two metals which alone constituted' 
 "coin," in the meaning of the statute, was de-monetized and re- 
 jected as money of full liberating power. Inasmuch as the only 
 value which money has is purchasing power, and that value is- 
 determinsd by supply and demand, the demonetization of one of 
 the metals enormously increased the demand for the cither, and- 
 by increasing the demand proportionately increased the value. 
 The object of the bondholders was to increase the purchasing 
 power of their bonds — of the debts which the people of the- 
 United States owed to them. That was what they knew they 
 would get if they could secure the demonetization of one of the 
 money metals. They have since received from the United States^ 
 in payment of the principal and interest of their bonds, an enor- 
 mous increment which was not due nor earned by them, nor 
 agreed to be paid to them, nor to be received by them. 
 
 Having secured from Congress an act which waived payment ia 
 lawful money, and agreed to pay in "coin," having then secured 
 the act which demonetized one of the metals and made the debt 
 payable in the other, they nextattempted to secure from Congresa 
 a new interpretation of the act which provided for the payment 
 in ' ' coin " — an interpretation which should translate the word 
 
 785 
 
3G9 
 
 " coin" into the word "gold." This interpretation Congress re- 
 fused to make. Congress then distinctly stated, by an over- 
 whelming majority of votes in both Houses, that the word "coin " 
 meant either gold or silver coin of the United States of the stand- 
 ard value of July 14, 1870. From Congress they appealed tO' 
 what seems to be a higher court, not provided or contemplated 
 •by the Constitution, namely, the executive officers of the United 
 States, who, acting as a self-appointed court of appeals, decided 
 that the word " coin " meant "gold coin," and proceeded to pay 
 those usurers in that metal. 
 
 Now, by contrast with this relation of the bondholders to the 
 United States, in what relation did the miners stand toward the 
 the country. 
 
 When they entered upon the work of silver mining they had 
 every reason and every right to expect and to believe that sil- 
 ver would continue to be what from time immemorial it had 
 been, namely, money. And it it could have entered their minds 
 that other nations might demonetize silver — nations whose soil 
 contained none of that metal, and whose people produced none-r 
 they could never have suspected or supposed that it would be 
 demonetized by the Government of the United States, especially 
 after a large number of citizens had embarked in the business 
 and had learned the trade — for trade it is, requiring a consider- 
 able time in which to become skilled. Silver had been the com- 
 panion of gold in the exercise of the money function not only 
 since the dawn of histoi-y, but prior even to the period of tradi- 
 tion. In common with gold, it had been dedicated by the Con- 
 stitution of the United States to the performance of that func- 
 tion, in the injunction imposed upon the separate States by a 
 provision which recited that — 
 
 No State shall * * * make anything but gold and sliver a tender In 
 payment of debt. 
 
 Thus the miners not only invested money, but suffered en- 
 during hardships and incurred the utmost risk of health and 
 life, upon the faith of what may be termed a constitutional guar- 
 anty, and upon the faith of the laws of the United States from 
 the foundation of the Government — laws having the origin in 
 customs, mint regulations, governmental orders and decrees of 
 
370 
 
 all nations, from "time whereof the memory of man runneth 
 not to the contrary." 
 
 The miners have never asked the Government for any bounties 
 of any sort. They have simply sisked, and they only ask now, 
 that the plain intent of the Constitution shall be given eflect — 
 that that intent shall be adhered to, at least until the people of 
 the United States have theopportunity of determiningfor them- 
 selves, and without interference by the executive department, 
 the question involved in the constitutional provision. The Con- 
 stitution stating that Congress shall have the power to coin 
 money and regulate the value thereof, and that no State shall 
 make anything but gold and silver a tender in payment of debts, 
 the miners were warranted in'expecting that Congress would 
 never attempt by a mere law to override the authority implied 
 by the Constitution, which was that a State could lawfully and 
 constitutionally make silver as well as gold a tender in payment 
 of debts. 
 
 If all the States should declare gold and silver to be legal 
 tender, while the Government of the United States should pre- 
 vent the coinage of silver, the provisions of the State laws passed 
 in compliance with the Constitution would be of no avail. 
 
 Wherever the miners have gone they have built up communi- 
 ties that, until struck by the hand of the foreign creditor of the 
 United States, were prosperous and happy. They have added 
 to the flag of the Union a number of great self-supporting States 
 whose future influence upon the destiny and welfare of mankind, 
 and especiallyof our Republic, bythe yield of the precious metals 
 and otherwise, was destined to be most powerful. They have 
 shown that they were true Americans in the courage, and energy, 
 and determination with which they set to work to construct 
 towns and cities in the heart of that which was a desert. 
 
 In those towns and cities, even in the least populated villages, 
 they have established all the institutions of self-government — 
 school houses, churches, libraries, lyceums, and all the other 
 concomitants of American civilization. They have had to ba-t- 
 tle with the rude forces of nature and, like true Americans, 
 have not flinched from the conflict. 
 
 I need not expatiate upon the comparative equities of the 
 
 785 
 
371 
 
 claims of tUe bondholders and the miners respectively. Those 
 who, after consideration of all the circumstances, do not see a 
 clear case in favor of the miner — a case which should be sup- 
 ported by all the power and all the energy of the United States — 
 are in my humble estimation to be commiserated upon the ab- 
 sence, not merely of patriotism, but of moral sense. 
 
 The foreign bondholders, notwithstanding the total absence of 
 equity and even in defiance of all law and of the plain and un- 
 mistakable terms of the written contract, find that they have 
 only to " ask andit is opened unto " them; while the brave hearts 
 that, in the hopeful dawn of early manhood, hazarded strength 
 and health and life in the honorable ambition to achieve — that, 
 American like, they might call no man master — are now, many 
 of them, in their declining years, and with families that are as 
 dear to them as ever wife and children were to bondholders — 
 left to seek, not new homes merely, but, harder yet, weto occm- 
 pations. These, too, are the men whom the good and gentle 
 Lincoln declared in a message to Congress to be worthy not 
 merely of the protection of law, but of an " extraordinary " de- 
 gree of encouragement. These are the men whose acute suffer- 
 ings have afforded opportunity of ghoulish delight to the pro- 
 prietors of the gold press of the country. 
 
 The demand of the bondholder is not only that laws passed for 
 his special and unjust advantage, after his contract was made, 
 shall be enforced, but that the most important word in the law 
 shall be read out of it, and a new and different word read into it 
 in order that he may get from the people not only far more than 
 he gave, but more than the people agreed to pay him, and more 
 than he agreed to receive from them, in full discharge of their 
 obligation. 
 
 The present executive oflBcers of the United States, following 
 the example of their predecessors, without respect to party, ever 
 since the issuance of the bonds, and supported by the army of bond- 
 hold ers and their servitors, and especially the leading newspa- 
 pers of the great money centers, are determined to enforce this 
 interpretation which they themselves, without warrant of law or 
 reason, have made, even when, in order to accomplish it, they 
 find it necessary, like kaisers, to reconstruct entire maps and 
 
 785 
 
372 
 
 ruthlessly destroy the population of whole States. Even czars 
 do not destroy the law-abiding people of their own countries. It 
 was only the Janizaries who pillaged the cities which it was their 
 duty to guard. 
 
 The people of the mining States, Mr. President, among them 
 the people of the State which I have the honor in part to repre- 
 sent in this Chamber, advance in defense of their cause reasons 
 founded at once in principles of eternal justice and sound eco- 
 nomic policy. They are confident that a large majority of their 
 countrymen are with them on tha side of the right, and only 
 need a fitting occasion and a plain statement of the case to make 
 prompt and unmistakable decision. 
 
 They assert that in fairness to the republican principle of gov- 
 ernment, which does not recognize the lodgment of all the 
 powers of state in the hands of any one man, all questions of su- 
 perlative importance, such as that which involves at once the 
 monetary standard of the Republic, and the lives, fortunes, and 
 happiness of the population of entire Commonwealths, should 
 be submitted directly and openly, fairly and squarely, to the peo- 
 ple of all the States, and should not be decided by snap judg- 
 ment, after the manner of ignorant magistrates and petty crim- 
 inal courts, nor by personal orders or rescripts in the nature of 
 imperial decrees. They believe that justice to the theory of 
 government "of the people, by the people,'' demands that all 
 questions of preeminent importance should be submitted to the 
 enlightened suffrages of the people in their capacity as rulers. 
 
 They submit that the question now under discussion is, in its 
 broad aspect, one which, for fifteen years, has, by disingenuous 
 methods, been studiously withheld from submission to the peo- 
 ple, owing mainly to what, in my humble opinion, is an unconsti- 
 tutional encroachment— gradual, progressive, and finally over- 
 shadowing and dangerous to the independence of the lawmak- 
 ing body— the encroachment by the incumbents of the Presi- 
 dential office, without distinction of party, upon the functions of 
 the lawmaking power. 
 
 The Roman republic, Mr. President, did not lose its liberties 
 'until the senate had degenerated in to a mere instrument for re- 
 cording the will of the chief magistrate. Macaulay has com- 
 
 785 
 
373 
 
 niented upon the ease and smoothness with which all democratic 
 forms, and the names and titles appertaining to a republican 
 form of government, were preserved in that commonwealth con- 
 currently with the absorption of all the powers of the state— ex- 
 ecutive, legislative, and judicial — in the hands of one man. But 
 that was a long time ago. Times change, and men change with 
 them. This is a very different Republic from that of Rome, and 
 although history, we are told, sometimes repeats itself, I, for 
 one, can not believe that the Senate of the United States is ever 
 to become a subservient Semite. 
 
 I know that I can speak for the voters of the mining States 
 and millions of voters in other States who are in hearty ac- 
 cord with them on all fundamental features of the question now 
 before the Senate when I assert that if the entire monetary pol- 
 icy of the country i^ to be changed it is too great a question to 
 be decided without consulting the American people, whose mere 
 representatives and servants we are. And, if there be a major- 
 ity of Senators here favorable to the passage of this measure, 
 without reference to the fatal effect which it is absolutely cer- 
 tain to have, not only upon all the people of the mining States, 
 but upon the producing masses in every State in the Union, may 
 I not admonish those Senators to pause and reflect that there is 
 no exigency whatever demanding its passage — that absolutely no 
 public condition requires it, and that^ 
 
 it Is excellent 
 To liave a giant's strength, but it Is tyrannoiis 
 To use it like a giant. 
 
 [Applause in the galleries.] 
 
 Friday, October 27, X893. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. At the close of my remarks on Tues- 
 day I had stated that "the most immediate consequence of the 
 vote to be cast here in favor of repeal would be to practically 
 destroy the silver-mining interests of the country. Although 
 the inhabitants of the so-called mining States are numerous 
 enough to be entitled to consideration, they are not numerous 
 enough to be able, unaided, to undo at the polls the wrong in- 
 flicted here. It is not, however, to the inhabitants of those 
 States that Senators will have to account, but to a much more 
 
 785 
 
374 
 
 numerous body of citizens in all the States of the Union, namely, 
 the agriculturists and other producers. 
 
 THE INTEREST OF T^ PBODUCEBS OF WHEAT AWD COTTON IN THE RE- 
 MONETIZATION OE SILVER. 
 
 I assert that by reason of the demotjetization of silver the 
 wheat and cotton producers of this country are compelled to 
 give a much greater quantity of the products of their labor for 
 a given number of dollars than with unrestricted coinage of that 
 metal at our mints they would be called upon to give. 
 
 Agriculturists suffer in perhaps an exceptional degree from an 
 increasing value in the monetary unit. The obligations of their 
 mortgages, like those of all others, are stated in dollars. But 
 unlike ot^er obligations, such as railroad and corporate securi- 
 ties in general, the farmer has no means of defending himself 
 from the injustice inflicted by an increasing value in the dollar. 
 
 Although railroads must suffer with others, yet when the value 
 of the dollar increases, their managers shrewdly " refund" and 
 " reconvert " their bonds at rates of interest lower than the rates 
 originally provided for. But there is no " reconversion "or " re- 
 funding " for the farmer or cotton planter. The only result in 
 his case is that every day is hastening him on to the time when 
 the mortgage is to become a deed, and the mortgagee to become 
 the owner of the property. 
 
 Wheat and cotton, the leading products of our soil, have for 
 twenty years been falling in price. They fell last year, last 
 month, and last week, and will fall further next week, next 
 month, and next year. To the producer the term "fall of 
 prices " is the equivalent of " increasing value in the dollar." 
 
 Where is the falling process to stop? Is it to persist until 
 wheat gets to be 5 cents a bushel, and cotton 1 cent a pound? If 
 BO, what are those agriculturists to do whose farms are mort- 
 gaged, and who owe fixed amounts of other debt, all of which 
 must be paid out of the amounts realized from the sales of their 
 products? Were debts to be "scaled down" according as the 
 value of dollars increased by reason of relative contraction of 
 the money volume, no one could complain. But adebtis a fixed 
 number of dollars, no matter how the value of the dollars may 
 increase. 
 
 In order to get an idea as to how the fall of prices is progress- 
 res 
 
375 
 
 ing let us entvsr into a comparison, at random, of a few items 
 from the report of the Government Statistical Bureau as to the 
 quantities (contradistinguished from values) in the case of a few 
 of our leading articles of export, for the two periods comprising 
 the nine months ending September 30 of this year and the cor- 
 responding period of last year. According to those figures, we 
 discover that while the exports of wheat were less in bushels this 
 year than last by only two millions they were less in dollars by 
 eighteen millions. 
 
 Taking flour a^ another illustration, we find that this year 
 the exports of that commodity were less in barrels by 100,000, 
 but less in dollars by 2,200,000. 
 
 Still more striking are the figures representing the quantities 
 and values of our petroleum exports during the periods named. 
 The exports of crude petroleum this year were greater than 
 those of last year in gallons by 13,000,000. Notwithstanding this 
 large increase in quantity, there was a decrease in the number 
 of dollars received this year, as compared with last, by 3,000,000. 
 
 The full statistics of the cotton exports for the nine months 
 are not yet available, but comparing the exports of the single 
 months, September, 1892, and September, 1893, we find that the 
 exports of cotton were this year less in bales by 17,000, but they 
 were less in dollars by 215,000. 
 
 All these figures show that we are sending to Europe each 
 year an increasing quantity of our agricultural wealth for a con- 
 tinuously decreasing amount of money . Our producers are being 
 sacrificed and forced into poverty because of the avarice and 
 cupidity of men, who, whether in Europe or America, produce 
 nothing. 
 
 If the fall in the gold price of silver bullion is in any manner 
 responsible for this, is it not the imperative duty of thinking 
 men to investigate the subject? 
 
 The case for the agriculturist is so well stated by the New 
 York Sun of September 10 last that I give in full the able edi- 
 torial which presents it. The Sun says: 
 
 TEB FABMBBB AND THE CBISIS. 
 
 When, ty reason of unfavorable conditions, nearly Italf of the population 
 Is deprived In whole or In part of Its power to purchase of the products of 
 those engaged In manufacturing Industries, the whole commerolal and lu- 
 785 
 
376 
 
 duBtrlal world suffers from paralysis; the exchanges become deranged; 
 hoarding ensues; monetary stringency follows; mills, factories, and fur- 
 naces close; operatives, ceasing to earn, lose their power to purchase of tlM 
 products of their own labor as well as of the labors of others ; and the circle 
 of declining activity constantly widens. 
 
 Such are the conditions now existing, and they are largely If not almost 
 wholly due, primarily, to the loss of the power on the part of some 45 per 
 cent of the people to purchase of other than the veriest necessaries. 
 
 On the other hand, whenever this great multitude of people have large 
 revenues, their purchases are of such volume and the character and quantity 
 bought so constant that manufacturing plants are fully employed, and new 
 ones are built to meet augmenting demands; the mill-owner buys raw ma- 
 terial In advance of consumption; operatives and artisans have constant 
 work; the wage scale being an ascending one, the ability of the worker to 
 buy of the products of his own labor and of the labor of others is enhanced; 
 money seeks employment with confidence; the merchant's stock rapidly dis- 
 appears and is constantly replenished; collections are easy, and, in short, 
 labor Is fully employed, manufacturers overrun with orders, money is abun- 
 dant, and times are good. 
 
 As the prices of farm products have fallen, so has declined the purchasing 
 power of that great body of producers constituting nearly half the working 
 force of the nation, and so has waned the prosperity of all. 
 
 At the taking of the census of 1870, 52 per cent of all the males following 
 regular vocations were engaged in agriculture, and this was approximately 
 the proportion of the people living upon the farm; but by 1880, owing to the 
 growth of manufactures, the proportion had been reduced below 49 per cent, 
 and is now probably about 45 per cent. 
 
 After the close of the civil war farm products brought such prices that the 
 52 per cent of the population then directly dependent upon agriculture had 
 ample revenue; their purchases of the products of manufacture were so 
 liberal that many establishments ran night and day; the mill-owner, the 
 producer of raw material, the merchant, and all those engaged directly and 
 indirectly in distribution or construction, as well as those employed In the 
 subsidiary industries, were fully employed at remunerative rates, the result 
 being an era of prosperity never equaled In our history, as neither before 
 Tior since have those prices for farm products been equaled. 
 
 Now the very reverse of such conditions obtains, except in so far as relates 
 to the desire of the farmer to buy of the products of others. This desire re- 
 mains, as it has during all the years when declining prices for his products 
 have forbidden its exercise, except in the most restricted manner. 
 
 As the power of the farmer to buy declined, so has declined, measurably, 
 the activity of the Industrial and commercial world, except as an Impulse 
 has been given to commerce and manufactures by the construction of an 
 Immense railway mileage, often in advance and excess of localneeds. While 
 the development of transportation facilities served to mask and postpone 
 some of the Inevitable results due to the farmer's loss of purchasing power, 
 the almost entire cessation of such works tends to emphasize the loss of 
 that power which the farmer exercised in such a way as to cause a rapid 
 extension of the industrial equipments of the country, until it has become 
 more than sufttclent to meet demands reduced by reason of the loss of reve- 
 nue suffered by the greatest body of workers in the country 
 
 The nation is likely never again to have its economic conditions hidden by 
 a factitious prosperity growing out of great railway constructions, as suet 
 operations are no longer possible, there being no region, except very limited 
 Southern areas, where expenditures could be made to appear as promising 
 returns to tempt the possessors of available funds. 
 785 
 
377 
 
 For more than fifteen years— 1878 to 1893— all the great primary agricultural 
 staples have lieen declining In price, although there hare been periods when 
 the price of some one was high for a limited time. This is more notably true 
 as respects secondary products, especially meats and lard; hut the trend of 
 the whole scale has been constantly downward, and the general price level 
 at the end of each year was lower than at Its beginning. In the meantime 
 there has been no material reduction in the cost of production, the self- 
 btnder, the gang plow, mower, hay tedder, and hay loader, and all other great 
 Improvements in agricultural machinery having come into use prior to 
 1878. Subsequent modlfloatlons and improvements have been in the direc- 
 tion of greater facility In operation rather than of lessened cost. While it is 
 true that there has been a material reduction in the cost of farming imple- 
 ments, such reduction has not always resulted in lessening the cost of pro- 
 duction on the farm, as new machines have often displaced those which were ' 
 but partially worn and which were quite as efficient. 
 
 It is probable that upon farms large enough to warrant the purchase of full 
 linesof Improved machinery the cost of production has thereby been lessened 
 10 per cent, but such farms, constituting less than 5 per cent of the whole 
 area under cultivation, the aggregate saving from such economies has been 
 Blight and has probably been fully offset by the progressively increasing use 
 of commercial fertilizers, which has been found necessary in all the region 
 east of the Mississippi, not to Increase the fertility of the land, but simply 
 to prevent further deterioration. 
 
 While the cost of production can not have been lessened as much as 5 per 
 cent since 1875, prices for the staple products of the farm averaged 82 per 
 cent greater during the five years ending with 1875 than now. This is espe- 
 cially true as respects the five staples— corn, wheat, oats, hay, and cotton— 
 which employ 195,000,000 out of the 206,000,000 acres now devoted to staple 
 crops. 
 
 The following table shows, in five-year averages, the gold value per acre 
 (in the local farm markets) of the product of the five staples named, tor 
 quinquennial periods, since 1866, and an estimate of the value, with average 
 yields, of an acre under each such staple in 1893 at present prices: 
 
 Staples. 
 
 Value of an acre's product— 
 
 1866-70. 
 
 1871-'75. 
 
 18?6-'80. 
 
 1881-'85. 
 
 1886-'90. 
 
 1893. 
 
 Corn - - 
 
 $12. 84 
 13.16 
 10.93 
 13.28 
 28.01 
 
 $11.30 
 
 11.90 
 
 9.81 
 
 14.38 
 
 28.55 
 
 $9.62 
 12.00 
 8.58 
 11.57 
 , 17.65 
 
 $10.25 
 10.20 
 9.17 
 11.15 
 15.63 
 
 $8.81 
 9.07 
 7.50 
 10.19 
 13.84 
 
 $8.35 
 
 
 6.00 
 
 Oats....u 
 
 Hay . -- 
 
 5.75 
 10.00 
 
 
 10.65 
 
 
 
 
 78.21 
 15.64 
 
 75.94 
 15.19 
 
 59.42 
 11.88 
 
 66.40 
 11.28 
 
 49.44 
 9.89 
 
 40.75 
 
 Average 
 
 8.15 
 
 If, as Is altogether probable, the revenue derived from the cultivation of 
 each acre of the staples named has not since 1885 been in excess of the cost 
 of production, then it is readily seen that the workers among the 30,000,000 
 who Inhabit the farms of the United States have for eight years received no 
 more than laborers' wages, and could purchase but the barest necessaries. 
 As prices now current are 21 per cent below the average of 1866 to 1890, it fol- 
 lows that the products of the farm are now sold below the cost of produc- 
 tion, and that the farmer is wholly without purchasing power other than 
 such as results from his wages as a common laborer. 
 
 Granting that present prices even cover the cost of production, or say $8. 15 
 an acre, it is evident that every cent that can be added thereto will be In the 
 785 
 
378 
 
 nature ot profits or rent, and will add tliat mucli to tlie purchasing or dsbt- 
 paylng power of the cultivator; but there Is abundant evidence that $8.15 
 does not represent the actual average cost of producing the staple products, 
 and that the farmer's debt-paying and purchasing power has been reduced 
 to that of the lower class of labor, aqd will afford him, while present prices 
 obtain, but the means ot the most meager subsistence. That present prices 
 are below the cost of production appears probable from the fact that out- 
 side a tew favorably situated communities, there has been no reduction of 
 farm indebtment In recent years, while the farmer has, over wide areas, 
 from year to year been reducing his purchases of the products of manufac- 
 ture, although his revenues have been 21 per cent above the present level. 
 
 The extent of the reductions made In revenue from each acre under staple 
 crops is best shown by saying that the acre revenue from 1866 to 1870 was 
 $7.59, or 93 per cent greater than in 1893; from 1871 to 1873 it was S7.04, or 86 
 percent greater than in 1893; from 1876 to 1880 it was $3.73, or 46 per cent 
 greater than in 1893; from 1881 to 1885 it was $3. 13, or 38 per cent greater than 
 In 1893; from 1886 to 1890 it was $1.74, or 21 per cent greater than in 1893. The 
 great diminution in the purchasing power of the tarmer, implied by these 
 progressive reductions in acreage revenue, without compensating reduc- 
 tions in the cost of cultivation, is thus clearly shown; but the enormous 
 yearly aggregate of lost purchasing power is comprehensible only when we 
 multiply the acres now employed In growing staples by the declines shovra 
 in the acreage value of products since 1870. 'While very accurately meas- 
 uring the farmer's loss of revenue by reason of the declining value of the acre- 
 age product, even multiplying the acres under staple crops fails to show the 
 whole loss, as no account Is thereby takeni of the reduction in the value of 
 animals and the thousand and one things produced on the farms ot the 
 United States, which have suffered. In many cases, quita as great a decline 
 in value as have the great staples to which this showing is confined. 
 
 As 206.000,000 acres are now employed in growing staple crops, it follows 
 that the power of the farmer to purchase is this year $1,563,000,000 less than 
 it would be it he was receiving the prices of 1866-'70 for his great staples. 
 If the prices now realized in the farm markets equaled those received from 
 1871 to 1875, the farmer would this year be able to spend $1,450,000,000 more 
 for manufactures and other commodities than he will be able to spend with 
 prices at the present level. Were prices now equal to the average of those 
 obtained from 1876 to 1880 the purchasing power of the f arijiers would this 
 year be augmented by $768,000,000. Should the crops of 1893 give average 
 yields and the prices equal those current from 1881 to 1885, the farmer's spend- 
 ing power would be $645,000,000 greater than with present prices. Even with 
 prices as low as those prevailing from 1886 to 1890 the farmers of the United 
 States would have $358,000,000 added to their debt-paying and purchasing 
 power In 1893; and like advances on the other products of the farm would 
 create an ample ftmd for building and general improvement, thus employing 
 more labor. 
 
 The least of these sums, added to the sums yearly distributed among the 
 producers of metals and textOes, would afford emplojment for great num- 
 bers, keep the mills in motion, make money abundant, and bring good times. 
 
 Much stress is laid upon the necessity of cheap food for the wage- worker; 
 but what possible benefit can be derived from a cheapness that deprives tho 
 30,000,000 who produce food and fiber of the ability to keep the wage-worker 
 employed by buying the products of artisan and operative? 
 
 Doubling the present price of wheat would probably add the price of six 
 
 or eight days' labor to the cost of the year's supply of bread for the average 
 
 family; but with wheat at an average of $1 a bushel at the farm markets. 
 
 and other farm products at proportionate prices, there would be no idle 
 
 78b 
 
379 
 
 mills, and tlie earner of wages would have tbat easily procured and constant 
 work which would assure him the continuous ability to buy bread. Would 
 not that be far better than existing conditions and bread unattainable 
 though low In price? 
 
 We recently published a statement to the effect that the 1,600 young women 
 employed In the Warner corset factory at Bridgeport, Conn., had been re- 
 duced to half time; that 600 of them were unable to buy food, andwere ted by 
 the charity of their employer. Such conditions exist because the women 
 upon the farms are unable to renew their corsets with wheat selling west 
 of the Mississippi at from 30 to 40 cents a bushel. 
 
 The relation between the price of wheat, the lack of power to buy corsets, 
 and the Idleness and Inability of the women of Bridgeport to buy bread Is as 
 obvious as that between the earth's movements and day and night. 
 
 However people may have disagreed about the late ZachChanc'ler's states- 
 manship, no one questioned his success as a merchant, and this was due as 
 much to his power of discerning economic conditions affecting his customers 
 as to the tmerring judgment with which he provided saleable goods. Soon 
 alter the close of the civil war, being asked If he could find sale In the farm- 
 ing districts for a lot of rich dress goods, which he was shipping to small In- 
 land towns, his reply was characteristic: 
 
 "Selltheml Sell them! Why, the women on the farms of Michigan have 
 discarded homespun and calicoes for silk and merino, and no farmer's son 
 now thinks of going out to plow unless dressed in doeskin trousers and calf- 
 skin boots. Don't you know that wheat Is selling for $3 a bushel! " 
 
 Such was the late Mr. Chandler's way of stating the operation of that eco- 
 nomic law which enables people to buy liberally of the products of others. 
 # < * « * « « ' * 
 
 When we reflect that had the 460,000,000 bushels of wheat exported since 
 July 1, 1891, brought but Id cents more a bushel, the corn exported 10 cents 
 more, and the cotton exported only 4mllls moreapound, fully $100,000, OOOlesa 
 In gold would have gone abroad, and many millions less in American securi- 
 ties have been sent back, we can understand that the purchasing power of 
 the farmer would have been enhanced by several hundred millions, as like 
 advances would have been setured on all similar products sold at home. 
 
 Snch an addition to the farmer's power to purchase would have kept the 
 mills and furnaces employed; the operatives, having constant work at high 
 wages, would be able to buy bread; and their power to purchase of the prod- 
 ucts of their own labor, as well as of the products of the labor of others, 
 would be vastly increased, gold would be abundant, confidence unimpaired, 
 and prosperity still be the rule. 
 
 With prices of farm prodiicts again such as to afford fair remuneration for 
 the labor and capital employed in production, as they presently must be, by 
 reason of the elimination of the world's acreage excess, the purchases of the 
 30,000,000 upon our farms will help to keep every spindle busy; labor In the 
 towns will, at least for a time, be well employed ; hoarding will cease ; confi- 
 dence will be restored, money become abundant, and an era of prosperity 
 will resultfrom the operation of that natural law which is the ultimate ar- 
 biter in determining the price of nearly every product of labor. 
 
 It would be difficult to describe more accurately the situation 
 of the farmers of this country and the effect which their pros- 
 perity or adversity has upon the entire body of our national in- 
 dustries. 
 
 785 
 
380 
 
 THE BrPEOT OP BAST DTIJIA COMPETITION ON OVS TABMEKS AND OOTTOW 
 
 PLANTERS. 
 
 Several years ago shrewd men in Great Britain foresaw what 
 would be the effect on the agricultural industries of the United 
 States of a fall in the gold price of silver bullion. They saw that, 
 in the situation of India, the price of silver bullion would dictate 
 the prices for wheat and cotton. 
 
 At a meeting of the British and colonial chambers of com- 
 merce held in London in 1886, Sir Robert Fowler, a member of 
 Parliament, banker and ex-mayor of London, said that — 
 
 The effect of tlie depreciation of silver must Anally be the ruin of the wheat 
 and cotton Industries of America and be the development of India as tho 
 chief wheat and cotton exporter of the world. 
 
 The interest of the farmers of this country in the silver ques- 
 tion can not be more perspicuously stated than is done by Mr. 
 Moreton Frewen, in some felicitous remarks delivered by him 
 at the second national silver convention held in Washington a 
 year or more ago. Referring to the method by which the price 
 of silver bullion controls the price of wheat, Mr. Frewen said: 
 
 This Is a question to which, when In India, I gave very close study, and I 
 should like to make this general statement, which I am convinced the ex- 
 perience of the past and of the future will amply confirm. Let me put it 
 briefly in this way : 
 
 The price of wheat in this country Is its price in Loudon or Liverpool, less 
 the cost of carriage from here there, and the London price of wheat Is, under 
 ordinary conditions, one ounce of silver per bushel of wheat. Your farmers 
 will always have to sell a bushel of wheat, say in Chicago, for an ounce of 
 silver, less freight charges to London. If, then, silver is worth $1.29 per 
 ounce, the London price of American wheat Is J1.29. while, if silver is worth 
 90 cents, then your wheat will realize only 90 cents. This is a statement that 
 will bear close examination, and It is the sum of the Importance of the silver 
 question to your nation. When in the Punjaub three years ago I went very 
 closely into the cost of producing wheat there. In that one India province 
 the area devoted to wheat-growing is twice that of the wheat area of all Great 
 Britain. 
 
 The irrigation system organized by our Government is perfect, so that 
 harvest returns are extremely uniform, and the figures I arrived at, and 
 wbich have not been called in question, go to prove that the Punjaub wheat 
 farmer wUl always make a living profit by selling his wheat in Europe for 
 2^ silver rupees per quarter [8 bushels] . And if this is the case the competi- 
 tion of tens of thousands of small wheat farmers In India will always suffice 
 to sell wheat In Europe down to that price. Now, 21 rupees a quarter Is an 
 ounce of silver per bushel; and seeing that the value of the rupee In India to 
 buy land or labor or any local commodity is actually a little greater than it 
 •was before the gold price of sliver fell, I hold that we are justified in stating 
 that the price of a bushel of wheat, whether American or Indian, lu the Lon- 
 
381 
 
 don marltet, has been In the past and will be In the future on the average an 
 ounce of silver. 
 
 Admitting, then, what all students ot prices do admit, namely, that the 
 purchase power ol the rupee In India is well maintained, the lact that the 
 price of wheat and cotton falls with the price of the sliver exchanges be- 
 tween Europe and Asia is not for a moment open to doubt. 
 
 A comparisou of the range of prices for wheat and cotton and 
 the gold price of silver bullion for the past twenty years will 
 demonstrate a much more than accidental relation betweehthem. 
 The following table gives the figures: 
 
 Year. 
 
 Wheat, 
 per bushel. 
 
 Cotton, 
 per pound. 
 
 Sliver, 
 per ounce. 
 
 1872 
 
 SI. 47 
 
 1.31 
 
 1.43 
 
 1.12 
 
 1.24 
 
 1.17 
 
 1.34 
 
 1.07 
 
 1.25 
 
 1.11 
 
 1.19 
 
 1.13 
 
 1.07 
 
 .86 
 
 .87 
 
 .89 
 
 .85 
 
 .90 
 
 .83 
 
 .85 
 
 .80 
 
 .65 
 
 Cents. 
 19.3 
 18.8 
 15.4 
 15.0 
 12.9 
 11.8 
 11.1 
 9.9 
 11.8 
 11.4 
 11.4 
 10.8 
 10.5 
 10.6 
 9.9 
 9.5 
 9.8 
 9.9 
 10.1 
 10.0 
 8.7 
 7.0 
 
 *1. 32 
 
 1873 
 
 1 29 
 
 1874 
 
 1.27 
 
 1875 
 
 1.24 
 
 1876 
 
 1.15 
 
 1877 
 
 1.20 
 
 1878 
 
 1.15 
 
 1879 
 
 1.12 
 
 1880 
 
 1 14 
 
 1881 
 
 1.13 
 
 1883 
 
 1 13 
 
 1883 . , . 
 
 1.11 
 
 1884 
 
 1.01 
 
 1885 
 
 1.06 
 
 1886 
 
 .99 
 
 1887 
 
 .97 
 
 1888 
 
 .93 
 
 1889 
 
 .93 
 
 1890 
 
 1.04 
 
 189) 
 
 .90 
 
 1892 
 
 .88 
 
 1893 
 
 .75 
 
 
 
 Let us endeavor to reach an approximate estimate of the losses 
 sustained by our agricultural population since 1885, when Pres- 
 ident Cleveland first advised Congress to repeal the silver-pur- 
 chase act of 1878 and to stop the coinage of silver dollars: 
 
 WHEAT. 
 
 Average export price per bushel— 
 
 1875 to 1885 «1.1T 
 
 1893 73 
 
 Difference 44 
 
 According to the report of the Agricultural Department for 
 December, 1892, the wheat crop of this country for the year then 
 closed amounted to 516,000,000 bushels. On this quantity a loss 
 of 44 cents per bushel, caused by the decline in the price of sil- 
 ver bullion, amounts to an annual sum of $226,600,000 of debt and 
 tax-paying power, which amount apportioned among the princi- 
 
 785 
 
382 
 
 pal wheat-producing States shows the loss of each of such States 
 to be as follows (I give the figures in round numbers): 
 
 Wheat crop of 1893 In— 
 
 Bushed. 
 
 Loss. 
 
 
 40,000,000 
 41,000,000 
 39,000,000 
 70,000,000 
 33,000,000 
 35,000,000 
 38,000,000 
 25,000,000 
 28,000,000 
 24,000,000 
 19,000.000 
 16,000,000 
 13,000,000 
 10,000,000 
 10,000,000 
 
 $17,600,000 
 
 
 18,040,000 
 
 California -., 
 
 17, 160, 000 
 
 Kansas - - ....... ... - - 
 
 30, 800, 000 
 
 
 14,080,000 
 
 NorthDakota ._ 
 
 15,400,000 
 
 Ohio 
 
 16,720,000 
 
 
 11,000,000 
 
 Illinois 
 
 12,320,000 
 
 Mlcliisan , j i.. 
 
 10,560,000 
 8,^60,000 
 
 Nebraska . ..... 
 
 7,040,000 
 
 
 5,280,000 
 
 Oregon --.- 
 
 4,400,000 
 
 Washington ■.. 
 
 4,400,000 
 
 
 
 There may be added to these figures five to ten million bush- 
 els each for the States of New York, Maryland, Virginia, North 
 Carolina, Texas, Tennessee, West Virginia,Wisconsin, and Iowa. 
 The loss on wheat, therefore, suffered by the farmers of this 
 country must be estimated at $200,000,000 annually. 
 
 Average price per pound in Ne w York — Cents. 
 
 1879 to 1885 Hi 
 
 1879 to 1893 8 
 
 Difference-- 31 
 
 Taking the crop year 1888-'89 as an average year, and, for con- 
 venience of calculation, computing the loss at 3 cents per pound, 
 we find that the total annual loss of the planters of the United 
 States amounts to over $100,000,000, distributed among the States 
 as follows: 
 
 Cotton raised In- 
 
 Pounds. 
 
 Iioss per 
 year. 
 
 North Carolina . . 
 
 230,000,000 
 275,000,000 
 480,000,000 
 32,000.000 
 422,000,000 
 532,000,000 
 240,000,000 
 719,000,000 
 350,000,000 
 162,000,000 
 
 $6,900,000 
 8,250,000 
 14,400,000 
 960,000 
 12,675,000 
 15,960,000 
 7,200,000 
 21, 570, 000 
 10,500,000 
 4,860,000 
 
 
 Georgia .-.-..— .. ... 
 
 Florida 
 
 
 Mississippi 
 
 
 Texas 
 
 Arkansas 
 
 
 
 Total 
 
 3,422,000,000 
 
 102,^60, 000 
 
 
 786 
 
383 
 
 This makes a total loss to the agriculturists of this country, 
 in wheat and cotton, by reason of the demonetization of silver, of 
 over $325,000,000 a year. 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson, inasmuch as I have made a declaration 
 •directly contrary to that made by the Senator on a former oc- 
 casion, I should like to ask the Senator how- he accounts for 
 it, then, that when you come to consider that the exports of 
 wheat from India have only averaged 10 per cent of the export 
 of wheat which supplies the world outside of India during the 
 past twenty years, how it could influence the market? Then 
 I wish to take up the export of cotton, and I read from the Sta- 
 tistical Abstract, which simply shows that while India in 1872 
 produced 35 percent of the world's supply of coton, with a stim- 
 ulus of 40 per cent in the fall of the gold value of ths rupee, In- 
 dia's whole product of cotton fell 23 per cent. I should like to 
 know how in the production of wheat and cotton it has been of 
 so much importance to India, when the Senator knows that in 
 Calcutta and Bombay the gold price and the silver price of cot- 
 ton has been exactly the difference between the value of gold 
 and silver bullion. I do not know what it has been in the inte- 
 rior of the country, but in the export cities the price of both 
 Wheat and cotton represents exactly the diflference between 
 gold and silver bullion, leaving out of the transaction, of course, 
 all transportation charges, so as not to cloud the transaction. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. A very slight surplus of product, say 
 10 or 15 per cent of wheat, is enough to demoralize the entire 
 market. 
 
 With reference to cotton, I wish to call the Senator's atten- 
 tion to the fact that the production of cotton is enormously in- 
 creased in India, but the shipments from India have not increased, 
 for the reason that the people, owing to the bounty (which the 
 premium on gold is), have been able to take an enormous amount 
 of business from the spinners and weavers of Great Britain. In- 
 dia is reaching out for the entire trade of the Orient, including 
 Japan, China, Siam, and the Straits settlements. The result is 
 thatthe mills of India have closed many of the mills of England. 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson, if the senator will permit me a moment 
 more. If it is ascertained that upon the continent of Europe 
 
384 
 
 there is a deficiency of wheat to supply consumption, say, of iiOO,- 
 000,000 bushels, India only supplies 10 per cent of the 300,000,000 
 bushels. The Senator will not pretend to say that that 10 per 
 cent will regulate and control the market tora deficiency of 300,- 
 000,000 bushels. He can not say that, and upon a little reflection 
 he will not. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Cheap silver stimulated the produc- 
 tion of India, of Russia, of the Argentine, and all other nongold- 
 using countries, because the wages obtaining in those countries 
 being payable in their national money, the rise of gold acted as 
 the equivalent of a bo inty on all productions. Does the Senator 
 deny the proposition that wages have not risen in India? Does 
 he deny the proposition that the rupee to-day among the 285,- 
 000,000 people of India will buy as much of all the thinjjs that 
 enter into daily lite as it ever bought? 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson. I deny it emphatically, because, in the 
 first place, there can be in commerce no such thing as a one- 
 sided prosperity. If the Senator tells me that the Indian ryot, 
 who lives in a mud hovel, wears straw clothing, and eats only 
 rice is cheated, and is willing that the shipping agents or the 
 Indian merchants of Bombay and Calcutta may have the full 
 benefit of his labor, then I can not deny that, because I am not 
 acq^uainted with the practices and habits of the ryots. But 
 when ttie Senator tells me that in Bombay and Calcutta the 
 price of both wheat and cotton, as taken from the Statistical 
 Abstract of India and England — both the gold price and the sil- 
 ver price of wheat and cotton— has not been exactly the difi'er- 
 ence between the value of gold and silver bullion, then I say the 
 Senator can not sustain his position. 
 
 Now, then, as to the rupee, if the Indian merchant at Bombay 
 or Calcutta ships his wheat to London he is able to get more 
 rupees either in council bills or silver for that wheat than he is 
 able to get if he sells it for gold. Does the Senator pretend to 
 tell me that competition between India and London, between 
 the importers and exporters of Indian goods and Indian products 
 from India is not exactly like the competition between merchants 
 in the city of New York, Philadelphia or Baltimore? If that is' 
 not the case, then it seems to me, Mr. President, that there is 
 
 785 
 
385 
 
 no such thing as commerce from that part of the country. It ia 
 robbery. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. I can scarcely understand the state- 
 ment made by the Senator from New Jersey. The ryots and all 
 the small farmers in India are in competition with one another, 
 like the farmers of this country. They must sell their wheat 
 for what they can get for it, and with the rates of wages which 
 have prevailed from time immemorial, and the range of prices 
 of commodities which now obtains, and has from time imme- 
 morial obtained, the rupee will buy as much of labor and as 
 much of the products of labor as before silver was demonetized. 
 It will buy as much now as then of everything sold in India that 
 the East Indian consumes. To 280,000,000 of the East Indians 
 it is a matter of entire indifference what money is used in Lon- 
 don. It would be as useless to inform them about it as it would 
 be to inform them, if one knew, the character of money used in 
 Mercury or Mars. They use nothing but silver. 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson, win the senator bear with me for a sin- 
 gle moment longer? 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Certainly. 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson. Take wheat in London, worth 40 shillings 
 a quarter. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Put it down lower than that. 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson, say, for illustration, 40 shillings a quar- 
 ter — I do not care what figure you put it at. Twenty rupees are 
 equal to 40 shillings, and the East Indian — leaving out of the 
 question, so as not to cloud the transaction, freight, commissions, 
 etc. — receives 20 rupees for his quarter of wheat. If that wheat 
 was sold to-day in England, with the rupee at 1 shilling 2 pence, 
 he would receive not 20 rupees, but 35 rupees in silver. I wish 
 now to ask the Senator if he believes that there can be such a 
 thing as commerce between London and India, in which an In- 
 dian merchant, located in Bombay or Calcutta, can send that 
 wheat to London! and receive 35 rupees in silver, and pay no part 
 of it to the producer? Then is it not true that wheat and cotton 
 buy more rupees, and is it not also true that the rupee has not 
 the same purchasing power as before? 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. I have the most complete tables on 
 785 — 25 
 
386 
 
 that subject, which I did not care to inflict upon the Senate, and 
 the figures they contain show that for twenty years the price of 
 silver has governed the price of wheat; that the price of wheat 
 varied with the price of silver. An ounce of silver coined into 
 rupees was the price of a bushel of wheat, with freight added, 
 in Liverpool. Is that accidental? The brief and sufEcient an- 
 swer to all the Senator has said with regard to what under given 
 circumstances the Bombay or the Calcutta merchant would do 
 and what the ryot would do is the simple fact that under all 
 changes the price of a bushel of wheat has been an ounce of sil- 
 ver. 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson, suppose I admit everything the Senator 
 has said. We know, of course, that India is not a civilized coun- 
 try to the full extent in which we understand the term civiliza- 
 tion. Apply that to the American farmer. He is an intelligent 
 man; he receives telegraphic reports; he takes the newspapers; 
 he knows every day at the little railroad station near which he 
 lives and where he sells his products the price of wheat in Lon- 
 don. I want to know if the American farmer would be willing 
 to sell his wheat in the London market for a dollar a bushel in 
 gold, to be paid in silver, and silver is worth but 57 cents on the 
 dollar? 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. The Senator talks as though a farmer, 
 cultivating a little piece of land upon which rests a tieavy mort- 
 gage, oooupieshimself by running to the telegraph office In order 
 to ascertain the, amount of wheat that India is going to sell, and 
 then makes calculations as to the product of Europe. Of course 
 no such thing occurs. He sees simply what the price of wheat 
 is in Liverpool, and that fixes it. That becomes the price. He 
 sells at that price, and can not get more. 
 
 Mr. TELLER. "WiU the Senator allow me to make a sugges- 
 tion as to the cotton trade? 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Certainly. 
 
 Mr. TELLER. The Senator from New Jersey thinks that 
 India does not export cotton, and that therefore she can have no 
 influence on the cotton trade. I have before me an article by 
 Mr. Grenfell, published in the Fortnightly Review for Septem- 
 ber, 1893, headed "Mr. Gladstone and the currency." and I want 
 
 785 
 
387 
 
 to" show from that article the export of cotton from India and from 
 England. The table that I now read is headed " From India to 
 China, Hongkong, and Japan." It does not include some of the, 
 other countries spoken of by the Senator from Nevada. It runs 
 from April 1 to March 31, that being the India^i fiscal year, and 
 the exports from India to China, Hongkong, and Japan are given, 
 beginning with the year 1876-'77. 
 
 Mr. GEORGE. Does that refer to raw cotton? 
 
 Mr. TELLER. No, it is cotton yarn. The first table given 
 is as follows: 
 
 From India to Ghina. Bongkong, and Japan, from April 1 to March 31. 
 
 Pounds. 
 
 I876-'77 6,596,189 
 
 1877-'78 13,783.563 
 
 1878-'79 19,348,261 
 
 1879-'80 84,381,387 
 
 Pounds. 
 
 1880-'81 25,103,496 
 
 1881-'82 28,638,540 
 
 Total 117,851,376 
 
 Taking the next six years, beginning with 1882-'83, the follow- 
 ing is the statement: 
 
 Founds. 
 
 1882-'83 42,972,785 
 
 1883-'84 47,288,099 
 
 1884- '85 63.413,067 
 
 1885- '86 75,635,540 
 
 Founds. 
 
 1886-'87 88,641,940 
 
 1887-'88 109,962,834 
 
 Total 427,914,265 
 
 The exports from 1888 to 1892 were as follows: 
 From January 1 to December 31. 
 
 Pounds. 
 
 1888 114,707,200 
 
 1889 126,766,800 
 
 1890 145,112,800 
 
 1891 165,339,472 
 
 Pounds. 
 1892 178,249,034 
 
 Total 730,175,306 
 
 Now, take the exports from England to the same places, China, 
 Hongkong, and Japan, beginning at the same time — that is, in 
 1876 — and the following is the statement: 
 From England to China, Hongkong, am,d Japan, from January 1 to December 31. 
 
 Pounds. 
 
 1876 29,838,495 
 
 1877 33,067,900 
 
 1878 36,467,800 
 
 1879 39,025,700 
 
 Pounds. 
 
 1880 46,425,800 
 
 1881 47,479,200 
 
 Total 232,304,895 
 
 It will be noticed that the exports from India rose from 117,- 
 851,376 pounds to the places named in the next six years to 
 427,914,265 pounds, and in 1882 the English export fell to 34,391,- 
 500 pounds. 
 
 Mr. McPHERSOIS . To the same countries? 
 
 Mr. TELLER. To the same countries. The following is the 
 
 785 
 
388 
 
 statement of the exports of cotton yarn from England to the 
 same places from 1882 to 1887: 
 
 Pounds. 
 
 1882 34,391,500 
 
 1883 : 33,499,800 
 
 1884 38,856,100 
 
 1885 33,061, 100 
 
 Poirnds. 
 
 1886 26,930,400 
 
 1887 35,354,300 
 
 Total 203,093,200 
 
 A decrease of more than 28,000,000 pounds in the six years. 
 The following are the figures of the English export for the 
 next five years, from 1888 to 1892: 
 
 From January 1 to December 31. 
 
 Pounds. 
 
 1888 44,642,600 
 
 1889 35,720,200 
 
 1890 38,057,400 
 
 1891 27,971,300 
 
 Pounds. 
 1892 31,886,000 
 
 Total..„ 178,277,500 
 
 Thus we have the total exports of cotton yarn from England 
 for the five years from 1888 to 1892 amounting to 178,227,500 
 pounds, as against 730,175,306 pounds, which had heen exported 
 from India to China, Hongkong, and Japan. 
 
 I have a statement here showing that the Indian export trade 
 has practically destroyed the yarn trade of Great Britain. I 
 think that will explain to the Senator how it has affected cotton, 
 because Great Britain was the market for our cotton and of the 
 cotton raised in India. I want to state a further fact to the Sen- 
 ator, if the Senator from Nevada will indulge me a moment, that 
 during the last year cotton has been imported — to what extent 
 I do not know, but it has been imported — from India to the 
 United States. 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson. I should like to ask the Senator ho vv that 
 statementchanges my contention in the least? India has engaged 
 in the manufacture of her own products, and she finds a ready 
 market in China and Japan. As a matter of course, if it were 
 not that India produced cotton, the result would be that Ameri- 
 can cotton would probably go to China and Japan through the 
 English market and through the English manufacturers, but if 
 India finds a market in China and Japan, it is to the infinite 
 credit of India that she is able to manufacture her own goods. 
 There is nothing in the world that should prevent that; and it 
 can not hurt the American crop of cotton. So the Southern 
 States have largely increased their manufacture of cotton, and 
 
 785 
 
389 
 
 so has England increased her manufacture of cotton; but she 
 has found markets elsewhere than China and Japan. That market 
 has been gained by India, which has become a factor In manu- 
 factures, and will always be a factor in the growth of wheat, but 
 India can not compete with the American export of the raw 
 material which goes to London, whether it be wheat or cotton 
 which we export, and do not manufacture. For what we manu- 
 facture we find a market in other nations and at home. 
 
 It is to the creditof India indeed that she has found a market. 
 You can not prevent her doing that, nor can you prevent the 
 natural causes which aid in the raising of wheat in India: but 
 that silver has anything to do with it, I deny, unless as silver 
 has fallen it has stimulated for a time, perhaps, growth and pro- 
 duction. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Why? 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson. For this reason. As a matter of course, 
 the Indian ryot, selling wheat to-day in London and receivinff a 
 certain amount, say 40 shillings per quarter, and taking his pay 
 in gold, will turn around and convert that gold into silver; and 
 instead of getting 20 rupees he gets 35 rupees for it. That stim- 
 ulates production to a certain extent, but to say that the pro- 
 ducer of wheat does not get the benefit is simply to say that there 
 is nothing whatever in commerce in which competition enters. 
 
 Mr. TELLER. May I be indulged a moment by the Senator 
 from Nevada? 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Certainly. 
 
 Mr. TELLER. The Senator from New Jersey says we shall 
 always have India in competition in wheat-raising and in manu- 
 facturing. 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson, certainly. 
 
 Mr. TELLER. We did not have India as a factor in either 
 until the low price of silver stimulated the export, first of wheat 
 and then the creation of manufactures in India. That is a his- 
 torical fact which the Senator will not deny. 
 
 No wheat came from India to Europe until after the fall in sil- 
 ver, and practically no goods were manufactured in India and 
 sent to China until after the fall in silver. Now, the Senator 
 says " What of it? It is to India's credit," That is not the ques- 
 
 785 
 
390 
 
 tion. The question is, Why did England buy less of American 
 cotton last year than ever before? Because England has lost her 
 own market. When the Senator states she has made up her 
 marEet in some other portion of the world, I say she has abso- 
 lutely lost her market and has not made it up anywhere, and the 
 statistics will not support the Senator. 
 
 India has become the competitor of Great Britain in the cot- 
 ton business as well as 'the competitor of the United States in 
 the wheat-raising business. It has become the competitor of 
 England because it raises its own cotton and manufactures it 
 and sends it to China, and thus takes away the English market. 
 It can be seen that the English market has fallen o3, while the 
 Indian product has increased from 6,000,000 pounds in 1876 to 
 178,000,000 pounds in 1892. It is not a question whether this is 
 to the credit of India. It is undoubtedly true, as the Senator 
 states, that India is to be hereafter a factor in wheat-raising and 
 a factor in manufacturing. That is the unfortunate part of it. 
 It will be the perpetual destruction of our market for wheat and 
 cotton. What we complain of is the stimulation brought about 
 in India by the cheap price of silver, or, to state it more accu- 
 rately, the enhanced value of gold. 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson. The senator should state that the fault 
 is not the fault of India or of the United States, but the gener- 
 osity of nature; that nature has given to India wheat-fields and 
 cotton-fields, which are suitable for the growth of wheat and 
 cotton, and suitable for nothing else. I want to know how he is 
 to stop India from producing wheat and cotton, when they have 
 rapid and cheap transportation between the ports of India and 
 those of England. There is nothing else they can do in the 
 world except to grow wheat and cotton, and, as a matter of 
 course, they will grow it. India has a population of 300,000,000 
 souls, or more, whion must be supported in some way out of the 
 lands of India. After 1870, when cheap transportation was 
 opened with India by way of the Suez Canal, India began to ex- 
 port her wheat and her cotton to London. 
 
 Mr. TELLER. She did not do it until some time after that. 
 
 Mr. MoPHERSON. I did not say how long after, but cer- 
 tainly in 1872 India exported very largely of wheat and cotton. 
 
 785 
 
391 
 
 Mr. TELLER. She did not. 
 
 Mr. Mcpherson. This export has been occasioned by the 
 improvements which have been made by the British Govern- 
 ment in India in developing her great railroad system. Before 
 these railroads were built, the only means of transportation in 
 India was by ox-carts across that immense territory. The very 
 moment transportation was opened, labor being cheap, they 
 began to grow wheat and cotton, and they became a factor and 
 they will always remain a factor; and as new lands are opened 
 in Asia and Africa the people of those countries will also become 
 factors; but what silver has to do with the question I can not 
 imagine. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada: Mr. President, the Senator from New 
 Jersey states that nature has done this thing, and that we have 
 to complain of nature. It had its genesis in the demonetization 
 of silver in 1873, and dates from that time. Nature did not do 
 that. That was done by legislation. Itenabledthe Eastlndian 
 <Fyot, in competition with the gold-using countries of the world, 
 to almost absolutely drive out of competition all other countries 
 and to make them produce cotton and wheat at a loss by reason 
 of the enhanced value of gold, or, as the Senator from New Jersey 
 might be pleased lo term it, the low price of silver. 
 
 The combined losses on wheat and cotton which I tave shown 
 amount to $325,000,000 a year, or more than a million dollars for 
 every working day, since the issue of Mr. Cleveland's first ful- 
 mination against silver. As a consequence of the repeal of the 
 silver-purchase law now in force, the losses to the farmers and 
 cotton planters of the United States will be very much greater. 
 Perhaps our farmers and planters should be only too happy in 
 the knowledge that any sacrifice on their part might contribute 
 to the constantly growing wealth of the nonproducers of Europe 
 and of India. 
 
 PRICES IN INDIA HAVE NOT TAIiIiEN. 
 
 Nothing is better established by men who know and who write 
 of their own knowledge regarding the affairs of India than that 
 the prices of commodities there have not fallen as have prices 
 in gold-standard countries. 
 
 785 
 
392 
 
 Mr. Daniell, in his work on The Industrial Competition of 
 
 Asia, says: 
 
 Wbat has happened ia tbat silver prices, or, to speak more exactly, the 
 Talne of silver ingolct has fallen t» Europe while its value in the exportable 
 products of India has not fallen correspondingly or at all in that country. 
 (Page 32.) 
 
 Kvery decline, therefore, in the gold price of silver bullion, so 
 far as our farmers and cotton planters are concerned, is a decline 
 in the price of wheat and cotton at Lirerpool; though not a de- 
 cline in the price of anything that the East Indian people need, 
 or consume, or buy. So far as the people of India are concerned, 
 gold IS not their money, and, as I have already stated, changes 
 in its value have no more effect upon them than if they inhab- 
 ited another planet. Every decline in the gold price of silver 
 bullion is a premium — a bounty — given to the producer of wheat 
 and cotton in India over the American farmer and cotton planter 
 in the prices of those commodities in European markets. 
 
 This encourages exportation from India to those markets 
 Should the Hindoo, in return, want to buy gold with which to# 
 pay for English goods, he would have to pay an enormous pre- 
 mium upon it. This fact acts as a discouragement to importa- 
 tions into India. But as the 285,000,000 East Indians live almost 
 wholly on what their own country produces, they do not need 
 to buy gold for foreign payments. The only people in India 
 who have anything whatever to do with goods made in gold- 
 standard countries are a few English ofiBcials, a few native 
 princes, and the few merchants with whom those classes deal. 
 The vast masses of the people of India buy the commodities of 
 their own country with the silver rupee alone. 
 
 THE rAIili IN THB GOLD PRICE OF SILVER BULLION A BOUNTr TO EAST 
 INDIAN PRODTJOBRS. 
 
 Every decline in the gold price of silver bullion is a direct 
 blow at the prosperity of the farmers and cotton planters of the 
 United States, a blow against which they are powerless to pro- 
 tect themselves, except by the opening of the mints of the United 
 States to the free coinage of silver. This will be an act which 
 can not possibly injure any human being, not even the ryot of 
 India, inasmuch as wages in that country of 285,000,000 people 
 remain the same throughout the years. It would, on the other 
 
393 
 
 hand, be an act which would put heart, and hope, and energy into 
 
 every farmer and every planter in the United States. 
 
 That the fall of silver bullion does act as a bounty or premium' 
 
 on Indian exports, the highest authorities show. Mr. Bagehot, 
 
 for many years the editor of the London Economist, in his work 
 
 on the Depreciation of Silver (page 54), says: 
 
 Tlie necessary effect of a depreciation of silver as against gold Is to give a 
 bounty on exports f torn India and the other silver-using countries to Eng- 
 land. An English merchant can now buy many more rupees than he for- 
 merly could with the same number of sovereigns, and therefore he can Im- 
 port from India, though prices at Calcutta are not at a level at which It 
 would have paid him to operate if he had not had that novel facility in get- 
 ting rupees. 
 
 So Mr. Bagehot differs from the Senator from New Jersey, 
 and I think that that gentleman has studied the question almost 
 as much as the Senator. 
 
 The same fact is proved by Mr. David McLean, manager of 
 the Hongkong and Shanghai banking corporation of London, in 
 the course of his testimony before the British royal commis- 
 sion on gold and silver, May 16, 1887. In that testimony I find 
 the following questions and answers: 
 
 Q. I think you said that the wheat In India was often sold here in England 
 before it was actually purchased there ? ^ 
 
 A. Yes; very often. 
 
 Q. Then ho w is the operation carried out ? Is it bought by corn merchants 
 here in England, and do they send out an otf er for a certain quantity of wheat 
 of a certain quality ? ' 
 
 A. Yes; and if the offer is sufficient, the wheat is shipped. 
 
 Q. Some witnesses have told us that the rate of exchange between India 
 and England acts like an export bounty or "bonus upon the wheat sent from 
 India to England. Is that your opinion? 
 
 A. I think the fall in exchange has encouraged the export of wheat from 
 India very largely. 
 
 Q. And every additional fall acts as a bonus? 
 
 A. Yes. 
 
 Q. And you think that the fall in exchange has stimulated the export of 
 wheat from India? 
 
 A. Yes; there Is no doubt aboiut itr 
 
 Q. Do you think that that will be an abiding stimulus. 
 
 A. Ittlnkso; I think it will go on increasing. 
 
 This witness's foresight has been amply verified by the subse- 
 quent facts. Inasmuch as an ounce of silver makes two and a half 
 rupees (no matter what the price of bullion may be), if silver 
 should fall to 50 cents an ounce in consequence of the repeal of 
 the Sherman law, an ounce of the metal would still make two 
 
 785 
 
394 
 
 and a half rupees, whicli would still pay for a bushel of Indian 
 wheat. So long, therefore, as India exports wheat, and it has 
 hardly more than commenced, the price of that wheat will fix 
 the price of American wheat until such time as silver is remon- 
 etized in the United States. When that shall be it is for our 
 producing classes, not for bankers, brokers, bondholders, and 
 other nonproducers, to decide. 
 
 With reference to cotton, an ounce of silver will place ten 
 pounds of that commodity in Liverpool. However low, there- 
 fore, the price of silver bullion may fall, the American planter 
 must, for the price of an ounce of that metal, deliver ten pounds 
 of raw cotton in Liverpool. Should silver fall to 50 cents an 
 ounce, it he would sell his cotton, he must deliver ten pounds 
 of cotton in Liverpool, and pay transportation charges on it, all 
 for 5 cents a pound. 
 
 By bringing the price of silver bullion to a parity with gold 
 on the relation established in this country since 1792, our farm- 
 ers and cotton-planters will be relieved of the competition of the 
 East Indian in the markets of Europe. 
 
 With reference to the effect of the competition of India on 
 the price of American and English wheat, the British Royal 
 Commission on gold and silver in 1887 examined a number of 
 witnesses, among them Mr. J. Shield Nicholson, professor of 
 political economy at the University of Edinburg, and one of 
 the most distinffuished economists of Great Britain. The fol- 
 lowing question, which is precisely to the point, was put to 
 Prof. Nicholson by a member of the commission: 
 
 Indian wheat Isthe very wheat that Is complained of by Secretary Man- 
 ning, Secretary of the United States Treasury, as having lowered the price 
 of European and American wheat, and he attributes it all to the divergence 
 of gold from silver. You do not think tying gold and silver again would 
 raise the price of English and American wheat by 85 per cent? 
 
 In his reply Prof. Nicholson discusses the factors entering into 
 
 the determination of prices under given conditions, and on the 
 
 point immediately germane to the point I am discussing, said: 
 
 Now, it seems to me probable if the price of silver rose to its old level 
 tvlieat could not beprofltablg exported from India until prices rose in a corre- 
 sponding degree. For India, being a silver country, the price of wheat there 
 is independent of the relative value of gold and silver. An exporter to England 
 at present will give the Indian price in silver, and he can buy his silver for 
 less gold, and thus competition will lower the price. If the price of silver 
 785 
 
395 
 
 rose the exporter from India must get more gold. Thus a rite of silver 
 would, on this view, raise the price of wheat to a corresponding degree. 
 
 There is not a shadow of doubt that Prof. Nicholson is right.' 
 
 IB THE EVENT OT RBMONETIZATION, SHOUIiD WE BE "FLOODED" WITH 
 INDIAN SHiVEBV 
 
 I must here repeat that there is no ground whatever for sup- 
 posing that in case of remonetization of silver in this country 
 all the silver of the world would be sent here. 
 
 As quickly as the telegraph could convey the news that the 
 United States had fully remonetized silver, that metal would 
 command $1.29 an ounce in every market in the world. As I 
 have said, there is no silver bullion in the markets of the world 
 to exceed 25,000,000 ounces, if so much. Such silver as may ex- 
 ist in any market would not need to come to the United States, 
 because when men knew they could get $1.29 for it by sending it 
 here they would not part with it for less. 
 
 We have a demonstration of this in the fact that when in 1890 
 there was some expectation that a free-coinage bill might be- 
 come a law in this country, and silver rose in consequence to 
 $1.20 an ounce, it rose to that price not in the American market 
 alone, but in every market in the world that had any silver bul- 
 lion for sale. 
 
 When it is said that the hoards of silver in India would come 
 here to be exchanged for gold, there is not the slightest founda- 
 tion in reason for such a supposition. Gold is not the money of 
 the 280,000,000 people of India, and it is impossible to conceive 
 that it ever can be. The remonetization of silver simply means 
 that with silver freely admitted to the mints, gold would fall in 
 relation to silver. 
 
 Why should the people of India want it on that account? 
 When silver fell as compared with gold, did the people of the 
 gold-standard countries buy silver because they could get it 
 "cheap?" Did anyone ever hear it suggested that when silver 
 declined as compared with gold the gold-using countries would 
 probably "dump" their gold, which was their money, into India 
 or any other silver-using country in order to take away silver, 
 simply because silver was getting " cheap? " As gold is not the 
 money of India, any more than silver is the money of the West- 
 
 785 
 
396 
 
 em world, whyshould we suppose that when gold falls relatively 
 to silver the people of India would "dump "their silver into 
 this country? 
 
 The silver of India, which is so much feared here, is referred 
 to by the latest official report — that of Lord Herschel's Indian 
 currency commission — as "coined rupees, of which, it is said the 
 hoards chiefly consists.'' (Report of the Commission, paragraph 
 106.) 
 
 Are the people of India going to ship out their coined money 
 to be exchanged for something that, so far as they are concerned, 
 is not money, but merely a commodity? The fact that there is 
 in India a considerable quantity of uncoined silver has but little 
 bearing on the question we are now discussing. As I have said, 
 the teeming millions of that country have always dedicated to 
 purposes of worship considerable quantities of the silver drawn 
 from Europe and America. Notonly do they use itin the architec- 
 tural decorations of their numerous and magnificent temples, but 
 as objects of religious regard, both in those temples and in their 
 homes and for religious charms, which they wear upon their 
 persons, and to which they attach supernatural virtues. 
 
 That a people like the unchanging and unchangeable Hindoos 
 should, because of a change in the commercial relation between 
 gold and silver, melt up their idols and religious charms is, to 
 my mind, simply inconceivable. , 
 
 Even as to that portion of the silver of India which consists of 
 simple personal ornaments and to which no religious value may 
 be attached, there is not the slightest justification for supposing 
 that its owners would part with it. The best evidence of this is 
 found in a fact recorded in the report of the Herschel commis- 
 sion, paragraph 106. Referring to that class, the report states: 
 
 In times of scarcity and famine a considerable quantity of silver orna- 
 ments has found its way to the mint. ' 
 
 But what is the quantity that the Commission terms "con- 
 siderable "? It states that in the three years 1877-1879, inclu- 
 sive, as much 4,500,000 tens of rupees were coined from these 
 ornaments. Now, the famine of 1877 was one of the most de- 
 structive famines ever known in India — the number of recorded 
 deaths from starvation being over 500,000 — leaving the imagi- 
 
 785 
 
397 
 
 nation to conceive the vastly greater number of unrecorded 
 deaths occvirring' among 280,000,000 of a squalid population 
 which during the most prosperous seasons are barely able to 
 keep body and soul together. In round numbers 4,500,000 tens 
 of rupees may be taken to be $22,000,000. This is the total sum 
 in silver ornaments which, in those three extraordinary years, 
 under the pressure of wholesale starvation the Hindoos could be 
 induced to part with. This is at the rate of about $7,000,000 a 
 year — which for the purposes of this discussion is hardly to be 
 regarded as threatening a "flood." Nothing but starvation 
 would have drawn from them even so much as that. It is pre- 
 posterous to suppose that a change of relation between gold and 
 silver would do what widespread starvation has been unable to 
 do— especiiilly when, to the Hindoos, the process appears in the 
 light not a rise in silver measured by gold, but a fall in gold 
 measured by silver. 
 
 For as I have said, silver and not gold is the measure of value 
 in silver-using countries. Persons living in a gold-using coun- 
 try, accustomed to estimating values in gold and to seeing prices 
 stated in gold, are prone to imagine that all the world sees 
 things as they see them. The fact is that the people of each 
 country estimate and measure values — that is, they state prices^ 
 in whatever is money in their own country. In silver-using 
 countries all estimates are made in silver; in a gold-using coun- 
 try in gold; in a paper-using country in paper. What, to a 
 people in a gold-using country, would seem to be a decline in 
 the value of silver, would to people in a silver-using country ap- 
 pear to be an advance in the value of gold. 
 ' In order that it may be ascertained which of the metals has 
 changed, or whether both may not in fact have changed, it is 
 necessary to compare each with all the things which it is the 
 function of money to measure. If it is found that all things ap- 
 pear to have changed in relation to the nioney of one country, 
 while all things remain unchanged in relation to the money of 
 the other, it can not be truthfully affirmed that the change has 
 been in the money of the country, in relation to which all com- 
 modities have maintained a practically unchanging relation. So, 
 when all commodities appear to have fallen in their relation to 
 
 785 
 
398 
 
 a particular metal, while at the same time maintaining practi- 
 cally unchanged their relations toward one another, it is asking 
 too much to require us to believe that it is all these things which 
 have changed and not the particular metal. From the point of 
 view of common sense alone, it must be conceded to be more 
 probable that one thing has changed than that every one of thou- 
 sands of things (which maintain throughout a practically un- 
 changing relation to one another) have all changed in relation to 
 one thing. 
 
 GOLD BETAINBD AT THB BXPENSE OF OUB PBODtTCIlBS. 
 
 The New York newspapers were delighted when, during the 
 past summer, the price of wheat fell to a point at which that 
 cereal could be exported instead of gold, in payment for im- 
 ports. The New York Sun of June 19, 1893, called attention to 
 the fact that when the price of wheat became low enough the 
 gold that had left the United States came back from England, 
 because our importers could pay for their imports with American 
 wheat rather than with gold. 
 
 The farmers of the United States ought to be very glad to 
 know that by this depression of the price of the product of their 
 labor the brokers of New York, who deal in Reading stocks and 
 in Chicago Gas and National Cordage, are enabled, without loss 
 to themselves, to pay their bills in foreign countries. Who are 
 the farmers of this country, that they should interfere with the 
 profits of the New York brokers, or complain of the state of 
 things by which wheat is, by artificial means, reduced in price? 
 If the ruin of the farmers be necessary to enable the brokers 
 and bankers of New York to become rich, the farmers should be 
 willing to be sacrificed. 
 
 I hope that Senators in this Chamber who represent agricul- 
 tural communities, who represent growers of wheat and of cotton, 
 can explain to their constituents the philosophy of the votes 
 they cast here in favor of the repeal of the Sherman law. 
 
 I hope the distinguished Senator from Ohio [Mr. Sherman] 
 will be able to satisfy the farmers of the great State which he 
 represents here that the $17,000,900 a year which they are out 
 of pocket on the sale of their wheat by the fall in the gold price 
 of silver bullion is more than made up to them in the gratifica- 
 
399 
 
 tlon they must feel at the Increased wealth accruing to the 
 bankers, bondholders , pawnbrokers, and other creditors of Eu- 
 rope and America. 
 
 I hope, also, that such of the distinguished Senators from cot- 
 ton-growing States as favor the demonetization of silver, to be 
 effected by the repeal of the purchase clause of the Sherman 
 law, will be able to prove to the satisfaction of the cotton-pro- 
 ducers of the great Commonwealths which they represent in 
 this Chamber that those producers are not being destroyed by 
 the competition of . India, and that that competition is not enor- 
 mously stimulated by the bounty which the fall in the gold price 
 of silver bullion gives to the East India grower of cotton. 
 
 Agriculture, Mr. President, is the most fundamental and vi- 
 tally necessary industry of mankind. "Without food men can 
 not live. But in order that some men in other countries may 
 live better than they otherwise would, it is neither necessary 
 nor desirable for our people to permit our agriculturists to be 
 destroyed, or to be Kept at the lowest level of physical existence. 
 A country can have no better class of men than those who culti- 
 vate the soil; and in the selection of national policies we can 
 make no mistake by adopting such as may save from serious in- 
 jury a class to whom the ordinary methods of tariff protection 
 can be of but slight avail. 
 
 PBOTBCTION rOK AQRICtrLTtJBIi. 
 
 Mr. President, I am and have been a protectionist, and for 
 very broad reasons, which I have heretofore had the honor to 
 present in full to the Senate. I believe no country can be so 
 happy as when it is doing all its own work; that no country can 
 be richer than one in which all its people are employed with 
 hand and brain in pursuits that accord with their aptitudes . But, 
 Mr. President, I want the protective theory to havp ii^U scope. 
 I want it carried out to the end of the chapter^ 1 am a consist- 
 ent protectionist. I believe in protecting all clafises,(apt' merely, 
 some classes; all industries, not merely,some industries. 
 
 Under the present protective policy of i '^his coun'iry it is not 
 possible for the farmers and cotton producers tp vd diir/eptly bene- ' 
 fited by the tariff. The benefit they ;«ceive ean on^y|, be that 
 indirect benefit which comes of developing j.n thpir immediate 
 
 785 .'''(; 
 
400 
 
 neighborhoods the various manufacturing' industries which will 
 create a demand for the products of the farm. Whatever differ- 
 ences of opinion may exist as to whether a tariff is or is not a tax 
 on some of our people for the benefit of others, no one can deny 
 that by legislation upon our part which will bring the price of 
 silver bullion to $1.29 an ounce we have an absolutely certain 
 method, without imposing any tax whatever on any class of our 
 people, of giving protection to our farming population, both 
 North and South, protection against a competition infinitely more 
 grinding and destructive than that of the people of Europe, 
 against whom especially our tariff wall has been erected. 
 
 When we take into account the premium which the Asiatics 
 receive upon their exports, by i-eason of the fall in the gold price 
 of silver bullion, theirs is a competition which it is impossible 
 for us to remove except by raising the price of silver bullion, 
 which can be done without the slightest injury to anyone and 
 with immeasurable benefit to all. We can not erect a tariff wall 
 which will compel the East India wheat-grower to pay a duty on 
 his wheat as it enters Liverpool; we have no control over the 
 fiscal policies of other countries. But in the way I suggest we 
 can erect a tariff wall that will protect our agriculturists North 
 and South, to the same degree that our manufacturing interests 
 are already protected. And we must remember, Mr. President, 
 that if our farmers are to get the benefit of protection to the 
 game degree that our manufacturers do, it can only be by the 
 plan I recommend — by opening the mints of tne United States to 
 the unrestricted coinage of silver. 
 
 For my part, I can not conceive how, consistently with their 
 theory, the protectionists of tne country can deny to the farmer 
 the full benefit of that policy. While I do not believe that pro- 
 tection js a-selftsh policy except in the sense that all national 
 policies are selfish, and national selfishness is patriotism, I fear 
 -that the,agrioultuijists of the country will come to believe— do 
 they not already largely believe? — that the protective policy is 
 ' designed to'benefit the manufacturers only; that it is for the ad- 
 vantage^of certain otesses, and not for the benefit of the whole 
 coulitry. , ( , ' 
 
401 
 
 THE PRESIDENT'S LETTER 10 GOVERNOR NORTHEN. 
 
 President Cleveland, in a letter addressed to Governor 
 Northen, of Georgia, which I find published in the Washington 
 Post of September 28 last, says: 
 
 EXBCTJTITE Mansion, WcisMngton, D. C, September 25. 
 
 Mt Dear Sir: I hardly know how to reply to your letter of the 15th In- 
 stant. It seems to me that I am quite plainly on record concerning the 
 financial question. My letter accepting the nomination to the Presidency 
 when read In connection with the message lately sent to the Congress In ex- 
 traordinary session appears to me to be very explicit. I want currency that 
 Is stable and sale In the hands ol our people. I will not Itnowlngly be Im- 
 plicated In a condition that will justly make me In the least degree answer- 
 able to any laborer or farmer In the United States for a shrinkage in the 
 purchasing power ol the dollar he has received lor a lull dollar's worth of 
 work or lor a good dollar's worth ol the product ol his toil. 
 
 1 not only want our currency to be of such a character that all kinds ol 
 dollars will be ol equal purchasing power at home, but I want It to be ol 
 such a character as will demonstrate abroad o»ir wisdom and good faith, 
 thus placing us upon a firm foundation and credit among the nations of the 
 earth. 
 
 I want our financial condition and the laws relating to our currency so 
 safe and reassuring that those who have money will spend and invest it in 
 business and new enterprises. Instead ol hoarding it. 
 
 You can not cure fright by calling It foolish and unreasonable, nor you 
 can not prevent the frightened man from hoarding his money. 
 
 I want good, sound, and stable money, and a condition of confidence that 
 will keep it in use. 
 
 ■Within the limits ol what I have written I am a friend of silver, but I be- 
 lieve its proper place in our currency can only be fixed by a readjustment 
 of our currency legislation and the inauguration of a consistent and com- 
 prehensive financial scheme. I think such a thing can only be entered upon 
 profitably after the repeal ol the law which is charged with all our financial 
 woes. In the present state ol the public mind this law can not be built 
 upon nor patched in such a way as to relieve the situation. 
 
 I am therefore opposed to the free and unlimited coinage of silver by this 
 country alone and independently ; and I am in lavor of. the immediate and un- 
 conditional repeal ol the purchasing clause of the so-called Sherman law. 
 
 I confess I am astonished by the opposition in the Senate to such prompt 
 action as would relieve the present unlortunate situation. 
 
 My dally prayer is that the delay occasioned by such opposition may not 
 be the cause of plunging the country into deeper depression than It has yet 
 known, and that the Democratic party may not be justly held responsible 
 for such a catastrophe. 
 Yours, very truly, 
 
 GROVEE CLEVELAND. 
 
 Hon. W. J. NORTHBN. 
 
 The President says he wants a " stable "currency. The Presi- 
 dent is said to be a man of convictions, and I have no doubt that 
 he believes fully that gold is a stable currency. But what do 
 the economists say in this respect? 
 
402 
 
 Adam Smith, in his work on the Wealth of Nations, says: 
 
 Gold and silver, like every other commodity, vary In their value. The dis- 
 covery ol the ahundant mines of America reduced in the fifteenth century the 
 value of gold and sliver In Europe to ahout a third of what It had been before. 
 This revolution In their value, though perhaps the greatest, Is by no means 
 the only one of which history gives some account. 
 
 Evidently Adam Smith did not believe that gold was a stable 
 currency. 
 
 Prof. Jevons, in his work upon Money and the Mechanism of 
 
 Exchange, chapter 6, says: 
 
 In respect to steadiness of value the metals are probably less satisfactory. 
 1 egarded as a standard of value, than many other commodities, such as corn. 
 
 By " corn " Prof. Jevons meant wheat and all other cereals. 
 
 The same author, in chapter 24 of the same work, says: 
 
 We are accustomed to looking upon the value of gold as a fixed datum line 
 in commerce, but in reality it is a very variable thing. 
 
 He appears to differ with the President as to the ' ' stability " 
 of gold as a standard of value. 
 Ricardo, in his paper on the High Price of Bullion, says: 
 II we diminish the quantity of ciirrency, we give an additional value to it 
 By " currency " Ricardo meant money of every character, in- 
 cluding gold. 
 Mr. Macleod , in his able work on the Elements of Banking, says: 
 
 The actual alteration In the quantities of the precious metals has materi- 
 ally altered their value at dlflerent periods of history. (Page 163. ) 
 
 We have a distinguished American economist who also differs 
 with the President as to gold being a stable currency. Prof. 
 Francis A. Walker, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technol- 
 ogy, in his able work on Money, says: 
 
 Gold and sliver do over long periods undergo great changes of value and 
 become in a high degree deceptive as a measure of the obligation of the 
 debtor; of the claim of the creditor. Thus Prof. Jevons estimates that the 
 value of gold fell between 1789 and 1809, 46 per cent, and from 1809 to 1849 it 
 rose 145 per cent, while in twenty years after 1849 it fell again at least 20 per 
 cent. 
 
 As this enormous increase in the value of gold and silver 
 
 arose from the falling off in the yield of the metals from the 
 
 mines of South America, one would suppose that the lesson of 
 
 quantity would have impressed itself on those whose duty it is 
 
 to deal with monetary policies. The President's idea of stability 
 
 must be somewhat nebulous when he supposes that gold is a 
 
 785 
 
403 
 
 stable material, history demonstrating that it suffered an al- 
 teration of 145 per cent in one generation, so that one pound 
 sterling became practically two and a half pounds sterling. 
 
 The President also says that he wishes our currency laws to 
 be such that those who have money will spend and invest it in 
 business and in new enterprises instead of hoarding it. 
 
 I wonder whether the President ever asked himself the ques- 
 tion why people hoarded money and did not invest it in business 
 enterprises. 
 
 Does he suppose that while dollars are increasing in value — 
 acquiring daily larger and larger control over property and 
 commodities, more valuable to-morrow than to-day, and more 
 valuable next week than this — people are going to be in a 
 hurry to invest in property that is going down in price? Does 
 he suppose that people will want to buy property that will be 
 worth less next week than it is to-day? Would not the instinct 
 of thrift induce them to withdraw their money from productive' 
 enterprises and hoard it? 
 
 Does the President suppose people will invest money for a given 
 amount of property when they know that that amount, if held in 
 hand, will buy much more property next month than this, and 
 next year than this year? The President's idea is that money 
 is "stable " when it is increasing in value, but unstable when it 
 is decreasing; so that according to this theory when property is 
 rising in price it signifies that money is unstable and unsound, 
 but when property is falling, so that those who own money may 
 be able to get an increasing amount of property for a given num- 
 ber of dollars, then money is " stable;" it is then " good " money, 
 "sound " money, " honest " money! 
 
 In this letter to Governor Northen, the President also says: 
 
 My letter accepting the nomination to the Presidency, when read In con- 
 nection with the message lately sent to the Congress In extraordinary ses- 
 sion, appears to me to be very explicit. 
 
 That is to say, explicit with reference to the President's views 
 concerning the financial question, upon which he says in the 
 same letter: 
 It seems to me that I am quite plainly on record. 
 
 It is a great pity, Mr. President, that the President was not a 
 
 785 
 
404 
 
 little more explicit before the election. Had hebeen so h.e might 
 have been relieved of the necessity of being so explicit after- 
 ward. After the election he furnishes the country with a oryp- 
 togram by which his letter of acceptance may be interpreted. 
 Had that letter needed no cryptogram the President would not 
 have supplied one. He would not have become President for 
 the second time had the people of the United States, or the voters 
 of his party, understood that there was a mental reservation with 
 reference to the financial question, which reservation would be 
 fully expounded in a message to be "sent to the Congress in 
 extraordinary session, " after the election , and which by its terms 
 would annul the platform of the party which nominated him. 
 In the same letter Mr. Cleveland says: 
 
 I will not knowingly te implicated in a coudltlon that will justly make me 
 In the least degree answerable to any laborer or farmer in the United States 
 for a shrinkage in the purchasing power of the dollar he has received for a 
 lull dollar s worth of work, or for a good dollar's worth of the product of his 
 toil. 
 
 Every man knows that when a " laborer or farmer" gets dol- 
 lars he usually retains them in his possession but a few days, 
 and on paying them out receives for them all that he gave. 
 
 Mr. Cleveland is very anxious that there should be no shrink- 
 age in the purchasing power of the dollar for the extremely few 
 men who have reduced dollars to possession, but he expresses no 
 anxiety with reference to the gross injustice of creatinsr an arti- 
 ficial shrinkage in the purchasing power of the bushel of wheat 
 and of the pound of cotton, and of all the other products of human 
 industry, with which alone dollars can be obtained. Very few 
 men have reduced dollars to possession compared with the enor- 
 mous number that have yet to produce the material with which 
 dollars can" be obtained, for the purpose of supplying wants and 
 paying debts. 
 
 The President knows that the whole stock of money in circu- 
 lation in the country is only sixteen hundred million dollars, 
 and he ought to know that there are at least thirty or forty 
 thousand million dollars of debt; so that for every dollar of 
 money which any man has reduced to possession there must be 
 twenty or thirty dollars that are owing by the producers of the 
 country, who must pay the ever-increasing value of the dollar 
 
 786 
 
405 
 
 by an ever-increasing quantity of the products of their toil. What 
 the President should conosrn himself about is not a shrinkage in 
 the purchasing power of the dollar to the few men who have re- 
 duced dollars to possession, but rather the shrinkage in the pur- 
 chasing power of the unit of all the products of industry; so that 
 the farms and homes that are mortgaged may not by summary pro- 
 ceedings become the property of the mortgagee to the ruin of 
 the mortgagor; and so that the workingmen of the country may 
 not be relegated to idleness by reason of the absence of profit to 
 their employer, owing to the persistent fall of prices, which 
 the increase in purchasing power of the dollar is constantly gain- 
 ing over the products of industry. For the entire question in- 
 volved in monetary discussion is the question of the course of gen- 
 eral prices. 
 
 It is a gbeat pity that the President did not call the extra ses- 
 sion of Congress before the election, so that the country might 
 have before it an unmistakable statement of his views with re- 
 ference to this all-important question. It does not seem to have 
 been quite candid on the part of the President to adopt the plan 
 of the serial story papers, by which each installment is supple- 
 mented with the statement, "To be continued in our next." 
 
 It is marvelous to observe what solicitude is displayed by the 
 President and the bankers witn reference to a shrinkage in the 
 purchasing power of the dollar — that is to say, a rise of prices 
 of commodities. This is what they term inflation. Inflation, 
 undoubtedly, is to be avoided, but so also is contraction. These 
 two opposite factors in the money problem end in disturbance 
 and distress. But the harm done by inflation, as the whole 
 history of commerce, shows, is not one-hundredth part so great 
 as that done by contraction. 
 
 PERIODS OV FALLING PRIDES ALWATS PERIODS OK DISASTER. 
 
 In every period of the history of the world, when prices have 
 been gradually rising, activity and prosperity have marked 
 every department of business, while, on the contrary, whenever 
 a fall of prices has been taking place — and that has been the con- 
 dition almost constantly, the periods of rising prices being few 
 and short— cankering and corroding misery have been its con- 
 comitants; social and political upheavals have been universal, 
 
 783 
 
406 
 
 and civil governments, without respect to the degree of freedom 
 or liberty of which the people were possessed^ were threatened 
 with overthrow. It will be remembered that, as I have already 
 stated in the course of my remarks, during 1848 and 1849, at the 
 end of a generation of falling prices, violent upheavals charac- 
 terized every city and countryol Europe. Starving men, women, 
 and children crowded the streets and cried for bread. 
 
 Almost every country of Europe had a revolution on its hands, 
 which could only be repressed by the strong hand of the mili- 
 tary. And this equally in despotic Austria and comparatively 
 free England and republican Praiice. It must never be forgotten 
 that the greatest civil commotion of all tim£ — that which struck 
 terror into the hearts of all the governmental forces of Europe — 
 the French revolution — occurred after a period of seven years 
 persistent /aM of prices. That fall, which brought to a culmina- 
 tion the miseries of the French people, was a fall of but 15 per 
 cent, yet it was suffloient to relegate to idleness and keep long 
 in misery enormous numbers of men whose discontent and suf- 
 fering finally overtoppled first the throne and later the republic. 
 
 In all ages of the world the great disasters have occurred dur- 
 ing periods of falling prices .' Yet we hear no solicitude — no anx- 
 iety — expressed by the President or the bankers because of the 
 persistent fall of the past twenty years in the prices of the prod- 
 ucts of industry in this country — although the story of all the 
 nations is punctuated with disasters growing out of this baleful 
 and prolific source. The only fear we hear expressed is that 
 prices will not fall enough — that the producers wUl not be suf- 
 ficiently "cinched" by the idle creditors, income-gatherers, and 
 bondholders. 
 
 The President and the bankers express so much anxiety with 
 reference to a shrinkage in the purchasing power of the dollar 
 th^it they ought to have been delighted with the recent panic. 
 There was no shrinkage in the power of the dollar throughout 
 that period, and there is no shrinkage in its power now. Who 
 ever saw a dollar in the United States buy more than during the 
 recent disturbance? According to the theory of the President, 
 instead of regretting the panic as a great evil we should rathei- 
 hail it as the dawn of the millenium. 
 
 785 
 
407 
 
 THE CHECKS AND BALANCES OT GOVERNMENT. 
 
 If this Republic, Mr. President, is ever to lose its liberties it 
 
 will be tbrough the gradual absorption and concentration of all 
 
 the functions of government in the hands of the Executive. 
 
 'J. 
 There is to-day throughout the country a feeling of uneasiness, 
 
 crystallizing into a conviction, that the lines ot demarcation 
 which the Constitution has wisely marked out between the va- 
 rious departments of the Government are being obliterated, and 
 that the functions ot government are being merged more and 
 more into the Executive. 
 
 It was the proud boaat of the makers of the Constitution that 
 for the first time in history the three departments ot govern- 
 ment, the legislative, the executive, and the judicial, were by 
 that instrument made wholly independent of each other. It 
 is within the knowledge of Senators that the Executive of 
 this Republic, whoever he may for the time be, possesses more 
 power of patronage than any monarch on earth. 
 
 The constitution grants the Executive the right, and imposes 
 it aa a duty, to make to Congress recommendations from time 
 to time as to the state of the Union, but the Constitution never 
 contemplated the exercise of any pressure by the Executive upon 
 members of either House ot Congress. The framers of that in- 
 strument — men of wisdom and patriotism — had had some expe- 
 rience and observation of a pressure exercised by a chief execu- 
 tive, who, though called a king, had neither power nor influ- 
 ence which was for a moment to be compared with that of the 
 Chief Executive of this Republic in the closing years of the 
 nineteenth century. 
 
 The population of Great Britain in 1780 was less than one- 
 quarter of our population of to-day. It was less than 16,000,000 
 of people, and the tenure of all persons holding government ofRces 
 was for life or for good behavior. The power of a king in such 
 circumstances — the patronage which he could exercise, the influ- 
 ence which that patronage implied— in other words, the pressure 
 which the king of a little country could bring to bear upon the 
 members of the legislative body, was not a tithe ot that which 
 the President of the United States could, were he so disposed, 
 bring to bear upon the members of the legislative department 
 
408 
 
 vt this Government— even were the members of that department 
 disposed to permit any interference with their constitutional 
 rights. 
 
 The British king may have been a tyrant; but there had been 
 greater tyrants. He was not Dionysius or Critias. But he was 
 tyrant enough to convince the people of these colonies that in the 
 making of a new constitution they should be on their guard 
 against any encroachment by executive power on the independ- 
 ence of the Legislature. Hence, in providing for the relations 
 which, in the Republic they were founding, should exist between 
 the executive and the legislative departments of the Govern- 
 ment, the makers of the Constitution never contemplated the 
 exercise of any pressure by the Executive upon the members of 
 either House in connection with questions of public policy. 
 
 The legislative branch of the Government is as independent 
 of the executive as is the judicial branch. I am now merely 
 supposing a case; but I ask, in all seriousness, what would be the 
 condition of public morality in this country if it should come to 
 be understood that the judges of the Supreme Court, who by 
 the Constitution are not a whit more independent of the execu- 
 tive department than are members of this body, might expect 
 Executive favors in the way of patronage provided the judges 
 rendered decisions corresponding with the views of the Ex- 
 ecutive in behalf of one or the other of the parties to a suit 
 pending before the Supreme Court of the United States? How 
 promptly would the press demand the impeachment of the Ex- 
 ecutive! Yet the gold press of this country— especially of the 
 great cities of the East— have been urging the President to ex- 
 ercise every means at his command (and all men know what that 
 signifies) to accomplish the passage of the bill now under discus- 
 sion. 
 
 THE i;>-CKOACHMBNT OT THE BXECUTIVB SUSTAINED BT THE QOLD-STAND- 
 
 ABD PRESS. 
 
 It is not the first time the gold press of the great money centers 
 were guilty of attempted subornation of perjury in urging the 
 Chief Magistrate of the Republic to violate his oath of oflBce by 
 inciting him to purchase the votes of those whose convictions 
 were opwosed to his. During the period of the debate in Con- 
 
409 
 
 gress on the silver-purchase law of 18Y8 a leading gold standard 
 
 journal of the Eastern States, which was in political accord with 
 
 the President then in ofB.ce, said, under date of January? of that 
 
 year: 
 
 The President knows that men can be held true to Bepublican pledges as 
 to finance— 
 
 It will be remembered that the President of the period was a 
 Republican — 
 if they Itnow that their truth will mean favor as to appointments. 
 
 This, as will be perceived, was no vulgar suggestion that the 
 President should bribe a member of the legislative body. It 
 was, on the very contrary, an incentive to him simply to purchase 
 the truth. It is a particularly delectable exemplification of gold- 
 standard morality — the morality that characterizes Wall street — 
 -that truth is, not something to be held sacred, as a precious per- 
 sonal possession, dearer than life itself, but something to be 
 bought by the President when necessary to maintain the gold 
 standard! 
 
 Another leading Eastern gold-standard paper, on the 12th of 
 
 February, 1878, during the same discussion, editorially gave the 
 
 Republican President a hint as to what he could do. It said : 
 
 The United States Senate has sunk so far below the standard with which It 
 was formerly associated that the propositions which we yesterday gave as 
 In circulation at Washington excite little or no surprise. There are Senar 
 tors who have so little Intelligence or principle that they do not know their 
 own minds in regard to the sliver question, or so little conscience that they 
 are ready to vote for or against the pending bill. They Imagine that It Is 
 popular. Provided they receive a quid pro quo, however, they are willing to 
 run the risk of unpopularity. They are ready In short to sell their votes to 
 the President and aid in defeating the bill. It is hinted that by adopting 
 this bribery plan the President may not only defeat the Bland bill, but also 
 may establish amicable relations between his administration and Senators 
 who are at present inimical. 
 
 The passage of what is known as the Bland bill by a two- thirds 
 majority of each House demonstrates that the then President 
 either did not take advantage of this hint or that if he attempted 
 to do so the attempt did not succeed. 
 
 It will be borne im mind that this language was not used with 
 reference to the present occasion, but to an occasion occurring 
 some fifteen years ago. Nor do I cite it as having application to 
 this occasion, but to illustrate how safely republican institutions 
 
410 
 
 may repose on such newspapers as are the obsdient servitors of 
 the banking and. creditor classes. This was not language used 
 by irresponsible socialistic or reactionary sheets, bent on bring- 
 ing into contempt such a thing as government of the people by 
 the people. It was used by newspapers priding themselves on 
 their conservatism, thai is to say, the conservatism of the bank- 
 ing classes, which does not regard such a trifle as want of fidelity 
 in a President to a solemn oath of office, or unfaithfulness in a 
 legislator to his own convictions, so long as thereby the gold 
 standard of which the bankers and brokers and their clients and 
 customers are the beneficiaries, may be sustained and perpetu- 
 ated. Their mo;tto is, "The end justifies the means.'' 
 
 So, also, on the 10th of January, 1878, a leading gold-standard 
 paper said: 
 
 The capital of the comitrj is organized at last, and we shall see whether 
 Congress will dare to fly to Us face. 
 
 We are told the same thing now, Mr. President. The cham- 
 bers of commerce, the boards of trade, and the bankers of the 
 United States, headed by the newspapers of the banking centers, 
 tell us that they are the people and the people are demanding 
 certain things to be done. The capitalists of the country un- 
 doubtedly, or at least a noisy part of them, are orsranized in be- 
 half of the measure now under consideration. But, mark you, 
 we do not hear of the labor of the country being organized in 
 its favor. 
 
 THB BEST PBOTEOTION FOB CAPITAL IS JUSTICE TO PRODUCERS. 
 
 Is not that a rather ominous fact? It would be more creditable 
 for the capital of the country to investigate the great question 
 pending here before coming to the conclusion to follow the shal- 
 low-pated scribblers who are posing as editors and statisticians 
 and political economists, and whose fortune it is to find ready, 
 zealous, and numerous believers among the beneficiaries of the 
 swindle which they denominate the gold standard. It appears 
 that it is the interests of capital that are to be consulted in this 
 country, not the interests of labor — the interests of the few, not 
 those of the many. Is it wise, let me ask, for the capitalists and 
 their organs, so early in the history of tha Republic, to attempt 
 to separate men into classes? Is it wise to establish orders which 
 
411 
 
 stall be known as the capitalists and the laborers — which, like 
 the patricians and plebeians, may reproduce in this age and on 
 this continent the feuds that pariodically convulsed the republics 
 of antiquity? 
 
 We must notf orget that history repeats itself. To the thought- 
 ful student of monetary science it was unnecessary for the gold- 
 standard press to convey the suggestion that the capitalists of 
 the country were "organized." It was but too palpable already 
 {to all who understand the subtle effects of the gold standard) 
 that those who were the beneficiaries of the system would be 
 "organized." I, for one, though my warning will pass unheeded, 
 suggest to the capitalists of the country that if they expect the 
 repose which should characterize a just government they might 
 profitably devote a little of their valuable time to examining and 
 analyzing the question with which we here are dealing before 
 petitioning for the passage of this bill. More reflection and less 
 noise would better become men who pretend to be thinking 
 beings. 
 
 In a free republic the best protection for capital— yes, the only 
 protection for it— is the hearty content of the laborers. It is 
 the bulwark alike of capital and of freedom. History attests 
 that the greatest breeder of social and political discontent is 
 poverty. We are admonished by the census returns that the 
 debts of the people are enormous. The attempt to increase 
 the burden of those debts unjustly will be repelled and punished 
 by the people. Any and all political parties that attempt to but- 
 tress and perpetuate injustice will be swept from power, what- 
 ever may be their names, or however great their history. 
 
 We must remember that this is not India, and that the people 
 of this country are not Hindoos. No order in council and no or- 
 der from Downing street will ultimately avail here to add to 
 the unearned increment which an increasing value in the money 
 unit exacts from the debtor — a secret, unjust, and clandestine 
 increment which the gold standard insures to the creditor with- 
 out the knowledge of the debtor, and to his injury. Unlike the 
 people of any other country in the world, the people of this 
 country are giving thought to their monetary policy. And 
 
 78S 
 
412 
 
 unless justice be installed, parties will crumble under the right- 
 eous indignation of the voters. 
 
 When it is said that other civilized peoples have abandoned 
 silver and gone to the gold standard, I enter a most emphatic 
 denial of the truth of the statement. The masses of the people — 
 the producers — of no country have been at any time consulted as 
 to what should be the material of th3ir money. These matters 
 are settled for them by the little coterie of statssmen who believe 
 themselves born to rule, and who, in so far as they are not ab- 
 stract theorists, are direct representatives of the creditor classes 
 and annuitants who are the beneficiaries of the wrong to which 
 these so-called " statesmen " lend themselves. 
 
 Our people will never surrender their sovereign powers into 
 the hands of any coterie of men, whether so-called statesmen or 
 fin?.nciers. This is the fundamental error which the gold-stand- 
 ard clique have been making in this country. They think they 
 have to do with Hindoos or Egyptians, whose habit it is to sit 
 in silence and upon hearing their doom pronounced accept it not 
 only without resistance but without remonstrance. 
 
 The Constitution, as I have said, made separate and apart the 
 executive, the legislative, and the judicial functions and offices 
 of the Government. It made them coijrdinate and independent 
 of each other. To suppose that the framers of that great instru- 
 ment intended that the Executive should have i policies of his 
 own to enforce against the convictions of a majority of the law- 
 making branch of the Government would be to imply that those 
 great men erred in trusting the making of laws to the wisdom 
 of a large number of men, selected to represent their several lo- 
 calities and States rather than the opinions or caprices of one 
 man. If the members of those Houses were to accept the dic- 
 tum of the Executive, it would have been better to provide that 
 the will of the Executive should be the law of the land. 
 
 THE CLASS OF MEN WHO LEAD THE GOLD-STANDARD PRESS. 
 
 With a few honorable exceptions the daily press of the great 
 banking centers of the country have in this contest, as in all 
 monetary contests since 1873, pursued like sleuth hounds the ad- 
 vocates of silver money. No language has heen found too vio- 
 lent, no abuse too gross,' no epithet too scurrilous, no imputation 
 
413 
 
 too unjust, no falsehood too flagrant, to be applied to the motives 
 and conduct of those who stand here contending for the rights 
 of the plain people and against the perpetration of a monstrous 
 wrong. Who are the persons who thus assail us ? It is well 
 known that the brainy men who are employed upon newspapers 
 have nothing whatever to do with fixing the policy of the paper 
 on which they are employed. 
 
 Many of them are with us heart and soul in this great contest, 
 but, like soldiers on duty, they obey orders, whether those orders 
 have or have not the approval of their judgment. The policies 
 of great modern newspapers are fixed and directed either by 
 syndicates of wealthy proprietors, in some instances leading 
 bankers or stock operators, or by single millionaire proprietors, 
 who prefer to spend in Europe in an anti-American environment 
 the money they make while figuring as " editors "of newspapers 
 published thousands of miles from the scene of the editor's lodg- 
 ings. Even when the so-called "American " proprietor of some 
 great city newspaper remains at home and attends to his busi- 
 ness, he is well described by Mr. J. W. Keller, the president of 
 the New York Press Club, who ought to know whereof he 
 writes, in the number of the New York Forum for August last, 
 as follows." 
 
 He knows iow to tuy and sell, whether it be white paper or Ink or trains. 
 The fact that he may not know the first rudiments of the English language, 
 that sociology and political science are as incomprehensible to him as the 
 hereafter, does not affect the case at all. He can hire men at so much a week 
 for all that sort of thing, just as he could hire skilled artisans if he were a 
 manufacturer of machines, or railroad cars, or jewelry. Editorial writers, 
 or copy readers, or reporters are so numerous and so cheap that his whole 
 editorial stall can be changed in a day if he deemslt necessary. Hedesplses 
 the literary accomplishments ot these men, and therefore the men them- 
 selves, because he measures all men by their ability to accumulate money, 
 and can not see advantage in anything not convertible into money. 
 
 These men may be his superiors In all but money getting, but they are his 
 docile hirelings. To him the business end of a newspaper is of chief Im- 
 portance, and if he does not attend to that himself he Is willing at all times 
 to pay more for a business manager than for an editor-in-chief. It Is a fa- 
 vorite boast ot one newspaper proprietor of this stripe that he can hire all 
 the editors he wants for $10 a week. This, of course, is a slight exaggera- 
 tion, although the average pay of the writers in his employ does not greatly 
 exceed that sum; but his theory of iournaiism that newspapers are made in 
 the business offices and that the editorial departments are mere adjuncts 
 for carrying out money-making schemes hatched elsewhere is widely shared. 
 
 The domination of the business office over the editorial department is a 
 development of recent years; a natural consequence of the gradual evolu- 
 783 
 
414 
 
 tlon ol Jonmallsm Into a purely money-making business. There wasa time 
 ■when the salaried editor despised the counting-room. His idea ol a news- 
 paper embodied a loftiness ol aim which could not be affected by any sordid 
 motive. He held that there were certain reservations on which the business 
 office should not trespass. An advertisement should appear In the unmis- 
 takable torm of an advertisement, and In the column set aside lor advertise- 
 ments. Editorial opinions should be above and beyond all considerations 
 except those of right and justice and the general good. The presentation of 
 news should be unbiased and uncolored, the single unvarying rule being to 
 give the tacts as nearly as possible. 
 
 In short, to borrow the words ol a distinguished New York editor, there 
 should be " no sailing under false colors. " This was the old theory, the high 
 chivalrous declaration ot iournallstlc principles which the new school ol 
 journalism, the purely business school, is willing enough to accept, even if 
 ■ It does not always practice it, except in the matter ol advertising. In that 
 the new school has wrought such a revolution that the salaried editor now 
 lends himself cheerfully and even enthusiastically to the attainment of the 
 one objective point, money getting. 
 
 The old school pretended to sell nothing but a certain space allotted to 
 advertising. The new school can see no reason for such restriction. If It Is 
 Tight to sell advertising space in one part ol the newspaper, that a man may 
 pull his wares, why not in another? This wholesale barter does not neces- 
 sarily mean debasement, but It does mean thai journalistic traditions are 
 shattered, and that in the new school the business office is paramount. 
 Therefore, if a man would be successful to the highest degree in journalism 
 to-day he must know the business office. Without this knowledge he may 
 attain success as an employ^, but never as an employer. Without it he can 
 never hope to attain the owuersmp oi a newspaper. 
 
 Working newspaper men, workers in the literary vineyard, have given too 
 little heed to this important fact. They have been too long and too thor- 
 oughly saturated with contempt for the business office. If the money get- 
 ter of the journal despises them for their lack of thrift they doubly despise 
 him for his methods, even when their sustenance depends upon his success. 
 This has been chiefly because they have had no business training. They are 
 denendent from the beginning, and their dependence Increases with their 
 years ol service. 
 
 A well-known editorial writer now in New York once made a contract 
 with a Boston newspaper owner to occupy the chair of managing editor lor 
 five years. His compensation was to be a fixed weekly salary and $5,000 worth 
 of stock at the termination of the contract. After he had served three years 
 the proprietor of the newspaper made things so uncomfortable for him that 
 he offered to leave 11 $3,000 of stjck or its equivalent were given to him. 
 "You can get out now," said the proprietor, "without any stock or any 
 equivalent. " " But, " said he ' ' my contract calls for the stock, and I demand 
 it." " Take your contract to a lawyer,"sald the proprietor, "and let him 
 see what it is worth. ' ' 
 
 The proprietor thus becomes a sort of despot at whose feet his vassals sue 
 for favor, and to Influence whom plots and counterplots are made until the 
 lionest, straightforward, guileless man is so sick of such underhand work 
 that he is all too willing to quit the contest and seek some other field. Hence 
 it is that the best places are not always held by the best men. The courtier 
 is often more successful, temporarily at least, than the journalist. 
 
 It is not necessary for me, Mr. President, to add to this de- 
 scription, nor to enlarge upon the herculean task which the 
 masses of the people will always have before them when they 
 
 785 
 
415 
 
 attempt to right any public wrong whose perpetuation appeals 
 equally to the cupidity and the ignorance of the men described 
 by the able journalist whom I have quoted. 
 
 Fortunately for the liberties of the people of this country, the 
 men thus described are few. Their example, however, and the 
 influence of their journals doubtless affect to a greater or less ex- 
 tent men who have not taken the pains to inform themselves of 
 the claims of bimetallism from sources friendly to that system. 
 They have formed their opinions of it from the great metropoli- 
 tan dailies, which, in view of the location of such papers in 
 great banking centers, they suppose must have analyzed the 
 question. They have been advised thatthe question was one that 
 concerned only miners of silver. Thus many earnest minds 
 among the journalists of the country, in the multiplicity of their 
 labors and the daily and hourly urgency and pressure of an ex- 
 acting profession, have not been able to give the subject the time 
 and thought that it deserves. It will not always be so. The 
 great body of the press of the country, with the exception of the 
 great city dailies, which will always be the allies of the banks, 
 will in time be found ranged on the side of the people. 
 
 THB INVESTMENT or FOBEI6N CAPITAL IN THE UNITED STATES NOT A BENE- 
 TIT BUT AN INJURY TO OUR PEOPLE. 
 
 The recent panic in this country has been ascribed to a great 
 variety of causes, some of which, with the permission of the Sen- 
 ate, I shall examine. 
 
 The New York World of August 1, 1893, said editorially that 
 the fright which caused the panic began with the foreign in- 
 vestor. It is not denied that at the very time that the foreign 
 Investor was so alarmed with reference to the class of money that 
 he should receive from the United States there was in this coun- 
 try more wealth than ever before in its history. 
 
 Are we to understand that the legislation of this country is to 
 be in the interest, not of the people of the United States, but of 
 foreigners? 
 
 Is the prosperity of this country to depend upon a lot of idle 
 fellows who live in some other country, for whom we must pro- 
 vide investment schemes upon which they may make a profit? 
 What, after all, is it that brings prosperity to a country? Is 
 
416 
 
 not prosperity present when all the people are at work with 
 hand and brain? The real source of wealth is the productive 
 energy of the people. The policy that will keep all our people 
 at work will develop the country without the aid of foreign in- 
 vestors. 
 
 The theory of these foreign investors is that in this new coun- 
 ■ try great numbers of our people should be idle in order that the 
 foreign investors may be able to send their money here for in- 
 vestment. If, as is constantly asserted, we have enough money 
 in this country, why do we want more? And if we have not 
 enough of our own money, why should we not have enough? 
 The position of the bimetallists here is that we have not enough, 
 and that we should have enough of our own. 
 
 With proper monetary and industrial policies in this country 
 everybody would be at work. Were all at work, they would be 
 engaged on the best ventures we had. This would be the max- 
 imum of efEort, and from it would result the maximum of wealth, 
 prosperity, and national content. 
 
 This exploitation of our country with foreign money simply 
 means that schemes are gotten up here to induce foreigners, who 
 do not understand all the conditions existing on this side the 
 ocean, to invest their money in enterprises thatare not sufficiently 
 good to warrant wise men among our own capitalists taking hold 
 of them. When sound investments are found here our own 
 capitalists do not hesitate to engage in them. 
 
 Were all our people occupied, a foreign investor, in order to 
 make a profit on the money he sent in here would be obliged to 
 send on the same ship with the money a number of foreign work- 
 men upon whose labor the expected profit could be made. Inas- 
 much as the mos t profitable enterprises would already be absorbed 
 by our own people, there would be nobody upon whose labor the 
 foreigner could make a profit unless he sent in men as well as 
 money. This would mean the sending to this country of hordes 
 of the lowest order of foreign contract laborers, unacquainted 
 with our language and institutions, and not coming here by reason 
 of the development in them of that aspiration for political freedom 
 which makes the only sure foundation for citizenship in a self- 
 governing republic. 
 
 785 
 
417 
 
 If all our people are usually at work, as is claimed by the gold- 
 standard champions, of what use would it be to bring into our 
 country more money? In order that suph money might be put 
 to use our people would need to be diverted from their accus- 
 tomed occupations^ — from those to which their lives have beeij 
 dedicated and in which they are prospering. They would need 
 to be turned into new and unaccustomed avenues. In this there' 
 would be great economic waste. A man is most useful and most 
 happy when in the vocation for which he has been trained — the 
 vocation of his choice and of his youth. 
 
 It would be much better for us, instead of anticipating what 
 this country may require a generation hence, to attempt to buil^ 
 up communities in reasonable proximity one to another, and 
 develop those to the utmost of our power, instead of building 
 railroads prematurely which are to languish for a generation or 
 more — much better to get all our domestic capital employed and 
 to main tain our own investments in high efficiency than to invite 
 hither the money of foreign investors, and thus throw away 
 much of our prosperity, if not also much of our independence. 
 We should not be dependent on foreigners for the money neces- 
 sary to make exchanges among our own people. 
 
 In a work on the Use and Abuse of Money, by a lecturer at 
 Cambridge University, England. Dr. Cunningham, the apposite 
 remark is made that foreign investments "do something to break 
 down the strong nationalism of old days." There can be no doubt 
 of this, judging from the awe with which the New York bank- 
 ers, brokers, and .newspapers look upon these foreign investors. 
 They regard the home investor, in comparison, as nobody — as 
 indeed no investor at all — because his money goes into enter- 
 p'rises that employ labor, while the foreigner employs the stock- 
 broker. The " Workingman " whom these people have in view 
 is he who exhausts himself daily shouting in the pit of the New 
 York Stock Exchange. His "compatriot," as he may becalled, 
 the "foreign investor " of Great Britain, is well characterized 
 by the same author in the following words: 
 
 He may be prepared to join In an outcry against the manufacturer wlio 
 sends Improved patterns ol guns to a rival power, say to Russia. But he 
 would leel no scruple In lending hii capital to Eussia, and thus giving that 
 
 785—27 
 
418 
 
 rival power the means of pnrchaalng the ImproTed arms. There Is no dU- 
 lerence between the cases. 
 
 These gamblers engage in a business for all it is worth, and 
 they do not care who or what is hurt, whether their own coun- 
 try or any other. 
 
 Instead of this foreign money being borrowed to develop, as ia 
 stated, the national resources of the United States, most of it 
 has been borrowed for the purpose of developing the personal 
 resources of speculative adventurers, who have been able to 
 obtain control of franchises and privileges for enterprises which 
 anticipated by many years the needs of the people, and on which 
 these promoters issued bonds for fifty to a hundred per cent more 
 than the cost of the enterprise. Of this amount large bonuses 
 were given 'to the foreign investor. Hence almost every cor- 
 poration is enormously overstocked, and the securities as a 
 whole upon which the people are paying interest represent two or 
 three times the money actually invested. 
 
 It were much better for our people if the foreign investor kept 
 his money to himself, or invested it elsewhere than here. Fot 
 all thepurposesof rational and natural development in the United 
 States, our own investors and men of enterprise would, under 
 proper conditions, supply all necessary capital. In such cases 
 the interest paid upon the investment, besides representing only 
 the normal cost of the plant, would remain in the country. Under 
 present conditions the interest is taken away by the foreign 
 investor, only to be brought back for investment in some new 
 speculative scheme, which also anticipates by many years the 
 natural demands of the community, but upon which the people 
 are constantly taxed to pay interest— so that they are compoundr 
 ing the interest on these foreign investments. ' 
 
 This course will, if the gold standard be proclaimed here, con- 
 tinue until these foreign investors will have our people as they 
 have the people of many other countries — in a condition of vas- 
 salage. 
 
 The importance to the United States of the money of the for- 
 eign investor is a mere bagatelle in comparison with the impor- 
 tance of a system of money which will maintain justice between 
 man and man. The sooner the people of United States learn to 
 
 785 
 
419 
 
 do their own work the better, including the work of supplying 
 themselves with their own money; to do this as the country needs 
 it, and in quantities sufficient to maintain all our industries and 
 keepprices firm. 
 
 It is very humiliating for a great country like the United 
 States to say that it must adapt its financial system to a condition 
 in which it can borrow money. This country does not need to bor- 
 row money. What would be thought of the owner of a vast and 
 splendid estate, whose sole and constant aim it was to be always 
 borrowing money that he did not need? Would it not be an im- 
 peachment ot his judgment and his common sense? Imagine a 
 man rich beyond the dreams of avarice, yet wringing his hands 
 and crying in despair, "What shall I do if I can not borrow 
 money?" And borrowing money, too, upon conditions that in a 
 subtle and unperceived way would eat up his property by reason 
 of the increasing value of the money unit. 
 
 When it is s'aid that if we do not have a gold standard the for- 
 eign investors will not buy our bonds and securities, let me in- 
 quire what they are going to do with their money? Do they re- 
 fuse to buy the securities of any other country or to invest their 
 money in any other country in which there is to be a profi t made? 
 Not at all. They have so plundered their own country that they 
 can not invest profitably there. Prices there are falling lower 
 and lower and driving more and more money out of England for 
 investment abroad. 
 
 Were our money national instead of international, and foreign- 
 ers then wished to invest in our securities they could do so with 
 perfect freedom, but they would be oliged first to purchase Our 
 money, either with commodities or with the money of their own 
 country, and with our money buy our securities, a process which 
 would in nowise inflate our currency. Then when they wished 
 to realize on their investments and withdraw, they would have 
 to sell in our money, and with that money purchase the money 
 of their own country. 
 
 In that way they could not perpetrate an injustice upon every 
 producer and every debtor in the United States — upon millions 
 of men who have nothing whatever to do with the investments 
 of foreigners, but who, whenever money is taken out of ourooun- 
 
 785 
 
420 
 
 try to pay JEor bonds forced upon our niarKet by monetary exi- 
 gencies arising abroad, have to pay a premium upon gold in the 
 form of a fall in the prices of the products of American labor— a 
 fall which by bringing the producer to poverty and keeeping him 
 there works advantage to no human except the few men who 
 lend money. 
 
 It should be enough that the United States furnish to foreign- 
 ers not only the opportunity to invest their money at rates of 
 interest higher than they could obtain in their own country, 
 but also the equal protection of our laws — protection equal to 
 that a (forded to our own citizens^without permitting the foreign- 
 ers to disturb and disarrange all the business of the country by 
 inflating the currency when they buy our securities, and con- 
 tracting it when they sell, thus destroying all the equities in 
 hundreds of thousands of time contracts — contracts involving 
 millions upon millions of dollars — and distorting justice in the 
 innumerable debts due by and among our own people. 
 
 Has the American farmer whose farm is mortgaged, or the 
 American mechanic who is buying a home on installments, any- 
 thing to do with these ' ' foreign investors"? Why should either 
 of these be made to suffer by reason of the investments of such 
 foreigners, either here or elsewhere? When it is undeniable 
 that the value of the unit of money depends upon the number of 
 units, is it wise to permit foreigners at their will to throw, say, 
 $100,000,000 of money suddenly into our country, thus inflating 
 our currency and putting up prices, and then, when prices have 
 gone up, or whenever financial trouble threatens in Europe, to 
 sell out the American securities, and take away the $100,000,000 
 as well as the profit on the investment, thus alternately inflating 
 and contracting our money volume to the great injury of our 
 people. 
 
 When bonds are sent here and gold is taken out by the for- 
 eign investor to enable him to meet pressing demands at home, 
 it is sure to be again sent here when the pressure there is over, 
 to be reinvested in the same or similar securities, only to be 
 again taken away as soon as the necessity arises for its Euro- 
 pean owners to meet obligations in countries other than the 
 United States. Had we a money of our own that was not inter- 
 
 785 
 
421 
 
 national in character we should be able to open up railroads and 
 to undertake all other enterprises as they were currentlyneeded 
 for the national progress of our country, and nothing is gained 
 by undertaking such enterprises prematurely. No enterprise 
 should be put upon the market except as it is needed, and with 
 a national money sufficient in quantity there would always be 
 enough ot it among our own people to enable theln to undertake 
 projects that would pay a fair return to capital. 
 
 Had we really to depend upon foreigners it would be a sad 
 commentary upon our population and our institutions— 70,000,000 
 of people with whom no like number anywhere in the world can 
 compare for energy, industry, ingenuity, intelligence, and aspi- 
 ration, and with a form of government adapted to the highest 
 development of man and without the traditions that tend to 
 petrify the conditionsof the people, as in the civilization of older 
 countries. 
 
 The gold newspapers think a clear case is made in favor of the 
 gold standard when they assent that the panic was caused through 
 lack of good opinion which foreigners entertained of our country, 
 because of a fear that we might go to a silver basis. Well, Mr. 
 President, if we are to legislate for every foreigner' who lacks 
 good opinion of the; United States we shall have a good deal to do. 
 The creditor classes of Europe never had any opinion of this 
 country, its people or its institutions. They see nothing good 
 in this country except when they can make a profit by sending 
 their idle money here. When they concern themselves at all 
 about our affairs it is to malign our people and condemn our in- 
 stitutions. 
 
 There is, therefore, no reason why we shoilld do injustice to 
 our own people in order to secure the good opinion which the 
 " foreign investor " may entertain of us or our country. 
 
 [At this point the honorable Senator yielded the floor for the 
 day.] 
 
 Monday, October SO, 189S. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Mr. President, everywhere we hear 
 it echoed and reSchoed by the gold-standard press of the bank- 
 ing centers that the people demand the repeal of the purchasing 
 clause of the so-called Sherman law.' I deny most emphatically 
 
 785 
 
422 
 
 that the people demand it. The last statement that we had from 
 the masses of the people of both the leading political parties was 
 contained in the platforms of their national conventions. The 
 orders of the people, there given in unmistakable terms, were 
 to continue the use of both metals as standard money, and it was not 
 even hinted that the use of either was to be dispensed with. 
 
 THE PEOPLB HAVE NOT DEMANDED THE REPEAL OI THE BHiVEErPUBOHASE 
 
 LAW. 
 
 The silver plank of the last Republican national convention 
 
 reads as follows: 
 
 The American people, Irom tradition and Interest, favor bimetallism, and 
 the Bepubllcan party demand the use of both gold and sliver as standard 
 money, with restrictions and under such provisions to be determined by 
 legislation as will secure maintenance of the parity of values of the two 
 metals, so that the purchasing and the debt-paying power of the dollar, 
 whether of silver, gold, or paper shall be at all times equal. The interest of 
 the producers of the country, its farmers and Its workiilgmen, demand that 
 every dollar, paper or coin, Issued by the Government shall be as good as 
 any other. We commend the wise and patriotic steps already taken by our 
 Government to secure an international conference to adopt such measures 
 as win Insure a parity of value between gold and silver for use as money 
 throughout the world. 
 
 The paragraph of the Democratic platform which relates to 
 silver is as follows: 
 
 We denounce the legislation known as the Sherman act of 1890 as a cow- 
 ardly makeshift, fraught with posslblUtlea of danger In the future, which 
 should make all of Its supporters as well as its author anxious for Its speedy 
 repeal. We hold to the use of both gold and silver as the standard money 
 of the country, and to the coinage of both gold and silver without discrimi- 
 nating against either metal or charge for mintage, but the dollar unit of coin- 
 age of both metals must be of equal intrinsic and exchangeable value, or be 
 adjusted through Intematlonal agreement, or by such safeguards of legisla- 
 tion as shall Insure the maintenance of the parity of the two metals, and the 
 equal power of every dollar at all times in the market and in payment of 
 debt; and we demand that all paper currency shall be kept at par with and 
 redeemable in such doia. We Insist up6n this policy as especially necessary 
 tor the protection of the farmers and laboring classes, the first and most de- 
 fenseless victims of unstable money and a fluctuating currency. 
 
 Upon these declarations of principle by the leading political 
 parties we assert that the masses of both parties are with us. 
 We deny that the gold-standard press correctly represents the 
 situation when it asserts that they are against us. Has there 
 been some census of opinions taken since these ofiBcial declars;- 
 tions were made; by which it has been ascertained that both par- 
 ties and their voters have abandoned their platforms? Is there 
 some new " Nickel-in- the-slot" machine of which we have not 
 
 785 
 
423 
 
 heard, by whicli the advocates of the gold standard can take a 
 census of the opinions of the people without the knowledge of 
 the silver advocates? 
 
 The Republican plank states that " the Ilepublican party de- 
 mands the use of both gold and silver as standard money," 
 while the Democratic platform announces that " We hold to the 
 use of both gold and silver as the standard money of the coun- 
 try, and to the coinage of both gold and silver without discrimi- 
 nating against either metal or charge formintage." These declap 
 rations must be taken to be and to mean the wishes of the voters 
 of the United States, at least of the respective parties which 
 these opinions were supposed to represent. 
 
 The proposition now before the Senate i? intended to do away 
 with the use of silver as standard money. It is therefore di- 
 rectly in opposition to the course recommended by these plat- 
 forms. And while the Democratic platform demanded the re- 
 peal of the Sherman law, it was not because that law went too 
 far, but because it did not go far enough towards free coinage — 
 it was not because too much but too little silver was put out 
 under it. The clause which denounced that law must be taken 
 in connection with the clause which declares that the Demo- 
 cratic party was in favor of both gold and silver as standard 
 money, and in favor of the coinage of both gold and sUver with- 
 out discriminating against either metal. 
 
 The platforms of both parties agreed in calling for the use of 
 gold and silver — not of the gold and silver merely that had been 
 coined, but for the use of gold and silver both in the present and 
 in the future, as the material of money. 
 
 The proposition now before the Senate is diametrically in op- 
 position to both platforms, and in the very teeth of their distinct 
 declarations. It is wholly against the wishes of the people of 
 the United States. 
 
 Undoubtedly the bankers, brokers, and money-lenders want it, 
 and no doubt they think they are the people. In the words of 
 Tennyson: 
 
 Xbey take the rustic murtnur of tbelr burg 
 For the great wave that rolls around the world. 
 
 Counting all the people whom the bankers have in the toils — 
 
 786. 
 
424 
 
 who feel that they must dance when the bankers whistle— and 
 the people who, for want of thought, adopt any opinion which 
 bankers promulgate, it is my solemn conviction that not 3 per 
 cent of the people of the country demand the passage of the 
 measure before the Senate. The great majority of the people — 
 the great producing classes — are in favor of silver money, but 
 they have no great city newspapers to speak for them and no 
 professors of political economy to propound learned and sophis- 
 tical opinions for them. They mil speak for themselves on election 
 day. 
 
 The law which it is attempted to repeal has upon the distinct 
 acknowledgment of the Senator from Ohio [Mr. Sherman] 
 himself, saved to the people of the United States millions of dol- 
 lars in sustaining the prices of the products of their labor at a 
 time when, without it, a decline enormously greater would have 
 taken place in those prices. 
 
 If it be a correct policy to cut o£E from the people the limited 
 supply of money which the Sherman law has been furnishing, 
 why have our people been coining or issuing money in the past? 
 The conditions which demanded an addition to our money volume 
 fifteen years ago — are they not continuing conditions? Have 
 our people abandoned the production of wealth? Has our popu- 
 lation stopped increasing? But it is said that the continued 
 purchase of silver and the issuance of these Treasury notes based 
 upon the purchases of silver constitute a menace to our gold re- 
 serve. These Treasury notes have the gold value of the siLver 
 bullion behind them, and, as is also said, the whole credit of 
 the Government behind them. Yet they are said to be a menace 
 to the reserve of gold in the Treasury. 
 
 I hone that some gold-standard Senator will interrupt me to 
 explain how any other kind of money except actual gold can be 
 issued that will not equally be a menace to that reserve. 
 
 And inasmuch as those Senator s do not propose to issue a money 
 that will be a menace to that reserve, I should like to inquire 
 what sort of dollars they do propose to issue? Or do they not 
 propose in any way to increase the volume of money in a country 
 in which population is increasing at the rate of 2i per cent per 
 annum? 
 
 785 
 
425 
 
 Unless we are to have the actual gold, is there any form of dol- 
 lar that will not be a menace? 
 
 A dollar issued under the Sherman law can be no more of a 
 menace than any other form of dollar, whether issued by the 
 Government or a bank. 
 
 The addition to the money of the country of a monthly sum 
 being a menace to the maintenance of the parity between gQld 
 and other forms of money, it must be the intention of the gold- 
 standard Senators to altogether prohibit the increase of money 
 in this rapidly growing country. That certainly is a most ex- 
 traordinary proposition.- • 
 
 BOND ISSUBS. 
 
 The proposition to issue bonds with which to obtain gold simply 
 demonstrates that those who' propose it do not understand 
 the conditions under which gold can be kept in -a country. 
 When gold goes out of this country it goes because the prices of 
 commodities internationally dealt in are, all things considered, 
 higher here than in other countries having the gold standard. 
 It is therefore the prices of commodities that will dictate 
 whether gold is to go out of this country or remain in it. If 
 those prices are falling rapidly in gold-standard countries it 
 would be as vain to issue bonds, in order to bring gold here, as 
 it would be to attempt to maintain a higher level of the ocean at 
 New York than at Liverpool by pumping water out of the one 
 harbor into the otljer. 
 
 I will venture the statement that if the United States Govern- 
 ment were to-day to issue $500,000,000 of bonds, while they would 
 all be taken by European bankers and money-lenders, it would 
 be on condition that the gold should be demanded in install- 
 ments only and at considetable intervals of time apart. Suppose 
 they sent us, say, $50,000,000 as a first installment. This would 
 tend to depress prices abroad and raise them here, with the 
 result that our importations would increase, and we should 
 shortly send back to Europe in payment for those goods the very 
 $50,000,000 we had received for the bonds. The Europeans would 
 then nay the ' second installment on the bond contract with the 
 same fifty millions with which they had paid the first. 
 
 And so the performance would go on until the entire five hun- 
 
 785 
 
426 
 
 dred million had been supplied— all with $50,000,000 of actual 
 gold, while our taxpayers would be saddled with interest on the 
 entire bond issue. Some people appear to think there is some 
 neutral ground stored with gold — some great vault ol the metal 
 awaiting an issue of our bonds. 
 
 The fact is, if a few million dollars in gold were taken from 
 Europe prices would fall. Mr. Goschen, when chancellor of the 
 exchequer of Great Britain, stated in the House of Commons 
 that he was ashamed to confess that the outgo of a million of 
 pounds sterling of gold strained the whole financial fabric. They 
 are strained for gold now. The very moment we take a few 
 millions of it there is danger of a panic. If I am correctly in- 
 fornied, they are on the very edge, of a panic now. We might 
 issue bonds under those conditions until this country were $10,- 
 000,000,000- in debt, yet we should permanently have no more 
 gold than we have now, because as fast as we took gold from 
 them their prices would fall while ours would rise, and out our 
 gold would go. It you use international money you must content 
 yourselves with international prices. It is impossibly to main- 
 tain gold here under any other condition. 
 
 If we are to enter upon a struggle with Europe for the possession 
 of gold the only course for us to pursue is when we get possession of 
 it to look it up, as it is practically locked up by Russia, and praoti-i 
 cally locked up by Germany, Austria, and France. But for us 
 to think of maintaining a range of prices here higher than the 
 European range — for us to attempt to establish a value of the 
 g'old unit here different from the value of the gold unit all over 
 the western world, and at the same. time retain gold here, is 
 preposterous. We might as well attempt, as I have said, to es- 
 tablish two levels to the waters of the ocean. It is utterly im- 
 possible of accomplishment. There would be an irresistible ten- 
 dency toward equalization of international prices'. 
 
 The banks want permission to issue their notes up to the par 
 of the bond. It is supposed that this class of money would not 
 dtive ovit gold and would not endanger the reserve. But at all 
 times it is the movement of prices of commodities internationally 
 dealt in that makes it necessary for gold to be sent from any one coun- 
 try to any other. Any increase in the quantity of money — in the 
 
 785 
 
427 
 
 number of dollars— in the country, of whatever material those dol- 
 lars may be composed, will have the effect of raising prices to 
 a level higher than the level abroad. An increase in the num- 
 ber of banknotes placed in circulation, woul'd have precisely the 
 same effect in sending out gold that an increase of Treasury 
 notes issued under the Sherman bill or any. other form of money 
 wovild have. Gold would be doing no more service in this coun- 
 try than would a money exclusively national, and therefore the 
 cheapest and most advantageous thing for merchants tq send out 
 in payment for imports, would be gold rather than products, be- 
 cause the range of prices of products of International trade would 
 be higher here than abroad. 
 
 THB NATIONAIi SABES AEH) THE FAmo. 
 
 The course of the national banks in the great money centers 
 during the past summer fully justifies the fears which the peo- 
 ple have long entertained of them. As soon as they discovered 
 that the Fifty-third Congress contained a majority against the 
 repeal of the Sherman law or any clause of it they undertook to 
 create a sham public opinion which, they shrewdly opined, would 
 by many b? mistaken for real public opinion in favOr of repeal. 
 This they could readily do by marshaling, not the great mass of 
 the producers of the country, who are under no obligations to 
 the banks, but the army of middlemen and nonproducers who 
 have intimate relations with the banks and who are 'Willing to 
 sign any petitions which the banks may suggest. Not one 
 of those petitions states a single reason why the Sherman law 
 should be repealed, except that what they called " want of con- 
 fidence" existed which, they professed to believe, but show no 
 grounds for believing, grew out of the Sherman law. 
 
 Having determined to Secure the repeal at all hazards, they 
 hit upon the cruel device of limiting and restricting credit— of 
 withdrawing from the business men of the country a certain 
 proportion of the accommodation which they had theretofore 
 been in the habit of granting. While doing this they took care 
 to pass the statement around that there was plenty of money in 
 the country and that all that was wanting was confidence. 
 
 The banks thought it best to give the country an object lesson ' 
 in the form of a panic, intending that it should go far enough to 
 
 785 
 
428 
 
 secure repeal, but no farther. They did not understand that an 
 economic cause determining' a crisis had tor some years been in 
 operation, namely, the increase in the value of gold. The bank- 
 ers ought to have known this fact, but they thought the change 
 in the relations between gold and commodities was not a rise in 
 the value of gold bat a fall in the prices of commodities and of sil- 
 ver, which metal had apparently fallen in relation to gold in about 
 the same ratio that commodities had fallen. They thought they 
 would set in motion a small fright, a bankers' "ghost dance,'' 
 to which they would invite their brethren, the brokers and mem- 
 bers of the chambers of commerce. The ball lasted much longer 
 than they intended, for the Teason I have mentioned, that they 
 had not reckoned with the factors that constitute a panic, which 
 were ready at any moment to create a crash on the occurrence of 
 the first deranging incident. 
 
 "With the latitude now allowed by law to the banks to lend 
 the money of their depositors to the extent of from 75 to 85 per 
 cent oE the deposits, there can be no security against the period- 
 ical recurrence of panics. The law should require them to main- 
 tain a much larger reserve, and should provide for the strictest 
 surveillance over them, so that the people may have some assur- 
 ance that the provisions of law would be respected. If this be 
 not done banks will always overloan, as they have been doing, in 
 order to -make dividends for their stockholders. Wh&tever the 
 volume of moneymight be, a crisis could be brought about if 
 the banks persisted in overloaning. Their book credits serve to 
 put up prices of commodities and property to a point far bej'ond 
 the range naturally consistent with the quantity of money in 
 circulation; and when the crescendo movement has continued to 
 the danger line and liquidation is required, either by depositors, 
 from their banks, or by the banks from those who have borrowed 
 from them the money of the depositors, the entire superstruc- 
 ture of credit begins to totter and finally comes to the ground, 
 the quantity of money (upon which alone credit must rest) being 
 insuEflcient to support it. 
 
 There are in the United States to-day about ten thousand 
 banks, including national banks, State banks, trust companies, 
 private banks, and savings banks. At the end of 1892 they had 
 
429 
 
 in all deposit liabilities amounting in round numbers to $5,000,- 
 000,000. to meet which they had a total sum in cash amounting 
 in round numbers to only $500,000,000. 
 
 Here were ten thousand institutions holding the money of the 
 people subject to call, yet lending it out on time to the extent of 
 90 per cent, keeping on hand but 10 per cent to meet all de- 
 mands. 
 
 It is manifest that in such circumstances the slightest un- 
 toward incident might cause the entire volume of credit to col- 
 
 DID THE PEOPLB HAVE A DISTBUST OF TREASURY NOTES OB SILVER? 
 
 Amo'ng the reasons which the banks hastened to assure us 
 were responsible for the panic was one to the effect that the peo- 
 ple were afraid of the quality of our money. This was trans- 
 parently absurd, as the facts of the situation subsequently dem- 
 onstrated. When the New York bankers advanced this as the 
 reason for the panic that had set in, they could not foresee what 
 was to happen. It did not occur to them that the money which 
 they were trying to disparage would soon bear a premium of 3 
 per cent over gold in the streets of New York. Yet such was 
 the f acx. During the progress of the panic I asked a great many 
 persons in New York City whether they entertained any fear of 
 the quality of the money they held En their pockets, and I could 
 not find a man who expressed any such fear. On the contrary, 
 there was perfect confidence in the quality of the money. The 
 only fear expressed — and that fear was well-nigh universal — was 
 that the banks did not have the money with which to meet the 
 demands of their depositors. And in entertaining this fear the 
 people were perfectly correct. 
 
 Nothing can better illustrate the hoUowness of the pretense 
 that the panic was caused by the peoples distrust of the quality, 
 or kiiK^! of money they were to receive than to inquire whether 
 the firms that failed would not have been glad to pay their debts 
 in any form of legal tender — anything that was money within 
 the United States. Had they been able to get together a suffi- 
 cient amount of such money to meet their obligations, as those 
 obligations matured, would they have gone into bankruptcy? 
 Was their failure a consequence of their impossibility to get 
 
 785 
 
430 
 
 gold? Would not their creditors accept payment in the class of 
 Treasury notes issued under the so-called Sherman law? Does 
 any one deny that those notes became more valuable from 
 month to month, and that the last one issued had more value 
 than the first? Would not the last buy more goods than the 
 first? 
 
 Let me ask any Senator who favors this bill whether he does so 
 uponthe ground that such notes are diminished in value , compared 
 with those which were issued originally, or diminished in value 
 as compared with gold? If so, how does the Senator prove that 
 the notes are diminished in value? No such proof can be ob- 
 tained, for the reason that it does not exist. On the contrary, 
 there is ample proof that the last of such notes issued would buy 
 more of all the commodities of life than would the first. This 
 was true not nlerely after the panic, but before, and even before 
 the President announced that he would pay those notes in gold. 
 We are told that the people took their money out of the banks 
 because they were afraid the country was going to a silver basis. 
 This explanation does not explain. If we were going to a silver 
 basis, what good would it do them to take their money out of 
 banks? The money they took out of the banks and kept at their 
 own homes or locked up in vaults is the very money they would 
 have when we should arrive at the silver basis. Very much of 
 it was either actual silver or paper based on silver, and, under 
 the law, not redeemable in gold. The fact is that they took their 
 money from the banks, not because they were afraid we were 
 . going to a silver basis, but because they were afraid the demand 
 for money with which to liquidate might be so great that the 
 banks might fail; and when a man has his money in a bank it 
 is his right to get it if he chooses. 
 
 DID THET TEAR A SILVER BASIS? 
 
 The workingmen of this country are ready to deliver the 
 products of their labor for the money of the United States. Has 
 anyone heard of any man in search of work who made it a con- 
 dition-precedent to his agreeing to perform such work that the 
 money he might be tendered for his serviced should be some 
 special form of money? I venture to say not one such has been 
 found. 
 
431 
 
 I have yet to hear of any manufacturer or workman, or person 
 engaged in any business whatever, refusing to exchange his serv- 
 ices for money simply on the ground that he was afraid the 
 money might not be as good as gold. No man has demanded any 
 particular kind of money. 
 
 If I had a dollar that was not advancing in value, and could 
 exchange it for a doUar that was constantly advancing, would I 
 not quickly do so? What, then, can be said of psople who fool- 
 ishly refuse to go to the Treasury to exchange" dollars which 
 they are informed by the bankers and the brokers, and the news- 
 papereditors, of New York, was liable at any time to depreciate 
 to the extent of 40 per cent. Are our people lacking in intelli- 
 gence? Can they not read (and do they not read) the newspapers? 
 Is there a country in the world in which the people read news- 
 papers and everything else to the extent that they do here? 
 
 If the masses of the people, say of New York, had had any dis- 
 trust of silver certificates, silver dollars, or Treasury notes,' .and 
 preferred gold, would they not have rushed in thousands to the 
 subtreasury with their silver certificates or Treasury notes in 
 order to get gold for them? 
 
 If I have a dollar that to-day will buy a bushel of wheat and 
 which I suspect may to-morrow or next week buy but two- thirds 
 of a bushel, if I can exchange that dollar for one that will be 
 sure to advance in value will I not make the exchange as quickly 
 as possible? Is it to be supposed that I should wait very long 
 before applying at the Treasury for the dearer dollar? 
 
 The withdrawal of money from the banks does not show a dis- 
 trust of the kind of money. It only shows a distrust of the 
 banks. Had it been a distrustof the kind or quality of the money, 
 there would not have been a dollar of gold left either in the 
 banks or in the Treasury. The people would have taken the 
 paper or silver money immediately to the Treasury and de- 
 manded gold much faster than it was possible for the Treasury 
 to get the gold or pay it out. Yet there has been no gold taken 
 from the Treasury , except for shipment abroad. It'is therefore 
 absurd for the bankers to claim that there was any distrust of 
 any form of our money. 
 
 Instead of the people of this country going to the subtreaaury 
 
 785 
 
432 
 
 with Treasury notes to be changed for gold, it was only the 
 agents or brokers of foreign governments who went there, and 
 they went for the purpose of sending the gold out of the coun- 
 try. They ought not to have been accommodated. The law had 
 provided that the Government had the option of paying in silver 
 whenever it was more convenient to do so. 
 
 THE NATIONAL BANES DETERMINED TO SECURE A MONOPOIiT OF THE ISSUE 
 Off MONEY. 
 
 The repeal of the Sherman law, if accomplished, will be but 
 one-half of the scheme of the banks. They desire to get silver 
 first out of the way. The project is, and the determination of 
 the banks is, that they must be permitted to have a monopoly of 
 the issue of money . They insist that the Government shall cease 
 the issuance of money and hand over the prerogative to them. By 
 the Constitution the right to coin money was given to Congress. 
 The bankers do not believe that was a wise provision on the part 
 of the framers of the Constitution, who should have devolved 
 this duty upon the bants. 
 
 When silver is out of the way, they will acquiesce in the views 
 of the producers of the country that more money is necessary, 
 and will demand an issue of several hundred million dollars of 
 bonds in order that the country may be enabled to have a sufB- 
 cient volume of money to do its business and maintain some de- 
 gree of prosperity. They hope and expect that by the time 
 they are ready to push this demand the distress of the country 
 will be so great for want of money that their wishes will be com- 
 plied with. 
 
 There is no doubt that the distress of the country will be great — 
 for wantof money. Distress will continue until relief be brought 
 by a sufficient supply of money — not, however, bank money, but 
 legal-tender money. It is useless to hope for permanent im- 
 provement of industrial conditions— useless to expect that the 
 great masses of idle men will find permanent employment — until 
 a volume of money shall be issued sufficient to arrest the per- 
 nicious fall 9t prices, and give to employers of labor and pro- 
 jectors of great enterprises the reasonable assurance that by 
 employing workmen they will not be losing money. This new 
 money can not be gold. We already have our distributive share 
 
 785 
 
433 
 
 of the gold of the world, and if we temporarily get more we Can 
 not keep it. Silver must therefore be remonetized, unless we 
 are to resort altogether to paper money . The country must have 
 money, and -there appears to be no alternative for quartz mills 
 except paper mills. This may he an unwelcome dilemma to the 
 national banks and the creditor classes in general, but if indus- 
 try is to be revived and maintained in this country it is a di- 
 lemma of which those classes must accept either the one horn 
 or the other. 
 
 If the Government must issue bonds— for which, in my opinion, 
 the.e is no necessity — why should it not take the bonds into its 
 own possession and deposit them in the Treasury of the United 
 States as security for Treasury notes to be issued by the Govern- 
 ment without expense to the people? In that case the Govern- 
 ment would have the advantage of saving the interest on the 
 bonds while they were locked up in the Treasury, which could not 
 be saved if the bon,ds were placed there as the property of the 
 banks. 
 
 We do not need to issue bonds for gold. We do not need to 
 sacriKce our people for gold. This country does not need to de- , 
 pend upon any other country for money. By reliance upon our- 
 selves, our own resources, and our own people, any development 
 that is necessary in our country will be made without difficulty. 
 We do not need to borrow from other countries for the purpose. 
 
 For, after all, what is it that is necessary for development? 
 Nothing but labor and the products of .labor. We have enough 
 men and enough material for all rational and natural develop- 
 ment. All that is necessary in addition is to have a well-regu- 
 lated system of money of our own. 
 
 HISTORICAL PABALIiEIiS. 
 
 I have referred to the effect which the demonetization of sil- 
 ver is destined to have upon the population of the mining States 
 of this country. The cunning, the cruelty, and the unwearying 
 vigilance of the creditor classes in adapting means to ends, and 
 in shaping events to fit their purposes, is well illustrated in the 
 genesis and progress of the movement for demonetization. It is 
 not, however, without historical parallel. 
 
 785 28 
 
434 
 
 We are told tliat tlie Emperor Nero, having himself set fire 
 to a portion of the city of Rome, turned the fury of the pop- 
 ulace against the Christians by ascribing the act to them; by 
 which means he justified their massacre. This cruel edict of the 
 Roman Emperor is to be outdone in cruelty by the edict to be pro- 
 nounced here. The bondholders and money-lenders of Europe 
 and their pliant agents in the United States, the national 
 banks, firstsecure the demonetization of silver, thus enormously 
 increasing the value of gold, and when as a natural consequence 
 gold appreciates in value, making the gold price of silver bullion 
 fall, they demand the destruction of the American silver miners, 
 and our President and lawmakers acquiesce, justifying the de- 
 cision by the fall in the gold price of silver bullion — a fall 
 which the creditors themselves have caused, though no silver 
 dollar has fallen by as much as the value of the one hundredth 
 part of a cent, but, on the contrary, as I have said, has, during 
 the late panic, been at a premium over gold! 
 
 However, the edict has gone forth. The vote soon to be taken in 
 this Chamber will give effect to the greatest and the saddest im- 
 molation of human beings which history has ever recorded. How 
 can American Senators, through whose veins there courses the 
 warm blood of a common race, consent to record so monstrous a 
 malediction against a million of their fellow-countrymen? 
 
 Of, what use to man is intellect, if he will not use it to analyze 
 and examine a question involving the- happiness of all his coun- 
 trymen — na,y, of the whole human race? Of what use is eon- 
 ecience, if it be overshadowed by cowardice? Among the gods 
 of the ancient Egyptians, one was preeminent for exacting sacri- 
 fices, not Of beasts, but of living human beings. This was Moloch. 
 It has been supposed he was dead, but that appears to be amisap- 
 prehension. Likethepoor, wehavehimalways with us,anditis 
 largely because of him that we have so many poor. The money- 
 lender, "like to Incarnate Moloch," demands as a living sacri- 
 fice a million of men, women, and children; and when the vic- 
 tims express a desire to appeal to the intelligence, the con- 
 science, and the votes of their countrymen, Moloch, the national 
 banker, declines to permit the appeal to be made. But in due 
 time the issue will be presented to the people, and the national 
 
 ',85 
 
435 
 
 banks will be unable to prevent it. Tbe arrogance of those in- 
 stitutions will be fittingly rebuked. 
 
 THE GOLD STANDARD MUST BE DBSTHOTED. 
 
 , It is related, Mr. jpresident, of Cato the Wise, that upon a visit 
 to Carthage, observing the haughty and intolerant disposition 
 of the Carthaginians toward the people of his own country, he 
 returned to his place in the senate of Rome, and ever afterwards 
 closed Ms speeches, upon no matter what subject, with the state- 
 ment, "Carthage must be destroyed." 
 
 This was because Cato knew that if Rome did not destroy 
 Carthage, Cjirthage would destroy Rome. If the people of this 
 country, Mr. President, do not destroy the gold standard, it will 
 destroy them. Notwithstanding the loud noises of a few news- 
 papers, the masses of the people of the* country see that the 
 adoption of that standard is incompatible with their prosperity. 
 It is a well-known fact that for several years every great organ- 
 ization of labor in this country, both of artisans and agricultur- 
 ists, has declared for the free coinage of silver. 
 
 In Congress aftet Congress, for many years, bills to efleotthat 
 object have b^en passed by the people's representatives, but 
 have been defeated by the Executive. The people may for a 
 time be defeated, but they will ultimately triumph, provided 
 they do nolj wait too long before engaging in the final struggle. 
 Each victory gained by the creditor classes— each successive fall 
 of prices of the products of labor from causes inhering in the 
 money system — will increase the power of the creditors to extort 
 and diminish the power of the people to resist the extortion. 
 With the establishment of the gold standard in this country, in- 
 dustry, with accelerated speed, will persist in the downward 
 trend already begun; and it is difScult to predict when, during 
 the descent, the people can find a level plane upon which to rally 
 their forces, face their opponents, and turn the tide of battle. 
 
 No matter how low may fall the prices of wheat, cotton, and 
 
 other basic Difoducts of industry, there will not be lacking sub- 
 
 • servient statisticians and superficial political economists to put 
 
 forth statements that this result is not from any increase in the 
 
 value of money, but for various other reasons. 
 
 From the fierce onslaughts made upon all who favor a just 
 
 785 1 
 
436 
 
 monetary standard— onslaughts that are no more sevsra amongr 
 the creditor classes of Great Britain than among the like classes 
 in the United States— it is evident that the people are to expect 
 no quarter, and that it will become their duty to adopt as a rally- 
 ing cry, " The gold standard must be destroyed." 
 
 THE "GBBAT" NATIOITS Off BUBOPB NOT COMPABABLI! IN TEUB GBEATIT^SS 
 WITH THE traiTED STATES. 
 
 Those who point to the greatness of European countries, arid 
 advise us to follow their example, forget the greatness of the 
 country of which they are citizens. Distance lends enchantment 
 to the view. When they say they want the "money of the 
 world," they mean the little world of Great Britain. They ig- 
 nore the far greater world of the United States. They fail to 
 note some facts to which I will invite their attention, a few of 
 which I find noted in an interesting work entitled Our Coun- 
 try, by Dr. Josiah Strong. 
 
 Our Republic would make sixty States each as large as Eng- 
 land and Wales combined; or thirty-one States as large as Italy, 
 or eighteen States each as large as Spain. Take five of the first- 
 class powers of Europe, namely, Great Britain, Germany, Aus- 
 tria, France, and Italy; to those add Spain, Portugal, Switzer- 
 land, Denmark, and Greece, weld them all into one mighty em- 
 pire, and you could lay it down in the United States a first time, 
 a second time, and a thied time, and then have room to spare. 
 
 Lay Texas alone on the face of Europe, and this giant, his head 
 resting on the mountains of Norway, one hajid covering London, 
 and the other Wai-saw. would stretch himself down over the 
 Kingdom of Denmark, thrpugh the empires of Germany and Aus- 
 tria, across Northern Italy, and dip his feet in the Mediterranean. 
 Dakota might be carved into a half dozen kingdoms as large as 
 Greece. Place the 70,000,000 inhabitants of the United States 
 all in Texas, and the population would not then be so dense as 
 that of Germany. Put them in Dakota, rfnd it would not be so 
 dense as that of England and Wales. 
 
 In all that constitutes the fundamental basis of the highest 
 development of a peojale, our soil and climate have been favored 
 by nature. We can produce everything necessary to the sustenance 
 and comfort of mankind. Even such articles as nature inhibits 
 
 786 . 
 
437 
 
 >in our country, no gold-standard cotmtry can supply to us. Sena- 
 tors should bear that fact in mind. Our own resources are equal 
 to everything except the products of distinctively tropical coun- 
 tries, and those are silver-standard countries. 
 
 Above allj'we have iron and coal in inexhaustible supply. 
 Iron is mined in twenty-three of our Staties. 
 
 In the work of storing away those elements — the twin bases 
 of enduring power — nature remembered the destiny to which 
 she had appointed this Republic, and gave it many times mora 
 than all the other countries of the world combined. 
 
 It was the discovery of coal and iron in adjacent fields that first 
 gave Great Britain the vantage ground in manuf aetures. We 
 have infinitely more coal and iron, and Great Britain has yielded 
 to us that vantage ground. The dominion of manufactures, 
 which th^ gold standard was expected to maintain for Great 
 Britain to the end of time, has been wrested from her. Our Re- 
 public is yet young. Our psople are alert, energetic, and aspir- 
 ing, and do not propose, after a century of independence, to pay 
 tribute to any foreign power— whether the attempt to collect 
 that tribute be by force of arms or by the subtle process of a 
 shrinking money standard. The world's scepter passed from 
 Persia to Greece, from Greece to Italy, from Italy, through in- 
 tervening states, to Great Britain, and from Great Britain it is 
 passing away; nay, in all that constitutes a dominating nation 
 it has already passed. 
 
 The usurers of that country have exploited their own producing 
 classes until, notwithstanding that millions of men are always 
 idle, there is no longer a possibility of profitably using money 
 by their employment. Leaving those millions of their own coun- 
 trymen to idleness, and to destruction — for idleness is the de- 
 struction of any people — these British usurers who, like Amer- 
 ican usurers, know not the name of patriotism— cast their looks 
 abroad, and, after having exploited India, and Egypt, and Ar- 
 gentina, and Australia, and wrought ruin and desolation wher- 
 ever they went — are now undertaking to exploit the people of 
 the United States. But they will find, Mr. President, that 
 while with the aid of thieir agents, the national banks, they may 
 have some slight temporary success, they will be doomed to 
 
 785 
 
4:38 
 
 fiventual disappointment. The people of this country will now 
 rouse themselves as they never have roused before They will 
 teach the creditor classes of Europe that the center of influence 
 has moved from their environment. 
 
 From the dawn of history power has been moving toward the 
 West, "asif guided," said DeTocqueville, " by the mighty hand 
 of God." Still "Westward the course of empire takes its way." 
 Here must it find pause. There is no farther West. Beyond us 
 is the unchanging and unchangeable Orient. 
 
 [At this point the honorable Senator yielded to Mr. Harris]. 
 
 Mr. JONES of Nevada. Mr. President, all countries of the 
 world except the United States are countries for the few. PriV' 
 ilege has been so- long installed among them — having its roots in 
 the barbaric ages of the past — that it may never come to an end. 
 With standing armies frowning upon liberty, and with the peo- 
 ple in practical servitude to the privileged classes, there would 
 seem, to be no outlook in that direction. The hope of all man- 
 kind therefore abides with this Republic. 
 
 For the people of this country to admit, after aU the splen- 
 did achievements of their history, that they are unable to 
 shape their financial policies for themselves without reliance 
 upon monarchical countries, would be to confess that republi- 
 canism is a ghastly failure; that as an instrument for the devel- 
 opment of progress and happiness among mankind "govern- 
 ment of the people, by the people," can not be compared with 
 government of the people by kings, emperors, or arbitrary presi- 
 dents; that laws passed by the representatives of a free people, 
 the result of their own intelligence and their own convictions, 
 without duress from any executive, whatever his title, can not 
 be compared in beneficence with laws passed by subservient law- 
 making bodies at the dictation of the executive. 
 
 The making of such a confession would be a slander upon self- 
 government and upon the people of the United States. 
 
 A. BHBINKING MONBT VOLUME PKODtTOBS BETBOGBEBSION 01' OIVHiIZATION. 
 
 The gold standard, Mr. President, is the standard of privilege. 
 It is a standard of injustice. It can not stand, it liberty is to 
 stand. The proofs of its injustice are to be found by anyone 
 who, with an impartial mind and without prejudice, examine* 
 
439 
 
 the eTidenoe. But so powerful are the influences hehind it th:iL 
 every effort is exerted to make it appear that what are in reality 
 glaring defects are evidences of a higher civilization — as the 
 Chinese justify the torture of their children's feet by claiming 
 that what we call a deformity is in reality a higher development 
 of the line of beauty. They regard the standard of the shoe as 
 of greater importance than the standard of ihe foot. This is not 
 civilization; it is barbarism. But in the midst of whcit even we 
 term civilization a shrinking volume of money produce- , on the 
 industrial and social body, distortions infinitely more cruel and 
 repulsive. 
 
 Without a sufBcient volume of money the steam engine, the 
 railroad, the telegraph, and the daily newspaper are in vain. 
 Without a sufficient volume of money every advance in the arts, 
 every addition to human knowledge but adds to the wealth of 
 those already wealthy and to the poverty of those ali-eady poor. 
 
 History, we are told, repeats itself. Like causes produce like 
 effects, whether upon men or nations. If the gold standard, be- 
 cause it is the standard of contraction, is to be universiliy estab- 
 lished throughout the Weslern world, the civilization of the Oc- 
 cident will not only be brought to a halt, but will experience a 
 retrograde movement. The records show such a movement to 
 have taken place upon the closing of the ancient mines of Spain 
 and Greece, resulting in the destruction of the great civilization 
 of Rome, ushering in the Dark Ages, and dooming mankind to 
 a thousand years of misery, ignorance, and superstition. Inas- 
 much as all the annual yield of gold is substantially absorbed in 
 the arts, the vote now to be cast in this Chamber practically 
 closes for all the purposes of money all the gold and silver mines 
 of the worla. A shrinking money volume is the greatest agency 
 known to man for the concentration and diminution of wealth 
 and for the increase and distribution of poverty. 
 
 Money is indispensable to the fust proprietary distribution of 
 wealth. It is as necessary for that purpose as roads or railway 
 cars are for its physical distribution. 
 
 The evils arising from an unjust distribution of wealth become 
 more palpable, and, to a free people, more intolerable as knowl- 
 edge Becomes more widely diffused. The higher becomes the 
 
440 
 
 intalligence of a people the keener become the pinchingsof pov- 
 erty and the discontent with injustice. To suppose, as many do, 
 that poverty is a necessary concomitant of an advancing civiiizar 
 tion is to deny the wisdom which ordained, the universe. It is 
 as absurd as to suppose that the slavery of some is a necessary 
 concomitant of the freedom of others. 
 
 The evils of an unjust distribution of wealth are not evils in- 
 hering in progress, but tendencies which, under the operation 
 of a just money system, would be arrested, and which, if sooi.ty 
 is not to bs condemned to retrogression, must be arrested. They 
 are not evils imposed by natural law, but are brought about by 
 violations of natural law. They are evils that do not cure them- 
 selves, and unless .the cause be removed, must grow greater and 
 greater. Under the gold standard, or underashrinking volume 
 of any other form of money, the more ingenious and skillful be- 
 come the masses of the people, the greater becomes the power 
 and wealth of the few. 
 
 A MOST SEBIODS FACT ON WHICH TO POKDER. 
 
 The world has never had the opportunity of realizing the 
 blessings that would come with a properly regulated volume of 
 money, and has only twice known a sufHcient volume of metallic 
 fnoney. Taking even both metals, with the exception of two 
 very short lustrums in history, all periods of recorded time have 
 been periods of monetary contraction. To this statement of ir- 
 refragable truth r invite the serious and most earnest thought 
 of this Senate and of the American people. I assert, without fear 
 of successful contradiction, that with the exception of those two 
 brief periods, the metallic monetary supply of the world has, 
 throughout all history, been insufficient to meet the growing 
 demands of the people. The first of these gleams of light came 
 upon the discovery of the American continent, not by reason of 
 that discovery itself, but by reason of the greater discovery 
 which it made possible, namely, the discovery of the great silver 
 mines of Potosi. The second occasion was half a century ago, 
 upon the discovery of the gold minesof California and Australia. 
 
 The demonetization of silver concurrently with the falling off 
 in the supply of gold — a demonetization secured in their own 
 interest by the creditor classes of the world — arrested the prog- 
 
441 
 
 ress of the most marvelous movement for the enrichment and 
 enfranchisement of mankind that had ever been known. It out 
 off the world from receiving the full benefit of the yield of sil- 
 ver, which, as if arranged by a special providence, came to sup- 
 plement and reinforce the dying energies of the gold supply. 
 
 In a civilization such as that of the present day, a proper vol- 
 ume of money is as necessary to the freedom of a people as is the 
 ballot. 
 
 THB ADVOCATES OT THE GOLD STANDARD DISTRUST THE PEOPLE OF THE 
 tlNITED STATES. 
 
 Without financial independence political independence is but 
 an empty name. In this Chamber we sound the praises of Liberty. 
 On the Dome of the Capitol we set up her statue. But we fear to 
 trust her. The advocates of the gold standard dare not submit 
 this great question to tne enlightened judgment of the voters 
 of the United States. They know they would be overwhelm- 
 ingly defeated. They Have not seen Liberty in all her grandeur. 
 They have seen her through a glass darkly. The beauteous 
 features and benign countenance of the Goddess of the Republic 
 have been obscured from their sight. 
 
 Bui the plain people know and recognize the genius of Free- 
 dom. They trust her. None recognize better than they do 
 that it is only under the segis of Liberty that they can prosper. 
 They will see that the Republic take no harm. ' 
 
 THE ON WARD MARCH OP THE BEPUBIiIO MUST NOT BE IMPEDED. 
 
 This is the only country in the world in which the masses of 
 
 the people have any chance to improve their condition. Well 
 
 has Emerson said: 
 
 We live lu a new and exceptional age. America is another name for Op- 
 portunity. Our whole history appears like a last effort of the Divine Provi- 
 dence in behalf of the human race. 
 
 This grand opportunity of which Emerson speaks is the very 
 thing of which the masses of the people are now to be deprived. 
 This opportunity means opportunity for advancement — ^for the 
 physical and mental development of man — for the widening of 
 his social life, the strengthening of his affections, the lifting up 
 of his aspirations. It means the progress of the race up to that 
 high plane of intellectual life in which the physical and the 
 
 785 
 
442 
 
 spiritual merge into equal and coiirdinate dominion. The basia 
 of this opportunity is, and always must be be, industrial pros- 
 perity. 
 
 The opportunity to whicli this measure is to give rise is the 
 opportunity of the foreign and domestic creditor to take from 
 the producers of the Unilied States a portion of that just reward 
 to which they are entitled for their-labor. It is the opportunity 
 to those creditors to get a bushel of wheat and a pound of cot- 
 ton — the result of American labor — for a constantly diminish- 
 ing return. It is the opportunity for which the foreign and 
 domestic money-lenders have been looking with longing eyes 
 for twenty years. At last they see the fruition of their dear- 
 est hopes. The deed which in 1873 could be effected only 
 by stealth, and as a consequence largely of the ignorance of 
 niembers of both Houses of Congress as to the contents of a bill 
 which they were enacting into a law, can now be effected in open 
 day and with full knowledge of consequences. That which for 
 twenty years has been characterized by Senators as a crime com- 
 mitted in the dark, can now be effected by the votes of Senators 
 themselves in the light of a blazing publicity, as an act of the 
 highest virtue and patriotism! 
 
 The opportunity which this bill creates is the opportunity to 
 the creditors abroad ahd at home to filch from labor, by a subtlB 
 and cunning device, not palpable to the laborer himseU, a por- 
 tion of his fair reward; and thus to turn the blessings of material 
 progress into curses. By its effect in producing poverty among 
 agriculturists and idleness among artisans it will, if not speedily 
 corrected by the people, be responsible for more misery than 
 ■ any measure ever enacted into law by the representatives of a free 
 people. 
 
 To depress by artificial means the prices of the products of 
 labor, from which prices alone can men receive the reward of 
 their toil — what is it but to turn men out of their homes in every 
 State of the Union— to turn the mortgage of the farmer and 
 planter into a deed for the mortgagee? What is it but by means 
 of hunger to goad men to crime, to rob women of the grace and 
 glory of a perfect womanhood? What is it but to pinch with cold 
 
 785 
 
443 
 
 and hunger and premature care the otherwise happy morning ol 
 childhood? 
 
 But, Mr. President, let no man suppose that the iniquitous 
 measure which is now foreordained to pass this Chamber and 
 become a law is to remain long without correction. The peo- 
 ple of the United States will never copsent that the money vol- 
 ume of the country shall again be contracted, as it has hereto- 
 fore been contracted, in the interest of sordid greed, for I main- 
 tain that the gold standard, as it is understood to-day, is the 
 child of greed and avarice and the prolific parent of panic and 
 of involuntary idleness. 
 
 The people understand this question much better than the advo- 
 cates of the gold standard suppose they do. They will, by an over- 
 whelming majority, rebuke the high-handed, unlawful, and un- 
 constitutional interference of the Chief Magistrate with the rights 
 {and especially the right of conscience)/)f the members of the law- 
 making branch of the Government. They will overturn the tables 
 of the money-changers and expel them from the temple. They 
 will, if not now, at a time which I believe to be not far distant, 
 embody in the money system of the Republic those fundamental 
 principles of equity and justice by which opportunity will be 
 withdrawn from the usurer and restored to the plain citizenship 
 of the Republic. Then the king, which is the people, will come 
 to his own again. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 In my humble opinion, Mr. President, words are inadequte to 
 express the glories of the achievement of man under the stimulus 
 and enjoyment of a perfect system of money— a system in which 
 the quantity of money, the number of monetary units, should 
 always and unfailingly keep pace with demahd. Imagine a world 
 in which industry ceases to be a game of chance, in which the 
 honors and prizes of life are for the producers and the contempt 
 for the idlers, in which projectors of enterprises and men of far- 
 seeing vision' may with safety enter into contracts requiriijg 
 years for their completion, with the knowledge that the unit of 
 money will not change a hair's bread tn in its measuring cap.icity 
 between the day of making the contract and the day of it^ final 
 completion, a world in which the products of industry are jusUy 
 
444 
 
 distributed between employer and employed, a world from which 
 involuntary idleness is banished, and in which hunger is un- 
 known! 
 
 What an enormous stimulus to intellectual and moral growth — 
 to the development and unfolding of the spiritual nature pt man, 
 would be a civilization in which no willing worker should ever 
 be idle, in which all would be assured, by uninterrupted employ- 
 ment, of the comforts of life, and in which hunger and cold would 
 not benumb alike the body and the soul. We may not see this 
 immediately, Mr. President, but with the growth of intelligence 
 and strength among the masses of the people, and in spite of the 
 opposition and cupidity of the creditor classes, the result will 
 be achieved by an intelligent monetary system scientifically ad- 
 justed in quantity to the increase of population and demand. 
 The flow of time in its irresistible current is carrying us rapidly 
 to the goal. It is for want of such a system that the destiny of 
 man is retarded, his control over nature belated, the fruition of 
 his hopes postponed. 
 
 The days of tlie nations tiear no trace 
 
 Of all the sunshine so far toretold; 
 The cannon speaks in the teacher's placej 
 
 The age is weary with work and sola . 
 And nigh hopes wither and inemorles wauoi 
 
 On hearths and altars the fires are dead. 
 But the brave faith hath not lived In vain; 
 
 And this Is all that the watcher said. 
 983 
 
M5 
 
 APPENDIX A. 
 
 CHECKS, DRAFTS, AND BIXjLS OF EXCHANGE— DOES THEIR DSE BENDER 
 UNNECESSARY AN ADDITION TO O^B VOLUME OF MONEY? 
 
 [Extract from the address of Hon. John P. Jones, a delegate from the 
 United States, delivered at the International Monetary Conference, at Brus- 
 sels, Belgium, December 13, 1893. Prom the ofacial proceedings of the Con- 
 ference.] 
 
 In every discussion of the money question the advocates of the 
 gold standard insist that, owing to the use made of checks, drjfts, 
 and bills of exchange, no increase of money, whether of gold or 
 silver, is necessary. As proof of this they cite the statistics of 
 the London and New York clearing houses, which, as they claim, 
 show that at least in England and the United States 95 per cent 
 of business is transacted *ith those devices, apd only 5 per cent 
 with money. 
 
 Even were this true, neither checks nor clearing houses are 
 new devices. They have long been in full force and operation. 
 The proportion of checks to money is not increasing. It is the 
 same that it has been for many years in the past. 
 
 There is ample demonstration of this, although the proofs 
 are conveniently ignored by those who find it necessary to sus- 
 tain the gold standard without reference lo its failure to pro- 
 mote the prosperity of the masses of mankind. 
 
 In 1866 Mr. Babbage, in a paper read before the Statistical 
 Society of London, showed that so early as 1839 the amount of 
 cash that passed daily in the exchanges was frequently less than 
 4 per cent. In 1865 Sir John Lubbock demonstrated that money 
 (including bank notes and coin) formed only 2.8 per cent of the 
 transactions of the bank of which he is a partner. 
 
 Mr. John B. Martin, a London banker, submitted to the same 
 society Bgures drawn from the official tables showing that the 
 London bankers in 1880 made exactly the same percentage of 
 their payments in coin that they had made in 1864. 
 
 In an address delivered before the London Institute of Bank- 
 ers, April 18, 1883, Mr. Goschen said: 
 
 As regards England, then. I do not see that there has been any economy In 
 the use of gold to counterbalance the increasing demand of the population; 
 nor are we aware, those of us that have been able to look into the matter, 
 that in France, or Germany, or elsewhere, the economies have been such as 
 to counterbalance the iicreaslng demand for gold. 
 785 
 
44G 
 
 And he added: 
 
 To sum up tUa part of the question, wishing to jnake every allowance for 
 the fact that as little gold Is used as It Is possible to use, and that every 
 economylultsusels studied by bankers In England and elsewhere, I cer- 
 tainly do share the opinion that the economies effected do not counterbal- 
 ance the strain put upon gold either by the Increased demand of the popular 
 tlon lor pocket money or for the Uciuldatlng of the enormously Increased 
 balance of transaotloijs both of this country and of others. 
 
 Mr. Giffen; in the Jour'aal of the London Statistical Society 
 
 for March, 1879, presents ,a paper in which he states: 
 
 The United Kingdom was very fully " banked " before 1860, the growth of 
 banks and banking business having since been no more than In proportion 
 to the Increasing wealth of the community. 
 
 Not merely Great Britain, but every other country is "banked" 
 to the extent that it has been found profitable to bank it. The 
 world can trust the intelligence and the acumen of the money- 
 lending classes to avail themselves of every available opportu- 
 nity in which a good return for money may be expected. Banks 
 are started, not with the altruistic view of benefitting the com- 
 munity, but the bankers. 
 
 So checks were invented, not as an aid to the currency or to 
 the public, but as an advantage to the banks. So long as their 
 use is for the benefi,t of the bankers they will continue to be, as 
 they have hitherto been, fully availed of. 
 
 But, instead of checks and clearing houses being independent 
 of money, the whole structure of credit, of which they are the 
 instruments, is erected upon money as upon a necessary founda- 
 tion. The limit of their use in any country is determined by the 
 volume of money in circulation in that country. "Without money 
 there would be no checks or clearing houses; and whatever pro- 
 portion or percentage such expedients bear to the volume of 
 money, that proportion or percentage can not be augmented ex- 
 cept through a prior augmentation in the money volume. 
 
 All banks and banking devices grow out of credit, and credit 
 is and always must be proportioned and coSrdinated to the volume 
 of money. It does not exist by and of itself; it presupposes the 
 payment of money, and is based on such payment. 
 
 Checks, drafts, and bills of exchange, deriving all their elfi- 
 •cacy at any given period from the proportion, whatever it may 
 be, which they then bear to the volume of available money in 
 
447 
 
 the community, can only increase as that volume increases; they 
 must inevitably diminish in the full proportion in which that 
 volume diminishes. 
 
 If this be not so, then we are at a loss to understand the re- 
 cent embarrassment of a celebrated banking firm of Great Brit- 
 ain, and must express our astonishment at the terror which the 
 condition of that firm inspired in every bankings ^nd business 
 house in the Kingdom. It can not be doubted that every device 
 known to the most experienced banker was within the knowl- 
 edge and at the command of this firm — a house that for more 
 than a century had stood in the front rank of the banking and 
 business community of Great Britain. Before succumbing to 
 the inevitable, they doubtless availed themselves of every pqs- 
 ■sible aid to be found in checks, drafts, promissory notes, and 
 bills of exchange. What was it that rendered futile all further 
 resortto those devices? What was it that called the halt? What 
 but the knowledge that the limit had been reached at which 
 the amount of these instruments of credit bore relation to 
 money? 
 
 Their difficulty was that they did not have sufficient money 
 on which to base further checks and drafts. If it be true that 
 but one- twentieth part of all payments consists of cash, it would 
 appear that they did not have the prescribed one twentieth on 
 which to base any further superstructure of checks, drafts, and 
 bills of exchange. If money is so trifling a matter in the con- 
 duct of business, this was a good opportunity to prove it. 
 
 Notwithstanding the spectacle of impotence exhibited in this 
 instance by checks, drafts, and bills of exchange, we continue to 
 be informed that money is but the " small change of commerce,'' 
 and that owing to the extensive use of instruments of credit, 
 only the merest trifle of actual money is necessary for the tran- 
 saction of business. 
 
 Whatever this so-called "trifle" may be, it is the basis of all 
 credits. Even were it admitted that nineteen- twentieths of the 
 world's business is done with instruments of credit and only one- 
 twentieth with money, this would but furnish an irrefutable 
 argument why the " one-twentieth," which is to bear up the en- 
 
448 
 
 tire structure of credit, should at all times be absolutely suffi- 
 cient for the needs of industry. 
 
 Monev is indispensable to the existence of all checks, drafts, 
 and bills of exchange: it could exist without checks or drafts; it 
 existed for thousands of years before they were invented. The^, 
 on the other.hand, could not exist without money. All banking 
 and banking exped.ients are founded on money and predicate 1 on 
 the concurrent existence of money. Every check and' draft calls 
 for a specific sum in money; it is an order for a fixed number of 
 dollars or pounds which the signer of the check or draft has lo 
 his credit. Tie checks and drafts of thosa who have no money 
 are not recpgnized or honored by banks. 
 
 , Lord' Overstone, himself a banker, and probably in his life- 
 time the most influential and authoritative of the supporters of 
 the single gold standard, when testifying before the special com- 
 mittee of Parliament in 1840, was examined in regard to this 
 question of the relation of the volume of money to credit. He 
 was asked the question: 
 
 Is the amount ol bills of exchange dependent in some degree on the quan- 
 tity of money? i 
 
 To this Lord Overstone replied: 
 
 I apprehend that it is dependent in a very great degree. I consider the 
 money of the country to be the foundation and the bills of exchange to be 
 the superstructure raised upon it. 
 
 With reference to the point of the special dependence of bills 
 of exchange upon the increase or decrease of the money volume. 
 Lord Overstone said: 
 
 I conceive that the bills of exchange are an important form of banking 
 operations, and the circulation of the oountrj' is the money in which these 
 operations are to be adjusted; any contraction of tfie circulation of the country 
 will, of course, act upon credit. Bills of exchange being an important form 
 of credit will feel the effect of that contraction in a very powerful degre . 
 
 It is well known that the profits of bankers are derived from 
 the utilization of credit, but it will surely not be contended that 
 the amount of credit thus utilized is independent of the ahiount 
 of money at the command and disposal of the bankers. If the 
 total amount of money placed on deposit with banlcs be reduced 
 by sny certain percentage, will any one contend that a propor- 
 tionate reduction will not take place in the percentage of credits 
 superimposed upon that total deposit? JDo we not know that 
 
449 
 
 under such conditions tlie practice is that even a greater per- 
 centage of credit is withdrawn? 
 
 Bimetallists have never denied that checks and drafts form a 
 component part of the system of payments; they simply insist 
 that checks and drafts are already utilized to the full. No advo- 
 cate of the gold standard will claim that checks can be drawn 
 tfithout limit, or that bankers will pay them if so drawn. 
 
 What, tlien, is it that fixes the limit beyond which checks can 
 not be drawn? Manifestly the proportion of money which experi- 
 ence has shown to he indispensable as a basis of credit. We are not 
 informed of any new device by which the volume of money can 
 be economized to any greater extent than at present. Yet un- 
 der present conditions the prices of all commodities are falling 
 and industrial conditions are yearly becoming less and less sat- 
 isfactory. Some provision must be made for the future. 
 
 It is impossible that that provision c m be any larger propor- 
 tion than at present of checks and bills of exchange. It miist 
 be more money. Every dollar of bank deposits is already used, 
 and will continue to be uspd even to the verge of danger 
 for the profit and advantage of the banks. Every expedient 
 which the ingenuity of man has been able to devise has already 
 been resorted to in order to utilize to the utmost possible limit' 
 every penny of deposits. How then ci},n relief be had — how can 
 further credit be obtained? How shall the situation be redressed 
 and industry be relieved? Above all, how shall employers of 
 laborers be enabled to put idle men to work? Only by so in- 
 creasing the volume of money as that the prices of the products 
 of labor may be held at a steady level. 
 
 This it is impossible to do if gold alone is to be relied on. 
 SilvePmust be restored to the position it has occupied throughr 
 out history before relief can be found for present conditions. 
 
 But even assuming that the checks drawn exactly balanced 
 each other and were settled by making entries in the books of 
 the banks, it would not then be true that 95 per cent of the , 
 world's business is conducted by means of checks and drafts. , 
 
 A check performs its function in one act. Having performed 
 that one act it dies. Having paid the man in whose favor it was 
 
 785 29 
 
450 
 
 drawn it is of no further use. It effects but one exchange, while 
 each dollar of money may effect 10,000 exchanges. 
 
 Of the $2,000,000,000 said to form the entire money volume of 
 the United States, it we leave out of account the amount in the 
 Treasury and the amount held as reserves in the banks, we have 
 a round sum of about $1,000,000,000 as the amount of money in 
 active circulation and in the pockets of the people. 
 
 If every dollar of this money changes hands only once a week 
 it gives a total exchange for the year of $52,000,000,000, an 
 amount nearly equal to the total exchanges of the clearing 
 houses, which for the last year amounted to $57,000,000,000. If, 
 however,, we suppose that in the course of retail trade through - 
 out- the country each dollar changes hands twice a week, which 
 is not an unreasonable hypothesis, it would give a total amount 
 of $104,000,000,000 a year of money duty as against a check duty 
 of but $57,000,000,000. 
 
 The prosperity of business depends on the demand for com- 
 modities that are the product of labor. Demand for commodi- 
 ties depends in turn on the extent to which the masses of the 
 people have money with which to make purchases, and the 
 money of the masses — the money of nine- tenths of the people — 
 is derived from wages which are, and always must be, paid in 
 cash, not checks. 
 
 When the prices of commodities decline, it is impossible to 
 suppose that checks and drafts can be issued to the same amount 
 as before for the same extent of business. It is only as the busi- 
 ness done represents an increased number of money units that 
 checks and drafts can increase in amount, and the increase in 
 the use of those instruments nrill next ye.ir bear the same pro 
 portion to the business then done as their amount this year 
 bears to the amount of business now done. 
 
 Tae advocates of bimetallism do not underestimate the utility 
 and efficiency of cheeks, drafts, and bills of exchange; but the 
 friends of the gold standard preposterously overestimate them. 
 
 If the present ruinous process of falling prices is to be ar- 
 rested, a larger supply of money must be provided with which 
 to do business. Where is this money to come from, unless the 
 immemorial lunction of silver be restored to it? 
 
 785 
 
451 
 
 APPENDIX B. 
 
 Index nuniberi ihowUig the downward trend of wholesale prieei, not tn one elate 
 of eommoditiee merely, but in all clateee of commodities from the y^ar in which 
 silver was demonetized. 
 
 Year. 
 
 Vegeta- 
 ble food 
 
 Animal 
 food 
 
 Sugar, 
 coffee, 
 
 Total 
 
 Mine- 
 
 Tex- 
 
 Sundry 
 mate- 
 rials. 
 
 Total 
 
 mate- 
 rials. 
 
 Orand 
 
 (wheat, 
 etc.). 
 
 (meat, 
 etc.). 
 
 and 
 tea. 
 
 food. 
 
 rals. 
 
 tUes. 
 
 total. 
 
 1873.. 
 
 106 
 
 109 
 
 106 
 
 107 
 
 141 
 
 103 
 
 106 
 
 114 
 
 Ill 
 
 1874.. 
 
 105 
 
 103 
 
 105 
 
 104 
 
 116 
 
 92 
 
 96 
 
 100 
 
 102 
 
 1875.. 
 
 93 
 
 108 
 
 100 
 
 100 
 
 101 
 
 88 
 
 92 
 
 93 
 
 96 
 
 1876.. 
 
 92 
 
 108 
 
 98 
 
 99 
 
 90 
 
 85 
 
 95 
 
 SI 
 
 95 
 
 18T7.. 
 
 100 
 
 101 
 
 103 
 
 101 
 
 84 
 
 85 
 
 94 
 
 89 
 
 94 
 
 1878.. 
 
 95 
 
 101 
 
 90 
 
 96 
 
 74 
 
 78 
 
 88 
 
 81 
 
 87 
 
 1879.. 
 
 87 
 
 94 
 
 87 
 
 90 
 
 73 
 
 74 
 
 85 
 
 78 
 
 83 
 
 1880.. 
 
 89 
 
 101 
 
 88 
 
 94 
 
 79 
 
 81 
 
 89 
 
 84 
 
 88 
 
 1881.. 
 
 84 
 
 101 
 
 84 
 
 91 
 
 77 
 
 77 
 
 86 
 
 80 
 
 85 
 
 1882.. 
 
 84 
 
 104 
 
 76 
 
 89 
 
 79 
 
 73 
 
 85 
 
 80 
 
 84 
 
 1883.. 
 
 82 
 
 103 
 
 77 
 
 89 
 
 76 
 
 70 
 
 84 
 
 77 
 
 82 
 
 1884.. 
 
 71 
 
 97 
 
 63 
 
 / 79 
 
 68 
 
 68 
 
 81 
 
 73 
 
 76 
 
 1885.. 
 
 68 
 
 88 
 
 63 
 
 74 
 
 66 
 
 65 
 
 76 
 
 70 
 
 72 
 
 1886.. 
 
 65 
 
 St 
 
 60 
 
 72 
 
 67 
 
 63 
 
 69 
 
 e? 
 
 69 
 
 1887.. 
 
 64 
 
 79 
 
 67 
 
 70 
 
 69 
 
 65 
 
 e? 
 
 67 
 
 68. 
 
 1888.. 
 
 m 
 
 82 
 
 65 
 
 72 
 
 78 
 
 64 
 
 67 
 
 69 
 
 70 
 
 1889.. 
 
 65 
 
 86 
 
 75 
 
 75 
 
 75 
 
 70 
 
 68 
 
 70 
 
 72 
 
 1890.. 
 
 65 
 
 82 
 
 70 
 
 73 
 
 80 
 
 66 
 
 69 
 
 71 
 
 73 
 
 1891.. 
 
 IS 
 
 81 
 
 71 
 
 77 
 
 76 
 
 59 
 
 69 
 
 68 
 
 72 
 
 Note.— The foregoing are the figures of Mr. Augustus Sauerbeck, pnl)- 
 llshed by the Eoyai Statistical Society of London. The average prices of 
 ten years (1868 to 1877) are taken as 100, and upon that basis the figures given 
 above for the separate years result, showing a persistent decline of prices 
 In every department of Industry, 
 783 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Act " to strengthen the public credit" g^uaranteed payment of 
 bonds not in gold but in " coin," 251. 
 
 Act "to authorize the refunding of the national debt'Ufixed 
 the standard of the coin in which bonds should be paid,-252. 
 
 Agriculture in the United States; effects of East Indian compe- 
 tition on, 380. — Protection afforded by unrestricted coinage of 
 silver, 399. — Value of an acre's product in United States, 377. 
 
 Agriculturists, American; their interest in the remonetization ' 
 of silver, 374. 
 
 Alisqn, Sir Archibald; effects of increasing supply of money 
 upon working classes, 332. — Effect upon landowr .n.jand others 
 in Great Britain of the adoption of the gold standard, 229. — 
 The two greatest events in the history of mankind brought 
 about, oiie by a contraction and the other by an expansion of 
 the money- volume, 116. — Some consequences of a decreasing 
 value in the monetary unit, 331. 
 
 American Cyclop sdia of Commerce; value of money depends on 
 quantity, 176. 
 
 Appreciation of gold, 59, 206, 213. 
 
 Aristotle on the f )inotion of money, 46. 
 
 Arnold, Sir Edwin; description of artisan life in England, 231. 
 
 Arts, gold used in, 25. 
 
 Attorney-General; opinion as to proposed use of word " gold " 
 in United States bonds, 257. 
 
 Authority has lost much of its influence; truth greater than 
 "authority," ■«. 
 
 Automatic system of money-supply, 51. — Creditors, for their own 
 advantage, interfere with its natural operation, 102. 
 
 Bagehot, Walter; fall in gold price of silver a bounty to Indian 
 producers of wheat and cotton, 393. 
 
 Bailey, on the nature, of value, 8. 
 
 Bain, F. W.; influence of cost of production on value dt money, 
 22. 
 
 Balance of trade, 280. — How met, when adverse, without gold, 
 
 ' 304, 315. — If permanently against us to the extent of even 
 $50,000,000 annually, would be but the two-thousandth part of 
 our entire business, 299. 
 
 785 453 
 
454 
 
 Bank "money " does not appear to need " intrinsic" value, 31. — 
 " Elastic " in the wrong direction, 168. . 
 
 Bank of England: increase of its rate of discount is in effect a 
 premium on gold, 283. 
 
 Bank of England notes; why acceptable outside of Great Britain, 
 309. 
 
 Banks, national, and the panic of 1893, 427.— Determined to se- 
 cure a monopoly of the issue of money, 432. 
 
 Barbour, Sir David; bullion derives its value from money, not 
 money from bullion, 28. 
 
 "Best'' money; what it is, 355, 358, — " Best money and plenty of 
 it;'' absurdity of the term, 361. 
 
 Bond buyers do not buy until they have carefully scrutinized 
 the conditions of payment, 260. 
 
 Bondholders of United States; are their claims just? 250. — Ef- 
 forts to protect them, 273. — Solicitude felt for them, 270, 273. — 
 " Honest " dollar for them; " dishonest" dollar for the work- 
 ingmen, 273. — Their claims contrasted with those of the sil- 
 ver miners, 368. — The degree of sacrifice with which the bond- 
 holders parted in paying for the bonds contrasted with the 
 degree of sacrifice with which the people have parted in pay- 
 ing them, 268. 
 
 Bonds, gilt-edged, rise in value while other property is falling, 
 151,152,156. 
 
 Bonds, United States Government; payable according to law in 
 either gold or silver coin, 251.— Senator Stanley Matthews' 
 resolution reafBrming this fact passed in 1878 in both Houses 
 of Congress, 262. — If the law does not compel payment in gold, 
 does equity demand such payment? 267. — Does the honor of 
 the Government require it/ 257.— -Bond issues discussed, 425. — 
 If bond s must be issued as " security " for money, why not de^ 
 posit them in the Treasury as security for Treasury notes to 
 be issued by the Government direct, thus saving to the Treas- 
 ury and the taxpayers the interest on the bonds? 433. — In- 
 dorsement on Government bonds as to standard of payment, 
 252. — Total amount sold before refunding act and amount of 
 money received from sales, 267. 
 
 Booth, Gen. William; description of England's " Submerged 
 Tenth," 236. 
 
 Bramweir, Lord; gold money does not derive its value from bul- 
 lion, 28. 
 
 Browning, Mrs. E. B.; appeal for the children, 241. 
 
 Bullion, demand for, compared with that for coin, 49, 112. — Value 
 of, derived from the money-use of the metals, not from their 
 commodity-use; in other wo.':d3, the value of money does not 
 depend on bullion, 29. 
 
455 
 
 Burke, Edmund, on the power of capital, 225. 
 
 Business men suffer from increasing value of the dollar, 154. 
 
 Cairnes, Prof. J. E.; Great Britain's interest-receipts from for- 
 eign investments, 227. — Want of parity of moneys no obstacle to 
 foreign trade, 307. — Effect of increase in money-volume to make 
 a larger proportionate distribution of money among the work- 
 ing classes, especially, 343. 
 
 California discoveries; social and political discontent dispelled 
 by the increase of money resulting from, 120. 
 
 Capital and labor;, the conflict between them not injurious, pro- 
 vided the dollar is not increasing in value, 158. — The equit- 
 able adjustment of their correlative demands impossible under 
 contraction or under undue expansion of the money volume, 159. 
 
 Capital, foreign; its investment in the United States not a bene- 
 fit but an injury to our people, 415. 
 
 Capital, idle, should be rendered as unfruitful as idle labor, 159. 
 
 Capital; its best protection to be found in justice to producerB, 
 410. 
 
 Capital separated from labor by an increasing value in the dol- 
 lar, 159. 
 
 Capitalists can not afford, while prices are falling, to invest in 
 enterprises that will employ labor — hence the supreme injury 
 to society caused by an increasing value in the monetary unit, 
 160, 
 
 Cato the Wise; declaration that Carthage must be destroyed, 435. 
 
 Checks, drafts, tind bills of exchange — Does thei)' use render 
 unnecessary an addition to the volume of money? 445. 
 
 Chevalier, M.; efforts on behalf of French bondholders, 271. — 
 His statement of the classes of persons affected by a fall in 
 the value of money, 329. 
 
 Child labor in the home of the gold standard, 239. 
 
 Chinese civilization; the standard of the shoe more important 
 than the standard of the foot; a parallel for the gold standard, 
 439. 
 
 Civilization; a shrinking money-volume produces retrogression 
 of, 438. 
 
 Cleveland, President; his idea of a sound and stable currency, 
 401. 
 
 Coin, demand for, compared with that for bullion, 49, 112. 
 
 Commerce and production ot United States, total annual, 298. 
 
 Competition for money determines value of money, 96. 
 
 Conflicts of peace, no less than those of war, demand the " best" 
 money, 356 
 
 Contraction of money-volume gives profit to owners of idle 
 money, 160.^ 
 
 Contraction after the civil war, 163. 
 
 Contracts; suppose they were made in terms, not of money but 
 of wheat, 317, 353. 
 
 78i , 
 
456 
 
 " Corners " in wheat less injurious than " corners " in money, 
 100. 
 
 Cost of production, theory of, not applicable to mon^y, 15. 
 
 Cost of production of gold; letter from Capt. (afterward General) 
 W. T. Sherman, 19. 
 
 Cost of production of silver; statisticians take into account only 
 successful mines, 19, 143. 
 
 Cotton, fall in price of, 381. — Such fall a " premium" on gold 
 (though not so designated), which the planter is compelled to 
 pay, 275. 
 
 Cotton-growing States; annual loss by reason of fall in gold price 
 of silver bullion, 382. 
 
 Cotton-planters of United States; effects on, of Indian competi- 
 tion, 380. 
 
 Cotton, producers of; their interest in the remonetization of 
 silver, 374. 
 
 Cotton; quantity which would have paid the bonds at the time 
 of their purchase contrasted with quantity paid in money- 
 equivalent, 269. 
 
 Courtney, Leonard, member of Royal Commission on Gold and 
 Silver; his admission of appreciation of gold, 216. 
 
 Credit dependent on quantity of money available for liquida- 
 tion, 199. 
 
 Creditor classes set the example of abandoning the automatic 
 system, 102. 
 
 Crime diminished by increase of money-volume, 332. 
 
 Dark Ages, the falling off of the yield of the precious metals 
 from the mines a potent factor in producing the collapse of 
 civilization, 119. 
 
 Debt the foundation of modern industrial life, 58. 
 
 Debt, national; number of owners; Great Britain and France, 
 233. 
 
 Debt-paying power of all our people reduced when large sums of 
 our money go abroad, 279. 
 
 Debts, enormous furtive addition to the burden of, by demon- 
 etization of silver, 140. 
 
 Debtor countries, like the United States,, suffer most from de- 
 monetization of silver, 188. 
 
 Decrease of quantity of money, effects of, 116, 153. 
 
 De Oolange, Prof.; value of money depends on quantity, 176. 
 
 De Laveleye, Prof. Emile; effect of gold standard on Ireland, 
 246. 
 
 " Deluge " of silver, fear of, 62, 74, 395.. 
 
 Demand for money is not for any special kind, but for any kind 
 that 13 legal tender, 96. 
 
 785 
 
457 
 
 Demand for money, as correlated to aupplyj determines value of 
 mottey, 96. 
 
 De Toequeville; power moving West, 438. 
 
 Development of men begins only when they are certain of a 
 livelihood, 348. 
 
 Disaster, industrial and commercial, always results from falling 
 prices of commodities and property; that is to say, from rising 
 value of money, 405. 
 
 Discontent, universal social and political; dispelled by increase 
 of metallic money, 120. , 
 
 Distress in the United Stales; when it shall have persisted suf- 
 ficiently far, the national banks will demand the issue of bonds 
 in order that the issue of bank notes may be increased, 432. 
 
 Dollar; when is it honest? 349. — The demand that one must be 
 kept as " good" as another, 352. — The "Sixty-cent dollar," 359. 
 
 Dollars appear to fall to 60 cents, but never rise beyond a hun- 
 dred!— 359. 
 
 " Economist," London; admission of great pressure of demand 
 for gold with diminution of supply; hence appreciation of 
 value, 215. 
 
 Economists, political; misdirection of their efforts, 347. 
 
 Emerson, Balph Waldo; America another name for Opportu- 
 nity, 441. 
 
 Employment, uninterrupted; importance of, 348. 
 
 European nioney systems no criteria for the United States, 319. 
 
 Executive department; its pressure on the law-making power, 
 407. 
 
 Farmer, the; fall of prices of his products constitutes, so far as 
 he is concerned, a premium on gold, though not so designated, 
 275. 
 
 Farmers and the crisis of 1893; editorial from the New York 
 Sun, 375. — Effects of Indian competition, 380. 
 
 Fawcett, Prof. Henry; purchasing power the only value of 
 money, 98. — Increased demand for mOney without increased 
 supply creates a fall of general prices, 181. 
 
 " Fiat " money, 102. 
 
 Fichte, value of money depends upon quantity, 175. 
 
 " Flood " of silver, 62, 74, 395. 
 
 pood, cheap; considerations affecting its relation to the pros- 
 perity of all the people, 378. ' 
 
 Foreign investor preferred to the home investor by the gold- 
 standard press and the national bankers, 417. 
 
 Foreign payments, how made, 277. — How could they be made iu 
 case we had no gold? 304. 
 
 785 
 
458 
 
 Foreign trade; fallacy of basing monetary systems on, 314. — 
 Want of parity of moneys no obstacle to, 307. 
 
 Foreign trade of United States; insignificant amount of, com- 
 pared with domestic trade, 298. 
 
 France, why its mints were closed to 6ilyer/66, 103. — The exam- 
 ple of, in dealing with bondholders, 271.— In case of unre- 
 stricted coinage here, would its silver come to the United 
 States? 131. • 
 
 French revolution occurred after a period of falling prices, 406. 
 
 Frewen. Mr. Moreton, cost of production of wheat and cotton in 
 India, 380. 
 
 Function of money, importance of, 41. 
 
 Gibbon, comparison of money with letters, 46. 
 
 Gide, Prof., value of gold not derived from bullion, 29. 
 
 Gi^en, Robert, statistician to London Board of Trade; admis- 
 sions that fall of prices was due to pressure of demand for gold, 
 210. — That improved methods of production were a feature of 
 the twenty years before as well as of those after 1873, 218. 
 
 Gladstone, W. E., England the great creditor of the countriesof 
 the world, 226. 
 
 Gold; its value not derived from bullion — not from commodity- 
 use, but from money-use, 27. — If demonetized; what would be its 
 value? 26. — The test of utility in warfare, 324, 354. — Has it ap- 
 preciated? 59, 206, 292. — Predictions of rise in its value, 208. — 
 Not stable in value, 402. — Opinion of Prof. Jevons that owing 
 to want of stability of value it should be discarded as a standard 
 for deferred payments, 200, 213. — Similar opinion of Prof. 
 Alfred Marshall, 202. — Increasing pressure of demand for, 
 causing fall of general prices, 210. — Suppose our stock should 
 go? 320. — Retained in the United States at the expense of our 
 producers, 398. — Not a measure of /value in silver-using coun- 
 tries, 397.^Does the honor of the United States require that 
 our Government bonds be paid with? 255. — Use of the word, in 
 United States Government bonds, forbidden by the Attorney- 
 General, 257. — Enormous increase of demand for, since silver 
 was demonetized, 208. 
 
 Gold standard; effects of adoption of, on producing masses of 
 Great Britain, 229. — Its advocates distrust the people of the 
 United States, 441.— The supreme test of the, 324, 354.— Must 
 be destroyed, 435. 
 
 Gold-standard press; the class of men who lead it, 412. 
 
 Gold supply; nine-tenths obtained from "placers," which are 
 now exhaiTsted, 19. 
 
 Goschen, Mr. ; opinion that fall of prices is due to increasing de- 
 mand tor gold, 213. 
 
 785 
 
459 
 
 Government, origin ot, in physical force, 41.*— 'Work of, performed 
 by the ballot better than by the bludgeon, 42. 
 
 Graham, Sir James; effect on people of Great Britain of adoption 
 of gold standard, 230. — Value of money is in the inverse ratio 
 of its quantity, 176. 
 
 Great Britain; concentration of wealth in, 282. — Destitution 
 among its people, 287. — Falling off in exports of cotton yarns 
 to the Orient, 388. — Injuries inflicted on its people by adop- 
 tion of gold standard, 228. — Interest received from foreign 
 investments, 227. — Is it a rich nation? 221. — Its achievements 
 due to its artisans, 339. — Its advantage as the great creditor 
 country of the world, 227.— Long-standing determination to 
 exploit the industries of the United States, 223.— Ought the 
 United States to follow the example of that country as to a 
 monetary standard? 220. 
 
 " Great " nations, so-called, of Europe not comparable in true 
 greatness with the United States, 436. 
 
 Greenbacks; are money, 16. — Service of, during the war, 324. — 
 The burning up of, after the war, 165. 
 
 Greenbacks and gold during the war; relative fluctuations no 
 correct measure of the so-called depreciation of the green- 
 back, 299. 
 
 Grey, the Earl; inconvertible paper money will be at a premium 
 over gold if issues be sufficiently limited, 181. 
 
 "Hard times'' a synonym for falling prices, 147. 
 ' Historical parallels, 433. 
 
 Hobbes on the function of money, 45. 
 
 "Honest" dollar— what is it? 349.— The demand for; a Pharisa- 
 ical claim of money-lenders, 352. 
 
 " Honest" dollar for the bondholder; " dishonest" dollar for the 
 workingman, 273. • 
 
 Horner, chairman of bullion committee, regarded wheat as the 
 best standard of value, 204. 
 
 Horses, white and yellow; silver and gold compared with, 56. 
 
 Hume, David: value qf monetary unit determined by the num- 
 ber of units, 175. 
 
 Huskisson, William; value of money depends on quantity, 176. 
 
 Idleness; the argument that men prefer it to lg,bor, 345. 
 
 Idleness, compulsory; disastrous effects of, 343. — The bane of 
 labor, 338. — Extent of, in Great Britain, 338. — In United States, 
 344. 
 
 Idleness of large numbers of workers, when compulsory, an evi- 
 dence of defect in the money syatem, 347. 
 
 "Image and.superscription " — whose? 13. 
 
460 
 
 Importers, how coul^ they pay their foreign debts in case we 
 had no gold? 277, 280, 304. 
 
 Importers should not, by shipping out the money of the country, 
 reduce the debt-paying power of all our people, 316. 
 
 Improved methods of production, a characteristic of all periods 
 in history, 217. — Have not lessened cost of production of agri- 
 cultural products by as much as 5 per cent since 1875, 377. 
 
 Increase of money supply, effects of, 116. 
 
 Independence, Webster's definition of it, 244. 
 
 India, the effect of its competition on our farmers and cotton- 
 planters, 380. — Prices have not fallen in, 391". — Kapid develop- 
 ment of, since demonetization of silver, 71, 387. 
 
 Indian's rifle, the source of its value, 42. 
 
 Insufficiency of money, effects of, upon the interests of the work- 
 ing classes, 326. 
 
 Interest, rates of; dependent upon amount of profit which can 
 be made by the use of money, 125. — Why are they falling? 
 151. — Always low when mo&ey-volume is shrinking, 124, 148. — 
 Fall of, an unfailing indication of rising value in money, 60 
 292. 
 
 Interest on Government securities, decrease of, not a sign that 
 the Government's credit is increasing, 153. — Prophecy made 
 in 1876 of further fall in, 149. 
 
 International money, disadvantages of, 294, 303. 
 
 Ireland; ruinous effect of the gold standard on, 246. — Great im- 
 provement in its condition when money-volume was inoreas-* 
 ing, 332. 
 
 Irredeemable paper money may be maintained at par with gold 
 or carried above par by limitation of quantity^a demonstrar 
 tion of the truth of the quantitative theory, 180. 
 
 Jevons, Prof. Stanley, definition of value, 8. — "No duoh thing 
 as intrinsic value," 12. — Influence of cost of production on 
 value of money, 21. — Gold not a stable money, 402. — Predic- 
 tion as early as 1868 of rise in the value of gold, in case silver 
 should be demonetized, 209. — Recommgnds discarding gold as 
 a permanent standard of value, and adopting " tabular "stand- 
 ■ard instead, 200,213. — Happy effects of increasing money- 
 volume, first yi arresting fall of prices, next in raising prices, 
 219.^Improved methods of production a characteristic no less 
 of the period before than of the period after demonetization 
 of silver, 219. — Inconvertible paper money, if limited in quan- 
 tity, will have same value as gold money, dollar for dollar, 
 demonstrating truth of qi;p,ntitative theory-, 177. 
 
 Justinian, pandects of, on the quantitative theory of money, 175. 
 
 Key by which to solve all monetary problems, 173. 
 
 785 
 
461 
 
 Labor and capital, the conflict between them not injurious when 
 the dollar is not increasing in value, 158. 
 
 Labor, British Royal Commission on; testimony before, 333. 
 
 Laborers; effects of shrinking money-volume upon, 156. — Their 
 struggle in Great Britain in the effort to maintain wages, 337. 
 
 Land as a "basis " for the issuance of money; the theory of, er- 
 roneous, 195. ; , 
 
 Land; concentration of ownership of, in Great Brita,jn, 233. 
 
 Landowners; effect on those of Great Britain of the adoption ol 
 gold standard, 299. 
 
 Latin Union, agreement of, as to redemption of silver coins in 
 gold, 133. 
 
 Law can not make v^lue, but demand can, and law can create 
 demand, 114. 
 
 Legal-tender function, the life of money and the all-sufQcient ' 
 guaranty of the money- value, 112. 
 
 Letters, invention of; money compared with, 46. 
 
 Locke, John; considered wheat the best standard of value, 204. — , 
 Value of money derived not from substanpe, but from quan- 
 tity, 175. 
 
 Liberty, if ever lost in the United States, will be by the arbi- 
 trary assumption of all governmental functions by the Execu- 
 tive, 407. 
 
 Losses suffered by people of wheat and cotton growing States 
 through fall in gold price of silver, 382. 
 
 Macaulay's comment upon the facility of change of the Roman 
 republic to aOoe-Man Go%-ernipent, 372. 
 
 Macleod, H. p.; alteration in the quantity of money alters the 
 value of money, 402. — On intrinsic value, 12. — Value of gold 
 derived from money-use, not from commodity -use, 27. 
 
 Marshall, Prof. Alfred, of Cambridge University, England, rec- 
 ommends discarding gold as a standard of deferred- payments, 
 owing to its instability of value, 203. — Idleness of workingmen 
 caused by changes in the value of money, 202. 
 
 Materials used at different epochs as money, 36. 
 
 Matthews, Senator Stanley, resolution of January, 1878, reafBrm- 
 ing that United States bonds are paya,ble in either gold or sil- 
 ver, 261. 
 
 McCulloch, J.R.; irredeemable papSr notes, if legal tender, and 
 sufficiently limited in quantity, may maintain a par with gold, 
 or be raised to a premium over it, illustrating truth of quan- 
 titative theory of money, 178. 
 
 Merchants "kept under water " by having to pay undue toll to 
 creditors through increasing value in the dollar, 203. 
 
 Metals, precious; commodity-demand for, merged in the demand 
 for money, 39. 
 fss 
 
462 
 
 Mexican dollars, value of,, 53. 
 
 Mill, John Stuart;, definition of value, 9.— On Intrinsic value, 12.— 
 Influence of cost of production on value of money, 21. — ^Pur- 
 oliasing' power the only value of money, 98. — ^Value of money 
 varies inversely as its quantity, 175. — Even in case of metallic 
 money, the immediate agency in determining its value is not 
 the piaterial, but the quantity, 176.— Want of parity of moneys 
 does not affect foreign trade, 308. 
 
 Mill, James, value of monetary unit depends on number of units, 
 176. 
 
 Mining, a lottery, 19. 
 
 Missionary work, the best in the world, that which keeps men 
 employed, 348. 
 
 Moloch's exaction of living human beings, as sacrifices, 434. 
 
 Monetary Commission of United States; series of extracts from 
 report of, 117 et seq. ' 
 
 Monetary oontraxstion a characteristic of almost the entire pe- 
 riod of history, 440. 
 
 Monetary systems and discussions should not be based on foreign 
 trade, which is a bagatelle in comparison with domestic trade, 
 314 
 
 Money; "best," what it is, 355, 358. — Coinage or isstie of, a gov- 
 ernmental function, 312. — Compared with letters, 46. — Deriva- 
 tion and significance of the word, 93. — Eflfect of increase of, 
 to call idle men to labor, 342. — Effect of a unit of one material 
 precisely the same as that of the unit of another material, 
 363. — Eflfect of increase and decrease contrasted, 116. — Either, 
 in shrinking or unduly increasing volume separates capital 
 from labor, 159. — Essentially a function raliher than a mar 
 terial, 40.— Evolution from barter, 34.— "Fiat," 102.— Good, 
 needed in peace as well as in war, 356. — Increase of, prosperity 
 caused by, 332. — Insufficiency of, bileful effects upon the in- 
 terests of the working classes, 326. — International, disadvan- 
 tages of, 294. — Is it the commodity equivalent of the commodi- 
 ties for which it is exchanged? 241— Is it ' ' sound," " stable," and 
 ' ' honest " only when its changes of value are giving creditors a 
 clandestine and undetected advantage ovor debtors? 403.— Its 
 principal function to keep all the people at work, 347. — Mate- 
 rials used as, 35.— May be'eomposed of anything capable of di- 
 vision andi identification, 94. — Misconceptions regarding, 5. — 
 Metallic; enormous accumulation of the metals necessary to fit 
 them for use as money, 30.— There has never been too much me- 
 tallic, 187.— Mustours be as "good" as the money of any other 
 country? 301.— National, advantages of, 29&, 419.— Not cheap 
 TBhen Interest i^ low, 150.— Should be adjusted toour domestic 
 
 786 
 
,iG3 
 
 trade, our entire foreign trade not being one-flf tietU part of 
 our total trade, and our imports not the one-hundredtli part, 
 298. — Quantitative tlieory of, 173.— Redeemability of, 102. — 
 The only thing the demand for which can be foretold, 114. — 
 The only thing in the world for which thei% is no substitute, 
 99. — Relation of its value to cost of production of material of 
 which composed, 15. — Value of, determined not by cost of pro- _ 
 duction of material of which composed before being made into 
 money but by cost of obtaining it a/ier being made into money, 
 16. — Value of unit determinable by scientific regulation of 
 quantity. 111. — ^Valua of, how determined, 93. — Value of the 
 unit should be unchanging, 94. — When increasing in value, 
 fattens on the general disaster, 158. — When is it honest? 349. — 
 As indispensable to the societary existence of men as air to 
 their itdividual existence, 108. — Operates on industry through 
 the medium of prices, 117. 
 
 Nation, what constitutes aft 222. 
 
 National money, advantages of, 295, 302. — The only money that 
 fights for liberty, 355. 
 
 National banks, their relation to the panic of 1893, 427, — Deter- 
 mined to secure a monopoly of the issue of money, 432. 
 
 Nero's massacre of the Christians, 434. 
 
 Nevada, the noble motto on great seal of, 367. 
 
 Newspaper proprietors who lead the gold-standard press, 412. ' 
 
 Newspapers of New York and the stock market, 363. 
 
 Nicholson, Prof. J. Shield, of Edinburgh; all economists of re- 
 pute are advocates of q uantitative theory of money, 182. — A rise 
 of silver bullion would raise the price of wheat, 395. 
 
 Nicholson, N., A.; value of money depends on quantity, 181. 
 
 Northen, Governor, President Cleveland's letter to, 401. 
 
 Opportunity, America another name for, 441. 
 
 Option of United States Government to pay bonds in either gold 
 or silver, 26C. — Suppose it were to deliver wheat or barley in- 
 stead of gold or silver? 272. 
 
 Overstone, Lord; value ot money depends on quantity, 178. 
 
 Panic of 1893; relation of the national banks to the, 427.— Rela- 
 tion of the foreign investor to the, 415.— ^Purchases of silver 
 not responsible for, 145. 
 
 Parity, alleged pledge of, 63. 
 
 Paulus, Julius, Roman Jurisconsult; value of money derived hot 
 from substance but from quantity, 175. 
 
 Pauperism in London, 235. 
 
 Payments, deferred; effects of changes in value of money on, 57. 
 
 Peel, Sir Robert, on the power of capital, 225. 
 
 785 
 
464, 
 
 Per capita circulation; steadiness of, only important because of 
 time contracts, 124. — Unreliability of reports regarding, 171. 
 
 Perry, Prof. A. L.; definition of value, 9. — On intrinsic value, 
 12.— Quantity of money should increase as enterprises and ex- 
 changes multiply', 182. — Irredeemable paper money carefully 
 limited in quantity may not only be kept at par with gold but 
 carried above par, demonstrating truth of quantitative theory, 
 182. 
 
 Platforms of Bepublican and Democratic national conventions 
 of 1892; silver planks of, 422. 
 
 Political economy, termed " The dismal science," 173. 
 
 Population of countries demandirig gold in 1870 and in 1893 con- 
 trasted, 208. 
 
 Porter, Robert P , description of artisan life in Great Britain, 
 234. , V 
 
 Predictions as to appreciation of gold, 208. 
 
 Premium; under unrestricted coinage or continued purchases of 
 silver would gold go to a? 274.^No possibility of a, until quan-^ 
 tity of all forms of money in circulation sufficient to put our 
 prices above international range, 281. — The fall of prices of 
 commodities equivalent to a, 275, 281. 
 
 President of the United States, his position on silver, 247, 401. 
 
 Price the barometer that measures prosperity, 152. 
 
 Prices, fall of; increasing demand for gold tends to ,produc6 
 a, 210, 213. — Whether due to appreciation of gold or to causes 
 affecting commodities, 60. — Always greater than the degree of 
 mbnetary contraction from which the fall results, 165,167. — 
 Tends to destroy diversification of industries, 155. — Causes 
 hoarding of money, ,154. — Operates as a premium on gold 
 which all producers are compelled to pay, 275. — Effect enor- 
 mously more injurious than that of a mere premium on gold, 
 283.— When persistent, destroys the hopes of the producers of 
 wealth, 152. 
 
 Prices, commercial; happy effects of steadiness of, 122. — Effects 
 on, of increase and of decrease of money- volume, 219. — Have not 
 fallen in India, 391. — Money operates upon industry through 
 the medium of, 117. — Rise of, preceded by call of idle men to 
 labor, 342.— The fallacy that they can rise without a resulting 
 rise of wages, 346. — The objection not to low, per se, but to 
 the persistence of the powering process, 57. 
 
 Production and commerce, total annual, of United States, 298. 
 
 Production, inlproved methods of, characteristic of all periods 
 of history since the application of steam to the purposes of in- 
 dustry, 217. 
 
 Production, self-interest the inducement to, 157. 
 
465 
 
 Progress in ail departments of thought except that of money, 
 108. 
 
 Prosperity, universal, resulting from increase of metallic money,. 
 332. 
 
 Protection for agriculture, 399. 
 
 Purchasing power; the only value which money has, 98. — Money 
 of highest, 361. 
 
 Purchasing power of the agricultural communityf the pros- 
 perity of the entire country largely dependent on, 376. 
 
 "Quality " of money, does the argument for quantity ignore it? 
 191. — Is altogether the result of quantity and created by quan- 
 tity alone, 191. 
 
 Quantitative theory of money, the key to all monetary probleftis, 
 173. — Does not mean that all countries should have the same 
 per capita, 194. 
 
 Quantity of money; happy effects of proper increase ofi 120. — 
 Harmful efEeots of undue increase of, 118. — Baleful effects of de- 
 crease of, 153. — As to regulation of, 184. — The blight known as 
 the Dark Ages caused by the decrease of, 119. — If diminished 
 in proportion to demand, prices of commodities must fall, 
 126. — The value of the monetary unit determinable by scien- 
 tific regulation of. 111. 
 
 Railroad companies; how could they pay their gold bonds in case 
 we had no gold? 304. 
 
 Railroad stockholders suffer from increasing value of the dollar, 
 155. 
 
 Redeemability of money, 102. 
 
 Republican party; position of, with reference to the money 
 question, 310. 
 
 Ricardo, David; value of money depends on quantity, not on the 
 material oh which the stamp is placed, 13, 176. — A well-regu- 
 lated but irredeemable paper currency will maintain full gold 
 value, a demonstration of the truth of the quantitative theory 
 of money, 177, 179. — Not necessary that such money should 
 be payable in specie to secure its value equal to specie; only 
 necessary that it be sufficiently limited in quantity, 180. — If 
 the quantity of money be diminished, the portion remaining 
 acquires increased value, a further demonstration of the truth 
 of the quantitative theory, 402. 
 
 Rogers, Prof. Thorold, of Oxford University, England; increas- 
 ing demand for gold compels a fall of prices of commodities, 
 214. — Advantages of Great Britain asa creditor country, 227. — 
 Value of gold derived from money-use, not commodity-use, 28. 
 788 — 30 
 
466 
 
 ^ome, Republic of; preserved its liberties until the senate be- 
 came a mere instrument for recording the will of the chief 
 magistrate, 372. ^ 
 
 Rupee, " perverse," 72. 
 
 Buskin, John; value of gold not derived from bullion— not from 
 oommodity-use, but from money-use, 29. — The highest wealth 
 "full-breathed, bright-eyed, and happy-hearted human crea- 
 tures," 349. 
 
 Scrope; proposes tabular standard of value, 199. 
 
 Seyd, Ernest, remarkably accurate prediction as to consequences 
 of demonetization of silver, 209. 
 
 Senior, Prof. N. W.; Oxford University, England; "The mine 
 worked by England is the general market of the world!" 226. 
 
 Sherman, Senator John; bonds of United States not originally 
 payable in gold, 251. — Letter to Attorney-General regarding 
 use of word "gold" in United States bonds, 257.— Recommen- 
 dation in 1877 that provision be made for payment of bonds in 
 gold not acted upon by Congress, 259. — Opinion in 1878 that 
 resumption could be more readily maintained upon a double 
 standard than upon a single gold standard, 265. 
 
 Sherman, Capt. (afterward General) W. T.; letter from, regard- 
 ing cost of production of gold, 20. 
 
 Sherman law, so-called; the people have not demanded its re- 
 peal, 421. — If the policy of repeal be correct, why have we been 
 coining or issuing money in the past? 424. 
 
 Sidgwick, Prof. H.; influence of cost of production on value of 
 money, 21. 
 
 Value of money, simply purchasing power, 98. — Depends on 
 quantity, 176. — No substitute for money, 101. 
 
 Silver basis, is there danger of a? 62,74,127. — Suppose the United 
 States should adopt a? 302. — Would it place us alongside India? 
 322.— In the panic of 1893, did the people fear a? 430. 
 
 Silver; the fall in the gold price of, a bounty to East Indian pro- 
 ducers of wheat and cotton, to the disadvantage of the pro- 
 ducers of the United States, 392. — A rise in the gold price of, 
 would raise the price of wheat, 395. — Price per ounce since 1872, 
 381. — As to cost of production of, 142. — A product of the United 
 States, 365.— EflB.ciency in warfare, 324. — ^Isit "cheap " money? 
 358. —Fallacy of the idea that it is the credit of the Govern- 
 ment that keeps it at a parity with gold , 192. — We are indebted 
 to it for the performance of all the functions of money in this 
 country, gold being either hoarded or held in banks, 323. — 
 The argument that its unrestricted coinage will not put 
 money into the pockets of the people, 327. — Its full utilization 
 as money indispensable to the resuscitation of iadustry, 189. 
 
 785 
 
467 
 
 Silver miners; their arduous calling^, 3c6. — Have never asked 
 any favors of the Government, 370. — Were warranted by the 
 Constitution of the United States and the experience of all 
 time in expecting that silver would always continue to be 
 money, 369. — A contrast of their claims with those of the 
 bondholders, 368. 
 
 Smith, Adam; gold not a stable money, 402. 
 
 Southern States without money at the close of the war, 164. 
 
 Speeches, reading of; a word in reply to objections urged 
 against, 92. 
 
 Standards, monetary; if a people are fit for seU-government, a 
 question of such superlative importance as a change in their 
 monetary standard should be submitted squarely to them for 
 their decision, 372. 
 
 Standard, gold-monometallic; are our people ready to "train 
 down " to it? 107. — Recommendation of Profs. Jevons and 
 Marshall that it be abandoned because of its injustice, 200, 202. 
 
 Standard of payment for bonds of United States, 252. 
 
 Standard of value; can it be more than one material? 196. — Mis- 
 application of the term, 197. — Not the material of money, but 
 the number of units of money constitute the standard, 198. — 
 The "Tabular," 199. 
 
 Statisticians, in discussing wages, take no note of idle laborers, 
 343. 
 
 Strikes in Europe, 334. — In the United States, 335. 
 
 Sun-spots; panics in Great Britain attributed to, 230. 
 
 Tabular standard, 199. , 
 
 Taxpayers; no consideration for the, 270. 
 
 Time-contracts, the basis of modern industry, 58. 
 
 Token coins, their efficiency as money, 14. 
 
 Tooke (History of Prices), as to improvements in methods of 
 production, 219. 
 
 Torrens, value of money depends on quantity, 176. 
 
 Trade unions; effects of, in maintaining wages, 332. 
 
 Treasury notes; fallacy of the idea that it is the credit of the 
 Government that keeps them at a parity with gold, 193. — In 
 no way responsible for the panic of 1893, 284. — Did the people 
 distrust them or fear depreciation of their value? 429, 431. — In- 
 stead of losing value, have increased in value month by month 
 since 1890, 105. 
 
 Truth greater than authority, 33. 
 
 United States; all articles of prime necessity to our people pro- 
 duced in the, 322. — Should not be dependent for money upon 
 the idlers who are known as " Our foreign investors," 419. — The 
 position of, with reference to need of money, 309. 
 
468 
 
 Onited States Constitution; checks and balances of Government 
 provided by, 407. 
 
 United States Government should not permit foreign govern- 
 ments to be partners with itself in the matter of its money, 
 316. 
 
 Unit of value, stability of, as important as stability of power in 
 the mathematical unit — the figure 1, 110. 
 
 Value; what it is, 8.— Correct definition of, 9. — Not objective, 
 hence not. intrinsic, 10. — Exceeding importance of stability in 
 the unit of, 94, 108, 110. — Stability not to be found in gold 
 money, 402. 
 
 Value, " intrinsic"; purely imaginary, 7. — Nosuch thingas,10. — 
 The idea of, a survival from dim antiquity, 32. 
 
 Value of money; meaning of the term, 95. — Nothing but pur- 
 chasing power, 98, 192. — How determined, 95, 113. — Classes 
 that would be affected by stopping the rise in, 329. — When 
 rising, relegates men to idleness, 348. — Some of the conse- 
 quences of a decrease of, 331. — Effects upon deferred pay- 
 ments of changes in, 57. — In United States, should not be per- 
 mitted to depend on action of other governments, 313. 
 
 Value; standards of^ 196. 
 
 Wages of labor; references to Senate report regarding, 106, 169. — 
 Effects of trade unions in maintaining, 332. — The struggle to 
 maintain, hopeless, in the face of decreasing volume of money, 
 337. — In the Southern States; reduced relatively and abso- 
 lutely, 288. — Great rise of, after California discoveries, as re- 
 sult of increased money-volume, 332. — The fallacy that prices 
 of commodities can rise without resulting in an increase of, 
 346. 
 
 Walker, Prof. P. A.; definition of value, 9. — Characterization of 
 money, 15. — Greenbacks are money, 16. — Influence of (Jost of 
 production on value of money, 21. — How money measures 
 values, 22. — Value of money merely purchasing power, 98. — 
 Gold not a stable money, 402. — Wheat a better standard of 
 value for adjustment of long-term contracts than gold, 204. — 
 All the work of money in Europe being thrown on gold, inev- 
 itable that prices of commodities should fall; in other words, 
 that the value of gold should rise, 214. 
 
 Walsh, Archbishop; effect of gold standard on Ireland, 246. 
 
 War, as a test of the efficiency of the gold standard, 354. 
 
 Waterloo, battle of; still a source of profit to the creditors, 241. 
 
 Wealth; concentration of, in Great Britain, 232. 
 
 Weights and scales; importance of having correct, 318. 
 
469 
 
 Wheat; considerations affecting the price of, and the relation 
 of such price to the prosperity of the entire population, 378. — 
 As a standard of value for deferred payments, better than gold, 
 204.— Fall of price of, 381.— Quantity which would have paid 
 the bonds at the time of their purchase contrasted with quan- 
 tity paid in money-equivalent, 268. — Rise of price resulting 
 from increase of money-volume, 332. — Interest of the produ- 
 cers of, in the remonetization of silver, 374. 
 
 Wheat-growing States; annual loss by reason of fall in gold price 
 of silver bullion, 382. 
 
 Work, the dynamo of civilization, 348. 
 
 Working classes; baleful effects of an insufSciency of money 
 upon the interests of the, 326. — Can not be benefited by an in- 
 creasing value in the dollar, 330. — Relegated to idleness in enor- 
 mous numbers by such increase, 156, 202. — First (and what more 
 beneficent?) effect of increasing money-volume to call idle men 
 to labor, 342. — The argument that they are better off now than 
 formerly, 340. — With a proper money-volume, would keep 
 much more money in their pockets, 341. — Mock fears that they 
 may be paid in depreciated silver, 328. 
 
 World; had we a silver basis should we separate ourselves from 
 the rest of the? 322. 
 
 Young, John P.; want of parity of moneys no obstacle to foreign 
 trade, 30& 
 
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