Are You Ready for the Qnestioa ?
FACTS AND FEATURES BEARING UPON
THE MONETARY ISSUE.
by
JUNIUS ROGERS,
Author or Labor and Wealth," " Youno America," and "The
Genius of Monet Getting."
The distinguished mark of greatness is to assert itself in the midst
of adversity.—Macaulay.
CHICAGO :
VOGT & CIIRISTLEY.
1895.
Im C.
Ana«y
'S 7^7^
COPYRIWUT. 1895,
Dr
VoCT & CETRTRTLET.
Roifbt, L»0mkrd ft Ge., PrinUn, Ohioaf*
PREFACE.
IMPELLED by an earnest desire to encourage
thrift and econonay by helping those who need
help and have a will to help themselves, and to
inspire study of the problems touching upon our
present social and industrial condition, to the end
that our common well-being may be promoted, we
suggest in a few plain statements, some of the
causes of our hard times, and propose some prac¬
tical remedies.
We are encouraged in this effort by the solicita¬
tions of many persons who have been pleased to
commend former efforts in this behalf, as well as
from a modest assurance which comes from an
experience of forty years in the study of and par¬
ticipation in the financial affairs of our country.
We most hopefully dedicate the following pages
to the young men enjoying citizenship under the
broad aegis of " Old Glory."
THE AUTHOR.
Chicago, June 15, 1895.
.'43,
5" 5-5 1
AUF, YOU READY FOI! THE QUESTIONt
CHAPTER I.
PEKLIMINAKY STATEMENT.
IN ORDER to properly understand and consider
our personal interests and public responsibili¬
ties ; and to rightly appreciate the questions now
engaging the attention of our citizens, it is necessary
to lay out the work ; to prepare the materials ; to
inspect, and then to use them.
We do not propose to build for others. "We give
our best materials ; proclaim their several qualities,
and tender them to the reader. He must arrange
the parts and then bring them together to compose
the structure he would fashion. If he builds wisely,
he will adorn the heritage into which he was born,
or to which he has come by virtue of the gracious
laws that bring him into adoption.
Under several heads or chapters we present the
facts and features underlying our financial system
and economy, leaving it with the reader to deduce
his conclusions. The intention being only to fur¬
nish assistance and inspire study to the end that the
greatest good may be accomplished.
5
6
AKE YOU EEÄDY FOR THE QUESTION ?
THE LINES DRAWN.
At the present time the ranks are forming prin¬
cipally on four lines.
I. Those who insist that gold alone shall be the
standard money of redemption. These hold that
gold is best adapted to our convenience and necessi¬
ties and yet allow that a small portion of silver may
be used as subsidiary or token money, regardless as
to the bullion value, be it more or less, in the silver
coins so used ; such coins being reducible into gold
by redemption.
II. Those who favor the use of both silver and
gold in full extent, calling themselves " Bi-metal-
ists." They desire the service of both metals for
coinage, but, holding that as silver has fallen in its
market value as bullion, insist that the silver dollar
shall be made heavier, so that the metal in the white
dollar shall in its material, be equal to the gold dol¬
lar tested by current bullion values.
III. Those who would use both silver and gold
at an established ratio as between the metals, to be
fíxed by an international convention, yet to be called.
These holding that only by decree of such conven¬
tion duly conflrmed by the respective governments,
could a ratio be maintained in the commerce of the
world.
IV. Those who advocate the full use of silver as
well as of gold on the ratio of 16 to 1—the ratio of
TKELIMINARY STATEMENT.
7
our present dollar—the historic ratio, which covers
practically all the U. S. dollars in existence. They
hold that this ratio is satisfactory, safe and equitable,
and while the difference in bullion value is admitted,
they insist that the discrepancy is occasioned by
unfriendly attacks upon silver, and particularly, that
the privilege of using the mint by our citizens for
the coinage of silver has been cut off ; but, that
with this privilege restored, silver would speedily
find its old-time bullion value on this ratio with
gold ; it being denied by them that the discrepancy
in value was so much a matter of fall in the price
of silver as it has been in the rise of gold conse¬
quent upon the intense demand for it through dis¬
criminations against silver.
INVESTIGATION ENCOURAGED.
The very numerous and diverse theories as to
money, its uses, its material substance or want of
substance, its volume, and its relation to other
things, commodities and interests, public and pri¬
vate, are somewhat confusing to the average citizen
who may have paid but little attention to the gen¬
eral principles underlying our financial system ; but
'it is a very simple matter in its practical aspects ;
and any person of ordinary intelligence and educa¬
tion is capable readily of understanding all that is
involved and has bearing upon his private interests
and which calls into exercise his duties as a citizen
in relation to the matter.
CHAPTER II.
PROPOSITIONS IN MONETARY ECONOMY.
a^^IIE bearings of the money question upon our
- individual and public interests are herein¬
after stated in the form of facts as to what has
been, and wliat now is; with some reasonable
deductions from experimental knowledge as to
wliat will be in the future, and the proper course
to pursue in conserving our well being. But be¬
fore asking consideration of these facts we deem
it proper to lay down certain propositions for the
direction of the reader in the study of the ques¬
tions before us.
The commonly accepted theory of money in our
domestic, commercial and financial economy, is that
money is simply an interposing commodity, had
and used in our hand-to-hand transactions, and has
only an official and incidentally a serviceable rela¬
tion to other commodities, rather than a positive
and arbitrary relation ; that its principal use is for
the most part to efíect exchanges in commercial
intercourse, as between individuals, or, on a larger
scale, in settlement of balances at the clearing
houses, and still larger in payment of balances as
the result of international commerce. And it is
8
PROPOSITIONS IN MONETARY ECONOMY. 9
held that a volume sufficient to do this work is the
amount required.
We are assured by educated and profound stu¬
dents of political economy, that the first and para¬
mount need for money is as a standard of value.
A high standard is called for, with emphasis upon
the qualifying adjective. Prof. Sumner says:
" Specie is more and more important every year as
a measure of value, and less and less important as a
medium of exchange." Prof. Perry says : " What
is wanted is a standard of value, and not strictly a
circulating medium."
What these political economists uniformly call
for is "A high standard to measure by," and largely
ignore or belittle the matter as to the quantity
needed, urging that checks ami drafts are more
convenient and make the volume unimportant.
These views are most heartily approved and com¬
mended by "the fortunate few" who have large
accumulations of wealth, and by such as delight to
bask in the sunshine of their favor. These views
are arbitrarily held and dictatorily advocated, and
little favor is shown to dissenters. As governing
the matter of volume, it is also insisted upon that,
although there are two money metals, one of the
metals is wholly unfitted for use as money, and that
it is a constant element of danger, and is liable to
disturb values, owing to its quantity, and fluctua¬
tions in its market value.
10 ARE YOU READY FOR THE QUESTION í
We observe that, if money were used simply asa
convenient commodity to facilitate in ejecting
exchanges, or if only for the purpose of furnishing
a standard, it would matter comparatively little as
to the medium employed, whether high or low, or
generally, as to its quantitative volume. Also—
That money has other uses, greater and more
intensely absorbing ones, altogether ignored by
these wise men—uses which most emphatically dis¬
prove their presumption of equitableness in the
use of one money metal only, as we most stoutly
affirm.
In contrast with these principles, and the want of
principle in ignoring the most important of the
uses of money, we take issue in the following propo¬
sitions ;
I. The use of money as a " standard," or as a
" standard to measure by," is purely incidental and
nominal. As a standard it simply names a quantity,
as the case may be of gold or silver, and thus far
it is a true and arbitrary measure in the same sense
that a yardstick is a measure, but it does not signify
or determine the value of that which is measured ;
other interests and causes intervene to make and
constitute the matter of practical value. As to the
standard being "high" is a mere matter of choice
or sentiment; nothing more hoi}' or sacred inheres
in money than in any other thing desired and used
to serve our purposes.
PROPOSITIONS IN MONETARY ECONOMY. 11
In no sense is it more dignified, business-like, or
necessary to make a bargain and state that pay¬
ment is to be made in dollars than it is in bushels of
corn ; and it is just as honorable on the part of the
merchant to deliver yards of cloth as it is on the
part of the buyer to give dollars in exchange for
the cloth. The frequency of our use of coins does
indeed inteasify the necessity that such coins should
be true to their lawful name as to fineness and
quantity of metal composing them, which in each
transaction is no more important than as to the
quality or quantity of the goods bought. Hence—
II. Its necessity as a medium of exchange while
important is imperative as a matter of convenience
only.
III. That its principal use and most important
employment is as an equivalent, in that, from time
immemorial it has been adopted by human kind
co-extent with civilization, as the highest expression
of concrete value of all the general commodities
entering into human use thus far available, for such
purpose ; and in the undisputed fact that the money
metals will buy anything and all things, that may
be properly olfered for sale, and that it has through
all the ages performed this labor required as an
equivalent. And hence—
IV. That money has an intense, arbitrary and
governing relation to all other things, and interests,
in which value inheres, pertaining to the worldly
12 AEE YOU READY FOR THE QUESTION ?
estate of man, which may be allowed to pass from
one ownership to another. And—
V. In the exigencies of our industrial, commer¬
cial and national life, for lack of money at hand,
recourse is had to credits of various kinds—those
payable on demand and to contracts promising the
delivery of value at a future date. Its special ser¬
vice as a redeeming equivalent is by far the great¬
est existing occasion for money. That is, to make
delivery of l;his value on call, or at the appointed
date as may be named in the agreement or obliga¬
tion. Its necessity as a means by whicii value may
be delivered under these obligations is expressed
most truthfully and sententiously by the single word
prosperity if we are able to deliver as agreed upon,
and by the word ruin if we are not able so to make
good the contract.
VI. The use of both metals is imperative as a
matter of safety. (1) For the reason that both
metals have been in general use as standards and
redemption money throughout the world during
past centuries, and values have ever been rated on
the basis of both metals so used. (2) That while
neither of the metals have the quality of unchang¬
ing value, each rising or falling under the law of
supply and demand, yet owing to the influence and
bearing of the one upon the other, both being used
as money, one being scarce, the other supplying the
otherwise unsatisfied demand, steadies the value of
PROPOSITIONS IN MONETARY ECONOMY. 13
each and thus tends to work and sustain an equi¬
librium of value in money. (3) And last but not
least, for the common sense and patriotic reason
that our country is the principal field of production
for both metals.
CHAPTER III.
WEALTH.
EALTH is the resulting accumulations pro¬
duced by human activity in promoting and
developing the individual and common well being.
Wealth in the abstract is the measure of prosperity;
in its visibfe material it signifies and is the reflec¬
tion of prosperity, and in the effects as relating to
the individual, the community, or the nation, is the
realization of prosperity.
Wealth is not confined to, although it is largely
represented by, material things. All property is
not wealth ; but those materials iu nature brought
into service, and devices wrought out by human
genius, made use of to good ends, are wealth.
Wealth is weal accomplished; many factors con¬
spire to develop it. We may not always know
what are and what are not factors of wealth, but
we do know that wealth is the grand desideratum
in and for this world. The ablest, the wisest, and
the most noble are those who, with the greatest
degree of certainty, know what wealth is, where
and how to find it, and, knowing, seek to accom¬
plish it.
Hence if we would be wise and noble, the
14
WEALTH.
15
demand is upon us to investigate, and in full exer¬
cise of our ability to solve this practical problem ;
only so far as we do this is the world the better for
our presence.
We know that selfish greed is not one of the
factors from or by means of which wealth as here
defined and limited accrues, although means
obtained in sordid quest may be diverted into ele¬
ments of wealth. Patience in well doing, aiming
at beneficence, is the spirit under which true wealth
is developed.
In working out this problem, which is our life
work, each individual demonstrates the measure of
his or her wealth by the sum contributed to the
common wealth.
We may differ widely in our estimation of this
sum in detail, as oftentimes results are not immedi¬
ately apparent. Our sight may be clouded and our
appreciation biased, but we may approximate the
truth. We know but little intuitively ; we learn
much by theory ; and then we un-learn by practical
experience—when, indeed, we have a will to learn.
CHAPTER IV.
COMMERCIAL WEALTH,
A^'ING thus defíned and limited wealth in
its true sense, we proceed to consider the
subject as obtaining in its common accepted sense
and use under the term of " commercial wealth,"
which may be stated as being acquired material,
the product of human labor and the means made
use of in the industrial and commercial activities.
AVealth, in its popular sense, is a term used syn¬
onymously with capital, money or riches. As pre¬
liminary, it is only necessary to state the well
understood fact that capital put to use is power.
The relation of the power for good or evil, to the
individual, the community and the nation, is the
practical question of the day.
Deep rooted in human nature is the desire to
have and to hold, for the exercise of power—to
rule. The growth of intelligence and its develop¬
ment is not more rapid than the increase in strength
of will power — ambition. The power gained and
exercised presents many phases and features, more
or less arbitrary in its manifestation, silent or
POWER OF WEALTH.
16
COMMERCIAL WEALTH.
17
violent in its force, since the exercise of power is
the symbol of our being. As a child comes to the
knowledge of the use of things, discovery is made
of the sources of power, and early in life it comes
to know that money is one of such sources.
With the increase of years money is desired as a
means wherewith to gratify its will in doing what
may be done with the aid of money, and to satisfy
its pride of spirit in possessing what may be had
for money. It matters not what as to purpose, it
discovers that money is a prime necessity, incident
to our mortal existence. Youthful profligacy is
yielding to an erroneous supposition that pleasure
may be had in dissipation, and be thus bought
with money — a mistaken idea as to the power
inhering in money.
Experience teaches that money making is the
science of practical life, and money using its com¬
prehensive end and aim.
The desire for money in each person is common
to all alike, modified only in degree. It is aspiration
for power in every instance ; it is desired for a pur¬
pose— for use. Even the hoarding miser gathers
and uses it as an object of worship. This ambition
is no doubt at the first almost universally healthy
and worthy, prompted by pleasurable anticipations
and good intentions; but in running its natural
course, gaining strength by victory, flushed with
pride, it becomes a passion, and as such is without
18 AKE YOU KEADY FOB THE QUESTION ?
exception absorbing and demoralizing. It Idunts
the finer and more noble sensibilities, and tends to
expel from the heart of man every clement of
mercy, and too often it well nigh accomplishes this
result.
INSIDIOUS IN ITS OPERATIONS.
Capital in itself is arbitrary, cunning and merci¬
less. This fact is attested by the common law and
by the statute law of every state which proclaim
and provide relief and exemptions to the poor.
Nevertheless, the greedy rich are ever trying to
defeat and evade these laws. Capital is also too
often malicious and preys upon its competitors and
those in extremity, seeking out such as are weak or
helpless to destroy tliem. An epitome of its history
may be written in one word—cruelty. The bitter
essence of human greed may be summed up in one
vjoxài—oppression.
Increase of educational intelligence has not ren¬
dered it less crafty, and modern methods have only
tended to refine the temper of its steel, and harden
the iron of which its bands are wrought. It is quite
unnecessary to cite proofs of a fact so patent—that
riches in the abstract possess no conscience.
ELEMENTS OF MERCY.
Rich men may exercise mercy, and happily for
all we have many noble examples of rich men who
COMMERCIAL WEALTH.
19
turn their gains into wealth by graceful contribu¬
tions for the endowment of eleemosynary or educa¬
tional institutions, or in other ways to make return
for opportunities enjoyed by themselves through
the public who have contributed to them, to the end
that the power of their riches may carry blessings
and wealth to the poor. It is a demonstration of
success in life, and is their only defense. But the
fact remains that the reflex and violently active
power of riches on the possessor is in a high degree
demoralizing. "We all know this, for we have seen
it, and on too many occasions have felt it.
CENTRALIZATION OF WEALTH.
Commercial wealth is nothing except in its use—
its power. The inherent law of this power is to
make all things subservient to its behest, combining
all means to this end, and the tendency at the pres¬
ent time, more than ever before in the history of
the world, is to centralization—combining for power
to more speedily accomplish certain ends. All leg¬
islative bodies are wrought upon, and too often are
the willing tools of this power. Money, not neces¬
sarily direct bribery, is the occasion of most of our
evil legislation. Occasionally the'people, feeling
the encroachments of this power, are aroused to
indignation, and in their might, throw off the yoke
and secure better laws—more efficient protection ;
but the mighty genius of capital sleeps not, and new
20
ARE YOU READY FOR THE QUESTION ?
devices are found and brought into service to defeat
the will of the people and to place new burdens
upon them.
MONOPOLV.
In considering the power of collective capital, we
cannot avoid the use of that hackneyed and much-
abused word, " monopoly." It has been ridden as
a hobby up and down the land by fanatics and
demagogues, to such an extent that it has become
tiresome and of no force in engaging attention ; but
it means just this : Centralized capital manifesting
its power to aggrandize and perpetuate itself, and
in this sense we make use of the word.
It matters not in what the aggregation of capital
may consist, it is inevitably a monopoly unless the
element of "Charity" is admitted as a controlling
factor. The natural instinct and disposition of the
genius animating capital is to make its power felt
up to the utmost limit of toleration. The element
of mercy finds small place in modifying its power,
which is kept in subjection only by the restraint of
statute law, or by the force of competition—other
capital seeking to secure to itself some of its rival's
advantages.
ITS TENTACLES.
Capital reaches out in every direction seeking
interests with which it may combine, and powers
COMMEECIAL WEALTH.
21
with which it may ally itself for increase of
power.
This is natural, and in most instances it is right ;
but the avarice of men leads almost certainly to
abuse of this natural right, and develops itself in
acts of injustice and oppression.
Scientific inventions and modern improvements
in machinery and methods of business transactions
tend to hasten and assist the work of centralization.
Our commercial facilities are now such that space
is almost annihilated ; cities, states and nations are
brought into close contact, rendering practicable
what in years recently passed would not have been
deemed possible. Every new source of wealth is
speedily monopolized; keen-witted and cunning
men are alert and actively engaged in spying out
materials and opportunities for gaining riches, and,
finding them, they well know how to use thém.
Each new invention is " capitalized " for all it
will bear in value, its worth being estimated on the
basis of its assumed ability to win earnings from
the people.
WATERED CAPITAL.
An invention which may practically have cost
nothing is capitalized at millions, and as soon as
possible exploited upon the people. If it proves to
be a successful undertaking and will bear more
capital, or if anj'^ interest is discovered with which
22 ARE YOU READY FOR THE QUESITON
it seems desirable to combine, it is capitalized
again ; and usually a debt equal to its true value is
placed upon it to make the outfit complete and put
it in the right shape to win the utmost of revenue.
As a matter of fact, our corporate enterprises are
uniformly not erected and built by payments made
on subscribed capital except as to preliminary work
to prepare for the construction. The capital
required is provided by an immediate recourse to
bonded indebtedness, the proceeds of the debt being
the means used in building, the subscribed capital
taking its chances as a source of profit to the builders.
So also our public enterprises are inaugurated and
built by an indebtedness anticipated as to payment,
by taxes to be imposed upon the people. This is
the era of rapidly increasing means for strengthen¬
ing the bonds which bind tiie people in the payment
of tribflte to those who hold large accumulations,
and providing ways whereby such acquired capital
may ever compound in power.
These new elements of wealth may be, and often
are, of inestimable value to the people, and we may
well glory in the spirit of invention and discovery
which brings them into existence ; but this is a
matter of capital representing no cost—capital ex¬
temporized for the purpose of imposing taxes upon
the people—" watered capital ; " overestimation of
values for the purpose of compelling the payment
of tribute. It is a just proposition that the i)eople
COMMERCIAL WEALTH.
23
are entitled to all things of general utility and
necessity at a fair price and at rates reasonably
remunerative to inventors, projectors and pro¬
prietors.
The people study too little as to the secret and
daring conduct of those who have come into power.
In the consideration of the financial problem before
us, we hope to encourage investigation on the lines
we have already suggested.
NO MYSTERY IN FINANCE.
The capitalists assume that these matters are
above the reach and comprehension of the poor—
the people ; that they are not able to understand
the problems in which they of necessity are vitally
interested. The rich are able and willing to tell
the people all about them in their own manner of
explanation—when they know they must do so—
when the people speak with emphasis ; and, when
it becomes necessary to mystify the questioners,
they have plenty of wise and learned writers on
social, political and financial economy, and statis¬
ticians well qualified to mystify them thoroughly.
All these things are good in their way—to those
who care to wade through the depths of their
wordy-wise and grandly mysterious dissertations,
and then " simmer them down " and extract the
kernel of practical sense.
It is all as though there were some hidden mys-
24 ABE YOU BEADY FOB THE QUESTION?
tery in finance not appreciable by the ordinary
mind ; that only men of profound wisdom—schol¬
astic and expert workmen on the one hand, and
the rich, crowned with the glamor of success, on
the other hand—could comprehend these deep
subjects. Nonsense! The people have in fact
largely relegated the matters of commerce and
finance to the rich ; but it is high time the people
show themselves equal to the occasion, and assert
their will, and exercise their greatness in power,
ere the fetters with which they are being bound
shall be too strong to be broken.
"We desire to emphasize the duty resting upon
our over-modest citizens to apply their strong wills
and practical minds to the investigation of these
matters, to the end that much of indignity, suffer¬
ing and oppression may be spared to the present
and the coming generations. It is the science of
buying and selling, planting and reaping, perform¬
ing labor and distributing the products of labor, to¬
gether with the enactment of just laws, and the
support of the government.
At the present rate of progress, unless the
machinations of the rich men are thwarted, it will
be but a few years before the laboring man and
his children, throughout the length and breadth of
our country, will be bound in the chains of per¬
petual poveï'ty, and be reduced to a condition com¬
parable to that of the peasantry of Europe.
CHAPTER V.
MONEY.
CIVILIZED and enlightened peoples are active
in buying, selling, trading, growing, produc¬
ing, inventing, and manufacturing useful commod¬
ities, creating and developing valuable interests,
and devising means of communication, transporta¬
tion, and distribution of the products of labor.
The whole world is busy seeking things necessary
for the comfort and protection of the body, or the
delectation of the mind, and this activity necessi¬
tates a measure — that is, a scale of value — to
serve as an index whereby values may be rated or
nominated, so that ail men may meet on an intelli¬
gent footing, as they come in contact with one
another, in the distribution of the products of their
labor, or in the disposition of the service of their
hands and minds. The words and signs of the
leading nations are U.S. dollar, $, British pound,
£, German mark, mk., and French franc, fr., each
of them is such an index.
This measure, or scale, necessarily implies a
medium^ itself valuable, or representing value, by
means of which a producer having more of things
useful than are necessary for, or desired by, himself,
as
26 ARE YOU READY FOR THE QUESTION ?
may excliange his surplus among others needing
them ; or, on the other hand, desiring what he does
not himself produce, that he may procure the things
or services desired, whereby value may be given for
the value received.
This medium is called money. IVloney is the
medium of exchange ; in its uses—when it is used—
it is by actual test the measure of value. In its
signs and denominations it is the index of value —
being recognized as the valuable tiling in and of
itself.
Let it be remembered that representative money
is, in practice, much more largely used as a medium
of exchange than real money ; but we have to do
with money in this chapter, representative money
being considered in the pages following.
Money is prescribed and defined by sovereign
power ; but, of necessity, this must be done follow¬
ing in the line of, and in subservience to, human
instinct, caprice, and necessity.
Sovereign power may decree money, but cannot
create it. It can, and in innumerable instances has,
decreed other commodities than the precious metals
to be money ; but has ever shown its inability to
control the instincts of humanity. Mankind natur¬
ally rebels against the use, as money, of that which
does not possess value in itself.
At certain times in the history of the world
articles of beauty, as beads, shells, and teeth; some
MONEV.
27
articles having superstitious value; things valuable
for service, as slaves and domestic animals, and arti¬
cles of necessity, as cloth, skins, and many kinds of
food, have been used as money, either by order of
sovereign decree or by agreement among tribes or
peoples. Specific things representing and recog¬
nized as value, were used as tokens of value in
exchange, as a dove was the index of one value and
a horse of another value.
The precious metals have always been used as
the index of value so far as their uses were appre¬
ciated and their beauty admired. Human instinct
insists that money shall, in itself, possess true value.
It is the province and opération of the individual
mind to gauge and measure value; all do not
measure alike as we do not reason and think alike ;
but it is a fact that all men, not excepting those in
the least degree civilized, see value in the precious
metals.
The history of mankind has demonstrated the
problem of money—what it is and what it shall be.
The mutations of the centuries have confirmed all
mankind in their insatiable desire for the precious
metals.and their acquiescence in the fact that these
alone are true money. The discoveries and inven¬
tions of the ages have developed no other satisfac¬
tory and universally approved medium. It fully
satisfies the instincts of mankind, and many believe
that it is the decree of One whose laws change not,
28 are yon ready for the question?
and who rules over all. It is a demonstration of
the law of adaptation, in that they combine the
necessary qualities—great density, divisibility,
durability, purity, and resistance to corrosion. All
men deem them beautiful ; and the uses are almost
infinite tq which they may be put, for the gratifica¬
tion of humanity, and for service in the arts and
manufactures.
By common agreement and afiirmed by their
universal use as money, the precious metals are
the truest measure of value of all commodities;
but this value is not fixed and absolute. In detail
their value is necessarily a matter of agreement;
i. e., how much a certain piece of money will pur¬
chase of this or that commodity depends upon
agreement; but taken as a whole the value of the
precious metals — gold and silver — is compara¬
tive, for the gold and silver of the world measures
the value of all other things, and this by the
expressed will of the human race, illustrated and
manifested as often as a bargain and sale — an
exchange of values — is made.
In all civilized countries a thousand transactions
are made for a money consideration, or upon the
basis of money, to one barter transaction, and in
most of these barter transactions one of the parties
to the barter has an aim to turn the commodity so
bartered for into money.
The precious metals, owing to the special quali-
MONEY.
29
ties inhering in them, are the truest measure of
value because of their -wide distribution over the
whole earth in quantities so limited that it is impos¬
sible to produce sufficient to suddenly increase the
money stock and thereby disturb values, since the
precious metals are subject to the law of supply and
demand as certainly as are other commodities.
Money is the universally acknowledged and
valuable commodity called into use by civilized
mankind to serve as an equivalent. It is given by
the buyer and received by the seller in the exchange
of commodities and valuable interests. Two com¬
modities are thus chosen, gold and silver, and when
lawfully coined, bearing governmental inscription,
are money.
CHAPTER VI.
COMMERCIAL VAIAE8.
E HAVE much faith in human instiucts
and intuitions which we ñnd common to
all men. These are the practical arbiters that silently
decide the points about which the doctors disagree.
We have much faith in the wisdom developed in
the practice of good common sense as at once indi¬
cating and illustrating the truth.
In the preparation of this little volume we have
faithfully studied the mind and heart of the poor.
We have done this, since we believe that the natu¬
ral ability and good judgment of the poor is quite
as great as that of the rich, and that, under cultiva¬
tion, it is oftentimes greatly in advance of, and
superior to, that of the rich, in those elements which
adorn the mind and enlarge the heart. On these,
true wealth rests as a basis, and upon these the super¬
structure of our commonwealth is reared.
The sons and daughters of the poor have ever
been the greatest lights in the world, and have done
most for mankind.
We believe that the genius of the poor, as
exhibited in the management of their small estates,
and in procuring the necessaries of life, is quite as
30
COMMERCIAL VALUES.
31
brilliant as it is in those who possess riches, and
who in the matter of their riches, so far as they
themselves are concerned, are but creatures of cir¬
cumstances, who may perhaps have inherited that to
which they have contributed nothing ; or who have
been so situated and favored that it required no
special exertion or ability to become rich.
The honorable and educated poor lack only in
the power which money itself affords; their hearts
and minds are nobler for the active discipline by
which they are exercised from day to day.
"We give a definition of value from the mouth
and heart of one of the poor to whom we addressed
the question, " What is value ? "
He replied : "Value is of two kinds, the limited
and the unlimited ; the limited value is of the kind
that may be rated in money, and the unlimited is
that which cannot be defined in money."
This reply led the way to a second question, and
we asked, " What is money "
He replied : " Money is property boiled down,
and pressed, and represents many hard knocks to
get enough to pay our way, and much more to lay
by any of the needful. This is my experience,
and they say experience is a good teacher if the
lesson is well learned."
Our friend's laconic replies comprehended great
truths. His first kind of values, " the limited," is
but another name for " commercial " values, being.
32
ARE TOU READY FOR THE QUESTION ?
in fact, the relation which things, commodities, or
interests, snch as are in their nature and by agree¬
ment exchangeable, may bear to each other, as
determined in the event of an exchange. The un¬
limited being those things of value, worth, or merit
which, by virtue of their nature, are not exchange¬
able, or by reason of some inhering quality may
not be exchanged.
A work of art may be " priceless a keepsake
may be excelled in value only by the life of the
possessor, such being the estimation in which it
is held. These things are unlimited in value, and
yet may be exchanged ; while other unlimited
values, such as education and moral qualities, while
they may be communicated, and are true elements
of wealth, cannot be exchanged.
There is much confusion on the part of some as
to the meaning of the word "value." It may be
correctly used in many ways, and bear as many dif¬
ferent signitications.
In a commercial sense, it is not a matter of worth,
merit, or utility ; these several elements may, and
usually are, considered in making up an estimation
of commercial value ; but value, as touching any
thing or commodity, is a comparative relation
between items of the commodities, or services use¬
ful for, or desired by, any two or more persons or
parties agreeing as to price.
Commercial value is the result of agreement
COMMERCIAL VALUES.
33
arrived at by comparison in making exchanges.
The purchase price of a thing is its immediate
value. This value, as an elemental fact, is not a
ñxed quantity except at the time at which the
exchange is made. It is changeable, uncertain, and
indefinite, and is intensified, diminished, or modi¬
fied by circumstances, by caprice and by lawful and
unlawful force, necessity most often impelling to a
decision as to value, or, it may be, a desire to make
gains.
The commercial value of a coin depends upon
the strength of man's desire to possess it, and the
use he may be able, or thinks he may be able, to
make of it. In the use of a dollar, agreement fixes
its value ; the dollar buys more or less as may be
agreed upon. In the matter of prices, so far as
relates to official salaries and taxes fixed by law, the
law stands as one party to the agreement. Law¬
ful taxation compels the payment of a certain
quantity of coin ; but the amount of taxes does
not define the matter of value, except in a nominal
manner; for in the one case it may be assessed on
the property of the widow and the fatherless, and
in another on the property of the rich man — both
properties valued alike in the assessment, and in an
equitable manner as to current rating of the prop¬
erties, and yet be a burden requiring much labor
and self denial to meet its payment on the part of
one, and not be consciously felt by the other; thus
34 ARE YOU READY FOR THE QUESTION ?
the true value of the same coin is unlike in these
cases.
A yard-stick is a linear measure, and possesses
only the property of measurement. Money is a
measure in nominal ratings and statements of value,
but it does more than the yard-stick, for in each
instance it measures the expenditure of physical
and mental force required to get it. It fixes and
defines the quantity of metal to be used as an
equivalent in providing for our necessities, and in
serving our purposes.
CHAPTER VH.
STEIGT VALUE.
IN ORDER to make plain and simple the rela¬
tion between property and money as showing
the general influence of money on all commercial
and industrial interests, we give the following
illustration ;
Since commercial value is determined by com¬
parison, a strict comparison may be made in this
manner :
Let us draw a small circle. On the inside we
will place the world's stock of coin, which includes
both gold and silver.
We describe another circle, in size sufficient to
'contain the whole earth, that we may take in all
the world possesses of that -which can be, or which
men will allow to be, transferred in ownership :
houses, lands, railways, steamships, mills, mines,
food, raiment, luxuries, diamonds, works of art, in¬
cluding all articles manufactured in whole or in
part from gold and silver; the tangible and remain¬
ing products of the labor of all mankind in the
past, and the current labor of all men now living—
and last, but not least, all of the world's outstanding
evidences of debt, an amount the enormity of which
35
36 ARE YOU READY FOR THE QUESTION?
staggers the human mind, and is beyond compre¬
hension, and this with the accruing interest thereon.
We stand upon the proposition that the contents
of the smaller circle are equal to and the true
measure of value of that without the circle—that
in fact so far as these things are held for sale, and
so far as they are encumbered by debt, the smaller
circle is master of all without, and is the power
which determines the value of all things exchange¬
able. The solid fact upon which we base our prop¬
osition is the universal strife among men for that
within the smaller circle.
Now, let a person try this proposition by any
possible method, and the result will ever be the
same—the preponderance of power obtains from
within the lesser circle. It rules the world. It
says to thrones, " Thou shalt " and " Thou shalt not."
It holds sway over the heart of every man.
The heart of mankind is fixed on the precious
metals. Men will have money. A little money is
a necessity ; for a man in a state of civilization can¬
not by himself provide all requirements of his con¬
dition, but with money he can procure them. A
little money serves him well, but a greater portion
only whets his appetite ; he is never satisfied with
sufiicient for the necessities of himself and those
dependent upon him. Only the poor in spirit seem
to be measurably contented with their portion,
and with the weight of their purse. The rich
STRICT VALUE.
37
never cease to cry for more, and bend all their
energies to get it.
Strict value is the relation between the world's
voluntarily adopted measure and medium, money,
and all other things. The quantity of gold and
silver—the world's money stock—governs the val¬
ues of the world, modified by man's special tastes,
desires; and immediate or anticipated necessities.
Strict value obtains by virtue of the law of pro¬
portion which men have imposed upon themselves
by the adoption of the precious metals as the meas¬
ure of value ; and as the material in which debts
are written to be paid.
This law is ever operative, though it may, owing
to the great mass of objects and interests operated
upon, be locally and immediately almost impercept¬
ible ; but because it is not generally recognized in
practice, it does not follow that there is no such law
or that current values are not affected by it And,
for the reason that this fact and most important
feature of the situation in which we now find our¬
selves has not been well understood in the past,
advantage has been taken to our great injury. This
matter should more earnestly engage the attention
of the people.
This law is true even though we might allow
that the aggregate of estimated and current values
exceeded the money stock hundreds of times. It
is slow and subtile in its bearings on values, and its
38
AEE YOU READY FOE THE QUESTION ?
operation is not, perhaps, readily discerned ; but it
is as certain in its operation as any other commer¬
cial law, the same being but another formulation of
the law of supply and demand. It is largely
ignored, but it is certain to obtain general recogni¬
tion in the near future. It would be much more
apparent were it not that we have recourse to repre¬
sentative money.
We do not presume that this law has other than
a general effect upon current values of commodities
and fixed property, or that strict values can be
determined absolutely and specitically, because it is
beyond human ability to do so. In ordinary busi¬
ness dealings estimates of value are made from
things in sight and nearest at hand and most easily
comprehended — current values.
It holds a general sway over all values, and it
follows that while the property of the world is
rapidly increasing, by the development of new
interests and enterprises and the enlightenment and
civilization of the darker portions of the world, if
there is no corresponding increase of the money
stock, the tendency of values must be downward.
It is well known and admitted that the increase of
the money stock is trifling compared with the
increase of valuable property.
There is an enormous accumulation each year
over and above the amount consumed by mankind
and destroyed by the elements. A large portion of
STEIGT VALUE.
39
the gold and silver produced does not go to increase
the money stock, but on the other hand goes to
swell the mass of valuable manufactured commodi¬
ties, the whole of which being measured by the
existing stock of coin, necessarily gives money a
greater work to perform, and so intensifies its
power, and consequently tends to depress the value
of all other things. There is no increase of the
money stock in comparison to the increase of prop¬
erty values and bonded indebtedness. The world's
production of gold and silver is but a drop in the
bucket. In illustration of this fact, we would
simply call attention to the creation of values in
the line of electrical appliances which are counted
by hundreds of millions ; and, as well, the bonded
debts upon its materials and franchises run into
the hundreds of millions, all created within a few
years past.
So long as the value of the world's money stock
is rated at and assumed to be less than the sum of
all other commercial values, just so long will the
world's coin grow in power. And, so long as the
world's indebtedness, nominated in coin, continues
to increase, just so long will the strife for the metal
grow more and more fierce. We are all now
engaged in the occupation of buying coin rather
than that with coin we are buying property. By
means of oiir labor we are buying the coin with
which to procure food, clothing, and shelter, and
40 AEE YOU READY FOR THE QUESTION ?
the United States government is itself brought to
the same level to provide for its necessities !
DOES NOT SATISFY THE PLUTOCRATS.
But what shall we now say ? for this showing is
not satisfactory to the rich men—" the favored
few," the bankers and the holders of the world's
evidences of debt ; they are not content with this
showing of the vantage ground they occupy in the
power accruing to them by virtue of what they
already possess, but they insist that the small circle
shall be reduced so that it will hold only the gold
coin of the world, and that the silver must be re¬
moved, and take its place on the outside with other
things, and that the stock of gold coin shall not
only govern the price of all things but shall include
all the silver coin as well ; that this coin itself shall
be turned into merchandise to be lorded over by
gold, that gold alone may dominate all things, with
none to hinder or make afraid in its autocratic and
conscienceless exercise of power!
CHAPTER VIII.
INFLATED VALUES.
IT IS necessary to define the term " inflation," as
it is widely and frequently used in financial
discussions and in the consideration of commercial
affairs.
The popular conception of the term is, enhance¬
ment of values by reason of superabundance of
money, all devices and make-shifts used as money,
being in this sense considered money ; but this is
far from being a correct and full definition of infla¬
tion, and fails to locate it.
Infiation relates to and inheres in false or repre¬
sentative money, and to property in its current
value ; the degree of inflation being determined by
the difference between its current value, and its
value rated in- or sold for real money—coin.
Inflation, in its true sense, implies the element of
fiction in value. There is no such thing as fiction
in real money, for this is hard cash, powerful fact,
and solid basis, in and about which there is no
"inflation," which last properly reduced is but the
ghostly specter of hopes that were vain, of power
that was but a desolating flame !
Only desperate emergencies warrant action which
41
42 ARE YOU READY FOR THE QUESTION?
may result in inHation. We all allow that it was a
necessity during the late civil war to resort to
promises to pay, seeing that the war could not be
prosecuted without money.
We will not refer to the numerous instances of
commercial inflation which have occurred in our
own country, or to other nations which have made
use largely of representative money, as many of
them have done, and are doing at this time ; but
we will, by way of illustration, refer briefly and
only to the gigantic inflation north and south dur¬
ing and since the late war, as brought about by and
affecting both parties in the strife, in the use of a
vast volume of representative money, i. e., sus¬
pended " promises to pay."
The expression " war prices," so commonly used
in the past, implied the inflation in values of all
kinds of property rated in such representative
money, the volume of money largely controlling the
degree of inflation in values, but not absolutely, as
the prospect of success on this or that side entered
to increase or decrease the purchasing power of
their respective "promises to pay" used as money.
The experience on either side was much the same
until toward the end. When it was determined
that the South would not succeed, and as a conse¬
quence could never make good its promises, the
element of value in their circulating medium was
wholly gone.
INFLATED VALUES.
43
On tlie other side, according as the struggle
seemed to be favorable to success of their arms, the
money in use experienced an increase of value, i. e.,
of power to purchase ; or, the same in effect, the
values of property rated in such money began to
decline, and so continued slowly to decline up to the
close of the war ; after which date the decrease was
more rapid and permanent, until finally, about four¬
teen years after, the greater portion of the circu¬
lating medium having been either absorbed by taxes
imposed by the government, or redeemed by the
issue of interest-bearing bonds, and a part having
been paid from the surplus in the treasury, the gov¬
ernment in the meantime laying by a stock of coin
to that end, and having resumed payment in coin,
inflation ceased to exist in the representative money
remaining, and the treasury notes (greenbacks) and
national bank notes were then used and accepted as
equal in power to coin itself.
During all this period there was no inflation
where values were rated in coin, except, perhaps,
as to some articles in limited supply and in great
demand, which was more incidental to the fact of
the existence of war, rather than to the use of
representative money ; and excepting always the
general fact of inflation as seen by the capitalist
from his vantage ground of observation and power,
owing to the great disparity between the stock of
real money on the one hand, and the whole sum of
44 ARE YOU READY FOR THE QUESTION?
exchangeable values, together with the volume of
indebtedness, on the other hand.
From the well known fact that coin is the basis
upon which all other values rest, and by which the
value of all property is tried by parties in efforts to
exchange, and proved in the event of an exchange
of ownership, we safely conclude that there is no
such thing as inflation in money itself, i. e., coin.
The money stock of the world is believed to have
doubled during the third quarter of the present
century —1850 to 1875 — and during the past
twenty years a large percentage has been added,
and yet all this increase has been absorbed in the
great sea upon which float all our industrial ships,
and so far as values were affected by the increase
it was ever in the line of benefit to all legitimate
industries, and has given an impetus to progressin
commercial affairs such as the world lias never
before known in all its history. But there has been
no increase corresponding to the necessities of the
case.
The clamor of the " wise men " and the capital¬
ists, who prate of the direful effects of inflation,
disguising the real issue, intent upon deceiving the
people, will be in vain ; they may distort the facts
of history, and insist that the use of silver will
work inflation, and that in our own country, restor¬
ing silver to its time-honored position is an act of
inflation, but their efforts in the end will be as
INFLATED VALUES.
45
futile as have ever been the endeavors of alchem¬
ists to transmute base metals into gold and silver,
and as unavailing as all the laws and devices of
man have been to permanently supplant, or to sup¬
ply, money other than gold and silver. They must
first change the natural instincts of mankind.
We have thus shown the popular misapprehen¬
sion as to inflation, and have intimated as to the
designs of those who, knowing the true meaning
of the term, yet use it only in its popular import
for the purpose of overawing and deceiving the
masses who too generally pay but little attention to
the fundamental principles upon which our financial
and commercial superstructure stands. We con¬
sider this matter of deception more fully in other
chapters.
We have herein laid down the proposition thal>
inflation implies the element of fiction in value, and
now we are prepared to define with exactness
wherein the fiction lies.
Inflation is actual error made in estimating values,
as between the money stock and all merchantable
commodities and exchangeable interests.
Let us make a practical test of this matter.
Having a superabundance of some specified prop¬
erty, or having imperative need of money, go to
the rich man and try to exchange your property for
money. We assume that such property is some¬
thing outside of his immediate physical necessities.
46 AEE YOU KEAUV FOB THE QUESTION?
Ile will examine the property deliberately a»d
estimate its value. He esteems it of value only in
its capacity to gain money in return ; money is the
ultimate object. He will consider the uses to which
the property may be put, and the chances of
exchanging it for other and more desirable property.
You tender the property at a value named, but he
keenly discovers that the value you put upon it is
inflated, exactly how much he may not know, but
he states the value at a venture, as his mind cannot
take in and comprehend the whole world of values,
but he regards his estimation as safe, and with your
consent the exchange is made — on his terms.
It may be from your standpoint and in your esti¬
mation a very great sacriflce, but that element,
special value to you, does not enter into his calcula¬
tions ; he takes your property that he may gain
more money, and by the transaction you acknowl¬
edge that money is master of the situation. Money
was scarce, no inflation in it, but by your concession
you admit that your property, rated in value as you
had it, was inflated, and the rich man determined
the degree of inflation.
We think this most ordinary illustration demon¬
strates the fact of inflation and locates it, and, as
well, shows who had the power to decide the mat¬
ter at issue — the amount of error or flction in the
value of your property.
This demonstration may not be satisfactory to
INFLATED VALUES.
47
the " wise men " and the rich men, hut it will cer¬
tainly satisfy the poor man who has made such a
test.
CHAPTER IX.
DEPRESSED VALUES.
IN our deñnition of " strict " value, we have laid
down the rule of proportion, as the law gov¬
erning prospective values, and affecting current
values in a tendency to depression. We have also
intimated the advantage obtaining in holding
secured evidences of debt rather than other items of
property.
This law is expressed in the want of acknowledg¬
ment on the part of capitalists of current and rated
values of property — in the want of conffdence in
these values, when it is desired on the part of prop¬
erty holders to dispose of, or to borrow money on,
their property.
Capitalists require first-class and improved prop¬
erty, yielding an income, and they will take it as
security for money loaned under this advantage at
but about one-third — not of the rated, but the cash
value, appraised by disinterested parties ; and after
this precaution, make the principal sum mature
with default in the payment of interest, and, as
well, require the improvements on such property to
be insured during the term for which the money is
taken, with loss, if any, payable to the creditor.
48
DEPRESSED VALÜES.
49
It will readily be admitted that real property,
with good improvements, producing income, ranks
fírst in the list of desirable properties, and, in illus¬
tration, use is made of tliis, the best of property, to
show the working of this law.
Capital, from its vantage ground, insists upon
the fact that values of real property are inflated ;
and in every instance it gains submissive obedience
to its behest, where the owner of the property must
have money. Capital always dictates the terms,
and always rejects current and rated values on all
kinds of property, and it does this in recognition
of the law of strict valuation. The power of
capital is exerted in the line of depression — it buys
in the cheapest market, whether it be of man's
labor, the product of man's labor, or the material
things by which his labor is utilized. It greedily
takes advantage of men's necessities.
It lends its own only upon the pledge of the
most desirable and permanent property, or those
things most immediately and certainly needed for
the use of mankind, and then only at a large con¬
cession from current values. Money cannot be
borrowed on perishable property without additional
guarantees.
To guard against the ordinary fluctuations in
current. values, or the possibility of destruction,
does not account for tliis discrepancy — there is a
law governing it.
50 ARE YOU READY FOR THE QUESTION?
It is not enougli to say that in the management
and use of properties tlie owner has a compensation
in liability of greater gains than the capitalist
has on his part, in lending his money, his income
being determined, or intended to be absolute and
positive ; for positive income overreaches and out-
gains any hazardous income.
When it is admitted that gold and silver, or either
of the metals duly coined, is not absolute in value,
and is subject to change in purchasing power, the
law of strict valuation is implied ; and when it is
admitted that gold and silver alone are money, and
that money is master of the whole world of values,
to which proposition most persons seem to agree,
the law of strict valuation is a necessary conclusion,
for the reason that the changes in purchasing power
must be in relation to the whole mass of valuable
things, or such portion of the mass as a purchaser
can see, or has any practical and particular knowl¬
edge of.
Because men are not able to comprehend values
in their entirety, and correctly in detail, does not
militate against the law ; for each person does his
best to work out the problem, and he ever strives
to exert the greatest power possible in relation to
the whole world of values by selection in the use
of his money.
Many of the creditor class, while they hold great
sums in evidences of debt due to them, also have
DEPRESSED VALUES.
51
large holdings of property other than money and
credits. These persons do not generally hold prop¬
erty not paying income longer than is necessary to
dispose of it ; and their estimation of the value of
such property is in the amount of income derived
from it, as compared with the income from the sum
at which they rate it, duly invested in mortgages or
other evidences of debt. When it falls below this
mark it is for sale, unless it is believed to possess
some prospective value not yet realized ; so that
because the creditor class hold properties the value
of which, under the rule of strict valuation, is
known by them to be inflated, it does not work a
negative to this law.
The fact is, that generally, persons possessed of
large means reduce their property to interest-bearing
securities; they want a sure thing — money — or a
safe investment which will bring money, the only
certain, the steadily appreciating, and most perma¬
nent of all property. They well know there is no
inflation in money, although they see it in all other
properties.
At this time everybody having property not
needed by them to serve their comfort or pleasure,
is making an effort to reduce the same to money,
or is awaiting an opportunity to do so ; and a
buyer being found with a sufficient cash payment
to protect the seller from any immediate effect
in the operation of the law of strict valuation.
52 ARE YOU READY FOR THE QUESTION i!
the property is converted into an interest-bearing
security.
Because persons who well understand this law
determining strict value continue to buy and sell,
and with the utmost nonchalence issue their prom¬
ises to pay, does not negative this law, for they are
impelled to this, thinking the day of reckoning is
far off ; and the fact seems to be that most people,
and many of the rich, do not comprehend this law,
but believe that the barest fraction of coin only is
necessary and that things will always go on as they
have done; or, in other words, each man seems to
think he has the secret largely in his own keeping,
and is disposed to pride himself on his business
skill.
It is high time that the citizen of modest and
limited means and the wage-worker were looking to
their own interests in this regard. We insist that
fully nine-tenths of our citizens will consult their
direct pecuniary interest in countermanding the
edict, " silver must go ; " each person must deter¬
mine for himself whether depression in business
and industrial pursuits is better than gqod times
and general prosperity.
The working of this law is so depressing in its
effects that in our own country at the present time
only in extremely rare instances may be observed
any increase of commercial values ; except perhaps
in real property in favored spots affected by local
DEPRESSED VALUES.
53
changes and iiiiproveinents, and in the desirable
farnaing and timber lands.
It is vain to expect better times if we allow our¬
selves to be put on a "gold basis," or allow the
coinage of silver to be discontinued.
The only possible relief under our present condi¬
tion is by an unexpectedly large increase in the
production of the precious metals.
We now find ourselves in the position where
practically the coin is demanded by the creditor,
and where sales of property must be made on the
coin basis. We are in such condition that the issue
of more promises to pay — greenbacks and bank
notes-—would more tend to increase the plethora
than to atford relief. Any possible relief from such
source would be momentary, just as it would be
with the individual in taking up an old I. O. U. by
the issue of a new promise to pay, increased in
amount by the interest on the old debt.
Such relief is disastrous in the reaction. The
relief for the people as a whole is only to be found
by increase in the true money — coin — and for the
individual to pay up as fast as possible. And the
question now is whether or no we as a people, a
nation, will utilize what we now have and can readily
obtain, or will allow the plutocrats to bind us down
to a basis consisting of gold alone, and thus deprive
us of half of our natural, constitutional, and right¬
ful means of payment, and so much of the life-blood
of our industrial activities.
CHAPTER X.
THK DOLLAR.
IN all the history of the world's coinage, no
coin bears a more honorable part than the
dollar. It has ever done a worthy service. It
has a history of several centuries, and we offer a
few leading historical facts in order to show what
it has been and is now, these facts being an abso¬
lute necessity to a correct understanding of the
matters at issue, so vitally affecting our cornraon
welfare. It is all written history, free from as¬
sumptions and uncertainties.
The dollar of the United States of America has
ever been the synonym of truth in weight and
purity. Tiie inhabitants of our own continent, of
Europe and of Asia, all alike ascribe to it this
honorable record. It is part of and inseparable
from our national histoiy.
The historical dollar is the silver dollar. It was
the coin in most common use when, in 1785, more
than one hundred years ago, the American Con¬
gress adopted it as the unit of account. This
dollar was the Spanish milled dollar. Much of the
coin then in use was clipped and worn ; the mill¬
ing was a device to prevent clipping, thereby giv-
54
THE DOLLAK.
55
ing the people a standard, full weight—a true
dollar. This antedated our own coinage.
The Mint Act of 1792 was the establishment of
our coinage system. It conlirmed and perpetuated
the standard of 1785. This standard was received
with universal approval. General Washington not
only approved the act, but had given his indorse¬
ment to the memorial of Mr. Jefferson which led
to the adoption of the silver dollar unit in 1785.
Alexander Hamilton also heartily approved this
action, and did efficient service in the work of in¬
augurating our coinage system.
This unit of money, the silver dollar, contained
371^ grains pure silver. As it is coined now, it
is the same that it was then in quantity of pure
silver ; the quantity of alloy, base metal for hard¬
ening the coin, has been changed. Until 1837 the
exact weight of the dollar was 416 grains, the
difference in weight being in the quantity of alloy.
The weight since that time has been 412^ grains,
made up of 371^ grains pure silver and 41J grains
copper as alloy, the coin being " nine-tenths fine."
The act of 1792 also provided for the coinage
of gold on the basis of weight in the legal relation
to silver of 1 to 15, which legal relation was there¬
after changed, the governing unit being the stand¬
ard silver dollar, the several gold coins being
adjusted thereto and determined thereby.
The silver dollar continued to be the unit of
56 ARE YOU READY FOE THE QUESTION?
value until the act of February 12, 1873. This
act, commonly called the Demonetization Act,
provided that: "The gold coins of the United
States shall be a one dollar piece, which at the
standard weight of 25^®^ grains shall be the unit
of value," and "The silver coins of the United
States shall be a trade dollar, a half dollar, a
quarter dollar, and a dime," providing also that
"No other gold or silver coins" shall be issued,
except as set forth in the title ; and " The gold
coins of the United States shall be legal tender at
their nominal value," and " The silver coins of the
United States shall be a legal tender for any
amount not exceeding ñve dollars for any one
payment."
This act deprived the silver dollar of its unit of
value quality, and transferred this quality to the
gold dollar. It also abolished the old silver dollar,
by making no provision for its coinage—by simply
dropping it out of the list of coins authorized by
the act.
In February, 1878, the white dollar was par¬
tially restored and rehabilitated by the act of
Congress commonly called the Remonetization
Act, whereby silver dollars of 412,] grains stand¬
ard silver were authorized to be coined in a limited
amount, not less than $2,000,000 worth per
month, nor more than $4,000,000 worth per
month, "which coins, together with all silver
THE DOLLAR.
57
dollars heretofore coined by the United States of
like weight and fineness, shall be a legal tender
at their nominal value for all debts and dues,
public and private, except where otherwise ex¬
pressed and stipulated in the contract ; " thus
giving the white dollar equal paying power with
the gold dollar, but leaving the gold dollar as the
unit of value.
The act of 1792 authorized the coinage of eagles,
half-eagles, and quarter-eagles, containing 24f grains
pure gold to the dollar, this being, as before stated,
in the ratio of silver to gold as 15 to 1. Owing to
the poverty of the cpuntry, and the fact that this
ratio of coinage was moi*e liberal in the weight of
the gold coins compared with the ratio in most
other countries, viz.: 15^ to 1, the amount of de¬
posits at the mint for coinage was very small, and
we were unable to retain in service even what had
been coined.
In 1833 the Secretary of the Treasury reported to
Congress that up to that time there had been less
than $12,000,000 gold coin minted, and that there
was then no gold coin in circulation. The country
was wholly dependent upon its silver coinage and
foreign coins. The policy of Mr. Jefferson to coin
all silver into fractions of the dollar had been con¬
tinued since 1809 ; he had peremptorily ordered the
silver coinage to be confined to fractional coins, that
the people might be the better served thereby. This
58 AKE YOU KEADY FOR THE QUESTION
order was not from any hostility to the dollar itself,
as is so often asserted by those opposed to silver.
In 1834 the weight of the gold coins was reduced
to the ratio of 10 to 1, equal to about six per cent
less of gold to the dollar, bringing the ratio down
in gold and up in silver, so that our ratio was about
three per cent less in gold to the dollar than the
European ratio of 15^ to 1, whereas before our gold
coins had been over-weighted about three per cent,
our ratio having been 15 to 1.
Subsequent experience proved this over-reduction
in the weight of our gold coins to have been advan¬
tageous to us in largely increased offerings of gold
for coinage at the mint, even though it acted to
reduce the deposits of silver.
It had the effect of retaining a much larger por¬
tion of the California gold product than would have
otherwise remained in the United States. Largely
increased deposits were made at the mints, and coin
made its appearance more largely in circulation, and
gave such an impetus to our industries that while
our increase in population from 1850 to 1860 was
29 per cent, our increase in material wealth was 127
per cent.*
In 1839 the coinage of silver dollars was renewed,
»The valuation of property by the census of ItttU was $ 7,135,780,000.
•' " " " " 1860 was 16,159,616,000.
" " " estimated iu 1895 is 70,000,000,000.
The population in 1850 was 23,191,876; in 1860 it was 31,433,321.
" 1895 about 70,000,000.
THE DOLLAE.
59
and continued each year, except the year 1858, until
1873, at whicli date the white dollars found no place
in the list of authorized coins at the mint.
In 1849 Congress authorized the coinage of the
gold dollar, "conformable in all respects to the
standard of gold coins now (then) authorized by
law," which is the first authority for, and this date
the natal year of, the "gold dollar." However,
the unit of value remained in the silver dollar.
The gold dollar contains grains pure gold,
gi'äins alloy, weighing 25.8 grains, and being
" nine-tenths fine," which is standard fineness.
In 1853 the fractional silver cQins were reduced
in weight to keep them from being exported. Ho
change was made in the standard white dollar.
Our coinage system was established at a period
of trying responsibilities in our history, by men of
sound financial system. Our national history fur¬
nishes us with no names more eminent in practical
sense. They builded wisely. Let us not undo their
work, or stand idly by and allow ruthless hands to
tear down the flag which is the sign of our financial
invincibility !
CHAPTER XI.
COINAGE OF MONEY.
The Constitution of the United States grants to
Congress power to coin money, to regulate
tlie value thereof, and to regulate the value of for¬
eign coins, and provides that " No state shall make
anything but gold and silver coin a tender in pay¬
ment of debts."
Coining money.consists in putting the metal into
convenient and presentable condition, so that it may
be intelligently used by mankind for the purposes
intended.
The laws authorizing coinage regulate the value
by prescribing the weight and fineness of the metal
in each coin, and this is as far as the government
can go in regulating the value. The government
can determine the value of foreign coins in relation
to its own coinage, by declaring the weight and
fineness, and authorizing their use according to the
quantity of pure metal in them. It does this by
ordering a practical test of weight and fineness, and
on the basis of such test giving to the coins paying
power rated relatively in denominations of its own
coinage.
Any inference drawn from the fact of constitu-
60
COINAGE OF MONEY.
61
tional power granted to Congress to regulate the
value of its coinage, implying that Congress can
create value, or that Congress in providing our coin¬
age, thereby guarantees the power of or value of its
coins, is erroneous, except in the event that two or
more metals are prescribed as money, to establish
their interchangeable and paying relation—their
ratio to each other.
The government cannot create value, but it can
prescribe uses, and thus increase value by creating
demand, or it can forbid use, and so decrease value
by limiting or prescribing demand.
Governmental power is directly limited to the
coinage of money. It does not make the value of
the coin, but it makes the coin ; and in doing this,
it does not presume to guarantee the purchasing
power of the coin in relation to any other commodity.
The user of the coin must take his chances as to that
—is compelled to exercise his intelligence, skill, and
discretion.
The government simply gives paying privilege to
the debtor, and makes it compulsory on the part of
the creditor to receive the coin in payment of debts
nominated in such coin.
The coinage laws designate the names or de¬
nominations of the several coins and fix one coin
as the unit of account, so that all values may
be rated in a common measure, that the people
may distinctly understand in their dealings how
62 ARE YOU READY FOR THE QUESTION
much of the metal they obligate themselves to
pay or receive, as the case may be, in prosecuting
their labors, and in the commercial conflict—the
business intercourse of individuals in their efforts
to gain a livelihood and accumulate vrealth, and,
in the recurring event of taxes imposed and
assessed, how much they shall contribute in sup¬
port of the government.
Gold and silver coins are legal tender, pro¬
vided they are not clipped or punched, e., pro¬
vided they are full weight ; the quantity of metal
is the essential thing, each and every and at all
times.
There is something real at stake, as we discover
in looking into the matter, even though the " wise
men" would have us believe that the quantity or
volume of real money is of little account, so that
the standard is right. What the " wise men " do
not say is that the standard is always the highest
in the money hardest to procure, and which is
consequently increasing in power ; all this working
to the special advantage of those possessed of
large accumulations of money and pledges of
money due to them.
The purchasing power of a coin is its imme¬
diate value ; this value is determined by an
agreement between two or more persons in the
exercise of their judgment as to equivalency, one
person in giving and the other person or party in
COINAGE OF MONET.
63
receiving. There is nothing fixed in the coin
except its weight and ftneness. Its value may
change a hundred times a day, or as often as it is
used.
In certain cases the government does indirectly
limit, restrict, or control the oiBce work of money,
as in fixing the maximum price of provisions in
time of famine, or in limiting the rates of tolls and
freights, and interest for the use of money, which
on occasion is necessary to be done in order to
curb the greed of the rich, to .stay the hand of the
oppressor ; but in relation to its coinage, it does
not presume to warrant further than as to the
weight and fineness of its coins.
CHAPTER XII.
BANK NOTE INFLATION,
ONE Y is the hlood of commercial life, and
"plethora" is a word used to designate
fullness, or an overloaded condition of the com¬
mercial body with the vital element. It is con¬
tended that there is too much money at the present
time; that the market is in a "plethoric" con-
It is well known that our commercial interests
have suffered fearfully in times past, and that great
misfortunes have come upon the people by reason
of too much money—such as it was.
A concerted effort is now being made by the
" wise men " and the capitalists to decry and
berate silver, intending evidently by this means to
intimidate the people. One of the most effective,
and, withal, dishonest practices is to represent that
the continued coinage of silver will result in a
" plethora " of money, represented by them as a
condition certain to result in disaster.
It is a delightful theme for the rich men to tell
of the plethoric condition of the treasury vaults
literally overflowing with silver " which the people
will not touch," which, as fast as it is coined and
dition
BANK NOTE INFLATION.
65
issued, is thrown back to the keeping of the treas¬
ury department, and so proving itself to be a great
burden, and requiring the construction of new
vaults in which to store it.
The " wise men " expatiate on the insane folly
of the "silver inflationists;" of their stupidity
and ignorance, and of their malice and culpability
in desiring to cheat, defraud, and injure their
creditors.
We have made very diligent inquiry as to the
calamities so surely to come upon us by reason of
the continued coinage of silver, but the prophets
of evil altogether fail in deflnite response. We
have often denied this positive assurance of evils
to come, and demanded to know what we will be
subjected to, but the issue is invariably dodged^
while we are able to give assurances of great bless¬
ings to result from the restoration of silver to its
time-honored position.
There is no such thing, and in the nature of
things there can be no such event, as a plethora
of real money. There never has been and there
never will be. The " wise men " may ridicule this
statement ; but, nevertheless, it is truth.
Silver is every whit money as truly as gold is
money, and the rich men will do well not to for¬
get this fact. It does not rest with the rich to
say what shall be money and what shall not be
money.
66
ARE YOU READY FOR THE QUESTION %
Plethora can no more exist in relation to a
community, state, or nation than it can to the
individual citizen. When a person is discovered
who will allow that he is possessed of too much
money, then we may know that a genuine subject
of plethora has been found. The same is true of
nations.
Plethora can only be produced by over issue
of representative money — " promises to pay."
There is no danger of getting too much of the
real stuff. We may have, and sometimes have
had, too great a volume of make-believe money as
our circulating medium, but whether or no such a
condition obtains at this time we discuss else¬
where ; we desire in this chapter to point out the
sophistry and miserable hypocrisy of the cry of
'' plethora."
There has oftentimes in the history of our
country existed a plethora of bank notes, embracing
many kinds and qualities of paper, secured and
unsecured, all of which is make-shift money, and
which occasioned enormous losses to the people,
for the reason that tiii'v were " promises to pay,"
and in the course of human events pay day came.
But that is all past, our people have learned
wisdom and will have no more of it. ^\'e have to
do with the present and to prepare for the time to
come.
Plethora, as an element of danger, can only
BANK NOTE INFLATION.
67
exist by reason of a superabundance of credit
money.
We will note some of the signs and development
of a plethora. After a season of expansion and
intiation, when the dealer in merchantable goods,
the broker, and the stock jobber, lesson their activ¬
ity and take a breathing spell, loanable funds rapidly
accumulate in the banks. The manufacturing
industries, by reason of lessoning demand for their
products, are depressed, and as a consequence they
draw less on the loanable funds to carry on their
business. Other branches of business are affected
in the same manner and have occasion to use less
money — all tending to increase the stock of loan¬
able funds. Currently with the glut in the banks,
all values begin to decline ; when there appears to
be plenty of money to buy with, the buyers seem
to be few. At the same time wages are necessarily
on the decline, and many workers are thrown out
of employment. At such a time loanable funds
literally go a-begging for borrowers with good
securities, and this is a "plethora."
Next in order, the press and the wise men begin
to write of, and publish as to the " disturbing
causes," " over-production," " depression in busi¬
ness," and quite as often as any way, go far from
home to find causes for the dull times and general
stagnation in business ; and the farther away they
look for causes, the wiser they seem to consider
68
ARE YOU READY FOR THE QUESTION
themselves, and too often the people are disposed
to yield recognition and too ready acceptance of
their profound conclusions.
In the meantime, all buyers come more than ever
to distrust current values ; prices largely decline,
and people discover an immense amount of inflation ;
dealers see it in values of all kinds of property,
and creditors see it in the notes, bills, bonds, and
stocks they hold; then capitalists, after hearing a
few small commercial explosions, perhaps hear of
greater ones and begin to distrust their own judg¬
ment and the methods and practices of those with
whom they have to do ; they scan their securities,
and commence a thorough investigation of the
standing of their debtors ; they are taken with an
intense desire to sell out and to collect in, that they
may realize their gains ; everybody is notified to pay
up ; the cry is " hard times," and lo ! the plethora
is succeeded by a,panic and money is in demand.
At such a time money means the metal ; money
is the saving element lacking all the time — too
little real money j and now what little money there
may be in existence can hardly be found ; demand
for it, made at the banks with securities ever so
plentiful, fails to draw it from its hiding place.
The instinctive attachment of humanity to the
precious metals is marvelous ! The stock of gold
and silver coin is the safety fund of each individual
and of every nation.
BANK NOTE INFLATION.
69
The wise men, who, by the cry of plethora, think
they can frighten the people and coerce them into
believing that coining silver is a sure precursor of
disaster, might as well, and with as much hope of
success, try to make the poor believe that the
scarcer money is, so much the more they will be
able to earn, and, over and above their current
necessities, lay by against the time to come ; and
that if they would only let the rich dictate terms and
conditions without question or dissent, all parties
would be the better off.
The workers have ever seemed to be too ready
and willing to do this, but the time has come for
the poor to act for themselves and in their own
behalf.
('HAPTER Xin.
PAY DAY.
The past sixty years have revolutionized the
commercial affairs of the world, and have in
many respects changed the conditions under which
business is transacted, and the relation of the
masses to, and of participation in, the prosecution
of business.
During this time all our railways and telegraphs
have been built ; steam navigation was then in its
infancy ; now fast ships plow every sea and ocean,
and gather and distribute the manifold products of
all the nations of the earth.
The genius of mankind has wrought out wonder¬
ful inventions and devices and methods of commer¬
cial dealing and manipulation of credits, quite as
revolutionary and astounding to contemplate as our
modern means of communication and transporta¬
tion. Time and space seem to be as nearly as
possible annihilated ; we speak and print by light¬
ning, and we go ourselves and carry the products of
our labors with a speed and facility hardly dreamed
of a few years ago.
We have strained the system of credits to extreme
tension ; the parts are now separating. There has
70
PAT DAY.
71
been violent action in expansion, and it is certain
that there will be correspondingly violent action in
contraction of credits. This is a natural and reason¬
able conclusion — where there is action there mnst
be a reaction.
To-day an organized company of men have a
thousand times as great power to inspect and com¬
pare the whole world of values, as was possible then ;
this may now be done at a simple glance and with a
single eye, to one end ¡ we all have some under¬
standing of the disposition manifested on every
hand to consolidate and centralize interests for a
set purpose.
By means of these credit devices great advan¬
tages have been had by capitalists, colossal fortunes
have been accumulated, and, as we have already
shown, power represented by capital has been con¬
centrated in the hands of the few, and these few
have brought the accomplished fact to our notice,
that the world's money stock has been and is now
cornered over and over again ; is compassed about
with a net which will surely take it in — or con¬
trol it (the same thing practically, and what is
desired rather than the immediate possession of
the metal).
The money power is now the practical element,
and what was not formerly possible — to bring a
force to bear to depress all other interests, at the
behest of this power — is by reason of these great
72 ARE YOU READY FOR THE QUESTION?
commercial facilities, now thoroughly practical, and
being done.
The genius of this power — monopoly — is to
aggrandize itself at the expense of all other interests.
It is a fact admitted by all that the money power
already determines the course of nations against
nations in the matter of engaging in war to protect
the rich and save them from losses in money lent ;
and nations are prevented from going to war lest
the interests of the rich should be prejudiced, or
because the rich will not furnish the money to carry
on the war.
What we contend for and believe is that we have
already entered upon a new era in our financial and
industrial history. We have been passing through
the era of inflation, and we are beginning seriously
to consider the situation and watch for the outcome.
Capital is more than ever before giving the closest
scrutiny to all credits, and looking more intently
than ever as to the collaterals and securities upon
which these credits have been granted, and new
credits are given,only on absolute security; and,
this being the era of closest scrutiny as well as
of liquidation, it must of necessity be an era of
depression.
We .have shown how enormously credits have
been extended and suggested as to the extent of the
present inflation ; and we insist upon it that the
capitalists know full well as to the power of the
PAY DAY.
73
dollars they hold, whether they be in the metal
itself or in notes and bonds promising the delivery
of the metal.
These gentlemen are not "playing for fnn."
They know the distinction between the metal dol¬
lar as a " measure " and the yard-stick as a measure ;
in the matter of gathering in their dollars, they are
in dead earnest ; and seeing that the Shylocks
" mean business," it will prove a wise precaution on
the part of all those in debt to look about them and
see where the metal is coming from.
A great majority of our people are loaded down
with a burden of debt. It will be hard and trying
times for debtors, and as to the poor, it is bad
enough now, and we leave the reader to anticipate
their condition in the time to come.
Liquidation will be voluntary, and as immedi¬
ately accomplished as may be consistent and pos¬
sible, on the part of those who are wise and able
to pay their debts. It will be compulsory on the
part of those who put off the evil day, and run the
risk of continuing in an extravagant or needlessly
inffated condition.
The Shylocks will have the coin, or they will
have property at their own prices — at values fixed
by themselves. There is absolutely no other altern¬
ative, unless they change their minds, and arrive at
the conclusion that the precious metals are of no
account ; and as to that, we can only determine what
74 ARK YOU READY FOR THE QUESTION?
men may do by what they do now, and what they
have done in the past. It is simply a question
whether the debtor lias the coin, or has property
with which he can buy it. The coin is the sine
qua non.
Let no " wise man " say that this present dom¬
inating power will not exert itself in the line of
depression. It will not avail; only tliose who wish
to believe it will not so depress, will agree with
them. The poor, the masses, have learned by
experience that capital is selfish, grasping and
cruelly mean, and never is, or will be, satisfied. A
poor man may be, and often is, well nigh satisfied
and contented with the modest means of sub¬
sistence, aspiring only to physical comfort and
limited means of usefulness ; but the rich, those
who do not convert their riches into wealth., are
never satisfied.
The present depression in business, in industrial
activities, and in values of property, is the result of
many causes, among which are : (1) The efforts
made by the people to reduce their burden of debt.
(2) Their general admission that they have no use
for so much property now as they formerly had.
(3) That the rich want money rather than property ;
that those who are able to purchase have no
faith in current, or, as the case may be, of debtors'
estimates of values. (4) That the poor are not
able to buy. (5) That all people have made the
PAY DAY.
75
discovery that they can ^et on witli less furniture
and clothing, and live on plainer food, and that less
expensive recreation is most suitably appropriate
these days.
The " vidse men" may theorize and philosophize,
may discuss the matter of "over-production," and
the " wicked antagonism of labor against capital,"
the necessity of a " higher standard of commercial
morality," " increased facilities and cheapening
processes," but we state the situation as a whole
and in few words : The jjeople have been playing
" loose " with credits^ and capital has got them
'"'■fast " in pledges, and the screws are bein^ turned
down.
The process of liquidation will go on until we
have a closer approximation to strict values, and
many who now believe themselves to be rich will
be poor indeed ; they will learn that instead of
being rich, they were only somewhat inflated ; will
learn the difference between the control of property
by virtue of being permitted to occupy it, and the
occupation of property by virtue of the ownership
of it.
Some of those who now consider themselves as
being poor, though possessed of means sufficient to
provide a living, but without debts, will be well off
compared with many who now assume to be rich ;
and the very poor will be mercilessly ground
between the upper and nether millstones — the
76 AKE YOU READY FOR THE QUESTION ?
upper stone being dear money, and the lower stone,
little work and less wages.
And when the process of liquidation has gone
on a little farther, and these dollars, all having
been so easily promised to be paid, are found to be
so hard to get, and when it will be discovered that
they are so scarce, after current expenses of living
are paid, even by living ever so closely, that to
accumulate and lay by for emergencies, misfortunes,
sickness, and old age, will be next to an impossi¬
bility, many who now join with the rich in the cry
for a " gold dollar," and an " honest dollar," will
be perfectly satisfied that they are doing full justice
in payment in tendering the dollar of the people —
the dollar" given us by the fathers, made of the
metal which is the world's money, and is, in every
respect, the same to-day that it has ever been, the
true dollar.
CHAPTER XIV.
CAPITAL PLENTY MONEY SCARCE.
N ALL the history of our country, money has
never been cheaper than at the present time,
in the rate of interest at which it may be obtained,
on the basis of satisfactory security; and within
the present generation money has never been so
dear as at the present time, in the necessity of
making great sacriffces to obtain it, by the sale of
property, and in the portion of labor necessary to
earn it.
Rates of interest have never been lower, but this
fact does not prove that money is plenty ; but in
the present condition of affairs it does demonstrate
that money is scarce.
In order to obtain a proper understanding of
this matter, all should remember that what is
ordinarily termed " money " in the commercial
and bank reports is, for the greater part, bank
credits and debt inflation. When it is said that
" money is plenty," " the market is easy," or that
the banks are " overflowing with loanable funds,"
it means simply that deposits in bank are large,
and that the banks are having limited requests
from borrowers for funds to carry on the respect-
78 AKE YOD READY FOR THE QUESTION?
ive lines of business. Bank credits and debt infla¬
tion are not money.
The present hard times have not been brought
about by what is popularly known as a contraction
of the currency—by reduction in the volume of
bankable funds—but because capitalists are de¬
termined that the true circulating medium, real
money, shall be reduced or limited to gold alone—
that they will force it into contraction.
At the present time it is a matter of dear money
at the expense of all other values. The capitalists
see such a vast amount of inflation in all values,
they do not wish to purchase any property, but
prefer to hold their means in hand, idle. They
now see their money growing rapidly in power
even while it is idle, and this more rapidly than it
would increase at ordinary rates of interest, i.e.,
they know the best investment they can make of
their money is to keep possession of it, or put it
where they can recover it again at call, or put it
into such securities as can be converted at an
houi*'s notice, even though it be at a very low rate
of interest.
In many localities property lias depreciated
from twenty-five to fifty per cent, and this means
that if general values have fallen ofl: twenty-live
per cent, the dollars are thirty-three and one-third
per cent greater, and where the depreciation has
been fifty per cent, the dollars have actually
CAPITAL PLENTY MONEY SCARCE.
79
doubled in purchasing power. No wonder that
there is a "plethora" of money—that capital is
idle !
We submit no statements of our own as to
depreciation in values, but leave the reader to
judge of this matter by a comparison of values in
his own locality, in sales actually made at this time,
and former current values.
The capitalist knows that with the present
amount of indebtedness outstanding, there is not
real money sufRcient to do the work of liquidation
and allow current values to be maintained. And
some of them know that were the interest on the
present volume of indebtedness recpiired to be paid
in gold alone, the whole stock of gold coiu would
be exhausted by the payment of one year's interest
only, even if it were possible to gather it all in and
use it for this purpose !
We beg the reader not to condemn this as a
wild statement, but to investigate the facts, and
see how nearly correct the statement is. Fifteen
thousand millions of debts, averaging four per cent
interest, would require six hundred millions of
gold coin for payment of one year's interest, a sum
equal to the total gold in the country ; and in fact
not one-quarter of this could possibly be made
available for such purpose, as the gold is owned
and controlled by the creditors, and how, indeed,
could the debtors get possession of it? Green-
80 ake you ready fok the question '(
backs and bank notes only serve to relieve the
strain ; they are not money, but are simply
promises to pay coin.
The capitalist knows that the commercial com¬
munity is indebted to the national and private
banks in the sum of four thousand millions of
dollars, and that the bank credits, about three
thousand millions, are largely made up of credits
held against this indebtedness ; or, in other words,
that bank credits are an uncertain element, and
liable to vanish like a mist before the sun. That
there is about twice as much banking capital as
there is coin in the country, and that within ten
days' time the banks could gather in all the
available coin, and leave the people moneyless—
stranded high and dry ; that in such an event,
those who held the pledges of the United States
and of the several states, and mortgages on shops,
farms, and railroads, would be masters of the situa¬
tion, or, at all events, would be on top.
The fear of such a contingency is the reason why
the state of Connecticut is able to place a three-per¬
cent loan at a premium—that the subscribing
capitalists prefer the pledge of the state at less
than three per cent rather than a bond secured by
mortgage on separate items of property at a much
higher rate of interest.
The only reasons preventing the banks and
capitalists from acting upon their present oppor-
CAPITAL PLENTY MONEY SCAECE. 81
tunity to control the available gold coin by pre¬
senting the treasury notes for redemption, is their
conservatism and the fear of disaster, and the
power of the government to turn out to them the
white dollars. But, nevertheless, this is just what
the capitalists are gradually working up to, and
were it not for the presence of the white dollars in
the treasury, the people would to-day be wholly at
the mercy of the capitalists. The capitalists do
not want the white dollars. It is not for the
reason that they are not money, or that they are
bulky—the capitalist does not want gold to carry
away in his hand, for in receiving it in any con¬
siderable quantity he does not handle it himself ;
the fact of bulk is but a thin pretext ; he can
handle silver as well as gold, and if he is possessed
of it, he is abundantly able to handle and store it
(the poor will shed no tears over his want of
storage capacity), but he does not want it because it
defeats his plans—it breaks the corner.
The trouble in business and commercial affairs at
the present time arises from debt, inflation, and a
scarcity of coin with which the debts may be liqui¬
dated. It is the consciousness that many will not
be able to pay, that the volume of indebtedness is
too great, that the water must be squeezed out of
stocks, bonds, and securities of all kinds, and that
values must be readjusted on the coin basis; the
capitalist desires that this shall be on the basis of
82
AHE YOU READY FOR THE QUESTION?
gold coin, and the people say if it must be so, it shall
be on the basis of gold and silver.
The present depression is not occasioned from the
fact that capital is not abundant. There are untold
millions of capital accumulated, the bare income
from which, aside from this capital itself, if it were
set properly in motion by investment to such end,
would make the hives of industry hum again ; but
capital seeks safe and profitable investment. It does
not feel safe now. It proposes to make a sure thing
for itself, or do nothing.
In considetlng the present issues, it is necessary
to observe the grand distinction between money and
capital.
Money is capital, but all capital is not money.
The income from capital for the most part is received
in money ; but the great bulk of capital, outside of
real and fixed property—farms, lands, and improve¬
ments—exists in the form of interest-bearing securi¬
ties, mortgages, written and unwritten, on states,
cities, corporative properties and farms, and firms
and individuals ; all of which property capital is rap¬
idly absorbing, by virtue of its inherent power to
compound and perpetuate itself.
The amount of capital is simply enormous and
rapidly increasing—so great that our minds cannot
comprehend it ; the amount of real money is very
small, a bare fraction of the accumulated capital ;
and, as we have shown, a strenuous effort is being
CAPITAL PLENTY—MONEY SCARCE.
83
made to limit and lessen the amount. Only limit
the amount of money and the work is done ; it will
have a constantly increasing work to perform ;
values of property will go down, down, and wages
will grow less and less ; those who have little will
consume all they have, and those who have much
will have gathered it all in. Under the present
condition of affairs this is the inevitable outcome.
Those only who have houses, lands, and property in
their own right, free of debt, are on the safe side.
We have seen the day when we, as a people, had
no money—when we did business altogether on the
presumption that some day we would have money ;
we became infatuated with the idea that we could
always do business without money ; the " wise men "
told us we needed only a little money to make the
money " denominations ; " that money was a " meas¬
ure merely''—that "credits" would almost alto¬
gether usurp the place of money. We have con¬
tinued our work on the credit plan, have been buying
and selling and issuing our promises to pay, in the
aggregate more than we can tell or comprehend,
pledging ourselves to deliver the metal ; and now
the metal is called for.
Is money plenty, or is it scarce ?
CHAPTER XV.
CORNKKINO THE GOLD.
TT MAY NOT be very clearly apparent how
modern systems of communication, transpor¬
tation, and methods of transacting business, tend to
the centralization of capital and to unifying its
power.
We will briefly illustrate this by a hypothetical
" corner " in corn on the Chicago Board of Trade.
United accumulations of capital have been the
means with which great lines of railways have been
built leading out from Chicago into the great grain
Heids of our continent ; many vast storehouses have
been erected there to hold the products of the fields
awaiting the process of sale and distribution. The
cattle, sheep, and hogs from ten thousand hills and
valleys concentrate, by means of these railways,
at this great commercial center, to be prepared
for use as food, and the products are sold on the
" Board.''
These packing and grain houses are far more
extensive than were dreamed of by the most vis¬
ionary enthusiast of fifty years ago. The accom¬
plishment of these things would not have been
possible without the united capital of many persons
»4
CORNERING THE GOLD.
85
brought together in corporative capacity and used
to this purpose. We need not amplify as to this
matter. The greatness of the commerce of Chi¬
cago is on every tongue.
There has been quite a marked change in the
methods of conducting the commercial business of
this distribution as there has been in the mechan¬
ical parts of handling and transporting it. One per¬
son, or firm, now deals in and handles a thousand
times as great quantities of produce as formerly ;
thousands of firms are directly or indirectly repre¬
sented on the Board, and many thousands of dealers
scattered over the length and breadth of the land
are, by means of the telegraph, in almost instan¬
taneous communication with the members of the
Board.
Transactions upon the Board are done in the
most perfect order and under the most thorough
system of business rules, notwithstanding its appar¬
ent confusion and disorder during the hours of
" Change ; " values of products are so accurately
defined and closely watched, that a cargo or a hun¬
dred or a thousand car loads of grain are sold at a
word, or by a signal, when there are so many voices
the word cannot be heard.
It has come to be the practice also to sell for
future delivery, and a large portion of the transac¬
tions are in " futures." There are very many ele¬
ments of uncertainty entering to change and disturb
86 ARE YOU READY FOR THE QUESTION?
the value of the products marketed there; the pur¬
chase price for the moment of any product may
widely differ from its vainc ere the day or the
month closes, or during the next month ; and the
contract price may resolve itself into a revelation
of great loss or proñt when the [»urchase is made
to provide the grain for delivery.
Commercial skill consists in buying and selling
on comparison and personal judgment of these
uncertain and unknown values, in the items making
up the commfidities marketed on the Board.
The hope of gain in making a more nearly correct
estimate of values, is the inducement for individuals
to try their skill in predicting and anticipating prices-
l\[illions on millions of units—bushels and bar¬
rels of commodities — are bought and sold without
desire or expectation of seeing or handling the
commodities; the resulting gain is the desired end
and object.
A few capitalists, seeing their opportunity, enter
into combination to "corner" the market.
They select a commodity which they believe will
prove to be a good "purchase;" they labor in
secret and lay plans to make great gains ; careful
estimates are made of the stock in store at home
and at all accessible points ; they estimate also
the amount reasonably to be expected from the
various sources of supply under pressure of increased
demand and higher prices.
CORNEKINfi THE GOLD.
8Y
The plan of the campaign being, as they think,
well laid out, brokers are commissioned to gather in
pledges or contracts for the delivery of the com¬
modity, which we will assume to be corn. The
operators and traders are brisk and lively, all anxious
to sell, and under the influence of tlie general con¬
tagion obtaining, assisted by numerous hints and
"points" from the wise ones, and perhaps some
advance in prices, they sell freely ; the friends in
the country get tlie word and readily contribute
their quota to the pledges. In the meantime the
syndicate has practically secured control of the
stock of corn in store.
Having secured pledges for the delivery of corn,
several times greater in quantity than the amount
in store, or at least in suflicient quantity to serve
their purpose, the syndicate order their brokers to
secure all the com offered for delivery within the
time in which the contracts mature; tlie demand
suddenly increases, and those who have sold for
future delivery are now contemplating in a very
active manner how and where they may obtain the
corn with which to till their contracts ; the order of
the syndicate being imperative to secure the corn,
its value rapidly advances. They are masters of
the situation ; they fix the price to suit themselves,
and those who have contracted to deliver the corn
are fully in the power of the syndicate. Our people
stand now in exactly the same relation to the capi-
88 ARE YüO READY FOR THE QUESTION?
talists as do the traders on the Board to the syndi¬
cate — we are in their power ; we have been turning
out our promises to pay at a lively rate, and to an
amount twenty times greater than our stock of coin
— the commodity which we have promised to
deliver. Now tlie question is, Where are we going
to get the coin ? We are not required to be exact
in our estimates; tlie amount of our indebtedness
can only be approximated. In order to make a just
estimate it would be necessary to consult the public
records of every county, city, and state, and the
books of every business man, lirm, and corporation
in the United States ; but all will readily admit that
our stock of coin is but a small fraction compared
with the net aggregate of our indebtedness, even
after all due allowance is made for offsets and cur¬
rent liquidations.
Coin is but a commodity, no less and no more so
than corn. The debtor has to make good his
pledges to deliver the metal. If he has not the
coin he must buy it ; he must sell his property to
provide the coin ; he must turn out his property to
pay the debt.
The rich men well understand the present situa¬
tion, and they are no less liable to take advantage of
the situation than is the syndicate above described.
They are after money, and they will make it if they
can ; and we are feeling the pressure now.
The money power is striving for an absolute
COKNEKINfi THE GOLD.
89
mastery, and with a permanent cessation of the
coinage of silver, which this power now arbitrarily
demands, and a little further concert of action, they
will have things all within their grasp, and will be
able to exercise full control. The only mitigating
circumstance of the present situation is in the fact
that the time of payment is not fixed on a day, but
is extended over a period of years; but the outcome
is inevitable; our debts must he paid, and we
modestly suggest to those who have pledged the
delivery of dollars, and gold dollars at that, you do
not know that you have anything so long as you are
in debt. You may be in temporary possession of a
homestead, a stock of goods, a shop, or a farm, but
a pressure is being brought to bear upon you which
is as terrible as any engine of cruel war. It will
overrun and crush you unless you get out of the
way.
CHAPTER XVI.
DOriiLE STANDAR]).
The Mint Act of 1792 established a dual coin¬
age, and erected the unit of lawful money in
the silver dollar; it provided for the coinage of both
silver and gold, and fixed their relative valuation at
15 to 1.
Alexander Hamilton, in his report to Congress in
1791, says : " To annul the use of either of the metals
as money, is to abridge the quantity of circulating
medium, and is liable to all the objections which
ai'ise from a comparison of the benefits of a full,
with the evils of a scanty circulation."
This report was heartily concurred in and the dual
coinage inaugurated, the object being to utilize to
the fullest extent all of the money metals which
should be deposited at the mint. The policy of
coining two metals at a fixed ratio of value to each
other is in great part the issue at this time. Our
object is more to explain the matter of double coin¬
age than to make any extended effort to defend it.
Nevertheless we have a few words to offer.
Tlie matter of the double standard is, in all the
possibilities of what we do not know, and in the
technicalities touching the things we do know, a
90
nOUBLK STANDARD.
91
matter of interminable discussion. Eut, as will be
seen, it is a very simple and easily understood
matter, in its practical operation. Much indirect
matter bearing upon and relating to this subject has
already been expressed in these pages.
No system or basis for commercial dealing, defin¬
ing and prescribing money, can be laid down which
will work absolute equity, so long as the purchasing
power of money is changeable and uncertain, and
so long as men are fallible in their estimation of the
worth and utility of tlie various commodities ; but it
is a certainty that relief is had in the privilege of
the use of two metals rather than of one only in
making exchanges—in buying and selling, and in
the payment of debts.
The option of payment in either tender where
more than one commodity or money is a tender
under the strict letter of the contract, is just and
righteous, a safeguard from malicious injury and
willful oppression. In this respect a dual coinage
is a wise and necessary precaution on the part
of the government, making provision in behalf
of itself and of the people, that payment may be
made in either of the metals, in recognition of the
fact that there is no absolute stability in either one
taken alone, the one being scarce recourse may be
had to the other.
England was the first nation to establish a single
gold coinage. This was done in 1816, and the
92 ARE YOU READY ] ()R THE QUESTION ?
influences at work to day to 2:)er8uade our people to
adopt tlie gold standard are essentially British, and
the benefit largely accrues to them. Their allies in
our country have interests in common with them
and submit to their dictation because it pays to do
so.
The theory is held that the use of one metal as
the sole standard is better than to make use of two
metals, and under the inspiration of this theory the
claim is made that gold is the proper metal ; that it
is steadier in value; that the use of two metals
results in demoralization and confusion, and will
culminate in disaster.
The advocates of the single gold standard fail al¬
together to show any disaster as having occurred in
the past, in our own or in any other country. The
countries using the double standard are of the most
prosperous nations, and while the market value of
the metals as bullion has caused some fluctuations
in the volume of the one and then the other of the
metals, these nations have been able to possess
themselves of, and utilize, more coin under the
double standard than would have been the case had
the standard been single.
We have an object lesson in the condition of our
affairs at the present time showing the reverse of
their proposition, and how that for the want of prac¬
tical bi-metalism we are great sufferers and are com¬
pelled to go to London to buy one of the metals to
DOÜliLE STANDARD.
93
supply our needs, when in fact we are one of the
principal producers of the metal.
Our country could not have afforded to exclude
one of the metals from our coinage during the early
years of its history, for the reasons stated by Mr.
Hamilton, as noted in the opening of this chapter,
and his reasons have the same force to-day as
then. His statement is an epitome of the whole
matter.
The trials our country has undergone for the want
of coin ought to convince any person of the folly of
any effort to exclude either of the jnetals ; and as
we have shown, we now need all we can obtain as
certainly as it was needed then.
The effort is made by the wise men to clothe this
matter in much mystery, but it is a matter of prac¬
tical common sense, and is readily understood, and
it is as truly pertinent and wise on the part of our
country to hold to the double standard, as it is pru¬
dent on the part of the farmer, having equal facili¬
ties, to diversify his crops and raise corn and wheat,
instead of hazarding his labor all on one commodity.
And now why should we not utilize both metals ?
Surely we are not wiser than our fathers who
calmly considered this matter in all its bearings and
established the system herein advocated, and which
we propose to perpetuate. Gold and silver have
passed on down through the history of human
affairs, standing and operating the one to fortify
94 AKE YOU READY FOR THE QUESTION 'i
and re-enforce the otlier in the event of a scarcity
on the part of either.
There are some wonderful facts showing the co¬
ordinate standing and operations of the two noble
metals. One is, that the estimates of the world's
stock of coin, which is practically agreed upon
by the authorities, places it at about 8,000 millions
of dollars, which stock is equally divided between
gold and silver, rated on the European ratio of
15^ to 1. This is a signiticant fact. The world's
accumulated production and present stock stand on
this basis. This would make a showing of about
$5 total gold and silver coin per capita, not includ¬
ing the unenlightened peoples of the earth.
Another significant fact is, that gold is never
found in its native rock unaccompanied by silver.
Even our great Oomstock silver mines, which are
now a thing of the past, produced about forty per
cent of gold. Some of the silver mines produce
gold in very slight quantities ; but, on the other
hand, the washings from alluvial deposits yield but
a minimum of silver. The money metals are com¬
plements of each other and inseparable, as in their
native bed, in their service to mankind.
The world's stock of gold and silver plate, orna¬
ments, and other manufactures is estimated to be
equal in value to the stock of coin, and in relative
value to be about equally divided between silver and
gold.
DOUBLE STANDAsá». """»fs 95
It is urged that the "double standard" is a "will
o'the wisp" — an illusion, and an impossibility in
fact, and that we never had any such thing ; also
that we have been under a gold standard since the
weight of the gold coinage was reduced in 1834:.
In answer we say, granted that gold has princi¬
pally been used since that date, which is not the mat¬
ter at issue, under the double standard, we did
have the option of making payment in either metal,
and in using gold we simply acted under the privi¬
lege of paying in such as we could get to pay with,
it being that silver was so scarce it was out of reach
and sight. This privilege is a birthright, and we
do not propose to be robbed of it.
The secret of the whole matter of opposition to
a dual coinage lies in the desire of the creditor to
nominate the metal for the single standard, choos¬
ing the one which can be most readily handled and
manipulated; and, to deprive the debtor of the
option of payment in either metal, as is his privi¬
lege under the bi-inetallic system.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE DEMONETIZATION ACT OF 1873.
E DO XOT propose to enter into a discus¬
sion of the merits or demerits of this act
further than to explain how this law came to be
enacted, and some of the apparent inducing motives
for the monetary change produced by this law.
The act of February 12, 1873, was a long act of
sixty-seven sections, regulating all the details of the
mint. It covered the whole work of the several
mints, the assaying, and the refining ofiices. It did
not demonetize the old silver dollar, or any of the
fractional silver coins of standard weight issued
prior to 1853. The silver dollar is not named in it,
and it would escape casual observation that the
white dollar was in any way affected by it. The
section relating to the silver dollar was drawn in
such a maimer as to deceive the legislators them¬
selves as well as the people. It did not boldly and
frankly particularize its object, as it should have
done if it was intended that what it did do should
be understood, by declaring that the coinage of the
silver dollar was thereby to be discontinued, and
should be a legal tender no longer. It recited no
such thing, but it accomplished that end by próvid¬
os
THE DEMONETIZATION ACT.
97
ing that no other coins than those named in the list
to be coined, should be coined, and the silver dollar
was not one of the coins named in the bill.
At no time in the Senate or House did any per¬
son explain that the bill abolished the silver dollar,
or that the unit of value was by the bill fixed in the
gold dollar, and in no section of the act was it
specifically pointed out that the effect of the act
was to change the standard of values from gold and
silver to gold alone. The title of the act, instead of
containing any intimation of the change made in the
standard of values, was "An act revising and amend¬
ing the laws relative to the mints, assay oflBces, and
.coinage of the United States."
This bill was before Congress in various stages
for over two years. It was meritorious on the line
indicated by its title. The mischief was wrought
by the addition of about a dozen words by the con¬
ference committee just before its passage, changing
the standard from silver to the gold dollar.
While this bill was on its passage, our legislators
vainly asked for information. Some delay was
experienced, but it was finally forced through with¬
out having been printed. The act, when passed,
was not read except by title, and it is notorious that
this transcendent change in the money system of
the country, affecting the most vital interests, was
carried through without the knowledge or observa¬
tion of the country.
98 ÄßE YOÜ KEADY KOE THE QUESTION?
The managers of the bill, in advocacy of its pas¬
sage, stated that it was very essential that the mint
laws should be revised and codified. The several
acts were somewhat confiicting, and very numerous,
the ostensible object being to do away with obsolete
acts and sections, and to bring the whole into unity.
It was claimed that it would reduce the expenses of
the service, and that the salaries of no officers were
increased. In fact, it was represented to be quite
harmless.
As paper money was the actual currency of the
country at the time, a coinage act was not likely to
and did not attract general attention. In its rela¬
tion to the question of a single or double standard,
it was discussed but little in the House, and not at
all in the Senate. The press of the country was
entirely unobservant or silent when it was pending,
when it passed, and for more than three years after¬
ward. If it had been generally known that any
such vital questions were lurking in the bill, it
would have aroused a widespread discussion through¬
out the country.
In 1868 a bill was before Congress, one of the
principal objects of which was to demonetize silver,
but it found no favor, the weight of legislative and
public opinion being overwhelmingly against it.
The people of the United States believed in the
white dollar, and they were unwilling to give it up.
The crafty power seeking to aggrandize itself in
THE DEMONETIZATION ACT.
99
this movement, finding it could not carry out its
plan in the face of the people, determined to
strike in the dark. In due time a stunning blow
was struck—a blow not so apparent at first, but
of deadly power, and disastrous in the end. A
combination of foreign and American experts were
equal to the occasion. They conceived the idea
of accomplishing demonetization in this country
through the bill revising our coinage laws.
A movement had already been inaugurated by
the money powers of the world to dethrone silver
from among the commercial nations, and some¬
thing had been accomplished toward this end.
In order to inake this scheme a success, it was
necessary to commit the United States to it, our
country being, in growth of power and influence,
the most aggressive nation of the world. Germany
had already been inveigled into the snare, and the
states of the Latin Union were looking about them
in consternation.
Willing subjects were found in the officers of the
treasury, and in the committees on mints and
coinage in Congress. The foreign and domestic
money lenders had things pretty much to their
liking. They "experted" this provision making
gold the standard into the mint and coinage laws
at the last moment and the bill was then forced
through.
We have little occasion to assure any person as
100 AK Ii YOÜ READY FOR THE QUESTION ?
to the motives of those who engineered this skillful
plan to a consummation, further than to refer to a
few facts. Our government had outstanding at
that time about two thousand millions of bonds
payable in coin. Our states, cities, and corpora¬
tions were in debt in an enormous aggregate.
About tliat date the amount of gold production
seemed to be rapidly decreasing, and has since con¬
tinued to decrease, and the silver jiroduct was un¬
usually large, promising a large increase in the
stock of the white metal. The excessive produc¬
tion of silver has since fallen off, and is now
declining.
As a movement this was simply a scheme to de¬
prive silver of its lawful uses, thereby to increase
the demand for, and enlarge the office work of
gold, all tending to make the yellow metal more
valuable.
Let it not be said that it must have been an
honest proposition for the reason that at the time
this act was passed, silver was at a premium of
about three per cent, for this premium obtained by
reason of our legal ratio being 16 to 1 instead of
15^ to 1, as it was in Europe; that is to say,.in
Europe a less amount of silver by about three per
cent was the equivalent of gold than in the United
States, hence our silver in Europe was worth three
per cent premium, which fact accounts for the
scarcity of silver in the United States.
THE DEMONETIZATION ACT.
101
The discovery of the disability which had been
put upon silver was not made by most of the
members of Congress and by the people generally,
until the approach of the day—January 1, 1879,
which had been set for the resumption of payment
by the government. Wonder was expressed why
silver was not being coined with which to prepare
for that day. When the facts became generally
known there was a commotion, and the people were
heard from in a very emphatic manner.
But full justice was not accomplished by the act
of 1878, which restored silver so far as to provide
for a limited coinage of the dollar on the part of
the government only. Heretofore during all our
history, the owners of silver bullion had the right
to demand its coinage into dollars. The people
were deprived of this right by this act.
It was a compromise, and compromises never
settle a question of this character. It was to pla¬
cate for violated rights which quieted for a time,
only to revive as an issue of greater intensity after
the results of the compromise should come to be
known and considered.
The stealthy manner in which this act was
rushed through the House is well illustrated by the
following colloquy in the Senate while the act of
1878 providing for the restoration of the silver
dollar was under consideration :
Mr. Blaine said : " It would be found that the
102 ARE vor READY FOR THE QUESTION <
subject was not as well understood then as now.
The silver dollar was not in circulation then, and
no one saw the effect of the act. It would be
quite as well if they all acknowledged their igno¬
rance."
Mr. Yoorhees, of Indiana, asked if the senator
from Maine, who was then Speaker of the House,
knew that the bill demonetized the silver dollar.
Mr. Blaine: "I did not. Did you?"
Mr. Voorhees said he would frankly say he did
not.
Mr. Thurman, of Ohio, said this was a singular
catechism. One senator asks the other if he knew
the bill demonetized the silver dollar, both being
members of the House at the time, and the reply
was: "No, did you?" and the other says "No."
Neither knew that the bill demonetized the silver
dollar, because it did not. [Laughter.]
The legal tender quality of the silver dollar was
not taken away or limited until the adoption of the
Revised Statutes in June, 1874, of which section
3,586 is as follows : " The silver coins of the United
States shall be a legal tender at their nominal value
for any amount not exceeding five dollars in any
one payment."
CHAPTER XVTII.
MORE SILVER IN THE DOLLAR.
IT IS contended by some of our citizens who
hold that the full use of silver is desirable
and that it would be best to restore it to its
former equality witli gold under the coinage laws,
but that it would be better to establish it on or
about the ratio indicated by the bullion value of
silver and gold, rather than the present legal ratio.
We believe this would be a very serious error, and
we note some of the reasons why this would not
be the proper course to pursue.
Past experience has shown that on the basis of
16 to 1, we were not able to retain silver coin in
the country; the European ratio being 15.1 to 1,
showing a margin of about three per cent for profit
by exportation and recoinage in Europe.
This has been for many years a very embar¬
rassing problem. We had coined gold at the
ratio of 15 to 1 up to the year 1834, at which
time the ratio was changed to 16 to 1, by reduc¬
ing the weight of the gold coins, which was done
for the purpose of preventing exportation of our
gold coinage. If the ratio had, instead, been
made to conform to the European ratio, we
103
104 ARE YOU READY FOR THE QUESTION?
would have been spared much trouble and annoy¬
ance.
While our ratio remains higher by about three
per cent than the European ratio, it would not be
wisdom to increase it. The full rehabilitation of
silver in the United States would create a great
demand for the metal, and its value as bullion
would doubtless appreciate to the old ratio ; cer¬
tainly, we do not know that it would not so en¬
hance in value, in which event, by increasing the
weight of the silver dollar, we would be selling our
silver too cheaply.
It is desirable that the nations of the world
should come to an understanding, and agree upon
a ratio of coinage, but this will not be accomplished
until the United States restores silver to its time-
honored position. Such action on our part would
in its effects tend to compel the nations of Europe
to act in their own behalf, and in the meantime
we would gain advantages of which we are now
deprived.
The timid policy manifested by our government
in establishing limited coinage in 1S78 was a dis¬
astrous mistake, and it is largely the source of our
ñnaneial uncertainties and depressions at this time.
It has kept the silver standard and the silver and
gold standard nations of Europe in suspense as to
our future policy, and has emboldened the gold
standard nations, and our "wise men" and Shylocks,
MOKE SII.VEE IN THE OOLLAK.
105
to continue tlieir relentless war on the white metal.
It has placed our people at a great disadvantage,
and deprived them of the benefits which would
have accrued by having done the right thing—in
placing silver under the laws just as it was before it
was wantonly dethroned.
To increase the quantity of pure silver in the dol¬
lar would he a great wrong. It would confirm by
legislative enactment the wicked action of creditors
in their infamous designs against the debtors. It
would be a public yielding to unjust demands, and
would lirand our people as cowards. Yielding
would be a precedent acknowledging that the privi¬
leges and powers of the creditor precede and govern,
and that he may even have and enjoy the benefits
accruing as the natural result of his own errors and
frauds, as against the debtor.
A long train of misfortunes has come to us from
the evil legislation of 1873, and it is now desired
that we shall confirm, fix, and acquiesce in the havoc
resulting, as being our normal condition. We
understand very well that the greater portion of
our present outstanding volume of indebtedness has
been created since 1873, but if this indebtedness
was made under conditions misrepresented by the
creditor, surely the debtor is entitled to relief. To
those who ask a greater jiortion of the metal, we
say justice and right must obtain if the people have
the spirit to maintain them. No rule of ethics
106 ARE YOU EEAOY FOR THE QUESTION?
implies any obligation on- the part of the debtor to
pay in excess of the bond.
In this matter there is at present but one course
to pursue ; go to the bottom of our troubles and
extirpate the cause. Place silver where it was origi¬
nally and give it full liberty to show its " mettle "
and there will be a demonstration as to the powers
and quality of the metal, and then will come tiie
proper time for any adjustment of the ratio which
may seem to be required.
The plea urged so loudly and persistently, that
we shall lose our financial prestige and impair our
credit, if we do not conform to the British standard,
is unworthy of notice. It matters little to us what
course other nations pursue in their efforts to inten¬
sify the monetary standard. We are not under the
slightest moral or economic obligation to conform
to the standard of other nations, when in so doing
we perpetrate a wrong upon ourselves.
It is insisted that we should conform to the British
standard, so that we may be able to pay for the silks
and wines purchased abroad, lest our foreign trade
should be disturbed !
Have any of the " wise men,'' or rich men, heard
of any disturbances in trade within our own borders ?
What means the wail of distress going up from the
millions of workers in our own conntrv ? Charity
begins at home ! We shall get on qttiie as well if
we buy less of foi'eign 'productions, and use and
MORE SU,VER IN THE I)OI,LAR.
107
consume goods and products made hy our own
people and raised within our own horders.
Trade relations between Portland, Maine, and
Portland, Oregon, between Chicago and Xew Or¬
leans, and between Nebraska and Pennsylvania,
determine the prosperity of our people.
Silver as hullion will at this time buy, of things
necessary and useful for mankind, about as much as
ever before within the time in which our present
indebtedness was created ; so it appears that in this
respect the creditor receives more than an equiva¬
lent, and now what is our proposition but to increase
its value and restore it to an equality with gold ?
If in the process of time, after silver has been
restored, it apjiears that gold is still in excessive
demand, and we find that it is taking its departure,
we may again reduce the weight of the gold coins,
as was done earlier in our history.
In the event that it should finally appear to be
necessary to increase the weight of the gold coins
(about three per cent) to correspond with European
ratio, in order to retain our silver stock, we may do
this ; but the people's dollar must remain as it was
established and as it now is.
The white dollar is the material element of our
financial safety. It is our strong tower.
CHAPTER XrX.
BRITISH DICTATION,
HE WISDOM and patriotism of our revolu¬
tionary fathers was fully demonstrated in
their conduct of affairs, in view of all wrought out
and accomplished by them. The value of their
services is greater than we can define and portray,
even if there was any occasion to make an effort so
The conspicuous sentiment controlling them was
the spirit of independence, and the impelling
motive was to obtain freedom from British dic¬
tation.
The opportunity is now afforded us of crowning
the work of the master builders of our financial
system. We may well believe that Washington,
Jefferson and Hamilton, great in faith as they wore
noble in resolution, wise in legislation and just in
execution, looking down the century, saw the day
when this should be a mighty nation abounding
in wealth, with a coinage and commerce second to
no people on the face of the earth, with great store¬
houses filled witli coin — anchors to hold the ship
of state steady amid the storms of passion, avarice
and power, outriding the tidal waves of commercial
to do,
108
JiKITISH DICTATION.
109
distress, and thus keeping in safety a prosperous
and happy people.
But tliere have arisen those who claim to be
wiser than the fathers, who condemn the work
ordered and established by them ; who say we have
come to a day of better things ; who brand as " low
born " and a " nuisance," the dollar established by
them ; who seemingly cannot find expressions suffi¬
ciently vituperative for our grand old white dollar,
and who shed tears of agony and distress because at
the present time our government is storing a few
millions of the people's money.
Our people possessing great patience and endur¬
ance, well preserving the spirit of the fathers, have
struggled on through poverty to power. Our nation,
having little coinage of its own, has been almost
wholly dependent upon other nations for its coin ;
but it has come to see the day when it is able to
hoard coin and lay by in store, having grown in
material wealth until it is the realization of its
founders, the grandest nation, the recognized light
and acknowledged hope of the world.
Hitherto we have been dependent. Now is the
day of our grand opjiortunity to act and accomplish
great things—to place ourselves at the head in finan¬
cial strength, and in the lead in the formation of
international policy.
It does not become us at this time to stand by and
let other nations dictate onr policy. It is obligatory
110 ABE YOU BEADY EOB THE «G ESTION í'
on the people to rise up and issue a proclamation of
independence— to come out fairly before the world
and declare the equality of silver and gold on the
basis of our historical standard; and to call upon
our citizens to lay by in stock and store all the
money they may be able to accumulate.
The duty of the general government to store the
coin and bullion of its citizens, is manifest and
undisputed. No person will deny that it is the
duty of citizens to lay by, to gather and utilize all
the coin they may be able to obtain. Those who
assume that there is danger of laying by too much
either as individuals or collectively, as a nation, are
simply giving vent to their innate selfishness, orelse
they are the deluded victims of the selfish ones who
fear that the people will have too much hard cash,
as a basis upon which to do business.
The government in issuing certificates, nominated
in dollars, exchangeable at will for deposits of coin
and bullion made by citizens, will furnish the most
convenient, the best, and safest currency the world
ever saw ; it would be a currency of the people, for
the people's use, and owned hy the people. It
would seem possible from this on to lay by a grand
stock in store of the precious metals as ballast for
the old ship of state. Will we do it'r'
As to the amount of silver coin needed, we may
safely leave it to the commercial demands. With
the issue of certificates redeemable at the option of
BRITISH DICTATION.
Ill
the holder in coin or bullion, it would be necessary
only to keep in a fair supply of the coined metal.
As we have said, this is the day of our opportu¬
nity. We are not now of necessity dependent upon
what other nations may do. In many respects we
are the strongest nation on the face of the earth.
Our domestic commerce exceeds that of the British
islands and Germany combined. We are asked to
hold our domestic commercial interests in abeyance
lest the importers of foreign goods should be dis¬
turbed in their operations ; and that home interests
should take second place ; but will we do so ?
The several republics of the Americas, and France,
with the other states of the Latin Union, are look¬
ing to us to move in this matter. The possibilities
of trade with Japan and China are almost limitless,
and it goes without saying that we will very greatly
increase our foreign commerce through the advan¬
tages obtaining by the restoration of silver.
Why should the United States presume to allow
herself to be considered a cipher, and meekly grant
that British and aristocratic influences may dictate
the financial policy of our people Í
CHAPTER XX.
CONSTITUTIONAL KIGHTS.
SIL\'Eli dollar in use at this day is the
J- same that it was in the beginning and since
has been, and we may hope always will be. No
change has been made in its portion of pure silver
— 37H grains. The integrity of the silver dollar
has ever been preserved. For eighty-one years the
mints were open to any citizen who had gold or
silver metal and wished to have it converted into
coin. Mr. Jefferson did not impair this privilege
(as has been claimed) by ordering the silver coinage
to be done in fractional coins instead of dollar
pieces, and which obtained for many years, for
these fractional coins were of full weight and un¬
limited in paying power.
The mints were erected for the use of the people
in common, and at the present time there is no law
which in direct and specific words denies the use of
the mints to any citizen. It is not to be believed
that any bill ever could have passed Congress which
in plain words denied such privilege. The effort
to enact such a law would have raised a tempest
and would have been instantly recognized as an
112
CONSTITUTIONAL BIGHTS.
113
attempt to deprive the people of a sacred and
fundamental right.
But the same end has been accomplished in an
indirect manner, and was done when the attention
of our people was absorbed by other matters. As
has been shown, the Pi-esident who approved the
bill and the Speaker of the House who signed it,
did not know what was being done. The mint was
held to be as much for the service of the public as
was our courts of justice and post office, and in its
special service just as essential to our individual
and public necessities.
It will not be questioned that at the date of the
adoption of our Constitution silver was part and
portion of the world's money stock, gold being by
immemorial usage not more certainly recognized
and confirmed as devoted to such use than was
silver. There was nothing doubtful as to the
meaning of the language used in the Constitution ;
it recognized gold and silver alike as dedicated to
monetary uses, and no doubt as to the intent of the
statute of 1792 which provided that so many grains
of pure silver alloyed as prescribed was made to
constitute what was called the dollar or unit of the
money of account.
Here we find our constitutional right and author¬
ity, and the same was directly expressed and stipu¬
lated and made available by legislative enactments
and perpetuated in being provided, had and done
114 ARE vor READY FOR THE QUESTION?
as speedily as the ability of the governifient would
allow ill the erection and establishment of the
mint, and since that day the right of mintage has
been granted to the people and by them accepted
and enjoyed ; and the products of the mint, in the
economy of business relations as citizens and as a
nation, where dollars entered, the dollars have been
demanded and received and been tendered and
paid for the full term of our history up to 1873,
and had become a vested right as well, by law of
user.
Our right to the service of the mint, and to silver
as money of full paying power, is clear, certain and
absolute. Only by an amendment to the Constitu¬
tion to this end can the citizen be lawfully de¬
prived of these rights.
Congress has indeed enacted laws which deny
these rights, but we protest and demand the repeal
of such laws. The law of 1878 provided for a
limited coinage of silver for account of the govern¬
ment only. Tills law was no relief to the citizen,
for the right of mintage was still denied. To
admit the power of Congress to limit the coinage is
equal to a waiver of our rights; for the power to
limit, in its logical conclusion, is power to destroy.
It is conceded that it is the duty of Congress to
prescribe the weight and fineness, and to fix the
ratio as between the money metals—the relative
value of the gold and silver coins ; and to regulate
CONSTITUTIONAL EIGHTS.
115
the value of foreign coins in terms rated in our
coin, and to make such foreign coins legal tender
in its discretion. This authority has been exercised
by changing the weight of the gold coins on two
occasions (Laws of 1834 and 1837), and it has as
much right to change the weight of the silver
coins, but Congress has no warrant of authority to
deny the use of the mint to our citizens for the
coinage of either silver or gold. If we should allow
that silver may be thus denied, it would but be
allowing that gold also may be denied and demon¬
etized.
It is not probable that these claims will ever be
confirmed and proclaimed as a judicial decision.
In the progress of events there will be no occasion,
for the people will see to it that these rights are
restored. It is all too easy to secure the enactment
of a bad law, and when such law has an approving
and sustaining partizanship, it may be a long and
laborious task to secure its repeal, for the reason
that among all our diversified interests it is not an
easy matter to concentrate the attention of the peo¬
ple to one specific interest; but the logic of events,
the disasters following and accruing are most cer¬
tainly bringing our people face to face with the issue.
The vital matter at issue is, shall acknowledg¬
ment be made of these rights and they be restored
to the people ?
Are you ready for the question \
CHAPTER XXL
INTERNATIONAL AGREEMENT.
E HAVE tried faithfully, by means of three
monetary conventions, to come to an under¬
standing with the nations of Europe, in the adop¬
tion of an international standard, but these several
conferences have resulted only in an agreement to
disagree. On this line of procedure we have accom¬
plished no good for ourselves except to discover
some of the secret and artful devices of the power
which is supreme and rules in the conventions ; and
also to demonstrate the impracticability of securing
the end desired through the aid of such conventions.
Even this much would be very valuable to us if we
were to appropriate and make use of the knowledge
thus gained.
The several nations represented in the conven¬
tions are, in their general interests, pitted against,
jealous of and are ever striving each to gain some
advantage over the other in all matters of negoti¬
ation.
None of the delegates were entrusted with power
to commit their principals by any proceedings of
the conference. The Latin States in 1865 formed
a union, which was a success until it was broken up
116
INTERNATIONAL AGREEMENT.
117
by this mighty power; but this power will never
allow another union to be formed except upon terms
of its own dictation. It remains to be seen how
long America will submit to the dictations of this
power. We have, indeed, given it great advantage
over us, and we have been losing ground as the
years have passed until now, and we find ourselves
in desperate straits.
By the error committed in 1873 ; by the miserable
compromise of limited coinage in 1878, and by the
wretched patchwork of our legislation since that
date, relating to silver and affecting gold in an
equal degree, we have shown our timidity and our
weakness in {he line of business perspicuity and
strategy, and lack of the assertive dignity warranted
by our marvelous resources and ability to do for
ourselves.
We have sadly underrated our strength, and all
along have assumed that it remained for us to sit
by and be told what to do, or to await the pleasure
of other nations for permission to do what we ought
to do.
It becomes us as a nation to act for ourselves and
in the direct interest of the two American conti¬
nents by declaring our independence, remembering
that the money power — the holders of the world's
evidences of debt — not only hold the thrones in
their subserviency, but most certainly control the
monetary conferences which they permit to be
118 ARE YOU READY FOR THE (¿l ESTION ^
called for the illusion of those upon whom they are
operating, and remembering that this power will
willingly make no concessions; certainly none
which will accrue to our industrial and commercial
advantage that does not serve them still better, or
that will lighten by one ounce the burden we have
imposed upon ourselves by our unwise action.
No argument is required to show that they will
work in their own interest. And now, will any
one rise and tell us why this power should be
expected to approve of any change in a financial
system so manifestly and practically to their advan¬
tage as at present obtains i
They determined more than twent^' years ago to
cut the world's stock of money metal in two parts,
and to cast out one part by denying the part cast
out for use in the liquidation of the world's debts.
This has well nigh been accomplished. They
insist that among the more advanced nations silver
shall be treated as an article of commerce like the
baser metals and be subject to the laws of trade,,
allowing it to be used as token money to a limited
extent only, such use of it to be had in semblance of
money, but not to be esteemed as of value in itself,
and without reference to any value more or less,
which as metal it may possess, wholly doing away
with it in its historical service to mankind and
denying its function as primary money — the metal
with which bonded debts may be paid, and that
INTERNATIONAL AGREEMENT.
119
in which all money obligations finally resolve them¬
selves for liquidation.
They know all too well wherein their interests
lie, and they know as well how to foster, serve and
protect their interests; and it remains to be seen
whether we have the intelligence to comprehend
our own welfare in this matter, and spirit to care
for our interests.
America must take a bold stand and bravely bat¬
tle for its rights, claim its privileges and improve
its opportunity, and then, and then only, will other
nations under the dominations of this power, listen
to and heed the cry of their oppressed people.
America produces the world's supply of silver.
The nations of the old world must have their
several portions of, and the dependent and semi-
civilized nations can not do without, silver. If we
insist on making our own price, they will pay our
price for it. The proper way to set our price is
to restore it to its historic position—to give it a
chance to fight for its life. He is a poor mer-
chajit who would berate, decry and make worth¬
less in value his own goods and then put them on
the market to sell for such prices as might possibly
be offered.
Great Britain—most persistent and vigorous of
all the nations in its action inimical and subversive
to our interests—is compelled to purchase yearly of
silver in quantity about equal to our annual pro-
120 ARE YOU READY FOR THE QUESTION ?
duction to suppl}' its dependencies in Asia, and the
demand of its manufacturers at home.
The government and her merchants are buyers
and consumers of silver and their policy is obvious :
it is to retain and use silver as an article of mer¬
chandise among themselves, and as money among
the dependencies of the nation.
As consumers, a vast business is carried on in the
manufacture of merchandise in whole or in part of
silver to supply the markets of the world, with
ornamental goods, and for altar and table service.
The silver, consisting of coin or manufactured
articles sent to the dependencies, is wholly swallowed
up in a great vortex which never was known to
give back any portion of the white metal except
under the withdrawing power had, as the result of
war.
This policy yields profits to her merchants in
trading tending to her commercial supremacy, and
gives the nation the prestige of dictating the
world's financial affairs; and, by restricting the
medium in which its enormous revenues must.be
paid, it expects to hold itself in supreme power by
virtue of its established and rapidly augmenting
wealth.
And not only is our silver product a necessity on
the part of Great Britain to secure it, and that she
has shown herself a more skillful trader than our¬
selves, but by virtue of our debts and commercial
INTEKNATIONAL AGREEMENT.
121
intercourse we pay yearly tribute to England in a
sura greater than our entire production of gold in
excess of the value of our total silver product,
lier insatiable maw is open, and it has been our
misfortune to swira in and be swallowed.
American debtors are under pledges at this time
of payment to English capitalists in specific sums
of gold distinctly written in the bonds and mort¬
gages more than any reasonable anticipation of our
entire production of that metal for a century to
come; and while the individual, industrial and
municipal corporations may rue the day when such
pledges were made, our national safety in this
respect remains in the fact that we have made no
specific pledges in gold evidenced by the test of
any bond outstanding. The ipse diœit of our
finance minister is not law. Fortunately for us
that in the recent negotiations to replenish the
treasury, the bid of a lower rate of interest for gold
bonds was not accepted by Congress, although
desired by the President, and by the syndicate whft
sold the gold and took our bonds in .payment.
Our bonds are payable in coin (gold and silver or
in either gold or silver) : every silver dollar now in
existence coined by our government has fiill paying
power for the discharge of our obligations.
It is assumed and such is and has been our cus¬
tom to look to London dealers to make prices for
us on our silver product, and to-day we are at the
122 ARE YOU READY FOR THE QUESTION?
mercy of brokers in Europe. In buying silver,
when it is indeed lawful even for the government
to buy it, our financial premier coolly tells the pro¬
ducer in offering silver for sale, " We pay the price
set by Uncle Jacob in London." Whereupon
inquiry is made at the three balls, the price is
named, and then our government knows what price
to tender and is prepared to purchase. Let the
American rise and be looked at, who is not ashamed
in this humiliation !
And all this comes of our own errors and vacil¬
lating policy since we discovered that we were led
unwittingly into a trap through revising the mint
laws in 1873, resulting as it has in a train of disas¬
ters fearful to contemplate. We have practically
disowned and turned out with reproaches and kicks
one of the most important factors of our prosperity
and leading products of our country, silver. It is
not at this time necessary to characterize the legis¬
lation of 1873 as having been viciously accom-
jilished, even though it was so brought about
is strongly evidenced by the determination on
the part of those whose interest it serves, that this
legislation shall be confirmed and perpetuated re¬
gardless of the disasters attending and following.
By this legislation we gave the holders of the
world's evidence of debt a perpetual corner on the
available stock of gold coin, unless we shall mean¬
while rise in our might and proceed to break the
INTERNATIONAL AGREEJÍENT.
123
coruer. To sit supinely by and allow our President
tlirough the chief of the treasury to refuse to recog¬
nize the silver dollar as money, wliile by our con¬
stitution and laws it is money, thus in the most
high-handed manner nullifying our laws which in
unequivocal and distinct statutory provisions de¬
clared it to be the coin of the realm, is not action
in praise of and becoming to our patriotism.
To repeal this miserable legislation and thus
restore silver to its historical status, to bravely face
the issue and act in the same spirit and with the
same nerve as was once done at a certain tea party
in Boston, would set us on our feet again and silver
in its market value would seek the level of the
past three centuries. To fully re-establish silver on
its historical basis as primary money, co-ordinate
with gold, will cause gold and silver each to come
to the assistance of the other and lighten the terri¬
ble burden now resting upon gold, and relieve silver
of the shameful restriction which impairs its use¬
fulness and value in serving the needs of commerce
and of our common humanity.
To wait and look for relief through an interna¬
tional agreement is but to hope in vain. Its result
would be but to wait for the lion to lie down in
peace with the lamb. Bi-raetalism through the
agency of an international convention need not be
expected until such time as lust for gold is no longer
one of the human passions, or until the power of
124 AKK VOIT READY EpE THE QUESTION ^
this lust is conquered by a will equally strong and
more noble in its nature.
And what have we been doing since the agitation
which arose in 1878 but wait and try this device
and that—anything but doing the right thing, which
then was, all along has been, and now is, the proper
course—to repeal the legislation of 1873? It was
about four years after the date of this legislation
that it came to be generally known that the coinage
of the silver dollar was by this law forbidden.
We have since that discovery been a party to a
series of compromises (elsewhere related), which
have in every instance made our situation more
serious and unbearable. With the powers which
control the monetary conferences, assisted by their
powerful allies in the United States, it is with
them a matter of how to prevent and delay action,
and to make sure that nothing shall be done by
dealing with the matter very daintily and ever
suggesting for future consideration, the whole a
conspiracy how not to do the thing which in our
interests ought to be done, and as trenching upon
their interests, what they will not permit to be done.
It matters not how much increase of sentiment
there may be in favor of more extended use of
silver in foreign countries, or how much the people
murmur at their disabilities, or how sorely the agri¬
cultural and manufacturing industries of the several
countries are depressed, some concessions might
INTERNATIONA!. AGREEMENT.
125
indeed be granted in siicli events to appease these
interests, but they will lie only sucb as tend to
tighten and strengthen the cords with which they
are bound. And why ? Capital is merciless !
The creditors have the people, the industries and
the nations in their power, and they will fight to
retain their power. Or, stated in other words, will
not allow silver to come to the assistance of gold
in its oiSce work as the metal of ultimate payment.
It is a vain hope to flatter ourselves with the
evidences of dawning light among their people as
to the necessity of re-establishing silver in Europe
and of the promise of assistance from that quarter,
ourselves in the meanwhile doing nothing.
When we take up our work and do our duty we
will prepare the representatives .of their industries
to make demands which, if now made, would be
unheeded ; but then would in the very nature of the
situation in its commercial aspects be a necessity to
save the creditor as well as the manufacturer, the
producer and the carrier.
It would be a master-stroke of policy and would
secure to us a greatly enlarged trade with the peo¬
ple of the American continents and the Asiatic
nations.
This boon is ours if we will but prepare to take
it by doing our duty without fear or favor.
\^y do we with so much assurance insist that
we may with safety and certainty do what can not
126 AKE YOU RE ADV FOR THE QUESTION í
be done by the people in the old world ? Our peo¬
ple know that in this matter we are in the right,
and that we have been defrauded ; and, last but not
least, our people are sovereign and make their own
laws. We have no masters !
CHAPTER XXII.
DISCOVERY OF OI K SILVER MINES.
After the close of the war great storehouses
of silver were discovered in Colorado, and
later it was discovered that the Rocky Mountains
from the British line on the north to Mexico on the
south was a treasure vault abounding in both gold
and silver. The knowledge of this fact was known
to the bullion dealers and capitalists of London
before our citizens themselves came to realize the
value of our mountain country and its possibilities,
or even to know that already there had arisen a
glorious sign of prosperity in the output of precious
metals from our mines.
At this time our peoplcNivere using no coin, save
for duties and interest on the national debt, and our
circulating medium was made up of paper money
which, although at a heavy discount, was the basis
upon which all our business operations were carried
on.
Our production of bullion was mostly shipped
directly to London, or through British agents to
Asia to make exchange on London. Great Britain
thus began to absorb the product of our mines, and
her capitalists knew much better than we ourselves
127
12í^ ARE YOU READY FOR THE QUESTION
as to our resources. All these years the people
were fçiving no attention to our coinage and were
completely off their guard.
The holders of our war bonds knew that unless a
check was put upon our prosperity by curtailing
our privileges, we would with such power of recu¬
peration controlled by our industrial invincibility,
dig too much money out of our mountains and
speedily outrank the whole world in wealth.
Then recourse was had to crafty legislation in¬
spired by them, and carried out by allies at home,
which would and thus did deprive us of the benefits
of what the Almighty had graciously bestowed
upon us.
However, after 1870, our people seeing the grad¬
ual and sure recovery of our paper currency, anti¬
cipated its speedy rise to par in coin value, and
began to make liberal deposits of silver at the mint,
and never before in alboiir history had there been
such activity in coining the white metal as obtained
when the act of 1873 went into effect. Thus it will
be seen that we were just at this time beginning to
develop and bring into service what was within our
grasp, and would have been of incalculable benefit
to us, if we had not been taken unawares in the trap
set for us.
COST OF PRODUCTION.
There has been much discussion as to the com-
DISCOVERY OF OUR SILVER MINES.
129
parative cost of production of gold and silver as
bearing upon this question. We have read much
very silly talk on the subject. The wise men who
present tables of statistics pretend to know all
about it and to have determined the true cost, and
tell us that silver costs say about fifty cents per
ounce. Whereas the fact is, their computations
are worthless ; they are not able to tell the cost of
silver.
They discourse upon the matter as though one
might be able to go out into the mining regions
and by his labor produce silver the same as he
would raise a crop of corn. Mining for silver is
not upon the same plane as an industry. Where
one.obtains a reward many lose their labor and all
money invested. One must first find a mine. Suc¬
cess may be had in one year, ten years, a lifetime
or never. The success most have is the latter re¬
sult, and at great cost in the elfort.
It is true that taking a single mine the cost of
production from that mine may be shown for the
immediate output, and the same can be determined
as to the output of the several mines taken together,
but it happens that even this does not tell the whole
story even as to these mines, and much less does it
give the true cost of silver as an industrial product.
Any computation which leaves out of consider¬
ation the cost and labor to the hundred thousand
prospectors who spend their lives toiling in the
130 ARE YOU READY FOR THE QUESTION^
mountains in search of the precious metals, as well
as in the aggregate the enormous sums spent in
opening and developing veins which prove to be
of insufficient value to pay for working, or which
yield no returns whatever, fails utterly in its esti¬
mates of the cost of production. These prospectors
are fascinated with the free, independent and peri¬
patetic lives they lead. When their money is gone
they work out wherever opportunity offers and
secure a "grubstake," and renew their hunt while
their means hold out, then work again for a new
stake. These prospectors draw financial assistance
from many sources. They plead with their friends
to send money to enable them to open their claims,
as " they have struck it rich this time," but ninety-
nine times out of a hundred any money going into
that " prospect " is so much paid for " experience "
in mining. Not one in a thousand of the pros¬
pectors ever gain any material reward for their
labors except in a small way by selling out "pros¬
pects."
It would be quite as correct to take one or a
dozen mines where the actual yield on an average
costs two dollars an ounce, and conclude that to be
the cost of silver, as to take the bonanza mines and
fix the cost at fifty cents per ounce.
Estimating the value of a mine with a view to
purchase, and so determining the cost of silver from
that mine, is one thing, but the cost of production
DISCOVERY OF OUR SILVER MINES.
131
as an industrial product is a vastly different matter.
It has never been known and never will be known
until a census sliall be taken of those who follow
prospecting as an occupation, and an estimate is
made of their time and expenses, and until all those
who have "blowed in" money on mining enter¬
prises, not in swindles but on actual mining work,
shall stand up and be counted and voluntarily tell
how much it cost them.
Placer gold mining, which is now a thing of the
past, has at times been very profitable ; but it is
believed that in quartz mining, for both gold and
silver, more money and labor has been put into the
ground than has ever been taken in value out of it.
The fallacy of the pretense of showing the cost
of either silver or gold is best illustrated by simply
making a statement of the fact that if silver was
adjudged to be of no more value than its cost as
being produced from a bonanza mine, then there
would be no silver mined; for unless there was
special reward to those who strike it rich there
would be no inducement to search out and engage
in mining for either silver or gold.
The matter resolves itself into a question as to
whether or no the silver miners are worthy of
reward. Is what they do a blessing or a curse ? and
if the latter, by all means let us put a stop to the
development of our mountain resources.
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE KEI.ATI\'E VALUE OK GOLD TO SILVER.
HE continuous fall in the market value of sil¬
ver as compared with gold, notwithstanding
the increased amount of silver coined in the United
States, is declared to be proof positive and absolute
that silver has failed of its mission as a money
metal, and that its value is permanently impaired ;
and assurance to this effect is allowed to be doubly
certain, seeing that the sustaining power of this
government, aided by other nations, each in its own
behalf, in holding the silver coinage in service at
par value with their gold coinage is not sufficient to
buoy the value of silver bullion or to sustain it from
a possible and even probable further decline.
This argument seems plausible, but is in fact very
superficial ; it is founded in error and does not con¬
stitute proof of the proposition that silver is hope¬
lessly impaired in value.
In the first place the governmental sustaining
power relates to and operates upon nothing but the
silver coin itself so held up. This is its legitimate
end and object and the power ceases with the
accomplishment of its purpose. Most certainly it
should be able to do this with silver coin when it
132
THE RELATIVE VALUE OF GOLD TO SILVER. 133
is conceded that it may and does do the same work
with its paper issues. It happens that while the
paper as to its material is of no value, the silver
does possess some degree of recognized value. If
the government can sustain moifey such as is printed
on paper, it can to as great or greater extent sus¬
tain money printed on pieces of silver.
If the silver dollar is not value in and of itself—
if it is not an equivalent and redeemer—then surely
it is not money. In order to be money it must be
primary value in itself; for if not, it is thus rele¬
gated into the realm and status of representative
money. It is used as money on account of that
which sustains it, viz. : The government's accept¬
ance of it in payment of the various taxes imposed
upon its citizens to provide means of support ; by
its legal tender quality ; or by virtue of the govern¬
ment's promise to redeem it.
If not recognized as money in fact, silver is there¬
by red need to the plane of paper issues worthless as
to material. In some respects the paper does a
more convenient service than silver; for except in
the matter of fractional coins, our people prefer
paper for general use and so deposit the silver coin
with the government and receive and use paper
certificates therefor, under which form the silver
circulates in its monetary service. This preference
as to form in which it is in service extends as well
to gold ; gold government certificates are chosen
134 ARE YOU READY EOK THE QUESTION ?
when the option of receiving either is offered. In
no sense does it militate against silver that paper
certificates are chosen and used in place of the coin
itself, gold being subject to the same betterment
for convenience ; but as representative or token
money, paper does in fact a more desirable service
than silver, save that in a fire test silver has a
remaining value.
Our silver dollars are denied their legitimate and
historical service, and are only incidentally use¬
ful in that they serve to swell the volume of the
currency. They are serviceable only in matters of
local, petty and transient account. They are not
treated as any measure of value by virtue of value
inhering in the coin itself, and it matters little how
much of it may be used as token money, except as
to the matter of expanding the currency.
Now it happens that all of our silver dollars, under
the laws authorizing their coinage, are endowed as
money of full paying power, yet they are in effect
as shown above, token money only ; and this for
the reason that the treasury department denies to
these dollars such service as they are by law intended
to accomplish. Such denial is made and maintained
under the inspiration and by the will of the Presi¬
dent supported by the power of which Wall Street
is the centre in the United States.
The value of silver is not enhanced by the inci¬
dental use made of it in our coinage. The exten-
THE UELA'UVE value of gold to silver. 135
sive use of it for such purpose tends strongly to
depress its value, and necessarily silver must fall by
virtue of its misuse, for as token money it is not
called for further than to furnish necessary change
in our petty dealings, and all in excess of a liberal
supply of fractional coin is an obstruction and posi¬
tive inconvenience; such an amount as is used over
and above what is here shown to be a necessity is
an actual weight serving to depress,the value of the
metal in serving as a constant threat of a deluge
liable to come upon the market, granted that the
will of the President shall come to be the will of
the people, and shall be so expressed in our statute
laws; or, in other words, that the holders of the
world's evidences of debt shall come to be success¬
ful finally in dethroning silver and in limiting the
world's money stock to gold alone.
Its value in such an event would be brought to
the level of the demand for it in the industrial
arts, plus the power exercised by the nations of the
world still retaining it in service as money of the
realm. The logical result of such treatment of
silver would be the impoverishment of ourselves,
as elsewhere shown in these pages, and of other
nations adopting the same course, and to the advan¬
tage alone of those who hold evidences- of debt
payable in stated sums of gold by weight or in cur¬
rent standard gold coin.
Since the passage of the act of 1873 the power
136 AEE YOU EEAI)Y FOE THE QUESTION?
of silver to sustain itself in the market has dimin¬
ished in response to, and just as rapidly as the
manifestation of power has increased on the part of
those who are laboring to suppress it, and put it
effectually and forever out of the money stock. It
is a parallel case with the status and market value
of the forced loan exacted by. our government
during the war—the issue of greenbacks. With
the progress and development of the war and the
constant recourse to increased issues to pay our war
expenses, the greenbacks entered upon a continuous
decline in gold values : favorable news from the
seat of war caused greenbacks to rise in value,
but reverses caused weakening of confidence in
the speedy close of the war, and while we were
being weighed in the balance in the conflict, the
market value of greenbacks was the general and
truest expression on the part of the commercial
world as to our ability to redeem our government
promises to pay. The power of those pitted against
us, in reverse order, marked the value of the green¬
backs.
A similar contest is now waging as between
those who control the gold of the world and the
masses whose interests, identical with the restora¬
tion of silver, are being weighed in the balance
against gold.
Hence we see that "a more extensive use of
silver" under conditions now obtaining is not to be
THE RELATIVE VALUE OF GOLD TO SILVER. 137
desired, as an increase in the amount would neither
serve our convenience nor exert any influence tend¬
ing to raise the price of the metal. Necessarily
silver falls by its own weight when its most impor¬
tant use is destroyed. Bound hand and foot, silver
is shorn of its power ; break the bonds by restoring
the freedom of the mint, and it will take the place
and maintain the position it has occupied during
the centuries.
It matters not how frequently and with what
assurance the " wise men " and the bankers tell us
that silver has shown its incapacity and has failed
as a money metal, or how sorely they deride the
people's money as a " fifty cent dollar and desired
only to cheat the creditor," for it is well understood
that the trouble is not in the silver, but in the
debasement wrought by the hands of those who
have thus robbed it of its certain ability to success¬
fully compete with gold, and bring the yellow
metal down from its high estate.
And let it here be noted that the usurpation of
power and practical nullification of our laws on the
part of the President will be rebuked presently in
a manner which will serve as a historical precedent
for all time to come.
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE WA.IL OF THE GOLDITES.
The prophesies of disaster to come upon us
in the event that the mints shall be thrown
open have no terrors for the people. It is notice¬
able that those who cry "panic and ruin" do not
specify—do not tell wherein these white dollars
will serve us so disastrously, or identify the evils
we are so certain to suffer. In a general manner
they say that values will be unsettled ; that we will
have a fifty cent dollar instead of a dollar worth
twice fifty cents; and that there will be a fearful
contraction of the circulating medium by reason of
the gold leaving the country.
And now, assuming that the law denying the
freedom of the mint was to be repealed, what
would be the effect of such legislation upon our in¬
dustrial and commercial interests As to the matter
of a fifty cent dollar, let it be distinctly understood
that there is no proposition offered at the present
time to cut our present white dollar in two parts in
order to make fifty cent dollars. We will use them
as they are ; without doubt this statement will be
very assuring to the poor souls who have fifty cent
dollar on the brain. Not only this, but we will
138
TJIE AVAIL f)F THE GOLIUTES.
139
have more of them and all that may be desired by
those who have silver to deposit at the mints.
Let it be remembered that in 1890, during the
consideration of the passage of a free silver bill in
Congress, under the influence of the apparent possi¬
bility of the bill becoming a law, the price of silver
advanced almost to par value with gold ; that is to
say, in August, 1890, it advanced to $1.20^ per
ounce, being the par value on the ratio of
16 to 1. This betterment in the price of silver bul¬
lion was not conflned to our home market (which
by the way is one thing we do not possess !) but was
general, and affected the world's stock of uncoined
silver. All of which means that gold was brought
down from its high estate and showed more dispo¬
sition to keep company with silver.
Do the gold advocates think the people can be
frightened by the cry of a fifty cent dollar? It is
too silly to consider for one moment. They know
full well that to restore silver to full monetary uses
will restore and retrieve its value. The people
know that they are not honest in their cry of a fifty
cent dollar. These falsifiers well understand that
every advance made by legislation favorable to
silver immediately shows its effect in the markets
of the world in reducing the strain on gold, tending
to bring it to the level of silver.
The cry that " values will be unsettled " tends only
to increase and intensify the demand of the people
140 ARE YOU READY FOR THE QUESTION?
for the white dollar. Values have indeed been set¬
tling- and have settled down to such a point that
many values have gone out of ordinary sight, down
where microscopic power would be required to find
them. The fact is, the people are becoming very
impatient for the unsettlcnient of values so that the
equities in their holdings may be discernible.
We heard this same cry of "disaster and ruin"
uttered by the press and from the pulpit and ros¬
trum in 1878. It was the cry of "dishonesty and
fraud," and an appeal to the people to avoid the
shame to come upon us by coining the "dishonest"
white dollars. The cry captured the superficial and
subservient, but for all that the white dollars were
authorized by Congress, and came to stay.
A representative gold advocate, in the person of
Prof. J. Laurence Lauchlin, publishes with gusto
the stale and ungraceful thrust that " It was only
after 1876, when their value had fallen below 100
cents in gold, that the cries went up to heaven for
silver dollars with which to scale indebtedness."
True it is that the discovery of the bold scheme to
rob the world of its silver was not made until 1876,
and was not generally known until 1878, when,
under demands from the people, partial restitution
■was had in the passage of the Bland-Allison act of
1878, which provided for a limited coinage of the
white dollars. Such snarling insinuations ai*e con¬
temptible and unworthy.
THE WAIL OF THE GOLDITES.
141
The people laid down on their arms when the
advance was made which secured them the privi¬
lege of again seeing and handling the white dol¬
lars. It did not worry anybody tliat these dollars
were sorely derided, and for lack of beauty in
artistic design were stigmatized as the "buzzard
dollar." There was no panic and no dishonor as
the result of coining the dollars, nor is there any
more reason to expect panic and disaster in the full
restoration of the white dollar, which is now im¬
peratively demanded.
The people have once again arisen and are now
forming in line of battle to complete the conquest.
We are assured that in such an event gold would
immediately take its departure. We do not allow
this. As a matter of fact the banks have far the
greater part of the gold in their possession already,
and they will keep it. It will do the same service
then that it is now doing. They also stand between
the people and the U. S. Treasury, and control the
greenbacks which control the gold in the treasury.
Let nobody fear for the gold, the banks will take
that care upon themselves. We would be no worse
ofE than we now are, for the people do not hold the
gold.
In any event, except in payment of debts due
abroad and payable in gold, it would not leave us,
or any portion of it, unless we first had value for it.
We cannot be robbed of it. The inducement for
142 ARK YOU RKADY K)K TIIK QUESTION?
any to buy it from us will be lessened, for then it
will not be as valuable as now.
It is said that those debtors who have made
obligations payable in gold would be ruined. AVhile-
we most emphatically deny this proposition, yet
allowing that it would work some hardship to them,
the real ipiestion is, shall we fix upon ourselves for
all time the disability and misfortune which these
debtors have voluntarily taken upon themselves?
We hold that the restoration of silver is an impera¬
tive necessity for the relief of those who have made
pledges payable in gold. As it is now, all our in¬
terests, commercial and industrial, are tethered up
with a taut line to a post in Lombard Street, London,
England, and the proposition is to cut that line.
As we have already shown. Great Britain as our
creditor absorbs our total product of both gold and
silver, and it will continue to do so until our
indebtedness is liquidated or purchased by home
investors. Restoring silver will not add one iota to
our present burden ; it will not increase our gold
debt one dollar.
Great tribulations are promised because that other
nations will "dump their silver" in upon us. If
•there was any ¡lossibility of such an event we
would say, let them "dump." Wo nation on the face
of the earth has any silver to spare. It is all utiliz¬
ed by them doing service, and their several people
could not do without it, and from one end of the
THE WAIL OF THE OOLDITES.
143
world to the other the people are crying for more of
it than they now have. And much less would they
have any to spare if the United States would, as we
have already shown, set its price on silver by restor¬
ing it to full monetary service by opening the mints
to its coinage.
The claim that there exists great stores of silver
available to be run in upon us, is to the people as a
nursery tale told to terrorize the children, of the
same usefulness and serving the truth only as well.
Mexico has no stock of silver. British and
German ships carry it away as fast as it is mined.
Prussia has no silver to spare, and at this time her
people are clamouring for more than they now have.
France, holding the greatest amount of silver coin
of any nation of Europe, needs every franc of its
coinage to supply the necessities of its people.
And Russia, that great nation having been on a
paper basis for the past forty years (its nominal
basis being silver), could readily and would itself
absorb the world's total product of silver for the
next decade if it had the means of securing it.
Our own silver states can show no stock of silver
bullion. It is farcical in the extreme to urge that
there are billions of silver awaiting such legislation
as will make it profitable to bring it to our country
to be coined into dollars. It will be worth just as
much where it now is as it will be in the United
States.
144 ARK YOU READY FOR THE QUESTION?
The constantly repeated statement that there has
been a great increase and over production of silver,
possesses no more of truth than there would be* in
saying that Lake Michigan had been vastly swollen
by a good lively rain storm. The increased pro¬
duction of silver during recent years was in fact as
readily absorbed in the markets of the world as a
good shower would be taken in and be lost in the
lake. The silver taken out of the earth during the
present and past centuries has ever been immedi¬
ately absorbed and practically lost among the peo¬
ples of the world. We have no reason to expect
that the supply will ever exceed the demand,
granted that it shall be allowed to hold the place to
which it is rightly entitled.
In proof that there is no available or consider¬
able stock of silver bullion in the world, it is only
necessary to call attention to the fact that when
there appeared to be a prospect of the passage of a
silver bill in Congress, it was discovered that there
was no silver to be found fur speculative purposes,
and in lieu of the silver itself recourse was had by
the speculators to *' fixtures" and to rupee time bills.
Our government fortunately has a stock of un¬
coined silver which is available for coinage.
We have nothing to fear from any silver which
may come to us from abroad. If any does come to
us it will necessarily be in exchange for the pro¬
ducts of our shops and ñelds and will be exchanged
The wail of the goldites.
145
at the price we set upon our products. For all that
might come would only tend to quicken our in¬
dustries and revive our business interests, and espec¬
ially those which provide supplies for the silver-
using countries.
CHAPTER XXV.
FINANCIAL PANIOB,
T IS becoming to consider with all fairness and
seriousness the constantly repeated assertion,
that, as a result of opening the mints to silver, a
terrible panic will ensue and "indescribable disas¬
ters will be the reward of such folly." We are
freely called knaves and idiots for presuming to
advocate such a measure.
Let us see how unreasonable are such prognosti¬
cations, how unworthy they are and how little cal¬
culated to disturb the serenity of our citizens. In
the first place those who advocate the restoration of
silver know full well the motives which impel them
to this course. We need not here give these
motives in detail, hut the principal reason is in a
consciousness that their rights have been violated,
and trespass has been committed upon their modest
estates. And they understand very well the course
they desire to pursue in the consummation of their
labors in this regard.
On the other hand, the gold advocates understand
the motives prompting them in their labors in this
regard as well as the advantages to be gained,
granted they are able successfully to resist the
146
FINANCIAL PANICS.
147
restoration of silver; and none know better'than
themselves as to what they will do to advance their
personal interests in the event that they are not
successful and that silver shall be allowed again to
compete witb gold in the markets of the world on
the basis of full monetary equality.
Now, let us apply a little common sense to this
matter and sustain our proposition that, instead of
creating a panic, "the worst the world has ever
known," there will be no panic, or any occasion for
a panic.
A panic is ever and always the consequential
result of a surprise, and there never has been a panic
where the event was published beforehand and the
people have had opportunity in a general manner
to anticipate the event. The question relating to
silver has been considered for years; is being
agitated now, and in the nature of its present
possibilities must be agitated for time to come
until the matter is finally adjusted by legislative
action.
In this instance there can be no surprise and
hence there will be no panic. It is much more
reasonable to assume that there will be rebellion
and revolution if silver is not restored. Where
there is restlessness and popular agitation and a
gradually wrought up sentiment relating to some
trespass upon or denial of sacred rights, it will most
certainly end in revolution so far as the matter at
148 ARE YOU READY FOR THE QUESTION Í
issue is concerned, or a restoration of the rights and
privileges contended for.
Agitation preceded the civil war and the result
was attempted revolution, but while fraught with
the gravest issues and unknown consequences, it
created no panic, for those interested as partizans
on either side met the issue bravely, and adapted
themselves to and made the best of the situation.
Indeed, it does not require argument to show that
agitation does not result in panic.
And relating to the several panics which have
occurred during the past thirty years, they were
severally the result of surprises. In 1865 the army
of gold brokers in New York were taken by sur¬
prise on a certain day and came to grief, and the
day stands in history as "Black Friday." The
people looked on complacently and pursued the
even tenor of their way.
The panic of 1873 came as a surprise and was
not understood by the people at the time, but in the
light of subsequent information its cause was plainly
seen. There had been a period of great advance
in public enterprises and railroad building, and the
boom was on in real estate speculation. It had
been comparatively easy to market bonds to carry
on the various enterprises, but the money power
suddenly became very conservative and refused to
furnish any more money for the enterprises then
projected and in process of building; the banks
FINANCIAL PANICS.
149
refused usual accommodations to speculators in real
estate and other lines of business, and the result
was a collapse and panic. There is not the slightest
doubt in the minds of many of our most intelligent
citizens as to the direct connection between the de¬
monetization act of 1873 and the panic occurring
immediately thereafter. The leading creditors who
held our municipal and corporate bonds knew that
we had been cut off from the use of silver, and at
their instigation there was inaugurated a general
restriction of credits, with intent to rest awhile and
more deliberately measure the ability of the debtors
to liquidate. It was the inaugural movement of
the money power to draw in the net in which we
had been entrapped.
The panic of 1893 came in quiet and prosperous
days, occasioned by a violent spasm of conservatism
on the part of the money owners and loaners, mov¬
ing them to lock up their money and deny the use
of it to themselves or to others, and most unmerci¬
fully to let ruin catch those who might be in need
of money; this involved our whole industrial
interests. Much discussion has been had as to the
causes contributing to this panic, and while there
were other causes operating to bring it about, the
principal and significant cause was in a sudden and
general restriction and refusal to grant and extend
credits—to lend money. This panic was the result
of deliberate and willful effort on the part of the
150 ARE YOü READY FOR THE QUESTION?
capitalists and prominent bankers to effectually crush
the silver sentiment and bring about such legislation
as would end the contest.
So long as we are in debt we will be subject to
financial panics. The extent of our indebtedness
largely determines the violence of the panic, when
such an event transpires. And the power to produce
such panic inheres in the creditor class. When
they in a general and united manner pull in the
purse strings, demand payment and lock up their
money, there will be a panic, and this by virtue of
the dependence of the debtors upon them.
The debtors and the people as a whole are ever
at the mercy of those wfio hold the accumulated
wealth represented by money credits and evidences
of debt. The average citizen and dealer has no
surplus of money; the little iu hand is uniformly
exhausted by current necessities, and recourse must
be had to borrowing. A citizen may have a home¬
stead paid for and a business in easy and paying
condition, but he cannot say that he is not in debt,
for there is a blanket mortgage covering his house
and his business : the district, the city, the county
and the state in which he resides are in debt, and
he is subject to the creditor.
It is well to bear in mind the grand distinction,
as affecting this matter, between real and fixed
property on the one hand, and personal property on
the other, in the economy of our business activities.
FINANCIAL PANICS.
151
Real property with its improvements is always in
sight, is fixed, doing special service for humanity,
and is uniformly a visible expression of wealth and
progress. It is very slowly changed into money
and credits, and is not available for manipulation
and aggressive power, and not ordinarily made use
of for other purposes than such as contribute to our
common necessities.
Personal property, of - which far the greater part
consists of money credits and evidences of debt, is
just so far a mortgage on the real property, and on
the visible products of labor. It is the available
means whereby mischief is wrought, extortion is
practiced and the people are oppressed. It is the
power which has decreed the destruction of silver.
It works with consummate skill and cunning, reach¬
ing out and dominating every interest available, to
the end that it may perpetuate and aggrandize
itself, and while it almost wholly fails to pay its
dues to the state, by secreting the items of wealth
from the assessor, yet it is inexorable in its demands
for protection, and is set up before the people as
the holy thing which in no contingency must suffer
loss. The debtor is welcome to bear all the burden
in any and every event. It matters not that the
debtor has been robbed and denied his natural and
legal rights.
He is without means and unable to recover and
enforce his rights. The technical advantages must
152 ARE YOU READY FOR THE QUESTION ?
all accrue to the creditor, and the disadvantages to
the extreme, must be accepted by the debtor as his
portion. The favoring circumstance that the day
came when, by reason of the discovery of mines,
silver might be more readily obtained than formerly,
was not allowed to make any possible betterment
of the circumstances of the debtor, or go to increase
the advantages under which the poor might pursue
their various avocations in life ; all things must
work to make the rich richer.
In the present emergency the control of the mat¬
ter is in the hands of the people. We can greatly
lessen the probability of panics by doing just what
the gold advocates say will produce "a greater
panic than the world has ever seen." We can
enlarge the means absolutely essential to our finan¬
cial safety by the restoration of silver to its full
monetary service. Except we do this we will be
at the mercy of the plutocrats, and to-day five
financial houses can be named who can inaugurate
a panic as often as it may please them to do so.
CHAPTER XXVI.
SOPHISTKIES CE THE WISE MEN.
HE rich have many to speak and write for
them. Indeed, it would seem that riches are
all-powerful in commanding the best services of
the most highly educated and refined.
The power of riches is shown in the social dig¬
nity that attaches to the persons of the rich, in a
subservient yielding on the part of many at their
behest, and in the extreme desire almost universally
manifested to win their favor.
Strip off their riches and they sink suddenly to
the general level, tiieir personality has no longer a
charm, their voice does not command a reverent
hearing, their opinion is of little account, and their
wish finds no favorable response,—they are lost in
the multitude !
But "alas for the rarity of Christian charity,''
the poor have few to plead their cause in the line
of defending them against the machinations of the
despoiling creditor. It is not " business ; " it does
not pay ; and while in sentiment it may be fine, in
practice it is unpopular.
Among the wise men who write in behalf of the
rich, we have selected one of the most popular and
153
154 ARE YOU READY FOR THE QUESTION?
highly educated, as representing a class of writers
and teachers who exercise a powerful influence.
The people look up to them as exponents of the
most advanced opinions and correct views.
Professor A. L. Perry, of Williams College, is one
of the boldest and ablest advocates of the distinctive
doctrines that tend to conserve and itensify the dis¬
trust, already too pronouced and causing alarm, in
the existing relations of the rich to the poor—mani¬
festing itself in a tendency to work a separation of
our people into classes.
It is a lamentable fact that a large proportion of
our college professors are infected in a greater or
less degree with the same doctrines, and too often
we fear with desire to serve the rich, and bask in
the sunlight of their favor, which service, owing
to the universal greed and craftiness of the rich,
must of necessity be at the expense of and to the
injury of the poor.
In charity to them, we may say of the college
professors, they abound in theories grand and bril¬
liant, adapted to an ideal world ; but there are some
elemental facts obtaining in this practical world, of
which they have little knowledge, which knowledge
is the heat gendered by the friction of capital grind¬
ing on labor, and of the creditor crushing the
debtor.
Professor Perry is one of the " wise men." We
take issue with his theories and propose to put some
SOPHISTRIES OF THE WISE MEN.
155
of them to the test and show how nearly he occupies
the position of the "lawyers" who did "bind heavy
burdens" upon the poor, and as a reward have the
" uppermost rooms at feasts," and "greetings in the
markets," and are called of men " Rabbi, Rabbi."
We are far from impugning his motives, but we
do believe that his judgement is warped by his
theoretical fancies, that he is dazzled by the splen¬
dor and applause of the rich, and that he cannot,
by reason of the glamor, see the interests and
necessities of the poor in the matters at issue.
An address* delivered by Professor Perry, on
invitation, at a convention of the American Bankers'
Association, on "Money," well illustrates the power
of riches over men of trained intellect.
His argument was against the use of silver as
money, as being unnecessary and impolitic from
every point of view. He asserts that the stock of
gold is sufficient, and, in fact, more than sufficient
in quantity, for a standard of value, by reason of
the great use of bank bills, checks, drafts, and other
credits which take the place of and assist coined
money in commercial transactions ; but, he says,
" credits can never usurp the whole place of coined
money, otherwise there could be no denominations
to measure values with."
He says, " There is no lack of gold, nor is
there likely to be." " The notion that abundant
•Official Proceedings, Session 1877.
156 AKK YOU READY FOR THE QUESTION ?
money is somehow favorable to tlie masses of men,
is an illusion." "Abundant harvests are favorable
to all, and why not have money abundant?"
" Why not add the mass of silver to the mass of
gold and have money enough for the masses ? "
He says, "I denounce the cry of 'abundant
money ' as a delusion and a snare." " The dearest
money is the best for the poorest peopleT "Money
is not like food, like clothes, like books, it is a
measure merely ; and a steady measure must be a
costly measure; and therefore gold alone as the
standard, while it is best for all classes, without
exception, it is preëminently best for the masses of
mankind." And he says he advocates these doc¬
trines because he believes in the masses of men, as
" their interests outweigh many-fold the interests of
the fortunate few."
We have indeed seen the day when this language
would apply with great force; when wildcat banks
were going down all about us, owing to the lack of
true money to cover their '' promises to pay," and
the people, by reason of them, were sustaining great
losses ; but now it relates solely to the matter of
forcing the people's white money from the money
stock, thereby making real money scarce and almost
impossible to be obtained by the great army of
workers.
But now, what does this mean ? Let us make an
analysis of these doctrines.
SOPHISTRIES OF THE WISE MEN.
157
lie believes in a scarcity of money ; then, logi¬
cally, the scarcer the better; and, if so, we would
be better off without money, which was the con¬
dition of the masses in the dark ages, when the rich
had all the money, and the poor were sunk in deg¬
radation so dark and terrible that those ages have
bequeathed to us almost no history save the general
fact of their poverty and wretchedness.
But he cannot mean this. It is charitable to con¬
clude that he is sadly lacking in practical experience.
He evidently thinks that a condition of credit in¬
flation is better than to have an abundance of coined
money, although he may not know it by this term ;
but such it is, and will eventuate as certainly as
time rolls on, as all inflations have done—individ¬
ual, commercial, and national—in the coming of the
day of payment. We have had some experience
in this regard since the spring of 1893, at which
time there was a sudden and general demand for
payment, which found our people, as well as many
of the banks and money dealers, quite unprepared
for such a call.
Again, " credits can never usurp the whole place
of coined money, otherwise there could be no
denominations to measure values with," but logi¬
cally, they can mostly^ for we only need enough to
signify the denominations of money.
But without referring to the question of quan¬
tity, as to whether or not there is sufficient gold.
158 ARE YOU READY FOR THE QUESTION ?
his statement is fair and distinct that what is in
fact wanted "is a standard of value, and not
strictly a circulating medium;" we must have, he
says, some coin to make the money denominations,
and " money is a measure merely."
This is the doctrine the Shylocks like to have
preached to the people. They themselves can listen
to it with great complacency. It serves them well
and truly, but woe to the people who have so con¬
fidingly and freely issued their " promises to pay."
These doctrines are the sweet words of the rich
men, " the fortunate few," ever magnanimous in
their charity, calling to the people and saying, " It
is all right, we will attend to this matter, we know
more about these things than you do ; we will do
well by you ; " " and now listen to Professor Perry,
one of the wise men, a learned anthority. His
words are as pure waters from the fountains of his¬
torical research and learning, he is burdened in
behalf of the well-being of the masses." "We do
not care as to the actual quantity of gold ; gold is
necessary only to indicate the denominations of
money,—we, of course, must have a standard,—
but so far as the coin is concerned, we do not care
for it ; we much prefer to use bills or drafts,
credits ; coined money is a measure merely, and all
we desire is a suitable measure—the best measure
we can have." " Don't let tlie matter of a measure
trouble you ; it is for your interest that the measure
SOPHISTRIES OF THE WISE MEN. 159
be as true as possible, otherwise you might get
cheated," and with their commendation Professor
Perry speaks in behalf of the masses.
While we might allow that Professor Perry
believes that money is in the name of the thing
only, as a "denomination," "a measure merely," or
as a "standard," and not the thing itself, except
incidentally, in slight degree, in few instances, and
unimportant as to volume, a small portion only of
the commercial exchanges resulting in the use of
coin and few credits being liquidated by actual
payment in coin ; if he does believe this, it is
because he wishes to believe it, and not because it
is true.
If Professor Perry was a close observer of the
financial and market reports, he would know some¬
thing of the trepidation of. the money and stock
dealers on seeing a decrease of the gold in the
treasury and in the bank reports. A slight reduc¬
tion in the volume of gold in sight, instantly affects
the stock and grain markets, and by a slower move¬
ment the prices of merchantable commodities.
The rich men whom he serves know it is not
truth ; they know that money in its uses, as it is
used, and- when it is used, is the measure of value,
and that money is the valuable thing in itself. It
is the quid pro quo—the equivalent.
Over against the stock of coin is set the whole
world of valuable commodities, exchangeable inter-
160 AKE YOU READY KOR THE QUESTION?
ests, and the world of debts, which are simply
pledges to deliver coin ; and though some of the
" wise men " may not exactly and fully comprehend
and concede this, yet the practice of the capitalists
is substantially on this basis; they insist that coined
money shall rule in the commercial affairs of man¬
kind, and having the power by virtue of the pos¬
session of money, they compel submission.
It will be said that money does not possess value,
as we cannot eat it or drink it; or that it does not
to any great extent, in itself, contribute to our
physical requirements; that its value is mostly a
matter of fancy ; that we can only make money
serviceable to us by getting rid of it; that the
amount of money in circulation will naturally be
just the amount needed to make our exchanges,
and no more ; that idle money is unproductive ;
that money will adjust itself and flow to the cheap¬
est market, where it is most needed, and that \vith
noiseless action it takes from man the products of
his labor, and in exchange returns to him the pro¬
ducts of all lauds and climes, and when its work is
accomplished, it modestly withdraws.
But we say that this is purely theoretical, and is
sound reasoning in appearance only ; that it is
deceptive and fallacious in practice, and that it is a
theory which works to the special advantage of the
rich and inevitably crushes and grinds the poor.
Go where you will on the face of the earth.
SOPHISTKIES OF THE WISE MEN.
161
where the light of civilization has broken in, and
in the use of coined money you can buy the good
will of the king of the realm, and the banditti of
the wilderness—all things are yours for money.
The concerted effort is made by the " wise men'"
to hide the fact that the covn is the element of
value and the essence of the whole matter. It is
by Professor Ferry belittled and made of no com¬
parative account, as to the matter of volume, when
in fact the prosperity and safety of all our commer¬
cial interests, of the people and of the nation are
absolutely dependent upon it.
Professor Perry says, " The mass of all business
is now done by credits of various kinds, and while
the standard of value is more important than ever
it was to measure these credits, as well as all com¬
modities and services, the actual metal dollars are
no longer used to anything like the former extent
and this, he says, "is a vital element," doing away
with the necessity for coin.
We insist that the use of credits is the element
of danger that the coin is the thing needed and
necessary. To a certain extent we can with com¬
parative safety utilize credits, and to some extent
it is necessary to do so, but coin safely in store is
the vital element.
These "credits" so much relied on to assist in,
and to largely do away with, the use of money, are
all predicated on the coin as the basis of their
162 ABE YOU READY FOE THE QUESTION?
existence, and we receive and use them only to the
extent of our faith as to the coin being behind them
-—of their convertibility into coin.
These evidences of debt are defined in dollars,
and the capitalists know that these dollars are some¬
thing more than " denominations." Aye, they know
dollars mean hard cash.
We give the rich men credit for only a fair sense
of discernment of their own interests in applauding
Professor Perry for saying "money is a measure
merely," and in denouncing " abundant money "
as a " delusion and a snare."
The reason the Shylocks hate silver is because
the poor men need it. The rich men want scarcity
of money, as " scarcity " augments their accumu¬
lated dollars—i. e., compounds their power; they
want in payment that which is hardest to get ; and
the harder it is to get, the better they like it, for the
greater sacrifices the debtors are compelled to make
in order to get it. This policy means low and de¬
clining wages, and property at values fixed by the
rich.
"Money is a measure merely" is administered
to the people by these " wise men " as a soothing
lotion ; and many, in the belief of and resting on
these assurances, are slumbering all too peacefully;
it is a deadly drug. Citizens, take warning ! and
remember that gold as a money basis is the divisor
which makes the price of everything you produce
and the value of your labor most desperately small.
CHAPTER XXVII.
PROFESSOR W. G. SI MNER OF YALE.
NE of the authorities most often quoted on the
part of the gold monometalists is Professor
Sumner, who has in his lectures and published
papers assumed to speak in behalf of a "higher
standard of commercial morality " as against those
who call for a restoration of sacred rights of which
they were defrauded. In the Worth American
Review (June, 1885), under the title, " Shall Silver
be Demonetized ? " he says " that we do not want or
need silver as a circulating medium, and shall not
abandon it because we never had it." " The people
of the United States never have used silver as a cir¬
culating medium, and they have shown that they do
not want to use it unless at such a ratio to the old
standard of value that the debtors of the moment
can win a percentage on their contracts." And he
also says :
"From 1792 to 1834 under the double standard
law, they used silver as a standard of value, but
no silver dollars were coined from 1806 to 1836.
Bank notes were used, and there never was any test
whether the people would like silver dollars as a
circulating medium or not. In 1834 the rating
163
1(14 ABK YOU READY' FOR THE QUESTION?
under the ' double standard ' was changed so that
the gold dollar became the standard. In 1853 sil¬
ver was demonetized, except the dollars. In 1878
the dollars were demonetized, never haYung existed
as a circulating medium."
His statements falsify history : and as well they
cover a contemptible insinuation common to pre¬
judiced partisanship, wholly unworthy to one occu¬
pying his high position.
CHANGES RUNG lîY OTHER " WISE MEN."
It is persistently repeated by others under various
forms of statement to the effect that inasmuch as
we did not have silver currency in any considerable
amount, and that, between 1792 and 1873, there
was coined only about eight millions of standard
silver dollars, the reason of so scant coinage was
because the people did not want silver coin, and as
a consequence no wrong was done by the act of
1873, which interdicted the coinage of the silver
dollar which was in fact the standard up to that
date, and, in substitution, erected the standard in
the gold dollar.
It is also insisted that the law of 1873 did not
demonetize the silver dollar for the reason that
there was none, or practically none, then in exist¬
ence to be thus operated upon.
The foregoing are " stock " arguments against
silver and we proceed to wipe them all out by
PROFESSOR W. G. SUMNER OF YALE. 165
INDUBITABLE HISTORICAL FACTS.
We will premise by saying that the citizen now
of middle age can little understand the compara¬
tive poverty of our country in the early years of
our history. Those whose memory ante-dates the
50's know something of our hardships and can
realize in some degree how great were the trials
and adversity through which our nation struggled
from the beginning.
As to the " test " whether the people did or did
not want silver previous to 1873, we have only to
say that the most perfect and practical test was
made that under the circumstances could have been
made. We have used all the silver we could ob¬
tain for coinage at our mints, and had recourse to
a great volume of foreign coins which our people
always welcomed and literally wore out with using.
The memory yet remains of the important service
foreign coins were to us in days past, when most of
that in use consisted of French, Spanish and Mexi¬
can silver pieces. It is not so much the matter at
issue as to the quantity we were able to obtain and
what we did secure and use, as that we did our
utmost to that end, and when the day came in
which we could have an abundant supply, our
right to use silver was shut off.
SILVER IN CIRCULATION BEFORE 1873.
Let it be remembered that our silver mines had
166 ARE YOU READY FOR THE QUESTION?
not been discovered and that we depended on worn-
out foreign coins and silver plate to be reduced for
coinage purposes.
Our actual production up to 1860, from the
beginning of our history, according to the U. S.
mint reports, being less than two millions of silver,
whereas by the same re^Jort and during this period
of sixty-eight years we had produced over 675
millions of gold. Notwithstanding the poverty of
our silver supply, the product of our mints up to
February, 1873, had been 157f millions of silver
coin, of which sum ninety-three millions was in
standard silver of full paying power; of which
amount, it is true, only about eight millions were
in dollar pieces, the rest being in fractions of the
dollar.
And as bearing expressly on the fallacy that
there was none in existence to demonetize, during
the two years prior to the act of February, 1^73,
over two and one-half millions of silver dollars
were coined, and 977,150 standard dollars were
coined in the six weeks of January and February
in the year 1873, at which date the coinage ceased
by virtue of this act.
FOREIGN SILVER MADE LEGAL TENDER.
It will be seen that the most strenuous efforts
were put forth to procure silver for service from
the fact that, in 1806, Congress made the French
PROFESSOR W. G. SUMNER OF YALE. 16t
and Spanish silver coins full legal tender, and in
1834 Congress extended the legal tender to the sil¬
ver dollars of Mexico, Peru, Chili, Brazil, Central
America, and the five franc piece of France, in
order to draw the silver to our country. The gold
coins of several countries were also legalized. In
1843 Congress provided for the use in payment of
customs of the silver coins of Prussia, Portugal,
Russia, British America, and other foreign mints.
This condition obtained up to 1857, at which
date, owing to the infiux of gold to our mints by
reason of the heavy production in California, it
was deemed advisable to restrict the legal tender
quality of all foreign silver coin except for the pay¬
ment of duties and the purchase of public lands,
excepting only certain Mexican and Spanish coins,
which continued a legal tender until 1873, and this
for the greater part was the source of our govern¬
ment's silver supply. We sold our lands to pro¬
cure silver for coinage.
ANOTHER IMPORTANT FACT.
Another factor governing the coinage of standard
dollars should be noted. In 1806 Mr. Jefferson
peremtorily ordered the silver coinage to be con¬
fined to fractional coins that the people might be
the better served thereby, and not from any hostility
to the dollar itself, but on account of the scarcity
of silver, and no standard dollars were thereafter
coined until 1836.
168 ABE YOU READY FOR THE QUESTION?
Another fact should be noted, that, in 1834, the
ratio of silver to gold was changed from 15 to 1 to
16 to 1, or in otiier words the weight of gold coins
was reduced about six per cent, and the European
ratio being 15^ to 1, it made our silver coins worth
about three per cent more than our gold coins,
and this caused our silver to be sold for use in the
arts and to be exported.
In 1853 the weight of our fractional silver coins
was reduced in order to keep them in service, all
previously coined having been exact fractions of
the standard dollar. These new light-weight silver
coins were by the act limited in their legal tender
quality to payments in sums of five dollars only,
and for the reason they were of less weight than
the standard, but it did not limit the legal tender
(quality of the full-weight fractional coins. The
integrity of the standard dollar has ever been pre¬
served, and change in quantity of pure metal has
always been made in the gold coinage, netier in the
silver dollar.
It will stand without question to say that while
during our history we have used many different
forms of scrip and bank notes, the people never
used them from choice; and while at times the
most of our circulating medium consisted of bank
notes such as Michigan " wildcat," Georgia "shin-
plasters," Indiana " red dog," and Illinois " stump-
tail," together with the notes of the old national
PROFESSOR W. G. SUMNER OF YALE. 169
banks, and other reputable banks of issue, that the
people were averse-to such currency and made use
of it under compulsion, by reason of their inability
to obtain sufficient coin.
We venture the assertion that Professor Sumner
never saw the day when miscellaneous bank issues
were not distrusted. The metal itself—coined
money-—never was and never will be distrusted.
COINAGE FROM 1792 TO 1810.
Professor Sumner would have us to understand
that practically no silver was in use up to 1834.
The record of the mint shows as follows ;
The total amount of gold coinage up to 1830, $ 9,334,685 GO
" " silver " " " 27,761,477 95
Thus far three times as much silver as gold had
been coined.
During the next ten years the coinage of gold was $18,756,487 50
" " ■' silver " 27,309,957 00
Total gold coinage at 1840, 28,091,122 50
" silver " " 55,071,434 95
Showing at this date, 1840, nearly twice as much
silver as gold coin; all of this silver had been
standard, coin—full weight and paying power—
but had been mostly coined, better to serve the
convenience of the people, in fractions of the
dollar.
170 ARE YOÜ READY FOR THE QUESTION?
COINAGE LAW OF 1834.
lie also says tliat in 1834 "the gold dollar
became the standard." The standard remained in
the silver dollar ; the standard is fixed by law, and
the law made no change at that time.
No doubt at that time debtors made more free
use of gold in making payments, just as the
legislators enacting the law intended they should
have the privilege of doing, it being the debtor's
option to pay in either silver or gold, a right vouch¬
safed to the people in the provision for a dual coin¬
age by the framers of the Constitution, a right
guaranteed to our people for all time, a right and
privilege provided by them for future emergencies,
such as at that time occurred, and such as tiow
exists, a right as well understood by the creditor as
by the debtor.
The reduction in the weight of the gold coins in
1834 was not made for the purpose of effecting a
depreciation of 2^ per cent in the standard of con¬
tracts. It was done to attract more gold to the
mints for coinage, that the current distress might be
relieved, and it had in some degree the desired
effect, as may be seen by reference to the increase
in the proportion of gold coinage between 1830
and 1840 above noted.
The Professor strives to make a- point from the
act of 1853, but altogether at the expense of his
]>ROFESSOK W. (Î. Sl'MNEE OF YALE. 171
fairness. The plain inference from Iiis statement
is that all fractional silver coins were by that act
demonetized. The law makers were very jealous
of the standard, and did nothing to violate it.
During the agitation in 187S, in Congress, which
resulted in the passage of the Bland bill,
ROBERT TOOMBS OF GEORGIA
said to a reporter of the Atlanta Constitution :
I have just read an article by Mantón Marble in the North
American Review, in which he says that silver was really de¬
monetized in this country by the act of 1853. That is not
true. I was on the Ways and Means Committee at the time,
and drew that very bill, and passed it after a month's discus¬
sion. The truth is, that the bill made no change in the coinage
of the country. The reason of the act was this: Silver bullion
was worth more than the coin, and men were buying up our
half-dollars, quarters and dimes, throwing them into the melt¬
ing pot and exporting them. We had no change in the country,
and the people were really in want. England had suffered in
the same way, and to correct the evil had reduced her sub¬
sidiary coin six per cent below the standard. I simply adopted
the same rule for the purpose of keeping the coin in the coun¬
try. The act was passed, and the result was reached.
And referring to the Demonetization Act, he
said :
It was a fraud, put through by a venal Congress. A set
of thieves fixed up the code and did their corrupt work there;
but we are not bound by it. It is not law. Take our own
code of this state ; the supreme court is constantly driving out
of it things that were never law. The silver dollar never has
been le.ally demonetized, and if it ever has, it was a fraud
172 ARK YOÜ RKADY FOR TOE QUESTION ?
upon the people, a trick that ought to be punished by a penalty
on the tricksters.
It is true that in 1873 the dollar was dropped
out of the list of coins authorized ; but when Pro¬
fessor Sumner says that the silver dollar never had
an existence as a circulating medium, he denies a fact
as patent as any other fact in our history. Millions
of them had been coined, as he may well learn by
consulting the records, and that they were being
coined more rapidly than ever before up to the
very date of the passage of the act of 1873 ; hence
they did exist as a circulating medium.
Professor Sumner cannot truthfully say that the
people do not want silver ; for if they do not want
it, and he is not desirous of preventing them from
having it, why is he and others like him worrying
themselves at the expense of truth and fairness,
and why is he straining the charitable spirit of
those who would think well of him, even though
they had not the fullest faith in him as a teacher
of sound political economy ?
Professor Sumner abounds in insinuation. Ile
seems to think that only debtors, and those directly
aiding and abetting them, want the silver dollar,
assuming that the debtors desire them that they
may be able thereby to defraud their creditors.
Iiis imputation of dishonor on the part of the peo¬
ple who, in their true nobility and manliness, resist
the unjust demands of the money power, is not
PEOKESSOE W. G. SUMNEK OF YALE. 173
honorable on his part ; and if he was not so tlior-
oughly bound up in, and was not compelled so
fiercely to fight in his efforts to sustain his theories,
he might be able to see in the struggles of the
people to fully restore the white dollar a desire on
their part to protect the poor, and to conserve the
best interests of our industrial activities, thereby
to promote a healthier social condition than at the
present time obtains.
In keeping with his partisan untruthfulness is
his ungrateful reproach upon a worthy people, and
the ungraceful act to use the fact of our poverty
in days gone by as an occasion against us now.
Because we were poor does not warrant him in
assuming that he may ride rough-shod over the
people now, and set up a standard in defiance of
precedent and justice.
THE SIMPLE PEOPOSITION.
The simple proposition as to the propriety of
demonetizing silver may be stated in few words.
If it is good sound common sense and rational
policy to make our monetary standard so that the
money shall, by virtue of scarcity, constantly in¬
crease in purchasing power, at the expense of the
states and municipalities which have in these past
times of inflation loaded themselves with debt, and
at the direct expense of the people who, by reason
of the great volume of their current indebtedness
174 ARE YOU READY FOR THE QUESTION ?
as individuals, ñrms and corporations, are now in
the throes of a pressure prostrating and strangling
their industries, throwing out of employment and
driving the wage-worker, the poor, to desperation ;
if it is best to discourage our business men and
manufacturers who of necessity, in the prosecution
of their legitimate enterprises, must borrow money
and sell their goods and wares on credit; if the
paramount object in view is to secure to the credit¬
ors all the advantages, and especially tliat their
accumulated capital, without labor on their part,
shall compound by inherent growth, as well as by
accruing interest, then by all means let us have a
one-metal standard ; let us submit without protest
to the dictation of the " wise men " and the cap¬
italists.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
BANKS AND BANKERS.
IIE prevailing sentiment obtaining among
bankers seems to be as expressed by Con¬
gressman Harter, in a recent "honest money"
address delivered at Philadelphia, wherein he is
reported as having said "that credit has so usurped
the place of money among the advanced nations
that the aim and purpose of intelligent government
now is, to maintain, as most important, credit ; and
let the least important, the volume of money, in a
measure take care of itself."
"We hear much of this very fine talk, but it is
not truth; and much less is it common sense: yet
Mr. Harter was heartily applauded. The truth is
that credit on the part of governments is main¬
tained by a showing of ability to collect taxes from
its people and subjects, sufficient to pay its current
expenses and make reasonable provision for the
payment of its debts. It remains for the people
to provide the means, and see that the government
is sustained. It is suicidal on the part of the gov¬
ernment to interpose and hinder the people in the
accomplishment of this duty.
Relating to the banks it is not a part or principle
175
176 AKE YOU READY FOE THE QUESTION ?
of sound banking. The quantity of coin in sight
and other cash means, is the material element and
outward expression of the credit of the bank. An
ample and visible estate or hypothecation of collat¬
erals is the basis of credit on the part of the cus¬
tomer of the bank. Credit goes for nothing
except there is solid material to warrant and back it
up. There is no sentiment in business, it is reality
itself.
In reading the many published interviews held
with bankers, it would seem that the bankers have
forgotten, or at least ignore the fact, that they them¬
selves as bankers occupy the position of, and are in
fact, debtors ; that their debts rank among the first
in importance in the community in which the
banks are severally located. It would seem also that
they had no thought of ever being called upon to
pay up and redeem their issues.
T1 le fact is that in clamoring to be rid of silver,
and every effort put forth to secure this end, is but
to sap and mine the foundations of the banks tliem-
selves. In opposing the restoration of silver they
are sowing the wind ; and, granted that they are
successful, they will surely reap the whirlwind ;
when that day comes, if it does come, they will
appeal more strongly for silver dollars than they
new do to be rid of them.
We think the bankers are standing to their own
injury in this matter. Tiiey insist on a gold basis
BANKS AND BANKERS.
177
and say the supply for such basis is abundant. "We
suggest to them—suppose you take an inventory
and see what your present stock is, and estimate
the probable demand in the near future, and then
consider the sources of supply to meet the calls to
be made upon you. Such an investigation may,
and certainly should, cause alarm.
Any effort to replenish your coffers, even at this
time, would produce an immediate pressure and
make trouble ; such an effort would speedily demon¬
strate the fact to each bank, and especially to banks
outside of the largest cities, that such bank is not a
" Bank of England " even on a small scale. The
banks can secure only what their clients may yield
and that is practically nil. The Bank of England
has command of the gold of the world, because
her clients have the gold of the world in totality
times over pledged to them ; the world's annual
production is by far insufficient to cover the income
on these pledges. It needs to carry no great stock
of gold, as it occupies an independent position, and
the whole world must yield up at its command.
We grant that in the United States there is gold
sufficient as matters have been when there was
practically no use for the gold except in settlement
of foreign business ; but in the immediate future,
the necessity for gold will duly manifest itself, for
pay day is at hand and you insist on a strict gold
basis. But why should we anticipate the speedy
178 ARK YOU READY FOE THE QUESTION I
advent of " pay day '' ? Very few of those now in
the management of the banks knew anything of
specie redemption or its signification ; or of gold
redemption and what that implies. Those who
were first to organize under the national law gave
much consideration to the matter of redemption,
and their ability to protect their issues. Efforts
were made in putting out their circulation to get it
as far from home, and give it as wide a distribution
as possible. Some arranged to have their issues
used in paying off the boys in blue at the south.
They knew the responsibilities they were assuming
in issuing promises to pay—bank notes for circu¬
lation.
Under the old state bank systems redemption
was the vital event, and the notes of the bank were
redeemed on presentation or the bank was broken.
Those banks established for circulation were located
so as to be most inaccessible—in swamps and
away from railroads. Georgia and Tennessee were
esteemed to be quite inaccessible by Chicago bank¬
ers, who located banks of issue in those States, but
issued the notes from their Chicago offices; but
that condition is not relevant now, as no corner of
our country is inaccessible.
It was expected by those organizing under the
new system that they would soon be called upon to
redeem, but owing to the legal tender quality of
the greenbacks and their rapid increase in quantity,
HANKS AND BANKERS.
1Y9
which principally made up our money medium,
there was nothing to be gained by note holders in
presenting them for redemption. Coin could not
be had by so doing. And as time passed, the
bankers went to sleep over the matter, and in their
dreams disported themselves in the Elysian fields
of a high standard and a credit that vouchsafed
the acme of success. Presently a rude awakening
will disturb their slumbers.
The national banks in all their wonderful history
have never practically been called upon to redeem
a dollar of their circulation. Retiring worn-out
notes is the extent of their burden in this regard.
In the meantime, the bankers have become over
persuaded that they possess a charmed life, that
credit is everything, and that credit accomplishes all
things so far as they themselves are concerned.
And it has come to be generally believed that the
volume of money is quite unimportant compared
with a high money standard and this very material
thing called " credit."
Professor Perry gravely informed the bankers in
convention assembled, that " credit can never usurp
the whole place of coined money, otherwise there
would be no denominations to measure values
with," and the bankers seem to act on the supposi¬
tion that money sufiicient to show the denominations
is about all that is required so far as their liabilities
are concerned. The way the banks collapsed dur-
180 ARK YOU líEADY FOR THE QUESTION ?
ing the spring and summer of 1893 does not seem
to liave been an object lesson for the bankers.
Only those learn who wish to learn.
But it will be said that the panic of 1893 was
caused by the purchase of silver under the Sher¬
man law : this is not truth. It was caused by a
few leading bankers who, for the time being, acted
upon the assumption that credit was nothing, and
shut down on it. And, in detail, to those affected
—to bankers and others—it was because they had a
good stock of credit and were short of money. As
we show on another page, these leading bankers
managed this to put a quietus on the "silver
craze." But, how it it now ?
The day for redemption of government issues is
at hand, and is preparing the way for an attack
upon the banks; except silver is restored there
will be nothing to redeem with ; they will have
neither silver nor gold.
It is asserted that We now are, and since 1879
have been, on a gold basis. In a nominal manner
we have been ; but not so in fact. We have made
use of gold in our current business, but there has
been no gold redemption on the part of the banks.
The elements and forces bringing matters to a
crisis relate to man's desire for gold, the power
inhering in it, and the 346 millions of greenbacks
and other demand indebtedness of the government
now outstanding, which afford such a grand oppor-
BANKS AND BANKERS.
181
tunity for the exercise of power and the gratifica¬
tion of this lust.
The opinion seems largely to obtain among bank¬
ers that it would be best to dispense with the legal
tenders and relegate the matter of paper issues to
the banks themselves, seemingly being assured that
they are abundantly able to do this with present
means, and thus provide an elastic currency which
will (theoretically) adapt itself to the strict demands
of our commerce.
But it happens that the people have become
accustomed to and count upon the greenbacks as
being very desirable currency, and they will not
allow them to be funded.
The government is already in a dilemma ; holding
the greenbacks up to a basis of gold only, instead
of coin in which by their text they are payable,
seriously threatens the peace and prosperity of our
domestic affairs. Provision must be made to pro¬
tect the greenbacks. Credit will not save them
from dishonor. Silver will justly, fully and hon¬
orably make satisfaction as a tender in payment.
Suspension of payment on the part of the gov¬
ernment is inevitable, if the gold conceit is carried
to its logical issue ; any resulting panic and dis¬
turbance will be for the want of coin, both gold
and silver.
The government can not much longer endure
the strain, and there will be a break. With the
182 AKE YOU READY FOR THE QUKSTION?
delivery of the bonds, and receipt of the gold
recently purchased, there will come the day of trial
of our ability to stand on a gold basis. The hold¬
ers of the greenbacks will deplete the treasury.
Patriotic instincts will not save the treasury ; noth¬
ing but gold, that being the basis, will protect it.
Patriotic regard did not save the government the
necessity of going into the market for the purchase
of gold. The same cause which operated to create
that necessity will operate again with greater force
and intensity.
An inflow of gold, owing to a credit balance on
foreign trade and the sale of our securities will not
save the government ; for such obtaining, will be
in effect but as a creditor doling out a little more
money to the debtor for the purpose of securing a
stronger hold upon him. It would mean a little
delay of the inevitable, but nothing to our special
advantage.
This sale of gold was presumably very profitable
to the syndicate which engaged to supply the gold.
Our government is at the mercy of those who are
able to control the world's stock of gold, and these
gentlemen are not in business for their health or
from patriotic impulses.
Tlie clients of the American banks have no gold.
We cannot hold what our mines produce, for it is
sold and pledged in advance, and must be delivered
up ; all that is available the banks now hold ; and
BANKS AND BANKERS.
183
as soon as the way is open there will be a scramble
for such gold as may be in sight. The treasury
Avill be drained, and the banks will lock up what
they hold. Wall Street will take the gold, and the
country banks will get left. The only course to
prevent trouble is to restore silver. It will be im¬
possible to replenish the stock of gold. While in
the past it has not been necessary to keep gold in
stock, from this time on it will be imperative on the
part of the banks to make a much greater showing
of gold in sight.
Gentlemen, yon cannot maintain a gold basis.
You haven't the wherewithall, and what is more,
you canH get it / except, at fearful cost to the
people. It will not do to assume that our indus¬
trial products, such as wheat, pork and silver, can
be turned into gold ; it can only be done at prices
fixed by those who own the gold, and this is but a
prophecy of hard times and low and declining
prices to come.
The dollars in which your dealings are nominated
in their true analysis, are so many grains of stand¬
ard gold, dnly coined, and you will find that it is
the metal that is wanted. If it is not that the
metal is and will be wanted, why do you insist that
gold, and gold alone, is and shall be money? All
your movements are but hurrying forward the day
of tribulation for yourselves.
Owing to the demands made by the world's
184 AEE YOU READY FOB THE QUESTION ?
increasing commerce requiring a greater number of
depositories in the new and growing centers, and
the disposition of a number of foreign states of
the old world and of the Americas to strengthen
their treasuries, to help their credit, the era of gold
redemption is to be forced upon us.
They are impelled to such efforts by the conduct
of our government in insisting on the exclusion of
silver as a debt redeemer. And already our gov¬
ernment is getting a foretaste of what is to come ;
the treasury being the vulnerable and first object of
attack ; and the means of despoiling it, being so
readily available. In the final test, " credit " will
not pay debts. Conceit could make for itself no
more emphatic expression than to presume to sus¬
tain the enormous commerce of our country on the
basis of the existing stock of gold, with all the
demand there is and will be for it at home and
abroad.
An effort on the part of the people to lay by and
secrete ten dollars each would cause such a pressure
that not one in twenty could possibly secure the ten
dollars for such purpose. Let it be once clearly
and definitely understood that gold is to be king
and autocrat, and the effort would be made in dead
earnest by each and all to secure the gold. The
demand in such an event will be what our country
has never yet experienced. That is the day, if it
must come, when those dealing in money will call
BANKS AND BANKERS.
185
on the mountains to pour forth their treasures
of botli silver and gold to help them in their
extremity.
The day was when the world's stock of gold was
scattered and disseminated through the countries,
and could not largely be made available for specu¬
lative purposes ; when communication and trans¬
portation was slow and expensive ; when there were
no collossal accumulations of capital in individual
hands, and gigantic combinations were not in power;
when bonded indebtedness was but a trifle to what
it now is. What there was of specie those days
served the purposes of commerce fairly well.
But a chauge has come, and what served that day
will not fill the requirements of the present, even
on the basis of proportional increase.
Our modern facilities and appliances demand
correspondingly increased resources and available
means, instead of, as,seems to be generally held by
the bankers, that the various modern conveniences
render less necessary the quantitative volume of
primary money. There should be an increase com¬
mensurable to the enlarged facilities, as well as
increase of population and of commerce itself, to
insure safety.
This is nothing more or less than war—strife for
the possession of the gold, and modern war appli¬
ances only enhance the necessity of greater means
and more extensive preparations to insure against
18G AKE YOU READY FOR THE QUESTION?
the wiles and strategy re-enforced by these new
appliances. Coin enough to establish the " denom¬
inations to measure values with," would be equal
in such emergency to the gongs and other instru¬
ments of war made use of by the Chinese as against
modern weapons.
The prosperity of the banks depends upon the
prosperity of the people. The banking business
never was more remunerative than during the war,
when the circulating medium was in excessive sup¬
ply. We have now opportunity for an abundant
supply of a better medium than we had at that
time; then every dollar in use was a promise to pay
one dollar. Now we may have the dollars them¬
selves represented by government certificates for
the coin safely in store.
(CHAPTER XXIX.
WHAT SAY YOU 'i
E glory in the declaration of the immortal
Lincoln, that ours is "a government of
the people, for the people, and by the people."
Our government, in the text of its Constitution,
has reserved to itself power to protect the people.
Governments are bound to protect their subjects;
and redress their grievances ; failing in this pro¬
tection, and refusing just and necessary relief, the
governed will arise in their might and declare their
sovereignty by sending up as representatives men
who will protect the people.
We look about us and see our people in extrem¬
ity and hear the wail of distress. The causes are
clearly apparent, and may be summed up in these
words : The legislative powers of our country, so
far as they relate to financial and commercial inter¬
ests, do service to the rich, conspiring to the end
that the rich may grow richer, regardless of the
fact that such legislation inevitably condemns the
masses to poverty and the poor to servitude.
The time has now come to make imperative
demand, not for new privileges or unwarranted
rights, but a restoration of rights taken away and
187
188 ARE YOU READY FOR THE QUESTION?
withheld from us — rights guaranteed by the Con¬
stitution and reserved to the people by law for
fully eighty years, without which we can have no
encouragement for the future.
We ask only for o^fair chance for ourselves and
our children, and if what we ask is not given to us
we will take it —take it hy storm !
We look to our representatives to protect us, or
we will surely relegate them to private life and
place men in power who can discern the rights of
the people, as against the favored few. Men who
will protect the poor from the invasions and dep¬
redations of the crafty, over-reaching and greedy
rich. Men who will spend their strength in devis¬
ing ways and means looking to the betterment of
the condition of the people, rather than in sub\%rt-
ing their constitutional riglits.
We demand that legislation shall be in favor of
the whole people, and that in the exigencies of the
times, if there are sacrifices to be made, the rich
shall at least share an equitable part rather than
that occurring misfortunes shall be borne by the
poor and that such misfortunes shall be turned to
augment the power of the rich.
We need to utilize the white metal to the fullest
extent. It is preposterous to assume that the
people can have too much money. No one of our
rich citizens will allow that he now has or can have
too much. There is no more danger to be appre-
WHAT SAT TOD ?
189
hended by reason of the people having too much
money than there is that our nation shall become
too wealthy. And to this end we demand that the
coinage of silver shall be made as free as the coin¬
age of gold — the coinage to be on our time-hon¬
ored and historical basis — and that the government
shall receive and hold, on terms of equality, gold
and silver coin and bullion for our citizens, and
issue certificates therefor, redeemable in dollars or
in fine bars on the basis of dollars, at the option of
the holder, the same to serve as our money medium,
thereby giving to the people the best currency the
world has ever known — a currency subject to no
contingencies of failure—every dollar resting on a
solid basis, even the metal itself.
And now, if you, personally, are ready to respond
to the question, speak with no uncertain utterance
to those who represent you in Congress, that they
may know your will !
CONTENTS.
chapteb
PAGE
I.
Preliminary Statement
. 5
II.
Propositions in Monetary Economy
. 8
III.
Wealth
. 14
IV.
Commercial Wealth
. 16
V.
Money ....
. 25
VI.
C0.mmercial Values
. 30
VII.
Strict Value
. 35
VIII.
Inflated Values .
. 41
IX.
Depressed Values
. 48
X.
The Dollar .
. 54
XL
Coinage of Money
. 60
XII.
Bank Note Inflation .
. 64
XIII.
Pay Day
. 70
XIV.
Capital Plenty—Money Scarce
. 77
XV.
Cornering the Gold .
. 84
XVI.
Double Standard
90
XVII.
The Demonetization Act op 1873
. 96
XVIII.
More Silver in the Dollar
. 103
XIX.
British Dictation
. 108
XX.
Constitutional Rights
. 113
XXI.
International Agreement .
. 116
XXII.
Discovery op our Silver Mines .
137
XXIII.
The Relative Value of Gold to Silver
. 133
XXIV.
The Wail of the Goldites .
#
. 138
XXV.
Financial Panics .
. 146
XXVI.
Sophistries of the Wise Men
. 153
XXVII..
Professor W. G. Sumner of Yale
. 163
XXVIII.
Banks and Bankers
. 175
XXIX.
What Say You ? .
. 187