CHEAP MONEY. 
 
 address before the trustees 
 
 OF 
 
 ISorwich University, 
 
 Northfield, Vt., 
 
 AT 
 
 COM M EN CEM ENT, 
 
 June 27th, 1895, 
 
 HON. H. HENRY POWERS. 
 
^ cc\A 
 
CHEAP MONEY. 
 
 Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Board of Trustees, Ladies and 
 
 Gentlemen: 
 
 In our system of government where every citizen is clothed with 
 sovereign power and compelled to share in responsibility for the pub¬ 
 lic weal, the coming of a re-enforcement of young educated men into 
 the ranks of citizenship is both an inspiration and a benediction. 
 This annual contribution by the colleges of the nation, to the citizen¬ 
 ship of the nation is the sure guaranty that popular government is to 
 be perpetuated. For with an intelligent manhood comes an intelli¬ 
 gent comprehension of all political problems and an intelligent ballot. 
 
 I congi-atulate you therefore Mr. President and those associated 
 with you at the council board of administration, that this venerable 
 institution has, to-day, as it has all along its history, discharged a 
 high and patriotic service to the government under which we live, 
 by adding to the intelligent manhood of our country your quota of 
 educated young men, thoroughly equipped for the duties of practical 
 life and practical citizenship. The true import of the credentials 
 with which our higher institutions of learning invest their graduates 
 is not appreciated, until we compare their eflSciency for public service 
 with that great undefinable mass of ignorance that imperils the very 
 existence of free institutions. 
 
 An honest ballot is no more imperatively demanded than an in¬ 
 telligent ballot. A dishonest ballot threatens no more disaster to the 
 republic than an ignorant ballot. 
 
 You have not commissioned these young gentlemen to be pri¬ 
 vates who are to merely follow and acquiesce in the teachings of 
 others, confiding in the dangerous dogma that “whatever is, is right,” 
 but you have sent them forth as teachers and file-leaders in their as¬ 
 sumed duties and responsibilities as citizens of the republic. 
 
 Every question arising that touches the prosperity and weal of 
 the commonwealth is to be, by them, grappled with and settled upon a 
 basis of sound and discriminating conservatism, a basis that promises 
 the highest good to the greatest number. 
 
 I may be pardoned then if, in answering the summons with 
 which I have been honored, I address a few suggestions to you in the 
 hearing of these newly enrolled citizens, upon a subject that just now 
 engrosses the attention of the people of our common country. The 
 question of cheap money is not a new one- All along our histor}', all 
 along the history of England, France, Germany and every other civil¬ 
 ized nation,, a conflict of opinion has raged between the advocates of 
 
4 
 
 good money and the demand for cheap money. Experiments have 
 been tried everywhere in the effort to make something out of noth¬ 
 ing; to give value to an article not susceptible of value; to delude the 
 people with a shadow in place of a substance. 
 
 But happily for the people all such schemes have, thus far, proved 
 abortive. There are three distinct classes in the ranks of the advo¬ 
 cates of cheap money in this countrji, all ajjreed as to the end in view, 
 but not agreed as to the best means to attain that end. 
 
 One class believes that the government can issue irredeemable 
 paper money which will circulate from the momentum given it by 
 the fiat of the government; that it need have no intrinsic value; that 
 it is never to be paid; but that the confidence of the people will float 
 it along in the channels of business, and the wants of the people will 
 be fully met by it. 
 
 Another class, not going quite so far in banking on the confi¬ 
 dence of the people and the fiat of the government, says the great 
 trouble with the times is the scarcity of money among the people, 
 and that some plan must be devised to make money plenty, and they 
 offer as their remedy the establishment of state banks in place of the 
 National system. 
 
 The third class has some notions common to both the other classes, 
 but rests its hopes in the free coinage of silver at the ratio of 16 to 1, 
 and it is proposed to establish free coinage in America, alone, irre¬ 
 spective of any action looking to this end by other nations. 
 
 The advocate of fiat money triumphantly points to the greenback 
 of the war period, and asks, did not that carry us through the great¬ 
 est war of modern times, and if it was good in war will it not be good 
 in peace ? 
 
 This argument is specious and has turned the head of many can¬ 
 did men, but when we turn the flash-light of the second sober thought 
 upon it, it is speedily relegated to the domain of exploded theory. 
 
 Tlie greenback of the war period was not fiat paper. Fiat paper 
 is issued without any consideration. It is put out by the government 
 without anything being received back by the government. It is the 
 mere, empty promise of the government to pay dollars with no value 
 received to support it. Every greenback ever issued was first put out 
 in payment for services rendered or property received by the govern¬ 
 ment. It was, then, in substance, a promissory note, given on good 
 consideration. But in order to expand the currency the government 
 gave to the note the added quahty of legal tender, so that it would be 
 as good in the hands of a stranger as in the hands of the first taker 
 who furnished the original consideration. 
 
 It is thus seen that the greenback is the written obligation of the 
 government to pay for some valuable consideration received by it. 
 
 As the government in its contract relations stands precisely like 
 an individual in his, this promise to pay is a legal promise and en¬ 
 forceable as such. By reason of this legal obligation the greenback 
 now stands in public confidence by the side of government bonds, both 
 as good as gold the world over. The bonds were issued for borrowed 
 
5 
 
 money. The greenbacks were issued for purchased supplies and ser¬ 
 vices. Both are expected to be paid in good, honest, one hundred cent 
 dollam. The fiatist fails to discriminate between the paper and 
 the signer of the paper. The confidence given to the gi-eenback does 
 not rest wholly on the fact that it is signed by the government, but 
 rests, primarily, on the fact that it is ])aper that the government had 
 the right to issue and it is therefore legally collectible. 
 
 Mr. A. may give me his note for a hundred dollars for money bor¬ 
 rowed. A. is perfectly responsible. I can collect the note not because 
 the signer is financiairy responsible but because tlie note is legall}' 
 binding and thus legally good. But if Mr. A. gives me his note with¬ 
 out any value received, I cannot collect the note however responsible 
 he may be financially. 
 
 Just so with the government; any paper issued for value received 
 will always be accepted bj'the people ; any paper issued without value 
 received will not be accepted by the people. 
 
 Wlien the greenback now current is offered to a man, he enquires 
 who signed this paper. The United States government. Where is it 
 payable ? At the counters of the government. When is it payable ? 
 On demand. Then I will take it. 
 
 When the fiat greenback is offered to a man he enquires who 
 signed this paper. Nobody. Where is it payable ? Nowhere. When 
 is it payable ? Never. Then I don't want it. 
 
 No paper of any description will pass current among the people 
 unless it wins the confidence of the people in two respects. 
 
 1st. That the issue is not disj^roportionate to the ability of the 
 maker to jJay, and 
 
 2nd. That the maker is legally bound to pay it. 
 
 The greenback of the war period forcibly illustrates the truth of 
 this proposition. The government was fighting to preserve its exist¬ 
 ence. Millions of men were to be raised and paid. Millions of other 
 expenditures must be met. Specie had disappeared. Paper promises 
 to pay were the only resource left. Successive issues of these paper 
 promises were piled up, Pelion upon Ossa, until tlie confidence even 
 of a patriotic people was shaken. If the rebellion was a success no 
 man could predict the fate that awaited the loyal North. Whether 
 we should have any government left at all, and if so whether it would 
 jiay or repudiate its paper were questions uppermost in everybody’s 
 mind. Bj' reason of this, the greenbacks, though legally issued for 
 legal purposes, were worth forty cents on the dollar. In common par¬ 
 lance we say that gold went to a premium, but this is a misuse of lan¬ 
 guage. Gold never went to a premium during the war. It main¬ 
 tained its equal, unvai’ying value throughout the war, both at home 
 and abroad, without variableness or shadow of turning. It was worth 
 an even one hundred cents on the dollar—no more, no less—in the 
 loyal States and in the disloyal States. 
 
 If the farmer in Vermont received a dollar a pound for his butter 
 it was because he took his i^ay’ in greenbacks. Whereas, if the gold 
 
was offered him, he would sell for twenty-five cents. If the confed¬ 
 erate had to pay one hundred dollars in confederate money for a din¬ 
 ner, he knew he could buy it for a single gold dollar. The price of 
 butter and of dinnei-s went up as the currency in circulation went 
 down, because it takes more cheap money to buy goods than good 
 monev. 
 
 N^ow if the war greenback lost its standing when it had behind it 
 the pledge of the American people that it should be redeemed in hon¬ 
 est money, and when every nerve in our national being was strained 
 to uphold it, how long is it probable that mere fiat paper—paper is¬ 
 sued without value received, issued without limit—issued without 
 any purpose of ever being redeemed ; or if redemption be promised, 
 issued far beyond the ability of the government to redeem, will pass 
 current among the people? 
 
 The only asset the government has available to meet its promises 
 is its power of taxation. The only money it ever has is money re¬ 
 ceived from taxes. It can only levy a tax for some public purpose, 
 to raise money for some proper governmental object. It can no more 
 levy a tax to supply me with money than it can to supply 
 me with food. It is not organized for the purpose of do¬ 
 ing for individuals what they should do for themselves. 
 The acquisition of wealth is the business of the individual. The 
 
 E rotection of the individual in the enjoyment of his wealth is the 
 usiness of the government. Every man must earn his own money 
 and the government will protect him in its possession. 
 
 The scheme of fiat money, then, is absurd in theory, vicious in 
 application, and bad in law. 
 
 The second class of financial dreamers insists that, if fiat money 
 issued by the government is not the proper remedy for the ills they 
 complain of, the next best thing is to overturn the national banking 
 system, and set up in its place a system of State Banks. They say 
 this will make money plenty in every locality and where money is 
 plenty the country is on the high road to prosperity. But this propo¬ 
 sition is not (pzite sound in the way they put it. If good money is 
 plenty the country does prosper, but if bad money is plenty the 
 country will go to ruin. Money is the measure of values. If money 
 is worth one hundred cents to the dollar, it will exactly measure the 
 value of one dollar’s worth of property. If butter is worth twenty- 
 five cents per pound in honest money, that is its true value, no mat¬ 
 ter what it sells for in cheap money. 
 
 An honest dollar is not provincial in its character. It is equally 
 
 f ood in New York and in London. If you start on a journey to San 
 'rancisco or Peru, the honest dollar will pay your bills without dis¬ 
 count at either place. If you take the wings of the morning and 
 dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, the honest dollar will buy you 
 a dinner on your arrival. 
 
 But no State Bank bill will do your service satisfactorily five hun¬ 
 dred miles away from the home of the bank issuing it. Strangers are 
 afraid of it. If you visit Ohio you must exchange it for Ohio money, 
 
7 
 
 and pay the broker for his risk. If you visit London you could not 
 use it at all. Is that the kind of money that the business interests of 
 this country desire again to try ? We have tried the state banking 
 system once. In that trial has not old experience already attained 
 
 ‘ To Something of Prophetic Strain ?” 
 
 We are to look at the question not from the standpoint of in¬ 
 dividual good, but from that of the public good. There ai'e, say one 
 million stockholders in the banks of this country. What interest 
 have the other sixty-nine millions of our people in tlie banks? What 
 do they want ? There are two classes among them having a direct 
 interest in the character of banks,—one is the depositor, anxious to 
 know that the bank is safe and sound and will return him his money, 
 —the other is the bill holder anxious to know that the bills in his 
 pocket are worth their face value in every market. 
 
 What was the experience of our people under the state bank sys¬ 
 tem ? Taking it as a whole it brought ruin to countless numbers of 
 both depositors and bill holders. Now we liave but one lamp by 
 which our feet are guided and that is the lamp of experience. We 
 have no way of judging the future but by the past. If State Banks 
 worked unsatisfactorily, if they brought disaster to the holders of 
 their bills, what will they do in the future ? If on the contrary the 
 national bank system, planted on the bed-rock of national responsi¬ 
 bility, with a history running through a generation, has never, any¬ 
 where, shown the loss of a penny to its bill holders, and only an 
 infinitesimal loss to its depositors, why, as intelligent men, should we 
 seek a change ! 
 
 What vii’tue in the banking system do the sixty-nine millions of 
 our people demand which is not found in the national banking sys¬ 
 tem ? 
 
 More than a hundred and fifty of them have failed within the 
 past two years. What man among you ever looked to see if he had a 
 bill on one of these failed banks in his possession ? You never look 
 to see what bank issues the bill which is offered to you,—you don't 
 care. You know the bill is good whether the bank fails or not. The 
 bills of a national bank are not only good and pass without inspection 
 in the locality of the bank but in all localities. They are jiist as good 
 in London or in Pai’is as they are in Boston and New York. This 
 general and unquestioned cuiTency given to National Bank bills is in 
 itself sufficient reason why the system should not be changed. It is 
 
 E reciselj’^ the one thing that the people desire and must have in a 
 anking system, and this system is the only one that makes this re¬ 
 sult certain. 
 
 I am aware that all manner of hard names are applied to the 
 managem of national banks, but hard names are not arguments, 
 abuse is not logic. We are trying the merits of the system, not the 
 
8 
 
 merits of the managers, and I do not say this by way of apology, on 
 the contrary I can unhesitatingly affirm that there cannot be found 
 in the world, anywhere, in any kind of business employment, any 
 class of managers, more straightforward, more cautious, more jja- 
 triotic, and more honest than the managers of our national banks, as 
 a class. During the war they were the right arm of support to the 
 National Treasu^’, since the war they have been the bulwark of de¬ 
 fense to the Nation’s credit. 
 
 State Banks mean cheap money. The security for their bills will 
 be such as each of the forty-four States may adopt. If a State is 
 controlled by Populists, very likely the bills will have no security 
 behind them and in every State nothing will be provided equal to 
 the security of Government Bonds. We now have eight or ten dif¬ 
 ferent kinds of money in use among the people, all of it interchanga- 
 ble and all equal to gold. The jiroposal is to add forty-four kinds 
 more, not interchangable with its own kind nor with that now in use 
 and none of it equal to gold. State bills cannot be made legal tender 
 because the Constitution forbids it. It is clear that this system of 
 banking will work untold mischief if adopted. 
 
 But the advocates of cheap money, if they find that fiat money 
 is impossible, and find that State Banks are condemned, make their 
 final assault upon metallic currency itself. They say, give us free 
 coinage of silver at the ratio of 16 to 1. If we cannot have fiat money 
 worth nothing, or State Bank money worth but little more, give us, 
 at least, silver money worth half price. 
 
 They say silver is as much the money of the Constitution as gold, 
 that silver dollars were the dollars of the daddies, and if the govern¬ 
 ment will open its mints and coin silver dollars, worth only fifty 
 cents, the govemment stamp upon them will float them in every 
 market of the world. But if the government can make half dollars 
 into good merchantable dollars, it can make half bushels into good 
 current bushels, it can make two quarts into a gallon, and eighteen 
 inches into a yard, with equal right and equal success. 
 
 The same clause in the Constitution which gives Congress the 
 right to coin money and regulate its value, gives it the right to fix 
 the standard of weights and measures. Both propositions, then, 
 stand upon the same level of fundamental right. 
 
 The Constitution does not provide for coining dishonesty. Money, 
 weights and measures, as used in that instrument, mean honest 
 honest dollai-s, honest weights, and honest measures. Dishonest 
 dollars, therefore, ai’e not Constitutional money. 
 
 The argument of the advocate of cheap money, that they want 
 the “dollar of the Constitution,” the “dollar of the daddies,” is, 
 therefore,from their standpoint absolutely illogical and unsound. The 
 dollar of the Constitution and the dollar of the daddies were both 
 honest dollai-s, worth one hundred honest cents; and the sons of 
 those daddies want dollars equally good. But who wants cheap 
 money ? The advocates of it are located mainly in the West and 
 South. The mine ownere in the West who have invested their cap- 
 
9 
 
 ital in silver mines are clamoring for free coinage because it will 
 stimulate their industry. The people in the South, who were made 
 poor by the war and who are deeply in debt, want free coinage of 
 silver, or State banks, or both, because they think that with cheap 
 money they can more easily pay their debts. The mine owners in 
 the West with free coinage or silver at the ratio of 10 to 1, can see 
 countless millions in the venture. If they can take fifty cents worth 
 of silver to the mint, have it made into a dollar free of expense to 
 them, it is a profit worth securing. Silver is a commodity dug out 
 of the earth as granite is. If the granite producer could get a law 
 passed that would compel purchasers to pay one dollar per foot for 
 granite worth only fifty cents, the results would be eminently fortu¬ 
 nate for the producer, but you and I who buy the granite must suffer 
 a corresponding loss. If tlie mine owner gets his silver manufac¬ 
 tured into dollars at double its value, he is eminently fortunate, but 
 you and I who buy those dollai-s must suffer a corresponding loss. 
 The mine owner, then, is simply seeking legislation for his own selfish 
 advantage, regardless of its effects upon the general public. 
 
 But it is claimed that even if this be true, it is for the genex'al 
 good that silver be used as money of ultimate redemption. This is 
 true if it be available everywhere for this purpose. But it is to be 
 remembered that the American nation is a part of the family of 
 nations. We buy and sell to all the other members of the family. 
 We must have tea, coffee, sugar, spices and other necessaries of life, 
 and must purchase numberless luxuries that cannot be produced at 
 home. We must, therefore, have a kind of money that the seller of 
 these articles will accept in payment. We could, doubtless, establish 
 bi-metalism in our own country that would answer all purposes of 
 domestic commerce. Northfield might have a medium of exchange 
 that would work well enough at home, but Northfield must trade 
 with Montpelier, and the Montpelier dealer will accept only such 
 medium as is current in Montpelier. Every sound thinker is in favor 
 of the use of both gold and silver in the monetary system, but as 
 money is demanded by our people for use abroad, as well as at home, 
 it must have an international currency. Local money for the United 
 States is as objectionable as local state bank bills were in the daj's of 
 state banks. 
 
 Gold and silver have each an intrinsive value, each is a com¬ 
 modity used in the arts, each is a commodity used by all the nations 
 of the earth, each, therefore, has an mternatio7ialcommercial value, 
 and over that value the legislature of one nation alone has no con¬ 
 trol. Gold and silver coins from American mints pass current in 
 foreign markets according to their weight, not according to their in¬ 
 scription, and if tiie silver dollar only weighs fifty cents that is the 
 measure of its value. If it is worth only fifty cents in London and 
 Paris it is worth no more in New York, for the prices of all staple 
 articles of commerce must by natural law be approximately the sajne 
 in all markets. Gold, by nearly every civilized nation, has been 
 made the standard of values. Its annual production keeps pace so 
 
10 
 
 evenly with its annually increased use, with the increase in popula¬ 
 tion and business needs, that its price remains staple and it becomes 
 a steady, unvarying measure of exchange: on the other hand silver 
 is fickle in price and discredited in the markets of the world. 
 
 It mav be true that the supply of gold is alone insufficient for the 
 business needs of the world, and that a scramble to secure it is likely 
 to take place. But that scramble has no terrors for us. No nation 
 under the sun can make such tempting offers for gold as the United 
 States. Whoever may. for the time have gold in his possession, does 
 not wish to have it lie idle. In that condition it does him no more 
 good than so much iron, he is looking for a chance to place it in some 
 good paying investment. The United States offers the best invest¬ 
 ments, our government and State bonds, the bonds of our great rail¬ 
 road systems, the innumerable offerings of securities made by our 
 people in every department of commercial enterprise, bear a higher 
 rate of interest and rest upon a more certain base of security, than 
 like offerings by other nations. This advantageous temptation will 
 secure the gold of the investor and our international share of the 
 world’s gold is made secure. This coigne of advantage must not be 
 thrown away. We do throw it away if we raise any suspicion that 
 we are drifting to a silver basis in our currency system. Foreign in¬ 
 vestors expect payment of our obligations in the money of the world. 
 So long a.s we support that expectation, so long will our 
 securities float at the best price. Destroy it and they will not 
 float at any price. Our national, state, municipal and commer¬ 
 cial indebtedness amounts to about fourteen billions of dollars, one- 
 third of which is held abroad. We have promised to pay it at the 
 rate of a hundred cents on the dollar. But if we should coin legal 
 tender silver dollars, worth fifty cents only, all this vast mountain of 
 securities would be thrown upon the market and every bank, every 
 great industry, and every kind of business venture would be para¬ 
 lyzed and millions of wage earners be turned into tramps. The fiat 
 of the government can no more make gold or silver or anything else 
 of value by legislation than it can make a horse drink when he is not 
 dry. The horse is govei-ned by natural laws, value is governed by 
 natural laws, and these laws are controlled by Heaven, not by man. 
 Govenrment may make cheap money a legal tender here at home for 
 existing debts, but no new ones could be created so long as cheap 
 nmney could discharge them. And no makeshift policy will help the 
 difficulty. It has been urged that by making concession to foreign 
 nations in our tariff duties upon their productions, they would accept 
 our silver currency in exchange. But this proposition implies that 
 the foreign exporter pays the tariff duty which is not always true, 
 and secondly that in order to sell his goods he will accept cheap 
 money. What will induce him to accept money worth lialf its face 
 value ? Where can he use it ? If he accepts a fifty cent dollar for 
 hia goods he must recoup his loss by doubling the price of his goods, 
 and thus our people gain nothing. Again if we make tariff conces¬ 
 sions to one nation we must to all. How, then, can we get revenue 
 
11 
 
 for tliesiipport of government except by some form of taxation wliicli 
 will burden the people ? It is safe to say that you cannot make your 
 cheap dollai-s current among the nations of the earth by any thin 
 sugar coating process like this. 
 
 The conclusive answer to the argument for the free coinage of 
 silver is this—it is a dishonest attempt to cheat the people. 
 
 The proposition for the free coinage of silver dollars, intrinsically 
 worth only half price, is, in essence, a scheme to make the fiat of the 
 government contribute one-half of the currency those dollars may 
 have. The government receives no value from tire owner of silver 
 bullion who brings it to the mint for coinage, on the other hand it 
 does the work of coining it free and returns to him the dollars into 
 which his bullion is coined. It puts its stamp upon the coin which 
 merely certifies to its genuineness as a coin which the government 
 has manufactured. The owner of the bullion ownes the dollar made 
 from it. Why, then, should the government assume any liability in 
 the transaction more than the miller does who grinds your wheat 
 into flour. Why should the government make the silver dollar, worth 
 only half price, a legal tender for its face value, any more than the 
 miller should certify that your half bushel of wheat makes a bushel’s 
 worth of flour ? 
 
 The people of this nation believe in honesty in all things. They 
 cannot, consistently, declare that fifty cents is eyual to one hundred 
 cents. They cannot, therefore, directly nor indirectly sanction any 
 currency that is not intrinsically worth what it purports to be. No 
 metal, therefore, whether it is gold or silver or copper can be safely 
 coined tliat has any different price whether it is in the bar or in the 
 coin. If fifty cent silver dollars were put into circulation by the side 
 of one hundred cent gold dollars, and both were legal tender, the 
 gold dollars would disappear within thirty days after the enterprise 
 was inaugurated. If I owed a man a dollar and I had a gold dollar 
 and a silver one, he would be certain to get the silver and I would re¬ 
 tain the gold. The cheap dollar always drives the good dollar into 
 hiding. 
 
 But the men who clamor for cheap money, whether paper or 
 silver, are asking for the very thing they do not want. 
 
 It is true that such dollar, if made a legal tender, would pay off 
 existing debts. But how is the debtor to get the fifty cent dollar ? 
 When it comes from the mint it is the money of the man who sup¬ 
 plied the bullion from which it is made. He went into the business 
 for the profit tliere was in it. He has secured a dollar that he wishes 
 to pass at its full face value. 
 
 You and I must paj*^ him one hundred cents for it. Thus you and 
 I, if we are trying to get it to pay off an existing debt, might as well 
 pay the debt in full without bothering with the silver dollar. 
 
 Again, suppose the cotton farmer of the South and the wheat 
 farmer of the West, by some hook or crook, could get possession of 
 cheap dollars enough to pay off their mortgages. This would end 
 their interest in such money. It would help them in this first trans- 
 
12 
 
 action, but the next dav when they offer their wheat and cotton for 
 sale, and always afterward when they market their products, they 
 are on the other side of the transaction. They must take Uieir pay 
 in the same cheap money. . j . 
 
 It thus appears that cheap money is good for the debtor class 
 only in the first transaction, namely, to pay off existing debts. He 
 cheats his creditor just the amount he saves to himself. After that 
 the debtor is cheated. But if the debtor desires again to borrow 
 money he finds the doors of credit closed. No creditor will expose 
 himself the second time to a payment in cheap dollars. 
 
 The effect of free coinage upon existing currency will be the 
 same. The government, for the convenience of the people, has issued 
 millions of silver certificates based ui)on a deposit in the treasury of 
 a corresponding amount of silver bullion. These certificates on their 
 face are payable in silver dollare. You all have these certificates in 
 your pockets. Read the contract on their face and you will see that 
 all the government agrees to do, is to pay them in silver dollars. It 
 is true the goveniment now does redeem these certificates in gold if 
 it is called for, but this is purely ex gratir, it is done to prevent the 
 depreciation of them in the hands of the people. 
 
 Now if we adopt free coinage or silver independent of other 
 nations, we destroy our market abroad for the sale of our securities 
 and we drive gold out of circulation, and the government is left 
 powerless to get gold for the redemption of these certificates. It 
 would be forced to pay them off in silver dollars. Silver dollars are 
 worth no more coined than the bullion from which they are coined. 
 The bullion being worth half price, the dollam are worth half price. 
 The instantaneous result would be that every silver certificate in 
 your purse would drop to half its face value, and you are left to 
 stand the loss. 
 
 As long as we remain on a gold basis, and the world sees that we 
 are willing to pay our obligations in the money the world is willing 
 to accept, we can keep all kinds of our currency at par. But the 
 moment we take our place among silver nations, our currency will 
 rank in value with that of Mexico. But this fact by no means milli- 
 tates against bi-metalisni, which we all desire to establish, on the 
 contrary, it is the best reason in the world why bi-rnetalism should 
 be established. A large per cent, of the commercial nations now 
 have the single gold standard; all need silver to redeem money pre¬ 
 cisely as we do; all have the same motive and the same interest in 
 restoring silver to its place in the monetary system that we have. 
 This common necessity, then is the sure promise that international 
 bi-metalism will be secured in the near future. It would be inexcus¬ 
 able folly, then, for us to attempt bi-metallism alone, depreciating 
 our own money one-half, and bringing untold disaster to every busi¬ 
 ness interest in the land. 
 
 I have in briefest manner called attention to one of the popular 
 heresies that the young educated man is called upon to combat. In 
 meeting this as well as all other questions of public concern, he, of 
 
13 
 
 all men, is least excusable for erroneous conclusions, he is equipped 
 for the combat and is bound, by force of his equipment, to wage the 
 war of conquest against all popular errors. He is to subject all ques¬ 
 tions to a keen, searching analysis. He is not to eliminate a dogma 
 because, forsooth, it is old, nor retain it because forsooth it is new. 
 
 The whole inspiration of these halls of learning, which he now 
 leaves, the whole hope of the citizenship which he now enters, com¬ 
 bine to lift him from the domain of bigotry up to the level of im¬ 
 partial inquiry. 
 
 All will be well if he follows the discriminating conservatism of 
 St. Paul—“Prove all things, hold fast that which is good.”