TEE CURRENCY QUESTION. 359 



ers was " all right." French, German, and other nations, includ- 

 ing the Greeks and Romans, have had a similar and generally far 

 worse history of their coinage. 



While it must be admitted that the question of silver coinage, 

 involving as it does the whole history of the production, use, and 

 value of the precious metals, is a great and delicate and difficult 

 problem, I believe there is no controversy about this proposition : 

 that men should pay precisely what they contract to pay should 

 do just as they agree. The difficulty arises over the question as 

 to what they really agree to do. If they agree to pay one hundred 

 dollars, the question arises, What is a dollar ? and the answer 

 must be, in general terms, that it is a monetary unit, composed 

 of a certain amount of gold or silver determined and defined by 

 the United States Government. This leaves open the door for all 

 sorts of honest differences of opinion as to what a dollar really is 

 (since two kinds of dollars are in actual circulation), and also for 

 a very wide field of action for the political power. Manifestly, if 

 contracts were made to deliver a certain amount of gold or silver 

 bullion, or a certain amount of wheat or railroad stock, of speci- 

 fied kind, the ambiguity would not arise. 



This is the solution of the currency problem that the financial 

 world, led purely by that enlightened self-interest which is at the 

 bottom of most improvements, is preparing. Several copies of 

 railroad mortgages, made within the last ten years from forms 

 dictated at the great financial centers, lie before me, and in each 

 of them I find the promise to pay " in gold coin of the United 

 States of America of the present standard weight and fineness." 

 For example : 



The Toledo, Ann Arbor and North Michigan Railway Com- 

 pany . . . delivers " its certain ten thousand bonds for one thou- 

 sand dollars each, . . . severally payable to the Farmers' Loan and 

 Trust Company, or bearer, in gold coin of the United States of 

 America of the present standard weight and fineness . . . with in- 

 terest thereon ... at the rate of five per centum per annum, pay- 

 able in like gold coin." 



No doubt there are hundreds of such mortgages, amounting 

 in the aggregate to at least a billion dollars, and probably much 

 more.* 



The highest court of the land has several times declared that 

 such contracts must be performed literally. If a man promises to 

 pay a certain amount of gold, he must do so, whether at the time 



* It is not easy to see how many of these companies could escape bankruptcy in the 

 event of the free coinage of silver, if they were compelled to fulfill their contracts to pay 

 in gold coin. While their earnings might rise somewhat from higher charges, it is hardly 

 possible that they could earn thirty-three per cent more in that way setting aside the 

 likelihood of financial panic and business stagnation. 



