CONGRESS. (TiiE I)IN<;LKY BILL.) 



nry dollar for dollar of legal-tender money and 



loan it to tin: people at interest double interest, 

 interest upon tlie bonds paid by the Government 

 and interest upon the loans paid by the money 

 borrowers. The banks invest their capital and re- 

 ceive interest upon it, get an equal amount of 

 money, and then receive interest upon that from 

 the borrowers. In 1S!.)5 we paid to the national 

 banks over ss.000,000 in interest on their bonds, 

 and they were loaning to the people an amount 

 equal to 90 per cent, of those bonds and receiving 

 the highest rate of interest the people would pay. 



" That is not all of this proposed remedy for our 

 financial ills. It proposes to give the national banks 

 entire control of the paper currency. Suppose they 

 issue only $350,000,000 of notes and then loan them 

 to the people for fifty years, say. at only 5 per cent. 

 interest : the money borrowers will pay in interest 

 117,500,000 annually, $875,000,000 of interest in 

 the fifty years. 



"Now. Mr. President, the question arises, can 

 the national banks maintain gold redemption 1 ? If 

 the whole United States can not maintain a gold 

 reserve, can the national banks do it -i It is a per- 

 tinent question. To retire the United States notes 

 is to transfer the whole of the demand for gold on 

 the banks, their notes then being redeemable only 

 in gold. Xow, if they can maintain the gold re- 

 demption of their circulation, it will prove conclu- 

 sively, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that there has 

 existed and now exists a combine, to say the least 

 of it, to raid the gold reserve, force the issue of 

 bonds, vest in them the absolute control of our 

 currency, and then, when clothed with this abso- 

 lute power to manage and direct the currency of 

 the country, redeem it or not, just as they choose, 

 and just as they did in 1893, when they refused to 

 honor drafts in money to their customers and 

 country banks, and resorted to $38.000,000 of clear- 

 ing-house certificates in the city of Xew York. 



"Mr. President, it is easy to criticise a policy, 

 but what should have been done instead of this dis- 

 astrous, costly policy, paralyzing to the business of 

 the country 1 The answer is plain. The executive 

 branch, in obedience to the legislative will and to 

 existing law, should have reserved the option to re- 

 deem in silver dollars as well as gold : should have 

 coined all the silver bullion in the Treasury into 

 standard silver dollars ; should have redeemed and 

 canceled every one of the Treasury notes and re- 

 tired them, as the law required, when redeemed in 

 silver dollars ; should have redeemed the green- 

 backs in silver dollars as well as gold, and to-day 

 we would not have one solitary dollar of Treasury 

 notes outstanding. Every one of them would have 

 been redeemed and canceled. In lieu of them, we 

 would have had outstanding an equal amount of 

 standard silver dollars and "$53.000,000 of surplus 

 added to the balance in the Treasury, which would 

 have prevented the issue of any bonds to replete 

 the Treasury exhaustion, and not one dollar of the 

 $262,000,000 bonded indebtedness would be in exist- 

 ence to-day." 



Senator Cockrell cited the votes in Congress from 

 the Forty-fifth ('(ingress down, and the declara- 

 tions of Democratic platforms to show that the 

 party had been in favor of free coinage. He dis- 

 cussed the prediction that the double standard 

 would drive all the gold from the country and con- 

 tract the currency, and the question of overproduc- 

 tion of silver. On this latter subject he said : 

 " These are the recorded facts and figures of history, 

 and they conclusively prove, first, that there is no 

 silver bullion in the" world stored away : second, 

 that the annual production of silver is wholly con- 

 sumed year by year and more too: and third, that 

 as in the past so it will be in the future, the annual 



product of silver will be consumed in the world. 

 It must be so. Why ( Xo nation can do with gold 

 only. No nation can ever get along with gold as 

 its only metallic money. You can not make your 

 dollars and half dollars out of it. You have to use 

 silver, and every gold nation on earth to-dav is 

 using silver as a limited legal tender and as small 

 money. That silver must be annually added to. 

 It rapidly disappears. It is abraded and worn. It 

 is lost. It has to be supplied annually, and some 

 nations have a fixed law prescribing an annual in- 

 crease of silver coin in proportion to the population, 

 and the annual increased consumption is equal to 

 the annual product. Then the gold nations can 

 not do without silver, because silver is the money 

 of the world to-day, in which 90 per cent, of the 

 individual transactions are had. England can not 

 part with her silver; Germany can not; France 

 can not. Xone of the nations of the world can, 

 and they must add to their coinage every year." 



Senator Hoar asked: ''What does the Senator 

 from Missouri understand to be the motive of all 

 those European nations, then, in limiting the coin- 

 age of silver > " 



Mr. Cockrell : " Simply because their governments 

 are in the hands of the aristocratic, "the wealthy 

 classes, and they want to increase the purchasing 

 power of the dollars named in their bonds and se- 

 curities and to depress the selling price of all the 

 products of the world that they have to buy." 



Mr. Hoar : " But my question is not exactly an- 

 swered. If, as the Senator xinderstands. opening 

 the mints to the free coinage of silver will not de- 

 crease the purchasing power of gold at all, but it 

 will remain the 'same '' 



Mr. Cockrell : " I do not say it will not decrease 

 the purchasing power of gold. I say it will. I did 

 not say it will not." 



Mr. Hoar : " I thought the Senator claimed that 

 the standard money of the country would remain 

 of equal value " 



Mr. Cockrell : " It would." 



Mr. Hoar : " If we opened the mints to the coin- 

 age of silver ? " 



Mr. Cockrell : " It would, by silver going up and 

 gold coming down." 



Mr. Hoar : " Very well. Then those moneyed men 

 and aristocrats have not increased the purchasing 

 power of the dollar of the country or have not af- 

 fected it by closing their mints " 



Mr. Cockrell : "They would if they were to open 

 their mints to the coinage of silver. They did af- 

 fect it by stopping the coinage of silver. They 

 doubled the purchasing power of every dollar of 

 their securities by demonetizing silver, and they 

 want to hold to it. If you will read Mr. Roths- 

 child's statement before the Berlin conference, at 

 which the distinguished Senator from Iowa was 

 present, you will see he says : The low prices of 

 wheat and other products is not a curse ; it is not 

 injurious to us.' Certainly not." 



Mr. Hoar: "I understand the Senator to claim 

 that the quantity of silver used in different coun- 

 tries as money would not be changed, that none of 

 the silver of other countries would come here any 

 more than there is now, by opening our mints to 

 the free coinage of silver ; that they would keep 

 their silver as they have it now, and we would keep 

 ours as we have it now : that there would be no 

 change. I do not see, if that doctrine be true, what 

 difference the limiting of the coinage of silver by 

 the great European nations has made to anybody. 

 That is my trouble." 



Mr. Cockrell : " The limiting of it is in the fact 

 that they have got it a* a minor coin, a legal tender 

 for not exceeding $10, and the Rothschilds are 

 never bothered with silver. They do not have ten- 



