188 



CONGKESS, UNITED STATES. 



finances of the world j that the price of gold 

 would rise, and thus the effort at redemption 

 defeat itself; and that to prevent its flow to 

 us, various devices and hostile legislation would 

 be resorted to by other nations. All this is 

 probably true, if the proposal was to secure 

 this accumulation in a short period of time. 

 And to meet that difficulty the proposed plan 

 avoids fixing any period within which the ac- 

 cumulation shall be made, or the gold pur- 

 chased, and it fixes no specific time when the 

 redemption shall commence. The proposed 

 act leaves that necessarily to the discretion 

 of the Secretary, who would act in view of the 

 price of gold from time to time, and would 

 avail himself of those products of our own 

 mines, which have never yet constituted a por- 

 tion of the circulating medium of the world a 

 product which, I understand, is estimated to 

 amount this year to $60,000,000. 



" We at one time had in our Treasury $100,- 

 000,000 ; and if we had that amount now, with 

 the power in the Secretary to reissue the re- 

 deemed notes at par for gold, and in default of 

 gold to redeem with six per cent, bonds, we 

 could, without risk of suspension, commence 

 to redeem in coin to-day. 



" 2. The next objection is, that the plan pro- 

 posed would create a too sudden transition in 

 the modes of business, and would produce a 

 shock injurious to the country. I agree that 

 resumption should not be sudden ; and such is 

 not the purpose of the bill. Due notice would 

 be given by the passage of the act that the 

 Government was moving slowly, though irre- 

 sistibly and inevitably, to the fulfillment of its 

 provisions and to resumption. The act would 

 fix no time when the resumption would com- 

 mence ; that would depend on what success 

 the Secretary had in obtaining the coin on 

 sufficiently favorable terms, and when, in view 

 of the situation of the money market, it was 

 wise to commence the payment of coin ; of all 

 which the public, week by week, would have 

 full notice. 



" Thus the objection as to impossibility of at 

 once obtaining the gold, and the objection that 

 the plan would be a shock to business, are met 

 by having no arbitrary and definite time fixed 

 for resumption, but having taken the firm re- 

 solve to redeem, having conferred on the Secre- 

 tary the power to obtain the means wherewith 

 to redeem, it is left to the Secretary, fully in- 

 formed as to all the circumstances in his discre- 

 tion, exercised in full view of the nation, to fix 

 the day to commence resumption. 



"3. Another objection to the plan is, that 

 combinations would be made to drain the 

 Treasury of the gold, and resumption would be 

 a failure that it would be followed by suspen- 

 sion. 



" The one important point in any attempt at 

 resumption, a consideration in importance over- 

 shadowing all others, is, that when we com- 

 mence to redeem, the impossibility of defeat or 

 failure must be apparent. 



" It must come so slowly as to produce no jar, 

 and so inevitably as to disarm opposition. The 

 Secretary of the Treasury should have the 

 power to issue $225,000,000 of these six per 

 cent, bonds. He should have the right to re- 

 issue the redeemed United States notes in ex- 

 change for coin at par ; to avoid possible failure 

 he should have the right to redeem the United 

 States notes in sums of $1,000 with such of the 

 bonds as remained unissued. With such pow- 

 ers and resources, it would be apparent that 

 resumption could not be defeated, when the 

 Secretary, selecting the opportune time, should 

 say the resumption would begin. That time he 

 would select in view of the accumulation of 

 gold he had made, in view of the condition of 

 the money market, and in view of the permanent 

 approximation in value the United States notes 

 had made to gold. The passage of the proposed 

 act, rendering it certain that at some time the 

 United States notes were to be redeemable, 

 would do much to raise their value in the mar- 

 ket, and a much less gold reserve in the Treas- 

 ury would be required for redemption than I 

 would be willing now to state. Perhaps few 

 would agree with me as to the amount." 



Mr. Schurz, of Missouri, said : "I shall now 

 approach the question of financial policy. Is 

 there any one among us who, under ordinary 

 circumstances, when we had a metallic currency 

 in the country, would have thought of substi- 

 tuting for that metallic currency an irredeem- 

 able Government paper-money ? If there is 

 any one I have not heard of him. We all know 

 that there was a time when the great leaders 

 of public opinion in the United States a large 

 majority of them at least considered it un- 

 constitutional to make any thing a legal tender 

 save the precious metals. I might quote for 

 hours from the sayings of the great men of the 

 past, whose names are mentioned only with re- 

 spect. I state this not for the purpose of re- 

 viving a discussion on the constitutional point, 

 which would now be too late, as it has been 

 otherwise decided, but to give a specimen of 

 the old-fashioned way of thinking which quite 

 generally prevailed before the war, and which 

 was disturbed only by its extreme necessities. 

 Leaving the constitutional question entirely 

 aside, certainly no consideration of financial 

 policy was then advanced to urge the substi- 

 tution of irredeemable legal-tender paper cur- 

 rency for gold dollars. Nobody thought of 

 such a thing. 



" The reasons why the precious metals were 

 considered the most reliable measure of value 

 and the best available tool of exchange were so 

 generally accepted then, and are in fact so lit- 

 tle called in question now, in this debate at 

 least, that I do not feel called upon to go into 

 an elaborate defense of a position which is vir- 

 tually not attacked. Even the opponents of 

 the resolution under debate on this floor seem 

 to recognize them as valid, for they admit that 

 only actual distress has forced us to give up 

 the specie basis, and that at some tune we 



