CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



147 



pledged it was an honest dollar, even in the 

 sense in which our friends attempt to put the 

 case. 



" You say we have not coined a silver dollar 

 for forty years. Why? It was your undis- 

 puted unit of value ; why not coin and pay it 

 out ? The answer is, it cost too much ; gold 

 was cheaper. Yet the Government that did 

 this with its undoubted standard would, if your 

 position be correct, be immoral and a repudia- 

 tor to do in the other metal precisely what it 

 has been doing for forty years in gold. Would 

 we have heard any such argument if the gen- 

 tlemen who own the debt did not see an ap- 

 preciation of their bonds in the use of gold 

 alone? But there is another answer to the 

 argument of non-coinage. In it we find a pos- 

 sible denial of the theory that gold will fly from 

 us if we coin silver. It is the fact that while 

 all the rest of the world estimated silver as 15 

 to 1 of gold our laws estimated it as 16 to 1. 

 The difference is nearly 4 per cent., and neces- 

 sarily when our silver was minted at that rate, 

 more than it was anywhere else, the cupidity 

 of the bullion-dealer sent it to the melting-pot 

 to make for himself the profit of the differ- 

 ence. If it had stood toward gold as silver did 

 elsewhere, the equilibrium of the two metals 

 would not have been disturbed. The answer 

 to the cry that the cheaper metal flies, and the 

 normal relation of the two metals, is found in a 

 universal relative legal value. This is both pos- 

 sible and practicable. 



" We now come to the act of 1873. It 

 changed the base of our system from silver to 

 gold. Up to that time we had the optional 

 standard; debtors could pay debts in silver 

 dollars or in gold dollars. Contracts made on 

 the faith of that law were changed; and the 

 creditor got the option to demand pay in gold. 

 All contracts in existence at the day of the 

 change were permeated by it. The option of 

 the debtor to choose the metal in which he 

 would pay and the power of the Treasury to 

 coin silver dollars were stricken out of exist- 

 ence. Before it, a debt payable in dollars could 

 be paid by silver dollars ; after it, nothing but 

 gold would pay. Legal-tender notes were put 

 upon a relation to gold alone, and not to silver ; 

 and by this act, copying the policy of Germany 

 and obeying the wishes of Great Britain, both 

 of which were creditor nations, while we are 

 debtors, resumption has been delayed and much 

 of the misery of the past four years been di- 

 rectly caused. But for the suspension of the 

 coinage of the silver dollars caused by it, the 

 mints could have given us at least $100,000,000 

 in that period. Can it be said that this would 

 not have aided us on our road to resumption ? 

 Is it common sense for a people seeking to re- 

 sume specie payment to deliberately cut off one 

 of the metals as an aid thereto ? We were in 

 a state of suspension, with a currency that had 

 no metallic basis. We had the bullion ; it was 

 our own product. The people would have wel- 

 comed the silver coin, yet we deliberately closed 



our mints and cut off the supply of the very 

 thing our necessities called for. Who dictated 

 this policy ? Let us look fairly into this legis- 

 lation, see its purpose, its ultimate scope, and 

 the end to be reached by those who originated 

 it, and who now with pen and speech bitterly 

 antagonize its repeal. 



" The proposition goes to the full extent of 

 striking out of existence as full legal-tender 

 money all of the silver of the world. It is the 

 fruit of the Paris conference of 1867, by which, 

 with deliberate emphasis, the elevation of gold 

 as the sole standard and the relegation of sil- 

 ver to a subordinate position were determined 

 upon. Germany, influenced by an imperial po- 

 litical policy and from her attitude as a cred- 

 itor, has been the leader in the practical move- 

 ment. She changed from silver to gold, and 

 threw upon the world's markets all of her sur- 

 plus silver. France, her neighbor, was com- 

 pelled to cease silver coinage or be the recep- 

 tacle of all of that surplus. Other European 

 nations upon a metallic basis were influenced 

 in like manner, and our act of 1873, with no 

 such reason, swells the list that debases the 

 white metal. Germany not only refuses silver, 

 but she demands gold, and the same policy is 

 urged upon us. Where is the gold to come 

 from? What we have done the commercial 

 nations of the earth are advised to do. This 

 is the ground it is put upon here now. What 

 is to be the effect of this ? 



" Mr. Goschen's English Parliamentary com- 

 mittee of 1876 gives its effect in these words : 



It is obvious that if effect should be given to the 

 policy of substituting gold for silver wherever it is 

 feasible, and giving gold, for the sake of its advan- 

 tages in international commerce, the preference, even 

 among populations whose habits and customs are in 

 favor of silver, and thus displacing silver from the 

 position (which it has always occupied) of doing the 

 work of the currency over at least as large an area as 

 gold, no possible limits could be assigned to the 

 further fall in its value which would inevitably take 

 place. 



"This is the report of a committee vested 

 with specific power to inquire as to the further 

 fall of silver. This committee was writing in 

 July, 1876, when silver had already fallen to 

 52f . It had not been this low for a century. 



" The total stock of gold money in the world 

 is about $4,000,000,000. Russia, Austria, Italy, 

 and the United States are using paper. They 

 require gold for resumption. By the doctrine 

 of our opponents it is to be gold alone. They 

 need eight hundred millions. How does this 

 need affect the gold where it is now ? It must 

 be redistributed. The demand for it for these 

 nations necessarily increases its value wherever 

 it may be. The quantity held by any nation 

 must be decreased, and in decreasing the cir- 

 culating medium you reduce prices, destroy 

 commerce, and retard the progress of civiliza- 

 tion. Nor do you advance it in the nation to 

 which you remit the gold, for you intensify the 

 commercial distress consequent upon the pas- 

 sage from paper to metal, you increase the dif- 



