156 



CONGKESS, UNITED STATES. 



would at once resume its former relation with 

 gold. The European countries when driven 

 to full remonetization, as I believe they will 

 be, must of necessity adopt their old rat.io of 

 fifteen and a half of silver to one of gold, and 

 we shall then be compelled to adopt the same 

 ratio instead of our former sixteen to one. 



"3. The question before Congress then 

 sharply defined in the pending House bill is, 

 whether it is now safe and expedient to offer 

 free coinage to the silver dollar of 41 2|- grains, 

 with the mints of the Latin Union closed and 

 Germany not permitting silver to be coined as 

 money. At current rates of silver, the free 

 coinage of a dollar containing 412 grains, 

 worth in gold about ninety-two cents, gives an 

 illegitimate profit to the owner of the bullion, 

 enabling him to take ninety-two cents' worth 

 of it to the mint and get it stamped as coin 

 and force his neighbor to take it for a full dol- 

 lar. This is an undue and unfair advantage 

 which the Government has no right to give to 

 the owner of silver bullion, and which defrauds 

 the man who is forced ito take the dollar. And 

 it assuredly follows that if we give free coin- 

 age to this dollar of inferior value and put it 

 in circulation, we do so at the expense of our 

 better coinage in gold; and unless we expect 

 the uniform and invariable experience of other 

 nations to be in some mysterious way suspend- 

 ed for our peculiar benefit, we inevitably lose 

 our gold coin. It will flow out from us with 

 the certainty and resistless force of the tides. 

 Gold has indeed remained with us in consider- 

 able amount during the circulation of the in- 

 ferior currency of the legal tender ; but that 

 was because there were two great uses re- 

 served by law for gold : the collection of cus- 

 toms and the payment of interest on the pub- 

 lic debt. But if the inferior silver coin is also 

 to be used for these two reserved purposes, 

 then gold has no tie to bind it to us. 



"4. Consider further what injustice would 

 be done to every holder of a legal-tender 

 or national-bank note. That vast volume 

 of paper money over $700,000,000 is now 

 worth between ninety-eight and ninety-nine 

 cents on the dollar in gold coin. The holders 

 of it, who are indeed our entire population 

 from the poorest to the wealthiest, have been 

 promised from the hour of its issue that the 

 paper money would one day be as good as 

 gold. To pay silver for the greenback is a 

 full compliance with this promise and this ob- 

 ligation, provided the silver is made, as it al- 

 ways has been hitherto, as good as gold. To 

 make our silver coin even three per cent, less 

 valuable than gold inflicts at once a loss of 

 more than twenty millions of dollars on the 

 holders of our paper money. To make a silver 

 dollar worth but ninety-two cents precipitates 

 on the same class a loss of wellnigh sixty mil- 

 lions of dollars. For whatever the value of 

 the silver dollar is, the whole paper issue of 

 the country will sink to its standard when its 

 coinage is authorized and its circulation be- 



comes general in the channels of trade. Some 

 one, in conversation with Commodore Van- 

 derbilt during one of the many freight com- 

 petitions of the trunk lines, said, ' Why, the 

 Canadian road has not sufficient carrying ca- 

 pacity to compete with your great line.' ' That 

 is true,' replied the Commodore, 'but they 

 can fix the rate and force us down to it.' Were 

 Congress to pass a law to-day declaring that 

 every legal-tender note and every national- 

 bank note shall hereafter pass for only ninety- 

 six or ninety-seven cents on the dollar, there 

 is not a constituency in the United States that 

 would reelect a man that should support it, 

 and in many districts the representatives would 

 be lucky if he escaped with merely a minority 

 vote. 



" And yet it is almost mathematically de- 

 monstrable that the same effect will inevitably 

 follow from the coinage of an inferior silver 

 dollar. Assurances from empirics and scien- 

 tists in finance, that remonetization of the 

 former dollar will at once and permanently ad- 

 vance its value to par with gold, must go for 

 what they are worth in the face of opposing 

 and controlling facts. The first and instant 

 effect of issuing any silver dollar that will pay 

 customs dues and interest on the public debt 

 will undoubtedly be to raise it to a practical 

 equality with gold ; but that condition will only 

 last until the amount needful for customs shall 

 till the channels of its use ; and the overflow go- 

 ing into general circulation will rapidly settle to 

 its normal and actual value, and then the dis- 

 count will come on the volume of the paper cur- 

 rency, which will sink pari passu with the silver 

 dollar in which it is made redeemable. That re- 

 monetization will have a considerable effect 

 in advancing the value of the dollar is beyond 

 doubt, but not enough to overcome the differ- 

 ence now existing a difference resulting from 

 causes quite independent of our control on this 

 continent. 



"5. The responsibility of reestablishing sil- 

 ver in its ancient and honorable place as mon- 

 ey in Europe and America, devolves really 

 on the Congress of the United States. If we 

 act here with prudence, wisdom, and firmness, 

 we shall not only successfully remonetize sil- 

 ver and bring it into general use as money in our 

 own country, but the influence of our example 

 will be potential among all European nations, 

 with the possible exception of England. 



"6. On the much- vexed and long-mooted 

 question of a bimetallic or monometallic stand- 

 ard, my own views are sufficiently indicated 

 in the remarks .1 have made. I believe the 

 struggle now going on in this country and in 

 other countries for a single gold standard 

 would, if successful, produce wide-spread dis- 

 asters in the end throughout the commercial 

 world. The destruction of silver as money and 

 establishing gold as the sole unit of value 

 must have a ruinous effect on all forms of 

 property except those investments which yield 

 a fixed return in money. These would be 



