180 



CONGKESS, UNITED STATES. 



that the resumption act is no more responsible 

 for the present sufferings of New York and 

 Kansas than it is for the frozen feet of the Turks 

 in the Shipka Pass ; not a bit more ! It is high 

 time for members of Congress and all men of 

 sense to drop and renounce forever all such non- 

 sense. We have records, which no man's in- 

 genuity or audacity can change, which enforce 

 and establish our position. 



" As late as the 20th of October last, or 

 about three weeks ago, there were more green- 

 backs in use than at any time from 1868 to 

 1873 ; more than when we were building ten 

 thousand miles of railroad per annum and 

 otherwise living and scheming as if all the re- 

 served resources of this continent could be de- 

 veloped for the aggrandizement of our genera- 

 tion. We have to-day in use only about a 

 million and a half less than we had when we 

 constructed those sham fortunes which crazed 

 the whole nation prior to the great explosion in 

 1873. No man outside of jail will deny these 

 statements of fact. 



" Now place alongside the foregoing facts the 

 following: For about eight years prior to 1873, 

 the brain power, labor power, and money power 

 of the country, joined by the land-giving power 

 of Congress, w ere to an uncommon extent de- 

 voted to railroad industries. It amounted to a 

 railroad mania. These industries suddenly col- 

 lapsed. The capital invested was lost. A very 

 large proportion of the labor of the country was 

 displaced. It was violently switched off its track 

 and plunged into a deep pit of enforced idle- 

 ness and waiting. There it has remained ; there 

 it is now. Of course the power of the people 

 to consume and pay for the products of labor 

 is immensely crippled. Enterprise is dead. In- 

 comes have disappeared. Wages are reduced. 

 The volume of business is diminished. Prices 

 have fallen. We have sharp contraction on all 

 sides, and in all things, by the force of laws as 

 immutable as the law of gravitation, the green- 

 back currency only excepted ! It has required 

 just four years to get rid of the new emission 

 of twenty-six millions issued after the crash of 

 1873 by a freak of legislation which history has 

 already located in a lunatic asylum. 



" Take three men, where you find them, who 

 have for a long time enjoyed and shared a daily 

 ration of a dozen bottles of good brandy. Take 

 away one man and continue the same ration, 

 tnd what will become of the other two men 

 if compelled to drink half a dozen bottles apiece 

 daily ? The answer to that question will throw 

 vivid light upon the existing currency illusion, 

 and the argument is not impaired by the fact 

 that the two victims clamor wildly for anoth- 

 er ration ! 



" Nobody ever can compute the cost of the 

 fatal issue of twenty-six millions of greenbacks 

 in 1873 to which I have just referred. The 

 most serious and distressing disappointments 

 and disasters of the last three years are directly 

 traceable to that act of lunacy, and the end is 

 not yet! 



"But, says the gentleman from the West, 

 the banks have contracted their currency ! 

 Why not ? Government has no more right to 

 say how many notes the bank shall circulate 

 than it has to enact how many acres a farmer 

 shall cultivate. The banks are equally free to 

 expand and are now expanding their currency. 

 The national-bank act admits of such expansion 

 to the full amount of the bonded debt: say 

 $2,000,000,000. Expansion is profit, contrac- 

 tion is loss. Is it not tolerably certain that 

 under such a system there will be all the cur- 

 rency out that can be used honestly and prop- 

 erly? 



"But the gentleman shouts again he can 

 get no money in the West ! They are mista- 

 ken. I know Low it is myself, for I have been 

 there. You have money instantly at command 

 for everything you raise which the world 

 wants. You and I both want money to resur- 

 rect our old and wild investments, which we do 

 not deserve to get and never can borrow on 

 lands and improvements which have cost us 

 four or five times their value. Let me explain 

 what I mean, so that I may be clearly under- 

 stood by every man from the North or South, 

 East or West, who will take the trouble to 

 give me a moment's attention. All Congress- 

 men of our time have heard of Duluth. I 

 know a man who belongs to the class frequently 

 denounced in these halls with fluent and igno- 

 rant rhetoric as ' bondholders,' who was fool- 

 ish enough, soon after the eloquent gentleman 

 from Kentucky made himself and Duluth fa- 

 mous for evermore, to send out there and buy 

 a corner lot, on a portion of which he built a 

 house for home and business purposes. The 

 total expenditure in cash eight years ago was 

 $10,000, leaving a slice of land unimproved. 

 The property has cost its owner, including in- 

 terest and taxes and deducting income to the 

 present time, more than $15.000. He is willing 

 to sell it all for $2,500. The dreadful banks 

 will not loan a cent on it. Why should they ? 

 And yet there is plenty of money in Duluth to- 

 day to buy every horse, bushel of wheat, and 

 prairie chicken brought to market. This case, 

 Mr. Speaker, truthfully suggests the real trouble 

 we have to deal with. There are thousands 

 just like it in the city and State of New York. 

 No shouting of demagogues, no paper-money 

 device is equal to the exigency upon us. It 

 is cruel mockery and damnable wickedness 

 to hide the truth any longer from the people. 

 It is a crime against the omnipotent forces 

 of nature, which with boundless generosity in- 

 vite the nation to patient industry, upright- 

 ness, and frugal living, for us to try to con- 

 ceal our scars or cure our disease as with a 

 garment of irredeemable paper money, or with 

 silver dollars worth only ninety-two cents 

 apiece ! That was the price on Monday week ; 

 they are two cents cheaper to-day. In the case 

 I have cited, the sufferer bought no more than 

 he could pay for. He simply threw to the winds 

 his own in a ridiculous wild venture. If he had 



