248 



CONGRESS. (COINS AND COINAGE.) 



16 being Democrats and 11 Republicans) sup- 

 ported the veto in one solid and unbroken 

 column, either by voting or pairing. 



" We must be prepared to expect that the 

 ramified pecuniary interests engaged in this 

 scheme, stimulated as they are to the intensest 

 efforts by the vastness of the profits which 

 success in it will bring to them, controlling 

 the policy of governments in some important 

 countries and having numerous allies and ad- 

 herents in every country in Europe and in this 

 country, will maintain the struggle to the last. 

 It is in the great power of the gold propagand- 

 ists and in their persistency, arising from the 

 vast interests at stake, that the difficulties of 

 the question of the monetary standard lie. 



"No careful student of the subject can fail 

 to arrive at the conclusion that the abandon- 

 ment of the use of silver as a money metal 

 must lead to one of the following results : Ei- 

 ther the world must suffer an enormous con- 

 traction of the volume of money and a corre- 

 sponding fall in prices, or it must resort to the 

 use of irredeemable paper money." 



Mr. Sherman, of Ohio, said, in opposition to 

 the resolution : " I suppose every Senator 

 agrees with the proposition that bimetallism is 

 the best public policy if it is attainable. It has 

 been decided over and over again by the most 

 intelligent nations of the world that silver and 

 gold, traveling side by side, should be the 

 standards of all values. They have changed 

 in their relative market value, but the change 

 has been met by the changing legislation of 

 the times. Alexander Hamilton probably more 

 tersely stated the necessity of bimetallic money 

 than any writer who has followed him, by de- 

 picting the great evil it would be to confine 

 the circulation of the world, the money stand- 

 ard of the world, to a single metal, the changes 

 of which might cause a great fluctuation of 

 values. The bimetallic standard of money is 

 accepted by the great body of intelligent men 

 in the United States as the wisest public poli- 

 cy; but this concession is always accompanied 

 with the declaration that these two standards 

 of coin should be made equal to each other 

 according to their general market value, so 

 that the market value of the metal in one 

 tested by the legal ratio should be as near as 

 practicable to the market value of the metal in 

 the other. 



" It is impossible to make them exactly of 

 the same value, because for two thousand years 

 the relative value of these metals has been 

 changing, but the changes were slow, and for 

 years imperceptible. In the last four hundred 

 years a greater change has occurred. Four 

 hundred years ago, prior to the discovery of 

 America, eight ounces of silver were worth 

 one ounce of gold. Now it requires eighteen 

 ounces of silver to be worth one ounce of 

 gold, and in the mutation of time the relative 

 value of the two metals has been met by the 

 laws of the intelligent nations from time to 

 time. The general drift has been the fall of 



silver, or, what is the same in effect, the rise 

 of gold, but this variance has not always con- 

 tinued, for the discovery of gold in California 

 caused gold to decline in relative value, and 

 this continued until the Comstock mine caused 

 a decline in silver. Even with these fluctua- 

 tions, these two metals have maintained their 

 relative value more nearly than any other two 

 great natural productions. 



" The act I have referred to was passed when 

 from various causes the decline of silver be- 

 came marked ; and this act was designed to 

 check the decline, and to restore silver to its 

 legal relation to gold ; and now, Mr. Presi- 

 dent, I say the experiment has been tried. It 

 was entered into for the highest possible ob- 

 ject. It has been properly tested. Seven 

 years, nearly, have passed away since the act 

 of Feb. 28, 1878, was passed. The law has 

 been in full force during all that time. The 

 total coinage since that time, by the last re- 

 port of the Secretary of the Treasury, was 

 $185,000,000, now about $187,000,000. The 

 total amount of these silver dollars now in cir- 

 culation among the people is $41, 000,000,' or 

 less than one fourth the amount coined. The 

 balance belongs to the Government of the Unit- 

 ed States, and is in the Treasury. 



" What has been shown by this experiment? 

 Let us see. In the first place, it has been 

 shown that the law of Congress has not re- 

 stored silver to its old relation to gold. When 

 that law took effect the silver in the silver dol- 

 lar was worth only ninety-one cents in gold. 

 The hope of those who tried the experiment 

 was that if we should give a substantial occu- 

 pation to all the silver mined in our own coun- 

 try, or the great body of it, we should restore 

 the relation so that the silver in the dollar of 

 41 2| grains of standard silver would be equal 

 to 25-8 grains of standard gold. That expec- 

 tation has been disappointed. On the con- 

 trary, under this law, from which so much was 

 expected, silver has steadily gone down. 



" Although we have absorbed $2,000,000 a 

 month to purchase silver bullion for coinage, 

 and have coined 28,000,000 . silver dollars a 

 year, and in this way have withdrawn from 

 the market the great body of the domestic pro- 

 duction of this country, silver has steadily 

 gone down in relative market value. I have 

 looked at the prices paid ; I have them before 

 me. According to the reports of the Director 

 of the Mint from the year 1878, the first year 

 during which this law was in operation, it ap- 

 pears that in 1878 one ounce of fine silver was 

 worth $1.18, or the silver in a silver dollar was 

 worth 91 cents. In 1884, after seven years of 

 experience, an ounce of fine silver. is worth in 

 the market $1.11, which means that the silver 

 in the silver dollar is worth between 85 and 

 86 cents; so that now, instead of 41 2| grains 

 of silver being equal to a dollar in gold, it re- 

 quires, as near as may be, one ounce, or 480 

 grains of standard silver, to be equal in market 

 value to a gold dollar. 



