230 



CONGRESS. (FREE COINAGE.) 



"That that act was inspired by the selfish 

 greed of bondholders, monoraetallists, and money- 

 holders I think there can be no doubt. That it 

 was the deliberate purpose on their part (whether 

 understood by members of the two Houses or 

 not, I know not) to sacrifice the interest of the 

 great body of the people in order, by an unjust 

 and iniquitous law, to promote their own fort- 

 unes there can be no doubt. No such legislative 

 crime, in my opinion, has ever been committed 

 in this country ; and I do not know in the his- 

 tory of any legislation a crime of equal magni- 

 tude to it. 



" The passage of such an act under circum- 

 stances that show that neither the House of Rep- 

 resentatives nor the Senate understood it, passed 

 substantially without discussion for the special 

 question of demonetizing silver was not dis- 

 cussed in either House is a thing that ought to 

 attract the profound attention of the American 

 people, and it did not fail to attract their pro- 

 found attention when they came to know what 

 had been done in this respect. And from the 

 time the people came to know what had been 

 done in the demonetization of silver they com- 

 menced the struggle to restore its coinage; at 

 least they commenced that struggle as soon 

 as the Democracy of the country got the con- 

 trol of the House of Representatives, and that 

 struggle was kept up until, in 1878, the House 

 of Representatives passed a bill providing for 

 the free and unlimited coinage of silver. That 

 bill came to the Senate, and was so amended as 

 to strike out the provisions for free coinage and 

 to substitute one authorizing the Government to 

 purchase not more than four million nor less 

 than two million dollars' worth of silver per 

 month, and to coin that. 



" That act, instead of making silver a unit of 

 value and money, as it had stood from the time 

 of the passage of the act of 1792 to the passage 

 of the act of 1873, made silver a commodity 

 which, like wheat or cotton, or other products of 

 the soil, was to be valued by its gold value, and 

 not allowed to possess the money value which it 

 had possessed before that value was taken from 

 it by the act of 1873. 



" But the people were not content with this 

 disposition of the question, and the struggle was 

 kept up from year to year until last year, when 

 we passed another bill which made some conces- 

 sion to the demands of the people of this country, 

 but still preserved silver as a commodity to be 

 valued by gold and did not make it money. That 

 that was done in the interest of the bondholders 

 and moneyed class, and against the interest of 

 the great body of the people, I think there can 

 be no doubt. 



" Now, again, Mr. President, the question comes 

 back to us as I stated in the Senate a year ago 

 in debate upon this question that it would come 

 back and continue to come back until justice 

 should be done and until silver can be restored 

 to the place it occupie 1 under the Constitution 

 and in the traditions of i^his country side by side 

 with gold." 



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

 free coinage : 



" With a silver supremacy gold would no 

 longer be in sight as money, but would be held 

 as a commodity to be sold to the highest bidder, 



and the stock of gold, being on Nov. 1. 1890, as 

 stated by the Director of the Mint, $624,010.285, 

 is so large, being nearly twice as large as that of 

 silver, that 'its sudden withdrawal from use as 

 money would create a contraction possibly of 

 greater stringency than has ever been known by 

 our people. The one hundred and seventy-five 

 millions of gold certificates outstanding, cover- 

 ing gold in the Treasury, may at any moment 

 drop out of circulation, if not already hoarded. 

 Of course the clouds now hovering over us, even 

 with a silver lining, do not fail to be widely re- 

 garded as portentous. 



"The production of gold in the world in 1889 

 was $118,832,000, being more than in any year 

 save one since 1873 ; apd the amount of gold re- 

 ceived at our mints and assay offices every year 

 from 1880 to 1889, inclusive, has far exceeded 

 that of silver, being $612,526,877 of gold and only 

 $379,046,208 of silver. Notwithstanding large 

 exports of gold last year our present stock is 

 supposed to equal that of all Europe. Yet one 

 would infer from the tenor of the debate that 

 gold was about as near extinction on the Amer- 

 ican Continent as the buffalo, and say ' nobody 

 ever sees it.' The vitriolic denunciations of gold 

 which periodically leap out here clearly indicate 

 that nothing less than the absolute domination 

 of silver and the expulsion of gold from our 

 country is the real and supreme object aimed at. 

 It is my deliberate opinion, however, shared by 

 business men generally, that whenever a prac- 

 tical divorce between gold and silver shall occur 

 in the United States, silver will have lost its 

 most powerful friend, and will suffer greater de- 

 gradation in its commercial and money value 

 than it has recently experienced. 



"One subterranean purpose can not be con- 

 cealed, though softly denied, and that is to scale 

 all debts, public and private, or to supply medium 

 for their liquidation at a cost largely reduced 

 from that required and existing at the time of 

 the original contracts. 



" At the last session of Congress it was often 

 urged that if the Secretary of the Treasury had 

 only purchased to the full limit of law the 

 $4,000,000 worth of silver instead of two millions 

 per month everything would have been lovely, 

 money plentiful, silver at par, and the silver 

 goose cooked, and that no further demand in be- 

 half of silver or anything else would have been 

 made. The new law, therefore, was passed for 

 the purchase of 4,500,000 ounces of pure silver 

 per month, equal in coinage value to more than 

 $5,000,000 per month, or over sixty millions an- 

 nually, and yet the cry here is now more vocifer- 

 ous than ever for more, for a larger dose. Not 

 even the permanent and high-salaried national 

 Executive Silver Committee, long planted as the 

 advisers of Congress on Pennsylvania Avenue, 

 will jog one and nudge another and claim that 

 the Secretary of the Treasury has been a laggard, 

 or that he has not purchased all the silver possible 

 under the latest law, and yet the contest of the 

 silver men for more is like" that of Macbeth : 



"Damned be him that first cries, 'Hold, enough !' 



" It may be well to probe the silver problem 

 to the bottom to discover, if possible, its mer- 

 its. It is now manifest that the Government's 

 purchase and locking up of one half of the an- 





