204 



CONGRESS. (FREE COINAGE.) 



bankruptcy ; that prices are shrinking every- 

 where and enterprises are being crushed and de- 

 stroyed. Bonds that are out are now down. 

 We thought the bonds would be paid, but now 

 States and nations are afraid of bankruptcy. 

 They see that it is impossible for them to de- 

 liver. 



" Suppose the United States with all its pow- 

 er should undertake to deliver a thousand buffa- 

 loes ; could it do it f You talk about its credit ; 

 but could it do it? No. because they do not ex- 

 ist. And if the United States should undertake 

 to deliver more gold than it can get or than ex- 

 ists, more than it can obtain, then its credit is 

 good for nothing, an utter impossibility is un- 

 dertaken. It is impossible to find gold enough 

 to sustain all the financial institutions that now 

 exist, to maintain the vast fabric of credit that 

 has been built up on this narrow foundation. 

 There is not enough gold. The supply must be 

 increased or bankruptcy must follow." 



Discussion of the topic was renewed on May 26. 

 Mr. Morgan, of Alabama, maintained that it was 

 the subject nearest to the popular heart. 



' This is not a temporary or an ephemeral 

 agitation or inquiry. It has been going on since 

 1873 or about 1875, when the people and the 

 President of the United States and the members 

 of the two Houses of Congress first discovered 

 the fatal blow which had been struck in secret 

 against the free coinage of the silver dollar, the 

 blow of absolute destruction to the life of silver 

 coinage, and every year that resolution has 

 gained strength. There is no question to-day 

 before the people of the United States whicn 

 comes as near to their hearts and as near to 

 their pockets as the question of the free coinage 

 of silver. 



" We are informed by strategists in politics 

 that the reformation of the tariff is the great 

 question which is agitating the country. The 

 House of Representatives, with a strong Demo- 

 cratic majority committed to the reformation of 

 the tariff, have sent to us already bill after bill for 

 that purpose, and these bills have gone into the 

 quiet retreat of the Committee on Finance, and 

 the country has not bothered itself to know 

 what they are doing with the bills, whether they 

 are investigating their merits, whether they are 

 being discussed in committee, or whether any 

 report is to be made after all. The country is 

 not agitated about that. I think the country 

 ought to be; I think the country ought to hold 

 the Finance Committee of the Senate up to the 

 most rigid accountability if they fail to act upon 

 these bills and present them here for considera- 

 tion ; and yet I know every Senator here knows, 

 and all discern that the people of the United 

 States are not greatly agitated about that matter. 



" I am speaking of those questions which 

 come nearest to the hearts of the people of this 

 land. I am speaking, when I refer to the 

 finances, of those questions which they feel to 

 be most directly impressive upon their personal 

 interests and welfare. I am now gauging public 

 sentiment in the remarks I am making, and I 

 am trying to ascertain and to convince the Sen- 

 ate of what it knows, just as well as I do, that the 

 great question in the minds of the people of this 

 country at this time is the question of finance, 

 money, some relief from their miserable condi- 



tion, some means of providing that the agricul- 

 tural and other industries of this country shall 

 have a reasonable enjoyment of the fruits of 

 their labors labors which have produced in 

 every department of industry excessive abun- 

 dance during the last twelve or fourteen months. 



" With a very large crop of cotton on hand, 

 being a second" large crop ; with a very large 

 crop of wheat on hand, quite an exaggerated 

 crop I might call it; a still larger crop of corn, 

 and, as a consequence, a large production of 

 provisions, far in excess of the demands of the 

 people of the United States, the condition of our 

 people in the agricultural regions and in the 

 mining and other industrial regions, the forests, 

 and elsewhere, is absolutely deplorable. No 

 people in the United States to-day have the 

 slightest prosperity except those who have the 

 grasp upon the money power of this country and 

 can contract it or expand it to suit their ends. 

 They are the only men in this country who are 

 prosperous and who are satisfied with existing 

 conditions." 



On May 80 and May 31 Mr. Sherman, of 

 Ohio, spoke against the policy of free coinage of 

 silver. Touching the general issue, he said : 



" I do not regard the bill for the free coinage 

 of silver as a party measure or a political meas- 

 ure upon which parties are likely to divide. It 

 is in many respects a local measure, not exactly 

 in the sense in which Gen. Hancock said in re- 

 gard to the tariff that that was a local question, 

 but it is largely a local question; yet at the 

 same time it is a question of vast importance. 

 No question before the Senate of the United 

 States at this session is at all to be com- 

 pared with it in the importance of its effects 

 upon the business interests of the country. It 

 affects every man. woman, and child in our 

 broad land, the rich with his investments, the 

 poor with his labor. Everybody is deeply inter- 

 ested in the standard of value by which we 

 measure all the productions of the labor and all 

 the wealth of mankind. 



" Five States largely interested in the produc- 

 tion of silver are very ably and zealously repre- 

 sented on this floor. They are united by their 

 delegations, ten Senators, in favor of the free 

 coinage of silver. The South seems also to have 

 caught something of the spirit which actuates 

 the mining States, because they desire not ex- 

 actly the free coinage of silver, but they desire 

 an expansion of the currency, cheaper money, 

 and broader credit, and they are also largely 

 represented on this floor in support of the propo- 

 sition in favor of the free coinage of silver. So 

 in other parts of the country, those who have 

 been taught to believe that great good can come 

 to our country by an unlimited expansion of 

 paper credit, with money more abundant than 

 it is now, also believe in the free coinage of 

 silver. 



" I, representing a State nearly central in 

 population, have tested the sense of the people 

 of Ohio, and they, I believe, are by a great ma- 

 jority not only of the party to which I belong 

 but of the Democratic party, opposed to the 

 free coinage of silver. They believe that that 

 will degrade the money of our country, reduce 

 its purchasing power fully one third, destroy 

 the bimetallic system which we have maintained 



