CONGRESS. (SPECIAL SESSION TUK SHERMAN ACT.) 



227 



vail, then, in my opinion, until the day of a bet- 

 ter judgment shall come, we might as well re- 

 treat from the lofty position we nave occupied 

 in i In- confidence of mankind, and, descending, 

 lock Immis wiih every bankrupt government of 

 the earth that believes in the manufacture of 

 weal! It at government mint-, in cheap money, in 

 broken contracts, and in repudiated debts, and 

 so believing have by reason of their faith been 

 excommunicated as heretics from the roll of 

 civilized communities and banished from the 

 field of honor. 



" I am aware of the fact that many of my col- 

 leagues, for whose opinions I entertain the great- 

 est respect, assert, and it has been freely charged, 

 that, the decline in the price of silver has been 

 caused by its demonetization at the American 

 mints, and by what is constantly called a "con- 

 spiracy" to destroy it as a circulating medium 

 among the governments of Europe. I deny this 

 proposition, and the statistics will not sustain it. 

 It may be true that the free coinage of silver at 

 the mints would tend for a time to keep up the 

 fictitious standard of the coin, but the value of 

 the bullion would always be controlled by the 

 market price ; it would fluctuate. 



"Like every other commodity, it would be 

 governed by the laws of supply and demand, 

 and eventually, according to every principle of 

 reason, according to every cardinal and accepted 

 axiom of political economy, the coinage price 

 would become the bullion price; the unit of 

 value would be the market value ; the money 

 basis would be the basis of the cheaper metal : 

 the dearer metal would leave the avenues of 

 trade ; inflation would give way to panic ; pri- 

 vate obligations would be nullified; public obli- 

 gations would be discredited ; and the honor of 

 the nation would be impaired. 



" Now, it is claimed that what we require in 

 this country is a system of bimetallism, a bime- 

 tallic standard that is to say, the free use of 

 both gold and silver at the Government mints. 

 But, Mr. Speaker, we will never have this until 

 the commercial nations of the earth agree upon 

 a proper ratio ; and just so long as the Sherman 

 act remains upon the statute book so long is an 

 international ratio a financial impossibility. So 

 long as we purchase silver and part with gold, 

 so long will monetary conferences result in fail- 

 ure. When we cease purchasing silver and pro- 

 claim to the world that the gold dollar is the 

 standard and the unit of American value, then 

 we can bring our rivals to terms, because, in my 

 opinion, there is not a sufficient amount of gold 

 in existence to supply the demands of commerce 

 and the necessities of the world's circulation. 



" So long as the Treasury continues to act as 

 a pawnbroker's shop for the benefit of the Col- 

 orado and Nevada mines, so long will Great 

 Britain and Germany refuse to appreciate the 

 collateral securities that we hold in our vaults; 

 but when a silver certificate can be redeemed at 

 jmr and a silver dollar is intrinsically worth the 

 inscription that it bears, then we can proudly 

 and defiantly meet them upon the field of finance 

 without the slightest sacrifice of the stability of 

 our currency or the slightest surrender of our 

 hmior as a nation. 



" Now, let us look for one moment at our ex- 

 perience in attempting to keep up the price of 



silver. What is the truth! Why, that silver, 

 instead of rising, is lower to-day than it has ever 

 IH-I n ; and instead of the silver dollar b:ing upon 

 a parity with gold, the disparity between them 

 is greater than it has ever been in the history of 

 the world. Not only this, but the Government 

 has lost nearly $40,000,000 in its efforts to 

 "corner" a declining market, and the Treasury 

 to-day would not dare to risk the sale of its bul- 

 lion silver. 



"Not this alone, but with all our persistent 

 efforts to force silver into circulation, tne people 

 have stubbornly refused to take it, so that to-day 

 the overwhelming proportion of it is hidden in 

 Government vaults. I believe that if the people 

 appreciated the actual condition of the Treasury, 

 and that there was not enough gold in the Treas- 

 ury to redeem the smallest fraction of our out- 

 standing notes, there would not be a single one 

 of them that would be worth 60 cents upon the 

 dollar. You ask me, then, what keeps up the 

 parity between gold and silver? I think I can 

 tell you. One thing, and one thing alone the 

 misplaced confidence of the people. 



" When once that yields and the fuse is 

 lighted, there will be no necessity for repealing 

 the Sherman act : it will repeal itself immedi- 

 ately. Commercial ratios will take the place of 

 legal ratios. Our equation of values will depart. 

 The faithless union between gold and silver will 

 be dissolved. Its spurious offspring will be ex- 

 cluded from the channels of legitimate circula- 

 tion, and your silver certificates and Treasury 

 notes, instead of passing by sleight of hand at 

 par, will be exhibited as mementoes and souve- 

 nirs of the most grotesque system of finance that 

 ever obtained among any intelligent people since 

 the day when political economy first claimed 

 recognition as a science, and the doctrine of fiat 

 money was relegated to the bankrupt govern- 

 ments of the Orient and the revolutionary re- 

 publics of Central and South America." 



Aug. 12, Mr. Hendrix, of New York, said in 

 support of the measure : 



" I do not propose to take up any time in the 

 discussion of financial theories ; I am for practi- 

 cal, decisive action. Why, sir, the way primary 

 principles of finance are brought up on this 

 floor, thrashed over and over, and twisted one 

 way and other, seems extraordinary to one who 

 comes from the markets of the world. The ex- 

 perience of the world is all in one direction. 

 The slow-moving finger of time has not changed 

 its motion for a single second since 1798, when 

 England made the change in her policy by sub- 

 ordinating silver to gold. 



" Right along through the ages this process of 

 monetary evolution has gone on. It is going on 

 to-day, and we in* this House can not stop it ; we 

 can not control it ; it controls us. It is no 

 new thing, sir, in the history of monetary evo- 

 lution for the more desirable currency to domi- 

 nate. When the Australian used to send stone 

 slabs as the medium of exchange ; when the Fiji 

 Islander used red feathers for his currency ; 

 when the Roman used his oxen; when in the 

 early ante-Roman days in Ireland female slaves 

 were a medium of exchange in the use of eggs, 

 in the use of iron, in the use of tin, in the use of 

 zinc, the process of evolution worked out the in- 

 ferior and worked in the superior article. One 



