230 



CONGRESS. (SPECIAL SESSION THE SHERMAN ACT.) 



25 per cent., yet make money in gold 25 per cent, 

 more valuable, the tariff remains as great a bur- 

 den as ever. It takes the same quantity of wheat, 

 corn, pork, and cotton to pay it as before. 



" Now, as 1 have already stated, the silver 

 question, as now presented, is not the question 

 we have had presented to us in the past. It is 

 true that in what has been called the Bland coin- 

 age act we passed in this House a free coinage 

 bill (I mean not in this particular body, but in 

 the House of Representatives) by a large majority 

 by a two-thirds vote. But when it went to the 

 Senate there was engrafted upon it a provision 

 requiring the purchase of at least $2,000,000 

 worth of silver each month, and not exceeding 

 $4,000,000 worth, and its coinage into standard 

 silver dollars. That was a bullion purchase bill. 



" But mark the distinction : It required every 

 dollar of that bullion to be coined into money as 

 fast as purchased ; and it required the issue on 

 that money of certificates redeemable in silver. 

 To that extent the measure was in the line of 

 bimetallism. The only difficulty was the limita- 

 tion as to the amount. But the present law re- 

 pealed that law. You do not propose now to put 

 us back to where we were when you repealed that 

 act, which was adopted as a compromise measure 

 providing for the purchase of from $2,000,000 to 

 $4,000,000 worth of silver per month. 



" You propose to wipe out the act of repeal 

 and to leave us where ? You propose to remit 

 us to the demonetizing act of 1873, which in all 

 my section of country the Democratic party on 

 every stump has denounced as the monumental 

 fraud of the nineteenth century. Here is a 

 Democratic House proposing to go right back 

 to that act. When you do so you will be guilty 

 of a greater fraud than that act itself. I speak 

 advisedly when I say that if the Democratic 

 party, after all the pledges it has made in regard 

 to silver in its platforms, national and State 

 should take the country back to its condition 

 under the act of 1873, you will have consum- 

 mated the monumental fraud of the nineteenth 

 century, because we never expected much from 

 Mr. Sherman or his party; they never made 

 many promises, as we have. 



" If we now violate in the light of day every 

 pledge that we have made, we shall be convicted 

 of insincerity, of betraying the people who sent 

 us here, of bowing our necks meekly to the yoke 

 of Wall Street. If Democracy means anything, 

 it is that those who come here from the people 

 to represent them should carry out their pledges 

 in good faith. It does not mean that we are to 

 pass an act which (though some people say it will 

 stop the panic) will put a yoke upon your con- 

 stituencies for probably centuries to come." 



Mr. Bryan, of Nebraska, Aug. 16, said in the 

 course of one of the notable speeches of the 

 session : 



" I have read with care the message sent to us 

 last week, and have considered it in the light 

 of every reasonable construction of which it is 

 capable. If 1 am able to understand its lan- 

 guage, it points to the burial of silver, with no 

 promise of resurrection. Its reasoning is in the 

 direction of a single standard. It leads irresisti- 

 bly to universal gold monometallism to a realm 

 over whose door is written, ' Abandon hope, all 

 ye who enter here!' Before that door I stop, 



appalled. Have gentlemen considered the effect 

 of a single gold standard universally adopted ? 

 Let us not deceive ourselves with the hope that 

 we can discard silver for gold, and that other 

 nations will take it up and keep it as a part of 

 the world's currency. When all the silver avail- 

 able for coinage could gain admission to some 

 mints, and all the gold available for coinage 

 would find a place for mintage, and some nation 

 like France maintained the parity by means of 

 bimetallism, it was of comparatively little im- 

 portance whether a particular nation used silver 

 or gold or both. 



" Exchange did not fluctuate and trade could 

 be carried on without inconvenience. But times 

 have changed. One nation after another has 

 closed its mints to silver, until the white metal 

 has in European countries been made an outcast 

 by legislation, and has shown a bullion value dif- 

 ferent from its coinage value. India, at last, 

 guided by the misrepresentations of the metro- 

 politan press, which proclaimed as certain what 

 was never probable, has suspended free coinage, 

 fearing that this country would stop the purchase 

 of silver. If the United States, the greatest silver- 

 producing nation, which now utilizes more than 

 one third of the total annual product of the 

 world, closes its mint to the coinage of silver, 

 what assurance have we that it can retain its 

 place as primary money in the commercial 

 world ? 



" Is it not more reasonable to suppose that a 

 further fall in the bullion value of silver will be 

 followed by a demand for a limitation of the 

 legal-tender qualities of the silver already in ex- 

 istence ? That is already being urged by some. 

 Is it not reasonable to suppose that our hostile 

 action will lead to hostile action on the part of 

 other nations ? Every country must have money 

 for its people, and if silver is abandoned and 

 gold substituted it must be drawn from the 

 world's already scanty supply. We hear much 

 about a ' stable currency ' and an ' honest dollar.' 

 It is a significant fact that those who have spoken 

 in favor of unconditional repeal have for the 

 most part avoided a discussion of the effect of 

 an appreciating standard. They take it for 

 granted that a gold standard is not only an 

 honest standard, but the only stable standard. 

 I denounce that child of ignorance and avarice, 

 the gold dollar under a universal gold standard, 

 as the most dishonest dollar which we could 

 employ. 



" I stand upon the authority of every intelli- 

 gent writer upon political economy when I assert 

 that there is not and never has been an honest 

 dollar. An honest dollar is a dollar absolutely 

 stable in relation to all other things. Laughlin, 

 in his work on Bimetallism, says: 



Monometallists do not, as is often said, believe 

 that gold remains absolutely stable in value. They 

 hold that there is 110 such thing as a " standard of 

 value " for future payments in either gold or silver, 

 which remains absolutely invariable. 



" He even suggests a multiple standard for 

 long-time contracts. 1 quote his words : 



As regards national debts, it is distinctly averred 

 that neither gold nor silver forms a just measure of 

 deferred payments, and that, if justice in long con- 

 tracts is sought for, we should not seek it by the 

 doubtful and untried expedient of international bi- 



