158 



CONGRESS. (THE FINANCIAL MEASURE.) 



" President Hayes vetoed the bill, but on the 

 liSth of February, 1878, it was passed over his 

 veto by both houses, the vote in the House being 

 l!)(i to 73. and in the Senate 40 to 19. The rapidity 

 with which the silver dollars were coined and is- 

 sued into circulation greatly stimulated the advo- 

 cates of cheap money, who became restless at the 

 delay occasioned by the mints, which were not 

 able" to turn out the money as rapidly as the peo- 

 ple desired, and the law of July 14, 1890, providing 

 for the immediate issue of Treasury notes based 

 upon the bullion purchased, to be redeemed by 

 the dollars as coined, enabled the issue of the 

 money more rapidly than was provided by the 

 capacity of the mints. 



" By the act of Sept. 26, 1890, Congress discon- 

 tinued the coinage of the one-dollar gold piece, 

 which the law of Feb. 12, 1873, had declared to be 

 the ' unit of value.' This act further confused 

 the legal status of the standard. While the actual 

 exist) nee of the gold one-dollar piece is not essen- 

 tial, yet, it having been declared by law to be the 



unit of value,' its discontinuance cast doubt 

 upon the character of the standard. The purchas- 

 ing clause of the law of July 14, 1890, was re- 

 pealed Nov. 1, 1893. So grievous had grown the 

 burden upon the Government because of the vast 

 issue of a depreciated coin that confidence in the 

 Government's ability to maintain it was shaken. 

 The same law which repealed the purchasing 

 clause of the act of July 14, 1890, contained the 

 provision declaring it to be the fixed purpose of 

 the Government to maintain its gold and silver 



* of equal intrinsic and exchangeable value.' 



" Hut for this declaration the silver coins would 

 have circulated only at their intrinsic value, which 

 \\as less than par. With the declaration the 

 pledge of the Government for the maintenance of 

 their parity created an obligation as sacred as a 

 national bond. By this pledge the Government 

 made additional recognition of the standard of 

 gold, in which by implication it proposed to meas- 

 ure the value of the silver dollar." 



Mr. Bell, of Colorado, took the opposite view of 

 the same topic. He said: 



" The present legal standard of this nation is 

 bimetallic, or based on both gold and silver, and 

 $18.000.000,000 of debts have been contracted 

 under the bimetallic standard and $1,300,000,000 

 of I'nited States obligations are now outstanding 

 made payable specifically in coin of the standard 

 value of July 14, 1870, the time when the act was 

 passed which embraced the present silver dollar 

 a-< well as gold coin. The correctness of this ver- 

 sion is proved not only by the decisions of the 

 Attorney-General, but by the declaration of the 

 Matthews resolution, which passed both houses 

 >f Congress with great unanimity in 1877. 



" The second section of this bill provides 

 ' ' That all interest-bearing obligations of the 

 I'nited States for the payment of money now ex- 

 isting or hereafter to be entered into . . . shall 

 lie deemed and held to be payable in gold coin.' 



" What does the payment of these debts in gold 

 which were contracted to be paid in gold and 

 -ilver mean to the creditors of this nation? 



" It means that after a struggle of over a quar- 

 ler of a century the money changers and specula- 

 tor- him- secured such a change of the money 

 standard as to give them hundreds of millions of 

 dollars in value more than they really lent. 



" Sirs, this is not a matter of wild speculation; 

 it is demonstrated through the actual offers of 

 speculation for our bonds payable in coin or in 

 gold alone. On Feb. 8, 1895, President Cleveland 

 sold $02,815,435 thirty-year coin bonds to August 

 Belmont & Co., N. M.* Rothschild & Sons, J. P. 



Morgan & Co., and J. S. Morgan & Co., and ob- 

 tained an offer at the same time that if he would 

 have Congress provide that they should be payable 

 specifically in gold coin that they would reduce 

 the annual interest payment $539,159, a saving in 

 thirty years of $16,174,770. 



" President Cleveland upon this day in a spe- 

 cial message to Congress said: 



"'The arrangement just completed . . . de- 

 velops such a difference in the estimation of in- 

 vestors between bonds made payable in coin and 

 those specifically made payable in gold in favor 

 of the latter, as represented by three fourths of a 

 cent in annual interest. In the agreement just 

 concluded the annual saving in interest to the 

 Government, if 3-per-cent. gold bonds should be 

 substituted for 4-per-cent. coin bonds under the 

 privilege reserved, would be $539,159, amounting 

 in thirty years, or at the maturity of the coin 

 bonds, to $16,174,770.' 



" And this sum was offered the Government to 

 make them payable in gold alone. Now, the 

 same men who made this advanced bid for bonds 

 made specifically payable in gold hold largely our 

 other coin bonds. If it was worth to them over 

 $500,000 a year to have $62,000,000 made specific- 

 ally payable >n gold instead of in coin, then it 

 was worth just as much in proportion to have the 

 $1.300,000,000 outstanding coin bonds made pay- 

 able specifically in gold; or the market value of 

 the annual interest on the $1,300,000,000 coin 

 bonds, if converted into gold bonds, would be en- 

 hanced in value over $9,000,000 per annum. 



" Now, sirs, there is no dodging the question. 

 When this bill is passed, there is taken from the 

 pockets of the people $9.000,000 per annum by 

 congressional legislation and without considera- 

 tion, except love and affection, and which will be 

 thrown into the opulent laps of the bondholders 

 and national bankers of the country. 



" The legislation of money from the pockets of 

 the taxpayers into the pockets of the syndicate 

 now controlling legislation has become so commor 

 and so enormous that it is appalling. 



" The audacity of this move would be astonish- 

 ing if Congress had not succeeded in the last fe\ 

 months in voting untold millions into the hands 

 of these syndicates without arousing much public 

 indignation. 



" Do you not think that the national bank and 

 bond syndicates have received enough through 

 the vile popular loan scheme wherein there \\;i- 

 voted them $200.000,000 bonds at par, when the\ 

 were worth in the market at least from 1054 tc 

 106, or $11,000.000 or $12,000.000 more on tin 

 market than face value? And they were voted t< 

 them as a gift under the false pretense that 1h> \ 

 were to go to the poor people of this country, 

 as though they had a right to vote any one thes 

 millions, whether rich or poor. Every one knows 

 now, and they should have known then, that it 

 was the speculators' scheme to have the $1 1 .000.000 

 or $12,000.000 of the people's money voted into the 

 pockets of the syndicates. The whole thing \va- 

 so gauzy and cheap that a great many banks con- 

 demned it as a damnable theft. The banks used 

 their customers to subscribe for the bonds, but the 

 banks paid for them and owned them at all times. 

 On the 9th of this month these bonds were worth 

 on the market 100?. or $10.500,000 above par, a 

 gift voted into the pockets of the purchasers. 



"The Speaker of this House, Mr. Henderson. 

 Mr. Cannon, Mr. Hopkins, Mr. Hepburn, and 

 many other leading Republicans refused to vole 

 to put 'gold ' in this issue, though we could save 

 more than $16,000.000 thereby, because, as said 

 by Mr. Hopkins, the precedent would cost us 



