14 



roads, l^he farmers are set against the greedy capitalists, as they 

 call them. But how does the problem look to these greedy capi- 

 talists ? They have three hundred and fifty millions invested in 

 railroads at the West, and, with the exception of a few isolated 

 cases, none of them are paying a cent in dividends. So far as get- 

 ting'"any money from them, the capitalists might just as well throw 

 their money into the sea. The trouble is not with the railroads ; 

 the trouble is not with the great class of middle-men about which 

 we hear so much — a class which in a country like ours it is per- 

 fectly idle to think of getting along without. The trouble is not 

 taxation. Taxation is heavy — it is prodigiously heavier than it 

 would have been but for this malignant currency, but you could pay 

 it without feeling it if it wasn't for this currency. It isn't possible 

 for any prosperity to rest upon the agricultural interests of the 

 country as long as this currency, which is eating out their life- 

 blood hke a cancer, is allowed to exist. Therefore, amid all the 

 folly that we hear about among grown-up men is there anything 

 quite so senseless as the cry which comes up from our Western 

 farmers for an increase of the currency ? These Western farmers 

 have got affiliations here. I know I may be treading on sombody's 

 toes, but I am not a paid machine-rnnner, and I never intend to 

 seek office, and I say that this granger interest, in so far as it is 

 an interest for the increase of the currency, is folly. I will not 

 compare it to the man that killed the goose that laid the golden 

 egg, but to the man who, with his house burning over his head, 

 endeavors to quench the flames with that which makes them burn 

 only the fiercer. 



Now let us pause for a moment. It isn't the agricultural inter- 

 ests alone that are affected, by this vitiated currency, but the man- 

 ufacturers also. Our manufacturers complain of hard times, not- 

 withstanding the tariff. There are few articles of which we export 

 more now than in 1860, while of others less. Our cotton manu- 

 facturers, who have been meeting in Boston of late, have been 

 talking of an over-production, and combined to shut down their 

 mills, but they wouldn't have to enter into any such combination 

 if the market of the world was open before them. Why isn't the 

 market open ? The great reason is the shiftless management re- 

 specting the currency, and the depreciation and the change of 



