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just, and if not, whether we can arrive at an honorable and equit¬ 
able basis, so as to be just to capital and generous to labor. “Sup¬ 
ply and demand,” says one writer, should regulate money. Anoth¬ 
er writer says: “No man of ripe years and sound judgment, acting 
freely and with bis eyes open, ought to be hindered with a view to 
his advantage, from making such bargains in the way of obtaining 
money as he thinks fit, nor anybody hindered from supplying him 
upon any terms he thinks proper to accede to.” 
Is money like wheat, corn, meat or other products produced by 
the labor of the people? Not at all. It possesses the power to 
measure or represent the value of each, without possessing in and 
of itself intrinsic, actual value for the supply of our necessities. It 
is simply a convenient medium of exchange of all commodities, and 
should have a fixed value, and such value can only he determined 
by the rate of interest it draws to itself. We must also bear in 
mind that whatever that rate of interest is, must be paid by labor, 
and if that rate is too high, then the whole surplus products of 
labor must be paid to capital and the laborer receive a bare subsist- 
ance. 
The Congress of the United States “shall have power to coin 
money, regulate the value thereof, and fix the standard of weights 
and measures.” So says the Constitution, Article 1, section 8, sub¬ 
division 5. Weights and measures have been fixed by law of Con¬ 
gress and every person understands their respective lengths and 
size; and I doubt not that our national legislators, in their wisdom, 
believed they had discharged their duty honestly and faithfully 
when they regulated the value of money, by saying that twenty-five 
and three-tenths grains of gold and four hundred and twelve and 
five-tenths grains of silver should constitute the dollar and not the 
rate of interest which it annually will accumulate. But so far as 
its practical working is concerned, regulating the value thereof in 
fact, or the ruinous effect which such regulation has upon the legit¬ 
imate, productive industry of our people, Congress might as well have 
said, the yard-stick is thirty-six inches or three feet in length, but 
when yard-sticks are scarce they may be contracted to half that length 
and still measure a yard, or that weights and measures shall only 
be made by Government, and when they have been gathered into 
the hands of the few for the purposes of gain, that these weights and 
measures may be so changed as to suit the selfishness, greed, and cu- 
