260 
Annual Report of the 
the party in power is the father of lies. All the true basis of money 
is real estate. I would have the Government loan money to the 
borrower at a fair rate. What right have we to charter two thou¬ 
sand banks for the purpose of distributing money through the 
country and furnishing that money at one per cent., and guar¬ 
anteeing that we will redeem it if they don’t? 1 would have 
the Government loan that money in ever county and town where it 
could be secured by double its value in lands, and I would have the 
money convertable into bonds at 3 per cent., and re-convertable 
again. If the people should be crushed, as they have been for years, 
they will soon come where they cannot bear the burthen any longer 
and will repudiate the whole thing. God forbid that such a state of 
affairs shall ever come to pass! We are ruined by high rates of 
interest. 
Mr. Orledge. It gives me very much pleasure to see the interest 
that is manifested in this question. Finance, taxation, tariff, all in¬ 
terest us even before the transportation question. I have found 
that the most difficult thing for me to do in my life was to unlearn 
the lessons of m} r youth. So the hard money men of the country 
have the hardest lessons to unlearn, the lessons of the past. I 
insist that gold is not so necessary as it was years ago. I have given 
some attention to this question during the last year and I must 
admit that I know nothing at all about it. I only see what is being- 
done. I only know that unfortunately for our profession here, that 
for the ten years we have had paper-money, that just as soon as it 
could settle down on a basis of certainty, that just as soon as it dropped 
into a certain position where it would have remained steadily at that • 
value up to to-day, that the capitalists would not let the mone} r alone. 
It is most unfortunate for us that there is such difficulty in settling 
this question, because it tends to destroy confidence and undermine 
values, and every one must see that. I begin to look at this question 
from another stand-point from what I used to. I have learned that my 
father’s teachings were not always correct, and as Mr. Anderson 
says, in too many cases we import our teachers from the East, where 
the hard-money people live. But if a teacher teaches us falsely, or 
we don’t understand him, it is a part of our duty to tell him so. 
This money that we have, which these professors tell us is worth 
nothing at all, buys us everything that wC want, and we can go 
anywhere we please with it, and we get within ten cents as much 
