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Annual Report of tiie 
earth’s surface. Let us have the contentment which begets cour¬ 
age, makes us good citizens and does not leave us uneasy, ready to 
get the upper hand of somebody by law, or to take an advantage of 
our neighbor. Let us accept the natural conditions that nature 
gives us, rejoice in them and persevere in developing them. 
In relation to the question of currency, one large object of money 
is to measure values. It takes values and holds them for a time, 
and then gives them up again. Money is constantly put to that 
use. You have an article of a certain value, you sell it for money 
which holds the value of the thing sold till you wish to transfer it 
to something else. The use of the money is to measure and to hold 
that value as the half-bushel-measures and holds the wheat. It is 
nonsense to assert that that which of itself has no value, can meas¬ 
ure value or can permanently hold value. This cannot be done 
any more than you can measure twenty feet by that which has no 
length. Money itself must have a permanent value in order to 
measure value. Paper-money has no value of itself, though it may 
gauge value for a time because of its relation to gold. If it slips 
away from gold it loses its stability. Its value will then depend 
upon its quantity. Our yard-stick has become now long and now 
short, and it loses its entire power to measure anything. 
President Stilson. I don’t wish to occupy the time of this con¬ 
vention very long, but as I am occasionally made a target by 
learned men, it has been my rule to always paddle my own canoe. 
I am a farmer’s son, but so far as the hardships and the pay of the 
teacher is concerned, I could fully realize what the president has 
stated, for I myself in my younger days was a middle-state school¬ 
master. But the contest is not between us producers and the con¬ 
sumers, and it matters not whether we are producers of thought or 
of materials. It is between productive industry and capital. Here 
is where the war is. There is between those elements a combative 
force as between heat and cold, as to which shall have supremacy. 
We claim that centralized capital has got the supremacy over in¬ 
dustry, over the farmer, the college professor, and all who are labor¬ 
ing men for the good of humanity. And as for my individual self, 
the professor has singled me out and I will reply by placing myself 
beside two of my intimate friends who have become capitalists, al¬ 
though they started out with almost the same capital that I did. 
And where I can put down a dollar to-day, they can put down five 
