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Canjjrmiflnal Uncord. FIFTY-FIRST CONGRESS, FIRST SESSION. receives no more for his products than he does now, and there is no aid given to him in the way of increasing the currency of the country and putting some of it within his easy reach, a very large portion of that class of our fellow-citizens are doomed to bankruptcy and ruin. It seems to me that the causes which have tended to his destruction SPEECH arise, in the first place, from the unequal taxation to which he has been subjected by our tariff laws, inasmuch as he has been compelled OF to sell his leading products in the free-trade markets of the world in competition with all similar products of the world and has been com pelled to buy his supplies in the highest market in the world, restricted HON. Z E B U L O N B. V A N C E , by tariff to prevent competition. Another cause of the ruin which is threatening him, arises from the O F N O R T H C A R O L IN A . fact that those same tariff restrictions operate against the extension of his trade. Inasmuch as his products can not freely go abroad, for the I n th e Sen a te of th e U nited S ta tes , reason that the products of the people abroad can not freely come in exchange for them, he has not only been subjected to these disadvan 1890, tages to which I havejust alluded, but his market hasbeenso restricted that the natural lawof supply and demand could not work to increase On the bill (S. 2350) authorizing the issue of Treasury notes on deposits of silver the price of his products. bullion. But as if that was not enough, after you had practically forbidden Mr. VANCE said: him to send anything abroad and stationed a sentinel with a club at Mr. P r e s i d e n t : Since I have been a member of this body I can not every port of the country to keep anything fromcoming in to exchange recall a question that has been more thoroughly and ably discussed with him, you stepped in at the instigation of Wall street and de than this of the coinage of silver, nor can I remember one which has monetized one-half of the currency of the country which gives credit come before this body which I think of greater interest to the people and value to his products. One of the strangest economic operations of the country. that I have ever known advocated by sane men in modern times, is It is a fundamental, elementary maxim of the science of finance that that when the wealth and business of the world had increasedtenfold an abundance of money makes high prices for products, and, , the money with which that business was done should have beendimin that a scarcity of money makes low prices for products. In other ished one-half. Just when it had most to do was the time when the words, the value of the productsofthe world is measured by the amount currency was curtailed, and the work which had been performed by of circulating medium, of tho precions metals, that there is in the both silver and gold was left to be performed by gold alone. world to exchange for them. But so it is that these hard times have come upon the country, and I do not think anything has been better established than the neces we are called upon to do something to relieve the people who are in sity of this country for more money, for a larger circulation to meet its distress. Inasmuch as there seems but little chance to relieve the constantly enlarging business and its rapidly increasing population. farmer of the incubus which has been imposed upon him by unjust We must have more money; it is necessary to our progress and to taxation, then the question arises, are we willing to relieve him in this our prosperity. It is necessary that the currency of a countiy should way or in any other way keep pace with its growth in population and its business* It is a re In order that there may be no misunderstanding about the purport markable feet, most complimentary to the civilization of this age, that of my remarks, that it may not be inquired as I go on which side I the wealth, and consequently the business, of the world has increased am upon, I simply wish to say now that I favor the unlimited coinage even in a &r greater ratio than its population. Within the last fifty of silver money and restoration of silver as it was before it was de years it is not too much tosay that the wealth of the world has increased monetized and the coinage of the silver dollar was forbidden in 1873. tenfold. Now, the circulating mediumofthe world is furnished by the Now, what is the danger of this coinage ? Suppose that we yield to precious metals, gold andsilver, and with the exception of remarkable the clamor of our fellow-citizens who are in distress, the laborer, the finds now and then, lasting not a great while, the output from the workingman, and the agricultural classes everywhere with their labor, earth of the gold and silver which furnishes our circulation has kept and the common people at large, who all demand this addition to our pace neither with the population of the world in the last fifty years currency—suppose we were to yield to it, what is the danger that is to nor with its wealth/ come upon this country? In the first place, it is said that we will be In consequence of business and population having outgrown the cir immediately delnged with silver; that all the silver of the world will culating medium of the United States, hard times havecome upon this come immediately to the United States to be coined. Mr. President, country,and prices ofall products are low, lower perhaps than they ever I do not regard that as a danger. I do not regard it as a misfortune if, have been in the history of the Government. Wages are low, lower having $1 in my pocket with which to buyso much flour and so much than they have been in recent years of oar prosperity, and they would meat, there comes legislation which will put $10 in my pocket to do have been still lower if they had depended altogether upon economic the same thing. Some men may regard that as a misfortune, but I do Causes. The very slight increase in labor that has taken place within not. But treating it as though it were a misfortune, I wish to suggest the last twenty years is due more to the exertions of labor itself than that there is no danger of any suoh thinj: happening. The silver of to any economic cause. Labor associations and the struggles which the world will not come here for various reasons. they havemade to secure their proportionate andproperdivision ofthe In the first place we coin at a ratir* of 16 to 1 when Europe coins at proceeds of capital have operated to some extent to keep up the price a ratio of 15} to 1. It is hardly supposable that a man who had silver of wages; but in every other respect the condition of the country is an in Europe worth 15J to 1 would lose 3 per cent, upon it by voluntarily unhappyone so far as its finances are concerned. taking it where it could only be coined at 16 to 1. It is very certain The debtor class especially are in trouble in consequence of the legal that the silver of the silver cou•ies of the world would not come ratio which existed for hundreds of years between gold and silver hav here, because it is their standard of value, and they would not make ing been dissolved and the extraordinary fall of one of the metals or the sacrifice, of course, of sending it off and making their standard of the rise of the other; and owing to the fact that debts contracted vears value scarce. The silver of Asia would not come, nor would the silver of European ago have to be discharged in a metal that is constantly increasing in value, thedebtor class perhaps are suffering worse any other. No, silver-standard countries come, nor would the silver of the bimetallicI will not say that. Those who have suffered most from this deprecia-1 standard countries of Europe cotne, nor would the silver of the goldtion, this bearing of silver by means of legal enactment,is the agricult standard countries come. Why ? They all use silver, every one of ural class of our country. them. The gold-standard countries use silver. I have here the last The fanner has not only to receive these low prices for his products, copy of the London Economist, dated the 31st of May, in which I find a table of the coinage of Great Britain and of the world for the year 1889, but he has gradually fallen behind more and more until his farm, and Ills homestead, and his roof-tree have become covered with mortgages, andI find that Great Britain coinedover $12,000,000of silver last year, just about half of what wc coined ourselves^ I find the and he is so in debt that if the present state of things continues, if he Silyer-Bullion Certificates* Thursday, June 12, per contra ? £2,215^)00] CONGRESSIONAL RECORD. 2 following important fact, which is commented upon by the editor of the Economist: The gold coinage, it w ill be observed, consisted w holly of sovereigns, the coinage of half-sovereigns being suspended, as it was in 1883 also. Indeed, dur ing the past few years only 841,200 half-sovereigns have been coined. An open ing has thus been created for the more extended use of silver in the currency, and tw o m easures taken by the T reasury in 1889 further increased tfte use of the w hite metal. A rrangem ents w ere m ade for paying wages in dock-yards and other large G overnm ent establishm ents in silver instead of in halfeovereigns, and as the small charge previously m ade for sending silver from the B ank of E ngland to banks or firms in the provinces was found to interfere Tfith the free circulation of the m atal, th at was abolished, the cost of carriage b eitg defrayed by the m int. It is no doubt to these m easures th at the large expansion of the ftilver circu lation is m ainly due, and although the Chancellor of E xchequer was blam ed in certain quarters for pushing out silver, he unquestionably acted w isely in doing so. The half-sovereign is a very convenient coin for the w ealthier olasses, and as it is less troublesom e to handle than silver to the sam e value it is n at urally preferred by bankers and those w ho have large wages bills t* pay. T he great m ass of w age-earners, how ever, find it m ore convenient to be paid in sil ver th an in gold, w hich they not unfrequently have a difficulty in getting changed, and as in addition to this there is a very large profit in the issue of silver, w hile the half-sovereign is a costly coin to m aintain, there is a double advantage in the substitution w ithin due lim its of silver for the sm all gold pieces. Silver coinage. Cities and countries. 1889. 1888. £2,215,743 £755,113 India.........................................„..................................................... 7,282,000 10,790,000 9,497,743 11,515,113 United States................................................................................. 6,903,000 6,837,219 37,201 207,800 France and Colonies.................................................................... 269,979 453,632 237,915 239,863 nil.O nil. 1,000 nil. Belgium ....................................................................................... nil. nil. A ustria and H ungary.......... .................................................. 939,474 1,144,438 Sweden, N orw ay, and D enm ark..... ...................................... 54,211 27,304 nil. nil. 140,000 315,555 320,000 1,760 5,206,245 5,368,806 2,089,510 2,042,422 25,376,278 28,508,917 2,128,777 (*) This is the organ of the gold-standard economists and financiers of England, and this is the official action, showing that the Government Total..................................................................................... 25,376,278 30,637,695 of England, although it has the single gold standard, finds it necessary not only to keep a certain amount of its silver in circulation, but is from time to time increasing that amount and refusing to coin the smaller pieces of gold in order that the silver may more readily take its place. Now, where has England got any silver money to send to us in case we adopt the free coinage of silver? Why, Mr. President, the Secre tary of the Treasury tells us the same thing. In his last report he tells us that England could not send any of her silver heye without the greatest inconvenience and without disarranging her currency and incommoding her people. If this be so, that the chief gold standard country of the world can spare no silver, surely the double-standard countries will not spare it. Where then is silver to come from? There is no surplus silver known to be anywhere unemployed in Europe, unless it be the remnant of the German quantum that was on hand when Germany demonetized sil ver and adopted the gold standard, and as she has already sold off more than $140,000,000 worth of her surplus, who knows how much silver Germany has on hand ? France has more than any other country, but she is using it all and coining more. The Secretary of the Treasury also estimates for us that the total pro duction of silver in the world is only about $142,000,000. 2 believe it is. Of that India alone takes and is obliged to have about $35,000, OCO. China and Japan take about $20,000,000. The remainder bringing the total down to about one-half of it, $70,000,000, is distributed over the silver-using countries of Europe* From that must be deducted the amount required for use in the arts, which is estimated at about $15,000,000. That would leave about fifty-five or sixty million dollars of snrplus silver that could come to the United States in consequence of our adopting the system of free coinage. But by the table Which I ap pend from the Economist it will be seen that the world’s coinage for lastyearwas <£25,376,278, ormorethan $125,000,000, leavingonlyabout $17,000,000 for use in the arts and for “ flooding ” us ! The dire pre dictions of calamity and disaster that are made by Senators on theother side, of ruin to come to our financial system by this influx, would be, if my calculation is correct, only about $1,000,000 more than is pro vided for by this bill which was reported by the Finance Cbmmittee, which is $54,000,000. Gold coinage. Cities an d countries. L ondon........ S yd n ey ........ M elbourne, In d ia............ 1889. £7,257,455 £2,277,424 3,294, GOO 2,732,000 22,600 13,306,065 5,009,000 10,118,959 699,112 3,888,446 nil. 80.000 n il 683,606 222,070 109,306 19,778 66,994 186,939 2.187.000 2.890.000 nil. 7,294,424 United States.............................................. 5,672,830 Germany...................................................... 7,214,438 France and Colonies................................. 22,166 Russia............................................................ 4,219,523 Italy................................................................ 97,358 Switzerland......................... .......... ......... 3,520 Belgium......................... ....................... . n il. Austria and Hnngary................................. 570,048 Sweden, Norway, and Denmark nil. Holland......................... ....... ....................... 29.395 Spain......................................................... nil. Portugal......................................................... 21,1X0 Mexico..................................................... 79,729 Japan............................................................. 194,867 Egypt................... .................................... 112,879 53,330 T otal.......................................................................»........ 34,562,144 25,472,738 * No record obtained. To the increase in the gold coinage of the year it w ill be observed th at this country and A ustralia and Germ any have m ainly contributed, w hile the de crease in the silver coinage is fully accounted for by th e lessened output ot the Indian m ints. The Indian coinage in 1888 was, how ever, exceptionally large* owing to the im portation in th at year of the native coins received from the M aharaja Sindia. In confirmation of the views I have just been expressing, to the effect that there is no danger of a flood of silver, I beg leave to read from the report of the royal commission, those distinguished gentlemen who had in charge the inquiry as to the depression in trade, etc., arising from the separation of gold and silver in bullion value. They say, on page 78, as follows: T urning next to silver, it is very difficult to estim ate the extent to w hich the use of this m etal has dim inished in E urope and America ow ing to currency changes. No doubt the adoption of a gold standard in G erm any dim inished the dem and for silver in th at country, but on the other hand there has been a very large coinage of silver in the United States during the last ten years, am ounting to upw ards $300,000,000, while in the ten years preceding 1873 the currency in th at country was paper, and but very little silver w as coined. ' W hen all the facts are taken into account it seems doubtful w hether there has been, on the whole, any great dim inution in the use of silver for currency purposes. Now, if under all those circumstances, if in the period following the depression of silver by its demonetization in many of the leading coun tries in Europe and by the closing of the mints of all the countries of Europe toits coinage it had still maintained, or verynearlymaintained, in the language of these distinguishedgentlemen, its use incirculation, how can we argue that the increase of its use now will be injurious to anybody ? The very fact that the price of silver has never fallen as compared with products, and that a dollar in silver now will buy as much as a dollar in gold and as much as a dollar in anything else will, is evidence that the county wants it and that the country desires more of it. That which the country wants kept in use and wants increased can not possibly be construed by any kind of philosophy into an injury to the country. I believe all sides agree now, though they didnot agree until pressed by what they regard as the great danger of the free coinage of silver, that whilst it would be an excellent international arrangement, yet that the United States Government would find itself overwhelmed and ruined if she undertook toremonetize silver and to maintain its parity with gold throughoutthe world. Who prophesies all these dangers to thin rouTitrg ? Whn tells us nf theevils that are to followif we remone tize the silver of our fathers and give the people once more the money that they are entitled to have by the Constitution of the UnitedStates The same men who told us in 1875, in 1878, in 1883, in 1885, and all the way through, whenever any increase of the coinage of silver orthe remonetization of the silver dollar was proposed; the same men who told us then that ruin would come, tell us nowthe same story. When pushed to the wall by the facts they begin to prophesy, and in every instance they have proved false and lying prophets. In other words, the prophets speak for their profits, and that is what they are doing now. Why could not the United States maintain the parity of gold and silver with unlimited eoinage, if she could maintain that same parity and preserve herself from financial ruin by adopting the bill reported from the Finance Committee, which comes very near taking all the surplus silver in the world? What is the practical difference of the two propositions? We have the greatest country in the world. We are the third country in the world in territorial extent; and when yon take into consideration the character of our country, its situation, its fertility, its teeming and untold wealth, and the energy and intelli ? CONGRESSIONAL RECORD. gence and the force and power of the people, it is not too much to say that this is the greatest country in the world, and that it cansolve suc cessfully this greatest financial problem. Let me read to you what is reported in the newspapers to have been said recently by a distinguished English financier and bimetallist, Mr. Moreton Frewen, when interviewed on that Subject The interviewer says: And if these results follow, do you think that England will then accept bimet allism? The results to which he alludes were answered in another question. I had better read that first: Assuming that there is to be a coinage monthly of 4,500,000 ounces, I think these results will follow during the next twelvemonth. There are some 87 eroresof Indian rupee paper, worth to-day, say, £55,000,000; the rupee will rise to about 22d„ and these securities will increase their value to £80,000,000. There will be a great boom in the Lancashire trades, and real estate in Manchester will rise. Pari passu, there will be an industrial crisis in Bombay, and im mense numbers of black men there will be thrown out of work. There will also result a rapid rise of prices and wages in the United States which the goldbugs here will ascribe to inflation—for everything with these gentlemen is in flation unless the world’s currency is being contracted visibly by anti-silver legislation—and trade to the States will be stimulated,and America, rapidly in creasing her imports, will for a year or two lose much gold, which gold will come here, so that probably 1391 will be a year of brisk speculation in the city. Then the question is put: And if these results follow, do you think that England will then accept bimet allism? Probably not; and, however desirable, it maybe no longer necessary; for if, as I anticipate, the action of Congress forces silver up to nearly the American coinage ratio of 1 to 16, it is almost certain that after a conference with tlie United States the mints of the Latin Union would be thrown open to the free coinage of silver once more. I quite believe that America could, even singlehanded, maintain the ratio—the par of exchange—all over the world; but cer tainly America and France together can. So that the world of trade would be once more bimetallic, as betore 1873. I have no doubt in the world of the soundness of that opinion. I believe the world is waiting for somebody to begin, and that the mo ment this great people throw open the doors of their mints, the mo ment that they pledge their immense volume of business to support the ratio and to support exchanges, the moment that they pledge their great wealth to support silver money the success of free coinage will be so well assured that the smaller nations of Europe who ardently de sire the free coinage of silver money will at once come to the rescue, and that it is only a matter of courage that is required on our part to cease to regard the interested howls of gold speculators, throw open tbe doors, and make the beginning. Mr. President, all classes of our people desirethe passage of this bill. The agriculturists especially desire it; and as the rates of exchange have to be maintained by our foreign commerce and as seven-eighths of that foreign commerce is the product of the field and the farm, why should not their voice be heard in this matter? Yes, sir; out of every $8 which enters into our foreign commerce $7 of it is the product of the agricultural classes of this country, and that foreign commerce alone maintains the rate of exchange between our country and Europe. The agriculturists desire this thing earnestly. They will suffer, if it is not successful, more than anybody else and longer than anybody else through any losses of trade which can possibly occur. The mer chants will charge up the percentage they have to pay for exchange; the bankers will make it off their customers; but the farmer whose product goes to market and is sold has no one upon whom he can throw his losses* Every man in the country who works for wages de sires this great change. Silver is the money of the people, the common people, net of the spec ulators, not of the wealthy men, not of kings and princes and poten tates. It is the money of the people and has been the money of the people so long and so far back in the history of our race as we have any record whatever. * The common day laborer, who works with his hands and receives his pay qn Saturday night, knows nothing of your theories of finance and econloay; he knows nothing of the automatic theory; he never beard of Gresham’s law; he never heard of the differences in exchange and of thofee things which are technical to the theory of finance; bnt he knows that when silver dollars are plenty his wages are higher than when they are scarce, and he knows when he hears them clinking in his pocket as he returns to his home on Saturday bight that they make a music which speaks of food and raiment, cheerful faces, and more comfortable surroundings at his hearthstone. They want this money. We ought to give it to them. There never was a greater crime perpetrated against the American people by legislation—and that is saying a great deal, for I have known some most infamous crimes of that character—than the one which robbed them of the value of their silver money. Nature has placed it in the earth at a ratio of about 15 or 16 to 1. The poor men who use it and receive their wages and buy their weekly supplies with it are in a ratio of about 16 to 1 of the rich men who put their money in bank and use checks and handle gold. Let us establish that ratio and give them this money. Bnt we are told that if we increase the valne of silver money and make it about the ratio of 15} to 1 and make it a legal tender on a parity with gold in all respects we shall s» stimulate the production 3 of silver that the price will go downagainand financial ruin will ensue. Mr. President, how is money produced ? Bo you sow a crop of it in the earth? Is it produced like wheat, or tobacco, or cotton ? Do you sowit broadcast, or do you drill it, or do yon plant it inhills ? To talk about increasingthe valne of silver stimulating its production, it seems to me, Mr. President, is not much removed from talking nonsense. If making it of equal value with gold or even increasing its value would stimulateits production,will some one please to tell me why gold, which is now more valuable than it has been for fifty years, is constantly de creasing in its production ? Why is it that the stimulation will operate to bring out more silver than we want if its value is made equal to gold, when, the value ot gold now being about 30 per cent, above silver, the product itself is decreasing from year to year? It is well enough to look ahead at these things. Why, this same royal commission, or a portion of them, gave it as their opinion that if something was not done to increase the valne of the silver production and to create a parity between it and gold, gold would go on appreciating until there would be financial disturbances, and the credit of the world would be disturbed by the appreciation of its standardjust the same way that it is disturbed by the depreciation of its standard; and that it was absolutely necessary to have a bimet allic currency, so that silver in its fluctuations and its uncertainties might be supplemented and supported by gold, and that gold in its fluctuations and uncertainties might be supplemented by silver. In other words, as the commission expressed it, silver was needed to broaden the base on which the financial edifice stood, in order to make it more secure. Mr. President, I may argue myself into opinions which are' not well founded, as men frequently do when they have the object which is to be attained mnch at heart I may argue myself into the belief that there is no argument on the other side, but at the same time no pro* position can & plainer it seems to me. What are we going to do fof our country ? What are we going to do for the agricultural classes, whose farms and homesteads are covered with mortgages ? What are we going to do for the working classes, who are struggling and striving to maintain their wages. Where is our country going if we continue to restrict silver and that is followed by the continued appreciation of gold and a reduction of prices in consequence—where are we going to land? How are you going to recompense the farmer for the evils he has suffered, from the very nature of things, through unequal taxa tion? Or do you really intend to do anything? If not, candor re quires you to say so. It isyonr best policy to say so. My word for it you can not fool him much. I do not see how you are to do it now except by giving him abundance of money, and putting it within his easy reach, and then, in the language of the distinguished English financier which I have quoted here, wheat, flour, pork, beef, and all the food products that are produced in this country will go up, the prices will be increased, and the farmer will be enabledto dischargehis mortgages, and his home stead once more will be safe. He can then educate his children, and he can feel that the laws of his country are not unjust to him; that they have given him what he has desired, and after long years of patient suffering his time has come at last. Let me read once more about the effect that the increased valne of silver will have upon the products of the farmer. The only two items, or rather the two main items, in whicti the cheap silver countries of the world, India particularly, compete with the United States are in the items of wheat and cotton. There we not only have to compete against the cheap labor of those countries— and we can hardly form a conception of how cheap it is—but we have to compete also under the circumstances which are produced by the fact that a silver rupee in India will buy just as mnch wheat or cotton as it ever did, and that the English merchant can buy the silver rupee in London, or the silver to be converted into t*j rupee, or with which to purchase the rupee for 30 per cent, disennnt, and that, pypry man fopa n. bushel of wheat in India to be shipped from Calcutta to England, to meet the bushel of wheat that comes from Illinois or the plains of the West in the market of London with 30 cents on the dollar advantage over him, to say nothing now of the cheap labor with which it is pro duced. Here is what Mr. Frewen said on that subject: Now, it isno longer questioned, even by our monometallists here, that the lower the piieeof silver falls the lower must fall the prices of wheat, cotton, and other American exports. If the silver countries, say India, can secure in Mark Lane the gold equal to 20 silver rupees per quarter they are satisfied to sell their wheat Therefore, with the rupee at 2*., the price of wheat here will be £2, but with the rupee at 1*., then £l. Thus the export price of American wheat, and therefore the entire home prioe, the New York price, has been hammered down by the great fall in silver, and has resulted in the impoverishment of the farmers of the far W est to a degree quite pitiable. I think farmers west of the Alleghanies have Buffered even more than in England since the monetary revolution of fifteen yepurs ago, and it is for this reason that the strength of the silver party is in the Ceatral, the Western, and the Southern States. Mr. President, it seems to me that those of us who make professions of regard forthe great agricultural portion of these United States, those who constitute nearly 50 per cent of all its workers, of all those en gaged in labor or gainful occupations, those who furnish seven-eighths 4 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD. of those products which constitute our foreign commerce—I My if those of us who profess any regard for them and any desire to do somethiug for them refuse either to take the taxes off their necessaries of life or to give them abundant currency, might well be set down as their abso lute and implacable enemies; as men who will do nothing forthem, be cause all the means by which it is sought to ameliorate their condition have been rejected by these statesmen. I do not know, Mr. President, that I have anything more to say. I O only desired to make a few brief remarks on this silver question, in order that my position might be known to my people, who are deeply interested in it, and in the desire that I have to rontribute something towards this discussion and a proper solution of the question which we have been debating. It is difficult, indeed, to go over this Held, which has l>een so carefully sw^ftt and gleaned, and add anything worth}' of consideration; but I am obliged to the Senate for having listened to me with so much attention.
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