View original document

The full text on this page is automatically extracted from the file linked above and may contain errors and inconsistencies.

S O U N D

M O N E Y

A

C H E A T S

N O B O D Y .

SPEECH

BY

JUSTIN S. MORRILL,
OF

VERMONT,

IN T H E

SENATE

OF

T H E

UNITED

MONDAY, AUGUST 21,




WASHINGTON.

STATES,

1893.




Sound Money Cheats Nobody.

A

S P E E C H
BY

J U S T I N

S.
OF

M O R R I L L ,

VERMONT,

IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES,
Monday, August 21,1893.
Mr. MORRILL said:
Mr. PRESIDENT: The effervescence of speeches on silver, as
we all know, by those, like myself, who always have one on tap,
is not unlike that of champagne yesterday uncorked—gone and
very flat. I can only vouch that this one of mine has never before been uncorked.
Let me frankly avow that I do not yet abandon all hope of bimetallism, and, accordingly, I shall gladly vote for the repeal of
so much of the act of 18^0 as requires the purchase of silver,
which originally did not receive any favor from me, and the
wide distrust it has excited should be speedily removed.
But, after its repeal, we shall not be dependent upon gold alone
for currency, as there will be in the Treasury much more of silver
than of gold, more of paper currency than ever before, and the
silver dollar will not be demonetized. Whenever more silver
can be coined and utilized without crowding gold to a premium,
it will be done by universal consent; but the Treasury of the
United States should be relieved from its embarrassment of furnishing gold to pay for silver bullion. W e may not ever be able
to keep as much silver afloat as has been done by France, because our people prefer something lighter, of equal nominal
value, and more portable to handle; but we can easily carry
enough of both silver and gold for all the business of the country,
if the mastery is not wholly surrendered to silver.
I shall have more to say on this branch of the subject after
some preliminary remarks upon the general subject, as well as
some commentary upon the pitiful failure of our costly Populistic attempts to raise the value of silver by the action of the
United States single-handed.
To maintain silver, with our present standard, on aparity with
gold, while increasing our public debt by the daily purchase of
over five tons of silver bullion, for which Treasury notes must
39
3




4
be issued, practically redeemable in gold, imposed a task upon
the Treasury Department, in the face of an almost total disappearance of gold in the receipts of revenue, too great for even
an unclouded Administration to bear: and it was wise for the
present Administration to seek relief, if so to be found, by an appeal to Congress. It is a time when the leaders of States where
silver most abounds should do something more than in figures
of speech to take up the pickax and spade to dig rifle pits from
which to assail others, or build up earthworks behind which to
merely protect themselves. The declaration that " the silver
question was of equal and greater importance than the question
whether the country should remain united or divided/' was an
utterance that will go unclaimed by any State.
The Democratic party, once distinguished for its intrepid hostility to all cheap substitutes for legal tender money, having successfully pushed gold to the front during the Jacksonian era,
with Missouri then in the lead for gold and now in the lead for
silver, more recently, though not fully, accepting the fantastic
fiat theories of those who claim for the Government omnipotent
power to keep an unlimited circulation of either silver or paper
on a parity of 16 to 1 of gold, it has in various latitudes, with a
knowing wink, played off tolerance to any delusive financial absurdities that fished for and promised to catch votes.
Unfortunately, the bait, being pungently perfumed with debt
repudiation, proved attractive, and more votes were caught than
may be conducive to its political health. Now. the old leaders
clearly see that if these fresh and undisciplined recruits are permitted to lead, and that is likely to be their demand for any
further party allegiance, the country may be ruined. It is to be
hoped, however, that these new local recruits, before they are
allowed to lead the majority of the people in the various States,
will be permitted to tarry at Jericho a little longer.
Very recently an excellent Democratic friend related to me a
conversation he had with a witty Southern member of Congress,
known to be a full-blooded silverite at home, but at heart, like
many other Democrats, wholly destitute of faith in the silver
panacea for all financial maladies, when remonstrated with for
occupying such a parlous position, replied, " W h a t would it
matter to me were I to save the whole country and lose my own
deestrict?'
I am glad to believe that even such embarrassed statesmen as
this will finally conclude, if the whole country can be saved, no
part of it will be lost.
The Silver League here in Washington of the revolutionary
propagandists recently began to be desperate. Losing confidence
in their logic, as they well might, they appe ir to have thought
it easier to win by threats of violence, and called a convention of
the faithful to meet at Chicago, where the lately pardoned anarchists no doubt were ready to participate and to be assigned
to any forlorn duty. Colorado was to contribute largely to a
national campaign fund. One of the members of the league from
Colorado predicted that " the convention at Chicago would be a
call to arms." Another diligent student of reigns of terror was
reported to have said, " T h e people are ready to shoulder the
musket in real earnest," adding, " T h e y will accept no quarter."
637




5
The peace-loving governor of Colorado, knowing that he was
great, and overestimating his hideosity, believed that by showing himself as governor he could scare all the very devils of
Wall street to death, but instead the martyrs proved to be nearer
to him in Denver.
The silver-mine owners declare that they will not consent to
the repeal of the act of 1890 without a satisfactory substitute,
notwithstanding that in every month's delay the value of silver
plunges downward with increasing velocity. The only satisfactory substitute indicated by them is free coinage—the very
measure that has been most feared by the country—which, when
established, would at once bring with it the single silver standard, and on .this standard the producers of silver, in less time
than one year, would get no better money than that made of silver. Such money, when no longer supported by the privilege
of exchange for gold, or its equivalent, would be current at its
commercial value only, no matter what the ratio. The coin
would be legal tender and receivable for demands due the Government—by no means a measure of value—and that would be
the only redemption ever to be offered. The coins of no monometallist nation were ever current,[and never will be, at a single
fraction above their intrinsic value. No man outside of an insane asylum would receive the silver coins of Mexico, India, or
Peru for more than their weight value in bullion.
The coining value of silver produced from mines in the United
States in 1892 was $74,989,900, or more than double what it was
in 1873. and the product of the world was ten millions more than
ever before, with a coining value of $196,608,200, or $115,000,000
more than in 1873. For twenty years Germany, France, and all
the Latin nations have ceased from the coinage of silver, and
every year the annual surplus, beyond consumption for the arts,
has glutted and cloyed all markets. Other metals are meeting
the same fate, and from no other reason than that of an excessive
production. The vast and abnormal overproduction of silver can
no more escape from depreciation in price than iron or copper,
or than cotton, corn, or wheat, with a redundant production.
Even ostriches and ostrich feathers at the Cape of Good Hope
have not been relieved by any precious miracle from the same
law. As soon as this royal bird began to be domesticated there
was a mania there to win the fabulous profits of ostrich farming,
as there has been for silver mining in Colorado. The doctor and
the lawyer, the baker and the barber, all went into it, and a pair
of ostriches could be sold for a thousand dollars or more. To restrain their export to California and Australia, an export duty of
$500 was imposed on each ostrich and $25 on each egg; but the
supply of ostrich feathers has now so largely increased that, like
silver, they have sunk in value about one-half. But the government there has not been asked to buy and hoard ostrich feathers
at the old standard price.
The extreme partisans of silver claim that all the facts support
their ill-begotten theories, and muster them like conscript soldiers to combat on their side; but when they will not stay there,
so much the worse for the facts, and they are then straightway
consigned by these partisans to the Wall street of the bottomless
pit. It is well known that for several years there has been a
39




G

downward tendency in the prices of food products and of many
other materials, and the silver extremists claim this to have
arisen solely from demonetizing'silver. But here it is not demonetized. It is manifest that so far the silver dollar here,
though now distrusted, has rarely had a larger purchasing
power, but is as barren of influence as to the depreciation of the
price of cotton or wheat as copper or tin, or as the winding sheet
of an Egyptian mummy. Wherever depreciation of the price of
any article has occurred all the world knows, save the unfortunate
dupes of silver extremists, that it has arisen from redundance
or from a cheaper cost of production.
In such cases the supply is greater than the demand. For
many years there has been a prodigious annual increase of silver
bullion, and the downward tendency of its price has followed
step by step. So tempting were mining profits that over one
thousand mines, according to the Census reports of 1890, were being worked, though producing neither silver nor gold, and apparently exhausted; but all the same they still kept on barking,
like Mr. Bucher's dog, at the old hole, long after the disappearance of the squirrel. But the labor lost in such mines creates
no claim to be included in the average cost of labor in successful
silver mines.
Even if our good intentions to bull the market for silver had
been in the slightest degree successful, ss they have not been,
there is another law, as universal as the 1 A of gravitation, which
W
inexorably determines the value of silver, as it does of other
products, and th it is the cost of its production.
The average wages of all persons, foremen, miners, and laborers, employed in our gold and silver mines, according to the Census report "of 1890, were $729 a year, and the average output per
man amounted to $1,732 a year. In any other business these
facts would indicate no stinted hilf-rations as the measure of
profits. Certainly it far exceeds the profits of wool-raising in
Oregon, of cotton-raising in Texas, and even of corn-raising in
Kansas.
This statement includes 1,610 mines for each of which the bullion product was less than $1,000, and 1,408 mines where the product of each was over $1,000 and not over $10,000. The great bulk
of silver bullion comes from a very limited number of mines, and
their rich ores have afforded some silver kings large profits,
surely higher returns than capital invested and labor employed
in any other industrial occupation.
It is not to be assumed that all silver mines now, like the Consolidated Virginia years ago, with an assessment on stockholders
of only $411,209, are paying dividends of over $1,000,000 per month;
nor that any other mines now equal the Mollie Gibson mine of
Colorado, which was claimed to have produced up to December
31, 1891, 2,000,000 ounces of silver at a cost of 4.8 cents per ounce;
but it should be claimed that the average cost of the production
of silver within a few years has been greatly and radically diminished by improve dmachinery, by new processes of treatment,
and by much cheaper transport ^tion.
Mr. William H. Beck, as quoted by Cowperthwait, says:
When I went to Montana, in 1886, it cost us to transport ores from Dillon
to Omaha $24 per ton. That transportation now costs $10 a ton. It cost us
39




7

then to treat ores $17 a ton. Now it costs $8 and $10. Mining powder cost
50 and 60 cents a pound. We can buy it now for 20 and 22 cents a pound. It
cost then to hoard a man $t a day and more. We can do it now for a less sum.
Machinery is better and improvements in mining machinery are being constantly made.

He also states that when he went to Colorado, in 1878, he was
told that they "could not treat ores that assayed less than $20
to the ton. Ores can now be profitably handled that yield as
low as $5 a ton."
It can not be doubted that the cheaper cost of mining silver
has had the natural effect of reducing its value. If by any
means the product were now to be considerably increased, an
equal or greater reduction in value would be likely to follow.
With no greater consumption of silver than now exists, the
interest of no part of our country can be promoted by stimulating
work in the poorest mines or in the tailings of the richest.
The generosity and large concessions to producers of silver by
the Government of the United States has been unparalleled in
the history of the world, although it had a low seat at the table
during the administration of Gen. Jackson. Silver was originally put into our coinage at nine hundred and twenty-five thousandths fine, then changed to nine hundred thousandths fine,
and our dollar had 2 to 3 per cent less of silver than the Spanish
milled dollar, or than the Mexican dollar. In 1834 the dollar
was practically demonetized by a reduction of over 6 per cent of
the gold in our gold coins, which served to exclude the silver
dollars from coinage or circulation. This was the condition of
the dollar, as recognized in 1873, and clearly and fully explained
in the report of the Secretary of the Treasury (Governor Boutwell). Those who claim to be ignorant of the act passed must
also seek absolution for ignorance or indolence in not reading
the report of the Secretary of the Treasury.
In 1853 our half dollar and other minor silver coins were made
with a less amount of silver, mainly to prevent their exportation. In 1873, to make an Asiatic market for silver and to promote its exportation, the trade-dollar, of 420 grains of standard
silver, was coined, but becoming unmarketable it was at length
redeemed by the Government, which bore the loss. In 1878 we
tried to make an American market for silver by making the
Government a purchaser and coiner of not less than two million
nor more than four million dollars per month, for which our
silver certificates are now outstanding, and only kept on a parity
with gold by redemption in gold whenever demanded. The silver so purchased has depreciated in value to the extent of
$89,730,248. This Bland speculation was bad for the Government and worse for the people, who ultimately can not escape
the loss which has accrued or may accrue.
A t last the law of 1890 was passed, by which we have since purchased silver bullion to the amount of over 154 tons per month,
for which Treasury notes are outstanding, greatly embarrassing
the Secretary of the Treasury by threatening to absorb with an
open-mouthed appetite, his slender stocki of gold. This latest
speculation in silver, it was loudly claimed, would raise the price
to $1.29 per ounce or to the parity of gold; but this midsummer
night's dream ends with sil ver flat at 75 cents per ounce, leaving
the silver dollar at the value of 58 cents. The value of the silver
39




8

bullion purchased under the act of 1890, at the present market
price is now worth $29,543,335 less than was paid for it.
From 1878 to 1893 there were 419,332,450 silver dollars coined,
with a difference between their face value and present market
value of $176,086,829, a depreciation of over 40 per cent. The
stock of bullion and silver dollars now on hand, if placed in the
hands of a receiver, would exhibit a melancholy loss, but a loss
that would be more cheerfully endured if we " could trammel
ap the consequence," and it were to be the all and end-all of portending future suffering of our people in all the business relations of life. The desperate remedies administered for the congestion of silver everywhere prevailing have not only aggravated ugly symptoms but have started a wide suspicion that the
plethoric condition of silver was more dangerous perhaps to the
United States Treasury than the facts would warrant, so long as
the present Administration appeared pledged and willing to
preserve the parity between gold and silver.
These delusive efforts, made by all the power and prestige of
the National Government to enhance the value of silver, show
that the universal law of supply and demand is still invincible,
and ean not be set aside even by the dynamics of legal-tender
laws. Every milestone along the dreary track of these unsuccessful experiments marks a step downward in the depreciation
of silver.
It has been too obvious that our nominal consumption of silver
did not consume. Its swollen bulk of over 15,000 tons, ever visibly increasing, perpetually suggeststhat it may be too great to
be forever held above and away from all contact with the world's
markets, and that, like an Alpine avalanche when jostled by
some thunderbolt, it may ere long be let loose, and by its fall
finally and forever crush out its own life as a precious metal.
The futile attempt also for fifteen years to force silver dollars
into circulation by the unending woe, grief, and trouble of all
the Secretaries of the Treasury, in repeating the stubborn task
of Sisyphus of rolling a stone daily uphill that daily rolls down
ag^in, has resulted in the unstable distribution of no more than
$57,000,000, though delivered to any place near or remote, however great the cost to the Treasury of its transportation. Y e t
even this slender allotment so frets the pockets of the people that
they swiftly unload it through the custom-house at the earliest
opportunity. Constantly diminishing in value and somewhat in
weight, silver dollars, though strutting with the outstretched
wings of an eagle, are known to be pushed through the world for
more than they are worth, and are beginning to be regarded as
base intruders in all markets. Their deepest degradation, however, would seem to be that they are passed by on the other side
by Levites, or shunned even by the owners of silver bullion.
Foreign nations will not be persuaded to adopt any measute
in favor of silver by the fact that it might afford some relief or
the United States, but they will do much for their own relief.
Too ready to believe whatever may be derogatory of the American people, they have confidently believed that, with Boeotian
stolidity, we should be contented with silver only, and that
the stock of gold now in America and all future productions
would easily be transferred to their possession. Four of the
39




9

great powers of Europe are training soldiers possibly to make
famous other fields than Waterloo and Sedan. Their success,
as they believe, requires not merely the heaviest artillery, but
the heaviest stock of gold; and this they are financially maneuvering to acquire. Nations, as well as men, often get gold and
yet fail to keep it. We, very well, have learned how recklessly
destructive martial glory is to treasures of gold, whether thcxt
of the victors or the vanquished. These ambitious powers have
regarded America, not as a formidable competitor for gold, but
as one of their unfailing sources of its supply, as well as an unfaltering and hungry market for silver.
America, however, can be a competitor for gold, and by far
one of the strongest, for the reason that it is a home producer
of gold as well as of silver, and will use both only for all the beatitudes of peace and prosperous commerce. By the great cost
of large armies, and greater loss of labor in domestic industries,
European nations are really crippling their financial resources,
while our small army and our peace-loving habits relieve our
people from such excessive burdens, and will surely in the end
give us the primacy in financial power. A repeal of the silverpurchasing clause in the act of 1890 will give us a practical force,
so long manifestly disregarded, in the final determination of the
silver problem, and Europe, after all, to provide for its own financial necessities, is most likely to reach the conclusion that silver
should not remain obsolete and useless only as a commodity.
The magnificent colonial possessions of Great Britain have
been no doubt immensely profitable, but the query is now often
suggested, even by the Queen's subjects, whether they will much
longer largely contribute to her wealth and power. If Great
Britain could fetter them to the free-trade conditions of a Cobden Club revenue tariff and be relieved from the risk and cost
of their defense, no serious objections would be offered to their
prompt independence; but unstaggering unbelief in free trade
reigns supreme among their colonies, big and little,
India, unquestionably, with 250,000,000 of population controlled
by British revenue laws, still affords splendid advantages to
British trade. India, however, has suddenly declined to bear the
whole burden of silver depreciation, and refuses to receive silver
on the old standard for its domestic products and then pay gold
in return for British merchandise. India is also heavily in debt
for its railroads and other internal improvements, upon which
annual interest in gold must be paid in London, and this has to
be met by the sale of silver rupees at a ruinous reduction from
the nominal value. The exports of India exceed imports to the
extent of $100,000,000, for which gold instead of silver is now
wanted. No remedy will now be satisfactory unless the currency
of gold and silver shall be more equitably employed by Great
Britain in all of her financial relations with her Indian Empire.
The interest of colonial people in monetary questions can not
be forever ignored, even by an imperial government. Great
Britain might be happier and stronger if there were less bankruptcies in Australia, less United States annexationists in Canada,
and less Irishmen in Ireland. She may have no apprehensions
elsewhere, so long as her neighbors have all the quarrels they
like among themselves, but it would be opportune and perhaps
39




10

sound policy for her to begin the cultivation of better political
and financial relations with her kin across the Atlantic, and
fairly consider whether or not international bimetallism is destitute of all merits.
I can not, however, favor bimetallism without an increase of
silver in silver coinage, as without an increase it would be impossible to maintain any parity between gold and silver, ev^n
with the cooperation of many nations. Nor can I favor the free
coinage of silver by the United States alone were the ratio between the two metals to be advanced from 16 to 25 to 1, or even
to 28 to l , f o r the reason that the present colossal output of silver
can not be annually absorbed by any single nation, and a preposterous attempt to absorb it on our part might win a smile
from the governor of Colorado, but would provoke the ridicule
of the commercial world, and inexorably cause its further depreciation. No remedy will have a prosperous ending which does
not squarely and fully recognize the existing extraordinary
magnitude of the amount of silver which must be furnished with
a new market.
Mr. Chernuschi, by far the ablest bimetallist that has yet appeared, has always insisted that it was only necessary for the
United States for the time to cease from coining or from purchasing silver to bring European nations to a proper and just
international arrangement by which the general use of silver as
an integral part of the money in use among leading nations
would be speedily consummated. Delay may have made this
more difficult. The Bank of Prance now most unwillingly hoards
250,000,000 of 5-franc silver coins, which are there appreciated
much as the $363,000,000 hibernating in the United States Treasury are appreciated here. If we tamely assume the burden of a
monopoly of silver here, a burden quite large enough for the
whole world, it may induce France and other nations also to
join the gold monometallists of Europe.
I well understand that it will be necessary to enlist in any international agreement a considerable number of nations that will
each take their just proportion of the present enormous annual
production of silver, or it must necessarily be a failure. Nevertheless, an international agreement is the best hope of a permanent
resuscitation of silver, and after proper national action here on
our part, the chances of resuscitation will be greatly multiplied.
Other nations will have an equal if not greater responsibility.
It may be called a bitter remedy to stop purchasing silver, but
without it the case is hopeless. If in all the world we are now the
only purchaser of silver, to cease from it might temporarily
cheapen its price, but to open our mints to its free coinage would
permanently cheapen its value, as its solitary accumulation in
our hands has already sufficiently demonstrated. In the language of Burke, " a wise and salutary neglect" is the highest
service we can now render to silver.
After the repeal of the silver-purchase law of 1890 the United
States will not wrestle alone with the overproduction of silver,
as the question will equally confront foreign nations and can not
be shirked. There is no statesman among such nations that
does not know the United States can fix and carry a currency on
the gold standard, if necessary (though I do not now believe that
39




11

it will ever be necessary), with greater ease than any other nation on the earth. W e produce enough of the metal ourselves
to supply any needful annual increase of currency in gold coins,
much more than equal to our annual increase of population.
There is little now of the necessaries of life for which our people are dependent upon any foreign country in peace or war, and
much of what we produce to sell, like cotton, petroleum, and
provisions, can not so readily be obtained elsewhere in equal
abundance or on terms equally satisfactory. There is no possible
combination of circumstances that can deprive the United States
of its large and natural share of the world's gold, unless by free
coinage we go directly to the silver standard, or unless our revenue laws shall be so framed as to permanently fasten upon the
country an excess of imports over exports, and of this no party
in our country can ever afford to take the risk.
With a sound currency foreign gold capital will flow into our
Country by millions for investment, but with any cheap or uncertain standard of money panics will be an every day occurrence,
and foreign capital would stand aloof and foreign creditors would
demand a prompt return of all investments.
It is well understood that the great hindrance to bimetallism
in our international conventions has been the fixed opposition of
Great Britain. The leaders, however, of one of the great British
parties have recently declared themselves ready to respond
favorably to the popular opinion and to the business petitions in
behalf of bimetallism. The demand for silver in India has annually been from forty to seventy million dollars. To all this
the mints of India have suddenly been closed. The British trade
with India is very large, and Great Britain, with that trade confused if not paralyzed, can not there safely abandon a large use
of silver, and it must be used in such manner as will not subject
the Hindoos and the Mahometans to the whole loss on bills of
exchange. Nothing short of bimetallism would therefore seem
possible.
There are some persons who wish to figure as one-string bimetallists by our country only. I have been told by a distinguished astronomer that the coal of the entire coal fields of
Pennsylvania, which he had laboriously computed, would produce a heat equal to that of the sun for the 900-millionth part of
a second. These one-string fiddlers, it may be computed, would
maintain bimetallism for an equal length of time.
It has been absurdly charged that to repeal the law of 1890,
which requires the Secretary of the Treasury to purchase 154
tons of silver bullion every month, would at once establish here
the gold standard and nothing else; but that is untrue and comes
here as a scarecrow that will scare nobody who does not want to
be scared. Not a Senator who will vote to repeal that law will
do it as a gold monometallist. The purpose and effect of the repeal will be to keep in circulation as much silver as ever, and to
have enough gold keeping company with it to maintain the
parity of the two metals. The repeal is the only lever by which
bimetallism internationally can be secured. Americans should
have the courage to use this lever and take a stand that will at
once relieve our financial condition from foreign dictation, and
secure the stock of gold which must naturally find a home in the
39




12

United States, and which should not he deprived of that home
without our consent.
I would not be personally offensive to anybody, but I think it
could with more propriety be said that this charge of gold monometallism is a subterfuge to conceal an organized purpose of
precipitating silver monometallism upon the American people.
I think they will not fail to so understand it. Among all those
who will refuse to discontinue the purchase of silver not one will
consent to any purchase of gold.
The repeal of the silver-purchasing part of the act of 1890 will
at once unlock millions of gold now hoarded, as well as millions
of the old United States notes, to redeem which gold has long
been held in the Treasury, as it would satisfy the public that
Congress, as well as the President, propose to maintain every
dollar of our currency as good as every other dollar, of no
greater and no lower value than we have had, and so just and
sound as to give assurance of being just and righteous for both
the debtor and creditor to-day as well as years hence.
W e cannot afford to take the risk of a silver dollar that may
curtail the usual reward of wage-earners nearly one-half and
cause an epidemic of strikes. Merchants might possibly shirk
or transfer to others a large share of their losses from a depreciated dollar; but farmers, for what they have to sell, would be
compelled to accept whatever legal tender might be offered.
Indirectly the duties on all imported dutiable merchandise, if
paid in depreciated silver, would suffer a reduction that would
more than satisfy even the exterminators of protection.
With the present rate of annual accumulation there would be
piled up in the Treasury within ten years over a billion in pig
silver bullion, and its depraved value fluctuating with the daily
market when sold for use in the arts and manufactures. Certainly no prudent Senators can be expected seriously to propose
that this expensive accumulation of silver and of public debt
shall go on forever, bringing, as our experience has already
shown, no benefit to producers of silver, but untold disasters
upon our common country. Alone, and without international
cooperation, if the United States would take its annual- purchase
of silver and give it a fatal plunge over the falls of Niagara, so
that it would be irrecoverable while wood grows or water runs,
we might somewhat advance the market price 01 silver: and by
no other less heroic measure, nor by any cunningly contrived
compromise, while the supply is great and the demand down to
zero, can the United States by itself lift silver out of the mire of
overproduction.
Thirty-three years ago the yearly production of silver in the
United States amounted to only $150,000; but in 1892 it amounted
to five thousand times that sum. The silver extremists now demand that the United States shall not only take and pay for the
whole of this vast increase, but at the valuation of thirty-three
years ago, and will not even aid in opening the way for largely
increasing the demand for silver by making it the interest of
many nations to cooperate in a bimetallic standard for its use.
Probably, with one-half of all our iron furnaces closed, and
one-half or more of all woolen and cotton mills idle, we have
rarely required so small an amount of currency for actual busi39




ness purposes. The difficulty is that currency, to an extraordinary amount, is being- hoarded by millions of depositors in savings banks, who have feared they would have to wait sixty days
if they were not drawn out at once. Only one country in the
world has a larger per capita circulation of money than the
United States. W e shall have plenty of money whenever distrust goes out of circulation.
According to the great Roman orator, " a commonwealth should
be immortal,and I can not suppose that any Senator would willingly limit the life of our Government to any briefer period. In
all the advantages of power and wealth, of natural and industrial
productions, of coal, iron, and copper, of food products, and of
territory and climate, no other people will dispute the superiority
of the American Republic. Nor will they dispute our primacy
as the producer of gold and silver. Thev dispute only our capacity
for self-government, and deny the wisdom of universal suffrage.
They believe we are to stumble on silver.
The crucial test is whether we are or not to drop from the bimetallic standard of gold and silver, maintained on a parity, to
the dangerously crippled standard of silver only, and thereby
limit to an inferior currency the foremost business nation of the
world. The gra ve responsibility rests upon a Democratic Ad ministration now in full control of both branches of Congress, as well
as of the Executive department. No government can be sustained which does not fulfill its pledges in good faith. The public debt, national and State, and all other contracts, by our recorded pledges, are payable in legal tender on a parity with gold.
The honor oi the country may be in peril. Whatever policy will
relieve the public distress will be my policy. Whatever party
favors the public credit will have my favor. Whatever measures
support public honor will have my support.
39




O