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EXLIBRIS
MRS. ANNIE M. L. CLARK
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HONEST
MONEY
Goin's Fallacies
Exposed
By STANLEY WATERLOO.
The Equitable Series.
Vol. 1.
Issued Quarterly, $1 per year,
MAY, 1895.
THE EQUITABLE PUBLISHING CO.,
415 DEARBORN STREET,
No. 1.
CHICAGO, ILL.
Entered at the Chicago Post Office as Second Class Mail Matter.

Honest Money:

"Coin's" Fallacies
Exposed.
BY STANLEY WATERLOO.
THE EQUITABLE PUBLISHING CO.
415 Dearborn Street,
CHICAGO, ILL.
1895.
COPYRIGHT, 1895.
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the Year 1895, by
H. J. SMITH and GEO. F. CRAM,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress,
at Washington, D. C.

HONEST MONEY
HYPERION TO A SATYR,
FREE
SILVER
"Honesty Is The Best Policy."


THE SILVERITE ARGUMENT.
Table of Contents.
INTRODUCTORY.
ix.
CHAPTER I.-TWO MEN TALKING.
17
CHAPTER II.-THE QUESTION OF THE UNIT.
24
CHAPTER III.-"THE CRIME OF 1873."
36
CHAPTER IV.-AMOUNTS OF GOLD AND SILVER.
48
CHAPTER V.-PRODUCTS AND WAGES.
57
CHAPTER VI.-THE CASE OF THE FARMER.
66
CHAPTER VII.-MEXICO, CHINA, JAPAN, AND SPARTA.
82
CHAPTER VIII.-SOME SILVERITE ABSURDITIES.
99
CHAPTER IX.--HOW NEW CITIZENS ARE AFFEcted. III
CHAPTER X.-THE OPINIONS OF FAMOUS MEN.
118
CHAPTER XI.-THE ALLEGED "SCHOOL.'
150
CHAPTER XII.-THE course suggested.
177
CHAPTER XIII.-"COIN UP TO DATE."
198
INTRODUCTORY.
There came recently to the United States a period
of financial trouble. Whenever this condition of
affairs occurs in a nation, it is a matter of record
that the Cheap Johns of finance and legislation
have come forward with some panacea for all
existing evils, and it has sometimes happened
that a public ordinarily intelligent has been
affected by what these queer would-be leaders
have said, and that vast injury has resulted. The
Mississippi scheme, engineered by John Law, and
which wrecked France financially, and the Tulip
craze in Holland, were illustrations of how wild
the general public--the ordinarily reasoning pub-
lic-may become in certain phases of the life of
a country.
Just now there is indication that in the United
States is germinating a condition of monetary
and business insanity. We have had a panic-a
panic occasioned by the natural laws producing
such business disturbances in the past-and the
INTRODUCTORY.
usual group of charlatans have arisen, with their
charlatan remedies for all that is wrong in the
situation. The clamor seems to be in the direc-
tion of the coinage into money of all silver that
may be found anywhere in this country, or any
other, and brought to the mints of the United
States. These people, some of them schemers,
some of them foolish-a vast majority unreasoning
and impulsive-seem to think that, with the
unlimited turning into money of a certain metal
-a metal not the unit of value throughout the
world-and with the force and prestige of the
United States brought into play, such metal will
become worth whatever the United States declares
to be its value, regardless of the opinion of the rest
of the world. They appear to believe that, some-
how, it will get into everybody's hands; that all
that anybody produces will be worth more, and
that all that anybody has to pay in the way of
debts will be worth less; and that there will be a
sort of heaven on earth upon this continent.
•
There are a number of books in circulation,
produced by the fanatic or the reckless, as the
case may be, which influence the unreasoning.
Prominent among these, in the Mississippi Valley
at least, is a book called "Coin's Financial
INTRODUCTORY.
School,' supplemented by another book called
"Coin Up to Date"-the latter being but a partial
reproduction of the original volume, with certain
more or less new ideas treated in the original
style.
"Coin's Financial School" is a curiosity. It is
a compound of bad grammar, half-facts, and utter
falsities. There is a sort of superficial bright-
ness in its treatment of grave themes, and it is
illustrated with a series of pictures likely to appeal
to the unintelligent. It is a book which may lead
astray the ignorant and childish, just as the dime
novels send the boys out West hunting Indians.
To the well-informed it can not well be dangerous;
but, cheap, and shabby, and shallow as it is, it
may be adapted, in its easy glibness and absolute
assurance, to affect the reasoning of many people.
Even the intelligent may be more or less influenced
for the moment. When it is stated in a book that
a certain law was passed at a certain time, with a
certain intention, it is hardly possible for the
ordinary reader to believe that the assertion is
utterly false, and that no such thing happened;
and, when a picture is given illustrating a certain
alleged condition, the simple lesson brought to
the eye has often an effect, though all premises
INTRODUCTORY.
are false. How very few people there are in the
community who know anything of finance or
financial legislation, be it the business man in the
city or the farmer in the country; and how few
there are who may not be imposed upon by any
one who is reckless as to facts, and adroit, even in
a shallow way, as to comparisons! So it occurs
that "Coin's Financial School" has possibly
affected thousands, in the present almost feverish
condition of the public mind upon financial
questions.
In the book which here is given to the reader,
it is proposed to take very nearly seriatim the
points discussed in "Coin's Financial School," to
show where false statements have been made
originally, and to show as well, even in cases where
the author has accidentally stumbled upon some
fact, how absurd the argument which follows.
The book is worse than a worthless volume of
finance-it is wicked and dangerous in some of
the ideas which it wishes to make general. It
assails bitterly England, the Mother Country--the
country with which our commercial relations are
by far the closest and the most extensive;
it advocates a war with those of our Own
blood as a popular measure; and it is, from
INTRODUCTORY.
the first page to the last, an utterly reckless and
dangerous expression of ideas upon matters of
grave present import to the people of the United
States.
There is a certain audacity in the quality of
this queer volume which has come suddenly into
flamboyant existence. The book is the story of
an alleged series of lectures, and in those lectures.
conversations are asserted to have occurred with
various eminent financial authorities, gentlemen
of standing and of judgment, who, simply because
they have sense, are necessarily opposed to the
two pet lunacies o. 'he free silverites: first, that
silver should be remonetized at the absolute ratio
of 16 to 1; and, second, that it is not at all necessa-
ry, to insure the success of this scheme of remon-
etization, to obtain the co-operation of the other
great and older nations of the world, the inde-
pendent action of the United States being all-
sufficient to bring about the desired result. The
mere implication that these conversations were
actually held is of itself a piece of the most
astonishing assurance, and something most unfair
and most unjust toward all the gentlemen-men
of national reputation-who were thus made
subjects of a cheap ridicule. But, when it is
INTRODUCTORY.
made to appear that, in the contest of arguments
between these gentlemen and the free silverites,
the former were worsted at every point, the im-
pertinence is redoubled, and an absolute wrong
is done to men of standing.
Among the gentlemen whose names have
been dragged by "Coin" into purely imaginary
conversations are Mr. Lyman J. Gage, President
of the First National Bank of Chicago; Mr. John
R. Walsh, President of the Chicago National
Bank; Mr. J. Laurence Laughlin, Professor of
Political Economy in the University of Chicago;
Mr. H. H. Kohlsaat, proprietor of the Chicago
Times-Herald; Mr. John B. Drake, late proprietor
of the Grand Pacific Hotel, Chicago; Col. J. K.
C. Forrest, the "Old Timer" of the Chicago News;
Mr. A. F. Hatch, a prominent Chicago attorney;
Mr. Franklin H. Head, of the American Trust
and Savings Bank of Chicago; Mr. Adolph Kraus,
late proprietor of the Chicago Times; Mr. E. S.
Lacey, President of the Bankers' National Bank
of Chicago; Mr. P. S. Eustis, General Passenger
Agent of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy
Railroad; Mr. J. A. Montgomery, Superintendent
of Mails at Chicago; Mr. H. F. Eames, President
of the Commercial National Bank of Chicago;
INTRODUCTORY.
Mr. Charles Henrotin, of the Chicago Stock Ex-
change; Mr. Kirk, ex-President of the American
Exchange National Bank of Chicago; Mr. George
H. Rozet, a prominent real estate dealer of Chica
go; Mr. Joseph Medill, Editor of the Chicago
Tribune; the late Mr. James W. Scott, of the Chi-
cago Herald and Evening Post; Mr. William Henry
Smith, late Manager of the Associated Press;
Mr. Struckman, ex-President of the Board of
Commissioners for Cook County; and others
widely known in the world of honest business.
Several of these gentlemen have seen fit to make.
it known to the newspaper-press that they were
never present at these so-styled lectures, and never
heard of "Coin" until their attention was attracted
to it by comment on their appearance in the
yellow-covered handboo: issued in the interest
of the half-mad free silverites and the mine-
owners of the West. Yet it is an actual fact that
there are people in the United States, supposably
intelligent, who do not understand that the story
of these "lectures" is what is popularly termed a
"fake," and that the whole thing was but a com-
monplace device to attract attention.
The object of the perpetration of such whole-
sale falsehood and forgery was, of course, to gain
INTRODUCTORY.
the interest of the public in the "penny-dreadful"
publication in which bogus representatives of
thoughtful business men are made to figure. The
so-called "School" must certainly have failed of
popular recognition if the only force employed
toward that end had been the mentality in such
arguments as it afforded. But it was shrewdly
conjectured that a plentiful sowing of big names
among the fictitious auditors of these "lectures"
which never occurred would have a striking effect
upon the minds of a large number of unthinking
people. The mere circumstance that the names
of Messrs Gage, Walsh, Kohlsaat, Laughlin, and
other citizens of eminence were, without their
consent and without their knowledge, utilized
to further the aims of the free silverites, is
in itself but a fair illustration of what these
reckless demagogues will do toward attaining a
crazy object.
It is proposed here to consider all that is said
in "Coin's Financial School," and to do what is
possible toward bringing to reason those who may
have been affected by its fallacies. Whatever is
here said in the way of statistics or simple state-
ment will not be mere assumption, but fact. It is
right and proper that such a book as this be now
INTRODUCTORY.
given to the public. It matters not how com-
paratively insignificant the cause of any evil-for
the effects produced the remedy should be at
hand. To explain the absurdity of the arguments
in "Coin's Financial School" is not a difficult task.
To reach the great mass of dreamers is a task some-
what more troublesome. But there need be slight
cause for apprehension. The American people
are intelligent. Given a little time, and the
majority of them will seek and find the right way.
Neither charlatan nor fanatic can influence them
very long. They are honest, and will take not
only the most honest course, but the wisest one
in a business way-in financial legislation as in
any other matter affecting the general welfare.
There come occasions when, among reasoning
men, political differences are forgotten. In the
present discussion of the currency question
thoughtful men have forgotten whether they are
Republicans or Democrats; are working together
shoulder to shoulder, in Chicago and New York,
in all the great cities of the United States, and in
the country as well, to secure the nation against
such legislation as might come from any popular
delusion of the moment. The Mississippi scheme
of John Law and the Tulip craze of Holland
INTRODUCTORY.
were little more than on a par with the droll
ephemeral fancy of certain thousands, or hun
dreds of thousands, of well-meaning people in
the United States-people influenced unknow-
ingly by the shallow-shrewd efforts of represent-
atives of mine-owners who would like to produce
unlimited quantities of silver at 50 cents for a
certain little lump of it, and to sell the lump for a
dollar to the rest of the world. But, as already
said, this plain, ordinary Anglo-Saxon nation is
not lacking in sense entirely. Lincoln once said,
"You may fool a part of the people all the time,
you may fool all the people a part of the time,
but you can not fool all the people all the time."
There will be an end to this white lunacy.
&
HONEST MONEY,
CHAPTER I.
TWO MEN TALKING.
Two men sat at a table in one of the rooms of
the Union League Club of Chicago. The contrast
between them was curious; they were all unlike
in personal appearance, yet the two were born on
adjacent farms in a Western state, were of the
same sort of blood bred the same way, had grown
up together until 15 years of age, and had been
schoolmates even later, when attending the high
school of an adjacent town. They had been good
friends, and remained good friends still, widely
differing as their views might be upon certain
regnant topics-topics affecting the welfare of a
nation. The name of one man was John Simp-
son. He was well clad; his hair was longer
than is usually worn by the man of the city, and
his beard was something tremendous. It reached
unto his waist, and the tapering fag-ends of it
18
HONEST MONEY.
bobbed against the lowest button of his long vest.
He was a leading man from one of the smaller
towns of the Mississippi Valley. He was earnest
and honest, as far as his discernment went.
Opposite the man described sat the friend
already spoken of--unlike him in almost every
one of the ways which come with the broader
consciousness of the relations of things, yet very
much such another person if only probity and
honesty of purpose be considered. His name
was Richard Huntley. He was a man reasonably'
acquainted with worldly affairs-a man active and
knowing in business in the great central city of
the American continent. His hair was cut short,
and the only beard he wore was a mustache of
moderate dimensions. Here were two men of
middle age, who had begun life together, then
separated and grown up under different circum-
stances. One had come to Chicago, endured the
usual hard times following the advent into busi-
ness of an uninformed young man, and had finally
acquired a full degree of commercial intelligence
and become a successful broker. The other had
become possessor of a tract of land on the out-
skirts of a small town in Iowa, had eventually
found his land imbedded in the village as the
thriving place extended, and had become ulti-
mately one of the little city's leading lights.
Each of these two men was what might be
HONEST MONEY.
19
called a good American citizen-each a man who
pursued the course he thought the wisest and
most honest; and they had met together simply
to chat over old times, to talk of what each was
doing, to suggest means, if possible, by which
each might help the other in a business way, and,
finally, to discuss the broad general issues in
which each, like any good citizen, must neces-
sarily be interested.
Said Huntley, "Well, my boy, how are things
going? I know, as I have known all along, that
you are doing well in your town, that you are one
of the big men, and that things are all right with
you in a money way; still, we have all of us had
pretty hard times for the last year or two. What
do you think about the future?"
"Yes," said Simpson, "as things are, I think
the outlook pretty gloomy. I know that you
will say that things are getting better already,
but you will find that it is only temporary. We
shan't have any really good times until we get
free silver. Things have been going from bad to
worse since what I call, as some one else has
called, the crime of 1873, when silver was demon-
etized. If we can get the right sort of legislation,
though, there will come such an era of prosperity
as this country has never seen before."
"Are you quite sure," said Huntley, "that the
present improved condition of affairs is not going
20
HONEST MONEY.

WNNW WN
TRYING TO GET AT FACTS.
HONEST MONEY.
21
to be a permanent and increasing one; and are
you quite sure that what you call the demonetiza-
tion of silver had anything to do with the hard
times of the past three or four years?"
"I am very sure," said Simpson.
"How do you know?" was the reply.
"Well, as a matter of fact," was the answer,
"until recently I hadn't paid much attention to
it. Of course I endured my hard times with the
rest, and waited for renewed prosperity. But a
little while ago I stumbled upon two or three
books that opened my eyes a little, and now I
know what the matter has been.'
his chair and laughed.
"A large number of
Huntley leaned back in
"I thought so," he said.
other people have been affected just as you are.
When hard times come from certain universal
causes there always appear a lot of fellows who
have a specific remedy for everything, and who
tell what the matter was. There has been a
mushroom growth of late of these uneducated
educators, and any one of them can answer off-
hand any question which has puzzled every
statesman of the last ten centuries. Some of
them are honest enough, but ignorant; some of
them are frauds pure and simple. I don't mean
by this to include every advocate of silver, but I
do mean by this to include a majority of publica-
22
HONEST MONEY.
tions which have appeared within the last year or
two."
"That's all right, Huntley," said Simpson, "but
it is only an assertion. We must have facts in
any argument. I have become acquainted with a
lot of facts presented in recent works, and they
have decided me in my attitude. I am for the
free and unrestricted coinage of silver at the rate.
of 16 to 1. I have begun to think that even 15
to I would be a better ratio."
Huntley's face was somewhat graver as he
replied: “I had imagined some such thing. I had
imagined that you might have gotten hold of
some of these works of which you speak, and
that they had affected your ordinarily good judg-
ment. Following the panic come the trumpeters
of a remedy no longer needed; and, if their noise
can affect such men as you, what may they not do
with others less well informed? It so happens.
that just now what the United States may do with
regard to its coinage of gold and silver, counted
in what is known as 'redemption' money, may
affect all nations of the world, and this nation.
more particularly and disastrously. Those who
are advocating the more foolish and abandoned
course have unfortunately the millions of the
great silver-producers behind them. They have
been able to scatter broadcast their demoralizing
theories; yet nothing of which they have secured
HONEST MONEY.
23
the printing is, when thoroughly considered, likely
to affect permanently the views of any man of
real intelligence."
And
"You speak with any amount of confidence,
Huntley," answered Simpson, "but I have a right
to my opinions as well as you. I have thought a
great deal upon the money question of late, as I
have no doubt you have. Let us compare what
we know. I have here certain authorities."
then Mr. Simpson, opening a hand-bag, drew
forth a number of publications, all insisting upon
free silver as an adjustment for all financial evils,
and selected from among them one, a yellow-
paper-covered publication entitled "Coin's Finan-
cial School."
Huntley gazed upon the volume with some
interest. "I know it very well," he said. "It has
acquired somehow, as I understand, an extended
circulation, and the other day I read it. You will
pardon me, but I am astonished that you who read
it do not inquire as to its facts and afterward con-
sider its conclusions, What do you say? Shall
we take up this money question, using this par-
ticular book as a source of argument, and then
consider all points in their order? It ought to do
either one or the other of us good. Shall we
try it?"
"I am ready," said Simpson.
24
CHAPTER II.
THE QUESTION OF THE UNIT.
The two men had been sitting beside the table,
eating as they talked; now each of them was
smoking. Huntley leaned back in his chair and
made himself comfortable. "Now, Simpson,"
he said, "bring on your facts; but first I want to
say to you something about the book from which
you are about to quote. It happens, accidentally,
to be one of the cleverest things of an ignorant
kind ever presented to the American public. It
is unfair, but the average reader does not know that
it is unfair. It is shallow, but the average reader
does not know that it is shallow. It is a
grotesque sort of a thing, something we laugh at,
and yet it seems to have affected its thousands.
As you say, it has affected you."
"Yes," said Simpson hesitatingly, "it has. To
tell the truth, it has become almost my platform."
"Well, there you have it," said Huntley. "We
will take it between us, just as two ordinary
American citizens should do, and we will go over
it paragraph by paragraph, proposition by prop-
osition, assertion by assertion, fact by fact, de-
HONEST MONEY.
25
duction by deduction-anything by anything that
may help toward a good result of our reasoning.
You are a fair man, Simpson, though you may
have become too careless and too impetuous in
your way of thinking. Neither one of us desires
anything but what is right.”
Simpson was eager for the fray. He produced
his yellow-covered book, and, reading it in silence
for a moment or two, said:
"Well, as a beginning, I want to say that the
present monetary condition is wrong, and that
the right one was won away from the people by
a trick of legislation. I want to say that silver
was the original unit of value-so established by
the people of the United States after they had
won their independence."
"I doubt that," said Huntley. "Prove it."
Simpson leaned back in his chair, pushed his
flowing beard to one side, and read sonorously
from his yellow-covered book:
"They had fought eight long years for their
independence from British domination in this
country, and, when they had seen the last red-
coat leave our shores, they settled down to estab-
lish a permanent government; and among the first
things they did was to make 3714 grains of silver
the unit of values. That much silver was to con-
stitute a dollar. And each dollar was a unit.
They then provided for all other money to be
counted from this unit of a silver dollar; hence
36
HONEST MONEY.
t
dimes, quarters, and half-dollars were exact frac-
tional parts of the dollar so fixed. Gold was
made money, but its value was counted from these
silver units or dollars. The ratio between silver
and gold was fixed at 15 to I, and afterward at 16
to I; so that, in making gold coins, their relative
weight was regulated by this ratio. This con-
tinued to be the law up to 1873. During that
long period the unit of values was never changed,
and always contained 3714 grains of pure silver.
While that was the law. it was impossible for any
one to say that the silver in a silver dollar was
only worth 47 cents, or any other number of cents
less than 100 cents or a dollar. For it was itself
the unit of values."
And then he read on and on through a wilder-
ness of sentences, all the matter of which was an
attempt to show that silver was the basic unit
adopted in 1792. They were but assertions.
There was a lack of needed explanatory quota-
tion and of fact.
Simpson turned triumphantly: "What have
you to say to that?"
"It illustrates the qualities of the book from
which you have been reading," was the response
of Huntley. "Only half-facts have been quoted.
I have taken some little interest, as an ordinary
business man, in this particular phase of the
matter we are now discussing. We are talking
now about what was the original money unit.
adopted in this country. Let us talk of nothing
HONEST MONEY.
27
else just for the moment. Let us keep to the unit
idea in this discussion. I have the Chicago Tri-
bune of yesterday in my pocket. The Tribune is a
solid, and I think a reasonably fair newspaper,
published in a city of vast importance among the
great cities of the world. It happens to have
taken up the unit question, and to have given
some plain facts about it. It has means of refer-
ence at hand, can get at what are facts and not
opinions, and can not afford to make a misstate-
ment deliberately, nor to err. I am going to
quote from it and to comment as I read. Here,
now, is a portion of the money act of 1792:
"SEC. 9. And be it further Enacted: That there
shall be from time to time struck and coined at
said mint coins of gold, silver, and copper of the
following denominations, values and descrip-
tions, viz.: Eagles, each to be of the value of ten
dollars or units, and to contain 247 grains and four-
eighths of a grain of pure or 270 grains of stand-
ard gold. Half-eagles, each to be of the value of
five dollars, and to contain 123 grains and six-
eighths of a grain of pure or 135 grains of stand-
ard gold. Quarter-eagles, each to be of the value
of two dollars and a half, and to contain 61 grains
and seven-eighths of a grain of pure or 67 grains
and four-eighths of a grain of standard gold.
Dollars, or units, each to be of the value of a
Spanish milled dollar, as the same is now current,
and to contain 371 grains and four-sixteenths
part of a grain of pure or 416 grains of standard
silver.'
28
HONEST MONEY.

FREE SILVER
IT MUST BURST, INEVITABLY.
HONEST MONEY.
29
"That's gold, isn't it?" said Huntley; "that's all
gold practically. They weren't thinking of any-
thing else, those blessed forefathers of ours in
1792. Very solid men were they, and they
thought of sound things, and real things, and
honest things. This book from which you are
reading quotes them but half-way, and does them
the grossest injustice. Let us go on." And he
continued reading, giving certain details as to the
coinage of minor silver pieces, and more particu-
larly as to the weight and quality of the ordinary
copper cent. He followed with these simple
comments:
"The free silverites claim that, because the
dollar, or unit, was to be of silver, therefore the
silver dollar was to be made the unit of value.
It seems to me that an ordinary reasoning person
would understand that the dollar was made sim-
ply the unit of account. We had then the old
English coinage, and were to make an absolutely
new departure. We have but barely made that
departure now. Old men today still talk of
sixpences. It was to get rid of the pounds, and
sovereigns, and shillings that the change was
made. There was no particular unit declared as
relating to a particular metal, save that all the
tenor of the act shows that gold was regarded
as the base of everything financially. The silver
dollar was made of its present weight and fine-
30
HONEST MONEY.
ness simply as a convenience. It was desired to
make it coincide with the Spanish milled dollar,
at that time the most common large silver coin
current on this side of the Atlantic. The specifi-
cation of the number of grains of gold indicated.
that gold was to be the real standard. Silver
was largely ignored; it was thought of but as a
potent and useful, yet always a subsidiary thing.
"More than this. A great man, one Alexander
Hamilton, was Secretary of the Treasury at that
time. The law was based upon a magnificent
report which he had lately made, giving his ideas.
and outlining a plan for the monetary system of
the United States. He expressed himself clearly
as to the relative merits of the metals. He was
strongly inclined, he said, to the opinion that a
preference ought to be given to neither of the
metals for the money unit. Perhaps, if either
were to be preferred, it ought to be gold rather
than silver. What do you suppose Alexander
Hamilton would say of the wild vagaries of you
silverites today?"
"You have opened my eyes a little, that's a
fact," said Simpson.
"But there is more to come," said Huntley.
"That silver was not made the unit of value by
the act of 1792 is proved by another section
which the silverites never quote. It is as fol-
lows:
Vi
HONEST MONEY.
31
"That the proportionate value of gold to silver
in all coins which shall by law be current as
money within the United States shall be 15 to 1,
according to quantity in weight of pure gold or
pure silver-that is to say, every fifteen pounds
weight of pure silver shall be of equal value in
all payments with the pound weight of pure
gold.'
"And so all the way through," continued
Huntley. "When the statute is considered closely,
the fact is made evident that there was no inten-
tion of making silver the unit. 'Coin's' com-
ments are but assumption and concealment-a
device for giving the wrong idea. The dollar
was made simply the unit of account. It has
been well said, that, if silver had been the unit,
the law would have started off with defining it
as the unit, and would have given the silver coins
the preference in the order of arrangement. On
the contrary, Congress put the gold ones first,
because it looked on gold as the more valuable
and preferential metal, and put silver in between
gold and copper, where it belonged then and
belongs now. The gold coin had greater value in
less bulk. Hamilton had told the Congressmen,
in his report on the mint, that gold had greater
stability than silver. They believed him, and
thus gave the preference to gold in their law and
in their coinage. For, up to 1804, when the coin-
age of the silver dollar was stopped by Jefferson,
32
HONEST MONEY.
more gold than silver had been coined. Gold
dollars would have been coined as well as silver
ones but for the exceedingly small size of the
former.
"But we do not have to depend merely on the
inference to determine what unit was originally
intended. The matter was discussed thoroughly,
and what was done is history. The two Morrises
wanted silver to be the unit of value.
This prop-
osition was thoroughly discussed, and finally
rejected; and Congress adopted Jefferson's idea
of using both gold and silver-the result being
the system of coinage that exists, with some
modifications, up to the present time. As to the
ratio between the two metals Jefferson said, 'The
proportion between the two values of gold and
silver is a mercantile problem altogether.' Event-
ually Congress adopted the ratio of 15 17-100
to I.
"Furthermore," continued Huntley, "this unit
is not anywhere nor under any circumstances as
clearly defined a thing as these suddenly well-
informed financiers believe. Abroad, where they
have been considering the money problem for
centuries, they do not profess any such definite
knowledge as do these preposterous new prophets.
A prominent German-American, well informed as
to the currency system of his native land, met well,
in a recent interview, the fallacious 'unit' argu-
HONEST MONEY.
33

ㅠ
​A LATE PHOTOGRAPH OF THE "SCHOOL."
34
HONEST money.
ment of the free silverites by illustrating how the
'unit,' as defined by law, is often an abstraction
instead of a concrete thing. Thus, for instance,
in Germany, which has the single gold standard,
the unit is expressed by a fixed quantity of gold.
At the same time, there exists in that country no
gold coin which contains just the quantity of
gold which makes the unit. The unit of account
in Germany is the mark. Still, no one-mark pieces
of gold are coined; but that country coins gold
pieces of 10 marks, or units, and gold pieces of
20 marks, or units. The only one-mark pieces.
coined are made of silver. Under the German cur-
rency system the unit is measured in gold only;
still, the only coin which passes for the value of
one unit is a silver piece, and the only gold pieces.
coined contain multiples of the fixed unit. Thus
we see that the only true unit in the German sys-
tem, which is expressed in a certain quantity of
gold, is merely an abstraction, as no one-unit gold
coins are in existence, and the one-mark silver
coins are merely subsidiary money. The same is
true in France, where the franc is the unit, and the
money system is the single gold standard. There,
also, no one-franc pieces are coined in gold; and the
only gold pieces are multiples of the unit, or
franc.
"There you have it," said Huntley, "and there
you have facts-not quibbles, and evasions, and
HONEST MONEY,
35
half-truths, such as make up the smart printed
dreams on money which seem to have influenced
you. Will you say now that you believe silver
was ever intended as the unit of value?"
"No-o-o," responded Simpson; "you are prob-
ably right about the unit; but there are other
things to be considered. What was first thought
of as the unit, it seems to me, does not matter so
much. The question is, What we should do now?
What is it that has made the hard times?"
Huntley laughed.
"Let us take this queer book of yours, and, as
I have already proposed, go ahead with it, taking
up point after point as we have agreed, consider-
ing each one reasonably and fairly, but accepting
no false statements, and being affected by none
of its many evasions."
CHAPTER III.
"THE CRIME OF 1873."
"But you must acknowledge," said Simpson,
"that the coinage revision act of 1873 was sneaked
through Congress without any public knowledge
on the subject?"
"I acknowledge nothing of the sort," replied
Huntley. "It has been one of the charges of the
free silverites that the law of 1873, which demon-
etized silver, crept through Congress surrepti-
tiously; and that, under the pretence of effecting
a few necessary improvements in currency and
metals, a vital change was made in our whole
system of currency, unknown even to many of
those who assisted in making the change. In one
of the many silverite books now given to the
public appears the story of how this change was
made after the bill had reached the hands of the
Engrossing Clerk; and it is further stated that
three or four years elapsed before the country
really knew that silver had been degraded at all
from its status in comparison with gold. These
assertions, made by implication or otherwise, are,
in a general way, falsehoods.
HONEST MONEY.
37
"The act by which the silver dollar was thrown
out of coinage is stigmatized by 'Coin' and the
free silverites as 'the crime of 1873.' Their asser-
tion that the act was passed without any public
knowledge on the subject, and that even many of
the Congressmen who voted for the measure had
no idea that it contained a provision for the
demonetization of silver, is one of the graver
things to be considered when we talk of what has
been done and what is for the good of this
country.
"Let us consider the story of this bill. In
1870, three years before the passage of the act of
which we are talking, an act for the revision of
the coinage-three years before this, mark what
I say the original draft of the act was sent to
the Senate by Secretary of the Treasury Bout-
well. Shortly afterwards a consensus of opin-
ion was obtained from a large number of promi-
nent men who were supposed to have ideas of
some value upon this particular subject; and the
expression of views thus obtained had much to
do with subsequent legislation. In these opin-
ions, all of them based upon a full statement of
the facts in issue, silver demonetization was ta-
ken as a matter of course. And these opinions
were transmitted to the House of Representa-
tives, thoroughly considered, and made the sub-
ject of extended debate in that body, represent-
38
HONEST MONEY.
ing the American people. In January of the
year 1871 the Senate passed the bill by a vote of
33 to 14. Immediately the measure became one for
public comment, and for the consideration of the
House of Representatives. It was a shuttlecock.
affair, tossed back and forth, commented upon.
by every editor of the country who cared to ex-
press an opinion, and considered more or less
carefully by every Representative in the Lower
House of Congress. And this condition of things.
existed, not for a day or two, but for two long
years. The bill was simply remarkable in the
fact that it was given to the people for considera-
tion more frequently and fully than almost any
other measure that ever passed the two Houses
of Congress. It was printed and reprinted no less
than thirteen times. It was discussed in every
phase and in every feature! It was considered
over and over with an attention almost micro-
scopic, and the debates upon it fill solidly 148
pages of the Congressional Globe. And this is the
measure which the silverites say went through
Congress with 'the silent tread of a cat.'
"Prof. Laughlin, of the University of Chicago,
in a recent communication to the Times-Herald
of this city, gave the following table, showing at
a glance the whole history of the enactment
stigmatized by the free silverites as 'the crime of
1873':
HONEST MONEY,
39
Procedure.
Senate.
House.
Submitted by Secretary of the
Treasury..
-April 25, '70
Referred to Senate Finance Com-
mittee.
April 28, '70
500 copies printed.
May 2, '70
Submitted to House.
June 25, '70
Reported, amended, and ordered
printed.
.Oct.
19, '70
Debated.
Jan'y 9, '71
Passed by vote of 36 to 14-
Jan'y 10, '71
Senate bill ordered printed..
Jan'y 13, '71
Bill reported with substitute and
recommitted...
Feb'y 25, '71
Original bill reintroduced and
printed..
Reported and debated.
March 9,71
Jan'y
9, '72
Recommitted..
Jan'y 10, '72
Reported back, amended, and
printed..
Feb'y 13, '72
Debated.
April 9, '72
Amended and passed by vote of
110 to 13--
May 27, '72
Printed in Senate..
May
29, '72
Passed Senate..
Reported, amended, and printed. Dec.
Reported, amended, and printed-Jan'y
Printed with amendments, and
16, '72
7,'73
-Jan'y
17, 73
Conference
Committee ap-
pointed....
Became a law Feb'y 12, '73.
Jan'y 21, '73
"Facts are stubborn things, of course; not that
they have anything particular to do with the
reasoning of the free silverites-still they remain
facts. Facts do not seem to indicate that the
demonetization act was either sneaked or rushed
through in the National Legislature. On the
contrary, the measure in all its features, and even
in its little details, had an extraordinary degree
40
HONEST MONEY.
of publicity. For three long years it dangled,
with all its facts and bearings, before the Ameri-
can people, and before the lawmakers who were
the people's representatives. If noise be used as
a simile, the thing was strident in its personality.
Certainly, not merely every member of the
American Congress, but every American citizen,
had the privilege and the opportunity thrust upon
him to become acquainted with this particular
bill's minutest feature.
"On the 9th of January, 1872, Mr. W. D. Kelley,
of Pennsylvania, Chairman of the House Com-
mittee on Coinage, Weights, and Measures, rec-
ommended the passage of the bill-saying, among
other things:
*
"It was referred to the Committee on Coinage,
Weights, and Measures, and received as careful
attention as I have ever known a committee to
bestow on any measure. *
* *The com-
mittee proceeded with great deliberation to go
over the bill, not only section by section, but line
by line and word by word. I wish to ask the gen-
tleman who has just spoken if he knows of any gov-
ernment in the world which makes its subsidiary
* * * *
coinage of full value?
It is impos
ble to retain the double standard. The values of
gold and silver constantly fluctuate.'
"Mr. Kelley-Pig-Iron' Kelley-was for many
years one of the most prominent members of the
Lower House of Congress. His own utterances,
HONEST MONEY.
4I

"Nein mein frendt.
UNREDEEMED GOODS
VERY CHEAP
I gifs you no dollar on funfty cents
vord of silber.”
42
HONEST MONEY.
when recommending the passage of the coinage-
revision bill, show that he fully understood that it
provided for the demonetization of silver. And
his auditors in the Hall of Representatives, and
people generally who followed the printed reports
of the proceedings of Congress, could not have
failed of participation in that understanding.
"On the 9th of April, 1872, Mr. Hooper, of
Massachusetts, then in charge of the coinage-
revision bill, made a speech in the House, in
which speech he thus set forth the object of the
measure:
"It declares the gold dollar of 25 8-10 grains
of standard gold to be the unit of value-gold
practically having been in this country for many
years the standard or measure of value, as it is
legally in Great Britain and most of the European
countries. The silver dollar, which by law is now
the legally declared unit of value, does not bear
a correct relative proportion to the gold dollar.
Being worth intrinsically about $1.03 in gold, it
can not circulate concurrently with the gold
coins.
The committee, after careful
consideration, concluded that 25 8-10 grains of
standard gold, constituting the gold dollar, should
be declared the money unit, or metallic represent-
ative of the dollar of account.'
*
*
"Mr. Hooper knew what he was talking about;
and so did everybody who heard him, and every-
body who read his remarks.
"On the 14th of January, 1891, Senator Ingalls,
HONEST MONEY.
43
of Kansas-circumstantially, for the moment at
least, a warm partisan of free coinage-asserted
that 'The bill [the demonetization act] was pend-
ing in its various stages for four years in both
Houses of Congress, passed them by decided
majorities, was read and re-read thirteen times,
was commented on by newspapers, and was a
subject of discussion in financial bodies all over
the country.'
"As a matter of fact, the situation was this:
At the time this measure was adopted, silver cut
very little figure in the consideration of legisla-
tors, since it was not in general circulation.
Their thought about it was necessarily as to what
it might be at some future time, and what its de-
gree of force might be with relation to any other
medium. But all thought was as to theory, and
not as to present practice. Silver had counted
so little in the aggregate of our coinage up to the
time of the revision act of 1873 that the statesmen
of this country had paid very little attention to
the effect of its use upon the welfare of the na-
tion; and it occurred to few, if anybody, that its
demonetization was a particularly serious matter
in one way or another.
"The cry that any financial woes of the United
States are due to 'the crime of 1873' is a far cry in
any application. From 1874 to 1892, the country,
despite the semi-ostracised condition of this ever-
44
HONEST MONEY.
cheapening metal, was in a very prosperous con-
dition; and, though there has come to the United
States a season of what is popularly called 'hard
times,' to attribute the cause to this action of 1873 is
about as reasonable as to attribute it to some
variegation of sun-spots. Had the demonetization
of silver been necessarily so productive of bad re-
sults, the preceding eighteen years should cer-
tainly have given evidence of some of the con-
sequences of that awful 'crime of 1873.' Men
have made fortunes since then-some of them
silverites; and now they fall back to something in
the past-something which was done when they
were penniless-and quote it as a reason why they
cannot transform one hundred thousand dollars
into two hundred thousand dollars.
"The whole thing is a case of non-sequitur. Sil-
ver is good; we need it as a coin. It is all right
in its way; but it has not controlled, and does not
now control, the vast business machinery of the
universe. Why the free silverites should so howl
over the alleged fearful results of the act of 1873
is something incomprehensible to the average
reasoning being. From the foundation of the
United States mint in 1792 to the demonetization
act of 1873, the whole coinage of silver was
somewhere in the vicinity of $140,000,000, of
which only $85,000,000 was full legal-tender, and
but $8,000,000 in dollar coins. Between 1873 and
HONEST MONEY.
45
the present time (twenty-two years)-just think of
it and compare the figures with the record of the
past-we have added $600,000,000 in silver, of
which over $400,000,000 is in silver dollars, which
are full legal-tender. This is the period of horror
of which the free silverites are talking
"Just from an ordinarily honest sympathetic
view silver does not appear to be suffering so
terribly as to evoke our tears, much less any hys-
terical manifestation. It seems, indeed, to be
doing very well even in this hard-hearted country,
which does not yet utterly belong to certain
prosperous gentlemen who own silver mines along
a great mountain-range, and whose great fad is to
make United States Senators of themselves. It
is a very good thing, is silver. It makes a pleas-
ant-looking card-receiver in the hallway. There
was a time when it was magnificent as plate-as,
for instance, when one John Paul Jones, with a
ship called the 'Bon Homme Richard,' sailed down
into the teeth of a great nation and carried away
the plate of the Earl of Selkirk. It is a metal
which, next to gold, probably ranks as the best
thing to use for that thing which men must use
in exchange all over the world. But, stretching
from north to south in the western part of the .
United States, lies a range of mountains in which,
bound in the solid stone, lies silver in infinite
abundance. American ingenuity and American
46
HONEST MONEY.

COIN
HONEST
MONEY
Don Quixote and Sancho Panza "Coin" Making a Charge with
an Inevitable Result.
HONEST MONEY.
47
}
perseverance have resulted in the making of such
machinery that this silver can be pounded out of
the stone in quantities unlimited, and at a cost
less than half that which the free silverites want
to place it at as a medium of monetary exchange
throughout the world. We may not gainsay solid
facts."
48
CHAPTER IV.
RELATIVE AMOUNTS OF GOLD AND SILVER.
"I admit," said Simpson, "that I have been
mistaken on some points; that I have accepted
what I have read as true, and without going any
further than the arbitrary statistics given me; but
I want to ask you a question or two.”
"Go ahead," said Huntley.
"Well, we have to have money to do business
with, haven't we?"
"Yes."
"You are in favor of gold, and you are in favor
of silver too as an assistance, aren't you?"
"Yes."
'And you will admit that we must have
abundant money for our needs.
for our needs. A thousand dol-
lars or a million dollars of money, be it silver or
gold, would not be enough to do business with,
would it?"
"Certainly not."
"Then we have got to have silver and gold any
way, haven't we?"
"Certainly, if we consider only the coin stand-
ard," said Huntley.
HONEST MONEY.
49
"Then why are you fearful of having the silver
standard? What difference does it make which
one of the two is taken?"
"Because one of the two is more stable than
the other. The more stable one should be taken
as the standard."
"But why is gold more stable than silver? I
have learned from this book we have been reading
that there isn't so very much difference after all
in the production of silver and gold. Why not
take silver instead of gold?"
"My dear fellow," said Huntley, "I am afraid
that, having read only a one-sided statement of
the case, you are not as well informed as you
should be regarding the relative amounts of silver
and gold in this rather pleasant world of ours.
Shall we consider this particular question at some
length?"
"I will be glad to do it," said Simpson. "You
know me well enough, Huntley, to know that I
want only facts. If I have been careless in
accepting figures from which to form my conclu-
sions, I want to know about it. Go ahead with
your figures and with what you may have chanced
to learn."
"All I have learned," said Huntley, "is what I
have gleaned from the best authorities in the
world. You will hardly dispute any of them, for
they are the best in existence. And, in the first
50
HONEST MONEY.
place, I will say that no man living can tell defi-
nitely how much silver or how much gold there
is in the world ready for production on occasion.
The statisticians of the world have been unable
to get at anywhere near the ultimate facts. Still,
we know in a general way what quantity of silver
or of gold might be brought into circulation in
an emergency."
"That is the way I like to have you talk," was
the reply. "We want to get at this thing in a
straightforward way, and a way which will give
us the best idea of the situation. Now proceed
with what you know."
"All right," was the response. "And, first, I
will make this general proposition, or rather
double proposition: that there is in the world, or
can be readily produced, enough gold to be
sufficient for all requirements as the basis of all
currency in all nations; second, that there is al-
ready in the world, or can be produced, and at an
expense making it common, enough silver, not
merely to supply all its uses as an assistant coin,
but to supply all its uses in the arts or as an orna-
ment, and to make it a commonplace metal for
ordinary uses, ranking next to copper."
"I don't believe you can prove it," said Simp-
son.
"I will try to do it," was the answer; "or, if I
don't succeed-maybe I have exaggerated the
HONEST MONEY.
51
case a little-I will at least showyou that silver,
from being one of the so-called precious metals,
has dropped into being almost one of the me-
chanical ones."
Simpson again expressed his desire that his
friend should go ahead with the argument.
"It will be in sharp contrast," said Huntley,
"to some of the statements you have read in
'Coin,' the facts which I will give you now. Sen-
ator Allison, of Iowa, said, in a recent speech
(and a man who may yet be the President of
the United Sta:es would scarcely venture to mis-
state figures), that 'The amount of silver in cir-
culation in 1894 in Europe, where a gold standard
has taken the place of a double standard, is 1,355
millions; and there are now in circulation in the
United States 625 millions, while in 1873 we had
not a cent. And still they claim we demonetized
silver. How can we demonetize silver when we
put it in circulation to that extent in twenty-two
years, and this silver passes current with gold?'
'The last expression of the Senator's does not
matter, though it is logical in its conclusion. I
use it only because of the figures in it. I will
give you more figures. Now, the governmental
official statement shows that December of last year
the following were the accounts of the different
kindsof currency in circulation in the United States:
52
HONEST MONEY.
Gold coin and gold certificates-
$524,715,0&
Silver dollars and silver paper.
514,341,855
334,045,489
202,517,054
61,606,967
Greenbacks and currency certificates.
Bank notes...
Fractional silver..
$1,637,226,451
"I have given you these figures chiefly to show
you to what extent silver is already in circulation.
as currency, and to show with what generosity it
is being used up almost to its limit as being a
thing of any value.
"Free silver means the coinage of silver from
anywhere, be it from Colorado or from farthest
India. It means an attempt to make what we
call a dollar's worth of it worth a dollar, no mat-
ter whether the amount of metal required may
be bought anywhere for 50 cents or 5 cents.
Could it be bought cheaper still, there would be
of course no difference between using it and
using paper for the money we use, and dropping
at once to fiat money, pure and simple. It is all
only a question of degree. Gold, as we all know,
is found but in small quantities, pretty generally
diffused throughout the world, but difficult to
secure, and maintaining always about the same
intrinsic value. The improved machinery which
cheapens silver does not cheapen gold in the
same degree, simply because gold does not exist
in such abundance, while its area of production
is widely scattered; and circumstances are such
t
HONEST MONEY.
53

The Free Silverite's Idea that He can Swing the World by
the Tail.
54
HONEST MONEY.
that, while there promises to be no lack of abund-
ance of it as a standard and a steadying force,
there appears also no likelihood that it will ever
become cheapened by the production of enor-
mous quantities at any particular locality. Silver,
on the contrary, lies in tons within the limits of
the United States, in South America, in India, and
in various other parts of the world. The very
peasant girls of India wear silver bangles and
bracelets; and the great mines of Colorado, where
mountains contain silver which can be produced at
a certain percentage of cost, are lying idle just
now because silver has so dropped in value that
it does not pay them to produce it, though they
must have made a profit at even as low a rate as
Your 'Coin,' in one
perhaps 60 cents an ounce.
of his reckless statements, asserted that the stock
of silver in the world cost over $2 an ounce.
Whatever the cost of producing it has been at
any time in the past, or whatever this droll teach-
er may now say, if the great miners find it to
their profit to produce it at 60 cents an ounce,
the fact means that it is all that it is worth at
the present time. If it be worth more than 60
cents an ounce, it would follow that the produ-
cers in the West were fools for selling it at a less
figure; and they have not yet been accused of
that in a business way. They know what they
are about. Scratch a business backer of 'Coin'
HONEST MONEY.
55
and see if you do not find a man interested in a
Western silver mine. All over the world silver
is being discovered; all over the world increased
means of transportation and improved machinery
make its production cheaper. It has been, and
will be, affected by the same causes which re-
duced the price of wheat in the United States;
and it has fallen to a place, not among precious
metals, but among ordinary commodities. Why,
even as a commodity, this precious metal of
yours is losing its place. Not long ago, in va-
rious countries of the world, it was counted rather
a fine thing to have silver upon the table. All
old silver plate was considered something to be
preserved in a family. What is the situation
now? Aluminum-a swiftly cheapening metal,
and one whose use is pretty certain to be of large
and rapid growth in the future-is proving better
than silver for a thousand household necessities;
and nickel, and china, and half a hundred deli-
cate forms of tableware are superseding silver all
over the civilized world."
Huntley paused for a moment.
"That's a rather bad showing," said Simpson.
"I mean a bad showing for silver."
"But is it not absolutely true?" said Huntley.
"You are a reading man, and you know the ordi-
nary bearings of things, and, generally, what is
going on in the world. You know that what I
56
HONEST MONEY.
have said is absolutely true. You know that sil-
ver can hardly more be counted among the pre-
cious metals, and that, as far as the coinage of
money is concerned, we might about as well use
copper or something else. That is, with regard
to the extent to which the coin in use will steady
itself by the cost of its own production. I will
give you further statistics if you want them."
t
CHAPTER V.
57
VALUES OF PRODUCTS AND WAGES OF LABOR.
"But," said Simpson, "you will admit one thing:
that we have had hard times since silver was
demonetized, and that the prices of the great
staples have fallen."
"Certainly," was the reply. "I assent to that.
But the reasons are easy of explanation; they
have nothing to do with any financial legislation,
and the present condition results from material
causes which can not be affected by anything
Congress may do. Furthermore, recent condi-
tions, notwithstanding the fact that we are
emerging from a panic, are most admirable. The
greatest benefit and the greatest happiness come
where a man can get the most for his day's labor.
He can get more now than at any time in the
history of the country before silver was demone-
tized."
"I would like to have some proof in support of
either of your propositions," said Simpson.
"Certainly--here they are. The act of 1873,
to which 'Coin' ascribed every evil which has
fallen upon the country (he ought to have
58
HONEST MONEY.

16
آسم
16
The Free Silverite Heaven. A 16 Harp to a 1 Crown.
HONEST MONEY.
59
Է
included the 'grippe' and all the Southwestern
cyclones), had at the time of the last census
been in operation seventeen years. From the
last census, then, we may fairly make deductions
as to its effects-and deductions made not upon
assertion, but based upon absolute statistics.
First, we will consider the causes which have
reduced the values of certain products; and, next,
we will consider the present condition of the
man who works."
"Well, go ahead," said Simpson.
"In a recent edition of the Forum," said Hunt-
ley, "Mr. Edward Atkinson-admittedly one of
the first authorities, if not the first, in the United
States-calls attention to the variations in the
cost of meat, and tells why prices have de-
creased. I will take animal food merely as an illus-
tration to begin with. Says this excellent au-
thority:
'Since 1860 the causes for a reduction in price
of animal food are the extension of railways, the
establishment of great packing houses, the inven-
tions in canning provisions, the application of
freezing processes and cold storage chambers,
and the change from sail to steam on the ocean;
in production, the rediscovery and use of ensilage,
and many other improvements in feeding stock
of all kinds. In 1860 the supply of meat to great
cities was limited to farms and pastures in close
proximity; in 1870 the movement of live or
dressed animals by rail was insignificant, and by
60
HONEST MONEY.
steamships of no influence or effect. In 1860 and
in 1870 the beeves of South America and Texas
were slaughtered mainly or only for their hides;
they possessed no international food value. The
great prairies of the United States were still
buffalo ranges, and the sheep of Australia and
New Zealand yielded use and value only in wool.
and tallow. In 1890 every part of the animal had
become an article of international commerce,
while the cheese factory and the creamery had
made an economic revolution in dairy processes.
Had not the purchasing power of the great mass-
es of the people increased with the stability of
the gold standard and with the rise in wages, a
great reduction in the prices of animal food must
have ensued. Had not the supply of gold fully
compensated for the partial disuse of silver as a
full legal-tender, a greater might have occurred.'
"There," said Huntley, "are given from un-
doubted authority the reasons for the decline in
monetary value of one of the great productions
of the country. I have quoted it but as an illus-
tration. We will now consider things more in a
general way. This may be stated as an absolute
fact: Increased transportation facilitics, vastly im-
proved machinery, and new discoveries of power and
its application have enormously decreased the cost of
production of many things; while at the same time
the pay of the workmau has advanced, and he can
with his wages secure more of the comforts of life than
he could in 1873. We will now consider the matter
more generally; and, while I show you how the
HONEST MONEY.
61
selling price of certain articles has decreased, I
will show you at the same time the truth of the
other proposition, that wages have advanced.
'Coin's Financial School,' in its bungling, but
daring, attempt to show that the decline in prices.
is not due to improved means of production, says
as follows: 'Take the case of wool. There have
been no improved facilities for making wool grow
on the backs of sheep, or of shearing them, in the
last twenty years; and yet wool is only about.
one-third the price it was a few years ago.' And,
in alluding to the present price of horses: 'It
can not be said that there are any improved
facilities for raising horses.' We will continue:
Large reductions have occurred in the prices of
grain and sugar. The explanation is simple.
Railroads have been extended into vast new
regions which have proven the greatest wheat-
producing areas of the United States; the Dakotas
and the entire Northwest have been added to the
field; extraordinary improvements in sowing,
reaping, and milling have resulted in so reducing
the cost as to place wheat or flour on sale abroad
at a price a little more than half of the average
of 1870. Because of equally improved machinery,
the cost of production has been enormously
diminished. In general, though, it may be
asserted that the enormously increased consump-
tion has kept the prices of food higher than these
62
HONEST MONEY.
great improvements might have warranted.
"Of course, next to food comes clothing. Tak-
ng Sauerbeck's tables, we find that the cost of
iclothing, counting a standard of 100, was in 1870
124, and in 1890 76%. Here is something from
Mr. Atkinson again.
"The war demand for woolen fabrics carried
the prices of wool to an extravagant point. Then
followed the vast increase of crops of cotton by
free labor; tools and instruments with which
slaves could not be intrusted, but which freemen
use, were generally introduced; the secondary
products of the cotton-seed presently reached a
value of $30,000,000 a year, all previously wasted.
Australia went from an insignificant position to a
product of wool which exceeds that of any other
country. Immense improvements were made in
the mechanism of the factory; the use of the sewing
machine became almost universal in the United
States and very general in Great Britain. In
every branch of these arts the labor cost was
lessened, while the earnings of labor were aug-
mented. Egypt under English control developed
an increasing supply of cotton, while India re-
sumed its former unimportant position, which is
due to the inferiority of its cotton staple. No
other causes need be or can be assigned for the
very moderate average reduction of prices indi-
cated by Sauerbeck's figures, which are at the
gold standard. This reducfion is not commensu-
rate with the vast improvements in production.'
"Now, to continue in the same vein, we will
take metals and implements, and we will see that,
HONEST MONEY.
63
with the inventions of Bessemer and others, the
cost of production was enormously decreased;
while this decrease was further assisted by the
opening of new iron mines, both North and
South, containing ore of the most tractable char-
acter; and the opening of great coking-coal mines
added additional impetus in the same direction.
New inventions and new sources of supply had
the same effect upon copper and silver. The
same general laws apply to lumber and all build-
ing materials. These are hard facts of supply
and demand. The change of ratio from silver to
gold had no more to do with it than it had to do
with whether or not a seal were sick from swal-
lowing too big a salmon in Bering Sea.
1
same
"The same general law-that is, the
cause for fluctuations in prices will apply to
almost every article of common use produced.
"Now let us take up the matter of the price of
labor.
"The latest United States census shows that the
average annual wages of workingmen increased
from $386 in 1880 to $540 in 1890-a gain of 40
per cent.-while prices in the same time declined
16 per cent. This includes nearly all of the period
during which 'Coin' says the country was going to
the dogs. These figures are confirmed by every
investigation. Here are some more of Mr. Atkin-
son's figures.
SA
HONEST MONEY.

SILVER STANDARD
ALL YE WHO ENTER
HERE
LEAVE (50 PER CENT OF HOPE
BEHIND
THE SILVERITE INFERNO.
HONEST MONEY.
65
"Taking the wages of 1860 as 100, Mr. Atkinson
gives the following table to show the average
wages in 1890 of persons engaged in principal
employments:
Books and newspapers.
Building trades.
Carriages and wagons.
Cotton fabrics..
Illuminating gas..
Lumber..
Metals and metal goods.
Railway service..
Stone workers..
Woolen fabrics-
All industries.
Salaries of city teachers.
Prices of all goods...
Purchasing power of all wages..
148.6
172.5
- 202.4
-165.1
167.7
177.9
148.6
-148.4
-165.2
- 167.8
-160.7
186.3
92.3
- 172.1
"Of course each panic has varied these figures
for a short time, but only to a trifling extent.
Recent even as was the panic of 1893, the figures
have become very nearly the same.
Since 1873
the cost of labor has increased, and the cost of
living has decreased. The fact stands out bold
and clear; and yet such stuff as 'Coin' exploits is
accepted as a fact by a portion of the unthink-
ing."
66
HONEST MONEY.
1
CHAPTER VI.
THE CASE OF THE FARMER.
"Do you deny," asked Huntley, "that prices of
many of the necessaries of life have fallen, while
the wages of all workers have increased, during
the period the yellow-covered book you hold
there tries to induce us to believe that the country
has been in an awfully bad way?"
"I will not deny it," said Simpson, "you have.
opened my eyes as upon other points; but I am not
yet entirely satisfied. Of course I can see that
the average laboring man is much better off than
he was in 1873; but how about the farmer? Hc
is the producer; he is the bone and sinew of the
country, and a majority of the country. Products
have gone down and wages have gone up. How
about the farmer?"
"You are right," answered Huntley. "The
farmer is all you say, and more.
He is the very
backbone of the nation, and upon his decision.
must depend ultimately the settlement of all great
questions. He is, as you say, a producer, and the
price of certain products has fallen. Considering
only your queer 'Coin's' half-facts, it would appear
HONEST MONEY.
67
that the condition of the farmer had not improved
since 1873. It has improved, however, and the
farmer knows it as well as anybody. 'Coin's'
statements are simply wrong.
are simply wrong. He says, for
instance, that 'A debt for $1,000, that 1,000
bushels of wheat would have paid ten years ago,
now requires the farmer to give up 2,000 bushels.
of wheat in exchange for the dollars with which
to pay the same debt.' That is as much as to say
that wheat is only worth half as much now as
it was when 'Coin's' bugbear of demonetized sil-
ver was creating its awful ravages. Take about
the middle of the time elapsed since 1873-com-
pare the value of wheat last year with that of ten
years previous. The Agricultural Bureau gives
the average farm value of wheat for 1884 as 64½
cents per bushel, and for 1894 as 40 I-10 cents per
bushel. This is a decline, but it is less than half
of that asserted by the reckless free silverites, to
whom facts are as nothing. The price of wheat
in Chicago today is very nearly that of 1885, and
the demonetization of silver has had nothing to do
with the decline at any time. As already said,
the opening of wide new wheat-producing re-
gions in the Northwest, the inventions which have
greatly decreased the cost of production and in-
creased its quantity, the enormously improved
transportation facilities, and the competition in
the European markets have combined to decrease
68
HONEST MONEY.
throughout the world the price of this great food
staple. Nothing can advance its value save in-
creased consumption or decreased production.
All the Congresses and Parliaments in the world
can do nothing in the matter. The laws of trade
are greater than those of foolish theorists.
"No lack of statistics exists to establish facts as
to the present purchasing power of a bushel of
wheat. Unquestioned authorities are quotable on
all sides, and the figures they present have been
gathered with a view to the closest scrutiny.
Prof. Laughlin, of the University of Chicago,
whom I have heretofore quoted, writes in strong
corroboration of the proposition that, ‘Even
though wheat has fallen, it will bring as much as
and more than ever.' He says:
a
"A less number of bushels of wheat will buy
the agricultural implements of the farmer in 1889
than in 1873, because there has been such
marked reduction in the cost of manufacturing
these implements. Foreign competition reduces
the Liverpool price of wheat, but the implements
to be bought have fallen still more. This is so
important a point that it should be reiterated and
repeated, for it has been taken for granted that
the fall in price of wheat means an absolute loss
to the farmer, when, in fact, other things as well
have fallen, and in a greater proportion. Ex-
amine, then, the number of bushels of wheat
required to buy the following implements of gen-
eral use on a farm in 1873 and in 1889:
HONEST MONEY.
69
Bu. oats.
Bu. wheat.
Bu. corn.
Implements.
1873. 1889.
1873. 1889.
1873. 1889.
One-horse steel plow (wood
beam)....
6.4 3.8
19.1 8.5
27.0 11.5
One-horse iron plow (wood
beam)....
4.9
2.7
14.7
6.2
20.8
8.3
Two-horse side hill, or rever-
sible plow.
17.6
13.7
52.9
31.2
75.0
41.7
One potato-digger.
19.6
10.2
58.8 23.4
83.3
31.2
f
Old-fashioned tooth harrow.
14.7 8.9
44.1 20.3
62.5
27.0
One-horse cultivator....
6.8 4.7
20.5 10.9
29.1
14.5
One-horse mower..
83.3 61.6
250.0 140.6
354.1 187.5
Common iron garden rake
(10-tooth steel), doz……..
11.7 5.1
One-horse horse-power.
44.1 34.2
35.2 11.7
132.3 78.1
Binder....
277.7 184.9
769.2 421.8
50.0 15.6
187.5 104.1
857.1
562.5
Corn-sheller (1 hole)..
11.2
8.2
33.8 18.7
47.9 25.0
Common hoes (cast steel
socket),per doz…………
6.3
4.7
19.1 10.9
27.0
14.5
Common rakes (wood), per
doz....
2.9
2.4
8.8 6.2
12.5
8.3
Scythes (Ames' grass), per
doz...
15.7
10.2
47.0 23.4
66.6
31.2
Scythe snaths (patent), per
doz...
10.8
6.1
32.3 14.0
45.8
18.7
Shovels (Ames'), doz...
17.6
18.0
18.1 13.7
...569.4 389.1
52.9 29.6
54.4 31.2
1,645.1 886.7
75.0 39.5
27.0 46.6
2,018.2 1,187.7
Spades (Ames'), doz.
Total.....
"The figures indicate the number of bushels it
took in 1873 and 1889, respectively, to buy the
implement opposite to which they are placed.
For instance, while it required a farmer to sell
83.3 bushels of wheat in 1873 to buy a one-horse
mower, it required only 61.6 bushels in 1889.
That is, although wheat fell in price, mowers fell
still more, because of the cheapening in cost of
manufacture. Notice the final lesson as concerns
wheat alone, even though it has fallen in price
from 99.4 cents in 1873 to 69.8 cents in 1889. In
1873 all those seventeen kinds of implements
would require 569.4 bushels of wheat to buy them,
and after the crime of 1873' it took only 388.1
bushels to buy the same articles. If there were
any sense at all in this talk about "demonetization”
in 1873, we might beg for more of it for the
farmer.'
70
HONEST MONEY.
"But it is not wheat alone that the farmer raises.
There has actually been an increase in prices in
other products of the farm. Here is a little table

MINEY
B
TO LOAN
"Coin's" Idea of Increasing the National Debt. Business at the
Pawnbroker's.
showing average prices for ten years ago and for
the fourth week of April of the present year, and
lately printed and commented upon in the Chicago
Tribune:
HONEST MONEY.
71
Wheat
Corn
Oats
Flax-
Cattle.
Hogs
1885.
Now.
8334
$ 61
425%
48
28%
29
I 28
I 412
4/2
54
434
48
31/4
Sheep
3/2
"The average prices of 1873 in Chicago, as
expressed in currency of which it took $1.14 to
buy $1 in gold, were as follows: Wheat, $1.17%½;
corn, 37; oats, 2834; flax, $1.70; cattle, 5½; hogs,
42; sheep, 42. Corn is 30 per cent. higher,
while hogs and oats are higher, and cattle are
but cent lower. As measured on the gold
4
basis the prices of all the articles named averaged
lower in 1873 than now, except wheat, sheep, and
flax; and the latter was only about 5 per cent.
higher. But it is important to take into account
the fact that the cost of transportation from the
farm to Chicago in 1873 was nearly twice as great
as the present cost, since it is the price to the
producer that is made the basis of an alleged ar-
gument in favor of debasing the currency unit.
Without fear of successful contradiction it may
be affirmed that the prices of all farm products, at
the farm on which they are grown, average higher
now than they did for the whole of 1873.
"And Prof. Laughlin, in the same article above
referred to, says:
"When the comparison is made between im-
plements and corn or oats, the gain of the farmer
is something quite surprising since 1873. In 1873
a binder could be bought by no less than 769.2
bushels of corn, and in 1889 by only 421.8. The
difference is amazing. Corn has not fallen at all
72
HONEST MONEY.
in comparison with gold, but the articles bought
by the farmer have. All those implements re-
quired in 1873 no less than 1,645.4 bushels of
corn to buy them, while in 1889 they could be
bought by only 886.7, or about one-half. And
the same thing is true of oats in nearly the same
degree.
How, then, has the fall in silver injured the
farmer? The price of wheat has fallen indepen-
dently of the amount of money in use in this coun-
try, and the other products of the farm command
far more than in 1873.'
"The farmers can not be fooled by 'Coin's'
vagaries. Take some of the wheat states, for
instance. In the Minnesota Legislature, as polled
recently, nearly ten to one-Republicans and
Democrats alike-are opposed to free coinage.
Or take Minnesota in another way. Here is a
recent statement as to the condition of the farmers
in that state:
Total farm mortgage debt.
Increase for ten years.
Increase of value of farm machinery in the
same time.
Increase in live stock
Increase in land values.
Total increase in wealth
Increase in debt...
Net increase in wealth.
$ 39,000,000
4,000,000
$ 3,826,000
26,860,000
146,000,000
$176,686,000
4,000,000
$172,686,000
"The mortgage foreclosures in 1892 and 1893, as
compared with 1880 and 1881, show a decrease of
33.1 per cent. in number, 34.4 per cent in amount,
and 12.5 per cent. in acreage. Not a bad show-
ing.
HONEST MONEY.
73
"In Wisconsin, an agricultural state almost
entirely, there is a season of prosperity and a
rejoicing in it. Of thirty Democrats in the Wis-
consin Legislature but seven are affected by the
silver craze, and but nine Republicans out of
forty-five. The Germans of the United States,
who are so largely engaged in agricultural pursuits,
are almost unitedly in favor of sound money, just as
the American farmer will be found to be at elec-
tion time. The farmer realizes facts. Carriages
are now so cheap that the man who went to
church with his family in a springless road-wagon
twenty-five years ago can now afford to go in
something better. Yet, with his improved ap-
pliances, he can earn more in a day than he could
then; while the workman who helped make the
carriage can buy with his wages at least three
times as much as he could in 1873. The farmer
in the country and the workman in the city are
alike in better case. It is true that in some por-
tions of the West mistaken men, who bought land
unworthy of cultivation, may be now in a bad way.
Extended railroads have brought new and better
land into cultivation, and such owners cannot
compete with those possessing land more arable and
productive. There are a number of such farmers
in debt, and some of them may be ready to ac-
cept any wild theory as to means for getting out
of trouble. This farmer is unfortunate. He is
74
HONEST MONEY.
}
in the same category with the man who owns
stock in a railroad built when steel rails were
worth twice as much a ton as they are now, and
who must suffer the payment of interest on bonds.
issued then, in competition with a stockholder in
a railroad built recently and paying interest on
bonds of only half the amount. These are un-
fortunates; but neither 'Coin,' nor Schweinfurth,
nor the leader of the Dervishes in Egypt can aid
them by any scheme of legislation. They suffer
from the mistakes they have made. Their condi-
tion is to be regretted, but it has nothing to do
with the financial question.
"It is true that the farmer's wheat does not
bring him the price that it did twenty years ago.
It is true that in some parts of the country he is
in debt, and that, were the free silverites' idea car-
ried out, he could deprive whoever it may be that
he owes of a part of the money due. But the man
who loaned him the money gave him good
money, and has a right to a return upon what he
himself earned or gained in his early life. It is
possible, though rather uncertain in any particu-
lar case, that a farmer might for the moment be
benefited by some wildcat system of currency—
free silver or printed promises of worthless banks,
as the case may be. But what a price he would
pay for it!
"What is the condition of the farmer now? We
HONEST MONEY.
75
have had a panic, and are practically over with it,
and have entered upon another of those cycles of
business prosperity, with a possible subsequent
depression in years to come-what we hope we
may be intelligent enough to avoid-which have

ACERIL
CLEANINI
FRESH
@SOAPO
YEAST
BEST
LARO
"Coin's" Figures on the National Debt-Grocer's Bills of the
Week.
been a sequence in all commercial history. The
farmer has suffered with the rest; but that he has
suffered more than other people is not clearly ap-
parent, and that his prospects for the future are
bad does not appear. Under conditions just as
76
HONEST MONEY.
they exist now, and with a sound currency, the
outlook for the American farmer is something
most promising. He has the world for a market.
The marketable conditions are becoming easier
every day, and the United States is on good terms
with all the rest of the world. Furthermore, tak-
ing all relative conditions into consideration, his
personal profit in his particular line of
business is likely to be good-supposing always
that we engage in no silver craze. The farmer's
wheat may bring him less per bushel, but many
of his other crops will bring him as much as in
the past, while what he buys outside of what he
produces will, almost without exception, cost him
less than in the past. His salt, his sugar, and half
a thousand other things cost so much less nowa-
days that 60 cents a bushel for wheat-even taking
as a basis that one cereal, lessened in selling value
as indicated because of Russian and other foreign
competition and from other causes-will buy more.
of the outside necessaries of life than a bushel of
wheat would when he sold it at from 80 cents to
$1 a bushel. But very few of the things he pro-
duces have declined much in value. Other pro-
ducts of the farm remain very much as they were,
while what the farmer has to buy has under pres-
ent circumstances decreased enormously in cost.
This is no begging of the question. Every
thoughtful man who labors in the country to pro-
HONEST MONEY.
77
duce what the world needs, and who has read and
pondered, knows this to be a fact. The farmer is
all right if he will but aid the great country in
which he lives by sticking to a sound monetary
standard, and getting the benefit of a sensible and
honest system of monetary legislation.
"There is a great deal of foolish talk with regard
to the capitalist. The capitalist, so called, is no
different from the farmer or any other man who
has managed to get a little money ahead. Natu-
rally he wants to get an interest on that money,
and to invest it as well as he can; but it does not
follow that he is always otherwise than a straight-
forward, fair, and honest man in all he does. It
happens sometimes that, having succeeded in
business, he is anxious to 'help the other fellows
out,' and I want to tell you what an Iowa man-
and Iowa is almost a typical state in the matter of
the alleged oppression of these fellows who loan
money to other fellows to help them out--has to
say about one money-lender in particular. Here
is his talk to me. It was in my office, and I had
my stenographer take it down:
""From 1870 to 1880, Mr. Austin Corbin, then
living in Davenport, Iowa, aided the Iowa farmers
by granting them five-year loans. With great
wisdom and foresight he cut the ground from
under the 2 to 3 per cent. per month money-
sharks then abounding in my state. Money was
scarce and hard to get hold of in those days.
78
HONEST MONEY.
Many a man needing to buy barbed wire (it cost
about 10 cents a pound at that time) to fence in
a pasture, or to stock up with cows for the pur-
pose of going into the dairy business, would
voluntarily put up his farm as collateral security
with Mr. Corbin. The average rate of interest at
that time was 10 per cent., and the average loan
per quarter-section $1,000. The county-seat loan
agent would make a charge of 10 per cent. com-
mission, or 2 per cent. per year. In the end the
borrower would pay 12 per cent., and in doing
this would see a saving of from 12 to 24 per cent.
per annum.
"In this way a great part of the Middle West
was capitalized and aided marvelously by just
such men as the pioneer mortgage-banker herein
referred to. From the profitable intermediary
relation existing between the Western borrower
and the Eastern and foreign capitalists grew up
the big individual loan agencies under the aus-
pices of Lombard, Jarvis, et al. From the large
loan agencies the mortgage-loan agencies were
evolved. Concurrent with the inrush of people.
from the East into the West, and from Europe,
came the railroad-grant agent, who stimulated
settlement. From the rapid development of the
prairie lands came about the enormous increase
in the output of small grain. The inventor, dur-
ing this same period of Western development,
kept pushing improvements in the gang-plow, the
self-binder, and all the needed machinery-en-
abling one man to produce more from the fertile
soil in one day than was formerly done in the
same time by six men.
"The men who now single out one item as ex-
HONEST MONEY.
79
plaining the present depression and emphasizing
the financial crime of '73' fail to grasp the signifi-
cance of the financial situation, and what has
transpired in subsequent years.
"To-day, in that same Iowa field originally ex-
ploited by Mr. Corbin on a 12 per cent. basis, al-
most half of the farming population of the state
is out of debt. The other half, still owing money
to resident or non-resident capitalists, can obtain
their money at the rate of 6 per cent. per annum.
In buying farms the rate on unpaid balances of
purchase money is usually from 7 to 8 per cent.
From this simple statement is it not clear that the
Western farmers, so often used as a theme for dis-
cussion, are infinitely better off to-day than they
were twenty years ago? Is not the decline in
interest rates herein stated equal to the decline in ~
the price of wheat? If an Iowa farmer in the
early '70's got $1 per bushel for his wheat, and had
to pay $1.20 per year for the use of $1,000, is he
not as well off today, when he has to pay only
$60 for the use of the same amount lent? It
must be remembered that millions of acres of
Western lands, sold at a nominal price twenty
years ago, have passed into the hands of settlers
who are now out of debt. The thrifty, prosper-
ous, and hard-working people who earned their
farms and have paid off all their loans are wholly
ignored in the free silver arguments, and only
those pointed out who owe money to Eastern or
foreign mortgage-holders. Let us look at the de-
cline in railway-freight charges in twenty years.
How about the decline in the price of farm
machinery and all the things needed in the
home?'
80
HONEST MONEY.
"They are not all fools, these operators in favor
of the free coinage of all silver, and they know
the strength of the farmer. They know that, if
they can mislead the farmer, they will have be-
hind them a tremendous force. That to ignore

3 Birne
"Coin's" idea of increasing the National Debt.
facts, to overlook what is a duty to each indi-
vidual in the progressive, logical upbuilding of a
nation, and to mislead those unversed in financial
matters, is a crime, is nothing to these financial
adventurers. But the farmer is the United States.
HONEST MONEY.
81
There may be great centers and great cities; yet
around them, extending over prairie, and hill, and
valley, and woodland, lies the great, potent, final
force and arbiter of the destinies of the nation.
The best concensus of judgment regarding any
question affecting the welfare of the United
States comes ever from the ultimate expression
of the farmers of the country. They be mistaken
for the moment; they may be misguided for the
moment; but in the end, somehow, they have
managed, so far in the history of the country, to
reach a just conclusion. They are not repudi-
ators of debt; they are not unpatriotic; and,
above all, they are not fools. Given a little time
to think, and they will join in no such insane or
dishonest course of action as the free silverites
are advocating."
82
CHAPTER VII.
MEXICO, CHINA, JAPAN, AND SPARTA.
"One of the favorite arguments of the silver-
ites," said Huntley, "is, that a majority of the
population of the world uses silver alone as money,
and gets along very well. The inference is, that
they refer to China and Mexico, the South
American countries and India. Their assumption
is hardly correct, for gold is used to a limited
extent in India at least, and to some extent in
South America. But, allowing their claim to be
correct, it needs no argument to convince any-
body that the Chinese coolie, working for two
cents, or thereabout, a day, or the Mexican peon,
or the East Indian laborer, working for little more,
living and dying very much like the beast of the
fields, is not as well off as the average man of the
gold-using countries. However, just for the sake
of illustration, we will consider China and Mexico.
Here is the situation regarding them, and I
challenge you to find any fault in any statement
made.
"Suppose now we were to do what the free
silverites wish us to do-we might be in general
HONEST MONEY.
83
accord with the countries named, but we should be
aggressive toward most of the nations of the
world with whom our business is transacted.
That would be our situation. The argument of
the silver maniacs takes no cognizance of the fact
that Asia and Spanish America are not, in the way
of business, entitled to rank with even the minor
subdivisions of Europe, and therefore cannot bear
commercial comparison with such powers as Great
Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Austria, or with.
the splendid Dominion on our own continent,
lying to the north of us. Of course there is the
vainglorious idea, which sometimes takes with the
multitude, that the United States can rule the
world in all ways. But the idea is a false one,
either as to political, social, or other condions;
and Business is business.' And the mere
populousness of China, or South America, or
India counts as nothing. The extent of the
commercial wants of a people, and their measure
of capacity to meet the gratifying of those wants,
are the all-important factors from a business point.
of view.
"Let us take Mexico as a fair type of the politi-
cal segments of what we may call Spanish
America. It is the most extensive of them in
area, it has the greatest population, and is pos-
sessed of the richest natural resources; it is in
realized values superior to any of its co-nationali-
84
HONEST MONEY.
ties; and yet the Mexicans, as a race, endure what
we should call the very extreme of poverty. Of
course climatic conditions have much to do with
this, and all things arc relative. In some favored
island of the Pacific one may live upon bread-fruit
and cocoanuts and other natural products of the
soil, and do little or no labor at all, and have no
currency, and yet get along very well and happily,
after a fashion. But we of the Northern nations
must consider where we live, and conduct our-
selves accordingly. Cocoanuts are scarce in Min-
nesota, and the bread-fruit crop in Michigan was
last year an absolute failure. There weren't even
any bananas. But that is a half-digression. Mex-
ico is at least an active entity in the world, and,
with the right kind of financial legislation, should
have a splendid future; but it is on a silver basis,
and its entire trade, internal as well as foreign, is
naturally on the same plane of abasement as the
circulating medium by means of which its busi-
ness is done. A stream cannot rise above its
source; a chain cannot be stronger anywhere than
it is in its weakest link. The laws of nature and
of trade are practically invariable, and cannot be
disregarded without the inevitable penalty.
"It might be urged, by those who do not know
of Mexico and its steady progress, that the people
of that country are not, in some respects, up to
the level of the peoples of Europe and the United
HONEST MONEY.
85
States, and that their industrial subordination is
due, in part at least, to their social and educa-
tional inferiority. But such consideration can

The inevitable result of Silver Monometallism-a panic and
poverty.
carry little weight. While the Mexicans, as con-
ditions have been, may be deficient in point of
broad education, yet they are a sober, thrifty, and
86
HONEST MONEY.
fairly industrious sort of people, have a keen ap-
preciation of the advantages derivable from
wealth, and manifest no disposition to neglect an
opportunity to improve their circumstances. As
things are, though, these characteristics avail
them little in the attainment of national opu-
lence. Their currency, compared with that of
the greater portion of the civilized world, is on
about a 50 per cent basis. It has been made
evident, not by theory, but by practice, that a
50 per cent. currency makes a 50 per cent.
commerce, and subsequently, from conditions.
produced, not far from a 50 per cent. man. The
Mexican himself—that is, the individual Mexican
-must not be blamed for this. He has had but to
endure; but the time of growth toward better
financiering, toward a better national policy, will
come. Our friends of the great republic to
the South are intelligent and hopeful. They will
take care of themselves, and will yet have a
currency established on a basis in common with
that of the great countries of the world. Then
will a new era of prosperity for Mexico begin.
"A portion of the area of Mexico is crossed and
criss-crossed with veins of silver ore; and,
according to free silverite logic, those great stores
of argental metal should lift the country possess-
ing them to a commanding position in the field of
commerce, and thereby secure to it a vast
HONEST MONEY.
87
proportion of the wealth of this round world.
But somewhow the theory fails to coincide with
the stubborn fact. The very possession of such
a vast amount of silver has proved a detriment—
even a curse—to this young, hopeful nation. It
has been so almost since the discovery of America.
Silver caused the invasion of Mexico by the greedy
Spaniards. It caused the overthrow of the
empire of the Montezumas, and thousands of
Aztec lives were lost because of the avarice of
the Castilian conquerors. It caused, in its
consequences, the enslavement, and almost
universal degradation, of the native races of one
of the most beautiful earth-areas for man's
habitation. It caused deterioration among conquer-
ors as among the conquered; it excited their
cupidity, made mere brigands of them, and left a
great region for centuries undeveloped. But for
this silver, which tempted the robber free-lances,
Mexico might be today ranking in all great
respects with the remainder of the North American
continent. Of course this is not logic. It has no
direct bearing on the point at issue, but it is a
curious and interesting fact in this connection.
"Now, let us go to China. The free silverites
are frequent in their references to that now badly
battered empire, in illustration of how a country
may set up a cheap monetary standard for itself
and get along on its own account.
88
HONEST MONEY.
"China is larger by one-half than the United
States, and contains about six times as many in-
habitants. Its annalists differ somewhat in their
conclusions from our own, but they figure out a
trifle of two million years of history for China.
previous to the advent of Confucius. Possibly
we may not accept these figures, but China had a
very ancient history long before the United States
existed. Centuries ago its literati prepared an
encyclopedia of more than 22,000 volumes. Surely
a country so vast and queer as this must present
a curious study in industrial and monetary aspects.
Here is a land in which population absolutely
swarms—a land which teems with humankind as
the ant-hill teems with insects. If numbers be of
any value in determining how financial manage-
ment may affect the condition of a nation, China
should furnish an object-lesson surpassing any
other in existence--an object-lesson the deduction
from which should be unmistakable. Now, let us
consider just what this lesson is which is taught
by this vast empire of the East.
"With all its magnitude as regards size, popu-
lation, and period of existence, China has ever
remained a performer on the pettiest of scales in
the quality of its commercial transactions. Its
people starve by hundreds of thousands, but it has
reached the most sublimated height of the free
silverite conception of finance. Through uncount-
HONEST MONEY.
89
able ages-through its seemingly innumerable
dynasties, Chow, Tsin, Han, Suy, Tang, Sung,
Ming, and other triple and quadruple combina-
tions of alphabetical uncouthness-China did all
its internal business through the instrumentality
of one coin of base metal-'cash'—-of about the
value of one-tenth of an American cent. The
'outside barbarians' with whom China traded
would not furnish the transportation facilities
necessary for the utilization of this primitive
species of coin, and so silver was finally resorted
to as a substitute for use in such commerce as
might be allowed with the exterior world. That
was the only concession made. China got along
by itself, just as the free silverites said the United
States would get along, independently of the rest
of the world, if the metal loved were to be
adopted as the unit of value. And undoubtedly
we would get along alone, just as China has, iso-
lated behind a wall, with our starving millions-a
crumbling thing, to be knocked to pieces eventu-
ally, just as China has been shattered by the little,
iron-handed man of the world, Japan.
"It is true that Japan also has been a silver coun-
try for ages, since, commercially speaking, Japan
has been an appanage to whatever degree of Asi-
atic civilization might exist on the Pacific coast.
But it is equally true that Japan, while she has not
in a codified way changed her laws or made a def-
90
HONEST MONEY.
inite rule as to coinage for the future, has yet,
with a certain flexibility, met all currency contin-
gencies as they might arise, and practically
adapted herself to the ways of European nations
and the United States. Japan, with a silver cur-

Cheap mining in Mexico-Unlimited Silver.
rency nominally, has yet had a bimetallic cur-
rency in fact. The same marvelous prescience
which has somehow lifted this little nation from
nothing into one of the great powers of the world
has at the same time affected her monetary legis-
lation, at least her monetary action; and, whenever
HONEST MONEY.
91
the occasion has occurred, Japan has met all exi-
gencies by simply being adaptable, and doing
whatever in a monetary way was best for herself
and for those with whom she dealt. Financial
legislation ever follows the graver feats of nation-
ality. We won our war for independence, and
then we legislated as to money. Japan has shown.
her inherent power. She has sprung into rank
among the great nations. Now will follow some
very practical financial action; and it will be worth
while to observe what those wonderfully clever
people will do. It may be they will teach a les-
son to us all. This much we know, judging from
what they have done already: that they will at least
assimilate themselves in their monetary policy
with the leading civilized nations of the world.
The course pursued by China has been almost
fatal in its results. It has bound and smothered
the Chinese business world, as a boa-constrictor
crushes the goat it may have seized upon. Largely
paralyzed by the rigidity of the toils by which it
is encompassed, the business of China has re-
mained so dwarfed that its immense population
has sunk into a state of pauperism. Ninety per
cent., or more, of its over four hundred millions of
people are forced to eke out an existence on a
pittance of a few cents a day. Not only is it im-
possible for them to obtain food proper for their
sustenance, but they cannot get food of any kind.
92
HONEST MONEY.
in quantity sufficient for the due nourishment
of their physical organization. The ordinary
American tramp is a gourmand, a voluptuary, a
pampered being, compared with the thrifty work-
ingman of China. Penury in its direst shape is
the latter's constant companion from the cradle.
to the grave. Most of the human beings born in
China know of no such infantile luxury even as
the cradle, and must be content, when their
struggling life is ended, with the knowledge that
their remains will rest at the bottom of a shallow
trench, since better burial cannot be afforded
them.
"The land is rich in agricultural resources.
Dense as is the population, there is land enough
to supply its needs. Vast districts of the empire's
area are still uncultivated. But how can any
nation rise above penury which refuses to employ
the resources of enlightened utilitarianism, ad-
hering to financial methods which have for
centuries been outgrown by other countries?
"With senile tenacity the government has clung
to the copper and silver standards; and, so far in
its history, no outside influence has been sufficient
to make it retrace its steps from the pathway of
ruin in which it has walked from the time when
first the so-called kingdom of old Cathay became
known to European nations, or when Marco Polo
made his famous journeys. Devotion to ances-
HONEST MONEY.
93
tors is a leading feature of Chinese worship. It is
all-sufficient to the Celestial of today that his
fathers, and his grandfathers, and his for-
bears of the oldest known degree believed.
that a cheap currency was a satisfactory
basis for trade, whether internal or external.
What they did is all right in his sight, and he
has no desire to make a new departure. The idols
he worships--the josses niched in the holiest places
of his temples-are fit emblems of the business
status of the empire. They are made of card
board or soft wood, and covered with a cheap
imitation of a cheap metal-silver. There are
very similar joss-worshipers in the United States.
There is little that is valuable about these gods.
They are Cheap John gods, made of Cheap John
materials, for the adoration of a Cheap John
people.
"China, with her immense extent, her immense
population, her immense resources, could become
one of the richest and most powerful countries of
the world if she but chose to avail herself of the
proper channels of inter-communication-if she
would but place herself upon a money foundation
every constituent of which was equal in value to
the standard (of gold) which the great nations.
have accepted. The masses of the people might
thereby be elevated physically, mentally, and
morally; and China become a 'Flowery Kingdom'
94
HONEST MONEY.
in a broader sense than that of a mere geographi-
cal appellation. But, so long as the great nation.
clings with mulish obstinacy to a depraved cur-
rency, to its 'cash' of copper and its dollars of
comparatively worthless silver, it must remain
where it now is, a pitiable object--a mass of hun-
dreds of millions suffering because those who
have been and who are in power hold the same
views as the free silverites of the United States.
"Mexico and China are wonderful object-les-
sons. They are the two most prominent free
silver countries of the world. Who is there so
void of comprehension that the lessons cannot.
reach him?
"But let me present still another object-lesson.
About 900 years before Christ, a strong man
named Lycurgus, one of the royal family of
Sparta, established a new and novel constitution
for the government of that little Grecian king-
dom. He must have been a man of most astonish-
ing force, for he made departures in his style of
reasoning that were unknown up to his time. He
realized, even in that age of the world, the dan-
gers that beset a commonwealth when fortune
accumulates in the hands of a very few. He was
anxious to protect his people from such risk, and
sought to devise a plan by which they might, as
far as possible, live within themselves, indepen-
dent of the outside world. He compelled the
HONEST MONEY.
95
adoption of laws for the purpose of carrying out
his objects; and among these was one prohibiting
the use of either gold or silver as money, and al-
lowing only money made of iron.
"The Lacedæmonians were vigorous-they were
a wonderful people-but they could not force.
their iron currency into circulation abroad. After

The Peon and his condition-Mexico, a Free Silver Country.
the end for which Lycurgus worked-that is, the
demonetization act, 'the crime of' 880 B. C.-
went into effect, trouble came gradually, but
inevitably. Unable to buy anything of other
peoples in consequence of the worthless character
of Spartan money, and therefore equally unable to
96
HONEST MONEY.
sell anything to other peoples, the countrymen of
Lycurgus found that, with that which he and
they thought was wisdom, they had built around
themselves a wall which cut off the breath of com-
mercial life-a wall more absolute in its effects
than that other material wall built 600 years after-
wards by Che Hwang-te for the protection of the
northern frontier of his vast Mongolian empire.
"Wealth was debarred from Sparta, and of
course the evils that come with wealth did not
exercise their influence there; but the drastic
legislation of Lycurgus had to blossom as a flower
does and bear its proper fruit. The blossom was
very pretty-Sparta became a power-but the
fruit lacked all nourishment, and was fatal to the
little kingdom Shut off by their own financial
action from all the world outside their own slight
boundaries, the Spartans were thrown back en-
tirely upon themselves, and the consequence was
a sort of constriction, mentally and morally
and in other ways. There came a dry rot, with its
inevitable result.
"All the rest of Greece advanced most rapidly
in the fields of literature, art, science, and
philosophy; but Sparta remained in a condition
of intellectual stagnation. While Athens and
other Hellenic states were filling the whole world
with the fame of their poets and their thinkers,
their dramatists, their orators, their historians,
HONEST MONEY.
97
sculptors, painters, statesmen, and sages, Sparta
continued to produce nothing but mere brawny
fighting men-thoroughly brave and unintellectual
animals. The Spartans knew how to fight and
how to die, but they did not know how to live.
They were an absolute failure as compared with

A Free Silver Country-Laborers working for 2 cents a day in
the rice-fields.
their brethren; and the failure, as all the thinking
world admits, was largely due to the status of
their currency. They held, as our free silverites
do today, to the paradoxical dogma: the cheaper
the constitution of the currency, the greater its
intrinsic value.
98
HONEST MONEY,
"The dogma which has been alluded to did not
work well some 900 years before the lowly
Nazarene walked beneath the palms of Palestine,
and it works no better today. The laws of trade
are invariable, and it is a sort of idiocy, which can
result in action only from the more or less un-
intelligent, to repeat the errors-especially the
financial errors—of their semi-civilized or barba-
rous ancestors, with the wild expectation that
measures which failed miserably in the past may
be successful in the present.
"Sparta and America are separated by thousands
of miles and by some 2,800 years of life in this
little world of ours. Between Lycurgus and
Peffer is a vast distance, but the same grim rules
prevail. The laws of finance are the same now
as then, and here as there. There can be no
progression of a nation the life-blood of whose
commerce is subjected to the absurd pressure of
financial torturers.
CHAPTER VIII.
99
SOME SILVERITE ABSURDITIES.
"One of the most remarkable things about this
book," said Huntley, as the two men leaned
back smoking comfortably, "is either the audacity
or thoughtlessness of your writer in assuming a
lack of ordinary intelligence in the reader. His
misstatements, he imagines, they will not perceive.
His insults, he imagines, they will overlook. His
tricks, false premises, false deductions, he seems
to think, will pass unnoticed. I will take the
book now and call your attention to some of its
aggressive absurdities, and you will not mind, I
know, if we expend a little further time in dis-
secting the flabby thing."
"Of course I won't," said Simpson. "I want to
compass the thing thoroughly."
"We will begin," said Huntley, "with consider-
ing an illustration which appears on the back of
the cover. There appears a picture labeled 'The
Average Business Man,' with the interior of his
brain exposed, and represented as being full of
wheels. Of course this is in utilization of the
ordinary slang expression, 'He has a wheel in his
$
Dor M
IOO
HONEST MONEY.
head,'-meaning that the person thus referred to
is a fool, or at least with a mental tendency in
that direction. To the back of the head so illus-
trated extends a string pulled by a hand labeled
'Banker.' The whole implication is, that the ordi-
nary business man lacks intelligence, and is but a
puppet in the banker's hands. That is to say,
that the merchant, the manufacturer and lawyer,
the insurance man, the farmer, and every other
man who does business of any sort, is less intelli-
gent than the banker. It is an insult to the com-
munity-a cheap device to produce a very cheap
impression.
"An assault upon bankers as a class is as absurd
as an attack upon any other class of business men.
Edward Atkinson [and Huntley produced a
newspaper-clipping from his vest-pocket] has
described most accurately the sort of people who
make bugbears of any one group of business men.
He says: 'There are two kinds of fools in this
world: one consists of the natural fools, and to
describe the other a swear-word is necessary.
That swear-word is well applied when the silver
cranks begin to talk about banks and bankers.
owning all the gold, and trying to oppress the
community by forcing the use of gold money or
its equivalent. Money made of gold requires no
force. Everybody that can get it wants it. It is
only cheap silver dollars that require force to
HONEST MONEY.
ΙΟΙ
make a man take 'em. The class of condemned
fools of the silver-crank type try to make the
natural fools believe that banks and bankers con-
spire against them. Banks and bankers own and
keep no more gold than is necessary to enable
them to pay their debts. If there is one standard
by which to judge of the relative ignorance or in-
telligence of a community, it is their intelligent
support and use of banks or their ignorant
opposition to them. The bank is the next friend
to the farmer, the mechanic, and the tradesman,
if it is rightly organized and safely conducted.'
Let us take another illustration in the
book under discussion. Opposite page 42 of
this jumble is a picture representing a speaker
telling his audience that a bushel of wheat
will buy as much as it ever did. Among his
audience is a farmer listening most intently.
After the speech the farmer is represented as
going to pay his taxes, and finding them the same.
as in 1873. He meets the County Judge, and
upon inquiry finds that the Judge's salary is the
same as in 1873. He rides on a street-car, and
finds the fare the same as in 1873; and in a
Pullman car, with the same result. He stops at
a first-class hotel, with a similar experience. He
sends a dispatch by telegraph, and pays the same
price as in 1873. He gets a shave, and pays the
barber the same price as in 1873. He buys tea
102
HONEST MONEY.
and coffee, and pays the same as in 1873. He
gets a note discounted at the bank, and finds no
change in rates of discount. He is finally rep-
resented as making a personal assault upon the
man who said that a bushel of wheat would buy
as much as it ever did.
"A more striking illustration of argument made
up of part falsehood, part evasion, and part
assumption, it would be difficult to find. Let us
take the thing in order. Taxes are utilized in
paying wages and salaries, and wages have not
declined, neither have taxes declined to any great
extent. Street-car service represents labor, and
also vastly improved accommodations for the
public. First-class hotels have vastly increased
their accommodations for the public, and it is not.
a fact that their prices for the same service are
as in 1873. A hotel of the sort the farmer visited
in 1873 would now charge him about half what he
paid then. Telegraph toll, except for short
distances, is vastly decreased since 1873. The
barber gets as much as he did in 1873; wages have
not fallen. Tea and coffee, coming from abroad,
have not, it is true, declined in value, as have some
other food products: their production has not been
made easier by our labor-saving machinery. You
observe that this tricky and falsifying 'Coin' said
nothing of salt or sugar, nor of half a hundred other
articles which might have been quoted. As for the
HONEST MONEY.
103
discount at the bank, the statement is utterly reck-
less. Rates of interest, as every intelligent man
knows, are not what they were in 1873. Loans
can be made at 5 per cent. on good security

*
BYG INJUN ME!
That was impossible at the earlier date. The only
fair statement in the whole business is as to the
fare on Pullman cars. That is a monopoly; and
104
HONEST MONEY.
the whole country will agree with 'Coin,' or any-
body else who asserts that it is an onerous one.
But, take the picture as a whole, how evasive its
intention, and, above all, how preposterous its
deduction in connection with what 'Coin' has
been trying to prove in the rest of the book. His
howl from cover to cover is, that prices have gone
down since the demonetization of silver; and yet
this preposterous picture, if it means anything,
means that they have remained the same. But
we don't expect reason from ‘Coin.'
"I agree with you now," said Simpson.
"Another illustration is a representation of an
elongated piebald cow, with her fore feet astride
the Mississippi River and her hind feet on the At-
lantic coast. She is being fed by the South and
West, while New England and New York are
represented as milking her of dollars. There is
no particular aim or object to this picture, save to
stir up animosity between different sections of
the country; but that is a trifling thing to him, or
the silver-mine owners behind him, if they can but
sell half a dollar's worth of bullion for about a
dollar. Let us now consider a few of his bald
lies," continued the speaker. The law of 1792,'
quotes 'Coin,' 'says, "A ten dollar gold piece shall
be the value of ten silver dollars." Now, as a
matter of fact, the law of 1792 really says, ‘each
to be of the value of ten dollars, or units.' It will
HONEST MONEY.
105
be observed that the law makes no mention of sil-
ver in this connection; but the interpolation of a
single word in a national statute is no task at all
for such a writer as this. He wouldn't hesitate to
fabricate an entire volume of statutes to assist in
his contention. A little thing like forgery is a
trifle. Here is another quotation from 'Coin.'
He says that, 'If at any time their combined quan-
tity [that of gold and silver] should become too
small, then some other metal would have to be
adopted and added to these two. The law of un-
limited demand by free coinage would tie a third
metal to these two, and thus increase the quantity,
if at any time it became necessary.' There is
richness of reasoning for you. Why not tie on
a fourth, a fifth, a sixth. Why not utilize the en-
tire resources of the mineral kingdom. And, if
the resources of the mineral kingdom failed, an
unlimited supply of brass could be quarried from
the inner consciousness of 'Coin' and his as-
sociates.
"Here is another quotation from 'Coin': 'You
do not enrich the people of the silver states one
cent by the remonetization of silver, except in
common with the state of Illinois and the whole
United States.' This is another of the falsehoods-
one so apparent that it is a wonder it was ever
ventured upon. Why are the people of the silver
states-who are largely dependent for subsistence
106
HONEST MONEY.
on the silver-mining industry-so extravagantly
enthusiastic for the wildest inflation of their prin-
cipal local product? Why are they laboring with
might and main to secure a duplication of the
South Sea bubble? Why, they are merely look-
ing out for Number One, Simpson? You can see
that readily enough."
And Simpson again assented.
"In 'Coin's Financial School," continued Hunt-
ley,"it is asserted with easy abandon that. The total
debts in the United States, national, municipal,
state, county, corporate, and private, is [sic] now
estimated to be about 40,000 millions of dollars.'
"Coin' then proceeds with customary glibness
to itemize this aggregate of the total debts. The
extraordinary book gives some $19,000,000,000
as 'figures on which something definite has been
obtained;' and to this it adds amounts summing
up $21,000,000,000-the estimates being based on
nothing or less than nothing. It is humbug of
the most transparent kind.
"To start with, it assumes a certain ratio of
increase of the first named class of debts since
the dates of the statistics on which its figures are
founded-such dates ranging from two to four
years ago and, with an assurance which is
simply indescribable, it makes the increase with-
in that short period of time from 40 per cent. to
50 per cent. of the entire original amount.
HONEST MONEY.
107
Eight thousand million dollars is thus piled upon
the 19,000,000,000 of vaguely 'definite' foundation.
This rate of increase equals in magnitude the rate
of interest imposed by the gentlemen who lend
money on 'personal collaterals'-the thrifty trades-
men whose business is indicated by the protrusion
into the public eye of a symmetrical triplet of
golden globes.
"One thousand million dollars is then added for
'mortgage debts on homes not occupied by owner.'
This sum is 'estimated.' The estimate might just
as well have put the total of such mortgage debts
at ten times the figures so modestly assumed.
No one has any positive knowledge on this sub-
ject; and, when the silverite statistician gets
among the thousands of millions, a few ciphers.
more or less don't worry him a particle. What
are a few billions to him when contemplating the
illimitable field of arithmetic possibilities?
"Overdue accounts due merchants' are
'estimated' at $5,000,000,000. If the merchants
of the United States are staggering under such a
load as this of past-due credits, it is little wonder
that a considerable percentage of our too trust-
ful traders passes yearly through the process of
liquidation. Five thousand million dollars is a
large sum to anybody but a free silverite. It is
nearly $100 for every man, woman, and child in
the American Union.
108
HONEST MONEY.

HEAVEN
100 PËRCËNT
PER CENT
50
SEARTH
100 PERCENT
Silver at 50 per cent. hanging. like Mahomet's coffin, between
Heaven and Earth,
HONEST MONEY.
109
"Then 'debts due pawnbrokers' are 'estimated'
at $1,000,000,000. How this estimate was arrived
at is a mystery of the densest kind. Did the
silverites pick up the information clandestinely
while visiting their 'uncles' with cunning
propositions to borrow 100 cents on the pledge of
a 50-cent dollar? All that is safe to say is, that
the visitors are not likely to have secured any
heavy loans on such an unsatisfactory class of
collaterals.
"To make up the grand total, $6,000,000,000 Is
"estimated' for 'private debts due from individuals
to individuals, and of which there is no public
record or other data;' maritime debts;' and 'over-
drafts, taxes and miscellaneous items of indebted-
ness not covered in any of the foregoing.' Here
is certainly one of the jewels of this astonishing
book! Think of placing 'private debts from
individuals to individuals' in a category of
national indebtedness. Tom borrows $5 from
Dick on Monday, paying it back on Tuesday.
Dick borrows $5 of Tom on Wednesday, and
settles with him on Thursday. Neither Tom nor
Dick owes a cent on Friday, and yet our silverite
statistician calmly adds $10 to his aggregate of
American indebtedness!
"The housewife settles her account at the gro-
cer's every week or every month, and then goes
forward with a perfectly balanced pass-book..
IIO
HONEST MONEY.
There are several millions of housewives in the
United States, and their weekly grocers' bills
must make an aggregate running well up into
seven figures in its expression. But the principle
upon which the few days' credit allowed on pur-
chases of coffee, tea, sugar, butter, lard, cheese,
potatoes, onions, squashes, and soap is made to
swell the volume of national indebtedness, is ut-
terly inexplicable to anybody whose intellect is
in a normal condition.
"It is reasonable to assume that the silverites
themselves,unless they be sheer lunatics, as people
became in the time of the Tulip craze, do not re-
pose faith in such figures as 'Coin' presents. They
must quote them simply with the idea, as ex-
pressed in an old political byword, that they may
prove ‘a good enough Morgan till after election..
"Such figures as 'Coin' presents are not statis-
tics; they are assumptions and absurdities--an
insult to the intelligence of its readers.
CHAPTER IX.
III
HOW NEW CITIZENS ARE AFFECTED.
"Here," said Huntley, "I want to make a de-
parture, and to bring up a question which I have
never seen considered in print, at least not until
yesterday, yet a point which has a bearing of the
utmost importance in all the relations between
men which may come as a sequence to the present
monetary controversy. The Times-Herald, one of
the great Chicago newspapers, had upon its front
page an illustration which appealed to me most
forcibly. The illustration, as I understand, was
the result of a suggestion from Mr. J. J. P. Odell,
one of the leading financiers, and one of the most
thoughtful men in reasoning for the general good,
of the great central city of the United States. It
was but the picture of a sturdy workingman send-
ing over seas $100 in silver to assist his aged
parents in paying their rent in the old country.
He passes over $100, as the silverites propose to
establish values here. The illustration shows the
landlord of this aged couple receiving $100, and
allowing $50 for it. This is but a newspaper
illustration, but it represents an absolute fact, and
II2
HONEST MONEY.
I have thought much since looking at it. What
could the landlord do, save to give only $50 for
the $100, were 'Coin's' monetary ideas adopted.
And what can the father, or mother, or sisters, or
brothers, or any other relations of any sturdy
naturalized American representative of any family
do but to accept trade conditions, and, when they
pay their landlord or any other creditor, accept
the half value which the free silverites would
force upon us were we to adopt the Chinese
idea and array ourselves financially against all
other nations of the world?
}
This is not a trifling thing for consideration in
connection with settlement of the monetary
problem now before us. This is comparatively a
new country. Its population is made up of many
races and let us thank God for it-largely of
strong ones, of the great sca-roving and man-
conquering type. The country is not so densely
populated that the tide of immigration is at an
end. These sturdy sons and daughters of Great
Britain and Germany, Norway and Sweden, and
other fringing countries of the European conti-
nent drift over here and blend with us because
they are like a part of us-because all of us who
are here are only their brothers, who came over a
little sooner. Naturally, they want to bring over
to unite with them those who are closest and dear-
est to them; they want to get the family all
HONEST MONEY.
113
together. We-and by we is meant those who
are already established here and have been here
for some little time--want them to come to us,
and be with us here, and have with them all those
of their families whom they wish to come and
who desire to come.

Immigrants left behind-Fare sent to them by relations in the
United States not sufficient-worth only 50 per cent.
"But how can these later splendid occupants of
the United States-all helping us, and working
with us, and making of this vast continent a greater
114
HONEST MONEY.
theater of progress do all they would if the free
silverite idea is carried out, when such bar to
intercommunication is raised as to make $1's
worth or effort on one side equal to only 50 cents'
worth of purchase on the other? How can the
poor old father and mother, the sister, or brother,
or cousin, working for slight wages, abroad be
enabled to leave their scene of struggle and come
to join their relations here in an effort for more
definite and far greater returns, when the money
sent them costing $1 of labor in this country, is
but 50 cents in the European home, decreasing
in value mile by mile as it crosses the Atlantic?
"There is a vast contingent, made up of good
men and women, who, with the tide of prosperity
now coming to the United States-coming inevit-
ably despite the croakings of the free silverites-
whose movement hitherward is something with-
out question to be desired, and to be assisted.
The time may come—and I have no doubt it is
very near-when we will have secured about our
proper amalgamation, and when immigration must
be limited-limited sharply and most firmly. But,
by a common concensus of American opinion,
that time is not yet reached, and we must help
these blessed fathers and mothers, and brothers
and sisters, and cousins and aunts, of these neigh-
bors and friends, and helpers of ours to come
over here and work with them and with us in build-
HONEST MONEY.
115
ing up what remains to be built of this vast nation-
ality upon the continent of North America. The
course of the free silverites is such as to absolutely
deter such consummation. If an Englishman, or
a Norwegian, or a Swede, or an Irishman, or an
Italian, after earning a dollar here, can only get
50 cents for it when he sends it across the water to
his relations in the country from which he came,
then he, or they, must suffer; and this condition
of things would be the inevitable result of free
silver in the United States. There is not an
intelligent, or semi-intelligent, free silverite in
the country who could deny this proposition.
There is not a man or woman in the United States
who hopes eventually to bring over some relation
or friend of his or hers who can afford to be in
favor of free silver. To be in favor of free silver
for him or for her, is to advocate its costing twice
as much to assist any one in the old country, or
to bring any one from any of the old countries to
this new home. This is a fact apparent upon its
face. This is something for every new citizen to
consider.
"But," continued Huntley, "we cannot expect
the free silverites to consider the good of the
community or of the world.
I have already
spoken of the quality of their arguments. I
will digress a moment to quote two examples:
The present great depression in the price of
116
HONEST MONEY.
wheat is asserted by the free silverites to be the
result of the demonetization of silver by the act
of 1873. They take an effect, and simply fabri-
cate a cause for it. In 1836-'7 wheat was so high
in this country that flour was imported from
abroad at a cost of $12 a barrel in gold. But
only a few years afterwards, in the early 40's,
wheat was sold in Ohio at 25 cents a bushel, and
flour in Cincinnati brought but $2.25 a barrel.
This was a remarkable change indeed; and yet
'the crime of 1873' had not then been perpetrated.
The free silverites claim that the fall in the
price of silver is due solely to the demonetiza-
tion of that metal. The real cause of the fall is
the fact that, in the United States as elsewhere
throughout the world, the production of silver
has of late years increased largely in excess of
the production of gold. In 1873 the world pro-
duced 4,650,000 ounces of gold and 63,267,000
ounces of silver. The same year the United
States produced 1,741,500 ounces of gold and
27,651,000 ounces of silver. In 1891 the world
produced 6,010,000 ounces of gold-an increase
of about 30 per cent. over 1873, and 140,865,000
ounces of silver-an increase of over 100 per
cent. In 1891 the United States produced
1,604,840 ounces of gold-a decrease as com-
pared with 1873, and 58,330,000 ounces of silver-
an increase of over 100 per cent.
HONEST MONEY.
117
From 1890 to 1892 the production of gold and
silver showed a percentage of 5.9 of the former
to 94.1 of the latter. For 400 years ending with
1892 the proportion was 5 of gold to 95 of silver,
or I to 19. Demonetization is a wretchedly poor
skulking-horse.
"It looks that way," said Simpson.
118
CHAPTER X.
THE OPINIONS OF FAMOUS MEN.
"What we have said," continued Huntley, "has
given us each an idea of what the other thinks,
and, as you say, and as I know, your own conclu-
sions have been modified by the facts I have for-
tunately had in my possession and which I have
presented to you. But men of greater prominence
than we, men whose reputation is national, and
whose good judgment is undoubted, have given
the monetary problem most careful consideration.
I want to quote to you some of the opinions of
those admittedly among the greatest men in the
country. First, I will quote the views of the
Chief Magistrate of the nation.
PRESIDENT CLEVELAND.
"It so happened that recently a letter was
addressed to Grover Cleveland, the Democratic
President of the United States, by a committee
representing a great club here, asking him to be
present at a meeting of the club and to say some-
thing concerning honest money. It chanced that
the Chief Magistrate of this nation could not
accept the invitation, but he made a hearty and
carnest response to it, as follows:
HONEST MONEY.
119
'

The Western Hemisphere's deposit of Silver-a metal
becoming cheaper every day.
120
HONEST MONEY.
"EXECUTIVE MANSION,
Washington, April 13.
"To Messrs. William T. Baker, George W.
Smith, John A. Roche, T. W. Harvey, David Kel-
ley and Henry S. Robbins-Gentlemen: I am much.
gratified by the exceedingly kind and compli-
mentary invitation you have tendered me on
behalf of many citizens of Chicago to be their
guest at a gathering in the interest of sound
money and wholesome financial doctrine. My
attachment to this cause is so great, and I know
so well the hospitality and kindness of the people
of Chicago, that my personal inclination is
strongly in favor of accepting your flattering
invitation; but my judgment and my estimate of
the proprieties of my official place pledge me to
forego the enjoyment of participating in the
occasion you contemplate.
"I hope, however, the event will mark the
beginning of an earnest and aggressive effort to
disseminate among the people safe and prudent
financial ideas. Nothing more important can
engage the attention of patriotic citizens, be-
cause nothing is so vital to the welfare of our
fellow-countrymen, and to the strength, pros-
perity, aud honor of our nation. The situation
confronting us demands that those who appreci-
ate the importance of this subject, and those who
ought to be the first to see impending danger,
should no longer remain indifferent or
confident.
over-
"If the sound money sentiment abroad in the
land is to save us from mischief and disaster it
must be crystallized, and combined, and made
HONEST MONEY.
121
immediately active. It is dangerous to overlook
the fact that a vast number of our people, with
scant opportunity thus far to examine the ques-
tion in all its aspects, have nevertheless been
ingeniously pressed with specious suggestions,
which in this time of misfortune and depression
find willing listeners, prepared to give credence
to any scheme which is plausibly presented as a
remedy for their unfortunate condition.
"What is now needed more than anything
else is a plain and simple presentation of the
argument in favor of sound money. In other
words, it is a time for the American people to
reason together as members of a great nation
which can promise them a continuance of protec-
tion and safety only so long as its solvency is un-
suspected, its honor unsullied, and the soundness
of its money unquestioned. These things are ill
exchanged for the illusions of a debased cur-
rency, and groundless hope of advantages to be
gained by a disregard of our financial credit and
commercial standing among the nations of the
world.
"If our people were isolated from all others,
and if the question of our currency could be
treated without regard to our relations to other
countries, its character would be a matter of com-
paratively little importance. If the American
people were only concerned in the maintenance
of their precious life among themselves they
might return to the old days of barter, and in this
primitive manner acquire from each other the
materials to supply the wants of their existence.
But if American civilization were satisfied with
122
HONEST MONEY.
this it would abjectly fail in its high and noble
mission.
'In these restless days the farmer is tempted
by the assurance that, though our currency may
be debased, redundant, and uncertain, such a
situation will improve the price of his products.
Let us remind him that he must buy as well as
sell; that his dreams of plenty are shaded by the
certainty that, if the price of the things he has to
sell is nominally enhanced, the cost of the things
he must buy will not remain stationary; that the
best prices which cheap money proclaims are un-
substantial and elusive; and that, even if they were
real and palpable, he must necessarily be left far
behind in the race for their enjoyment.
"It ought not to be difficult to convince the
wage-earner that, if there were benefits arising
from a degenerated currency, they would reach
him least of all and last of all. In an unhealthy
stimulation of prices an increased cost of all the
needs of his home must surely be his portion,
while he is at the same time vexed with vanishing
visions of increased wages and an easier lot.
pages of history and experience are full of this
lesson.
The
"An insidious attempt is made to create a
prejudice against the advocates of a safe and
sound currency by the insinuation, more or less
directly made, that they belong to financial and
business classes, and are therefore not only out of
sympathy with the common people of the land,
but for selfish and wicked purposes are willing to
sacrifice the interests of those outside their
circle.
HONEST MONEY.
123
"I believe that capital and wealth, through
combination and other means, sometimes gain an
undue advantage; and it must be conceded that
the maintenance of a sound currency may, in a
sense, be invested with a greater or less impor-
tance to individuals according to their condition
and circumstances. It is, however, only a
difference in degree, since it is utterly impossible
that any one in our broad land, rich or poor,
whatever may be his occupation, and whether
dwelling in a center of finance and commerce or
in a remote corner of our domain, can be really
benefited by a financial scheme not alike benefi-
cial to all our people, or that any one should be
excluded from a common and universal interest
in the safe character and stable value of the cur-
rency of the country.
"In our relation to this question we are all in
business, for we all buy and sell; so we all have to
do with financial operations, for we all earn money
and spend it. We can not escape our interde-
pendence. Merchants and dealers are in every
neighborhood, and each has its shops and manu-
factories. Wherever the wants of man exist,
business and finance in some degree are found,
related in one direction to those whose wants they
supply, and in another to the more extensive busi-
ness and finance to which they are tributary. A
fluctuation in prices at the seaboard is known the
same day or hour in the remotest hamlet. The
discredit or depreciation in financial centers of
any form of money in the hands of the people is
a signal of immediate loss everywhere.
"If reckless discontent and wild experiment
124
HONEST MONEY,

Satan rebuking Sin-The repudiating Silver Monometallist
says robbery is wrong.
HONEST MONEY.
125
C
should sweep our currency from its safe support,
the most defenseless of all who suffer in that
time of distress and national discredit will be the
poor, as they reckon the loss in their scanty sup-
port, and the laborer and workingman, as he sees
the money he has received for his toil shrink and
shrivel in his hand when he tenders it for the
necessaries to supply his humble home. Dis-
guise it as we may, the line of battle is drawn be-
tween the forces of safe currency and those of
silver monometallism. I will not believe that, if
our people are afforded an intelligent opportunity
for sober second thought, they will sanction
schemes that, however cloaked, mean disaster
and confusion, nor that they will consent, by un-
dermining the foundation of a safe currency, to
endanger the beneficent character and purposes
of their government. Yours very truly,
"GROVER CLEVELAND.'
"That is what is thought by the man now Presi-
dent of the United States-one whose views are
known to be at least honest, and so recognized
even by his political opponents, whatever they
may think of his policy in any given direction.
EX-PRESIDENT HARRISON.
"Let us turn now to the other side. The
ex-President of the United States, Benjamin Har-
rison, the man who preceded Mr. Cleveland in the
Presidential chair, may be fairly accepted as a
type of the thoughtful Republican, just as Presi-
dent Cleveland is of the thoughtful Democrat.
Ex-President Harrison has not spoken extensively
126
HONEST MONEY.
upon the pending monetary issue, but he has not
endeavored at any time to conceal his views up on
the subject. It is said that he intends at no remote
date to express himself at length. He has already
bluntly and plainly indicated the attitude which
he thinks should be that of every good American
citizen at the present time. Here is an extract
from a speech delivered by him at La Junta, Colo.,
last year and understand that, when he talked, he
was speaking in a silver state to a silver audience-
in which he came out openly in opposition to silver
monometallism, and to the idea that this country
alone could range itself against all the nations of
the world and force a monetary unit, giving a
high fixed value to a metal acknowledgly debased
because of vast existing deposits and of improved
methods of production. This is what he said:
"Now I say to you today what I said when I was
President, and what I have always believed, that
a larger use of silver for money, and free coinage
of silver upon a basis to be agreed upon that
would maintain its parity with gold, was good for
the whole world. I do not believe that we could
run free coinage ourselves when the European
governments were pursuing the policy they have
been pursuing with silver. But, my fellow-citizens,
there are clear indications now in England and
in Germany that they are feeling the effects of a
scarcity of gold and its prostrating effects upon
the industries.'
HONEST MONEY.
127
HON. J. STERLING MORTON.
"Now, we will turn to another type of man.
We will take a member of the Cabinet of the
President of the United States. Let us see what
the Hon. J. Sterling Morton, Secretary of Agri-
culture, has to say upon this subject. He has
lately written a letter, and a very pungent one it
is. Secretary Morton comes from the Prairie
West-the sort of region where the silverites
often attain their wildest degree of lunacy—and
certainly he, if any one, should know something
of the causes and effects which are exploited by
the free silver advocates. Let me read to you
“You assume certain propositions to be true
of silver, which are not historically true at all,
but quite the reverse of true. You say, for
instance, "Until 1873 the chief use of silver was
for coinage. It had other uses, but the demand.
for it for coinage purposes was steady and con-
stant." On this point you have been monstrously
misinformed. The first federal coins of silver
were minted in 1794 and of gold in 1795. Their
ratio to gold, as recommended by Secretary
Alexander Hamilton and fixed by act of Con-
gress, was 15 to 1. It was hoped thus to keep
the two metals in equilibrio in the coinage. But
they would not even come into equilibrio in that
ratio; still less would they stay there.
"What was the matter with those silver dollars?
Nothing-only they were too valuable. The coin-
age of silver dollars, authoritatively suspended at
the American mint in 1805, was not resumed there
128
HONEST MONEY.
for thirty years. In these few facts, which are
official and unquestionable, behold the beauties
and advantages of a double standard of two yard-
sticks of different lengths to measure cloth by in
the same market.
"In the second place, Mr. Cherry, as an instance
of an historical assumption contrary to facts and
natural inference, allow me respectfully to call
your attention to the use, in common with many
of the bimetallists so called, of the date 1873 as
the time of the "demonetization of silver." Unless
I am mistaken, the silver dollar is not mentioned
at all, one way or the other, in the act of 1873.
All the demonetization of silver, as I understand
it, that ever came about in this country, happened
in the law of 1853.
"You ask, "What creates demand when Con-
gress, after open and full discussion, and practi-
cally with unanimity, introduced the subsidiary
silver coinage, of which a nominal dollar's worth
weighed 6.91 per cent. less than the silver dollar,
and also took away the legal-tender quality of all
silver in payment of debts of over $5 in amount;
and answer, "use." I ask, in my turn, "What cre-
ates use?"and answer, "demand." "Why is it there
is so little "use" of silver 'dollars in this country
today, while there are millions upon millions of
them lying idle? I answer, confidently, because
there is no adequate "demand" for them. Have
you not innocently, but badly, mixed up cause.
and effect in this case? You have helplessly put
the cart before the horse. What is the sense of
clamoring still for unlimited coinage when the
treasury can not get rid, by hook or by crook, of
HONEST MONEY.
129
a tithe of those already coined and lying in use-
less heaps? They are well minted, of just weight,
nine-tenths fine, are legal-tender for all debts, and
bear the legend, 'In God We Trust.' What ails

SILVER
DOLLAR
“Now you sce it and now you don't"-Free Silverite
manipulation of the dollar.
them? I answer, and so must you, on reflection,
there is no "demand" for them, and therefore no
"use" of them. What more can the law do for
them?
"Mr. Eckels, the present Comptroller of the
130
HONEST MONEY.
Currency, has made it apparent, by careful
inquiries instituted through his department, that
about 50 per cent. of the retail business of this
country is achieved by means of checks drawn on
local banks and cleared by the banks with very
little use of coins. The relative employment of
these instruments of credit is constantly increas-
ing, through the multiplication of banks and
otherwise; and of course, also, the quantity of
coin money required to do the business of the
world, is steadily decreasing relatively to the
business done.'
WASHINGTON HESING.
"Let us take the practical views of other men
of prominence. The present Postmaster of Chi-
cago is the editor of a leading newspaper, a Ger-
man-American, who has been prominent for a
number of years in the affairs of one of the great-
est cities of the United States. He is admit-
tedly a strong man, a thoughtful man, and one of
keen perceptions. He also has expressed him-
self. Here is a portion of what Mr. Washington
Hesing says:
664
'Why should the government of the United
States open its mints to any individual who has
silver bullion which is worth, say, in round figures,
70 cents an ounce (or less than 55 cents for 412
grains in the American dollar), and pay 100 cents
for the same? Is this not direct protection of
everybody who is interested in silver? Is it any
different from the attempt to enact a law com-
pelling the government to pay $1 for a bushel of
HONEST MONEY,
131
wheat which today is worth bu. 60 cents in the
markets of the world? Why should the silver
interests receive greater favor at the hands of the
United States government than the farming
interests?
"But let us suppose for a moment that this
law is passed, enacting free coinage at the ratio
of 16 to 1, and what would happen? The first
thing certainly would be, that all the silver in the
world would be dumped at the doors of the
United States mints, and coined metal would be.
demanded in return. This coined metal would
no doubt immediately be taken to the sub-
treasuries and to the banks, and gold demanded.
in payment. The gold would thus be gradually
withdrawn, and the $454,000,000 of gold which we
have in this country, and which the world over is
worth 100 cents in any coin in the world, would
be driven out of circulation, and this country, in-
stead of having an increased circulation, as is
contemplated by those who believe we haven't
money enough to do our business, would have
less money in circulation than before, because
immediately the holders of our securities abroad
also, who have a right to demand the payment of
the same in gold, would send these securities
here, and there would be a drain on our circula-
tion such as has never been known, and which,
by the very act of free coinage, would bring
about ruin and desolation; for it is a fundamental
law of finance, that has been demonssrated over
and over again in every age, that the perfect coin
of full weight or full value, instead of driving out
the light or debased pieces, is always itself driven
132
HONEST MONEY.
out of the circulation by them. Thrown into the
crucible or exported in commerce, this superiority
immediately manifests itself; and therefore into
the crucible or into the channels of foreign trade
such money would be thrown, and all experience
with one voice testifies that exactly those are the
destinations of such money.
"'We have seen that condition exist in another
form on many occasions in this country. The
theory that any country can stand alone in
designating a value to a coin, regardless of other
nations, is, in my opinion, absolutely untenable.
The commercial relations of the world are so
great today, the financial interests are SO
intimately interwoven, that there must be an
understanding upon the money question. No
one country, be it what it may, can attempt to
say to other countries at what price metal can be
recognized. While this country is great, its
resources boundless, and its influence in the
markets of the world daily increasing, yet it is
far from able to say, for instance to England, in
buying a bill of goods, "We will pay you in silver
dollars, which you must accept at our price."
England would naturally say, "Silver will be
received at the universally accepted price in the
markets of the world; we insist upon the one
metal with which we, in turn, can pay our
differences in France and Russia."
"I go further. It is nothing short of dishon-
esty for a government to say to its own inhabitants
that a coin, because it bears the official stamp,
shall be accepted at a price which it is not worth,
and which can not be obtained for it of any silver-
smith in the country.
HONEST MONEY.
133
"The impression seems to some extent to be
abroad, that, if a free coinage act at the ratio of
16 to I were to pass, immediately there would be
a great abundance of money; that everybody
would have his pocketbook filled. Have these
gentlemen considered that in the first place, so
long as Grover Cleveland is President, or until
March 4, 1897, no legislation looking in that direc-
tion can be passed, because it will require his
signature, and it is well known that that can not
be obtained. Hence, at the best, two full years
must elapse before any relief can be obtained in
that direction. Have the advocates of free silver
considered the further fact that the maximum
capacity of the United States mints today is less
than 40,000,000 silver dollars per annum? How
much benefit would the people derive from an
increase in money amounting to $40,000,000 per
annum?
"Since what is known as "the crime of 1873" was
committed, nearly 400,000,000 silver dollars have
been coined; while, prior to 1873 and during the
time silver was not demonetized, only about
$8,000,000 were coined. The remonetization of
silver cannot possibly help anybody except those
interested in silver bullion. On the contrary, it
would mean ruin to that very class which expects
relief-the debtor class. Has it ever occurred to
these gentlemen that, while they are constantly
using the argument that the people are all in favor
of the remonetization of silver, and the bankers
and capitalists are against it because they belong
to the creditor class, these very gentlemen would
profit most by it, and those who are the advocates
134
HONEST MONEY.
of free coinage and who belong to the debtor class
would suffer most by it?
"The merchant prince and the banker, who
have large interests in the stability of the the gov-
ernment and its commercial relations, are opposed

A
HON
MONCY
MONEY
HONEST MONEY
IST MUNEY
HONEST
HONEST MONE)
HONG ST MONEY
Kindling 'tires of liberty' with costly kindling-wood.
to this scheme, because they look upon it as
positively dishonest and as ruinous to the country,
yet knowing at the same time that if they desired
they could profit most by it temporarily.
"If the silver in the dollar is worth but 55
cents, would not the capitalist, and would not the
HONEST MONEY.
135
banker especially, take the very money belonging
to others, buy for it silver, and ask the govern-
ment to stamp it and give him in turn 55 cents in
silver worth 100 cents, thus enabling him to make
45 cents on every dollar? The poor man, the
laborer, the debtor, cannot do this. The rich man
can. It is to me very evident that this very
thing would be done, and that this very legisla-
tion would have the effect of making the rich
richer and the poor poorer.
"The passage of a free coinage bill would not
make money cheap, but dear; money, instead of
becoming more plentiful, would become scarcer:
labor would everywhere be idle, and idle labor
means the ruin of the little shopkeeper, which, in
turn, means largely decreased profits to the
middleman and wholesale merchant, who, in turn,
would be compelled to throw themselves upon
the mercy of their bankers.
"No policy, be it financial or otherwise, which
means absolute dishonesty, can but be the menace
and the ruin of a nation. The nation which at-
tempts to meet its obligations in a coin at a price
which is not universally accepted by the world
cannot and will not expect to enjoy the confi-
dence of and to maintain friendly relations with
her sister nations. From the moment its com-
mercial honesty is questioned its financial integ-
rity is undermined, and the very life of the
government threatened. Nations long ere this
have stamped copper and iron and other baser
metals, and they have passed at the price stamped
upon them within their own confines, but other
nations have declined to accept them at more
136
HONEST MONEY.
than the universally accepted value of the bullion.
And so to-day this country must be honest and
honorable, and any attempt to deviate from that
principle will mean for any party defeat, its dis-
ruption and ruin forever.'
PRESIDENT E, B. ANDREWS.
"There is more to follow. Let us get out of
the lists of fhe political and the official, and call
upon the ranks of the learned. President An-
drews of Brown University is recognized as one
of the most acute thinkers upon this continent.
President Andrews has been called upon by a
prominent newspaper, the Chicago Record, to ex-
press himself upon the subject now attracting the
attention of so many hundreds of thousands of
people. It is fair to say of President Andrews
that his response is very much in earnest. There
is no mistaking what he says. The beauty of it,
too, is, that he is a silver man. But, when it
comes to the matter of arraying the United
States against all the other nations of the world
in a wild white monometallic crusade, he expresses
himself with a degree of fluency and vigor which
is beautiful to look upon. And here is what
President Andrews says:
"All the gold nations and the great banks in
them are looking for chances to stock up with
gold. This procedure is not the usual provision
of gold for the normal purpose of insuring note-
redemption, but, from a strictly economic point.
HONEST MONEY.
137
of view, is entirely morbid. Moreover, this hoard-
ing bids fair to increase, not diminish. The new
output of gold seems not to check it at all. Give
the gold nations the slightest opportunity to get
away our gold and they are certain to try it.
They are under a new pressure to such effort—a
pressure which has never existed till recently.
This pressure many of their best people regret,
and a number of the nations would gladly secure
relief from it by a general system of bimetallism;
but, if we go forward, the moneyed classes there,
who almost alone control the press, will certainly
seize the chance to cry down silver still more,
frightening American gold-holders to hold or
sell their gold, for which Europe will then make
a market.'
"It should also be remarked that nations like
Austria and Russia, wishing to get upon a hard-
money basis, who would gladly join in a general
scheme of bimetallism if a chance were offered,
must choose gold as their basis if, and so long as,
Europe as a whole continues upon this basis.
And they would be likely to make final their gold
policy the moment they heard that we were taking
up silver. Japan, with a vast war indemnity, much
of it gold, might perhaps strike into the same line
of policy, making the retention of gold by us more
difficult still. These considerations do not, I
admit, absolutely prove that free coinage by us
would drive out gold, but is it not clear that they
make such a proceeding exceedingly risky? It
seems to me altogether likely, almost certain, that
gold would be forced from us, and that we should
be driven after a time to a financial basis much
like that of Mexico at present.
138
HONEST MONEY.
"But, some will interject, suppose gold does
leave us? What harm would come if we were to
go over to a silver basis? Why wait for other
nations? Are we not strong enough to have a
monetary policy of our own? Is it not weak and
unpatriotic to postpone action until rival nations
please to do what we desire, when we have no
power to influence their action? I reply that it
is not weak or unpatriotic to do what is best for
our country. I would not wait for other coun-
tries in order to please them, if we were in the
long run to suffer thereby. The question is:
What is the best on the whole for the people of
these United States? Is it best for us by our-
selves to proceed freely to coin silver, so long as
there is good hope that within a reasonable time
international free coinage may be brought about,
making the restoration of silver easy
absolutely safe for all? I think not.
and
"If we take up the metal alone, and that course
results, as I should anticipate, in the expulsion of
gold, we shall have, in the first place, a financial
crisis worse than any ever suffered in the country.
This because we cannot in a long time, even by
working our mints day and night, coin silver
enough to take the place which would be vacated
by gold. Prices would surely fall. Immense
numbers of failures would occur. Laborers would
be thrown out of work. Altogether a dreadful
paroxysm in our business would be precipitated.
Slowly the gap left by gold would be filled by the
mining and coinage of silver. Prices would then
gradually rise. At last they would become higher
than now, more and more approaching the Mexi-
can and Japanese level. Some advantages would
HONEST MONEY.
139
doubtless spring from this elevation of prices, but
it is a mistake to suppose that it would redress
the iniquity caused by the fall of prices since 1873,
because the rise and the fall would, in the over-
whelming majority of cases, not apply to the same
parties. In most instances the very men who
have profited by the fall would manage to profit
again by the rise. Moreover, wages would rise
more slowly than values at large.
"But a consequence far worse than any of these
would be, that our passage to a silver basis would
erect against foreign exchange between Europe
and the United States just such a barrier as now
exists between Europe and Mexico. It would
annihilate all fixed par between New York and
London, repeating the terrible inconvenience in
our European exchanges which we suffered in
war times, when we were upon a paper basis. The
damage that this order of things would effect, it
seems to me, the friends of national free coinage
have not sufficiently considered.
EDWARD ATKINSON.
"There lives down East a man who has a gift.
His name is Edward Atkinson. His gift is in
the way of figures, and he stands perhaps at the
head of all the statisticians of the United States,
and possibly of those of all the world. He is ac-
cepted very nearly as the rising of the sun is, or
the ways of the tides are. He is not addicted to
making mistakes. His deductions are accepted
140
HONEST MONEY.

Result of enlightened bi-metallism-Prosperous City and
Prosperous Country.
+
HONEST MONEY.
141
66
as at least mathematically correct by men who
know of the relative ability of men of prominence
in any field. And here is what Mr. Atkinson says:
Since the end of the civil war in 1865 to the
present date there has been a vast improvement
in all the processes of production and distribution.
If we regard Uncle Sam as a concrete individual
he can now produce twice us much grain, more
than twice as much metal, nearly twice as great a
product of meat and dairy products, more than
twice as much cotton, and from every factory of
almost every kind he can turn out twice or more
than twice as many goods as he could in 1865 at
a less cost either in labor or in money. These
articles of food, fibers and fabrics he can move
over the railroads and waterways at less than half
the cost in 1865 to 1870 His work is twice as
effective or more, with less effort on his own part.
There has therefore be a great fall in prices to the
benefit of all consumers, especially to those who
work for wages. There has been a diminishing
cost of production due to more effective labor,
while all wages have risen, or had risen, down to
the panic of 1893.
'The country was never in a stronger, more
prosperous or more progressive condition than in
the years 1891 and 1892, so far as all the facts
making for prosperity are concerned, except for
the condition of the currency. Measures were
under way for reducing the taxation under the
tariff and for promoting domestic industry by
relieving the materials therein used from taxation.
Then came the silver craze, promoted mainly by
the owners of silver mines and smelting furnaces,
142
HONEST MONEY.
This petty silver industry gave employment in
1890 to a force of only about 33,000 men, half of
whom derived the silver from lead or copper
ores, their total product in any given year being
less in value by one-half or more than the
national product of hens' eggs. But, with an
audacity in inverse proportion to their impor-
tance, being in control of a number of seats in
the senate in inverse proportion to the number of
persons represented, they have spread abroad the
delusion that the people need cheap money.
"They are attempting to put bad money upon
the people by acts of legal-tender-that is to say,
money which will not stand the hammer test.
The test of true money is the hammer. If gold
coin be placed upon an anvil or in the melting pot
and reduced to bullion, it is worth as much after
it is hammered smooth or melted as it purports to
be worth in the coin. If silver be hammered
smooth or melted it is worth only half as much as
it purports to be worth in coin.
"In this effort to defraud the great mass of the
people by assuming a false appearance of what is
called bimetallism, in their effort to put this
country upon the single stand, rd of a 50-cent
dollar, these men suddenly brought doubt and
discredit upon the nation. The panic ensued;
credit ceased; constructive enterprise stopped.
Hundreds of thousands of people who were ordin-
arily engaged in constructive work and in provid-
ing for future need were discharged from work
for lack of credit. Prices were forced below the
cost of production, and for two years the country
has paid the penalty of this delusion of cheap
money and the silver craze.
:
HONEST MONEY.
143
"Dealing in round figures, about 10 per cent. of
the working people of this country are usually
occupied in providing for future need-in build-
ing new railroads, constructing new waterways,
putting up new factories, providing new indust-
rial buildings, working on new houses and in every

1
GO
D
Clown-"What does the pretty lady want?"
Equestrienne-"Give me a Silver banner to jump over in-
stead of a Gold one; it is only half as high."
other way making provision for the comfort and
welfare of the future. All this constructive work
depends upon credit. When the silver craze des-
d the credit of the money of the United
{
144
HONEST MONEY.
States for a time that kind of enterprise stopped
to the extent of at least onc-half or more. What
does that mean? Out of a population of 70,000,000
people one in three is occupied for gain in some
kind of work-mental, manual or mechanical.
Ninety per cent. of that work must go on in order
that the mass of the people may subsist. Ten
per cent. on constructive enterprises may be
stopped as it has been in part by this silver craze.
That means throwing nearly 2,500,000 working
people out of a job. One or two million working
people who have been thrown our of a job during
the last two years have found that out; they can
charge it to this little, petty conspiracy of the sil-
ver cranks in their effort to keep 33,000 men at
work making silver that nobody wants. That is
about the size of it.
"The pretext under which this nefarious effort
has been conducted is, that we must raise prices.
For whose benefit are prices to be raised by
tampering with the currency and destroying the
credit of the dollar? Prices were raised in that
way by the issue of the legal-tender notes during
the war.
Prices in 1865 went up double, treble,
quadruple what they had been. How about wages?
Did they go up double, treble, quadruple? Not
a bit. A day's work of an honest, industrious man
in 1865 would only buy for him two-thirds as much
food, fuel, clothing, and shelter as he enjoyed in
1860. Prices have been reduced since the end of
the war by the application of science and invention
to the benefit of consumers as well as of producers.
We were on solid ground in 1892 on low prices,
moderate profits, and high wages. What the
HONEST MONEY.
145
silver cranks have undertaken to do is to bring
about high prices and low wages.
"It's time to stop being mealey-mouthed about
this matter. This undertaking to coin silver in
this country alone at the rate of sixteen pounds
of silver to one of gold when the value is only
about thirty-two to one is a fraud. It is not bi-
metallism. It is an effort to put this country on
the single silver standard and to throw gold out
of use.
The people of this country are not idiots.
Some of them can be deceived and misled for a
little while by such rubbish as that which is now
being sown broadcast in 'Coin's Financial School'
and the like, but they cannot be fooled long.
"Now what does a man want money for? To
spend. What kind of money does he want?
Money that is good everywhere-money that you
can tie up to-coin that will buy anything all
over the world, and that is as valuable after it is
hammered or melted as it is in the coin. What a
fool a man would be to want any other kind!
When a man has goods to sell, what kind of
money does he want? The best kind. What a
fool a man would be to sell his wheat, or his
corn, or his meat for dollars that were worth
only 30 cents, when he can sell it for dollars that
are worth 100 cents! What are farmers thinking
about? Don't they buy as well as sell? The
farming tools and implements which the farmer
needs, the sugar and tea that he wants, the cloth-
ing, the furniture, the household wares--every-
thing that he buys-has been reduced in price
since 1873 more than the price of his farm
products has been reduced; the cost of the rail-
way service has been reduced a great deal more
146
HONEST MONEY.
than the price of all his products except the
single article of wheat. The farmer has just
learned that he can get a full price for his wheat
by converting it into meat, and he is doing so.
The reduction of prices has benefited the farmer

Free Silverite endorsement of "Melter Moss'" idea of honesty.
more than any other man, except those who
depend wholly on their day's wages for a living
and who have no farms.
"The people who are being cheated by the
HONEST MONEY.
147
pamphlets and articles in the papers which are
paid for by the silver barons had better put some
questions to them. The man who wants to go to
a financial school should put to Senator Stewart
the question: "Why do you permit your agent to
loan money on mortgage payable only in gold?'
Why not ask Senator Stewart, Senator Jones,
Representative Newlands, and the rest of them
why they don't take their own salaries as mem-
bers of Congress and Senators in silver dollars?
Look into the condition of the banks in Colorado,
Nevada, etc., of which some of these men are
directors; ask them why they keep their reserves.
in gold almost wholly instead of silver. Ask
them if they are not playing a game in which
their motive is 'heads we win, tails you lose.'.
CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW.
"There is another man, called a Republican,
but belonging rather to both parties and to the
nation-a genial, extraordinarily gifted, and suc-
cessful man of the world Everybody knows.
him, everybody likes him, and everybody believes.
in the honesty of his purposes. He is a great
orator and a statesman. His name is Chauncey
M. Depew, and here is what Mr. Depew says upon
the subject with which we are engaged:
"How are we to preserve our prosperity and
continue our progress? The drastic lesson of the
last two years has taught us that this enormous
internal commerce of ours, which includes all the
productive elements which go to makeit up, can be
destroyed by distrust. Confidence and credit are
Uarm
148
HONEST MONEY.
the factors of American prosperity and progress.
With confidence the spindles hum, the furnace is
in blast, the miner is at work, the farmer happy
labor has full enjoyment, capital is active, and the
wheel of the freight car is perpetually revolving.
With confidence a business of incalculable magni-
tude can get along with notes, checks, warehouse
receipts, telegraphic orders, and other commer-
cial appliances, and with very little currency.
Without confidence there is not money enough
in the world to conduct the business of
the United States. We are all business men.
Business men care nothing for feather-heads.
whose stock in trade is epithets or phrases.
By business men I mean every man who uses his,
hands, or his brains in any activity. The time
has come when, without regard to temporary
madness, or prejudices, or hard names, business
men should calmly consider the dangers of our
situation. We have been at the bottom, and we
are on the up-grade of prosperity; but it is purely
tentative so far because of doubt and distrust.
Doubt and distrust about what? About the things
concerning which among the commercial people
there should never be any doubt or any distrust.
"There never should be any doubt as to the
currency of the people. Their currency should
be such that the world would recognize it upon a
common standard. It is said that the debtor can
pay his debts more easily in depreciated cur-
rency. There is an easier and quicker way, and
that is to not pay them at all. The United States
are a debtor, national, municipal railway, and in-
dividual, to the extent of about $14,000,000,000. We
have developed our marvelous resources with this
HONEST MONEY.
149
borrowed capital. Of this sum one-third is held
abroad. A well-defined policy to pay our debts at
75 cents or at 50 cents on the dollar would lead to
$2,000,000,000 or $3,000,000,000 of securities coming
home here for us to take. The presentation of them
in our markets would endanger the stability of
every bank, derange every exchange, and paralyze
every industry in the United States. The fiat
of the government cannot make paper of value,
nor silver of value, nor copper of value, nor gold
of value, though it may compel any or all of them
to be taken in payment of debts within the limits
of the United States. There can be but one stand-
ard of value, and that is a metal which will bring the
same price whether it is in the bar or has the
stamp of the government upon it. If the promise
of the government to pay a dollar is to be redeemed
at the treasury in a coin which is worth 100 cents
anywhere in the United States, and worth 100 cents
anywhere in the world, then the dollar which pays.
the laborer for his work, and the farmer for his
wheat, and the merchant for his wares represents
the full value of the labor and of the product for
which it is paid. Anything less as money ruins.
our trade with foreign countries, robs the wage
earner and producers and makes us a nation of
speculators.
150
CHAPTER XI.
FURTHER COMMENTS ON THE ALLEGED "SCHOOL.”
"And now," said Huntley, "I will just run over
the remainder of the book as a whole, endeavor-
ing to take the points not already considered as
nearly in sequence as possible. Just to make it
clear, I will first quote, and then comment, para-
graph by paragraph. Of course this will be no
elaborate disquisition. Doubtless many another
man could give a better answer than I to these
absurdities, but I will do the best I can from the
standpoint of an ordinary business man."
"That's right," said Simpson. And Huntley
began his reading and his comments:
"While that was the law [the coinage law up to
1873] it would have been as absurd to say that the
silver in a silver dollar was only worth 47 cents as
it would be to say that this figure which I have on
the blackboard is only 47-100 of 1."-Coin's Finan-
cial School.
Answer. The majesty of law is great-ineffably
great; but even law cannot establish as a fact the
proposition that 47 cents are fully equal in value
to 100 cents; that a part of a thing is absolutely
HONEST MONEY.
151
equivalent to the whole of that same thing; that
a major can be comprehended-and with room to
spare—within a minor.
"It [silver] was so much handled by the people,
and preferred by them, that it was called the
people's money. Gold was considered the money
of the rich."-Coin's Financial School.


SØTTOKOREA SILVER
6000
WHREE SILVER).
AS GOLD
The Silverite idea-a shriveled arm or a wooden leg as good
as a sound one.
Answer.-Eagles are not so plentiful as quarters,
and poor men are much more likely to have a
specimen of the latter than of the former. But
the poorest man that ever lived would not seri-
ously object to receiving a $10 coin in exchange
fora 25-cent one, and certainly would never dream
that his possession of the "yellow boy" created a
152
HONEST MONEY.
caste distinction between himself and his less
fortunate co-laborers.
"The silver in a silver dollar is just sixteen.
times as heavy as the gold in a gold dollar."-
Coin's Financial School.
Answer. And so silver should always have just
one-sixteenth the value of gold! Because a pound
of feathers is just sixteen times as heavy as an
ounce of lead, should the former always possess
just one-sixteenth the worth of the latter?
"When the mints of the world are thrown open
and the governments say, 'We will take all the
silver and gold that comes,' an unlimited demand
is established. The point at which the supply
can take advantage of that demand is fixed. And
the demand pulls them both plumb up to that
point."-Coin's Financial School.
Answer. But the silverites contend that it is
not at all necessary for the government of the
United States to secure the concurrence of the
other governments of the world in action upon
the free coinage question. In default of that
concurrence, would there not be a failure in
the establishment of that "unlimited demand"?
And, the demand being limited to the United
States, would not the double pull above referred
to prove a complete fiasco as regards metallic
equalization?
"It slowly dawned on the country [after the
HONEST MONEY.
153
passage of the act of 1873] that silver was neither
fish nor fowl; that, like Mohammed's coffin, it
swung half-way between the floor and ceiling."—
Coin's Financial School.
Answer.--Unlimited silver cannot take the place
of fish, flesh, or fowl in the financial menu of the
country; but silver, in its proper place on that
bill of fare, should, and can, fill creditably the
position of "good red herring." Naturally, under
present conditions, silver swings hali-way between
earth and heaven. It could hardly be expected
that a 50 per cent. gas should be able to rise to a
100 per cent. altitude.
"By putting silver back in the column of
redemption money we could increase it from its
present volume of six hundred million to twelve
hundred million."-Coin's Financial School.
Answer. This is a mere juggling with figures.
What difference is there in value between six
hundred million dollars worth 100 cents each and
twelve hundred million "dollars" worth but 50
cents each? Doubling a number of coins, while
depressing their value one-half, cannot add a
single iota to their purchasing capacity. Giving
solidity to pure wind is beyond the capacity of
Herrmann or Kellar, or any prestidigitator that
ever lived.
"Nearly everything except gold has declined
largely in the last two years; the average is about
25 per cent.-Coin's Financial School.
154
HONEST MONEY.

GOLD
IRON
UNLIMITED
SILVER
Iron is even more abundant than Silver. Why not, according
to the Free-Silverite idea, use Iron as a Standard.
HONEST MONEY.
155
Answer. Accepting this statement as fact,
silver has suffered much more than "the average."
A quarter off is a pretty heavy shrink, but still
another quarter must be added to indicate the
extent of silver's emaciation. "The average" has
simply tumbled over the falls of the Genesee, but
silver has been precipitated over the cataract of
Niagara.
"Our silver dollars are at par with gold by
reason only of our enforcement of the gold stand-
ard-redeeming silver with gold."-Coin's
Financial School.
Answer. If our limited supply of silver dollars
be kept at par only by their redemption in gold,
what would be the condition of an unlimited
supply of silver dollars not so redeemable; and
that couldn't be redeemed in gold even should
such redemption be eventually desired by every
one, for the reason that the very existence of that
unlimited supply would preclude the possibility of
there being any gold in our possession?
"A gentleman from Oregon, now in the audience,
tells me that he has lately seen horses in his state
sell at auction for 75 cents each."--Coin's
Financial School.
Answer:-Huntly chuckled as he read this, and
said: "If this extreme cheapness of horses in
Oregon be due to the depression in the value, of
silver, then a restoration of that value to par
156
HONEST MONEY.
30.
should result in advancing equine price in that
state to an equal extent. That is, if silver be
allowed to have free coinage, then an Oregonian
horse should command $1.50 at auction! Would
the horse breeders of the Web-Foot state be
thoroughly satisfied with this princely figure?
That seems to me argument enough, but there is
more to follow. The best answer to that absurd
declaration comes from Iowa, one of the states
which 'Coin' declares among those most suffering
from present financial methods. It comes from
the editor of a Democratic newspaper in that
state, the Sigourney Review. Evidently this
editor has not only sense, but means of inform-
ation. He relates a conversation between two
colored gentlemen, one of whom had been attend-
ing 'Coin's Financial School', and the result of
this conversation is to illustrate 'Coin's' cheap
methods of attracting attention, and also to answer
the argument which Coin uses in connection with
a supposably large purchase of horses by the
government. Here is the conversation. Bruddah
Johnsing is a pupil of 'Coin.' The colored
gentleman with whom he has been talking asks
the first question."
"I been wantin' to ax yo', Bruddah Johnsing,
wheddah you's read de new work entitled 'Coin's
Financial School' and what yo' done think about
it."
HONEST MONEY.
157
"Has I read it. Bruddah Simpsing? Doan' yo
recollect dat I tended de school myself 'long wid
Jay Gole, ole man Vandahbilt, and a whole passel
of dem big bugs dat has some finances of der own
to financier wid?'
"Say, yo' doan' mean to say dat Gole and Van-
derbilt war dar, when day been dead years befo'?
Sides I hain' nevab mist yo' out ob de town long
enough foh you to get up dar an' back.”
"Dat meck no difference, Bruddah Simpsing.
I war jes' as much dar as any ob de fellahs de
book say war dar, and so war Gole an' Vandahbilt,
and de next time you runs acrost Lime Gage, the
big goldbug banker, or Walsh, anodder Chicago
banker, or Coal Scuttle, yo' ax 'em ef I wasn't dar
just de same time dey war."
"Well, I guess dat settle it dat yo' war dar,
Bruddah Johnsing. But I want to ax yo' ef dat
little kid did get away wid all dem big bankehs
and pollytishaners in de argyment like de book
say?'
"Indeed he did, sah, jes' as dey was dar, and his
ansahs please de augence moutley. Say, yo'
recollec' dat Walsh, I believe it war, axt him dish
heah question; 'How kin de govahment by a
simple ac' ob Congress raise de price ob any
article?' Den yo' recollec' dat Coin say 'you
wasn't heah yestedy?' and when Walsh say he
wasn't, Coin say 'spose dis govahment 'nounce
158
HONEST MONEY.
dit am gwein to purchase a hundred thousan'
mules foh de hoss marines, kain everybody see
dat de price ob mules is gwien to bound up, and
not only de mules de govahment buy, but de hosses

ORTH
$100.00
U.S.
Free Silverite Theory-Anything is worth whatever the
Government brands it.
and mules to teck dar places, and dat am jes' de
way de ack of Congress am gwien to riz up de
price ob silvah.' Well, jis' as all de scholahs who
had dar parts larnt war a swallowin' dis down,
'cordin' to de rule ob de school, de good-for- nuffin
HONEST MONEY.
159
niggah what kep' de doah bus' out laffin his bes'.
'What yo' laffin' at, yo' brack rascal?' says Coin.
Den de niggah he say: Didn't you say todder
day dat dis govahment musn't buy silvah, 'kase
buyin made it a commodity, and silvah didn't
want to be that?' 'In cose I said so' says Coin.
'An didn't you say dat all de govahment got to
do to foch up silvah war to weigh it and put on
de govahment stamp?' 'In cose I did,' says Coin.
'Well, den,' says de niggah, 'how much you 'spose
de price ob mules would be riz ef instead ob buyin'
and payin' down de spot cash for 'em, de govah-
ment only sent 'roun' a man wid a brandin' ir'n
to bran' 'em U. S. on de flank?' Den ole Hutch,
who had been takin' a little nap on one ob de
back seats, got to laffin' and fell off, and dey got
de news down to de Bode ob Trade dat dar was
a big tumble in wheat. So de next day Coin he
'pollygize to de school foh de niggah not havin'
his paht committed and comin' in wrong and
spilin' de show, an' say he gwien to hiah a new
do'-keepah ef he have to pay him fo' bits mo' a
week."
Simpson's face was wrinkled with a hearty laugh.
"I am afraid", he said, "that you have got us there.
The illustration is not only pat, but convincing.
That editor in Iowa knows what he is talking
about. There is another Iowan-and I am the
man who hasn't considered the subject so
100
HONEST MONEY.
thoroughly in all its bearings." Huntley continued:
"Imps of hell unchained, banqueting in selfish
glee upon the heart's blood of the world."-
Coin's Financial School.
Answer. There has been no utterance so soul-
thrilling as this since Miss Henrietta Petowker,
of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, recited "The
Blood-Drinker's Burial" at the house of the Ken-
wigses. As Umslopogaas would remark: "Wow!"
Of course," laughed Huntly, "What I may say
after reading some of these assertions is not
argument, but there are certain bits of the
buncombe so rich that it is hard to avoid at least
an allusion to its quality." And he reac on:
"There are two ways ordinarily of getting this
money back that goes East. One is to sell some-
thing to them at a profit. We are not doing that.
The other is to borrow it."--Coin's Financial
School.
Answer-The silverite philosopher neglects to
mention two other ways of meeting indebted-
ness-the ways most popular with his school of
economics. One of them is, to refuse payment
at all; and the other, to steal the amount requisite
for such payment. In either case the debtor
comes out 100 per cent. ahead. To the honest
man there might be some moral strain in either
course of action; but the conscience of the 16-to-
'er is so indurated as to be utterly unsusceptible
to any tensions of an ethical nature.
HONEST MONEY.
161
"The law spends its force by confiscating the
property of the people. The people will retali-
ate."-Coin's Financial School.
Answer-Hard times have come upon the
people of the United States, as they have upon
peoples of all other countries of the civilized
world. These hard times being world-wide, the
causes of them are, of course, not confined to our
own land. Alternate waves of boom and panic
strike the business interests of the entire earth,
and we can escape the one no more than we can
hold on to the other. A long continued period
of inflation has been followed, in the natural
course of events, by a period of depression.
Liquidation may not be pleasant, but it is neces-
sary. "Who breaks, pays." But the silverites
insist, without a shadow of reason, that all our
troubles come from a single cause, that the cause
grew out of the action of a certain portion of our
own citizens, and that the proper way for sufferers
to get even is to refuse payment of their debts, or
to scale them down to 50 cents on the dollar,
This mode of procedure they call "retaliation.”
It is the retaliation of Fagin and Bill Sikes.
"The future of the republic looks serious and
threatening."-Coin's Financial School.
Answer-It does indeed, unless there be a
pretty speedy and thorough extinction of the
silverite school which has so grotesquely arro-
162
HONEST MONEY,
gated the title of "financial." The word "finan-
cial" should have some relevance to the word
"finance;" but the adjective as employed by the
free coinage monomaniacs has no connection with
the noun from which it is a derivative. Sixteen-

am
How the United States would be crushed by the 16 to 1
Silver Constrictor.
to-oneism has no more to do with finance than a
wind pudding has with a dish of pork and beans.
Pefferian charlatanry is destitute of finance.
"To expect these debts to be paid under present
conditions is too much. It is like trying to fit a
HONEST MONEY.
163
ค
six-foot man to a three-foot coffin."-Coin's Finan-
cial School.
Answer-This trial is just what the free silver-
ites are now working at. They are endeavoring
to fit a 100 per cent. business to a 50 per cent.
currency. And those upon whom they may oper-
ate will experience sufferings equal to those
undergone by the victims of the bed of Pro-
crustes.
"The fact that all the gold in the world available
for money can be put in space of twenty-two feet
each way has knocked it [gold monometallism]
out of me."-Coin's Financial School.
Answer. As there are very few people in this
country who advocate gold monometallism, the
fighting of it is about as absurd as Don Quixote's
attack upon the windmill. But the above objec-
tion urged against gold monometallism would, in
an immaterially modified form, apply as against
silver monometallism. The same authority which
places the bulk cf the consolidated gold of
the world at a cube of twenty-two feet places the
bulk of the consolidated silver of the world at a
cube of but sixty-six feet. If the Pefferites hanker
after a coin material that would really make a big
show in its consolidated bulk, they should imitate
Lycurgus of Sparta and construct their currency
out of unalloyed iron.
"A war with England would be the most
164
HONEST MONEY.
popular ever waged on the face of the earth. If
it is true that she can dictate the money of the
world, and thereby create world-wide misery,
it would be the most just war ever waged by
man.”—Coin's Financial School.
Answer. The most vociferous jingoes are
generally fellows who hope to make ultra-zealous
professions of patriotism. They are always
anxious for war with some country, it doesn't
matter which-any one will do about as well as
any other. These jingoes have no idea of
participating personally in the physical strife they
invoke. They have no inclination to "seek the
bubble reputation in the cannon's mouth." They
mean to stay at home and make money out of the
international row. Bloodshed, and misery
generally, are of no account to them. Their veins
are not to be exposed to the danger of depletion;
their pocket-books are to be afforded large chances
of inflation; and selfish people can witness an
immense amount of suffering without experiencing
even a twinge of commiseration.
"The money-lenders of the United States, who
own substantially all of our money, have a selfish
interest in maintaining their gold standard."-
Coin's Financial School.
Answer-If those "who own substantially all of
our money” are all "money-lenders," there must
be a very large class of money-lenders in the
HONEST MONEY.
165
United States. For there is a pretty wide dif-
fusion of property interests in our country, even
in these hard times. The opponents of free silver-
ism may indeed be selfish in that opposition; but
are the advocates of free silver any less selfish in
that advocacy? And how can our present mone-
tary standard be stigmatized as gold monometal-
lic when our currency includes several hundred
million dollars of silver, all of which amount is
full legal-tender?
"With silver remonetized, and gold at a pre-
mium, not one-tenth the hardships could result
that now afflict us."-Coin's Financial School.
Answer-It will be noticed that this quotation
admits, by implication, that the remonetization of
silver (a la Peffer) would send gold to a premium.
And how long would gold, with a steadily advanc-
ing premium, remain a portion of our currency?
If "Distance lend enchantment to the view," and
if the degree of enchantment increase with the
degree of distance, we should, soon after the com-
ing in of the silverite Millenium, enjoy such
rapturous views of gold as would belittle the most.
gorgeous depictments of the New Jerusalem.
"At any moment an internecine war may break
out among us. Wrongs and outrages will not be
continuously endured. The people will strike at
the laws that inflict them."-Coin's Financial
School.
'
166
HONEST MONEY.
Answer-Who is going to start this "internecine
war?" Does Peffer intend to assault President
Cleveland? and does Jerry Simpson contemplate
an attack upon Secretary Carlisle? Before re-
sorting to war the silverites would better devote

SILY
SILVER }
The Free Silverite Genral Boum. "America can lick all the
the world! Blood!"
much careful thought to a contemplation of the
likely results of a second rebellion against the
government of the United States. "Striking at the
laws" didn't pay in 1861-'65; and there is no
reason to believe that it would be more profitable
HONEST MONEY.
167
at the present time. Of all the absurd incidents
of this period, a forcible attempt to establish a
50-cent "dollar" would be about the wildest in its
absurdity.
"We know now that Mexico, South and Central
America, the Asiatic governments, and France
would be with us (in remonetizing silver) from
the start."--Coin's Financial School.
Answer-So far as France is concerned, we
don't know anything of the kind; in fact, we know
directly to the contrary. As for Mexico, South
and Central America, and the Asiatic govern-
ments their concurrence would hardly make com-
pensation for the antagonism of all Europe. The
Mexicans and the Celestials would be but a slight
offset, in a business way, to the peoples of all the
great powers of Christendom.
"Gold must be given to understand that it is not
indispensable to the currency of the country. If
necessary, fire a man bodily into the street to
teach him his place. Gold needs that lesson."-
Coin's Financial School.
Answer-This gives the genuine free silverite
idea of bimetalism. The Peffers are not satisfied
with placing silver on an absolute equality with
gold; they want the latter to be displaced ut-
terly. And they are not content with getting rid
of gold in a quiet, easy way; they desire to "fire
it bodily into the street." Which facts demon-
168
HONEST MONEY.
strate that the Peffers are not simply gibbering
idiots, but bloodthirsty maniacs.
"Gold may go out of circulation, but its doing
so does not disturb the practical effect of bimetal-
lic prices.'-Coin's Financial School.
Answer-Then cutting off a man's leg and giv-
ing him no substitute-not even a crutch-would
not disturb his power of locomotion. Take 1
away from 2, and the remainder would be equal
to the original sum. This is logic run mad!
"There should be a law making it a forfeiture
of the debt to discriminate in favor of one form
of national currency as against another."-Coin's
Financial School.
Answer. Under such a law the free silverites
would all fall under the ban of justice. The entire
faction are discriminators from way back. But
perhaps it is meant that discrimination should be
punishable only when resorted to by creditors,
and is actually praiseworthy when put into
operation by debtors.
"The present law allowing gold to be named in
the bond is statuatory treason."-Coin's Financial
School.
Answer.-"No rogue e'er felt the halter draw
with good opinion of the law." A person who
wishes to cheat looks with disfavor upon anything
that stands in the way of his cheatery.
"If, after a fair trial, gold continued at a
HONEST MONEY.
169
premium, what remedy would you suggest?' Put
less gold in the gold dollar. Bring the weight of
the gold dollar down until they are on a parity."-
Coin's Financial School.

Throwing out Gold-They say they want Bi-metallism but
they really want nothing but Silver.
Answer. That is, if the scale containing an
alleged pound of sugar will pull up to an equality
170
HONEST MONEY.
the scale containing a pound-weight, the grocer
must chip off from the pound-weight such an
amount of metal as will render it possible for the
sugar to bring the weight to an equilibrium. Of
course this action will not make the sugar really
weigh a pound; but such a little discrepancy as
that counts for nothing with a faction whose
existence has little other basis than unadulterated
fraud.
Suppose that free coinage of silver by the
United States should flood us with silver, what
would we do with it? Put it in the pockets of
the people; put it to work; put it in the channels
of trade."-Coin's Financial School.
Answer. How are the people to come into
possession of this flood of silver unless they ren-
der labor or exchange property? Otherwise they
cannot secure a dollar of it; and the trouble with
poor men now is that they have no property,
and find it difficult to obtain any great surplus
over a livelihood from their labor. Would a
flood of 50 cent dollars add anything to the pur-
chasing capacity of their labor? The cheap
money would of course be put to work in some
way-there are smart men enough in the world to
see to that—but they are the men who have the
money already. Just how the laboring man will
be benefited, be he farmer or mechanic, neither
"Coin" nor anyone else can say,
HONEST MONEY.
171
"It will all end, if the present policy is continued,
in England owning us body and soul."-Coin's
Financial School.
Answer.-Uncle Sam has heretofore been able
to hold his own in relations with any other nation.
He is not strong enough to force a 50 cent dollar
on the world probably, nor is he likely to be so
dishonest; but, in the ordinary commercial
relations between nations, there is slight like-
lihood that he will come to grief. We are old
enough, and strong enough, and sharp enough to
take reasonably good care of ourselves.
"If the commercial value of 23.2 grains of gold
is more than the commercial value of 371. 4 grains
of silver, then reduce it [gold] to 22, 21, 20 grains,
or less. Reducing the gold in the dollar would
leave gold for more dollars, and this would assist
in establishing rising prices, as it would multiply
the number of dollars. The weight of the silver
dollar should not be changed. Its integrity should
be preserved as originally fixed."-Coin's Financial
School.
Answer. The free silverites would place the
50-cent silver dollar at par by cutting the value
of the gold dollar down to 50 cents; and they
would make more dollars by cutting each gold.
dollar in two and calling each half of it a dollar.
This is financiering with a vengeance! They
could make still more dollars on this system by
quartering the original gold coin. Why not make
172
HONEST MONEY.
yet more by dividing and subdividing the silver
dollar?
"The bimetallists (silver monometallists) do
not believe that the ratio has much influence."-
Coin's Financial School.
Answer.--Why, then, do the free silverites
shriek so persistently for the 16-to-1 ratio? Their
practice does not square with their profession.

SILVER
SOUTH
SEA
Two bubbles of history-the last the bigger and more
dangerous.
"In this controversy one point should never be
lost sight of, and that is, that higher prices-
bimetallic prices-will come with remonetization
of silver, even though gold goes to a premium."
Coin's Financial School.
Answer. If the way to establish bimetallic
prices lies through monometallism, would bimetal-
lism, on the same principle, establish monometal-
HONEST MONEY,
173
lic prices? If AB equals CD, surely CD should
equal AB. If not, why not?
"All we would have to do to force England to
adopt bimetallism would be to put an excessive
tariff on all imports coming from her, and all other
countries having a gold standard, until they
adopted a bimetallic system with the same ratio
as ours."-Coin's Financial School.
Answer. What would England "and all other
countries having a gold standard"-comprehend-
ing all the great powers and most of the smaller
countries of Europe-be doing all this while?
The United States is a great country; but can it
"swing the universe by the tail," without any regard
to the wishes of any other portion of the human
race?
"If such a course on our part conflicts with
treaties, treaties should be broken. If England
wages a war on humanity, the United States
should declare an industrial war with England."-
Coin's Financial School.
Answer.-International good faith, of course,
goes for nothing with the advocates of a depreci-
ated currency. If it be all right to treat treach-
erously such of our own people as were
unfortunate enough to lend us money, why should
there be hesitation in breaking our solemn cove-
nants with the peoples outside our pale of
nationality? One "might as well die for a sheep
as a lamb."
174
HONEST MONEY.
"With silver remonetized and a just and equit-
able standard of values, we can, if necessary, by
act of Congress reduce the number of grains in a
gold dollar until it is of the same value as a silver
dollar. We can legislate the premium out of
gold."—Coin's Financial School.
Answer. It will be found much easier to
"legislate the premium out of gold" than to legis-
late the depreciation out of silver. A wholesale
injection of the latter into the currency, on the
scale these lunatics demand, would be like the
mixing of muddy and clean water. The impure
would not be clarified, but the pure would be
rendered foul.
"We are forced to take independent action.
To hesitate is cowardly. Shall we wait while the
cry of the helpless is heard on every hand? Shall
we wait while our institutions are crumbling?"-
Coin's Financail School.
Answer. Not much! No waiting for us under
such circumstances! Let the free silver phalanx
move against the enemy with "the intrepid march
of a jackass toward a peck of oats". What a heroic
drum-beater this writer is, but how he insults the
intelligence of his readers.
"To throw open our mints to the silver OF THE
WORLD fixes the exchangeable values of the two
metals the world over. To establish a parity
between the two metals enables us to exchange
silver for gold, 16 for 1, and thus enables us to pay
these debts. To coin the American product will
HONEST MONEY.
175
not restore a parity or furnish relief. Absolute
free coinage forces a parity."-Coin's Financial
School.
Answer. With the free coinage people it is

AMERICAN
PACTORY
DRAFT FOR
810023
SILLER
RECEIPT FOR
$5000
GOLD
Money sent to help Relations in the Old Country.
"whole hog or none". No half loaf goes with
them. They want all the assistance possible in
the payment of their debts; and they are deter-
mined to have peace with their creditors, even if
176
HONEST MONEY.
they have to fight for it. The sentence quoted is
another of the buncombe assertions.
"The United States commands the situation,
and can dictate bimetallism to the world at the
ratio she is inclined to fix."-Coin's Financial.
School.
Answer. "Big Injun me-Ugh!" Why confine
our national title to the United States of America.
Why not call ourselves the United States of the
Earth? What buncombe and what bounce, with-
out sense or reason, or even attempted argument,
behind it.
"I agree with you," said Simpson.
"Perhaps that's about enough now of the thing
in detail," said Huntley. "I could go on from
page to page with false statements, false assump-
tions, and preposterous deductions. There is
nothing to the book, save a certain shallow clever-
ness in concealing what exists, presenting what
does not exist, and inflaming the minds of those
who imagine there is an easy road to wealth, with
the idea that it can be attained by silver legisla-
tion. So far as it circulates it is a dangerous
book; but, thank God, the majority of Americans
have sense; and this, and all similar literature of
the free silverites, cannot result in reading the
people as a whole into financial folly. We are all
right; good times are with us again, and the good
times will take care of the free silver mania.”
CHAPTER XII.
177
THE COURSE SUGGESTED.
"Well, what shall we do?" said Simpson.
"That is a grave matter," answered Huntley.
"I know many things, that any man of ordinary
intelligence must know exceedingly well, in the
the way of knowing what not to do. One learns
enough, at least, not to stick his hand in the fire.
But, if all the great financiers and thinkers of the
world were to be assembled in some great hall
to-day, I doubt if any one of them would venture
to say, promptly and absolutely, what should be
done with the currency of the world. Of course,
any free silverite could unhesitatingly tell all
about it; but that doesn't matter. The greatest
statesmen, the most thoughtful and industrious
statisticians, the shrewdest and most famous rea-
soners from plain facts, have attempted to
determine what should be the best medium of
exchange for the civilized world. They have
accepted gold and silver as the basis for the
coinage, and, as a basis, for the printing of what
is used as money. But they are undetermined as
to the relative use to-day of those two metals;
178
HONEST MONEY.
they are undetermined as to the ratio between
them, although, being sensible, they know pretty
nearly where it ought to be; and they are unde-

Panic and runs on the banks-The inevitable result of Silver
monometallism.
termined as to the position to be occupied at the
present time by any great nation of the world
HONEST MONEY.
179
with regard to this particular issue. In a
general way-and, understand, I am only putting
forward a conception of what I think would.
be the right thing," said Huntley-"this is what
I would say:
"The proposition which the free silverites ad-
vance would be—and it takes but a slight degree
of reason to recognize that fact-a silver mono-
metallism. Taking this hemisphere alone, and
looking at a map of it, you will see that from
Alaska to the Isthmus and thence through South
America almost to Patagonia, is a bulge of earth
known as the Rocky Mountains, the Cordilleras,
and the Andes. It is where there was, some time
in the past, a cracking and upheaving of the globe
and where, among the constituents that were
cast up to form this range of mountains, which
extends almost across half the curve of the
carth's surface, was thrown up the metal known as
silver, in infinite abundance. Through that ridge
of earth there is a streak of silver from Alaska to
Patagonia. Modern machinery and modern ap-
pliances enable us to give that metal to the world
at a cost of about half its present value as a me-
dium in our currency. I am speaking now but of
the United States. I am not referring at all to
the Asiatic and European resources in the pro-
duction of this metal which has become so com-
mon. That is the status of silver.
1
180
HONEST MONEY.
"As to gold, according to my poor knowledge,
the same machinery and the same enterprise which
enable the production of silver in greater
quantities will enable also the production of gold
where it may exist; but gold lies more isolated
beneath the surface of the earth than does the
baser metal. It lies in 'shreds and patches' and
while, under present circumstances, it may be
brought out certainly in sufficient quantities to
continue its adoption as a sort of ground-work
for all the business affairs of civilization, yet at
the same time it is unlikely, in the opinion of
scientists, of practical miners, and of economic
theorists and thinkers, that it will ever become
such a metallic drug as silver must be, soon and
certainly.
"But ever, it seems to me, must there be a sub-
sidiary currency a real and practical bimetallism;
and silver promises to be a thing which must
always be used. In all the relations which affect
its production it holds the attitude it has main-
tained for centuries; and, aside from that, there
is the natural sentiment which has come from its
use for centuries-the fact that it is utilized by
all races and nations, and that any change of pro-
gram would be, not only most expensive, but
inexpedient from almost any point of view. The
free silverites would have the United States dance
wildly forward, announcing that there is but onc
HONEST MONEY.
181
god with silver as its prophet. This, of course, is
monetary lunacy; but silver must be part of the
currency of the world. The real bimetallism
must be such an adjustment of the use, as coined
together, of the two metals, as the wisest
financiers of the various civilized nations of the

G
L
The Mexican considering the result of Silver monometallism-
"Poor American; he has put himself just in my condition!”
world may agree upon. Then, the governments
working together, with financial thinkers of all
nations united, and earnest, and helpful in
experiment for the good of all mankind, may be
produced a monetary system which will be for
the benefit of every human being. To "cach
182
HONEST MONEY.
some such great end should be the aim and
object of every reasoning person in the United
States. We are not all bombastic and aggressive.
We would be fools to be so. We must work
with the other nations, and try to determine, by
assembling the best of our men and their men
together, what is best to be attained. The time to
talk of a definite ratio between the two metals has
not yet come. The time to provide for a con-
sideration of such a subject, and the time to be
ordinarily sensible, is with us now, as ever.
"How are you going to provide for a ratio?"
said Simpson.
"Your question may be answered in a very few
words. I take it for granted you are fully con-
vinced that, while the commercial and financial
power of the United States can scarcely be over-
estimated, it by no means follows that this coun-
try can safely ignore the monetary policy of the
other great nations, and that to adopt alone the
double standard at the ratio of 16 to 1, which
'Coin' so determinedly insists upon, would, par-
ticularly at this time, when the amount of bullion
contained in the silver dollar is worth little more
than half the bullion contained in a gold dollar,
sharpen the greed of thousands of speculators,
who would bring tons upon tons of foreign sil-
ver to reap the harvest this profit would afford,
while our own mines all along the eastern wall of
HONEST MONEY.
183
the Rockies would be worked to their utmost ca-
pacity to double and quadruple, if necessary, the
production of all former years, until our mints,
our treasuries, and our bank-vaults would be filled
to bursting by the inflowing silver stream.
"Let us consider what would be the consequen-
ces. Naturally, since certain invariable financial
and commercial laws prevail, a period of inflation
would have begun, prices would undoubtedly, as
the silverites claim, have increased, and trade.
would be so stimulated that men would marvel at
the apparent ease with which money could be
made. Meanwhile, our bonds and railway securi-
ties now held in Europe would be tossed back to
us, and our gold taken away in exchange. The
little stock of that metal remaining would rapidly
disappear, and we would be left with silver mono-
metallism. Then--and this is the lesson of all
modern times-would follow a season of mad
speculation, expansion, inflation; and then their
consequences-the collapse, exploded banks,
business houses toppled over, manufactories
closed, real estate dead, no man any longer giv-
ing credit to his neighbor or his friend-every-
where, on all sides, destruction and ruin, and all
the dreadful results of false, and foolish, reckless
financial experiment by a nation.”
For a moment the ticking of the little clock
on the mantel in one of the club's private dining-
184
HONEST MONEY.
rooms alone broke the silence. Huntley, thought-
ful, with drooped eyelids, seemed to be looking
inwardly, mentally gazing upon the picture of hu-
man suffering which he knew must be the inevi-
POOR HOUSE

WE HAVE NO
MORE ROOM
After a Silver monometallism panic-no more room in the Poor
House.
table result of isolating ourselves financially from
the other great powers. Simpson's face ex-
pressed deep emotion; but, before he could speak,
his companion continued:
HONEST MONEY
185
"All this may be avoided by patience and wise
counsel, and we may still profit by a vast coinage
of the silver which, together with the gold,
Nature has stored widely in our mountain-depths,
apparently for use as the world's great medium of
exchange. Conditions change, and requirements
change with them. The thinking man in America,
or in Europe, or elsewhere, be he laborer, banker,
or prince, must see the necessity of a large store
of redemption money, not merely by its efficiency
in use, to lessen the burdens and add to the com-
forts of the poor, but to guard commercial inter-
ests everywhere from any possible aggregation of
the world's money in certain channels controlled
by certain groups of selfish financiers. This feel-
ing, abroad and at home, has already resulted in
a call for an International Monetary Congress, of
as many of the great nations as may be induced
to send authorized representatives to act.
Such
a congress is, unless the United States be foolish
in the present, almost an inevitable thing of the
immediate future. At this congress, it is hoped,
and is as well believed, that a plan will be adopted
by which silver will be remonetized the world
The representativer to this congress should
be, and in all probability will be, men of broad
views-men who have made finance a study, and
who are capable of deciding in a practical man-
ner what ratio should be adopted as between gold
over.
186
HONEST MONEY.
and silver, and what the degree of that ratio's
flexibility."
Huntley paused for a moment-then continued,
in something like a monologue:
"This is a very different world from what it was


The farmer today—a carriage costing half what it did twenty
years ago.
even a few hundred years ago. The period of
arbitrary and military conquest has passed; the
energies of every great nation are directed toward
commerce. The world's property, already
estimated at enormous figures, is being each year
rapidly augmented: credits and credit money are
HONEST MONEY.
187
vastly expanded; and the real money-the money
which must protect this credit money-the money
on which all the great nations of Europe rely for
the final exchange of this huge property-must
be produced and provided for according to the
best judgment of the best men of all the civilized
nations of the world. It is a matter to be attended
to, not by a single country, but by all the earth,
and at once. No doubt great financial com-
binations exist, but financial combinations have
no nationality. Thoughtful men, of all civilized
nations, are anxiously scanning the financial
horizon."
A curious expression, half of suprise, came over
the face of Simpson-an expression soon dispelled
as Huntley continued with his comments:
"I am quite aware that the reckless free silver-
ite-the thoughtless man who looks only upon the
surface, having only the fetish words '16 to I'
before him-would seize upon the facts I have
recited as evidence of the strength of his own
position. But let us consider a minute. Nations
are but aggregations of individual selfishness.
Were the United States -too impatient to await
the convening of the International Congress-to
declare for free and unlimited coinage of silver
on the basis of 16 to 1, the prime incentive to an
International Congress would be withdrawn. So
far as other nations are concerned, the end would
188
HONEST MONEY.
have been practically accomplished; both metals
would have been employed in commerce-they
using the more valuable, and we the baser metal.
That would be the condition of things.

The merchant's condition after silver monometallism-Inevit-
able eventual panic and disaster.
"Now, even to the mine-owners of the country,
nothing could be more disastrous; though neither
they nor their fanatical supporters probably
appreciate the fact. They would immediately
find themselves facing a competition with foreign
HONEST MONEY.
189
silver; and eventually, instead of an advance in
the present price of their silver bullion, it is
probable that, with the vast incentive offered,
the enormous supply that would be brought to
our market might produce a still further decline,
until the working of Western silver mines might
be no longer profitable. No possible legislation
could prevent gold going to a premium; for,
while the fiat of the government might declare
that 3714 grains of silver should be one dollar,
that fiat would be utterly powerless when called
upon to make sixteen ounces of silver equal in
value to one ounce of gold, since natural laws
and commercial laws, which are but a reflection
of the natural, alone may establish values.
"Next to the silver miner, the farmer would be
one of the first to suffer. As I have already
explained, and I hope made it clear, whatever
fictitious advance in price he might receive for
his crops would be more than offset by the
increased cost of machinery; and, being naturally
-since he is improving his land-a borrower, he
would no longer be able to obtain money, except
under special contract to pay principal and
interest in gold, for which he would be obliged
to pay whatever premium might be demanded.
"Next would come the wage-earner. We have
already considered what his position must be un-
der varying financial conditions. In all seasons
190
HONEST MONEY.
of monetary trouble, wages are among the first
things to decline and the last things to be re-
stored. Yon can readily see that, we being fin-
ancially isolated, since our money would not be

་
The farmer's condition after silver monometallism-Everything
he buys higher.
on a parity with that of other nations, our com-
merce would be very greatly reduced. Day by
day the army of the unemployed would be in-
creased, and those who retained their positions
HONEST MONEY.
191
would be paid in 50-cent dollars, with which they
could buy but one-half the comforts, and even the
luxuries, they enjoy today. Every class would
suffer, but the greatest burden would be upon the
wage-earners and those in moderate circumstan-
ces. The worst feature of it all would be, how-
ever, that the cause of universal bimetallism and
universal prosperity-a generous and friendly
understanding between the nations-would be
delayed for years.
"My friend, this must not be. You and I, and
all other honest and patriotic men, must meet the
emergency. We must work as determinedly as
are working the fanatics, and expose the vicious.
nature of their plans to drag our country singly
and alone into silver monometallism. We must
insist, and instruct our legislators to insist, upon
this International Congress, until the grand, but
simple and practical, result is accomplished, and
silver given, with gold, its true place, its flexible
relation, among all the nations of the earth.
What a demand for the white metal would then
arise; how its price would advance, how its real
value increase, as it approached the dignity of
universal acceptance as redemption money!
With the great nations of the world working to-
gether, its value may be forced, and held most
stable. Then the American miner may reap a
rich and never-ending harvest, selling his bullion
192
HONEST MONEY.
always at a profit. Then will the American far、
mer be in the condition which he deserves, with
the industry which he always shows, and with the
great resources of Nature at his hand. Then will
the country, as a whole, enter upon an era of
prosperity such as has not been exceeded at any
time in its career."
"Do you not think it possible," said Simpson-
"admitting the ratio of 16 to I would depreciate
our currency so that, measured by the world's
standard, our dollar would have a purchasing
power of but half of that of other nations-tc
remedy this, and at the same time establish free
coinage in the United States, regardless of the
other commercial powers, by increasing the ratio
to say, 20 or 25 to 1, and thus avoid the evils you
have so strongly pictured, and at the same time
double the quantity of our redemption money?"
"I am glad you have asked me this question,"
said Huntley. "It is not a new idea by any means,
but one that has been considered--somewhat
cautiously I must admit--by many conservative
thinkers, whose good judgment is utterly opposed
to free 16-to-1 silver, and yet who would gladly
accept some compromise which could be effected
with safety.
"Pursuing your thought further would no doubt
have brought you to the right conclusion, and
you would see the utter impossibility of attain-
HONEST MONEY.
193
C
ment of the object should the United States
alone seek to force a parity between the two
metals at any ratio; for gold, having a com-
paratively fixed value the world over, would not
change, but silver would follow the course of the
market-its value influenced by the natural laws
of supply and demand, and possibly more or less
by speculation. If the ratio were placed very
high, the silver dollar of America might not
unfrequently present a greater value than the
gold dollar of Europe. The probabilities are,
however, that, at any ratio we could establish, it
would be less. Its value would constantly fluc-
tuate. While, if silver remonetization were
established by universal international legislation
—that is, if all the civilized nations of the world
should agree upon the value fixed for this sub-
sidiary token (for all money there is of any sort.
is but a token)—no matter what the ratio might
be, there could never occur any difference in
value between the gold and the silver dollar, for,
either being a legal-tender for the settlement of
all obligations of whatever nature, one would be
always equal to the other. It is only in this way
that both the precious metals may be placed on
an equal footing, maintained at an absolute
parity, and both made to do duty in protecting
the world's credits."
Huntley paused for a moment. "It has been
194
HONEST MONEY.
good for you, Simpson--good for us both," he
said, "that we have had this talk. Now tell me
what you think of it all; tell me honestly what
your conclusions are. You have had facts-ab-
solute facts, such as you may not question—as
opposed to the fallacies which tickled your fancy

The silver monometallist' "figure 4”—It will hardly catch the
farmer.
for the moment. What do you think of it all?"
Simpson straightened himself up, and spoke
with vehemence.
"I was wrong," he said. "I was caught by the
half-way magnetism-it is hard to explain just
what it is-which attaches to a craze of the mo-
HONEST MONEY.
105
}
ment. If you will allow me to say so, I think that
I am now in a reasonably rational condition, and
I'll go back home with definite ideas instead of
indefinite ones on a topic of the utmost import-
ance to the nation and to every individual person-
ally. And you may wager, Huntley"-and here.
he sprang from the table and grasped the hand of
his companion, who rose at the same time-"you
may wager that I will endeavor to instill a degree
of sense on this monetary question into the mind.
of everybody, at least in my immediate region."
"I am glad of it," said Huntley. "We are
merely American citizens figuring together; but
the subject which has compelled our attention is
one which not only affects the general welfare,
but the absolute business future of every individ-
ual in the United States, be he banker, or merchant,
or manufacturer, or farmer, or workingman of any
type who but sells his services day by day. It is
not in war times nor great national emergencies of
the dramatic sort alone that the patriotic citizen
is called upon to do his duty. A great nation is
but a great business house; it must show ordinary
sense, or it will fail. One of those occasions for
the performance of duty appears to have come
now, though the improved times following the
panic of '93-becoming steadily better day by day
and month by month-may serve to dissipate the
energy of the free silverite adventurers and
196
HONEST MONEY.
theorists. Anyhow, honest and sensible men
must work together. Let us labor to prevent any
wild action that may lead this country into such
financial difficulties that years and years may be
required to bring about recovery."

་་་་
A good understanding-the result of seeking facts.
Simpson's eyes were moist; he grasped Huntley's
hand heartily. 'I'll help you," he said. And the
two men shook hands again repeatedly and
HONEST MONEY.
197
earnestly, and separated, each the better for
having considered with a helpful friend the bear-
ings of a pending problem, and for having reached
a firm conclusion.
198
HONEST MONEY.
"COIN UP TO DATE."
[The book known as "Coin's Financial School"
has been followed by one entitled "Coin Up to Date"
-the latter issue being largely a repetition of the
assertions and so-called arguments of the origi-
nal work, but containing certain new declarations
and deductions. From this latter work the prin-
cipal points have been collated and answered ac-
cording to their degree of absurdity.]
"During the last twenty-one years the produc-
tion of silver over gold has been less than 5 per
cent."-Up to Date.
Answer. During the last twenty-one years the
production of silver had become so great as to
cause a large depreciation in the value of the
metal; consequently the production of silver has
ceased to be an industry paying a large amount
of profit, and therefore there has been a very
marked cessation in the prosecution of the indus-
try.
"The central point of attack on monometallism
is, that gold alone is redemption money."--Up to
Date.
Answer. An exclusively gold currency woulp
be a monometallic currency; but wouldn't an ex-
d
HONEST MONEY.
199
clusively silver currency be equally as monomet-
allic? And an exclusively silver currency is what
our argentines are aiming at. "Sauce for the
goose must be sauce for the gander."
"Supply [of gold and silver] hasn't anything to
do with it."-Up to Date.
Answer.—What does a silverite care for the
laws of the Universe? Paradise is naught to him
unless the silver harps and the golden crowns
bear the mystic relation of 16 to 1. To him glut
and famine appear to be synonymous terms.
The law of
"They ['conservative business interests'] cry
'Confidence'! It is a natural cry.
self-defense prompts it."-Up to Date.
Is it not perfectly natural to cry "Confidence!"
when one has fallen victim to the wiles of a con-
fidence man? In what better way can the victim
give vent to his injured feelings? And how can
he more significantly notify the police of the out-
rage that has been perpetrated upon him?
"Two per cent. of the people in this country
own over 50 per cent. of its wealth."-Up to Date.
Answer. Would the unlimited coinage of 50-
cent dollars diminish the percentage of the own-
ers of property? Wouldn't the depreciated cur-
rency fall mainly into the hands of the very rich,
and reduce the alleged 2 per cent. to a still
smaller proportion?
200
HONEST MONEY.
"They say it is an 'honest dollar'! Those who
could forge deeds to your property will not hesi-
tate to forge words."-Up to Date.
Answer. One hundred honest cents constitute
one "honest dollar," irrespective of the owner of
the coin, be he forger or not.
"It is a dear dollar-so dear that a farmer must
give up two bushels of wheat to buy one of them,
where before he purchased one dollar with one
bushel of wheat."-Up to Date.

An Honest Standard-all the Free Silverite Standard-only
Stars.
fifty per cent of the stars.
Answer.-The author of this sentiment is of the
school of "Melter Moss" in "The Ticket-of-Leave
Man," who declared, "Honesty may be the best
policy, but it don't pay, my tear!" Wheat is now
at a very low price, but other considerations than
those of the currency enter into its present de-
pression in value. And the farmer has some
HONEST MONEY.
201
consolation in the fact that most of the articles he
purchases are less in cost than when his products
commanded higher figures; so that one depreci-
ation, to a certain extent at least, offsets the other.
"Citizens, arouse! Kindle anew in America the
fires of liberty.”—Up to Date.
Answer. Here is a strange confusion of meta-
phors. How can men kindle fires by liquidating
their debts on a basis of 50 cents on the dollar?
Such procedure would, of course, involve much
"liberty" on the part of the payer; but what in-
terest in that "liberty" would fall to the share of
the payee?
[Look here upon this picture:] "The confisca-
tion of property by King George, against which
our forefathers protested, is insignificant in im-
portance as compared with the twenty-two years
of increasing money measurement and falling
prices."--Up to Date.-[And then on
on this:
"Silver still bears the same relative value to
other property that it always has. Other
property comes down with it; hence, at its
lowered price, it will still exchange, as a rule, for
as much of other property as it ever would.”
Answer. Whence, then, these tears? Why
give needless employment to the lachrymal
ducts?
"We must in some way educate the boys grow-
ing up to understand that a 'good name is better
than riches.-Up to Date."
202
HONEST MONEY.
Answer-True! And we should also educate
them to understand that 50 cents is not equal to a
dollar; and that a person who seeks to pay his
debts with less value than those debts call for is
guilty of dishonesty.
"'Make money honestly if you can, but make
it,' is the lesson taught by our present form of
civilization."-Up to Date.
Answer.-Satan rebuking sin is out-Sataned
when brought into comparison with a silverite
rebuking dishonesty. How his Infernal Majesty
must chuckle when he listens to such hypocritical
preachings! Let us hope that "our present form
of civilization" is, as a whole, superior in morale
to the ideas sought to be inculcated by the priests.
of silverism.
"The [alleged monometallic] management or
Central Music Hall, Chicago, where the [national
silver] convention [of 1893] met, offered the first
of several open insults by refusing to open the
doors till the hall was paid for."-Up to Date.
Answer.-Landlords everywhere have a preju-
dice in favor of securing rent in advance. It may
be an ignoble idea, but a deviation from it fre-
quently results in pecuniary loss. And why
shouldn't a landlord be especially careful
on the point of prepayment when he is dealing
with a set of men who insist that 50 cents is a fair
equivalent for $1 of indebtedness?
"The Chicago Tribune is owned in part and con-
trolled by English capital."-Up to Date.
HONEST MONEY.
203
Answer. Mr. Joseph Medill will hardly give
credit to the assertion that any of the earnings of
his great paper go to swell the pockets of
Britannic plutocrats. And he certainly will
pooh-pooh the idea that such plutocrats interfere
in the slightest with Mr. Joseph Medill's control
of that newspaper establishment.
"If gold has appreciated, its appreciation should
be taken out of it.”—Up to Date.
Answer. Reduce the gold dollar to the value
of the silver dollar and the silverites would not
hesitate to become goldites. What they desire
in money is cheapness, and the cheaper it is the
better they would like it.
"If we have forfeited our right to revive the law
as it previously existed as to existing gold debts,
then we should reduce the size of the gold dollar.
To add to the size of the silver dollar is but to
fasten low prices upon the country, and to assure
disaster that we seek to avoid with rising prices."
-Up to Date.
Answer.--The Indian said that, when he went
hunting with the white man, and the joint product
of their marksmanship was a turkey and a buz-
zard, the white man proposed, as a division of the
spoils, that he should take the turkey and the In-
dian the buzzard, or, if that procedure failed to
appeal to the aboriginal sense of justice, that the
Indian should take the buzzard and the white man
204
HONEST MONEY.
the turkey. "He never," exclaimed the noble red
man, "said 'turkey' to me once!"
"Silver is more durable and less subject to
physical changes [than gold."]-Up to Date.
Answer. It is true that gold coin suffers loss.
in weight in the course of time; but it has the ad-
vantage over silver that the historic period has
failed to diminish gold to the full extent of one-
half of its value.
"Gold as a basis of a monetary system is
impracticable and impossible. There is no pre-
cedent for it in the monetary history of the
world."-Up to Date.
Answer. It has been said, paradoxically, that
nothing is more possible than the impossible. If
we have, as alleged, been for over twenty years
on a gold basis, then certainly, to the view of the
silverites, one impossibility has been converted
into a possibility, and agnosticism as to precedent
has been irradiated with enlightenment.
HONEST MONEY CLUBS.
THE
HE formation of Honest Money
Clubs has become a patriotic duty
everywhere throughout the United
States. Any information regarding
the manner of organization of such
clubs will be furnished cheerfully,
without expense, by the
Equitable Publishing Co.,
415 DEARBORN STREET,
CHICAGO, ILL.
THIS
HIS is a suggestion to any man
interested in the condition of
the country. If you believe in sound
money; if you have a friend who is
affected by the silver craze-one who
may read some of the many wild
silverite publications in circulation-
merely tell him to read "Honest
Money." This new book is the one
great medium by which, throughout
the United States, the fallacies of
"Coin" and kindred publications
must be refuted. Honest money
clubs will be supplied with the work
at reduced rates and, upon inquiry,
all assistance given in its circulation.
Address
Equitable Publishing Co.,
415 Dearborn Street,
CHICAGO, ILL.
ACENTS WANTED.
GENTS for handling "Honest
Money" are wanted in every town
in the United States. A most de-
sirable opportunity for employment
is afforded honest and reliable men
and women. For particulars ad-
dress
Equitable Publishing Co.,
415 DEARBORN STREET,
CHICAGO, ILL.

½=1
THE SILVERITE ARGUMENT.

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
3 9015 06449 9356

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