CREDIT OF THE GOVERNMENT. 
 
 SPEECH 
 
 HON. D. W. VOORHEES, 
 
 OF INDIANA, 
 
 IN THK' -» 
 
 Senate op the United States, 
 
 JANUARY 15, 1878. 
 
 t 
 
 W ASHIN G-TON. 
 
h fA * 
 
 3SU.nl 
 
 UUJt 
 
 O-r y . 
 
 S r E E 0 H 
 
 OF 
 
 H UN. D . W . V 0 0 K HEES. 
 
 The resolution submitted by Mr. Voori-iees on the 13tli of Decem¬ 
 ber, 1877, was read. 
 
 Mr. VOORHEES said: 
 
 Mr. President: On the 13th of December I had the honor to in¬ 
 troduce in this body the following resolution: 
 
 Resolved , That it is of the highest importance that the financial credit of the 
 Government be maintained, anil, in order to do so, the Government itself, in all 
 its departments', should in good faith keep all its contracts and obligations entered 
 into with its own citizens. 
 
 And in pursuance of a notice then given I now call it up for the 
 purpose of discussing the subject to which it relates. 
 
 The agitation of the question of finance has continued without a 
 moment’s intermission from the commencement of our present sys¬ 
 tem until this hour. Nor is it likely to cease for many years to 
 come. In fact it will never cease until the people are satisfied that 
 our yast debt is in process of extinction upon principles of justice to 
 tax-paying labor, or until, on the other hand, they are subjugated 
 into silent submission and the Government itself becomes changed 
 in spirit and form into a moneyed aristocracy. It may be that this 
 latter alternative is to overtake us. There are dark and plentiful 
 omens in our recent history indicating such a conclusion, and there 
 is a numerous and powerful class in our midst who believe, as Alex¬ 
 ander Hamilton declared, that the British government, on this as 
 well as on other points, is the best ever devised by the wisdom of 
 man. Those entertaining this opinion have thus far triumphed in 
 the financial legislation of the United States and the time has now 
 arrived when their victories must be reversed or soon this Govern¬ 
 ment will cease to be republican and the people no longer be free. 
 
 The policy of this victorious interest in this country, as in all others, 
 has been vigilant for opportunities of greed and gain, and aggres¬ 
 sive in appropriating them to its own advantage. In its tenacious 
 pursuit of this policy it has during the last sixteen years pressed its 
 cruel and unjust demands upon the American people in a variety of 
 shapes. Just now it assumes a manner swollen with arrogance, 
 haughty, defiant, and filled with insolence toward all opponents. 
 Those who are ranged on the side of grasping wealth affect a high 
 disdain for such as choose to remember that labor lias rights which 
 this Government is called upon to protect. There seems to be an im¬ 
 mense sneer on the face of sordid, inactive capital, as if its pretensions 
 were beyond the criticism of ordinary mortals. Its advocates outside 
 of Congress do not condescend, as a general thing, to argument at ail. 
 
4 
 
 Denunciation is now their principal weapon. There is no epithet how¬ 
 ever base, no insinuation however infamous that is not of daily use 
 against all who dare to differ in opinion with them. A curious spectacle 
 is presented on this subject by a large portion of the eastern press, here 
 and there aided by a newspaper in the West. Their columns reek from 
 day to day with clamorous abuse of all who venture to believe as I do 
 that, to a great extent, our whole financial system is an organized crime 
 against the laboring, tax-paying men and women of the United States. 
 Those who think as I do that a great work of financial reform is 
 demanded in order to secure the people from slavery in fact, if not 
 in name, are denounced in the same spirit, and in the exact language 
 with which every old criminal abuse in government, throughout all 
 history, has sought to paralyze the work of reformation and beat 
 back the tide of human progress. Wherever in the annals of the 
 human race unholy avarice has built its strongholds and privileged 
 classes have intrenched themselves; wherever superstition has held 
 the human mind in bondage for the benefit of spiritual tyrants; 
 wherever man in any way has had unlawful mastery over his fellow- 
 man and gathered in what belonged to another, there the same cry 
 which we now hear has always been raised against any intrusion or 
 disturbance of established and venerable iniquity. Nor does the 
 parallel stop here. The great plea of the present hour for the con¬ 
 tinuation of wrong and injustice is that good faith requires it. Those 
 who, finding a monstrous evil imbedded in the laws of their country, 
 wish to eradicate it by peaceful legislation are at once and with the 
 utmost fury assaulted as violators of the public faith, enemies of the 
 national honor, and worse if possible than common swindlers. It 
 matters not how deep and burning the outrage may be or how fraud¬ 
 ulently it may have crept into our statutes, good faith, in the esti¬ 
 mation of those who profit by the outrage, requires it to remain there 
 forever, though it should aid day by day the ghastly work of ruin 
 that now pervades the laud. When the peasantry of France, in 1789, 
 worn out with the extortions of five centuries, arose against king, 
 priests, and nobles, they were told that they were breaking the faith 
 of the nation which had been pledged a thousand times for their 
 silent submission to any wrong, in person or property, however horri¬ 
 ble or indescribable. Whenever the starving people of Ireland, in 
 the dreary centuries of the past, have grown uneasy in their bondage 
 and struggled against their fetters, they have been fiercely reminded 
 that the good faith of Eugland is solemnly.pledged to maintain ex¬ 
 isting laws and perpetual abuses. 
 
 Sir, this plea, so loud now in our ears, has been invoked in behalf 
 of every wickedness that ever cursed the world. The usurper in¬ 
 vokes it to protect the throne ho has stolen, as soon as he is seated. 
 The tyrant invokes it to shelter his prerogative, and his nobility in 
 turn invoke it in order to live in ease and splendor oil’ the labor of 
 others. It is my purpose on this occasion, however, to show what 
 the obligations of good faith require of us on the great question of 
 our finances, and to arraign those who have systematically broken it 
 whenever their interest prompted them to do so. It is my purpose 
 also to show that while it is of the highest importance to maintain 
 our financial credit, it can only be done by the Government keeping 
 all its contracts and obligations with its own citizens. This issue has 
 been presented of late iu a manner so persistent and offensive, espe¬ 
 cially to western men and western interests, that it shall now be met 
 as far as my humble capacity enables me to meet it. 
 
 Sir, I appeal to the history of our financial legislation. I challenge 
 
5 
 
 its solemn records for judgment against the actual repudiators of 
 national faith and honor. Its pages contain the facts, the immutable 
 facts, from which the future historian will judge this question. Let 
 us candidly review them. The act of February 25,1862, is the begin¬ 
 ning of our bonded debt. The precious metals were found to be un¬ 
 equal to the emergency of war. Specie payments were abandoned as 
 soon as the hour of trial came, and gold and silver cowered in the 
 rear, while the legal-tender dollar went to the front with the dag 
 and staid there. I was among those who doubted our right to issue 
 it, but experience has shown it the best money, all things considered, 
 that ever circulated on American soil. By this act of February, 1862, 
 and by similar legislation at subsequent periods, every bond issued 
 by the Government which did not on its face stipulate for payment 
 in coin was made payable by the express words of law in legal-tender 
 notes. It was plainly written in the statute that these notes, now 
 known as greenbacks, ‘‘shall be receivable in payment of all taxes, 
 internal duties, excise, debts, and demands of every kind due to the 
 United States, except duties on imports; and of all claims and de¬ 
 mands against the United States of every kind whatever, except for 
 interest upon bonds and notes, which shall be paid in coin; and shall 
 also be lawful money and a legal tender in payment of all debts, 
 public and private, within the United States, except duties on im¬ 
 ports and interest as aforesaid.” 
 
 This simple, explicit, and at the same time comprehensive enact¬ 
 ment guaranteed to the American people the right to pay three-fourths 
 of their national debt in national currency. It was the law of the 
 contract when all the 5.20 bonds, amounting to over fifteen hundred 
 millions, were purchased from the Government by the bondholders, 
 and paid for in this currency at par, when it was quoted at from 40 
 to 60 per cent, below par in coin. Every one understood the law to 
 be as I have stated it at the time of its passage. In fact the great 
 struggle then was whether even the interest on the bonds I have men¬ 
 tioned should be paid in coin. The act of February 25, 1862, first 
 passed the House without any provision at all for the coin payment 
 of interest. That feature of the law was attached here in the Senate 
 as an amendment, and when the act, thus amended, was returned to 
 the House a violent conflict at once arose. An examination of the 
 Congressional Globe for the second session of the Thirty-seventh Con¬ 
 gress, at pages 821 and 900, will show that both Mr. Spaulding, of New 
 York, and Mr. Stevens, of Pennsylvania, the leading members of the 
 Committee of Ways and Means, and one its chairman, united in de¬ 
 nouncing the Senate amendment in the bitterest and severest terms. 
 They contended in stern and determined language that even the pay¬ 
 ment of interest in coin was an odious and unjust discrimination in 
 favor of the bondholder and against the soldier, the sailor, and the 
 citizen, who were compelled to receive the legal-tender currency, 
 greatly depreciated by this very discrimination. 
 
 No one by a single word in that entire debate made the slightest 
 pretense or intimation that the principal of the bonds was payable 
 in coin. During the full term of seven eventful years that followed 
 there is not a platform of either political party in any State in the 
 Union which makes such an assertion. No claim for such a construc¬ 
 tion of the law in behalf of the bondholder ever fell from the lips 
 of a leading member of the party in power during the same length 
 of time in either branch of Congress, or anywhere else, as far as the 
 public is advised. On the contrary in many States, and notably in 
 Ohio, the home of the President and his Secretary of the Treasury, 
 
() 
 
 the dominant party in its State convention in 1868 expressed its de¬ 
 liberate “ conviction that according to the laws under which the 5.20 
 bonds were issued said bonds should be paid in the currency of the 
 country which may be legal tenders when the Government shall be 
 prepared to redeem such bonds.” On this doctrine the present Chief 
 Magistrate and his Secretary took their stand only nine years ago and 
 told the people that the doctrine was true. Not only so, but Secre¬ 
 tary Sherman, who now r in his recent report warns us against repu¬ 
 diation, then gave in a letter dated March 20, 1868, and widely pub¬ 
 lished his idea of what constituted a repudiator. Speaking on this 
 subject, he says: 
 
 United States Senate Chamber, 
 
 Washington, March 30, 18G8. 
 
 Dear Sir : I was glad to receive your letter. My personal interests are the same 
 as yours, but, like you, I do not intend to be influenced by them. My construction 
 of the law is the result of careful examination, and I feel quite sure an impartial 
 court would confirm it if the case should be tried before a court. I send you my 
 views, as fully stated in a speech. Your idea that we propose to repudiate or vio¬ 
 late a promise when we offer to redeem the “principal ” in leiral-tenders is errone¬ 
 ous. I think the bondholder violates his promise when he refuses to take the same 
 kind of money he paid for the bonds. If the case is to be tested by the law I am 
 right, if it is to be tested by Jay Cooke’s advertisements. I am wrong. I hate re¬ 
 pudiation or anything like it, but we ought not to be deterred from what is right 
 for fear of undeserved epithets. If under the law as it stands the holders of five- 
 twenties can only be paid in gold, the bondholder can demand only the kind of 
 money he paid, then he is a repudiator and extortioner to demand money more 
 valuable than he gave. 
 
 Truly yours, 
 
 JOHX SHE UMAX. 
 
 When it is remembered that the bondholder never paid a dollar 
 in coin for a bond of any description, but purchased them all with 
 Government currency, which the Government itself had depreciated 
 by refusing to take it for customs dues and interest, the full mean¬ 
 ing of this letter becomes very plain and very forcible. It is not 
 the offspring of impulse or inexperience. Its author was then chair¬ 
 man of the Finance Committee of this body, and he wrote, as he 
 says, after “ careful examination.” By the light which he here 
 throws upon the subject we may see the exact beginning of repu¬ 
 diation and behold the furtive and ravenous movements of the actual 
 repudiators as they hurry up and down the precincts of legislation 
 during the last nine years of our history. By its light, too, w r e behold 
 the present Secretary of the Treasury, judged by his own words, as 
 the chief of repudiators, foremost among the violators of contracts, 
 and a leader among those who have in no instance kept the good 
 faith of the Government with its own people a moment after they 
 found that bad faith would bring them richer gains. In less than 
 ten months after this letter was written, and after the enunciation 
 of the Ohio platform, Hon. John Sherman, then a Senator, advo¬ 
 cated and procured the passage of the act of March, 1889, for the 
 payment of all the bonds in coin which he had declared payable in 
 currency, thereby establishing an open repudiation of a solemn and 
 binding contract and fastening an extortion of not less than $500,- 
 000,000 on the staggering industries of the country as the speculative 
 profits of the operation. In the whole financial history of the civil¬ 
 ized world no parallel can be found to this audacious deed of broken 
 faith, deliberate treachery to the people, and national dishonesty. 
 It stands out by itself, towering high above all common frauds 
 and dwarfing them in comparison with its own vast proportions. It 
 Avill bear the names of those who enacted it to distant generations 
 amidst the groans, the curses, and the lamentations of those who 
 
i 
 
 toil on the land, and on the sea ; and more deeply engraven than any 
 other name will be forever found that of the Secretary of the Treasury 
 as the author of what he himself said constituted the twofold crime 
 of repudiation and extortion. Do I state the case too strongly? 
 Does any Senator think that I am not justified in the language I 
 use or in the conclusion I state ? If so, I pray him to recall the 
 utterances of my lamented and distinguished predecessor in this 
 body. When this monstrous act of repudiation was on its passage 
 here in March, 1869, Senator Morton pointed out in the plainest and 
 most explicit manner four distinct acts of Congress under which the 
 people had acquired a vested right to pay the 5.20 bonds in legal- 
 tender notes, and which were to be broken and set aside by the 
 measure then under discussion. Among other things he said : 
 
 And now I propound tlie question. It is either intended by this bill to make a 
 new contract or it is not. If it is intended to make a new contract, I protest 
 against it. We should do foul injustice to the Government and the people of the 
 United States after we have sold these bonds on an average for not more than 
 sixty cenl s on the dollar now to make a new contract for the benefit of the holders. 
 
 Again he says: 
 
 It gives to those laws a construction that I do not believe in and that I have 
 shown is contradicted by at least four acts of Congress. 
 
 And again Senator Morton exclaimed, with that power of state¬ 
 ment which always so greatly characterized him : 
 
 Sir, it is understood, I believe, that the passage of a bill of this kind would have 
 the effect in Europe, where our financial questions are not well understood, to in¬ 
 crease the demand, and that will enable the great operators to sell the bonds they 
 have on hand at a profit. It is in the nature of a broker’s'operation. It is a bull 
 movement intended to put up the price of bonds for the interest of parties deal¬ 
 ing in them. This great interest is thundering at the doors of Congress, and has 
 for many months and by every means been attempting to drive us into legislation 
 for the purpose of making money for the great operators. That is what it means 
 and nothing else. 
 
 These are words of intense and overwhelming force. Where in 
 the whole range of debate can be found a more revolting picture of 
 bad faith inspired by base cupidity than is here portrayed by the 
 greatest party leader perhaps ever known in the American Congress ? 
 He has passed away, his voice is silent, and he rests after life’s fitful 
 fever, but this accusation hurled against criminal wrong-doing sur¬ 
 vives, and will continue to survive as long as it remains to be deter¬ 
 mined who have repudiated the sacred obligations and the plighted 
 faith of the American Republic. In far distant times generations 
 now unborn while examining the sources of the burdens that have 
 descended to them will read the charge made in this presence by 
 the late Senator from Indiana, that a combination of stock-jobbers, 
 as destitute of conscience as pirates and inspired alone by greed for 
 money, successfully thundered at these doors and finally drove this 
 Government into the most stupendous act of bad faith and legalized 
 robbery ever practiced upon any peojde since the dawn of history. 
 Five hundred millions made by the great operators and five hun¬ 
 dred millions lost to the plowman and the mechanic who have it all 
 to pay! 
 
 And yet the authors, the instigators, the abettors of this crime, and 
 the participators in its proceeds, fill the air with railing on the sub¬ 
 ject of repudiation, and point their fingers, stained with plunder, at 
 honest men, as repudiators, because they believe that a contract for 
 the benefit of the people should beheld as sacred as one for the bene¬ 
 fit of the bondholder. Sir, forbearance on this point has ceased to be 
 a virtue. Those who have at all times labored to keep the faith of 
 
8 
 
 the Government with its citizens, and its creditors alike, cannot sub¬ 
 mit any longer to insult added to injury, to wholesale calumny added 
 to national plunder. In some countries the habit prevails of building 
 a cairn, a pile of stones, to mark the spot where some tragic event has 
 happened. So let American tax-payers, whenever the act of March, 
 1869, is cited, each cast a stone upon it, to mark the place in Amer¬ 
 ican history where repudiation began, and where the rights of the peo¬ 
 ple were mercilessly and treacherously slaughtered. 
 
 The next step in the systematic violation of its obligations to its 
 own citizens by the American Government was taken in the enact¬ 
 ment of the law of July 14, 1870, known as the act for refunding the 
 national debt. The motive which prompted this legislation has 
 never yet been fully exposed. It has always been held up in the 
 innocent guise of an attempt to reduce the rate of interest. It was 
 in fact, however, the offspring of an apprehension remaining in cer¬ 
 tain minds even after the act of March, 1869, that the work of repu¬ 
 diating the contract for the payment of the 5.20 bonds might not 
 be quite complete and final. These bonds were outstanding, and 
 although the law of their payment had just been repealed, yet their 
 holders feared that the people might sooner or later in turn repeal 
 the faithless act of March, 1869, and declare again for the payment 
 of these original bonds according to the original contract. 
 
 Therefore this act of July 14, 1870, called the refunding act, was 
 brought in as supplemental to that of March, 1869, and in aid of its 
 false assertion that our whole bonded debt was payable in coin. By 
 a sort of moral forgery on the American people the refunding act 
 provides for the issue of new bonds to the amount of $1,500,000,000, 
 with an agreement for coin payment written on their face; and then 
 further provides that these new coin bonds shall be substituted for 
 the original 5.20 bonds, one in exchange for the other, dollar for dol¬ 
 lar. Avarice in the ordinary affairs of life has often tempted the 
 holder of a deed, a will, a bond, or other obligation for money or 
 property to obtain a false construction, if possible, or even to change 
 the terms of the instrument in order to enhance its value. Here both 
 these objects have been obtained by the money power; first a false 
 construction of the contract, and next a direct change of its most 
 vital terms. It is true that a reduction of the rate of interest on the 
 new coin bonds is provided for in the act of July 14, 1870 ; two hun¬ 
 dred millions of these bonds to bear 5 per cent., three hundred mill¬ 
 ions to bear 4-J per cent., and a thousand millions to bear 4 per cent. 
 This reduction in the rate of interest has, at first, the appearance 
 of a concession to the people, but a moment’s calculation will show 
 the amount thus saved utterly trilling in comparison with the enor¬ 
 mous loss they suffer by the whole transaction. Nor is it to be sup¬ 
 posed that the holders of the 5.20 6 per cent, bonds would surren¬ 
 der them voluntarily in exchange for bonds of a less rate of interest, 
 unless they knew' they were getting bonds of higher value and were 
 to reap substantial advantages by the operation. To draw a differ¬ 
 ent conclusion would be to reverse the well-ascertained laws of hu¬ 
 man nature. The archives of history may be ransacked in vain to 
 find a single instance where a moneyed investment relinquished with¬ 
 out compulsion a superior for an inferior security. Such a thing was 
 never known and never will be. 
 
 When, however, this elaborate scheme for the destruction of the 
 rights of the people in regard to the payment of the 5.20 bonds was 
 supposed to be finished ; when the gateways of justice, of law, and 
 of public morality had all been closed, and double-barred, and bolted 
 
against tlie taxpayers by the repudiating acts of March, 1869, and of 
 July, 1870, did the practice of had faith on the part of the Govern¬ 
 ment toward its own citizens stop even then? A finality appeared 
 to have been attained. Proclamation was made in every quarter 
 that a permanent settlement had been reached of the manner in 
 w hich every dollar of our national debt should be paid. We were 
 constantly reminded from that day forward that no law-abiding, hon¬ 
 orable citizen would ever again seek to reopen or agitate the ques¬ 
 tion. The bondholders were for the time being content, but they 
 did not remain so a moment longer than a new opportunity presented 
 itself for another encroachment upon the heavily taxed industries of 
 the country. By both the laws of March, 1869, and July, 1870, framed 
 in their interest and under their dictation, it is so plainly written 
 that the bonds then outstanding and afterward to be issued were 
 payable in coin—not in gold alone, nor in silver alone, but in coin— 
 that it is impossible to construct an argument against the proposition. 
 
 Indeed, it is almost equally difficult to make an argument in its 
 favor, for a truth that is self-evident does not admit the ordinary 
 methods of reason in its support. In the first section of the act of 
 July 14, 1870, the bonds therein authorized are made “redeemable in 
 coin of the present standard value.” What is there here for con¬ 
 struction ? What word here taken from the law can the keenest 
 casuist construe into even a doubtful meaning ? We all know what 
 the term coin means in connection with the use of the precious met¬ 
 als in the trade and commerce of the world. Even, however, if we 
 did not, and we desired to seek a still plainer and more explicit 
 guarantee, we have only to turn to the act of March, 1869. It de¬ 
 clares its object in the following language : 
 
 That in order to remove any doubt as to tlie purpose of the Government to dis¬ 
 charge all its just obligations to the public creditors and to settle conflicting ques¬ 
 tions and interpretations of the laws, by virtue of which such obligations have been 
 contracted, it is hereby provided and declared that the faith of the United States 
 is solemnly pledged to the payment, in coin or its equivalent, of all the obligations 
 of the United States not bearing interest, known as United States notes, and of all 
 the interest-bearing obligations of tlie United States, except in cases where the 
 law authorizing the issue of any such obligation has expressly provided that the 
 same be paid in lawful money or other currency than gold and silver. 
 
 False and perfidious as this law is known to be, yet it has at least 
 one merit. It is absolutely clear and unambiguous. If human lan¬ 
 guage can be made to convey an unequivocal meaning, then this law 
 pledged the faith of the Government to the people, and to the world, 
 for the payment of the national debt in “ gold and silver.” It is a 
 rule of court, however, in finding the true meaning of a law under 
 consideration, to resort, if necessary, to the opinions of those by 
 whom it was enacted. If we do so in the x>resent instance we are 
 amply rewarded by rich discoveries. William Pitt Fessenden, then 
 a Senator from Maine, and who also served as Secretary of the Treas- ( 
 ury, used on this floor the following language : 
 
 Sir, I meant what I said, and the Congress of the United States meant what it 
 said, that it would pay so many dollars. What was a dollar ? A dollar was de 
 fined by statute. It was gold or silver coin. 
 
 Senator Morton, when pleading here for the payment of the bonds 
 according to the original contract made the following statement: 
 
 When you return to specie payments you have nothing to pay any o your bonds 
 with but gold or its equivalent, and therefore the exception here iii favor of bonds 
 payable expressly in currency is utterly worthless, because we shall have nothing 
 then but gold anii silver with which to pay these bonds 
 
 But the evidence on this point would not be complete if I did not 
 call Senator Sherman, now Secretary of the Treasury, to refute not 
 
10 
 
 only all the present enemies of silver as a coin of legal tender, but 
 especially to refute and confound, as usual,his own subsequent views. 
 In his recent report on the state of the finances, now on our tables, 
 he says: 
 
 If the market value of the silver in the new coin is less than the gold dollar a 
 forced payment in the new coin is a repudiation of a part of this debt. 
 
 Now it is repudiation to pay the national debt in anything but 
 gold. What was his position when the act of March, 1869, was here on 
 its passage ? At that time he exclaimed : 
 
 What is the first section of this hill 1 It is simply a solemn pledge of the 
 United States that all the obligations of the United States, notes and bonds, shall be 
 paid in gold and silver coin, except only those where the law expressly provides 
 that they shall be paid in lawful money. 
 
 And again, in speaking of the resumption of specie payments, he 
 
 says: 
 
 The honor of the country, the good faith of the nation, the interests of the 
 laborer, the rich and the poor, all classes, demand that we should resume specie 
 payments as early as possible and place all the obligations of the people of the 
 United States upon the solid basis of gold and silver coin. 
 
 Sir, this theme becomes humiliating to every honest American 
 mind. It fills with shame every honest, patriotic heart. The naked 
 fact confronts us at every step that no pledge, however high, solemn, 
 or binding in law and morals, has been strong enough to compel the 
 authors of our financial legislation to obey it. No sense of national 
 honor or good faith has restrained for a single moment the unbridled 
 avarice of idle interest-bearing capital whenever it has been tempted, 
 like some hungry marauding animal, to break over the barriers 
 erected between it and new fields of spoliage that lie beyond. The 
 silver dollar came to us with the birth of our Government. It was 
 devised as a unit of value by Thomas Jefferson and adopted by Con¬ 
 gress in the days of Washington, Hamilton, and Morris. It stood as 
 honored as gold through every storm that beat upon this Govern¬ 
 ment. It is associated with all our development, our strength, our 
 growth, and our glory. With it as a currency, more than any other, 
 the picket-lines of civilization have pushed westward. The pioneer 
 in the shadow of the great forests or on the wide prairies toiled to 
 lay it by, one by one, until the coveted sum of one hundred lay be¬ 
 fore him. Then tightening the girths of his saddle, he rode with speed 
 to the distant land office, where the Government took his one hundred 
 silver dollars for eighty acres of land, which thenceforward became 
 that most blessed spot of earth, a home; a home where trees were 
 planted, where children were born and grew to be men and women, 
 and then in turn went forth into the great world, still to the west, 
 there to live over again in labor and privation the lives of the father 
 and mother left behind. 
 
 The silver dollar is peculiarly the laboring-man’s dollar, as far 
 as he may desire specie. When specie payments were authorized 
 before the war it was the favorite currency with the people, and 
 it will be so again whenever a general circulation of coin is ob¬ 
 tained, if that shall ever happen. Throughout all the financial 
 panics that have assailed this country no man has been bold enough 
 to raise his hand to strike it down ; no man has ever dared to 
 whisper of a contemplated assault upon it; and when the hour of 
 its danger and destruction drew nigh, when the 12th day of Feb¬ 
 ruary, 1873, approached, the day of doom to the American dollar, 
 the dollar of our fathers, how silent was the work of the enemy ! 
 Not a sound, not a word, no note of warning to the American peo- 
 
11 
 
 pie that their favorite coin was about to be destroyed as money; 
 that the greatest financial revolution of modern times was in con¬ 
 templation and about to be accomplished against their highest and 
 dearest rights! The tax-payers of the United States were no more 
 notified or consulted on this momentous measure than the slaves 
 on a southern plantation before the war, when their master made up 
 his mind to increase their task or to change them from a corn to a 
 cotton field. Never since the foundation of this Government has a 
 law of such vital and tremendous import, or indeed of any impor¬ 
 tance at all, crawled into our statute-books so furtively and so noise¬ 
 lessly as this. Its enactment there was as completely unknown to 
 the people, and indeed to four-fifths of Congress itself, as the pres¬ 
 ence of a burglar in a house at midnight is to its sleeping inmates. 
 This was rendered possible partly because the clandestine movement 
 was so utterly unexpected, and partly from the nature of the bill in 
 which it occurred. The silver dollar of American history was de¬ 
 monetized in an act entitled “ An act revising and amending the laws 
 relative to the mints, assay offices, and coiuage of the United States.” 
 The avowed and ostensible purpose of this act is set forth by Dr. 
 Linderman, the Director of the Mint, in his recent work on Money 
 and Legal Tender. After citing very fully the legislation of this 
 country on the subject of mints and coinage, he says: 
 
 There were, however, provisions of law, conflicting in their character, as to the 
 relative powers and duties of the Secretary of the Treasury and the Director of 
 the Mint. To remedy this and to consolidate coinage enactments were the chief 
 objects of the act approved February 12, 1873, revising and amending the laws 
 relative to the mints, assay offices, and. coinage of the United States. 
 
 This act embraces sixty-seven sections, and fills twelve closely 
 printed pages of the seventeenth volume of the United States Stat¬ 
 utes at Large. From this voluminous and prolix measure, proclaim¬ 
 ing, as it did, other and totally different objects to accomplish, it was 
 only necessary to silently omit the few words that for nearly a hun¬ 
 dred years had floated the old familiar dollar as a full legal tender 
 down the stream of Time. This was done in the fifteenth section, 
 which I quote in full in order that the people may see for themselves 
 exactly how this great wrong was effected. It reads as follows : 
 
 That the silver coins of the United States shall be a trade-dollar, a half dollar or 
 fifty-cent piece, a quarter dollar or twenty-five-cent piece, a dime or ten-cent piece : 
 and the weight of the trade-dollar shall lie 420 grains troy; the weight of the half 
 dollar shall be twelve grams (grammes) and one-half of a gram, (gramme;) the 
 quarter dollar and the dime shall be respectively one-half and one-fifth of the 
 weight of said half dollar; and said coins shall be a legal tender at their nominal 
 value for any amount not exceeding five dollars in any one payment. 
 
 Thus it will be seen that in declaring what the silver coins of the 
 United States should be, the dollar, so long imbedded in our history, 
 was dropped, literally thrown away as useless, and another coin, 
 styled a trade-dollar, of no service to the people as a legal tender, was 
 inserted in its place; or, as the Director of the Mint expresses it— 
 
 Under the provisions of this act the coinage and issue was discontinued, of the 
 silver dollar of 412J grains, the three-cent silver piece, the five-cent silver piece, 
 and the two-cent bronze piece. 
 
 And by a subsequent act of Congress, July 22, 1876, the legal-ten¬ 
 der quality of the trade-dollar for even the small amount of five dol¬ 
 lars was repealed, and now it is not a legal tender for anything or 
 any amount. 
 
 But, sir, having pointed out the false pretenses under cover of 
 which the American silver dollar was eliminated from our money 
 system, it yet remains to inquire into the real reasons for such an 
 
act. In tlie first place liad silver failed in its functions as a specie 
 basis any more than gold ? Had it been found any less capable than 
 its twin metal in upholding a paper currency on which the com¬ 
 merce and business of the world has been transacted since the be¬ 
 ginning of civilization ? These two metals of gold and silver have 
 come down to us together, from the days of Abraham, Isaac, and 
 Jacob. They were in great abundance and in high favor when 
 Israel built her temple and adorned the city of Jerusalem. They 
 crept along the shores and islands of the Mediterranean, hand in 
 hand, as arbitrary factors in human affairs. They spread over 
 Europe, as inseparable allies, during the dark and barbarous ages 
 that intervened between the downfall of Rome and the discovery 
 
 c 
 
 of the art of printing, the revival of learning, in the fifteenth cen¬ 
 tury. The cupidity of man has delved into the earth, toiled across 
 the stormy seas, broken solemn treaties, sworn false oaths, murdered 
 his fellow-man, and bartered away his soul alike for them both. 
 The Spaniard and the Portuguese swept whole races in the West 
 Indies, Mexico, Central and South America, first into slavery and 
 then out of existence, in their accursed greed and thirst for gold and 
 silver. Throughout all our colonial history these metals were linked 
 together in an embrace that no convulsion could tear asunder. And 
 when our Government emerged, weary and blood-stained from the 
 Revolution, our fathers found them both standing together on our 
 threshold as a mighty tradition of all the past. They were adopted 
 together as our measure of values because other nations had done the 
 same. They entered their career as American money together, equal 
 in dignity before the law. By the Constitution of the United States 
 they were introduced into each new incoming State of our expand¬ 
 ing Union on terms of absolute equality. We find by article 1, 
 section 10 of that instrument that— 
 
 >Io State shall * * * coin money ; emit bills of credit; make anything but 
 gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts. 
 
 From that day to this I challenge every page of American his¬ 
 tory to show a single instance in which the silver dollar has not been 
 as brave, as firm, and as reliable as the gold dollar. I challenge the 
 sad records of every financial alarm, panic, or crash that ever befell 
 us to show where for a single day or hour silver was not as intrepid 
 and fearless in the money markets as gold. 
 
 From 1792 to 1873, from the coinage of the American silver dollar 
 to the day of its insidious destruction, eighty-one years, gold and sil¬ 
 ver never fluctuated in their relation to each other but a fraction 
 over 3 per cent., and during most of that time silver money ranked 
 higher than gold money, and did so the day it was destroyed. It is 
 true that both these metals, so precious iu the traditions of mankind, 
 broke down at once when this Government was called on to fight for 
 its life, when the ultimate and extreme necessity of the hour de¬ 
 manded a money stronger than them both, based on the confidence 
 of the people that their Government would live and not die; yet when 
 they fell, they fell together. Neither the one, nor the other, nor both 
 united were sufficient to make even a respectable struggle for national 
 existence, and they abandoned the field on the first roar of hostile 
 cannon, hut silver did not flee any sooner nor get under cover any 
 quicker than gold. It may then, I think, he safely assumed in the 
 light of all experience that the real reason for demonetizing silver i3 
 not to be found in its failure to be the peer under all circumstances, 
 in all ages, and in all nations of the other precious metal which has. 
 
“now become so strangely, so suddenly, and so surreptitiously exalted 
 in the eyes of the money power as the sole standard of values. 
 
 Pursuing our inquiry, therefore, on this point we come next upon 
 one of the principal reasons now assigned for abandoning silver coin 
 as money. It is true that the sincerity of this reason is open to the 
 suspicion which always taints an argument brought forward as an 
 after-thought to justify an act which evaded all discussion at the 
 time of its passage, but nevertheless it shall be fairly considered even 
 at this late day. It is now urged with great vehemence by the advo¬ 
 cates of the gold standard alone, that because here and there a Euro¬ 
 pean monarchy with the hardest worked and poorest paid peasantry 
 on the face of the earth has banished silver, we are called upon by 
 our business relations to do the same. It is urged that we are to fol¬ 
 low and not lead in the affairs of the world. According to this argu¬ 
 ment we are to trail in the footsteps of governments whose principles 
 we denounce, and whose laboring people are fleeing in constant 
 streams from their shores to our own in order to escai>e oppression 
 and starvation. 
 
 Sir, no one disputes the fact that all civilized governments have 
 certain communities of interest; but to my mind the American Re¬ 
 public is less dependent for its strength and prosperity on the con¬ 
 duct and policies of other nations than any other government now 
 in existence. Nature in her most lavish mood has conspired to make 
 the American people, in fact as well as in name, an independent peo¬ 
 ple. Our place on the map of the globe is an isolated one. Mighty 
 oceans stretch out between us and all the first-class powers of the 
 world. What foreign neighbors we have on our immediate borders 
 are weak and unimportant. We are not only substantially alone as 
 a. political power ou the North American continent, and separated by 
 long distances from all the great nations of the earth, but we possess 
 within ourselves, in unfailing abundance, every article! and every 
 element of national wealth and glory. Our vast domain will feed 
 uncounted millions, mountains of iron and of all other useful ores 
 respond to every call of scientific progress, while the intelligent in¬ 
 dustry of man, if not paralyzed by bad government, will forever 
 supply all his wants, comforts, and luxuries. On such a theater our 
 greatest resource is self-reliance, and wo have but little need of 
 examples or alliances furnished by less fortunate nations. 
 
 Admitting, however, the argument, for the sake of meeting it, that 
 our financial policy in regard to a specie basis ought to be in har¬ 
 mony with the rest of the world, let us examine into the actual facts 
 as they now exist in the various money systems of every people with 
 whom we have even the slightest commercial intercourse. Has silver 
 in the general trade and business of nations fallen into such discredit 
 that we are compelled to cast it aside in order to keep pace with a 
 wide-spread financial revolution ? Is it; held iu such dishonor as a 
 medium of traffic throughout the world that we cau no longer uphold 
 in with credit to ourselves ? On the contrary a careful estimate shows 
 that silver is an enormous and overwhelming favorite. Of the entire 
 trading and commercial populations of the whole earth 696,250,000 
 more people have silver alone as their standard of values, and trans¬ 
 act all their business upon it as a specie basis, than those who have 
 gold alone for similar purposes. From the same sources of informa¬ 
 tion we learn that 744,200,000 more people use silver alone than use 
 gold and silver both as their metallic currency. In this last state¬ 
 ment I include the population of the United States as using the dou¬ 
 ble standard, for we shall return to it at once, as far at least as a 
 
specie basis can now exist. The great fact, therefore, is that in the 
 mighty bulk of intelligent mankind more than four times as many 
 people have chosen silver as have chosen gold, and more than five 
 times as many have chosen silver as have chosen gold and silver to¬ 
 gether. 
 
 The following table, giving the financial systems and the popula¬ 
 tions of the various governments of the world, will be found in the 
 main correct: 
 
Distribution of gold, silver, and double currency throughout the world. 
 
 15 
 
 a 
 
 o 
 
 a 
 
 £ 
 
 oooooooo 
 
 OOOOOOOO 
 
 oooooooo 
 
 oooooooo 
 
 oooooooo 
 
 H<yjHinaooi > -o 
 
 irf r-ToT t-ToTo'c*' o* 
 CO <JI r-1 TP» 
 
 O 
 
 o 
 
 o 
 
 o' 
 
 o 
 
 LO 
 
 cf 
 
 CO 
 
 © 
 
 a 
 
 a 
 
 o 
 
 b£ 
 
 a 
 
 <D 
 
 DO 
 
 a 
 
 o 
 
 •fH 
 
 <3 
 
 £ 
 
 a 
 
 S3. 
 
 •r* r> 
 
 b£. 
 
 r 3 " 
 
 © <D 
 
 O O 
 
 a ^ 
 w ■+—> 
 
 CO 
 
 a 
 
 0> r O 
 
 - w ^ □ s: V 
 
 P O >;.S +3 +3 
 
 ■ <x 9 a *a 
 o a cl, 
 
 pqpqfrOficedrjP 
 
 a 
 
 o 
 
 *-+£ 
 
 c 3 
 
 O 
 
 Ph 
 
 ooooooooooooo 
 
 OOOOOOOOOOOOO 
 
 OOOOOOOOOOOOO 
 
 o'*o'* o’*o*o'*cTo'*cTo'*o'*o'*o o~ 
 ooooooooooooo 
 
 OOOCOOOOOr-ClOi^^ 
 
 1> O* of r-T lO o'* cf T* Cl —T Cl CO* r-T 
 GO CO Cl O 
 
 Tf CO 
 
 o 
 
 o 
 
 o 
 
 o* 
 
 o 
 
 t- 
 
 o* 
 
 <— 
 
 GO 
 
 © 
 
 a 
 
 o 
 
 a 
 
 a 
 
 © 
 
 a 
 
 © 
 
 a 
 
 a 
 
 G0 
 
 a 
 
 o 
 
 *rH 
 
 ts 
 
 & 
 
 a 
 
 o 
 
 o 
 
 o 
 
 o 
 
 05 
 
 © 
 
 +3 
 
 c3 
 
 cc 
 
 •<1 
 
 sits - 
 
 a s § 3 a s^S S P 
 
 a +- 1 
 
 2-2 
 3 5 
 
 <-< r-* 
 
 HB 
 
 3 N 
 
 |s 
 
 O © 
 
 wt> 
 
 • 
 
 ooooooooooooooo 
 
 O 
 
 a 
 
 ooooooooooooooo 
 
 o 
 
 o 
 
 ooooooooooooooo 
 
 o 
 
 a 
 
 o' o r o © o r o' o o o o o o o o o 
 
 o* 
 
 oooiooooooomouooo 
 
 lO 
 
 
 OOOCIlOOOQOOOClCOi^T-HO 
 
 
 P< 
 
 Ct Tf Cl Tji O O O H GO H rH rH Cl CO 
 
 o'* 
 
 O 
 
 CO Cl T-H n< CO 
 
 GO 
 
 Ph 
 
 
 rH 
 
 © 
 
 K 
 
 o 
 
 r 1 H 
 
 a 
 
 02 
 
 r-H 
 
 o 
 
 a 
 
 © 
 
 ■■a 
 
 a 
 
 .2 
 
 a 
 
 fe5 
 
 .B 
 
 5 
 
 4-» 
 
 'a 
 
 PP <5 
 
 _<3 
 
 ’53 
 
 n3 
 
 a 
 
 05 
 
 © 
 
 a 
 
 5-3.9 
 
 a 
 
 I* 
 
 >a 
 
 © 
 
 S3 
 
 r© 
 
 © 
 
 .a 
 & 
 a 
 
 H 
 
 !5 ©’ rt —I g-p rt © 5 
 
 Ph 
 
 © 
 
 P3 
 
 © 
 
 a 
 
 
 "a | 
 
 ^S^o33S^M©fe 
 0:j - ' - - ‘ 
 
 S • a 
 
 ©c S3 ^ 
 
 o 
 
 H 
 
 ! ^ O S O - QJu © *£ © , 32 a 
 
1G 
 
 It will be seen from tliis statement tliat silver coin, as money, not 
 only meets the desires of four-fifths of the human race, but that 
 those who use it as a standard occupy more than three-quarters of 
 the inhabited parts of the globe. Germany is perhaps prematurely 
 placed in the list of nations using gold alone. It is true she has at¬ 
 tempted to adopt the gold standard, but there are still two hundred 
 millions of silver currency in the hands of her people, and they are 
 reluctant to give it up and see it driven away from fatherland. 
 Whether the empire will bo entirely successful in depriving its sub¬ 
 jects of this favorite money y.et remains to be proven. Ju view of 
 all the foregoing facts, however—in view of the history and condi¬ 
 tion of the world on this question—the enemies of the silver dollar in 
 the United States who, having first destroyed it, seek now to justify 
 themselves by slandering the reputation of its metal in distant lands, 
 must stand before their injured countrymen covered with shame and 
 confusion. They are utterly overwhelmed and beaten from their 
 position by the general testimony of the civilized races of men, and 
 we are left at this point to follow them next to their final and in fact 
 real reason for their assault upon silver money. 
 
 Sir, I touch now upon an issue as old as human society and as uni¬ 
 versal as the loaning of money at interest and the investment of 
 capital for income. Two classes have existed in every age of history 
 on the question of money. All such as plow, sow, and reap ; who 
 spin, weave, and make merchandise for sale ; who manage and work 
 the caverns of coal and iron, and the blast-furnaces and forges; who 
 construct railroads, build ships, and found cities; all such as are in 
 any way pushing on the cause of progress aud material development 
 and who desire to keep their capital, whatever it may be, and espe¬ 
 cially that greatest of all capital, the bone and muscle of the 
 laborer, actively employed, constitute one class. Those who have 
 stepped aside from the active moving column of affairs and with¬ 
 drawn themselves and all they own from the trade and business of 
 the world, intending thenceforward to fasten their idle wealth on the 
 productions of labor as a consumer, and not as an assistance, consti¬ 
 tute the other. Of these two classes those who compose the first 
 desire money to be plentiful aud cheap, for they are working to obtain 
 it, while those who compose the latter desire money to be scarce and 
 dear, because they already have it in abundance to loan and to in¬ 
 vest at high rates of interest and profit. And it was in the real and 
 actual interest of this latter powerful class that silver was demone¬ 
 tized in February, 1873, not because it was less valuable as money 
 than gold, nor because such a change was demanded by the policies 
 of foreign nations, but simply because retired capital desired to 
 diminish the amount of money of every kind circulating in the 
 hands of the people. 
 
 Silver was selected as the victim for sacrifice on that occasion be¬ 
 cause it was thought, on account of certain circumstances yet to be 
 noticed, that it could be more successfully assailed than the other- 
 kinds of money then in existence. The managers of the great money 
 centers in this country and in Europe saw with avaricious alarm the 
 bright streams of silver beginning to increase in volume and in value 
 as they flowed from the mouths of our mines, and now we hear from 
 their angry throats, and from an apparently still angrier newspaper- 
 press which they control, a cry without ceasing against silver infla¬ 
 tion arising from an overproduction of the metal. They have here¬ 
 tofore filled the world with their hostile clamor mainly against a 
 paper currency not immediately convertible into coin of intrinsic 
 
17 
 
 value, but it now appears that there can be, in their own amiable 
 language, an insane inflation of a currency which lias this very in¬ 
 trinsic value itself. We have heard much talk to prove that gold 
 and silver are the only real money, that they have an absolute value 
 as such everywhere and at all times; but we now discover that even 
 these precious metals may become more abundant than is agreeable 
 to those who want the purchasing power of money increased by less¬ 
 ening the quantity in circulation until fifty dollars will buy in a 
 farm worth a thousand under the foreclosure of a mortgage. Is it 
 true, however, that for the genuine interests of the American people, 
 for their advancement in trade and development, and for the pros¬ 
 perity of our commerce throughout the world, too much silver has 
 been produced in the United States or anywhere else ? Has silver, 
 as now claimed, ever threatened to pour into the channels of busi¬ 
 ness such floods and torrents as would unsettle and sweep away all 
 the landmarks of safety ? We will examine this question. 
 
 The history of the production of the precious metals is one of great 
 and prevailing interest. Although they have been arbitrarily deter¬ 
 mined upon as the money of mankind, yet it has never been possible 
 for the highest human intelligence to foretell their supply or to say 
 with certainty that their production will not fail altogether. The 
 quantity of a circulating medium sufficient to meet the legitimate 
 demands of trade can be estimated, but who has ever been able to 
 look into the mines and declare how far their veins of ore extend or 
 how soon they will cease to yield ? Who has ever been able to point 
 out where new mines may be opened into the hidden riches of the 
 earth to take the place of those that are worn out, sterile, and bar¬ 
 ren ? The result has been that while the precious metals have been 
 declared the standard of values, they have themselves always been 
 an unknown quantity, and the irregularity, uncertainty, and insuffi¬ 
 ciency of their production have caused frequent and crushing disas¬ 
 ters in all countries and in every period of history, and have often 
 compelled the strongest governments of ancient and modern times to 
 entirely abandon them. 
 
 It is not my purpose, however, to dwell on this point further than 
 to meet the argument based upon an alleged overproduction of sil¬ 
 ver in recent years. From a report made not long since by a com¬ 
 mittee in the British Parliament it appears, as nearly as can be esti¬ 
 mated, that the entire production of silver throughout the world dur¬ 
 ing the last twenty-five years has reached about ,$1,400,000,000. The 
 increase in its production during that period arose from about 
 .$40,000,000, in 1852, to $80,000,000, in 1875, and the annual amount 
 produced at this time may be placed at $70,000,000. Of these amounts 
 South America. Mexico, and the United States produced all excepting 
 about $10,000,000 a year, arising from the silver resources of all other 
 countries. In our own country the development of this great agency 
 of national prosperity has all taken place in the last eighteen years, 
 substantially in the last ten. 
 
 The following estimate, made by the Commissioner for Mining 
 Statistics, shows the annual production of silver and its increase in 
 the United States: 
 
 1859 . $100, 000 
 
 1860 . 150,000 
 
 1861 .:. 2,000,000 
 
 1862 . 4,500,000 
 
 1863 . 8, 400, 000 
 
 1864-1869 (average).. 11, 625 ,000 
 
 1870. 16,000,000 
 
 2 vo 
 
18 
 
 1871 . 23,000,000 
 
 1872 . 28,000,000 
 
 1873 . 35,750,000 
 
 1874 . 32,000,000 
 
 1875 . 32,000,000 
 
 Estimating tlie production of 1876 and 1877 the same as 1875, and 
 we find that the entire amount of silver yielded hy the mines of the 
 United States since they began to pay for working them has reached 
 but a trifle over the comparatively small sum of $250,000,000. This 
 is less than one-half the amount of our present volume of currency ;• 
 yet when those who are interested in making and keeping a scarcity 
 of money in circulation, noticed an increase of only $12,000,000 from 
 1870 to 1872, they took the alarm which resulted in the act of 1873, 
 proscribing and outlawing it from the companionship of gold as 
 money. It will not do to say that the demand for silver had failed, 
 for aside from what our own people needed at home, the demand from 
 abroad was so great that in the very act demonetizing it here pro¬ 
 vision was made for the coinage of a dollar that we found neces¬ 
 sary for our foreign trade. It was a dollar of the weight of 420 grains 
 troy, and the Secretary of the Treasury, in his recent report, says: 
 
 Tills provision was made at a time when such a dollar was worth in the market 
 102.12 in gold, and was designed for the use of trade in China, where silver was the 
 only standard. 
 
 The great demand for this coin, especially in our trade with China, 
 is shown by “reports made by the two leading foreign banks of China, 
 the Oriental Bank and the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Cor¬ 
 poration, dated respectively January 31 and 30, 1877, and furnished 
 by the United States Consulate at Hong Kong to the Secretary of the 
 Treasury. 77 I find these reports quoted by the Director of the Mint, 
 and I extract from them the following statements: 
 
 The United States trade-dollar has been well received in China, and is eagerly 
 welcomed in those parts of the country where the true value of the coin is known. 
 It is a legal tender at the ports of Foo-cboo and Canton, in China, and also at 
 .Saigon and Singapore; and, although not legally current in this colony, it is anx¬ 
 iously sought after by the Chinese, and in the bazaars it is seldom to be'purchased. 
 In proof of the estimation in which the trade-dollar is held in the south of China, 
 we need only state that the bulk of the direct exchange business between Hong 
 Kong and San Francisco, which is very considerable, is done in this coin, the na¬ 
 tives preferring it to the Mexican dollar. Late advices from San Francisco report 
 that so great is the demand for trade-dollars for shipment to China that the California 
 mint is uuequal to the task of turning out the coin fast enough to satisfy require¬ 
 ments. * * * My opinion is that ultimately it will be current all over China. 
 It is the best coin that ever has been imported,"and, being produced at the fountain¬ 
 head of silver, can be laid down more cheaply than any other dollar. * * * China 
 requires many millions of dollars annually, and while the clean Mexican dollar 
 will be imported for the north of China, tlie trade-dollar will be imported for the 
 south. I would roughly estimate that the San Francisco steamers will bring from 
 four to six lacs of trade-dollars (from four to six hundred thousand) each fort¬ 
 nightly trip all the year round. 
 
 The Secretary of the Treasury also informs us that since the trade- 
 dollar was authorized it has been coined to the large amount of 
 $30,710,400, mainly to meet this and other foreign demands for silver 
 money. It is true, however, that he further states that the export 
 demand for the trade-dollar has now almost if not quite ceased. It 
 is not strange that this should be so, when this Government has done 
 all in its power to dishonor it at home; first limiting it as a legal 
 tender to the insignificant sum of $5, and hastening soon afterward to 
 strip it of even this small badge of respectability. Distant people, 
 naturally suspicious of our institutions, would necessarily reject a 
 coin on which we ourselves have placed such a stigma of disgrace, 
 however great, as we have seen, may be their demand for silver 
 
19 
 
 money. In fact, no artifice, no cunning device has been spared to 
 bring the silver dollar into contempt and to drive it out of existence, 
 although the American people and the people of all lands and of 
 every form of civilization plead for its restoration to favor and to an 
 ample circulation. 
 
 If there are some, however, who still think that these assaults on silver 
 were inspired by any other motive than the fear of too much money, 
 allow me to recall an incident in financial history full of teaching 
 on this point. When the revelation of gold took place in California, 
 and on the other side of the world in Australia about the same time, 
 an impulse was given to the progress of mankind greater than has 
 been produced by any other one event since Columbus discovered 
 America. It quickened every energy of labor, aroused all the great 
 industries everywhere into new and startling activity, revived the 
 drooping sails of commerce in every sea, and sent the loaded cara¬ 
 vans of railroad transportation flying in every direction over the face 
 of the earth. The whole world rejoiced with one exception. The 
 creditor class in every clime beneath the sun looked on in sullen dis¬ 
 trust and dread. And in 1856, when the production of gold had 
 reached its highest point, and when it was supposed that it would 
 continue to increase, this class broke forth in the different countries 
 of Europe in favor of demonetizing gold, because the supply was 
 making money too plentiful. De Quincey, Chevalier, and other 
 writers, made earnest and elaborate arguments to show that the in¬ 
 crease in the flow of gold was so great that soon it would be within 
 the easy reach of all classes, and then its power to purchase labor 
 and property in large quantities for very small sums would be forever 
 gone. Germany, and Austria, and some other European governments, 
 heeded these arguments, and in 1857 actually demonetized gold in 
 order to maintain the scarcity of money. The reason why this ques¬ 
 tion did not seriously agitate the financial circles of the United States 
 is to be found in the fact that at that time we had no great creditor 
 class in this country ; we had no stupendous national debt held as 
 an investment for fixed incomes ; no such State, municipal, and cor¬ 
 poration debts as have since filled all the stock markets with interest- 
 bearing bonds, and which are now a draining tax on all the labor 
 and production of the country. Had our situation been then as it is 
 now we would have seen the holders of Government securities and 
 all other bonds wherein the payment of money from the many to the 
 few was nominated, as badly affrighted in this country at what was 
 called an overproduction of gold as the holders of similar securi¬ 
 ties and bonds were in Europe. The laws which govern the human 
 heart in its love of gain are the same everywhere. The creditor 
 class is not so much concerned what coin or other material shall con¬ 
 stitute money as it is that there shall be no redundancy after its 
 demands are paid. 
 
 The report of the monetary commission submitted to this body in 
 March last by the distinguished Senator from Nevada [Mr. Jones] 
 comments on this fact as follows: 
 
 In all the European discussions, after 1848 and prior to the German demonetiza¬ 
 tion of silver and its consequences, the point made was not that either metal had 
 depreciated relatively to the other, but that by reason of extraordinary supplies of 
 gold from California and Australia, supplemented, about 18C5, by new supplies of 
 silver from Nevada, both metals had depreciated relatively to labor and commod¬ 
 ities, and that those having fixed incomes were being injured by a rise in prices. 
 So long as the double standard existed, a new supply of either metal was only an 
 addition to and only affected the value of the general mass of money and not the 
 relati ve value of the metals. 
 
The “fall in gold,” which Chevalier lamented in 185T, was its fall in relation to 
 property. He pointed out how the double standard had prevented any change 
 from occurring in its relation to silver and how it would continue to do so until 
 the silver of double-standard countries was exhausted. In order, therefore, to 
 protect the interests of the income classes it was claimed to be necessary to de¬ 
 monetize one of the metals, and gold being the metal which then promised the 
 most abundant yield was selected for the purpose. 
 
 It was the depreciation in the value of the precious metals and of money, sup¬ 
 posed to have already resulted from the new supplies of gold, which made him the 
 conspicuous advocate of the demand that one of the metals should be demonetized 
 in order to “redress the situation.” 
 
 It appears, therefore, that gold, even gold, the very god of a fierce 
 idolatry in our midst at this time, has committed the mortal sin of 
 inflation, and has been cursed and ostracised on that account by the 
 usurers and money-changers as well as its more modest companions, 
 silver and paper. Aud if now both the precious metals threatened 
 to increase beyond the wishes and interests of this class they would 
 be earnestly inquiring and scheming into some plan by which they 
 could demonetize gold and silver alike, and substitute diamonds or 
 some other scarcer and more difficult commodity to obtain as the 
 basis of specie payments and the money in which all debts due to 
 them should be paid. 
 
 There remains, however, one other argument in connection with 
 the alleged overproduction and inflation of silver which requires 
 attention. In the name of good faith it has been urged here in this 
 body and elsewhere that, although silver is specified as plainly as 
 gold in all our financial legislation, yet it was produced in such 
 meager quantities at the time our national debt was created that 
 the purchasers of our bonds could not have reasonably supposed they 
 were ever to receive it in payment of the same, notwithstanding the 
 law expressly said they should. In other words, it is an argument 
 fo release the bondholder from the absolute, definitely written words 
 of the law on the ground that he could not foresee that the Govern¬ 
 ment would ever have silver enough to fulfill the law. This is the 
 highest, boldest note of repudiation ever heard in this country; an 
 open admission of the law and an open, square demand for its viola¬ 
 tion. 
 
 No facts or surrounding circumst ances at the time the contract was 
 made can for a moment justify such a flagrant abr ogation of its most 
 explicit terms, but even if outside conditions, not expressed in its 
 face, could be set up now to defeat it, I assert that the conditions 
 alleged by the advocates of this argument never existed at all. I 
 assert that when the law for the payment of the public debt was 
 construed by the famous act of March, 1869, to mean payment in 
 gold and silver both, the production of our silver mines for that year 
 was $11,625,000, and had annually averaged that amount since 1864. 
 It is contended that the purchasers of our bonds overlooked, when 
 they were first issued, the feeble supply of silver. Did an annual 
 average production of nearly twelve millions for the space of . five 
 years preceding the act of March, 1869, likewise escape their atten¬ 
 tion, when they were framing that act in their own interest and to 
 suit themselves ? But again, by the refunding act of July 14, 1870, 
 authorizing the issue of new coin bonds to be substituted for the 
 original five-twenty bonds, making thereby a new contract of that 
 date, it was agreed that the bonds issued by virtue of that act should 
 be payable in silver as well as gold. 
 
 During that very year, the year of the contract which is to be en¬ 
 forced in all its demands against the flesh and blood of labor, the 
 generous silver mines of the United States yielded $16,000,000. Was 
 
21 
 
 not tliis sum sufficient to put the authors of that enactment, the 
 bondholders in Europe and America, on their guard against making 
 a solemn stipulation to receive silver money in payment of their 
 bonds unless they intended at that time to do so ? During the years 
 1871 and 1872 many hundred millions of bonds wero issued under the 
 act of July 14, 1870, and received in exchange for live-twenties. 
 They were all payable by the express terms of the law either in sil¬ 
 ver or gold, at the option of the Government; and the production of 
 silver, when they were thus voluntarily received, amounted, according 
 toour mining statistics, in 1871 to $23,000,000 and in 1872 to $28,750,000. 
 It is no doubt true that the product of these two latter years ex¬ 
 cited the fear of a silver inflation which has since deepened into the 
 absurd panic now prevailing, but how can it with any fairness be 
 pretended that the bondholder is released from receiving silver accord¬ 
 ing to his agreement on the ground that we were not producing that 
 metal when the laws governing the contract were enacted ? And, if 
 it was not coined in amounts as large as it has been since, yet it 
 w r as well known that the law made its coinage free and unlimited, 
 and no one has a right to complain of the enforcement of a law of 
 which he had full knowledge at the time his rights and liabilities 
 accrued. The argument is unsound in law and unsustained by the 
 facts. In fact, the entire movement demonetizing silver is to be ex¬ 
 plained solely and alone on the principle of contraction; and this 
 brings me, in this connection, to consider more fully that destructive 
 principle, and especially to examine the policy and the effects of the 
 law of January 14, 1875, for the resumption of specie payments by 
 an enforced contraction of the non-interest-bearing legal-tender cur¬ 
 rency of the country. The law of February, 1873, taking away sil¬ 
 ver money from the people, and the law of January, 1875, fixing the 
 day, now less than a year in advance, when the greenback shall also 
 perish, are twin monsters of evil, born of the same x^arentage and 
 linked together for the destruction of all money save gold. In their 
 discussion, therefore, they are entitled to a joint recognition. 
 
 Sir, in the entire catalogue of crimes against human society not 
 one can be found so awful in all its consequences, both immediate 
 and remote, as a Government commits when it deliberately destroys 
 the money of its own citizens. Wherever in all the regions of time 
 such measures have been accomplished the horrors of history have 
 taken place. No shrinkage in the amount of money, no contraction 
 of the currency in the hands of the people was ever enforced by law 
 to any considerable extent, except amidst broken lives, ruined hopes, 
 despair, lost honor, and all the vices springing from the lowest depths 
 of poverty and human misery. The worst ingredients of war, pest Hence, 
 and famine all flow from the act of a government violently tearing 
 from the hands of the laboring masses the money they so much need. 
 Murder, theft, robbery, prostitution, forgery, embezzlement, and 
 fraud of every hue and mien curse the land that is deprived of a full 
 and sufficient circulating medium on which to give employment to 
 its toiling men and women. The social statistics of mankind will 
 show that wherever the supply of money has been scant and labor 
 poorly paid, or left entirely idle, there the gallows-tree has borne 
 most frequently its horrid burden; there the jails and the peniten¬ 
 tiaries and all the haunts of infamy have been most crowded. The 
 well-clothed and w r ell-fed Pharisee may ostentatiously thauk God 
 that he is better than such as these, but he is not. When the strong 
 hand of the Government is engaged in abolishing money, and thus 
 interposing between the laboring-man and the laboring-woman 
 
and their last chance for bread by honest work, their sins for self- 
 preservation are less odious to their merciful Father than the prayers 
 of the usurers who have driven them to ruin. 
 
 It is said in highly intelligent quarters that at this hour there are 
 three millions of our own people unemployed, who have no other 
 dependence for food and shelter than the labor of their hands, 
 and one-half of whom are now tramping from place to place for 
 crumbs of charity. Pitiable and dangerous spectacle! It never hap¬ 
 pened before in this land of bounteous nature, nor would it now but 
 for the fact that in these later days a class has arisen in our midst 
 which is benefited by the scarcity of money, and the consequent de¬ 
 struction of all those great industries which afford employment to 
 labor. Nor does this frightful spectacle appeal alone to our sympa¬ 
 thy with human misery, deep and indescribable as that must be. The 
 loss to the country in actual wealth arising from the absolute idleness 
 of three million persons is very great. It has been estimated that at 
 one dollar per day as wages it would amount to enough in two years 
 to liquidate our public debt. The. United States monetary commis¬ 
 sion make the following valuable observations in their recent report: 
 
 The worst effect, however, economically considered, of falling prices is not upon 
 existing property, nor upon debtors, evil as it is, hut upon laborers, whom it de¬ 
 prives of employment and consigns to poverty, and upon society, which it deprives 
 of that vast sum of wealth which resides potentially in the vigorous arms of the 
 idle workman. A shrinking volume of money transfers existing property unjustly, 
 and causes a concentration and diminution "of wealth. It also impairs the value 
 of existing property by eliminating from it that important element of value con¬ 
 ferred upon it by the skill, energy, and care of the debtors from whom it is wrested. 
 But it does not destroy any existing property, while it does absolutely annihilate 
 all the values producible by the labor which it condemns to idleness. The esti¬ 
 mate is not an extravagant one that there are now in the United States three mill¬ 
 ion persons willing to work, but who are idle because they cannot obtain employ¬ 
 ment. This vast poverty-stricken army is increasing and will continue to increase 
 as long as falling prices shall continue to separate money capital, the fund out of 
 which wages are paid, from labor, and to discourage its investment in other forms 
 of property. 
 
 Labor, co-operating with the forces of nature, is the source of all wealth, and 
 to reach the highest degree of effectiveness it must be classified through the aid 
 of capital and supported by capital during the process of production and be 
 measured and paid in money, each unit of which is a sight-draft on all other 
 forms of property, bearing a value in proportion to the number of such drafts. 
 In order that any country may reach the maximum of material prosperity cer¬ 
 tain conditions are indispensable. All its labor, assisted by the most approved 
 machinery and appliances, must be employed, and the fruits of industry must be 
 justly distributed. These conditions are only possible when capital is absolutely 
 protected against violence and free from illegitimate legislative interference, and 
 when the laborer is protected in his natural right to dispose of his labor in such 
 manner as he may prefer. They are utterly impossible when the money stock is 
 shrinking and the money value of property and services is declining. Howsoever 
 great the natural resources of a country may be, however genial its climate , fertile its 
 soil , ingenious , enterprising , and industrious its inhabitants, or free its institutions, 
 if the volume of money is shrinking and prices are falling, its merchants will be over¬ 
 whelmed with bankruptcy, its industries ivill be paralyzed, and destitution and dis¬ 
 tress will prevail. 
 
 The instinct of self-interest is the mainspring of industrial and commercial 
 activity. It is the animating motive alike of the capitalist and of the laborer. 
 Without it, no labor would be performed, nor would capital have an existence. If 
 money capital is withdrawn from productive enterprises, it is from the apprehen¬ 
 sion of loss and from the same instinct of thrift through which it was acquired. 
 It is natural that the money capitalist should exact from labor all he can in ex¬ 
 change for his money, and that the laborer should exact all the money he can in ex¬ 
 change for his labor. What is known as the conflict between capital and labor is 
 not so much a conflict between other forms of capital and labor as it is between 
 money and labor. Indeed, the conflict between money and other forms of capital 
 is as distinctly marked and quite as severe as the conflict between money and labor, 
 and in that conflict other forms of capital suffer fully as much as labor, the only dif¬ 
 ference being that they are better able to endure losses. Other forms of capital must 
 
be constantly converted into money in order to pay wages and to meet other de¬ 
 mands incident to industrial enterprises. AVlien the stock of money is shrinking and 
 prices are falling, this conversion can only be made at rates continually growing 
 more unfavorable, while at the same time the products of the labor for whose wages 
 sacrifices have been made are also undergoing a shrinkage of money value. Thus 
 loss and sacrifice are encountered at every turn, and the owners of other capital 
 than money shrink from the friction of exchange, withdraw from productive enter¬ 
 prises, and only exchange as much of their property for money as will suffice to 
 meet the necessary expenditures of living, which are reduced to the most econom¬ 
 ical level, as it is principal and not income which is being consumed. Little more 
 labor will be employed under these circumstances than is sufficient to support the 
 owners of capital on this parsimonious basis, and as a consequence the labor mar¬ 
 ket will be overstocked, and the competition between laborers will reduce wages to 
 a starvation level. But during this period, when property is being sacrificed to 
 meet current necessities, and laborers are being remitted to idleness and destitu¬ 
 tion, money fattens on the general disaster. 
 
 When, therefore, on the 14th of January, 1875, this Government, 
 having already destroyed silver money, determined to destroy within 
 the next four years its outstanding legal-tender paper currency until 
 there should be no more of it left than could he redeemed in gold 
 coin alone on the 1st day of January, 1879, it became responsible for 
 all the appalling consequences that have followed. An attempt to 
 force the resumption of specie payments with gold and silver botli 
 as our metallic basis would be a cruel failure at this time; but the 
 proposition to contract, reduce, cancel, and burn our present amount 
 of currency until it harmonizes with the meager margin of gold 
 which we can command has stricken the arm of labor with paralysis, 
 dried up the fountains of business prosperity, and placed hollow-eyed 
 want in more than a million hitherto happy homes. The demone¬ 
 tization of silver was purposely accomplished before the policy of 
 specie resumption was declared in order to make money as scarce as 
 possible in reaching by forced contraction the single standard of 
 gold. We could reach the double standard easier than the single one, 
 but the purpose of the money power was the diminution of money in 
 circulation, and it better accomplished that object by first outlawing 
 silver and then seeking the specie basis composed of but one metal. 
 It- cannot be denied that great progress has been made in this work 
 of destroying moneys, and all values, except the value of money, 
 which is made greater by being made scarcer and harder to obtain. 
 
 At the date of the act of January, 1875, our volume of currency 
 was already reduced in proportion to population far below European 
 nations, where labor commands barely subsistence wages. We had 
 nearly one-half less per capita than Germany, England, or France. 
 Financial distress was even then upon us. Business wrecks were 
 afloat on every hand. We had the warnings of the nine preceding 
 years during which the money of the country had been diminished 
 nearly $400,000,000 by contraction, and during which time the lia¬ 
 bilities for commercial failures and bankruptcies had arisen from 
 an average of about $11,000,000 per annum to nearly three hun¬ 
 dred million. A panic had just swept over the country with sufficient 
 havoc and ruin to extort the admission from General Grant in his 
 message of December, 1873, that our volume of currency was too 
 small for our business, even at its dullest stages. We had less than 
 $735,000,000, not counting fractional currency, and yet against the 
 supplications of every active business and industry a still further 
 reduction w T as dictated, and has been effected to the extent of nearly 
 one hundred million. If, however, the law for the enforced resump¬ 
 tion of specie payments is to stand unrepealed on our statute-books, 
 then there still remains a work of destruction to be done in this 
 
24 
 
 country far more extensive, dangerous, and full of wretchedness’ 
 than we have yet witnessed. That law declares that— 
 
 On and after the 1st day of January, A. D. 1879, the Secretary of the Treasury 
 shall redeem in coin the United States legal-tender notes then outstanding on their 
 presentation for l'edemption at the office of ihe assistant treasurer of the United 
 States in the city of New York, in sums of not less than $50. 
 
 The term coin here used means only gold now, and the law, in order 
 to enable the Secretary of the Treasury to carry out this plan for re¬ 
 tiring the greenback money from circulation, authorizes him to sell 
 interest-bearing bonds to obtain gold and to use such surplus reve¬ 
 nues as he may have on hand. 
 
 The Government has undertaken two things: first,the shrinkage of 
 the amount of currency, and, second, the possession of gold in such 
 quantity that the one can be converted into the other. The smaller, 
 therefore, the quantity of gold that can be obtained the greater must 
 be the reduction of paper money in order to rest dollar for dollar on 
 such a narrow metallic basis. It becomes important in this view to 
 know what has been done under the law of January, 1875, in ac¬ 
 cumulating gold as a basis for specie payments a year hence. Many 
 efforts have been made to ascertain the exact amount of actual gold 
 which this Government now owns, none of which has been entirely 
 successful, for the reason that the sum is so small, but it is perfectly 
 safe to state, after deducting the amount due as interest on bonds, 
 That there are not this day fifty millions of gold in the United States 
 Treasury and in all the national banks besides. If resumption is to 
 take place on that basis, the gigantic task of this poor pittance will 
 be to stand good for the redemption of $350,007,308.50 of legal-tender 
 notes, commonly called greenbacks, and $291,874,236 of national-bank¬ 
 note circulation, making in all the sum of $641,881,544.50. It is very 
 plain, even to those who believe that $1 in gold is sufficient for the cir¬ 
 culation and redemption of $3 in paper, that our present condition 
 of $1 in gold to about fourteen in paper must be radically revolu¬ 
 tionized against the day fixed for specie resumption. What prob¬ 
 ability is there of any large increase of gold in the vaults of the 
 Treasury ? Will specie resumption be reached within the present 
 year by leveling up the amount of gold in our possession or by level¬ 
 ing down the amount of currency in circulation ? No one claims that 
 foreign nations will supply our want of gold. 
 
 On the contrary, nearly all the produce of our mines goes to them 
 to pay interest on public securities held abroad. But even if this 
 Government could turn the entire gold yield of every American mine 
 into the Treasury between this and the 1st day of January, 1879, the 
 supply would fall far short of a specie basis for one-tenth part of 
 our present circulation. During the year that has just closed, 1877, 
 the gold coinage of our mints reached only the sum of $44,078,199. 
 The bulk of this sum went abroad, a portion of it is hoarded by 
 private parties, and a small fraction, perhaps, found its way into the 
 coffers of the Government. An examination of the report of the 
 Director of the Mint for 1877 shows that the entire coinage of gold 
 in the United States from the establishment of the Mint in 1793 to 
 the present time amounts to but $983,159,695. This is the slow and 
 comparatively small production of gold money in the long space of 
 eighty-four years, nearly the whole life-time of the American Repub¬ 
 lic ; less than $1,000,000,000; less than enough to pay for one siugle 
 crop of agricultural products in the western States of Ohio, Ken¬ 
 tucky, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Missouri, Minnesota, 
 Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska ; and less than one-half enough to pay 
 
25 
 
 the national debt as it exists to-day. Is there no lesson of wisdom 
 in these figures for the statesman of these times? They are the ex¬ 
 perience of almost a century. Do they encourage any reasonable 
 being to believe that gold enough can be obtained by this Govern¬ 
 ment in the next twelve months to redeem its currency and to ena¬ 
 ble its citizens to do business on a specie basis? Is there anywhere 
 in America or in the whole universe a new fountain of gold, pouring 
 forth increased volumes, from which our parched and scanty re¬ 
 sources may be replenished? 
 
 The very reverse is the fact. Old fountains are drying up ; their 
 streams are diminishing ; no wizard’s rod can smite the earth and in¬ 
 dicate where new supplies will break forth. But the requirements 
 of the Government for gold constitute but a small portion of the de¬ 
 mand. The American people at this time are enormously in debt; 
 more than any other people beneath the sun. Their State and mu¬ 
 nicipal debts of all kinds, and their private debts to each other, have 
 been variously estimated at from six to teu thousand million dollars. 
 Every dollar of this vast indebtedness will call for gold coin after 
 the 1st day of January, 1879. Where are the people to obtain suffi¬ 
 cient gold with which to pay their debts and transact their busi¬ 
 ness ? The question is one that may well terrify every man who 
 owes his neighbor anything, for there is not now, and never has 
 been at any oue time, enough gold in circulation as money on the 
 face of the wdiole earth to meet this demand. If, therefore, specie 
 payments are in reality to be resumed in January, 1879, the Govern¬ 
 ment has yet to destroy at least two-thirds of its present paper cir¬ 
 culation, and the people on this reduced basis, and under the gold 
 standard alone, will be compelled to meet their debts and their 
 taxes which have undergone no diminution. 
 
 Sir, here'the bad faith of this Government toward the great mass 
 of its citizens culminates. To a people in debt the destruction of 
 their money is the virtual increase of their indebtedness to the ex¬ 
 tent of the money destroyed. If a man makes a contract to pay one 
 hundred dollars on a given day, and has just that sum of money in 
 his possession at the date of the contract, he is doing business 
 securely. If, however, fifty dollars are taken from him by force, and 
 he is left to meet his contract on one-half the amount needed, his 
 bankruptcy necessarily follows. The American people were supplied 
 with one amount of currency on which to contract debts, both jjublic 
 and private, and they are now to have another, and far smaller 
 amount, with which to pay them. They entered into all their exist¬ 
 ing obligations with comparatively plenty of money in their hands. 
 By the laws of this Government now they are first to be deprived of 
 one-half their money, and then required to pay every obligation in 
 full. The national debt was contracted on the basis of inflation, and 
 is to be paid on the narrowest basis of the most merciless contraction. 
 A thousand-dollar bond for which only $600 in gold was realized 
 by the Government, in its distress, at the time of its issue, has 
 now to be taken up and paid for with over a thousand dollars in gold 
 by the tax-payers. The farmer who bought land with deferred pay¬ 
 ments; the mechanic who purchased a house and lot and made a 
 mortgage for the balance of the purchase-money ; the business man 
 who uses his credit as a part of his capital, have all found the weight 
 of their obligations largely increased by being deprived of the means 
 of meeting them. They must be met, however, and property itself, 
 in the absence of money, changes hands from the debtor to the cred¬ 
 itor classes in payment of debts. It changes hands, too, at such 
 
20 
 
 reduced values that the business mau is sold out and closed up, and 
 homes are swept away, often for the want of a very small sum of 
 money. 
 
 Since the act demonetizing silver, supplemented as it has been by 
 the act for a forced resumption of specie payments, the property of 
 the people of the United States has shrunk not less than 35 percent, 
 in value. What could be sold for $100 five years ago can be bought 
 now for $65 on an average all over the country. This is a criminaf 
 confiscation of property amounting to not less in value than $10,000,- 
 000,000 when the estimate is applied to every State and section alike. 
 In this vast shrinkage of all values, arising from the shrinkage of 
 money iu circulation, is to be found the immediate cause of that gen¬ 
 eral bankruptcy and ruin which now fill the land with the sound of 
 falling business houses, commercial failures, broken savings banks, 
 and the lamentations of the poor who have been robbed of their hard 
 earnings and of the opportunity to earn more. Under the influence 
 of this policy nearly forty thousand business failures have taken 
 place in this country since February, 1873, with liabilities amounting 
 in the aggregate to over $1,000,000,000. The heart sickens in think¬ 
 ing for a moment of the sorrows, the broken hearts, the shattered 
 hopes, the suicides which these figures represent. If the policy of 
 this Government has been to inflict the greatest misery on the great¬ 
 est number its success has been complete. It is in vain to attribute 
 such wide-spread disasters to other causes. We sometimes hear them 
 ascribed to what is vaguely styled overproduction. I would gladly 
 know what is meant by this oracular term. Overproduction ! What 
 is it that we overproduce ? Is there too much food, clothing, and 
 other necessities of life ? Has the soil yielded too much wheat, com, 
 hay, cotton, sugar, rice ? The producer is one who creates wealth, 
 and overproduction would therefore signify too great au amount of 
 wealth. It will be hard to convince a sane mind that an overflow of 
 wealth is the cause of depression and gloom, of financial calamities 
 and rapidly increasing poverty, and of laborers praying, and praying- 
 in vain, for the privilege, once afforded to slaves, of working for the 
 bare means of subsistence. The mission of wealth produced by toil 
 from the bosom of the earth is far different from this. Unless de¬ 
 prived of its natural functions by pernicious laws it brings abundant 
 happiness to a people and establishes smiling content in their midst. 
 
 But the cause most commonly assigned by the authors of our finan¬ 
 cial policy for its baleful effects on the business and labor of the 
 country is that the currency has been and is yet in an inflated condi¬ 
 tion, and that real prosperity can only be attained by its reduction to 
 the gold basis. The evils of inflation have been painted in the darkest 
 colors for years past, and on all occasions. I am not an inflationist 
 in any sense that would disturb the true interest of trade and com¬ 
 merce, nor would it ever be necessary to discuss the question at all 
 if the contractionist had only been willing to let the volume of our 
 currency remain at the point where the country prospered most and 
 the people were happiest. A comparison between the periods when 
 our i>aper circulation was greatest and the years of contraction which 
 have followed is crushing to the advocates of the latter policy. Dur¬ 
 ing the whole fouryears of 1863,1864,1865, and 1866, when the volume 
 of our currency averaged over a thousand millions, the business fail¬ 
 ures of the entire country reached only twenty-one hundred and 
 sixty-seven ; less in number than occurred in any three months of the 
 year just closed. Is this an argument against a full and generous 
 circulation of money ? During the period which is now stigmatized ' 
 
as one of inflation the windows of business houses were not dark¬ 
 ened, and business men did not go as mourners about the streets. 
 The laborer did not go home without bread to his wife and children. 
 Helpless millions did not cower and tremble at the approach of 
 winter for the lack of food and shelter. The public peace was not 
 broken by riots in resistance to starvation wages. The courts were 
 not principally occupied in enforcing collections, foreclosing mort¬ 
 gages, ordering sheriff sales, or in punishing the destitute and the 
 outcast. These are some things which did not take place. Others 
 that did are equally striking. Good wages and good prices stim¬ 
 ulated every laboring-man’s muscle, every business man’s brain, and 
 every power of machinery into the highest and most productive 
 activity. Hope and encouragement were in every heart. New 
 farms w T ere bought and cultivated ; new workshops were opened; 
 new manufactories were established; new towns and cities were 
 founded, and old ones expanded and improved ; new railroads were 
 built, giving employment to millions and bringing the remotest aud 
 most obscure regions into immediate contact with trade and civil¬ 
 ization; new mines of iron, coal, and silver were sunk into the earth, 
 w r hose contents in return assisted in the glad work of a universal, 
 individual, and national prosperity. Am I to be reminded that this 
 well-known condition of general welfare and happiness was a de¬ 
 lusion, that it w r as unreal and could not last? Why was it a delu¬ 
 sion? Were not its comforts and blessings a reality to the American 
 people? But w T hy did it not last? But one answer can be given : 
 The money power determined it should not last. The Garden of 
 Eden before the fall was not more hateful in the eyes of Satan than 
 was this picture of plenty and prosperity to those whose gains and 
 profits depended on the scarcity of money in the hands of the people 
 and consequent hard times. They began their work of spoliation in 
 1866, and they have made the downfall complete. They have haunted 
 these halls; they have thundered at these doors; they have fortified 
 themselves in the high places of this Government, and, whether by 
 deceitful persuasion, artful speech, or open menace and assault, they 
 have not ceased to bring blight and ruin to the people. The very 
 madness of avarice has impelled them from blow to blow, from act¬ 
 io act. The picture of general welfare that I have drawn, indeed, 
 did not last. It has been defaced, torn, stamped under foot by the 
 repeated acts of legislation inspired by remorseless greed. The peo¬ 
 ple asked for no such change. They never sent petitions here ask¬ 
 ing for any of the enactments of the last twelve years. They would 
 have been glad to be let alone and to allow the natural laws of trade 
 and business to work out a safe solution of every financial problem. 
 Loud complaint is now made by thoughtless or designing persons 
 that the question of our finances is under agitation. Every act of 
 legislation thus far has been dictated by invested capital, and not one 
 by the people. Every agitation of the question in Congress, until 
 the present, has been made in the same interest and to gain addi¬ 
 tional advantages. 
 
 The people thus far have borne their wrongs in the forbearing hope 
 that they would cease, and if now they rise at last and see to it that 
 their rights are better respected, it is because the full measure of 
 their patience is exhausted. When their prostrate and suffering con¬ 
 dition, however, is forced on the unwilling recognition of the money 
 power, we are often met with the impatient argument that it is not 
 for the Government to make money for the people. I might content 
 myself with answering that it is certainlvnot for the Government to 
 
28 
 
 destroy money for the people. Those who deny the right of the Gov¬ 
 ernment to regulate the amount of currency in circulation overlook 
 the fact that they have been dictating that very policy to be pur¬ 
 sued for themselves ; only that they have always caused it to be reg¬ 
 ulated downward instead of upward. 
 
 But what is the duty of the Government in this regard ? Is it true 
 that the people are not dependent on the policy of their Government 
 for money on which to do business ? Is it true, as often asserted, that 
 in some way or other those who are willing to work, or have some¬ 
 thing to sell, can always obtain money regardless of all financial 
 legislation ? No greater fallacy than this was ever put forward in 
 defense of wrong and injustice. Money is the creature of government 
 both as to quality and quantity. It exists merely by the assertion of 
 law, and in no other way. Article 1, section 8, of the Constitution of 
 the United States provides that “The Congress shall have power 
 * * * to coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign 
 
 coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures,” and section 10 of 
 the same article denies all such powers to the States, thus making 
 Congress the exclusive creator of money for the American people. 
 Without the action of Congress not one dollar can exist in the United 
 States. If the article called money, whether of gold, silver, or paper, 
 is necessary at all in the transactions of life, here alone is the fountain 
 from which it emanates. How, then, shall this high power be exer¬ 
 cised ? Shall only enough lawful money be created, in proportion to 
 the labor and other commodities which it is designed to pay for, to 
 give ten cents a day to the laborer, and $10 for a horse; or shall it be 
 furnished in sufficient amount to afford a just equivalent for labor aud 
 for every other thing of value? On the answer to this question has 
 depended the prosperity or the adversity of the American people in 
 all the past; on it their present deplorable condition can alone be 
 explaiued, and their future fate foretold. A circulating medium 
 being a recognized necessity of civilized nations, and its existence 
 depending solely on national authority, that government which, for 
 any reason, fails to make a supply adequate to the business prosperity 
 of its citizens, violates that fundamental compact of duty which must 
 prevail in every free political commonwealth. 
 
 Not only, however, has this Government failed in this great duty, 
 but the manner it has adopted to furnish the people with their lim¬ 
 ited and insufficient supply of currency was conceived and perfected 
 by the owners of retired inactive capital. The system of national 
 banking now in use is the most elaborate and complete scheme for 
 making the people pay tribute to wealth, in order to obtain a circu¬ 
 lating medium, ever known in the financial history of the world. 
 There is not a dollar to-day in the hands of the people on which they 
 have not paid a tax for the privilege of having it put in circulation 
 by the Government. The national bank is the middle-man between 
 the Government and the people, and is enormously paid for doing 
 what the Government ought directly to do itself. According to the 
 report of the Comptroller of the Currency there were two thousand 
 and eighty national banks October 1,1877, and they owned in even 
 numbers $336,000,000 of Government bonds as the basis of a bank¬ 
 note circulation of $291,000,000. The interest paid by the people on 
 the bonds thus used to secure a currency on which to transact their 
 business amounts to not le a s than $16,000,000 per annum. This is the 
 tax paid for the bank-note circulation. The bondholder has been 
 made the banker of the country, and he is banking on the interest- 
 bearing debt of the people. For every $100 of currency they pay him 
 
nearly $6 interest on the bonds whicli secure that hundred. His ad¬ 
 vantages, however, only begin with this bonus of sixteen millions. 
 
 The report of the Comptroller shows that, October 1, 1877, the na¬ 
 tional banks had loans outstanding to the amount of eight hundred 
 and ninety-one millions. No one will pretend that these loans are 
 made on an average interest of less than 10 per cent. This makes an 
 interest account of eighty-nine millions per annum, and this is an 
 under rather than an over estimate. Of other bonds, stocks, debts, 
 real estate, specie, currency, clearing-house exchanges, United States 
 certificates of deposit, and all other resources, the property of the 
 national banks, at the above date, amounted to something over five 
 hundred and fourteen millions, which, at the low rate of 5 per cent., 
 makes au additional interest income of twenty-five millions. The 
 following statement will therefore correctly represent the facts: 
 
 October 1,1877: 
 
 National banks. 2, 080 
 
 Resources... $1,741, 000. 000 
 
 Interest on resources paid by the people per annum. 130, 000, 000 
 
 In return for the establishment of this stupendous money power it 
 simply acts as an agent in transmitting the currency of the United 
 States from the Treasury to the people. Will any one pretend that 
 a cheaper and more equitable mode of supplying the country with a 
 circulating medium cannot be framed by our legislative wisdom ? 
 In fact can any one for a moment defend such a system of monopoly 
 and oppression ? He who desires its permanence desires also the per¬ 
 manence of the national bonded debt. The two are inseparable. One 
 rests upon the other. If the national banks are a blessing then our 
 public debt is a blessing, for the debt supports the banks. This idea 
 is embraced in the act of January, 1875. Provision is made in the 
 third section of that act for an increased number of “ banking asso¬ 
 ciations” to be based on au increaserl number of interest-bearing 
 bonds sold for that purpose. They are armed too by this section with 
 hostile powers against the legal-lender greenback. With the aid of 
 the Secretary of the Treasury they are authorized to exterminate 
 this favorite money of the people. For every $100 issued after the 
 date of the act of January, 1875, by the national banks then in exist¬ 
 ence or organized afterward $80 in legal-tender notes are to be with¬ 
 drawn from circulation and destroyed until that currency is contracted 
 to the limit of $300,000,000. The purpose of this legislation is to make¬ 
 file banks completely master of the financial situation and to subor¬ 
 dinate all the wants and interests of the American people to their 
 will and pleasure. And in order to facilitate this purpose the green¬ 
 back dollar has been denounced with e very epithet of contempt and 
 derision kuown to the English language. I will not pause now to 
 defend this great money iu its contest with those who are bent on its 
 destruction. Its reputation in peace and in war is known to all. 
 The soldiers and the sailors knew it in the great hour of peril; their 
 widows, their orphans, and their maimed and crippled comrades have 
 known it ever since. The people of every class and of every party, 
 engaged in business and labor, know that, in spite of all assaults, in 
 spite of the fact that the Government dishonors it byrefusing to take 
 it for Government dues, and in spite of the fact that there is not gold 
 enough in the Treasury to redeem it at ten cents on the dollar, yet 
 to-day it ranks but 3 per cent, below gold in the money markets that 
 are most hostile to its existence. All these things are known and 
 treasured up, and I do not dwell upon them now. 
 
 Sir, thus far 1 have spoken in pointing out what I conceive to be 
 
the vicious legislation of this country on the great and paramount 
 question of its finances. There are two opposing ideas on this sub¬ 
 ject now thoroughly aroused into vigilance and activity. On the 
 one hand is the vast money-power in all its various developments of 
 bonds, banks, and loaning associations, and on the other are the great 
 industries, the active business, and the laboring people. The issue 
 has been years in making up, but it is now joined. Nobody need be 
 deceived. All the wide-spread influences of capital are organized 
 and combined. The holders of public securities in America and in 
 Europe work together. They think and act in concert. 
 
 The national banks of the United States have a solid organization 
 to protect what they have and to get as much more as possible. 
 They are asking now to be relieved from paying taxes on their circu¬ 
 lation and deposits, in order that they may enjoy their enormons 
 profits free from all burdens for the support of the Government. As¬ 
 sociations of capitalists, engaged in obtaining mortgages at 12 
 per cent, interest on western farms, on account of the scarcity of 
 money in that section, are not only striving to make all such mort¬ 
 gages payable in gold a year hence, but they are threatening those 
 in pecuniary distress that they shall have no further favors at the 
 same rates unless they agree in advance to pay gold in return for 
 greenback loans. The power of money in the midst of times like 
 these is very great, but I am much deceived in the people if they 
 have not turned at last in defiance and bold warning upon their op¬ 
 pressors. They are not in favor of repudiating a single dollar of 
 their public or private debts. They intend to pay everything they 
 owe, but they intend to submit to no more changes of contracts, 
 violations of obligations, and breaches of public faith, in order to in¬ 
 crease their indebtedness or to take away their means to pay it. 
 They demand, too, that certain specific wrongs shall be redressed. 
 
 First, those for whom 1 speak demand the restoration of the silver 
 dollar exactly as it stood before it was touched by the act of Feb¬ 
 ruary, 1873. They desire that it shall have unlimited coinage, not 
 fearing that it will become too plenty for their wants; and that it 
 be made a full legal tender, believing that it is as good now with 
 which to pay all debts, public and private, as it was during eighty- 
 one years of American history. 
 
 Second, they demand the repeal, unconditionally, of the act of Jan¬ 
 uary 14,1875, compelling a resumption of specie x>ayments in January, 
 1879, holding that the question of a return to a specie basis for our 
 currency should be controlled entirely by the business interests of 
 the country. They do not believe that the country should be dragged 
 through the depths of ruin, wretchedness, and degradation in order to 
 reach a gold standard for the benefit alone of the income classes. 
 
 Third, they demand that the national-banking system be removed 
 and a circulating medium provided by the Government for the peo- 
 ple, without taxing them for the privilege of obtaining it. And they 
 ask that the amount thus placed in circulation shall bear a reason¬ 
 able and judicious proportion to the business transactions and the 
 population of the United States. 
 
 Fourth, they demand that the currency circulated on the authority 
 of the Government shall be made a legal tender in payment of all 
 debts, public and private, including all dues to the Government, well 
 knowing that it will then be at par with gold, or more likely at a 
 X)remium over it. 
 
 And fifth, they demand that hereafter the financial policy of the 
 country be framed permanently in their interest; that they shall not 
 
31 
 
 be discriminated against in future legislation as in the past, and that 
 their prosperity, and not the mere growth of incomes to retired capi¬ 
 talists, shall be the primary duty of the Government. 
 
 In my judgment, these demands are just and moderate. I implore 
 Senators not to suppose that they can be disregarded with safety. If 
 they are rejected now they will be renewed hereafter with still greater 
 determination and perhaps with others added. I plead for the finan¬ 
 cial credit of the Government. It rests on the popular will alone, 
 and that will can no longer be defied or menaced with impunity. 
 The people are sovereign, and they can bind and they can loosen. 
 If the money power is advised with wisdom it will stop and retrace 
 its steps. It confronts a power now mightier than itself : a free peo¬ 
 ple at the ballot-box, inflamed by a sense of injustice and oppression. 
 If, however, it is joined to its golden idol; if its heart is hardened 
 and its neck stiffened by its vast possessions ; if the burning lust of 
 avarice has made it deaf to the voice of reason and blind to all hu¬ 
 man experience, it will push on in its career, until it works its 
 own destruction ; for, sooner or later, the people, irrespective of party 
 names, will unite in their own defense and establish justice. They 
 have been slow to believe that there was a deliberate purpose to 
 degrade and impoverish the great producing classes, but they are 
 being rapidly educated now. The condition of the country is a 
 teacher whose awful lesson is engraven on all their hearts. They 
 have also recently read the proclamations of the great organs of the 
 money power, removing all disguise as to the meaning of our finan¬ 
 cial legislation and the misery it has created. In the columns of one 
 they have read that— 
 
 The American laborer must make up his mind henceforth not to be so much 
 better off than the European laborer. Men must be content to work for low 
 wages. * * * In this way the workingman will be nearer to that station in 
 life to which it has pleased God to call him. 
 
 In the columns of another organ of consolidated capital they have 
 read the following revolting sentiments : 
 
 There seems to be but one remedy. It is a change of the ownership of the soil, 
 and the creation of a class of land owners on the one hand and of tenant-farmers 
 on the other ; something similar in both cases to what has long existed and now 
 exists in the older countries of Europe. 
 
 And in every form in which the English language can be used the 
 American people, and especially the people of the West, have been 
 notified, not that their consent will be asked, but that they will be 
 compelled to submit to the legislation which results in this British 
 system of baronial landed estates, a dependent tenantry and pauper 
 wages for the workingman. Sir, I have no word of menace to utter 
 on this floor, but, in behalf of every laborer and every owner of the 
 soil whom I represent, I warn all such as value their investments 
 that when these doctrines of despotism are sought to be enforced 
 this fair land will again be convulsed in agony and the fires of 
 liberty will blaze forth again, as they did a hundred years ago, in 
 defense of the natural rights of man. May the wisdom of our fathers 
 and the benignity of our God avert such an issue ; but if it shall 
 come, if infatuation has seized our councils, the result will only add 
 one more instance to the long catalogue of human crime and folly, 
 where avarice, like ambition, overleaps itself and in its unholy at¬ 
 tempt to rob others of their possessions loses its own. 
 
 ✓