GOOD READING for SOUND MONEY DEMOCRATS HON. W. BOURKE COCKRAN’S SPEECH AT MADISON SQUARE GARDEN NEW YORK CITY IN REPLY TO CANDIDATE BRYAN. TWENTY QUESTIONS PROPOUNDED EDITORIALLY BY THE NEW YORK WORLD TO CANDIDATE BRYAN WHICH HE HAS FAILED TO ANSWER. 2 SPEECH OF HON. W. BOURKE COCKRAN. SPEECH OF THE Hon. W. Bourke Cockran IN ANSWER TO CANDIDATE BRYAN jT Delivered at Madison Square Garden, New York, August 18 . Mr. Cockran’s address was as follows: Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen, Fellow Democrats All: [Applause.] With the inspiring strains of that national song still ringing in our ears, who can doubt the issue of this campaign? [Applause.] Stripped of all verbal disguise, it is an issue of com¬ mon honesty, an issue between the honest discharge and the dis¬ honest repudiation of public and private obligations. It is a ques- tion as to whether the powers of this government shall be used to protect honest industry or tempt the citizen to dishonesty. On this question honest men can not differ. It is one of morals and of justice. It involves the existence of social order. It is the contest for civilization itself. A democratic convention may renounce the democratic faith, but the democracy remains faithful to democratic principles. Democratic leaders may betray a convention to the populists, but they can not seduce the footsteps of democratic voters from the pathway of honor and of justice. A candidate bearing the mandate of a democratic convention may in this hall open a canvass leveled against the foundations of social SPEECH OF HON. W. BOURKE COCKRAN. 8 order, and he beholds the democratic masses confronting him organized for the defense. Fellow democrats, let us not disguise from ourselves the fact that we bear in this contest a serious and grave and solemn burden of duty. We must raise our hands against the nominee of our party, and we must do it to preserve the future of that party itself. We must oppose the nominee of the Chicago convention, and we know full well that the success of our opposition will mean our own exclusion from public life, but we will be consoled and grati¬ fied by the reflection that it will prove that the American people can not be divided into parties on a question of simple morals or of common honesty. We would look in vain through the speech delivered here one week ago to find a true statement of the issue involved in this can¬ vass. Indeed, I believe it is doubtful if the candidate himself quite understands the nature of the faith which he professes. I say this not in criticism of his ability, but in justice to his morality. I be¬ lieve that if he himself understood the inevitable consequences of the doctrines which he preaches that his own hands would be the very first to tear down the platform on which he stands. We must all remember that lurid rhetoric which glowed as fiercely in the western skies as that sunlight which through the past week foretold the torrid heat of the ensuing day, and here upon this platform we find that same rhetoric as mild, as insipid as the waters of a stag¬ nant pool. He is a candidate who was swept into the nomination by a wave of popular enthusiasm awakened by appeals to prejudice and greed. He is a candidate who, declaring that this was a revolu¬ tionary movement, no sooner found himself face to face with the American feeling than he realized that this soil is not propitious to revolution; that the people of this country will not change the in¬ stitutions which have stood the tests and experiences of a century for institutions based upon the fantastic dreams of populist agita¬ tors; that the American nation will never consent to substitute the republic of Washington, of Jefferson and of Jackson for the repub¬ lic of an Altgeld, a Tillman or a Bryan. Whatever change may have come over his manner as a candi- 4 SPEECH OF HON. W. BOURKE COCKRAN. date, however much the vehemence of his eloquence may have been reduced, two things for which he stands remains unaltered. On this platform he defended the most revolutionary plank of the Chicago convention in speeches vehement but not less earnest than that in which he supported their adoption. On this platform he defended the populistic program of overthrowing the integrity of the supreme court. If there be any fruit which has grown for the benefit of all mankind out of the establishment of our republic it has been the demonstration that it is possible by the organization of an independent tribunal to safeguard the rights, of every citizen and protect those natural privileges against any invasion from whatever source or however powerful might be the antagonizing elements. The very existence of that power presupposes the existence of an independent tribunal, yet we have this populist convention, be¬ cause a populist measure was condemned as unconstitutional, pro¬ posing not to amend the constitution in the ordinary way prescribed by that instrument itself, but proposing to pack the court so that it will pronounce those laws to be constitutional which the constitution itself condemns, a proposal to make the courts of law instruments of lawlessness; to violate that sacred pact between the states on which the security of this nation rests; to profane the temple erected for its protection by the hands of false priests, who, though sworn to defend it, will be appointed to destroy it. In the time to which I must confine myself to-night I can do nothing but examine that one question which Mr. Bryan himself declared to be the overshadowing issue of this campaign. I am a little puzzled when I read this speech to decide just what Mr. Bryan himself imagines will be the fruit of a change in the standard of value throughout this country. I do not believe that any man can follow wholly with the speech, because if he dissents with one set of conclusions he has got to read but a few paragraphs and he will find another. If Mr. Bryan could show me that by any means known to heaven or on earth wages could be increased I will be ready to support him, because I know of no test of prosperity ab¬ solutely infallible except the rate of wages paid to laborers. When we come to find how Mr. Bryan expects to increase the SPEECH OF HON. W. BOURKE COCKRAN. wages of labor we find ourselves lost in the maze of contradiction. No man can tell how or where or when the wages of the working¬ men are to be increased, but any one who examines the scheme can see that the inevitable tendency, the inevitable consequence of a debasement in the standard of value must be a reduction in the rate of wages—and that is the conspiracy in which the populists are engaged. Now, Mr. Bryan tells us that he wants to cheapen the dollar; that he wants to increase the volume of money. I do not believe that any man who ever lived could quite understand a populist’s notion of what money is, further than he believes it is a desirable thing to get and that he is not very particular about the means by which he can get his hands on it. Nothing is more common than the mistake that money and property are identical. They are not. There may be a very large volume of circulating medium and very great poverty. The issue of paper money simply is no more an increase of wealth than the issue by an individual of his promissory note would show an increase of his property. As a matter of fact an increase in the coinage is no proof of an increase in property, but may be a strong proof of a decrease in wealth. It is not the volume of money, but the activity of money, that counts. The basis of sound trade is sound money. [Applause.] Money which is intrinsically valuable, money which like the gold coinage of this country the government can not affect if it tried to. I can take a $10 gold piece and can defy all the power of all the governments of the earth to take 5 cents of value from it. Having earned it by the sweat of my brow, having earned it by the exercise of my brain, having earned it by the exchange of my commodities, I can go to the uttermost ends of the earth, and wherever I present it its value will be unquestioned and unchallenged. That gold dollar, this meeting, the democratic party, the honest masses of this country without distinction of party divisions, demand shall be paid to the laborer when he earns it and that no power on earth shall cheat him of the sweat of his brow. / It is perfectly clear that the purpose of the populists is to put up the prices of certain commodities. Mr. Bryan’s language is 6 SPEECH OF HON. W. BOURKE COCKRAN. that he is going to improve the conditions of the people of this country. I do not suppose he claims he can multiply the number of chairs upon this platform or upon this floor, although he has shown his capacity to empty them. If he is going to work any change in the conditions of men he must increase the material possessions of some part of the community. Now, if he got possession of the government to-morrow he would not create one single thing of value by any exercise of governmen¬ tal power in the world. No power ever yet exercised by tyrant or constitutional monarch can cause a barren field to become fruitful,can cause two blades of grass to grow where one grew before, can bring together the stones that compose this building and raise them into a stately temple dedicated to political discussion. No, it requires the labor of man and the labor of man alone to create wealth. If Mr. Bryan is going to enrich somebody the thing which he means to bestow on him he must take from somebody else. Who is to be despoiled and who is to be enriched by the exercise of this new scheme of government? [A cry of “Silver mine owners.”] My friends, the silver mine owners will get cheated with the rest. A government never can be generous, because if it be gener¬ ous to one it must be oppressive to another. But Mr. Bryan’s financial scheme contemplates an increase of the price of certain commo¬ dities. We are coming now pretty close to the wood pile behind which the African is concealed. Now, if everything in this world or in this country, including labor, be increased in value to-morrow in like proportion, not one of us would be affected at all. If everything be increased i o per cent in value we would pay io per cent in addition for what we would buy and get io per cent more for what we would sell, and we would be exactly in the same place we occupied before. Therefore, it is fair to assume that is not the lame and impotent conclusion which this populist revolution contemplates. What, then, is it? It is an increase in the price of commodities and allowing labor to shift for itself. If the price of commodities be increased and the price of labor be left stationary, why, that means a cutting down of the rate of wages. If instead of a dollar which consists of a given quantity of gold equal to ioo cents anywhere in the world with the purchasing power of ioo cents, the laborer is to be 7 SPEECH OF HON. w' BOURKE COCKRAN. paid in dollars worth 50 cents each, why, he can only buy half as much with a day’s wages as he buys now. Wage earners,-Mr. Bryan says, know that’while an honest money standard raises the purchasing power of the dollar it also makes it more difficult to obtain possession of that dollar. They know that employment is less permanent, loss of work more prob¬ able and re-employment less certain. If that means anything it means that a cheap dollar would give him more employment, more frequent employment, more work and a chance to get re-employ¬ ment after he was discharged. If that means anything it means that if the laborer is willing to have his wages cut down he will get more work. But a diminution in the rate of wages does not in¬ crease the scope of employment. The more abundant the product, the higher the wages. There can not be an abundant product unless labor is extensively em¬ ployed. Mr. Bryan would have you believe that prosperity is ad¬ vanced by cheapening the rate of wages, but the fall in the rate of wages always comes from a narrow production and narrow produc¬ tion means there is little demand for labor in the market. When after the panic of 1873 the price of labor fell to 90 cents a day it was harder to obtain labor than when the rate of labor was $2, and the difference between the populist who seeks to cut down the rate of wages and the democrat who seeks to protect it is that the democrat believes that high wages and prosperity are synonymous, and this populist wants to cut the rate of wages in order that he may tempt the farmer to make war upon his own workingmen. Mr. Bryan leads the van in saying that it is the creditors he is after. In order that you should understand just how a change in the standard of value enables men to cheat their creditors you have to consider the function which money plays in measuring debts. If I had paid $10 for ten yards of cloth to be delivered to me next week and in the interim the government should pass a law declar¬ ing that hereafter the yard measure should consist of eighteen inches and that all existing contracts should be settled in that sys¬ tem of measure I would be cheated out of half the cloth for which I had paid. If, on the other hand, I owed a cloth merchant for ten yards of cloth, which he had delivered to me and which was payable next week, and in the meantime the government would change the standard of value and cut down the unit of coinage one-half, then 8 SPEECH OF HON. W. BOURKE COCKRAN. I would settle that debt in $5 and the cloth merchant would have been cheated. Now the populist loves to say that the creditor is a person who oppresses the western farmer; the creditors of this country are not the bankers; they are not the so-called capitalists; they are the laborers and it is at the expense of labor that this change is made. The laborer is always a creditor for at least one day’s work. When any man can show me a laborer who has been paid in ad¬ vance for a day’s work, I will show him a laborer who is a debtor. The laborer by the very law of his being a creditor for at least one day’s work is generally a creditor for a week’s work or two weeks’ work. Every great industrial enterprise has for its chief creditors its own laborers. The heaviest account in every department of industry, whatever it may be, is always the wages account. The pretense that the farmer of Nebraska is suffering under the weight of a mortgage contracted under a metal which has stead¬ ily increased in value is but a populistic metaphor. Two-thirds of the farmers have no mortgage debts whatever. I do not believe there is 5 per cent of them that owes a mortgage over three years old, during which time there has been no change in the value of the metal. This proposal of the populists is an intent to enlist the farmer in a conspiracy to reduce the wages paid this labor that he may have a larger proportion of his own products, and they are willing to cut down the wages of every man who works in cities, who toils at the bench, who digs in the mines, who manages the train, in the hope that they can ride into power, on a wave of cupid¬ ity and greed awakened in the breast of the voter. But, my friends, it is a tremendous vindication of American citizenship that this attempt to enlist the farming and agricultural members of this community into this conspiracy has failed, mis¬ erably, utterly, absolutely. Every western state which in 1890 and in 1892 fell into the hands of the populists and went into the Farmers’ Alliance, before their real purposes were executed, was purified, and the populistic forces scattered out of existence when the farmers of this country understood precisely what the populists meant for their welfare was really for their ruin. The farmer who, when this country was in danger, shouldered his musket to set it aside when the last shot had been fired on the southern battlefield, whose moderation prevented the political warriors at Washington from pursuing a policy of discrimination and punishment in the southern states—that farmer who made the policy of the north a policy of conciliation, of forgiveness, of reunion, whose hand it was that made ruin of her cities and ashes of her homes, received her once more and said, “Live in peace and SPEECH OF HON. W. BOURKE COCKRAN. 9 sin no more.” That farmer to-day is the mainstay of order and of property as he was the mainstay of the union. There was a populistic delegation from states that were dem¬ ocratic, but it is a significant fact that every northern state in which there was a chance of electing a democratic governor or of choosing democratic electors, with the exception of Missouri and Indiana, stood boldly and firmly for the honest money standard at Chicago and they were submerged by a wave of populism from the south. My friends, there has been a great change in the democratic organization of the southern states. The men who, from a mis¬ taken sense -of loyalty, followed their states out of the union, whose gallantry in war, whose fortunes in defeat won the admiration of the civilized world, the men whose virtues commanded the support of northern public opinion in the attempt to overturn carpetbag governments in the southern states, the men who led their people through ah the troubled period of reconstruction back into a full union with the sister states, these men, like Hampton in North Carolina 2nd Caffrey in Louisiana, have been swept from power— a new set has got into the saddle, a set of leaders of which Tillman is the exponent, who boldly unfurled the sectional flag at Chicago and declared that this populist movement is a direct movement against i.he prosperity of the east. Me t of New York, toilers of America, guardians of your own homes will you allow your rate of wages to be affected—[cries of “Never. Never”]—by any man who never has paid wages at all if he could get out of it? Will you submit to this conspiracy be¬ tween the professional farmers, the farmers who cultivate the quarrels of their neighbors, farmers who labor with their jaws, pop¬ ulist agitators of the west and the unreconciled slave-holders of the south. This is a conspiracy between professional farmers who want to pay low wages and the unreconciled slaveholder who would like to pay no Wages at all. [Applause.] Here is the real root of this conspiracy. Mr. Bryan did not create it. No man can create a movement like this. The forces that created it are active and have •been working in a thousand different directions. Mr. Bryan, rep¬ resenting this theory, is but like a drop of water on the crest of the wave, more conspicuous, but no more important, than the millions of drops that form its base. The populistic movement is the attempt of these professional farmers, of these men who are unwilling to share with the laborer, to appeal to their greed. He is an enemy of public order, he is an obstacle to progress, he is a conspirator against the peace and pros- 10 SPEECH OF HON. W. BOURKE COCKRAN. perity of the industry of the country. I have said that the laborer is the object of this conspiracy, and he is. But let no man imagine that if they are successful the injury would all be borne by the man who works with his hands. He would be the last to suffer and the last to recover from its effects. But the shock to civilization which would ensue from such a breach of public and private faith would be irreparable. Its effect no man could measure from any experi¬ ence of the human race. We can not tell to what degree it would paralyze industry. If I were asked to define civilization I should say it was “in¬ dustrial co-operation. ”, Everything that a man does for his own benefit acts directly upon the interests of his neighbors. No man can stand alone in a civilized community. His interests, his pros¬ pects, his fortunes are to some extent shared by Tiis fellows. There is not an ear of corn ripening in the western field that does not affect the prices of bread to you and to me. The farmer who scatters seed upon the ground, by that act starts into motion the wheels of the factory, he sharpens the tools of the carpenter, he stimulates the construction of railroads, he causes the engineers to plan new bridges crossing currents, new tunnels under rivers, new canals joining oceans and separating continents. If the farmer did not work, if the miner did not dig in the sud- terranean gallery, every other department of industry would languish, for men would not produce and create if they did not see in the industry and activity of others a prospect of a demand for the commodity which they produce, and so every man in the world is bound closely to the destiny and interests of his fellow man. Underlying the whole scheme of civilization is the confi¬ dence men have in each other. Confidence in their honesty, con¬ fidence in their integrity, confidence in their industry, confidence in their future. If we get silver coinage to-morrow, if we even debase our standard of value, men say that still you would have the same property you have to-day, you would still have the same soil, you would still have the same continent. And it is true. But so did the Indian have the same rivers that roll past our cities and turn the wheels of commerce as they pass. So the mountains were full of mineral treasures 400 years ago. The same atmosphere en¬ wrapped this continent; the same soil covered the fields; the same sun shone in heaven, and yet there was none but the savage pur¬ suing the pathway of war through the trackless forests, and the river bore no single living thing except the Indian in his canoe pursuing a pathway of destruction. There was no industrial co-operation because the Indian was SPEECH OF HON. W. BOURKE COCKRAN. 11 a savage and did not understand the principles by which men aid each other in taking from the bosom of the earth the wealth which makes life bearable and develops the intelligence which makes civ¬ ilization. Anything that attacks that basis of human confidence is a crime against civilization and a blow against the foundations of social order. Wherever you find populists assembled you will find discus¬ sions proceeding upon the theory that men are hostile to each other in their interests; that the condition of life is one of contest. At Chicago Mr. Bryan declared: “When you come before us and tell us that we shall disturb your business interests, we reply that you have disturbed our business interests.” [A voice: “He was right.”] He was, my friend. When a man loses all sense he has a right to defy those who possess any. [Laughter.] In a convention of extremists the most excitable will always be selected for a leader. Your prospects are not bad. I merely desire to call the attention of this gathering to the character of that speech, to the underlying spirit that pervades it and then to ask the workingman of this country to ask the citizens of this nation if the government should be trusted to the hands of men whose concep¬ tion of civilized society is one of warfare and strife. We believe that the very essence of civilization is mutual in¬ terest, mutual forbearance, mutual co-operation. We believe the world has got past the time when men’s hands are at each other’s throats. We believe to-day that men stand shoulder to shoulder, working together for a common purpose, beneficial to all—[applause]—and we believe that this attempt to assail wages, which means an attempt to attack the prosperity of all, will be re¬ sisted not by a class, but by the whole nation. What labor has gained that shall it keep. The rate of wages paid to it to-day is the lowest rate we will ever willingly accept. We look forward to a farther and farther increase in the pros¬ perity of workingmen, not merely by an increase in the daily wage, but by a further increase in the purchasing power of wages. Men who tell us that the price of farm products has fallen and that the farmer for that reason is a sufferer, forget that while the price of wages has risen off the farm the efficiency of labor has increased; that the cost of production has been reduced through the aid of machinery, while the wages of the individual laborer may have risen. While wages remain at their present rate I hope there will be a further and further continuance in the decrease of the cost of living. There is no way in which I can be admitted to a share of God’s bounty except through a fall in the price of the necessaries of life. 12 SPEECH OF HON. W. BOURKE COCKRAN. While we have in existence a system of mutual co-operation, which is but another name for civilized society, all are admitted to a share in every bounty which providence showers upon the earth. The dweller in the tenement, stooping over his bench, who never sees a field of waving corn, who has never inhaled the perfume of grasses and flowers, is yet made the participator in all the bounties of Providence in the purifying influences of the atmosphere, in the ripening rays of the sun, when the product of the soil is made cheaper to him every day by the abundance of the harvest. [Ap¬ plause.] It is from his share in this bounty that the populist wants to exclude the American workingman. To him we say, in the name of progress, you shall neither press a crown of thorns upon the brow of labor, nor press a scourge upon his back. [Applause.] You shall not rob him of study, of progress in the skill of his craft or benefits by organization of the members who work with him at the same bench. You shall not obscure the golden prospects of a further improvement in his condition by a further cheapening of the cost of living as well as by a further depreciation of the dollar which is paid to him. [Applause.] The man who raises his hand against the progress of the work¬ ingman raises his hand against prosperity. He seeks to restrict the volume of production, he seeks to degrade the condition of the man who is steadily improving himself and in his own improvement is accomplishing the improvement of all mankind, but this attempt will fail. I do not regret this campaign. The time has come when the people of this country will show their capacity for self-govern¬ ment. They will prove that the men who have left the world in the pathway of progress will be jealous guardians of liberty and of order. They are not to be seduced by appeals to their cupidity or moved by threats of injury. They will forever guard and jealously guard and trim the lamp of enlightment and progress. They will ever relentlessly press and crush under their heels the flaming torch of populist dissent, populist agitation and populist de¬ struction. When this tide of agitation shall have receded, this tide of populist agitation, this assault upon common honesty and upon in¬ dustry shall have been abated forever, the foundations of this re¬ public will remain undisturbed. This government will still shelter a people indissolubly wedded to liberty and order, jealously for- biddirig any distinction of burden or of privilege, conserving prop¬ erty, maintaining morality, resting forever upon the broad basis of American patriotism and American intelligence. NEW YORK WORLD EDITORIAL. 13 EDITORIAL IN NEW YORK WORLD, AUGUST 14, 1896. ARE THE WORLD’S QUESTIONS ANSWERED* On Tuesday The World propounded to Mr. Bryan twenty questions on the silver issue. They went, as we think, to the root of the matter. Mr. Bryan’s able speech, devoted mainly to free coinage, is fresh in the minds of the public. The people can tell whether he has answered these questions convincingly or whether they are not the best answer to his speech. For convenience sake the inquiries are here repeated: 1. When in the history of this country has silver occupied '‘its ancient place by the side of gold?” Has there ever been a time when the two metals circulated upon equal terms as full-legal tender money, with the mints open to the free and unlimited coin¬ age of both? If so, when was it? 2. You say that the restoration of that condition will, in your judgment, “restore the parity between money and property.” Will you kindly explain what you mean by this? What is the “parity between money and property?” Do you mean that the “restoration” will put up prices, undo the cheapening effects of improved machinery, transportation, etc., and increase the cost of living to all classes of the community? If so, will you kindly explain how this increase in the cost of all commodities is likely to pro¬ mote “a return of general prosperity?” Will the workingman, whose wages are stationary, or nearly so, be made more prosper¬ ous by having to pay more for his flour, meat, groceries, chickens, eggs, fruit, vegetables, clothing, household utensils, rent, and all the rest of it? Will even the farmer be better off with a double price for his produce, in the wholly improbable contingency that 14 NEW YORK WORLD EDITORIAL. Europe will consent to pay it, if he must pay double for everything he has to buy? , 3. You point us to “a larger field of usefulness in supporting the gold and silver coinage of the Constitution.” But what is “the gold and silver coinage of the Constitution?” In what clause of the Constitution, or in which of the fifteen amendments, does the fundamental law prescribe a gold and silver coinage or any other coinage? In which does it mention any coinage further than to authorize the General Government to “coin money” and to “regu¬ late the value thereof?” Acting under that authority Congress at first authorized coinage at 15 to 1. Was that the “gold and silver coinage of the Constitution?” If so, how has 16 to 1 come to be the coinage of the Constitution? Under the first ratio silver was undervalued and refused to circulate except in the form of worn and abraded foreign coins. Our own silver coins, even the subsidiary pieces, were melted down for bullion because they were worth about 3 per cent more than gold dollars. In all the period up to the time of the great silver discoveries Congress sought to make the coinage ratio the same as the commercial ratio. It never authorized coinage at any other. Was that the “coinage of the Constitution?” If so, will it be a return to it for us now to estab¬ lish free coinage at the ratio of 16 to 1 when the commercial ratio is about 31 to 1 ? 4. Will not free coinage at 16 to 1 reduce the value of the dollar unit by about one-half? 5. Will it not be in fact a repudiation of about one-half of of all our debts, public and private? 6. Is there not danger that it will cause the return to us of all the American securities held abroad—Government, railroad and industrial stocks and bonds—thus precipitating a panic of giant proportions, with long years of depression to follow? 7. Will not your election upon the Chicago platform cause the calling in, between November and March, of all collectable debts, all loans, all mortgages that have expired? And will not this produce such a distress as this country has never known, par¬ ticularly in the West and South, where capital and credit are most needed and depend upon CONFIDENCE as their basis? 8. Will not free and unlimited coinage drive all the five or six hundred millions of gold and gold certificates out of use as money or as bank reserves? Will it not cause a currency contrac- s NEW YORK WORLD EDITORIAL. 15 tion of the most disastrous proportions, inasmuch as the utmost capacity of the mints to coin silver can not make good this with¬ drawal for several years to come? 9. Will not free coinage place us at once on a financial level with Mexico, India and China, and can we afford to go upon that level? 10. Is there any country in the world to-day which gives free and unlimited Coinage to silver? Mexico does not. India does not. None of the Central or South American states does. We know of no country that does, of no example that can be studied. 11. Is there any country in the world now on the silver basis which is as prosperous as the United States, even in this time of depression? Is there any in which wages are so high as they are here, or in which the dollar received in wages will buy so much? Is there any silver-basis country that has a large commerce, pros¬ perous manufacturers or a well-to-do agricultural class? Is there one in which gold circulates or is used as money? Is it not a fact that in every silver-basis country in the world abject and hopeless poverty on the par of the masses is the rule? 12. Will you explain to us for our enlightenment and guidance how our country is to escape like conditions if we go to silver basis, or how we are to avoid the lapse to that basis if we adopt free and unlimited coinage at 16 to 1 when the commercial ratio between the metals is about twice that? 13. And if you tell us, as many free-coinage advocates do, that free-coinage will raise the commercial value of silver to the coinage rate, will you explain to us how in that case free-coinage is to make money cheaper or easier to get, how it is to relieve “the debtor class,” how is it to increase the price of wheat or any other com¬ modity? 14. You may be aware that there was last year on deposit in the savings banks of this state alone $643,873,574. This enormous sum belonged to 1,615,178 depositors, giving an average to each of $398.63. It represents mainly the small savings of the thrifty poor. Nearly all of it has been deposited since the present standard of value was adopted by the Government. Do you think it'fair or just to impair by 47 per cent., or by even 1 per cent., the value of the money in which these deposits were earned and in which to-day they would be paid? 15. There are in this state 88,719 pensioners. They drew from the Government last year nearly $14,000,000. Considering the nature of this debt of honor—when justly due—can you look with favor upon any policy that might result in paying them in a depreciated currency? 16 NEW YORK WORLD EDITORIAL. 16. There are in the country 5,838 building and loan associa¬ tions, of which 418 are in New York. These associations have r,745,7 2 5 shareholders—all of the working and saving classes. Their assets last year were $450,667,594, represented chiefly by mortgage loans to home-seekers, of whom 455,000 are members of the associations. These associations have nearly all been organ¬ ized within the last fifteen years under the existing money standard. Can you think it fair or beneficial to the working people to reduce by 47 per cent., or any lesser sum, the value of these investments of the thrifty poor? 17. Is it not a fact worth consideration in proposing a descent to the silver standard that the thirty-nine old-style life insurance companies alone doing business in this state last year had in force \ here nearly 2,000,000 policies, insuring over $5,000,000,000? The assessment companies and various benevolent orders have a vast amount more. Would it not be an injury and a wrong to the beneficiaries of these policies—the widows and orphans whom a provident love had sought to protect—to compel them to receive in payment depreciated money? 18. The “rise in prices” which you predict as a result of free silver coinage would, of course, mean an increase in the cost of living to all the people—to wage-earners, salaried men and the whole body of consumers. Do you know of any case in which a rise in wages or salaries has been parallel with the rise in prices Is there any way to render it certain, or even probable, that th wage-earners will be compensated for the increased cost of living 19. You attribute the decline in silver to the demonetizatior of the silver dollar in 1873, though that dollar was not then coineci in any considerable numbers, and was not in circulation at all owing to the fact that silver bullion was worth more in the marke than at the mint. Do you not consider that the increase in th( world’s silver production from 61,100,000 ounces in 1873 to 165, 900,000 ounces in 1895 had something to do in causing this decline even though gold, the standard money of all the great commercia nations, and the most sought after of money metals, has also in creased its yield meanwhile? 1 20. You speak of the “crime against silver” involved in su pending the coinage of non-circulating dollars. Has your atte tion been called to the fact that the government coined only 296,60;',. silver dollars in 1873, but that from Jan. 1 to June 30 of this yeajj;! it coined 7,500,412, or 908,691 MORE than in the entire eight one years of its history up to 1873?