uull,III 	„ianwai 8orios.	
Toe Crime o[1813	
parvellaugli114	
PUBLISHERS:
COIN PUBLISHING COMPANY,
134 Monroe Street, Fort Dearborn Building,
CHICAGO.
COIN'S FINANCIAL SERIES, ISSUED QUARTERLY, $1.00 PER YEAR VOL. 2, No. 7, JUNE, 1895.
Entered at the Postoffice, Chicago, as second-class mail matter
Trade Supplied by the American News Compahy and its
JUNE NUMBER	
COIN'S FINANCIAL SERIES
No. 7
"The pen is mightier than the sword."
COPYRIGHT 1895 BY
COIN PUBLISHING COMPANY
134 MONROE STREET
CHICAGO
This book is entered as second class matter at the Chicago Postoffice, and is mailable at the rate of one cent for four ounces. It weighs, including wrapper, about nine ounces, and for 3 cents postage,is mailable to any part of the United States, Mexico, or Canada, but the person so mailing it must mark on the wrapper the word "Magazine," or "second class matter."
N0-4. 25
aat
tor5 or runt roR
/lir Bys rA r•J DE 125.0JYR ow
Chicago Inter Ocean.
Under the Reign of a Moneyed Aristroracy.
`..--- ;4-	---------_-	II 1110p 1,1011W' -,:-.•
..-\\.
OfficEs 
HE
Try 11 SI,
N7
THE OLD BRASS GOD IN THE MARKET PLACE.
AN Old Brass God, that had stood in the Market Place for centuries, kept bawling out in a loud voice: "There is but one God, and I am He." And he repeated these words So Often that the Simple People at last accepted them as Veritable Truth. So they brought him all manner of Fruits and devoted a large portion of their Incomes to him as peace offerings. To this day they share with him most of the Products of their Labor, and you may frequently hear them say : "There is but one God, and this is He."
CONTENTS.
PAGE
EDITORIAL MATTER	 9 TO 33
LAW OF 1792 AND 1873 COMPARED, SHOWING
HOW SILVER WAS DEMONETIZED	 34 TO 45
How THE UNIT OF VALUE WAS FIXED IN 1792	 47 TO 51
HARVEY-LAUGHLIN DEBATE	 53 TO 117
No MONEY FOR THE SILVER CAMPAIGN	 121 TO 126
	THE CRIME OF 1873   127 TO 169
CHICAGO TRIBUNE EXPOSED 	11,13,14,15,
18, 19, 20, 25, 29, 32, 51, 120, 126, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173
Nwinber Seven	9
OUR DAILY BULLETIN.
On the first day of June we encouraged others in the publication of a daily bulletin called the Chicago Daily Coin. It was thought that it would put us more frequently than would be accomplished by the SERIES in communication with the bimetallic forces in the United States, but the promoters of it are satisfied now that a better method can be adopted and have shut down the Daily Bulletin. It was in a measure an experiment. The better method to be adopted is a literary bureau from which a weekly communication can be arranged to reach our readers in the United States through the friendly newspapers, and in this manner much good may be accomplished by keeping the forces now organizing in touch with headquarters in Chicago. All persons who have subscribed to the DAILY COIN will have their money refunded by the proprietors of the paper and those who may subsequently send in their subscription by reason of the premature announcement and publication of the same will receive their money by return mail.
10	Number Seven
OUT OF THEIR OWN MOUTHS THEY ARE CONDEMNED.
WE publish in this issue extracts from the Chicago Tribune of 1878 when it was honestly and intelligently advocating the remonetization of silver. The reading of these extracts by the venerable editor of that paper will affect him (if he have a conscience) like burning blisters upon the skin.
We believe that a man has a perfect right to change his views, if that change be an honest one, and whether it be honest or not, is mostly a matter of the man's own conscience whose views are being changed. But not so with a change in a statement of facts. When a man has stated certain things to be facts and persisted in these statements under circumstances going to show that those utterances were deliberately made, and at a later period makes statements just the opposite of the previous statements, the public has a right to question the motive of that man, and if it is found that he has dealt doubly with the public, to brand his reputation as it deserves. The same man controls the policy of the Chicago Tribune now as in 1878.
A gold trust, however, dictating an English policy for this country, did not own a large share of the stock of the Tribune in 1878,and Mr. Joseph Medill at that time might have been classed as a true American citizen. It will be both amusing and interesting to the readers of the Chicago Tribune of to-day to read the extracts we reprint from that paper when it was edited and published by an American, and we are very much mistaken in our estimate of the average citizen familiar with its present British policy if he does not conclude the reading of these extracts with a feeling of honest indignation and contempt for the character of the man guilty of such duplicity.
Number Seven	:11
"AND THE CAT CAME BACK."
THE ANCIENT UNCHANGEABLE DOLLAR.
A correspondent asks us why we give so marked a preference to the silver dollar of 8711 grains of pure silver, and reject the proposed "Christiancy dollar," or the "Blaine dollar," or the trade dollar? We shall not undertake now to repeat or restate all of them. But the first reason is that the dollar of 3711 grains pure silver has been the monetary standard or unit of value in this country from 1792 until 1873, a period of 81 years. It is the ancient, unchangeable dollar of this country.—Chicago Tribune, February 11, 1878.
12	Number Seven
THE HORS-HARVEY DEBATE.
As we go to press with this number of our series the rules to govern the debate between Hon. Roswell G. Horr, of New York, and Mr. W. H. Harvey, of Illinois, have been substantially agreed upon, and unless something unexpected should interfere, it will take place.
It will be the first debate of the kind that has ever occurred in the history of joint debates.
The number of words to be used in the entire debate will be about 160,000, and will be divided equally between the two disputants, or about 80,000 words each. These will be again divided about equally between the six chapters of COIN'S FINANCIAL SonooL, the facts and propositions in that book being the subject of the debate. The discussion will take place in the presence of not to exceed fifty people, and a stenographer will take down the words uttered, and manuscript type-written copies of the discussion will be furnished each disputant at the end of each day's session of the debate. The discussion will continue from day to day till the whole number of words are consumed and the six chapters of COIN'S FINANCIAL Sonoma have been covered.
At the time this is written the day for the commencement of the debate has not been agreed upon, but it will be in either July or August of this summer.
THE fables printed in this number of our series are by 2Esop, Jr., and are published by the Progress Publishing Company of Des Moines, Iowa, and are, with others printed by that company, bound in a small pamphlet —price 5 cents.
Number Seven	18
IT WAS ASTONISHING INFORMATION.
When Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson devised the system of American coinage they adopted the metallic plan for the express and direct purpose of securing to the American people, as a protection against all fluctuations in the relative value of gold and silver, the option to pay debts in coin of either metal. We continued the system in this country until 1876; the people were astounded with the information that in 1873-4 we had abolished the coinage of the silver dollar, and declared it no longer a legal tender.—Chicago Tribune, January 25, 1878.
DOLLAR DEFINED.
A dollar's worth of silver is 4124. grains standard(with alloy), or 3711 of pure silver. This standard weight was adopted by Congress in 1792, and has never been changed ; 3711 grains of pure silver constitutes exactly a dollar's worth of silver. —Chicago Tribune, January 17, 1878.
SILVER HAS NOT DEPRECIATED.
Silver, even as bullion, has not depreciated since it was demonetized, as compared with property or labor. —Chicago Tribune, February 6, 1878.
....11•0111MOOM
In the report of the debate between Mr. W. H. Harvey and Professor Laughlin made by the Associated Press, the conclusion of the debate was reported as "friendly chaffing." This is an error. Never were two disputants more in earnest; at least we know that to be true of Mr. Harvey. The agent of the Associated Press got his impression probably from the laughter and the manner in which the audience enjoyed Mr. Harvey's getting back at Professor Laughlin on his bridge story.
14	Number Seven
A TALE OF TWO NATIONS.
A TALE OF Two NATIONS has not yet been dramatized. The author intended to do so soon after it was written, but the work that has so rapidly been forced upon him in the management of an educational campaign has consumed all of his time, and thus far made it impossible for him to give the necessary time. It will, however, be dramatized at the earliest possible opportunity.
CHANGING THE SIZE OF THE GOLD COINS.
The gold coinage down to 1834 was not in general use; it was worth more as bullion than it was as coin, and was exported, the silver remaining as the general coin in circulation in the country. At that time Congress did not, as it is now proposed, vote to put more silver in the silver dollar, nor did it demonetize silver; it voted to reduce the amount of gold in the gold coin, thereby reducing the value of the gold eagle or $10 coin to the value of about $9.75 in silver coin. The gold coin, which was thus debased and reduced 2i per cent below the silver dollar, which had previously been at a discount in gold, became the cheaper coin, and silver, being worth more as metal than as coin, was exported, and gold then, because cheaper, became the general coin in circulation. For forty years, gold continuing all that time to be of less value in our coinage than the silver, was used to pay debts.—Chicago Tribune, January 15, 1878.
THE TRIBUNE AND WORKINGMEN.
A laboring man would infinitely prefer to be set at work earning silver dollars than to starve waiting for employment on a gold basis.—Chicago Tribune, January 9, 1878.
Number Seven	15
HOW TO DESTROY PUBLIC CREDIT.
FROM THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE OF JANUARY 16, 1878.
If the government has been paying gold interest, it had that right by the original agreement, and 'it may hereafter pay silver interest by the same right. The option is in the government, and it has never been surrendered and never will be. How often must this be repeated before the goldites will consent to accept the fact? We have had enough Shylock talk about "public credit," "good faith," "honor," "understandings," g4expectations," and "suppositions." The surest way to kill "public credit, good faith and honor" is to smash down the price of property, paralyze business, pauperize labor, bankrupt enterprise, and drive the people into poverty and despair; and that is precisely the role the gold-yelpers are playing. —Chicago Tribune, January 16, 1878.
16	Number Seven
ASSESSMENTS OF CHICAGO BANKERS.
In the March number of our Financial Series, "Coin's Financial School Up To Date," there was published a certificate of David Gore, Auditor of Public Accounts for the State of Illinois, giving the amount of money and credits assessed as belonging to the bankers and brokers of Chicago, also showing the sum for which the agricultural implements, machinery and tools of the county in which Chicago is situated are assessed. As we go to press with this issue, criticisms are coming in attempting to explain away the natural effect of this certificate of Mr. Gore. In our September number (No. 8 of our Series), Mr. Harvey will reply to these criticisms and give all of the corroborating and explanatory facts connected with the statement made in the certificate of Mr. Gore. The facts embraced therein were only incidentally touched upon in "Coin's Financial School Up to Date," as a more elaborate statement would have interfered with the thread of the narrative in which it occurs, but when all of the attending circumstances and facts upon which it is based are given to the public, and which will appear in our September number, the critics who have assailed this statement will be put to rout and confusion.
A SPURIOUS BOOK.
A book entitled "THE PEOPLE'S MONEY, by W. H. Harvey, author of COIN'S FINANCIAL SCHOOL," has been advertised to appear from the publishing house of Charles H. Sergel Company of this city. No such book has been written or compiled by Mr W. H. Harvey, and it is without authority and a fraudulent use of his name.
Number Seven	17
THE SYMPATHETIC HEN, THE INTELLIGENT ROOSTER, AND THE CALAMITY OWL.
ccA H ME," said a Sympathetic Hen, "I fear there
.Mfwill be much Distress this winter, for I have just heard the Farmer say there is a great Overproduction of Grain." "Indeed, I would not be surprised," said the Intelligent Rooster, "for last night on my way home to the Perch, I overheard the Store-Keeper lament upon his Over-Stock of Clothing and say that some poor devils were sure to shiver before spring." "It does seem strange indeed, " remarked the Calamity Owl, as she laid aside her chewing gum, "that Man, who prides himself on being the Crown of Creation, and who is certainly much favored of Heaven, should be unable to devise some better method of Exchanging the Gifts of the Gods, which at present seem a curse to him in their very abundance. It would surely be a Cold Day when the Fowls in the Air, or even the Beasts of the Field, got left under like conditions."
18	Number Seven
IN MEMORY OF JNO. G. CARLISLE.
Mr. Carlisle in a speech in the House of Representatives in 1878 said "that the demonetization of silver was the most gigantic crime of this or any other age; it would cause more suffering to the people than if one half of all the movable property, including railroads and shipping, were destroyed at a blow." Mr. Carlisle might have then added that it would, while destroying property, also destroy human character and cause men to deny their previously expressed honest convictions and cringe and play the pliant tool of that same destroying power. It would have thus described him as he now is, and is a sufficient answer to his Covington and Memphis speeches.
GIVE US MORE SOLID MONEY.
The prime object in remonetizing silver is to add to the solid, substantial intrinsic money stock of the country. There can't be too much hard money—real money —in circulation. Such an inflation is stimulating and invigorating. It is at once a sign and prop of national and commercial prosperity. The simple remonetization of the silver dollar, with proper provisions for its coinage, will contribute a steady stream to the money resources of the United States. —Chicago Tribune, January 23, 1878.
IT IS NOW AS BLIND AS A BAT IN DAYLIGHT.
The folly of advocating the single gold standard of money must be obvious to every one not blind as a bat in the daylight.—Chicago Tribune, January 5, 1878.
Number Seven	19
GOLD BASIS MEANS BANKRUPTCY.
FROM THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE OF JANUARY 16, 1878.
To undertake to do the business of the world on a single gold basis of measurement and equivalents means loss, bankruptcy, poverty, suffering and despair. Debts will grow larger, and taxes become more onerous. The farmer will receive small prices for his crops; labor will be forced down, down, down, and there will be a long series of strikes, lock-outs, and a suspension of production. Those who own property, but owe for it in part, will see their mortgage increasing in proportion as gold acquires new purchasing power, while the property itself will be shrinking in value. There will be no relief, it must be kept in mind—for gold will be the only recognized equivalent of values, the stock of gold with its power will be constantly growing; and the circle of wealth will be uniformly contracting.—Chicago Tribune, January 16, 1878.
Number Seven
SNEAKED THE FRAUD THROUGH CONGRESS.
Harper's Weekly insists on the single gold standard, and has frequently denied that the silver dollar was demonetized surreptitiously or unknown to Congress and the country. But it appears from Harper's own files that nobody about that concern had the faintest conception as late as January 9, 1875, that silver had been demonetized. In the issue of that date Nast illustrated the first page with a picture which represented the "Ark of State" floating towards a distant peak, just showing above the watery waste, on which is inscribed: "A Sound Specie Basis--Gold and silver," while above gleams the bright rainbow of "Our Credit." This, recollect, was on the 9th of January 1875, nearly two years after Dr. Linderman and his gold co-conspirators had sneaked the fraud through Congress, and up to that time neither Tom Nast nor George William Curtis, nor Eugene Lawrence, the three editors of that publication, had yet an inkling of what the anti-silver conspirators had accomplished. —Chicago Tribune, January 19, 1873.
AN IMPUDENT ASSERTION.
It is mere, naked, unsupported, irrational, impudent assertion that remonetization of silver will not reduce the difference in value between it and gold. —Chicago Tribune, February 6, 1878.
JOHN SHERMAN A GOLD BULL.
The Secretary of the Treasury (John Sherman) is the greatest bull in the gold market, and every means at his official disposal is employed to force an exclusive gold currency on the country, and to depreciate all property—the accumulations of the industry and thrift of the people. —Chicago Tribune, January 21, 1878.
Number Seven	21
THE CAMPAIGN OF 1896.
THE presidential campaign of 1896 may be said to be already begun. Never before in the history of the United States have the people commenced so early to earnestly discuss a national issue. It is evidence of the deep interest felt and the importance attached to the issue involved. With those who have studied with unbiased judgment and taken sides with the bimetallists and independent action, a conclusion has been reached that the life of the Republic is now at stake. Such a dire result as its overthrow in the impending struggle would be far-reaching in its effect upon civilization.
With the success of the financial trust by which gold alone has been made primary money, other trusts have )een fostered and encouraged. To overcome the loss f profits resulting from falling prices, trusts and com-Anations have been formed in nearly all branches of trade and business. One of the most common of these is Department Stores where large capital concentrates under one roof at a minimum cost and expense of handling all the merchantable commodities and articles that are sold by the smaller merchants. The simple methods of a government of the people are disappearing and capital is passing into the hands of a few.
Our most influential citizens among the middle classes are those who yet have a home and a competency and are not in debt. They believe, as a rule, that the situation of their unfortunate neighbors who have lost what they had or who are not able to pay their debts taxes, is the personal fault of these neighbors, and o not always seem to comprehend that the situation their neighbors only portends their situation at a
22	Number Seven
later period. The financial enslavement of the people and the establishment of a despotic government is only a question of time under the present financial system and class legislation that eats quietly and without seeming noise at the throat of prosperity.
COIN'S FINANCIAL SERIES has taken up the fight of the people against this organized selfishness and aggressive power; a power that knows no instinct but the tyranny of the master. We publish our SERIAL in book form, as the best method to adopt in reaching the people. The metropolitan press of the cities is as a rule in the hands of the other side and is backed by unlimited wealth. Through this means they seek to mold public opinion. They have the advantage in this respect, and trained writers are thus used to misrepresent the facts an otherwise do the bidding of organized greed. COIN' FINANCIAL SERIES will not only meet and combat the a guments of the other side, but will arraign the selfish interested promoters of a gold standard before the b of public opinion, where abuse and misrepresentation will not be regarded as an intelligent defense.
COIN'S FINANCIAL SERIES began in December, 1898. The first number was the able pamphlet of Archbishop Walsh of Dublin, Ireland. The second number, issued in March, 1894, was COIN'S HAND Boox, by W. H. Harvey. The third was COIN'S FINANCIAL SCHOOL, issued in June by the author of COIN'S HAND Boox. The fourth was A TALE OF Two NATIONS, by the same author, issued in September, 1894. The fifth was Chapters on Silver, by Judge Henry G. Miller, of Chicago, issued in December, 1894. The sixth, COIN'S FINANCIAL SCHOOL UP To DATE,by W. H. Harvey, was issued in March, 1895 and the seventh is the present number.
The circulation of the books up to the first day of t present month (June, 1895) is as follows:
No. 1.		Number Seven	28
		Bimetallism and Monometallism		57,518
"		COIN'S Hand Book		110,000
"		COIN'S FINANCIAL SCHOOL 		360,466
"		A Tale of Two Nations		..105,945
"		Chapters on Silver		13,627
"		COIN'S FINANCIAL SCHOOL UP To DATE.		130,831
Making a total circulation of the books to June 1, 1895, of 778,387.
At the present time the books are going out to actual purchasers at the rate of 200,000 a month.
The financial question seems to have never been made plain to the masses of the people till COIN'S FINANCIAL SCHOOL acquired its phenomenal circulation; but as large as that circulation is, it is yet small to what it must be before victory is assured for the cause it so ably represents. It is now, however, upon its mission, and should it reach a circulation of 2,000,000, the battle for bimetallism and independent action by the United States will have been won.
For the last two months COIN'S FINANCIAL SCHOOL has been the subject of discussion of the press of the United States. The gold standard papers have used abuse and misrepresentations without limit in order to try to unjustly weaken its influence. It is unnecessary to say that all their arguments and misrepresentations will react upon them, as the intelligent and unbiased American 3 waders learn that the book is right and its critics wrong.
COIN':; FINANCIAL SCHOOL UP TO DATE answered all of the prominent critics who attacked the SCHOOL up to that date (March, 1895); the present volume is intended to place in the hands of our readers a defense of the SCHOOL upon some of the cardinal points involved in the controversy, with other entertaining matter of general interest to the public.
24	Number Seven
THE SONGS 1W SAMYEWEL
(BY SAM FONOGRAF)
how duth the bizzy banker man improve each blessed minnit & skoop in sukkers rite along fer evrything thers in it
how skillfully he lays hiz plans & stores up koin like wax how wundrusly sekure hiz loner how smawl hiz inkum tacks
in him deer frens a gide we hay filosofer & frend
hoo karts a lite upon owr path which way owr footsteps trend
a lite which followed surely brings
these hard times 2 an end
he never sels hiz stok in trade
hiz mishun iz 2 lend
whut fewlishnus 2 lay in stok & at the market shy it then role abowt in bed awl nite fer fees sum skamp wont by it
how better far 2 lone it owt
2 inkreese evry sekund
then get it bak in korse uv time
with intrust reddy rekund
Number Seven	25
yew dont suppose them hi grad mewels ar fed on korn tew sel em
not much yung man sam fonograf makes profits jus tew swel em
them mewels ar loned tew gold base fewels
hoo feel thay need a likkin
but havent strength er boots eiiuf
2 giv therselves a kikkin
P. S. N. B. in werks uv laber & uv Skil
i wood be bizzy 2
if dets with intrust did not giv
me sumthin else tew do
ABSURD TO MEASURE SILVER BY CORNERED
GOLD.
The theory that a remonetization of the silver dollar demands that the weight of that dollar be increasea to correspond to the present London bullion value of silver, as measured by "cornered" gold, is simply absurd, It is in plain defiance of the experience of all the rest of the world—even with our own experience before the silver dollar was demonetized—which teaches that 151 ounces of silver to one punce of gold is the proper basis for equalizing the money value of the two metals.—Chicago Tribune, January 8, 1878.
As the London Times has said, the remonetization of the silver dollar would equalize the values of silver and gold coin and at the rate of 16 to 1, the American dollar would soon prove, according to past experience, to be comparatively too heavy, and ought to be reduced to the European standard of 1511 to 1.—Chicago Tribune, January 8, 1878.
26	Number Seven
THE POOR MAN AND HIS WOODEN GOD.
APOOR man who was very desirous of Wealth,kept a Wooden God in his house,to which he offered prayers daily. Instead, however, of becoming rich, he constantly grew poorer and poorer. At last out of all patience, he seized the God by the legs,and dashing it to the ground; it burst in two, scattering Gold in every direction. Transported with joy at the sight, he exclaimed: "Miserable Deity, you yield to Force only, that which you deny to my supplications."
Number Seven	27
THEY ARE ORGANIZED. THE New York Herald, of May 4th last, says:
"An important contract has been signed between the National Reform club and a news organization, whereby 'plates' with sound money articles will be furnished free to every newspaper in the United States that wants them.
"Fresh matter, to the extent of a page, is to be supplied each week, and the latest phases of the crusade, as well as vigorous articles from clever writers, will appear regularly. A large number of newspapers have signified their willingness to use this matter, and, together with the supplements that are being sent out, fully a thousand newspapers scattered through the country will shortly be engaged in disseminating sound money articles on all aspects of the money crusade. Beginning with the coming week, 300,000 supplements will be folded in nearly three hundred newspapers, located in twenty-nine states of the Union, and will go to every subscriber."
On Saturday, April 27 of this year, there was a banquet of bankers in this city (Chicago) at which Mr. William C. Cornwell, president of the New York State Bankers' Association, delivered the principal address. Among other things he said:
"If, in 1875, 1876, 1877 and 1878, the bankers and sound-money men had been organized as they are organized now, and had spoken out as they are speaking out now, had started on a campaign of education as they are starting out now, the greenback would long ago have been wiped out; the silver lunacy, before it had wrought incalculable damage,
would have been con-
fined to the asylums, where it belongs."
Thus it will be seen that the forces of monometallism are organized. For many years they have been repre-
28	Number Seven
sented by an organization equally as powerful as that now existing, but it has been an organization promoted by a few London and New York bankers who have worked quietly. The conspiracy portrayed in A TALE OF Two NATIONS is based on facts; but many good citizens have doubted that such a monstrous conspiracy could have existed. We do not believe that American money lenders are a party to the London conspiracy, but they erroneously think that their interests in a property sense are allied to that of the kings of money in Europe and will act accordingly. It is no longer a fight under cover, as they now regard the people sufficiently routed to warrant them in throwing off disguise and coming out into the open to wage their merciless warfare.
The same banker before referred to said in his speech in talking to his fellow bankers:
"It is time to tear off disguise. International bimetallism is a traitor in the camp. It is a false fraud.. It can never be accomplished. It is a 'will o' the wisp' dancing above the deadly marsh. It is as illusive as a dream of magic, as idle as the pursuit of perpetual motion, as dangerous as the delirium of fiat money."
He admits what the wise have all along known, that they are organized, and that they have been masquerading in disguise; that they have been leading the people for the last twenty-one years by fraudulent practices; that they have thus far won by disguise. He now thinks they are safe to throw off that disguise and do openly what they have been intending to do through all these years of shambling and miserable deception, viz.: To fasten a single gold standard and English money policy on this country.
He thinks his side was not organized in 1875, 1876, 1877 and 1878. He simply mistakes, and he himself is one of the products of that organization.
Number Seven	29
The people must not be discouraged by this show of force and organization of the gold monometallists. We, too, will organize; organize as only manhood and patriotism can organize, pure, unsullied, and invincible; and nerved by the reflection of what is in store for us and our posterity, we will stand like a wall of steel against these pirates of commerce who have no remedy to offer except the terrible experiences of the past, and the unsatisfactory civilization of the present.
THE ONLY HONEST DOLLAR.
The fight is to restore to its old place the wrongfully-ejected silver unit,viz. : the 374-grain dollar. The(Chi-cago) Evening Journal pretends that it is in favor of silver remonetization. But how? Why, it would bite off from a silver bar chunks each worth a dollar—in what? Why, gold! and each chunk it would call a dollar until gold fluctuated and went higher, and then it would call in all the outstanding pieces, and bite off larger chunks of silver. But this would not be the American dollar at all, and that is just the point in the case. The old Spanish milled dollar of 3711 grains was a standard dollar and unit of value in parts of this country from 1690 to 1775, when the Continental Congress adopted it as the standard dollar, on which to borrow money to carry on the Revolutionary war. That war debt was incurred in dollars of that exact weight. The Revolutionary debt was paid in silver dollars of exactly that weight. The debt of the second war with Great Britain was incurred and afterwards paid in silver dollars of that exact standard. If anybody had called the money "a 91-cent dollar," he would probably have been rotten-egged for his slanderous malice. —Chicago Tribune, February 11, 1878.
Number Sewn
THE CORPULENT DUCK AND THE QUACK.
AFAT old Duck, becoming too corpulent to stand on her feet, consulted a Quack as to the best means of obtaining Relief. He promptly advised her to cut off her Right Leg, assuring her that she could stand on One Leg much easier than upon Two. "Moreover," said he, "it is the Proper Caper, and by doing so you will retain the Confidence of your neighbors, the Foxes." But no sooner was her Leg removed, than she settled down in the Mire, and became an easy prey to the Quack and his friends.
Number Seven,	81
THE SONGS UV SAMYEWEL
(BY SAM FONOGRAF)
the prise uv wheet wuz fawlin fast
az up wall street a banker past
hiz klose perfumed & smellin nise
while threw hiz hed ran this devise
sownd munny
from albion's shores heed just arrived with plans mature & well kontrived
softly in the kokney tung
he warbled owt with hiz wun lung
sownd munny
in church you mite have herd him sing
thank the lord fer evrything
if perchanse he fell asleep
heed mix with amens lowd & deep
sownd munny
in happy homes he. saw the lite
uv big log fires blaze up at nite
az he thot uv morgege loner
he sang agen in lowder tones
sownd munny
o stay thy hand the widow kride
evikt not those so harshly tride
he simply sed ekonomize
then thay herd abuv her krys
sownd munny
32	Number Seven
kum stop those triks abe linkup sed fer dery yer skin ime fer frum ded ile set the people 2 tan yer hide but stil that kokney voise replied
sownd munny
wun day thay fown him stif & kold (a suiside so i wuz told) hiz korps ett up by rats & mise but on hiz shirt frunt this devise
sownd munny
ACT DONE SECRETLY AND STEALTHILY.
In 1873-4, as it was two years and more later discovered, the coinage of this silver dollar was forbidden, and silver dollars were demonetized by law. This act, which was done secretly and stealthily, to the profound ignorance of those who voted for it, and of the President who approved it, had, without the knowledge of the country, removed one of the landmarks of the government; had, under cover of darkness, abolished the constitutional dollar, and had arbitrarily, and to the immense injury of the people, added heavily to every form of indebtedness, public and private.—Chicago Tribune, February 23, 1878.
THE ONLY PROPER TEST.
The purchasing power of legal tender silver coin furnishes the only proper test. The values of gold or silver as bullion are not pertinent to the issue, whether the two metals, as legal tender, can be maintained. —Chicago Tribune, January 9, 1878.
Number Seven	83
THE INDUSTRIOUS DUCK AND THE FAITH
CURE.
AN industrious Duck who had laid a great many Eggs, returned to her nest one day, to find that they had all been stolen. Disconsolate, she set out in quest of them, when she met a Fox whose mouth and feet bore evidences of a Burglary. "Dear Sister Duck," said he, "I sympathize with you most deeply, but regret to notice your lack of Faith. Return immediately to your nest and sit thereon with as much Confidence as for-merly,and the result will be, I assure you, as satisfactory as you can desire."
Number Seven
THE LAW OF 1792 AND THE LAW OF DEMON-
ETIZATION COMPARED, SHOWING HOW
SILVER WAS DEMONETIZED.
BY W. H. HARVEY.
THE COINAGE LAW OF 1792.
On April 2, 1792, the Congress of the United States enacted a mint and coinage law for this Government. Most of the act is formal, for the regulation of the mints, providing for officers, their salaries, etc. The part of the act that gave us free c-inage of gold and silver and established these two metals, when coined, as the primary money of the republic is as follows:
Sec.. 9. That there shall be from time to time struck and coined at the said mint, coins of gold, silver and copper, of the following denominations, values and descriptions, viz.:
Eagles—each to be of the value of ten dollars or units, and to contain two hundred and forty-seven grains and four-eighths of a grain of pure, or two hundred and seventy grains of standard gold.
Half Eagles—each to be of the value of five dollars, and to contain one hundred and twenty-three grains and six-eighths of a grain of pure, or one hundred and thirty-five grains of standard gold.
Quarter Eagles—each to be of the value of two dollars and a half dollar, and to contain sixty-one grains and seven-eighths of a grain of pure, or sixty-seven grains and four-eighths of a grain of standard gold.
DOLLARS OR UNITS—each to be of the value of a Spanish milled dollar as the same is now current, and to contain three hundred and seventy-one grains and four-sixteenth parts of a grain of pure, or four hundred and sixteen grains of standard silver.
Half Dollars—each to be of half the value of the dollar or unit, and to contain one hundred and eighty-five
Number Seven	85
	grains and ten-sixteenth parts of a grain of pure, or two hundred and eight grains of standard silver.
	Quarter Dollars—each to be of one-fourth of the value of the dollar or unit, and to contain ninety-two grains and thirteen-sixteenth parts of a grain of pure, or one hundred and four grains of standard silver.
	Dismes—each to be
GEORGE WASHINGTON.	of the value of one-tenth
of a dollar or unit, and to contain thirty-seven grains and two-sixteenth parts of a grain of pure, or forty-one grains and three-fifth parts of a grain of standard silver.
Half Dismes—each to be of the value of one-twentieth of a dollar and to contain eighteen grains and nine sixteenth parts of a grain of pure, or twenty grains and four-fifth parts of a grain of standard silver.
Cents—each to be Of the value of the one hundredth part of a dollar, and to contain eleven pennyweights of copper.
Half cents—each to be of the value of half a cent, and to contain five pennyweights and half a pennyweight of copper.
Sec. 11. That the PROPORTIONAL VALUE OF GOLD TO SILVER in all coins which shall by law be current as money within the United States,
THOMAS JEFFERSON.
86	Number Seven
shall be as fifteen to one, according to quantity in weight, of pure gold or pure silver; that is to say, every fifteen pounds weight of pure silver shall be of equal value in all payments, with one pound weight of pure gold, and so in proportion as to any greater or less quantities of the respective metals.
Sec. 14. That it shall be lawful for any person or persons to bring to the said mint gold and silver bullion in order to their being coined, and that the bullion so brought shall be there assayed and coined as speedily as may be after the receipt thereof, and that
FREE OF EXPENSE TO THE PERSON OR PERSONS BY WHOM THE SAME SHALL HAVE BEEN BROUGHT. And as soon as the said bullion shall have been coined, the person or persons by whom the same shall have been delivered, shall upon demand receive in lieu thereof coins of the same species of bullion which shall have been so delivered, weight for weight, of the pure gold or pure silver therein contained: Provided nevertheless, That it shall be at the mutual option of the party or parties bringing such bullion and of the direction of said mint, to make an immediate exchange of coins for standard bullion, with a deduction of one half per cent, from the weight of the pure gold or pure silver contained in the said bullion, as an indemnification to the mint for the time which will necessarily be required for coining the said bullion, and for the advance which shall have been so made in coins. And it shall be the duty of the Secretary of the Treasury to furnish the said mint from time to time whenever the state of the Treasury will admit thereof, with such sums as may be necessary for effecting the said exchanges, to be replaced as speedily as may be out of the coins which shall have been made of the bullion for which the monies so furnished shall have been exchanged; and the said deduction of one half per cent shall constitute a fund towards defraying the expenses of said mint.
Sec. 16. THAT ALL THE GOLD AND SILVER COINS WHICH HAVE BEEN STRUCK AT, AND ISSUED FROM THE SAID MINT, SHALL BE A LAWFUL TENDER IN ALL PAYMENTS WHATSOEVER, those of full weight according to the respective values
Number Seven	87
herein before declared, and those of less than full weight at values proportional to their respective weights.
The foregoing three sections quoted give the princi-
ples of the financial system adopted.
These principles were:
Gold and silver both as money.
The unit of value, the silver dollar of three hundred and seventy-one grains and one-fourth grain of pure or four hundred and sixteen grains of standard silver.
The legal ratio between the two metals, gold as measured in silver, to be until otherwise provided as fifteen to one.
That any person could take either of the two metals to the mints and have them coined into money free of expense. This gaveunlimited free coinage of both metals.
Coins struck from both metals were made a legal
tender in the payment of all debts.
The Constitution had previously provided as. follows:
ARTICLE I.
Section 8. Congress shall have power to coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures.
Section 10. No state shall enter into any treaty, al-Haim, or confederation; grant letters of marque and reprisal; coin money; emit bills of credit; MAKE ANYTHING BUT GOLD AND SILVER COIN A TEN. DER IN PAYMENT OF DEBTS; pass any bill of attainder, ex post facto, law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts, or grant any title of nobility.
THE CHANGE IN THE RATIO.
June 28, 1834, Congress changed the ratio from fit-
88	Number Seven
teen to one to sixteen to one by lessening the size of the gold coins (12 grains out of each eagle). The act is as follows:
Sec. 1. That the gold coins of the United States shall contain the following quantities of metal, that is to say: each eagle shall contain two hundred and thirty-two grains of pure gold, and two hundred and fifty-eight grains of standard gold; each half eagle one hundred and sixteen grains of pure gold and one hundred and twenty-nine grains of standard gold; each quarter eagle shall contain fifty-eight grains of pure and sixty-four and a half grains of standard gold; every such eagle shall be of the value of ten dollars; every such half eagle shall be of the value of five dollars; and every such quarter eagle shall be of the value of two dollars and fifty cents; and the said gold coins shall be receivable in all payments when of full weight according to their respective values ;and when of less than full weight, at less values, proportioned to their respective actual weights.
By act January 18, 1837, Congress changed the proportion of alloy and pure gold in the gold coins, again changing their size slightly (two-tenths of a grain in ten dollars),but the change was made in the gold coins and not in the silver coins.
THE ACT DEMONETIZING SILVER.
On February 12, 1873, Congress passed an act to revise the mint and coinage laws. Like the act of 1792, it covers the whole ground of formal matters, regulating the mints and the officers who might perform services under the act, and contains about double the number of words in the statutes as the act of 1792.
The ground covered by sections nine and sixteen of the act of 1792, viz. :
The coinage of gold and silver coins,
Fixing a Unit of Value, and
Number Seven	89
The legal tender character of coins so struck,
Are merged together into sections fourteen and fifteen
of the act of 1873.
These two sections are as follows:
Sec. 14. That the GOLD COINS of the United States shall be a ONE DOLLAR PIECE, WHICH, AT THE STANDARD WEIGHT OF TWENTY-FIVE AND EIGHT-TENTHS GRAINS, SHALL BE THE UNIT OF VALUE; a quarter eagle, or two and a half dollar piece; a three dollar piece; a half eagle, or five dollar piece; an eagle, or ten dollar piece; and a double eagle, or twenty dollar piece. And the standard weight of the gold dollar shall be twenty-five and eight-tenths grains; of the quarter eagle, or two and a half dollar, sixty-four and a half grains; of the three dollar piece, seventy-seven and four-tenths grains; of the half eagle, or five dollar piece, one hundred and twenty-nine grains; of the eagle, or ten dollar piece, two hundred and fifty-eight grains; of the double eagle, or twenty dollar piece, five hundred and sixteen grains; which coins SHALL BE A LEGAL TENDER IN ALL PAYMENTS at their nominal value when not below the standard weight and limit of tolerance provided in this act for the single piece, and, when reduced in weight, below said standard and tolerance, shall be a legal tender at valuation in proportion to their actual weight; and any gold coin of the United States, if reduced in weight by natural abrasion not more than one half of one per centum below the standard weight prescribed by law, after a circulation of twenty years, as shown by its date of coinage, and at a ratable proportion for any period less than twenty years, shall be received at their nominal value by the United States Treasury and its offices, under such regulations as the Secretary of the Treasury may prescribe for the protection of the Government against fraudulent abrasion or other practices; and any gold coins in the Treasury of the United States reduced in weight below this limit of abrasion shall be recoined.
Sec. 15. 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
40	Number Seven
ten cent piece; and the weight of the trade dollar shall be four hundred and twenty 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.
Section fifteen, as will be seen, omits the standard silver dollar.
Section 17. That no coins, either of gold, silver, or minor coinage, shall hereafter be issued from the mint other than those of the denominations, standards, and weights herein set forth.
Section fourteen of the act of 1792, providing for the free and unlimited coinage of both metals, was omitted in the act of 1873, and the following section was inserted, intended with what afterwards followed to bar silver from the mints.
Sec. 21. That any owner of silver bullion may deposit the same at any mint, to be formed into bars, or into dollars of the weight of four hundred and twenty grains, troy, designated in this act as trade-dollars, AND NO DEPOSIT OF SILVER FOR OTHER COINAGE SHALL BE RECEIVED; but silver bullion contained in gold deposits, and separated therefrom, may be paid for in silver coin, at such valuation as may be, from time to time, established by the Director of the Mint.
This is the damage done by the act of 1873. What it did was as follows:
It made the gold dollar of twenty-five and eight-tenths grains of standard gold the unit of value instead of the silver dollar of the act of 1792.
It dropped the standard silver dollar and provided for a TRADE DOLLAR of four hundred and twenty grains.
It left gold a full legal tender in the payment of
Number Seven	41
all debts and limited the legal tender character of silver to five dollars.
4. The mints were left open to the free and unlimited coinage of silver into trade dollars only, and the deposit of silver for other coinage was prohibited. Silver to be coined into trade dollars would not seek the mints, as was known to those who engineered this legis-lation,as it was over-valued by seven and one-half grains, being that number of grains heavier than the old silver dollar abolished by the act.
THE FINAL STROKE TO SILVER.
On the 22nd of July, 1876, Congress passed another act,the second section of which is as follows:
Sec. 2. That the trade dollar shall not hereafter be a legal tender, and the Secretary of the Treasury is hereby authorized to limit, from time to time, the coinage thereof to such an amount as he may deem sufficient to meet the export demand for the same.
This closed the mints to silver except in such quantity as the Secretary of the Treasury might deem sufficient to meet the demand for trade dollars for export. The trade dollar was intended for use in trade with the Orient and never was intended or used as a domestic currency.
On February 19, 1887, a law was passed abolishing entirely the trade dollar. It read as follows:
Section 3. That all laws and parts of laws authorizing the coinage and issuance of United States trade-dollars are hereby repealed.
The effectual demonetization of silver was accomplished by the act of 1873, as the trade-dollar at four hundred and twenty grains weight, under conditions then existing, was worth about $1.06 as measured in gold, the new unit of value, and could not possibly seek
42	Number Seven
the mints for coinage except for the use for which it was intended. Access to the mints for free or private account was inhibited by the law of 1873 to silver to be coined into any other coins. The final demonetization and overthrow of silver as primary money, however, cannot be said to have technically occurred until the act of 1876, closing the mints to the trade dollars. The mints were practically closed to silver by Sec. 21 of the act of 1873. We will presently see what constitutes demonetization.
LEGISLATION IN THE MEANTIME.
In the meantime the following acts treating silver as a commodity and subsidiary coin were passed.
July 22, 1876. Section 1. That the Secretary of the Treasury, under such limits and regulations as will best secure a just and fair distribution of the same through the country, may issue the silver coin at any time in the Treasury to an amount not exceeding ten million dollars, in exchange for an equal amount of legal tender notes; and the notes so received in exchange shall be kept as a special fund, separate and apart from all other money in the Treasury, and be reissued only upon the retirement and destruction of a like sum of fractional currency received at the Treasury in payment of dues to the United States; and said fractional currency, when so substituted, shall be destroyed and held as part of the sinking fund, as provided in the act approved April seventeenth, eighteen hundred and seventy-six.
Sec. 3. That in addition to the amount of subsidiary silver coin authorized by law to be issued in redemption of the fractional currency, it shall be lawful to manufacture at the several mints, and issue through the Treasury and its several offices, such coin, to an amount that, including the amount of subsidiary silver coin and of fractional currency outstanding, shall, in the aggregate, not exceed, at any time, fifty million dollars.
Number Seven	43
Sec. 4. That the silver bullion required for the purposes of this resolution shall be purchased, from time to time, at market rate, by the Secretary of the Treasury, with any money in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated; but no purchase of bullion shall be made under this resolution when the market rate for the same shall be such as will not admit of the coinage and issue, as herein provided, without loss to the Treasury, and any gain or seigniorage arising from this coinage shall be accounted for and paid into the Treasury,
as provided under existing laws relative to the subsidiary coinage: Provided, That the amount of money
at any time invested in such silver bullion, exclusive of such resulting coin, shall not exceed two hundred thousand dollars.
This fixed the maximum limit to the coinage of sil-
ver at $60,000,000, treated that metal as a commodity, and reduced silver coins to the position of token money.
About this time the country awoke to what had been done, and the people's representatives in Congress brought on a fight resulting in the disastrous compromise of February 28, 1878, commonly known as the "Bland-Allison act;" the essential features of which are embodied in the first section of the act.
It is as follows:
Sec. 1. That there shall be coined, at the several mints of the United States, silver dollars of the weight of four hundred and twelve and a half grains troy of standard silver, as provided in the act of January 18, 1837, on which shall be the devices and superscriptions provided by said act; which coins, together with all silver dollars heretofore coined by the United States, of like weight and fineness, shall be a legal tender at their nominal value, for all debts and dues public and private, EXCEPT WHERE OTHERWISE EXPRESSLY STIPULATED IN THE CONTRACT. And the Secretary of the Treasury is authorized and directed to purchase, from time to time, silver bullion, at the market price thereof, not
44	Number Seven
less than two million dollars' worth per month, nor more than four million dollars' worth per month, and cause the same to be coined monthly, as fast as purchased, into such dollars; and a sum sufficient to carry out the foregoing provision of this act is hereby appropriated out of any money in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated. And any gain or seigniorage arising from this coinage shall be accounted for and paid into the Treasury, as provided under existing laws relative to the subsidiary coinage: Provided, That the amount of money at any one time invested in such silver bullion, exclusive of such resulting coin,
shall not exceed five million dollars: And provided further, That nothing in this act shall be construed to authorize the payment in silver of certificates of deposit issued under the provisions of section two hundred and fifty-four of the Revised Statutes.
This act was repealed and reenacted July. 14, 1890, by what is commonly known as the Sherman act. The only change as to silver coinage was to make the amount of bullion to be purchased monthly 4,500,000 ounces instead of the lesser amount mentioned in the Bland-Allison act. It retained the clause authorizing contracts, notes, bonds and mortgages to be taken payable in gold.
The purchasing clause of this act was repealed November, 1893.
So .that the mints are now closed to the free coinage of silver by the acts of 1873 and 1876, and all laws for compulsory purchase of silver for coinage are repealed except as provided for fractional or subsidiary coinage in Section 1, 3 and 4 of the act of July, 1876, and such discretion as is conferred on the Secretary of the Treasury by the unrepealed portion of the act of July 14, 1890.
Number Seven	45
WHAT IS MEANT BY DEMONETIZATION.
The demonetization of silver was accomplished by bringing about by legislation three things. In the order of their import-ance they are as fol-lows:
Closing the mints
tzsZ,...,.`	to its free and unlimi-
ted coinage into money, thus cutting off for it an unlimited demand.
Depriving t h a t metal of fixing the unit of value, and thus regulating gold, its companion metal.
Taking away from it its legal tender character.
All these three things have been accomplished. Silver, the people's money, has been dethroned, stripped and deprived of all that made it primary money, by the most ac-complished, heartless, kid-glove d criminals that ever disgraced the human race, or went either whipped or unwhipped of punishment.
JOHN SHERMAN.
GROVER CLEVELAND
46	Number Seven
THE GRAVE OLD MULE AND HIS COMPANIONS.
AGRAVE Old Mule and his companions, about to cross a Swollen Stream, were bitterly disappointed on coming to the usual Crossing Place, to find that the Bridge had been carried away during the night by the rising waters. "Alas," said the Grave Old Mule, observing the state of affairs, "it is a Condition and not a Theory which confronts us. " The marvelous wisdom of this remark was so bewildering to Himself and Companions, that instead of seeking another crossing, they sat down on the Banks of the Stream, and began muttering this wise expression over to themselves and would have continued to sit there had not an Eagle on the limb of a Tree near by pointed out another Bridge on which they could cross.
Number Seven	47
HOW THE UNIT OF VALUE WAS FIXED
IN 1792.
BY W. H. HARVEY.
THE substance of the discussion that led up to the fixing of the unit of value is in the state papers of that period, the principal ones of which may be found in the report of the international monetary conference of 1878, and consist of the following documents:
Mr. Jefferson's notes on the establishment of a money unit and of a coinage for the United States.
Report of a grand committee on the money unit.
The coinage system proposed to Congress April 8, 1786, by Samuel Osgood and Walter Livingston, who constituted the Board of Treasury.
The resolutions on coinage of Aug 8, 1786.
Report of Alexander Hamilton on the establishment of a mint.
Miscellaneous documents."
From these it will be seen that Mr. Jefferson on page 438 advises the following coins:
A golden piece equal in value to $10.
The unit or dollar itself of silver.
The tenth of a dollar of silver also.
The hundredth of a dollar of copper."
The above is his exact language. Further on Mr.
Jefferson says:
"The unit or dollar is a known coin and the most familiar of all to the mind of the people. It is already adopted from South to North, has identified our currency, and therefore happily offers itself as a unit already introduced. Our public debt, our requisitions and their apportionments, have given it actual and long possession of the place of unit. The course of our commerce, too,
48	Number Seven
will bring us more of this than any other foreign coin, and therefore renders it more worthy of attention." Further on he says:
"If we determine that a dollar shall be our unit we must then say with precision what a dollar is."
And then again, on page 442, he says:
"The quantity of fine silver which shall constitute the unit being settled, and the proportion of the value of gold to that of silver, a table should be formed from the assay before suggested, classing the several foreign coins according to their fineness."
And again, on page 443, he recommends that a committee be appointed:
"To prepare an ordinance for establishing the unit of money with these States; for subdividing it and forstriking coins of gold, silver and copper on the following principles:
"That the money unit of these States shall be equal in value to the Spanish milled dollar, containing so much fine silver as the assay before directed shall show to be contained on an average in dollars of the several dates circulating with us.
"That this unit shall be divided into tenths and bun-diedths."
In the report of the grand committee on the money unit that fixed the silver dollar as the unit we find on page 447 the following:
"The quantity of pure silver being fixed that is to _be in the unit or dollar and the relation between silver and gold being fixed,all the other weights must follow."
On page 449 we find the following:
"On the 8th of April, 1786, the Board of Treasury directed to the President of Congress their report on certain principles for establishing a mint, accompanied by a letter to the President of Congress. The report was in triplicate and contained, as will be seen below, three distinct schemes, each of which was set forth in the report with great particularity. * * * Each of these reports proposed a silver dollar as the unit."
Number Seven	49
The opposite view of the question was presented by Alexander Hamilton, and his report is in the book re-
ferred to and now before me with the other documents above referred to. On page 456 he says:
"But, if the dollar should, notwithstanding, be supposed to have the best title to being considered as the present unit in the coins, it would remain to determine what kind of dollar ought to be understood; or, in other words, what precise quantity of fine silver."
On page 458 he again says:
"The next inquiry toward a right determination of what ought to be the future money unit of the United States turns upon these questions; •Whether it ought to be peculiarly attached to either of the metals in preference to the other or not; and if to either,to which of them."
On page 479 Mr. Hamilton recapitulates and advises as follows:
"One gold piece equal in weight and value to ten units or dollars.
"One gold piece equal to a tenth part of the former and which shall be a unit or dollar.
"One silver piece which shall also be a unit or dollar. "One silver piece which shall be in weight and value a tenth part of the silver unit or dollar."
Mr. Jefferson at one time came very near yielding to the arguments of Mr. Hamilton, but the whole matter went into the American Congress at its first session, and out of the recommendations and discussions that had been had, the result was the enactment of the law
of 1792, and section 9 of that act is the one that settled this question. It is as follows:
"And be it further enacted, That there shall be from time to time struck and coined at the said mint, coins of gold, silver and copper of the following denominations, value, and descriptions. viz.:
"Eagles—Each to be of the value of ten dollars or units, and to contain 2471 grains of pure, or 270 grains of standard gold.
50	Number Seven
"Half Eagles—Each to be of the value of $5, and to contain 123/ grains of pure, or 135 grains of standard gold.
"Quarter Eagles—Each to be of the value of $2.50 and to contain sixty-one and seven-eighths grains of pure, or sixty-seven and four-eighths grains of standard gold.
"Dollars or Units—Each to be of the value of a Spanish milled dollar, as the same is now current, and to contain 371 4-16 grains of pure,or 416 grains of standard silver.
"Half Dollars—Each to be of half the value of the dollar or unit and to contain 185 10-16 grains of pure, or 208 grains of standard silver."
"Quarter Dollars—Each to be of one-fourth the value of the dollar or unit, and to contain ninety-two and thirteen-sixteenths grains of pure or 104 grains of standard silver."
The dimes are then provided for.
The section closes by fixing the size of the minor
coins.
Albert Gallatin, Secretary of the Treasury for twelve years under Jefferson and Madison, made a written report on the relative value of gold and silver, Dec. 31st, 1829, in which he says:
"The American dollar, of 3711 grains of pure silver, is the unit of money and standard of value on which all public and private contracts are founded."
[Writings of Albert Gallatin (Adams)Vol. ii.,p. 424.]
WAS THE LAW TILL 1873.
It will thus be seen that the unit was settled on silver. In 1873 the law was changed to read as follows:
"That the gold coins of the United States shall be a one-dollar piece, which, at the standard weight of 25 8-10 grains, shall be the unit of value."
The mints were then closed to the free and unlimited coinage of silver, and a fierce and hostile attitude has
Number Seven,	51
been assumed toward it since that time. Thus it will be seen that in fixing the unit originally the advice of Hamilton was rejected and that of Jefferson was adopted, and while that was the law it was as impossible for the silver in a silver dollar to be worth less than a dollar as a bushel of wheat to be less than a bushel. It will be observed that Hamilton's suggestion of two units, a gold and a silver unit, was not adopted, and Jefferson's position was adopted, of a unit fixed on silver only. Jefferson's plan contemplated a change in the commercial ratio of the metal in the two coins, with the intention of changing the size of the gold coins if it should occur, and this change did occur twice afterward, and each time the change was made in the gold coins.
While the old law was in existence-1792 to 1873—the mints were open to the free and unlimited coinage of both metals; but with the act of 1873,abolishing the silver unit and substituting the gold unit, the mints were closed to silver and left open to gold alone.
THE SILVER DOLLAR ABLY DEFENDED.
What Is a Whole Dollar? Who says that a part of a dollar shall be a whole dollar or wants it to be? Four hundred and twelve and a half grains of silver is a whole dollar, and was so fixed by law in 1792. It never was anything else, never can be anything else, under the law. Whether at present that weight of unlegal tender silver is worth as much as a gold dollar of 25 8-10 grains in London, no one cares. Four hundred and twelve and a half grains of silver coined and made legal tender is just as much a dollar as the gold dollar. —Chicago Tribune, January 19, 1878.
52	Number Seven
THE LABORIOUS GOOSE AND THE FOX.
ALABORIOUS Goose and a Fox being cast upon a „Desert Island during a Period of Great Stringency, the Fox at once took possession of all the Food they had saved from the wreck. To the charge of Hard Hearted-ness preferred by the Goose, he replied: "You know, my dear Miss Goose, what a Capital fellow I am, and how much Interest I take in your welfare; why, then, can I not have your Confidence? Have, I pray you, no heed of the morrow, for there is just as much food in the world as ever, and if you but Practice Economy you can live very nicely indeed, upon the Eggs that you lay."
Number Seven	58
BIMETALLISM VS.
MONOMETALLISM.
SHALL THE UNITED STATES ACT INDEPEND-
ENTLY OF OTHER NATIONS IN THE
RE-ESTABLISHMENT OF SILVER
AS PRIMARY MONEY?
THE DEBATE AT THE ILLINOIS CLUB,
BETWEEN W. H. HARVEY, AUTHOR OF COIN'S FINANCIAL SCHOOL, AND PROFESSOR J. LAURENCE LAUGHLIN, PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL ECONOMY IN THE CHICAGO UNIVERSITY.
ON the evening of May 17, 1895, two leading exponents of diverse financial views met in debate at the Illinois Club on stately Ashland Boulevard in the city of Chicago. One was Mr. W. H. Harvey, author of COIN'S FINANCIAL SCHOOL, A TALE OF Two NATIONS and COIN'S FINANCIAL SCHOOL UP To DATE, and the other was J. Laurence Laughlin, Professor of political economy in the Chicago University.
The question debated was as follows:
Resolved, That the United States should at once enter upon the free coinage of silver at the ratio of 16 to 1, independently of the action of any other nation.
For ten days previous to the debate the Illinois Club had tried to bring these two gentlemen together. Mr. Harvey consented to meet Professor Laughlin on the
54	Number Seven
subject of what had constituted the monetary unit of this governm-mt irom 1792 to 1873. This proposition Prof3s-sor Laughlin declined. Mr. Harvey then proposed the following question:
Resolved, That the act of demonetization of 1873 was surreptitiously passed through the American Congress.
Mr. Harvey to take the affirmative and Professor Laughlin the negative.
These two propositions were declined by Professor Laughlin, who proposed the question that was debated, with Mr. Harvey in the affirmative and Professor Laughlin in the negative.
The assembly room of the Illinois Club will seat comfortably about 500 people. It was packed and no standing room left, with bankers, brokers and leading business men of the city of Chicago, members of the club and invited guests. The demand for tickets during the day had been so great as to indicate that the Auditorium, that seats 3,000 people, would not have held half those seeking admission, had it been engaged for the occasion.
Before the disputants sat probably the most intelligent audience ever assembled in the hall. Every seat was taken, even including those in the little gallery or box in the corner of the room. Wherever the eye ranged
over the throng it rested on men who
were the bone and sinew of the coin-
'	munity, and the wisest business men
J. LAURENCE LAUGHLIN. of the city. It was an audience so
W. H. HARVEY.
Number Seven	55
experienced and critical that it might well abash any but the most accomplished expert in political economy.
The meeting in itself was a victory for bimetallism. Six months prior to that time Chicago had refused to give a listening ear to the question of silver's remoneti-zation; and now the almost universal subject of conversation was silver and its free coinage. COIN'S FINANCIAL SCHOOL had at last gotten under Chicago. The newspapers of this city, the place of the book's publication, had waited till nearly all the balance of the people of the nation had read the "SCHOOL," and the thundering cannon of every literary gold standard fortress in the United States had been trained upon it, before joining in the general bombafdment. The Inter Ocean, however, had sided with COIN and the Record was neutral, but seemingly with a determination to make good any break in their ranks the Tribune and Times-Herald loaded and fired with a fierceness and rapidity remarkable only for the greatest recklessness probably ever displayed in a literary battle.
And now, in this city that had so long turned a deaf ear to the truths of bimetallism, COIN was to meet the champion of the gold standard forces. There was still another victory in it for the cause COIN represented. The very papers that had been abusing him and had for years closed their columns against the arguments of the silver men were now per force, as a matter of news, compelled to open these same columns and convey to their readers the very arguments these readers had so long been kept ignorant of.
A few minutes prior to the beginning of the debate Mr. Harvey and Professor Laughlin met with President Thomas in the latter's private office of the club. Professor Laughlin denied having consented to the pub-
b6	Number Seven
lished terms of the debate, which were that Mr. Harvey was to open with one hour, Professor Laughlin to follow with one hour and a half and Mr. Harvey to close with thirty minutes, and said that he wanted to speak one hour instead of one hour and thirty minutes, Mr. Harvey to have twenty minutes to close and he to have twenty minutes to follow and that to close	
	COMMISSIONER ECKHART ALL ATTENTION.
the debate. Mr. Harvey replied that he had consented to debate on the division of time as announced by the club; that the question selected was the most difficult of all the questions t h e subject presented to make plain in a debate,and as he had the affirmative he should insist on the usual parliamentary disposal of the time to be consumed by the two speakers. Professor Laughlin then said that no debate would
PROFESSOR LAUGHLIN'S FAVORITE ATTITUDE.take place and he de-
Number Seven	57
clined to take part. Mr. Harvey then said he was willing to leave the question as to how the time should be divided to President Thomas. This proposition Professor Laughlin declined. Mr. Harvey then stated to Professor Laughlin that he regarded it as a matter of courtesy due to the Illinois Club and the people then assembled in the audience room waiting for them, that each of them should agree to leave the matter either to President Thomas or some one to settle between them and abide by the decision. At this point President Thomas suggested that the time be divided as follows: Mr.Har-vey to open with one hour, Professor Laughlin to follow with one hour, Mr. Harvey to then speak for fifteen minutes, Professor Laughlin to follow with fifteen minutes and Mr. Harvey to close with five minutes. Mr. Harvey agreed to this, and then Professor Laughlin consented.
LISTENERS TO THE ARGUMENTS.
Among the prominent men present were:
Lyman J. Gage,
N. Perry, F. H. Head, Prof. H. Scott, D. A. Moulton, W. B. Judson, Dr. Withrow,
R. Chapman, Dr. H. Thomas, J. J. P. Odell, H. F. Selfridge, J. D. Wallace, A. F. Doremus, 0. F. Pettibone, D. B. Scully, H. C. Hoyt,
W. Shoemaker, W. H. French, Geo. W. Foss, C. K. G. Billings, 0. W. Wallis, W. Gregory, F. L. Champlin, W. J. Chalmers, H. W. Stroker, Mayor Swift, J. R. Lyon, A. C. Hewitt, D. W. Gisham, L. R. Harsha, Ald. Campbell, R. L. Martin, P. M. Conger, J. G. Peters, A. J. Stone, F. A. Riddle, II. J. Jones, W. G. Brown, C. V. L. Peters,
58	Number Seven
C. C. Kohlsaat,
B. S. Cracker, J. C. Knowles, W. D. Kerfoot, H. S. Robbins, W. A. Vincent, S. Meers,
D. A. Mudge, Evanston,
W. H. Aldrich,
F. M. Woods, A. McCourtie, Judge Burke,
L. W. Busby,
E. A. Hill,
J. McLaren, W. P. Tuttle, H. Duncanson,
G. Birkhoff, Jr.,
C. Shackleford,
C. C. Reed,
A. Wygant,
H. S. Burkhardt,
E. H. Pearson, J. M. Oliver,
H. T. Weeks, Judge Showalter,
D. F. Flannery,
H. L. Marshall, Dr. E. Garrott,
C. H. George, J. Williamson,
H. H. Brown,
F. W. Fisk,
F. P. Fisk,
G. W. Standford,
C. Mark,
J. L. Fulton, J. H. Holden, R. J. Smith, Geo. P. Blair, W. J. Pope, John A. King,
E. Clark,
W. S. Bogle,
F. Richolson,
I. N. Camp,
T. N. Bond,
G. H. Moulton,
L. Baldwin,
W. D. Edmonds,
A. M. Stewart,
F. W. Bryan,
F. S. Wright,
J. D. Marshall, J. G. Keith, Wm. Thomas, J. W. Thomas, Edgar French, E. W. Taylor, W.R. Champlin, Ulric King,
E. B. Bennett, W. A. Tichnor, L. T. Gray,
T. F. Mullaney, A.Durborow,Jr.,
H. S. Newton,
J. Avery, A. F. Salberg, J. F. Talbot, Wm. Rodiger, D.H. Dickinson, Samuel Carson, Dr. Lawrence,
W. Kohlsaat, 0. Burdick, R. S. Lyon, T. Sennott, E.G. Stearns, Carl Moll, C. Hutchinson, Matt Benner, H. H. Aldrich, W. P. Smith,
W. Penn Nixon, C. E. Hambleton, Henry G. Miller, Geo. E. Bowen.
Charles G. Dawes, Lincoln, Neb., Chas. S. Collins, of Little Rock, Ark., and J. Harry Howard, of Denver, were also guests.
The "Honest Money" (?) league was represented by
Number Seven	59
President Henry S. Rob-
bins, Sigmund Zeisler	C":
and W. D. Kerfoot, who
	-	'
occupied front seats and	14 .fe' paid close attention to1 Al
the author of "Coml."	c'-f.71-
William Penn Nixon,	ti--.4
With them sat Colonel
who appeared to relish i	\ r?..
the free silver arguments I i	4t. 
"%,..
advanced by Mr. Harvey.	i	_ .....--
Ex-Alderman Mills, ex-	,.- :.....Set\
Alderman Martin ander "--
ex-Alderman Gallagher	..,..0". were seated close to the
front. Rev. Dr. H. W. Thomas was an interested listener, being one of the earliest arrivals. The majority of the audience was composed of representative west side business and professional men, who gave both speakers close attention and made frequent applause.
A vase containing beautiful red and white roses grac e d the speaker's desk.
LiAs President Thomas and the two speakers came into the hall there was a hearty round of cheers. Mr. Harvey was seated at a small table on the platform at the right of the president f '
and Professor Laughlin
HENRY S. ROBBINS, PRESIDENT OF THE at a similar table to the USURERS' MONEY LEAGUE.	left of the president.
EX-ALDERMAN W. R. MARTIN.
60	Number Seven
Professor Laughlin was in full evening dress; Mr. Harvey wore a sack suit well fitted and very becoming.
INTRODUCED BY PRESIDENT THOMAS.
The meeting was called to order by Dr. Homer W. Thomas, the president of the Illinois Club. He said:
Gentlemen of the Illinois Club and Invited Guests: There is no question in which there has been such widespread interest and such a general study as the question of the financial problem. Among the many conflicting rules and systems which are presented for our consideration there appears to the uninitiated an almost hopeless maze of statement of facts and theories. In this dilemma the Illinois Club is pleased to welcome to its rooms two distin-
guished s t u d e n t: s of
finance, Professor Laugh-PRESIDENT THOMAS INTRODUCES MR. HARVEY.11117 on my left, of the University of Chicago, and Mr. William H. Harvey, on my right, well known as a writer. The topic selected for the evening's discussion is embodied in the resolution which I now read: "Resolved, That the United States should enter at once upon the free coinage of silver at the ratio to gold of 16 to 1, independent of the action of any other nation."
Mr. Harvey will have one hour to present his side, Professor Laughlin will then have one hour to reply,
Number Seven	61
Mr. Harvey fifteen minutes to follow him, Professor Laughlin fifteen minutes for rejoinder and Mr. Harvey five minutes to close the debate.
It is now my pleasure and privilege to present to you Mr. William H. Harvey, who will discuss the affirmative of the question.
MR. HARVEY OPENS THE DEBATE.
MR. HARVEY was received with great applause and it was several minutes before he could begin his address. After the noisy demonstration of approval had subsided, he said:
Mr. President, Members of the Illinois Club, and Gentlemen : When accepting the invitation of your committee I had hoped that this discussion would be on fundamental principles and facts; thus educational in its character, and later on when better informed as to these we would reach the remedy. I felt also a keen desire to get at Professor Laughlin on the unit of value existing prior to 1873 and the "crime" of that year,two points on which he has been misleading the readers of the Times-Herald. But he has seen fit to decline a discussion of those two questions and we are to-night to take up the remedy—the last question covered by this controversy.
The first reason why I am in favor of independent action by this country is that we should not be subjected to the influences of the governments of Europe. When our forefathers declared their political independence from Europe it was to free themselves from the class legislation of those governments, justly termed aristocracies. If people can be reduced to poverty and the prosperity of the United States can be ruined by
62	Number Seven
hanging to the financial policy of Europe, then we can be reduced to the same condition by financial legislation as a war of conquest would reduce us. The monometallists mostly say or admit bimetallism would be
MR. HARVEY ADDRESSING THE ILLINOIS CLUB.
good if we could get international bimetallism. In other words, they agree that there is something radically wrong, but claim that we are tied to the financial
	 vitrd
24.11.W.,,,,t7.7;'
Number Seven	63
policy of Europe. So that if a war of conquest in this country by the monarchies of Europe, whose form of government is different from ours, would reduce us to the condition that the people of those governments are in, and they can accomplish the same purpose by financial legislation, then there is a necessity for independent action. [Applause.] Where there is a necessity there is a remedy. Suppose you were to say to a man of common sense, "We are compelled to adopt the financial policy of Europe," and he replied, "The country is going to waste and ruin, and desolation is spreading from ocean to ocean," and demonstrates that the cause of it is our adoption of the financial policy of Europe, and we say back to him, "It makes no difference, we are compelled to adopt the financial policy of Europe," this answer would not be acceptable to the hard-headed citizen of this country. The governments of Europe are plutocracies. They squeeze the lemon for the people about every so often. The few control class legislation and the masses are hewers of wood and drawers of water for the titled few. Like the farmer who goes out and robs the bees' nests, they rob the people and then give them time to fill the nest again before going out to rob it again. [Applause.]
SHOULD DECLARE OUR INDEPENDENCE.
We have certainly not forgotten the history giving the reason why- our forefathers established this govern-ment—and that was the reason. Now, if financial legislation is one of the classes of class legislation by which the many are robbed and the few are enriched, by which the lemon is squeezed, then it is one of the institutions of the European governments that we as a nation of people, republican in form, should declare our in-
64	Number Seven,
dependence of. [Applause.] That is the first reason why independent financial action should be taken by the United States. If they say, "We must have the same money that they have in order to carry on business with them," my reply is, that the biggest business we ever did carry on with the balance of the world, and particularly Europe, was the time when they had gold and silver as money, and we had neither. [Applause.] It is one of those peculiar arguments that wears its way into a man's brain when reiterated and monotonously given out by the daily press that we must have the same money that the other great commercial nations have. We never stop to investigate. It belongs to that catalogue of arguments that existed prior to 1492, when a majority of the people of the world said that the world was flat,and a few men,including Columbus, contended that it was round. [Applause.]
Those interested in purposely cultivating through ages an international money on lines marked out by i hem have the same possession of the public mind as the critics of Columbus had, and those who contend for financial independence from Europe can be classed with the followers of that great navigator whose minds were in advance of the age in which they lived.
This Nation can have.an independent financial system without any reference whatever to the balance of the world, and can carry on its own commerce by ocean and by land with the other governments of the world notwithstanding. We do not now settle our balance with Europe in coin except on its commercial value and by weight. Our coinage has nothing to do with it. Primarily balances of trade are settled with trade. We give them our wheat and we take their silks, and the balance that we may owe them or they may owe us will
Number Seven,	65
be settled just as the merchants between the importing points may agree to settle it. They can settle it in gold for so much a pennyweight as measured in the money of their country or our country, or in so much silver or so much copper, or so much of any other merchandise that may be agreed upon between them in their trade relations. There is no such thing as an international money. So, a merchant in London who has sold goods and vice versa with a merchant in New York, at the end of six months the merchant in New York owes the merchant in London $50,000 as measured in the American money, whatever it is, or so many pounds as measured in the English money, whatever it is; and they have an understanding by which the New York merchant is to settle those balances and it may be in wheat or it may be in cotton that the contract would be settled—any-thing that would be in a general way agreed upon—but gold or silver, irrespective of how much we are coining of it as money, could be agreed upon. So that in the beginning of a study of this question that point can be made clear to the mind of any man who does his own thinking. [Applause.]
THEORETICAL REASONING.
You cannot meet arguments that are purely theoretical, such as a man proving to another that a cat has three tails. He proves it this way: No cat has two tails and one cat has one more tail than no cat; therefore one cat has three tails. [Laughter.] Profound theorists on the other side of this question are now especially fond of this class of reasoning. Growing out of a long accustomed habit, the men who have studiously cultivated class legislation for their benefit have impressed the common masses with certain apparently fixed
66	Number Seven
principles which they are to be controlled by, and one of them is the necessity for international money, just as they have made you believe that national bank money was necessary. [Applause.] Now, the reason behind that is this: They can go to Washington and hypothecate their bonds, draw the interest thereon, get a loan on these bonds to 90 per cent of their face value, without paying any interest, to loan it to you at from 7 to 12 per cent. This is a special privilege. And we have learned not to blame people for doing these things. But we should. It should be a common country conducted for the benefit of all the people. [Applause.]
BIMETALLISM DEFINED.
What we are contending for is the opening of the mints to the free coinage of silver (they are now open to the free and unlimited coinage of gold and have never been closed to that metal) and the establishment of bimetallism on those simple and fixed principles that were adopted by those statesmen who had in view the interest of no class, but of all the people. What we want is bimetallism. And scientific bimetallism is this:
First—Free and unlimited coinage of both gold and silver; these two metals to constitute the primary or redemption money of the government.
Second—The silver dollar of 8714 grains of pure silver to be the unit of value and gold to be coined into money at a ratio to be changed if necessary from time to time if the commercial parity to the legal ratio shall be affected by the action of foreign countries.
Third—The money coined from both metals to be legal tender in the payment of all debts.
Fourth—The option as to which of the two moneys is to be paid in the liquidation of a debt to rest with the
Number Seven	67
debtor, and the government also to exercise that option when desirable when paying out redemption money.
UNLIMITED COINAGE.
The mints are now open to the unlimited coinage of gold. Such portion of the product of that metal as does not find an immediate demand to be used in the arts and manufactures is taken to the mints and coined into money—into money—and becomes at once the object for which all other products seek the market. It thus has an unlimited market, as the mints are open to all of it that comes.
This was true also as to silver prior to 1873, but by operation of Sec. 21 of the act of that year the mints were closed to the unlimited coinage of that metal. Hence, when silver now seeks the market and exhausts the demand supplied by the arts and manufactures, and the small purchases of the government to coin it into token money, the demand for it ceases. Gold has an unlimited demand. Silver has a limited demand. Silver is now a commodity to be measured in gold. It is an object to be gored and kicked by bulls and bears. It is shut out from the United States mint.
It is token money. It has been deprived of that unlimited demand it enjoyed prior to 1873. We would restore to it that unlimited demand. We would open the mints to it again. We would leave the mints open to gold as they are now. We would give silver the same privileges as gold. Restoring to it this unlimited demand would cause the value of silver to rise as compared with gold. This is what we want. This is what we would do. [Applause.]
88	Number Seven
THE UNIT OF VALUE.
We would again make the standard silver dollar the unit of value, as it was before 1873. It would thus be a dollar, and the bullion in it would be worth a dollar, as the number of grains of bullion in a dollar would have the right to walk into the mint and be coined into a dollar. No man would take less for it when he could have it coined at pleasure into a dollar. We would make gold coins of the value of so many silver units or dollars, as the law existed prior to 1873. Silver is the people's money. [Applause.] It was so regarded by our forefathers, and was the favored metal of the two. It was given the position of honor in the coinage of our two metals by having the unit of value made from it, and gold, its companion metal, measured in it. Gold was and is the money of the rich. This was to be a government of the people, and the people's money was to be the most favored. Twice when the commercial ratio between the two metals made it advisable to change the legal ratio the change was made by recoining the gold coins. This was in 1834 and 1837. The spirit of our forefathers then lived in their sons. [Applause.] The gold coins were changed in weight and size. In 1834 the gold eagle had twelve grains taken out of it. In 1837 the gold eagle had two-tenths of a grain added to it. No change was ever made in the quantity of pure silver in the silver unit. There were to be no two yardsticks. The rich man's money—gold--was recoined when the commercial ratio changed to interfere with the legal ratio. This is the law we would reenact. [Applause.]
LEGAL TENDER MONEY.
We would make both legal tender in the payment of
Number Seven
all debts. We would repeal the law of 1878 and the Sherman law of 1890, authorizing contracts (bonds, notes, and mortgages) to be taken payable in gold only. We would allow no discrimination to be made between the legal tender character of the two metals. We would allow no private individual to dictate to the government what its legal tender money should be. We would place the white metal on an equal footing with the colored metal, "without regard to race or previous condition of servitude." [Great applause.]
OPTION TO THE DEBTOR.
We would give the option to the debtor, if there was any preference, as to which of the two he would use in the payment of a debt. A break in the commercial parity causes the cheaper metal to be used. This increases the demand for the cheaper metal. This increased demand restores the value of the metal that had thus fallen below a parity and brings it back to parity. To give the option to the creditor causes the dearer metal to be demanded, and it thus grows dearer and dearer and a parity is permanently broken, and the gap grows wider and wider. When the debtor has the option the two metals will oscillate close to a parity and substantially at a parity. This oscillation is the elasticity that bimetallism gives to primary money. If one becomes scarce the other is used. If one is cornered the other takes its place. Either answers for money.
[Applause.]
HOW SILVER WAS DEMONETIZED.
A true knowledge of bimetallism and the simplicity of that system died with our ancestors. Selfishness stalked into the American Congress at a time when
70	Number Seven
neither metal was being used as primary money (our primary money was then paper money),at a time when corruption was rife in our National Legislature, followed by articles of impeachment against Vice-President Colfax for complicity in the Oakes-Ames affair; the resignation of Secretary of War Belknap for bribery; the charge of corruption against numerous congressmen in connection with the Credit Mobilier scandal and land grant swindles; at a time when statesmanship was dwarfed in personal selfishness,men who knew what the effect of such a change in our financial policy meant organized successfully the first trust to be benefited by National legislation in this country. It was a money trust. It was the demonetization of silver. The money of the people, as primary money of the land, was destroyed. Silver at that time was at a slight premium over gold.
By this act the mints were closed to the unlimited coinage of silver, except the trade dollar, which was overvalued by eight grains and intended only for export to China, and it was shut off by the act of 1876, except as the Secretary of the Treasury might permit it to be coined.
THE DECLINE OF SILVER.
Silver had then begun to fall as measured in gold and the breach in the commercial parity of the two metals, as was natural, gradually widened. With resumption, gold asserted its importance and silver correspondingly declined. Under the Bland-Allison act of 1878, creditors began to make their notes, bonds, and mortgages payable in gold, to the exclusion of all other forms of legal tender money. This increased the demand for gold. Silver had ceased to be primary money. It had taken a
Number Seven	71
place with nickel and copper as token money, all redeemable directly or indirectly in gold. That elasticity which the alternate use of silver with gold that true bimetallism gave our primary money was now absent. If the demand for gold became too great to supply the normal needs of primary or redemption money there was nothing to take its place as such. Creditors would demand the dearest metal and the law had given them the right to do so. There was but the one metal to which the mints were open—the commercial value of the other metal had been lowered by legal discrimination against it. Gold was carrying the silver just as it is carrying paper money. Silver was not permitted to take the place of gold. If gold was cornered neither the United States Treasury nor the debtor could put silver in competition with it.
They must go to the men who have the gold and get it and submit to their terms. A corner on beef cannot seriously threaten the health of the people of this Nation so long as mutton and pork are in competition with beef. A corner on gold could not, as it does now, seriously threaten the credit of this Nation if silver were in competition with gold as primary money. [Great applause.]
THE REMEDY.
What is the remedy? Shall we follow Mr. Cleveland and Mr. Sherman and such party leaders any farther? They have led us into a swamp and the mire is getting deeper and deeper; we are sinking in the mud and slush more and more, with an abyss and oblivion beyond. Speaking of these two party leaders reminds me of the good old Methodist woman who was invited by a Presbyterian lady friend to go to her Presbyterian church
72	Number Seven
to hear a Presbyterian preacher. Well, when they got there they took seats up in the amen corner, and to the surprise of the good old Methodist woman she found that the Presbyterian preacher could preach a real soul-stirring sermon, and she expressed her satisfaction by saying amen. This attracted the attention of the good old Presbyterian deacons, and they commenced looking cross-eyed at her. But the sermon grew better and better, and the good old Methodist woman was soon crying hallelujah! The dignity of the Presbyterian deacons was shocked. From crying hallelujah the good old Methodist woman soon got to clapping her hands and shouting. This was too much for the deacons,and two of them took hold of her and picking her up carried her out of the church. As they passed down the aisle with her, she exclaimed: "I cannot stand the honor." She repeated this statement several times: "I cannot stand the honor." The curiosity of the old deacons was excited to know what she meant, and when they had sat her down in the vestibule of the church they asked her why she had said what she did. She replied: "Christ rode out of Jerusalem on one donkey and I have ridden out of this church on two." [Great applause and laughter.]
Let us have nothing more to do with the men who have assisted in tying the hands of this great nation and delivering its financial policy over to the gold gamblers of the world. [Applause.] The bank of Roths-childs in England is now behind the United States Treasury. They are our financial agents, our financial managers. We are paying them the princely salary of $8,000,000 for each six months of their valuable services. It requires special pleading to defend this transaction and the circumstances which have led up to it. You
Number Seven	78
will hear some of that special pleading to-night from the gentleman who is to follow me.
AN INTERRUPTION.
PROFESSOR LAUGHLIN (interrupting Mr. Harvey). Mr. President, I object! I thought there were to be no personalities here?
	MR. HARVEY : - Mr. President, I did not mean to be personal, but with us, sir, in this struggle, life is real, life is earnest, and we believe that it requires special pleading to defend that infamous contract between President Cleveland and the Roths-childs of England. [Long continued applause and cheers.]
PROFESSOR LAUGHLIN OBJECTS TO PERSONALITIES.	
Mr. Harvey then continued his address.
We are now in the hands of the pawnbrokers of Europe. [Applause.] They will take the same care of us that the spider did with the fly. We have very little gold left in this country. We are a debtor nation and our people and corporations are heavily in debt to the people in England, and the interest on what we owe them amounts annually to about $250,000, 000, payable in gold. They demand gold. The contracts call for it in gold. To pay this we have a balance due us in trade with Europe of about $100,000,000. That leaves $150,000,000 still left to pay them. How do we pay it? We
74	Number Seven
produce about $40,000,000 in gold yearly. We give them that. This leaves about $100,000,000 still due them. How do we pay it ? Out of our reserve stock of gold. With them getting all our money, represented by the balance due us on exports, and all our annual production of gold, and $100,000,000 annually from our reserve stock of gold, how long is our reserve stock of gold to last?
ASKS WHERE WILL IT END?"
How are we to replenish it? There is only one way —that is to borrow it from those who have it, and that means England. And that is what we are doing. That means more interest, more gold annually to be paid to England. Where will it end? It means the "dismal swamp" and "hell's half-acre" beyond. [Applause.] This is what having a gold standard means. A primary money without the elasticity that two metals give; the rich man's money—a money that is easily cornered. That can be physically cornered—cornered in this room ; all of it; all there is in the world. A dollar made from it is the size of a drop of water—so small that by act of Congress of Sept. 26, 1889,its further coinage has been prohibited. We now have a unit of value so small as to be impractical for use: That cannot be coined into money the size of a poor man's transaction. This is not now a poor man's government. [Applause.]
How are we to pay these debts to England? Repudiate them? No. Robber dollars as they are, let us pay them. Result of a conspiracy played on us while we slept, yet let us pay them. [Applause.] If we don't, Lyman Gage or Russell Sage will say we are dishonest. They will never say the other fellow is dishonest. He wears good clothes, looks important, and owns a
Number Seven	75
newspaper. [Laughter.] But how are we to pay these debts to England? It is this way: Restore silver; put it in competition with gold on a legal ratio of 16 to 1. Repeal all laws allowing a discrimination between the two metals; stop gold notes from being taken; put silver in competition with gold as quickly as possible. Where gold contracts do not exist silver will go at once into competition with gold, and this will take some of the demand off gold. To that extent it will lower the value of gold. [Applause.] The extra demand for silver will raise its value. Everything will advance in value at once. The Tribune admits that. As silver advances, the silver England is now buying from us to ship to India ($15,000,000 last year) to buy wheat and cotton will cost her more. India wheat and cotton that she buys with silver will cost her that much more. A farmer in India wants an ounce of silver for a bushel of wheat. At free coinage that ounce of silver is $1.29. That means that if England pays us $1.29 for an ounce of silver, wheat from India will cost her $1.29 per bushel. Then she will pay us $1.29 per bushel for our wheat. She now buys silver from us at 65 cents per ounce and buys wheat and cotton with it in India, and we must compete with that price.
When our silver advances and the price of all our products advances and wheat and cotton go back to their old price, we will be more able to pay our debts. [Applause.] Our balance in trade will be $200,000,000 instead of $100,000,000 and this will only leave us $50, 000,000 to pay the balance we owe England annually. The only way to pay England is to advance prices permanently, not spasmodically as is now being done on a few articles. We are now getting drunk on more money borrowed from England. Fifty million dollars
Number Seven,
on railroad bonds last week. The relapse will he worse than the last attack. But they say gold will leave us and will go out of sight, and how are we to get it to pay our gold debts? We are now paying 100 per cent premium for it with our silver and about the same premium on it in our wheat, cotton, and other products. When we have put silver in competition with gold the premium cannot possibly be that much. If when our mints are open to silver gold is held at 25 per cent premium it will mean that we have taken 75 per cent of the present premium out of it, as it now takes the silver in two silver dollars to buy one of them. It will then only take one and a quarter of one of our silver dollars to buy one gold dollar, and it will take less of any of our other property to buy gold than it does now. It is foolish to say that when silver is in competition with gold that gold will cost us more. As in the former illustration, as well say that beef will go higher by putting pork and mutton in competition with it.
As we get these gold debts paid off we will be more independent. We can show gold that we do not depend on it for money. It will then be our slave. It is now our tyrant It will then come back and beg us to take it as in 1873, when it—one of these gold dollars—was worth two cents less than a silver dollar. The more importance we place on it the more we will have to pay for it; the less importance we attach to it the less we will have to give for it. [Applause and cheers.]
STRIKE FOR THE NEAREST SHORE.
If a man suddenly finds himself floundering in the middle of a stream the quickest way out is to strike out for the nearest shore. The quickest way out of the present situation is to leave the mints as they are, open
Number Seven	77
to the free and unlimited coinage of gold, and throw them open to the free and unlimited coinage of silver at the ratio of 1 to 16 as full primary—redemption—money. [Applause.] And why the ratio of 1 to 16? Because that was the ratio when the trick was played. Justice demands it. A great wrong has been committed and to right the wrong is the first thing to do. [Great applause.]
With the mints of this great Nation open to the free and unlimited coinage of silver a demand has been created sufficient to absorb all the surplus silver in the world if it wishes to unload upon us. How much silver is there in the world? As expressed in dollars there is $4,000,000,000 of it available for use as money. As expressed in bulk there is the cube of sixty-six feet. It will all go in the room of the First National Bank of this city and the basement thereunder.
Now, we will pull the throttle valve; we pass the act of remonetization. The mints are thrown open as they were prior to 1873. Now, what is the result? It would be like an engine starting off on a rough track to start with, probably. Here would come the silver of the world, we will say, to take our gold away. "You fellows have overrated silver. We are willing to swap with you; we will give you our silver and take your gold." Well, here they come with it. How are they going to give us their silver? They give us silver for our gold. How much would they get and how much would they give us? At the present time there is probably about $400,000,000 of gold in the United States. It is only a very small sum compared with tho necessities of the country. Now, suppose they got all of our gold. What would they do with it? Would they eat it? Is there anything sacred about gold, or silver,
78	Number Seven
either, except for the use of the arts and manufactures and for their desirability for use as money? Now, they want to bring us the balance of their silver. What do we give them for it? We give them our products. Ships are coming into our harbors from all portions of the world, bringing us the silver of the world—this sixty-six feet. (I am taking an extreme view of it—a mon-ometallist's view of it.) And they are going back with the products of our spindles and looms and of our fields. They have got our products and we have got their silver. We can go to work and raise the same products next year over again and tell them to bring some more of it if they have it. They bring us all their silver and they have found out that we have got enough to give them for it. In other words,the United States is big enough when she throws her mints opeli to the free coinage of silver to take all the silver in the world and give up her products in payment for it; and such a nation can fix the ratio between gold and silver. [Great applause.] They could find ships enough to bring it to us. Two ships would carry it all. The products of this country for a single year could take it all. And we could still say: "Come on. We have more to sell you." [Prolonged applause.]
GOOD FOR OUR MANUFACTURERS.
Such a thing would put our manufactories at work. There would be no idle labor in the United States in ninety days after the monometallists tried that game on us. There is only $1,400,000,000 of silver in the world that is not in the coins of the established governments.
It would be the very best thing that could happen to this country if we could trade what is claimed to be
Number Seven	79
$600,000,000 of gold in this country (but in truth less than $400,000,000) for all the silver of the world. It is just as good for money. It is an erroneous idea to stand gold up and worship it as a great god. There is nothing in it except its use in the arts and its use as money, and you have been impressed with its use of money simply because it has been impressed upon you. You don't have to carry silver around with you. You don't carry gold around with you. We carry more silver than we do gold. You carry a paper substitute to represent them. Gold would immediately come back and knock at our door. (I mean if this happened. I don't admit it will happen, because I won't say that the balance of the world are fools enough to give us their silver.) What I say will happen will be this: When a great government like the United States says: "Here is equal exchange, 1 for 16, gold for silver," a man in France is not going to part with his silver for gold unless he gets that much for it—unless he gets as much for it as the United States will pay for it, less the cost of exchange. [Applause.]
So that, when a government is big enough to take all the silver in the world, if they want to test its capacity, a demand is created by an influence that is able to sustain that demand, so that a man nowhere in the world is going to sell his silver for gold, for any less than he can get for it in the United States. But we will not have to go it alone. Mexico, Central and South America are already with us when we start. We start with one-half of the world geographically; all bonded together in sympathy. [Applause.] The reason why Mexico and the South American governments cannot go it alone is because they are small commercial govern meats. Europe and the United States are too much
80	Number Seven
for them. The enormous demand made for gold by the enormous commercial transactions of Europe and the United States makes a demand for gold that the governments of Mexico, South America,. and China and Japan are not equal to overcome. So that the United States, when she would start, would have the assistance of these weaker governments with her.
FRANCE WILL JOIN US.
France said to the United States at the international conference in 1878, to our delegates: "We come here to hear your proposition and to follow you; all you have got to do is to start." [Applause.] France has been enforcing the bimetallic system and refusing to pay out except half and half, saying to us: "We are waiting for you; open your mints and we will follow." So we would start with the Western Hemisphere, with China and Japan on the Eastern Hemisphere, and with France with the United States, two of the greatest governments in the world. When the nations of the world that give importance to silver have a commercial influence as great as those nations which give importance to gold the commercial parity between the two metals will settle itself. [Applause.] England demonetized silver in 1816, and yet there was a commercial parity maintained at ratios fixed from that time to 1873. The United States, France, and the Latin Union had their mints all open to silver and England stopping the free coinage of silver, had no effect upon it. So, if we begin, we beige strong enough to do it. "The way to resume is to resume." [Applause.] The way to remonetize is to throw our mints open and we have got it. We will have higher prices once more. Everybody can make some money. There is not that paralyzed and deadly feelin(
Number Seven	81
that cornea with the destruction of prices and the hoarding of money. Now, suppose that gold should still to we us and you want to stop it. You don't need it in settling with a foreign country. We demonstrated that during the war, because a man can go and buy it at whatever it will cost in order to pay it in settlement of his balance of trade. Our trade with foreign nations is only 4 per cent of all our business and our domestic business is 96 per cent of all our business. Which do you want legislated in the interest of—the 96 per cent or the 4 per cent? [Applause.]
But suppose you want to keep the gold and have gold and silver both circulating among us. Gold doesn't circulate now; but suppose we wanted to keep them on a commercial parity and found that the conditions that I have described didn't do it, how would you do it? The first thing would be, how can we increase the demand for silver? Well, it might be done two or three ways. In the first pl ace we would send a commission or several commissions to Germany and say to those people: "Here, we, the great United States, have begun the work of declaring emancipation for the human race from these burdens that are upon them, and we want to add our argument to the arguments of your able bimetallists here in Berlin; we want you to come in with us." [Applause.] Wouldn't it have some effect? Would it not have more effect than to lay back like dogs in the manger, as we are doing now? Germany could be persuaded, possibly, with the influence of her bimetallists so that we could go on in the missionary work, launched on a gigantic scale as it would be, until we had back all of the governments of the world where we were prior to 1873, except England. We don't want her at all. You are not going to get her, either. I would just as
82	Number Seven
soon think of going to England, to the men who mold legislation in England, and ask them to give us bimetallism as I would going to the rankest gold-bug in Wall Street and asking him to go down and persuade Mr. Clbveland to turn over to us. [Applause.]
SELFISHNESS THE CAUSE.
Why? Man is moved by selfish motive, unless he has freed himself from those base instincts. Large money makers who have long since got more than they needed in this world, and are still piling up more for the purpose of saying that I am the richest man in the world, or that I am richer than my neighbor, and so my wife can say that she is richer than Mrs. Smith—when you strike a man like that, and that is the kind of men you strike when you go to England, who control legislation there, there is a selfish motive for their monometallism, and it is because they are the creditor nation of the world. All the world owes them money, and what is the object of commerce? It is the exchange of prop-erty—property for property, property for money, and money for property, and England can exchange her gold that you owe her and all the world owes her for twice as much of your property as she could if we had bimetallism. In round numbers there are as many silver dollars in the world as gold dollars. The statistics will show you that there is but a slight difference, an equal amount of each, dollar for dollar, free coinage prices; and when you add silver to gold as primary money prices advance, and England's gold would then have its value taken out of it, and she would have to pay twice as much for our property. Now, that is the reason why England won't consent to bimetallism. [Applause.]
If an undue and unrighteous influence by schemers
Number Seven	83
and tricksters abnormally enhances the value of gold so a commercial parity at 16 to 1 cannot be maintained, then do as our forefathers did, change the ratio, and make the change in the weight and size of the gold coins. Monroe and Jackson did it. They were not called dishonest for doing so. They were legislating in the interest of the people and not in the interest of the favored few. We are not compelled to keep the legal ratio at 16 to 1; we can change it to 20 to 1, if necessary, to fix the legal ratio to correspond with the commercial ratio, but if the change is made let us make it in the rich man's money and not in the poor man's money. To 1:.,-'en the size of the gold coins makes more dollars. To increase the size of the silver coins makes less dollars. [Applause.] A parity at some ratio is practicable, as admitted by the experience of ages. This is what we ask.
This is a question of capital on one side and humanity on the other, of sound money—the sound of the clod on the coffin—on one side; and sound money—the sound that has the honest ring of the people's money in it—on the other side. It is a question of an English policy or an American policy. Which shall it be? [Prolonged applause and cheers.]
PROFESSOR LAUGHLIN'S REPLY.
PRESIDENT THOMAS said:
It is my special pleasure now to present to you Prof. J. Laurence Laughlin of the Chicago University. [Loud applause.]
Prof. Laughlin then addressed the club as follows: GENTLEMEN : I had supposed that Coin's Financial
Number Seven
School was held in the Art Institute. But Mr. Gage and I and Coin are here on the West Side. This is the real Coin's school, and it ought to be in order for me to adopt the right attitude. [Laughter and applause.]
PROFESSOR LAUGHLIN ADDRESSING THE ILLINOIS::
I suppose, gentlemen, that we should discuss here tonight the question whether the United States should adopt the free coinage of silver at the ratio of 16 to 1 independently of other countries. I have not heard to-
,
"'"•••••••••••••••::•"..•!::.
41,
Number Seven	85
night any argument directed to that point. An attempt has been made to lead the discussion off on the question of what the unit was from 1792 to 1873, but to borrow an expression of our friend, Tom Reed, "that fly was embalmed in the rhetoric of Judge Vincent." It is not necessary for us to go into that question.
The persistence with which the point is referred to reminds me of the backwoodsman who pointed out the bear to his friends—the bear- being up the tree, and aiming his gun at it. And the other fellow could not see the bear, and his friend was pointing at it and saying: "Don't you see it?" And it finally became necessary to do something and he said again: "Why, don't you see it?" His friend said: "Why, no." And then he went over to his friend, who thought he saw a bear, and it was a flea on his eyebrow.
I should like for a moment or two to free ourselves from the obscuration of that mighty animal directly before our eyes and get at some of the especial points of the question. Before commencing on those subjects I should like to speak briefly of three or four points in correction of the argument of the gentleman preceding me.
He spoke of the fact that there was a greater trade with Europe during the times when there was a freer coinage of gold and silver than since 1873. I have turned to the statistical abstract of the United States for 1894 and find that in 1872 the gross sum of both exports and imports of the United States was eleven hundred and sixty-four millions; in 1894 fifteen hundred and forty-seven millions. Certainly that statement is not accurate. Also the statement was made that we paid for our foreign goods by constant drain on our resources of gold. I happen to have here at my hand
86	Number Seven
a chart, which possibly you can see (holding up a chart) which shows a comparison of the ratio, representing in the green squares the total amount of exports and imports in our foreign trade from 1850 to the present time, and the yellow square indicates the relative amount of gold and silver both that passed out and in to settle all those balances. That, gentlemen, is the way in which the payment for our goods is made in foreign trades—[applause]—not by the shipment of money except in small sums at particular times.
BLAND AND SHERMAN ACTS.
Another point I should like to call attention to, which has occurred before, is in reference to the fact that the Bland act of 1878, and the Sherman act, were supposed to require certain obligations in securities to be paid in coin. What seems to be that statement in the act of 1878 is that silver dollars shall be a legal tender for all debts, public and private, except where otherwise expressly stipulated in the contract. Is it possible that people who demand the free coinage in the ratio of 16 to 1 would naturally prevent you or any other business man in this city from making an express stipulation for gold or any other article? It seems almost inconceivable to one that the law of 1878 would bear any such interpretation and that is the only quotation that could possibly be so construed. It seems to me unnecessary to go further on this question, except to point out here one thing more before I begin. That we are supposed to be people who maintained gold and silver at a parity previous to 1873 and that this was done by the free coinage of both gold and silver.
HOW IT IS IN FRANCE.
Reference has been made to France. Now, we know
Number Seven	87
that in 1803 the French law established silver as the unit of measure. It was supposed that they had concurrent circulation of both gold and silver in France from 1803 down to the time of the discovery of gold in 1850. That is absolutely untrue. I quote from an official document issued by the French government in 1872, on page 562, in volume 2. This document says that in 1808 the circulation in France was only about eight millions of gold—that is francs, and two millions of silver. In 1838 the whole of the French circulation did not include over 5 per cent out of the total circulation of four million that is, that silver had driven out gold because they were not at a parity. Again, the same document says that since the law of 1803 France had had no gold monetary circulation during the period before 1850. Up to that time silver was our sole monetary circulation, but after the gold discoveries of California and Australia gold took the place of silver in the general monetary circulation of the country. You will find that in Vol. 2, page 32, of the same official document.
Again, you will find in a report issued by the Minister of Finance in 1869 that France had had one-third of its circulation in gold. In 1848 almost all this gold had disappeared. Out of fifty-three million then possessed by the bank only one million was gold. This metal had disappeared from 1803 to 1848 because it had enjoyed a premium, which reached at that time 1 per cent. And so I have twenty references of the same kind to show that not in France was there a concurrent circulation of gold and silver for the reason that the two were not kept at a parity. That, every student of our own monetary system knows perfectly well, vacs true of the United States. We had silver only in
88	Number Seven
circulation up to 1834 and shortly after 1834, when the ratio was 16 to 15.19. So gold drove out silver, and we had only gold in circulation, and nobody in this audience ever saw a silver dollar in circulation after about the year 1840, and up to 1873 no silver dollars were in circulation, and consequently when the act of 1873 was passed there was not any silver and had not been since 1840 in circulation, and at the time the act of 1873 was passed there was not even any gold or silver in circulation.
MONEY AS A MEASURE OF VALUE.
But I would like now to pass, if you please, to the main points I would like to discuss, in connection with the principal topic of the evening. Money as a measure of value, or as redemption money, is like a common denominator, to which other things are referred for comparison. In order to compare goods with money there is no more need of as many pieces of money as there are articles to be compared than there is of having a quart cup for every quart of milk in existence, or having a yardstick in a dry goods store for every yard on the shelf. The idea that to multiply the measurements of value is necessary is absurd, but it is of the foremost importance that the measure of values should not be tampered with, and should not be changed by legislation to the damage of all transactions based upon
it.	Right here is the whole secret of the opposition to silver as money. Silver has lost its stability of value. [Applause.] It is no better than ordinary metal for stability. The action of India sends it down 20 per cent. The mere rumor of the Chinese indemnity sends it up 10 per cent. [Applause.] The more money there is roaming about in circulation is no reason why any
Number Seven	89
one gets more of it. Money, like property, is parted with for a consideration. No matter how many more coins there are coming from the mint under free coinage and going into the vaults of the banks through the credit of the mine owners who own the bullion, there are no more coins in the pockets of Weary Waggles, who is cooling his heels on the sidewalk outside the bank. [Laughter and applause.] The increased number of handsome horses and carriages in Michigan Avenue does not imply that I can get them if I have not the money to purchase them with. I must produce work, turn out goods and labor. I must get gold and silver or something to the value of the goods, and in that way I will get them and in no other way. There is no way of getting rich by short cuts or by legislation or by merely increasing the means of exchanging goods, when goods themselves are the principal thing. [Applause.]
Money is only the machine by which goods are exchanged against one another. No matter how valuable, it is not wanted for itself. It is only a means to ark end, like a bridge over a river. Do you suppose that the farmers of this country really believe that with each ton of silver taken out of the mines by the silver lawmakers in the Senate there are created bushels of wheat and bushels of corn and barrels of mess pork? The silver belongs to the mine owners. How will it get into our pockets or the pockets of any one else? Do we insult any one's penetration by supposing that the Congressional kings are going coaching about the country distributing their money for nothing? [Laughter.] Our farmers are no fools. They know they can get more money by producing more commodities to be exchanged for it, and for those commodities they want as good money as any other men in the country have got. [App
90	Number Seven
plause.] I want to call your attention to the fact that goods in these days after being expressed in the common denominators of value are exchanged practically without the use of money.
DEMONSTRATES THE PROPOSITION.
I will explain that very briefly, because the facts must be familiar to every business man in the city of Chicago. A sells a carload of wheat and draws a bill on the Chicago purchaser for the same. A discounts this bill and has a credit in his deposit account in a bank representing his wheat expressed in terms of money. But another person, B, may have sold to A woolen goods for the same amount. B draws on A for the sum, and B also gets a credit to his bank account through the banks; then these two bits of paper meet and offset each other, that is, the wheat and woolen goods expressed in the common denominator of value are exchanged against each other by a medium of exchange known as deposit currency.
If you will permit me I will point to that chart on the other side of the room, which represents the relative amount of that kind of currency in the United States as compared to the other kind. I refer to that large gray square to the right, which represents the total amount of credit deposits in the banks. Now, what work does it do? Why, it does the work which we know in exactly quantitive form is performed by the clearings of the United States. That function or that kind of money the most welcome of all our kinds of money amounts at the present time to $2,963,000,000 in our deposit accounts. But what work does it do? It does the work of about $60,000,000,000, which represents the work of our clearing-houses. You can verify those fig-
Number Seven	91
ures any week if you wish to know the way in which transactions are actually performed, goods actually exchanged without the use of money to the amount of $60,000,000,000 a year. And when you contrast the size of that with the square representing our gold, our silver certificates, our national bank-notes, and our greenbacks and subsidiary currency, which are the other blocks on the same sheet, you can see what an immense influence that has on our business.
It is not necessary for me to expand further on that point, because those are commercial facts apparent to any business man in the Union. I can only say that from 92 to 95 per cent of all our transactions are performed in this way, practically without the use of money, and that under recent investigations by the Comptroller of the Currency about 54 per cent are performed in the same way. But it will be said by some one "This is a vast system of credit"—but it is not credit, it is a system of exchange—but they would say, "This vast system of credit must be liquidated in actual coin or money. And so our business system rests like an inverted pyramid upon the apex of the small reserve of coin." Now, how true is that? If I have explored rightly, and I took but 'a very short time to refer to that matter, it would seem to me that is just the means by which goods expressed in the term of the common measure of value are exchanged against each other without the intervention of money, and by this means, which is independent of the passing of coin from hand to hand. These transactions expressed in terms of money are not based upon coin, but upon goods that are bought and sold.
DRAWING OF CHECKS AND BILLS.
No business man waits until checks and money have
02	Number Seven
reached such a volume before he thinks the medium is sufficiently large for the needs of trade, before he sells his car-load of wheat or his bushel of corn or woolen goods. He first sells his grain and cotton and draws a check or bill afterwards. The deposit currency I have spoken of is the consequence and result of the transactions. This system I have been describing is as broad as the "transactions," it is ultimately resolved into goods and based on goods. It is not true, therefore, that this system I have been describing is unstable like an inverted pyramid, the transactions are the reason for the existence of the checks and deposits. The checks and the deposits are not the reason for the existence of the transaction. To talk, then, about redemption money being scarce or being cut off by the act of 1873 is about as futile as talking about hearses being scarce, because there is not a hearse to every man. [Laughter.] If people die rapidly the hearses do not stand so long in the undertaker's yard. [Laughter.] If many transactions take place, the money becomes :nimble and a little goes a long way. One hearse may carry many people one at a time, and so a little money will exchange a great many goods. But you say, "There must be money enough to liquidate every transaction necessary," and you point to a panic, and when there is a money famine. You'point to when there is a money panic, that is to say when properties and securities are thrown on the market at once to be sold to get the legal means of paying obligations. Very true, but in ordinary times all goods are not at once offered any more than all people are dying at once. When a cholera epidemic comes people die and die rapidly, and hearses are in exceptional demand, like money in a panic. But note this. Even if every corpse is not lucky enough to
Number Seven	98
be carried in a hearse, it yet can be buried some way or other. It may not be so stylish, but it gets there all
the same. [Laughter.] It may go to its grave in a cart or an express wagon. So the goods and money, if they cannot all be exchanged in currency for coin, may yet be exchanged by other means—by clearing-house certificates, or, last of all, even by barter. All goods are not offered for exchange at once any more than a million men crossing a bridge are all on the bridge at the same time. A million men can all cross a bridge comfortably 100 at a time, but if they all cross at once there is a panic and some one is hurt.
Now, I want to suggest, in connection with the act of 1878 and with the general question, very briefly one or two facts. Prices since 1873 have not fallen because of any lack of money, and I think I have shown you on general principles there has been no reason why there should be an increasing amount of money, and I intend to show you now by facts that prices have not fallen since 1873 because of any lack in the quantity of money.
ILLUSTRATES WITH THE CHART.
I have prepared on that chart, the large one on that side, the facts showing the most extensive movement of prices, the most exhaustive study of prices ever made in this country or any other. If the gentlemen can see across the room you will find that there is a straight black line crossing the middle chart, and that that represents the figure 100 or the basis from which the figures move. Now, there is a line that starts from the beginning there, in 1860, representing the movements of 223 articles quoted solely in the American market. That line rises up as you see it. It is marked "C. " It rises up from that base line to 1865, and then
94	Number Seven
it starts downward It would be better if you could get close enough to see the color. It moves down, and in 1879 strikes the base line again, so that the movement of prices shows that in 1879 we were exactly on the same level as to prices in the United States as in 1860, before the civil war. Then the line moves slightly above the base line, showing that prices were higher than 1860. Then it drops a little under again to the figure "C" just under the line, and compared with 1869 the prices of 223 articles averaged together in the American markets showed a decrease as compared with 1860.
Now, let us compare with that the circulation. There is a line marked "D" across it. Soon after the civil war it moved just a little above the line, and then in 1879 the circulation of the United States advanced rapidly and moved to the right There was a greater demand put upon the money with the increasing circulation; but I point to the chart to show you what the transactions were which you would appeal to as showing how much trade had increased. That might indicate the amount of demand put upon the circulation of the country. That line up there in the red is the line of coloring, which I just explained to you was the amount of transactions in the United States practically without the use of money; consequently the very thing that you will refer to as indicating an increased demand upon money is the very thing which explains just to what extent we have economized the use of money.
Lastly, on that chart there is a dotted line in red, which begins some distance from the base line. That represents the value of silver compared with gold. It travels along the seventies about the same ratio, 15 to
1.	Then it goes down and up. In 1879 it was just crossing the line of circulation at "D " It keeps on
Number Seven	95
pretty steadily until after 1885, and then it ' drops below the line, then rises, and now it is again down. You can just see it faintly on the lower edge of the chart, like a star in the winter just passing over the horizon. That is a significant story. That shows the relation of silver to gold, while the line "C" indicates the relation of all the commodities in the United States to gold.
SILVER'S PURCHASING POWER REDUCED.
Now, I ask you whether there is any parallel showing of silver relative to gold and commodities relative to gold. The price of commodities is 8 per cent below what it was in 1860. Silver is 50 per cent below. Isn't it perfectly clear, then, gentlemen, that silver did not have the same purchasing power in 1894 as it had in 1873? If you were to propose free coinage of silver, which means a single silver standard, and in that way to measure contracts and transactions and claim that would be true because the purchasing power of silver to-day is what it was in 1873, you will find there is absolutely no correspondence. The purchasing price of silver is infinitely below the price of the purchasing power which it had in 1873. Therefore it is not to-day, in 1894,a just means of paying debts. But more than that, why should there have been any change in prices in the United States after 1873? There was no more gold in circulation than in 1873. Net May 1, 1895, there was gold in circulation in the United States $568,000,000, and of silver $524,000,000, making a total of $1,092,000,000. More redemption money has been coined by the mint by $1,092,000,000, and yet prices fall. That is due without the shadow of a doubt to any investigator to the cheapened cost of production. Moreover, if it be associated with a fall of prices since 1873, with
96	Number Seven
the demonetization of silver, I point to the fact that there is more silver in circulation in the very countries concerned to-day than in 1873. Germany has still 110,000,000 thalers of her old silver, and the five-franc pieces of France are more in circulation than in 1873, and they are all legal tender.
The United States, after the Latin Union ceased to coin silver in 1878, tried this experiment, and now the United States has added to the circulation of the world something over $600,000,000. That is, there is more today, in 1894, than there was in 1873. Therefore, why the use of talking about the fall of prices having been due to the subtraction of the money of the world when there is more silver in circulation and more gold in circulation by hundreds of millions? [Applause.] Moreover it may be said that commodities had fallen because of the subtraction of silver from the circulation. In 1873 compared with earlier years the exertion of the average laborer had risen 8 per cent. The laborer today commands more gold than he ever commanded in the industrial history of the world. [Applause.] Not only have wages risen all this time, but because of this great cheapening in the cost of the production of commodities, which has caused the falling of the prices of commodities in general, wages have risen in money, ii gold, and his purchasing power has increased double; not only has money risen but commodities have fallen. The laborer has got double since 1873. For heaven's sake let us have more of 1873 for the laborer. [Applause.] This persistence in saying that the fall of prices is due
to silver is like the story of the grandmother who said there was something good in everything, and the daugh-
ter said: "I really believe you would say something good about the prince of evil." "Well, my dear, I am
Number Seven	97
sure we must all admit he has great perseverance." [Laughter.]
Now, as to the free coinage of silver at 16 to 1 let us get the record to the point; when the market ratio was about 32 to 34—it skipped about so much you can't be really certain. It has been 34 to 1, somewhere between 82 and 34 now. If the market ratio be that, and in the mint ratio you propose 16 to 1, there is a premium of sixteen ounces of silver profit on withdrawing every ounce of gold in circulation. Free coinage of silver at 16 to 1, means single silver monometallism; 16 to 1 is a single silver standard and in the language of my opponent we will start with all the South American countries and Mexico. [Applause.] Free coinage of silver, then, is absolutely certain to drive all gold out of circulation. The mere hint of it did that in the panic of 1893. May 5, 1895, the first of this month, there were $568,000,000 of gold in circulation. Since gold must be inevitably driven out if free coinage of silver is had, there will be no increase in the quantity of money. If the people who support free coinage hope to increase the quantity of money it is perfectly evident on the face of it that it will contract the currency by the total amount of $568,000,000. [Applause.] It could not change prices, therefore, by increasing the amount of the medium of the exchange. That is plain. The only way it would act would be to increase the price of everything because reckoned in a cheaper medium than that of gold. This, my friend admitted this evening. If prices would rise we would have a glow of satisfaction. It is the kind of "glow of satisfaction which comes to the inebriate after he has been supplied with drink after he had been thirsty a long while. For example, take a pair of gloves worth 100 cents in gold; they
98	Number Seven
would exchange for about 210 cents in silver. A dozen eggs, now selling at 15 cents, would sell for about 80 cents, and everything we buy would rise in proportion, since the intrinsic value of the pure dollar is worth but 51 cents.
SILVER WILL RAISE PRICES.
As free coinage of silver would inevitably result in a rise of prices,it would immediately result in the fall of wages. Its first effect would be to diminish the purchase power of all our wages. The man who gets $500 or $1,000 a year as a fixed rate of wages or salary will find he can buy just half as much as now. Yes, but some one said the employer will raise his wages. Now, will he? Now, the facts on that are clear and indisputable. It has been one of the undisputed facts of history that when prices rise the wages of labor are the last to advance and when prices fall the wages of labor are the first to decline. Free coinage of silver would make all the articles of the laborer's consumption cost him 500 per cent more unless he can get a rise in his wages by dint of strikes and quarrels and all the consequent dissatisfaction arising from friction between the employer and employe. He would be able to buy only half as many articles of consumption as he had before.
INJURY TO THE LABORING CLASSES.
In short,a rise of prices necessarily results in a diminution of the enjoyments of the laboring class, uiitil they can force the employers, through a long process of agitation, to make an increase in their wages. Are we willing to sacrifice the interests of the laboring classes to the demands of certain owners of silver mines to hoodwink the people with the cry of more money? This
Number Seven	99
is a distinct and serious damage. The damage runs in other directions, however; but the proposal to adopt a depreciated standard of value is simply an attempt to transfer from the great mass of the community who have been provident, industrious, and successful, a portion of their savings and gains into the pockets of those who have been idle, extravagant, or unfortunate. The provision which has been made for old age, for sickness, for death, for widows and orphans, or by insurance will be depreciated in the same ratio. No invasion of hostile armies, burning and destroying as they advance, could by any possibility equal the desolation and ruin which would thus be forced upon the great mass of the American people.
Such a desolation, however, does not fall alike upon the shrewd and unsophisticated; but it would affect 11,000,000 of persons. The case that I have described, therefore, is not a limited or special one.
OUR RAILWAY BONDS.
The bonded debt of the railways in the United States is about $6,000,000,000. If free coinage of silver were introduced it would enable these railways to pay off their debts with what is now equivalent to about $3, 000, 000,000. They would thus be relieved of the necessity of paying the small investors who have taken their bonds one-half of what these corporations now owe them, and it is only a few of such corporations and railways that have outstanding indebtedness that has run a long time and which could have been paid before the period of 1873.
The Sherman act of July 4, 1890, unless it had been repealed, would have brought us to the silver standard. As it was, the mere suspicion of it struck a blow at
100	Number Seven
our measure of value, brought on a panic, made prices uncertain, and caused doubts as to future plans in every factory and shop in the land. Those who have silver mines, and who can, by their wealth, control political parties and Legislatures, who make,the very seat of our National Government their private offices, and actually turn the National Senate into a bureau for bulling the prices of their product—to those men we say, beware. Those of us who belong to the rank of plain citizens, who are thinking only of the country as a whole, who believe in the honesty and intelligence of the people, hold that when a question of right or wrong is presented in a campaign of education the people will decide for right and for justice. [Applause.] We cannot believe that a special interest, led by millionaires, can go on unchecked in their plan of sacrificing the taxpayers in order to heap up riches, especially when this is done on the most fallacious of all economic grounds —grounds which have been proved wrong by the experience of every country of modern time. How long will it take to convince every man in the land that conditions of prosperity are those in which the honest man can best meet and pay his obligations? Unless a debtor can get employment or find a market for his goods,how can he pay interest or principal?
Now, if tampering with the standard in the terms of which all transactions are drawn, all contracts made, all goods bought and sold, brings industrial paralysis, because no one knows what will happen ten days hence, and no one will go on making goods for a changing market, it is to the interest of every laborer, every debtor, every honest man, is it not, to keep and maintain the value of the standard so far as that may be done? The debtor will be no better off by free coinage,
Number Seven	101
even if we had it, which we never will. [Applause.]
Every lender would insert the gold clause in the contract; and on our present basis of contracts and prices, the very hint or possibility of a change to a depreciated single standard would precipitate a panic just as it did in 1893; and when the gentleman who spoke before me charged me with being certain to engage in special pleadings I ask him Ito consider the condition of the country to-day, what it is to-day with the great iron industries of Pennsylvania,keeping up prices since there has been a steady recovery of industry from the very moment when Mr. Cleveland put his foot down, and said, "We should and shall maintain our standard of value inviolate." [Loud applause.]
DEBTORS WILL NOT BE BENEFITED.
Is it true that, even laying aside all honor and justice, resorting to a single silver standard depreciated 8 per cent, the debtor will sell his goods at 100 per cent more, and the more easily pay off his 'debts? By no means. That is the most superficial of all views. Trickery is always sure to follow to those who resort to
it.	And I do not myself feel it necessary only to ap-
peal to the selfish motives of American people. I for one am ready to appeal to that integrity, that sense of honor, and that uprightness in the American people which, whenever it has been appealed to, has decided rightly upon these great questions of justice.
In conclusion, gentlemen, extraordinary as is the proposal for free coinage it is in truth only a huge deceit. It was born in the private offices of the silver kings, nursed at the hands of speculators, clothed in economic error, fed on boodle, exercised in the lobby of Congress, and as sure as there is honesty and truth
102	Number Seven
in the American heart it will die young and be buried in the same ignominious grave wherein lies the now forgotten infant once famous as the rag baby. [Applause.] Free coinage is greenbackism- galvanized into life. The heresy in its old form of a demand for more money has already been laid low. It will not long deceive us in its new form of a demand for more silver, for silver fiatism, nor in any other respect is it what it presumes to be. It is not a predecessor for bimetallism. It is a wild leap in the dark for silver monometallism. Under the cry for more money are veiled' the plans of a giant syndicate of mine owners and speculators, who have hoodwinked the people in certain parts of the country and who are still deluding them with a specious argument for more money, and are laughing in their sleeve at a constituency so easily gulled. [Great applause.]
MR. HARVEY'S REJOINDER TO PROFESSOR LAUGHLIN.
THE CHAIRMAN—Mr. Harvey will now be allowed 15 minutes in rejoinder.
Mr. Harvey spoke as follows:
Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, I have 15 minutes, and must be brief. I will as near as I can in that time cover all the ground that Professor Laughlin has gone over. He says exports in 1872 were eleven hundred million, in 1894 fifteen hundred million, as an argument that what I said is not true, that we did more business with Europe when we had neither gold nor silver as money than we do now. I would only say that the population has increased faster than the increase as shown by those figures. [Applause.]
104	Number Seven
drove out gold in this country, he says, for the first fifty years of the century, and then gold drove out silver Now, that is just what we want the business men of Chicago to understand. That is bimetallism—bi-metallism which makes either gold or silver money primary money, because when one metal gives out and gets dearer or becomes scarce the other comes in. How can silver come in now? There is no such law authorizing it to be primary money or redemption money. It cannot come in now. Gold has got the track to itself, but under bimetallism, for centuries, as long as we have any statistical record of it, when one metal came in and drove the other out it was because it was cheaper by a small percentage, which drove it partially out, or for a short time. Or it drove it substantially all out, and then came the other, but it was the very fact that either metal answered for use as money, and that if one was not enough, or if the business of the country would have its back broken by reason of insisting on one metal, there was the other to take its place, and that is what bimetallism means. [Applause.]
METALS AND MEASURES OF VALUE.
Now, it does not mean when one of the metals go out of circulation temporarily that it is not a measure of value, because it is a measure of value. This question is world-wide in the sense of commercial parity, and the dearer metal leaving us means that it is going into the markets of the world to hold up the price level of the two metals.
If silver left us in 1873 because it was at 2 per cent premium over gold at 16 to 1, why was it? Because there was a market in Europe; the mints in France were open to it at the ratio of 151 to 1, and it went
104	Number Seven,
drove out gold in this country, he says, for the first fifty years of the century, and then gold drove out silver Now, that is just what we want the business men of Chicago to understand. That is bimetallism—bi-metallism which makes either gold or silver money primary money, because when one metal gives out and gets dearer or becomes scarce the other comes in. How can silver come in now? There is no such law authorizing it to be primary money or redemption money. It cannot come in now. Gold has got the track to itself, but under bimetallism, for centuries, as long as we have any statistical record of it, when one metal came in and drove the other out it was because it was cheaper by a small percentage, which drove it partially out, or for a short time. Or it drove it substantially all out, and then came the other, but it was the very fact that either metal answered for use as money, and that if one was not enough, or if the business of the country would have its back broken by reason of insisting on one metal, there was the other to take its place, and that is what bimetallism means. [Applause.]
METALS AND MEASURES OF VALUE.
Now, it does not mean when one of the metals go out of circulation temporarily that it is not a measure of value, because it is a measure of value. This question is world-wide in the sense of commercial parity, and the dearer metal leaving us means that it is going into the markets of the world to hold up the price level of the two metals.
If silver left us in 1873 because it was at 2 per cent premium over gold at 16 to 1, why was it? Because there was a market in Europe; the mints in France were open to it at the ratio of 15-i to 1, and it went
Number Seven	105
there and took the place of so much gold, which came back to us, but it is not so now. Silver, when it leaves us, does not take the place of money, because silver is demonetized. With both the metals remonetized, one of the metals going out of use and leaving us, it is still a measure of value, because it is holding up the measure of values for the world—the price level of the two metals for the world—and as needed it is purchased at a small premium. It is holding up the value of wheat in London, where it makes them pay $1.30 for India wheat, and makes them pay us $1.30 for our wheat. Gold and silver alternately are the strength of bimetallism, and it is not this one or the other one used as a measure of value, when both are conjointly recognized before the law. [Applause.]
"No silver in circulation from 1850 to 1873," he says. Now, silver was in circulation at that time. I know it as a fact. I was a boy 10 years old in 1861, 9 years old in 1860, and I know silver was in circulation. There are instances in my life that impressed it on my mind, that make me know that, and you know it if you were living at that time.
He says the measure of value should not be tampered with. I agree with him. The measure of value from 1792, also during the continental days and up to 1873, was gold and silver, and it should not have been tampered with. [Loud applause.] You people are tampering with the measure of values. You tampered with it in 1873 and the gold standard is an experiment. Show me, in the history of the world, where it ever existed before, except since 1873, and except since 1816, in England only. The ages have had bimetallism at a legal ratio between gold and silver, and monometallism, the gold standard, was attempted to be fastened upon
106	Number Seven
the world by the simultaneous action of the financiers of the world, beginning with 1873. [Applause.]
He says that silver now bobs up and down. Of course it bobs up and down. It did not bob up and down before 1873. Professor, take the table of ratios, comparative ratios between gold and silver for 200 years in the book before you and you will find they staid together for those 200 years and that silver did not bob up and down, except the slight difference of exchange in the different countries and the slight difference in ratios between France and the United States. It did not bob up and down, and that is what we want you to do. We want you to give them equal rights before the law and then silver will not bob up and down. Of course it goes up and down now and the monometallists are the cause of it—the act of 1873 is the cause of it. [Applause.]
He says people should work and turn out property, and they will get their money. They are working, but they can't get the money. [Applause.] They produce the property, and find the property costs them what they get for it; that they get no more than it costs them to produce. The farmer finds himself in the same fix, and that is why he can't pay his mortgages. Mortgages are increasing. Would they increase, as they are now, like a cloud threatening the prosperity of the country, if it were true that such industry as the American citizens can display would produce property that they could go and sell at a profit? The trouble is, when they have produced the property, the price has been destroyed. [Applause.]
The Professor tells a good story. I have heard him tell the same story before. [Applause.] Now, I want to tell a story. [Laughter.] it is true if there is a
Number Seven	107
bridge across a stream and everybody wants to go over it at the same time, or there is a busy day such as we would like to see in this country once more, and they could not get over the bridge at the same time, if there were two bridges, Professor, they could get over. [Laughter and applause, continuing for five minutes.] Also if they should charge too much toll over one bridge we might get over the other cheaper. [Applause.]
He says silver is the property of the bullion men only. Whose property is gold? [Applause.] This is not a question of who owns the property. That, by the experience of ages is demonstrated by wisdom and intelligence as best adapted to be coined into money, no matter who owns it, whether it is owned by the citizens of Illinois or owned by the citizens of Colorado; it is a question of wisdom and intelligence as to what property, if we are going to have property money, is best to be coined into money, and when that question is intelligently settled no special argument and no criticism can be made upon it by pointing to American citizens as owning it. [Applause.] If they owned our silver in England and England owned our grand Rocky Mountains we would not hear of who owns the silver. [Applause.] It is a lack of Americanism in not standing up for our own product that I object to, when the intelligence of centuries has determined that silver is a proper metal for use as money. [Applause.]
He says goods are exchanged practically without money. He says business is done without the use of money. He ought to go down to Washington and tell Mr. Cleveland how to do without money. [Applause.] Well, if we can drive these gold standard fellows to the position of the fiatists, we may reason with them. The latter are a more reasonable people. If business
108	Number Seven
can he done without money, then there is no reason why we should discuss the question of redemption money at all. He says a man buys goods one day, using the money to get other property on the same day, and that it is the exchange of property. The country merchant comes to Chicago and buys goods and in the course of sixty or ninety days he pays for them, and has his goods on his shelf for a year. He must carry them with money; he must have money to pay for them. [Applause.]
ILLUSTRATIONS FIT THE TIMES.
The only appropriate illustrations that the Professor used were such words as "hearses, graves, etc.," and using these to illustrate his points. Such reflections are in sympathy with the condition of the country. [Applause.] He is not an international bimetallist. He says prices have not fallen since 1873.
PROFESSOR LAUGHLIN—I didn't say that. I said that prices had not fallen since 1873 because of lack of money.
MR. HARVEY—Well, that is boo tough for me. [Applause and laughter.] He says prices have not fallen since 1873 for lack of money. Why have they fallen? Is not property measured in money when everything else is equal?
He points us to a map on the wall representing the amount of clearances in a day going thorugh the clearing-house. I thought he was going on with the illustration of the map and would point out the gold in the country that it all rested upon, but he didn't do so, and says that our credit money and credit system is not based on primary money. But the point we make, gentlemen, is that credit money and credits all are piled up on redemption or primary money. When you run under
Number Seven	109
such a gold standard it is a part of the statutory law of this country; it is regulating us with reference to our finances, and which we are reminded of, as to what that standard is, every time we look at one of out gold notes, our gold mortgages, etc. ; and when you pile up all those credits and transactions of the Nation upon a primary money, you must consider the quantity and quality of that primary money, and that is the essential question and issue that is between us here to-night. [Applause.]
THE PRESIDENT—Mr. Harvey, your time is up. Professor Laughlin will now have fifteen minutes.
Professor Laughlin spoke as follows:
The gentleman stated to you that I spoke with regard to the figures of exports and imports from. 1850 down to the present time, as a test of the fact that we had a certain amount of trade at home. I made no such statement whatever. I may have misunderstood the gentleman. I gave the figures for the total exports and imports combined in the year 1872 as $1,165,000,000 and in 1894 as $1,547,000,000, because the gentleman had stated that there had been a greater trade with Europe in the time when gold and silver had free coinage, and I used the year 1872 to show that there was a certain amount of trade, $1,164,000,000, and that today we had a greater trade and that we do not have free coinage of silver.
Now, he also said that I showed a chart to explain to you that we paid all our international balances in money. I did no such thing. I gave a total area, indicating the total value of exports and imports in the United States from 1850 down, and gave on the same chart—this is the one [holding up chart]—showing in another square, down here, a relatively small amount
110	Number Moven
of money that had traveled back and forth, both gold and silver—whether it was as merchandise or as gold made no difference—in order to settle transactions. Then the gentleman referred to a most extraordinary proposition, which struck me at the time as so inconceivable that I thought I must be mistaken. It was in regard to the act of 1878. Now, it happens that I was brought up in a lawyer's office, and I breathed in a lot of the old common law, and when he makes this statement that there never had existed anywhere in previous history any such statement as that a citizen of the United States was affected by such a statement as this in law, "except where otherwise expressly stipulated in the contract," "that citizens in the United States were not permitted to make a contract of any kind for the delivery of a specific kind of goods"—I am amazed. I suppose it is one of the common law fundamentals, as old as any legal history. The statement, therefore, that a statement like that, recognizing the common law of the country,appeared in the act of 1878 merely as an expression, and never had been heard before, is the most extraordinary exhibition of ignorance of the fundamental principles of law as we understand it in this Anglo-Saxon age.
HE IS FOR A SINGLE GOLD STANDARD.
Now, he made the statement in rebuttal concerning something I stated that the law of 1873 prevented silver from coming in and gaining its relative position again. If it would, that alone would raise its value. Now, the fact is that before 1873—the facts are indis-putable—the relative market value of gold and silver so varied that they did not remain in circulation then. I challenge any student of economic or financial history
Number Seven	111
to find a case, an authenticated case, of the concurrent circulation of gold and silver under a so-called bimetallic system for any length of time. I say that that is a fact indisputable, that it was always either gold in circulation or it was either silver in circulation. I have furnished here absolute, indisputable proof from French financial documents to show that in France itself, where they attempted to establish what was supposed to be a bimetallic system, they did not have the concurrent circulation; the silver went out; they did not keep their parity. In 1860 the value of a silver dollar in gold was 104.58. The gentleman, then, must have been living in the plutocratic regions of those people who always paid about $1.04 when they need only have paid $1. Or he may have been keeper of a museum where they had those things on exhibition. [Laughter. ]
HE REGARDS BIMETALLISM IMPOSSIBLE.
The gentleman suggests that we have been tampering with the standard. Now, what do you mean by the standard? Why, the standard by which prices are estimated, by which transactions are made. Now, there was not any silver in circulation, there was not any gold in circulation. The only standard we had been tampering with was the greenback. There was no change made, for there was no gold and silver in the country. Tampering with the-standard is when we try to get that metal of the most unstable kind; and right behind the gentleman is a chart representing the gyrations of silver when it really has a chance. In 1876, irrespective of commodities or anything else, it changed its value 25 per cent. That is a pretty standard. That is the kind of standard to tamper with. In 1890, under a stimulation connected very closely with the passage of the
112	Number Seven
Sherman act of 1890, silver went up, and then it came down again like a rocket. [Applause.]
SILVER BOBBING TO THE BOTTOM.
Now, he spoke of my chart, over there, and suggested that silver was bobbing. Yes, it has been bobbing and has gone to the bottom, and it is like the old story of the man in the boat. When he dropped out of the boat he swore it was the boat that had gone up. He then says we have spoiled the market because men, if they have produced goods, cannot sell, and in the next sentence he says a man sells for what it cost him to produce, and yet he says he cannot sell. Now, what is selling except what it cost to produce?
Then he speaks to the point of the bridge illustration. I could not expect to be understood even on a second reading. [Laughter.] The bridge illustration was simply meant to show that in a time of great panic or great excitement, when a great amount of work has got to be done in a small space, disorder sometimes arises. It is perfectly clear that with order and with a proper medium of exchange and a proper condition that would have served equally for every one, it does not make any difference which of the two bridges a man goes over. But if he goes on the second bridge and it is a shaky one and it bobs up and down like that, he had better not get on it. [Laughter.]
He also added that it was very un-American to talk about gold. Now, we produce gold as well as silver, and he ask who owns the gold. I answer exactly the same in regard to the matter of silver. The bullion owners, the mine owners, own the gold bullion just as much as the silver mine owners own the silver bullion,
Number Seven	113
and when you put it into the mint it does not get into your pocket and mine. I tell you there is another process entirely beyond all that. The mint does not create an unlimited demand for gold. The mint does not buy gold.
IT MAKES MONEY OF IT.
It is simply and nothing more than it merely changes its form into a round disk, and puts a stamp on it to indicate an authority that it is a certain fineness and weight. That is all the mint does. It does not create any demand for gold, and gold mine owners own their gold just as the silver mine owners own their silver. And if it is un-American I say, to say the truth, then I am un-American.
He objected to my funeral illustration. [Laughter.] I suppose he considered that if we were not going to have free coinage of silver that was quite too funereal a thing to think of, and I haven't any doubt if you were to examine into my illustration closely you will see a very much despised thing called a rag silver baby being carried out.
He lastly says that the fall in prices since 1873 has not been accounted for by me. I did not say that prices had not fallen since 1873, because I called your attention to the movement of prices of 223 articles in coin. Since 1860 they had fallen 8 per cent, and it gives me an opportunity to call attention to something which I did not have time to before, and that is that the fall of prices began in 1865. It was at the time when prices were highest, and from 1864 and 1865 the movement was steadily down. Now, if they are going to talk about 1873 why don't they talk about 1875? They were both under a paper money period. The high prices were in
114	Number Seven,
1865, and when resumption of specie payment took place, January 1, 1879, prices were exactly on the same level as they were in 1860. But you start with silver in 1879 and compare its price with silver to-day with what prices were in 1879 after the resumption of specie payment, and you can see the difference and the change in the purchasing price of silver as compared with the money.
Now, what was the cause of the fall in the values of the commodities? It seems to me that before an audience of men engaged in industrial operations, men who know something about the way in which industrial improvements have been introduced into every factory, in every furnace, in every cotton and woolen mill in this country in the last ten or fifteen years, that the change produced in the cheaper cost of productions, in improvements and inventions in the last fifteen or twenty-five years is the striking marvel of this century. Many a man and owner of a mill I have heard say that it made him tired and fatigued to keep up in this race of improvements. The moment that he had his mills adjusted somebody else had got something new, and he had to change his mill and his men all over again. [Applause.] One man in the iron industry in Pittsburg wrote to me that since 1873 he could mention no less than 500 different inventions, all united together, to change the price of production of iron. You all know how the price has gone down; how about the price of steel rails, which has gone down until steel is really no more valuable than iron was then.
PRICES SHOULD HAVE FALLEN MORE.
I need not go over this to a body of men who know the movements of commercial prices; the reduction of
Number Seven	115
prices from the change of cost has been phenomenal. It has been one of the most difficult things of my life to understand why prices have not fallen more than 8 per cent since 1860. The only possible excuse for it that I can see is the enormous production of gold. These charts directly behind you will show the enormous production of gold since 1850. While before 1850 the production was about $38,000,000, it rises to $153,000,000 in 1853, and we have to account not merely for the annual production in any one year, but the total of gold in existence. Up to 1853 in the 357 years from the discovery of America there were but $3,300,000,000 of gold produced; in the forty-three years from 1850 to 1893, inclusive, the amount of gold produced was $5,400,000,000, almost double the amount of the previous 357 years. In 1893 the annual production of gold was larger than any time in the history of the world, over $155,000,000. And the directors of the mints show us that the reports of 1894 will show a still larger production of gold. [Applause.]
PRESIDENT THOMAS—Mr. Harvey will now have five minutes for the close of the discussion.
Mr. Harvey closed as follows:
Professor Laughlin refers again to the bridge story. I want to do the same thing. If one bridge is rickety we use the other while we put the bad one in order. If we have only one, and that is out of order, we have to wade or swim. That is the trouble now. We have only one bridge, and the administration and Mr. Cleveland have hold of one end, and the Rothschilds have the other, and they have drawn our end away from us. [Great applause.] Professor Laughlin refers to the laborer's wages, etc. There is contention between the labor unions of the country and the financial and other
116	Number Seven
trusts of the country, and it is a deadly struggle, as we know, and one of the worst things of that struggle is the 4,000,000 of idle laborers in this country. In order to hold up the wages of the country it is producing idle labor. Unions are trying to hold up wages till good times return and all can get work. I would like to have more time to make the reply that should be made to this proposition.
He tried in his first speech to scare the saving depositors. That is one of the special arguments that is made on the other side. They will stop scaring them when these depositors have no money left, and that is what their policy will come to. [Applause.]
And now in conclusion I want to tell a story that the Professor reminds me of. He said in one part of his speech to-night that the debtors would not be benefited by remonetization of silver, and in another part of his speech he said that commodities would rise in value double; cost the wage-earner more (double), and debtors would thus cheat their creditors by selling their property for more money, and with this money paying off their debts; now he has thus stated two diametrically opposite propositions. One is that the debtor will not be benefited by remonetizing silver, and the other demonstrates clearly enough that he will be benefited. In following men whose arguments are not consistent we are apt to get lost, and it reminds me of a boy down in the hills of West Virginia by the name of Johnny Stine-felter.
A man from the city, with austere bearing, came along the country road one day on horseback and asked the boy the way to some distant village. The boy, not liking the manner in which he was addressed, said:
"Mister, about a mile from here turn to the right,.
Number Seven	117
at the cross roads turn to the left; take the middle road next time; cross through the draw bars, pass a black jack and a white oak on the hillside; turn to the right and take the left hand road to your right down through a low gap, and you will be in the middle of a ten acre briar patch, and then if you ain't lost, stranger, I don't know a 'cuckoo' when I see one." [Laughter and long continued applause.]
Thus ended the debate.
A SUMMARY OF THE DEBATE.
MR. HARVEY did not have time to answer specifically all the points made by Professor Laughlin, and to the intelligent reader it was not necessary.
What will strike the average reader with the greatest force, is that the gold standard advocate did not answer Mr. Harvey's argument at all. The audience had listened to a plain, common sense statement presenting the truths of bimetallism, and this presentation gave strong reasons why that financial system was best in providing a primary money, and those who did not agree with Mr. Harvey's views at least expected a reply that would show the fallacy of Mr. Harvey's statements. In this they were disappointed.
The impression created by the opening speech was that as two legs are better than one in the physical structure of man, two lobes to the heart in supplying the blood of life, so were two metals better than one in supplying the blood of commerce, and apparently good and cogent reasons were given for it—to this no reply was made and no argument was advanced in favor of gold—a single metal. Professor Laughlin did not tear down the arguments of his opponent, neither did he
118	Number Seven
build up an argument on his own side. He contented himself with taking isolated propositions of his own construction and speaking to them. Any subject will
permit of this treatment, but where one is in error all the parts cannot be made to fit together. This was the situation of Professor Laughlin.
Take, for instance, his illustration in which he compares money as a measure of values with "quart cups" as a measure of liquids, and "yard-sticks" as a measure of length and says there is no more necessity for a multiplicity of the number of the first than the latter two. Every one must carry more or less money around with him, but he does not have to carry quart cups and yard-sticks. Quart cups are all right as a measure, but if one had to convey a large body of water from one point to another he would find quart cups an inefficient medium of exchange. Yard-sticks are not loaned out and used in barter and trade,possessing a value of their own for which property is exchanged. The Professor was theorizing.
As civilization advances and production and distribution of property classifies and divides up population into different pursuits, experience teaches that more money is necessary as a medium of exchange to distribute the property produced among the consumers. A family now uses more' money in making these purchases and exchanges by far than would have been used by the same family forty years ago. We know this. It is in the knowledge of every one. And yet the Professor reasons it out that less money is necessary now than then.
He makes an argument based on what he calls "deposit currency," that would win the admiration of any man that has ever "kited checks," but not the admira-
Number Seven	119
Lion of any business man who knows that when he gives a check the money should be in the bank to meet the check at the time the check is given.
He states that there is more silver in circulation now than in 1873, but does not reply to his opponent's argu-men that this silver he refers to as in circulation now, is token money, and is not permitted to compete with gold as primary or redemption money.
He says the laboring man now fortunate enough to have work will be able to buy less with his'money when we have free coinage of silver and rising prices, but loses sight of the fact that most laborers, like the farmer and the village tanner, get paid through the sale of their products. He also ignores the fact that all classes of labor not belonging to unions, such as clerks, have had their wages reduced one-half in the last twenty years. His argument only has apparent merit in it when applied to wage-earners who belong to unions, and here it is only apparent. Where competition is not permitted to lower wages during a period of depression such as has been produced by a gold standard in this country, it has the other effect to be expected and that, is to throw people out of employment and produce hundreds of thousands of idle laborers who draw no wages at all. And while the Professor's argument might tickle the fancy of a union laborer who has employment to-day, it would be bitter gall and wormwood to the same workman to-morrow when out of employment and drawing no wages. His argument is narrow and not broad. And neither is it true, for under rising prices and general prosperity there would be an increase in the price of wages.
To build up an argument in support of the gold standard where everything would be consistent with
120	Number Seven
the whole structure, he would have to show among other things that taxes and the cost of running the governments, national, state and municipal, had been reduced one half,and this he could only do by some system of theorizing that would turn facts into falsehoods.
Professor Laughlin's claim as uo the enormous supply of gold is exposed and its fallacy laid bare in the second volume of COIN'S FINANCIAL SCHOOL.
If any one has any doubt on any other point made by Professor Laughlin, Com has answered them in the last four chapters of his UP TO DATE, and made these answers so plain that any one can understand them.
But, to conclude, Mr. Harvey's argument is built upon a broad and firm foundation that means industrial progress and prosperity, while that of Professor Laughlin is narrow, evasive, misleading, and holds out no hope except a continuation of the present conditions.
THE CAUSE OF PRESENT DISTRESS.
Does not this New Jersey Governor (McClellan) know, as we have already stated in these columns, that an ounce of silver to-day can be exchanged for more of any given commodity than it could five years ago when it was at a premium with gold? As far as stability is concerned, the value of silver has remained comparatively stationary as compared with other property. As a measure of value it has fluctuated less than gold. It is the enormous and alarming enhancement of the value of gold that has squeezed out the values of property, paralyzed the trade of the country and produced the present distress. If there is to be a choice between the two metals, the people prefer that metal which most nearly retains its equilibrium in relation with other commodities.—Chicago Tribune, January 19, 1878.
Number Seven	121
NO MONEY CONTRIBUTED FOR THE SILVER CAMPAIGN.
[From the Chicago Inter Ocean.]
THE report that the silver convention at Salt Lake proposed to raise $250,000 a month to push the silver campaign in the East has been the cause of much gossip and discussion. While Mr. W. H. Harvey sat chatting with a group of gentlemen in the Illinois Club Friday night, after his debate with Professor Laughlin, this report was referred to and it was jokingly asked how much "COIN" expected to get out of the silver fund. Said Mr. Harvey:
"Not a penny. That is a good story for my friend the Professor to use, and it may be true the gentlemen gathered at Salt Lake talked of raising $250,000 a month, but they could not raise one-hundredth part of that sum for a campaign. It is natural for men who have little, to talk about the use of money in a campaign. They hear this talk and get the idea that money is the only power that will win. They feel that it is necessary to raise money, and they often plan to do it, but the great trouble is that they are not able to get it themselves, and those who are able are not with them and will not give. I do not believe that the men at the Salt Lake convention can raise $10,000 to push their propaganda, and it is not necessary. They have no need of money in such a campaign."
"But where are your rich silver miners of Colorado?
122	Number Seven
They ought to subscribe liberally," remarked one of the club men.
"The silver miners are like the gold miners. They are bullion men and bankers. Their banking interests outweigh their silver interests, and they are with my friend the Professor, on the other side, when it comes to giving money. Here is a letter received by a gentleman in Chicago to-day from Mr. C. F. Thomas, of Denver. It was handed to me this afternoon to look
at.	Mr. Thomas is chairman of the 'Democratic State committee. In reference to just such a scheme as that proposed at Salt Lake Mr. Thomas says," said Mr. Harvey, reading from the letter:
"'So far as your plan is concerned, it is a most excellent one, but there is no probability that $200 per month or any other sum will be raised or paid for that purpose among our people. Indeed, I have resolved to ask for no more contributions for the cause, since the most of those who can give bluntly and almost rudely refuse to do so, while those who can not give need not be troubled with needless importunities. I endeavored last fall to raise some money for the Ohio campaign, and succeeded in getting somewhere about $500. This was the best that I could do. The Chamber of Commerce is spending some money in the circulation of Harvey's books,and that is certainly well spent' (about $100 a month, said Mr. Harvey parenthetically). 'It proposes to continue this during the summer, and a few Democrats here have quietly resolved to do something for the party in Illinois in the event its convention of June 5 comes out unequivocally for free coinage. It is needless, however, to look for any financial aid from Colorado at present. I do not believe that $500 could be raised among our people, if Bland and Bryan, coupled with Teller and Wolcott, were to make personal appeal to mine owners for that amount.'
"And" continued Mr. Harvey, as he passed the
Number Seven	123
letter to one of the gentlemen present, "that will show you how difficult it is to raise money for the silver cause in what is called by gold men the center of the silver sentiment."
"How do you account for such lack of interest?"
"It is very simple. As I said, the bullion men are bankers, and they are in reality with the bankers of the East on this question. They may talk silver at home to be with the people, but they are not putting up any money for the cause. They are to-day buying up Denver, and they have already gathered in a good share of it since the hard times began. They are prospering by this depression."
"But it is reported they have subscribed liberally to COIN and helped to circulate your books."
TRIED TO BORROW MONEY.
"Not the silver miners and bullion men. I can give you my own experience in an effort to secure money in Denver. A year ago, when I was bringing out COIN'S FINANCIAL SCHOOL, I needed money, and went to Denver to borrow $10,000. I had 640 acres of land in the suburbs of Pueblo and had bankers' certificates that it had a cash value of $20,000. I had paid $37,000 cash for it, and there was not a dollar's incumbrance on the property, and I wanted to borrow $10,000 on it. I thought it would be an easy matter, especially in Denver, where the rich silver bullion owners and bankers lived, and I went to Dennis Sheedy, president of the Globe Smelter and vice-president of the Colorado National Bank. I presented my proposition to him and offered to give a first mortgage on my property and pay whatever interest he should fix on the money. I pro-
124	Number Seven
posed to leave it all to him and put up $20,000 worth of property for $10,000 in money. But my property had no rental value, and Mr. Sheedy declined to loan me any money on any property that did not have a rental value equivalent to the interest. I took my proposition to other smelters and bankers, with the same result. They all knew that I needed the money in my business, which was publishing silver literature. Now, after such an experience it is ridiculous to talk about these men subscribing hundreds of thousands of dollars for a silver campaign. As Mr. Thomas says in his letter: `Those who can give bluntly and almost rudely refuse to do so, while those who cannot give need not be troubled with needless importunities.' The silver campaign is not pushed by money. It is the cause of the people, and it has a sentiment behind it that is stronger than any created by money."
"Well, I see that Don Cameron is with you, and has ordered 10,000 books for circulation in Pennsylvania."
"Another canard, pure and simple. Senator Cameron has done nothing of the kind. He did send a list of the members of the Pennsylvania Legislature and an order for one copy of COIN'S FINANCIAL SCHOOL to be sent to each of them. That called for about 350 copies, I think.
NOT BOOMED BY RICH MEN.
"My friends, the gold men are too generous in their efforts to boom COIN. Nobody and no organization is buying the books by thousands for circulation. The news companies and book dealers are handling it in every State in the Union, and hundreds of people are sending us letters every day ordering single copies, while a good many are ordering one or two or perhaps
Number Seven	125
a dozen copies sent to their friends. COIN is under no necessity for any rich man like Senator Cameron to purchase 10,000 copies for the people. The Pennsylvanians are doing their own buying and paying for their own books. It interests and amuses me to see the gold monometallists circulating these reports and abusing rich men for using their money in such a dangerous manner. But they are unjust to their own friends and supporters. They slander the rich men and ought to be more charitable at home in their own circles. COIN will circulate just as well without any family quarrels or false accusations among the millionaires, who seem to be suspicious of each other. The books go to New England on New England orders; to the South on orders from that section, and to New York upon orders from every city in that State. We have no need for a big campaign fund for silver to send this literature out to the people. They are eager to get it and are buying it for themselves.
"And,gentlemen," concluded the author of COIN'S FINANCIAL SCHOOL, "if any of you are able to run down and corner that $250,000 silver state fund I should like to be informed. I should like to see - it. I have never found such a fund behind silver, and when I wanted to publish COIN'S FINANCIAL SCHOOL I made pretty diligent search for the backers of silver who had the money to push such a campaign and help to arouse the people. I could not find them in Colorado or any silver State. I had a written contract with an Ogden (Utah) banker to whom I had loaned money time and again, in which he agreed to loan me $5,000 on safe securities worth four times that amount. I was never to draw more than $2,000 at a time. I got $1,000 of that money and he went back on his contract and left me in the lurch. I have no faith in any man who has money subscribing
126	Number Seven
to a fund for a silver campaign, and these reports are used by the gold men to create the impression that it is not a sincere conviction with the people but a fictitious boom created by paid agents."
Mr. C. S. Collins, of Little Rock, Ark., was in the circle about Mr. Harvey, and he gave some experiences in trying to raise the money for the bimetallic club of that city which were very similar to those of Mr. Harvey. He had thought it necessary to send out paid agents to arouse public sentiment in the cause he represented and he had canvassed the city for money to d this work. He failed absolutely; could not arise $20:,), and after his failure made the discovery that he needed no campaign fund, for the people were with him and were buying "COIN'S" books by the thousands.
THE SILVER DOLLAR THE UNIT.
The silver dollar was not changed. In 1792 Congress enacted that 3714 grains of silver should constitute the American dollar; that this dollar should be the unit of value of American money, and be a legal tender in payment of all debts,public and private. During the eighty years that followed, though the size and quantity of pure metal in the gold coins were changed more than once, the silver dollar, the American unit of value, remained unchanged.—Chicago Tribne, February 23, 1878.
In the controversies with goldites it is proper to point out and keep constantly in view the fact, which they are so anxious to blink, that this country always had the double metallic standard from 1792 till 1873, when silver was clandestinely dropped. —Chicago Tribmie, February 11, 1878
Number Seven	127
THE CRIME OF 1873.
WE reproduce in this number of the FINANCIAL SERIES the words spoken in the House of Representatives and Senate of the American Congress on the day that the bill demonetizing silver, or what afterwards became a bill demonetizing silver, passed those two houses. It will be interesting reading to all citizens of the United States who have an earnest desire to investigate this subject. The reader will want to notice especially in the discussion in the Senate that a silver dollar was evidently provided for in the bill under discussion of the size of the French franc piece, which would be a dollar weighing about 384 grains, and that the claim was made while discussing the bill that silver money was intended to be enobled—the American silver dollar to have benefits not before conferred on it. The reader will also notice that in each instance while the bill was before the two houses, those having it in charge seem to have taken special pains to impress the members that there was nothing of importance contained in the bill and that it was, in effect, merely a codification of the mint law then in existence.
It is not our purpose in this issue to discuss at length this question, but to lay before the reader the words uttered in Congress on the day of the passage of the bill,in order that he may, after having digested this much, understand more fully at a future time the methods adopted by the promoters of this bill,and how it was they tricked and misled their associates and,
128	Number Seven,
without knowledge of the people, secured its passage.
Mr. Harvey, in his debate with Mr. Horr, will mercilessly expose and make plain to the people of the United States how this bill was passed. In the debate, however, with Mr. Horr, there will not be space or opportunity to copy the Congressional record, and this is one reason why we reproduce from the Congressional proceedings that which appears in this issue of our series.
To save comment we have emphasized certain words uttered in the House and Senate while this bill was passing by having the same set in small capital letters or italics that will assist the reader in detecting the deception that was practiced by the promoters of the bill.
ALL THE WORDS UTTERED IN THE HOUSE
OF REPRESENTATIVES OF CONGRESS
ON APRIL 9, 1872, THE DAY THE
BILL PASSED THAT BODY.
MR. HOOPER, of Massachusetts. I desire to call up the bill (H. R. No. 1427) revising and amending the laws relative to mints, assay offices, and coinage of the United States. I do so for the purpose of offering an amendment to the bill in the nature of a SUBSTITUTE, one which has been very carefully prepared and which I have submitted to the different gentlemen in this House who have taken a special interest in the bill. I find that it meets with universal approbation in the form in which I offer it. I MOVE THAT THE RULES BE SUSPENDED. AND THAT THE SUBSTITUTE BE PUT ON ITS PASSAGE.
MR. BROOKS. I ask the gentleman from Massa-
Number Seven	129
chusetts (Mr. Hooper) to postpone his motion until his colleague on the committee, my colleague from New York (Mr. Potter), is in his seat. It is my impression that he does not concur in this substitute.
MR. HOOPER, of Massachusetts. It is so late in the session that I must decline waiting any longer.
MR. BROOKS. I would again suggest to the gentleman that he should wait until my colleague comes in.
MR. HOOPER, of Massachusetts. I cannot do so.
MR. HOLMAN. I suppose it is intended to have the bill read before it is put upon its passage.
THE SPEAKER. The substitute will be read.
MR. HOOPER, of Massachusetts. I hope not. It is a long bill, and those who are interested in it are perfectly familiar with its provisions.
MR. KERR. The rules cannot be suspended so as to dispense with the reading of the bill.
THE SPEAKER. They can be.
MR. KERR. I want the House to understand that it is attempting to put through this bill without being read.
THE SPEAKER. Does the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Hooper) move that the reading of the bill be dispensed with?
MR. HOOPER, of Massachusetts. I WILL SO FRAME MY MOTION TO SUSPEND THE RULES THAT IT WILL DISPENSE WITH THE READING OF THE BILL.
THE SPEAKER. The gentleman from Massachusetts moves that the rules be suspended and that the bill pass, the reading thereof being dispensed with.
MR. RANDALL. Cannot we have a division of that motion?
THE SPEAKER. A motion to suspend the rules cannot be divided.
MR. RANDALL. I should like to have the bill read, although I am willing that the rules shall be suspended as to the passage of the bill.
The question was put on suspending the rules and
130	Number Seven
passing the bill without reading; and (two-thirds not voting in favor thereof) the rules were not suspended.
MR. HOOPER, of Massachusetts. I now move that the rules be suspended, and the substitute for the bill in relation to mints and coinage passed; and I ask that the substitute be read.
The clerk began to read the substitute.f MR. BROOKS. Is that the original bill?
THE SPEAKER. The motion of the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Hooper) applies to the substitute, and that on which the House is called to act is being read.
MR. BROOKS. As there is to be no debate, the only chance we have to know what we are doing is to have both the bill and the substitute read.
THE SPEAKER. The motion of the gentleman from Massachusetts being to suspend the rules and pass the substitute, it gives no choice between the two bills. The House must either pass the substitute or none.
MR. BROOKS. How can we choose between the original bill and the substitute unless we hear them both read?
THE SPEAKER. The gentleman can vote "aye" or "nay" on the question whether this substitute shall be passed.
MR. BROOKS. I am very much in the habit of voting "no" when I do not know what is going on.
MR. HOLMAN. Before the question is taken upon suspending the rules and passing the bill I hope the gentleman from Massachusetts will explain the leading changes made by this bill in the existing law, especially in reference to the coinage. It would seem that all the small coinage of the country is intended to be recoined.
MR. HOOPER, of Massachusetts. This bill makes no changes in the existing law in that regard. It does not require the recoinage of the small coins. On the contrary, I understand that the Secretary of the Treas-
*Here another bill was attempted to be taken up.
tit will be noticed that the clerk only began to read the bill. He was interrupted and never read it.
Number Seven	131
ury proposes to issue an order to stop the coinage of all the minor coins,*as there is now a great abundance of them in the country. The salaries are not increased. They remain as they were.
MR. HOLMAN. Is not the salary of the sub-Treasurer at New York increased?
MR. HOOPER, of Massachusetts. No, sir; it is not increased.
MR. GARFIELD, of Ohio. Does the gentleman say that no salary is increased by this bill?
MR. HOOPER, of Massachusetts. No salary is increased by this bill.
MR. FARNSWORTH. Are there any additional offices created?
MR. SARGENT. The bill dispenses with some existing offices.
MR. HOOPER, of Massachusetts. It dispenses with certain officers now in the mints, and the saving on their salaries will more than pay for the expenses of the new bureau of the Treasury Department.
MR. HOLMAN. What is the new bureau called?
MR. HOOPER, of Massachusetts. This new bureau is to be called the bureau of mines and coinage. There is now no general superintendence; each mint runs on its own hook. There is really now no law regulating the mints, and no responsibility.
MR. HOLMAN. How many mints are provided for by the bill?
MR. HOOPER, of Massachusetts. No new mints.
MR. HOLMAN. Did the Committee on Banking and Currency consider the subject of discontinuing any of the mints?
MR. HOOPER, of Massachusetts. They did consider it, and did not deem it expedient. The Secretary of the Treasury has authority now, independent of this bill, to discontinue certain mints if he deems it expedient; one at Charlotte, for instance. This bill does not change his power at all in that respect.
*This refers to nickels and coppers.
132	Number Seven
MR. MERRIAM. Has this bill been submitted to the Secretary of the Treasury; and if so, does it meet his approval?
MR. HOOPER, of Massachusetts. It has been submitted to him, and he not only approves it, but strongly urges its passage. He deems it exceedingly important, as there are irregularities in the Mint now, which cannot be controlled by any existing law.
MR. KERR. Does the nickel clause, so-called, and which led to some controversy a month or so ago, remain in the bill as it was at that time?
MR. HOOPER, of Massachusetts. It has been changed. Any nickel to be purchased is to be subject to bids after advertisement.
MR. BROOKS. My colleague from the Westchester district (Mr. Potter) stated the other day that this bill provided for the recoinage of more or less of the small currency of the country arnd the creation of a new currency.
MR. HOOPER, of Massachusetts. THAT IS NOT THE CASE WITH THE BILL AS IT NOW STANDS.
MR. McCORMICK, of Missouri. I ask that the nineteenth section be again read.
The section was read as follows:
Sec. 19. That upon the coins of the United States there shall be the following devices and legends: upon one side there shall be an impression emblematic of liberty, with an inscription of the word "liberty," and the year of the coinage; and upon the reverse shall be the figure or representation of an eagle, with the inscriptions, "United States of America" and "E Pluribus Unum" and a designation of the value of the coin; but on the gold dollar and three-dollar, the dime, five, three, and one cent piece, the figure of the eagle shall be omitted; and the Direct or of the Mint, with the approval of the Secretary of the Treasury, may cause the motto "In God we trust," to be inscribed upon such coins as shall admit of such motto; and any one of the foregoing inscriptions may be on the rim of the gold and silver coins.
Number Seven	183
MR. McCORMICK. What I wish to inquire of the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Hooper) is, whether, under the provisions of the nineteenth section, the Director of the Mint is not authorized to recoil) ail the nickel coin of the United States in order to make it conform to this section.
MR. HOOPER, of Massachusetts. He is not. On the contrary, under the existing laws, as I stated before, the amount of minor coinage is so large that the Secretary of the Treasury has prepared an order prohibiting any further coinage until further notice.
MR. McCORMICK. I understand that the Director of the Mint says that it costs the Government almost as much to coin a five cent nickel piece as it does to coin a ten-dollar gold piece.
MR. HOOPER, of Massachusetts. There is nothing in this bill to compel a recoinage.
MR. McCORMICK, of Missouri. Would the gentleman have any objection to strike out that section?
MR. HOOPER, of Massachusetts. Certainly I would.
MR. GARFIELD, of Ohio. Does this bill provide what shall be done with those officers of the Treasury that are now called Assistant Treasurers, and who are ex-officio officers of the Mint? By this bill they are evidently separated from the Treasury, and belong wholly to this new bureau which is to be established. Now, will it not be necessary for us to establish new offices in their cases, and to give them a salary appropriate to the duties they will have to perform in the Treasury?
MR. HOOPER, of Massachusetts. The Superintendent of the Mint (and that officer now exists) takes the place of the sub-Treasurer, who acted ex-officio as an officer of the Mint, and provision is made in this bill that the sub-Treasurer who acted ex-officio, shall go back and confine himself to his duties as Assistant Treasurer, and disconnect himself from the Mint.
MR. GARFIELD, of Ohio. Go back to the Treasury?
134	Number Seven
MR. HOOPER, of Massachusetts. Yes.
MR. GARFIE LD, of Ohio. The gentleman will then see that that entails upon us the necessity of providing a sufficient salary for those going back to the Treasury.
MR. HOOPER, of Massachusetts. I beg the gentleman's pardon; it leaves the Superintendent of the Mint with the same salary as before.
MR. GARFIELD, of Ohio. I mean that the officers who go back into the Treasury must have salaries provided for them.
MR. HOOPER, of Massachusetts. They were ex-officio officers of the Mint; their salaries were not increased.
MR. GARFIELD, of Ohio. I beg the gentleman's pardon; they had one salary as ex-officio officers of the Mint and another as officers of the Treasury.
MR. SARGENT. That was not so except in one instance.
MR. McNEELY. As a member of the Committee of Weights and Measures, having carefully examined every section and line of this bill, and generally well-understanding the subject before us, I am satisfied the bill ought to pass.
MR. SARGENT. I hope we will now have a vote.
The question being taken on the motion of Mr. Hooper, of Massachusetts, to suspend the rules and pass the bill, it was agreed to; there being—ayes 110, noes 13.
The foregoing are all the words uttered in the house on the day the bill was discussed and passed: May, 27, 1872.
THE DISCUSSION IN THE SENATE,
JANUARY 11, 1873.
MR. SHERMAN. I move that the Senate now proceed to the consideration of the mint bill, as it is commonly called, revising and amending the laws relative
Number Seven	135
to the mints and assay offices and coinage of the United States. I DO NOT THINK IT WILL TAKE MORE THAN THE TIME CONSUMED IN THE READING OF IT.
The motion was agreed to and the Senate, as in Com-mitte of the Whole, proceeded to consider the bill (H. R. No. 2934) revising and amending the laws relative to the mints and assay offices and coinage of the United States.
The Secretary proceeded to read the bill, but before concluding':
THE VICE-PRESIDENT. The Secretary will suspend the reading. The morning hour has expired, and the Calendar is before the Senate under the Anthony rule; but the Senator from Indiana has given notice of his desire to speak to-day upon a resolution offered by him in regard to the election of President and Vice-President.
MR. SHERMAN. I desire to give notice that after the Senator from Indiana shall have concluded his remarks, I shall ask the Senate to dispose of this mint bill. I THINK IT WILL ONLY TAKE THE TIME REQUIRED IN READING IT.
THE PRESIDING OFFICER. The Calendar, under the Anthony rule, is now in order.
MR. SHERMAN. I rise for the purpose of moving that the Senate proceed to the consideration of the mint bill. I will STATE THAT THIS BILL WILL NOT PROBABLY CONSUME ANY MORE TIME THAN THE TIME CONSUMED IN READING IT. It passed the Senate two years ago after full debate.* It was taken up again in the House during the present Congress, and passed there. It is a matter of vital interest to the Government, and I am informed by officers of the Government it is important it should pass promptly. The amendments reported by the Committee on Finance present the points of difference between the two Houses, and they can go to a committee of conference WITHOUT HAVING A CONTROVERSY HERE IN THE SENATE ABOUT THEM
*A half truth only; it was not the same bill.
136	Number Seven
MR. ANTHONY. I hope the Calendar will be laid aside informally, not postponed.
MR. SHERMAN. Let it be passed over informally until we finish the reading of the mint bill and dispose of it. The reading is about half through, I am informed by the Secretary.
MR. CRAGIN. I shall not oppose this motion, but I wish to give notice that as soon as the mint bill is disposed of I shall move to call up the bill (H. R. No. 3010) for the construction of six steam vessels of war, and for other purposes, which was reported from the Committee on Naval Affairs. I hope that bill will be left as the unfinished business this evening.
THE PRESIDING OFFICER. The chair is informed that it is proposed that the Calendar be informally passed over.
MR. SHERMAN. I am perfectly willing that that should be done.
THE PRESIDING OFFICER. That will be regarded as the sense of the Senate if there is no objection, and the bill referred to by the Senator from Ohio is now before the Senate.
The Senate, as in Committee of the Whole, resumed the consideration of the bill (H. R. No. 2934) revising and amending the laws relative to the mints, assay offices, and coinage of the United States.
The chief clerk resumed and concluded the reading of the bill.
THE PRESIDING OFFICER. The Committee on. Finance report the bill, with amendments, which will now be read.
MR. SHERMAN. I send to the clerk some amendments of a formal character from the Committee on Finance, adopted since the amendments first reported were printed. I will ask that they be acted upon with the others in their order.
The first amendment of the Commitee on Finance was on page 4, Section five, line three, after the word "coins" to insert "or sample of bullion;" so that the clause will read:
Number Seven	187
That the assayer shall assay all metals and bullion, whenever such assays are required in the operations of the mint; he shall also make assays of coins or samples of bullion whenever required by the Superintendent.
The amendment was agreed to.
The next amendment was on page 5, Section eight, line two, to strike out the word "wording," before the word "dies," and insert the word "working."
The amendment was agreed to.
The next amendment was on page 6, Section nine, line one, before the word "office" at the end of the line, to insert the word "assay."
The amendment was agreed to.
The next amendment was on page 9, Section fourteen, to strike out the following words:
And any gold coin of the United States, if reduced in weight by abrasion not more than one half of one per cent on the double eagle and eagle, and one per cent on the other coins, below the standard weight prescribed by law,
shall be received at their nominal value by the United States Treasury and its offices, under such regulations as the Secretary of the Treasury may prescribe for the protection of the Government against fraudulent abrasion or other practices; and any gold coins in the Treasury of the United States reduced in weight below this limit of abrasion shall be recoined.
MR. COLE. I hope that amendment will not be agreed to. I think it is a very wise provision in the bill as it came from the House, and it ought to be allowed to remain. It merely provides that coins, when a little abraded by natural use and wear, shall be received at the Treasury of the United States, and the concluding portion of the clause proposed to be stricken out provides:
"And any gold coin in the Treasury of the United States reduced in' weight below this limit of abrasion shall be recoined."
It is certainly the duty of the Government to provide the coins of the country and at its own expense, and this section seems to be well guarded. The language is:
138	Number Seven
"Under such regulations as the Secretary of the Treasury may prescribe for the protection of the Government against fraudulent abrasion or other practices."
It strikes me that this clause ought not to be stricken out. I remember at the last session of Congress we passed a law which contemplated the restoration of these coins. I will read it. It was passed at the earnest application of the Secretary of the Treasury, and I believe at the unanimous suggestion of the Committee on Finance of this body it was incorporated in an appropriation bill. It is as follows:
"For loss and expenses involved in the recoinage of gold coin in the Treasury which are below standard weight, under such regulations as the Secretary of the Treasury may prescribe, $150,000."
The Government makes provision for the restoration of the coins when they have been reduced by natural wear, and I should think that this part of the section ought to be left in the bill. I see no reason why it should be stricken out.
MR. SHERMAN. I can only say I have here a number of documents, not only from the Director of the Mint in Philadelphia, but from Professor Barnard and the Comptroller of the Currency, calling our attention to this very important feature of the bill, and the Committee on Finance, after a patient examination of the whole matter, decided that it was clearly inexpedient and wrong to put in this provision for the recoinage of all the present gold coins of the United States.
It is true, as the Senator says, we have provided for recoining the coin in the Treasury of the United States; but we go no further than that. No nation in the world has gone further than that. I DO NOT WISH TO DELAY THE SENATE by reading these documents, but I suggest to the Senator whether he had not better let this PROPOSITION GO TO A COMMITTEE OF CONFERENCE RATHER TITAN UNDERTAKE TO DISCUSS IT HERE, because if we are compelled to discuss it here I shall be obliged to have these letters read, which entirely convinced the Committee on Finance that the United States dare not assume the loss of abrasion beyond the legal standard.
Number Seven	189
There is a legal standard within which the United States make the coin good, but when coin depreciates below the standard of abrasion, then neither the United States nor any other nation in the world undertakes to make the coins good except for their intrinsic value. The ways in which these coins might be abraded by fraud were shown to us, and it would be utterly impossible for any regulation of the Secretary to prevent great loss to the Government if we-attempt to maintain these coins when they fall below the limit of abrasion and redeem them at the nominal instead of the real value. It is a delicate question, and it will only be necessary to read these papers in order to convince the Senator himself that it would not be wise for the United States to undertake to do what the House proposes.
MR. COLE. I should like it better if the Chairman of the Committee on Finance would give us some reasons why this amendment should be made. This clause protects the Government fully. The degree of abrasion is prescribed in this clause not to exceed one half of one per cent, on double eagles and eagles, and not to exceed one per cent, upon coins of lesser denomination. If it would involve the Government in some expense to restore these coins after they had been received in the ordinary business of the country, received at the custom houses and in the Treasury, it is very proper that the Government should bear that expense. And let me again remind the Senator that we have entered upon that business, and at the last session made an appropriation of $150,000 to do this very thing.
MR. SHERMAN. That was for coin belonging to the United States.
MR. COLE. Exactly. This clause provides that when the coin reaches the Treasury it may be so treated, and that this coin shall be received by the United States at the Treasury and other offices.
MR. CASSERLY. I had risen to ask a question of the Senator from Ohio (Mr. :Sherman) which my colleague has anticipated. Authority is valuable only in
140	Number Seven
proportion to the reason which goes with it. The names mentioned are of course names of authority in coinage and minting. But when it is said that we ought to strike out a provision such as that which we are now considering because men of authority say it would be dangerous to enact it, we ought to know what reason they have for so saying. In the first place, everybody knows that it is almost a mechanical impossibility to manufacture a coin that is exactly of the standard. The coin will be a little above or below the standard in weight, but generally it is below it. So that when you fix the limit of the abrasion as here at one half of one per cent on the double eagle and eagle, and one per cent on the other coins, you make your limit exceedingly narrow. In addition to that, the Secretary of the Treasury is authorized to make such rules as he sees fit for the protection of the Government against fraud. Now, what danger can there be to the Treasury of the United States under such a provision? Why should any respectable Government consent to permit its gold coins to remain in circulation after they have suffered by abrasion so as to fall much below the legal standard? The loss by abrasion has to fall somewhere in the end, and it certainly ought to fall upon the whole people rather than upon the innocent holder who has taken the coin of the Government at its face, on the faith of the Government, without being aware of the reduction from its standard value.
I insist that it is the duty of the Government to make its coins of the standard value in the first place, and in the next place to keep them up to the standard value. The citizen is obliged by law to receive them for their full standard value, and as the loss must fall somewhere, it ought to fall on the Government, and not upon the citizen. It is hard enough that the innocent holder of a coin which has been fraudulently abraded or reduced as by what they call "sweating," or any other fraudulent process, must lose by the fraud to which he was no party. It is ever so much worse when you make him bear the loss of the natural and inevitable wear of the metal. Every such loss should
Number Seven	141
be the loss of the Government, for it is the duty of the Government to keep its coin at the standard value at its own expense.
I do not understand the last two lines of this amendment as the Senatcfr from Ohio understands them. If I understand them aright, he would not press his objection so strongly as he does. The language is:
"And any gold coins in the Treasury of the United States reduced in weight below this limit of abrasion shall be recoined."
MR. SHERMAN. The reason that those words are proposed to be stricken out is, that the coins in the Treasury have already been provided for. The law now provides for recoining abraded coin in the Treasury of the United States. There is no necessity, therefore, for putting it in here again. Indeed, when this clause was inserted in the House the law providing for that recoinage had not been passed. It was passed in an appropriation bill on my own motion, I think, at the last session of Congress. The mint was authorized to recoin the abraded coins in the Treasury of the United States, some of which were taken at their reduced value.
MR. CASSERLY. Of course, if the Senator says the clause is unnecessary because it is the law now, there is nothing more to be said.
MR. SHERMAN. The Senator's colleague referred to the law a moment ago.
MR. CASSERLY. I am content to take what the Senator from Ohio says on that point. But that only corroborates what I say, that the Government recognizes it as its duty to restore its coins to the standard value after they have fallen below a certain limit of abrasion. Now, all that is asked is that before they fall below the limit of abrasion, and while passing current in the business transactions of the country, they shall be received at their denominational value by the United States Treasury, under such regulations as the Secretary of the Treasury may prescribe. I fully recognize what the Senator from Ohio says, that the whole subject of specie coinage is one of great intricacy,
142	Number Seven
so that what appears a very small matter itself may have very wide-spread consequences. But this provision now under consideration is so plain, so reasonable, and so perfectly guarded that I had very strong hopes the Senator from Ohio would consent to allow it to remain.
MR. SHERMAN. I think after a full explanation of this matter the Senators from California themselves would vote for this proposition. I do not desire to take up time, but will say a few words in explanation of the amendment proposed by the committee striking out this clause. All nations retain the nominal value of abraded coin to a certain standard, but when it falls below that, the loss falls on the individual who holds it. That has been the custom of all countries. The coin that is held by the Treasury of the United States is received at its nominal value, if it is within the limits of abrasion fixed by the law, but if it falls below the limits the loss falls on the holder of the coin, and much of that which is now being recoined in the United States was taken at the abraded value, that is, reduced value. It was not taken at the full nominal value, but at the reduced value. Consequently, when we issue it again, we issue it in the form of coin up to the standard. Therefore, the question as to whether we shall recoin our own coin and the question whether we shall recoin the coin in the hands of citizens are very different things. Upon this identical point I will read a letter of Mr. Comptroller Knox. I may say that this clause was put in in the House, I believe, without the consent of the committee, and upon some motion made in the House; at least I am so informed, although I have not looked at the Globe to ascertain the fact. Mr. Knox writes this to the Committee:
"1 inclose herewith a copy of a portion of a letter recently received from him (Professor Barnard), in which you will be interested. I desire to call your special attention to his criticisms upon sections fourteen and fifteen in reference to abrasion. So far as I can learn, no nation in the world has laws which offer inducements to wrong-doers to lighten the coins which are in circulation. If I had charge of the bill now before the Senate I should certainly much prefer its de-
Number Seven	143
feat to its passage, unless section fourteen from line twenty, and section fifteen, could be stricken from the bill."
That is what he says. Then I have here the letter of Professor Barnard, which is very interesting. I will read a paragraph from it:
" Section fourteen of the bill provides that any gold coin, if reduced in weight not more than one half of one per cent, on the double eagle and eagle, and one per cent on the other coins, below the standard weight and limit of tolerance, shall be received at their denominational value by the United States Treasury and its officers, under such regulations, etc. This one half of one per cent,with the tolerance, makes on the double eagle about six tenths of one per cent; that is to say, twelve cents on every such double eagle, and on the eagle seven tenths of one per cent, or seven cents on every such eagle. This is an enormous sacrifice for the Government to propose to make, and one which will insure the return to the Treasury of a vast number of gold coins much reduced in weight by means which cannot be proved to be ftaudulent. A coin, or a lot of coins,which has been to some extent reduced by holiest abrasion will be a godsend to a rogue, for this may be still `sweated' down to the limit named in this section, without sensibly altering its appearance. Coins may, moreover, be abraded by rubbing them with rouge powder or with prepared chalk, by hand or by mechanical means, so as seriously to reduce them without leaving any traces of violence. I am at a loss to know on what grounds the proposition is defended to receive ' at their nominal value' all coins depreciated by abrasion below the limits of legal tolerance. It is true that this section authorizes the Secretary of the Treasury to `prescribe regulations' under which such coins shall be received. If this authority extends so far as to permit him to refuse to receive them at all ' at their denominational value' it may prove a safeguard ; otherwise the provision seems to me extremely dangerous."
Here is another and a later letter from Professor Barnard to the Comptroller of the Currency under the date of December 24:
" MY DEAR SIR :-Dr. Torrey has just told me a very important fact. There is a manufactory of watch cases in Brooklyn. The workmen put the last polish on the cases with fine paper and rouge powder. Some time since the proprietor applied at the assay office for advice as to some method of burning these papers so as to prevent gold from being carried away mechanically in the smoke. He said their loss from this cause was serious, but that in spite of
144	Number Seven
this they recovered $5,000 worth of gold from these papers per annum. The establishment is a large one, it is true; but on the other hand, the workmen do not work with the design to polish off as much gold as they conveniently can, but just as little as the object in view will allow."
I mention this to show you how easy it would be for a designing man to live off the coin of the country, setting up with a capital of a few thousand dollars. It is needless to say that the coins so abased could not be detectable by their brightness, for nothing is easier than to tarnish them.
Within a certain degree, one thousandth per cent, a small degree, the Government maintains the coins at their nominal value even if abraded, but when they are abraded below that, the loss falls on the holder, and every man who receives a coin must look to it that it has not been abraded beyond the legal amount. If it is so abraded, he can refuse to take it, or if he takes it at all, he should take it for what it is intrinsically worth. The recoinage of the gold coin now in circulation, although not very large, would amount to one or two million dollars. As a matter of course, as soon as our attention was called to this fact we struck out this clause. I do not wish to go any further into the details of the matter. I think the action of the Committee on Finance was clearly right, and it would he very wrong indeed to undertake in this ambiguous way to make good all the coin now outstanding.
MR. CASSERLY. 1 do not wish to he tenacious about this matter, still less pertinacious. I am very glad that the Senator from Ohio has read the letters on which he relies. I think they speak for themselves. The burden of them is that gold coin may be abraded or reduced fraudulently with such skill as to make it almost impossible of detection at the Treasury. The last letter from Professor Barnard conjures up a phantom to terrify Senators withal. It is that if this provision should become a law a man might with a capital of a few thousand dollars, by fraudulent abrasion, make a good living out of the Treasury. I ask the Senator from Ohio, what does such an argument amount to? If a man can make a good living out of tho Treasury
Number Seven	145
by fraudulent abrasion of the coin, so skillfully made as to defy the detection of the officers, how is it to be with the community?
MR. SHERMAN. I will say to my friend from California that any citizen can at any time test it by weight.
MR. CASSERLY. I was just coming to that. The Senator says any one can weigh each piece as he takes
it.	Just imagine a merchant in large business in the
city of San Francisco going about with a pair of scales in his pocket to weigh gold coin hourly as he receives it! The Senator surely is not serious when he says so. We are legislating for the American people, a rapid if not a fast people in their enterprises; a people whose energies are impatient of pause, still less of delay; to suppose that such a people are to go about with scales at their button-holes to weigh coins is to suppose something which, wishing well to the Senator, I hope he may live long enough to see.
Mr. President, we cannot carry on a great Government like this without running some risk. I am sure that nobody ought to put the whole risk of coinage upon the citizens. As I said, the citizen has no choice. He must take the lawful money of the country in the course of his lawful transactions, and at its denominational value. If there must be loss even by fraud, I am not sure that it ought not to be borne by the Government in the case of an innocent holder, but I do not wish to raise that question now. The portion of the clause proposed to be stricken out for which I am contending is that which provides for the natural and lawful abrasion of coins. I am surprised that these learned and scientific men make such objections as those which the Senator has read, although I think they pretty much answer themselves.
Before I take my seat I wish to observe to the Senator from Ohio that THIS APPEARS TO BE A BILL FOR THE CODIFICATION OF ALL THE LAWS ON THIS SUBJECT. Consequently, the fact that there is another statute which covers the ground covered by lines twenty-eight, twenty-nine, and thirty of this clause would not be a good reason
146	Number Seven
for striking them out. They should therefore be retained.
MR. SHERMAN. I will say to the Senator from California that the amount heretofore appropriated will probably be sufficient to have that recoinage done before this bill will take effect; at all events there will be no trouble about that, and I do not care whether the clause is retained or stricken out. The thing is provided for already by an appropriation as a distinct matter.
MR. CASSERLY. THIS IS A CODIFIED LAW, AND REPEALS ALL OTHER LAWS.
MR. SHERMAN. If the Senator is willing to compromise on that, I am perfectly willing to allow those lines to remain in the bill.
MR. CASSERLY. I shall vote to retain the whole clause; but I shall not debate it any further.
MR. SHERMAN. I have no objection at all to the gold coin in the Treasury, that which has fallen below the standard, being recoined ; but that will be done under the present law, under an appropriation which I moved myself.
MR. CASSERLY. To save any question about that, probably the Senator will consent to let those words remain.
MR. SHERMAN. I have no objection to that.
MR. COLE. I shall not detain the Senate from a vote on this question more than a minute or two. By the Constitution of the United States it is the duty of the Government to furnish the circulating medium, the material which is the price of values in business transactions, the currency of the country. That they assume to do in one form or another. Gold is a legal tender for all debts, .and it is presumed when the gold is presented with the stamp of the United States upon it, so indorsed by the Government of the United States, that it is of a certain value and weight. Now, what are the facts so far as the Pacific Coast is concerned? There is a quantity of coin there that has been in circulation for more than a score of years, and of course it has become more or less abraded by natural wear. It has become so in its use in business, and the dates upon
Number Seven	147
these coins will show that they have been in use a long time.
I hear it said about me, sotto voce, that we ought on that coast to have paper money, and in that way avoid this difficulty of having coins which are worn used in business transactions. What are the facts so far as that is concerned? Why, sir, in the first place, in California there never was any bank of issue, there never was a dollar of paper money issued by any bank in that state; but before the late rebellion gold and silver were the circulating medium exclusively. When the nation adopted as a legal tender the United States notes, it was, as it will be well remembered, a long time before they were made to replace the bank notes that were in circulation throughout the various states. It occurred by slow degrees, and by the time you were ready to dispense with the State banking institutions the legal tenders had fallen in value below the value of gold. They wore worth perhaps but ninety, or eighty, or seventy cents on the dollar, and before they had decreased in value there was no supply possible to be obtained in the community which I have the honor in part to represent. There was no possibility before that time to receive enough there to supply as circulating medium the place that was filled with gold and silver. California never resisted the acceptance of paper money, but from force of circumstances it could not be adopted there.
In the states on the Atlantic side of the United States notes very naturally came into use as money. They took the place of the bank notes at first circulated with them and at the same value, and from one description of paper money they very naturally fell into the use of another. Those circumstances never existed on the Pacific Coast, and we never have had any banks of issue or paper money there. The United States notes or greenbacks never were furnished in sufficient numbers or quantity to supply the wants of the country, and they never could circulate as the money of the country. It is owing to these facts, and not to any unfriendly disposition on the part of the State of California or her
148	Number Seven
people, that the United States notes have never come into general use there. It is owing to the fact that gold and silver were all the currency there before the issuance of United States notes. It is a great misfortune to us, and we realize it, that we have not the use of United States notes there the same as here. That fact is realized by our business community very generally. But we have never seen the time when we could use them or adopt them in place of gold and silver as the measure of value for the reasons I have mentioned. And now, since there is in use there this abraded coin, it is very proper that it should be received when not much abraded, when not abraded below the amount specified in this bill,by the United States for the various uses for which they accept that sort of currency, and I think this bill ought not to be amended as proposed by the Finance Committee of this body.
MR. FRELINGHUYSEN. I understand that the law has been for a course of years that the Government would always receive at the nominal value coin that was not abraded more than one half of one per cent. So I do not see the hardship which the Senator from California complains of. The people of that State and of that community that use coin could under that law at any time have had the abraded coin redeemed.
MR. COLE. Let me correct the Senator. I do not understand, at all events, that the coin is receivable now when abraded, as specified in this section, to the amount of one half of one per cent upon eagles and double eagles and one per cent upon coins of lesser denomination. I do not understand that that is the case
MR. FRELINGHUYSEN. I understand that the law has been for a course of years that if the coin was not abraded more than the rate fixed by law, such a law as existed, the Government received it at its nominal and not at its actual value. Therefore I do not see the difficulty.
MR. SHERMAN. I will read the Senator a paragraph on that subject in this very bill. These coins aro receivable now. The language is:
NUM ber Seven	140
"Which coins shall be a legal tender in all payments at their nominal value when not below the standard weight and limit of tolerance."
MR. COLE. What is that?
MR. SHERMAN. It is one thousandth per cent. And another section provides that when they do fall below the limit of tolerance, they shall be received at their actual value.
MR. FRELINGHUYSEN. And that is only a reenactment of a preexisting statute.
MR. SHERMAN. Certainly; it is the law now.
MR. FRELINGHUYSEN. Therefore I do not see that there is any hardship on the community that the Senator represents, inasmuch as they have had the right at any time to have that coin received at its nominal value within the limit fixed by the existing law, and. it is absolutely necessary that the Government should have such a law. If this Government is to receive at its nominal value coin that has been reduced, abraded, it is a premium on fraud at once. Men will go to work with this process of sweating, and make money by it, and come and get the nominal value for the coin. This provision seems to me to be a very essential .feature in our laws. The Government will of course receive the coin at its actual value; but if we should now pass a law that the Government would receive at its nominal value abraded coin, this coin that is in circulation in California, for instance—
MR. COLE. How much abraded?
MR. FRELINGHUYSEN. I do not remember the limit.
MR. COLE. One tenth of one per cent.
MR. FRELINGHUYSEN. The rate now is one half of one per cent.
MR. COLE. No, sir, one tenth of one per cent.
MR. FRELINGHUYSEN. Very well. It is	,alto-
gether immaterial what the rate is. The point of difference is that which is insisted on as covering the coin in
150	Number Seven
California and that which is provided by this bill, and that is the point to which I am directing my remarks. They could have gone and had that coin made anew, but they did not do so. Now they want the rate increased, so as to cover the abrasion which has taken place there, and that very provision any person who was disposed to commit a fraud upon the Treasury could avail himself of.
THE PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on the amendment proposed by the Committee on Finance, striking out the words that have been read.
The question being put, it was declared that the ayes appeared to have it.
MR. CASSERLY. I should like to have a decision on that.
MR. SHERMAN. We have not got a quorum.
THE PRESIDING OFFICER. Does the Senator call for a division?
MR. CASSERLY. Yes, sir, or the yeas and nays in order that we may have the sense of the Senate on the question. By the sound the noes had it, I think.
MR. SHERMAN. I think no one voted but the Senators from California. I suppose if the question is put again and Senators respond " ay" or "no" there will be no difficulty in deciding it.
THE PRESIDING OFFICER. The chair will put the question again on striking out the words which have been read.
The amendment was agreed to.
MR. CASSERLY. I understood the Senator from Ohio was willing to permit the last two lines to remain.
MR. SHERMAN. I have no objection to that clause, because it is in accordance with existing law:
"And any gold coins in the Treasury of the United States reduced in weight below this limit of abrasion shall be recoined."
That is the law now, and I have no objection to retaining those words if it is desired.
Number Seven	151
MR. CASSERLY. That means, abraded below this limit of one half of one per cent.
MR. SHERMAN. Oh, no; we struck out all about that.
MR. CASSERLY. The meaning of the language is to be taken according to the place in which it is put.
MR. SHERMAN. It is fixed above. If we strike out all between lines nineteen and twenty-seven, then this clause will relate to the language before line nineteen, which reads:
"Which coins shall be a legal tender in all payments at their nominal value when not below the standard weight and limit of tolerance provided by this act for the single piece, and, when reduced in weight below said standard and tolerance, shall be a legal tender at valuation in proportion to their actual weight."
MR. CASSERLY. I understood the Senator to be willing to keep those words in the last clause of the section just in the meaning they had in that place; but of course if he has a different view of it I shall not contest it with him, because it is evident very few Senators are paying attention to this subject.*
THE PRESIDING OFFICER. The next amendment will be read.
The next amendment was to strike out the fifteenth section of the bill in the following words:
Sec. 15. That any gold coin now in circulation the weight of which is below the limit of abrasion prescribed in this act may be received at the mints in Philadelphia and San Francisco at par in exchange for silver coins: Provided, that the circulation of such gold coin, as shown by the date of coinage, has been sufficient to produce such loss by natural abrasion; and the coins so received shall be recoined; but no gold coins which appear to have been artificially reduced shall come within the provisions of this section.
MR. CASSERLY. It seems to me that section is one which should be retained not only for the general reasons applicable to the other section which I stated, but for the further reason that there is a protection
*The whole discussion and votes taken show that little attention was given to the bill.
152	Number Seven
provided by the express language of this section which it seems to me is absolutely sufficient. The language is:
"That any gold coin now in circulation the weight of which is below the limit of abrasion prescribed in this act may be received at the mints in Philadelphia and San Francisco at par in exchange for silver coins: Provided, that the circulation of such gold coin, as shown by the date of coinage, has been sufficient to produce such loss by natural abrasion; and the coins so received shall be recoined; but no gold coins which appear to have been artificially reduced shall come within the provisions of this section."
Of course that section, if it is to remain in the sense in which I desire it to remain, should be modified so as to refer to the limit of abrasion just stricken out, that is, not more than one half of one per cent on the double eagle and eagle, and one per cent on other coins. I presume, after the amendment the Senate has just adopted, the Senator from Ohio would be willing to retain the fifteenth section.
MR. SHERMAN. No; the fifteenth section is the one I have been debating all the time.
MR. CASSERLY. Then I must have the wrong bill before me.
MR. SHERMAN. It is the same bill that the Senator has before him; but the two amendments go together. If one falls the other falls. Is it right, -is it just that the people of the United States should maintain the gold in circulation in California against the abrasion of honest people as well as the abrasion of rogues, when it refuses to maintain its own paper currency against the abrasion of accident? When our paper currency is reduced in value by being mutilated to the amount of one sixteenth, the holder of the bill loses the extent of that mutilation, and the Treasury redeems the paper at so much less, in proportion to the loss of the bill. A mutilated bill presented to the Treasury is not redeemed at its nominal value. It is reduced in proportion to the amount presented. In order to
Number Seven	153
avoid fraud, it is indispensably necessary to have such a provision. Indeed the Senators from California and their constituents are much more interested in the passage of this bill than the people of Ohio; and I hope, therefore, if they want the sense of the Senate on this question they will take it by yeas and nays, and let us go on with the bill. I BELIEVE THIS IS THE ONLY CONTROVERTED POINT IN THE BILL. I think the people of the Pacific Coast who persist in circulating gold coin rather than paper money should not seek to get the people of the United States at large to make good their abraded coin, not only against honest abrasion, but against dishonest abrasion; and, as Professor Barnard has told us, it is utterly impossible to distinguish between honest and dishonest abrasion.
MR. COLE. Before the Senator takes his seat I should like to ask him who pays for printing the United States notes. Do. not the people of the United States at large pay for it, the people of California as well as the people everywhere else? And as to this other point about the notes being torn, what we are providing for is equivalent to furnishing notes that have been effaced without being torn. It is provided here that if the coin is not abraded beyond a certain extent it shall be re-coined at the expense of the United States. That is the effect of the proposition, but if it is reduced beyond that, as if a bill were torn one sixteenth or one fourth, then there shall be no relief for the party holding it.
THE PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on striking out the fifteenth section.
MR. CASSERLY again spoke against the amendment; his remarks being cumulative to those already expressed on the subject of abrasion.
THE PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on
the amendment striking out the fifteenth section.
The amendment was agreed to.
The next amendment was to strike out section (sev-
enteen) sixteen, in the following words:
Sec. [17] 16. That the minor coins of the United
154	Number Seven
States shall be a five-cent piece, a three-cent piece, and a one-cent piece; and the alloy for minor coinage shall be of copper and nickel, to be composed of three-fourths copper and one-fourth nickel; the weight of the piece of five cents shall be five grams, or twenty-seven and sixteen hundredths grains troy: of the three-cent piece, three grams, or forty-six and thirty hundredths grains; and of the one-cent piece, one and one-half grams, or twenty-three and fifteen hundredths grains; which coins shall be legal tender at their nominal value, for any amount not exceeding twenty-five cents in any one payment. And to insert in lieu thereof the following:
That the minor coins of the United States shall be a five-cent piece, a three-cent piece, and a one-cent piece, and the alloy for the five and three-cent pieces shall be of copper and nickel, to be composed of three-fourths copper and one-fourth nickel; and the alloy of the one-cent piece shall be ninety-five per cent copper and five per cent of tin and zinc, in such proportions as shall be determined by the Director of the Mint. The weight of the piece of five cents shall be twenty-seven and sixteen hundredths grains troy; of the three-cent piece thirty grains; and of the one-cent piece, forty-eight grains; which coins shall be legal tender, at their nominal value, for any amount not exceeding twenty-five cents in any one payment.
MR. SHERMAN. There is an omission!in the matter proposed to be inserted by the committee. I move to insert in line eleven, after the words "twenty-five cent piece," the words "and a dime or ten-cent piece."
The amendment to the amendment was agreed to. The amendment as amended was adopted.
The next amendment was.in section (eighteen) nineteen, line nine, to insert after the words "three dollar piece" the words "the silver dollar, half dollar, quarter dollar," and also to insert in line eleven, after the word omitted, the words "and on the reverse of the silver dollar, half dollar, quarter dollar, and the dime respectively, there shall be inscribed the weight and the fineness of the coin." So that the section will read:
Number Seven	155
Section (19) 18. That upon the coins of the United States there shall be the following devices and legends: Upon one side there shall be an impression emblematic of liberty, with an inscription of the word "liberty and the year of the coinage, and upon the reverse shall be the figure or representation of an eagle, with the inscriptions "United States of America" and "E Pluribus Unum," and a designation of the value of the coin; but on the gold dollar and three dollar piece, the silver dollar, half dollar, quarter dollar, the dime, five, three and one-cent piece the figure of the eagle shall be omitted; and on the reverse of the silver dollar, half dollar, quarter dollar, and the dime, respectively, there shall be inscribed the weight and fineness of the coin; and the director of the mint, with the approval of the Secretary of the Treasury, may cause the motto: "In God we trust," to be inscribed upon such coins as shall admit of such motto; and any one of the foregoing inscriptions may be on the rim of the gold and silver coins.
MR. CASSERLY. It may be a matter of sentiment, but sentiment sometimes goes a great way, especially in those cases where it is difficult to reduce the action of men to a mere logical standard. I regret that the eagle is to disappear from the dollar, half dollar, and quarter dollar of our coinage. It will hardly be possible to think of a half dollar or a quarter dollar as being such a coin without the eagle upon it.
MR. SHERMAN. The Senator will see that the reason is because it is necessary to describe the weight and fineness of the coin. This amendment has been proposed by the officers of the mint. They have adopted a plan of describing on each coin its weight and fineness.
MR. CASSERLY. What is the use of that when we know that the weight of the coin is constantly being reduced?
MR. SHERMAN. The reason given to us is because it has been adopted as a mode of international coinage. This method has been adopted in the corresponding coins of France and all the countries of Europe, pretty much, of describing upon the face of the coin its intrinsic weight and fineness.
156	Number Seven
MR. CASSERLY. I must say I never saw a coin marked in that way.
MR. SHERMAN. That is the reason the officers of the mint give for this change.
MR. CASSERLY. I ask the Senator whether he is very strenuous in his advocacy of this amendment. I should like to save the American eagle on the half dollar and quarter dollar.
MR. SHERMAN. The eagle is preserved on all the gold coins in a size large enough to be caged. (Laughter. )
MR. CASSERLY. But the half dollar and quarter dollar are the money of the people, and they are the leading coins of our entire silver coinage. I do not think it is of so much importance to put the fineness or the weight upon a half dollar or a quarter as it might be upon a gold coin. I have never seen any foreign coin, and of course no American coin, marked in that way. To have the weight of the coin upon gold coin may be a useful thing because of the great preciousness of the metal; but what is the importance of having the weight inscribed upon the half dollar or quarter dollar? Does anybody ever weigh half dollars or quarters in business?
MR. SHERMAN. If the Senator will allow me, he will see that the preceding section provides for coin which is exactly interchangeable with the English shilling and the five-franc piece of France; that is, a five-franc piece of France will be the exact equivalent of a dollar of theUnited States in our silver coinage ;*and in order to show this wherever our silver coin shall float—and WE ARE PROVIDING THAT IT SHALL FLOAT ALL OVER THE WORLD—we propose to stamp upon it, instead of our eagle, which foreigners may not understand and which they may not distinguish from a buzzard, or some other bird, the intrinsic fineness and weight of the coin. In this practical,utilitarian age,the officers of the mint seem to think it would be better to do that than to put the eagle on our silver coins. I must confess I do not think it is very important; but I think the Senator
*This would have been a dollar weighing 384 grains, but no such dollar was in the bill as finally enrolled.
Number Seven	157
ought to be willing to defer in these matters to the practical knowledge of the officers who have charge of this branch of the Government service. I will say that Mr. Linderman, whom the Senator must know,- has suggested this as being a convenient mode of promoting international coinage.*
MR. CASSERLY. We cannot have an international coinage on the basis of our silver coin unless our silver coin is up to the standard of all the nations with which we expect to have relations. Now, I ask the Senator whether this bill proposes a silver coinage of that character?
MR. SHERMAN. This bill proposes a silver coinage exactly the same as the French, and what are called the associated nations of Europe, who have adopted the international standard of silver coinage; that is, the dollar provided for by this bill is the precise equivalent of the five-franc piece. It contains the same number of grams of silver; and we have adopted the international gram instead of the grain for the standard of our silver coinage. The "trade dollar" has been adopted mainly' for the people of California, and others engaged in trade with China. That is the only coin measured by the grain instead of by the gram. The intrinsic value of each is to be stamped upon the coin.
MR. CASSERLY. Do I understand the Senator to say, then, that the intrinsic value of the dollar, half dollar, and quarter dollar is raised by this bill?
MR. SHERMAN. There is a difference of about one half of one per cent.
MR. CASSERLY. I suppose it must be raised to the basis of international exchange.
MR. SHERMAN. I think it is slightly raised, so as to conform with foreign coins. The Chamber of Commerce of New York first recommended this change, and it has been adopted, I believe, by all the learned societies who have given attention to coinage and has been recommended to us,I believe, as the general desire. That is embodied in these three or four sections of amendment, to make our silver coinage correspond in exact
*See "A Tale of Two Nations," by Harvey.
158	Number Seven
form and dimensions, and shape and stamp, with the coinage of the associated nations of Europe, who have adopted an international silver coinage. I do not like myself to break in upon this plan, or to change it in the slightest degree, but prefer to leave it to the proper officers of the Mint. Indeed I would be perfectly willing to leave the whole thing to the officers of the Mint rather than to fix it by law. That was not deemed convenient, and therefore we had to drop the American eagle from these minor silver coins.
MR. CASSERLY. I am not prepared to go as far as that. I would not leave it to anybody to remove from the eyes and the thoughts of the people, those symbols of nationality which have stood this country in such good stead on many a hard fought day by land and sea; and which may have to do the same service in the same way for many generations to come. While we laugh a good deal about the American eagle and the uses to which he is put by orators, political and otherwise, on the Fourth of July and other days, we must feel that the associations that cluster around the American eagle are associations that make him a symbol of power, and I am not at all satisfied, because we desire to put the weight and fineness upon our half dollar and our quarter dollar, that, therefore, it is necessary to abolish the American eagle. The eagle, it is said, suffers little birds to sing, and the eagle will not object to having his value in the countries of the world put under his wing on the coin. I say, retain the eagle and put whatever marks you like upon the face of your coin to indicate its weight and fineness. I do not think they will be of any value in regard to the silver coins of the denomination of half dollar and quarter dollar; but if the Senator is strongly of opinion that they ought to be there, let them be there.*
THE PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on the amendment of the committee.
MR. CASSERLY. I propose to strike out the words in italics in line nine of section (nineteen) eighteen, "the silver dollar, half dollar, quarter dollar."
*See "A Tale of Two Nations" for an account of the dramatic scene enacted at another place in Washington while these speeches were being delivered.
Number Seven	159
THE PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California can accomplish his object by voting against the amendment of the committee inserting those words.
MR. NYE. I should like to hear the amendment of the committee read.
The chief clerk read the amendment, which was in section (nineteen) eighteen, line nine, to insert after the words "three dollar piece" the words "the silver dollar, half dollar, quarter dollar;" and in line eleven, after the word "omitted" to insert "and on the reverse of the silver dollar, half dollar, quarter dollar, and the dime, respectively, there shall be inscribed the weight and the fineness of the coin;" so that that portion of the section will read:
But on the gold dollar and three-dollar piece, the silver dollar, half dollar, quarter dollar, the dime, five, three, and one-cent piece the figure of the eagle shall be omitted; and on the reverse of the silver dollar, half dollar, quarter dollar, and the dime, respectively, there shall be inscribed the weight and fineness of the coin.
MR. CASSERLY. I think the question is not understood by the Senate generally. As I understand, to vote for the amendment of the committee is to abolish the American eagle on the silver dollar, half dollar, and quarter dollar, and to vote against it is to keep him there. The subsequent amendment, in line eleven, to which there is no objection, will allow the mark of weight and fineness to be put upon the coin.
THE PRESIDING OFFICER. Does the Senator from California desire a separate vote on the two branches of the amendment?
MR. SHERMAN. I suppose the Senator has no objection to the last one.
MR. CASSERLY. None at all to the last one. The only point is, that I wish to retain the American eagle on the silver dollar, half dollar, and quarter dollar.
THE PRESIDING OFFICER. The question will then be taken on the amendment in line nine, which is to insert the words "the silver dollar, half dollar, quarter dollar. "
160	Number Seven
The amendment was rejected; there being, on a divi-
sion, ayes 24, noes, 26.
(So the eagle was retained.—Ed.)
MR. SHERMAN. As the Senate are so patriotic that they will not abolish the eagle, I hope they will be perfectly willing BOW to HURRY ALONG WITH THE BILL.
THE PRESIDING OFFICER. The other part of the amendment will be considered as agreed to, if there be no objection.
The next amendment was on page 13, section twenty-two (twenty-one), to add at the end of the section the following proviso:
Provided, that at the option of the owner, silver may be cast into coins of standard fineness, and of the weight of four hundred and twenty grains troy, designated in section fifteen of this act.as the trade dollar.
The amendment was agreed to.
The next amendment was in section (twenty-five) twenty-four, line two, to strike out the word "standard" and insert "fineness;" so as to read:
That the assayer shall report to the superintendent the quality or fineness of the bullion assayed by him, etc.
The amendment was agreed to.
The next amendment was in section (twenty-five) twenty-four, lines five and six, to strike out the words "for the cost of converting the bullion into bars;" so as to read:
Provided, that the assayer shall report to the superintendent the quality or fineness of the bullion assayed by him, and such information as will enable him to compute the amount of the charges hereinafter provided for, to be made to the depositor.
The amendment was agreed to.
MR. SHERMAN. The next amendment is on page 14, in section (twenty-six) twenty-five, line two, to insert the words "or for converting standard silver into trade dollars." They should be transposed to line seven of the same section.
THE PRESIDING OFFICER. It is suggested by
Number Seven	161
the Clerk that the word ought to be inserted in line eight, after the word "bullion."
MR. SHERMAN. At any convenient place, either after the word "bullion" in line eight or after the word 44standard" in line seven.
THE CHIEF CLERK. The amendment of the committee is section (twenty-six) twenty-five, line eight, after the word "bullion" to insert the words "or for converting standard silver into trade dollars;" so that the section will read:
That the charge for converting standard gold bullion into coin shall be one fifth of one per cent; the charges for refining when the bullion is below standard, for toughening when metals are contained in it which render it unfit for coinage, for copper used for alloy when the bullion is above standard, for separating the gold and silver when these metals exist together in the bullion, or for converting standard silver into trade dollars, and for the preparation of bars, shall be fixed, from time to time, by the Director, with the concurrence of the Secretary of the Treasury, so as to equal but not exceed, in their judgment, the actual average cost to each mint and assay office of the material, labor wastage, and use of machinery employed in each of the cases afore mentioned.
MR. SHERMAN. The Senate will see that the charge for converting standard silver into trade dollars instead of being fixed at one fifth of one per cent is fixed at the actual cost. It is provided that the price for this work done at the Mint shall be fixed by the Director of the Mint, but not in any case to exceed the actual cost of the operation.
MR. CASSERLY. I did not suppose that the amendment to section (twenty-six) twenty-five had been disposed of.
THE PRESIDING OFFICER. That is the question now pending.
MR. CASSERLY. I supposed that the charge there of one fifth of one per cent for silver coinage was a clerical error.
162	Number Seven
MR. SHERMAN. The words "or for converting standard silver into trade dollars" were intended to come in after the word "standard" in line seven. The Committee on Finance observing that it was printed at the wrong place corrected it, and I gave the Secretary the correct place where it should be inserted. It is only to be the actual cost of the operation, whatever that may be.
The amendment was agreed to.
The next amendment was on page 16,section (twenty-nine) thirty, line one, after the word "coins" to insert "other than the trade dollar;" so that the clause will read:
That silver coins other than the trade dollar shall be paid out at the several mints and at the assay office in New York City, in exchange for gold coins at par, etc.
The amendment was agreed to.
MR. CASSERLY. I wish to ask what has become of the amendment to section twenty-six? I did not know that it had been passed upon.
THE PRESIDING OFFICER. It has been adopted.
MR. CASSERLY. I presume it will still be in order to offer an amendment to that section after the amendments of the committee have been disposed of.
THE PRESIDING OFFICER. It will be.
The next amendment was on page 19, section (thirty-four) thirty-five, line four, to strike out "two thousandths" and insert "three thousandths;" so that the clause will read:
That no ingots shall he used for coinage which differ from the legal standard more than the following proportions, namely: in gold ingots, one thousandth; in silver ingots, three thousandths; in minor-coinage alloys, twenty-five thousandths, in the proportion of nickel.
The amendment was agreed to.
The next amendment was 'on page 25, section (forty-nine) forty-eight, line four, after the word "Pennsylvania" to insert "the Comptroller of the Currency;" so that the clause will read:
Number Seven	163
That to secure a due conformity in the gold and silver coins to their respective standard of fineness and weight, the judge of the district court of the United States for the eastern district of Pennsylvania, the Comptroller of the Currency, the Assayer of the assay office at New York, etc.
The amendment was agreed to.
The next amendment was on page 27, section (fifty-four) fifty-three, to strike out "metals" and insert “medals."
The amendment was agreed to.
The next amendment was on page 30, section (fifty-nine) fifty-eight, line five, to strike out "twentieth" and insert "second," so as to read, "as prescribed by the act of July 2, 1862."
The amendment was agreed to.
The next amendment was on page 34, section (sixty-six) sixty-five, line two, to strike out "July" and insert "April," and strike out "1872" and insert "1873," so that the clause will read, "that this act shall take effect on the 1st day of April, 1873," etc.
The amendment was agreed to.
The next amendment was on page 35, section (sixty-eight) sixty-seven, line two, to strike out "1872" and insert "1873," so that the clause will read, "that this act shall be known as the coinage act of 1873," etc.
The amendment was agreed to.
THE PRESIDING OFFICER. This concludes the amendments proposed by the Committee on Finance. The bill is open to further amendments.
MR. COLE. I offer the following amendment, to come in on page 13, at the end of section (twenty-one) twenty:
And the Secretary of the Treasury may issue through the Director of the Mint certificates for gold bullion deposited at any of the mints or assay office at New York, which certificates shall state the value of the bullion less the coinage and other mint charges, and be payable to bearer on presentation at the mint or assay office at which the bullion was deposited, either in bul-
164	Number Seven
lion or coin, at the option of the Superintendent of the mint or assay office, or in such proportion of bullion or coin as the superintendent may prefer:
Provided, That if any holder of a certificate demands to be paid in coin a certificate may be issued stating the time when such coin will be ready for delivery.
MR. NYE. That is a thing that is already provided for by existing law. Each one of our mints has a bullion fund provided, from which the depositor gets his pay in coin for the value of the bullion as soon as it is ascertained. There is no delay now or waiting for coinage at the mint.
MR. SHERMAN. The Senator from California showed me this amendment. As it had never been considered by the committee, I hesitated to give my consent to it, but I could not see any objection to depositing bullion with the Treasury or the mints or assay offices and allowing certificates to be issued, and therefore I had no objection to allowing the amendment to be made. If there seems to be any objection to it we can abandon it in a committee of conference, although if there is any doubt about it I think it had better not go on the bill.
The amendment was agreed to.
MR. POOL. In section (sixty-seven) sixty-six, line seven, after the word "Idaho," I move to insert the words "and the United States assay office at Charlotte, North Carolina." The chairman of the Committee on Finance I believe agrees to accept this amendment.
MR. SHERMAN. That depends upon the fact whether there is a legal assay office in North Carolina. If the Senator says there is, I shall not object; but I have the impression it has been abolished.
MR. POOL. No, sir, it has not been abolished.
MR. SHERMAN. If there is still a legal assay office there it ought to be named in this bill.
MR. POOL. There is no question about its being
such.
The amendment was agreed to.
MR. NYE. With the consent of the Senate I should
Number Seven	165
like to have the vote reconsidered by which the amendment of the Senator from California (Mr. Cole) regarding certificates for gold bullion was adopted.
MR. COLE. The bill has not yet been reported to the Senate. The Senator can have it reserved.
MR. NYE. Then I shall reserve it in the Senate. I do not think the Senator himself will insist upon it. The bill was reported to Senate as amended.
THE PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on concurring in the amendments made as in committee of the whole.
MR. SHERMAN. The Senator from Nevada wished to reserve the amendment offered by the Senator from California. (Mr. Cole. )
MR. NYE. I ask to have that amendment reserved
THE PRESIDING OFFICER. If there be no objection the chair will put the question on concurring in all the amendments together except the one indicated by the Senator from Nevada.
The remaining amendments were concurred in.
THE PRESIDING OFFICER. The question now is on concurring in the amendment proposed by the Senator from California, which will be read.
The Chief Clerk read the amendment, which was to add to section (twenty-one) twenty, the following:
And the Secretary of the Treasury may issue through the Director of the Mint, certificates for gold bullion deposited at any of the mints or assay office at New York, which certificates shall state the value of the bullion less the coinage, and other mint charges, and be payable to bearer on presentation at the mint or assay office at which the bullion was deposited, either in bullion or coin, at the option of the superintendent of the mint or assay office, or in such proportions of bullion or coin as the superintendent may prefer. Provided, That if any holder of a certificate demands to be paid in coin a certificate may be issued stating the time when such coin will be ready for delivery.
MR. NYE. I do not understand that this amend-
166	Number Seven
ment is insisted upon. The Senate will perceive at once that it is putting another currency into circulation, and one by which the superintendents of mints would be very likely to be injured and defrauded. I hope, therefore, it will not be adopted. They get their coin whenever they present their bullion now.
MR. STEWART. There is a bullion fund provided for that purpose.
MR. NYE. There is a bullion fund for that very
purpose.
The amendment was non-concurred in.
MR. CASSERLY. I wish to move an amendment to section (twenty-six) twenty-five As it now stands it reads:
That the charge of converting standard gold bullion into coin shall be one-fifth of one per cent.
I move to amend it so that it will read: "that there shall be no charge for converting standard gold bullion into coin."
The question raised by this amendment is not a new one in the Senate, nor indeed is it new in Congress. As I understand, it has happened at least once that the Senate adopted the principle of my amendment, and that the House also adopted it; but neither of them adopted it upon the same bill. So that the amendment has the sense of each House of Congress in its favor. The principle of it is obvious. I wish to say but this word in reference to it, that the only ground upon which the coinage charge has ever been supported was that the person depositing bullion for coinage ought to pay the Government for turning his bullion into the correct coin of the country. I think it only requires a statement of that proposition to enable any of us to see its fallacy. The person who furnishes the Government with the means to coin money for the necessary uses of its own citizens never should be taxed for that which really is a great advantage to the Government. Why, sir, Governments would be forced, if they could not get bullion without charge, to pay for it in order to manufacture their coins. It is contrary to the first principles of Government, it seems to me, especially
Number Seven	167
as applicable to this subject, that coinage charge should be continued. It is one which is evil in its results. It keeps up a discrimination which is always against us; and the reason to-day why the American man of business loses at the rate of two cents and fraction of a cent upon every pound sterling of exchange, all of which goes to the benefit of the banker on this side or the payer of the exchange on the other, rests precisely in the maintenance of this extraordinary charge. But for this charge there would be no such discrimination in the rate of exchange against us.
A great many other grounds might be given, but I hope the Senator from Ohio will be willing to concede this amendment at this time, and that what the two Houses have both indorsed may now be embodied in this bill.
MR. SHERMAN. I must confess my regret that the Senator from California should raise this disputed question at this stage of the bill, JUST AS IT WAS ABOUT ON ITS PASSAGE. The Senate of the United States deliberately, after full discussion, after hearing the Senator at length and other Senators who maintain his view of this question,decided to retain the charge for coinage of one-fifth of one per cent. It is now one-half of one per cent, but we reduced it to one-fifth of one per cent. The Senate, by a very decided vote, after a full debate, settled that question. The bill went to the House of Representatives, and there was another effort made by the members from the Pacific Coast to repeal the coinage charge, and there, after full debate, it was settled by an overwhelming majority to retain the charge of one-fifth of one per cent. The Senator says both Houses have at some time or other passed a bill abolishing the coinage charge. I am quite sure a proposition of that kind has never passed either House after debate and with full consideration. If this question about the coinage is to be opened and pressed, it will compel those of us who are in favor of retaining the coinage charge to enter into an elaborate debate. I did so when it was here before. The Senator now in the chair (Mr. Morrill of Vermont) and many other Senators partici.
168	Number Seven
pated in that discussion. The question has been settled, and this bill has now gone to its last stage. This bill once passed the Senate a few years ago, and was fully discussed, and the charge of one-fifth of one per cent was retained. I trust, therefore, that the Senator will not seek to reverse the decision taken first by the Senate, and afterward agreed to by the House. This point is beyond our consideration practically. We ought not to undertake, at this period of the session, to review that decision. The people of California are very largely interested in the revision of the mint laws. Indeed I have received more letters from that State about this coinage bill, desiring it to pass, than from any other portion of the country. I can see the great importance of it to them, and I believe it to be one of great importance to the whole people of the United States. Therefore I do not wish to enter into a discussion in regard to this coinage charge that may probably weary the Senate fidid DELAY THE PASSAGE OF THE BILL. I PROMISED THAT THE BILL WOULD NOT TAKE MORE THAN AN HOUR,, AND WHEN I MADE THAT PROMISE I SUPPOSED THESE AMENDMENTS WHICH HAVE BEEN ACTED UPON WOULD BE ACTED UPON SUB-SILENTIO,alld other questions which had been settled would not be revived.
I therefore will not undertake to answer the argument of the Senator from California except to say that the question is res adjudicata so far as this bill is c on-cerned. If, however, it is to be opened, as the Senator has a right to open it, it will lead to a long debate. I therefore prefer not to say anything on the question except that the coinage charge has not been and ought not to be repealed entirely. We have reduced it now to the lowest rate of any nation in the world except only Great Britain.
MR. CASSERLY. If I have made a mistake as to the fact of the adoption in each House of the principle of this amendment, of course I desire to withdraw what I said.
MR. SHERMAN. I do not deny that if the Senator says it is so; but I do not remember it ever passing the Senate.
Number Seven	169
MR. CASSERLY. I was so informed, and I have the impression that among the gentlemen so informing me was the Senator from Ohio.
MR. SHERMAN. I have no recollection of it.
MR. CASSERLY. I understand fully the objection to protracting debate at this late hour of the day, and I was very reluctant to say a word, even so much as was necessary to propose this amendment. I felt it to be my duty, however, to do so. I desire now to say that the continuance of this coinage charge repels from San Francisco, and of course from this country, almost the entire gold bullion product of Australia. We refine so much more cheaply in San Francisco than they do in London, that but for this coinage charge the whole gold bullion of Australia would come to San Francisco to be refined.
MR. SHERMAN. Oh, no.
Mr. Casserly spoke more at length in favor of dropping the mintage charge.
THE PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on
the amendment of the Senator from California.
The amendment was rejected.
The amendments were ordered to be engrossed, and
the bill to be read a third time.
The bill was read the third time, and passed.
A QUESTION TO BE ANSWERED.
We have not to deal with ideal theories. The two moneys have actually co-existed since the origin of human society. They co-exist because the two together are necessary, by their quantity, to meet the needs of circulation. This necessity of the two metals, has it ceased to exist? Is it established that the quantity of actual and prospective gold is such that we can now renounce the use of silver without disaster?
Let the falling prices and the rising multitudes of unemployed men answer these questions.—Chicago Tribune, January 5, 1878.
170	NumberSeven
MORE EXTRACTS FROM THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE BEFORE IT SOLD OUT TO THE GOLD TRUST.
The efforts of the gold men to increase the obligations of contracts have made it all but impossible for the debtors to fulfill their contracts.—Chicago Tribune, January 14, 1878
Silver dollars of 3711 grains pure were established as the "standard" of value or "unit of account" by the act of April 2, 1792—and this continued in full force until 1873-4.—Chicago Tribune, January 14, 1878.
Persons of the greatest experience in monetary matters, unite in calling for an international Congress to regulate the standards. If that is not feasible, silver should be made the standard with a concurrent coinage of gold.—Chicago Tribune, January, 21, 1878.
Stability in money values does not mean the power to resist depreciation alone, but appreciation as well. Of the two, a permanent and eternal appreciation of money value is vastly more injurious than a tendency to depreciation.—Chicago Tribune, January 16, 1878.
Number Seven	171
The old silver dollar of 412- grains fills the bill exactly. So long as it was a legal tender it was an honest dollar, worth 100 cents, and had the ring of the true metal. Remonetize it, and it will be again what it was for eighty years—worth 100 cents. —Chicago Tribune, January 10, 1878.
When the time came that the United States might have enjoyed and exercised the option of paying in either coin it was discovered that Congress had, unknown to itself, repealed the option—the vital purpose for which the bimetallic system had been established. —Chicago Tribune, January 15, 1878.
The "big dollar" is just what the country must stop if it hopes to escape universal bankruptcy. We want the old,historical dollar of 374 grains pure silver—the equivalent of the old Spanish milled dollar—and nothing else. The present purchasing value of the gold dollar has been fearfully enhanced.—Chicago Tribune, January 12, 1878
The wisdom and foresight of those who had established the bimetallic system, giving the country the option to use either coin, enabled the people of the United States, from 1834 to 1873, to use the cheaper gold coin, worth about 97i cents on the dollar in silver, to pay all their debts. —Chicago Tribune, January 15, 1878.
There has never been any contract made with the bondholders, expressed or implied, whereby the govern-
172	Number Seven
ment agreed to surrender its legal right to pay in silver when gold became the dearer metal. The practice has always been since the foundation of the government not to pay in the dearer of the two legal tender coins. —Chicago Tribune, January 14, 1878.
Hamilton and Jefferson concurred in the wisdom and necessity of having a double standard, the purpose being to confer the option on the debtor to pay in either metal at his pleasure. Those great statesmen clearly foresaw the trouble and disaster that a single standard would bring upon the country. The retention of the option by the debtor to pay in either silver or gold is vitally important to the welfare of the whole American people, and must never be surrendered.—Chicago Tribune, January 14, 1878.
One class consists of those who pretend to favor the restoration of the silver dollar, but insist that "it shall contain a dollar's worth of silver"—by which they mean that the weight of the silver dollar shall be determined by the present bullion value of silver in London, estimated in gold coin. This is begging the whole question, since the demand is based on the assumption that gold is the only money, and that a silver coin must be treated as so much wheat or pork, and weighed out in gold values. It might be claimed with equal propriety that the gold dollar should be determined by weight according to its bullion value in silver coin.—Chicago Tribune, January 21, 1878.
If there were any imperative reason for discarding
Number Seven	173
the double metallic standard, all scientific research and commercial experience would suggest the adoption of the silver standard, as the quantity of it to be had is adequate to our needs without giving it an excessive value, such as gold now has. There would then be some promise of stability in values in the likelihood or possibility that the production of silver in the future would be in a proportion to prevent a steady contraction of money equivalents—a calamity that no human power can avert on a single gold basis. —Chicago Tribune, January, 16, 1878.
The standard dollar of the United States from 1792 to 1873 was one containing 3711 grains of pure silver. This standard dollar was not established under any assurance that it was to equal the gold dollar, or to equal in value any weight of gold or any other metal in the United States or in foreign countries. The purpose of those who adopted the bimetallic currency was to prevent any disturbance in the values of property by any sudden increase in the value of either metal. While both gold and silver were made a legal tender, 3714 grains of silver remained the standard dollar. The silver dollar was always the standard by which foreign as well as American coins, gold and silver, were measured and valued. The policy of making the two metals legal tender was to protect the people from any extraordinary rise in the value of either metal. Thus in case of the rise in the value of silver metal the country could at once resort to gold, which, being a legal tender, would be a legal substitute for the dearer silver. This was practically the case from 1834 to 1873.—Chicago Tribune, February 15, 1878.
A TALE OF TWO NATIONS
AS
REVIEWED BY THE CHICAGO TIMES
It is a year of many publications, and among these are not a few bearing on the present financial situation, but heretofore has appeared no work at the same time fascinating as a novel and attractive to the student of affairs. The "Tale of Two Nations" fulfills both conditions. I t is a forceful novelty in new literature. The already widely known author, W. H. Harvey, has made a departure of a striking character, and one not unlikely to have widespread results.
The scene of this remarkable story is laid chiefly in Washington, and the characters are, in numerous instances, people well known in actual life and factors in the affairs of the nation. There is a trenching upon the divinity supposed to hedge the money and political kings and a laying bare of real relations. No one can mistake the applications made, and no one can misunderstand the logical conclusions reached.
The story is that of a gigantic conspiracy, international in scope, conducted with vast resources, indomitable purpose, and a daring and finesse resulting in the demonetization of silver in the United States, and continued still to compass ends toward which the de. sanction of the people's money was but an initial step. The central figure, the brilliant. unscrupulous, but
2	A TALE OF TWO NATIONS
fascinating plotter of the story, is the representative of a great foreign banking-house, the identity of which will be easily recognized. The hero is a Nebraska congressman. It is a queer combination which is formed all around, but the reader is made somehow to feel that it is the correct one. One feels that a true story is being related despite the striking character of the incidents, and the interest intensifies with each succeeding chapter.
As a love story the original volume must take a rank of its own. Its lesson in no wise interferes with its charming romance. It occupies a field in which were infinite possibilities and is readable to the school girl as well as to the statesman. The plot is a captivating one and in the character of the heroine and of a fair Jewess who loves the arch- plotter of the story, are afforded studies which are delightful in every way. The romance is something delicate and novel.
What will most strike the average well-informed man, though, is the daring innovation of introducing into the story many real people and accounts of real events, and tangling together inextricably what is certainly fact with what may be fiction. One wonders what Senator John Sherman will say or think when he reads the work; what the Missourian, George Frame, or the Coloradoan, Jack Carroll will conclude, or what will be the opinion of the bumptious Governor West of Utah, or that friend of the railroads the governor of Iowa, or the ridiculous Judge Noyes and Mayor Scott, of La Porte, Ind. Apparently the author was familiar with all that occurred in the Indiana town to which its frightened officials succeeded in giving an unsavory reputation, for an account is Presented of occurrences,
A TALE OF TWO NATIONS	3
evidently real, not heretofore made public, and which afford what is commonly known as "mighty interesting reading." The tragedies and semi-comedies of branches of the Coxey movement are pictured tellingly.
It is this curious and original feat of mingling the incidents of real events with the thread of the novel which will, perhaps, have most effect in at once attracting public attention. The opposite of the motto Faisus in uno, jUlsus in omnibus may not always be the case, but where the reader sees what he knows is absolute truth in one part, he is apt to accede it to another, and this almost reckless dealing with facts and dates and persons and things is carried on to an extent rarely seen in a novel before. For instance, there is a pathetic account of the death of Annie Lindgren in describing what had occurred in one place as a result .of the scheming of some of the characters in the plot. And the real Annie Lindgren did die just as described, crushed to death in a struggle for bread at the office of the county agent in Chicago, in early January, 1894. The account of her end, with its awful lesson to the country, appeared in the Chicago daily newspapers, and upon close study it will be found that many another incident of the strange story may be as easily authenticated. Facts in relation. to the passage of the bill demonetizing silver are so collated that the most ignorant of readers may recognize the great conspiracy and its effect upon the nation's welfare. Yet even through it all runs the charming ove story and ever the reader's interest is kept alive and alert for the next development of the wonderful plot.
There are certain chapters of the volume which are
4	A TALE OF TWO NATIONS
bound to maintain a great place in the literature of the time. It is not proposed in this review to give anything like a full outline of the story nor to in any way lessen the interest and delight of the many thousands who will inevitably read the "Tale of Two Nations," but it may at least be said that chapter 20 will engage thc earnest attention of all thoughtful students of the money question, and that the passion of Rogasner and its odd contrast with his character generally will be accounted something notable as a shrewd study in fiction. So the vein of humor which at times crops out, the word painting of personalities, and the touches of power and pathos add other features of note to what is certainly one of the books of the time which has an individuality all its own.
As a summary it may be said of this work just is, sued that its effect is not unlikely to be felt upon the destinies of the country. It has the elements of popularity; it is of interest as a story, while at the same time it foretells great existing evils and suggests for them great remedies. As "Uncle Tom's Cabin' roused a nation to knowledge of features of human slavery and impelled millions to action at a crucial period; as Bellamy's "Looking Backward" indicated the possi-bilitks of what might be accomplished by a real community of interest, so "A Tale of Two Nations" may arouse the people to a consideration of what it is which is making myriads suffer and impel them to action toward securing a remedy swift and sure. It is a forceful book, an original and attractive book and one which will have its impress upon the times, and of any book, by any author, this is much to say.
A TALE OF TWO NATIONS	5
NOTE BY THE PUBLISHERS.
The book contains 304 pages and is published in three forms; a popular edition at 25 cents; on fine paper bound in enamel paper cover,printed in two colors at 50 cents, and handsomely bound in cloth at $1.00. Sent postpaid at these prices to any part of the world. The trade is supplied by the American News Company and its branches; all other orders should be addressed to the Publishers. Those ordering COIN'S FINANCIAL SERIES in volumes of four numbers each, at i.00 per year, get the 5o cent edition of our books where published in that form. Coin's Financial Series began in December, 1893, and the first volume,now completed, includes Bimetallism and Monometallism, by Archbishop Walsh; Coin's Hand Book,Coin's Financial School, and A Tale of Two Nations, by W. H. Harvey. Remit in postoffice money orders, postage stamps, bank draft, express orders, currency, or any form except check. One dollar per year, issued quarterly. Address,
COIN PUBLISHING COMPANY,
134 Monroe Street, Chicago.
IF the reader of this book wishes to
assist in making FREE COINAGE voters, by writing us he will receive by return mail printed instructions how it may be done. There is no expense attached to the method.
Address
COIN PUBLISHING CO.,
116 Monroe street, GHICAOO, ILL.
Coin's Financial Series
Is a publication issued quarterly in book form at a subscription price of $1.00 per year, sent postpaid. We began issuing this series in December, 1893.
No. I of our series is BIMETALLISM AND MONOMETALLISM, by Archbishop Walsh of Dublin, Ireland. 78 pages, an able document; 25 cents.
No. 2. COIN'S HAND BOOK, by W. H. Harvey. Deals with the elementary principles of money and statistics. 46 pages; io cents.
No. 3. COIN'S FINANCIAL SCHOOL, by W. H. Harvey. Illustrated, 150 pages and 64 illustrations. It simplifies the financial subject so an ordinary schoolboy can understand it. It is the textbook of the masses, absolutely reliable as to facts and figures, and the most interesting and entertaining book on the subject of money published. Price, best edition, paper, sewed, cover two colors, 50 cents. Popular edition, 25 cents. Cloth, 1i.00.
No. 4. A TALE OF Two NATIONS, by W. H. Harvey. A novel of 302 pages. A love story that gives the history of demonetization and depicts the evil spirit and influences that have worked the destruction of American prosperity. A fascinating and instructive book. It holds the reader with wonderful interest from beginning to end. Popular edition, 25 cents; extra quality paper, 5o cents; in cloth, $1.00.
No. 5. CHAPTERS ON SILVER, by Judge Henry G. Miller, of Chicago. Ira pages. A book suitable for all thoughtful readers of the money question. Paper only, price 25 cents.
No. 6. UP TO DATE, COIN'S FINANCIAL SCHOOL. CONTINUED, by W. H. Harvey. Illustrated, 200 pages, and 5o illustrations. It is a history of COIN, the little financier, since delivering his lectures in Chicago. It is dedicated to the readers of COIN'S FINANCIAL SCHOOL, and should only be read by those who have read the " School."
2	COIN'S FINANCIAL SERIES
Popular edition, 25 cents ; better paper edition,
5o cents ; cloth, $1.00.
No. 7. (Just out). Number seven, of our Series,
Illustrated, 192 pages with apt illustrations. It contains an exposure of the crime of 1873, and the Harvey-Laughlin joint debate. This is one of the most instructive books of our Series. Popular edition 25 cents.
No. 8 of Coin's Financial Series will appear promptly in September. It will be fully up to the times, and will treat the financial question in a clear and forcible manner.
" Coin's Financial School " and "Up to Date, Coin's Financial School Continued," two books in one bound in cloth, price $1.00, sent postpaid. The two books together make the most complete treatise on the subject of money ever printed.
OUR SPECIAL OFFER.
We send the following four books postpaid for $1.00: Bimetallism and Monometallism (25 cents), Coin's Hand Book (ro cents), Coin's Financial School (5o cent edition, and A Tale of Two Nations (5o cent edition, $1.35 for $1.00. In ordering these, say " Set No. 1, of 4 books." We also furnish for $1.00 Bimetallism and Monometallism (25 cents), Coin's Hand Book ( io cents), Coin's Financial School (25 cent edition), A Tale of Two Nations (25 cent edition), Chapters on Silver (25 cent edition), and Up to Date, Coin's Financial School Continued (25 cent editions), $1.35 for $1.00. In ordering the books contained in this last offer, say, " Set No. 2, of 6 books."
Badges : Our silver badge, "16 to 1," size as here represented, price 5o cents.
Remit in stamps, postoffice money order, express order, registered letter, bank draft or currency, but do not use personal checks, as the banks charge us for collecting them.
Address,	COIN PUBLISHING COMPANY, 134 Monroe Street, Chicago, Ill,
To Proprietors of Newspapers Favorable to the Remonetization of Silver:
We ask you to aid us in extending the circulation of this book. We will furnish you on application a two column cut like this:
There is a mortise in the cut immediately over COIN as he
appears in the picture,where you can insert premium notice; or
it not otherwise wishing to insert matter there, we ask you to
insert the words, "For sale by all newsdealers."
We will be pleased to hear from you.
6E0. E. tiowEN, Secy. Chicago Bimetallic Club.
134 Monroe St., Chicago, In.
The June number of Com's Financial Series appears under the name of " No. 7." It contains the debate between Mr. W. H. Harvey and Professor J. Laurence Laughlin at the Illinois Club, giving a verbatum report ; also an exposure of the crime of 1873, and other important and interesting matter.
Newsdealers should send in their orders early. Our readers should remember that the subscription price to our series is $1.00 per year, and get on our subscription list, thus insuring prompt delivery to hem of our books as soon as the first numbers are off tb cess.
Address,
COIN PUBLISH G CO.,
134 Monroe St., Chcago, Ill.
4
,-
,
TH E
Thiratvor frete pros-or,
The Great German-American Bimetallistic Paper,
Has mailed the following letter to the Secretary of
the New York Gold Club:
CALVIN TOMPKINS, EsQ.,
SECRETARY "REFORM CLUB,"
52 WILLIAM STREET, NEW YORK.
DEAR SIR:— I received your letter, but can not use the so-called sound-currency " reading matter offered by you, for the FREIE PRESSE, founded by me twenty-five years ago, holds:
r. That gold and silver have been honest money since humanity has a history.
That the increase of the earth's population, the gradual extension of civilization on former barbarous nations, and the development of agriculture, industry, and commerce, are causing growing demands on the money market, and that, therefore, the demonetization of one of the metals, used for the coinage of money, is entirely illogical.
That the demonetization of one of the two metals will decrease the hard cash of the earth about $4,000,000,000, or one-half, and will make the remaining half twice as valuable and twice as dear.
That, therefore, the partially successful attempt of the great money lenders to demonetize silver appears as a dishonest effort of the creditors' class to force the debtors to repay loans in a cunningly enhanced money, and to force the producing classes to pay for loans a higher rate of interest.
That the assertion, the ratio of gold to silver could not be maintained is an empty excuse; because for 200 years (from 1687 to 1873) the ratio has
never beer,	r	r to 16.25, and never been higher than r to 14.14, a
change of o	bout T2 per cent within 200 years, and that only the demone-
tization of s	• since 2573 caused the heavy decline in its price.
That	s, therefore, our duty to fight for the restoration of silver to
its old right
Yours truly,
R. MICHAELIS.
The FREIE PRESSE, established 1871 by its present editor, is a member of
the Associates	ess. It issues a morning and two afternoon editions, a
Sunday and a	paper. The daily and weekly appear in the size of the
Chicago Tribu	Sunday with twenty-four pages in the same size. The
.abscriptIon rates are:
Morning edition with Sunday	$6.eo per year
Evening " "
Weekly edition.    1.00
Friends who are making an effort for the circulation of our papers may
deduct twenty per cent commission. Terms, cash in advance.
German-American Publishing CO., 90-94 FIFTH AVENUE,
CHICAGO, ILL.