THE MOTIVE OF ENGLAND.

England did not adopt the gold standard until she was in a position to become the principal creditor nation. When her forges, furnaces, spindles, and looms were ready to supply manufactured goods to all the world, she saw that all countries and peoples would be compelled to pour their treasures into her lap. Her insular position and great navy guarantied her against external assault. Released from the anxieties and labors incident to the Napoleonic wars, with a sturdy population of trained mechanics, and with fields of coal and iron in abundance, she was well adapted to become the "workshop of the world." With colonial possessions in every sea, and with Continental Europe in ceaseless unrest, England could rely on customers who could themselves produce nothing but raw material and would be obliged to buy her finished products.

The field of industry had been recently broadened by basic inventions of unparalleled importance—the steam-engine, the power loom, the spinning-jenny, and a multiplicity of other devices that increased a hundred fold the efficiency of artisan labor. England knew that her trade would in the main be a foreign trade and her financial dealings largely with foreign governments. She knew that from the people of the continent, impoverished by years of struggle for existence against the attacks of Napoleon, she could not expect immediate payments in cash, or in commodities. Time bonds and other deferred obligations were the media in which for the most part she received pay, she made interest and principal payable in gold alone, and if before the date of payment the value of money should increase it would not be to the disadvantage of the creditor. Whatever we may think of the ethics of this policy, we can have no difficulty in understanding its motive.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF THE MOTIVE.

As to the object which England had in view in demonetizing silver we are left in no sort of doubt. It has been candidly admitted by many of her financiers and publicists. The reason for her stolid adherence to the gold standard now is the same for which she originally demonetized silver. Her income and creditor classes are daily in receipt of an unearned increment to their wealth by reason of that demonetization. More candid than the advocates in this country of the single gold standard, the writers and press of Great Britain openly avow the object. No better testimony to the fact can be adduced than that supplied by the royal commission appointed in 1886 to inquire into the changes in the relative values of the precious metals.

At page 90, Part II, of the final report of that body, section 128, the commission say:

Before the British Royal Commission of 1868 on International Coinage, Mr. Jacob Behren, an eminent British merchant and member of the Associated Chambers of Commerce, after answering special and technical questions, was asked, in conclusion, "if there was anything else he wished to state." His reply was (p. 13):

Sir Lyon Playfair, in a speech delivered in the English Parliament on April 18, 1890, according to the report in the London Times of the day following, said that—

And, according to the same report, Sir Lyon Playfair, referring to the holding of the metals together by law, said that—

Gold is the "racer" whose "speed" must not be sacrificed, no matter how much injury may be effected by its tendency to greater and greater gain.

The weight of the enormous burden which is imposed on gold can not be better illustrated than by a statement of this same Sir Lyon Playfair, made in the same speech. According to the London Times of April 19, he said that—

On the same occasion Mr. Goschen, Chancellor of the Exchequer, delivered an able speech, in which he gave his facts, his eloquence, and his logic to the struggling masses of his countrymen by maintaining the wisdom of remonetization of silver, but gave his conclusions and his policy to the creditor classes by recommending no disturbance of present conditions.

said the Chancellor of the Exchequer—

The English creditor classes have not been without able coadjutors in this country. We have noticed for the last twelve or fourteen years that zealous advocates of the gold standard, the advantages of which are not confined to Great Britain, are to be found among the creditor classes of the United States.

If the toilers of this country, from the proceeds of whose labor these exactions have to be paid, had as little influence on the legislation of the United States as the toilers of England have on the legislation of that country, the creditor classes and financiers of the United States might be as frank as those of Great Britain in admitting the object of maintaining the single gold standard.

How graphically, though unintentionally, does the English poet, Waller, in the following verse, express the advantage which the gold standard gives to creditors everywhere, and the self-satisfaction with which they contemplate life:

The taste of hot Arabia's spice we know,
Free from the scorching sun that makes it grow.
Without the worm, in Persia's silk we shine,
And, without planting, drink of every vine.
To dig for wealth we weary not our limbs,
Gold, though the heaviest metal, hither swims.
Ours is the harvest where the Indians mow.
We plow the deep, and reap what others sow.

THE MOTIVE OF GERMANY.

When Germany, intoxicated by her victory over France, and in order to further cripple a fallen foe from whom she had exacted $1,000,000,000 in gold, demonetized silver, she inflicted on her people by the fall of prices consequent on the increase in the value of money, more misery than all her armies of horse and foot had been able to inflict on France. France, on the contrary, notwithstanding this unprecedented war tribute, by keeping a sufficient volume of money in circulation to maintain, and even advance, her range of prices, emerged in a few years from the consequences of the greatest disaster in her history, conscious of a triumph more complete than Germany had achieved by all the military splendor of the war. The ransom exacted of France was received back by her almost as soon as paid, in exchange for the products of her industry. It is not a sign of prosperity, Mr. President, when hundreds of thousands of people, the best bone and sinew of a nation, are found annually emigrating; and it is a coincidence which I merely mention, in passing, that as soon as the effects of demonetization of silver had had time to make themselves felt in Germany, a veritable hegira of its people took place.

From 1873 to 1889, the emigration from Germany numbered 1,546,000 persons.

Students of social science everywhere recognize the statistics of illegitimacy and of suicides as among the most powerful evidences of monetary distress. By reference to those statistics we find that notwithstanding the large emigration during that period the number of illegitimate births in Germany increased from 161,294 in 1883 to 169,645 in 1888. The suicides in Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, and Baden—the leading states of the German Empire—increased from 179 for each million of population in 1868 to 196 for each million of the population in 1876 and to 218 for each million of the population in 1882. In Prussia alone the number of suicides in 1876 was 151 per million, while in 1882 it was 191 per million.

This is part of the price which the toiling masses of Germany are paying for the gold standard experiment, which, without their consent their imperial government foisted upon them.

Bismarck made the mistake that many able men in all countries of the western world have made and continue to make, namely, that of attributing the commanding position of Great Britain in the commercial and industrial world to her adoption of the gold standard. Bismarck mistook for cause and effect what was a mere coincidence, the result of exceptional conditions, as did those of our legislators in 1873, who happened to know anything whatever of the nature of the act demonetizing silver. The belief of some of the most far-sighted statesmen of Great Britain has been that she secured her position, not by reason of the gold standard, but in spite of it.

In a speech delivered at Glasgow, in November, 1873, after the alteration by Germany in her monetary standard, Mr. Disraeli said:

And again in March, 1879, when the effects of the decreasing volume of money were making themselves more and more felt, Mr. Disraeli, then Lord Beaconsfield, said:

In reaching their conclusions, Bismarck and others ignored the fundamental principle that a gold supply that might be sufficient for one country with a gold standard, and might even result in a measure of prosperity to that country, would be wholly insufficient if other countries should adopt the same standard and should enter upon a keen competition and rivalry for the acquisition of gold.

The adoption of that standard by Germany and France was therefore not only destructive of their own prosperity, but was a stunning blow at the prosperity of England and all other gold-using countries. In taking England for his model, Bismarck had not the condition of the toiling masses before his mind, but the glamour of prosperity which surrounded the creditor-barons.

The unprejudiced observer can not fail to perceive that the $370,000,000 coined under the Limited Coinage Act of the United States of 1878, supplementing the gold stock of the western world, postponed great industrial and financial crises. But the elements of these crises are gathering, and, unless relief be soon forthcoming, will burst upon the world with crushing severity.

DEMONETIZATION IN THE UNITED STATES.

If we are surprised that the sordid selfishness of the privileged classes of Europe should have induced them to perpetrate so gross an act of injustice, we are reminded that the legislation of monarchical countries has usually been controlled in the interest of the privileged classes. But what shall be said in defense of the demonetization of silver by the United States? No such stupendous act of folly and injustice was ever before perpetrated by the representatives of a free people.

Our position differed materially from that of Great Britain. This was not a creditor nation. Our people did not, and do not, own thousands of millions of dollars of foreign bonds, on which to receive semi-annual interest in a constantly appreciating money, which would have to be paid from the current earnings of foreign labor. Instead, therefore, of our demonetization unjustly enriching our creditor-classes at the expense of foreigners, it enabled the creditors at home here to rob and despoil the debtors among their own countrymen. Instead of despoiling the Canadian, the Australian, the East Indian, the Egyptian, or the Turk, the spoliation arranged for by our adoption of the gold standard was a spoliation of the debtors in our own communities. In so far, however, as our debt was held abroad, it provided for a spoliation of our citizens by the foreign bondholders also. And as nearly all our public debt was so held, we had presented to us in 1873 the extraordinary spectacle of representatives, sent here to enact laws for the welfare and advancement of our own people, devoting all their energies, whether aware of it or not, to the upbuilding of the fortunes of the moneyed aristocracies of other countries, at the expense of the producers of the United States.

CONDITION OF THE COUNTRY AT THE TIME.

Consider for a moment the condition of this country at the time when this amazing piece of legislation was enacted.

The Republic was but just recovering from an exhausting war, which loaded it with a national debt approaching $3,000,000,000. There were also State, county, city, and town debts aggregating many more thousands of millions, with railroad and other corporate bonds and debts aggregating yet other thousands of millions and private debts of indefinite and unascertainable amount, represented largely by mortgages on real estate. This constituted an aggregate whose burden might naturally be presumed to be sufficient to tax all the resources of the people. Although some portion of those debts has been liquidated and the national bonds have been refunded at lower rates of interest, yet we all know that in this age all municipal and corporate debts, if not national debts, are practically perpetual. No sooner is one form of bond liquidated than another takes its place; no sooner is one public improvement completed than another is begun.

At the time silver was demonetized it might well have been supposed that a sufficiently large unearned increment had already been realized by the foreign and domestic holders of United States bonds. The greater portion of the debt of the Government was, when incurred, made payable simply in "lawful money"—the interest alone being payable in coin. Yet in March, 1869, the bond-holders secured the passage of an act of Congress, entitled "An act to strengthen the public credit," containing a pledge to pay in coin or its equivalent not merely the interest, but the principal of all national obligations not specially provided to be paid otherwise.

THE COURSE OF THE CREDITORS.

And again, when in 1870 Congress was about to provide for a refunding of the public debt, these clamorous creditors, not satisfied with having got the bonds at rates much below their face value, and not satisfied with the pledge to pay in coin—a pledge made long after the contract was made and the debt incurred—insisted that not only should the new bonds be payable in coin, but in order to guard against any possible interpretation which might work to their detriment they did what has rarely been done in the history of monetary legislation, insisted that even the very standard of that coin should be fixed and nominated in the bond. They were willing to take no chances. They were not willing to place confidence in the sense of equity and fair dealing of the people of the United States. They held before Congress the covert threat that if the new issue of bonds did not provide for payment in "coin," instead of "lawful money," and did not prescribe the precise standard of coin in which they were to be payable, it would be difficult if not impossible to place the bonds on the market.

So, by the refunding act of July 14, 1870, Congress provided for the payment in "coin of the present standard value," that is to say, in either gold dollars of 25.8 grains of gold, nine-tenths fine, or in silver dollars of 412½ grains of silver, nine-tenths fine, at the option of the United States. But even this extreme advantage to the creditors over payment in "lawful money" of the United States, in which the bonds were bought, and in which they were legally payable, was insufficient. All but the most ingenious would imagine that having thus provided for payment in coin then bearing a considerable premium over the current money of the Republic, and having the very standard of that coin fixed in the act, the highest point of vantage had been reached. One device, however, and only one, remained by which the money of the payment could be still further increased in value, and this device did not escape the watchful eye or cunning hand of the public creditors.

They clearly saw that if by legislative enactment they could secure the rejection of one of the money-metals they would succeed in enormously increasing the value of the metal retained. This they accomplished by the demonetization of silver, and thus by striking down one-half the automatic money of the world and devolving the money function exclusively on the other half, added thousands of millions of dollars to the burden of the debt.

THE PRETENSE TO "STRENGTHEN THE PUBLIC CREDIT."

It will be observed that this anxiety to strengthen the public credit was evinced by the bondholders after and not before the bonds were in their possession. No anxiety for the public credit was manifested by them at a time when the Government might be able to reap advantage from it. The Government having parted with the bonds at a heavy discount, their selling price in the market became a matter of no direct pecuniary importance to the people of the United States.

The "strengthening of the public credit" that was to be effected by the act of March 16, 1869, consisted of a rise in the price of the bonds for the benefit of the holder, at a time when they were no longer the property of the Government but of private individuals. The real effect of the act, therefore, was not in any way to benefit the Government but greatly to enrich, by an increment unearned and unbargained for, a few men who had already been greatly enriched by their dealings with the United States. The title of the act should have read "An act to strengthen the bank account and credit of the holders of United States bonds."

The excuse and apology for the act was that by its passage the refunding process then contemplated, and afterward provided for by the refunding act of 1870 might be rendered more certain of success; but if any advantage accrued from that cause, it was lost, and much more with it, by the increase which the act of 1869 effected in the burden of the bonded obligation, by pledging the nation to a payment in a medium much more valuable than the medium provided for in the contract. And, again, in 1873 when all the bonds provided for by the refunding act of 1870 had been sold and had passed out of the hands of the Government, another act was passed, intended by the money-lenders again to strengthen the public credit, and again to the disadvantage of the people and to the exclusive and enormous advantage of the bondholders. It bore the innocent title of "An act revising and amending the laws relative to the mints, assay offices, and coinage of the United States." This act, bearing on its face no suggestion of any change more serious than that of regulating the petty details of mint management, has proved to be an act of momentous consequence to the people of this country. This is the act that demonetized the silver dollar, which it did by merely omitting that coin from the enumeration of the coins of the United States.

DEMONETIZATION WHOLLY UNJUSTIFIABLE.

Among all the explanations that have been made to account for that demonetization by a Congress of the United States, I have never heard any reason advanced which constituted a justification for it. To my mind, in view of all the circumstances—in the face of the herculean difficulties by which the nation was surrounded, in the face of the sacrifices which our citizens had made to preserve the Republic, and in the face of all that had already been done by an over-generous people, proud of their national strength, and jealous of their national honor, to satisfy the rapacious demands of the money-lenders—in view, I say, of all these facts, the demonetization of silver by the United States must be regarded as one of those historic blunders that are worse than crimes. It was the child of Ignorance and Avarice, and is already the prolific parent of enforced idleness, poverty, and misery.

It is to undo as far as possible the effects of the blunder of 1873 that new legislation is now imperatively demanded by the people. While the past can not be recalled, the present is ours, and the pressing duty of to-day is to provide for the future. The demand comes from all sections of the country that a remedy for the depressed industrial conditions caused by the legislation of 1873, be applied at the earliest moment. And what better remedy could be applied than absolutely to reverse that legislation and to put the monetary position of this country back to exactly where it was when that wrong was committed?

Some twelve years ago an attempt was made to apply a remedy, but the attempt was only partially successful. Instead of resulting in free coinage, it resulted in the passage of the bill which authorized the coinage of not less than two nor more than four million dollars' worth of silver per month. On that occasion a financial debate of great interest and importance was had in this Chamber and in the other House of Congress. The proposition to remonetize silver or to increase the silver coinage was vigorously opposed, but the arguments then presented by the advocates of remonetization never have been, and never can be, refuted.

In fact, but rarely has there been any attempt made to answer those arguments. Puerile attempts at wit, and diatribes of abuse are all that the silver men have heard in sixteen years in answer to the contentions they have made in favor of the remonetization of silver.

EDUCATIONAL EFFECT OF DISCUSSION.

With that debate, Mr. President, long pending and eagerly maintained on both sides, there began in this country an educational movement among the masses, that is destined to have far-reaching consequence. The public attention was fastened, as it had never been fastened before, on the subject of money, and on the forces which govern its value, and up to this time that attention has never flagged. As a result we find the great body of our people to-day—the farmers and artisans of the country—after years of reflection and discussion in their lyceums and trade organizations, adopting to a large extent the views then presented by the advocates of an increased money volume—views which at the time were contemptuously derided by the advocates of contraction and of gold.

The cry for relief appropriately now comes from the farmers, the artisans, and the laboring classes, as well as from the young, the enterprising, the thoughtful, of all classes, who have not inherited wealth, but are hewing out for themselves the rugged path to success. It is they who have had to bear the exactions of the system which has prevailed. It is from the proceeds of their labor that the extortions have been paid. If objection be made that the character of relief proposed is not indorsed in financial circles, or by the literary guild or professional political economists that surround them, the sufficient reply is that the world can not wait for the correction of abuses by those who are profiting by them. In the nature of things, all movements for reform must be initiated by those who can not lose by the installation of justice.

But there are others besides the laboring masses who are working in the cause of humanity. There are noble, unselfish, and altruistic men in all the countries of civilization, who see the wrong and are indefatigable in their efforts to set it right.

I will read a cable dispatch recently addressed to me by Mr. Henry H. Gibbs, formerly governor of the Bank of England, and now president of the Bimetallic League of Great Britain:

Mr. Moreton Frewen, of London, an able writer on economic subjects, whose recent work on the "The Economic Crisis" I commend to the careful perusal of Senators, says:

UNFULFILLED PROPHECIES.

During the debate on the limited coinage bill, not content with abuse of the advocates of the measure; with flimsy criticism of it and specious arguments against it, its opponents in and out of Congress indulged in diverse prophecies and predictions. They pictured forth the lamentable results that would follow its passage, and the direful consequences that would ensue from an increase of the circulating medium of the country. Among the results confidently predicted were the following: that the silver would not circulate at all, and again that it would circulate to the exclusion of gold, which metal, we were informed, would flow out of this country with a velocity and in a volume theretofore unknown; that we should be unable to redeem our paper money in gold; that we should be precipitated into a silver vortex; that an inflation of the currency would follow, which would ruinously raise prices of all commodities and that this inflation would result in an unprecedented contraction. We were charged with forcing upon the public creditors a dollar worth only ninety cents. We were warned that the passage of the bill would indefinitely postpone the refunding of the public debt, and would lower the price and impair the value of our national securities. It was charged that we were setting on foot a new and irrepressible conflict between two great sections of the country—the East and the West. We were charged with uttering a debased coin; with lowering the standard of American credit; with tarnishing the integrity and honor of our country before foreign nations, and with unprecedented moral turpitude in setting an example of flagrant and shameless national dishonesty.

The men of the far West, and of the Pacific slope especially, were the particular targets of this abuse. They were denounced by some as "lunatics," by others as dangerous and unworthy demagogues, because, as was charged, their constituents, if not themselves, were directly interested in the restoration of the ancient right of silver to full recognition as one of the money metals. For their benefit resort was had to every epithet which the English language afforded. In holding them up to public scorn the rich and varied vocabulary of odium and opprobrium was exhausted.

These prophecies of disaster were united in by the professors of political economy in all the Eastern colleges, by the President of the United States, by the Secretary of the Treasury, by the leading American newspapers, by the principal public men and journals of Great Britain, if not of all Europe; and, of course, by all bankers, money-lenders, and professional financiers the world over.

And now, Mr. President, how many of all those alarming prognostications by all these distinguished prophets have been fulfilled? Not one! On the contrary, it is not too much to say that the public credit of the United States is to-day the highest in the world. It does not stand merely in line with that of other first-rate powers; it stands at the head. Our gold, silver, and paper money stand at a parity with each other. If a full measure of relief was not realized by the passage of that bill it is because the coinage of $4,000,000 a month was left optional with the Secretary of the Treasury, instead of being made mandatory on him.

But it is hardly necessary to assert that the predicted inflation of prices has not been observed as a consequence of the coinage of $2,000,000 a month. While the issuance of that amount has not, with our rapidly increasing population and wealth, been sufficient to arrest the downward tendency of prices, it has undoubtedly prevented them from falling much lower. Without that coinage, we should have had industrial depression, chronic and somber, with consequences of untold disaster.

But the result which gave most apprehension to those who advocated the gold standard, the evil which they regarded as on the whole the most threatening and direful of all the evils that were to result from even so small an increase in the money volume as that bill provided for, was the outflow of gold. They ridiculously under-estimated the tremendous money-absorbing power of this great country. And as if to emphasize to all the world the complete absurdity of their alleged fears—this apprehension has been conspicuously and notoriously set at naught by the constant inflow of gold. On the 30th of June, 1878, the amount of gold coin and bullion in the Treasury and in monetary circulation in this country is officially reported to have been $213,199,977, and this amount is probably much over-estimated. On November 1, 1889, we had more than three times as much—the amount of gold in circulation and in the Treasury being reported as $689,000,000.

"Experience," says Dr. Johnson, "is the great test of truth, and is perpetually contradicting the theories of men," and the last experience, Mr. President, is the best.

If the professors of political economy, the Eastern newspaper editors, and the professional financiers were then so seriously mistaken ought they not to be a little modest now in making predictions, especially in renewing predictions that have been already discredited? They can not point to a single instance in which their prophesy has not been falsified by the event. So humiliating a failure on the part of the professors, in a realm of which they boastfully claimed to be masters, so complete an overthrow of these "experts" by men who were ridiculed and derided as rural financiers and crazy theorists, ought to put the advocates of the gold standard on their guard against a like defeat on this occasion. They are pressed for reasons to account for the utter miscarriage of their prophecies. They are left without a shadow of consolation except that the coinage of $2,000,000 worth of silver bullion each month has not succeeded in placing silver at a par with gold. They affect to believe that the advocates of silver in 1878 expected that that metal, under the very limited demand of $2,000,000 a month, would be brought to a level with gold, which, owing to the demonetization of silver, had risen abnormally and ruinously in value.

No such belief was ever entertained or expressed. On the contrary it was repeatedly asserted by the advocates of silver that so long as the entire yield of gold from all the mines of the world (in 1878, $119,000,000) was invested with the full money function and had free access to all mints to be transmuted into coin, it could not be expected that the conferring of the legal-tender function upon a sum so comparatively trifling as one-fourth the yield of silver (the yield in 1878 being $99,000,000) would have the effect of placing it on a level with gold.

It is, however, a significant fact that every silver dollar that has been coined under that act is at a parity with gold, and will to-day buy as much of all the objects of human desire as will the gold dollar. Nay, more, silver bullion—disparaged and discredited as it is by being shorn of the money function, and denied access to the mints, instead of decreasing in purchasing power, has maintained so steady a relation to commodities that 412½ grains of uncoined silver will exchange for as much to-day as would the coined dollar, whether of silver or gold, in 1873, when the full money function attached equally to both metals. If this be true—and I shall presently demonstrate it beyond refutation—what an utter perversion of terms it is to say that silver has fallen in value!

WILL REMONETIZATION PLACE US ALONGSIDE INDIA.

We are solemnly warned that the full remonetization of silver in the United States would place us alongside India and the other barbarous countries of the world. This brilliant piece of reasoning is advanced with great confidence, and is intended to be conclusive of the argument against silver. But, Mr. President, India is no more barbarous now than it was in 1873—before our silver dollar was demonetized. India is no more barbarous now than it was in 1857, when Germany demonetized gold and placed herself "alongside" India. Neither is Germany any more civilized now than then. We did not at that time hear any complaint, either in the United States or Europe, that the use of silver as money placed any one nation more than any other in dangerous affiliation with the civilization of India. We have never heard it charged against France that its civilization was brought any nearer that of India by the immense quantity of silver money in France. Neither did we hear it charged against the United States up to 1873 that we were "alongside," or dangerously close to the barbarous nations by our use of silver as money.

Up to 1834 we had no metallic money other than silver in our circulation, and up to 1850 we had much more silver in circulation than gold. Were we "alongside" India then? Where were the wise and patriotic men of our country at those periods? History fails to record any protest on their part that we were placing ourselves "alongside" India or any other of the barbarous nations of the world by our use of silver and our recognition of its full money power. All the nations of the earth used silver and accorded it full recognition as money equally with gold up to 1819. Was all Christendom at that time "alongside" India? When, in that year, Great Britain sundered the silver link that from time immemorial had kept her "alongside" India and the other barbarous nations and, for selfish reasons of her own, arising from her position as a creditor of all other nations, decided to recognize gold only as money, was any evidence afforded of a sudden advance in the civilization of Great Britain? Was the emergence of that nation from the benumbing companionship of India and the other barbaric countries into the glittering and refulgent light of the gold dispensation signalized, as would be expected, by a corresponding improvement in the condition of the people?

On the contrary, the history of the time informs us that as a consequence of the passage of the bill by Parliament in 1819, compelling payments in gold, prices rapidly fell, cotton in particular sinking in the short space of three months to one-half its former level. Within six months all prices had fallen one-half, and showed no signs of improvement for the next three years. By reason of the contraction of the currency the industry of the nation was congealed, as is a flowing stream by the severity of an arctic winter. Alarm became universal; confidence and activity ceased. Bankruptcies increased in 1819 more than 50 per cent. over the number of the previous year. Meetings were held throughout England in which the people called on the government to devise some means of redressing the situation. So universal was the distress that the owners of land in England, who in 1819 numbered 160,000 were in seven years, by forced sales and foreclosure of mortgages on the smaller farms, reduced to 30,000, and one in every seven of the population lived on organized charity. All this was but a part of the price which the people of England paid for a policy imposed on them by the creditor classes among their own number. The condition of industry and disorganization of labor led to frequent and serious conflicts between the people and the military. They also led to commercial crises without number, and England, by demonetizing silver and thus ceasing to be "alongside" India, became the seat of panics, as Egypt had long been of the plague and India of the cholera.

As a contrast to this I will merely cite the change in the condition of India within the past seventeen years. When the Western world discarded silver as money and, as a consequence, India received a larger supply of it than ever before, that barbarous nation, as is universally admitted, made progress by leaps and bounds. No country on earth has in the same time made such advances in material prosperity and in all the elements that conduce to the comfort and happiness of a people. Notwithstanding the alleged debasement of silver, no sooner had its increased inflow into India begun than the industries of a vast continent were established and set in motion, and a substantial part of the activity and prosperity that were wont to pervade some of the industries of the United States has, by that demonetization, been transferred to fields of wheat, and fields and factories of cotton 10,000 miles distant.

What really placed us alongside such barbarous countries as India was the demonetization of silver. It was by that demonetization that the people of Europe were enabled, with gold, to buy silver at 30 per cent. discount, which, when shipped to India and coined into rupees, would buy as much wheat as could ever have been bought with that coin. There has been no decrease whatever in the purchasing power of the rupee in India. This was equivalent to buying wheat at 30 per cent. below the price theretofore paid for it, and thus the farmers of the United States were by demonetization placed "alongside" the barbarous people of India. Their wheat had to compete in the European markets with the wheat of India, and it is this competition that placed them "alongside" India. The farmer of this country, therefore, by demonetization of silver, was compelled to compete with under-paid and half-starved ryots. And so it was that our cotton planters, by the demonetization of silver, were placed alongside the barbarous people of India. It is this degrading competition that places a highly civilized people alongside a barbarous one.

The advocates of the single gold standard deem even silver money much better money than greenbacks. Does it then follow that when greenbacks were our only money—good enough money to carry the nation through the greatest war in all history—we were "alongside" or underneath the barbarous nations of the world? It is not the form, or the material of a nation's money that fixes its status relatively to other nations. That is accomplished by the vitality, the energy, the intellectuality and effective force of its people. The United States can never be placed "alongside" any barbarous nation, except by compelling our people to compete with barbarous peoples—compelling them to sell the products of American labor at prices regulated by the cost of labor and manner of living in barbarous countries. As well might it be said that we are alongside the barbarous people of India because we continue to produce wheat and cotton.

The distinguishing feature of all barbarous nations is the squalor of their working classes. The reward of their hard toil is barely enough to maintain animal existence. A civilized people are placed alongside a barbarous one when, in their means of livelihood, the foundation of their civilization, they are made to compete with the barbarians. That was the result accomplished for the farmers and planters of the United States when silver was demonetized.

CREDITORS AND DEBTORS.—A COMPARISON OF MOTIVES.

All movements for the increase of the monetary circulation are ascribed by the money-lenders and creditor classes to the unworthy desire on the part of the debtors to escape their just obligations. But if motives are to be brought in question, the rule should work both ways. No note is taken of the motive of the creditor classes in securing a contraction of the circulation. Whatever the apparent purpose of contraction, and however specious the arguments advanced in its justification, the real object has always been to increase the purchasing power of money. In all countries, and throughout all time, it is the cupidity of the creditor classes and annuitants, and their desire to increase the value of the money unit that has brought about a shrinkage in the money volume. Unlike the great masses of the people, who were ignorant of the effects to be naturally expected from such a shrinkage, the annuitants and moneyed men very well understood that the value of every pound or dollar depended on the number of pounds or dollars that were in circulation; the larger the total number out, the smaller the purchasing power of each; the smaller the total number out, the greater the purchasing power of each.

Loaners of capital are not usually those who entertain further hope of personal achievement. When men realize fortunes it is rarely that they conserve the faculty of initiative; they find no special delight in novelty; they look so carefully to security in the use of money that the spirit of adventure is restrained. The realization of a fortune is usually the labor of a life-time, and few men who reach the goal care to retrace their steps to enter again upon a struggle that demands all the strength, the momentum, and the intrepidity of youth. Men of assured incomes therefore are disposed to take their ease, and society must look, for its material progress and development, to those who have a career to make, with the ambition and the power to make it.

It is a remarkable circumstance, Mr. President, that throughout the entire range of economic discussion in gold-standard circles, it seems to be taken for granted that a change in the value of the money unit is a matter of no significance, and imports no mischief to society, so long as the change is in one direction. Who has ever heard from an Eastern journal any complaint against a contraction of our money volume; any admonition that in a shrinking volume of money lurk evils of the utmost magnitude? On the other hand we have been treated to lengthy homilies on the evils of "inflation," whenever the slightest prospect presented itself of a decrease in the value of money—not with the view of giving the debtor an advantage over the lender of money, but of preventing the unconscionable injustice of a further increasing value in the dollars which the debtor contracted to pay. Loud and resounding protests have been entered against the "dishonesty" of making payments in "depreciated dollars." The debtors are characterized as dishonest for desiring to keep money at a steady and unwavering value. If that object could be secured, it would undoubtedly be to the interest of the debtor, and could not possibly work any injustice to the creditor. It would simply assure to both debtor and creditor the exact measure for which they bargained. It would enable the debtor to pay his debt with exactly the amount of sacrifice to which, on the making of the debt, he undertook to submit, in order to pay it.

WHO ARE THE DEBTORS?

In all discussions of the subject the creditors attempt to brush aside the equities involved by sneering at the debtors. But, Mr. President, debt is the distinguishing characteristic of modern society. It is through debt that the marvelous developments of nineteenth century civilization have been effected. Who are the debtors in this country? Who are the borrowers of money? The men of enterprise, of energy, of skill, the men of industry, of foresight, of calculation, of daring. In the ranks of the debtors will be found a large preponderance of the constructive energy of every country. The debtors are the upbuilders of the national wealth and prosperity; they are the men of initiative, the men who conceive plans and set on foot enterprises. They are those who by borrowing money enrich the community. They are the dynamic force among the people. They are the busy, restless, moving throng whom you find in all walks of life in this country—the active, the vigorous, the strong, the undaunted.

These men are sustained in their efforts by the hope and belief that their labors will be crowned with success. Destroy that hope and you take away from society the most powerful of all the incentives to material development; you place in the pathway of progress an obstacle which it is impossible to surmount.

The men of whom I have spoken are undoubtedly the first who are likely to be affected by a shrinkage in the volume of money.

The highest prosperity of a nation is attained only when all its people are employed in avocations suited to their individual aptitudes, and when a just money system insures an equitable distribution of the products of their industry. With our present complex civilization, in order that men may have constant employment, it is indispensable that work be planned and undertakings projected years in advance. Without an intelligent forecast of enterprises large numbers of workmen must periodically be relegated to idleness. Enterprises that take years to complete must be contracted for in advance, and payments provided for.

A constant but unperceived rise in the value of the dollar with which those payments must be made, baffles all plans, thwarts all calculation, and destroys all equities between debtor and creditor. If we can not intelligently regulate our money volume so as to maintain unchanging the value of the money unit, if we can not preserve our people from the blighting effects which an increase in the measuring power of the money unit entails upon all industry, to what purpose is our boasted civilization?

By the increase of that measuring power all hopes are disappointed, all purposes baffled, all efforts thwarted, all calculations defied. This subtle enlargement in the measuring power of the unit of money (the dollar) affects every class of the working community. Like a poisonous drug in the human body, it permeates every vein, every artery, every fiber and filament of the industrial structure. The debtor is fighting for his life against an enemy he does not see, against an influence he does not understand. For, while his calculations were well and intelligently made, and the amount of his debts and the terms of his contracts remain the same, the weight of all his obligations has been increased by an insidious increase in the value of the money unit.

EFFECTS OF A SHRINKING VOLUME OF MONEY.

As to the benumbing consequences following a shrinkage in the volume of money, the testimony of history is briefly reviewed in the report of the Monetary Commission to which I have already referred, and from which I read the following: