My Own Opinion.

Upon reflection I took the same view of it that Prof. Wright did, and on my return said to the crowd assembled at the New Haven depot:

Do not criticise the Yale boys too harshly. I am not inclined to criticise them as severely as some others have. Having been a college boy myself, I attribute their interruption more to youthful exuberance than to any intention to interfere with free speech. I shall always be glad to return to New England when circumstances permit, and am certain that whatever may be my subject, I shall find persons here who are willing to listen, even if they do not agree.

In the evening a meeting was held in the Capitol grounds at Hartford, and later I addressed a crowd in front of the hotel. The following is an extract from the first speech:

Hartford Speech.

I am glad to talk to the people of the capital city of Connecticut. I know that in coming here I come to meet many who are not in sympathy with the cause which I represent, and to meet some who are too intolerant even to consider the merits of the cause. Error always shuns the light, and those who are enjoying that which is wrong are never willing that the people shall hear the right.

Your financiers sometimes assume that they, and they only, understand a question like the money question. I want to read to you what Senator Fessenden once said about the knowledge of financiers upon the money question. You will find the quotation in a speech made by him at a time when the legal tender laws were being discussed.

Nobody knows much upon the question of finance, not even those who are most familiar with it; for, sir, I declare today that, in the whole number of learned financial men that I have consulted, I never have found any two of them who agree, and therefore it is hardly worth while for us to plead any very remarkable degree of ignorance when nobody is competent to instruct us; and yet such is the fact. I can state to you, Mr. President, that on one day I was advised very strongly by a leading financial man at all events to oppose this legal tender clause. He exclaimed against it, with all the bitterness in the world. On the very same day I received a note from a friend of his, telling me that we could not get along without it. I showed it to him, and he expressed his utter surprise. He went home, and next day telegraphed to me that he had changed his mind and now thought it was absolutely necessary; and his friend who wrote me wrote again that he had changed his-and there were two of the most eminent financial men of the country.

There you have the testimony, not of a Western man, but of an Eastern Senator. I call your attention to this quotation because your financiers speak with all the assurance of men who receive their knowledge direct from some higher source. The fact is, that the Western farmer who has felt the pinch of the gold standard has a clearer understanding of what it means than the man down here who has not suffered from the system.

Never in the history of the world has reform come to mankind from those who derive a benefit from the vicious system to be reformed. Those who are not suffering do not study the conditions, nor do they seek a remedy.

Your city is noted for its great insurance companies, and the insurance companies are taking an active part in the battle to continue the gold standard. Is it not worth while for these companies to consider the interests of the rest of the people? The presidents of these companies are more concerned about their own salaries than they are in protecting the policy holders from the effects of free coinage.

Another thing: The people know that the insurance companies have a greater objection to the Chicago platform than is found to free coinage. That platform declares in favor of an income tax, and these insurance companies claim the protection of the Government, while they are unwilling to pay taxes to support the Government which protects them. They secure large incomes; they enjoy prosperity; they go into United States courts and there seek protection, and then they want to place upon less fortunate people all the burdens of government. If the presidents of these insurance companies would assume the responsibilities which belong to them, and consent to pay their just share of the taxes of the Federal Government, they would be more respected by the people generally.

Some of our opponents pretend to be afraid that the election of the Chicago ticket will interfere with property rights. I would not take from those who have a single dollar of their possessions; I would not take or destroy one iota of happiness which they enjoy, but I believe that the safety of our Government requires the setting of limits to greed and the putting of a check upon avarice, so that those who have will not monopolize all the avenues of industry and shut out of employment those who desire to have.

Of all the instrumentalities which have been conceived by the mind of man for transferring the bread which one man earns to another man who does not earn it, I believe the gold standard is the greatest. The gold standard, by its silent process of taking from the value of property and adding to the value of dollars, is making the rich richer and the poor poorer. And when the poor complain, those who are benefited by the system turn upon them, call them a mob, dispute their intelligence, and even question their right to participate in the government of the country.

Leaving Hartford early in the morning, a short ride brought us to Springfield, Mass., where the first meeting of the day was held. The following is an extract from the speech delivered in the public park:

Springfield Speech.

Before entering upon a discussion of the paramount issue of this campaign, I desire in this city to pay a tribute to independent journalism. I have always respected an honest, earnest and able opponent. I have never criticised the right of any one to speak his sentiments and present his ideas as clearly, as forcibly and as eloquently as he can. I believe with Jefferson that error is harmless where reason is left free to combat it-and if any man has an idea, I am willing for him to launch that idea and trust to the merits of that idea to make its way into the mind and into the hearts of men. I respect the Springfield Republican for the high plane upon which it discusses political questions. I respect it for the tolerance which it shows to political opponents,

and, without censuring those who substitute abuse for argument, I can commend those who use argument instead of abuse.

I can commend also to every citizen the words of that distinguished editor who was the founder of this paper. I am told that he is the author of the expression that a man who is not willing to die for a cause in which he believes is not worthy to live.

It is the willingness of the people to stake their all upon the correctness of their convictions that has enabled truth to spread from person to person, until it at last overcomes all opposition. And in this campaign we have as good an illustration as was ever given of depth of conviction and intensity of earnestness in the presentation of a cause. I challenge you to find in all the political contests through which this country has passed a single contest which has aroused more earnestness than this contest through which we are now passing. I challenge you to find among all the hosts who have defended a cause more earnest men than are found today among the advocates of the right of this Government to legislate for itself, without regard to other nations. It will not do to say that there is no cause for such feeling as is manifested now. If you read the dispatch from London which appeared in yesterday morning's paper you will find that a great meeting of agriculturists was held at Buda Pesth, and in speaking of that meeting the dispatch said that practically all of those representing agricultural societies were in favor of the restoration of bimetallism.

My friends, our opponents sometimes tell us that this movement in favor of free coinage is started by the mine owners and kept up by the mine owners. I want them to understand that they cannot explain this great uprising of the people on the theory that it is instigated by men who own bullion and want to sell it at a higher price. This uprising comes from the masses of the people, who do not produce bullion, but they produce property, and they realize that the gold standard has been driving value out of the property which they produce.

The opposition may well afford to pause in their ridicule of the advocates of free coinage and in their denunciation of them as lawless characters, to find out whether there is a well-founded reason for this advocacy of bimetallism among the farmers of the United States, of England, of Germany, of France, and of every other nation which has been cursed by the gold standard.

My friends, I assert here, and I challenge any gold paper to dispute it, that a financial policy which is injurious to the agricultural classes has nothing to commend it to the government of any nation.

The gold standard has never commended itself to the agricultural classes of any country which has ever had it. What will you say, then? Will you say that these farmers have no right to have their interests respected? No, you dare not say that, because, my friends, they must first produce wealth before there is wealth to be distributed. What will you say, then? Will you say that, having the right to have their interests respected, they have not the intelligence to know what is best for them? No, you dare not say that, because you know that in public life and in business life the best brains that you have come from the farms of this country.

What answer will you make to them? When they ask for bread, will you

give them a stone? When they ask for fish, will you bestow serpents upon them? That has been the policy of the financiers of this country, and, assuming their own unselfishness, they have been attempting to force their ideas upon others, while others have fallen down beneath the weight of these ideas and the financiers themselves have risen to prosperity on the prostrate forms of the fallen.

No person can accuse me of attempting to deny to the financiers or even to the money changers the right to their opinions, the right to their votes, or the right to every legitimate influence. What I deny to them is the right to think for anybody but themselves, the right to act for anybody but themselves, the right to put themselves above other people and go through the world crying "I am holier than thou; I am holier than thou."

My friends, let me give you one way by which you can determine the sincerity of men. It is not a new rule. It is as old as the law of evidence. It applies to all walks of life, to all conditions and to all subjects. The man who believes he is right tells you what he believes, and why he believes it. The man who does not believe that he is right is the man who has filled the dictionary with ambiguous terms and who fills his speech with words of double meaning.

The man who talks about "sound money" and then refuses to tell you what "sound money" means, can only get a certificate of honesty from himself. If the advocates of "sound money" believed that their money was good they would tell you that by "sound money" they meant a gold standard. I asked a man why it was that he was opposed to using the word "gold" in the platform.

"Well," he said, "we have found an unreasonable prejudice against the word gold, and, therefore, it is to avoid that prejudice that we use the phrase sound money."

My friends, the people have no prejudice against gold, but they have a prejudice against a system that is based upon gold and does not furnish the gold when people want it.

There is one advantage in being a bimetallist. You can like gold and silver both, while a gold standard man does not dare to like silver, and he does not get much gold to like.

A man told me that out of nearly $1,000,000 collected in taxes at Hartford, Conn., less than $100 was collected in gold. Our opponents tell us they want sound money, but they want a financial system built upon an invisible foundation. Do you call that soundness, my friends? If you do, you must write a new meaning for soundness and have soundness defined as that which is dangerous.

Our opponents talk about honest money, and yet, my friends, they never touch upon the purchasing power of a dollar in defining what is an honest dollar. They tell us that they want good money. My friends, there are two things that we need in money. Money must have quantity as well as quality. We must have money which we can get hold of. If money is so good that you can pray for it and long for it, but can never see it except when you have the privilege of gazing through some grated door and looking at somebody else's pile, then it is too good for the masses of the people.

Money ought not to be built on the balloon plan. Balloons are built to

go up, and the higher they go the better they are as balloons; but if dollars are built on that plan, the higher they go the greater is the misery that they bring to mankind.

Our opponents want a balloon dollar. Our opponents want a dollar that gets higher and higher all the time. If we are going to have a gold standard, if we are going to have a dollar whose appetite is never satisfied, a gold dollar which insists upon eating more of the products of toil every year, we ought to change the dies at the mint and so stamp that dollar that people will understand it. Let us take off the emblems that have adorned it from the beginning and put on one side the picture of the horse leech, and under the picture let it be written, as in Proverbs, "Give, Give, Give;" and on the other side of the gold dollar let us put the picture of an open grave, and above it let us write, as in Proverbs, "It sayeth not, it is enough."

My friends, that is the sort of dollar that the gold standard has given us. That is the sort of dollar that the gold standard will continue to give us. If oats get down to ten cents a bushel it means that $1 will buy ten bushels of oats, and if that dollar is not good enough you can send its value up until $1 will buy twenty bushels of oats, and if the farmer is getting too much money for his oats, you can still send it up higher so that it will take 100 bushels of oats to buy a dollar. You can make the dollar as dear as you want to, and the dearer you make it the worse it is for everybody except the owners of fixed investments and the men who sell bonds to the Government after having driven the Government into the position where it wants to buy the bonds.

When they talk of a gold standard I always think of what Lincoln said when a man once asked him how he liked a certain speech. He replied:

"Anybody who would like that sort of a speech would be very much pleased with it." I find that the people who like the gold standard are very much pleased with it, but I am glad to know that the number of people who like the gold standard is growing less every day, even in New England.

Truth compels me to admit that all of the gold papers were not as courteous in their criticisms as the Republican—for instance, the Louisville Courier-Journal, after the meeting at that place:

Louisville Courier-Journal Editorial.

Mr. William J. Bryan has come to Kentucky, and Kentuckians have, taken his measure. He is a boy orator. He is a dishonest dodger. He is a daring adventurer. He is a political fakir. He is not of the material of which the people of the United States have ever made a President, nor is he even of the material of which any party has ever before made a candidate.

The New York Tribune, after the election, said editorially:

New York Tribune Editorial.

The thing was conceived in iniquity and was brought forth in sin. It had its origin in a malicious conspiracy against the honor and integrity of the na