production and dole out daily bread to all the rest on such terms as the few may prescribe. I believe that this nation is the hope of the world. I believe that the Declaration of Independence was the grandest document ever penned by human hands. The truths of that declaration are condensed into four great propositions: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed with inalienable rights; that governments are instituted among men to preserve those rights, and that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. Such a government is impossible under an industrial aristocracy. Place the food and clothing, all that we eat and wear and use, in the hands of a few people, and instead of being a government of the people it will be a government of the syndicates, by the syndicates, and for the syndicates. Establish such a government, and the people will soon be powerless to secure a legislative remedy for any abuse. Establish such a system, and on the night before election the employes will be notified not to come back on the day after election unless the trusts' candidate is successful. Establish such a government, and instead of giving the right of suffrage to the people, you will virtually give the right of suffrage to the heads of monopolies, with each man empowered to vote as many times as he has employes. I am not willing to place the laboring men of this country absolutely at the mercy of the heads of monopolies. I am not willing to place the men who produce the raw material absolutely in the hands of the monopolies, because when you control the price that a man is to receive for what he produces you control the price that he is to receive for his labor in the production of that thing. The farmer has no wages except as wages are measured by the price of his product, and when you place it in the power of the trust to fix the price of what the farmer sells, you place it in the power of the trust to lower the wages that the farmer receives for his work, and when you place it in the power of the trust to raise the price of what he buys, you do the farmer a double injury, because he burns the candle at both ends and suffers when he sells to the trust and again when he buys of the trust. All Labor on an Equality.-Some people have tried to separate the laboring man who works in the factory from the laboring man who works on the farm. I want to warn the laboring men in the factories that they cannot separate themselves from those who toil on the farm without inviting their own destruction. I beg the laboring men in the factories not to join the monopolies to crush the farmer, for as soon as the farmer is crushed the laboring man will be crushed, and in a test of endurance the farmer will stand it longer than the laboring man. I come from an agricultural State one of the great agricultural States of this nation-and I want to say to you that while our people are, I believe, a unit against the trusts, we can stand the trusts longer than the laboring man can; we can stand all the vicious policies of government longer than the laboring man can. The farmer was the first man on the scene when civilization began, and he will be the last one to disappear. The farmer wants to own his home; he ought to own it. I think that this nation is safer the larger the proportion of home-owners. I want every man with a family to own his home; the farmer wants to own his home, but if you will not allow him to own his home, he can rent. He will have to be employed to work the farm. Take his farm from him by mortgage if you like, but the man who forecloses the mortgage and buys the property will not work the farm. He will need the farmer to work for him, and he will have to give the farmer enough to live on or the farmer cannot work. When prices fall so low that the farmer cannot buy coal, he can burn corn. But when prices fall so low that the coal miner cannot buy corn, he cannot eat coal. You can drive the farmer down so that he cannot buy factory-made goods, but his wife can do like the wife of oldmake the clothing for the family off of the farm; but when you close your factories it will take all of the accumulated wealth of the cities to feed the people brought to the point of starvation by vicious, greedy, avaricious legislation. A Union of Effort for Public Good.-But why should we try to see who can hold out the longest in suffering? Why try to see who can endure the most hardships and yet live? Why not try to see who can contribute most to the greatness and to the glory and to the prosperity of this nation? Why not vie with each other to see who can contribute most to make this government what the fathers intended it to be? For one hundred years this nation has been the light of the world. For one hundred years the struggling people of all nations have looked to this nation for hope and inspiration. Let us settle these great questions; let us teach the world the blessing of a government that comes from the people; let us show them how happy and how prosperous people can be. God made all men, and He did not make some to crawl on hands and knees and others to ride upon their backs. Let us show what can be done when we put into actual practice the great principles of human equality and of equal rights. this nation will fulfill its holy mission, and lead the other nations step by step in the progress of the human race toward a higher civilization. Then OUR CURRENCY AND BUSINESS NEEDS. BY HON. LYMAN J. GAGE, Thomas Benton left behind him a valuable record of his political experience in his "Thirty Years in the United States Senate." Mr. Blaine did a similar work in his "Twenty Years in Congress." The memoirs of Generals Grant and Sherman give to us the story of varied movements by contesting armies upon many bloody battlefields. But no one to my knowledge has recorded with any fidelity the dramatic movements to which by outward influences the life of the business man has been subjected since the year 1865 or 1870. The business man, I know, is nowhere regarded as a hero or statesman. He neither makes laws nor conducts military campaigns. He is so common a factor in the operations of ordinary life that he fails to attract the public eye. Nevertheless, within the range of his activities the wisdom of the statesman and the courage of the war leader are often required of him. If he cannot make law he must always be on the alert to watch the laws that are made. If such laws touch upon the field of economics he must anticipate their action and adjust to their operation and anticipated effects. If he cannot direct the movement of armies and win at once victory and fame, he must be quick to know the commercial effect of battles, sieges and long-drawn campaigns. The last thirty years have been to him a period of dangerous vicissitudes and peculiar trials. Money Which Had Only Local Value.-In the year 1870 all business affairs were carried on in the United States with a medium of exchange entirely dislocated from the world's money standard. Prices of all commodities, wares and labor service were stated in terms of an irredeemable currency. All time accounts were payable in the same money. And yet in itself that money was no true measure of the values which it served to transfer. Every commodity having in any of its parts or as a whole a value in foreign markets was really measured by its price in gold in the world's market. The value of the "greenback" was itself related to gold, and upon the unsettled sea of the public credit the value of our domestic money rose and fell. Goods or manufactures sold one day at an apparent profit on their previous cost could not on the day or the week following be replaced with the amount received in payment. Have you ever studied the oscillations in value of that instrument of exchange by which, perforce, all our domestic trade and commerce was conducted? Let us glance at the records. On January 1, 1862, the greenback was worth one hundred cents in gold. In twelve months it fell 31 per cent. The next seven months it advanced 15 per cent on its previous price. The next five months afterward it fell 18 per cent. Then in six months more it fell 40 per cent. In the next six months it advanced 20 per cent. Then in six months more it fell 40 per cent. The next six months it advanced 52 per cent. In the next twelve months it fell 6 per cent. The next six months it rose 13 per cent. Then it rose 10 per cent in three years—that is, for January, 1870, it stood at 82.4. It then in two years rose 11 per cent. In January, 1875, it was rated as worth 89.9. From that year, when the Resumption Act was passed, the oscillations were less marked, a range of from five to seven per cent per annum, with a general upward movement to January 1, 1879, when once more one dollar in greenbacks would command one dollar in gold. While I have noted these fluctuations by convenient periods, it must not be forgotten that each and every day between the periods there were minor but constant fluctuations. With what certainty of direction could the mariner sail his ship if the compass by which he reckoned was subject to such lawless aberrations? At noon each day he could determine by the sun how far he was off his course, but this |