We are here upon earth not alone as the conservators of the present, but also as directors of the future. We make laws and do deeds that bind and affect all future time. When the Rebellion came, there came with it the necessity to suppress it, not for ourselves alone, but for future ages, without limit, as we hope. Here was a work to do for the almost limitless future, and we sprang to it with a zeal and energy that gave assurance of our appreciation of the responsibility; and well did we perform

the task.

To do this future work with present means-with our money-was an impossibility, and the money itself so taught us. When the first shot struck Sumter, Gold started for the rear, and when the rebel shouts were ringing triumphantly through the land, Gold was out of sight and hearing -that "God-anointed King!"

It was only when we realized that it was a war for the future, and must be fought with the money of the future, and that the gold was still in our mountains that was to fight it, that we provided the Greenback and its consort the Bond, which stood by us like brothers to the successful end. We were all laborers for the distant future, and they paid us for our labors, during that five years, three thousand millions of dollars, well earned and ungrudgingly paid. During the war we prospered, in spite of the waste and devastation of war, because we were all employed in a necessary and finally successful work for a willing and able paymaster. After the war we prospered and soon made good to a large extent the waste of the war, but this after prosperity has been a declining one, and we are now almost, if not quite, without cause for thanks for prosperity. During these ten years of declining prosperity we have, as you say, steadily reduced the public debt. Is it not possible that you have reversed the light in which we should view this? Is it not open to question whether we are not paying a debt we do not owe? This is a debt owed, we hope, by a hundred generations, and is it not a questionable cause of congratulation that our Government is compelling one generation to pay it? In ten years we have paid $1,000,000,000, or one third of the principal of the debt. Besides interest on the whole at 5 or 6 per cent, we have paid 3 per cent per annum of the principal. The whole increase of wealth in our country from all sources, and through a series of prosperous years, will not exceed from 2 to 3 per cent, per annum. What the increase has been during the last two years is probably less than nothing, yet still comes the monthly announcement of the public debt reduced so much. Who can tell how potent a cause this is if for the present depression? The thousands of idle men who, you say truly, are to-day depending upon charity for a Thanksgiving Dinner, are not without substantial reason in thinking that the monthly announcement of reduction of the public debt, should be characterized as official stupidity, instead of official efficiency.

ful, or derisive of the new movement, and of those engaged in it. Their position may be illustrated by the fact that at the first conference, or advisory committee meeting, of the Wisconsin leaders of the Greenback Movement, Mr. J. T. Gilbert, of Milwaukee, scored the newspapers, quite roundly, for shabby treatment. In rejoinder the Milwaukee Commercial Times accused Mr. Gilbert of being too "sweeping" in his complaints. It said,

The Commercial Times looks upon the Greenback sophistries of such influential and well meaning citizens as Mr. Gilbert, Mr. Allis, *Mr. Nazro and others, with as much distrust and apprehension as any journal in the land. Yet the Commercial Times has been careful to place all the public utterances of these gentlemen freely and fairly before the public, and it has also offered them individually the free use of its columns.

Other daily newspapers very generally ignored the movement. The Commercial Times printed Mr. Allis's speech in full, and the editorial already quoted from, nearly a column in length, took care to explain the newspaper's entire dissent from Mr. Allis's doctrine. It said:

We therefore, present our readers with the views of Mr. Allis, while we do not agree with them, as a matter of news and an act of justice to one of Milwaukee's most estimable citizens.

Early in January 1876, there were steps taken to get Wisconsin greenback leaders together and map out an active program, and on January 18th, the meeting above referred to, was held in Madison.

The Milwaukee Commercial Times said, the next day, that it was "called a State Greenback Convention." The Sentinel of the 19th said: "There were forty or fifty persons present." W. W. Field, secretary of the State Agricultural Society of Madison, called the meeting to order, read a short adress, and was chosen Chairman, and S. D. ("Pump") Carpenter, a well known Madison editor, was made Sec

he was not aware that the meeting was called to organize a new party and declined to express himself on that subject. Other speeches were made by Judge Harlow S. Orton, an hitherto prominent Democrat, (who announced that he would support a Republican for President rather than a Hard Money Democrat), J. T. Gilbert, G. W. King of Clark County, M. Sellers of Fort Howard, "Pump" Carpenter, Herman Nabor of Shawano, and others. Ex. Gov. Dewey, Wisconsin's first Governor, did not respond to a call to speak except to announce himself as a greenback man. calls it a gathering of "a number of the most prominent men The report of Wisconsin", and the paper says editorially, that; "Mr. E. P. Allis of this city was the leading mind," among them. Judge Orton pronounced Mr. Allis's address the "most perfect presentation of the question he had ever listened to."

The result of this "Convention" or conference was the passage of a set of resolutions presented by Judge Orton, and the appointment of a State Committee to call a State Convention, if thought proper, and to organize a new party if neither of the existing parties should adopt a Greenback plank. The Resolutions were as follows:

Resolved, That gold and silver are too inconvenient and quite insufficient to be used in this country as a circulating medium, and that a paper circulating medium in lieu thereof as money, is absolutely indespensable.

Resolved, That the National Government should issue and furnish such paper circulation, interconvertible into National Bonds, at long time and low interest, and to be of such volume as is from time to time required by the exigencies of commercial exchange, which should supersede all other paper circulation as money and be receivable for all public ducs.

Resolved, that a forced contraction of currency, with a view to the redemption of Government paper with gold or silver, will greatly injure, if not utterly destroy, all the diversified interests of the country, except those of bankers, brokers and creditors.

Resolved, that the present volume of the currency is not in excess of the necessities of the times, and that it shall be of such character that its future expansion or contraction shall depend upon the natural course of business and the common laws of trade.

Resolved, that the true policy is to encourage the development of our National resources, and equal protection to all branches of business and productive industry and the administration of the Government with honesty and economy, and in this way sustain the National credit, and make it at least equal at all times to gold and silver.

So far as I have discovered, after dilligent search of the record, this is the first set of Greenback Resolutions adopted, by a representative State meeting, in Wisconsin.

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It will be of interest to state that George Easterly, was a prominent manufacturer of agricultural machinery at Whitewater; Harlow S. Orton, was a prominent lawyer, had already been a Circuit Judge and, two years later, was appointed a Justice of the Supreme Court, where he served with credit, until his death, in 1895; Edward P. Allis, of Milwaukee was one of the leading iron and steel machinery manufacturers of the West, a college bred gentleman; Eli Stilson, was a prosperous stock farmer, who lived near Oshkosh; G. W. King was a son of the first Governor of Maine, a lumberman, and a man of local prominence on Black river; Eliphalet S. Miner, was a pioneer lumberman of Necedah, an early partner of Thomas Weston and John T. Kingston, a firm later succeeded by the Necedah Lumber Co.; William Orledge was a farmer of local prominence in Kenosha county. Most of them had been prominent as Republicans.

Mr. Allis, to whom leadership in the Greenback movement in Wisconsin seemed to be accorded, from the outset, delivered an address on this occasion, which was accepted as the party "keynote," as follows:

Gentlemen: It is with extreme diffidence that I address you. I have neither the ability nor the ambition to be a leader, and only desire to add my voice and influence, feeble as it may be, to what I conceive to be a most vital question.

The cause that has brought us together is no trifling or sectional one; it underlies all civilized progress, and is at this moment affecting for good or ill the whole civilized world.

To the solution of this question, however, we should lay no claim to a world wide philanthropy; we should acknowledge the axiom that charity begins at home, and put our own house in order; we meet as Americans, to consider our own conditions and best interests.

That something is the matter needs no elucidation here. From a season of prosperous advance, we entered upon a season of decline, and are now standing upon the verge of individual and co-bankruptcy and ruin. Thousands of able and willing men are idle, and almost numberless women and children, in all parts of our land, are suffering for the commonest

necessaries of life. Hundreds of business houses are struggling and tottering to their fall, and hundreds of workshops are indebted to the busy spider to cover their rusty journals from the passers' gaze. All advance seems to have ceased in a land whose motto and life is progress.

All this and more has come upon us. Why? Our bounteous Creator has not ceased to smile upon us as of old. His glad sunshine and gushing rain-drops have bathed our land until it has laughed with rustling crops, and the farmer's garner is all too small to hold the golden fruit. Sweet peace has rested within our borders, and the sabre and musket are not seen, we go and come where we will, with none to molest, or make us afraid. Our forests and prairies are crying aloud for the sturdy caress of the axe and the plow, and our mountains are groaning as in labor, from their precious burdens. Wherefore are these things and all these cries in vain the cry of the laborer for work, and the work for the laborer? Wherefore do these two wish to come together and can not? Wherefore have the trader and manufacturer no power to bring them together; and wherefore does the capitalist fear to do so? The answers to these questions, gentlemen, lie wrapped up in the subject we are here to consider, and any one who from experience or knowledge can throw any light upon it, owes it to humanity and to his country to do so. As in most vital questions of policy, there is upon this one a wide diversity of opinion and as we are bound to believe, all have honest supporters. From the wildest inflationist -so called-to the most narrow contractionist and hard money man, there is a wide range, but the ideas of both are the legitimately begotten offspring of a sciencce too little studied and understood, and the truth lies somewhere between them.

In order to state my views in a simple form, and confine my few remarks to them, I have put my belief in the shape of resolutions, which I will endeavor to briefly elucidate, but on which I neither ask nor desire a formal vote:

WHEREAS, Gold is the acknowledged expression of value by the nations of the world, to whom we are socially and commercially related; and

WHEREAS, The United States are the largest producers of gold among nations; therefore,

Resolved, That the United States should maintain a gold basis. WHEREAS, The prosperity and progress of our country depend almost wholly upon the amount and value of its circulating medium; and WHEREAS, The amount of gold in the world is entirely inadequate to the needs of the world, for a circulating medium, therefore,

Resolved, That we need a paper currency of as large a volume as can be maintained equal to gold, and that its conversion into gold must be from intrinsic worth, and voluntary, and not compulsory.

Resolved, That the way to attain the inestimable benefits of a circulating medium equal to gold, and of a volume adequate and adapted to the needs of trade and progress, is to have an exclusive Government currency based on its indebtedness, receivable for all its dues, and interconvertible at the will of the holder, with its low interest bearing bonds, principal and interest payable in gold, or its equivalent.

In regard to the first proposition, that we ought to maintain a gold standard, I differ from many so-called greenback men, and I fully appreciate the force of their reasoning. I am free to say that I think it a grave

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mistake on the part of other nations. They are making indispenable to themselves an article which they do not and cannot produce, and for a supply of which they must look to us. They are creating and maintaining an unlimited market, and at a price far above its intrinsic worth, for one of our largest possible productions. We should be the very last ones, either by word or act, to discourage this folly, but should do all in our power to encourage and perpetuate the delusion. We should accept the situation they force upon us with the same good grace, and with much the same ultimate result as did the fabled legal gentleman, who passed the shells to the contestants, and himself swallowed the oyster. Few of us realize or appreciate the limitless wealth there is in our mines, if the markets of the world are not disturbed in their demand for the product. Our mining schools are just beginning to send out their young men, clothed with all the accumulated knowledge of the present day, and their influence upon the amount and cost of production will be felt more and more in a geometrically increasing ratio year by year. New fields are being opened almost every day, and more capital and better machinery being employed. The future of our mineral productions is such, in a commercial point of view, that we cannot as a Nation, afford even in seeming to discredit its value. The other nations of the earth will find out the truth all too soon and the time will come, as surely as the sun continues to rise and set upon a progressive world, when we can get all the gold we want from the accumulations of the earth much cheaper than its present value as currency. Our present duty, then, in a commercial point of view, is clearly to maintain, by all our power and legislation, the extreme value and production of our mines, and to pour it into the lap of an cager world, to the full extent of our ability. Give it to them in sheets, in bars, in ingots or in coin, wrought or unwrought, just as they want to and are able to pay for it.

We have but one thing to see to, that they do not in the future, as in the past, get the advantage of us in the exchange. We have heretofore been the veriest weaklings in their hands. They have taken all we had and given us literally nothing in return. They have persuaded us that we better let the coal and iron lie untouched in our hills, and have generously sent us theirs. They have persuaded us that we better not destroy the romance and beauty of our waterfalls by erecting factories upon them, that they would weave and spin our cotton and wool. They have taken our gold and silver and persuaded us that jack-knives, ribbons and wines were an equivalent. They have done unto us, and there is a poetic but bitter justice in the fact, as we did unto the poor Indian, giving beads, trinkets and whiskey for skins, pelts and valuable lands. But this is not all, nor the worst. We have given them something far more valuable than our iron and coal, or our silver and gold. After getting everything else we had that they wanted, they have persuaded us to give them our name written on a piece of paper; they have got our "Rags." Yes, gentlemen, they have got our "Rag Baby," and it is sucking all the milk out of us clear across the oceans that lie between us. They have bought our "Rag Baby," and we must buy it back or die. We want our rags, rags that we want, and we ask for nothing else. I say nothing else, for enough for the day is the evil thereof; but the time may come when we shall want something else, and that is their rags. The day may come when this pendulum of National indebtedness shall swing the other way, when they will be sending us the fruits of the sweat of their brows, to pay us the interest on their bonds, and when instead of our being their hewers of wood and drawers of water, they will be ours.