VOL. XIV.

A Schoolmaster and

His Scholars.

About two years ago there appeared in Chicago a little book entitled "Coin's Financial School." Its author was a certain Mr. Harvey, at that time unknown to fame. Mr. Harvey's fame, however, is now secure enough. As a man of letters he may not be enshrined in the American pantheon, and as a monetary scientist and publicist his reputation may prove only ephemeral. But as a disturber of old parties, a pathfinder where political issues were mixed and mazy, an agitator with a genius for exposition so great as to sway public opinion from the Alleghanies to the Pacific and from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, Mr. Harvey has made it certain and inevitable that his name must be forever connected with one of the most remarkable chapters in the political history of his country. Never since 1860,-perhaps it might be true to say that not even then, or at any previous time in our political life,-has there been a great party gathering comparable, for intensity of feeling, for concentration of purpose, for superiority to mere personal aims or to mere traditional party prejudices, and for genuine fervor in behalf of specific proposals touching public policy, with the recent Democratic convention at Chicago. What had happened to make this convention so totally different in all its characteristics from the Democratic convention held four years before in the same city? Several very important things, doubtless, had conspired to bring about a revolution in the leadership and spirit of the Democratic party; but it may well be claimed that as a precipitant and a crystallizing reagent nothing else was half so effective as the entry of Mr. Harvey with his little yellow-covered book.

The Fertile

The country was in a state of perplexity Soil and profound discontent. In 1888 it had of Discontent. given the Republicans a mandate, and they had made use of their brief lease of power to enact the McKinley tariff law and the so-called Sherman silver purchase act. The Democrats thereupon raised a great outcry against the McKinley bill, and frightened the country into condemning it before it had been tried at all. The silver purchase act, which was confidently expected to stiffen the price of silver and thus to make international bimetallism more feasible and probable, proved utterly disappointing. The price of silver kept falling continually, while

Courtesy of the Bookman.

No. 2.

MR. W. H. HARVEY, Author of "Coin's Financial School." international bimetallism, as a practical affair, seemed to be coming no nearer to a consummation. Republican policies had not pleased the country, and the Democrats were put into full power by the election of 1892. There followed a repeal of the silver purchase act, and we were left upon a square gold standard,-with the necessity, however, of keeping ourselves able to redeem in gold on demand a great outstanding mass of currency. Feeling themselves compelled for consistency's sake to get rid of the McKinley tariff, the Democrats enacted the Wilson-Gorman tariff with its income-tax ap

pendage, which was certainly worse in many of its features than the McKinley bill had been, while coming under the fatal condemnation of being unequal to the provision of an adequate amount of public revenue. The lack of revenue made it necessary for the administration to draw upon the gold redemption fund for the payment of current bills; and the state of the commercial exchanges between Europe and America made it profitable for Wall street to offer greenbacks at the treasury in order to secure gold for foreign shipment. The combined necessity for money to pay the current bills and for gold to maintain the redemption fund caused the administration to sell successive large blocks of interest-bearing securities.

of Silver.

Under these circumstances, the free silThe Position ver majority in the Senate believed that the Secretary of the Treasury ought to pay out silver as lawful coin and money of redemption, and also believed that the government's accumulated silver bullion,-known as the "seigniorage," and representing the nominal profits on the silver bought under the Sherman act,-should be coined and placed in the treasury to pay public obligations. The administration stood like a rock against the views of the free-silver majority in the Senate, and the President was sustained by the House of Representatives. Meanwhile, the position of silver in the bullion market, though comparatively steady, was not improving. The amount of silver contained in a standard silver dollar was worth, when bought for other uses in the open metal market, only a little more than fifty cents. It would not have seemed, on general principles, at all a hopeful or favorable time to attempt an unqualified restoration of silver to the place it had nominally occupied down to 1873, when in law, though not in familiar usage, the silver dollar equally with the gold dollar had been a full monetary standard. Certainly the free-silver debates in the Senate did not avail to alter public opinion extensively; nor was Washington, in point of fact, the centre of education and influence in the movement which at length culminated at the Chicago convention. The real centre of education and influence was Mr. Harvey with his little book; and if there was any conscious forethought or method in the evolution of the great wave of free silver enthusiasm which has swept across the South and West, it consisted chiefly in the multiplication of the presses which were printing Mr. Harvey's books, and in the systematic dissemination of copies by the million instead of the hundred thousand.

several decades ago when the cause of silver seemed so hopeless and so little justified by facts and circumstances as it seemed only the day before yesterday, so to speak. Our readers will remember articles lately published in this REVIEW upon the enormous recent development of gold production, and the undoubted prospect of a greatly increased gold ontput during the next few years. The chief commercial nations had of late seemed more strongly convinced than ever before that the gold standard could be and ought to be maintained. The bimetallists of Europe were trying to keep up their courage, however, in spite of failure to accomplish practical results, and they were almost unanimous in holding that free coinage of silver by the United States alone would mean nothing but silver monometallism, and would absolutely destroy all prospect of international bimetallism at least for a generation. The outlook for silver had never been so discouraging. The Sherman act had been repealed. The two great parties were both commit. ted by their platforms of 1892 to the maintenance of every dollar issued by the government at full par with gold. The free-silver sentiment seemed to be confined to the Western mining camps and to the Populists of the sub-arid belt. Mr. Cleveland's administration was congratulating itself that it had forever vanquished the free-silver forces, had established the gold standard beyond the possibility of dangerous assault, and had brilliantly preserved the public credit. Under all these circumstances, who would have supposed that out of the smouldering embers of an apparently suppressed fire there should suddenly break forth a new and almost resist less conflagration? It was Mr. Harvey's book that rekindled the fire; and when the silver leaders perceived the greatness of the opportunity, they did not fail to fan the flames and the fuel was only too abundant everywhere.

The times have been very cruel The Revived Gospel of for several years, and Western and "Sixteen to One" Southern discontent and disheartenment wanted an argument, a creed, and a rallying cry. "Coin's Financial School furnished the argument; free silver sufficed for the creed, and "Sixteen to One" became the cry. For the moment, other panaceas were forgotten, and men ceased talking about free state banks of issue, interconvertible bonds, sub-treasury land and prod uce banking schemes, and the various other financial specifics. "Sixteen to One" was on everybody's tongue. The argument in its essentials is a very simple one. Silver was lawful money of "ultimate redemption" up to 1873, and is held to have constitutional sanction. There was no proper reason for demonetizing it in 1873, and such action was criminally wrong. The value of silver has kept relatively close to the value of staple products in general, and if the real truth were perceived everyone would understand that, instead of the silver

dollar having declined so that it is worth only fifty cents, the gold dollar has in fact appreciated until it is worth about two hundred cents. Thus the producer must raise twice as much wheat or corn or cotton to pay each dollar's indebtedness, because with silver demonetized the purchasing power of money has constantly increased. Such is the outline of the argument. The great mass of Southern and Western free-silver men religiously believe that this is all true. They are persuaded that the reopening of the mints to the free coinage of silver would be a just and righteous act, and that it would very soon if not immediately bring about an equilibrium be

tween gold and silver, the one metal advancing and the other declining in the bullion market until they should reach a fixed level at the ratio established by law.

To call these men repudiationists, anarchWho Are These ists, and other disagreeable names reflectSilver Men? ing upon their motives and their honor, is either to trifle with the situation or else totally to misconstrue it. The New York Evening Post, for example, which reflects the extreme gold sentiment of Wall street more intimately and accurately than any other paper in the country, began the campaign against the platform and candidates of the Chicago

convention by constantly referring to the convention itself as a mob of repudiators" and to Mr. Bryan, the candidate, as "the chief of blatherskites." The Post of July 10th devoted its editorial page to political discussion of which the keynote is to be found in the following sentence, with which its leading article opened:

The Chicago convention yesterday evolved its chief demagogue in the person of William J. Bryan of Nebraska, who took the mob of repudiators off their feet by a speech of forty-blatherskite power.

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The scenes in the Chicago convention were likened by the Post to the opening scenes of the French revolution. Day after day the Post continued to treat the silver men as 'anarchists," "repudiationists," demagogues," and 'blatherskites." But on the 15th its editors began to see the situation in a new light, as witness the following editorial remarks in condemnation of the very methods to which its own columns, more than those of any other paper, had been devoted:

What is needed is a campaign of elementary education. The sound-money men must not stand off' and call the people who now incline to favor free coinage anarchists, blatherskites, or fools. They must recognize that they are well-meaning citizens, who have been deluded, but can be informed and converted. The Chicago convention had its Altgeld and its Tillman, it is true, but an exceptionally intelligent Eastern observer who has attended these national gatherings for many years testifies, in the Springfield (Mass.) Republican, that "the men composing the convention were in the main representatives of an honest and reputable citizenship-men more accustomed to the prayer-meeting and the church than to the barroom and the club." The Indianapolis News, an independent journal which supports McKinley, bore witness to the unusually high character of the Democratic state convention in Indiana a few weeks ago, which went for silver with a sweep. Plain, simple, direct speeches and newspaper articles are the thing needed. People must be told what the 16 to 1 policy really means; why it would not work well; wherein lie the fallacies of the pleas on the silver side; how the moral issue is involved, because the freecoinage scheme means repudiation. Work of this sort should be begun at once and kept up until election day. Nothing short of this will be safe. The Inter Ocean puts the case very well when it says:

There is serious work to be done. It will not be done by making fun of the fifty-cent dollar or by caricaturing Populists. The people are full of trouble. There are thousands of homes in distress that under ordinary circumstances would have plenty and to spare. They are looking for a way out of their troubles, and if they are saved from the demagogues, it must be by showing them a better way to find peace and prosperity than is offered them by the propaganda of the Coliseum convention plan.

SENATOR WHITE OF CALIFORNIA,

Permanent Chairman of the Convention.

free-silver majority and secure a compromise result. Against the earnestness, openness, and almost fanatical intensity of the free-silver majority, the calculating politicians were simply helpless. The silver men had gone to Chicago to control the convention in the interest of their cause, and not to wrangle about the rival claims of candidates. The great consideration with them was to make sure of the platform. After that they were willing to trust to the wisdom of the hour for a standard-bearer. When we express these opinions of the marvelous representation at Chicago of a certain type of American citizenship lifted to the height of an almost matchless enthusiasm under the spell of an idea passionately entertained, it does not follow for a moment that we consider enthusiasm to be a safe guide in the field of monetary science.

both sides are, with unimportant exceptions, sincere and honest. If the silver men were indeed to any great extent "blatherskites," intentional " repudiationists," or dangerous "anarchists," the country would be in no danger from their doctrines. It is only when good men hold tenaciously to erroneous views that there is serious danger that such views will prevail. The belief which four-fifths of the delegates to the Republican convention at St. Louis professed, to the effect that the welfare of all classes in our country-capitalist and wage earner, farmer and banker alike-required the maintenance of the existing gold standard, was and is an honest judg. ment, totally uninfluenced by an alleged conspiracy of institutions or personages known as the "money power." On the other hand, the opinion expressed by more than two-thirds of the Democratic convention at Chicago in favor of removing all restrictions from the coinage and the monetary efficiency of the familiar silver dollar, represents a conviction as sincere as it is passionate and intense. The Eastern bankers, university professors, and gold-standard editors who call Mr. Bryan a blatherskite," and place all the silver leaders of the West and South in the general category of anarchists and demagogues, are in turn making the situation more difficult by their mischievous folly. It is not merely

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SENATOR DANIEL OF VA., TEMPORARY CHAIRMAN.

a question of good manners or kindly forbearance. It is rather a question of the only means by which the better reason can be made to prevail over the

worse.

The Silver Forces at Chicago.

The chief marshal of the silver forces at Chicago was Senator Jones of Arkansas, with Governor Altgeld of Illinois as the most energetic and efficient of his co-workers. It was perceived before the convention assembled that no compromise at any point could be safely consid ered, and that the silver programme must be put through with a rush, lest the necessary two thirds majority which the friends of silver seemed to have secured might have its more doubtful members enticed away by the devices of the opposition. The National Democratic Committee, consisting of a member from each state, was strongly in the hands of the gold men. Much depended upon the temporary organization of the convention, and the National Committee selected Senator Hill of New York for temporary chairman. Mr. Hill had never made himself very offensive to the silver men, and his selection was a fine bit of strategy; but the silver majority could not afford to yield anything for the sake of idle compliments and courtesies, and they voted Mr. Hill out of the chair and made Senator Daniel of Virginia the temporary chairman. Mr. Daniel's speech for free silver was one of the principal oratorical events of the convention. Senator White of California, one of the most brilliant of the newer men in the national councils of the Democracy, was made permanent chairman. The silver men found on the second day of the great conclave that they were secure in the possession of a full two-thirds majority, and they proceeded rapidly and relentlessly to carry their programme through to the end.

The Debate on the Platform.

On the third day, the free-silver platform was adopted. A minority report in favor of international bimetallism was brought in by sixteen members of the Resolutions Committee, and presented by Senator Hill of New York; but the proposed amendments were decisively voted down, and the majority report was adopted by a large majority. For details of the votes in the convention, readers are referred to our "Record of Current Events." The presentation of the platform was made the occasion for a noteworthy debate. The most extended speech in favor of the free-silver resolutions was made by Senator Tillman of South Carolina, who was one of the four most conspicuous men in the convention, -the other three being Senator Hill, Governor Altgeld, and Mr. Bryan. The principal speeches against the platform were made by Senator Hill, Senator Vilas of Wisconsin, and ex-Governor William E. Russell of Massachusetts. Senator Jones of Arkansas had been expected to follow Mr. Tillman in championship of the platform, but after a very few sentences Mr. Jones gave way to Mr. Bryan of Nebraska. Mr. Bryan had come to