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tained its parity with your railway dividends, with the earnings in your shops and factories, in all departments of effort.

"If parity with gold is demanded, and the secretary of the treasury construes the law to mean whenever demanded to pay gold, then let us maintain the parity by reducing the number of grains in the gold dollar from 23.22 grains pure gold to 15 grains, or to such number of grains as will keep it at parity. While we may wrong by so doing the creditor class, through the increased value of the products of human industry. we must remember that for every one creditor there are a thousand debtors; and we should remember that the aim of the government is the greatest good to the greatest number, and also the minimum amount of evil. But no such drastic measure is necessary. Parity may be maintained and every declaration of governmental policy fully met by accepting for all dues, public and private, including duties upon imports, silver and paper issues of the nation of every description whatsoever.

"In all the gold-standard nations destitution and misery prevail. With great standing armies in Europe outbreaks are not of frequent occurrence, and yet one rarely peruses his paper without reading of these outbreaks. In Nebraska and Kansas, the land of wheat and corn, we read of starving households; even in Ohio appeals are sent out for the relief of thousands of starving miners, and yet men have the temerity to tell us that the evils arise from overproduction.

"Men tell us that there is an overproduction of silver, and that its price had diminished in comparison with gold because of its great relative increase. Such statements are not only misleading, but absolutely false. Figures show that in 1600 we produced 27 tons of silver to 1 ton of gold; in 1700, 34 tons of silver to I ton of gold; in 1800, 32 tons of silver to 1 ton of gold; in 1848, 31 tons of silver to 1 ton of gold; while in 1880 the production of silver had declined until we produced 18 tons of silver to I ton of gold; and in 1890 but 18 tons of silver to I ton of gold; and that, instead of the ratio of coinage being increased above 16 to 1, if relative production of the two metals is to determine the ratio, then the ratio should have been diminished rather than increased, and confirms the fact that merely the denial of mintage upon terms of equality with gold is responsible for all depreciation in the value of silver bullion.

"All the silver in the world today can be put in a room sixty-six feet in each dimension, and all the gold can be melted into a cube of 18 or 20 feet. There are today less than twenty-five millions of bar silver in all Europe. Mr. St. John, the eminent banker of New York, has stated that there was not over five millions of silver that could be made available to send to our mints. Begin to coin silver to the full capacity of

our mints, and we would have to coin it for twenty years before giving to each inhabitant a per capita circulation that France, the most prosperous nation in the world today, possesses.

"The struggle today is between the debtor and creditor classes. With one-half the world's money of final account destroyed, the creditor can demand twice as much of the product of your field, your shop, and your enterprise and labor for his dues. In this struggle between debtor and creditor the latter has taken undue advantage and by legislation. doubled and trebled the volume of debt. For example, suppose you had given a note to your neighbor promising to pay, one year after date, 1,500 bushels of wheat. You thresh the grain, measure it into the bin, and notify your creditor that the wheat is at his disposal. He goes to the granary, sacks the wheat, and then brings up your notes and states, 'I have taken 500 bushels, which I have endorsed on your note. I will call on you for the balance when next year's crop is harvested.' You say: 'Why did you not take all the wheat and let me make full payment?' The note-holder answers: 'I did take all the wheat, and there were only 500 bushels in the bin instead of 1,500.'

You fail to understand how that can be possible. You know that you threshed out and measured into that bin 1,500 bushels of wheat. You go to the granary and find that it is true. No wheat is there, but there appears to be an enormous lot of wheat upon those wagons for 500 bushels, and you ask the note-holder: 'Who measured this wheat? and let me see how you measured it.' You see something in the form of a measure about as large as a washtub, and you ask him what that is. He tells you that is the half-bushel measure with which he measured your wheat; but you reply: 'My dear sir, that holds more than half a bushel:. that measure will hold six pecks:' He answers: 'Correct, it does hold six pecks, but it now takes twelve pecks to make a bushel, instead of four pecks. Together with other friends who had wheat coming to us we went before the committee on coinage, weights and measures and secured the passage of a legislative enactment that it should require. twelve pecks instead of four pecks to make a bushel. We have secured this legislation for the proper protection of the holders of wheat obligations, for our own security, and for fear that we should became timid and lose confidence in your ability to pay unless we changed the standard of measure.' But you reply: 'Sir, we who have obligations maturing. contracts long standing, have never asked or consented to the enactment of such legislation. Our representatives in congress never permitted us to understand that any such legislation was pending.' He replies: 'Sir, you might have known it had you desired to do so, or had you kept yourself as well posted in legislative affairs as do the holders of

obligations calling for products of the soil for payment. We have our representatives in congress. We reward them for their fidelity to our interests; we punish them for fidelity to yours.'

"This, in my judgment, is not a far-fetched illustration, but depicts the exact condition against which production today protests. The debtor's obligation, true, does not call for wheat in specific terms. It calls for dollars, but by legislation we have made the dollar three times as large in purchasing power or in measuring values as it was before. We talk about gold being the only money of intrinsic value, and attempt to befog and mystify the masses by telling them that it has intrinsic value, when its value is merely the artificial product of legislation.

"Enact a law, to be rigidly enforced, providing that no meat of any kind, whether 'fish, flesh or fowl,' except mutton, shall be used for food. What will be the intrinsic value of your beef cattle, of your swine, your poultry, and your fish tomorrow? The mutton-headed monometallists would tell you that the great increase in the value of mutton was because of its intrinsic worth. Let this nation and the commercial nations of the globe enact a law tomorrow, that neither cotton, nor silk, nor fabric should be used for clothing or covering, forbid the factories of the world to spin or weave aught but wool, and what will be the intrinsic value of cotton or silk thereafter? Wool will be king; its value will be enhanced, but cotton, hemp, and silk will be as valueless as weeds or as gossamer webs.

"With the mints open to free and unlimited coinage of both gold and silver there has never been a moment when silver has not maintained its parity with gold, and a ratio of 16 to 1 commanded a premium of more than 3 per cent over gold. And if, by some fortunate discoveries to-morrow, gold should be found in great quantities sufficient to lessen the income of the annuitant, the bondholding, or the fixedincome class, there would arise a demand for the demonetization of gold and the establishment of the pearl, ruby, or diamond standard of values. Whatever standard can bring to grasping hands and greedy hearts the most of the toil, the sweat, and unrequited efforts of his fellowman, this standard will be demanded by the representatives of greed, and must be resisted by those who represent humanity and Christianity."

United States Senator Julius C. Burrows, of Michigan, in replying to the free coinage argument, said:

"Coin silver dollars at the ratio of 16 to 1 or 20 to 1 and you have a dollar intrinsically worth less than the gold dollar, and coin such a dollar as that-permit the owners of silver bullion to bring to the mints of the United States, and have manufactured into dollars, a certain num

ber of grains, worth in bullion much less than after they are coined, is a proposition to which I cannot give my assent.

"But it has been stated and repeatedly asserted that the present silver dollar is the 'dollar of the fathers.' That statement is not true. It is not the 'dollar of the fathers,' and the fathers if living would repudiate such an assumption as a reflection upon their integrity and sagacity. The silver dollar of the fathers was intended to be and was in fact practically equal to the gold dollar in intrinsic value.

"This contest for the free coinage of silver began in 1874, and it has been prosecuted with unceasing vigor ever since. Why? Up to that time the silver dollar was worth more, intrinsically, than the gold dollar, being worth in 1873 $1.03 as compared with gold.

"Up to that time the coinage of silver dollars in this country had been very limited. One would think from the tenor of this discussion that all at once a great outrage had been perpetrated upon silver, that it had been stricken from our monetary system at a blow, by the force of law, when the fact is that from 1793 to 1805, a period of twelve years, we coined but 1,439.517 silver dollars. From 1806 to 1836, a period of thirty years, we did not coin a single silver dollar. From 1836 to 1873, a period of thirty-seven years, we coined only 6,606,321 silver dollars. In eighty years we only coined a total of 8,045,838 silver dollars. So long as silver remained more valuable than gold there was no clamor for the free coinage of silver, but in 1878, when resumption was an assured fact, and the people had decreed that they would keep faith with their creditors and pay their unredeemed promises, then the champions of cheap money turned their attention to silver, finding it had declined in value from $1.03 in 1873 to $0.89 in 1878.

"The battle is now renewed under the plea of bimetallism, and the advocates of the free coinage of silver seek to delude the people by asserting that they are in favor of bimetallism while its opponents are not. We have bimetallism to-day.

"The free and unlimited coinage of silver at any of the ratios named will destroy bimetallism and will reduce this country to a single standard, that of silver, and that depreciated, and I am suspicious that for this very reason some gentlemen are anxious for its triumph. The opening of the mints of the United States to the unrestricted minting for individuals of silver into legal dollars at any ratio to gold less than the commercial value of both metals, under the pretense of aiding the cause of bimetallism or for the purpose of establishing or maintaining bimetallism in the United States, is simply playing upon the sentiment and credulity of the American people.

Mr. Bryan toured the country during the campaign, and spoke in all

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