aware that you favor bimetallism, and not merely 'by and by metallism.' Either a monetary union over a strictly limited area will establish the parity, or, if not, then the whole system is chimerical; because if bimetallism needs to be universal, then, also, it follows that our opponents are correct in declaring that the system is impracticable, because the defection of one of two warring nations would serve to destroy it.

"The new French Prime Minister, M. Meline, when pointing to the rapid spread and acceptance by experts of the bimetallic theorem, declared that what alone is now needed is the

electric spark.' Such an electric spark may very well prove to be a free-coinage plank in the national Democratic convention, which met at Chicago, on July 7th. For even if the Republican party should elect its president, still that plank, unless countered by a similar move in the Republican party, will certainly secure to the Democratic party the control until 1900 of the all important senate; whereas, on the other hand, the monometallist counsels of Mr. Cleveland and Secretary Carlisle, should they dominate the party at Chicago, will both leave in that party the record of a disgraceful surrender and will leave of that party for a generation to come not one stone standing upon another.

"Such is the great exchange crisis which to-day confronts the whole world of trade. Its effects

on international trade, still dimly perceived, are probably infinitely greater and more complicated than any of us at all appreciate. We have seen, with the great rise in the gold premium at Buenos Ayres since 1890, the wheat area in that country increase from 2,990,000 acres in 1891 to 7,141,000 acres in 1895; while in the same period the wheat exports jumped up from less than 2,000,ooo quarters to nearly 8,000,000 quarters. Here is a competition which, while the press is shouting for 'honest money,' has made Kansas and Minnesota not less desolate than Essex and Lincolnshire. On the other hand, we saw, in 1893, an artificial, a manipulated, rise in the exchanges between India and the far east strike the milling industries in Bombay as by lightning; so that 30,000 operatives there were thrown out of work in a few weeks, while yarn exports from Bombay fell off one-third, and the government of India was obliged to come to England because of the exchange disturbance and the contraction of exports, exactly as America has to-day to come to England, because of the contraction of her exports, in order to borrow gold. We have seen these experiments in exchange; we have seen experts, such as Mr. Hermann Schmidt, exactly foretell, in evidence before royal commissions, the results which were to follow from these experiments; and yet silly people there are who still declare that steady exchanges with four-fifths

of mankind are immaterial, because 'international trade is merely international barter.'

"Let me only add, in conclusion, that Europe and America are indeed to be congratulated if, because of the intuitions of the common people in the western republic, we are now very near the dawn of better days. At a time when political leaders the world over are, as never before in history, disappointed and disgraced, the western nations, unguided and unguarded, groping in the dark as to the magnitude of the issues involved, have come within an ace of being routed and their industries decimated by that exchange crisis which has given their silver money to our oriental competitors at half price. If, then, we succeed in evading the greatest race danger with which we have ever been confronted, we shall owe our escape, not to our statesmen, who have failed us, but to the detection of pseudo-liberalism, false economics, and half-truths (worse than any lies) by the great American nation. Not without reason did Lincoln declare of that nation: 'You may fool some of them all the time, but not all of them all the time.' Everyone,' said Lincoln, again, 'knows more than anyone!' an utterance which, no doubt, his successor, the present occupant of the White House, and his 'cuckoo' cabinet consider frankly blasphemous.

66

"Yours faithfully,

"MORETON FREWEN.

'White's Club, London, May 25, 1896."

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE CHICAGO CONVENTION.

The Democratic National Convention for 1896, which had been called to meet in Chicago, July 7th, was destined by political conditions to be the most important gathering of the kind in recent years. The interest in the financial question had grown so rapidly during Mr. Cleveland's second administration that it became the one topic of national consideration. The action of the Re. publican National Convention at St. Louis, in June, in declaring for a single gold standard gave an impetus to the movement for a declaration for free silver coinage by the Democratic Convention. The people had listened to arguments on the important issue, had read and studied the question, and had discussed it among themselves until there was a demand by them that the issue must be fairly and honestly met at the polls.

The silver sentiment had taken a more aggressive form in the Democratic party than in its formidable competitor, and as the latter had gone on record for a gold standard, the democracy was looked to to take up the cause of silver. In every state convention held to select delegates to the National Convention, this one question was

uppermost. No surprise was shown by the op ponents of free coinage when the friends of silver secured the delegations from the Western States, but when that sentiment gave evidence of sweeping the Middle and some of the Eastern States, there was much alarm among the advocates of gold.

The Democratic national administration was for the gold standard, and used its power to enable that sentiment to control the National Convention. The repeated issuance of bonds by the administration to uphold the gold standard, thereby increasing the national debt to a startling extent, aroused the people to a sense of the need of a change in the financial policy of the Government. The result showed that this sentiment did not exist alone in the States which mined silver, as had been so frequently urged by the enemies of free coinage. Bimetallism carried the silver States, the Western States, with but two exceptions, the Southern States, and passed on into the enemy's camp, and carried all the Middle States but two. So strong did the movement become that it was conceded weeks before the National Convention met that the free-coinage men would control by a large majority.

The body which met at Chicago was a deliberative one, realizing at the outset that it had an important issue to meet, and that whatever position the party took on the question, there would inevitably be a great deal of dissatisfaction,