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Success will crown our efforts. All we need is the courage and the resolution to establish our own financial system, suited to our wants and needs. I am convinced by thought and study that the United States is amply able to resume the coinage of silver and maintain parity. I am convinced that when this is done, prices will be restored and general prosperity and progress will return. I am convinced that the paths that the single gold standard men are trying to entice us into will but carry us further into the night of darkness and plunge us deeper into the abyss of sorrow and distress.

"Mr. Chairman, this great issue is now before the American people, and they are stirred upon it as they were never stirred before. They recognize the vast importance and the far-reaching consequences which will result from the proper settlement of this vital question.

"The coming great conflict, which will be fought to the finish, is the battle of the standards. The people have become tired of the miserable makeshifts and the temporary policies which the politicians have devised to avoid the settlement of this great question. The people can no longer be deceived.

"The great masses of the people are convinced that the continuance of the gold standard only benefits the capitalists and money lenders, and is destructive of the interests of the laborer, farmer,

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merchant and the business man.

Politicians may

This great prob

try, but they cannot create false issues. Issues exist in the condition and in the minds of the people, and they must be met. lem cannot be brushed aside. into more and more importance.

Each year it rises

"The intense struggle of the people for this reform is but a supreme effort on their part to release themselves from the greed, avarice and domination of the moneyed classes.

"The boast of the Democracy in all the years of its history has been that it is the party of the common people; that it is the champion of the rights of the toiling laboring masses. It has never espoused the cause of classes seeking to enrich themselves by depredation upon the masses. It is too late for it to do so now. It cannot climb upon the gold standard platform without trespassing upon ground long since occupied by and belonging to the Republican party.

"The issue is clear. The duty of Democracy is plain. It should make common cause with the people, remain true to its traditions and history, and carry the country back to that system and to those principles which our fathers founded and which gave us great prosperity and wealth, and the departure from which has brought us to our present woes and distresses." (Applause.)

CHAPTER XXIII.

SPEECH OF HON. JOHN F. SHAFROTH.

THE FREE COINAGE OF SILVER.

"Mr. Speaker: This bill, as it passed the House, was for the purpose of creating a coin redemption fund. The Senate has amended the bill by providing a substitute therefor authorizing the free coinage of silver. It is this free-coinage measure that is now before the House for discussion.

"The difficulty that has arisen so far in the discussion of this question is, that there has been no data or premises laid down upon which we have agreed as a foundation for our arguments; and yet there are some truths that are generally conceded.

There are two kinds of money in the world: "First. Primary money, by which I mean money of ultimate payment or redemption, and "Second. Credit money, by which I mean promises to pay, based upon the general credit of the Government, redeemable in primary money. "Primary money has two functions: First, as a measure of value, and second, as a circulating medium.

"Credit money does not act as a measure of

value as long as it is redeemable in primary money, because its exact value is fixed by the money in which it is redeemable, but it does act as a circulating medium.

There is one fact that we can all agree upon, no matter what our views may be upon the financial question, and that is, that there is not now and never has been a sufficient quantity of primary money in the world. This truth is demonstrated by the fact that all nations, in order to relieve their necessities for a circulating medium, have been compelled to resort, either directly or through their banking institutions, to the issuance of credit money. No Government would undertake the hazards of maintaining credit money unless there was an imperative necessity for the same, and no nation would ever authorize banking institutions to control the currency if there was sufficient primary money in circulation.

"There is in existence at the present time in the world $2,469,000,000 of such credit money, and if silver be treated as token or credit money by those nations that have adopted the single gold standard, there is in existence in the world nearly $6,000,000,000 of credit money. This credit money represents the amount of shortage in the world of primary money.

"There are two propositions that I first desire to discuss:

"First. That in theory by the demonetization

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of silver there should have been an enormous increase in the value of gold; and

"Second. That in actual experience there has been an enormous increase in the value of gold. "Previous to 1873 two metals formed the base upon which was built all the credit and commerce of the world. These metals are designed by nature as money metals on account of their quality of indestructibility, their compactness as compared to value, and the difficulty with which they are extracted from the earth. So evenly has nature stored these metals in the earth that, notwithstanding free coinage of both metals existed in many of the nations for centuries, yet the amonnt of gold and silver coined in the world previous to 1873 was practically the same. By the demonetization of silver in the various nations of the earth one of these two metal moneys was stricken down as a money of ultimate payment. All the burdens which both metals had borne were thereby shifted on to one. As those metal moneys were, and now are, practically equal in amount, the burden upon that one was thereby doubled. Doubling the burden upon a metal doubles the demand for the same, and doubling the demand for it doubles the value thereof.

"If there is any truth in the principle of supply and demand, this conclusion must inevitably follow. It is therefor mathematically certain that if the demonetization of silver had taken place throughout