If I had paid ten dollars for ten yards of cloth, to be delivered to me next week, and in the interim the government should pass a law declaring that hereafter the yard measure should consist of eighteen inches and that all existing contracts should be settled by the new standard of measure, I would be cheated out of half the cloth for which I had paid. If, on the other hand, I owed a cloth merchant ten dollars for ten yards which he had delivered to me, and before the date at which my debt became payable the government should change the standard of value and cut down the unit of coinage one-half, then I would settle that debt with the equivalent of five dollars as they now exist, and the cloth merchant would have been cheated out of the half of his

just due. That is just what the Populist programme proposes to do, and the important question that arises to the workman in this country is, who are the creditors and who are the debtors in this land?

Now, the Populist loves to say that the creditor is a person who oppresses the Western farmer. He invariably paints him as loud of dress, gaudy of ornament, coarse of features, with a cruel expression on his face, vicious in morals and hateful in appearance. He always declares that the money lender and the creditor are synonymous expressions, but as a matter of fact the creditors of this country are not the bankers; they are not the so-called capitalists; they are the laborers, and if the creditor is to be cheated by the reduction in the value of the dollar it is at the expense of labor that change must be made. During a discussion in the House of Representatives I advanced the proposition that a banker, in the nature of things, was not a creditor but a debtor, when I was interrupted by Mr. Bryan, who put to me a question which contains exactly the same

statement concerning banks as that which he made here in his speech a week ago. I will read it to you:

"I would like to ask the gentleman," he says,

"whether

it is not true that every solvent bank has for every dollar that it owes, either somebody's note or the money in the vault and its own capital besides?"

Now, my answer to that I can give here. The loans and reserves of a solvent bank, taken together, must exceed its liabilities; the excess represents its capital and profit; but as between their debts and their credits, all banks are debtors," which, my friends, will be apparent to you in a moment, if you will consider that a bank cannot loan all its deposits at interest, but must keep twenty-five per cent. of them in reserve. The very business of banking is the business of being in debt. It is the business of dealing with other people's money, and of course the money that a bank deals with is the money which it owes to its depositors.

But the laborer is always a creditor for at least one day's work. When any man can show me a laborer who has been paid in advance for a day's work, I will acknowledge the existence of a laborer who is a debtor. But every laborer that I have known in my experience, every laborer of whom I have ever heard in my examination of the conditions of men, must, by the very law of his being, be a creditor for at least one day's work, and he is generally a creditor for a week's, or two weeks' work. Every great industrial enterprise has for its chief creditors its own laborers. The heaviest account in every department of industry, whatever it may be, is always the wage account.

The influence which maintains in active operation the whole scheme of civilization is the confidence men have in S-Orations. Vol. 25

each other confidence in their honesty, confidence in their integrity, confidence in their industry, confidence in their success. It has been said that if we adopt a silver coinage, we still would have the same soil, the same mines, the same natural resources. And it is true, but the same rivers which flow past our cities, turning the wheels of industry as they pass, flowed in the same channels four hundred years ago; the same mountains were piled full of mineral treasures; the same atmosphere enwrapped this continent; the same soil covered the fields; the same sun shone in the heavens; yet no sound then broke the silence of desolation except the savage pursuing the pathway of war through sombre forests, and the rivers bore no sign of life except the Indian in his canoe, bent on bloodshed and destruction. The Indian could not avail himself of the bounties of nature, because he was a savage incapable of joining in that general industrial co-operation by which men aid each other in taking from the bosom of the earth the property which makes life bearable; the protection of which leads to the establishment of war, and makes civilization possible. Anything which attacks that basis of human confidence is a crime against civilization and a blow against the foundations of social order.

Now, the underlying trouble with all Populists is that they have a fundamental misconception of the principles on which civilized society is constructed. All through Mr. Bryan's speech, all through Mr. Tillman's utterances in the Convention, we find the argument proceeds upon the theory that the interests of men are irreconcilably hostile to each other; that the condition of life is one of contest, cruel, ceaseless, merciless. At Chicago, Mr. Bryan declared:

"When you come before us and tell us that we shall disturb your business interests, we reply that you have disturbed our business interests. We have petitioned, and our petitions have been scorned. We have entreated, and our entreaties have been disregarded. We have begged, and they have mocked, and our calamity came. We beg no longer; we entreat no more; we petition no more. We defy them!"

(A voice, "He was right.")

He was, my friend, he was quite right. When a man is bereft of all sense, he has an irresistible tendency to defy those who possess any. In a convention of extremists the most extreme will always be selected for a leader. Your own prospects are not bad.

I merely desire to call the attention of this gathering to the character of the speech which won for Mr. Bryan the nomination that makes him conspicuous; to the underlying spirit which pervades it, and then to ask the workingman of this country, to ask the citizens of this Nation, if the government should be trusted to the hands of men whose conception of civilized society is one of warfare and of strife?

We believe the very essence of civilization is mutual interest, mutual forbearance, mutual co-operation. We believe the world has made great strides in the pathway of progress since the time when men's hands were at one another's throats. We believe to-day that civilized men wherever they may be, at whatever tasks they may labor, are working together for a common purpose beneficial to all; and we believe that this attempt to arbitrarily reduce wages in this country, which means an attempt to attack the prosperity of all, will be resisted not by a class, but by the whole Nation. What labor has gained, that it shall keep.

The rate of wages that is paid to it to-day is the lowest rate the intelligent laborers of this country will ever willingly accept. We look forward to a further and a further increase in the prosperity of workingmen, not merely by an increase in the rate of wages, but by a further increase in the purchasing power of wages. Men who tell us that the farmer suffers because the prices of farm products have fallen while the cost of labor has risen, forget that the efficiency of labor has increased and the cost of production has been reduced through the aid of machinery, even though the wages of the individual laborer may have risen.

While wages remain at their present rate I hope there will be a further and continued decrease in the cost of living. There is no way in which I can be admitted to a share of God's bounty except through a fall in the necessaries of life. While we preserve in existence that system of mutual cooperation which is but another name for civilized society, all men must share in all the favors which Providence showers upon the earth. The dweller in the tenementhouse, stooping over a bench at which he toils through all the hours of the day, who never sees a field of waving corn, who never inhales the breezes which sweep, over meadows laden with the perfume of grasses and flowers, is yet made a participator in the benefits which flow from the growing fertility of the soil, the purifying influence of the atmosphere, the ripening rays of the sun, when the necessaries of life are cheapened to him by an abundant harvest.

It is from his share in this bounty that the Populist wants to exclude the American workingman by increasing the prices of bread and meat without any corresponding increase in the rate of wages. To him we say, in the name of humanity, in the name of progress, in the name of civiliza