hend, who will maintain that Congress possesses the power to demonetize both gold and silver, or that Congress could be justified in prohibiting the coinage of both; and yet in logic and legal construction it would be difficult to show where and why the power of Congress over silver is greater than over gold-greater over either than over the two. If, therefore, silver has been demonetized, I am in favor of remonetizing it. If its coinage has been If it has been prohibited, I am in favor of ordering it to be resumed. restricted, I am in favor of having it enlarged.

I believe the struggle now going on in this country and in other countries for a single gold standard would, if successful, produce widespread disaster in the end throughout the commercial world. The destruction of silver as money, and establishing gold as the sole unit of value, must have a ruinous effect on all forms of property except those investments which yield a fixed return in money. These would be enormously enhanced in value, and would gain a disproportionate and unfair advantage over every other species of property. If, as the most reliable statistics affirm, there are nearly $7,000,000,000 of coin or bullion in the world, not very unequally divided between gold and silver, it is impossible to strike silver out of existence as money without results which will prove distressing to millions and utterly disastrous to tens of thousands.

Senator Don Cameron, of Pennsylvania.

UNITED STATES SENATE, WASHINGTON, D. C., June 11, 1894. MY DEAR SIR: * * The single gold standard seems to us to be working ruin with violence that nothing can stand. If its influence is to continue for the future at the rate of its action during the twenty years since the gold standard took possession of the world, some generation not very remote will see in the broad continent of America only a half dozen overgrown cities, keeping guard over a mass of capital, and lending it out to a population of dependent laborers on the mortgage of their growing crops and unfinished handiwork. Such sights have been common enough in the world's history; but against it we all rebel. Rich and poor alike; Republicans, Democrats, Populists; labor and capital; railways, churches, and colleges-all alike, and all in solid good faith, shrink from such a future as that.

This agreement is the best part of the situation. At least we can be sure that no one is deliberately conspiring against our safety. Even on the burning ground of silver and gold we agree in principle. No party and no party leader has ever approved of the single gold standard. Not one American in a hundred believes in it. We are more unanimous in hostility to it than we are on any question in politics. A vast majority in all parties agree that the sigle gold standard has been, is, and will be a national disaster of

the worst kind. What is still more strange, almost the whole world sympathizes with us. Nine-tenths of mankind are hostile to the single gold standard. Our 70,000,000 people are unanimous against it. Most of the South America great Europeon nations and their governments dislike it.

rejects it. The whole of Asia knows only silver, and India, which contains five-sixths of all the subjects of the British crown, is as hostile to it as ourselves. Yet the bankers of London have said that we must submit, and we have submitted.

So strange a spectacle has never been seen in our history. Argument, and even the compulsive proof brought by world-wide ruin seems to be helpless against this astonishing power. What is the use of argument when we are all convinced, and when at least nine-tenths of the civilized and uncivilized world agree? England holds us to the single gold standard by the force of her capital alone more despotically than she could hold us to her empire in 1776. The mere threat of her displeasure paralyzes mankind.

The most instructive point of all is that our great majority consists of the interests in the world which have been from time immemorial reckoned as the safest and most conservative.

The whole agricultural class; the whole class, or classes, of small proprietors, the farmers that make the bulk and sinew of our race; the artisan whose interests are bound up in the success of our manufactures; all these join hands with what is left of their old enemies, the landed aristocracy of Europe, to protest against a revolution made for the benefit of money lenders alone."

On the other hand, that revolution is more radical than any which has been accomplished by professed revolutionists. Had all the despotic governments that have existed in a thousand years united their intelligence to set class against class, to breed corruption, to stimulate violence, and to shatter the foundations of society, they could have invented no device more effective than this decree which at one stroke doubled the value of capital, destroyed the value of industry, and swept the small proprietor. everywhere into bankruptcy.

The whole conservative force of the world protests against so violent and despotic a change. We protest against it the more because we know enough of politics to fear the reaction against such extravagance. We see the risks to which the gold mania is exposing us. We have reason to know the popular feeling, and we do not believe that the single gold standard can be long maintained. We want real money-coin-carrying intrinsic value; yet if England succeeds in her obstinate effort to destroy the value of silver for coinage, nothing can save us from paper. England may well succeed; she seems already to be on the point of success greater than her government wanted; and in that case, irredeemable paper-fiat money-stares us square in the face.

The task before us is to restore normal activity to our industry-to break down the barriers of sectionalism-to check the increasing tension between rich and poor-to relieve agriculture, and to save the small farmer and manufacturer-in a word, to smooth away the threatening dangers of social discontent. The Republican party alone has power to do this, and to carry on our society for at least one more generation without further disaster. You have only to adopt a platform of four words, and take your stand on it firmly, courageously, with honest determination to be true to it. The party has always maintained the national principle of a high tariff. You, whose deepest and best interests depend upon its success, have alone the power to add "free silver." Very truly yours,

ANDREW B. HUMPHREY, ESQ.,

Secretary National Republican League,

Denver, Colo.

Hon. William C. Whitney.

J. D. CAMERON.

From the discussion of the last twenty years it has come to pass that among the persons in Europe who are trained, recognized scientists upon monetary and economic questions, scarcely one is not at the present moment advocating the desirability of the joint standard as the real solution of the monetary difficulties of the world. This includes every professor engaged in teaching or lecturing on these subjects in the universities of Great Britain.-From statement to public June 21, 1896.

Senator Henry M. Teller, of Colorado.

In my judgment the American people in the whole line of their history have never been called upon to settle a question of greater importance to them than this.

we

The great contest, in which many of you participated, for whether should have two flags or one, was not more important to the American people than the question of a proper solution of what shall be the money system of this land.

I have said enough to show that I think that this is not a question of policy but a question of principle. It is not a mere idle thing, but one on which hangs the happiness, the prosperity, the morality, and the independence of American labor and American producers. (Applause.)

Confronted for the first time in the history of this glorious party of ours, confronted, I say, for the first time with the danger of a financial system that in my judgment will be destructive of all the great interests of the land, we are called upon to give this provision of our platform our adhesion or rejection.

Mr. President, I do not desire to say unkind or unfriendly things, and I will touch for a moment, and only for a moment, upon why I object to this provision of the platform. The Republican party has never been the party of a single standard. (Applause.)

It was a bimetallic party in its origin, in all its history. In 1888 it declared for bimetallism. In 1892 it declared for bimetallism. In 1896 it declared for a single gold standard. In 1888 we carried the State that I here represent for the Republican nominee; we carried it on a bimetallic platform. We carried it with a majority that is equal, considering our vote, to that of any other State in the Union. (Faint applause.) It has been a Republican State from the hour of its admission. It has kept in the Senate Republican Senators and in the House Republican members.

Mr. President, I promised you that I would not discuss the silver question, and I will not, except to say that this platform is such a distinct departure from everything heretofore done by the party that it challenges our Republican name to accept it.

The platform contains some platitudes about international conferences. It provides that we will maintain the gold standard in this country until the principal nations of the world shall agree that we may do otherwise. This is the first gathering of Republicans since this party was organized that has declared the inability of the American people to control their own affairs. (All the silver delegates arose in a body at this and howled their approval of the sentiment.) To my horror, this declaration comes from the great political party of Abraham Lincoln and U. S. Grant. Do you believe that the American people are too weak to actually maintain a financial system commensurate with the business of the country of their own fruition? Gentlemen of the convention, you will have no bimetallic agreement with all the great commercial nations of the world, and it can not be obtained.-From speech at Republican convention at St. Louis, June 18, 1896.

Hon. Richard P. Bland.

The masses of the people everywhere in this country are thinkers, and they are quick to recognize an issue which promises real relief from such burdens as they have to bear. The free coinage of silver at a ratio of 16 to 1 ought to be, and I believe will be, just as popular among the workingmen of New York City as it is among those of the rest of the country. The contest is between those who produce wealth by actual labor and those who acquire it by the force of bond or money ownership.

To-day a large part of the money of the country is, in a certain sense, hoarded in New York and other great cities, because the owners cannot profitably invest it in productive industries. The prices of the products of toil have fallen. Millions of men are out of work. The farmers of America cannot get as much for their crops or their stock as it costs to grow them. I know that is the fact on my own farm. Go anywhere you please and you will find the same conditions. Prices are low because the purchasing power of gold has increased. Multiply the energies of the country as you will and you simply add to the wealth of the capitalists.

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The remedy is free silver. With abundance of money prices will rise; capital will seek investment in the soil and in factories; every man who wants to work will be employed, and in the competition between employers for employees wages will rise.

This is as true in New York as it is out here in the Ozark country, or in California, Florida, or Ohio.-From interview in New York World July 1, 1896.

I can give the facts relative to existing industries and the establishment of new ones in Mexico under our financial system, and each may draw his own conclusions as to the causes which have produced such awakening in commercial and industrial affairs. Ocular demonstrations of the vast development may be found by visiting the cotton and woolen mills in our various cities. Some are old, others recently opened. Our paper mills and their output also furnish evidence of our material prosperity. Until a comparatively recent period all the pulp used in the manufacture of paper in this country was imported, and the paper only was made in Mexico; now the pulp and everything that enters into the composition of the paper is made here. The departments of the Government will furnish the exact data and statistics showing the growth of domestic manufactures and commerce. While our material interests have increased steadily and healtfully for the last twenty years, since the close of the Indian mints and the repeal of the Sherman law, so-called, in the United States, the growth of Mexico's commercial and industrial interests has been particularly marked. The consequent appreciation in the price of gold and the increase in exchange between Mexico and the gold-standard countries at once operated to reduce importations and stimulate home manufactures.

To show the falling off in the consumption of foreign merchandise, it may be said that the year prior to the increase of foreign exchange on silver our customs collections at the ports of entry amounted to $22,000,000. The next year they were $14,000,000. In the fiscal year ending in 1890 our importations exceeded $52,000,000. In the fiscal year ending in 1895 they were slightly in excess of $34,000,000. On the other hand, our exportations increased. In 1890-'91 they amounted to $63,000,000, and in 1894-'95 to $90,000,000. There was nothing in the nature of a commercial panic consequent upon the sharp advance in silver exchange.

Our merchants are conservative and careful, and bank and business failures are happily rare in Mexico under any circumstances. As to wages and the conditon of laboring men, considering the nature of work and classes of industry, they compare favorably with those in other countries.