The demand for skilled labor has grown with the great increase in the number of mills and manufactories. This demand in all branches of labor is strong. The added exchange has not impaired the value of our dollar as applied to the purchase of articles of home manufacture. Its buying power is unchanged in this respect, and prices for domestic merchandise and produce vary only according to the supply and the demand.

Heavy investments of foreign capital in Mexican enterprises have been made since the appreciation of gold elsewhere.

Senator Francis M. Cockrell, of Missouri.

Bimetallism is no experiment. It has been tried and sustained, and it has been the world's unbroken system since Abraham tramped out of Uz of the Chaldees up to 1816, when Britain established the single gold standard. Gold monometallism is purely a British invention, the fruit of British avarice and greed. Outside of England it was practically unknown until about twenty-six years ago. Since then it has been experimented with, and the disastrous results have been correctly stated by Secretary Carlisle when he represented the yeomanry of Kentucky in the other House in 1878. It is high time to cease predictions and give silver a fair chance. It can not make our conditions worse.

Gold and silver are the most suitable metals for use as money and a meas ure of value, and have been used from time immemorial and are more stable in their values than any other two metals. They have never been produced in unlimited quantities, like iron, lead, copper, zinc, and most other metals. Hence, no people have ever been flooded with gold and silver or either. Linked together as equals in money use for one hundred and eighty-five years prior to 1872, they maintained a most remarkably stable ratio during great changes in relative production, sometimes 75 per cent. of silver to 25 per cent. gold, and then 75 per cent. gold to 25 per cent. silver. Link them together again by our laws, as yokefellows and balances to each other, as we had them prior to 1873, the history of the world shows they will prove equal yokefellows. Year by year the coined money disappears in numberless ways, known and unknown. The annual production does not keep pace with the increase of population, commerce, and industry and the increasing demand for coined money.

There is no possible danger that we shall ever have too much irredeemable money of final payment and redemption, either of both gold and silver or of silver or gold. Infinite wisdom and power has so distributed these precious metals in the earth that all the people combined can not find them or either of them in unlimited quantities or in greater quantities than they can use for money. Search the world's record from the day when Adam and Eve were driven from the Garden of Eden, and you will not find a nation that has had more gold and silver, or either, than it could profitably use. Then give us back our democratic bimetallic system by restoring by our laws the silver dollar to the old place it had in our laws prior to 1873.

We should either establish by our own laws our monetary system in our interest and for our own advantage, and then maintain it by the many effective. and amply sufficient means we possess, just as every other independent, selfrespecting nation does, or else we should surrender back to old England, whose power we have twice defied and triumphantly repulsed, our independence; confess our incapacity for self-government and place ourselves under her selfish and avaricious guardianship and protection; haul down “Old. Glory," our star-spangled banner, the chosen emblem of the free and the brave, waving in honer, glory, and power over the greatest nation of people on earth; hoist in its stead the royal standard, and cry aloud, "Long live the Queen of Great Britain and Empress of India."-From speech in U. S. Senate March 13, 1896.

Senator John W. Daniel, of Virginia.

The issue, broadly stated and summarized in a sentence is, British capital against American labor; and I take the American side. For Briton or for American-that is the question; and that question ramifies into all other internal and domestic concerns. Like to like, the wide world over. The creditor sections of the United States draw sympathetically to the side of the creditor. The sections which produce no silver show a tendency to minimize the subject to a mere mining question. The American capitalists tend to the side of the British capitalists. American bankers who are largely under pressure from British bankers tend to their side. The great cities with congested populations tend also to dear money and cheap produce, be cause they have proportionately more money, and only manipulate what others produce, instead of being themselves producers of raw materials and provisions. On the other hand, the instinctive intelligence of the country people puts them on the American side as the side of their interest. The instinctive intelligence of the industrial classes in cities as well as in the country puts them also largely on the same side. Thoughtful and reading commercial men see that the ultimate effects of the gold policy is to contract and reduce their business, and to make it tributary to British interests, and many of them tend to the American side.

Scholarly men, just men, everywhere resent the injustice of the gold standard; and lovers of free government 'see in it the most powerful and subtle enemy of free institutions. Taxpayers nearly everywhere see that it means depressed prices for property and increased burden of debts and taxes. Wage-earners know by sad experience that it depresses industry and curtails the number of employees as well as the wages of those who are employed.

Mr. President, I have thus attempted as best I could in the hours at my command to state plainly what I conceive to be the true bearings of this question. I know that those of us who advocate the money of the Constitution, the money of the fathers, and the money of the plain people face a battlefield which will require men of mettle to stand up to its duties. With a full comprehension of the power of our enemy, knowing that fashion and

wealth and caste and office are all against us, I yet, sir, would be untrue to my duty as an American citizen and to my manhood as a man if I did not thus declare the truth as I see it, and pray God to give me strength to vindicate it. Whatever may betide, I take my place in the ranks of the plain masses of the American people who appreciate their institutions and intend to defend them at whatever cost.-From speech in U. S. Senate May 27 1896.

Senator James K. Jones, of Arkansas.

} believed then, as I believe now, that the unlimited coinage of silver would by reviving commerce increase our revenues and do away absolutely with any pretense of a necessity to issue bonds, and that under that bill such a revival in business would take place that no issue of bonds could be claimed to be necessary. And any man who believes that under that bill, if it had been enacted into law, any considerable amount of bonds could have been issued has much less faith in the efficacy of unlimited coinage than I have. I stated when I offered the bill to the Senate that I was opposed to the issue of bonds. The President had insisted that the issue of bonds was our only hope. I believed that the unlimited coinage of silver was the only hope. The President was at that time exercising, and has continued to do so, the right to issue bonds anyway, and the bill introduced by me would have put the test whether absolute relief would not come from the coinage of silver. I have no doubt now that if that bill had passed there would have been no more bonds, and we certainly would have had the unlimited coinage of silver. This was a fair offer to test our different theories, and the advocates of gold dared not accept it. This seems conclusive to my mind that they agreed with me that that bill would, by demonstrating the soundness of our position, have absolutely destroyed theirs. They rejected the bill, and what is the result? Bond sales continue, and we are no nearer a solution of the question and no nearer silver coinage now than before.

This leaves nothing for us to do but to present the system we believe in. without reference to theirs, to discuss it, and appeal at last to that great tribunal which must decide it. I am ready for the question.

The overwhelming majority of the people are animated by sentiments of lofty and unselfish patriotism. I have an abiding confidence that the great question which this proposed amendment presents for solution will be wisely and justly determined by the great tribunal by which it must be finally determined.

It is to my mind an evidence almost conclusive of the weakness of any cause for its friends to be unwilling to have it passed on by the people. To say that they are incapable of deciding any question they are interested in, as is sometimes done as to this question, is to declare them incapable of selfgovernment. A man who believes this has no place in this country and ought to find more congenial associations in the realms of those who believe in absolutism.

The friends of bimetallism are ready and anxious to have the people settle this question. They hope and believe it will be speedily done, and well done. From speech in U. S. Senate January 10, 1896.

Senator Isham G, Harris, of Tennessee.

Can we, the largest silver-producing nation on earth, and a debtor :ation and a debtor people, afford to demonetize either of the money metals? To do so is, as it appears to me, simply suicidal. If we utilize both metals as a basis of circulation we cannot have a redundant supply of money for our people and our business transactions.

If the commercial world utilizes both metals as a basis of circulation it will not have a supply of money that exceeds, if, indeed, it will keep pace with the increase of population and business, and no excuse can be found or reason given for the demonetization of silver, except the greed of gain that con trols now and has always controlled the money-changer. He wants to double the purchasing power of his money and his fixed income at the expense of the debtor class and that large class of our people whose daily labor produces the commodities which feed and clothe our own people and which go abroad and bring to us the gold of other countries. It is simply a question of which of these two classes of citizens we will, by our legislation, favor. It is purely and simply a contest between the conflicting interests of capital and labor, creditor and debtor. Reduce the volume of money and you benefit capital at the expense of labor, the creditor at the expense of the debtor. Mr. President, I have always opposed class legislation; nothing is more vicious in principle or in its effects than such legislation. Legislators should, in my opinion, hold the scales of justice and equality evenly balanced between all classes of citizens, and should favor neither at the expense of the other; but if there is a class more deserving favorable consideration than another, it is the class of producers.

They have made our country what it is; they have given to it the prosperities it has known; they are the only hope of its future prosperities. Strike that class down, and decay, if not utter failure, follows.

They have not only produced the wealth of the country, but they are the men who have fought its battles and the only men who can be relied upon to fight its battles. When the roll is called in the volunteer armies of the country you find the answers of the producing class but of no capitalist, unless he answer by a substitute.

Mr. President, capital ard capitalistic influences have controlled for many years and are controlling the legislation not only of this country, but of the world. Capital has time, capital has money, and has been and is able to buy the best outside talent to urge its sclfish arguments before committees and in the halls of legislation. Labor is not here, labor is engaged in its fields, shops, and mines, producing the wealth that has made our country great and powerful, but labor has nothing to rely upon for the protection of its rights and promotion of its interests except the official representative without the aid of hired outside talent.-From speech in the United States Senate.

Senator William M. Stewart, of Nevada,

I say, the legislation contained in this bill which changed one of the standards of money, which revolutionized the financial history of the world, ought to be corrected without a word. We ought to put it back where it was before. The people of the United States ought to have a new trial for mistake, if not for fraud. When this was discovered and brought to the atten tion of the country, whatever the policy might thereafter have been, it was, in all good conscience and all justice and honor, the duty of everybody who had anything to do with it, to say "the people have not had a hearing; the money of the Constitution has been taken away from them without a hearing, and we will undo the wrong." Now, we come here again and ask that the wrong be undone at this late day. We ask for the restoration of silver and are told that we are disturbing the finances of the country, the settled policy of he world. A "settled policy," established as this was, ought to be disturbed. It ought not to stand. It has no place upon the statute book. I have brought a crowd of witnesses who have proved that they did not know what it was.

I do not stand alone. I stand with Presidents and ex-Presidents, the living and the dead, who have borne the testimony which I print in my remarks, that they did not know of this transaction. Suppose it had been known that we were to change the standard, there would have been a lively discussion about it in the Senate. Do you suppose we should have been discussing immaterial things if a great question of that kind were pending? Was it proper for the chairman of the Committee on Finance to fail in calling the attention of the Senate to what was being done? If he was proposing to fairly make this great change, which he perfectly understood and which had been recommended, it would have been the first thing that he would have called to the attention of the Senate for discussion. That is usual. That is done every day.

If it was done accidentally and nobody knew about it and the Seuator was mistaken as to its consequences, then nobody would ever blame him, because, as I said before, we were in suspension at that time, not using gold or silver, and a mistake of that kind might very well happen. We knew very little about finance at that time. As the Englishman used to say laughingly, "We were blundering along in the dark, using paper money," and a mistake at that time might naturally occur. But when a mistake so fundamental as that occurred it should be corrected at the first demand that the money of the Constitution be restored.-From speech in United States Senate June 5, 1890.

Senator John T. Morgan, of Alabama.

The coinage of money and the regulation of its value and of the value of foreign coins is expressly given to Congress by the Constitution. It is not given to the President and the Senate, as one of the treaty powers. Giving this power to Congress, which cannot make treaties, necessarily excludes it from the category of treaty powers. It is an organic power of sovereignty that no department can destroy or modify.