sowing, and just as much reaping to get a short dollar as it does to get a full dollar."

Upon another occasion he declared himself concerning a debased dollar and its effect upon the business interests of the people as follows:

"A one hundred-cent dollar will go out of circulation alongside an eighty-cent dollar, which is a legal tender by the fiat of the Government. And no class of people will suffer so much as the wage-earner and the agriculturist. If it is the farmer you would benefit, there is one way to do it. Make the bushel measure with which he measures his wheat for the buyer three pecks instead of four, and require the buyer to pay as much for three pecks as he now pays for four. for four. No man knows what the future may be, but in our present condition and with our present light every consideration of safety requires us to hold our present status until the other great nations shall agree to an international ratio."

He had remarked in Congress on May 25, 1890:

"I do not propose by any vote of mine to force the people of the United States, the farmers and laborers, to the cheapest money of the world or to any policy which might tend in that direction. Whatever dollars we have in this country must be good dollars, as good in the hands of the poor as the rich; equal dollars, equal in inherent merit, equal in purchasing power, whether they be paper dollars, gold dollars, or silver dollars, or treasury notes-each convertible into the other and each exchangeable for the other, because each is based upon an equal value and has behind it equal security; good not by the fiat of law alone, but good because the whole commercial world recognizes its inherent and inextinguishable value. There should be no speculative features in our money, no opportunity for speculation in the exchanges of the people. must be safe and stable."

They

In the course of his address at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia on September 23, 1892, he used these words:

"My fellow-citizens, there is one thing which this country cannot afford to trifle with, and that is its currency, its measure of value, the money which passes among the people in return for their labor and the products of their toil or of their land. There is no contrivance so successful in cheating labor and the poor people of the country as unstable, worthless, and easily counterfeited curThe money of this country should be as national as its flag, as sacred as the national honor, and as sound as the Government itself. That is the character of the money we have to-day. That is the kind of money which it is the paramount interest of every citizen of this country, no matter to what political party he may belong, to want to maintain and continue.'

rency.

CHAPTER IX

McKinley and the Protective Tariff

O tell the story of McKinley's seven terms would be to tell the history of Congress and the nation for fourteen years. From the beginning he was an active and conspicuous member of the House. He lost his seat, indeed, in the election of 1882, in which he received a majority of eight votes over Wallace, his Democratic competitor. As the House of Representatives was then strongly Democratic it was not difficult to count out this small majority, and McKinley was unseated. Speaking to Secretary Folger of his small majority, the shrewd old man replied: "Young man, eight votes is a very large majority this fall." In the succeeding election of 1884, McKinley was returned with a majority of over 2000. William McKinley was an American, and he reckoned nothing that concerned Americans to be unworthy of his notice. He recognized, however, that in view of the vast development, extension and multiplication of human interests, there was little hope for success as a universal genius. A man must be a specialist if he would attain the greatest eminence and the greatest usefulness. Already, indeed, he had devoted his attention especially to the subject of the tariff and its bearings upon American industry.

The story is told that soon after he opened his law office at Canton, while he was as yet an untrained youth, he was drawn into a debate upon that subject. Pitted against him was a trained, shrewd and experienced lawyer, who had at his tongue's end all the specious sophistries of free trade. The older and more expert debater won a seeming victory, but McKinley, though silenced for a