competition. If I were going to try to find the root of the monopoly evil I would do as I have often had occasion to do-go back to the Bible for an explanation; and I would find it in the declaration that the love of money is the root of all evil.

"Another thing that, in my judgment, has aided monopoly is a high tariff. Nobody can dispute that a tariff-an import duty-enables a trust to charge for its product the price of a similar foreign product plus the tariff.

"Now, some have suggested that to put everything on the free list that trusts make would destroy the trusts. I do not agree with this statement as it is made so broadly.

"It has been suggested that discrimination by railroads has aided the trusts. No question about it. If one man can secure from railroads better rates than another man, he will be able to run the other man out of business. But even if we prevented such discrimination by placing every producer upon the same footing and absolutely preventing favoritism, monopoly might still exist.

"The remedy must go further. It must be complete enough to prevent the organization of a monopoly.

"I think men differ more as to the remedy than they do as to their opinion of the trusts. I venture the opinion that few people will defend monopoly as a principle, or a trust organization as a good thing, but there are great differences of opinion as to the remedy.

"We have a dual form of government-a State government and a Federal government. This dual form of government has advantages which can hardly be overestimated, yet it also has its disadvantages. When you prosecute a trust in the United States Court it hides behind State sovereignty, and when you prosecute it in the State Court it rushes to seek Federal jurisdiction—and we have some difficulty in finding a prison for it.

"Every State has, or should have, the right to create any private corporation which, in the judgment of the people of the State, is conducive to the welfare of its people. The people of the State are able always to settle a question which concerns them alone. If they create a corporation, and it becomes destructive of their best interests, they have power to destroy the corporation; but if the corporation which oppresses them is a foreign corporation, created in another State, they cannot destroy it. They should have power to exclude it. In other words, the people of the

State should have not only a right to create the corporations they want, but they should be permitted to protect themselves against any outside corporation.

"But I do not think this is sufficient. I believe in addition to a State remedy there must be a Federal remedy, and I believe Congress has, or should have, the power to place restrictions and limitations, even to the point of prohibition, upon any corporation organized in any State that wants to do business outside of the State.

"I do not believe that the people of one State can rely upon the people of another State in the management of corporations. New Jersey has a law favorable to trusts. It is not safe to place the people of other States at the tender mercies of the people of such a State as may desire to collect its running expenses from the taxation of corporations organized to prey upon people outside."

CHAPTER VIII.

THE MONEY QUESTION

The Democratic party, being the party of honesty, believes in an honest dollar. The honest dollar has been well defined as "the dollar lawfully existing at the time of the contract and in view of which the contract was made." "An absolutely honest dollar," says Mr. Bryan, "would not vary in its purchasing power. It would be absolutely stable when measured by average prices. A dollar which increases in purchasing power is just as dishonest as a dollar which decreases in its purchasing power."

The Democracy, being the party of the Constitution, stands for constitutional money, which is money based on gold and silver equally. Section 8 of Article 1 of the Constitution gives Congress the power "to coin money, regulate the value thereof and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures." Section 10 of Article 1 prohibits the States "from making anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts." "I am certainly of the opinion," said Mr. Webster in the United States Senate, December 21, 1836, "that gold and silver at rates fixed by Congress constitute the legal standard value of this country and that neither Congress nor any State has authority to establish any other standard or to displace this."

And for many years no man and no party thought of questioning the parity of the two metals as thus defined by these high authorities. The first act relating to coinage was that of April 2, 1792 It provided for the free and unlimited coinage of gold and silver at the ratio of fifteen parts of silver to one of gold. This act was prepared by Alexander Hamilton, the Federalist, endorsed by Thomas Jefferson, the Democrat, and approved by the President, George Washington. "I return you the report on the mint," wrote Mr. Jefferson to Mr. Hamilton. "I concur with you that the unit must stand on both metals.”

The ratio of 15 to 1 prevailed under successive Presidents without interruption or question until June, 1834, when, the number of grains in the gold eagle having been reduced, it was changed to 16 to 1. This was under the presidency of Andrew Jackson, who said in his farewell address: "The Constitution of the United States unquestionably to secure

the people a circulating medium of gold and silver. Under Van Buren, Harrison and Tyler, Polk, Taylor and Fillmore, Pierce, Buchanan, Lincoln and Johnson the ratio of 16 to 1 continued and the country prospered and waxed strong. It was under the presidency of U. S. Grant, in February, 1873, that the famous act was passed omitting the silver dollar from the list of coins and making the gold dollar the unit of value." The passage of this law is known, and will forever be known, as the "crime of 1873." For those who assisted in committing it, it is but charity to say that most of them had no conception of the purport or ultimate effects of the law.

But even this infamous statute did not deprive silver of its place as a basis of money. This point was brought up last February during the discussion of the recently enacted Republican currency bill in the United States Senate, and Mr. J. K. Jones, replying to one of his Republican colleagues, said with his usual force:

"I want to call attention to the adroit language of the first paragraph of this bill, in declaring that gold shall be the 'standard unit of value.' You assert that that is a continuation of the present law. That is not true. It is the continuation of the present practice, which is a lawless usurpation on the part of the executive department of the Government, and it is not a continuation of the law.

"The act of 1873 declared that the gold dollar should be the unit of value, and the word 'standard' is not used in the act. The word 'standard' means the particular dollar by which all other dollars are to be measured, and when you make the gold dollar the standard dollar, all others must be measured by it.

"Now, when the act of 1873 was passed, declaring that the gold dollar should be the unit of value, greenbacks were a legal tender, and from then on until 1879 greenbacks, which were below par as measured in gold, were the standard of value, and the only standard of value. All calculations were in greenbacks. Purchases and sales were made in greenbacks, and gold was at a premium. It was bought and sold as any other commodity was bought and sold. It was not current money and the legal tenders were the standard of value.

"The implied assertion in this bill that gold has been the standard of value from 1873 until now is not true in point of fact. In 1878 we provided for the coinage of silver dollars and made them a legal tender to a limited amount. Now, any legal-tender money is a standard of

value. This is true in the very nature of things, and needs no proof. Any legal-tender money is a standard of value. But you undertake here to declare that the only standard, the sole standard, is the one legal tender which is coined in gold, and gold alone. You do this by this bill when you, by law, provide that it alone shall be the standard, for you practically effect this by making other legal tenders only representatives of money and not money."

For twenty-six years after 1873 no one was more strenuous in his devotion to bimetallism than Mr. McKinley and his fellow leaders in the Republican party. Successive National Conventions endorsed planks asserting the parity of the metals and an unfailing loyalty to bimetallism. These professions, as we now know, were hollow, but it is significant that even the leaders of the plutocratic party were not yet ready to renounce the convictions, or at least the professions, of a lifetime and take their stand openly before the world on the side of the gold standard.

In 1896 the Democratic party, tired of this long duplicity, and determined at length to force the issue for honest money, took an open and unequivocal position in favor of the immediate restoration of bimetallism by the independent action of this country at the legal ratio of 16 to 1. Such action was made necessary by the cunningly devised evasions and ambiguities which had prevailed in the platforms, not only of the Republican, but of the Democratic party. The effect was instant and startling. The Democratic party was itself purged of the false friends who had used its house as a refuge for conspiracy against its principles. The Assistant-Republicans in the party went across the line and joined their real friends. With them went a considerable number of less conspicuous individuals to whom the currency question was as yet a new one and who were not yet educated up to the point of endorsing the real Democracy. It is needless in the light of recent developments to say that of these latter all, or nearly all, have since returned to the fold.

The Republicans, on the other hand, were forced to a declaration upon the money question agreeable to the convictions and aims which they long had secretly entertained. The issue was thus sharply defined and the so-called "silver question" became the paramount issue of the campaign.

The money question has lost none of its importance in the past four years. If it no longer occupies the unique position that it held in 1896, it is because the Republicans in their headlong career have forced other,