Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 January 1886 — SENATOR BECK ON SILVER. [ARTICLE]

SENATOR BECK ON SILVER.

He Opens Fire on the Gold BugsHot Review of the Bondholders’ Policy. A. Conspiracy Alleged to Compel Government to Pay Them Gold—Strong Plea for Bimetallism. The Entire Subject Discussed in All Its Bearings Both Upon This Country and Europe. From the Congressional Record. The Senate proceeded to the consideration of the following resolution submitted by Mr. Beck : Whereas, The laws of the United States require that all duties on imported goods shall be paid in coin; and Whereas, It is provided by Sec. 3594 of the Revised Statutes that “the coin paid for duties - on imported goods shall be set apart as a special fund, and shall be applied as follows: First, to the payment, in coin, of the interest on the bonds and notes of the 'United States ; second, to the purchase or payment of 1 per cent, of the entire debt of the United States, to be made within each fiscal year, which is to be set apart as a sinking fund, and the interest on which shall in like manner be applied to the purchase or payment of the public debt, as the Secretary of the Treasury shall, from time to time, direct; third, the residue to be paid into the Treasury”; liesolvad, That the Committee on Finance be instructed to inquire whether the laws above stated now are or nave heretofore been obeyed; and if they have not, to report by bill, or otherwise, such measures as will secure their enforcement, Mr. Beck—Mr. President, no man will deny that the laws passed by Congress are as imperative on the highest executive official as on the humblest citizen, whether they approve them or not. I venture to assert that no man will contend that the laws recited in the preamble to the foregoing resolution either are now •or have for many years past been obeyed. All Borts of excuses may be and have been offered for their violation, still the fact remains that the laws of the land have been disregarded by . our executive officers, and the legislative power has been subordinated to the will of men whose duty it is to submit , to them and to execute them as they exist. They have no right to decide whether a law is good or bad, politic or impolitic; so long as it is law they must be compelled to render implicit obedience to it. They have officially informed Congress for years past that they neither require coin to be paid for duties on imported goods nor do they set apart the cein or its equivalent so received as a special fund to pay the interest on our public debt or to procure bonds for the Sinking fund. On the contrary, they admit that as the existing laws do not coincide with their views of what is politic they disregard them. I deny their right to do so, because I believe many •of the evils the country is now afflicted yith grow out of the disregard of the plainest provisions of law by our Treasury officials. I have no faith in the remedies which are now and have for years past been proposed for the evils they allege to exist. That the country is not as prosperous as it ought to bo I admit, but I insist that the remedy is not to be found in striking down our silver coinage or the currency based • upon it, but rather in requiring our public creditors to take it as the law and the contracts thev required us to make demand. EQUALITY OF GOLD AND SILVER COIN. I believe that it can be demonstrated that gold and silver coin, and the paper representatives of both, stand on an absolute equality before the law, and that throe-fourths of our present troubles grow out of the refusal of our officials to pay the money received at our cus-tom-houses to our public creditors in the manner and for the purposes jirescribed by the laws of the United States. Therefore, I have recited these laws, which are plain and simple, in the preamble; and in the resolution have asked the Committee on Finance to tell the Senate whether they have been executed or not; and if not, to report measures which will secure their enforcement. I admit that even when that is done other combinations must be broken up before we con become a prosperous commercial people ; but as I all measures for tariff and tax reform must be originated at the other end of the Capitol, I am content to await the action taken there, being confident that the Executive is in full sympathy with all proper efforts in that regard. There can be no dispute as to the fact that there must be something wrong in the management of public affairs when the ports of great nations like Germany, France, Austria, and other countries are arbitrarily closed against our cattle, hogs, and other food products, without, as the President tells us in his message, “present prospect of reasonable change.* It is nut a healthy condition of things when wheat, hogs, and other farm products, debarred from foreign markets in retaliation because of our protective tariff, sell at home for prices which will barely pay the cost of production. As to them, certainly protection does not protect. The great American agricultural industries, which give employment to more than half of the workers for wages, whose welfare is held up (properly BO) as the highest aim of legislation, and whose products constitute at least eighty per cent, of our exports, receive no real consideration here and are not even ranked among the industries of the country over which Congress is asked or expected to throw its protecting arm. These great interests are the unorganized, unequipped, and, therefore, neglected militia, whose strength can not be brought to bear with half the efficiency of a single regiment of thoroughly armed veterans fighting for special interest. This is illustrated here and now by the zeal everywhere displayed by the combinations of bankers and bondholders and their able and well-paid press to maintain their bonds at a premium of 2-1 per cent., or rather to increase that premium to 30 or 40 per cent., at the expense of the already imjioverished masses of taxpayers. It seems as though it was thought to be the duty of Congress to see to it that the rich should be made richer by making the poor poorer. Why should we be in hot haste to strike down our silver currency for fear of a fall in our outstanding bonds below 24 per cent premium? Have the representatives of the people any interest in maintaining, far less in Increasing, the premium on bonds bearing 4 per cent, interest beyond 24 per cent, when we must soon become the purchasers, of them at any premium, or else contract our currency at ruinous rates by locking up in the Treasury all ‘ our surplus revenue, as reduction of taxation seems to be impossible, by the passage of laws Which will still further depreciatp the prices of farm products, now so low that producers cannot raise them and pay wages to their laborers • on which they can live ? When fat hogs sell at 3)4 cents a pound, and other things in proportion—when all the world is combined to exclude our agricultural products from their markets in retaliation against our protective system, which prohibits our farmers from buying what they must have with the proceeds of what they must sell, unless they pay 46 per cent, on the average more than they are offered them for, in order to enrich a few organized combinations of manufacturers, who seek no markets abroad and refuse to sell their products in competition with so-called paupers with whom the farmers must compete, our condition is not satisfactory. THE CRUSADE AGAINST SILVER. But I agree that the Senate cannot inaugurate measures to relieve the country from oppressions of that character; therefore I propose to seek relief in the treatment of our circulation, not by destroying it, but by extending its usefulness. The present crusade against silver is only another evidence of the audacity of the organization of wealth; they have always secured ail they demanded, however unjust their demands ; they have succeeded in alarming the President ana the Secretary of the Treasury as they have done several preceding administrations ; they threaten to use the power which our laws give them over our currency, of withdrawing from circulation among the people, and, if need be, from the country, the gold they control, and thus derange, even if ruin follows, the business of the people. Every concession increases their audacity and adds to their power. A stand must be mode somewhere by the representatives of the taxpayers or an absolute surrender of all the monetary interests of the country into their hands must follow. A mere reference to the post legislation of Congress on this subject proves what I say. When it was first asserted, in 1868, by the bondholders, as the time approached when the United States could lawfully pay off the 5-20 6

per cent bonds, and when the outstanding principal of the public debt exceeded $2,600,000,000, that the honor of the country demanded that the principal as well as the interest on the bonds should be paid in gold or silver coin, a cry of indignation was raised all over the land against such a demand by all honest, disinterested men. They were told, and told truthfully, that all the bonds they held had been purchased with legal-tender notes at par; that for each SIOJ in greenbacks they paid to the Government they had received a bond for SIOO, bearing 6 per cent, interest, payable in gold or silver coin: that the greenback when they exchanged it for the bond, was only worth 50 cents on the dollar in coin, and that it was an outrage in the face of the contract they had made, with the privileges given to many of them in addition as national bankers to have currency issued for them to loan out on the security of’ their bonds equal to 90 per cent, of the bonds deposited, to demand that the principal of their bonds should be paid in coin. They knew—everybody knew—that the claim was false. The legal-tender notes have and continue to have an indorsement on their . back that “This note shall be receivable at its face value for all debts, public and private, except interest on the public debt and customs dues,” so that there could be neither doubt nor dispute either as to the law or the fact. Nobody denounced the impudent demand of the bondholders more emphatically than the present presiding officer of the Senate (Mr. Sherman). It seems to me that any set of men wh > would deny the fact that the legal-tender note, indorsed as it was and is, which had purchased the bonds at its face value, should be received again by the bondholder in payment of the principal of the obligation he held, would not hesitate to deny the truth of the attraction of graviation. PAYMENT OF BONDS IN COIN. Yet those men not only denied it, but in 1869 procured the passage of an oct of Congress, against the vote and protest (I am happy to say) of every Democrat in both houses, declaring that the principal of the bonds should be paid in coin—in go! 1 and silver coin, as both are named. Legal-Lenders v ere only worth 50 cents on the dollar in coin when the bonds were bought; they were worth from 66 to 70 cents when this act was passed. The act was simply legalized robbery. The bondholders and their attorneys in and'out of Congress knew it, and knew that no court would sustain such a law. The indorsement could neither be erased nor sworn off the back of the legal-tender note, and nobody could plead ignorance either of the law or of the fact that it was tobe received at par in pavment of the principal of all our bonds. Therefore they caused the act of July 14, 1870, to be passed, extending the time of payment, reducing the interest, and exempting the new bonds in express terms from all taxation, State, Federal, or municipal; and to prevent all mistake or misapprehension as to the character, quality, and weight of the money in which payment of the new bonds should be made, they caused to be printed on each bond as part; of its obligation “that it shall be paid in coin of the standard value prescribed by law on the 14th of July, 1870.” The present gold and silver coin are both of the standard value prescribed by the law of July 14,1870, and were then as now both full legal-tenders for all our obligations. All the bonds that mature in 1892 and 1907, amounting to about $1,000,000,000, stand to-day unchanged, and payable as required by the act of 1870. The remnant of those payable now have been changed, the interest has been lowered, and the time extended, but the same provisions govern them and the same conditions are written out as part of the contract in all of them. In th’face of thes i facts it is s.mply absurd for anybody to ass rt that they are payable in gold ulon?, or that the taxpayers of the country are under any o ligation, express or implied, either to demonetize or step the coinage of the Silver dollar, wh ca is of the standard value required by t,.e act of July Is, 1870, or to increase its weight thirty, forty, or any other numbers of grains, because In eland, to whom we have ignominiously surrendered the carrying trade of this country and the world, with her 200,000 serfs in India and * Dewhere, and Germany, after extorting $1,003,000,0 Xi of gold from France, have combined in the interest of their moneychangers to d pre iate silver or put up the market pric.i of gol 120 per cent. THE CONSTITUTIONAL UNIT OF VALUE. If the gold mines of Calif* rn'a and Australia had c: ntinued to produce abundantly and the Comstock lo le and the Leadvill 1 min s had not produced silver, so that the ma ket value of the two metals as bull on in London had baen reversed, the argument could be made quite as plai sible that the silver do.lar was the constituti nal unit of value in 1870 wnich the bondholders hive a right to demand. There is not an outstanding obliga'icn of the United State s, ntr of any State, municipality, corporation, or inc ividnal which cannot be legally and honorably discharged by the payment of the present standard silver dollar. Whatright has Congress to deprive the debtor of that right by adding more silver to the coin than he agreed to pay, or by stopping its coinage so that he cannot obtain it? It is as palpable a violation of a contract to increase the obligation of the debtor as it is to impair or reduce the standard value of the coin which the creditor stipulated in his contract should be paid to him. When Congress has once coined money and regulated the value thereof, and contracts are based upon it, the right to pay according to its terms cannot rightfully or justly be taken from the people, and Senators and Representatives who deprive them of that right will have unpleasant explanations to make to the men whose burdens are increased by their vote. It is simply an attempt to repeal the legislation of 1869, and the same pretenses are made now that were made then. An honest dollar for the laboring man was then, as now, held up as the patriotic object of those who repudiated the greenback,as higher wages is claimed to be the prime object of all the patriotic combinations of monopolists and machiue-owners, who tax us all 46 per cent, under the present protective tariff and yet hire the cheapest pauper labor they cun import. It is the wolf guarding the lamb, the spider the fly, and the hawk the sparrow. I propose to test this question in the light of the facts furnished us by our Treasury officials. We are, of course, as good judges of the value of the facts they furnish and as competent to draw correct conclusions from them as they are. The last report from the Treasury Bureau of Statistics, relative to our foreign commerce for the fiscal year 1885, proves that there is no such condition either in our trade or exports of metals, whether of coin or bullion, as to render it necessary to strike down our silver coinage. It shows (page 1) that our total exports for 1885 were $726,682,946, and for 1881, $724,964,852, while our total imports for 1835 were $577,527,329, and for 1884, $667,697,693. It will thus be seen that while the value of our exports in 1885 exceeded those of 1884, our imports were more than $99,009,000 less. The same report shows that for 1885 our exports of gold were $8,477,892, and for 1834 $41,081,957, or over $32,000,000 less for the fiscal year than for the year before. Our exports of silver for 1885 were $33,750,633, and for 1884 $26,051,426, or nearly $8,000,000 more last year than the year before, while our imports of gold last year exceeded those of the year before nearly $4,000,006. These facts falsify the clamor that gold is fleeing ff om our country, and proves that all the (pretended) evils of a single depreciated silver standard are myths. Nor is it true that our silver coin has depreciated since July, 1870, when tested by any other standard than the market value of bullion in London. The report above referred to (pages 5 and 6) gives the New York or export prices in currency of the commodities which constituted over 80 per cent, of our exports, nearly all agricultural products, in 1870 and 1885, from which it will be seen that the silver dollar, which it has become fashionable to malign and denounce in aristocratic circles, will now purchase from 25 to 30 per cent more of all that the toiling millions of this country labor to produce, and of all that men need money to obtain, than it would in July, 1870. To avoid ■ all dispute as to these facts I quote the language of the report, as follows : The following table shows the annual average export price in currency of the articles of domestic product named and for the years indicated • Year ending June 30, Articles. 1870. 1885. Indian corn, per bushelso.92.s $0.54.0 Wheat, per bushel 1.28.9 86.2 Wheat flour, per barrel 6.11.2 4.89.7 Cotton, per pound 23.5 10.6 Leather, per pound 28.5 19.8 Mineral oils, refined, per gallon. 30.5 08.7 Bacon, hams, per pound 15.7 09.7 Lard, per pound 16.6 07.9 Pork, salted, per pound 13.3 06.3 Beef, salted, per pound 07.2 07.5 Butter, per pound 29.3 16.8 Cheese, per pound 15.5 09.3 Eggs, per dozen 39.3 21.5 Starch, per pound 08.2 04.0 Sugar, refined, per pound 12.6 06.4 Tobacco, leaf, per pound 11.3 09.9 In the face of these official facts and figures as to our trade, and exports and imports of gold and silver, and the comparative purchasing

power of the silver dollar now and in 1870.1 repeat : Why should it be stricken down, or its purchasing power further increased 20 per cent, by adding 40, 50, or any other number of grains, to its weight? In other words, why should every producer and debtor have to give 20 per cent, more of the products of his labor to obtain either a new silver dollar or gold coin with which to pay his debts than he does now, when he is already paying his obligations according to the terms of a contract in a coin which will procure for its owner much more of all he needs than it would in 1870? It is only another phase of the constant struggle of the rich to grind the face of the poor, and of the favored few to enrich themselves by class legislation. GOLD AT A PREMIUM. While no one can deny that every obligation of the United States and every contract within our borders can be discharged honorably with the present silver dollar, we are told that our foreign obligations and relations are such that gold will be at a premium very soon, and we will be on a basis of degraded silver at once if we do not increase the weight or stop the coinage of silver; that all Europe is horrified at our stupidity or dishonesty, or both. Even England, whose gold is said to lie used so freely to buy Senators and Representatives to vote for revenue tariffs against protection to monopolies called American industry, is held up now by the gold monometallists as an example worthy of all imitation ; her financial policy is lauded as the perfection of human wisdom. Fortunately the official reports overthrow all the reckless assertions of the gold worshiper*. The Register of the Treasury (see report for this year, page 4) shows that out of $1,071,460,262 registered bonds of the United States outstanding only $11,927,900, or a little over one-tenth of 1 per cent., is held abroad, and of those which can be paid before 1892 foreigners hold only $34,150, which is less than the interest on the money now lying idle in the Treasury for one day at 3 per cent, per annum. These facts, coupled with the fact that our exports of goods exceeded our imports $130,000,000 this year, and our imports of goods exceeded our gold exports $18,213,804, an amount greatly exceeding all our bonds held abroad, settle the question. The falsity of the clamor about foreign complications or gold premiums is made too apparent for any sensible mon to be deceived by it. The press is filled with articles day by day which seek to make people believe that all other nations have ceased to coin silver, and that we alone ore stubbornly persisting in forcing it upon this country after it has been abandoned everywhere else. I propose to disapprove these allegations by officially stated facts. The Director of the Mint in his last report shows (pages 131, 132) that for the year 1884 the world’s production of gold was $95,z92,569; of silver, $115,147,878; and that $99,459,246 of gold was coined, while the coinage of silver last year amounted to $96,039,443, of which the United States coined $23,991,756 of gold and $28,5(14,866 of silver. Other nations, therefore, coined in 1884 $61,504,577 of silver, showing that we ore far from being alone in the coinage of that metal. England coined $3,204,824 of silver last year and 86,201,517 the year before, to add to her stock, which has been accumulating for generations; while she has coined silver for India in the last three years to the value of $68,234,000. FOREIGN SILVER COIfL The workers for wages in Engl Ad to-day get their pay in silver coin, ’and the question is never mooted by them as to the comparative bullion value of the silver and gold coin of that country, Even Germany, notwithstanding she pretended to have demonetized silver twelve years ago, coined in 1882 $6,407,157 of it to add to her vast stock on hand; her laborers are paid in it now. No complaint is made anywhere, here or in Europe, about silver coin, except by the holders of our bonds, who seek to increase largely the purchasing power of gold, or, which is the same thing, reduce the value of all our property from 25 to 50 per cent, below its present value when tested by the single standard of gold, which they claim shall be paid by us to them, and to them alone. They do not seek to establish the single gold standard, they say; they are bimetallists. They agree that silver is a legal-tender for all debts and obligations of the Governmen t except those held by them. It is good enough to pay the laborer, the soldier, the sailor—in short, all who work for the United States—but they insist that it is dishonest in us to pay it to them, although their bonds and obligations all show on their face that it is a legaltender in payment of them all bo long as it is coined of tne standard value fixed by law July 14, 1870, as it is now and always has been. Our dollar is more valuable than that coined in most of the other leading nations, France included, theirs bearing the r.lationof 15)4 to 1 with gold, while ours is 16 to 1. I need not repeat in detail what the official reports show in regard to the gold, silver, and paper currency of the several countries. It is sufficient to prove by them that while the difference in the market value of gold and silver in London operates to degrade their silver coin more than it does ours, France and other countries maintain their silver and paper in all transactions, public and private, at par with gold under far greater difficulties than we have to contend with, no matter from what standpoint the comparison is made. DUTY OF THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY. No Secretary of the Treasury can mistake his duty under the law ; no public creditor con complain when the interest on his bond is paid in the coin which is set apart as a special fund, first for the payment of the interest due to him. Yet millions, hundreds of millions, have been paid for duties on imjxirted goods since 1878 in silver coin and silver certificates, which is only a convenient form of handling silver, as the coin they represent is ours when the certificates are paid to us; yet not one dollar, so far as lam advised, has ever been paid in silver as interest on the public debt or in the purchase of a single bond for the sinking fund, though it has been recognized as a coin which constituted the special iund created by law by its acceptance in payment of duties on imported goods. The public creditors have unju tly demanded gold ior tne interest on their bonds without any sem .1 inc* of right, and every Becret.iry of the Treasury has disregarded the law and acceded to their demands. Our officials have thus aided and abetted the organization of the most powerful body of capitalists in the United states against silver coinage—men who con rol the currency of the country, and hold the obligations of all its business cncerns; men who can inflate or contract the circulating medium on which ail our commercial transactions derend; men who hold $73 7,742,850 of bonds of the United States maturing in 1907, on which they now demand a premium of 24 per cent., and seek, by striking down silver, still further to increase thair premiums. They hold also $; 59,000,000 of our bonds payable in 1892, which they seek to enhance the value of even beyond the 12 per cent premium they now command. These men control boards of trade, chambers of commerce, and the best talent of the press ; they can crush all who arc In debt if they dare to dissent from or object to the demands they make; the reports of their conventions and speeches are laid before us w.th a parade and semblance of authority equal to the report of the S’cre ary of the Tr asury or the message of the Piesiuent I shall not be surprised if they dominate this Congress, but it will be after I have entered my protest against it and have given to the country my reasons for so protesting. If the managers of the finances of France had treated her silver coinage as our officials have cm's, she would have been prostrated financially, at the feet of England and Germany long ago. Why have the holders of the dishonored trodedollar been importuning Congress for years to give them in exchange for it a standard dollar containing 412)4 grains, while it contains 420? Simply because one is a legal tender and will pay the debts of its owner, and the other will not. Yet tested by the bullion value the tradedollar is worth the most. When our Treasury officials yielded to the clamor of the bondholders and violated the law by admitting their right to refuse silver received at the Custom House in payment of the interest or principal of their bonds, they degraded our standard silver dollar by depriving it of its most important function as a legal tender; and now, having captured the executive branch of the Government, the bondholders and their attorneys are besieging Congress to enforce their demand for gold alone in the settlements their claims, all law, justice, and equity to the contrary notwithstanding, by striking down the silver of the standard value of July, 1870, which they then demanded and inserted in the face of every bond they hold as one of the coins in which the bonds should be paid. It is hard to do justice to their audacity in temperate language; I hardly think lam equal to the tank and will not attempt it. I can, however, get the facta before the people. The last report of the Treasurer, page 35, shows that the receipts at the New York Cus-tom-House for the fiscal year 1885 were paid as follows ■ United States legaltender n0te5536,161,000, or 28.9 per cent United State* gold

coin 1,544,000, or 1.2 per cent United States gold certificates 42-779,000, or 34.1 per cent United States silver certificates 44,660,000, or 35.6 per cent United States silver coin 158,000, or 0.1 percent. T0ta15125,302,000, or 100 per cent It is fair to assume that the payments at the other custom-houses were made in substantially the same character of money. It will be observed that more of the customs dues wwe paid in silver and silver certificates than were paid in gold and gold certificates; all of it is by law a special fund which cannot legally bo paid or covered into the Treasury till the interest on the public debt is paid out of it and the bonis for the sinking fund are purchased or redeemed. SILVER HELD IN THE TREASURY. These, together, required about $108,000,000, yet not a dollar of silver has been so applied; it is paid into the Treasury aud held there, and a clamor is raised that it cannot be again got into circulation. If the law was obeyed and the bondholders required to take the same proportion of silver dollars that the Government receives through its custom-houses, the bondholders would have no difficulty in getting them all into circulation:. and when it is made their interest to maintain and support the silver they own we would hear no more about its being’ dishonest money. The Secretary says (page 14 of his report) that the balance iu the Treasury has been increased from the 4th of March, 1885, to the Ist of November, 1885, $58,053,702.27, yet there has been.no reduction ot the interest-bearing debt (and that is the only debt that is a burden on taxpayers) since November, 1884, certainly not since March, 1885. The monthly reports show $194,000,000 of 3 per cent, bonds then outstanding and precisely the same amount in November. How is the surplus silver coin to get out of the Treasury if the Secretary refuses to pay it out for interest and refuses to call in the bonds which are now payable ? There is no more effectual or pernicious method of contracting the currency than by collecting by taxation a large sum in excesssof the needs of an economically administered Govt rument and locking it up in the Treasury. Every dollar needlesly taken fromthe taxpayer wrongfully deprives him of that much capital, which he needs and labored to obtain, and when it is locked up the circulating medium which all the people want is wrongfully withheld from them. The thief who steals aud squanders an unneeded surplus locked up in the Treasury vaults would inflict less injury on the country and its business if the money he stole was put in circulation than a Secretary who holds aud hides in vaults currency which the people want, and refuses to use it to pay the debts, especially interest-bearing debts, which the men who own this money owe. It is easy to raise n clamor about a surplus, but it will be more difficult to explain to the people why inch vast amounts of ihoney they have been so heavily taxed to furnish is lying idle in the overloaded Treasury vaults and they deprived of its use, while interest. is running against them in bonds that cannot be and ought to be paid. The idle money, when paid out for interest on bonds, would at once be released and restored to circulation. Speaking of circulation, we ore constantly told that there is now a great abundance of it outstanding; indeed, we are officially advised that the legal-tender notes and the silver certificates should all be withdrawn—l presume, because of the superabundance of currency. Let hs look for a few minutes at the effect of these recommendations, if curried out, and see how far these certificates are now used as currency. It was the avowed purpose of the advocates of both gold and silver certificates, and I was one of them, to furnish a safe, convenient paper currency; every dollar of it could be wed just as the coin paid for it could be, and which would be secured by the deposit of an equal amount of coin in the Treasury. No better security could be asked or given. It was not thought desirable to have the coin of either me al exposed to the risk rs loss or reduction of value by the abrasion which necessarily accompanies its active use. The transportation of both was known to be dangerous aud expensive ; all the expense and risk, as well as the deterioration of the coin, were avoided by the use of the paper substitute, while the United States was sure to be amply compensated for all the expenses incurred for vaults, custodians, and everything else. WORN-OUT PAPER MONEY. We —I moan by we all the people—received a coin dollar for every paper dollar issued. We only pay out the coin on the paper brought back to our agents. All of it that is lost or destroyed by fire, flood, or the thousand accidents that ’ all transitory things are subject to is our gain. We had experience in operations of that sort and knew that they were profitable. Forty-five millions of dollars of fractional currency’ was issued. We afterward called it in for cancellation, and we now know that $15,000,000, or onethird of it, has been lost or destroyed. We made $15,000,000 out of that issue, as we received a full consideration for the whole amount issued. We only redeem such national bank notes as are returned, and the amount now known to be lost is so great that the Comptroller is devising all sorts of ingenions plans in his repoort to get it away from us for the benefit of the banks. None of them lost any of it. The people who borrowed it'or worked for it, after the banks got value received for it, were the sufferers; yet the Comptroller wants it all for the banks. I expect they will get it. They have as much right to it as to have their interest and principal paid in gold alone, or to have our silver stricken down. I have no idea that $300,009,0K) of the $346,000,000 of greenbacks charged in the report as outstanding could be returned if they were called in to-day. All lost Is clear profit to the Government. It is a sufficient answer to all the clamor about expenses and vaults that the coin is preserved from loss and from abrasion, and that our gain from the loss of the outstanding paper, if it is kept in denominations in which it will circulate, as it ought to be, will amply compensate the United States for aU expense of its safe-keeping. The object we all had in view by keeping in actual use paper substitutes for gold coin to the extent of the coin deposited has been grosslyperverted. The coin is looked up and four-fifths of the certificates issued are of such high denominations that they are of no sort of use as currency. The Treasurer’s report, page 23, shows that on the 30th of June, 1885, the outstanding gold certificates amounted to $137,760,860, of which all but $33,360,000 were in denominations of SSOO and upward, more than $55,000,000 of them being for SIO,OOO each. It is obvious that the people get no benefit in the form of currency when bills or certificates exceed SIOO. The Director of the Mint, on page 29 of his report, speaking of these paper substitutes, says: “As these certificates represent coin in the Treasury, which coin can only be used in their redemption, they really form a part of the active coin circulation of the country.” The Director, perhaps, did not know that $55,000,000 of them were for SIO,OOO each, as it would be absurd to speak of such notes or certificates as forming part of our active circulation. The Treasurer’s report (page 24) shows that June 30, 1885, silver certificates amounting to $139,901,646 were outstanding, and that $103,758,091 were in $lO and S2O bills, in about equal proportions. None were higher than $1,000; so that the only real currency furnished to the people in the shape of certificates is that based on the deposit ot silver coin. Yet the dollars so deposited are held up as useless incumbrances, performing no function of value, and all our officials join in the crusade against them and the certificates that represent them, and urge Congress to withdraw the one and stop the coinage of the other. Ido not pro[>ose to do either unless better reasons are given why it should be done than any I have yet seen or heard. I would, however, amend the law so that no certificate should be of a higher denomlua’ion than SSJO, and not more than 25 percent, oi tie amount outstanding at any time should be cf denominations higher than SSO. The legal tender not* s, too, are attacked. It seems as though every form of currency which costa nothing and enriches nobody is condemned. GOVERNMENT CREDIT. It is assumed that the Government has no right to use its own credit or to furnish any part of the currency the people need. Legal tender notes are denounced as a forced loan, as rag-babies, shin-plas-ters, indeed every opprobrious epithet has been hurled against them by those who insist that they must be vested with the sole right to issue currency to loan at a profit to themselves, and to dictate through their organization how much or how little it is most profitable to them to keep in circulation. But the people aud their representativ s have so far sustained the greenbacks, and while they have always been repudiated to the extent that they could not be legally paid at the custom-houses for duties on Imports, and that is the law now, over $47,0J0,00J of them was received for duties last year in New York alone by executive orders, in plain violation of law. The majority of the Senate refused last year to make them receivable tot duties, and

yet we •permit $47,000,000 of tli*m to be so received. I have a bill now before the Finance Committee making it legal to receive them for customs dues, as I believe they ought to be ; yet I insist that no executive officer oi aht to lx> allowed to do anything in violation of law, or to be placed in a position in which he feels authorized or compelled to disregard it. Congresa, by the aot of May 31, 1878 (see Statutes sx Large, vol. 20, pace 87), made an effort to wtain what was then left ot the legal-tender notes and to preserve tbem in such shape that they would b» currency in the hands of the people. We provided, in substance, that whenever legaltender notes are received at the Treasury from any source they shall not bo retired, but shall be reissued and paid out again and kept iu. circulation, and that new notes of the same denomination of those returned, because toomueli mutilate*! for use, shall bo issued in their stead. It is obvious that Congress did not intend teallow any increase of the denomination of the legal-tender notes above what existed when th* act was passed ; yet the table on page 20 of th* Treasurer’s report shows that bills of the denomination of SSOO have increased in the last year nearly $10,000,000, while those of smaller denominations have been proportionally decreased. There can bo but one purpose in this attack all along the line on everything except gold and national bank notes, and that is to transfer to the holders of our bonds absolute power over the currency, which meaus over the business of the country. NOT WARRING ON BANKS AND BONDS. I desire to state with great distinctliee* that I am not making war on bondholder* or national banks or bankers. I voted to renew their charters, to repeal alt taxes on their capital and deposits, and will cheerfully vote for any and all measure* necessary to add to their usetulness, either by increasing their circulation to pur with th* bonds deposited, or, if it can be done with justice to their competitors in business, reduce or repeal the tax on their circulation. But I would require them to take the sumo coins, both gold and silver, that all other creditors of the Government receive. I snail always oppose tho grunt or recognition of uny superior rights or privileges in them or in tho obligations they hold over those of other citizens. I would divorce them from polities and deprive them of power to control or influence legislation by contracting or expanding or by threatening to interfere with our currency, as was done when they obtained President Hayes' veto on u memorable occasion. I would require them to obey the law and receive the coin which wo take at the custom-house and set apart as n special fund for their security and payment. When wo say by law, as wo have done, “that no national banking association shall bo a member of miy clearing-house in which such (silver) certificate* shall not be receivable in the settlement of clearing-house balances,” I would forfeit the charter of any bank that dared to disobey the law, as I would flue and imprison any officer of any of them who would certify checks when tho funds were not actually in the bank at tho time. In short no set ot men should be allowed to exorcise privileges prohibited by law, nor have rights given to them in regard to the character and quality of the coin in which th* ir debts shall bo paid which are denied to all other equally.meritorious creditors; and no sot of men should ever have power to regulate or control, a» their private interests may be affected, the currency or the business of tho people. If that power is yielded or conceded to them, with legal tender notes and silver certificates withdrawn end gold paid to them, aud to them alone, for their interest and bonds, Congress would be powerless to resist any demands our bondholders and bankers might make. I know their power and appreciate the adroitness with which they enn hare their claims presented. Even the President in hiH message has been induced to say that up to tne present time only about ; 50,000,000 of the silver dollars we have coined have found their way Into circulation. He modified that statement by showing that a large amount of silver certificates was outstanding. But tho press of the country have taken up the first statement, leaving out all tho qualifications, and parade it before the country as conclusive evidence that too much silver has already been coined, aud that all of it is an incumbrance except about $.50,010,000. They utterly ignore the fact, which the official rejiorta show, tnat at the close of the lust fiscal year, June 30, 1885, out of a total coinage of $203,000,000, $140,000,000 in round numbers was in active circulation in the form of silver cer ificutos, in addition to the coin in tho hands of the p<ople, of which certificates $44,600,000 was paid to the Government’ for customs dues during the last fiscal year at the port of New York alone—mor* thin was paid in gold and coin certificates combined. Why Is not tho coin represented by these certificates as much in active circulation as if it was passed from hand to hand us often as the certificates arc? I ask, is it fair to complain of tho silverneld iu tho Treasury a* being expensive and useless under such circumstances, and yet not utter ono word of complaint in regard to over $137,000,000 of gold eoin locked up at the same time and in the sama way, represented by the safne sort ot certificates, most of them in a far less useful form ? If our officials would unlock the Treasury vaults and pay our interest-bearing debt with the money they are complaining of being overwhelmed with they would be doing their duty more satisfactorily than by the course they uro now pursuing. ADMINISTRATIVE EFFORTS. The President says: “A special effort has been made by the Secretary of the Treasury to increase the amount of our silver coin in circulation.* Let him make one more effort and pay out th* $60,000,000 or $75,000,000 he received for customs dues, and which he has no use for, in payment of interest and in redemption of the bonds now redeemable, and the ordinary expenses of the Government will keep the vaults reasonably clear of all not represented by certificates or bills, which the people have a right by law to demand on making a deposit of coin. No public creditor other than the bondholder has ever complained when payment is mado to him in silver or silver certificates. Ail other creditors are entitled to the same consideration as the holders of our bonds. We, as a taxpaying people, are not interested in keeping our bonds 24 per cent, above par when we must soon buy them with our surplus revenues. It must not be forgotten that all the gold coin deposited for silver certificates became at ono* tjie property of the United States; It was not held in the Treasury for their redemption. An equal amount of silver coin took its plaoe for that purpose at once. Men who o ,vned gold aU over the South and West, in Louisville, Indianapolis, Nashville, and other places, as well n s those cities named in the report, sent their coin at their own expense to the Assistant Treasurer in New York in order to have silver certificates delivered to them for use as currency at home. Yet during all this time the bullion value of gold in London was at least 15 per cent more than silver, and the country was being periodically alarmed and Congress advised by our officials that gold was leaving tho country, that silver was a degraded standard of value, and that its coinage must be stopped or its weight increased, or ruin would be speedily upon us because of its depreciation in tue London market. The facts I have stated overthrow all the speculations of the theorists. Our business men gladly exchanged their gold coin for silver certificates, and did not ask better security for the paper than the silver dollar deposited in the Treasury. So far from hoarding gold because of its greater bullion value in a foreign market, they sent it to a distant depository to get the paper we are advised is dishonest money because it is depreciated fifteen to twenty per cent, below gold in London. I have thus imperfectly outlined the reasons why I can not sustain at this time a policy which seeks to withdraw either our legal-tender notes, the silver certificate, or stop the silver coinage; and I see no propriety in increasing the weight of our silver coin beyond the standard value fixed by law July, 1870, under and by which all our outstanding bonded indebtedness is regulated. I am convinced that we can no longer look with safety to the national bunks to furnish the country with a stable currency. I insist that every creditor of tho Government is by law entitled to be paid in the same coin, and that our Treasury officials should be required to pay silver us well as gold when received for customs dues to oar bondholders, as they do to all others who have legal demands upon the Treasury; that done there will be no n* e*l, at least for years to come, to strike down silver In any form. Tho country is now rallying from a long period of depression. All railroad securities recently fell 59 per cent, on the average in eighteen months. Wheat, cotton, cattle, hogs, all farm products, are even now so depressed that they leave no profit to tho producer, even after ho pays the lowest wages for which he can obtain labor In their prouu rtion. Foreign nations ore closing their ports against our leading exports and throwing all obstacle* possible in the way of our commerce.