Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 February 1886 — COINAGE OF SILVER. [ARTICLE]

COINAGE OF SILVER.

Speech of Hon. Roger Q. Mills, of Texas, Delivered in the House of Representatives, Wednesday, February 3, 1886. Mb. Chairman: In 1878 Congress passed a law authorizing the limited coin we of standard silver. Ever since teat time there Laz been a court tnt demand for its rpe.l. Within the last twelve months, tssecu.. ons of national bankers, cot oa exchanges, and board. of trade have been very active and zealous in tne.r efforts to create a public sentiment that would compel Congrass to retrace its steps. They charge that the country is peiilously near the edge of a great financial crisis; that if we continue to coin silver as we have bean doing, gold •will laave the country, and that we will ba flooded with the cheap silver of foreign countries. They charge that the dollar which we are coining under the act of Feb. ‘2B, 1878, is a dishonest dollar, and that every creditor is defrauded. who is compelled to accept it. These are grave charges, and I propose to consider them in the order in which I have stated them. Is it true that gold will leave the country if we continue to coin silver? It was Patrick Henry who said that he had but one lamp by which his feet were guided, and that was the lamp of experience. I propose to test these propositions by the rays of light that are thrown from that lamp on our pathway. It was predicted by all the friends of scarce money when we were passing this law that gold would begin at once to leave the corintry and that the cheap silver of foreign countries would begin to be unloaded on us. The law has been in force eight years; what has the lamp of experience revealed ? The very first year after the law was passed we imported more gold than we exported. We have coined $218,000,000 of Silver dollars, and gold has continued to come to us, and during the eight years we have imported largely more than we have exported. When this law was passed we had $218,000,000 of gold coin in the country; we have now about $600,010,000. Does that look like gold was leaving us ? It is a curious fact that from the opening of the mines of California to the passage of the law of 1878 we were constantly exporting more gold than we were importing, and since that time we have been constantly importing more than we have been exporting. During the last eight years we have coined more gold than our mines produced. It was not the cheap silver but the cheap gold that has been • dumped upon us. Ido not wish any one to ■understand me as contending that the importation of gold was in any way caused by the limited coinage of silver. I assert nothing of the kind Gold is directed in its movement by the same inflexible laws that direct the movement of cotton, wheat, and com. It always goes from the lowest to the highest market for itself, and from the highest to the lowest market for the commoditylor which it is to be exchanged. We see that gold has been coming from foreign countries, and we know that it came to buy wheat and cotton and provisions, because they were cheaper here than they were in Europe. The lamp of experience shows that gold found it profitable to come from Europe and buy our cheap agricultural products. We still have it, and will retain it until prices are lower in other countries, and then it will begin its movement from us until its withdrawal from our markets makes prices low again, and then it will stop its outward movement. Just in proportion as it leaves the country, and its volume grows smaller, prices will decrease, and a level of prices between this and other countries will be reached, when its exodus will cease. So that there is no danger that gold will leave this country. But for what will gold leave us ? When we look over the whole field of our trade what article is it for wnich gold will go abroad? Will it go for silver? Why, silver is dearer in Europe than it is here. Every kind of silver is higher in Europe, higher in India, higher in every country on the earth than it is here, whether it is coined silver or manufactured silver or bullion silver. Then it can not go for silver. It can not go to Europe to buy something that is higher there than here and bring it here to be sold at a loss. What will it go for? Will it goforgotton? We ship about two. hundred and fifty million dollars’ worth of cotton every year. We produce a surplus of cotton, and it can be bought cheaper here than in Europe. Gold will not go abroad for cotton; it will not go abroad for wheat; it will not go for petroleum; it will not go for provisions. Then for what will it go? It will certainly not go as a gift. Our gold-owners are not so philanthropic as to give away $600,01)0,UCO in gold. If they send it away they must have something in exchange lor it, and I want some of the alarmists to tell me what gold is going for. It can only go lor such articles as are produced at a less cast in dther countries than here, such as coffee, tea, sugar, and manufactures. We import seven or eight hundred millions of such commodities, but does go.d go to pay for them? It never has, and it never will. Why? Because we pay tor them with commedit es which they want, and which we produce cheaper tnan they do. They can not eat gold nor wear it, and if they had all our gold they would send it to us for bread and meat, as they did in 1879 and 1880. We pay for all our imports with the commodities we export, and tuen have a surplus cf a hundred or more millions, which we apply to Our foreign debt. There is no evidence and none can be produced to show that gold will leave this country as a consequence of silver co’nage, and the Irstory of the last eight years demonstrates the truth of taat proposition. Now, the next question is, will we be flooded withth<j cheap silver of other countries? Are we to be buried in a sepulcher of this bright and beautiful metal? Suppose the silver of other countries were all sent to us. Would it be a curse instead of a blessing? If money is a curse, why is all the world struggling to get it? Now, I am going to demonstrate to you that this prediction is as groundless as the other. Silver is higher in Europe than it is here, and can only come here at a loss. Last year the annual average value of a gold dollar in silver bullion in New York was 451.09 grains of fine silver. That makes one ounce of fine gold equal in value to 19)4 ounces of fine silver. There is in round numbers three billion dollars' worth of coined silver in the world. It is coined in different countries at different ratios. In France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Greece, and Spain it is coined at 15)4 ounces of silver equal to one ounce of gold. In England, 14.28 to 1; in Portugal, 14.9 to 1; in the Scandinavian States, 14.88 to 1; in Austria-Hungary, 15.3 to 1; in Russia and India, 15 to 1. All this silver is legal tender and fully invested with debt-paying power. In some countries it is limited tender, in others full tender, but in all it is money, and the relative amount as fixed by the coinage laws of the several countries will buy as much, exchange as much, and pay as much as the equivalent in gold. In Germany and the Latin states 15'4 ounces of silver will pay as much and buy as much as 1 ounce of gold. In Russia and India 15 ounces of silver will buy and pay as much as 1 ounce of gold, and so with all the rest. In each one of these countries silver is money, and has the monetary value conferred upon it by law, but when it leaves the jurisdiction of the government that issues it and invests it with monetary functions, it leaves its monetary value behind it and becomes a mere commodity. Does any one deny this ? The Secretary of the Treasury is required by law to fix the value of all foreign coins, and that value is determined in sil ver-srundard countries by the value in open market cf the metal contained in the coin, and not according to the monetary value given to the coin by the law of the country that makes it. The florin of Austria is worth at home 48 cents in gold, but it is only worth here 37 cents. The rupee of India is worth 47 cents at home, but it is only worth 35 cents here. The yen of Japan is worth 99 cents; It is worth only 81 cents here. Within the jurisdiction of the country that coins it silver has a value given it by law, but when it gets beyond thejirotection of that government it loses that value and takes only such value as is accorded it on the open market of the world. France has a stock of silver worth in gold at home $>53,-000,0-0. If she should withdraw that silver and eend it here for sale it would be worth $401,000,000; she would lose $152,000,(01. Belgium has a stock of silver worth $54,000,000 at home, and $40,000,000 here. She would lose $14,000,000. Italy, Switzerland, Greece, and Bv*dn, coining at the same relative valu-, would lose $24,000,000. Austria would lose $18,000,000, and India would lose $285,000,000. Ha; any nation ever embarked in such an enterprise? And yet we are told that all these countries are going to withdraw

all their silver and dump it on ns, to the incalculable injury of our people, and at a loss to themselves of more than $550,000,000. They are so anxious to take advantage of our stupidity that they will withdraw all the silver from circulation where every 15)4 ounces is worth 1 ounce of gold and bring it here and sell 19)4 ounces for 1 of gold and lose 4 ounces of silver in every lof gold. India is the greatest of all the silver-owning countries. She is to withdraw her $1,300,000,C00 and dump it down on us at 19)4 ounces of silver for 1 of gold, when 15 ounces of silver at home will buy 1 ounce of gold, and she is going to do all this at a loss of $285,000,000. Now, is not that proposition perfectly absurd? You must remember that of the great stock of silver in the world the great body of it is coin. The mints are the great consumers of silver and there is no place where we can get any large amount of silver unless we extract it from the circulation of other countries. Now I have proved, I think, conclusively that silver can not be withdrawn from other countries and brought here. What has been our experience in the last eight years ? All the time we have been threatened with the silver deluge. When we began to coin silver in 1878 we had $65,000,000 of silver coins in the country. We have coined since then $218,000,000 of silver dollars nnd $10,000,003 of fractional coins and ought to have now $293,000,000 of silver coins. The report of the Director of the Mint shows that we had in the country on the Ist day of January, 1886, $213,293,872. We have just got what we have coined for our own use, and while we have only coined what we were permitted to do, and having a large surplus, me product of our mines, we have been constantly exporting more than we have imported. The lamp of experience has played sod havoc with the predictions of the prophets. Experience shows that gold is higher here and silver is higher in other countries. Twentythree and twenty-two one-hundredths grains of gold will buy 451.09 grains of silver here; it will only buy 359.91 grains in Germany and the Latin States, 326.93 grains in Portugal, 345.51 grains in the Scandinavian States, 355.26 in Austria, 348.30 in Russia, and 331.58 in England. Our gold dollar, the equivalent in value of 451.09 grains of silver, is worth 100 cents here; it is worth 78 8-10 cents in Germany and the Latin States, 72)4 cents in Portugal, 76)4 cents in the Scandinavian States 78 7-10 cents in Austria-Hungary, 77 2-10 cents in Russia, and 73)4 cents in England. Gold will purchase more silver here than in any of these countries, and silver will purchase more gold than it will here; therefore gold will not go there to exchange for silver and silver will not come here to exchange for gold—--451.09 grains of silver, which is worth $1 here is worth by the laws of Germany, France, Belgium, Italy, Greece, Switzerland, and the Netherlands $1.25, in Russia $1.30, Scandinavian States $1.30, Portugal $1.38, Austria-Hungary $1.27, and England $1.36. It is evident from these figures, which I have from official sources, that we may repress our alarm about the exodus of gold and the silver-dumping business. Why is it that the creditor class of France have not complained that 371% grains of silver in the French coins are only worth their bullion value of 79.8 cents instead of their money value of 103.1 cents? Why have they not demanded that silver enough should be put in to make the bullion value equal to their money value ? But there never has been a whisper of that kind in France. The same is the case in Belgium. Spain, Portugal, in all the countries of continental Europe, and in North and South America. Look even at England, conspicuous as the creditor country of the whole world, conspicuous for her devotion to the creditor class that constiinies her aristocracy and that supports her throne. The whole policy of that state has been for years to build up by every conceivable measure the aristocratical element in her society. And yet they never have learned up to this day that their silver coins, worth only 74 cents in the dollar, according to their bullion value, are swindling the people of that country out of twenty-six cents on the dollar. Now, Mr. Chairman, as I have said, the silver dollar has a monetary value that is placed on it bylaw. How? The law opens a new market for the silver. Everything in trade by an unerring law of political economy takes value in proportion to the uses to which it may be applied. If there was no demand for silver by the mints its value would be determined by the demand for consumption in the arts. But when there is in addition to that a large demand for consumption in coinage, then tne increased demand increases the price ; and if the Government would consume the whole produce and say to the holder of ths bullion, “I will give you $1 in silver for every 371% grains of silver,” it fixes the value of silver and prescribes the functions it is to perform. When the Government takes the silver from the holder and coins it and gives it back to him it adds to it 17 cants more in value than it had before. In all transactions in the United States and within the jurisdiction of our laws the silver dollar is the equal of the gold dollar. What difference does it make to the creditor or the debtor whether the silver has 480 or 380 or 280 grains in it when it is a legal tender? Wh n the debtor tenders it in payment of his debt the creditor is bound to accept it; and if he refuses, and enters suit and obtains judgment. when the Sheriff comes with the execution to sell he will be stopped and compelled at last to accept the tender. The money confronts him and he is bound to take it, and that is the end of it. It cancels every debt where it is tendered, and that is what makes it money. And yet Wall street tells and the people of the United States that there is but one honest dollar—that which is coined in the proportion of one ounce of gold to nineteen and one-half ounces of silver. There is no government on this earth that ever coined silver and gold at that ratio; and, sad as it is, according to their standard there never was an honest dollar. But it is some comfort to know that as we put more silver in our dollar than any people in Europe we come nearer being honest than they do. But I admit when a debt has to be paid to a foreign creditor that if it is paid in silver coin it must be paid at its bullion value. Our coins, when they go beyond the boundaries of our Government, go as commodities, not as money. If such a payment should be made in silver coin, it would be at a loss of 17 cents on every dollar. But he will not do that, but do as we did during the suspension of specie payment. He will buy silver bullion or wheat or cotton or provisions and ship them and draw on his consignee. But that is not a perfect condition of our circulation. The perfect condition of our money is when the monetary value of the coin is equivalent to the commercial value, and we ought to come to that. Well, how are we to do it? We are certainly not going to do it by stopping the coinage of silver. It was the stopping of the coinage of silver end depriving silver of its market tl a) made it depreciate and gold appreciate. Now, a great many of our friends say that the difference between silver and gold is all to be attributed to the appreciation of gold. Our friends on the other side say that all the difference is to be attributed to the depreciation of silver. The truth is the difference is equally divided between the two, according t> the economic principle that everything takes its viuue in proportion to the demand that is made on it or the uses to which it is applied. When the mints were shut down on silver there was no demand for silver but in the arts. Silver then ceased to occupy a certain field of circulation in the world. It left that field unoccupied and there was increased demand for gold to take its place. Tnen the two metals parted, diverging from a point where they were on terms of equality until they got down to the pdint of difference at which"they are to-day, wnich is about seventeen cents on our dollar, one-half of which may be attributed to the appreciation of gold and one-half to the depreciation of silver. But it is a strange sort of philosophy which teaches us that in order to bring back the desired equality we must stop the coinage of silver. That is liae telling a man when there is something the matter with one of bis legs that the proper way to restore it is to cut off that leg and “peg” about as well as he can on the other, and that perhaps after a while by some miracle—for nothing short of a miracle can produce the result—his leg will grow out again. It is like saying to a man when one of his eyes is diseased that he ought not to cure the disease and restore the ailing eye to the same condition aS the other, but that the proper thing to do is to jab it out, with the idea that maybe some of these days a miracle will be wrought—that somebody will come along and touch the eye and relume it again. Scarce irbuey has always been att< nded with disaster tbe woild over. Hso’v telle us of its horror t i:i Europe, but we need n t go beyond our own country for proof of the statement. Mr. Chai-man, from the time cf the first discovery < f the mines in the new world up to 18J9 tbe worll was full of money. Vessels cf Spa ; n were carrying into all the channels andmnts of na le the wealth produced in the new world. The history of that period reads like a romance <f the middle ages. The Spanish galleons with their cargoes of the precious metals were sailing o ver the ocean, loaded with the enormous predcations of the mines of the new world. So

rich was the booty, so tempting was the prize, that the ocean was soon covered with pirates, who swarmed in the track of the vessels to rob them. But in izoj all the dependencies of Spain on this continent broke into open revolt for the establishment of tl.e.r own independence. From 18J9 to 1849 the mines were abandoned and closed un. The revolting provinces established their independence in 1823 after the long, exhausting struggle; and when they did establish their independence they were not strong enough or able to protect the owners of the mines in investing capital enough to work them. Up to 1849 the prices were low, so low that the prices from 1809 to 1849 show that they had risen from that time more than 10j per cent, and one distinguished author says 145 per cent There was only one exceptional period that I remember in ail that long period of depression; and that was in 1836, when the country was taking a ride through the air on the Icarian wings of paper money. In 1835 the circulation amounted to one hundred and sixty-one millions of money. In 1836 it rose to two hundred and four millions. Thsra was an addition of forty-three millions to the circulation in one year, and thirty-six millions of that amount was wild-cat paper money. But it increased pi ices, and while the circulation went up 30 per cent, in one year, prices went up 29 per cent, But the business of the country, like Icarus of old, soon felt its wings giving way, and it fell from a giddy height. Circulation contracted and prices tumbled. The downward tendency continued till 1843, when the circulation had fallen to $142 and prices had fallen correspondingly. This year was the year that prices touched the lowest point reached in this century. In 1848 mines of gold were discovered in California, and they commenced pouring enormous quantities of that metal into the markets of the world, and in 1850 we had two hundred and sixty-five millions of money in circulation. Next year we had more, and prices went up. Next year still more, and prices still went up. And the circulation continued to increase year by year until 1857, when the volume of circulation was precisely 100 per cent, over 1850. We had $530,000,000 of circulation, actual circulation, and prices went up 31 per cent, above 1850. Each year prices rose above the year before, and there is no period of equal length in the history of this country when there was such unbounded prosperity in all departments of our industry, The national wealth increased at the rate of 12)4 P er cent, per annum. We had a good system of finance and taxation, and both aided in thrusting the country forward on the road to prosperity. In 1858 the circulation fell $88,000,000 below 1857, and prices fell 20 per cent. They commenced rising again when the war began and money was poured out all over the country, and touched the highest point ever reached in the country in 1865, when they were 4 per cent, higher in gold than in 1857, and the circulation rose to $1,157,000,000. About this time a number of gentlemen who amassed a large amount of depreciated paper money started on a wild hunt after honest money—started to impress the Government with the necessity of coming with rapid strides back to gold—started to bring this country by forced marches to a gold currency. They commenced to contract the currency for that purpose, and prices came down till they brought the country to the crash of 1873. We certainly all remember, that. We certainly all remember that from 1873 to 1879, after we had commenced the coinage of silver, this country passed through a period of darkness and gloom that has never been witnessed at any other time in its history, and God grant that it may never be witnessed again. I remember standing here and seeing a venerable Representative of Pennsylvania (Mr. Hendrick B. Wright, now no more) rise and unroll a petition signed by 20,000 of his fellow-citizens asking this Government to relieve their distresses and, if it gave them no other relief, to give them some means of flying from their homes where starvation confronted themselves, their wives, and their children. We remember the time when the city of Pittsburgh was set on fire; when the United States Government had to send its armed troops to protect property and suppress the terrible disturbance made by the Congress of the United States bending its knees in devotion to the gold power of the East. Every State in the North tottered from turret to foundation-stone, and every one of them was calling on the Government of the United States to stretch its strong arms around them and help them to stand in the midst of the tempest of disorder and violence created by their distressed and suffering people. Three millions of men willing to work were out of employment. They could have earned $3,000,009 per day; but there was none to employ them. Bread and meat were cheap, house-rent was cheap, fuel was cheap, everything was cheap but gold. Gold was high, but the pockets of the workmen were all empty. Would you take the country again thruogh that valley of the shadow of death ? Would you repeat again that experience so full of lamentations and mournings and woes ? If you would, listen to the soft, sweet notes of the siren as she sings from the vaults of the national bankers about dishonest dollars. Drive out into banishment the old silver dollar of our fathers; call in the silver certificates; retire all the Treasury notes; make money so scarce that the poor bankers in New York can buy a bushel of wheat for a dime, a pound of cotton for a penny; make it impossible for people to pay their debts ; make labor so cheap that working people can only earn enough to pay interest to money-lenders and taxes to support the Government, and you will see again the return of that night with all its horrors intensified. One of the most distinguished advocates of the suppression of silver has but recently said if we stop coining silver that the act will be a drag upon production, and that suffocation and strangulation are words not too strong to express the agonies of a people who are encircled in the colls of this golden serpent. And yet, with our eyes open and looking down into the abyss of human suffering that yawns before us, we are entreated and importuned to drag the eountry to the edge of the precipice and plunge it over into the tortures and agonies of contraction, to satiate the lust for gold. Sir, history has recorded on its pages every kind of scourge that has been sent upon mankind from the hand of his fellow, and it has carved the names of the guilty wretches on its pillory where they stand before the eyes of each recurring generation to suffer the execration due to the atrocity of their crimes. It tells of Nero vainly struggling to extinguish the truths of Christianity. by lighting the streets of Rome with the burning bodies of her missionaries; of Tamerlane discussing philosophy with the sages of Aleppo, while his savage soldiery were gathering the heads of his slaughtered foemen into monumental piles to please the eye of the royal invader; it tells of Philip 11. sacking, burning, and butchering the helpless inhabitants of the Netherlands, loyal to his kingdom and crown, because they elected to worship at the shrines where conscience bade them kneel; it tells of the obliteration of Poland, the partition of its territory, ths banishment and confinement of its unhai py people in the caves of Sibeiia by the sceptored robbers of Russia, Prussia, and Austria; it tells of the conquest and long-continued oppression and robbery of Ireland by the kings, parliaments, and people of England for five hundred years, and that in tuo face of the remonstrances of all Ciiristandom still stretches her victim on the bed of torture. But in all the wild, reckless, and remorseless brutalities that have marked the footprints of resistless power there is some extenuating circumstance that mitigates the severity of the punishment due to the crime*. Seme have been the product of the fierce passions of war, some from the antipathy that separates alien races, some from the superstitions of opposing religions. But the crime that is now sought to be perpetrated on more than fifty millions of people come s neither from the camp of a conqueror, the hand of a foreigner, nor the altar of an idolater. But it comes from those in whose veins runs tbe blood of a common ancestry, who were born under the same skies, speak the same language, reared in the same institutions, and nurtured in thelprinciples of tbe same religious faith. It comes from the cold, phlegmatic, marble heart of avarice—avarice that seeks to impale the whole land on a bed of torture to gratify the lust for gold [applause]—avarice surrounded by every comfort that wealth can command, ana rich enough to satisfy every want save that which refuses to be satisfied without the suffocation and strangulation of all the labor in the land. With a forehead that refuses to be ashamed, it demands of Congress an act that will paralyze all the forces of production, shut out labor from all employment, increase the burden of debts and taxation, and send desolation and suffering into all the homes of the poor. In this hour, fraught with peril to the whole country, I appeal to the unpurchased representatives of the American people to meet this bold and insolent demand like men. Let us stand in the breach and call the battle on, and never leave tbe field until the people’s money shall be restored to the mints on equal terms with gold as it was years ago.