Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 September 1893 — DISCUSS THE DOLLAR [ARTICLE]

DISCUSS THE DOLLAR

SPEECH THAT IS SILVER AND ANTI-SILVER. Specimens of the Oratorical Outflow Mined from the Veins of the Congressional Record—Many Proposed Solutions of a Great Question. Debate in Congress. Silver-tongued orators in Congress have spoken for silver and against silver. Some have not spoken at all, while still others, not silver-tongued, have talked and have said nothing of interest to the public. Many of the speeches made during the two weeks’ debate have been of such length as to he tiresome, and no paper except our esteemed contemporary, the Congressional Record, has cared to print these speeches in full. From the columns of this more or less interesting journal we extract the following from the efforts of some of the prominent debaters: Senator Voorhees’ Plan. Senator Voorhees, of Indiana (Dem.): We are confronted by a law without precedent or parallel in American history: a law which for months past had been the theme of all tongues and pens, and in whose name financial panic, alarm, and distress had been invoked, and for whose repeal this Congress has been convened. As a firm, unfaltering believer in bimetallism, I voted against the passage of the Sherman act, and for the same reason will vote for its repeal. The question has been asked whether a vote should be given for its unconditional repeal or whether a substitute must be agreed up n, I would at once eradicate this confessed evil from the body of our laws, with no other condition than my right and free agency, to support and to seoure, in connection with its repeal, or ifterward by an independent measure, as the success of its immediate repeal—the primary duty of the hour—may at the time dictate, a sound financial system, embracing the oolnage of silver on sn equality with gold. In making this statement I only repeat the declaration of the Chicago platform. The banks intensely realize that the present supply of government bonds for banking purposes must be very largely increased within the next five years or they will be forced to commence winding up and retreating from the theater of action on which they have so long appeared. I stand against the existence, the increase or the perpetuation of the national debt for purposes of national banking and call upon the millions who constitute the great army of the laborers to take notice of this issue from this time on—an issue that will not down at any man’s bidding. I do not expect the government ever to abandon a national currency, though it would abandon the system of national bonks. The great value of State bank money is, and ought to be. mainly local. It will increase the home circulation and the home accommodation of every agricultural community on American soil. Tn the meanwjiile it should he the duty of the .Federal Government to issue its own unassailable notes by retiring much of the present outstanding currency, and also by the payment of its debts, and to issue them in amounts equal to the requirements of trade as nearly ascertained as possible. Tjiose who live to witness the adoption of this policy will iook upon the safest, strongest and most beneficial system of finance ever before known in American history. It has in it the elements with which to accomplish these paramount and indispensable features of all sound financial legislation: 1. A sufficient volume of currency at all times, State and national, on practically a specie basis, guaranteed also by public honor, with which to transact the growing and expanding business developments of the coun2. The absolute denial and destruction of *ll power in the hands of individuals, corporations or syndicates to cause fluctuations in the amount of the different currencies in circulation, thus rendering panios and business distress impossible for the future. 3. Every dollar in circulation, whether gold or silver, State bank paper or United States Dotes, on a strict parity and interchangeable with every other dollar, thus securing to tho people the benefits and advantages of both a State currency and a national currency circulating- in harmony and uniformly performing all the functions of money at homo and abroad. 4. The settlement of the vexed question of silver money at once and forever by authorizing it to form its portion of the specie basis required by the Constitution for every chartered bank in the Union; by recognizing it when defining the powers of the State to make legal tender money, thus making the use of silver coined into money as imperative as it was useful to the great body of the people. 6. The total and complete overthrow of the dangerous centralization of the money power now existing at a few money centers and in the hands of a few individuals by giving to the people of the States the right of home rule on the subject of money, and thereby securing to them a reliable, nonfluctuating home circulation. No Question of Sectionalism. Senator Hoar, of Massachusetts (Rep.). Mr. President, any man or party in the Eastern States who should desire to have the value or the purchasing power of the dollar increased in order that the value of debts, or that assured and permanent incomes might be increased, or in order that speculation in gold or in credits might be rendered more profitable, would be hurled from power and buried in infamy by the swift and righteous indignation of the whole people of those States. The Serity, the power, the happiness, the growth of the Northwest and the South are as dear to the people of New England as th£ir own. What they want, what they desire and strive lor, is not an appreciating standard of value, but an unchanging standard of value, so far as the lot of humanity will admit'. Appreciation and depreciation can be ascertained and provided for. But, to use the expressive phrase of Mr. Balfour, “money is the record of obligations extending over long periods of time." And it is an injury, it is destruction to any community which has risen in civilization above the pirate stage, when that record is liable to uncertainty or is the subject of speculation or gambling. If the people of the Northeast seem to the people of another part of the country to bo contending for anything likely to bear hardly upon them, it is because they do not see or anticipate, such a result, and not because they desire it or are indifferent to it. Ido not believe that any large number of the people of the Northwest desire the destruction of property, impairment of credit or any injury whatever to the people of the Northwest. Their ambition is to acquire property; their hope is in the establishment and maintenance of credit. They always have depended, and for a long time in the future must depend, for these things on a close alliance and an interchange of advantages with the people whose children they are, with the states whence they came, and with communities from whose institutions they have modeled their own. and with whom in the great aucLglorious future they must live or bear no life. Chief among the resources of the West is its alliance with a wealthv and prosperous East. The wealth of the East must perish but for its alliance with a wealthy and prosperous West.

No Time for Contraction. Senator Wolcott, of Colorado (Rep.) When the papers yesterday and the day before announced that the banks were unable to furnish the farmers of Indiana and Minnesota and the Northwest with even the currency sufficient to move their (train, do you mean to tell us that confidence is to come back if you will only unconditionally repeal the Sherman act? Will it brine confidence back to the railroads, who see diminishing earnings week after week, earnings which will diminish in a still greater ratio in the months to come, with a povertvstricken people unable to get their currencv from the banks, and with the price of their grain constantly decreasing? Is it to bring confidence back to them? Will it bring confidence to the millions of people in the far Northwest, who have seen their principal industry stricken down by the existing condition of affairs, and which the passage of this resolution would entirely obliterate? Will it bring them confidence? Those people, Mr. President, law-abiding and orderly, ask, under the protection of the flag, to be permitted to earn their living and to carry on an Industry which the law has recognized since the foundation of the republic. The Senator from Massachusetts tells us that we want first unconditional repeal, and afterwards some measure will be enacted for the recognition of Bilver. You say to those people, already almost homeless, with the roof of their cabin gone and poverty before them, “If you let us knock out your foundation stone and obliterate all trace of your home and the place of your habitation, in the time to come, after we have had consideration, we will build you a stone-front house." Now, Mr. President, confidence will not thus be brought back. Locating the Responsibility. Senator Cockrell, of Missouri (Dem.). Mr. President, I confess that the people have lost confidence; but in whom? Jn the financiers, the gold monometalists, who are undertaking to fa-ten their iniquitous and oppressive and robber system upon the toiling millions of this country. Confidence has been lost in the banks that made this panic to order, who cut and hedged aud rolled it in to suit themselves, and then it escaped from their clutches and is playing sad havoc with them and with all the people of the United States. It passed beyond their control, and the people have lost confidence in them. What Is the result? The people go to the banks to draw out the money that is in the banks, and when they have drawn out 10 or is per cent. of the liabilities of the banks they have absorbed all the money in the United States, and there is no money that anybody else can get for any purpose. There is mu money enough in this country; as n

matter •f course there Is not; bnt the whole financial system that the distinguished financiers in the East have been building for years is based npon confidence, faith, hope, and charity. Destroy confidence, and the fabric falls. That is all there Is about it. We have got jnst as much money in this country as we ever had. The people have confidence in every dollar we have got, but they have no confidence in the men who have misled them. Now, let the men who are complaining and whose actions produced this panic say to the people of this oountry, “This money is all good; we are not solvent; we have misled you," and then they may restore confidence. Confidence in them is all that is wanted; confidence for the people to take back to tHe banks and deposit there the money and let It circulate; confidence that the people will take their money there and let the banks pay somebody else, and that person deposit it, and then somebody else can pay it. You have got to keep the money of this country turning over almost daily or you will have a panic. There is not money enough in the country. I pointed it out here in 1891, and showed the statistics to prove that there was only about 10 per cent, of the liabilities of the banks in cash. I then showed (and I shall at some proper time read what I then said) that the whole financial structure was based upon confidence, and that the moment you destroyed that you bad a collapse. I was called an inflationist'then, a silver crank. “I Would Act.” Senator Lodge, of Massachusetts (Rep.). The Senator from Missouri (Mr. Vest) yesterday said, in referring to the condition of the sliver States, that if we were to have legislation to close the mills of New England every Senator from those States would be here ready to offer the most bitter resistance. Mr. President, the mills of New England are closed now. There is no need of further legislation. At this moment, with the exception of two mills, there is not a spindle turning in the city of Lawrence, and they employ 12,000 hands. There is only one mils going in the city of Lowell, and they employ over 20,000 hands. There are over 30,000 people out of employment at this moment in only two of the cities of the Commonwealth that I in part represent. Multiply it by ten and you get some idea of the distress that rests upon the State of Massachusetts. Multiply it by 100 and you get some idea of the distress pervading the Northern States, and when there is such a blight resting on the industries of my own State, and oi ail the other great industrial States of the North, for one X have no mind for party politics or-for delay. I simply ask for action. I believe it is the highest duty that the Senate can perform to take the quickest possible action. It seems to me a case, Mr. President, to which I may apply the words of a very distinguished predecessor Ht mine, Mr. John Quincy Adams, “I would not deliberate; I would act." Palmer for Repeal.

Senator Palmer (Dem.), of Illinois, argued in support of the repeal bill. It could not fairly be asserted, he said, that the President did not favor the use of. both gold and silver as the standard money of the country, nor did it follow that, because the President had failed to say a word in reference to bimetallism in his recent message to Congress, he would disapprove of legislation providing for coinage of Doth metals that would be of equal exchangeable and intrinsic value. He expressed the opinion that the great majority of the Americae people would not only approve but would rapturously applaud legislation that would establish and maintain the bimetallism of the Chicago convention, lie believed, however, that in the present state of the market it was beyond the power of any finite mind to fix the ratio of silver to gold, because the market value of silver was in a state of chronic fluctuation. Tho present ratio should be adhered to, the Sherman law repealed, and the use of silver coin encouraged by judioious laws, and then the influonoe of events upon the relative values of the metals might be calmly watohed, with the hope that by the use of effective means the country might at no distant day reach the point where both gold and silver could i e coined and used without discrimination between them. The Fifty-eight Cent Dollar. Mr. Cox, of Tennessee (Dem.). I have listened with a groat deal of pleasure to the gentleman’s argument. He has stated that the Bilver dollar is worth to-day sic. Mr: Harter, of Ohio (Dem.) Fifty-eight cents. Mr. Cox. Well, 680. Now. the question is, do you know of any man in the United States who has sliver dollars that he will sell at that price, 58c? Mr. Harter. Certainly not, under present conditions. Rut I know every man who has a silver dollar Mr. Cox, One moment, please. Does not the ssc silver dollar buy jnst, as much of the products of this country as any other dollar? Mr. Harter. To that I answer yes. Butthatisnot the point. That is the present coodition under limited coinage, bnt you are proposing to change it. In further answer to my friend from Tennessee, whom I regard as an authority on his side of this subject, I say to him that white it is true to-day, the very morning that you have by your law established free coinage in this country, then it ceases to be true, ana that every dollar in existence which is now held up to its full nominal value by our present law will sink to 58c, the bullion value, us soon as your law becomes operative. Impossibility of Bimetallism.

Mr. Harter, of Ohio (Dem.). I say to my friend from Louisiana, without a miracle wo oannot keep both/ gold and silver coin in circulation at any fixed ratio. It is as much the law of God as if it were written between the covers of the Btble. You cannot do it without a miracle, and miracles must originate on high, not on this floor. Y'our legislative enactments can Dot accomplish it. I say to-day it would be more easy for Congress to secure bimetallism under free coinage—that is, koep noth metals in general circulation at a fixed ratio, no matter how high or how low the ratio —than to discover perpetual motion. We could just as easily mix oil and water. We could bo out to the Soldiers' Home Cemetery over there and clothe the dried hones of the dead with flesh, put seeing eyes into their sightless sockets, and erect from their remains living, breathing men, as readily as we could keep the two metals in general circulation under free coinage at any ratio whatever. And how then, can we do it. as proposed here, at 16 to 1? Why, this morning, if the ratio of 16 to 1 were fixed as the basis of your coinage, a dollar of silver would be worth 58 cents. The Evolution of Currency. j Mr. Hendrix, of New York (Dem.). It is no new thing, sir, in the history of money evolution for the more desirable currency to dominate. When the Australian used to send some slabs as the medium of exchange; when the Fiji Islander used red feathers for his currency; when the Roman used his oxen; when in the early aute-Roman days in Ireland female slaves were a medium of exchange—in the use of eggs, in the use of iron, in the use of tin, in the nse of zinc, the process of evolution worked out the inferior and worked in the superior article. One by one have these mediums of exchange been discarded and a higher level reached. The world has advanced step by step; and the preference of the world to-day, from barbaric Africa to highly civilized England or America, is, between silver and gold, for the more precious of the two metals. When yon gentlemen begin to quarrel, you must quarrel with the forces of evolution. A Texan Appeals to Shakgpeare.

Mr. Bailey, of Texas (Dem.). But, gentlemen, you deceive yourselves as to the temper of the people on this subject if you imagine that you can »paclfy them by ,shallow declamations about a dishonest dollar. If the present silver dollar is not an honest one, the people are willing to make it so, according to ang reasonable provision that can be propose* and all they ask of you to-day is an opportunity to fairly test the matter. Will you deny them this? Dare you do so in the face of your platform? If you do, then when you come again to ask their confidence and their support they may an-wer you with the bitter words of Macbeth about the weird sisters; "And be these juggling fiends no more believed, That palter with us in a double sense; That keep the word of promise to our oar, And break it to our hope." The California Reason. Mr. Bowers, of California (Rep.). I asked • man who was working for me, and who, as soon as he learned of the run on the banks, rushed down to get his money, why he did it. He did not want the money. He replied: "I don’t know how it looks to you, Bowers, but to me it looks like corky times ahead. I am afraid of Congress. If it knocks out silver, stops coining it, they have got money cornered sure." And that is what has happened. And when you, gentlemen, ask why you can not get money to do business, it is because it is cornered. That is the plain English of it. It was only necessary to send a few millions out of the country, lock up a few millions in bank vaults, the proper notices in the press, and the stocking could be depended on to eompleto the comer. England Is Financial Heaven. Mr. Hopkins, of nilnols (Rep.). I understand you to say that the condition of England under its financial arrangements and of the English people is better to-day than that of any other country on the globe. Mr. Harter, of Ohio (Dem.): I did say so. Mr. Hopkins, of Illinois; Does the gentleman mean to say that the condition of the laboring classes of England is better than that of the laboring classes of America? Mr. Harter: I sav that the laboring man's condition in England today, compared with the laboring man's condition in the State of Ohio, from which I come, is as much better lowing to the ruin wrought by this same silver question, however) as a berth in heaven is superior to a cot in purgatory. A Massachusetts Illustration. Mr. Morse, of Massachusetts (Rep.). Some of the speeches that I have listened to on this floor on this subject make me think of the boy whose father was a clergyman, who was asked by another boy if his father ever preached any of his old sermons. “Oh, yes," he said, “but he does not holler in the same place." The arguments during this debate are the samo old arguments which have often been refuted by abler tongues than mine. The onlv difference is that the speaker does not “holler" in the same plaoe. Do NOT strain your relations.