Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 October 1896 — FIGHTS GOLD WITH GOLD EAGLES [ARTICLE]

FIGHTS GOLD WITH GOLD EAGLES

"Coin” Harvey in His Auditorium Speech Denounces Politicians. W. H. Harvey, author of “Coin’s Financial School,” used $2,500 in gold eagles as an object lesson in the course of his speech at the Chicago Auditorium Saturday night. Four thousand people heard Mr. Harvey’s speech, and applauded vigorously at frequent intervals. A large blackboard figured prominently in the speech, Mr. Harvey attempting to show with its assistance the evils of monometallism. He resurrected his argument that all the gold available for money in the world could be cast into a solid cube of twenty-two feet. Still working at the blackboard, he showed that the same amount —$4,000,000,000 —in silver, all that is available for money, would, if cast into a solid block, make a cube thirtysix feet. He then dealt out statistics to show that up to the act of 1873 the variation in the commercial value of gold and silver had never been more than 3 per cent despite the influence of great fluctuations in the amount produced. That after the act of 1873 the variation of the commercial value of the two metals has become 50 per cent. He said that the present crisis is the crucial test of American civilization and American institutions. Without money this country would, he said, relapse into barbarism again. While he admitted that the farmer could buy as much calico or sugar with his bushel of wheat now as lie could before 1873, he insisted that the farmer could not do the same thing when he came to pay his taxes. There, Mr. Harvey claimed, was where expensive dollars pinched the farmer. He asserted, too, that commodities in the control of trusts now would become dearer and dearer, and the farmer less and less able to secure them. In conclusion Mr. Harvey said:

Selfishness Is a consuming fire that burns and destroys. It will destroy individual character and it will destroy national character. Call it what you will, a dragon, an evil spirit, or a devil: it can be aptly termed a serpent, with Its tail In India, its body in Europe, and its head raised in once proud America. Will you fight it. citizens of Illinois? Then throw aside politicians. Throw aside those who have a self-interest in asking you for your votes. Study this question for yourselves, and when you have studied civilization and the effects of the law on the prosperity of mankind we will then rear here an enduring republic. “It will no longer be a question of experiment. We will erect one that will be permanent and enduring, and when we cease to scramble over the things of this earth and pile them up around us, as these millionaires are doing, who now would dictate to you and f how to vote —when we cease that, then we will come to a newer and brighter civilization, in which we will study the principles of humanity, and not the principles of selfish interests. And with such a people we will go forward, step by step, and we will make a race of great men and great women, and it will lead to a brighter and a better day.