People's Pilot, Volume 6, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 September 1896 — Page 7

policy of protection has rsstly benefited the laboring man In the United States. Sir, nobody upon « fit occasion can speak upon that great policy with more enthusiastic encomium or more Intense eon vlotion than myself. But it cannot do everything. Handicapped by the single gold standard, it can work out only a portion of its proper results. When I plead for bimetallism, I plead for the other half of protection. Free trade and the gold standard both aim at low prices, are both embodiments of British aggression upon the industrial Independence of my country. I will resist them both to the utmost. I do not question the sacs that protection has had a beneficial effect upon wages; but, sir, organized labor is also largely to be credited for the maintenance of wages. Diminishing the number of hours of labor, lessening the number of apprentices, organizing against proposed reductions, they have fought their way by one method and another and have succeeded to a large degree in warding off the natural effects of an appreciating money. Let me add that if you will consider the number of men who have been out of employment and the diminished labor of those who have had employment the statistics of the rise in wages will appear far less imposing than they do now. The laboring man’s interests are precisely the same as the manufacturer’s, the tradesman’s and the farmer’s in this respect. And the policy that Is sure to wreck all employers in productive industry, if continued, cannot fail to ruin also the men who work for them. Profits cannot disappear and leave wages untouched. When men that hire labor become bankrupt, the man who works is very apt to be out of a job. The voluminous evidence gathered by the English parliamentary commission on the depression of trade and industry shows conclusively that wages in England have been long falling and continue to fall. In the United States various conditions have prevented the full operation of the same cause as yet, but many of its effects are already visible and the ultimate result is clearly foreseen by intelligent laboring men all ov?r the country. Their attitude is not uncertain. They are and will be for a money system that is favorable to industry and that deals justly between man and man. Experience of France. Frequent reference is made in this discussion to the experience of France In the early part of this century. Now, that government, from 1803 to 1865, and the Latin union—France, Italy, Greece, Belgium and Switzerland—from 1865 to 1873, did maintain the with mints open to both gold anu silver, and keep them practically at par at her mint ratio

CHART D.-PRODUCTION OF GOLD (IN VALUE) MEASURED IN SILVER. 1800-94.

or 15/j to 1. This great fact is of such conclusive significance that the advocates of the gold standard have not hesitated to fly in the face of history and flatly to deny one of the most notorious accomplishments on record. Such denials have been made in the course of this debate, and for that reason I propose to say a few words upon that subject. Soetbeer gives the following as the extreme variations of the market ratio of gold to silver in each decade from 1803 to 1873: 1803 1:15.41 1849 1:15.78 1808*...■ 1:13.08 1850 1:15.78 1813*1:13.25 1850 1:15.70 1814* 1:15.04 1331 1:15.19 1820 1:15.62 1862 1:15.35 1830 1:15.05 1869 1:15.60 1832 1:15.72 1871 1:15.57 1833 1:15.93 1873 1:15.92 1843 1:15.93 •Extremes during Napoleonic wars. An examination of chart E will confirm the lesson of these figures. For 80 years the line of market value of silver as compared with gold runs almost coincidently with the line representing the ratio on which the metals were coined at the mint of France. Mr. Williams—-I want to ask the gentleman a question for information. That, as I understand it, is the price of silver bullion in the London market? Mr. Towne—ln the London market. Mr. Williams—lt did not vary at all in the French market? Mr. Towne—The gentleman from Mississippi is right. Sir Henry Hucks Gibbs,' for 40 years a director of the Bank of England, some time its governor, a monometallic gold delegate to the international convention of 1878 and a bimetallist now and for the remainder of his life, declares —and he had personal knowledge for many years—that from 1803 to 1873, notwithstanding the fact that the law requires nothing of the sort to be done, there was not a day when any person could not go to the Bank of France and get either gold or silver for the other at the mint ratio. And here it occurs to me to call attention to the fact that mints do not, under systems of free coinage, purchase bullion, nor do they exchange necessarily coin of one metal for bullion of the other. I have seen on this floor indications that some gentlemen appear to think that one way we should lose our gold—if we opened the mints to silver—would be in handing it over to designing individuals who should bring silver bullion to the mint and “demand’ ’ gold. The open mint exists merely to coin the bullion brought to it and pass it back in coin to the owner. The government stamp cannot create value. Whether * coin when stamped shall be effectual to pass at the value it claims to represent will depend upon the USeitoan command. In this respect 1 agree wholly with the honorable gentleman from Maine [Mr. Dingley], who opened this debate, and who now does me the honor of listening •o me. The whole question of maintaining freely coined silver at a parity with

pld Is one simply of giving It enough to io, subjecting it to large enough demand. But to return to the French coinage. The figures above given are authoritative. In considering them It must be remembered that they are London market quotations, and that coinage In France was free, but not gratuitous. All gold and silver brought to the mint was coined as desired, but a charge was made for expense of coinage of three-tenths of 1 per cent on gold and 1 % per cent on silver. The total transportation cost on coin and bullion during the most of that time must have been somewhere about 1H per cent. In addition to this, interest was lost on lhe value of the bullion while at the mint for coinage. These considerations are entirely adequate to explain the small variations in the bullion market in London. Indeed these variations show that gold and silver m ust have circulated side by side in France. The following table, on the authority of the distinguished economist, J. Barr Robertson, shows, in five year periods, the French coinage during the time in question of both gold and silver. It is given in English money because taken from an English document: Silver Gold (average (average per per annum). annum). 1803-1810£1,201,136 £1,184,737 1811-1815 8,290,508 5,208,029 1816-1820 1,951,604 003,111 1821-1825 465,748 8,526,4$ 1826-1830 293,976 5,032,004 1831-1835 826,149 6,576,12 C 1836-1840 589,857 8,048,1® 1841-1845 159.326 8,033,25 f 1846-1850 1,294,337 4,311,27 f 1851-1855 12,669,268 1.481,751 1856-1860 21,605,465 666,651 1861-1865 7,667,357 175,00 f 1866-1870 9,546,561 8,402,0® 1871-1875 2.475,213 , 2,742,77( Total c0ined322,993,410 217,640,234 Silver was tendered and coined every year and gold every year but 1838 and 1872. When England in 1821 resumed specie payments after a long paper regime, the coinage of gold in France, as will be noticed in the table, fell off very much, and when in 1850 and following years the greatly increased production of gold came into the world’s supply it was tendered and coined in immense quantities. But al) this time the mints were coining both metals, and the open mint of France, like a jflpe between two reservoirs, maintained the level of the two masses of metal and was the equalizer of their variations. Two Metals Really One. Nothing could more beautifully or triumphantly illustrate the fundamental principle of bimetallism. Tho two metals became in effect one metal, one primary

money mass, to respond to the demands oi debts and business and to support with broader basis the credit fabric of the world. Said Mr. Cernuschi, French delegate at the monetary conference of 1881: “The law by placing the yellow metai and the white metal on the same footing, by establishing a fixed and invariable ratio between them, has made them really a single money. ’ ’ Thus, fellow citizens, they must be considered. Thus treated they become such a money, and if so we can regard with perfect equanimity, when the system is once established, the going out of one and the coming in of the other metal. The ebb and flow would be a perfectly natural and healthful movement, marking the frictionless adjustment of the money volume to the demands of trade and of localties. If gold starts to leave us today, we have nothing to take its place, and so we keep hanging on to it, the amount of our desire to keep it the measure of our necessities for it, being registered in the fall of the prices of all we produce or make. This is the greatest and heaviest premium money can command. If silver were also primary money, when gold wanted to go so badly it might go temporarily and satisfy the wants of somebody who would give more for it for the time being than we would. Under present conditions we pay more than it is worth to keep it. A premium of 50 per cent paid in all our commodities is today the premium on gold in the United States. It isn’t worth the sacrifice. In this connection I draw your attention to the following extract from the final report of the English commission before mentioned. This portion ip signed by the 12 members of the commission, gold monometalilsts and all, comprising the greatest specialists in England: Sec. 189. Looking then to the vast changes which occurred prior to 1873 in the relative production of the two metals without any corresponding disturbance in their market value, it appears to us difficult to resist the conclusion that some influence was then at work tending to steady the price of silver and to keep the ratio which it bore to gold approximately stable. Sec. 192. These considerations seem to suggest the existence of some steadying influence in former periods which has now been remov ed, and which has left the silver market subject to the influence of causes the full effect of which was previously kept in check. The question therefore forces itself upon us, Is there any other circumstance calculated to effect the relation of silver to gold which distinguishes the latter from the earlier? Now, undoubtedly the date which forms the dividing line between an epoch of approximate fixity in the relative value of gold and silver and one ftf marked instability is the year when the bimetallic system which had previously been in foroe in the Latin Union ceased to be in full operation, and we are irresistibly Jed to the conclusion that the operation of that system, established as it was in countries the population and commerce of which were considerable, exerted a material influence upon the relative values of the two metals.

8o long as that system was in force think that, notwithstanding the changes in the production and the use of the precious

THE PEOPLES, PILOT, RENSSELAER, IND.. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 17. 1896.

metals, it kept the market price of silver approximately steady at the ratio fixed by law between them—namely, 15K to L Bee. 198. Nor doe« it appear to us a priori unreasonable to suppose that the existendb in the Latin union of a bimetallic system .with a ratio of to 1 fixed between the two metals should have been capable of keeping the market price of silver steady at approximately that ratio. The view that It could only affect the market price to the extent to which there was a demand for it for currency purposes in the Latin union, or to which it was actually taken to the mints of those countries, is, we think, fallacious. The fact that the owner of silver could in the last resort take It to those mints and have it conyertcd into coin which would purchase commodities at the ratio of of silver to 1 of gold would, in our opinion, be likely to affect the price of silver in the market generally, whoever the purchaser and for whatever country it was destined. It would enable the Beller t-o stand out for a price approximating to the legal ratio and would tend to keep the market steady at about that point. The situation in France and the nature and theory of the bimetallic adjustment are admirably set forth in the following eloquent words of Cernuschl in the monetary conference of 1881: “Until 1874 a clear and sonorous voloe was always heard resounding from the banks of the Seine. It said: ‘I am France, rich in gold and rich in silver. I can arrange that in the entire world the two metals form but one money. Peoples and nations, bring to Paris all the gold and silver you like. I take it all. Fora hundredweight of gold, or for 15>i hundredweights of silver, I will always give you the same quantity of francs. Let the production of one metal or the other be more or less abundant, more or less costly, it will be immaterial to mo. Peoples and nations, do you want gold? Bring silver. Do you want silver? Bring gold. As bimetallists the French have no preference for one metal or the other. They will always make exchange for you, if you know how to ask it, of one metal for the other on the basis of 15>$, and in the two hemispheres the rclatiije value of the two metals will always and everywhere be the same.’ ” A Question of Judgment. The reason why France was able to do this was that her commerce was great enopgh and varied enoughtogive employment and exchange to all tho metals of either kind that were offered for coinage. As I have before said, the test of ability to maintain a parity between the metals is the power, founded on extent and variety of uses for money, to absorb them in commerce. Whether the United States could independently achieve this result is not, perhaps, absolutely demonstrable. It is a question of judgment. My own opinion is that the task is not beyond us, and that, though some international concert is preferable, independent action is much to be preferred to the indefinite continuance of the present system. In this connection I wish merely to call attention, in passing, to tho fact that it was the powerful influence of tho French mint that caused, first the gold (when our mint ratio was 15 to 1 and France’s to 1) and then tho sil - ver (when we had changed to 16 to 1) to leave the United States and go to France. It was exactly as if a commodity wore to seek the highest market.' But if she took our gold she sc-ut us her silver, un.l vice versa. The process was natural aud not harmful. Both metals were somewhere performing full money functions for all the world.

When asked whether England could successfully alone undertake the maintenance of the parity of gold and silver with open mints, Sir Henry Hucks Gibbs said, “Any great commercial nation can do it.” We do not sufficiently realize what a powerful nation we are and what we can do if we set about it. We need a little of the spirit of 1776. Why, we are more afraid of England now, after we have grown big erough to whip all creation, than our fathers were when they could count no more population than the state of Ohio has now. So long as we want her to do it England will manage our money system for us, and we may depend on her having an eye on England’s interests while she is at it. I make the assertion that in nearly every respect the conditions enabling a nation to support a system of bimetallism are today more favorable to the United States than they were to France from 1803 to 1873. To begin with (see chart D), from 1803 to 1870 the average number of ounces of silver in the world in coin and available for coining was 30 times as great as the number of ounces of gold. Yet she made it possible during all that time to go into the market and buy as much with 15 ounces of silver as could be bought with one ounce of gold. Today there are only 16 times as many ounces of silver in the world’s stock as of gold. Our ratio of coinage, 16 to 1, would, to commence with, almost exactly correspond to the natural ratio by weight. Ought it not to be very much easier to float two metals at 16 to 1 when the relative amounts of them are practically just that than to do it when there were twice as many ounces of silver to one of gold as the ratio called for? Again, if the demand for ; the use of a metal is the test of ability to maintain it at parity, the case is .still stronger. In extent and variety of power to give employment to money the United States today is immeasurably greater in respect to the general, capacity of the world than was France 25 and more years ago. Says Mulhall, the world’s greatest statistician, in North American Review, June, 1895: “If we take a survey of mankind in ancient or modern times as regards the physical, mechanical and intellectual force of nations, we find nothing to compare with the United States in this present year of 1895. The physical and mechanical power which has enabled a community of woodcutters and farmers to become in less than 100 years the greatest nation in the world is the aggregate of the strong arms of men and women, aided by horsepower, machinery and steam power applied to the useful arts and sciences of everyday life.” The relative extent to which a nation uses steam power illustrates perhaps as well as any one thing can the degree to which that nation is a factor in the world’s business andean give money work to do. In 1870 the world’s steam power, according to Mulhall’s dictionary of statistics, was 18,460,000" horsepower. That of France was 1,850,000 horsepower, or little more than 10 per cent of the whole. In 1888 the total for the world was 50,150,000 horsepower, and of this the share of the United States was 14,400,000, or nearly 29 per cent. Oilr share today is 16,940,000, almost as great as that of all the world in 1870 and fully three times as great in proportion to the whole as was that of Franco in 1870. Here we see, says Mulhall, that “the United States possesses almost as much energy as Great Brittan, Germany and France collectively.” In comparing the two countries In respect to commerce, a most important point is this: In proportion as the foreign commerce of a nation is small relatively to the entire bulk of trade, it is easy to matn-

tain a money system possessing independent features. In 1870 the total exports and Imports of the world were approximately *11,000,000,00® and those of France a little more than *1,100,000,000, or about 10 per cent of the whole. In 1889 the world’s total was nearly 817,000,000.000, and the share of the United States was about 81,800,000,000, or nearly 10 per cent. While it is impossible to obtain data as to the Internal commerce of various countries with completeness and accuracy, enough exists to show us that a very much greater percentage of the total commerce of France in 1870 was foreign than the percentage of the foreign commerce in the total trade of this country today. It is commonly considered that not more than 4 per cent of our trade is with foreign countries, while it is safe to say that in France in 1870 fully three times that proportion in her trade was of that character. In agriculture I have not at hand the figures for 1870, but Mulhall gives the total value of the world’s principal agricultural products for 1887 at about 819,740,000,000, of which the share of Franco was or somewhat less than 12 per cent, and that of the United States 83,880,000,000, or nearly 20 per cent. There is no doubt that the statistics of 1870 and 1895 would show even a much greater relative advantage on our part than this. In manufactures France, in 1860, produced approximately 81,900,000,000 worth out of the world’s total of 812,000,000,000, or about 16 per cent; in 1888, $2,425,000,000 out of 823,000,000,000, or less than 10 percent. If her share for 1870 be taken as the average of these two years, she would that year have produced about 13 per cent of the world’s manufactures. The United States, in 1888, had about 87,215,000,000 worth of manufactures, or over 31 ner cent of the world’s entire product. In 1870 the railway mileage of France was 9,770, and that of the world 128,235, the percentage of France being 7%. In 1895, of the world’s 870,281 miles of railway, the United States had 168,597, being about 44 per cent of the mileage of the entire world, and 26,782 miles more than all Europe combined. In 1870 the railway freight tonnage of Europe was 401,000,000 tons, of which the proportion of France was 52,000,000 tons, or about 13 per cent. In 1888 her share was 78,030,000 out of 765,000,000 tons, or 10 2-10 per oent, while the tonnage of the United States was 590,000,000 tons, or nearly eight times as much as tpat of Franco and three-quarters as much as that of all Europe. Of a like significance is the comparative tonnage carried on canals and rivers, being in France 14,500,000 tons in 1870 and 24,500,000 in 1885, as against 51,000,000 tons in tho United States in the latter year. The total canal and river mileage of Franco is 7,730, and of the United States 51,834, or 80 per cent of the world’s mileage of that character. Add to this the enormous capacity of our great lake system, and the unequaled facilities for the development of internal commerce can be partially realized.

A Convincing Comparison. '■But the most convincing comparison as a basis of judgment of the matter in hand is as to the relative banking power of France in 1870 and the United States in 1890 (tho statistics for 1895 not I < Ing at my present command) in proportion to the total banking power of the world at these respective dates. In 1870 the world’s banking power was about 88,000,000,000, and that of France was $820,000,000, or 4 per cent, tn 1890—and the proportion is still more favorable to us in 1895—the world's banking power was nearly SIQ,000,000,000, and that of the United States was 82 per cent of that tremendous aggregate, or $5,150,000,000. Of course the gold standard men will point to the doubling of the banking capacity of the world in the last twenty odd years as proof of the diminished need of money and will cite the very exceptional equipment of .this country in that respect as an argument that we cannot use any more primary money. But it is too plain for dispute that this great growth in the world’s means of economizing gold, coinciding, as it does, so closely with the steps by which the volume of ultimate money has been deliberately curtailed, gives convincing support to our position that more primary money is a crying need of the world. Credit has been expanded to the utmost, far beyond the safety limit; gold has appreciated beyond all precedent, and td try to meet the demands of business this banking power has been evolved. It is an exact index of the increased need for primary or real money and shows conclusively that the capacity of the United States today to absorb a new supply of real money is almost incalculable. These considerations are much enforced by the fact that our vast territory of just touched possibilities, with its constantly multiplying population, affords incomparable scope for the operation and expansion of the energizing functions of an adequate supply of primary money. Now, sir, as we have seen, there is a demand in the world for a large additional amount of primary money. The enormous appreciation of gold and the almost incalculable multiplication of credits are Incontestable proofs of it. The supply of gold has not for many years come anywhere near keeping pace with the demand, so that even the increasing facilities for using it, of which our gold friends have so much to say, have not availed to keep it from rising ruinously. Dr. Soetbeer and others have exhibited the immense growth of the demand for gold in the arts and manufactures. He showed how the gold available for coinage averaged $92,090,000 a year from 1851 to 1870, but $24,000,000 a year from 1871 to 1881. Mulhall says that during the 50 years, 1881-1880, the consumption of gold was 160 tons more than the production. In an article in The Nineteenth Century Magazine for November, 1889, the great statistician and gold monometallist, Giffen, said: “The precious metals, it is admitted on all sides, have an extensive nonmonetary use. They are merchandise as well as money. But few people realize that probably this nonmonetary use is preponderant over the monetary use Itself. About twothirds of the gold annually produced is taken for the arts, and if the consumption of India Is included, as being either for simple hoarding or for the arts, then the demand for gold for nonmonetary purposes appears almost equal to the entire annual production.” Professor Bemis, the brilliant young economist of Chicago, has recently shown from perfectly reliable sources that during the nine years last past there has been available for addition to the world’s stock of circulating gold money not over $15,000,000 of new gold all told'. Mr. Walker of Massachusetts —Will the gentleman tell the house how much the economic power of gold- in commerce has increased in the last 50 years? Has it not increased several thousandfold? Mr. Towne—Mr. Chairman, I understand the gentleman’s question to refer to the common argument of gold standard theorists that the conclusions drawn by

all statesmen and economists down to recent years as to the limited ability of coin to discharge commercial functions have t been abrogated and overthrown by mod*ern inventions that have facilitated exchange, as checks, clearing bouse certificates, book credits and such things. Is that what the gentleman referred to in his question? Mr. Walker of Massachusetts—l made it as clear as I could. Give your own answer. Mr. Hardy—Wul the gentleman pardon me a moment? Modern Hocus Focus. Mr. Towne—l must decline to yield just now, Mr. Chairman, to the gentleman from Indiana. To the question of tho gentleman from Massachusetts I have only to say this—that it implies one of the greatest fallacies with which the case for the single gold standard fairly teems, although I never heard this particular weakness so strongly stated as by the gentleman from Massachusetts. The Idea is that by reason of some modern hocus pocus you can compel a limited amount of real money to go on forever doing an unlimited amount of work. They say ‘‘it does not make any difference how much ultimate money you have if you only have confidence.” No word in their whole armory is so sadly overworked as this poor “confidence. ” Confidence in what? I take it these gentlemen cannot mean that childlike and bland and innocent reliance upon the established moral order of the universe which is sometimes implied in the word “confidence.” No, sir; these gentlemen use it as a business word, In a practical sense, and so used it has reference entirely to tho confidence which you must fool in the ability of a man or an institution that Is making unlimited and multiplying promises at some time to redeem those promises. That is what it means, and how such confidence operates Is illustrated from time to time when, under the spur and whip of this pernicious doctrine, credits are expanded on the basis of a few gold dollars, the gold Itself constantly growing relatively less and the various forms of its credit representatives becoming constantly and absolutely greater until finally you have a huge, distorted, swaying, inflated fabric of credit upon an ever narrowing base of gold, and while you stand there making your boast in the very face and eyes of the world of what a tremendous amount of business you are able to do upon an infinitesimal amount of gold you ask men to have ‘‘confidence” in the operation. Ah, sir, let not gentlemen deceive themselves. The world has not outgrown either the obligations or the limitations of honesty. All these instruments of credit; Mr. Chairman, are themselves but the expression of the gold measure. If you extend credit to a man, you extend so many dollars of credit, and if the stuff out of which the dollar is made is growing scarcer tho credit is oorre* spondingly growing bigger, eating up more and more commodities, just as tho gold dollar does that measures the credit. Says the great English economist, Jevons:

“Prices temporarily may rise or fall independently of the quantity of gold in the country. Credit gives a certain latitude without rendering prices ultimately independent of gold.” (“Investigations In Currency,” page 32.) And Huskisson, the famous British statesman and financier, in his pamphlet on the depreciation of the currency, sustains the proposition: “Price, therefore, is the value of any given article in the currency with reference to which that article is measured, and must, of course, be varied by any variation in the quality of gold an‘d silver contained in such currency.” An acute writer, Dr. W. H. Smith, in a recent work, says: “The volume of basic money fixes the volume of representative money (paper money Issued by the government). In turn, the volume of both representative money and basic money controls the volume of credits that act as money, and the quantity of all these, with the exchanges to be made and payments to bo met, fix prices. Thus indirectly the prices of commodities in a country are fixed and controlled by the volume of basic money.” Sir, under the stress and impulse of commercial development the world’s need of money has overtaken and passed the supply of metal for the purpose long ago and has • for many years explored all the avenues of invention for substitutes and economics to eke out the inadequate amount of ultimate money. The limit was long since reached. I cannot now take the time to prove, but I assert, with no dtead of contradiction, that the actual proportionate use of money among the people today is very much greater than it was 40 years ago. Says a great authority, Professor Kinley (Journal of Political Economy, March, 1895): “After a certain point of development In the use of credit instruments there is no further relative increase, but rather, possibly, a slight decrease.”

The True Flutist. The true flatist, Mr. Chairman, is yohr modern American gold standard advocate. The logic of his argument leads to a money base so small and a credit top so large that “confidence” is to take the place of redemption, and confidence never realized is only another name for irredeemability. For “populism” that out-Popullsts your Populist commend me to your gold standard extremist. Sir, I think I have heard the gentleman from Massachusetts speak of increasing the resources of tho banks so as to permit them to enlarge their accommodations to customers. We are to assume, then, from these arguments that the extent of accommodation is limited to the present rate of expansion, and that there must be some way of increasing the reserves in order to permit the piling on of additional credits at tho rate of $4 or $5 for sl. Increasing the reserves means increasing the ultimate substance that must in the end make good every dollar of credit and every promise made by bank or government in the nature of credit. It is more ultimate money that the world wants and must have. And I warn gentlemen upon this floor—not as a prophet, but as one who has always lived near the people—our duty must not be neglected. I tell you I know what the people are thinking and what they are feeling in this year of grace 1896. They know ,hat the constricting gold standard is existing by the permission and growing at the cost of the manhood and the enterprise of the universe, and that the time will come when a stop most be' put to it. Mr. Hardy—After your elaborate remarks will you now state in a few words : what you want the Republican party to do? I Mr. Chairman, it is to the great Repub- : lican party at such a crisis that the people, I turn with hopefulness, even as in times' 'past when the hour was heavy and the | way dark they groped anxiously that they ! might find and clasp with their hands the: hand of the Republican party and thus be led again to the heights of peace and along the paths of prosperity. The Republican

party has not yet declared for a single goldi standard— Mr. Hardy and others—And never wUL Mr. Towne—And I pray heaven it never will. But what is expected now, Mr. Chairman, of the Republican party la a prompt and definite proposition as to what it Intends to do. Sir, I am not strenuous upon having my way. While I should infinitely prefer that the nations undertake this regeneration together, yet I believe that tho United States of America, with its unlimited resources, with its manhood representing an energy that Mulhall says Is quite equal to that of the Englishman, the German and the Frenchman combined, with a population of 70,1)00,000, with an area equal to all Europe, and a large part o* which is undeveloped and needs the quickening assistance of an affluent, ultimate money, with one-third of the banking power of Christendom, showing its absorptive capacity over the money of all the. world that should seek employment bore, with one-third of the steam power (which Is the basis of industry and of business today) of all tho earth I believe tho United States could, with all this marvelous energy, with its multiplicity and variety of commerce, a proper care for which would enable it to become the clearing house for this hemisphere, as Blaine fondly hoped it might become, I say the Republican party, might, by opening the mints of this gov-l eminent and giving to silver the same privileges now bestowed upon gold, main-i tain the two metals at a parity at the oldi coinage ratio. It would be easier for us to do It than it was for France, France had to do it and did it when the natural bulk ratio of silver to gold was 82 to 1, while with us it is proposed to make: the ratio practically identical with that which the metals sustain to each other by, bulk today. Nor, sir, is there anywhere any “flood of silver" to swamp tho mint. I cannot pause to prove this, but it is absolutely true. Nearly ull existing silverj now circulates at a token parity, or a virtual redemption parity, with gold and* would gain nothing by coming here. What wo want is to take the silver from the top and put it beside gold at the bottom of tho money structure. If we cannot do tho work in un independent way—• if I iuu deceived in thinking that we might —lot us do it in some other way. If somebody proposes in this congress to restore the ultimate money function to silver Ini any practicable way he shall have myj vote. Tho main thing Is to take awayi from gold its universal and exclusive necessity that keeps all tho nations and all' the mon of tho world in a scramble for it at the constantly growing cost of their happiness and their substance.

Restore Silver. Restore the full money function to silver in some way and do it speedily. Say even that you will do it three or four years from now, with such other nations as you, may be able to induce to associate with you, and I will vote for the proposition.! Say that you will tux Incoming silver uudi coin only the American product, and I" will vote for it. Say that you will coin silver upon an International basis without the consent of Englund (which you can never get so long us the Rothschlldsi have flint country by the throat); say that you will do It in combination with France and Germany (and there ought to be uo question in the mind of any reasonable man that these three nations could sustain the purity of the metals) —say you will do that, and I will vote for it. I know that all legislation is a compromise, and even In this great matter I will compromise to almost any limit on tho means if only the end bo openly avowed and speedily sought. But what I say, Mr. Chairman, is that the Republican party must at this time make up its mind to do something. The people of the United States have passed al vote of confidence in the Republican party; that is all. We must now justify than confidence by being equal to tho emergencies that confront tho people. Our, Slatform pledges us explicitly to the re-; abilitation of silver, to make it “standard money,” even as gold is. The people! want that done. They have not yet decided exactly how, perhaps, but thatK is what they elected us for—to find out how,, to show them the way and loud therein. Bo assured, sir, if we fail to do what they: want done, they aro not so untrained in managing their affairs but that they will find somebody else to do it. Mr. Chairman, I did not think to have spoken so long. I did not think that I! could have abused the courtesy of the house to such au extent. But the question is most important and well nigh exhaustions. Even now I am conscious of having omitted many things that ought to be said. I thank the house very much for, extending my time and for the unusual compliment of its general and prolonged l attention. I desire to express my gratitude for this indulgence and shall endeavor not to be thus again a debtor during this session. But, sir, I could not be silent. I love my country. I cannot endure to see • ersuffer without relief when relief is wit..lm call. And the Republican party is dear to mo. My ancestors wore Federalists and! Whigs of New England. My father followed the standard of Fremont and Dayton to the glorious defeat of 1856. The Infancy of tho Republican party rooked my own cradle. Since my youth I have treasured the deathless fame of its great leaders, studied and professed its doctrines, 1 benefited by its policies and wielded ceaselessly what little strength was mine in its strenuous contests for the confidence ofl the people. My anxiety that it shall now rise level With tho emergency that meets us is greater than I can express. Sir, we are told in an old German legend how a monster, Alberlc, became possessed! of a magic ring of gold which gave himi unlimited ixiwer, which power he used in heaping up and hoarding all tho gold and! wealth of the world, and that he fashioned for himself a helmet of gold that en-i abled him at will to become invisible to men or to take upon himself any form be pleased. And the world, it is said, was at the mercy of that monster until the god Wotan appeared and took him captivewhile, in the insolence of his power, be was boastfully wearing bis most odious shape? If, sir, there is in this country today a malevolent power with ring and helmet of gold, now invisible and now terrible in aspect, as it either insidiously or openly undermines the foundations of liberty, could there be for the Republican party a more glorious destiny than, like the god in the story, to come to the relief of the people? ,

Raised His Own Coffin.

Judge Orin K. Farthing of Ba’tbolomew county, Ind., who is now 87 years old, was in bls day a prominent lawyer and a judge. He is wealthy and eccentric? Fifty-years ago be planted near his front/ doorstep a walnut with the avowed intention of scouring from the tree tipiber tar his ooffin. The tree throve steadily. Tbp other day, feeling strongly the infirmities* of age, the judge ordered the treecut down and sawed into boards. Then the carpenter took his measure and began the coffin.

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