187 ounces in 1873 to 174,796,875 ounces in 1895. In view of these considerations and of these figures as to production, who is wise enough to say that gold has gone up or silver down, or how much either metal has varied? And yet it is assumed that the silver dollar has been a true and stable measure of value, that it has neither gone up nor gone down since 1873, and that it would be honest to return to that standard and settle all contracts by it. Now how is this to be proved? or do our silver friends think it worth while to prove anything?

This illustration, used by Mr. Bryan, is the only attempt at argument I have seen: If he says-a man able to perform his contracts should offer to pay one dollar per bushel for all the wheat brought to him, would not the price of wheat go up to a dollar? But the United States is not to buy the silver -it only puts a stamp on it, and returns it to the owner. It is rather as if a miller should offer to take all the wheat brought to him, to grind it into flour without charge, to put each one hundred pounds of the flour into a barrel, to stamp on the head of it "this is a barrel of flour," and to return it to the owner. How would the price of wheat, or of flour, be affected by that transaction?

There are many people, I suppose, who would scorn to take advantage of a law that allowed them to have a full discharge from their debts upon the payment of fifty cents on the dollar, but who do not

feel humiliated by the suggestion that they shall pay them with a coin called a dollar, but worth only fifty cents as compared with the dollar they borrowed. It is said to be the old dollar-the dollar of the constitution, and of the fathers, and they are beguiled. It is neither the constitution does not require congress to coin silver dollars at the ratio of 16 to 1, or at any other ratio, or at all. It confers upon congress the power "to coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin," and neither gold nor silver is anywhere mentioned in the constitution save in a section prohibiting the states from doing certain things, where it says: "No state shall

make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts." It is not the old dollar, nor the dollar of our fathers; for their dollar was based upon the then existing commercial ratio between silver and gold. If it had been suggested to Hamilton or to Jefferson that while the commercial ratio between silver and gold was 31 to I we should coin silver dollars at the ratio of 16 to 1, they would have suggested the writ de lunatico inquirendo. They followed the commercial into three decimal numbers to find the coining ratio; and these claim to be their followers who say that the commercial ratio should be entirely disregarded. The former sought a ratio that would keep both dollars in circulation—the latter, one that gives gold to Europe and associates us with Asia.

But, in fact, there is no reason to believe that silver would appreciate as the result of free coinage, to a parity with gold at the present ratio. All that is guesswork-a guess not so much in the direction of the desires of the silver people, but to allay the fears of those who dread silver-monometallism, while desiring as large a use of silver as is consistent with the parity of our gold and silver dollars. Two of the leading free-silver senators, when the Sherman bill was pending, were, I know, much more positive than Mr. Bryan is now that the purchase by the government of 4,500,000 ounces of fine silver per month would take up the silver surplus that they said was weighing down the market price, and so make and keep our silver dollar at par with the gold dollar. The actual result was that 371 I-4 grains of pure silver-worth on the average in 1889 .724-advanced in 1890 to .926, and then declined each year until, in 1894, it reached the low limit of .457. Shall we trust these prophets again to our cost?

The demand for more legal-tender greenbacks in 1873 was the product of depressed commercial conditions, as is the present demand for free silver coinage; but the former was based upon the assumption that our per capita circulation was too low; that we did not have enough money. The latter is not based upon that assumption, but upon the assumption that the money we have is too good-not more dollars,

but cheaper dollars is the demand-not a silver dollar that will abide with the gold dollar, but one that will exile the gold dollar. What the red flag is to a bull, gold is to the free-silver advocates. It excites their rage; they want to gore and toss it.

Other nations that are upon a silver basis are struggling to be rid of the depression and trade disadvantages that it entails. A depreciated currency, with its always present tendency to fluctuations, is, whether judged by philosophy or history, a curse. No intelligent commercial people is now content to use such a currency-except under the severest necessity -nor to continue its use beyond the time of possible relief. It is easy to fall into the slough and hard to get out of it but it is harder to remain in it. This great people will not consent to have a double standard-unless each money unit is the commercial equivalent of the other; and if they must have a single standard they will have the best.

"NO MEAN CITY"

A RESPONSE AT A DINNER GIVEN BY THE COMMERCIAL CLUB, INDIANAPOLIS, APRIL 21, 1897, at WHICH

HE WAS THE GUEST OF HONOR

"No mean city." The apostle Paul, when he used these words, was in the hands of a Roman guard that had come on the run to deliver him from a Jewish mob. The captain of the guard believed him to be the leader of a band of murderers, but he did not think that he should be lynched. Paul appealed for identification and for consideration to the fact that he was a native of Tarsus in Cilicia-a citizen of "no mean city." To be ashamed of the city you live in is a lesser sorrow than to have the city ashamed of you, but still a heavy sorrow. There is great comfort when a column of residence is to be filled, and a Boston hotel clerk is watching the evolution of the name, in not being put to any disguise or ambiguous abbreviations. Is there a greater triumph in life than to lift your eyes from the register to the arbiter of destinies on the other side of the counter and to see that his fear that you might