WHO WOULD MAKE AND WHO WOULD LOSE.

If we went to a silver basis, as we should do if we had free coinage, the men who would profit are bankers, who own the gold, which they would hoard, and would be permitted to pay their depositors in depreciated silver. It would be their depositors who, having deposited money as good as gold, would be forced to accept depreciated silver instead. The insurance companies would profit, whose thousands of millions of investments are so largely in mortgages, by their terms made payable in gold. The widow and the orphan would suffer by having their policies paid in silver, whose purchasing price would be only one-half as much as the gold that they would otherwise receive. The capitalist employer, with his investments in lands, in factories, and every class of wealth, would see it double in price upon his lands almost at once. His employe would be paid the same wages he now receives in a currency which would buy only half as much, until, after years had passed in the slow readjustment of wages, he might have secured somewhat more of his rights.

APPRECIATION OF GOLD AND WAGES.

In this connection there is one point that I wish somewhat to dwell upon. Supposthat gold has appreciated, what is the effect of this upon our wage earners, the majority of our voters? Take your daily papers and look at wholesale prices of goods and food. You will find that they change daily and sometimes repeatedly within the day. As to retail prices, you know—or, if you don't, your wife does-that they change pretty often, in some things every month or so, and in some things every week or two. Now, take wages. You know that changes are comparatively rare, generally not more than once or twice a year, and often only once in two or three years. What does that mean? It means that the price of labor is more conservative than are the prices of goods that labor buys-hence, that if our currency is appreciating so as to make a dollar buy more goods, there will be weeks, months, perhaps years, during which, whilewages have not changed, a man will be able to buy more with them. In other words, the appreciation of gold, so long as wages are paid on a gold standard, means that every laborer gets more and more for the same amount of wages. And to the precise exten that you prove that the course of events of late years has been the appreciation of gold and the cheapening of prices in consequence, to that precise extent do you prove that the laboring man has been gaining more and more by the difference, and that it has come out of the manufacturer and capitalist.

INFLATION OF PRICES AND WAGES.

Take the opposite case. I have no doubt that free-silver legislation would in a measure accomplish what its friends claim—that is, soon raise the price of everything that is bought to nearly if not quite double their present rate. Do any of you imagine that your wages would be doubled at once? Don't you know that you would wait months and years for the slow process or readjustment by strikes and lock-outs before your wages would finally be raised in proportion.

With the wage erner, therefore, the free silver case stands thus: The appreciation of gold, of which the free-silver people complain, is the very process that will give him more and more for the wages he gets and, therefore, practically increase his wages. The inflation of prices that the silver men are fighting for is the very thing that will reduce the purchasing power of the wages he gets, and will thus decrease his wages. Do not understand that I claim that we should oppose free coinage and welcome the appreciation of gold just because it secures higher wages to labor. I am opposed to free coinage because I believe it to be wrong. At the same time it is proper that all should understand just what would be its effect. It may be that wages are too high in this country now. Personally, I do not believe such to be the case. If they

are too high, however, and it is desirable that they should be cut down, then let us have that issue frankly stated. But let not our free coinage friends clamor for legislation the first effect of which would be to reduce by one-half the wages that each laboring man receives, and at the same time invite laboring men to vote for such a programme without telling them what the real effect would be.

I confess that I am one of those who are glad to see the prices of things becoming cheaper and cheaper, so that the laboring man can buy more and more with every dollar that he receives. I have no sympathy with those who, by a tariff law or a silver law or private trusts or combinations, are continually endeavoring to raise prices of the goods that labor has to buy. I have no more sympathy for the men who are working to day to bring about high prices of clothes and food than had the Prophet Amos with the inflationists of his day, whom he cursed so thoroughly that the world ever since then has rung with his maledictions. You remember how he described them-it strikes me that his words would well befit the present situation-as he told of the men of his day, who lay awake nights, thinking how they might make corners in food and put up prices-"making the ephah small and the shekel great”—that is, making the poor pay more for their flour-and, as he put it, "falsifying the balances by deceit," that they might "buy the poor for silver and the needy with a pair of shoes; yea, and sell the refuse of the wheat."

APPRECIATION OF SILVER AND WAGES.

"Well, they say, "why would it not be a good thing to have appreciation of silver." Why? If the laboring men of this country wanted to sell silver or were being paid in silver, there might be some sense in it. But the laboring men of this country are being paid in gold, not silver. What I mean is this: You take a silver dollar. There is fifty cents worth of silver in it. You stamp the government's indorsement upon it. It then passes for a dollar, because the government's indorsement says: "Redeemable in gold." So that our laborers are now getting paid in gold values. What good does it do a man who doesn't own silver, who doesn't sell silver, who gets paid in gold values, to have silver cost more?

THE SILVER QUESTION IN A NUTSHELL.

But there is another way to look at it. We have seen how appreciation of gold means higher wages to the laborer. Now let me show you what this so-called appreciation of silver means. I shortly since heard a very pleasant gentleman, Mr. Cannon, a delegate in the next Congress from Utah, expound the silver side of the free silver question: and he went on to explain, first, that prices of goods were low here because they were measured in gold, and then that, on account of our wages here being paid in gold—which was costly-and wages in India, China and Japan being paid in silver-which wasn't worth only one-half what it had been-they had a fifty per cent. advantage, and that therefore there was great danger of manufacturers being driven from the world's markets. Do you see what that means? That their wages are so much lower than ours, on account of the appreciation of gold here, that, unless our wages are made equivalent to theirs in that respect at least-unless prices are inflated here in this country so that our gold wages will buy no more than their silver wages, their labor will tend to drive our labor out. In other words, the proposition to appreciate silver is practically a proposition to cut the wages of the laborers of this country squarely in half, in order to increase the profits of their employers.

Three months ago, though I should have argued this-for I believe it to be true-I should not have ventured to state that it was the serious contention of the freesilver advocates. But I have not merely heard it put forcibly by the gentleman I have mentioned as speaking for that cause, but I have it in another statement. Sir Henry

Meysey Thompson is one of the leading silver advocates. He offered a large prize for a man who would write the best essay, explaining how it was that China and India and other silver-using countries were getting an advantage over England, and a great many people competed for that prize. Mr. Jamieson, the British consul at Shanghai, wrote so good a paper that he was awarded the prize; and that essay is now the chief stock in trade of the British agitation for the restoration of silver. Now let me read you something from it. Sir Henry Meysey Thompson is proud of it. Here it is: "Wages in the gold-using countries have, through the appreciation of gold, become 100 per cent. dearer than they were relatively to silver wages; and the manufacturer in the silverstandard countries can obtain his labor at half the cost which he formerly paid." Hence, "while old-established industries in England are barely paying expenses, new industries in India are arising broadcast, and paying handsomely." And the remedy proposed by silver advocates in England is to correct this appreciation of gold, and raise prices, so that the British workman, though getting the same nominal wages, will get only half the real wages he gets now, and the British manufacturer thus be enabled to compete with the Indian manufacturer.

A similar view is taken by Señor Romero, the Mexican Minister at Washington, in his article in the North American Review for June, 1895, when he asserts that the depreciation of silver has favored Mexican capitalists by lowering the actual wages of their employees.

There is the silver question in a nutshell. It is simply the question as to whether our wage-earners are getting too high wages. They may as well face the question. If wage earners believe they are getting too high wages, and that this country is suffering in consequence, all they have to do is to take lower wages; or, if they prefer a roundabout way, they can favor free coinage of silver, and they will get their wages cut down half without any further trouble on their part; and we will be blessed, as are India and China.

QUANTITY OF MONEY VS. QUALITY OF MONEY.

It is, however, urged that an additional supply of money will so stimulate business as to bring better times for the wage-earner, as well as for every one else, even if we do have inflated prices. But in nothing is human experience better agreed than in the conclusion that, provided the standard is maintained, prosperity and business activity and even the effectual supply of currency depend upon confidence in the quality rather than in the quantity of circulating coin or notes. I quote again from Mr. Fairchild:

"They say that the amount of money regulates prices. Does it have any great effect upon prices if it is good money?

"All the time we hear, and I believe it is uncontradicted, that about 5 per cent. of all the transactions of the people of this country are made in money. All the rest of the transactions are made with the other media-checks, notes, and all kinds of things. If this is true, suppose we could double the amount of money in an instant, what would we have done? We would have doubled 5 per cent. of the whole. What would we have added? We would have added 5 per cent. to the whole. In a thou sand dollars what would we have added? We would have added $50. But suppose in adding that $50 you have disturbed the minds of men so that the other 95 per cent. was diminished, as has been done from time to time, during the last few years; suppose you apply your percentage to $950,000, and cut that in two, owing to the uncertainty you have created in the minds of men as to the quality of their money; suppose you have only affected it by 10 per cent.-what is the result? Why, yon have diminished that by $95, and when you come to add the $50 that you have credited by doubling your money and deduct your $95, you will find that you are $15 worse off than when you started. You are 4 1-5 per cent. worse off so far as the circulating medium that really transacts your affairs is concerned. That is one of the great reasons why we find these great disturbances in business when men tamper with the currency.

"I have given this illustration in answer to the assertion that the amount of money regulated prices, because some money is necessary in our transactions. True, some money is necessary still, because we have not yet reduced our methods of business to such a complete system that we settle everything by accounts,

"Yes, so is some grease on the axle of a wagon necessary, in order to move it any great dis

tance at any speed, because man has not yet succeeded in making an axle on which the wheel wili revolve entirely without friction. I say, we can say with equal truth as to my wagon, that because some grease is necessary on the axle, therefore the amount of grease fixes the cost of moving a ton of freight. You say that it is an absurdity; it is not true.

"The more I have thought upon this question, the more profoundly impressed I am that more people are concerned in the quality of the money, of actual money, than is its quantity. Now, we have had an interesting illustration of that in the United States in the last six months. You remember in January the great alarm that was felt in our business circles. You remember that prices were falling, and that there was distress in the commercial and industrial centers of every kind. What was the trouble? The trouble was that mankind had come to doubt the quality of the money of the United States. Quality was the question. Now, what was done? The Government took steps to sell bonds and take into the Treasury of the United States the money which should be the product of those bonds. The inevitable result of that was to diminish the quantity of money that would be in circulation among the people of this country. The other obvious effect was to improve the quality of the money of the people of this country, and to remove the doubts that had arisen in the minds of the people, not only of this country, but of the whole world, as to its future quality.

"That is what was done by that bond transaction. In January an improvement on the quality of our money was accomplished at the expense of the quantity in circulation. What was the result? Prices have been going up ever since, confidence has been restored, and it looks as if we were at the beginning of another grand era of prosperity."

"FREE COINAGE" UNDEMOCRATIC AND OPPOSED TO FREE TRADE. It is not hard for me to understand that a Republican protectionist may draw the line when it comes to free coinage, and oppose it as dishonest or inexpedient, even though he may believe it constitutional. But how a free trade Democrat can favor it is too deep for me. Free coinage is clamored for by men who have silver and want to get rid of it, or who owe people gold, and, when those people don't want silver, want to make them take silver instead. That is the worst kind of protection. Protection by a tariff is to make you buy goods of one man as distinguished from another, to make you buy certain goods as distinguished from other goods which you might, under the circumstances-price, and so on-prefer. Now there are two ends to every transaction; and, generally speaking, the other end to the receipt of goods is the payment of money. It is the same kind of protection and the same kind of tyranny to meddle with the dollars that you shall take, whether you want them or not, as to meddle with the coat that I shall take, whether I want it or not. There is no difference between the two. The present movement for free silver, so called, is not a movement for free coinage of silver at all. It is not a movement to enable people to get silver who want it. It is a movement to "protect " silver, just as tariff taxation was put on in order to protect American manufacturers,—to make you take silver when otherwise you wouldn't do it, just as the tariff was put on in order to make you take some manufacturer's goods when otherwise you might have gotten somewhere else better ones or cheaper.

Another reason why I think the whole question of free trade is involved in this currency question is this: Nowhere more generally than among free traders is it stated and admitted that all trade is barter, that money is only the medium of exchange. That is a generally admitted fact by free traders and protectionists alike. It does not mean that we don't know how exchanges are made. We do. They are made first into money, and then from money into the goods that we get, either immediately or mediately, in return for money. In other words, money is the medium through which what we sell becomes converted into what we buy. We insist upon freedom of trade. We say we have a right to sell where we can sell most advantageously, and a right to buy where we can buy most cheaply, and that this is a sacred right that the government must not interfere with. But is it not a farce to talk about free trade, when you have money between the two ends of every barter, and government interferes from day to day with that money? You can have all the "free trade" you please; and, if you will only allow me to manipulate the money that stands between the ends of the trade, I will soon put all the money-and goods, too, for that matter-at whichever end you say, and there will be no thimblerig about it, either. That is why it is incompre

hensible to me that the man who favors free trade should for a moment favor interference by government with the medium of trade. You cannot have free trade unless you leave trade free-from the article you sell straight through to the article you buy straight through the medium you use.

QUESTION SHOULD BE SETTLED PROMPTLY.

For the time being the currency question, like Aaron's rod, has swallowed up all other political issues. It will continue to engross public attention until it is settled, and settled rightly, But that is not all. It is of almost equal importance that it be settled promptly. Indeed, were it simply a question of the present agitation continuing for a couple of years or of suffering the damage and gaining the experience that would come from the prompt trial of free coinage and repentance therefrom, I verily believe the latter would be the less disastrous. If every creditor in this country should lose the amount coming to him-demoralizing as such an experience would be-there would be no property destroyed; and if there were confidence that the procedure would not be repeated, very few would starve or freeze to death, business would go ahead, and our people would work and thrive. So long, however, as uncertainty continues, so long as capitalists are afraid to ioan funds for fear that repayment will be made them in cheap money, there will continue a partial paralysis that clogs every wheel of industry, that impedes every enterprise which would employ labor or develop the country, and that leaves out of work a great proportion of those who otherwise would be steadily and profitably employed. All the blessings of which the free-coinage advocates dream would be far less than those of the prosperity which, in two years after uncertainty is ended, will have been shared by our people. All the disasters of free coinage would be less, could they be promptly realized, than the losses of a couple of years more of continuous obstruction of our business enterprises by free-coinage agitation.

To fight for sound money should be easy for a Democrat. Sound money has always been among the principles for which have battled in the past Jefferson and Jackson and Tilden, and in the fight on behalf of which Cleveland is leading to-day. Not merely this, but the form which the issue now takes is just the one which can leave no real Democrat in any doubt as to what must be his position. It is a Democratic prin. ciple that a man should be left free to make his contracts on the terms he thinks best, and that the law should intervene only to make men stand by their contracts. Free coinage of silver proposes to interfere with every contract and to help every debtor to break the contracts he has already made. Democracy is pledged to oppose arbitrary interference by Government. Free coinage involves the most pestiferous interference possible.

This issue must be met by prompt repudiation of the undemocratic notion that Government should constantly interfere with our standards of value, and by prompt assertion of the Democratic principle that Government should mind its own business and let others do the same. In the light of our experience with flat money legislation, from the greenback to the Sherman pig-silver certificates, this long-suffering country will finally learn that wealth is not created by flat, but is made by labor; that the law can put no dollar into any man's pocket unless it first take it from the pocket of some other man, and that wage earners are first and most interested in opposing interferences by law. There has never yet been made a law to put into any laboring man's pocket a single dollar that he did not earn. He of all men, therefore, has the best right to insist that there shall be no law passed that will raise the price of what he has to buy, and thus take from him some portion of what he has earned.

Every man for his own, and God help us all, is the Democratic motto. Each living on his neighbor, and the Devil take the hindmost, is the free-silver doctrine.