currency should be controlled They do not believe that the

question of a return to a specie basis for our entirely by the business interests of the country. country should be dragged through the depths of ruin, wretchedness, and degradation in order to reach a gold standard for the benefit alone of the income classes.

Third, they demand that the national banking system be removed and a circulating medium provided by the Government for the people, without taxing them for the privilege of obtaining it. And they ask that the amount thus placed in circulation shall bear a reasonable and judicious proportion to the business transactions and the population of the United States.

Fourth, they demand that the currency circulated on the authority of the Government shall be made a legal tender in payment of all debts, public and private, including all dues to the Government, well knowing that it will then be at par with gold, or more likely at a premium over it.

And fifth, they demand that hereafter the financial policy of the country shall be framed permanently in their interest; that they shall not be discriminated against in future legislation as in the past, and that their prosperity, and not mere growth of incomes to retired capitalists, shall be the primary duty of the Government. (Congressional Record, 45th Congress, Vol. I., 330.)

The language of Mr. Voorhees is so direct and his meaning so clearly expressed as hardly to require comment. He was a member of the House for the whole period pending the demonetization of the silver dollar, having been elected in 1869. From an examination of the Journals he appears to have been constant in his attendance at its sittings. Upon his table were laid all the reports of the committees of the House and all the bills in their various forms relating to the coinage. No member of the House outside the committee was probably more familiar with the progress of the measure in its various stages. In the face of all this his statement that there was "Not a sound, not a word of warning to the American people that their favorite coin was to be destroyed; that never from the foundation of the Government did a law of such tremendous import, or of any importance at all, crawl so furtively into our statute books as this; its enactment being as completely unknown to fourfifths of Congress as the presence of a burglar in a house at night to its sleeping inmates," was a piece of mendacity unmatched in legislative history. The most painful part of the whole businesss is that it has been accepted by the country as solemn truth.

“The silver dollar," said Mr. Voorhees, “was devised as a unit of value by Thomas Jefferson, and was associated with all our development, our strength, our growth and our glory. It was always the

money of the picket line of our civilization. No sooner was the coveted hundred dollars secured than the possessor rode to a distant land office to exchange them for eighty acres of land to become his future home." The same process, he declared, was repeated by children and grandchildren till the mighty wave of civilization was carried to the Pacific Ocean. Of the $8,000,000 coined up to 1878 not a dollar ever entered into general circulation; not a dollar ever crossed the Alleghanies! As for Jefferson he had no more to do with devising the mint ratio of the silver dollar as the unit of value than Adam. When in this country lying is to be done on a colossal scale Jefferson and Jackson are always summoned as vouchers.

"In the entire catalogue of crimes against human society not one can be found so awful in its consequences as when Government deliberately destroys the money of its own citizens." But not a dollar of money was destroyed by the Act of 1873. By it the obsolete provision for the coinage of the silver dollar, never in circulation, was dropped from the statute book. The few that were coined, having a greater commercial than coin value, were taken for use in the arts, or for export, as fast as they came from the mint. In a country like the United States metallic money will take care of itself. It may as well consist of the coinage of other mints as of its own. Symbolic money under free conditions will also take care of itself, its nominal value equalling that of the subjects of consumption; so that the terrible pictures of "war, pestilence, famine, murder, theft, robbery, prostitution, forgery, embezzlement, and fraud of every hue" due to the want of money were of Mr. Voorhees' own creation, or rather examples of lying with a cir

cumstance.

And what was the remedy? The creation by Government of money, the quantity and quality dependent upon its will, but enough, so that instead of 10 cents a day to labor and $10 for a horse there should be enough to secure ample reward for labor, and a remunerative price for all the products of labor. "When a Government fails to supply an adequate amount of money to the people, it violates,' Mr. Voorhees declared, "the fundamental compact of duties which must prevail in every free commonwealth." The Government, he said, had wholly neglected this great duty, leaving the supply of currency to the banks, in consequence of which they realized

$130,000,000 annually, "simply for acting as agents in transferring the currency of the United States from the Treasury to the people." The remedy was first, the repeal of the Act of 1873 and the unlimited coinage of silver; second, the repeal, unconditionally, of the acts for the resumption of specie payments, "that the country be no longer dragged through the depths of ruin, wretchedness and degradation in order to reach a gold standard for the benefit alone of the income classes; third, that the National Banking system be abolished; fourth, that the money of the country, created and issued by the Government, be legal tender in the payment of all debts, public and private, including all dues to Government, "well knowing that such money will be at the par of gold or more likely at a premium over it ;" and finally, "that the financial policy of the country shall be framed permanently in the interests of the people, and that their prosperity, not the mere growth of income to retired capitalists, should be the primary duty of the Government."

In 1877 Mr. Voorhees was elected to the Senate, in which he served for eighteen years consecutively. In that long period he never omitted an opportunity to repeat the doctrines of his great speech of 1878. In 1893, by regular gradation, being the oldest member of his party in service in the Senate, he was advanced to the chairmanship of the Committee on Finance, a place of influence, dignity, and honor, second only to that of the President of the United States. In 1893, when chairman of that committee, he made a speech in his place in which, among other things, he said:

Silver is the money of the Constitution, and so specified in that great instrument, and should be coined on the same terms that gold is coined, "without discrimination against either metal, and without charge for mintage." This has been the doctrine of the Democratic party from the days of Jefferson to the Chicago Convention of 1892, and it is the doctrine of the laboring masses to-day, irrespective of party, throughout the United States. In fact, the American people, the plain working people, have been benefited in the last one hundred years far more by silver money than by gold money, and the whining cant of sordid avarice which we now hear, that "gold is sound money "' and silver is not, has the profound contempt of every man familiar with the history and the developments of his country.

As to the parity of the two metals when coined, even the small children of finance know that the purchasing power of a dollar is not fixed by the quality or the quantity of the material which composes it, but by the law which makes it a legal-tender in the payment of debts. Much vapid nonsense has been spoken and written in regard to what is styled "fiat money." The fiat of the government

simply means "thus saith the law," and there was never, in this or any gov ernment on earth, and never will be, a dollar, whether of gold, silver, or paper, other than absolutely and entirely the creature of the law. When silver is coined, therefore, at the ratio of 16 to 1 in gold, or any other ratio, and clothed with the authority of law, it has never failed to be on a par with gold in its purchasing and debt-paying power. I am ready at any auspicious time to fight for the fair and honorable restoration of silver coinage to its old place alongside of gold. I care but little for the attitude of foreign nations on this subject. We are not subject to their dictation, and for their disapproval we may compensate ourselves with the approval of our own people.

Extracts from the speeches of Mr. Voorhees are given at considerable length, but they should be read and reread by every citizen who would get an adequate idea of political life in America, in which the highest offices are within easy reach of the most ignorant, malevolent, and revolutionary characters, and of the dangers to which our institutions are consequently exposed.

Among the members of the House who voted for the bill of 1878 was the Hon. John G. Carlisle, of Kentucky, afterwards Speaker of the House of the 48th, 49th, and 50th Congresses, and Secretary of the Treasury for the whole period of Mr. Cleveland's second term. From his speech the following extracts are given :

I know that the world's stock of precious metals is none too large. Mankind will be fortunate, indeed, if the annual production of gold and silver coin shall keep pace with the annual increase of population, commerce, and industries. According to my view of the subject, the conspiracy which seems to have been formed here and in Europe to destroy by legislation or otherwise from three-sevenths to one-half of the metallic money of the world is the most gigantic crime of this or any other age. The consummation of such a scheme [the disuse of silver] would ultimately entail more misery upon the human race than all the wars, pestilences, and famines that have ever occurred in the history of the world. The absolute and instantaneous destruction of half the entire movable property of the world, including houses, ships, railroads, and all other appliances for carrying on commerce, while it would be felt more sensibly at the moment, would not produce anything like the prolonged distress and disorganization of society that must inevitably result from the permanent annihilation of one-half the metallic money of the world. With an ample currency an industrious and frugal people will speedily rebuild the works of internal improvement and repair losses of property, but no amount of industry or economy on the part of the people can create money. When a government creates it or authorizes it the citizen may acquire it, but he can do nothing more.

I am in favor of every practical and constitutional measure that will have a tendency to defeat or retard the perpetration of this great crime, and I am also in

favor of every practical and constitutional measure that will aid us in devising a just and permanent ratio of value between the two metals, so that they may circulate side by side, and not alternately drive each other into exile from one country to another. I desire to add only, in conclusion, that while the measure in its present form is not what the country had a right to expect, it is infinitely better than anything the people have been able ever to obtain at the hands of Congress during the last fifteen years. It is the first victory won by the people during many weary years of warfare with the consolidated wealth of this and other countries, and although it is not by any means a complete triumph, it marks the beginning of a new and more popular era in national legislation; it attests a mighty revolution in public sentiment as represented at the capitol. It places the great industrial and producing masses of the people in the front and the nonproducers in the rear. For fifteen years the people have been on the defensive, and although fortified by the plainest provisions of law and the clearest principles of equity, they have been completely driven from one position to another until they have stood at last upon the very verge of financial ruin. Gathering up all their energies for this struggle, they have advanced, not very far, it is true, but they have advanced far enough to recover part of the ground lost in the previous conflict.

Our power of legislation on this subject will not be exhausted by the passage of this measure, and we ought not to halt for a single moment in our efforts to complete the work only inaugurated by it. The struggle now going on cannot cease and ought not to cease until all the industrial interests of the country are fully and finally emancipated from the heartless domination of syndicates, stock exchanges, and other great combinations of money-grabbers in this country and in Europe. (Appendix, Congressional Record, 2d Session, 45th Congress, page 41.)

Although Mr. Carlisle voted for the bill, he declared himself, in a speech delivered on the occasion, to be in favor of unlimited as against the free coinage of silver, in order that the Government might have the benefit of the large gain or seigniorage that would result, the subsidiary coinage which took the place of the fractional currency issued during the war being an example. For this purpose 31,897,371 ounces of silver bullion were purchased at a cost of $34,118,203, and converted into coins having a nominal value of $39,685,618, the gain or seigniorage resulting being $5,567,415. The same policy, he declared, should be pursued in the coinage of the silver dollars, unlimited in amount, but on account of the Government. Free coinage might be limited; that is, a certain amount authorized for any given period. He was for the unlimited coinage of silver precisely on the same terms as the coinage of gold. If the coinage of silver was not on account of the Government, the miners of it, bankers, and the governments of the Old World intent upon getting rid of their stocks of it would reap the whole benefit of the