was dishonoring one of our precious metals, one of our great products; discrediting silver and enhancing the price of gold. He endeavored even before his inauguration to office to stop the coinage of silver dollars, and afterward, and to the end of his administration, persistently used all his powers to that end. He was determined to contract the circulating medium, demonetize one of the coins of commerce and limit the volume of money among the people, make money scarce and therefore dear. He would have increased the value of money and diminished the value of everything else; money the master and everything else its servant. He was not thinking of the poor then; he had left their side. He was not standing forth in their defense. Cheap coats, cheap labor, and dear money! The sponsor and promoter of those professing to stand guard over the poor and lowly! Was there ever more glaring inconsistency or reckless assumption? He believes that poverty is a blessing to be promoted and encouraged, and that shrinkage in everything but money is a national benefaction.

Opposite this symposium in letters of red were various selections from my subsequent anti-bimetallic addresses, often interlaced with sacred gems from the choice selections of Secretary Carlisle's famous silver literature. May I read you one of them? It is from his prophetic speech in the House of Representatives, February 21, 1878, speaking of the Act of '73 and the Latin Union. (Reads:)

According to my view of the subject, the conspiracy which seems to have been formed here and in Europe to destroy by legislation and 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 would ultimately entail more misery upon the human race than all the wars, pestilences, and famines that ever occurred in the history of the world.

These were also contrasted with the Secretary's more

recent utterances to the workmen of Chicago. An antisilver speech of mine of the tenor following was posted at every cross-road of the country:

There is another duty resting upon the national Government-to coin money and regulate the value thereof. This duty requires that our Government shall regulate the value of its money by the highest standard of commercial honesty and national honor. The money of the United States is and must forever be unquestioned and unassailable. If doubts remain they must be removed; if weak places are discovered they must be strengthened. Nothing should ever tempt us-nothing ever will tempt us-to scale down the sacred debt of the nation through a legal technicality.

SENATOR: In that campaign we trusted the devil very discreetly. We made no reservations, but offered him everything saving High Tariff, Gold Standard, National Banks, our Trusts, lives and souls. Your silver speech and Carlisle's out-horrored all others. They struck the world speechless. Conticuit terra.

PRESIDENT: How did Mr. Cleveland manage to keep out of the silver mess?

SENATOR: With an admirable ascendency of piety and patriotism His Excellency kept his eye on the lodestars of Wall Street. At the very moment the economic order of bimetallism was about to undergo rapid fluctuations he established his fiscal court in Lombard Street. He made no speeches, but his endless chain of gold became the focus of great attraction in London. Regarded almost as inspired writings, the ex-President's speeches at that period constituted a grand bible of universal politics, but his enemies said they were long-winded effusions, chaotic circumlocutions tending no whither.

I have sometimes thought what a fine alliteration at the interval of three centuries Cagliostro and Cleveland would

make for what the Germans call a deep-world irony book. PRESIDENT: Who was Cagliostro?

SENATOR: A farcic-tragic melodramatic prophet, priest, and thaumaturgic moralist of the first magnitude. Count Alessandro di Cagliostro, pupil of the sage Altholos, foster child of the scheriff of Mecca. The Count always presented himself also with an air of calm strength. He was a sublime kind of figure, of sure perfection in his art, to whom the heart of his age opened itself with the same wonder and warmth of welcome which characterizes the American people's veneration for their ex-President at the close of the ninteenth century.

PRESIDENT: We are drifting, Senator, outside the range of practical politics. The International Bimetallic Commissioners were only comedians.

SENATOR: Our digression sustains my contention. McKinleyism and Clevelandism (the antipodes of each other) establish my postulate. America at the opening of the twentieth century is guided by the policy of France under Louis XI.

PRESIDENT: Do you refer to Louis' infamous dogma?

SENATOR: Yes, sir. Politics is an infernal ruse of dissimulation. Mr. Cleveland stood as the Jeffersonian tribune of the people. Yet under cover of national honor he delivered Industry bound in golden chains to the representatives of Lombard Street Jews. So clomb the first great thief into God's fold. The Republican party of Lincoln, Seward, Garfield, Conkling, Blaine, and hosts of illustrious patriots were lifelong independent bimetallists. What leprosy could be more glacial white than your election upon gold monometallism with a bimetallic tail to the platform? What heterogeneous hypocrisy of Louis' exceeds in gaudy coloring an international bimetallic commission tuft-hunting among European powers and toady

ing to Lombard Street Jews? What cold malevolence of the King of France excels the dissimulation of our cunning Currency Bill establishing a gold standard upon the ruins of the bimetallic platform on which you were elected in 1896? Understand, I am not criticising; just the reverse. I am justifying the expediency of practical politics. As yet in America we are not ruining the ruined, snatching the shirt from him who had been left his only shirt, and if the skin alone were left taking the skin. I mean Republicans scarcely conceal the exercise of absolute power beneath the semblance of a republic. Amid these beacon lights of American history, wherein do I err in asserting, with Louis XI., he who does not know how to dissimulate does not know how to reign?

The Republican Text Book of 1892 on the question of bimetallism and the money plank of the Philadelphia platform present interesting reading side by side:

Nine-tenths of the people are bimetallists. They want both money metals used, because they believe both are needed to sustain the world's commerce. The Republican party honestly and intelligently answers their wishes. President Harrison is a bimetallist, as his official papers and speeches show. The Republican platform declares for bimetallism, and in that respect faithfully represents the course of the party. The Republican policy seeks a broader monetary basis. The world's commerce expands so rapidly-the volume of paper currency and of various credit substitutes for money, which must be supported by the specie basis, has become so vast-that scarcely any can be found to deny that commerce and industry would be safer if the entire stock of $3,711,845,000 gold and $3,939,571,000 silver in the world could be freely employed as a foundation instead of only a part of that amount. As matters stand in the great commercial nations of the world the credit system and the commercial exchanges now rest upon the stock of gold as the only

basis. A bimetallist system would render the commerce and industry of these nations safer and more healthy. Serious losses and great risks are incurred through the constant disturbance of exchanges between gold-using and silver-using countries. Even in Great Britain, where gold monometallism is worshiped as it is nowhere else, the greatest statesmen and the most powerful boards of trade are at their wits' end to discover some way of escaping the frightful losses in commerce with the East which have this very year involved great banks and firms in ruins.

The money plank of the Republican party adopted at Philadelphia June 21, 1900, states:

We declare our steadfast opposition to the free and unlimited coinage of silver. We renew our allegiance to the principle of the gold standard.

PRESIDENT: There is an intensification of significance in your illustrations. Undoubtedly the toning down and shading of our national character seems to follow the varying conditions of our civilization. It cannot be overemphasized.

SENATOR: Mr. President, the history of the whole world can be written in one word-TAXATION! In the bodies politic of kingdoms and principalities, as in republics, there are two persons, two enemies, who wage war at the national expense until death composes or conquers the feud. The one is Avarice masked and mounted on stilts and the other the Public Jackass.

PRESIDENT: Who are they?

SENATOR: The moneyed and non-moneyed, the Powerholding and the non-Power-holding classes.

PRESIDENT: Yes, by the extent and wealth of our possessions, but much more by the tentative power of our