prices current. The dollar of the United States, half an inch in width and a thirty-second thick, is thus become $2 with which to buy the sweat and toil and anxieties of a season, at the very head and front of prosperity in the United States. While thus the dollar of the United States is worth 2 bushels of wheat or 20 pounds of cotton, it gauges the prosperity of the United States at 13 cents a year, if invested for the period of sixty days in strictly prime commercial paper of New York. The flood of our prosperity can not rise higher than its source. The font is where the nourished earth yields her own increase and for toil returns a hundred-fold. It follows that the conditions contemplated must alter presently, or the want of a traveling public and the lack of sufficiently liberal movements of freight, at profitable rates, will shrink the earnings of certain of our main trunk lines of railway into a deficiency of any dividends and, later, into default of interest on their bonds. Unless relief of law ensues without delay, choice parcels of real estate in New York City will inanifest declines in prices, exceeding 20 per cent, between sales in January, 1893, and December, 1896. I am well aware that moderate demand upon liberal supplies of commodities produced at low cost and distributed cheaply will yield low prices. On these terms, low prices stimulate moderate demand into a liberal demand upon the same supplies, and so tend to recover prices. On this basis, low prices of our staple necessities are desirable. In such variations of demand relative to such supplies, the producer may gather amid the fluctuations of prices, his fair share of the advantages arising from his abundance.

EXPERIENCE SAFER THAN EXPERIMENT.

But, for the reason that the producer does not share the general advantages of the abundance of his supplies, the United States at large is sufferer. Relief must be provided, and for that achievement we propose that, at all hazards, the United States shall abandon experiment. We ask the Congress now sitting to restore our Hamilton-Jefferson coinage system, founded with the mint, maintained for eighty years without complaint, and overthrown unobservedly at a time when neither gold nor silver was our current money.

On December 6 I submitted to the Chamber of Commerce a developed plan to restore, or attempt, bimetallism independently, the plan providing the modern convenience of paper substitutes for coin and providing ample means to stifle any possible money panic arising with the enactment. No moment could be more propitious than the present for any such attempt. Idle accumulations of money in our important money centers, like the present, are rare.

"GOLDITE" OBJECTION COMMENDS INDEPENDENT BIMETALLISM.

Our "goldites" antagonize every such proposal with two objections, to wit:

(1) That such legislation is superfluous because "if there is not gold enough for all, there is gold enough for us. We can command gold in competition with all nations. The United States is the largest and best source of supply of the commodities that the world most needs-cotton, wheat, provisions, petroleum, and the like."

(2) That to reopen our mints to silver without limit while offering coinage to gold without limit, will merely substitute silver monometallism for gold monometallism in the United States. They mean that

the proposed enactment will yield silver dollars and paper redeemable in silver dollars as our only money, and for the reason that it will banish gold from money and expel it from the United States.

We adopt both of their predictions as the assurance of our safety in making the attempt.

Our ability to command gold in competition with nations striving for the meager supply of gold available to money would depend upon the further sacrifice of our producers of petroleum, .provisions, wheat, cotton, and the like. Lower and lower prices for these elementary essentials of our prosperity must pursue a foreign market, and every drain of Europe's gold to us as our return for them would further lower Europe's prices for all commodities, including any more of these she buys.

By our proposal, on the contrary, the United States provides itself the convenient ability to part with gold composedly. Instead of our present restriction to gold alone as our tremulous necessity, we propose to be able to loan our gold to Europe for our own sakes, selfishly. If, as our Mint Director estimates, we have $600,000,000 of gold and $20,000,000 annually produced in excess of our needs in the arts and industries, to spare a liberal portion to Europe, having a convenient abundance of domestic money at home, is to loan Europe the vehicle with which to carry our prosperity. To increase thereby Europe's aggregate of money is to raise normal prices of all commodities in Europe, including those for which the United States is Europe's "best source of supply." Therefore, diametrically the opposite in achievement to what our "goldites" urge, we would enlarge Europe's demand for our surplus petroleum, provisions, cotton, and wheat, and upon a higher plane of prices for them as she buys.

SILVER BASIS ONLY TEMPORARY.

Imagine, as the immediate achievement of our proposed enactment silver dollars and paper redeemable in silver dollars to be the only money of the United States. The tendency first evident will be its restriction upon our importations of European products. This is evident under India's silver monometallism in her relation to the outside world. But a home experience may be recalled:

During the period of plethoric State bank notes in the United States, when a New York merchant had sold to Western and Southern merchants and bills were due, his collector obtaining local bank notes in a Western city would invest in grain or flour, in a Southern city would invest in cotton. Shipping the flour and cotton to New York, the sales would realize New York bank notes. The operation was thus equivalent to shipping New York bank notes from the Western or Southern cities to New York. The like operation between the United States and Europe for our international trade settlements would take the place of gold shipments, if gold were hoarded for a high premium, as feared. Each such operation would swell the volume of our exports of commodities and benefit, primarily, those for whom we must be most concerned.

But the likelihood of any need of such an operation as a part of the contemplation of the New York merchant in selling to the West and South tended to make him indisposed to sell there. To such extent the Southern and Western importations from New York were lessened. To the like extent our foreign importations will be lessened under our silver-money regime, to the advantage of our home manufacturers as

against the foreign manufacturers all the time. But in our home experience, when the New York merchant or manufacturer found his home market not broad enough for all his wares, as was frequently the case, his surplus was sold West and South at as low price and sometimes even lower prices than to customers at home. The home price being for the greater portion of their merchandise was maintained, at a sacrifice of profit on the moderate surplus sold elsewhere. Similarly Manchester, Lyons, and manufacturers in Germany would experience the restriction of our silver money upon them. Our importations of Europe's products are to large extent a surplus which she must sell. To that extent our importations of foreign products will continue to foreign disadvantage and our gain.

But, because we are Europe's "best source of supply" for our great surplus of staple commodities, Europe will buy of us, even though we do not buy of her. As, for instance, we buy from Cuba $75,000,000 worth of goods a year and sell to Cuba $12,000,000 to $25,000,000 only; or as Brazil finds a market here for $70,000,000 of her commodities and buys $40,000,000 only of our commodities in return; and finally as England, on the contrary, is debtor to the United States for an excess of $100,000,000 a year by average in our mutual barter of commodities with her.

OUR SILVER DOLLAR AT A PREMIUM.

Therefore, with our monetary restriction upon importations setting all our spindles turning, employing operatives at full time and these operatives made thereby to enlarge our aggregate of home consumers of all home products; with our trade settlements in merchandise serving to enlarge the exportations of our spare products; with Europe's prices for our products enhanced by our enlargement of Europe's aggregate of money, our achievement next evident will be a credit balance of trade established in Europe for the merchants in the United States. At that point exchange on London would sell in Wall street at a discount. This means a draft on gold payable seven days from date offered at a discount in standard silver dollars-the despised, stigmatized 50-cent-silver piece in Wall street, held at a premium over gold in London. It means our silver dollars and our gold coin at par; bimetallism a reality in the United States. Our prosperity as her example, and to such a degree at her expense, is likely to enforce the influence of Manchester's opinion of English monometallism, the result of which may mean the abandonment of England's vicious monetary system soon. Europe's only silver is her money. Europe's silver coin is valued from 3.06 cents to over 13.33 cents per dollar more than ours. Her "silver pots and spoons" carry the price of labor in them. She will ship us gold, therefore, rather than silver, at a minimum preference of 3 per cent.

GOLD DESPISED IN 1853.

Our "goldites" would dismiss all this on the ground of an overabundance of silver. Had the most influential doctrinaire in money in Europe been as influential with lawmakers in 1853, as our aforesaid tutor was influential with law dictators in 1893, France would have closed her mints to gold. Silver monometallism would have been the coinage system of the world. Chevalier threatened France with an abundance of gold as cheap and overwhelming as iron. Silver is the overabundant prediction of our doctrinaires. Note, however, that $5,000,000 worth of silver bullion is at this moment an overestimate for the world's distributing-markets' supplies of silver.

INDEPENDENT BIMETALLISM ACHIEVED.

Finally, our "goldites," and in particular our tutor aforesaid, distort history for proof that bimetallism has proved itself a failure; and that independent bimetallism in the United States during eighty years, furnished the experience for the certainty of failure if attempted now. The facts, justly handled, refute both assertions flatly.

The world's great mints were never open to gold and silver without limit on a single price among them for each metal. In consequence, every seeming divergence between a market price and a mint price for either metal was invariably a difference between mint prices. Divergence between one mint price and another, or other mint prices, has to answer in history for every annoying flight of gold, or of silver internationally. By undervaluing gold relative to silver, compared with the French mint's valuation of gold relative to silver, our coinage act of 1792 caused our merchants to choose gold preferably to silver for their foreign settlements, following 1792. By undervaluing silver relative to gold, compared with the French mint's relative valuation of the two, in our coinage act of 1834, we made our inerchants choose silver preferably to gold for foreign settlements thereafter. This divergence between mint prices-not divergence between our mint price and any market price-cost us gold in one period and cost us silver in the other, for the reason only that during most of both periods we were usually the debtors in balancing our foreign trade.

UNITED STATES INDEPENDENT BIMETALLISM EXPERIENCED.

Our "goldite" assertion that our said act of 1792 effectually demonetized gold by expelling it from the country, and that our act of 1834 effectually demonetized silver by expelling it, are alike refuted by indisputable records, not made for argument but reporting facts. Thus for the twelve years ending 1805, our gold coinage exceeded our silver coinage. In the eighteen years following, our gold coinage was half our silver coinage. In the nine years ending 1833 our gold coinage was one-fourth our silver coinage. And in this same period of "banished gold" (?) our trade movements of both metals were usually in one direction, usually export in excess of import of both until ending 1823. 1824 the net movement of the two was import in excess of export. 1825 refutes this gold banishing theory flatly by a net import of gold and a net export of silver. In the five years following, both metals moved together again, import in excess of export. In 1831 our "goldites" are again refuted flatly by the net import of gold with a net export of silver. Thereafter gold and silver both show import in excess of export until 1834.

In

And in the period following 1834, while "banishing silver" (?) is the assumption of our "goldites," our silver coinage in the first eight years equaled our silver coinage of the eight years prior. Our silver coinage in these first eight years exceeded by $3,000,000 our coinage of gold. In the second eight years ending 1850 we coined $18,000,000 of silver, although we were not producing silver, but were producing gold in amounts more vast than the world had known. And in the first four years of this "silver banished" (?) period our imports of silver exceeded our exports of silver by $6,000,000 more than our imports exceeded our exports of gold. For the three years ending 1842 the net movement of both metals was together, export in excess of import. And nine years after this act of 1834 our net movement was import in excess of

export for gold and silver both. Our "goldites" are refuted notably and finally in the fact that prior to our civil war no single important movement of the one metal inward and the other metal outward is the record of a year.

And note also in this connection and at this particular moment, besides the considerable sum in coins of foreign nations, circulating as our legal tender until 1857, and besides the unlimited legal tender function of half dollars, quarters, and dimes until 1853, and besides the fact that 80 per cent of all the silver dollars coined were coined after 1834, this fact, namely, that redundant bank notes which increased by more than $200,000,000 in a period of ten years, were tending all the time to house both gold and silver in quiet bank reserves.

FRANCE A SAFE CRITERION.

Finally, I regret profoundly that space forbids the mention of inde pendent bimetallism in France and the record of her mint dictation of the world's market price for gold and silver during a period of seventy years. On the closing of her mints against silver in 1874 France had $900,000,000 of gold and $700,000,000 of silver circulating side by side as money. Her population barely exceeded 35,000,000. Our present population exceeds 65,000,000, with a promise of exceeding the aggregate population of Great Britain and France within ten years; and our use for gold and silver is for a circulation over a territory seventeen times the area of France.

I will append a portion of her record and a table for the printed report.

INDEPENDENT BIMETALLISM OF FRANCE.

By act of her Corps Legislatif, March 28, 1803, "5 grams of silver, nine-tenths fine, constitute the money unit, which retains the name of franc."

The articles prescribed the same fineness for gold coin, and direct the coining of 20-frane and 40-franc gold pieces, as well as 5-frauc and smaller silver pieces. A thousand grams of gold, nine-tenths fine, are to yield 3,100 francs; and at the rate of 5 grams to the franc, 1,000 grams of silver are to yield 200 francs-the mint price of gold, therefore, being 15.5 times the mint price of silver; the 1-franc silver pieces being, as absolutely as gold pieces, the unlimited legal-tender coin of France, and they continued to be until the founding of the Latin Union in 1865. As already noted, the 5-frane silver piece continues to be unlimited legal tender in France, and, therefore, the full equivalent of gold in France, although no longer coined, and at the relative price for gold of 15.5 times silver in the existing coins.

Appended hereto are tables CD, reporting in dollars the gold and silver coinage of France during the seventy years in which her mints were open to the unlimited coining of both gold and silver, at a moderate charge, into unlimited primary moneys. And there will appear the world's production of gold and silver during this period, showing astounding variations in quantities of each produced, and yet as notable an approach to fixity during the period in the relative market price of gold and silver.

While the coinage of either metal was by the voluntary act of its owner all the time, the coinage showing as good a use as any other to which the owner could put it, or a charge for coining would not have been paid, we note with astonishment the following: