Carl Schurz

“ Immediately after the election everybody was inclined to think that the movement for free coinage and repudiation had received its death-blow, that the American people had successfully stood the crucial test of their honesty and good sense, and that the party raised to power would instantly take up the problem of currency reform with intelligence and fidelity. ”

“ When last winter, during the short session of the late Congress, the Committee of Ways and Means of the House invited manufacturers and others interested in productive industries to appear in Washington for a hearing, they ought to have known that such an invitation was equivalent to the opening before the whole country of a big grab-bag into which every one desiring to get an advantage through tariff legislation would be at liberty to thrust his hands. ”

“ The failure to do anything serious during all these months, after a victory won by a combination of forces formed on this very ground, has not only a pungent flavor of faithlessness about it, but, if much longer continued, it will gravely imperil the possibility of doing anything valuable in the future, and thus doom the party in power to merited disgrace and defeat. ”

“ The conduct of the Republicans in Congress last winter gave this hope the first shock. And now the utter neglect with which the monetary problem is treated after the assembling of Congress in special session makes people believe, here as well as abroad, that the American people may be sensible and honest enough, but that they have fallen under the control of politicians who either do not know what to do with the victory they have won, or who wantonly run after strange gods ”

“ So long as such opinions prevail among investors and business men generally there will be no confidence. And so long as there is no confidence there will be no real revival of prosperity. And if by the time the next Congressional election comes on confidence is not restored in a sufficient degree to permit a perceptible revival of prosperity, the Republicans will be beaten and lose their majority in the House of Representatives. ”

“ If they lose that, their power over legislation and currency reform will be gone. They will then approach the next Presidential election with nothing to show except a tariff likely to provoke a violent reaction by itself, and a record of broken pledges as to the money question and perhaps some other things. The result will be their utter discomfiture. This is as certain as fate and as plain as the multiplication table. What the consequences of such a defeat would be, nobody can now foretell. ”

“ There is much less of that confidence now than there was immediately after the late Presidential election. Whoever wishes to satisfy himself of this fact need only listen to the reasoning of those who have capital to put into business ventures, and who, under more reassuring circumstances, would be willing and even eager to do so. ”

“ No sensible person will regard the sending out of those amiable gentlemen in search of international bimetallism as a step in that line. Could not that aimless missionary venture be looked upon as a mere perfunctory compliance with the words of the Republican platform, it would appear as a mockery of the efforts and hopes of those who in the late Presidential campaign honestly fought for sound money. ”