Free silver

“ By the remonetization of silver, money will cease to be the object of commerce, and will again become its beneficent instrument. Activity will replace stagnation, movement will supplant inertia, courage will banish fear; confidence will dispel doubt; hope will supersede despair.
The lifting up of silver to its rightful plane by the side of gold will set in motion all the latent energies of the people. It will banish involuntary idleness, by putting every willing man to work. It will revive business, and reanimate the heart and hope of the masses. ”

“ Hardy, adventurous, and skillful miners from the United States, and capitalists from all countries, have ransacked the world in vain for new fields of gold. Why, then, with the knowledge of those facts before us, should we discard from the full money use and function the only metal that gives to the world any prospect of relief from the money famine from which civilization is now suffering and from which, if silver be not speedily restored to its ancient use and function, the world is destined to suffer much more? ”

“ I feel a conviction, as strong as the human mind can have, that the free coinage of silver now by the United States will be a grave mistake and a misfortune to all classes and conditions of our fellow-citizens. I also have a hope and belief, but far from a certainty, that the measure proposed for the purchase of silver bullion to a limited amount, and the issue of Treasury notes for it, will bring silver and gold to the old ratio, and will lead to an agreement with other commercial nations to maintain the free coinage of both metals. ”

“ If with free silver we receive only the quantity of silver we are required to purchase by existing law, the United States would pay over $13,000,000 a year more than if purchased at the market value, and this vast sum would be paid annually as a bounty to the producers of silver bullion. ”

“ Such an overvaluation of silver would mean that silver would be imported from Mexico, India, China, and other silver countries, as well as mined in larger quantities and coined in the United States, thus depreciating the currency both greatly and suddenly. The proposal was well satirized by a cartoon in the "free silver" campaign of 1896 representing the United States as a ship sailing over Niagara Falls in order to reach smooth sailing below the falls,—if only it survive the shock of the fall! ”

“ If I can show that for a period of seventeen years, since its demonetization in 1873, silver has lost none of its purchasing power, none of its command over commodities; that is to say, if I can show that 4121⁄2 grains of silver to-day, uncoined, and shorn by hostile legislation of its principal element of value—the money use—will buy as much as would 4121⁄2 grains of silver in 1873 (when our silver dollar bore a premium over gold) of all the articles that enter into the daily consumption of the people, it must be manifest that silver has not fallen in value. ”

“ President, the single gold standard is an expensive luxury for our people to maintain.
Those who deride silver as a money-metal indulge in feeble attempts at sarcasm by inquiring why we do not advocate the use of tin and brass as money. They speak and write as though the idea of using silver as money were a recent discovery or invention of people engaged in silver mining. They also ignore the fact that the standard silver dollar of the United States, which, with much satisfaction, they stigmatize as a 72-cent dollar, requires a gold dollar to obtain it. ”

“ No more patriotic or public-spirited class of citizens can be found within the borders of the Union. Their business is an honorable one. When they entered upon it they, in common with other citizens, had the warrant of time, and the authority of all writers and thinkers on political economy, for the belief that silver was, and would ever be, a money metal, entitled to that full credit which from time immemorial had been accorded to it. Silver, equally with gold, had been consecrated by all the ages to the money use, and was dedicated to such use by the Constitution of the United States. ”

“ We hear it said by the Republicans that free silver would drive gold out of the country; our Democratic friends tell us that free silver will not drive gold out of the country. So we see on that point people seem to differ in opinion. For my part I believe that free silver either will drive the gold out or else it will not. I want to ask the Republicans to acknowledge for the sake of argument that silver would not drive the gold out. ”

“ The full use of silver, too, would stop the increased demand for gold, and thus prevent any further rise in its price. It is because no one can speak with certainty that I insist that no change in the ratio can be intelligently made until both metals are offered equal privileges at the mint. When we have the free and unlimited coinage of gold and silver at the present ratio, then, and then only, can we tell whether any of the apparent fall in the bullion price of silver is due to circumstances over which we have no control, if so, how much? ”

“ Is it desirable that we should have more money? Does the maintenance of the gold standard involve injustice or hardship to debtors, or to any class in the community? Does it have any ill effects in hampering industry or checking the advance of production? Is the free coinage of silver, or any measure leading ultimately to a silver basis, fairly open to the objections commonly urged against it on the grounds of dishonesty and injustice?... ”

“ Now our gold standard men are in the position of those who first refuse to look at anything beyond the two things, gold and silver, to see what has happened, and who, when it is finally demonstrated that all other things retain their former relations to silver, still persist that the law which makes gold an unchanging standard of measure is more immutable than that which holds the stars in their courses. ”

“ But so much more is this true of gold than of silver, that the dependence of modern commerce, and, through it, modern civilization, upon it is almost absolute. If, therefore, free coinage at a ratio unfair to gold were attempted, gold would cease to be offered at the mints, but it would nevertheless continue in use in final settlements, especially in transactions of some magnitude, thus preventing its decline in value. ”

“ So determined are the advocates of the single gold standard in defending the wisdom of its maintenance that facts whose existence would at ordinary times be readily admitted, are, during a discussion of the money question, pointedly denied. For example, within the past few weeks we have seen in various eastern newspaper contributions from prominent writers taking direct issue with the advocates of silver as to the prevalence of general distress throughout the country. ”

“ They are left without a shadow of consolation except that the coinage of $2,000,000 worth of silver bullion each month has not succeeded in placing silver at a par with gold. They affect to believe that the advocates of silver in 1878 expected that that metal, under the very limited demand of $2,000,000 a month, would be brought to a level with gold, which, owing to the demonetization of silver, had risen abnormally and ruinously in value. ”

“ Gold will instantly disappear from circulation to be hoarded or exported. Why will it disappear? Because every sensible person when making a payment will prefer to make it in the less valuable silver dollar and hold the more valuable gold dollar back for more profitable use. Gold will, therefore, quickly rise to a premium, and we shall be on the silver basis long before a free-coinage law can be enacted. What does it mean to be on the silver basis? ”

“ We declare our steadfast opposition to the free and unlimited coinage of silver. No measure to that end could be considered which was without the support of the leading commercial countries of the world. ”

“ While the value of gold as a standard is steadied by almost universal commercial and business use, it does not despise silver nor seek its banishment. Wherever this standard is maintained there is at its side in free and unquestioned circulation a volume of silver currency sometimes equaling and sometimes even exceeding it in amount, both maintained at a parity notwithstanding a depreciation or fluctuation in the intrinsic value of silver. ”

“ The cheaper money will always be the money in circulation. Wherever free coinage now exists silver is the only money, while where gold is the standard, silver is employed as a subsidiary coin, maintained at par in gold by the mandate of the government and its receipt for or redemption in gold. ”

“ Those who study them with care hesitate. Those who are obliged practically to decide doubt and stop, overwhelmed with the weight of the enormous responsibility.
The quantities of the precious metals which are now sufficient may become insufficient, and we should proceed with great prudence before we diminish that which constitutes a part of the riches of the human race. Sometimes gold takes the place of silver. Sometimes silver takes the place of gold. This keeps up the general equilibrium. Nobody can guaranty that the present vast production of gold will continue. ”

“ Smith's assertion that "a conspiracy had been formed among the financial class in Europe and America to get rid of silver as full-valued money in order to increase the value of gold, in which their revenues are paid." ”

“ An increase of fully twenty-five per cent in the country’s supply of gold, the silver advocates argued, should be followed by a proportionate addition to the monetary use of the despised white metal. The mints were working at fullest capacity turning gold into coin under the Free Coinage of Gold Act. Surely a country with such a plethora of gold, in spite of the croakings of the monometallists less than a year ago, could afford to admit some silver to the mints to take its chance with the more valuable metal. ”

“ If gold, so important a factor in our medium of exchange both at home and abroad, should retire before silver—the cheaper money (and the light of experience surely proves that it would) can any one doubt that we would at once go on to a silver basis? Can any one doubt that the $625,300,000 of silver now used as money in this country would not instantly be cut in two so far as its purchasing power is concerned—that is, shrink from 100 cents, its face or nominal value, to 52 cents, its bullion value? ”

“ Have gentlemen considered the effect of a single gold standard universally adopted? Let us not deceive ourselves with the hope that we can discard silver for gold, and that other nations will take it up and keep it as a part of the world's currency. When all the silver available for coinage could gain admission to some mints and all the gold available for coinage would find a place for mintage, and some nation like France maintained the parity by means of bimetallism it was of comparatively little importance whether a particular nation used silver, or gold, or both. ”

“ Only for such things as can be produced cheaper in other countries than here, or such things as cannot be produced here at all, or if at all, not in sufficient quantities to supply the demand—such as coffee, tea, sugar, and some other products of manufacture. But for these we export cotton, breadstuffs, and provisions, which are cheaper than gold, and which must go to foreign markets or be a total loss to the producers. Gold, by an inexorable law, has remained here with the limited, and by the same law it will remain with the unlimited, coinage of silver. ”

“ Those who have accomplished this wrong affect to scorn the proposition that legislation could restore to silver its old value, ignoring the fact that the present apparent depreciation is due entirely to unfriendly legislation, and conveniently forgetting that with silver, everything else is at a discount when measured by gold. That is, gold is inflated by the discriminations which have been made in its favor. The chief use of silver in the world is for a measure of values, as the chief use of wheat is for material out of which to make bread. ”

“ Still another vague impression has been produced upon the popular mind, that the old silver dollar of the fathers is a sure medicine for all economic ailments, and our Democratic friends are loudly demanding “the removal of all restrictions to the coinage of silver and the reëstablishment of silver as a money metal—the same as gold, the same as it was before its demonetization.” Upon this point I shall permit myself only a very few remarks. Every sensible man will be in favor of silver coin as a part of our monetary system. ”

“ The converse of all this would happen if silver, instead of gold, were the metal which had risen in comparative value. A sovereign would not now be worth so much as twenty shillings, and whoever had a pound to pay would prefer paying it by a sovereign; while the silver coins would be collected for the purpose of being melted, and sold as bullion for gold at their real value, that is, above the legal valuation. The money of the community, therefore, would never really consist of both metals, but of the one only which, at the particular time, best suited the interest of debtors ”

“ The tendency of late among commercial nations is to the adoption of a single standard of gold and the issue of silver for fractional coin. We may, by ignoring this tendency, give temporarily increased value to the stores of silver held in Germany and France, until our market absorbs them, but, by adopting a silver standard as nearly equal to gold as practicable, we make a market for our large production of silver, and furnish a full, honest dollar that will be hoarded, transported, or circulated, without disparagement or reproach. ”