Britain-are to-day in favor of utilizing silver and gold.

It has been demonstrated over and over again by Mr. Balfour, by Prof. Foxhall, by Mr. Grenfell, and by other writers, many in number, that the creditor interests of England are not to be damaged by the union of the two metals, that it will so revive the trade of the world and the business of the world as to overcome and overbalance all that may come to a few annuitants or interest-receiving people as respects the great credits of England, and in addition their investments will be made more secure.

So I state here as my belief that if we will have patience upon this question and deal with it in a statesmanlike way, as was proclaimed by Mr. Ingham more than fifty years ago; if we will dismiss from our minds our prejudices and our party leanings and deal with it as a great question involving our country in its integrity and in its interests, we shall soon see the time when silver and gold will travel side by side. I have no idea that the accidental production of $100,000,000 of silver now as against $50,000,000 of gold, or $100,000,000 of gold hereafter against $50,000,000 of silver weighs as a thread in the balance. It is not the overproduction or underproduction of these metals that affects them. There is lying behind the silver in its pathway now nearly $4,000,000,000, of silver that is only a local currency, and that in a sense drags down the annual production of our mines.

Thus believing, I know of no interest in the United States that can possibly favor the suggestions which have been made which lead to a silver standard and which will bring a silver standard. Surely, it is not

the purpose of those who want a silver standard, or who want to rehabilitate silver, to change the measure of 7alue of all the things we consume, of all the wages of labor, of all production, of the relations of debtor and Breditor, whatever they may be, since 1880, if you please, when the large debts were incurred. Shall it be said that we favor the scaling down of debts? Shall it be said that the $6,500,000,000 of railroad bonds shall be scaled down?

When you come to the question of debts of twenty years ago they are very few indeed. It is stated by those who have examined the subject that debts on the average are only nine months old. I appeal to the experience of any business man. How does he manage to continue to have the same creditor for a period of twenty years? These changes come and go as the tides come and go. The railroads that have borrowed $6,500,000,000, it is said, and mortgaged their railways, never expect to pay a dollar of it, except in the form of a renewal of those mortgages.

Those mortgages are as much a part of the system of railways in every country on the face of the globe as are the cars or the engines. As their 6 per cent. investments mature, if the rate of interest is lower they refund the loans; and so it goes on and on forever, with increasing celerity and activity as respects railroads. So with the business men of our country, our savings banks, our manufacturers, our farmers, our producers. Debts created this year or five years ago are paid today. They are paid by a new loan at a reduced rate of interest or in some other form by accumulation of earnings. If you go back thousands of years it is found that the reason originally or one of the great reasons,

why silver and gold are stable relatively as respects the quantity, that whatever fluctuations or changes there might be, or depreciation or appreciation in value of the metals, would be such an appreciation or depreciation as would spread itself over a series of years and thus do no harm to anybody.

You may take silver and gold outside of their use as money and they are worth very little in comparison, although it is said now that one-half of the current production of gold is used in the arts; but for this purpose alone there is an accumulated supply which would last for fifty years. I have no doubt that more than that is so used, and it is for that reason, among others, that I believe it will be only a short period before there will be a full rehabilitation of both metals.

So believing, and believing that the industrial inter ests of this country, its wage earners, its farmers, its producers in every section and every State of the Union will be injured by transferring ourselves suddenly from the standard of money upon which all our obligations have been made and all their arrangements are being perfected is a mistake, and a mistake greatly to their injury.

WBallism

CHAPTER VIII.

BY HON. J. STERLING MORTON, SECRETARY OF AGRI. CULTURE.

WHEN one declares: "I am in favor of the free coinage of silver at the ratio of sixteen to one," does he not admit that he is a gold monometallist? Is not the "one" spoken of in his declaration a gold unit?

The farmers of the United States evolve from the earth by hard labor all cereals, fruits and other food. The prices of these products are determined by the relation of the supply to the demand for them. Farmers have never called upon the legislative power of the government to establish remunerative prices for the results of their labor. The miner and smelter, by the same sort of exertion, evolves from the earth silver bullion; and why should the people evoke for him the authority of law to establish for his product an artificial price? Conscientiously and consistently, for many years, many citizens have antagonized a protective tariff, because it, by law, pats an artificial price on the things they have to buy; and it seems now as though the same citizens ought to oppose the free coinage of silver at the ratio of 16 to 1, because, by law, it puts an artificial price on silver. When silver bullion is selling at less than 70 cents per ounce on the market, its free coinage into 4121 grain dollars, which are made a legal tender for all debts public and private, forces it upon the people at the rate of $1.29 per ounce. Therefore,

Is not the free coinage of silver at the ratio of 16 to 1 the application of the protective tariff principle to domestic affairs? Ought not all those who heretofore antagonized the protective system also, by the same reasoning, to antagonize the free coinage of silver?

Why should any good citizen advocate a monetary system which will compel the gold miner to dig until he has secured 100 cents' worth of that metal, at its bullion value, before he can demand a dollar for the same; and will at the same time allow the silver miner a dollar for every 50 cents' worth of silver bullion that he gets out? The farmer never gets a dollar for 50 cents' worth of wheat. Why then should he advocate the free coinage theories by which the miner or owner of silver bullion is to receive more than a dollar for every 50 cents' worth of that metal? Is not the free coinage of silver, as proposed to-day, a scheme for placing a premium upon mine labor and mine products, which farm labor and farm products must pay?