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"NOT HAY RACKS" 
 
 " But more hay," is the way Tom Reed puts it in 
 speaking of the Silver Craze to his neighbors and 
 friends, at Alfred, Maine, recently. It is a homely 
 illustration, but nevertheless is as forcible as it 
 is true. 
 
 This is what Mr. Reed said : 
 
 " If I were going to give good advice to the people of the whole United States I 
 should take this time to do it. Just now there is a good deal of froth and foam in the 
 air, and some time is really needful to disclose clearly to every eye how much of it is 
 the result of the temporary breeze which stills at nightfall, and how little there is of 
 that heavy ground swell which shows that great elementary forces are at work. How 
 .very suddenly all this rush and stir has set itself into action. 
 
 ' ' Two months ago no man of any standing would have risked his reputation as a 
 prophet by hinting the slightest doubt of Republican success. Four years of actual 
 trial of the opposition, under the guidance of its bes.t and twice- trusted leader, had 
 left no shadow of question as to public duty. However far the Republican party 
 might have fallen short of perfection, nevertheless all men felt that it was the best 
 party just now to draw nigh to for whatever is to be left to us of sound government, 
 commercial success, and business prosperity. 
 
 " On that we were all agreed ; some of us, who were Democrats, regretfully, for 
 we all hate to be classed with the unsuccessful, whose condemnation is at hand, even 
 if we gain by the change ; others of us, who were Republicans, cheerfully, but with- 
 out exultation ; for we know how hard the task must be to rebuild out of the ruins of 
 the last four years the stately mansions of national happiness, prosperity, and self- 
 respect, wherein our people lived until that unfortunate election of 1892. 
 
 "Two months have slipped away hardly time to ripen a strawberry, much less 
 a system of finance and there are those who tell us that all things have changed, 
 that those very men who were being arrayed for decent burial had burst the cere- 
 ments of the grave, and, transfigured by some new arrangement of crowns of thorns 
 and crosses of gold, were to lead us to a new happiness, and even repair all the 
 damage they themselves had wrought. 
 
 "Now this may be so, but to me it does not seem probable Human experience 
 in every walk of life teaches us that those who have blundered will blunder again, 
 and that the wisest course is not to employ a ship captain who has not yet emerged 
 from his last shipwreck, but the safe sailor, who has never lost a ship, a passenger, or 
 a letter, but who has sailed safe through every sea. He may have lost masts and 
 sails, and even been rudderless for hours, but if he has every time come safe to shore, 
 better have him than all the landsmen who are forever shouting what they can do, 
 and never dare to tell of what they have done. Boasters are worth nothing. Deeds 
 are facts, and are forever and ever. Talk dies on the empty air. Better a pound of 
 performance than a shipload of language. 
 
 "But is it wise or just to class all Democrats together, and to declare them all 
 wrong, then announce they must be beaten because they are Democrats ? That would 
 be very unwise, very unjust, and senseless altogether. It would flout all history, and 
 especially our own. Parties are one thing, their individual members may be another. 
 
 M&6252 
 
^ -^ > 
 
 2 NOT HAY RACKS. 
 
 Parties seldom follow their best men. They follow their average sense. In real 
 action there can never be but two parties, the creating party and the retarding party. 
 The progressive party may be unwise in its progress, and the retarding party may be 
 unwise in its conservatism, but both serve a good purpose, and between them both 
 the world slowly and safely moves ahead. Dreadfully slowly sometimes, but it does 
 always move ahead. 
 
 "Perhaps some one will say here we have a creative party which has sprung up 
 in a night like a mushroom and created a new system of finance. My friends, you 
 will find that that mushroom is not good to eat, and that that progress will land you 
 in the ditch. Now all progress avoids ditches. I have said that it would be unwise, 
 unjust and senseless to confound the Democratic organization with individual Demo- 
 crats. I have said, also, that that would be flouting a part of our own history, and a 
 glorious part of our history, too why, it is within the memory of a third, and, 
 perhaps, half of this very audience which listens to me, that when the terrible war of 
 the rebellion burst forth tens of thousands of Democrats, politicians, strong party 
 men, sprang to their feet, representing hundreds of thousands, aye, millions, and 
 thenceforth and always were part and parcel of the bone and sinew of the victorious 
 republic. What matter if the party had gone wrong? They were right. One man . 
 among them, one man alone, by a single sentence gave aid and succor to this Gov- 
 ernment which outweighed a whole army corps of veterans, musket on shoulder. 
 
 "When Stephen A. Douglas declared, after Sumter was fired on, that "thence- 
 forth there could be but two parties, patriots and traitors," he won the respect even of 
 foes and an imperishable place in history. We shall certainly welcome all suck 
 men to-day, not that they are to be Republicans, for they will not be, but because 
 they are patriots, for that they must be. Two mouths ago, as I have already said, 
 everybody conceded the election of the Republican ticket. What has happened 
 since then ? Have the four years of history been blotted out ? Not one scrap of 
 them. Is our condition any better? Rather worse. Has the party changed any 
 which caused the most of our unhappiness ? Yes, there has been a change, but it 
 has been for the worse. Its best men are leaving it. If this nation has thrice at 
 the polls condemned this party when it was better, are we now going to place it 
 in power when it has got worse ? If they blundered on business with their best mea 
 present, are they going to be a success on finance with their best men absent ? 
 
 " But we are all in a bad way, and something must be done. Yes, we are in a bad 
 way, and something must be done, but don't make the mistake of thinking that any 
 something will do. A sick man in proper cases had better take medicine, but he had 
 better be careful what medicine he takes. There are some political orators who think 
 if they can draw a rose-colored picture it ought to convert a continent. What a rosy 
 picture we had painted for us in 1892 ! What millions we were to expect ! We were 
 to sell in the dearest and buy in the cheapest market. We were to have both ends 
 of the bargain. We took their word for it, and here we are. And now the least 
 credible part of these same gentlemen are smearing the canvas with another picture, 
 for which they want us to pay another four years, or perhaps ten, of this nation's 
 life. Men deceived once are human ; men deceived twice by the same men are fools. 
 
 "There is another class of political orators which deserve reprobation the oratory 
 which paints the enemy in deep black. If anybody had curiosity to see what I said 
 of our opponents in 1892 they will find that I did not venture any denunciation which 
 depicts one-tenth of the evil which has happened. When I told you, two years ago, 
 what we Republicans would do if chosen, I drew no fine 'picture, but simply said to 
 you that all we could do would be to prevent evil . That we did, and it takes a good 
 deal of sense sometimes to do no evil. We tried to do better, and had the Democrats 
 
NOT HAY RACKS. 3 
 
 from the North risen above party for good, as the six silver Senators sank below party 
 for evil, the revenues of this country would have been equal to its expenditures, and 
 we should have been- two years nearer prosperity. 
 
 " Greeting you this time with the same frankness, I am bound to say that the vile 
 which has come to us by an unwise revision of the tariff has been greatly aggravated 
 by one of its consequences our loss of revenue. Had there been no deficit then a 
 hundred millions of borrowed gold would have carried us through the crises safe and 
 sound. As it was, the constant drain of the deficit, continually confounded with the 
 redemption of gold, has so afflicted the imagination of our people that confidence can- 
 not commence to be restored until our revenues equal our expenses. 
 
 " Periods of depression are common to the human race. Doubtless you and I 
 think that if we had had the world to make we would have had human progress 
 arranged on a continuous up grade, ten feet or better to the mile. But God knows 
 human nature more perfectly, and knows we could never stand such monotony, and 
 must go up hill and down dale. But while depressions are common, they have their 
 aggravating causes, which must be removed. Then when confidence conies prosperity 
 follows. How I think that can be reached I will tell you soon. 
 
 "Meantime, let us see what is proposed by those gentlemen who, within the last 
 two months, have discovered a new cure for all the ills flesh is heir to, and who pro- 
 claim, as they did four years ago, that they alone hold prosperity in their grasp. 
 
 "Their remedy is the coinage of silver at 16 to I. What does that mean ? 
 
 "Heretofore, whenever gold and silver have stood together it has been at the 
 market value. When we tried to make gold and silver circulate together we have 
 always married them according to their market value. To-day we find them, not 
 16 to i, but 31 to i, and we are going, they say, to lift silver to twice its value, not by 
 the universal sense of mankind, which alone makes values, but by the statute of the 
 United States, single handed against the civilized world. 
 
 " Why should the United States try to do this alone ? If the demonetization of 
 silver is a disease at all it is a world disease. I defy anybody to find a single 
 argument which proves that the demonetization of silver would be good for the 
 United States, that does not prove that it would be good for the whole world. If 
 it is a world disease how can it be reached except by a world remedy ? International 
 bimetallism, I can understand, but this driving out of gold and substitution of silver 
 is only silver monometallism for the United States. 
 
 " It is not bimetallism for the world and a stable currency, but the shifting from 
 gold currency and civilized Europe and going over to silver and Mexico, Japan, India 
 and China. Oh, but China and Japan, India and Mexico are prosperous just now ! 
 Yes, but what kind of prosperity ? The prosperity of cheap labor growing cheaper 
 every day. Manufacturers there may be prosperous, and traders may be prosperous, 
 but the people are not prosperous at all. Up here in Maine and New Hampshire 
 paper pulp is made cheap. How ? Because the manufacturer is close to cheap labor. 
 In silver countries labor is cheap and kept cheap by the silver dollar. For my part I 
 do not want that kind of prosperity. I want a prosperity which by good wages to all 
 is shared by all. We want a broader life, broadening every day for all our people. 
 
 " I won't discuss the question whether the free coinage of silver will raise it to 
 par or not. Very few people claim that it will, and if they did I could not believe 
 them. I was told in 1890 by two of the most sincere as well as the ablest silver 
 men that the purchase of 4,500,000 ounces a month would raise silver to par, and 
 when we did buy it silver went down like lead. Silver men have not been good 
 prophets in the past. 
 
 " If then we are going to have a dollar inferior to what we have to-day, what 
 
4 NOT HAY RACKS. 
 
 Will be the effect of it? Higher prices, they say. Not for everything. If you have' 
 $100 in the savings bank to-day you can get 100 gold dollars from the bank. If- 
 this wild project succeeds and you are paid in silver, you will get the $100, but 
 they will be 50- or 60- or yo-cent dollars. If you have a pension, that must be 
 scaled down. If you have a bond, that goes down, too. 
 
 ''Will the wage-earner be any better off? What you buy will go up. Will 
 your wages go up, too ? There you have experience to guide you. Wages during 
 greenback times measured in gold did not go up as other things did. They went 
 part way, but not all the way up, and were very slow about that. But wouldn't 
 business be better for more money ? It might be after a terrible crash with bad" 
 currency, and then we would have to get back again. Brandy may seem to 
 strengthen, but plain bread and meat are the surest. 
 
 ' ' What we want is not more money, but more capital. Money always comes 
 with capital. We have money now, more than we can use, lying idle. We have just 
 exported a lot of it. Money is the transferrer of capital, a."; a hayrack and horse is a 
 transferrer of hay. More hayracks will never make more hay, but more hay will 
 require more hayracks, and is sure to get them. 
 
 " If I sell my house in Portland, or mortgage it for $5,000, and sent the result to 
 a Washington State coal mine and it is spent and comes back to Casco Bank, my 
 $5, ooo worth of capital is in Washington just the same. What this whole country 
 needs is capital from abroad, from the whole world. I expect some of you will be 
 surprised and ask whether the world of the United States is not immense and sufficient. 
 Immense, yes ; sufficient, no. 
 
 " Our capital is great, but the United States is very much greater. There are mil- 
 lions of square miles and 75,000,000 of people and undeveloped riches without stint. 
 But there is not capital enough to keep 75,000,000 people at work. When are we the 
 most prosperous? It is when the 75,000,000 are all at work, and when that happens 
 we borrow of the rest of the world thousands of millions of dollars. Let me give 
 you one plain proof of the fact that money comes with capital. 
 
 "In 1890 we were prosperous. Our people were all at work. Consequently there 
 were good wages, and wealth greatly increased. At that time the figures show that 
 in that year we had $190,000,000 of gold more than we had in 1882 every bit of that 
 had been imported or kept, the product of our own mines. It was busy transferring 
 this vast capital we had borrowed and that which we owed ourselves. 
 
 " Now, just as soon as this election is over and the future possession of the United 
 States is assured, both as to money and to the employment of our people, capital is- 
 ready to come to us from abroad and from our own people, and we shall again be 
 prosperous. I know this plain, temperate statement does not seem so high colored as 
 will be given by speakers who are not really responsible for what they say, but it has 
 one advantage it will be found to be true. 
 
 " God keeps the future for Himself. Only His eye can see in the fulness of truth 
 the days to come, but He has left us some glimpses of them in the past, and if men 
 will only take guidance from experience they will, as they can in no other way, show 
 their superiority over the brutes which perish. 
 
 " You and I, my friends, have been together for twenty years ; two-thirds the life 
 of a generation of men. It would be singular if the past could give us no help in this 
 crisis of our affairs. But it can. We have been through all this once before. The 
 Greenbackers of 1878 were not bad men. They were sincere, and had a better case 
 than the silver men of to-day. In fact, it was much the same case. We must have 
 artificial inflation and cheaper money, they said, or blackest ruin awaited us. It was 
 a hard time. Prices were low and work was scarce ; taxes were high and debts hard 
 to pay, but we persevered and resumed specie payments. From that moment the 
 capital of the world was at our disposal. We had a good tariff, which makes us do all 
 our own work, and from 1879 to 1893 fourteen years of prosperity which placed the 
 United States in a great position in the world. 
 
 " If we do the like thing to-day, like things will follow. With revenues equal to 
 ur emergencies undue export of gold will cease. With the certainty that the dollar 
 paid will be equal to the dollar lent will come credit and confidence. With that other 
 certainty that we are to do all our own work will come the earning of wages steadily 
 increasing, which is the basis of that prosperity which is alone worthy of this great 
 nation, the prosperity of the whole people." 
 
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 JUL 16! 
 
 
 
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